Some years ago I had the chance to meet and listen to the late Stephen J. Cannell. Cannell was, of course, the television wunderkind who created such shows as The Rockford Files, Baretta, The A-Team, 21 Jump Street, and others. He wrote at least 450 filmed television scripts. The guy had a Midas typewriter.
In the 90s he started writing crime fiction, then a series of books featuring LAPD detective Shane Scully.
So Cannell was on this panel with Robert Crais and T. Jefferson Parker. Someone asked him a writing question, and Cannell said something to the effect that he always asks, “What’s the bad guy doing?”
Even when the bad guy wasn’t “onstage,” Cannell would be pondering: “What’s the bad guy doing?”
It’s a great question! We writers seldom give the offstage players any mind. I’ve written before of the power of the “shadow story.”What’s the bad guy doing? is one of the key questions to ask in that regard.
Note: you don’t have to be writing about a true “bad guy” to ask this question. It applies to any antagonist.
Let’s say you were writing the novel that became the movie The Fugitive, starring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones (in reality the movie was based on the hit 1960s TV series starring David Janssen, created by Roy Huggins). In the movie Jones plays U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard. He’s not a bad guy. He is in fact a good guy who happens to be tasked with nabbing Dr. Richard Kimble and sending him back to Death Row.
Let us further suppose that you were writing the novel in First Person or Limited Third Person POV (where you stay with one character’s perspective throughout). You would be in Kimble’s head as he comes home to confront the one-armed man who murdered his wife. Then would come the trial and Kimble’s wrongful conviction.
Next, the prison bus mishap, the train crash, the escape! Then Kimble struggles through the night with his wound and his prison uniform. And you’d come to the next morning when he sneaks into the rural hospital to dress his wound, get some civvies, shave, and get out of there without being noticed.
All very tense. Good job, novelist!
Finally Kimble gets out of the hospital, but not before he is recognized by a wounded prison guard from the bus. To keep the guy quiet Kimble pushes an oxygen mask on his face. And as the paramedics rush the guard inside, Kimble tells them to let the attending doctor know the guy has a puncture in his upper gastric area.
Which causes one of them to ask, “How the hell does he know by looking at him?”
Kimble then hops in the ambulance and takes off.
Nice scene, there, writer! The opening act has been awesome!
But then you come to your project the next day and can’t figure out what to write next. If you’re a pure pantser, of course, you can write about anything. So you do a scene where Kimble falls into a giant hole that spits takes him back in time to the Battle of Little Big Horn. There he tries to save as many wounded as possible until…
Oh bollix, you think. I wish I’d done some outlining! And I wish I knew why I keep using the word bollix!
Now what?
Ask the Cannell question! “Hmm, what’s my antagonist doing while Kimble is at the hospital?”
The nice thing about the movie is we get to see it. We cut back to Gerard at his command post, making plans. We see what kind of team and resources he has assembled.
So back to the hospital. You’re thinking about what Sam Gerard is doing. You imagine him at the crash site, with his team gathered around him. Then one of his people runs up and says, “Hey, we just got a report. Kimble stole an ambulance!” What would Gerard do next?
Order a chopper! Let’s move!
Which gives you the idea for the next scene in your novel. Kimble looks up and sees he’s being chased from the air!
Way back when I was first trying to learn this craft of ours, and writing copious notes on what I learned, I jotted this down: Most of the craft of fiction is knowing what questions to ask at what time.
I still think that’s a pretty good insight. And What’s the bad guy doing? is a darn good question.
I spoke with author James O. Born a few weeks before New Orleans Bouchercon 2016. Jim is the real deal. He is on the cusp of retirement from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and previously worked with DEA. He was also Elmore Leonard’s go-to guy on police procedure for over two decades. Jim has written a number of classic detective novels and next year will be moving into an extremely high profile writing slot. As if that isn’t enough, he annually presents an excellent panel on weaponry at Bouchercon each year. Because I was driving to New Orleans and he was flying, Jim asked if I would mind bringing some firearms with me. Jim assured me that he had cleared the presence of the weapons with hotel security and that I would be able to bring the weapons into the host hotel without difficulty.
On the morning in question I drove to the host hotel (I was staying elsewhere) with a square box briefcase containing three handguns and a shotgun bag containing a 12 gauge shotgun. All of the firearms were unloaded. I also had my loaded concealed carry weapon of choice (and my concealed carry permit) in my pocket.The briefcase with the handguns looked like any other briefcase (something like this Filson Briefcase); the shotgun bag with the shotgun inside looked like…well, a shotgun bag with a shotgun inside. I unloaded the car and turned it over to the hotel valet, who asked me conversationally if I was going to do any hunting, to which I replied that I was assisting with a panel at the writers’ convention. I then walked into the lobby, exchanged greetings with the gentlemen at the Bell Captains’ station, then proceeded up the escalator.
I had reached the second floor and was walking toward the third floor escalator when I was approached at speed and with purpose by an unarmed security guard who asked me 1) where was I going and 2) what was I doing. I stopped, politely told him, and also mentioned that my presence had been cleared with the head of security. The security guard, civil enough but all business, told me 1) that he hadn’t been advised and 2) to put everything down. I complied; he asked me what I had in the briefcase and I told him, and also advised him that I had a concealed carry permit and a loaded revolver in my pocket. He told me to step back from the briefcase and gun bag, which I did, and then ordered me to take the revolver out of my pocket and unload it. I stepped back, and said politely, “Sir, I will comply with your request, but please note that I am in full compliance with the laws of the state of Louisiana in carrying this. I will happily show you my concealed carry permit as well.” He declined to see the permit, telling me that I had no right to bring a loaded firearm into the hotel (wrong, but I did not press the point) repeating again his order to me to remove the revolver and unload it. I offered to let him remove the gun from my pocket himself, which he declined to do. The entire time that we were having this exchange I kept my voice down, my hands away from my body (except while removing the revolver from my pocket), and my demeanor cooperative and polite. After presenting my revolver, unloading it, and setting it down (he had me keep the bullets) I suggested that we call Jim and get things straightened out. I did just that; Jim came running and after a polite exchange with the guard, the head of security was called. That gentleman confirmed with the guard that all was well, and after a bit of back and forth (which isn’t germane to our purpose today) we all went about our business. Jim’s program was terrific, as always: entertaining, funny, and extremely informative.
Courtesy cliparts.co
Why all of this? My first thought upon seeing the guard approaching was that I hoped this wasn’t going to turn into a “thing.” By “thing,” I mean the summoning of a member of the New Orleans Police Department. The department is understaffed, underpaid, and over-regulated; their default response to a lot of situations is, alas, take the subject (which, in this case, would be me) to Orleans Parish Prison. I did not want to go to Orleans Parish Prison (known locally as “OPP”). I could see myself being summarily frog-marched down a long corridor where I would be quickly lost in the bowels of the criminal justice system, undoubtedly acquiring at least a couple of sets of unwanted and untoward stretch marks before things got sorted out (not to mention losing my guns). I could have given the guard an argument about my rights, the limits to his authority, and all of that good stuff, while refusing to comply at every step along the way. No; polite and cooperative, that’s me.
Now. The guard made a bunch of mistakes in dealing with me, and they didn’t have to do with failing to recognize me (“Hey, weren’t you in LA-308?”) or stopping me to begin with. With regard to the latter, he didn’t get the memo about the presentation; stuff happens. If he detected a potential problem he should be stopping me, and I have no business being unhappy, under this fact pattern. But. There’s a right way to go about this:
– A subject is either a) a threat; b) a potential threat; or c) not a threat. If c), there is no reason to be stopping them. The guard obviously regarded me as b), maybe a). So why did he approach me while alone and unarmed? He should have had at least two people with him, so that I was semi-surrounded from the beginning, one in front of me and one on each side. Nothing threatening; just folks have a chat. A couple of the bell captains would have been fine.
– He should have taken me up on my offer to let him remove the weapon himself. That I was a) polite, b) cooperative, and c) older is no reason to assume that I’m not a threat. See the paragraph above. What if I was giving him a load of buena sierra, stopped cooperating, and suddenly pulled the gun out?
– He should have searched me further, and then moved me against a wall, away from the guns, until everything was sorted out. Instead, he let me stand away from, but within arms’ reach of, my guns, and assumed that since I had told him about my concealed carry revolver that I had nothing else untoward in my possession. I did. I was wearing a utility hack knife on a necklace sheath. On those rare instances where I have been stopped and frisked — not because of what I was doing, but because of who I was with — I have been amazed that law enforcement (or whoever) always assumes that if they find two weapons you don’t have a third on you. Some folks do, and they are not all harmless little guys such as myself, full of well-mannered intent and good cheer.
This all could have gone badly. On my end, it’s an example of how being polite, civil, and reasonable can go a long way. On the guard’s end, it’s a cautionary tale. For you, the foregoing is offered as a teaching lesson, not only for your written vignettes but also for your real world dealings. I hope it helps with both. Has anyone else had an experience like this?
Creativity time. Write an opening paragraph based on this photo. Don’t look at anyone else’s contribution first. Let’s see what we come up with! (Photo by Carol Highsmith)
Before Laura Benedict joined TKZ as a new member recently, I had lined her up for a guest spot when her new book would be launched. I hope you’ll indulge us in allowing me to keep my promise in featuring Laura and her work. Take it away, Laura.
***
When I decided that I wanted to write a series of suspense novels, I didn’t do what many writers do: plunge a character into earth-shattering change, see how they respond, rebuild their world, have a successful conclusion to the story (meaning they survive), and move on to the next book. No, I wrote a different sort of series.
My vision of the Bliss House novels came to me all at once: five novels set in the life of a grand house that was built in Virginia in 1878 by a Long Island carpetbagger named Randolph Bliss. I knew Randolph Bliss to be an evil sumbitch, but he couldn’t be my series protagonist because of the extended time period, 1876-2014,—though since the supernatural is involved, I guess he technically could have been the protagonist. But the stories that came to me weren’t primarily about Randolph, or any other human. Their common actor, the character that drives the stories, stirs up and engages in conflict, and even changes over the years, is Bliss House itself.
Rather than start the saga of Bliss House with the house’s initial construction, I wrote the last book, first. Bliss House is a contemporary novel, set around 2014. By starting at the end, I was able to jumpstart the series with a story in which my protagonist was at its most powerful. (To be clear, though, the series is actually more of a collection of novels than a series. They all work as standalones.)
Oh, did I mention that Bliss House is haunted?
I had long wanted to write a haunted house novel. My favorite gothics—Jane Eyre and Rebecca—are set in houses that heavily influence the novels’ action. And then there are the novels with actively haunted houses: The Haunting of Hill House, The Shining, Hell House, The Turn of the Screw. The Haunting of Hill House, and The Turn of the Screw appeal to me because it’s possible to imagine that their hauntings are psychological, rather than organic. One of the premises of the Bliss House novels is that a house can be imprinted with the personalities and acts of its inhabitants. Thus, by 2014, Bliss House is replete with acts of both evil and goodness. But imprinting can work both ways: a story’s characters can be heavily influenced and even changed—physically and emotionally—by a house’s personality.
Think about your own experience with houses or even other types of buildings. There are buildings that make us feel good, and energized. And then there are the places that seem to sap our energy—a house, a school, a garage, a basement—places where we’ve experienced trauma, or that signal that something is just not right. Sometimes it has to do with unsettling angles and corners. Architecture can be claustrophobic or unfriendly. Every building has a distinct personality.
Years ago I saw a film called The Enchanted Cottage and was mesmerized by its plot: a disfigured WWII pilot played by Robert Young marries a homely young woman played by Dorothy McGuire. They settle in a charming honeymoon cottage in the English countryside, and soon after their marriage, they begin to see each other differently. Whole and attractive. They’re certain that the cottage has worked some magic on them, and they’re eager to surprise their loved ones with the happy results. Of course, it’s revealed to them that they have not physically changed, but now simply see each other through the eyes of love. It’s an unabashedly romantic story, originally written as a play produced just after WWI. I am no eager fan of romantic stories, but I am fond of fairy tales with hints of darkness. Perhaps I’m the only one who saw the possibilities of darkness in this story, of the house that might have manipulated these two people for its own reasons. Was it to trick them? To expose their deepest fears and wishes?
But back to the writing backwards thing. I knew from the moment I wrote the first lines in Chapter One of Bliss House that whatever was manipulating the house’s inhabitants was threaded through the very ground on which it was built:
“The blindfold kept Allison from seeing, but the chilly air around her smelled sweet and damp. There were flowers nearby—roses, she guessed—and the drip drip drip of water. They might be underground, even in a cave. How thrilling!”
I knew Randolph Bliss and his two (consecutive) wives were at the heart of the story that began nearly a century and a half earlier. There are elements in Bliss House whose significance isn’t seen until they’re introduced in The Abandoned Heart. And there are many things in The Abandoned Heart that I couldn’t see clearly until I had written Charlotte’s Story, which takes place in the 1950s.
I remember thinking that it might be somewhat easier to write the Bliss House novels starting with the last one, rather than starting in 1878. It was not. When a book is written and published, the story is pretty much set in stone. Family lineage of the characters is already chosen and established, including numbers of siblings, and physical traits. The geography is set. The house’s reputation as a dangerous place has to be carefully constructed in order to make it reflect the first (last) book.
The one constant had to be the house, even though its appearance and bearing changes with each book. When Rainey Bliss Adams buys it in 2014, it’s in considerable disrepair because its incarnation as an inn that was the site of a brutal murder meant it was vacant for several years. Rainey makes it the showplace it was when it was first built. In the mid 1950s, in Charlotte’s Story, Bliss House bears the gothic heaviness of a house that’s seen three generations of devastating secrets. But Bliss House truly shines in The Abandoned Heart. It smells of new wood, and new gardens. It’s filled with paintings and exquisite rugs and European furniture. It is surrounded by newly-planted orchards and centuries-old woodlands. Most of its secrets are unborn, and the ones extant are fresh, and perhaps not yet dangerous.
If you read the Bliss House books, feel free to start with the last. Or the first. Or even the middle one. I don’t mind.
To move back in time the way I did seems a little crazy to me now. But the only way to be true to a story is to tell it the way it presents itself. Sometimes stories aren’t logical or easy. Here, backwards isn’t a gimmick. It’s just the way the story happened. I was lucky this time around to have a publisher who didn’t mind my doing something a bit unconventional.
I haven’t decided if The Abandoned Heart is the last you’ll hear of Bliss House. A hundred-plus year-old house has a lot of stories living inside it, and clamoring to be told. Ghosts are…noisy.
FOR DISCUSSION:
1.) Have you ever tried writing a series backwards? Or did you find new inspiration for a series by discovering a great backstory to write about?
2.) Do you believe in ghosts? Have you ever had experiences with the dead?
The Abandoned Heart is available for pre-order HERE, and will be in stores on Tuesday, October 11th. Laura will be touring throughout October and early November in Missouri, Southern Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio, and Virginia. Check her list of appearances HERE.
Last week I started organizing end-of-fiscal year tax receipts. Having just returned from Bouchercon, it was a good time to make sure I had my business trip records all in order (read: receipts stuffed into individual envelopes). At first, it was the only trip I recalled, but then I remembered a couple readings in St. Louis I could claim hotel and mileage expenses for. It seemed slim pickings, but I will be touring this month and some of next, so there will be many more envelopes. Then I remembered my writing retreats.
Way back in early January, I needed to get some serious, concentrated words on my WIP, which was due on Valentine’s Day. ( I wrote a bit about it a few Wednesdays ago on my 10K-A-Day post.) I love my family, but if there are other people in the house, my concentration flees. Sometimes I’m able to shut my office door, but I’m always wondering what’s going on on the other side of it. So I often find myself doing things that are not writing during the daylight hours, and only writing after ten p.m. when everyone has gone to bed. I love the quiet. No voices. No music. Not much happening on FaceBook. Snoring animals. Owls outside my window. Those are perfect writing conditions for my ADD brain. Sadly, the not-perfect part is that I routinely go to bed at 1:30 and get up at 7:30. It wears on a body.
So, last January I got myself an AirBnB apartment in St. Louis for several days. It was on a cul-de-sac, and very quiet. Blissfully quiet. Lonesome, even. The chair was uncomfortable and kept me upright. I was paying lots of money to be there, so I was mindful. I only had to cook for myself. (That was weird.) I didn’t stay up all that late, and I wrote in 2-3 long sessions each day. It was my second-favorite writing retreat I’d ever taken, after a solo week at an inn on Ocracoke Island in 2002. (In fact I think it was only my 2nd writing retreat, period.)
But I did get in another writing retreat this year. Over Labor Day Weekend, I went to the Nashville home of another writer—along with four other women. That was something I’d never done before. (Though I did go to a scrapbooking lake retreat around 2004. I didn’t and don’t scrapbook, but I journalled and did needlepoint. On reflection, it was probably a little odd that I went. Still, there was wine and the women were friendly.)
Writing in a crowd felt awkward at first. There was plenty of room to spread out, so we didn’t actually even have to see one another if we didn’t want to. But eventually I adjusted. Everyone was serious about getting words done. Then we gathered for meals, taking turns cooking. In the evening, there was wine and much discussion and much laughter. We talked about our careers and the industry and craft, and told stories that were harrowing or hysterically funny. It was a completely different kind of retreat.
I didn’t get more than five thousand words on that retreat. Hardly comparable to my January trip. But I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I returned energized and ready to work harder. Writing can be such a lonely job. As here at TKZ, it’s good to be with like-minded people. To share stories and advice and good news and bad. And there’s nothing like face-to-face communication with nary a computer screen in sight.
Have you ever gone on a writing retreat—alone or with other writers?
“{Pain} is justified as soon as it becomes the raw material of beauty.” –Sartre
Whenever the word “pain” is mentioned, I immediately think of MacGregor, my Dog from Hell. Now don’t get me wrong. I love MacGregor. But he’s one of the world’s most demanding, high maintenance dogs. MacGregor is a ninety-pound, natural born herding type breed, long, lean, and somewhat feral looking. He’s a veritable wolf dog. MacGregor should have been born on a sheep farm, not confined within the gated walls of sedate suburbia. At the very least, he should have been adopted by a marathon runner, not by me, the Original Couch Potato. To keep my hyper-amped dog active enough to satisfy his restless herding breed instincts, I have cycled him through a series of dog walkers, hikers, boot camp drill sergeants, and even one former K9 cop turned dog trainer and psychologist. Their unanimous (and very expensive) verdict: MacGregor is indeed The Dog from Hell.
Dog and I hit our personal nadir last month, while I was recuperating from arm surgery. I wasn’t supposed to move my arms very much, so I had his leash fastened around my waist. (Dog people will guess what’s coming next.) As we passed a nearby house, a golden retriever rushed a fence to lodge her vociferous objections to our presence; then, MacGregor lunged left to argue the point, upending me in the process. The result: several bruised ribs, plus black-and-blue contusions from shoulder to knee. (Fortunately my arms were mostly spared.)
As I was sitting in the doctor’s lab waiting to get a chest x-ray to check for broken ribs, I did some agonized reflection on my relationship with my dog. It seemed that both of us had wound up with a lousy deal in our partnership. What could I do to turn the situation around, short of starting my own sheep farm?
In a moment of desperation, I started thinking outside the box. At some point I stumbled across an interesting site: CARDA, a volunteer search dog organization. If you’re ever lost in the mountains, CARDA volunteers and their dogs are the teams who’ll come looking for you. CARDA services are free of charge to the public and law enforcement. All expenses are paid by volunteers and donations. In each CARDA certified search team, both the human and dog undergo extensive training–it takes three years of training to become certified as a CARDA search and rescue team. Both the human and the dog have to be able to handle the rigorous requirements of search and rescue operations. In a moment of foolhardy optimism about my physical ability to handle hiking anything rougher than a golf course knoll, I submitted an application to CARDA. A friendly-sounding district representative quickly invited me to attend a training class this Wednesday night. (The first class is in Malibu, my kind of place.)
Disclosure: I predict that MacGregor will prove to be a natural as a search and rescue dog, but I’m fairly certain I won’t pass muster as the human half of our equation. The good folk at CARDA may take one look at me and bounce me back to Couch Potato School, to take Remedial Treadmill 101.
But in the end, it’s not important whether the dog and I ultimately graduate as a certified search and rescue team. It’s the journey that’s important. I’ve already latched onto the search and rescue notion as interesting story material. Instead of going to the gym to work out to get in shape for CARDA training, I’ve spent copious amounts of time browsing the web to learn about the culture of search and rescue volunteers (natch, because I like web surfing, not hiking). I’ve discovered all kinds of fascinating stories and camp fire lore about the volunteer search and rescue tradition. However long I survive the training itself, my CARDA experience will serve as research for a new project that’s started bubbling around in my head. For now, I’m calling that project A Working Dog Mystery.
If The Working Dog Mysteries bear fruit, I’ll really owe it all to MacGregor. Or, to put it another way (and misquote the Rolling Stones song):
You can’t always get the dog you want
But if you try sometime you just might find
You get what you need
What about you? Has life ever handed you a lemon in terms of having a challenge or bad experience, and then you transformed that crisis into story material? Tell us about it in the Comments. Thanks!
(If you’re a skimmer, you should know up front that there’s a payoff waiting for you at the end of this post… in the form of a handful of really enlightening movie trailers that can teach you two of the most important things there is to know about storytelling.)
The best way to really learn something from a lecture or a blog or a craft book – to really cement your understanding of it – is to go out and see it in play (within a novel, or in a movie) in the real world of storytelling.
Of course, some writers hear or read something they are told will serve them and dive right into executing it within a draft. Which is a bit like doing surgery the evening after sitting in on a med school lecture, without having witnessed that surgery firsthand.
But this point of craft is too important to not approach with the precision of a surgeon. In fact, your writing road will be long, steep and bumpy – your patient just might die on your table – until you get this one critical point of storytelling firmly implanted within your story sensibilities.
(A reminder… four movie trailers await at the end of this post that will show you this principle in play.)
One of the most important aspects of storytelling, from a structural perspective, is the execution of what many of us call The First Plot (sometimes known as the “call to action”), which is the turning point following the setup of a story (consuming the first 60 to 80 pages in a novel, or about 20 to 28 minutes in a movie) and the actual dramatic spine of the narrative. The First Plot Point launches that dramatic spine by inserting something into the story that changes everything.
Think of these narrative blocks as quartiles. The first quartile is the setup. The second quartile is the hero’s response.
Response to what, you might ask? To the critical narrative moment that divides those two quartiles: the First Plot Point.
The moment where the real drama and quest – the narrative core of the story – actually and fully begins in earnest. How the hero reacts to, attacks and ultimately resolves the problem or quest launched by that FPP moment will become the story from that point forward.
Remember: It isn’t a story until something goes wrong.
And when it does, the hero must respond (because bad things will happen if she/he doesn’t)… with some combination of fleeing, fighting, navigating the unknown, finding help, seeking information or simply surviving what at first seems like unbeatable odds and imminent danger.
The First Plot Point delivers that moment. And when properly handled, does so at the optimal point (within a prescribed range) in the narrative.
So how do we go out there and find this?
How do you see it for yourself? Study it? Prove it to be valid? Or if you’re a non-believer, try to prove it to be a false creed?
Watch a movie trailer, that’s how. Because…
Every movie preview is built around the FPP moment.
Don’t go to the movies much, you say? Good news for you: Youtube is stocked with tens of thousands of movie previews. If you own a smart TV (or Apple TV or Roku), the main menu will have an entire channel devoted to nothing but previews, with literally thousands available. Thousands of opportunities – little two-minute storytelling clinics – that will show you this principle in action.
Two of the four movie trailers shown below are adapted from bestselling novels, which means the very same plot point you are looking for exists within the novel that created it.
It’s important to note, though, that the placement of the first plot point moment within a trailer (where something goes very wrong) doesn’t align with where it belongs within a novel or script. While it may, in fact, appear virtually anywhere within the two minutes of a movie trailer, the optimal placement within a novel or a script remains in a range between the 20th and 25th percentile.
In fact, if the concept itself is the draw (rather than the premise/plot), then up to two-thirds of the trailer might focus there, before it cracks wide open with a First Plot Point that shatters the calm
One other thing to notice.
In addition to the First Plot Point, you will also sense the nature of the setup narrative (the first quartile of the actual story… novel or script) that precedes it. Remember, no matter how much or how little of it you notice in the trailer, the setup is everything that happens before everything goes wrong (thus comprising the entire first quartile of a novel), even when some of it contributes to that pivot.
The first quartile setup is where the concept of your story, as a narrative framework, is shown to the audience.
Okay, let’s watch some movie trailers and find those FPPs.
Jack Reacher, from a novel by Lee Child
Who doesn’t like the Reacher series, right? Well, more than a few didn’t approve of Tom Cruise being cast as Reacher in the first film… but he’s back, and this preview doesn’t disappoint.
The First Plot Point is shown at the 28-second mark (out of a total running time of 1:56). Everything prior to that moment is setup narrative, in this case (because this is a character-centric story) introducing the hero and the conceptual essence of him that invests us in him before he is thrust into harm’s way. (You may have to put up with a few seconds of promotion first… hang in there, hit the Skip button when presented.)
That initial scene with the handcuffs? Total prologue. Other than showing us Reacher himself (thus rendering it a setup strategy), it has nothing at all do to with the plot – the premise – of the story to follow.
The Help, from the novel by Kathryn Stockett
You’ve probably seen the movie and/or read the novel. But notice how the trailer sets up the strong themes before it reveals the First Plot Point (always the mission of the first quartile of a story), which is where Skeeter (one of three hero/protagonists) is launched on her dramatic quest, which is to write her book.
Once she heads down that path, serious drama awaits everyone.
Everything prior to the 1:28 mark is part of the setup of the story (borrowing, in this case, from several places within the story’s structure), before showing us the FPP that launches them all into a quest that is as emotionally resonant as it is dramatic. That moment, by the way, happens at the 24th percentile in both the novel and the film itself… right where it should be according to the principles of story structure.
Two Versions of Tomorrowland – a movie starring George Clooney
All Hollywood movies, and their trailers, are trying to sell you an idea. Sometimes that idea is almost entirely rooted in the concept, rather than the dramatic proposition (premise) of the story. In the first of these two trailers for Tomorrowland (based on an original sci-fi script inspired by an actual Disney place, rather than a novel), the only thing there is the concept. The story itself – the drama, and the FPP that launches it, is completely missing from this version.
Check it out, then watch the full trailer (that does include the drama and the FPP) that follows… and notice the difference. That’s where the learning awaits you.
Now, in this next version, notice the something does go wrong (which wasn’t included in the previous version), shown at the 1:30 mark (the First Plot Point) of the movie). The trailer is 2:23 in total length, so even here, it is the concept – not the drama – that is the main draw.
Too many new authors, who are enthralled with their own concepts, write a novel that resembles the first of these two versions. Which, as a fully-rendered story, doesn’t/won’t-ever work… because there is no dramatic spine/proposition (a plot) to it.
But the second version… that could have been a novel. And in that novel the FPP would not have appeared at the 60th percentile mark, as it does in the preview… it would appear in the 20th to 25th percentile mark, where the principles of structure tell us it works best.
Writers who mess with these principles do so at their own peril.
Just as writers who deny them, but nonetheless nail it in a story (and there are many) do so by virtue of their own story sensibilities, which tells them the exact same thing as does the principle they claim to deny.
Literally thousands of these little two-to-three minute writing clinics are at your fingertips. And nearly every one has something to teach you – by showing you – about two of the most critical elements of a story that works: an appealing, conceptually-driven setup quartile, leading to a story-changing First Plot Point that fully launches the dramatic spine of the story itself.
Get this right – get this principle firmly implanted in your writing head – and you will have achieved a sort of First Plot Point in your career. Only this one – your writing dream suddenly accelerated – will be wondrous, however dramatic it might feel.
The late, great John D. MacDonald (author of the Travis McGee series, but even more enjoyable for me, a string of paperback originals in the 1950s) had a philosophy of writing. It’s found in the introduction to his short story collection, The Good Old Stuff:
First, there has to be a strong sense of story. I want to be intrigued by wondering what is going to happen next. I want the people that I read about to be in difficulties–emotional, moral, spiritual, whatever, and I want to live with them while they’re finding their way out of these difficulties.
Second, I want the writer to make me suspend my disbelief. I want to be in some other place and scene of the writer’s devising.
Next, I want him to have a bit of magic in his prose style, a bit of unobtrusive poetry. I want to have words and phrases that really sing. And I like an attitude of wryness, realism, the sense of inevitability. I think that writing–good writing–should be like listening to music, where you identify the themes, you see what the composer is doing with those themes, and then, just when you think you have him properly identified, and his methods identified, then he will put in a little quirk, a little twist, that will be so unexpected that you read it with a sense of glee, a sense of joy, because of its aptness, even though it may be a very dire and bloody part of the book.
So I want story, wit, music, wryness, color, and a sense of reality in what I read, and I try to get it in what I write.
Isn’t that a nice credo for a writer? And JDM did put all that in what he wrote. Especially unobtrusive poetry, which is why he is still read today when most PBO writers have vanished into the mist.
Now, when it comes to style, we all have preferences. I know Isaac Asimov once explained that he developed a very plain style so he could just get on with telling the story. Maybe that’s the reason I haven’t read a lot of Asimov.
Ah, but Ray Bradbury! Now there’s a stylist. Check out Dandelion Wine or Something Wicked This Way Comes if you want to see what I mean.
Recently I came across a pulp writer whose work I was unfamiliar with. Howard Browne wrote a series of mysteries under the pseudonym John Evans. They featured Chicago PI Paul Pine. Browne’s model was clearly (and, I believe, admittedly) Raymond Chandler. While Chandler stands alone in the pantheon of stylists, I enjoyed Browne’s unobtrusive poetry. Here are some samples from Halo for Satan (1948):
I shoved open the front door and went into a gloomy hall filled with last year’s air.
It wasn’t much of a room. About large enough to play solitaire if you held the cards close to your chest.
Her right hand was pointing a small blue-steel automatic at the sweet roll I’d had for breakfast.
“Hello there,” I said brightly. It took a little while to get the words out because they had to come all the way up from the cuffs of my trousers.
There was a faded housecoat wrapped primly around her shapeless body and a lacy pink dustcap sat drunkenly on graying hair that probably had already been combed once that month.
Describing his office building:
It was sandwiched between two modern skyscrapers that seemed forever to be trying to edge away from their neighbor. It had a deep lobby, narrow and dim, paneled in gray and white imitation marble, a pair of secondhand bird cages masquerading as elevators and a sullen air of decay. The upper halls smelled like a Kansas hayloft after two weeks of rain, and my fellow tenants ran the type of businesses that attracted more process servers than customers.
Delightful, eh? Well, I think so!
So how can you find your own unobtrusive poetry? A couple of tips:
First, notice things. I mean, notice them through the eyes of your POV character. Take time. Look around at the scene. Watch things happen in the theater of your mind. Make a list of what is seen.
Second, take several stabs at description. Experiment. Use up a whole page (or more if you’re really cooking) and have fun. I guarantee you’ll find some gold which you’ve tickled so she comes out laughing (a line of unobtrusive poetry from the film Treasure of the Sierra Madre).
The nice thing about the movie is we get to see it. We cut back to Gerard at his command post, making plans. We see what kind of team and resources he has assembled.
