Archive for the ‘process’ Category

The Answer Man written and directed by John Hindman

Just some quick thoughts on ‘Answer Man’.

My take on the theme: If you want answers, you better be honest with yourself first.

A lot of this story is about the relationships of sons to their fathers. The sub plot with the alcoholic bookstore owner revolves around his issues with his alcoholic father. Arlan, the main character, is not dealing with his father’s death. Alex, the son of Arlan’s love interest is not dealing well with his father’s disappearance.

So we have feelings of anger and resentment toward the father, feelings of loss, and feelings of uncertainty. So growth comes from resolution with the father.

Atonement with the father is one of the steps in Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, or what I sometimes reference as the Monomyth.

This film is a good example of how a section of the Monomyth can serve as a story’s theme or centerpiece.

The following is a pretty good definition from Wikipedia:

“In this step the person must confront and be initiated by whatever holds the ultimate power in his or her life. In many myths and stories this is the father, or a father figure who has life and death power. This is the center point of the journey. All the previous steps have been moving in to this place, all that follow will move out from it. Although this step is most frequently symbolized by an encounter with a male entity, it does not have to be a male; just someone or something with incredible power”

Two of the fathers in this story are absent, but we do see one of these figures. They hardly seem like god-like, powerful beings, but this is one of the things I often like to point out about character: to the men and boy in this story, the fathers are just that. They are powerful.

Alren Faber’s dead father has the power to keep Arlen from “life”. He holds the power of life and death in his hands. Even though this is a father who is off screen we get a sense that this man was a huge influence in Arlen’s life. Enough that Arlen feels the need to preserve so much of his father’s memories [which is something the father in the story was losing to Alzheimer’s]. So here we see the Mythopotic power of a father who can put life on hold. When this story begins, this is how we find Arlen–attempting to connect with God [another father figure], but bitter at life for interrupting.

Kris’s father has gifted his son with a type of enslavement: alcoholism. This is a much more reflective relationship, in that the same issues the father faces the son faces. This comes out clearly in Kris’s questions to Arlen–is there such a thing as free will or are we predestined? In other words, “Am I destined the follow my father’s path? Is there no other way out? Or is this my life? Can I make my own choices and find my own rewards?” Kris’s issues with his father are the centerpoint of his journey. Unlike Alex or Arlen, Kris is dealing with his issues in the moment, and in a strange way looks to Arlen as an almost father figure. However, he finds disappointment in both fathers, until Arlen redeams himself in the end by doing a huge book signing at Kris’s store and probably saving Kris’s business.

Alex doesn’t get a lot of screen time, but his father is probably one of the most powerful. Alex’s father has managed to freeze time. Alex struggles to understand simple things like days of the week and months, because he’s not been told the truth about his absent father.

One could complain that a lot of these transformational threads aren’t resolved and could claim that they should have been in the film. However, Alex and Kris serve as support characters who do an accurate job of reflecting Arlen’s problems. Generally, in this type of story, it’s assumed that if the main character has resolved his issues, that the others will be resolved as well. Technically, not every character in the story needs a complete resolution. It’s perfectly acceptable that a reflection character continue to have their own problems, as long as they’ve helped the character going through the transformational arch actually transform.

Oh, and overall I really enjoyed this movie. I’d love to get a copy of the screenplay, but haven’t found it yet.

Today I am wearing my carpenter pants. Damn. You carpenters wear some comfy pants. These are the type of pants you should wear on Monday. Comfy pants. If I had my way I’d wear pajamas to work on Monday.

Anyway, it was a conquer-the-known-universe weekend and I succeeded. I managed to finish off the short piece I was working on and get it sent to the editor. Officially, it’s no longer a flash fiction story. I got some positive feedback, and word that something more substantial would head my way Tuesday.

I managed to write three scenes toward the new version of my short story Strange Loop. So far this version is much better than the original. In fact, this version has allowed me to make two really important discoveries about my own writing*. That’s always a huge bonus. I’m hoping to finish it up either tonight or tomorrow night, give it a few rewrite, grammar, and prose corrections and then send it off to my Clarion writing group.

I’ve almost finished reading a novel I’m critting for a fellow Clarionite. I should get that finished tonight, and then I can start the actual critique. That will be done before I start my mini weekend vacation. I’m off work Friday and then off next Monday. That means four days to focus on the novel. Yep, I’m still working on my novel and will be for most of the next year.

Faireuza hit 71 late Friday night. I’m limiting my World of Warcraft time to Friday nights now. It’s just too easy to get wrapped up in that game and lose sight of all other forms of existence. However, if I can hit a level every two weeks, I should be raiding on a B-team at some point this summer. That works for me. I had a fun PVP experience with an Orc warrior though. There’s nothing like being a hunter and just mercilessly beating down a warrior. That’s love.

* Here are the two things I discovered:

1) Character and problem are two things you can build strongly on in a shorter work. See, I’ve been trying and trying to figure out how to write short and this was one of the things that kept evading me; the whole concept that the problem needed to be something complex.

Well, it doesn’t. In fact, it’s sometimes better just to keep it as something rather simple. In this particular story though, this problem is represented in a few different characters. There is a mythical representation of it, a real world physical representation of it, and then the actual problem inside the main character.

In my story, the character first faces the mythical version. It is a physical confrontation and she does walk away defeated—clueless still about what the problem is. She, for the most part, is ready to give up, but knows she still wants her goal. Next, she faces someone who she would have never made the choice to face on her own. This meeting is forced on her. However, this particular incarnation of the problem is a teacher or mentor representation of the problem (I would imagine that other archetypes can take on the personification of the problem). She must directly face the problem here and understand it. This is a sort of realization scene. She has a new weapon, now how do you apply it to the first version of the problem?

Once she understands the problem, then she can actually transform and make the solution to the problem, or the problem itself a part of her. In Strange Loop, she is transformed physically by the problem, but she also learns about a particular need she had that someone outside her saw, but she could not see herself. It’s a small thing, but in the scope of a small story, it’s a life changing thing. It makes her into a new person.

This new person can now go back to the mythical incarnation of the problem and use what she knows to fix it. She does, and this grants her access to her goal.

That’s something I’ve been trying to focus on. How do I make the problem that is keeping the main character from her story goal naturally derive from the main character? In other words, the fictional character is to some extent the problem, so how do we overcome self to overcome the problem?

2) Use more dialogue. I don’t know why, but I’ve always had an aversion to dialogue. Well, not necessarily and aversion, but I’ve been timid with my use of dialogue for fear of overuse. I think this comes from my early—really early, studies of screenwriting. One of the earliest things I read was to limit the talking heads, but I don’t think that qualifies so much for fiction.

This version of the story has a lot more dialogue than the last, and it’s much better because of it. I Think I can go back now and look at some of my other works and probably clarify a lot with dialogue. Not that it’s the new hammer, but it’s nice when you look through the toolbox and say, “Hey, this is a nifty widget. I should really be using this to do more.”

Which is another reason I should be critiquing more. I’m in the process of reading a work that is very heavy with dialogue. Long conversations. My first reaction was to go, “Ack, lots of dialogue, see where you can cut!” And to my surprise, it was all pretty necessary. Not only that, but it really worked well. In fact, I liked it. So what’s up with that? Again, early impressions I received as a young writer stuck with me and I never questioned it. So here’s a lesson to other young writers. Question everything you hear from your writer instructors. So far, there don’t seem to be as many Truths in writing as I originally assumed.

Last night was productive. I worked a little on a shared world (otherwise known as fan fiction) story last night. These are of course stories that are not meant for general public consumption, but they give me a great place to experiment. Lately the experiments have been a two part attack. Not just on the quality of my writing, but the way I actually write.

First, I’m attacking this without a net. That’s not usually like me. I tend to outline to a fault. Second, I’m paying a little closer attention to the prosody and flow of the words as I write. This is normally something I do after the fact. My third of fourth pass over the manuscript is normally a prose revision. I want to see just how close I can get to right the first time. Another thing I’m focusing on is speed. I am an incredibly slow writer. I’m a relatively fast typer though. I just tend to let myself anguish over the words too much.

I think this has led to less story output than I’m capable of. Honestly, I’ve just let myself get lazy, telling myself I’m not a pro so I don’t have to produce like a pro. The problem with that way of thinking is that now that I have some aspirations to go pro, I have the habits of a noob. Unacceptable. So work will continue on the novel. I plan to finish my treatment over the weekend. And though I want to publish this work, I’m going to break from my normal routine and actually push myself to write this draft quickly.

I was able to push out about 1k last night in under an hour. I think this is publishable material. It’s not great by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s publishable.

For more fun than should be allowed, go visit Gord Sellar’s site to see KITTIES!

Last night was productive. I managed to get work done on about twenty more scenes. That means I have about eighteen more to go. The novel is starting to shape up nicely. The next part of the plan is the second treatment. Here is how the process has gone so far:

I started with a concept. I wanted to write about a unique military career and see that career in action in a science fiction setting. I came up with some ideas about the main characters and general world setting. I free wrote for a few pages about the characters, world, and the events. This free writing thing is useful. I tend to try to turn it on its heals a few times to get something more from the story. A lot of the good stuff comes from this part of the story building process.

Next is casting time. I come up with a general idea about who my main characters are going to be. I don’t do full biographies at this point, but I at least understand some of their life goals, their careers, their histories (essentials only), and if they’re a POV character I’ll also try to give them some point of change. This point of change normally revolves around an unhealthy part of their personality that they are going to face in this story. My notes will have something like: Bob never realized he was an alcoholic until he was faced with the responsibility of raising his dead brother’s son. Here we have inciting incident to play with; a new person in Bob’s life. We also have a personal issue for Bob to deal with; his alcoholism. Score extra points if one character in the story is another character’s inciting incident. These normally lead me into various story sequences.

Which leads me to working on my major sequences. I’ve read about other writers who have ‘candy bar’ scenes and they write around these. I tend to think in sequences. There’s normally one big sequence for the first act, two or three for the second, and then one more large one for the last. Sequences are pretty nice, because you can use some pretty standard formulas to create the sequences. You know just by the story architecture what the beginning, middle, and end of the sequence will most likely need to be. For me this is a fun way to write. I’m most comfortable, right now in my career, with the story that runs about 10-15k. Meaning, that’s pretty much what I can hold effectively in my own head space. If the story is built out of these mini stories than it’s much easier for me to handle. I think it also gives a good mix of things to the reader.

Once I have these sequences, I turn them into the first true treatment. This is a story act by story act write up of the story. It covers all of the major sequence, but not in any great detail. This is normally about three to four pages of writing for me. I do a lot of my world building here and work out higher level world based motivations. Do certain groups have a stake in my individual characters’ lives? Is there some huge event overshadowing everything, like a world war or natural disaster? I’ll also question the treatment at this stage. I’m not getting too critical. In fact, it’s not a very objective process. I mostly ask myself if it feels right. Is it a story. Did I pick the right characters for the job? At this stage, I haven’t committed a lot of words to paper, so it’s easy to change things if I need to. I will generally go over this little treatment for a week or two and probably do a few rewrites to it. One of my main characters in the current novel went through a huge change because of these treatment questions. The character went from a he to she and from a initially deceptive character to just the opposite. This is what turning things on their head can do. It can help you weed out the stereotypes and cliches.

Once I’m happy with the treatment I start dissecting it into scenes. That’s where the index cards come in handy. I do a lot of decision work here. POV characters start to develop a bit more here as I build the sequences up. The cards don’t have a lot of room for detail. They normally start with the POV character’s opening scene goal, move to the major conflict and problems in the scene, and then end on some sort of disaster or surprise. This changes up though, because there are also reaction shot scenes and general transition and set-up scenes as well. However, like I said, I only have a few lines to work with at this stage, so I keep it pretty thin. Once I have what feels like enough scenes to cover all the aspects of the various sequences, I start evaluating these. I have a few more questions I start asking at this point. I also try to put them into logical chapter breaks. I’ll arrange them in a way that gives me the most suspense between sequences. This is the sort of thing I just couldn’t see myself doing after I’ve written the draft. At this stage they’re just cards. I can rip up a whole set of them and start over until I’m happy with the way the whole thing feels. I normally spend a week or two going through the cards. I just flip through them and try to visualize each scene.

When I’ve completed that step, I move to where I am now in the development. This is a little easier. I have a scene sheet that is basically an expansion of the card. My index card now turns into a paragraph or two worth of scene information. I start thinking about the setting. I also find where I can condense some scenes together. If I need to I also add reaction scenes and other things to balance out the pacing. This is fun, because when I have it all done, I have a huge sheet to take notes on and expand upon. And what I do here pays off greatly in the phase draft.

The second treatment I will write will be much larger than the first. It will probably end up a good forty pages. No one ever sees this but me. I tend to write it in third person present tense. Once it’s complete I have a set of treatment questions I ask of this draft. This is sort of my alpha draft quality assurance. Once I’ve answered these questions to my satisfaction I give a pass or fail. If it fails, I might return to the cards and work out what’s needed and then write up the changes in the treatment. If it passes, then I move on to the phase draft.

I’ll write more on the phase draft when I get to that stage. This did go on for a bit, didn’t it? I’m probably writing this out more for my own benefit than anyone else’s. It will help for me to go back and refine this process later with other books. So far though I’m very pleased with the results I have.

Un deux trois, parle, mirroir noir!

I’m working new hours at work. Earlier hours. It’s kind of nice. I get in before any of the major noise starts up. Let me tell you, there’s nothing as fun as trying to write business analyst code in a cubicle farm. There’s a reason why people who have to think for a living need offices—or at least a way they can close themselves off from the rest of the world. At my next job I will have an office.

I did a lot of research for the novel yesterday. I’m not certain where to stop with the research. I really, really like it. I read once that some authors will use children’s books for research. I’m finding that’s just not adequate for this genre. There’s just a lot more to it. A lot of traditions, protocols, and a pretty advanced command structure.

I’ve put a few words to paper, but so far it’s mostly biography information and some notes on plotting. This weekend I’m shooting for at least a synopsis and perhaps a complete outline. The outline will of course be very liquid at this point, but that’s okay. I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to write a phase draft of this book. The phase drafts have worked pretty well on the short stories I’ve written, but I haven’t tried it yet for a longer work. The nice thing about a phase draft is that it’s easy to write the novel to. It’s a moment-by-moment focus and that’s usually easier to face than a big blank page.

I normally start by writing a general synopsis of the story that covers all the big, necessary plotting points. There are lots of these, but I tend to use screen writing points as a guide for the main story line. Subplots are a little freer, but they still have the same sort of structure before hand as well. From this I will write out a ten page synopsis. I revise and rethink the synopsis until I’m generally happy with it. From this I will break the synopsis down into scenes. I’ll play with the scenes until I have what I believe is a pretty good representation of the story. I’ll go through the cards and try to visualize the story as though it were a movie. Once I’m happy with that, I write my phase drafts for each scene.

You pretty much write a scene draft told in present tense in an extremely omniscient point of view. You’re writing for story, so descriptions are minimal, prose is simple, and you avoid actual dialog. It’s a lot like writing a treatment. You want to make sure you capture the surprises and all of the necessary emotional arcs. While writing the phase portions of the draft you want to make sure you’re writing in moment-by-moment chunks. For me this is very important. Once this is done, you now have a phase draft to write from.

Writing from a phase draft is usually pretty easy. I normally go through the phase draft a few times and might even let it rest for a few days before I begin actually writing a story to it. I prepare the phase draft by splitting each moment for each scene into its own paragraph. I change the type to italic and then auto number the phases. I write my actual prose for the novel under the phases. This allows me to take my time and really consider every moment of the story. I even have a set of moment revision notes that I keep with me to go over after each section. This probably sounds really slow to most people, and to a certain extent it is, but it’s what works well for me.

Wow, okay, I hadn’t actually planned to write about my writing method, but there it is for the most part.

Where I learned about the phase draft.

Finished the phase draft for the tattoo story. I still haven’t found a name I like. After a bit of research I’ll start the first person draft tomorrow. it’s getting closer to finished. It’s just under 11 pages.