ADAM RENFRO - A Writer's Confidential - Dear God, It's a Blog

ADAM RENFRO - A Writer's Confidential

Creating Despicable Villains

6/28/2018

The hatred for the villain should build.

Start with his name. No one is going to hate Dave Hazelnut. But they will hate Hannibal Lecter or Jame Gumb.

Make the villain in stark contrast to the hero and other "good" people in the story. He has different ambitions and motivations than the hero. Maybe the same goals, but a much worse way to get there.

Have characters talk bad about the villain. Or have them too scared to talk about him at all. This makes it more reliable than just hearing it from the protagonist.

And then, of course, the usual things: dialogue, actions, mannerisms, symbols.

The villain should have his own arc of evil. You can start small with all the annoying traits we hate. The villain is an egotistical narcissist. Everything is about him. Someone had a mom who just died, and he turns the conversation to back to him. Everyone hates lack of empathy. Also, he can top everyone's story with a story of his own.

The villain will, of course, do terrible things to our hero, and also to people who the hero loves and adores, and he does it with the forethought of malice.

The villain doesn't just kick at a puppy, he carries treats to lure the puppy over. Then he laughs as the dog scampers away yelping and licking its wounds.

He doesn't just almost hit granny at the intersection, he motions for her to go ahead and walk. He'll wait. All is safe. Then when granny is halfway across, the villain guns his douchebag car (Monte Carlo, of course) through the intersection, laughing as granny screams out.

Writing & Editing - Getting Over Your Separation Anxiety

6/18/2018

"Don't write and edit at the same time!"

"First write. Then edit."

We know the mantra. Seems like good advice. It is good advice. However, some of this insistence on separating writing and editing is held over from an era when it was very time-consuming to switch from one to the other. People wrote on paper or typed on typewriters. Editing meant that you might have to rewrite or retype an entire section, scene, or chapter because you needed to make just a few minor changes.

That's no longer the case with all of our super whizzbang writing software. Many of our edits fall within the creative process anyhow. Your first draft doesn't have to look like some stream-of-consciousness Finnegan's Wake word salad. Why forget an important and essential change because you're in composition mode and not editing mode? Maybe it's a one-minute fix now but an hour fix later because you have to decipher the incomprehensible Finnegan's Notes you left for yourself.

Also, I don't think you need to completely finish your story before you do some editing. There might be times when your mind is not in the creative/composition mode. Maybe that well is temporarily dry. So switch to editing mode. So what if you do that for an hour. Or a day. Or a weekend. ESPECIALLY if you weren't going to write, anyhow.

What you don't want to do is continually break your creative process with, what are at the time, unnecessary edits. Spell checks and grammar edits can certainly wait until the end. You do not need to till that same soil over and over again. However, it you spot a simple plot hole, fix it. Otherwise, you might forget it. Or by not fixing it, you might drive yourself insane. If you need to go pack and "plant" something earlier in the story so there can be a "payoff" with what you're writing now, do it! Do it before that genius disappears. That's all part of the creative process, and you're still pushing forward.

IN GENERAL, push out that first draft. Be like a jockey with a whip, driving forward. However, some editing along the way is okay, especially if it keeps you from going insane (so quickly).

Train Your Readers

6/15/2018

Writer's Forum Question: "Is it okay to switch points of view in your novel?"

Short answer: yes. It's okay to do anything you want. If it's a bit unorthodox, subtly train your readers to understand your method and then be consistent with it in your story.

Look at the first few pages of Irvine's Welsh's Trainspotting. The prose, generally, and the dialogue, specifically, are both hard to comprehend and amazing at the same time. By page 10, readers have picked up his rhythm and figured out his style, and they enjoy the wild ride the rest of the way.

In a piece I'm currently working on, characters text message each other a number of times, and there's zero style guide agreement on how to format text messages in fiction or a screenplay. So I have to pick a style and train my readers that this is what texting looks like in my story.

Work In Progress Update

6/12/2018

Here are the first ten verbs from today's work in progress: added, asked, pleaded, insisted, sold, traveled, jump started, lied, wanted, connected.

That was from the first three paragraphs. Not passive, hopefully, but pressing forward. A relentless pursuit to the end.

Here's a good test. Look at the key words in your local newspaper's headlines. See if your story's keeping pace with that. Here are the keyword from my small local newspaper today:

killed, hurt, struck, harassment, suicide, shot, no clues, shot, caught naked, exploding, killed, robbed, drug deal.

So that's just local. If your story can't keep up with the local headlines, it's not going to impress people. It will be a yawn fest. The Melatonin Chronicles. Think of yourself as a jockey with a whip. Onward!

Your story doesn't have to be all about death and dying, but it should be about all the BIG THEMES. Love, greed, betrayal, fear, hate, power, sex, anger, friendship, sorrow, humor, acceptance, job, money, joy.

Now that's a story.

Write the Stories You Love: A Story Generator

6/4/2018

You just published the story you've been working on for the last 37 months. Or you submitted your script to this month's big screenwriting contest. Now, you're faced with one big question:

WHAT NEXT?!?

Dear God, you've not had to actually think of a new story idea for months or even years. How does that work again? Who knows. There's no secret to generating ideas, but there's also no clear way that works for everyone.

The Write the Stories You Love Generator has been around the internet in one form or another for decades. This is my version of it.

With this story generator, you will take the fundamental elements of the stories you love and create something new. This also helps you talk about and elaborate on story elements you find essential or provoking. (A writer should be able to do that, IMHO.)

For this story generator, you have three steps to complete before you write the pitch for your new idea.

The Favorites. List your favorite movies, TV shows, and novels or short stories. Take a few moments. Don’t worry about anything from the literary “canon.” In fact, slip in a few that you wouldn’t necessarily admit to, but you loved reading and watching.
Favorite Story Elements. List your favorite elements of each story. For example: In the face of all odds, the protagonist has a “Not Today” moment. Story starts in the middle of the conflict. Multiple narrators. Story isn’t in sequential order. A hunt for a lost treasure. These elements should be what you liked about the story, not what critics say the story is about.
Mix of Favorite Story Elements. This is the fun part. Mix elements from different stories to give yourself the foundation for a new story idea.

Now it's time to write your story pitch based on the elements you chose.

Here are my examples:

So, running through the generator, here’s my first pass at a new idea:

Mix of Favorite Story Elements
Characters can be in prison even when free.
Dark comedy.
Character in a world where he doesn't belong.

My Story Pitch
Enid is OK - Fenwick Newhouse, an Ivy League educated, cosmopolitan wine sommelier, is diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder. An enzyme found only in a particular strain of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer can keep him alive. To stay alive, Fenwick is forced to move near the distillery in backwater Enid, Oklahoma, a place Fenwick calls a “geographic disorder.” Fenwick and Enid are not ready for each other.

Call me, Hollywood.

Be afraid. No, really. It's okay.

2/6/2018

From the Road of Souls rewrite. And really, not bad advice.

HERE'S THE THING . . . .

1/27/2018

If you're not sure how to introduce a narrative or short piece of information, use this shortcut. Simply start with . . .

"Here's the thing, . . . "

It's okay. This is a draft. You're in creation mode. It's totally fine to use a trite, cliched opener. You're going to come back later and take it out.

Variations work just as well . . .

"Here's a thing . . . ."
"There was a time when . . .."
"Know this . . .
"Note: . . . .
"One surprising thing about this is . . . ."
"I think that . . . ."

Rachel Syme tweeted this idea, and I wanted to expand on it because I mentor a group of writers. These short openers accomplish three important things.

1. They open the door for you to get to the heart of what you're trying to say. You can get your ideas on paper before those ideas are gone, evaporated into the regions of your brain where thoughts go to be forgotten. Have you ever spent twenty minutes trying to craft an introduction or transition to your main point only to forget some of that main point? Great ideas are armed with a ticking zeitgeist. "This isn't nearly as good as what I was thinking twenty minutes ago."

2. This also makes you trust that it's okay to write first-draft junk. That's why it's a draft. You're going to come back and fix all those cliched openers. The more you can trust that it doesn't matter what your first draft looks like, the more you can capture those brilliant ideas while they're still brilliant. You'll turn them into written art later.

3. After you take out those openers, your writing now speaks with authority. Your thoughts become clear declarative sentences that need no trite introduction.

Too Much Structure

1/17/2018

We want conflict and tension in our story. It's in our DNA to resolve tension, and that's what propels readers to the end of our stories. It's what keeps moviegoers in their seats. They want to see that the conflict is resolved and how it is resolved. It's part of the universal appeal of storytelling. It's the "yes, I could do that" or the "so that's how you do that" catharsis at the end.

To increase the tension, we've learned to make the worst possible thing happen at the worst possible moment. That's great advice. Seeing how someone handles conflict is how we learn about his true character. Your hero's response to conflict is way more telling of character than any description you can give. We also want to have the worst possible thing happen at the worst possible moment because we're telling epic stories meant for the big screen. In other words, we want to sell our novel or screenplay.

We've also learned structure. We've learned to plot our stories in three acts or five acts or eight sequences or sixteen beats or, dear God, 44 plot points. So here's the pitfall . . . we tend to make the worst thing happen at the most logical time for the worst thing to happen. That's where our structure turns formulaic and where it least resembles real life.

Our hero makes plans to do A, B, and C before she takes on the villain. Bing, bang, boom, take on the bad guy.

But in real life, if you've ever received that terrible phone call, or if tragedy has ever struck, you know it comes when you're least prepared, when you're least expecting it, when you've only started to think about A. You've not actually acted on A yet, and B and C are barely phantom thoughts swirling around in your head.

Real life is the standard we're familiar with, and as a creator, it's your challenge to spin a tale more dramatic than real life. You have to do terribly mean and twisted things to your characters at the worst possible times. It will pay off ten fold when the hero shows how clever she is and overcomes whatever cruel thing you've sent her way. These are the things that are memorable to your audience. However, the timing is critical.

It's important to have a tight story that doesn't wander all over the place, but some chaos can go a long way. If you need to get your script past a reader or novel past an editor, don't be overly formulaic. Leave room for you. The gatekeepers know all the formulas. They are literally thinking, "Here comes the twist. Here comes Plot Point 13." SHAKE IT UP! Let some things happen organically in your story. You need to surprise the gatekeepers before you get the chance to surprise your audience. You want the reader to say, "I did not see that coming. Now I'm interested." You'll rarely do that if you're overly formulaic.

Specific Details Are Evocative

12/31/2017

Avoid general descriptions. A single specific detail is evocative, and it can impact the reader more than entire paragraphs of generalized descriptions. From a draft of Shawshank Redemption:

He opens the glove compartment, pulls out an object wrapped in a rag. He lays it in his lap and unwraps it carefully revealing a .38 revolver. Oily, black, evil.

He stumbles out of the Plymouth. His wingtip shoes crunch on gravel. Loose bullets scatter to the ground. The bourbon bottle drops and shatters.

Extremely evocative for 54 words.

Don't worry about it in your first draft. Just get words on the page. When you're in that edit mode, make your language evocative. Change "dog" to 'golden lab." Change "car" to "67 Chrysler." You might even have one edit dedicated to evocative descriptions.

If you're bold, share an evocative sentence from one of your works on Twitter with us. Include me @adamrenfro.

All the best in your writing!

--ar

There is no terror in the bang . . . .

12/27/2017

"There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it."
--Alfred Hitchcock

You can have a bomb explode in a scene, surprising your audience. That surprise will pay off for a minute or two.

Or you can show your audience the bomb under the table and let the suspense build.

Choose the suspense. It torments your audience.