Plot and Character more Important than Prose?

I'm the type of writer, who I'm sure is like most, that frets over using the right word, right sentence structure, right exact perfect mechanics of prose to get across what I want to communicate in my stories. But does that really matter? Does prose actually have that much of a bearing on how it comes off to the reader as we think it does?

The other night as I was driving along the highways for work late at night, I popped in the audio book of "Epic of Gilgamesh" which is considered by a lot of people to be the oldest story in history. (Written around the 18th century BC. on the clay tablets pictured above.) Suffice to say, the word choice and sentence structure is not very advanced. There are many parts that repeat itself verbatim many many times to the point where I was chanting along with the narrator by the middle of the book in some parts. Overall, the work is very basic and has about the same sophistication I would expect out of a 10 year old.

But still, this story drew me in and kept me awake so I didn't crash my car. (yay!) And I began to wonder why that was, since it was so basic. And the reason is that the plot and characters are well developed. In reality, this is all that The Epic of Gilgamesh has going for it, and it has survived for almost 4000 years!

This brought me to another train of thought then. A lot of the classics that we know and love are indeed translations from the original work. And the format they were originally written in is usually not how we experience them in present day. For instance, just about everybody knows and likes the Iliad and Odyssey, however I don't know many people who have read it in the epic poem format. It's usually the modern spin offs that they have seen. But the power of the characters and plot has allowed this story to survive and still impact people after many years.

Shakespeare wrote plays, but still, people pick up those plays and read them as if they were a book, still getting enjoyment out of them. There is virtually no description, and all we have is dialogue that many of us struggle to comprehend without putting on our thinking caps. And still, he's widely read by people far and wide, even after they graduate. What keeps drawing people to these works, again, is the power of the characters and plot.

Even more modern works that end up getting translated loose a lot of the feel of the author, no matter how good the translation. But still, there are great pieces of literature that survive this process to still touch our hearts. Because the only thing that really can be translated across language and time barriers is in my opinion, character and plot.

I'm not saying that you should be writing your work at that 10 year old level, but perhaps a lot of the agony we spend trying to come up with the perfect word could be better spent on making sure we have an overall story that connects with the reader.

Reading

As a writer, you need to read in order to write. It’s just one of those truths out there. I personally can’t stand when I talk with somebody and they say “I’m writing a novel.” or “I’m thinking about starting a novel.” My next question then is usually “What kind of book are you writing.” They then start to sputter because their book is far too complicated to be stuck in a single genre and be summed up in a mear couple sentences. So then I follow up with, “What do you read?” And let me tell you, it is incredibly sad when the response I get is “I don’t really read all that much.”

Seriously?

If you want to be a painter, you need to be immersed in paintings. If you want to be a musician, you need to immersed in music. If you want to be a writer…I guess that’s all you need. No! You need to be immersed in books. The question then is, what should you, as an author, read?

I think there are about four levels that an author has in their reading list. The first level is the most crucial for them to read. It’s their genre and where they will get a lot of their voice from. The second level are the classics. They help immerse the author in truly great works in the art. The third level is the out-of-genre modern books. These, if time requires, should be sacrificed, but are important none the less. Finally, we come to the non-fiction aspect. Here you can gain incredible insights into how the world, mind, people, organizations, etc. work. Reading non-fiction, while it won’t necessarily help much with your prose and story telling, it will give your writing a real sense of legitimacy.

So obviously reading in your genre is the first thing you want to do. You need to know what types of things fans of your genre like and expect. You need to know whether or not certain themes have been done to death and become cliched. You need to figure out what things have not been done and would make your work new and unique. You also will find that a lot of descriptions are shared throughout genres. Romance will describe love making pretty frequently. If you write romance you better have lots of ways to describe that. Fantasy will describe new and interesting characters/worlds. You had better be able to do that if you write fantasy. And so on and so on. So I’ll stop here since I shouldn’t have to convince any of you on this point.

With respect to the classics, you might say that it’s a waste of time to read those. You might say that “people don’t write like that anymore.” or “That style sounds so dated.” But there is a lot you can learn. First, each writer will have at least one fundamental aspect of story telling down right mastered. Be it plot, voice, dialogue, characterization. No matter the time period, those aspects never go away as requirements for a good story. So learn from them because they are classics for a reason.

Imagine you read the ten greatest books published each year (as defined by Professor Smith’s 2134 Literature 435 class at Yale) How would those books on rank overall on average? Perhaps the top book might crack the top 200 of all time, once in a while. The 10th greatest book that year, probably in the 1000’s. So to hammer this point even further. Even if you read (regardless of genere) the best books each year, chances are they still won’t match up to the classics in terms of greatness. So since you emulate what you read, read great books.

Now onto those out of genre books. They will provide you with a good round backing for the rest of your story. There are some things that certain genre books do quite well. For instance those a fore mentioned romance books. If you read some of those, I will guarantee you that the next little romantic encounter you throw into your thriller novel will be written much better. Similarly for the romance writer: If you read more thrillers, you will be more apt to put a compelling bit of suspense and action to spice up your romance.

The same thing goes for all the other genres. Literary fiction will teach you characterization and good symbolism/theming. Fantasy/Scifi will teach you how to really create a compelling setting. Mystery will teach you how to create suspense and good puzzles. Even childrens books will teach you how to convey a message in as few words as possible.

Finally, as for non-fiction, reading those types of books will give your books that last little touch of legitimacy that can change something from good to great. Reading a book on psychology will make your characters more believable in their actions and emotions. They can give you insights into family situations you don’t have personal experience with. They can teach you just how far a person can go in terms of mental illness. Other books can teach you just how the inner functions of government work. Another might give you some great perspective on the life of a police officer. These books might not be relevant for whatever you’re working on now, but you never know when this knowledge will come in handy and help you craft the perfect scene and or book.

So keep reading, read wide, and read often.

Please let me know if I forgot anything.

Emulate Television or Movies in your Writing?

I feel that a lot of times, authors will be inspired by movies when they begin writing. And I understand that appeal, since a number of us probably end up watching more movies than we read books. I mean they are less time consuming, can be shared easily with other people, and usually don’t require a lot of imaginative effort. So then we as writers start to imitate what we see on the screen in our writing, we make a huge mistake.

The truth is that while books and movies may share a lot of story structure in the middle and end, the beginning of a novel is more akin to a television show. If you plan on taking story telling hints from the visual stories, then I suggest TV rather than movies. (at least in the beginning).

TV programs compete with 100s of other shows on at the same time as them, and when the break between programs comes on and people start surfing, they need to grab hold of the viewer and can’t let go. They need a compelling hook with an interesting character facing some sort of problem. For instance a ER type show might begin by showing some very unusual and possibly deadly ailment affecting a patient, a cute little 6 year old girl. Yea, everybody want to see if she makes it.

Does that sound familiar? Isn’t that pretty much what every writing tip tells you about your first page? Because just like the TV viewer, a reader browsing a bookstore is surfing through tons of books, all trying to grab their attention. If they happen to look at your book, you have only a couple lines to hook them before they move on, just like in TV.

Contrast this with movies where the viewer has spent the money on the ticket and entered the theater with their popcorn in hand. This gives the movie a chance to slowly bring the viewer into their world. They can have the opening credits scroll by in a fog while they show the setting. Then they can show the main character getting ready for work and doing their daily routine before anything interesting happens. But the only reason they can get away with this is because the viewer has already committed to the work. This just does not happen with books unless you are such a big name that readers pre-commit to you.

So when you write that opening chapter, don’t take us on a journey through the geology of your world and/or start with the character in their ordinary routine. I see that far to often in the fiction that I critique. Give us a compelling character stuck in a problem that we need to know the resolution of. Without that your book will be put back on the shelf or deleted from the editor/agent’s inbox.

Game Theroy for Writers part II. “No you go first, I insist.”

With this post I hope to give you another tool for you to demonstrate how intelligent your characters are. As writers, sometimes we are faced with having to write in a genius when we ourselves are not that smart. So how do we create an illusion of genius without having to devise the world’s greatest battle plan or business strategy? I think one tool could again be game theory.

In games, as in life, there are some things that you just naturally don’t want to go first in. One very good example would be rock, paper, scissors. If your opponent throws rock, well you’d be pretty stupid to not throw paper.

But then there are other games where going first has a distinct advantage. A great example of that would be a wild west shootout. If you get to shoot before the other person, then you stand a decent chance (assuming you’re not a horrible shot) of winning.

So now the question is how do we know when to go first (more specifically our game theory savvy genius of a character) and when to defer when the situation is not so obvious.

The answer is lies in the usefulness of information, and the chance of ending the game on the first move. I know this seems very basic, but please stick with me on this. Yes I know rock paper scissors and duels are done simultaneously, but that’s what makes these such clear examples.

So let us delve down into this idea. In the rock paper scissors example, there is a HUGE advantage of going last because 1) You gain the knowledge that allows you to make a winning move and 2) The other person can’t win unless you make a move. So that is pretty simple. Lets look at the shootout game. In that there is a HUGE advantage in going first because 1) You already know the other person is going to shoot at you, so you already know all the the information and 2) You can win without the other person having to make a move.

Now lets do something a little less obvious. Say there are two companies, A and B. They both have a new gadget, (say an mp3 player) that they think will revolutionize the industry. Now they both know that the other is going to release one of these and that there could be some bugs or features people don’t like. So introducing the second model would have the advantage of being better technically. But if you introduce first you can gain a reputation and market share that would dominate your competitors. So what do you do?

Obviously the answer to that is complicated and we would need a lot more information to solve this analytically. But thankfully we don’t have to because we are writers and we can make whatever we want happen. If your main character is the CEO of company A, you can have him choose either strategy, and you can decide if he succeeds or fails. What makes game theory useful is that you can SHOW the CEO thinking and coming up with their strategy in an intelligent manner yourself. Have them wrestle with this idea.

The same goes for a general in a battle. Sure you can make them appear smart by having them win the battle with whatever strategy you choose. But what I think would show their intelligence more would to have them go over these two variables and try to decide what to do.

Smart characters should be shown thinking to get the effect across, same as strong characters should be shown picking up boulders. If you want to demonstrate how physically strong your character is, you show them picking the boulder; you don’t just say the boulder was moved. Same goes with smart characters. You don’t have the smart general just win the battle by surprising the enemy. You show them weighing in these factors and deciding that perhaps we know enough about the enemy where we don’t have to wait first to see what formation they arrange themselves in.

Hope this helps.

Game Theory for Writers: Part I. Go Ahead and Burn That Bridge!

I had hoped to get this out much earlier, but later is better than never.

I also am going to have to do this in a couple different series since there is SOOOOOO much I could write about and don’t want to overwhelm all at once.

Now first, why do we care about game theory (GT) in writing? Well for one it helps you get a good grasp on what people would do in various situations. For second it will allow you to identify strategies that a smart character would use to win some sort of game (by game I could mean a game of checkers, or the “game” of taking over the world. Basically game just means a situation where there is some sort of competition). So hopefully you will be able to craft out a well thought-out plot that has your evil villain choosing the wrong strategy and going down in defeat because your hero was smart and picked the right one.

If that convinced you, now we need to get you grounded in GT. Basically all you do is write down the different choices the different players could make and the outcomes of those choices. So a real simple model game would be odd/even. This would be where player 1 (Bob) holds either 1 or 2 fingers behind his back. Then player 2 (Meg) tries to guess the number. Real simple.

Now lets say that when Bob chooses a 1 and Meg chooses a 1, then Meg gets $2 and Bob gets $1. If Bob chooses 1 and Meg chooses 2, then Meg gets nothing, and Bob gets $1. Now if Bob chooses 2 and Meg chooses 1, then again Meg gets nothing and Bob gets $1. Now if they both choose 2, then Meg gets $2 and Bob gets nothing. This is shown by the following chart.

Meg/Bob	Bob (holds 1)	Bob (holds 2)
Meg (guesses 1)	2/1	0/1
Meg (guesses 2)	0/1	2/0

So you can easily see that Bob should always choose 1, since his payoff is always going be be as good or better than if he chooses 2, and Meg, knowing this should also choose 1 every time. And since neither player can do better than this, both choosing 1 is called a Nash Equilibrium. Yes that same John Nash from A Beautiful Mind.

What does this particular game tell us about writing? Not much frankly, but that is notation that you need to know before we get onto the good stuff.

So the first thing I want to show you is why a smart character will eliminate one of their options in certain situations in order to gain an advantage. Yes that’s right, you can gain an advantage if you eliminate an option. So a businessman can gain an advantage over a competitor if he shuts down a factory, or a warrior if they burn their ships. Lets see how.

Lets take a business case. Say Sony and Microsoft are both existing in the business world. Microsoft happily making software, and Sony happily making TVs. Then one day both of them get the idea to make a gaming system, but then the market research folks come in and spoil the day. They conclude that if both companies enter the market, the competition for market share will be a drain on the company and they will both make $0 in profits. If both companies give up plans to make a gaming system, they will both go back to making $2 billion in profits. But if one company retreats, while the other company goes forward; the company making the gaming system will see profits of $5 billion, and the other will suffer from embarrassment and their customers won’t want their products. They will only make $1 billion in profits.

Here is the chart:

Sony/Microsoft	Microsoft (retreat)	Microsoft (go ahead)
Sony (retreat)	2/2	1/5
Sony (go ahead)	5/1	0/0

After many intense negations, neither company is willing to let the other be the only one with a gaming system, so obviously the best solution is for both of them to retreat. But then Bill Gates out of nowhere guts his software business and declares that from this day forward, Microsoft will focus only on their gaming system. They have essentially removed the option for them to retreat, and only the second column remains. Sony now has to choose between $1 billion in profits, or $0. Unless they want to sacrifice their company too, they will retreat and Microsoft will win.

So a warrior then who burns the bridges behind them and forces themselves to fight will gain this advantage. Same with somebody playing chicken who removes their steering wheel. Same with hostage negotiations when you have a policy where you can’t negotiate. The list goes on.

The one caveat with this is that the other player must know this. If not there could be disastrous results.

Now go out there and show off how smart you can make a character look by having them eliminate the safe option and take victory!

First update on my novel/chopping names

Right now I have two novels that I am writing. The first one, titled Bleed Well, is in the re-write/revise phase right now. The other one is in the draft stage and it is as of yet untitled. The new draft does not get a lot of attention as I find I’m really liking the revision process.

But anyways, Bleed Well has taught me a lot about revision; and the main thing I want to discuss with this post again deals with characters: specifically merging minor characters together.

Now I don’t know how many of you have read War and Peace, but for those of you who have (and even those who’ve just heard some horror stories) you know what I’m talking about when I say that too many characters can bog down a story to a crawl.

God bless you Leo Tolstoy, but in War and Peace you introduce SEVEN characters on the first page! This kind of character machine-gunning riddles the reader full of holes; and instead of flying through your book because it’s so beautifully written, they limp through, thinking of nothing but the difficulty of trying to figure out who is who; which characters matter; and why does it seem like this character has three names. Now Tolstoy could get away with this in the age that he wrote in, but not today.

So what do you do if you find yourself faced with your own War and Peace? Well if you’re written the next War and Pace by all means get it published! But for those of you who just have a novel with a cast of characters the size of the New York phone book, my answer would be to merge some of your minor characters together and eliminate many more.

What do I mean by this?

Each character has a specific purpose for being in the book. One character might be there for comedy relief, another to save the princess, and yet another to solve the riddle. Why not merge some of these responsibilities? Make the character that saves the princess funny. He can journey to the castle where she’s being kept, trying to solve the riddle. Then when he reaches her tells a funny joke and tells her of the riddle. Then have the princess solve the riddle. You’ve just taken four characters and condensed them into two.

I know I know that’s a pretty basic example, but look at your work carefully and scrutinize each character. Pretend you’re holding a delete key up to their head demanding that you tell them why they deserve to live; make them justify their existence. You’d be surprised just how many characters you can eliminate without losing anything.

Now an example pulled straight from my work would be this: I have a main character named Fredrick, who talks with his mother, gets some ‘motherly’ advice and moves on. Then another character, Susan, gives Fredrick some grief then dies. Does that already seem like too many characters? Yea I thought so too.

So here’s what I did. I did away with the main character’s mother. (Yes, you can do that. Nepotism is bad in both life and novels.) I then made Susan Fredrick’s aunt, who raised him after his mother died. So she’s kinda like a disliked but loved step-mother. Well Fredrick gets his ‘motherly’ advice from his aunt, who also gives Fredrick some grief. Susan dies and we move on with the story. (The mother did not do much of anything later on so she was just written out).

Another thing that I think every writer should be on the lookout for are naming insignificant characters. I won’t go into too much detail here, but no reader wants to read or cares about the six men sitting at the poker table in the back of the room. If they don’t directly contribute significant action to the story DON’T NAME THEM! But that does not mean name everybody who does something to affect the plot.

Even if one of those men at the poker table needs to break a beer bottle over your character’s head to move the plot forward, then are forgotten, just describe them as, “The man with the brown shirt who was playing poker in the back.” Yes it’s more words than just saying “Dave who was playing poker in the back.” but the word ‘Dave’ slows the reader down more than “The man with the brown shirt.” because the reader now has to create room in their mind for Dave, thinking they are an important character.

Now I don’t recommend that you keep referring to him as that in his scene. You can shorten it down to “the man” or something like that, but resist the temptation to name him. Yes it’s likely one of his buddies would say “Hey Dave, whatcha doin?” BUT DON’T DO IT HERE. Named characters need to be involved deeply in the story. They need to be 3D. Do you have time to develop Dave? Do you really have enough spare words to make him really come to life? I didn’t think so.

So as I’ve learned, by chopping down insignificant named characters and merging other characters together; you can really tighten up your writing and make your writing seem smoother and effortless.

As a side note, a blog that I read, Anne Mini’s Author! Author!, did a three part episode on names recently. I guess great minds think alike as I’ve had this in draft for the last couple days. But I just wanted to mention this so nobody thinks I’m stealing info (although I did read the articles and was probably influenced by them a little in my revisions.)

Character Motivation

I believe that character motivation is one of the most important elements in a story. It’s what makes the reader feel like a character is real, has feeling, and has an independent mind. Without this connection, it becomes very easy to see the strings dangling from the hands of the puppet master (the author).

What exactly does this mean? Well as a writer you have a plot in mind that you will guide your character through, and if the character is out of place, it will jump out to the reader like a flashing neon sign that the author does not know what they are doing.

For example: Say you have a Buddhist monk who has spent his entire life meditating, never killing a single thing; not even a mosquito. Then Rambo enters, trying to get away from the bad guys and asks the monk to help him out. If the monk starts fighting to help out Rambo; the reader is going to throw that book across the room. If for some reason you need the monk to start fighting you are going to need a REAL good reason to motivate this monk to forsake everything he’s ever believed in.

Pretty simple, but hopefully you get the point. Most cases it won’t be as obvious as this, and you as an author have to keep the motivations of your character in perspective, making sure that if you have them do something that they normally wouldn’t do, there needs to be a very good reason.

Another example would be a scene from the movie (I’ll try to use some literary examples in the future, but I think even in the writing community a there is a greater penetration for a lot of movies than most books.) The Shawshank Redemption, which just so happens to be based on a novella by Stephen King. So if you want, you can read a really good work by a skilled writer. But anyways, on to the example. One scene has the main character, Andy a former banker in prison for murdering his wife, on the roof of the license plate factory as part of a group of inmates chosen to do that work. At this point in the movie Andy is regularly being raped and does not really have any friends. Well he overhears one of the (notoriously violent and ruthless) guards talking about an inheritance he received, and how he’s disappointed that most of that money will be taken away by taxes. Andy approaches the guard and here is the transcript from that scene:

ANDY
Mr. Hadley. Do you trust your wife?

HADLEY (The guard with the inheritance)
That’s funny. You’re gonna look
funnier suckin’ my d*** with no
f***** teeth.

ANDY
What I mean is, do you think she’d
go behind your back? Try to
hamstring you?

HADLEY
That’s it! Step aside, Mert. This
f*****’s havin’ hisself an accident.

Hadley grabs Andy’s collar and propels him violently toward
the edge of the roof. The cons furiously keep spreading tar.

HEYWOOD (another inmate)
Oh God, he’s gonna do it, he’s
gonna throw him off the roof…

SNOOZE (One of the other guards)
Oh s***, oh f***, oh Jesus…

ANDY
Because if you do trust her, there’s
no reason in the world you can’t
keep every cent of that money.

Hadley abruptly jerks Andy to a stop right at the edge. In
fact, Andy’s past the edge, beyond his balance, shoetips
scraping the roof. The only thing between him and an ugly drop
to the concrete is Hadley’s grip on the front of his shirt.

HADLEY
You better start making sense.

Andy ends up explaining what Hadley can do and negotiates some beers for his fellow ‘coworkers’ in exchange for filling out the necessary forms. So now what can we extrapolate from this on Andy’s motivation? Well for starters most people would not have approached Hadley like Andy did, especially on a roof where ‘accidents’ could easily happen. But Andy could use two things. First he could use some favor with the guards; second he could use some favor with the other inmates.

This seems like a fine motivation for Andy; yet something seems wrong here. When Andy first walks up to Hadley, he insinuates that his wife is cheating on him. Now Andy is a pretty smart guy who would not do something like that on accident and here in-lies the problem that I have with this scene. I personally can’t find any motivation for Andy to do what he did there. If he wanted to die he could just jump off the roof; he would not insult Hadley and have him do it since Hadley hadn’t done anything to Andy. It makes no sense to me. Now granted it makes for a more dramatic scene, but when I was watching this movie it took a little of the magic out of it for me. Took away some of my suspension of belief.

To fix it so that the motivations of all characters are taken into consideration you could have Andy walk up to Hadley and just say, “I know how you can keep all of your money.” Then Hadley who is already in a rage could grab Andy by the shirt and push him over to the edge saying something like, “What are you trying to do? Get me in here wearing an number like you?” It’s not perfect but I think the scene would be a little more consistant as far as the motivation.

Anyways that’s enough for character motivation for now. My next entry will deal with some of the things I’ve learned while revising my latest novel.