If you’re a typical novice writer, then you’re obsessed with doing things the way a professional writer does things. So when a pithy piece of writerly advice comes along, you probably follow that suggestion like it’s one of the Ten Commandments.
Sadly, this gung-ho attitude is sometimes taken to ridiculous extremes by novice writers.
Take the pithy saying, “Kill your darlings.”
Now, what this is supposed to mean is that if a sentence, subplot, or supporting character doesn’t work, even if it’s something you worked hard on and like, you should cut it out “for the good of the story.”
Consider the source for this advice. Yes, Stephen King said it, but the guy who popularized the saying first was William Faulkner.
Think about Faulkner for a bit. This is the guy who decided to do the most self-indulgent thing I can imagine—writing one sentence that went on for pages—and he’s telling you not to be self-indulgent. And yet people remember Faulkner for taking this artistic risk. But he’s telling you not to take similar artistic risks?
Novice writers are so young and enthusiastic, that they often take writerly advice to an illogical extreme.
So, you have novice writers prowling around their prose like they’re Elmer Fudd, saying, “Be wery wery qwiet, I’m killing my darlings!”
They do the same thing with adverbs, the words “very” and “slightly,” and so forth, but my husband recently covered that one.
The point is that I’m starting to suspect that novice writers are overdoing it, because modern books are often very boring, and there’s an appalling lack of individual writing styles out there.
Now, I believe that you have to be willing to cut what doesn’t work. But I don’t believe that you should be actively hunting down every line of writing that you like and killing it.
“But it’s for the good of the story!” a novice writer will probably argue.
No, dear novice, it’s not for the good of the story, it’s for the good of the plot.
Plot does not equal story.
Plot is like the Wikipedia entry for a book. You read the bare bones of what a book is about, but you don’t get setting, dialogue, narrative style, nor character development. Only a whole book can give you those things.
A story is everything that a story is. A plot is simply what happens to the characters.
A story, in addition to a plot, has to have a setting, three-dimensional characters, good dialogue, an interesting narrative style, and an interesting writerly style.
Let’s talk about writerly style for a minute. Every writer should have their own style of writing. Yes, when you’re starting out, you’ll stand on the shoulders of your influences, but eventually, you’ll have to stand on your own. If you don’t have a writerly style, your prose suffers. As Shirley Jackson once said, writing isn’t the same thing as reporting the events that happen to your characters. There has to be a living, breathing soul behind your writing, or else it’s dry, lifeless stuff.
Nowadays, I see too much faceless, unindividuated prose out there. Oh, it’s professional enough, but it feels like an AI wrote it instead of a human being.
If I showed you a page of Dorothy Parker’s work, a page of P.G. Wodehouse’s work, a page of James Thurber’s work, etc., you would see that all of these writers have a unique way of seeing the world and writing about it. Yes, they’re all humorists, but they’re each funny in their own way—they’re each off-beat and quirky in their own way.
And I think they’re that way because they didn’t get Faulkner’s memo to kill their darlings.
That line or subplot or character that you’re killing off may be what gives your story zest and individuation. So, that line doesn’t advance the plot—it may do something more important, such as advance the readers’ understanding of a character, or help suspend the audience’s disbelief, or make the audience like/identify with a character.
Talk Sherlock Holmes. Technically, Holmes doesn’t need a pipe, or his “seven-percent solution,” or his lectures to Dr. Watson about Holmes’ methods, or Holmes’ criticisms of Dr. Watson’s writing style, or Holmes’ violin. None of these things contribute to the plot of a Holmes story. But they do contribute to what makes Sherlock Holmes who and what he is.
Maybe the quirks are the reason why we remember Sherlock Holmes and don’t remember, say, “The Old Man in the Chair,” a nameless detective contemporary of Sherlock Holmes. Holmes is quirky as can be, and, therefore, memorable.
Have you ever thought that maybe that line that you’re so eager to kill, far from being an annoyance that’s slowing down your plot, might be the very thing that makes you fascinating as a writer? Novice writers are told about all the ways that they can draw the reader into a story, but they’re told to kill any writerly quirks too, which seems illogical to me.
After all, the best way to attract anyone into your life is to be totally, uniquely yourself.
Maybe, just maybe, by killing something you love in your story, you may be killing off something that might make the reader remember and like your prose.
So, have your weapon at the ready to kill your darlings if they’re a threat to your story, but don’t go hunting them down—because if you’re kill-crazy concerning your prose, you may be giving yourself a self-inflicted wound instead of doing yourself a favor.
One time, a friend of ours got a meme or whatever you’d call it where he listed 100 favorite films. I showed it to Barb, and next thing you know, she couldn’t help but run off and start listing things herself…
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IN THE PRESENT, THOUGH, Barb says: “Oh WOW, I was such a different person when I made this list years and years ago! I’m going to go write a new version of this list right now!”
Anyway, since we’re also discussing creative CRAFT in these articles, we’ve also added CRAFT sections under each film or two, to help you think about what can be learned from these movies…
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Barb’s Favorite Films (from years ago)(PART ONE), In No Particular Order
Barb says:
Not a Top 100 List (close but no cigar), just films I like.
As anyone interested can see from the (first one-third of the) list below, I like comedies, film noir, and horror best. Weirdness, creativity, a certain degree of cynicism, characterization, and intelligence are all things I’m a sucker for. I also have a slightly secret sweet tooth for Hollywood soap operas, goofy bits of pop culture, and good all-ages films.
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—His Girl Friday
The best screwball comedy ever made. My favorite film and one of my biggest influences as a writer.
CRAFT: Also one of the best beginnings of a film. The scene when Hildy comes back and is talking in Walter’s office is fantastic. Look how fast they talk! Look how they talk over each other sometimes, like real people sometimes do in real life! Park and I often watch movies online at 1.2 speed or 1.5 speed, but His Girl Friday is good at normal speed.
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–Performance
Sex, drugs, rock and roll, magik, mob violence, Memo from Turner…what’s not to love? My other favorite film and one of my biggest influences as a writer.
CRAFT: What should we think of the ending? How should we feel about it?
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—Now, Voyager
–All This And Heaven Too
Yeah, I know, soap operas. But I love Bette Davis films, so sue me.
CRAFT: Look at how both films deal with narcissistic personalities (mothers, in both cases)…
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—My Man Godfrey
William Powell is a comedic genius, matched wit for wit by his ex-wife, Carole Lombard.
CRAFT: Look how fast they talk! Look at how Godfrey changes the lives of the people in the house, and why!
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—The Servant
Psychological Drama that feels like a horror film. Atmosphere bounds.
CRAFT: Look at how power works in this relationship!
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—The Haunting (the original version)
A horror film for adults. Very smart, very creepy.
CRAFT: Look at how the house manipulates these people…
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—The Changeling
Another horror film for adults. Also very smart, very creepy…and a big influence on Asian horror films (of which I am also a big fan)
CRAFT: Look at how this film deals with grief. In this century, every other horror movie claims that it’s about grief, but it’s often a hollow claim. This guy, he’s dealing with grief.
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—Inner Senses
My favorite Asian horror film. It’s been poorly marketed as Asia’s answer to The Sixth Sense, but its closest relative is Stir of Echoes (which just missed being on my fave movies list).
CRAFT: Is the protagonist haunted by a real ghost? Or is it JUST his grief and guilt? Are we even supposed to be able to decide?
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—The Producers (original version)
The best-written-and-acted first twenty minutes of comedy that I’ve ever seen. The rest is pretty darned funny, too.
CRAFT: Look at the speed! Look at the pacing! Look at the relationship between Leo and Max! Also: what does it mean that “Leo Bloom” is also the name of the fictional protagonist and hero of James Joyce’s 1922 novel Ulysses?
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—Gods and Monsters
Really just a two-character sketch, but when one of the characters is Sir Ian doing Frankenstein director James Whale, that’s reason enough to love this film.
CRAFT: One character is very gay, and the other is very straight, but they develop a friendship without the straight one ignoring that fact– it’s unignorable, it’s too much a part of who his friend is. This happens so rarely in English-language stories it’s amazing to see it done well.
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—My Neighbor Totoro
Heck, it could be just about any Miyazaki film. They’re almost all classics.
CRAFT: What is this film saying about childhood? About parenting? About the fear that something might happen to a loved one? About magic? About the sacred?
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—Get Carter
It doesn’t get much more hardboiled than this.
CRAFT: Think about what makes Carter so different from everyone else around him. What does this film say about concepts of masculinity? What are we supposed to think of that, in the end?
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–The Strange Love of Martha Ivers
Oh, sure, there are better film noirs, but few that are crazier or more sexually, um, deviant? Weird? Absolutely dedicated to linking sex and death? Love the gun as phallic symbol ending. Martha might be crazy, but she’s the one who pulls the trigger, let us say…
CRAFT: Look at the acting! Her! Our hero! Kirk Douglas! Playing the weakest man he’ll ever play! (And yet!) I can even put up with Lizabeth Scott’s acting here! What does this film say about the past? About how childhood shapes us?
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—Rock and Roll High School
—School of Rock
Two films that totally capture what it means to love rock and roll.
CRAFT: What do these films say about rebellion? About being young? About music?
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—Time After Time
David Warner finally gets a role he can sink his teeth into. A truly great adventure film.
CRAFT: What does this film say about the twentieth century? Look at the romance in this film! Look at the craft of how it makes us love these two people!
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—Brimstone and Treacle
I love British weirdness. Let’s leave it at that.
CRAFT: Good lord, think about what this film is saying about religion, about the devil, about evil!
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—Les Diaboliques (aka Diabolique)
Suspenseful– and dark suspense, with a ghost story hint at the end, just the way I like ’em.
CRAFT: What are we supposed to think about the end of this film?
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—The Lady Vanishes
Hitchcock’s most fun and perhaps best British suspense film.
CRAFT: Look at the craft of how Hitch stretches the situation out as long as possible!
—If…
More British weirdness. If only Clockwork Orange had looked like this instead of that plastic science fiction look…
CRAFT: What does this movie say about rebellion? About violence? About England? England, what’s wrong with you? And why are you still messed-up after this movie pointed it out? (Not that America doesn’t have at least as many problems, but come on!)
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—Quatermass and The Pit
Nigel Kneale was a god amongst script writers. Science fiction that feels like horror. Smart and imaginative. His work is an inspiration to me.
CRAFT: What is this movie saying about fear? What is it saying about the way human brains are wired? Are we just a jumble of chemical impulses? What is free will?
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—Laura
Clifton Webb is magnificent.
CRAFT: How sympathetic are we supposed to find Waldo? How sympathetic are we supposed to find Mark? Did the movie mean me to have the reactions I have to each man? (The answers to these questions may raise more questions about me than about this film, it’s true.)
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–The Manchurian Candidate (original version)
Lawrence Harvey’s finest hour as an actor. Maybe Frank Sinatra’s too. Whenever this film comes on, I can’t keep my eyes off of it. Complex, smart, weird, and scary films do it for me every time.
CRAFT: What does this movie say about politics in the twentieth century– and about the twentieth century in general?
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—Night of the Hunter
American noir weirdness. Preacher Powell is as scary as any movie monster.
CRAFT: What is evil? What are we to make about the scene when they’re both singing in the night? What does that scene say about religion, about evil, about the devil?
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—Singin’ In The Rain
Hilarious. Great dancing, great acting, great songs, great singing. Almost perfect, although I can live a happy life without ever seeing the “Gotta Dance” sequence again.
CRAFT: Look the craft of this! Okay, ignore the fashion show sequence, that was a mistake. But look at the craft of the rest of it! Yes, the dancing, but the writing! Don Lockwood makes a little speech and we have flashbacks that undercut everything he’s saying, but we just love him more. There’s a lot more to be said about the craft of this film…
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—The Late Show
A ’70s neo-noir classic that is often sadly overlooked by critics, perhaps because it’s a sad goodbye letter to noir, a reminder that we really can’t “make ’em like they used to”.
CRAFT: Look at how and why we like these two protagonists in spite of their flaws! Look at how this man and this woman have an increasingly-strong connection and there’s hardly a hint of the sexual brought into that! Do you understand how rare that is?! Like Singin’ In The Rain, there’s a lot more to be said about the craft of this film…!
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—The Lady Eve
—Ball of Fire
Both films star a joy named Barbara. Two whipsmart comedies by two of the best directors in the business.
CRAFT: Look at the little touches. Look at how the writer/director understands how to keep something funny yet touching. Look how human emotions are involved– in each case, the potential crime elements are just there as an excuse to have a movie about the relationships.
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—High and Low
Japanese film noir. Tough and tender, terribly suspenseful.
CRAFT: What does this film say about modern society, and corruption?
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—In A Lonely Place
Just about the saddest film noir ever.
CRAFT: Very different from the book. Look at how the director ratchets up the tension to make you anxious without driving you away.
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–My Favorite Year
A pleasure named O’Toole.
CRAFT: Look at how and why the young guy believes in this older actor. He’s his hero! What does it mean to be regarded as a hero– to one person, or to a lot of people? How does this movie talk about what it means to feel you should try to live up to someone else’s ideal?
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–Toy Story II
Heck, it could be just about any classic Pixar film: Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo. I just picked this one because it has my gal Joan Cusack in it. She’s one funny lady.
CRAFT: Look at how the story shifts mood, and when, and why… but especially how. Listen to how the soundtrack helps with that. Look at Jesse’s character as a portrayal of someone with PTSD.
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In the near future: the next installment, with 33 more films!
When I was in junior high, I had a good English teacher who taught me a lot of what I now incorporate into my writing. While not a creative writing teacher per se, she taught us the elements of the short story.
She taught us that all stories involve the following conflicts:
–Humans versus humans
–Humans versus nature/the world
–Humans versus what’s inside themselves, psychologically speaking.
She also told us that a story is a psychological journey. The lead character starts in one psychological state, and ends up in another. Whether the character is better or worse off at the end depends on the nature of the story.
However, the lesson she taught that’s stuck with me the most is the “bell curve” structure of storytelling.
Here’s an illustration of a bell curve:
A novel is like a rollercoaster. The first chapter is where the rollercoaster first starts its journey. The first chapter is where you check your safety belt, make sure that you’ve taken off your hat, and you otherwise make sure that you’re ready for the journey. There’s a sense of anticipation in the first chapter of a novel. But here’s the thing that modern writers don’t understand:
The first chapter of your novel should be the least interesting chapter of your novel. Yes, the first chapter should be interesting and intriguing, but… every chapter that follows should be more interesting than the previous chapter. So, chapter two should be more interesting than chapter one, etc.
Yes, I know, this is not what modern writerly advice tells you.
Most modern writing advice acts like the first chapter should be the most interesting chapter, so that you can “draw the reader in.” But if the first chapter is the most interesting, then the other chapters pale in comparison, and the audience starts getting restless. If the other chapters are boring compared to the start, then the reader is going to struggle with the rest of the book. They may even abandon the book, just because the next chapters are staid affairs compared to the first chapter.
So, the first chapter should be the “get situated” chapter. The authors should set up their dominoes in the first chapter. The second and third chapters should be the place where the readers get really hooked, as they can feel the ascending action happening. Then, as the book progresses, the dominoes fall over. The dominoes finishing falling over is the climax of the novel.
But back to the bell curve. As you see, the bell curve goes up and up and up, gaining tension. The chapters of your book should also be this way, giving a reader a sense of suspense and excitement, because they know that the payoff is coming.
Then, once one gets to the apex of the bell curve, the rollercoaster fun really starts. Soon after that, it’s time for the wheeeeee. About two-thirds of the way through the book is where we start having the climax of the book, where the reader should be breathlessly turning the pages of the book, wondering how everything’s going to play out.
If your climax and falling action don’t satisfy the reader, they’re going to think you’re a poor author indeed, and they won’t buy your next book.
Too often, I see the bell curve used in the first chapter, but then everything about that theory of writing gets abandoned after the first chapter. When the theory is abandoned, the events just flatline, like this stretch of road:
Without the suspense that comes from writing in a bell curve structure, the audience has nothing to look forward to after the first chapter except a series of events that don’t have much emotional impact.
Without the suspense that comes from writing in a bell curve structure, the audience has nothing to look forward to after the first chapter except a series of events that don’t have much emotional impact.
So often I read audience reviews of books that say, “I don’t understand what happened. The start of the book was great, but the next chapters were a boring slog to get through, and the ending sucked.”
That’s what happens when the start of the book is the most compelling part of things. You lose the audience that you gained with that amazing first chapter. I gotta tell you, I don’t make it all the way through a lot of modern books, because the bell curve first chapter followed by a flatline of monotonous highway bores me.
Now, you can screw around with the bell curve and have good results. Take the original 1978 film Halloween. Spoiler alert:
–Bell curve 1: We start with a bell curve. Seven-year-old Michael does something shocking.
–Bell curve 2: We get exposition, which we need because we want to know how a little kid could do something that horrible… but we’re seduced into another bell curve. Grown-up Michael escapes.
–Then the film goes into the longest bell curve (#3, if you’re still counting), which is the rest of the movie.
Why do it that way? To tell the audience that horror is coming.
Sadly, most moder, arthouse horror films start with a bell curve beginning, flat lines (usually involving arguments and/or people walking sadly around spooky places), only to end with twenty minutes (often as short as five minutes) of ultraviolence. The problem is that the flatline plot lasts so long that by the time we get to the bell curve at the end, we no longer care.
Looking at Halloween, we can see that one can start out with an incredible start to a work of entertainment, but then we have to restart the book by building up suspense again after the start. The audience will wait three chapters or so to watch you rebuild the bell curve, but if you don’t do that, you’re giving the audience a boring highway instead of a road they want to travel on.
Remember my first rule of writing: Never bore the reader.
Critics and readers have told me that I have a gift for dialogue.
I think maybe I do, but it wasn’t exactly something that I fell into instantly.
So, I’m going to tell you how I learned to write dialogue.
I didn’t learn to write dialogue from books, believe it or not. Most books, unless you encounter P. G. Wodehouse or Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett, don’t have memorable dialogue. I think it’s for two reasons:
1/ Writers learned how to write dialogue from reading novels, so their characters read like they are characters in a novel.
2/ Writing dialogue that sparkles seems “unrealistic” to some novelists. After all, most of us don’t sit around the Algonquin Round Table exchanging witticisms with famous wits.
I learned to write dialogue by watching old Hollywood movies, particularly screwball comedies– and films noir. I also learned my craft from playwrights like Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur, Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, and George Kaufman, whose plays were made into classic Hollywood movies.
See, screwball comedies and films noir depend on dialogue not only to move the plot forward, but to also reveal who a character is.
Take your average film noir. The majority of the time, the detective is talking to someone about something… and yet, it’s never talky. Here’s why:
1/ The detective is always in conflict with someone, be it the police, a client, a mobster, a hitman, a witness, a blackmailer, etc.
2/ The detective is talking about something important, like murder, assault and battery, a robbery, etc.
3/ The detective has to coerce someone to give him information of some type, so how the detective does so, and whether the detective succeeds or fails, becomes fascinating.
4/ The detective never knows who to trust, because he doesn’t know if someone’s lying to him.
A film noir takes 70 to 90 minutes to tell its story. So there’s no room for fat on its bones. So, every word of dialogue must show and tell not only something about the plot, but also something about the characters in the scene.
We can tell by a lot about a film noir character by how the character talks. Let’s make up a character– let’s call him Shortstuff.
The second Shortstuff opens his mouth, we find out who he is as a character:
–We find out what side of the law Shortstuff is on
–We find out if Shortstuff is afraid of something or someone
–We can tell how well educated/smart Shortstuff is
–We can figure out if he’s dangerous or not
–We will soon find out whether Shortstuff is cynical, philosophical, practical, worldly, naïve, and on and on.
We find out, through dialogue, a lot of what we need to know about the character, and since the film has only ninety minutes max to tell the story, we learn it fast.
I learned from films noir that dialogue doesn’t just move the plot forward, it moves the characterization forward.
As such, I learned that all of my scenes with dialogue needed to do the following:
–Show and tell you who the character is
–Show who the character likes and dislikes
–Show who the character is in conflict with
–Show us the likeable and unlikeable characteristics of a character
–Show us who the character has a real understanding with
Here’s the thing to remember about dialogue– in books, movies, TV shows, and real life, dialogue does one of two things:
–brings characters closer together, or
–tears characters apart
Think about real life. You meet someone. You like talking to this person. Then that person says something that strikes you as odd, offensive, or just plain unhinged. Are you going to start being friends with this person, or are you going to back away very slowly?
Or… you meet someone, and they mention a book or a movie you like. Are you going to stop talking to this person, or will you try to draw this person out further?
Like I said, dialogue either brings us closer together, or tears us apart.
Look for either the conflict in a scene with dialogue, or how dialogue brings people together. That’s where you will find your characters– and that’s where you’ll find your plot.
