In a previous post, I decried how many modern novels start with an in media res start to things—that is, they start the story already mid-plot and expect the audience to catch up, which is not just confusing to the reader, but may also alienate the reader, because it means they’ll have no idea who the action is happening to.
But literary agents, being busy people, only want to see the first chapter of your novel. So, people work to make their first chapter the mother of all first chapters, because they simply must capture the agent’s attention.
It’s gotten to the point where, if you don’t have a start to a novel that’s what I call a Crash Boom Bam (CBB) first chapter, agents may turn down your manuscript.
Now, you may ask, what’s so bad about a CBB first chapter? Don’t they draw the reader in?
While I get your point, CBB chapters are—among other problems—ruining slow-burn suspense novels. See, I love finding authors who know how to do a slow burn well, especially those who write in the horror or suspense genres. When you have a CBB first chapter, though, you destroy that slow-burn gradual building-up of suspense.
I’ll give you two examples of the beginnings of novels that I love, but modern agents would turn down flat.
The first novel is called Bedelia, by Vera Caspary, also the author of Laura, which was later turned into the classiest film noir ever. In Bedelia, the whole first chapter is a staid affair, talking about an ideal marriage between Charlie and Bedelia. Charlie considers himself to be “the luckiest man in the world.” And from all indications in the first chapter, he well might be.
Then, at the beginning of the second chapter, all hell starts breaking loose. Every page after that is a real nail-biter. I was hooked like a fish on a, uh, hook.
But if Vera Caspary had sent in that first chapter to a modern agent, without being able to send in the second chapter, her book never would’ve been published, because every agent in the world would say: “That’s boring. Why aren’t you giving me action?”
Well, the reason why there’s no action in the first chapter is to lull the reader into a quiet complacency and a false sense of security. But when the second chapter starts reeling the fish in, it’s too late for the fish to struggle. If the book started out with CBB instead, then some people might have said, “Nah, I’m not into this.” Luring the reader requires time and patience, but it works at least as well—maybe even better than—the CBB first chapter.
My second example is a book I read on a whim during the initial pandemic lockdown. I’d seen the movie the book was adapted from, and it wasn’t quite my sort of thing. But once the pandemic started, I was grabbing for any book that looked interesting.
Anyway, the book started out in a cozy little way. A young actor and his wife had just signed a contract to rent an apartment that they weren’t exactly keen on. But then, the apartment that they wanted had a vacancy, so the husband managed to wriggle out of the contract, and the couple rented the first apartment. They met their neighbors, who seemed very friendly. Heck, the apartment and the neighbors seemed so nice that anyone would jump at a chance to live there.
Sounds kind of boring, doesn’t it?
Well, wonder if I told you that the wife’s name was Rosemary Woods and that she and her husband wanted to have a baby? Yeah, that’s right: I just described the start of Rosemary’s Baby.
The book deliberately takes its time warming up. It is a slow burn. But three or four chapters in, I couldn’t put the book down. It’d hooked me because the author turned the heat up slowly, as opposed to quickly.
I’ve read horror novels that turned up the heat faster, and I didn’t finish a lot of them, because I wasn’t lured into the book—I wasn’t given breadcrumbs to follow. Instead, I was given CBB, and it was a turn-off for me.
Yet if Ira Levin had just turned in the first chapter of Rosemary’s Baby, the world would never know that Rosemary’s baby would have his father’s eyes.
As someone who’s written a few slow burn novels, it’s frustrating that agents need instant gratification first chapters. They seem to think that a slow burn first chapter means that you don’t know how to write a chapter that will “draw the reader in.” Unlike readers, who are understanding (as long as the writer knows how to write), agents seem to lack that kind of forbearance. And—I get why! Agents are busy! But the world needs slow burn novels, and we’re not getting enough of them, because writers can’t write them and write for a busy agent, too.
I don’t know what the solution is, but it’s a problem, as well as a sad state of affairs.
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.
Look, I can understand what motivates people to seek out arthouse horror films. Modern horror films are a mess. The direct-to-video films don’t even try to do anything good. Most of the found-footage films are wastes of time. (The only exception I can recall is Trollhunter, which is of course fantastic and excellent, the exception that proves the rule.) Many of the modern Hollywood horror films are either vying for a franchise or are simply a conglomeration of old ideas we’ve all seen a thousand times before (or both).
An alternative must be found. I get that. In fact, I’ve spent a lot of time doing just that. I’ve watched everything from Korean web series (Nightmare High was quite good) to made-for-TV films from the 1970s (The Spell, When Michael Calls, even the insane Bad Ronald). I’ve watched obscure Asian films from the Criterion Collection. I got into Mario Bava and Italian giallo films. I’ve watched horror films from Mexico. They’re not all “wrestlers vs. monsters” films. Carlos Enrique Taboada (Mexico’s answer to Mario Bava) is an underrated genius of slow, atmospheric horror. So, yeah, I’m with you all. Modern horror isn’t delivering the goods.
However, modern arthouse horror is also not the answer. I have tried many of these critics’ darlings, and I have ended up angry and frustrated with them. They are pretentious wastes of time.
Now, I can understand why many fans, frustrated by modern horror, wish to champion arthouse horror. Having seen a lot of them, I understand how they might have a superficial appeal. Every last one of these films has tone and atmosphere! They have wonderful cinematography! (Of course they do– half of them have ripped off Stanley Kubrick’s directorial style.) But, tone, atmosphere, and cinematography mean little if there’s not a good story involved in the film. I’m nuts for good cinematography! I watch a lot of old film noir! The camera work in all of those classic films contribute to telling good, interesting stories. But there must be a story, or else who cares? If the filmmakers would take the same time and effort with the scripts of modern arthouse horror (let’s shorten that to MAH) that they do with trying to make their movies look stylish, I would really like MAHs. But MAHs don’t take that same time and effort with their scripts.
And that is where my hatred begins. Modern arthouse horror films have about 15 to 20 minutes of actual plot stretched out over ninety frustrating minutes of film watching—and they’re increasingly creeping toward 180 minutes! (If and when I choose to watch a movie that’s 179 minutes or more, by the end of it, Rasputin, the mad monk better be dead, Anastasia better have screamed in vain, and the provisional government better have a 5-year plan.) I equate watching a modern arthouse horror film to getting on a rollercoaster ride and having the ride not go anywhere until the last few minutes. Imagine the ride going forward, but not having any ups or downs, just flatness. Boring, huh? Well, that’s what you get with modern arthouse horror films.
MAHs are storyless wonders. Let me be clear about what I mean by story: stories consist of plot (events that happen), characters (who these events happen to), characterization (who these characters are and what they want), character interaction (characters reacting to and responding to other characters), dialogue (how characters communicate with other characters), and backstory (who these characters were before the story began). We need most of these elements to care about characters (sometimes backstory can be brief or non-existent). If we don’t know who the characters are, what they want, how they respond to other characters or events… then we don’t care about the story. And if we don’t care, we get bored. These elements of storytelling matter to every story, be it horror, comedy, or tragedy. Horror adds something special to the mix, though. Horror is supposed to add the element of suspense. Horror is supposed to ratchet up the tension of a plot. But there must be a plot, or else there’s nothing to ratchet up.
With the exceptions of Trollhunter and Let the Right One In, MAHs do not have the above-mentioned elementary requisite elements of storytelling. We rarely get backstory. We don’t get to know MAH characters. They are mostly two-dimensional beings that slowly meander through a movie. They don’t relate to other characters (who also mostly meander through the movie). They rarely talk to other characters. The characters rarely react or respond to events because, in the main, events don’t happen.
But, man, the movies look good. Shouldn’t that count for something? Well, to me, these films are like a gift box you see in a department store window. “Oh, how pretty the wrapping is! I want what’s inside that box!” you might think. So, you open the box, and there’s nothing in it. So, yeah, darn’ right, you’re disappointed. You wanted something to be inside the box! You were lured in by the pretty wrapping– but without a gift inside, well, you’ve been rooked! You’ve been conned! You’ve been had! Cinematography is wrapping on a present. You have to have a story.
Now, if you dare to say that you don’t like MAHs, you’ll be attacked. It’s just a fact of life. Maybe you won’t be attacked in a typical internet way, where you get cursed at, told that you are a dumb **** or the R word. The attacks about not liking MAHs are often more subtle… but they’re just as ad hominem as any troll on any forum. If you don’t like storyless wonders, it’s all your fault. Your intellect, educational level, and sophistication level will all be called into question.
These attacks fall into the following categories:
1/ You’re just not smart enough to appreciate these films.
2/ You just like blockbuster films.
3/ You don’t understand arthouse films/You don’t understand or appreciate arthouse horror.
4/ You just don’t like slow moving, deliberately-paced films.
5/ You want everything in a film explained to you. You want plots “spoon fed” to you. You don’t understand ambiguity.
6/ You don’t want good, thoughtful horror films.
7/ You ain’t nothing but a gorehound.
8/ It’s not really a horror film. It was marketed wrong. You’re stupid to approach it as a horror film.
In short, you have to, at every junction, show your hip cred resume. So, fine, I will.
1/ I am not stupid. I have a Master’s Degree in Liberal Studies (and my husband is a PhD).
2/ Actually, I haven’t seen a modern blockbuster film in years.
3/ I saw my first arthouse horror film when I was a tween. It was Don’t Look Now, and I loved it. I saw my first arthouse non-horror film when I was fifteen. It was Shoot the Piano Player, and I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced toast. I’ve seen about 250 films in the Criterion Collection. I’m nuts for foreign films, especially foreign horror films. I can talk to you about film directors from Akira Kurosawa to Joseph Losey. So, yeah, I appreciate and understand arthouse films. In fact, it’s my appreciation for arthouse films that gives me the experience to say that modern arthouse horror films are a cheat. They are sound and vision signifying nothing.
4/ I’ve seen Wings of Desire four times. I’ve seen Celine and Julie Go Boating. These are snails’ pace films, and I liked them very much. I don’t mind slow, deliberate pacing if I care about the characters, or if I feel there’s a legitimate reason for slow pacing. Using slow pacing to cover up for a lack of story is not a legitimate reason for anything.
5/ I love ambiguity. I can talk for hours about films such as Performance or The Innocents. I’m crazy for stories that stay with me and make me think. But underwritten, vaguely-written stories are not ambiguous. They are simply empty experiences.
6/ See number five. I desperately want thoughtful horror films. Silk, The Others, The Haunting, Curse of the Cat People. I collect thoughtful horror films like kids collect Pokemon.
7/ I don’t mind gore at all, but I don’t consider myself a gorehound. But whether I like my movies bloody or light on the carnage isn’t the point. I’m not into horror films for the violence nor the gnarly kills. I’m into them for the tales that only the horror genre can tell. Horror films can tell great stories if the filmmakers actually care enough about their scripts to tell real stories instead of drifting from scene to scene without any intention of telling a coherent, worthwhile tale.
8/ If a trailer and a bunch of critics lead one to believe that a film is a horror film, then it is not stupid for an audience member to expect a horror film.
But let’s say, for a moment, that the trailers aren’t the film’s fault. Even if a film isn’t really a horror film, it has to be something else. It has to be a good, interesting something else. For instance, I once saw a Thai film called Dorm. It was marketed as a horror film. It wasn’t really one at all. In fact (SPOILER here), it was a very sweet, funny, well-written slice-of-life film with horror elements. I didn’t mind the bait and switch compared to what I was expecting, because the story was really involving. But if you were to pull a bait-and-switch on me and you had nothingelse to offer except pretty cinematography, then not only would I be angry, I think that I would have every right to be.
So, I guess what I’m saying, arthouse horror fans, is that I (technically) am one of the gang you’re in with. And, even then, sorry-not-sorry, I cannot, even in the name of wanting better horror films than found-footage garbage, call shit shinola, as the saying goes.
I look at modern arthouse horror, and I gotta say, this ain’t shinola.
The MAH emperor has no clothes– he’s naked as a jaybird. Modern arthouse horror is boring, not scary, and not a damned thing happens in it. It isn’t horror, it’s a con. If the future of horror is tedium that’s prettily filmed, then horror has no future.
When my book Song to the Siren came out, a website interviewed my husband and me. One of the questions was about whether we used “character sheets,” which are lists of what characteristics a character has. I blew the question off by saying something like, “I have a vague idea of what one of my characters is like, but I don’t really know the character until I put that character in a traumatic situation. Then I see what the character is made of.”
Now, that’s true, but I later realized that actually, I do write character sheets. I just do them in my head, that’s all. I guess I’ve been doing this writing/editing thing so long that it just comes naturally to me.
Well, I began to realize, for a novice writer, character sheets might be a good thing, just to organize their thoughts about their characters.
So, to be helpful and to show solidarity to novice writers who don’t know how to write a character sheet in their head yet, I guess I should list what I do in my head, just in case it helps writers who are just starting out.
Let’s take the lead character from Song to the Siren. I’ll show you what I knew about the character before I wrote him.
REED SINCLAIR
1/ Occupation: cult rock star/musician who died young, under mysterious circumstances.
2/ Place of birth: Germany. Reed was a military brat during his early years.
3/ Where’d he grow up: Bloomington, Minnesota during the 1960s.
4/ Economic status: upper middle class, living in a suburb
5/ Family: emotionally-distant father, alcoholic mother, a golden child brother who died in Vietnam, and a grandmother who believed in Irish mythology.
6/ Physical description: the most beautiful young man you’re ever going to see
7/ Intelligence level: gifted musician, near-genius IQ
8/ Psychological problems, if any: oppositional defiance disorder, possibly seeing things that aren’t there, prolonged grief syndrome concerning his older brother
9/ Miscellaneous facts: hates bullies, authority figures, rules, and unfairness. Loves his girlfriend, his friends, his music, and his freedom.
10/ Known enemy: The Belle Dame Sans Merci
That was the character sheet that I had up in my head. Everything else, I had to find out by writing about the character. I call the Song to the Siren novels (yeah, I’ve written more than one) my “play to find out” novels, since I didn’t know more than what the character sheet in my head told me, and I was curious to know more.
I learned more by throwing everything but the kitchen sink at my character. Seeing Reed fight cruel fate was how I “found” Reed. Once I found him, I didn’t want to let him go until I knew everything about him.
Now, here’s the thing about character sheets. If you know everything there is to know about a character, what’s the point of writing that character? Isn’t it better to have a few mysteries about the character?
I’m reminded of something my husband used to do before we were married. My husband played some table-top role-playing games in college. So, when he and I were living together, he used to do these long, well-thought-out character sheets for characters he made up. He’d do the backgrounds, the stats, the weapons, and so on. He’d min/max the heck out of characters. I started feeling a little bad about my husband not having a gaming group to join. I suggested he find a group.
He answered: “Nah, why bother? I already know everything the character is capable of.”
A lightbulb went off in my head. “Oh, it’s like Alfred Hitchcock, who used to storyboard his movies down to the last shot. He used to say that, since he’d already blocked out the movie, there was no mystery to the thing any longer. Shooting the movie was the most boring part to him.”
“Exactly,” my husband said.
The point is, it’s probably better to leave a lot of mysteries in your character sheets. Know enough about your characters to start writing them—then throw them into the mud, and see how they respond. In their responses to trauma and drama, you’ll find your characters, instead of what you assume they’re like.
Previously, I mentioned my three “rules” of writing, which are:
“Rule” 1: Never bore your reader.
“Rule” 2: Never betray your reader’s trust.
“Rule” 3: If your ending doesn’t satisfy the reader, they won’t come back to read your next novel.
My husband and writing partner said to me: “You’re going to have to explain the second one.”
Yeah, I do have to.
Let me list ways of betraying the reader’s trust:
1/ Not playing fair with the reader. Dorothy L. Sayers said that a detective novel must play fair with the reader by giving the reader all the clues needed to solve the mystery.
If you’re writing a mystery novel and you do the following, you have betrayed the reader:
a/ If a character that’s hardly in the novel did the murder, or a character that’s introduced late in the book did it.
b/ If the ending depends on esoteric knowledge that the average reader doesn’t know.
For instance, a detective knows all the symptoms of dying by an obscure poison, but we know nothing about that poison. Now, in the internet age, we might be able to do research about obscure poisons, but in the olden times, if you couldn’t find the time to go to the library and spend hours reading up on obscure poisons, you’d probably feel cheated by the ending of a story like that.
c/ If you fail to mention an integral element to the mystery.
For instance, if your villain stuck the body in the fridge for about an hour before putting the body in the living room, screwing up the coroner’s time of death, but you failed to mention that the apartment had a refrigerator large enough to store a human body.
I can think up more, but you get the idea.
2/ Changing a character’s character alignment in order to make the character follow the plot. I call this the “Game of Thrones” problem.
3/ You come up with a crazy, convoluted plot, but the truth is, all your characters are dead. Guess which TV show botched that plot.
4/ The plot has several complications that the reader is reading the darned thing to figure out, but they all kind of fade away without adequate resolution.
I got hooked on a manga once that had this problem. I won’t say the name of it, as the manga fans would hate me, but the plot complications were like this:
a/ Two young men loved the same young woman. We expected a big confrontation, but that subplot just petered out.
b/ There was a big mystery that we expected the young woman to be instrumental in solving, and… that didn’t happen.
We sat there, volume after volume, waiting to learn the big secret and how she would solve it.
The secret’s origin was boring, and the solution to it was a big shrug. What was worse, the young woman had nothing to do with solving the mystery!
5/ The audience has expectations concerning how the plot will conclude—and you leave them disappointed. While it’s wonderful for an author to defy the audience’s expectations, you must come up with something even better than the audience had in mind or else the audience will get annoyed.
WandaVision had this problem. (Spoiler alert ahoy!)
The show was set up as a “can you, True Believer Marvel fans, solve the mystery before the casual viewer can?” Every week, there were “Easter egg” clues. The hardcore fans followed the clues diligently, and came up with some bitchin’ fan theories. Now, we all know that some easter eggs do not hatch. But with WandaVision, none of the easter eggs hatched. Even the casual viewership figured out who the “big bad” was pretty quickly.
Now, some people will yell “fannish entitlement” concerning the letdown that the fans had, and will say that the Marvel fans shouldn’t have concocted such wild fan theories. But the whole ad campaign, the marketing campaigns, and so on, were aimed at the hardcore Marvel fans solving the mystery of WandaVision before everyone else. The fans were actively encouraged to be one step ahead of the rest of the audience, as if to say, “What about you, viewer? Can you stay one step ahead of the other viewers? Do you see what’s coming?”
We expected Nightmare, and/or the X-Men (or at least one or two of them). We ended up with a “boner” joke. That felt like a real insult to the “True Believer” Marvel fans.
Now, maybe getting out the judgment hammer isn’t totally fair to WandaVision, because I understand that COVID screwed with them being able to make the series the way they’d hoped to make it, but… you see what I’m talking about, right?
Many viewers were fine with the series, as Elizabeth Olsen’s performance was inspired, but others still felt let down.
6/ The author changes genres on the audience in order to exploit the audience’s emotions.
I was watching a movie once that seemed to be a feel-good movie…
…and then, for no reason, tragedy occurred. It just came out of nowhere. I’m a person who gets emotionally attached to a book or a movie, so if the screenwriter had played it right, I would have gotten teary-eyed.
Instead… I laughed my head off. I’m sure some people would call me a monster, because the ending was soooo tragic, but the screenplay writer had done nothing to gain my trust! And if the rest of the movie had gone back to being a feel-good movie, I guess maybe I would’ve shrugged. But a tragedy that comes out of left field just to exploit my emotions is a betrayal of trust, so I ended up having a fit of the giggles instead of getting sad.
You can’t use the emotional hard sell on an audience member if you haven’t gained their trust by establishing the idea that tragedy might happen. You know, little clues here and there, along with a little foreshadowing. If you don’t do that, but you expect the audience to shed tears, the audience might join me in shaking their damned heads at your ending.
There are other ways to betray your audience’s trust, like killing off the most interesting characters and leaving the boring ones, but I think you get my drift.
So… I guess I’m saying this: The audience remembers an authorial betrayal. Once-bitten, they become twice-shy concerning trusting you as an author again.
As a writer, one of the few questions I hate to hear is: “Where do you get your ideas?”
The problem is that the question’s much too broad. If you asked me where I got the ideas for the stories in my book The Talking Cure, I could tell you. If you asked me what inspired my book Song to the Siren, I could give you a fifteen-minute lecture about Shirley Jackson, “Turn of the Screw,” Oliver Onions’ “The Beckoning Fair One,” and so on.
But the broadness of the question makes it sound like there’s an idea store where I purchase my ideas. If only!
I could tell you that ideas come from Jung’s “Collective Unconscious,” where all ideas are supposedly stored, but I can’t tell you how to get there, as I don’t exactly know myself.
I could tell you that ideas just come to me, but that sounds like a cop-out, like I’m holding out on you.
I could say “I don’t know,” but that’s both true and false.
I can tell you that I have my radar up for ideas all of the time.
–I see a movie? I might think, “Oh, look, that’s different. Maybe if I took the idea and did this instead…?”
–I read a book? I might think, “I like the tone and atmosphere of this book. How can I take this tone and atmosphere and change it to suit my needs?”
–I see a picture of a mythological being, I might think, “Hey, no one’s written about that monster (as far as I’m aware)… Wonder if I did my research and…?”
My mind is always looking for that idea that sparks other ideas in my head.
I do a ton of research concerning my books, but it’s research that I enjoy. For instance, I probably wouldn’t write a novel about Revolutionary France, since I’m not all that interested in French history. But if I read a blog about paganism in Ireland, I might think, “Hey, that’s interesting. Let’s look up the myths mentioned here.”
But when it comes down to it, my story ideas come from the 4 questions I always ask myself:
1/ What if…?
For instance, what if there were zombies on a space station?
2/ What hasn’t been done before?
For instance, I wrote a story where Ophelia was pixelated by the fairies because… well, you’d have to read the story.
3/ If it has been done before, how can I do things differently?
For instance, most authors write stories about imaginary friends that turn out to be demons or ghosts. Wonder if the imaginary friend is a protective being instead of evil, but then…
4/ Why do I have to write this story?
Not enough authors ask themselves this question. They just say, “A writer writes,” then they write the story, even if it’s been done to death. “A writer writes, I have this idea, so I have to write it.”
If I don’t feel I’m the person to write the story, I let it go.
I came up with a cozy teatime mystery once, but I thought, “Nah, I hate those sorts of things. They’re all the same.” So, I let the idea go.
It’s okay to let an idea go if it doesn’t make you enthusiastic about writing the story…
…because if the story really wants to be written by you, it will come back.
For instance, I had an idea for a short sequel story to Jane Eyre. It was going to be called “A Year and A Day.” But I thought, “Anyone could write this story. It’s not all that original.” So, I let the idea go.
But I gotta tell you, that story followed me around like a puppy. I told it to go away—it wouldn’t go away.
So, finally, I cracked open Jane Eyre, and I realized, “The only reason I didn’t want to write this story was that I didn’t have a good ending. But what if…”
I wrote that story in about an hour, because it needed to be told. And it needed to be told by me.
There is nothing like the excitement of having a story say: “You and me! Come on, write me NOW! Yeah, right now!”
You’ll know if you’re meant to write a story, because if you are, you get really excited about writing it.
So…
Does that answer the question? Because I don’t really have a better answer than that.
There’s a whole cottage industry out there concerning writerly advice. Many, many blogs feature everything novice writers “must” and “should never” do. Frankly, if I were a novice, I’d be so confused that I couldn’t write one word, out of fear that I’d be doing something wrong.
I’m going to tell you a secret—or rather, I’m going to quote W.S. Maugham:
“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
― W. Somerset Maugham
This is the honest truth about writing. No one—no matter how rich, how well-known, nor how influential—knows the rules of writing, because, honestly, there are no hard and fast rules concerning writing.
What there are, instead, are good suggestions. You need to weigh those good suggestions and ask, each time, “Does this suggestion work for me?”
But “10 Good Suggestions For Writing A Great Novel” isn’t a very clickbait title, is it?
In the end, these “rules” are just suggestions that you should take with a huge grain of salt.
Look, I get it. You’re just starting out, so you’re desperate to figure out if you’re doing it right. You want a recipe for writing a novel. But novels are not something you can write with a checklist. Novels are something you write by instinct. Only experience can help you become a good writer. Only by getting your hands dirty can you know how to write a book—in other words, learn by doing.
You have to find your own methodology for writing. No one can do that for you. You learn by trial, error, and infinite patience.
So, I’m hesitant to give you writerly advice, as that makes it sound like I have the secrets to good writing, and that if you read my suggestions, you’ll become a great writer.
That’s not how it works. If I had the secrets, I’d give them to you.
But I do have “getting my hands dirty” experience, so I’ll give you what I’ve learned. If what I’ve learned applies to you, take what you need. If it doesn’t, go with what works for you.
However, since I’m thinking about these “three rules of writing a novel,” I’ll give you what I’ve learned:
“Rule” 1: Never bore your reader.
“Rule” 2: Never betray your reader’s trust.
“Rule” 3: If your ending doesn’t satisfy the reader, they won’t come back to read your next novel.
So, I’ll keep writing out my suggestions, but remember this: Don’t try to follow perfectly in my footsteps. I’m a stranger here myself—because every time I write a story, I’m back to square one. Every story of mine requires a new perspective and a new methodology. I’m fortunate enough to have the skills that I’ve learned by doing, but every story is still virgin territory for me. That’s what makes writing exciting.
I have no road maps to help you write a perfect book. But I do have experience, which I’m glad to share with you.
