Six things you should never do... if you are in a movie

1. If there has been a murder recently, trust the police to look into it rather than starting an investigation of your own. Follow this instruction even if you knew the victim.

2. Just because a building is creepy it doesn’t mean you have any right to break into it on a whim.

3. Just because the front door opens when you push it, doesn’t mean it is a good idea to step inside and look around. Consider the possibility that the opposite may be true.

4. On finding an old book or box in the house, don’t take a deep breath and blow the dust off the top. A slightly damp cloth will do the job far better without giving you or your fellow searchers an asthma attack.

5. However much time you feel it will save you in your search, never say, “let’s split up.”

6. On tripping over body in the dark, immediately call the police (see point 1). They may remind you of points 2 and 3, but will realise you are more likely to be a stupid person than a killer.

Four Plot Problems

There comes a time when the novel or screenplay gets pitched. That's when the product of our imagination and perspiration gets boiled down to a few short lines of prose - the story in a nutshell.

With all the gorgeous imagery stripped away, with all the texture, twists, turns and sub-plots gone, the producer, agent or publisher see our stories laid bare. It is an unforgiving moment - one in which any fundamental plot problems will probably be exposed. These are issues I try to anticipate BEFORE getting to the end of the writing process.

Here are four classic plot problems that should be clear by the time 25% of the story has been written.

• We don’t identify with the protagonist. She/he may be in danger, in love or in pain but ultimately we don’t care.

• The trigger is not big enough to make us believe the protagonist will do the things she/he will need to do in the story.

• The trigger is reversible, so we do not believe the protagonist will stay the course when things get really tough. She/he should simply turn around and go back home to live a quiet life.

• The protagonist is too passive – events happen and the protagonist reacts. The protagonist has become a character drifting down a river rather than actively swimming, someone that events happen to rather than a person who initiates change.
  

Strangeness in Stories

I'm putting together a workshop on storycraft for inclusion in a filmmaking course later in the year. Preparing the worksheets has set me thinking about the question of 'strangeness' in stories.

When people describe the archetypal patterns found in traditional stories they sometimes talk about the 'ordinary world' and the 'strange world'. The ordinary world is the home life of the protagonist before he/she starts the quest. The strange world is the unfamiliar landscape the protagonist will pass through before reaching the goal, whatever that may be.

This transition from ordinary to strange isn't confined to traditional hero epics. It comes up again and again in modern movies and novels.

The ordinary world may not be ordinary to us, the audience. But it is ordinary to the protagonist. If the protagonist is a racing driver, 'ordinary' means hurtling around the track at 150mph.

In a similar way, the strange world may not be strange to us, the audience, but will definitely be strange to the protagonist. One of the most important qualities of the strange world is that the rules the protagonist used to live by no longer hold good.

Generating Story Ideas

Where to find seed ideas for stories? Here are five ideas and observations:

Many stories come from asking questions. What would happen if... Thought is free so be as wild as you like. What would happen if a whale materialised high above the planet? No, wait, someone already wrote that one.

Stories can come from extrapolation. Read the driest news article from the most serious paper, then ask yourself about the people the story implies. The people in the background.

Don't be afraid of using up all your story ideas. The more stories you tell, the faster you'll find new ideas coming to you. The world is full of stories. All we have to do is train ourselves to notice them.

Other people's lives are a great source of story ideas. Happily, people love to talk about themselves. It is their favourite subject. Be a good listener and you'll have more stories than you can write.

I have a faulty digital radio that cuts out at random, usually leaving sentences unfinished. It's exasperating at times, but perfect for a storyteller. When the radio dies, my mind jumps forward, trying to complete the story.

And I am willing to sell this faulty digital radio/story generating machine. All reasonable offers considered. Now, that gives me an idea for a story...

The difference between Story and Reality

What is the difference between story and reality? According to Mark Twain: "Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't."

Tom Clancy made a similar observation: "The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense." However, he also commented on the overlap between the two: "I've made up stuff that's turned out to be real, that's the spooky part."

In his superb filmmaking masterclass last month, Chris Jones said: "The brain cannot tell the difference between a story and reality." That is why we cry watching a sad movie and scream watching horror. He also said: "Stories are about communicating truths not facts."

My take on it is this: Reality is a tangled knot made from an infinite number of threads. The full blinding complexity and intensity of it is available for us to experience in the 'now'. But as soon as events have past and we look back on what has happened, we start to order our memories into a narrative. From the tangle, we extract a single thread. That becomes the reality of our past.

As storytellers we do the same thing - extracting one thread from the mass of possibilities, cutting it to make a beginning and cutting it again to make an end. Then we present that to our audience.

Hadfield Library again

One month on and I'm heading up to Hadfield again.

A class on crime writing awaits. I have two and a half hours to get a group of people to go through the stages of sketching out a crime novel/screenplay story arc. In the process they will hopefully get a deeper understanding of how stories work.

Posessing that understanding has the unexpected side-effect of enabling people to reverse engineer the elements of a movie plot, and thus have a fairly shrewd idea of where the story is going to end up, having only seen the first 20 minutes.

Such knowledge can be a blessing and a curse. A blessing when you make a prediction and it proves correct and you get that smug feeling. A curse if it happens to be your partner who does the prediction and thus ruins your movie experience.

I'm well used to my long-suffering wife saying: "Stop! Don't tell me who did it!" I really must learn to hold my tongue.

When, just occasionally, a movie serves up something completely unexpected, it gives a special buzz of pleasure.

I say 'movie' rather than 'novel' because movies tend to be more tightly plot constrained. In story terms they are more condensed than novels. Being condensed, it is harder for the people who crafted the story to hide the tell-tale construction lines that, when projected, show where the story is heading.

Hadfield is a long way away

"Can you do a class on crime writing in Hadfield Library?"

"Sure. Love to."

"It's a long way, you know. People don't always realise how far north it is."

"No worries. It can't be that far. It's in Derbyshire, after all."

I looked at the map yesterday to plan my journey. She was right. It IS a long way. How come the East Midlands stretches all the way to Manchester?

(For those of you reading this in the USA or Australia, please be advised that on this small island we think of a hundred mile journey as a fair hike.)

So - it is blog-lite today as I am about to hop into the car and zip up to Hadfield to give a session on crime writing. During the session I hope to get the group to collectively plan out a story - whether it is for a novel or a movie I leave up to them. It's a popular workshop which I have done several times in different places. Always fun to do. Not so much a writing workshop as a story workshop.

So the actual time I would need to leave would be in two hours. But to prevent me from worrying about time (one of those dyslexic issues) I'm going to set off just as soon as I post this and power down the computer.