The Frame that Holds the Art

By Steve Weddle

Remember when you read “Heart of Darkness” and it opened with Marlow sitting on that boat with those old guys and how he started telling them that story of how he went up the river to find Marlon Brando?

And how about that book that was letters Robert Walton wrote to his sister about this weird doctor called “Frankenstein”?

And that book Washington Irving put together from that colorful guy called “Crayon” with all that stuff about Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle?
And how Hawthorne “found” those stories in an attic trunk? Or some fake dude Kierkegaard made up found fake letters some other fake person wrote to another fake person?

Since naming things helps to talk about them – and makes teaching easier – we call this gimmick, er, technique the “framing” device. Of course, since you’re so smart and good looking you already knew that.

This technique seems to work along that “willing suspension of disbelief” stuff in much the same way that a prologue-epilogue do.

Don’t tell anyone, but I just recently sculpted a prologue onto my current work in progress. Then I found out all the cool writers hate prologues. I felt like Ted Knight in that scene from “Caddyshack”--


Al Czervik: Oh, this is the worst-looking hat I ever saw. What, when you buy a hat like this I bet you get a free bowl of soup, huh?
[looks at Judge Smails, who's wearing the same hat]
Al Czervik: Oh, it looks good on you though.

Yeah. That prologue. Does it ever look good? Does it make your book an embarrassment?

Most arguments against the prologue sound something like this: “Just make the first chapter better, slacker.” Um, yeah. Thanks. Is this really a problem of nomenclature? If we called the prologue the first chapter and moved on, would that work?

SHUTTER ISLAND by Dennis Lehane opens with a prologue: “I haven’t laid eyes on the island in several years.” The prologue is dated 1993, nearly half a century after the events in the book. The framing technique here is that old doctor is losing his memory to age and needs to get this story down before he forgets everything. Why? Because you need to know.

Why does Marlow tell his story to the men on the boat? Because they need to know, need to understand the darkness.

A good prologue isn’t just a cheat on the first chapter. A good prologue can frame the narrative, in the way that the prologues did in Greek drama. Here’s a story I’m gonna show you. This story I have to share.

A good prologue can match up with a solid epilogue.

Maybe sometimes a prologue is just parts of the opening that should be included in the first chapters. And maybe it doesn’t always fit, but when it does, it’s a perfect match, particularly to a good epilogue that pulls you back out of the story. Maybe sometimes it forms a solid frame that holds the story, much like the way Conrad used Marlow to tell the story. The part that holds the story together.

In that scene in “Caddyshack,” Al Czervik makes fun of the judge’s hat as the judge is walking behind some aisles of other pro shop junk. You know, maybe that hat was a perfect match to the judge’s shoes, one edge complementing the other.


Today's Question: Have you ever read or written a prologue that worked particularly well? Or didn't?

Not Just For Kids Anymore

by Mike Knowles

When I was a kid, my parents didn’t read to me much. I knew about the Cat and the Hat, but I never read it until I was older. I remember sitting in a doctor’s office waiting to go into the examination room and seeing a worn copy of Dr. Seuss’ masterpiece sitting on top of the worn National Geographic’s. I picked up the book, mainly because I had already looked through the National Geographic’s years before on previous visits and because the magazine covers skeeved me out due to the thick sheen of finger grease left from years of being thumbed through by all of the other patients. So I read the book, put it down, and thought to myself: “So that’s what all the hype was about.” The book was cute and I got how it was delightfully different, but it didn’t do anything for me. The only book I could ever remember getting my attention was Where the Wild Things Are. That had monsters, so there was no way a cat wearing a top hat was going to compete with that. I found another Seuss title buried beneath the old magazines and read it just to be sure. One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish was even less interesting than the first. I put down the books and was done with picture books, for a while. I figured I just wasn’t a picture book kind of guy.

I am a teacher now and I teach Grade 8. Where I teach, I am responsible for almost every subject, so I work hard to get kids into some good books. I start every year with Ed McBain’s On the Sidewalk Bleeding. Harry Potter it ain’t. There are no wizards or movies about it. It is always something brand new for the kids. McBain wrote it as Evan Hunter and you can find it online. If you haven't read it, take a break and do it now the blog will wait. How often do you get to spend Sunday morning with McBain anymore (Click Here)? Often, this story is the first time kids I teach realize that not all stories have to finish with a happy ending. I segway this story into others like Roald Dahl’s Lamb to the Slaughter which is another dark story (just in case you never read that either Click Here). From there, I show the kids as many things as I can that will make them learn to see books as more than just a school chore. In looking for things to show the class I was guided by another teacher back to picture books. I was sitting through one of those boring Professional Activity Day meetings wishing I was at home like the kids when the presenter began sending around picture books. The passing ended when the books hit me, because I spent the rest of the meeting reading each one before passing it on. These children’s books were not like the one’s I remembered. There were no monsters, or rhymes, they instead dealt with serious social issues. I read a book on homelessness, one on the cultural devastation wrought by Columbus, and another about the dangers of life in a dictatorship.

After the meeting, I arranged to get each book and sought out several more by the same authors. I couldn’t believe someone had decided to stop treating children’s books like something meant only for a toddler’s bedtime and that I had missed the memo. These books used the medium of picture books to explain and explore topics that young children do not usually come into contact with until they are much older. The issues are presented in understandable terms and are usually centered around a young person’s perspective so that they are easily relatable for young audiences. My students have found them more engaging than a rhyming cat in a chapeau every time.

The book I now break out every year to break the kid’s prejudice about picture books (the same one I had) is The Composition by Antonio Skarmeta and Alfonso Ruano. The story is intense. It centers around a young boy named Pedro who lives in a time of political upheaval in Latin American country. The military begins to cart off the parents of young children for their opposition to the dictator. The situation even begins to affect all of the children in a nearby school when a General comes to class one day to assign a new piece of homework. The children are tasked with writing a report on everything their parents do at night. The fate of Pedro’s entire family is thrust upon him and he cannot hide or run away. The issues in The Composition are serious, but amazingly they are understood by a lot of young kids.

Books like The Composition stop babying kids and give them a chance to read something challenging and relevant. They also opened my eyes to the serious literary work that has been going on under my nose. So the next time you’re in the local big book chain. Take twenty minutes and cruise the kids section past the Seuss and Madonna. Just be prepared to get stuck there for a while.

Present at the Creation

Where are you going to be on Tuesday, 8 September? That’s the day after Labor Day where even the most die-hards among us--myself included--have to come to the sobering realization that summer is, in fact, over. Gone will be the mindless books and movies that rule that special time. Time to turn our attention to the “important” books of the fall, the return of our favorite television shows, and the start of the Christmas shopping season.

In the future, the eight of September might also be noted for something else: the birth of the digi-novel. Earlier this week, Anthony Zuiker, co-creator of TV’s “CSI,” did a little presser about Level 26, his new digi-novel he wrote with Duane Swierczynski. What, you may ask, is a digi-novel? Well, it is a book, first. Of that, there can be no doubt. Zuiker wrote the outline and Swierczynski fleshed out the novel. The book can stand on its own.

The thing that makes Level 26 special is the digital component. Every five chapters or so, there will be a break. If you so desire, you can log in to the Level 26 website, enter a code, and watch a three-minute episode, or cyber-bridge, that’ll give you some additional details and a deeper level of understanding about the characters and the novel. How cool is that? JP Frantz, of SF Signal, suggests the next step: digi-novels in an ebook format, say, on a Kindle where the digital experience could be contained on one device.

The idea is quite intriguing. I’m looking forward to seeing how this kind of entertainment is accepted. Let’s be honest: the book will never go out of style. There will always be bibliophiles, paper, binding, the smell of a new book, and the wondrous tactile feel of a book in your hand. But I certainly welcome new ways to become engrossed in a novel or a character. Michael Connelly and George Pelecanos are but two authors whose books have been packaged with CDs full of music their respective characters enjoy. Be honest: who among us wouldn’t want “walk” around Sherlock Holmes’s London, solving crimes with the great detective, or take a cruise with Travis McGee on his ship, Busted Flush? I’m there, baby.

And I’ll be there on Tuesday, too. Will you? Take a look at the trailer and see if you’re interested.

Secret Agent Man (or woman)

By Russel D McLean

Agents.

What are they good for?

Some people will tell you, like war, that the answer is “absolutely nothing”. Those people, I have found are generally rather self-deluded eejits who talk constantly about John Grisham selling his first novels from a wheelbarrow and complain about “someone else” getting a percentage of their deal, of their “work”. A good agent, you don’t mind paying that percentage. You don’t mind it at all.

I would encourage every would-be writer to find a good agent. And not just because most of the big boys are only accepting unsolicited queries (I got my deal with a UK indy press through my agent) but because a good agent earns their keep.

A good agent is many things to a writer. They are an initial sounding board, a first editor, an advisor and above all a salesperson. Without my agent, I’d still be making some huge mistakes in my manuscripts and probably being ignored by publishers big and small alike. Agents are the people who take you by the hand and help you negotiate the insanity that is the publishing industry.

I believe in agents, not as “Gatekeepers” (as they are described in this Bookseller article about MacMillan New Writing) so much as intermediaries between writers and publishers. As a writer, I am concerned with one thing: writing the best damn book I can. My agent allows me to do that by ensuring that everything else in the process works. He cuts the deals, finds the editors, explains the bits of the contract I don’t understand (and there’s usually a lot in the contract I don’t understand) and generally frees me up to concentrate on the business of working with an editor *on the book* rather than on the less sexy business side of the deal. He also helps me to understand the market and what editors are looking for as well as providing that all important first look at my precious manuscripts. And, yes, he tells me when I’m screwing it up. Pretty brutally, too. But that’s what I need, that’s what I ask for. An agent doesn’t have to be your friend, but they do have to have your respect.

Now, agents aren’t for everyone, I admit. I believe that the very fine transplanted Dundonian author Carol Anne Davis works without an agent. And I know that such schemes as MacMillan New Writing (which has produced some very fine writers, such as Ireland’s Patrick McGilloway) allows writers to bypass that part of the process and there are pros and cons to both sides of the argument about how that works. And then there are tales of the good old days where a genius like (The Artist Formerly Known As Colin) Bateman could submit his novel to the slush pile and be picked up for a nice deal. But the times they are a-changing and for someone like me, really, I just wanna write the book. I don’t have a business brain. I don’t want to think about negotiating royalties, advances, rights, all that stuff. I want someone I know can do that for me and do it right. Someone who’s not going to screw me over. Someone I’m happy paying that percentage to.

But how do you find a good agent?

That’s the question that people ask me a lot and the honest answer is I still don’t know. Basically, you just have to put yourself out there. Do research online or through books like The Writer’s Handbook (still a must-purchase for me, just to see what’s going on). Read the submission guidelines. Respect the agent as a person and a reader. And accept that not all of them will see the worth in your work. Deal with them professionally. Do not send them books that are not appropriate to their list. Do not send pre-bound manuscripts with glittery covers. Or cakes (well maybe in some cases the cakes will be eaten, but it won’t influence their opinion of your manuscript).

I think getting an agent is a bit like getting a good date. You have to just keep trying and accept that sometimes there is simply no chemistry no matter how good a prospect someone seems on paper. And sometimes, as I found, you might have to go through several agents before you find the right one for you. And, yes, some of them will be awful (but generally your initial homework should have steered you away from them) and some of them will think you awful (once the honeymoon period wanes) and some of them – no matter how well suited you seem – will just be unable to sell your work. But when you find a good agent, you’ll be thankful for them.

Big Books

I love big books.

I'm not talking huge, bible sized books. I'm not talking end-of-the-world thrillers (though I do like some of those too).

I'm talking books where the characters go to hell and back. When their emotions are so torn up, their lives are actually in danger, and you feel like anything can happen. I want books to be an event from an author.

Every year a writer has to put out a book. That's once a year for about a week, I get to enjoy what one of my favorite writers put down on paper. What he or she does to the characters he created. I love when characters lives get messed up.

And I even love it in series.

I don't often enjoy books where the author thinks he or she needs to go easy on the characters because they've been through a lot. I don't care, I want to see them go through the wringer. I don't want a small book. (Though some authors have succeeded at the break book. Laura Lippman's ANOTHER THING TO FALL--for one.) I want to feel the book as I read it. I want to be turning the pages.

When your series character needs a break, go write a standalone and let some time pass in the series. I think Lehane did a good job of this when he decided if the Kenzie Gennaro series went any further his two characters would become psychotics. So he put them away. He wrote MYSTIC RIVER, and that was an event. He wrote SHUTTER ISLAND... and that was an event. And then he wrote The GIVEN DAY and THAT was an event. And now, apparently, he's thinking about bringing his two detectives back. I hope they go through hell again. It's only fitting.

When I sit down to write, I want to tell the biggest book possible. In my two Jackson Donne novels, Donne went through hell. I actually got a fan letter after the second one asking me... "What's next for Jackson... cancer?"

I did a book group and they said the two books were gut wrenching.

That's what I want to do. I want to push the characters further. I want to torture them.

Give me action.

Give me high emotional stakes.

Let the characters fall from huge heights.

But then I want the characters to get back up. Because that's the most exciting moment for me. When a hero gets beat up... and then finally... gets back up. And wins.

That's an event.

What kind of books do you like? Do you like small books? Why? And vice versa. What appeals to you about high stakes novels?

The TV Pitch

When we started this blog I thought I'd be writing about books every week. I thought since I've had a few books published and I've been with four different publishers in two countries I'd have somethihng to say about writing or about the business.

But I've also been working in television this past year and I do have a couple of imdb credits (that Shakespeare one is actually a pretty cool movie, shows up on Bravo! once in a while) and I once wrote and directed a super low-budget movie about a couple getting married at a sci fi convention, so I guess I've got some things to say about the fringe of the movie-TV business, too.

The past few weeks I've been making the rounds of production companies pitching a couple of TV shows. The way it works is you put together a "pitch document" which is usually a one page overview of the show, a paragraph or two about five or six main characters and then five or six brief episode descriptions. Everyone involved understands that all of these details are likely to change during development.

I've seen a couple of pitch documents floating around the internet - there's a .pdf file of a 79-page document setting up The Wire with more detail than you can imagine - and almost all of it ended up in the show exactly as written, except McNulty was named McArdle and Stringer Bell and Avon Barksdale (named Aaron in the pitch) are reversed. On the other hand, I've heard stories of shows pitched and bought with only a few sentences.

So, this week my friend Scott Albert and I pitched a show called Quarantine. I even made this promo:



And here's the one page:

On June 10th, 2009 the population of the town of Palliser was 25,000. Three days later only 5000 were left alive. The town was put under an emergency quarantine. As fast as the mysterious virus arrived it disappeared. The survivors are all immune but remain carriers.

Now, a year later, the world has forgotten Palliser and its survivors. The town remains quarantined, cut off from the rest of the world but normal life has returned.

Better than normal. There is no crime, no one ever gets sick, there is no homelessness or hunger. It is the perfect town.

That’s the official story...

But when Travis Clark goes into Palliser he finds out the truth.

Palliser is a nightmare. A group calling themselves The Sherrifs run the town in secret. No one knows who they are or how many of them there are. They enforce their laws with an iron fist. People live in fear, afriad to let the outside world know what’s really going on behind the mask.

After 18 months in Afghanistan, Travis and his battalion take their turn on the Palliser wall. His hometown. He’s on his first patrol when a young woman tries to break out. He does what he’s trained to do. He shoots her. As she lays bleeding, he knows she’ll die if he doesn’t do something right away. Travis takes her inside. He saves her.

And he expects to contract the mystery virus and die. He’s ready, his whole family died in the original outbreak while he was in Afghanistan and he’s exhausted and suffering post-traumatic stress from what he’s been through.

He takes the injured woman to the town’s only doctor, Naija Singh.

And then Travis doesn’t die.

He doesn’t even get sick. Naija is worried for him, tells him to be careful and to leave her office right away. Travis realizes she’s scared of something so he doesn’t press her too much.

Walking the empty streets of Palliser at night Travis thinks it’s quieter than Kandahar after curfew. He sees a figure run by in the shadows and follows. This is like being on patrol. Travis stays hidden, watches a teenage boy, Danny McNair, being chased by men with black hoods hiding their faces. When the men catch him, they tell Danny this was his last chance.

Travis steps out of the shadows and says, “Last chance for what?” There’s a fight. Travis wins and then hooded men run off. Danny tells Travis he’s a dead man now, The Sherrifs will kill him.

Secrecy, conspiracy, fear, danger. That’s life in Palliser...


So, as you can see, it's pretty derivative stuff. In the meeting today Scott was able to think on his feet a lot quicker than I could and answered all the questions about the conspiracy and the secret plans being carried out. If we're very, very lucky, someone will pay us a little money to write a pilot episode.

And, to bring this back around to books, I'd just like to say that yesterday was the official publication date for my new novel, Swap - in Canada, at least. It'll be out in the USA in February and it'll be called Let It Ride.

Dr Jones, No Time For Blog...

By Jay Stringer

A couple of weeks ago I commented on Dave’s article that I could write essays about Indiana Jones. That set up a bit of a challenge, I suppose. I grew up as an Indy geek in the same way everyone else was growing up as a Star Wars geek.

But I’m not going to bore you with all the rants and in jokes. I’m keeping this on-topic. Well, as on-topic as it can be.

My obsession with the film has never really won me any punk points. It’s never been a hip film, it’s certainly not a ‘worthy’ film, and it doesn’t re-invent any wheels. But then, I don’t really think that great story telling has to be any of those things.

Breaking down RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK into its component parts is something I’ve done a number of times. It’s a good way to see what works and what doesn’t, and what lessons to take with you. When I was a film student I often used it as the textbook for how to pace and edit, and I outright stole a number of shots. As I turned to scriptwriting, I then began examining that side of the film; the script, the characters and the storytelling. And then, as I started taking the leap to writing full-length manuscripts, I found that I learned more from this film that from almost any other source.

So the main point of today’s blog is to look at a few specific examples of the lessons to be learned from RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. But before I dive into that, I want to hark back to Dave’s original blog. What is it about Henry Jones Jr that we find so appealing?

The majority ingredient is something that can’t be planned or written. It’s that bit of magic that happens between the page and screen when the perfect actor is cast in his perfect role. Harrison Ford has a magic ability to ground whatever story he is in. It doesn’t matter what manner of crazy shit is going on around him, he somehow manages to keep the film, and the viewer, within the realms of some magic plausibility. Maybe it’s his wry smile. Maybe it’s his stoicism. Maybe it’s that he has the photo’s that each of us want hidden and we’ll go along with whatever he says. Who knows?

But there are things that the script does to help us love the guy. As Scott has pointed out before, Indy fails at almost everything he sets out to do in this film. He doesn’t get the golden idol. He gets Marion’s home burned down. He loses the ark TWICE. He lets Marion get ‘killed’. He’s tied up and helpless during the big finale, and he doesn’t get access to the ark at the end of the film. He’s a pretty crap hero, all round, but he keeps getting up off the mat for another go.

Anyway, onto some specific lessons.

SHOW DON’T TELL.
That’s a phrase you’ll hear used a lot by crime writers. Hammett spoiled us, really, and we’ve been playing catch up ever since. The art of getting a story across without intruding, of SHOWING what is happening and why, rather than TELLING. I struggled at this for a long time. Hell, I still do. But I’ve got my foot in the door these days, and it was this film that finally gave me the way in.
Sure, there is one glaring moment of exposition. Indy gives that brief Sunday school lesson near the start of the movie where he explains what the ark is to the CIA men (and the audience.) Even then, the film stops short of drawing conclusions. He tells them that nobody knows what’s in it, or what its power really is. Aside from that, the film is a masterpiece of show-don’t-tell. The characters are revealed to us through their actions and conversations. Motivation is only discussed when the story needs to reveal it, and back-story is hinted at in dialogue, but never explained. The bar sequence is a perfect example. With one quick exchange an entire character history is given to us without actually revealing anything;

-I learned to hate you in the last ten years
-I never meant to hurt you
-I was a child, I was in love, it was wrong and you knew it
-You knew what you were doing
……..
-I can only say I’m sorry so many times
-Well say it again anyway
-Sorry

Boom. The characters have told us everything we need to know and nothing more. And it’s done without the writer (or in this case director) stepping into the narrative and dumping a load of back-story on us. There were longer versions of this scene written, but they were not needed. Edit your scenes, be your own harshest critic. If something doesn’t need to be there, get rid of it.
And can’t you just picture that exchange being between Bogart and Bacall?

Another good example is Marcus. His character was butchered for the third film, turned into a comic relief character, but here his entire persona is put across in two simple steps. Firstly, one of Indy’s students had left an apple for him. Marcus picks it up and starts eating it. We’re given right there the relationship between the two. Indy is the teacher to the students, Marcus is the teacher to Indy. No explanations needed. And then in one simple line, “If I was five years younger, I’d be going with you,” we get a back story and a time frame for it. We know that, whatever we see Indy doing on screen, this Marcus fella used to have a go at it himself.

CHARACTER ARC.
As much as I love all the other Indy stories; the films, the books, the comics, the TV show, they water down what was a perfect story arc. Everything that needed to be said about this strange grumpy character was said in the first film.
That’s it. Done.
In one incredibly compact narrative, we’re given a beginning, a middle, and an end for Indiana Jones that says everything about him.

He starts the film as a shadowy figure, dark and moody. He travels the globe in search of relics, fortune and glory. He can say he’s doing it for the right reasons, but he’s getting paid by the museum to do it, and museums acquiring the history of other cultures is always a dubious idea. Even when he starts on his mission, hunting for the ark before the Nazi’s can get it, it’s not for the greater good. It’s because he has a personal stake in it, because it’s the greatest find in history, and because he’s being paid. Midway through the film this is put to him by his archenemy, Belloq. They are “shadowy reflections” of each other, both “fallen from the true faith.” Belloq says it wouldn’t take much to push Indy to where Belloq is, to that extra degree of corruption, and he’s right. From there the character begins making his choices about who he is and what his motives are. The film doesn’t stop to show us this, it just continues to move. Near the end he’s made his decisions. He knows what, and who, is important to him. He’s refound a relationship that makes him something better, and he’s refound the “true faith” in archaeology.

He’s travelled so far from the shadowy figure at the start of the film, that he’s willing to take a leap of faith when the Ark is opened, to close his eyes and trust in its power. Maybe heeding his friend Sallah’s warning that the power within the Ark shouldn’t be for mankind. It’s a marked difference from the man Indy was when he first took on the mission, wide eyed at the notion of finding the relic, but not believing in magic.

The opening of the Ark itself was an important lesson for me. How does it work? What it the power? How does it kill? These were all things that were explained in early drafts of the story. And these were all things that didn’t matter one single bit to the story. It had no bearing on who the characters were, how the story moved, and what characters motivations were. If it has no bearing on any of those, you can live without knowing it.

CAUSE AND EFFECT
Ultimately this film asks us to accept some crazy, implausible stuff. No greater than the angry box made by the man in the sky that kills Nazis. But it feels grounded and somehow plausible. A large part of this is due to the way the film sets up cause and effect. Violence is shown to have consequences. Yes, sometimes its comedy. A few of the Nazi deaths are casual and comedic. But at the same time, they are at least being shown. If a man falls from a truck you’ll see him get run over. If Indy gets shot in the arm you’ll see the blood and the scar will remain. If the film shows an action, it follows through with a reaction, and that means that the logical parts of our brain can accept what’s happening.

So to sum up, here are the main lessons I take from the film into the stories I write. They work for me. Maybe they don’t work for anyone else.

-Show Don’t Tell. If something can’t be revealed through dialogue or action, then I’m not going to use it.
-Pacing. Come in with the story already in motion. Leave as soon as you’ve made your point. Don’t stick around just to throw in a bit of writing you’re proud of.
-Characters. Know who they are. Know where they are in the scene, and where they are in the story.
-Know what’s important. It’s more vital to me to know that character A will kill character B to get a box, then it is to know what’s IN the box.