Monday, March 25, 2013

Rantings of a writer

I've written a lot for this blog. I've written a lot outside the blog too, but you guys have only what I post here to know who I am. Still, when I say that I believe I qualify as someone who knows how to write and knows what good writing is, I think the blog speaks for itself to support me.

That said... I've been trying to watch movies for days. And I can't find any good ones. Because they're badly written. It's the same problem I've been having with games and, occasionally, with books and stories. The problem is how slow things start.

Look, I understand the importance of setting a scene. I know how much it matters to establish mood, to build suspense, and to draw the reader into a world. But there's setting the mood and then there's boring the living fuck out of your audience.

In a movie, if your audience isn't hooked in the first five minutes, you might as well give up. Without something happening, something that makes people want to see more, they'll turn things off. Considering I'm choosing between movies on Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon, I've got a lot to choose from. So if you don't hook me in those five minutes, I'm out.

And the same is true with writing. In a novel, you've got, say, five pages. In a short story (like the ones on this site), I'm guessing it's more like five sentences. Whatever it is, it's a rule of five.

I know what (some of) you are thinking. It's all well and good to say that when you write stories that take place in more or less the real world, but what about stories that don't? What about stories set in other worlds? How am I supposed to create a whole world in five minutes/pages/sentences?

I have a really, REALLY easy answer for that: don't. Don't do it. Don't spend your time with a prologue, or an introduction, or teaser. Just get into the meat of the story. Get into the action.

It's called in medias res. It means the middle of the action. Start there. Start with things actually coming to a boil. Introduce the conflict as soon as you can. Once it's there, you can step back if you want to. You can go and tell the back ground, or the motivations. You can go somewhere else entirely, and let the audience build its own suspense as it wonders what in the world the things you showed them first have to do with what's going on NOW.

If you ever wanted to know my secret, there it is. Start with the part that's interesting. Then go from there.


It's not the ONLY way to write. But it is a great rule of thumb.


Okay, I've ranted. That's it for today. Now, please, more requests.

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