Tag: how to write a novel

How to make your book read like a movie

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I have two pieces of advice today:

1. Don’t write your book as if it were a movie.

2. Do write your book as if it were a movie.

I love movies – and have spent considerable time daydreaming about my books as movies. There’s something magical about the scenery and the characters coming to life in front of you – with background music, no less! But some writers fall into trouble when they try to achieve that effect in the book itself.

For instance:

Against the left-hand wall were boxes of restaurant provisions, primarily paper towels for the rest rooms, candles for the tables, and janitorial supplies purchased in bulk. The right-hand wall, which faced the beach and the ocean beyond, featured two doors and a series of large windows, but the coast was not visible because the glass was protected by metal Rolladen shutters. The banquet room felt like a bunker.

            Sole Survivor, Dean Koontz, p. 239

What happened here? Koontz seems to think he has to  describe every feature of every scene down to the minutest detail for the scene to be vivid in the reader’s mind. But would the hero – who is about to find out whether his daughter is alive or dead – even notice janitorial supplies purchased in bulk? When you watch a movie, do you note the size, shape, color, and texture of every object in sight, or do you subconsciously register a general idea, and go on taking in the action?

The last sentence in this sample sums up, in seven words, what the preceding sixty-one words drag out. All Koontz needed to do was make some passing remarks about his hero squinting in the dim light of the mostly obstructed windows, or about the irony of the ordinariness of the restaurant supplies contrasted with the life-changing revelation he knows he is about to have.

Take the less-is-more approach. One or two details can go a long way into showing your readers where they are, but it will only hurt your writing if you describe everything. You’re the writer, not the set designer. You’re also not the fight choreographer. Don’t describe every single move in a fight scene. Your readers will get lost if they have to imagine each strike according to your exact specifications. A scene in a movie requires extensive choreography, but the viewer only perceives lots of movement and tension and clanging blades or flashing bullets, and that’s all you need to convey in your book. Not “a cut down across the left, followed by a two-handed thrust and a sweeping kick” for sentence after sentence after sentence.

The Takeaway:

Writing a book and making a movie require different methods to produce similar results. Give your readers a sense of scenery and action, but don’t get bogged down in details. Get back to the story!

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Read my other post on how to “show, don’t tell” by writing with the screen in mind. 

Sex in writing: where do you draw the line?

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Parental Advisory: This subject is unavoidably adult, but I have included nothing gratuitous or obscene. I aim to be frank but discreet. Those old enough to benefit from the rest of this blog are old enough to read this post.

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Without it, none of us would be here. It causes people to do crazy things, like throw away huge amounts of money, make idiots of themselves, occasionally kill other people, and of course, get married and have children. So can writers completely ignore sex? Obviously, no. The subject is going to come up. Not always, but sometimes. And anyway, we’re writers! We’re daring! We’re edgy! We push the limits of polite society!

But you wouldn’t show up to a book signing in a bikini.

In fact, you would consider it beneath you to do so. Why? Because although sex sells, there are a variety of words for people who sell it, and none of them are complimentary. Think about that. At what point does it become nothing but literary pornography? It doesn’t take writing talent to “turn on” readers. The crudest sentence (both technically and socially crude) can arouse anyone.

But sex isn’t just physical; it’s emotional, psychological, spiritual even.

And therein lies the key. The emotional side—that sacred bond shared between two people—that’s what you want to capture. But despite the great power of fiction, it has its limitations: while it is extremely easy to arouse your readers, it is extremely difficult to forge an emotional connection with them. One is a mechanical, hormonal reaction. The other is spiritual. You can try to use the mechanical to access the spiritual, but in this case, (be honest) it will only serve as a distraction. The physical side takes off—and blinds all other feeling. The moment you arouse your reader is the moment you cease to be relevant to their soul.

So what are we supposed to do?

Focus on the emotion. If you have to mention something physical, start with a kiss, a caress here or there, but focus on what that kiss means to your characters. What are they saying to each other in that kiss? Is the kiss a lie, or the truest thing they have ever expressed? What does it mean? Why is it important?

There is no need to go into great detail about where hands and legs and whatever else is; you will only undercut your attempts to connect, just as a guy would undercut his attempts to get a girl’s phone number if he kept making lewd suggestions to her, no matter how poetic his conversation was in between.  It’s the difference between lust and love; both are powerful, but only one means anything. So write about it, if you insist (assuming, of course, you are not writing a children’s book). But treat it as the sacred, private thing it is.

After all, you want your readers to respect you in the morning.

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You may have noticed I didn’t even mention erotica; this is chiefly because I deny its legitimacy as literature. I doubt any erotica writers would be hanging around this blog, but in case one happens to come across this post, well, I’m not going to apologize. And if I did, the word would be dripping with sarcasm.

 I welcome discussion in the comments – but please be sure it conforms to the parental advisory above.

How to write with body language

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55% of human communication is nonverbal.

Which means more than half of what you say is nothing but expressions and gestures and eye contact.

Which means if you use nothing but “he said” and “she replied” to tag dialogue, your readers are missing half the message. Besides which, body language is also an effective way to show tone without “telling” tone. For instance:

“Hmmm,” she said unhappily/happily/thoughtfully. [All “telling”]

“Hmmm,” she frowned.

“Hmmm,” she smiled.

“Hmmm,” she tapped her lips with one finger.

We have the additional benefit of cutting the dialogue tag, “said,” which can get annoying in large doses.

Of course, use of body language isn’t limited to dialogue. You can say a lot without actually saying anything (useful if, like me, you are terrible at writing dialogue):

He hunched in his chair, elbows on knees, head in hands.

She bit the corner of her bottom lip, her gaze darting left and right.

He frowned, stroking his chin.

She leaned back and folded her arms, tapping her fingers against her skin.

He cocked one eyebrow, smirking.

There are countless other gestures to illustrate countless other emotions. Here are a few (in totally random order). Got any other good ones? Leave ‘em in the comments!

Grin

Smirk

Grimace

Furrow brow

Wrinkle forehead

Slap forehead

Twiddle thumbs

Twitch/tick

Bite nail

Suck thumb

Pick nose

Run hand through hair

Twirl hair

Skip

Amble

Stroll

Lumber

Swagger

Shuffle

Bob head

Flare nostrils

Wink

Nod

Shake head

Hug self/knees

Rub arms

Shudder

Shiver

Tremble

Scratch

Rub eye

Slouch

Tilt head to one side

Meet gaze

Look in the eye

Gaze slide to floor

Blink

Start

Shrug

Sigh

Sniff

Swallow

Wrinkle nose

Squint

Shift weight

Cross legs

Eyes glitter

Eyes glint

Clap

Snap fingers

Thread fingers

Fold hands

Nose in air

Look down nose

Look sideways

Peer

Glance

Stare

Glare

Purse lips

Push hair out of eyes

A Defense of Happy Endings

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Let’s get down to it. What’s better: a happy ending or a sad one – and why?

First, let’s define “happy” and “sad” endings. It’s not as simple as whether or not the hero survives; Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Lewis’s The Last Battle both end with everyone dying, but one leaves you in despair and the other brings you incredible joy.

I think it’s more accurately measured by the presence of two things: meaning and victory. Compare Sydney Carton’s death in A Tale of Two Cities to any Nicholas Sparks book. Everything that happens in Two Cities leads up to, even contributes to, Carton’s death, and he dies nobly (meaningfully), to save a friend (victory). Whereas Sparks’s M.O. is for two people to find love, only to lose it again (defeat) when one of them unexpectedly (senselessly) dies in a car wreck, in a shipwreck, or of Leukemia. We cry an awful lot at Sparks (at least the movies; I never deemed the books worthy of my time) as well as at Dickens, but one leaves us sad and the other, satisfied. Dickens’s ending is meaningful; Sparks’s is a parlor trick.

Sparksstirs up emotion, sure – but tears are cheap. It’s easy to get our characters into scrapes, to beat them bloody, to take away everything they care about; it’s harder to get them out of trouble, heal them, and give them their hearts’ desires while making it meaningful and believable instead of nauseatingly cheesy. But the fact is – and Dickens proves it – it can be done.

Happy endings sometimes seem cheesy because they are unrealistically glossy – like nothing bad ever happened again. These are either simplified to reinforce the style of the story (perhaps for younger readers), or are just badly written. But some people lump all happy endings into the same “Unrealistic” category. They call themselves realists, preferring books that speak the “hard truth.” They scorn stories that end with weddings, saying the marriage would never last in real life. But that’s not realism. Realism is acknowledging that some marriages end in divorce; cynicism is assuming they all do.

And the funny thing about cynicism? It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. How much of what’s wrong in real life, failed marriages included, is that way just because people have given up fighting? If you write about a “realistic” failed marriage, what good is it? You’re not revealing anything your readers haven’t seen already. You’re only reinforcing hopelessness. Why not write about a struggling couple that fights to save their marriage? You can empower your readers to hope and to fight without being cheesy or unrealistic.

Don’t be silly, you might say; everyone knows it’s just a story. Readers don’t take it to heart.

That’s a lie. Even the cynical marketing world I work in acknowledges that the story is one of the most powerful forces on earth. A well-crafted story doesn’t just claim that a bad situation can turn out well—it shows how a bad situation can turn out well. Stories can make people see new possibilities. Stories can change people’s minds. Stories can inspire or discourage.

What will your stories do?

Are writers sadists?

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“Every book I’ve ever written ends with someone dying; every one. Really nice people too. Like the book about Helen, the school teacher. I killed her the day before summer vacation. How cruel is that?”

–         Karen Eiffel, Stranger Than Fiction

“I’d really like to see him,” he added. “Dustfinger, I mean. Naturally I’m sorry now that I thought up such an unhappy ending for the poor fellow, but it somehow seemed right for him.”

–         Fenoglio in Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke

Admit it. You love writing in the sad bits, the death scenes, the broken hearts. I know, because I do, too. But why? Why do we so enjoy torturing characters we’ve come to love? I mean, we wouldn’t do that in real life. We’re all pretty good people, right?

But if the author is good, how come bad things happen to good characters?

Because that’s the Way Things Are. It wouldn’t be realistic if I wrote it otherwise.

Then why are you writing it, doofus? Save yourself the trouble of making up sad stories and just stick with true ones.

Maybe I just like the control. We all like to play God.

Baloney sandwiches. You know perfectly well that after you have created your characters, you lose control of them completely.

Fine. Then I guess because…it’s beautiful, somehow.

Beautiful? What kind of a sick person are you? You think it’s beautiful for a person to have their heart ripped in two?

I don’t know. Something about it is.

My theory is this. We sense beauty in these situations and misinterpret it, thinking darkness is beautiful. But really, pain is beautiful only because it is evidence of something good. We love to write about the grieving widower because it illustrates how much he loved his wife. We love writing about the child dying of cancer because it illustrates how precious life is. It’s that love, that preciousness, that is beautiful. We have trouble seeing goodness if all is well, but when we take something away from a character, or threaten to take it, we prove the worth of that thing by the character’s reaction.

Say you have the chance to meet your protagonist (as did the authors in the quotes above) – to enter your story at its darkest moment. You kneel beside your hero as he coughs up blood, look into his slightly glassy eyes, and tell him everything is going to be okay. You wouldn’t give him any details, of course – that he’ll overcome the villain at the last moment – that would ruin the ending. You wouldn’t even want him to believe the part about everything being okay, not really. You’d just want to give him the tiniest glimmer of hope. Not enough to banish his fear, not enough to lift the deepening despair; just enough to keep him fighting. To push himself off the floor and pick up his sword.

And even if you prefer sad endings, and he does die, the point remains – that he picked up his sword. He didn’t give up, because there was something worth fighting for.

And that is beautiful.