When Detail Drains

I wrote about action scenes a while ago, but I've considered them even more in the last few days.

How does a writer transfer that amazing action scene from the screen (for real or in his or her mind) to the page? Some of those action scenes in a movie are awesome, and I almost hold my breath while they're taking place. I see every detail and it's all I can do not to call out. Have you experienced those? (I was lazy on Sunday and watched movies most of the day.)

Sadly, with many—if not most—novels that I read, these are one of the parts of the story that bore me. I find myself skipping over them, plucking out a word here and there to make sure there's nothing important happening that might force me to go back and read it carefully later.

What's with that?

As I mentioned in the earlier post, slowing down and developing details are important. But too much of either and you can kill the story. Trying to capture every nuance that is visually available on the screen becomes tedious and draining when you're throwing it out to your audience using only words.

How do you lift that tension-filled cinematic moment to the page?

I knew there had to be an answer.

Behind my back at this very moment is a bookcase with probably over sixty books related to writing. I like to think that somehow the brilliant advice and direction in each of them would somehow drill into the back of my head when I'm goofing around with emails, but alas, they require a more interactive approach.

Donald Maass is my 'go to' guy when it comes to most things writing, and he didn't fail me in The Fire in Fiction. In fact, I had conveniently highlighted it months ago when I first read it:

" . . . action, when related in strictly visual terms, feels flat. Handled objectively, it does not move us. Emotions are needed to give action force." (p. 198)

Yes! Exactly! So what does this mean . . . exactly?

Master Maass continues later:

" . . . tension in action comes not from the action itself but from inside the point-of-view character experiencing it." (p. 200)

(Note: This is also the first time I've seen a 'poor' example spelled out in a craft book. Nope. Not gonna tell you. You'll have to get your hands on a copy for yourself. But it begins on page 196.)

So, the way I interpret this is you reign in your broad cinematic view of the details to the sweat and fear and utter desperation in your POV character.

Slow it down, provide the details, but don't try to be a reporter on the scene. Be the character. This would be a perfect place for deep POV.

If there's something else, please share!




CR: Rain Gods by James Lee Burke. This one has really slowed me down. I'm considering shelving it for a bit because I'm sure it's me and not Mr. Burke. And, to be honest, there's been a lot of life going on at the moment.

It's all better with friends.

Writing Concept: Micro-tension in Exposition

Donald Maass has written a top-notch craft book called The Fire In Fiction. If you haven't laid your hands on this, I highly recommend it. This series of posts is taken directly from Chapter Eight. You will want your own copy if possible, so you can highlight and mark it up. I think this is one book on craft I will refer to often.

Exposition (interior monologue) is often skimmed over by readers. To illustrate his point, Maass suggests you pull out a purple highlighter (purple?) and grab a novel off your shelf. Read a few pages with your purple highlighter in hand. Draw a wavy line through any area you find yourself skimming. His bet is that much of what you skim will be exposition.

Why?

Maass writes: The most common reason is that such exposition merely restates what is obvious from what we have read: emotions that we felt earlier, thoughts that have already occurred to us. My private term for this is churning exposition. It's easy to skim because there's nothing new in it.

My notes from the his workshop include these words under micro-tension in exposition: SHARP HARD CONFLICT WAR

Tension in exposition is created when the author constructs feelings that are in conflict, or ideas that are at war with one another. Examples in Fire, include feelings of happiness and relief vying for worry in the exposition of one young girl. Ideas of judgment warring with forgiveness in the interior monologue of a dying man.

From Fire: How do you handle exposition? Are there passages of interior monologue in your manuscript that are just taking up space? If there are, you can cut them, or possibly you can dig deeper into your character at this moment in the story and find inside of him contradictions, dilemmas, opposing impulses, and clashing ideas that keep us in suspense.

. . . true tension in exposition comes not from circular worry or repetitive turmoil; it springs from emotions in conflict and ideas at war.

CR: Identity Crisis by Debbi Mack

It's all better with friends.

Suspense Novelists with Multiple Personalities

One of my favorite authors (one of a very few who don't write suspense), Anne Lamott (she can make me laugh out loud or spring tears—sometimes at the same time), wrote the following in Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (by the way, it's available on Kindle):

Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Don't worry about appearing sentimental. Worry about being unavailable; worry about being absent or fraudulent. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you're a writer, you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act—truth is always subversive.

Today, I had a good writing day for me. I'll need a lot more of them if I want to cross my self-imposed finish line of mid-July for my first draft.

I tried (like a willing athlete) to follow a bit of Anne Lamott's advice—to write to the emotional center. I won't know for a while if I was successful because I'm refusing to put on my editor hat at this point. I'm feeling a bit bipolar about the whole thing, but there you have it.

I also tried (oh please oh please oh please let this have worked) to take a page from Dean Koontz and draw out a bit of the tension. He's a master at making the horrible moments last. There's no way you can skim through a high-wire scene in a Koontz novel. No way.

But at one point, kind of toward the end of the drama, Stephen King's sardonic sense of humor butted its way into my scene. It didn't even apologize. It wormed its way in and I wrote it. It wasn't a big deal. It will either work in the end, or it will stink.

If what I wrote today makes the cut and dodges the delete key, I will figure out a way to take full credit, necessitating the deletion of this post. If it doesn't work, I will toss out the advice and examples of Lamott and Koontz and King like so much flotsam.

Yeah, right.

When you're writing, do you ever um . . . split your personality? Does someone else try to toy with your voice?

CR: Dead On by Robert Walker. This book will hit the shelves in July, and so far I'm liking it very much. You may want to make note of it.

It's all better with friends.