First Word

Rating: *** I like to focus my movie reviews on those films that something stood out in terms of storytelling. Nightcrawler starring Jake Gyllenhaal was a stand-out movie for its quirky characters and unorthodox story about a freelance video producer whose methods to capture the story are .... well -- questionable. The snappy, smart and very manipulative dialog just stole the film. Jake's young, driven and slightly autistic character is a sight to watch. Listening to him alone is a cross between every cliché self-help book and general business strategy plastered all over the Internet. If you've read these books or been inspired by them, Jake's character takes it to an interesting extreme. The movie was unique and different. Taking human actions to the ends of bad behavior, Jake's character is such a sociopath it's shocking. He descends into his power grab on the streets of LA and starts off innocent enough, but soon falls down into passionate greed to move to...

In storytelling writing characters with a flat, straight journey in the story doesn't work. Characters who start one way in a story and remain the same at the end aren't interesting. The character arc boiled down is about how the character starts at point A and ends up at point B changed somehow. Even in script writing this transformation is important to create a compelling script. How do you keep the character arc in mind. I'm going to give you an example from my forthcoming book Body in the Trunk. Evan Garner -- philandering player whose sexually irresponsible behavior always leads to his downfall. He meets the beautiful and sweet Mia with whom he intends to con and swindle of her stock options. Then he actually falls in love with her for real. And through his first real love experience he is put in a situation where he finally has to grow up to protect and not abandon her. He is redeemed in the end by his desire to finally do the right thing. So let's break th...

I read this statement in a recent review of the 3L Publishing book Vengeance is Now , which to paraphrase went something like this: strictly bad and good characters are boring. Author Scott D. Roberts and I have discussed flawed characters practically from the first time we met each other. We both have a propensity to enjoy the flaws the most -- and it's those flaws that prevent boring. In real life do you know anyone who is perfectly "white" or perfectly "black"? I know people who are overall good people, and I know people who I question their morals and ethics. Truth is most of us have our good points and our "messier" points. So when you're writing a novel or a story, it's always more interesting and provocative to make characters "gray" and then fill in the greater or lesser color of white or black. Let me give an example: In my forthcoming novel  Body in the Trunk , I've written the ex-husband as a real jerk. Yet our heroi...

One of the hardest things to do when writing fiction is to create unique voices for each character. If you make all the characters sound alike it makes the writing flat and uninteresting. It also makes it difficult to get to know a character -- they all sound like the same person. When I teach my fiction writing workshops, I always teach writers the following concepts to help create a voice for each character. Phone a friend -- I'm being cute ... what I really mean is pick someone you know in real life. Hear how he or she talks. Take this person's voice and apply it to one of your characters. If you don't know someone who would "fit the part" then take an actor or actress or even a public figure and listen to how this person talks. Mimic their inflections and phrases in your character(s). My biggest insight: really listen and repeat. People have their own ways of saying things. So, you want to capture the unique essence of the voice. Formalism in modern writ...

The best books take interesting approaches to storytelling. I recently received a submission from a new writer who naturally and successfully broke linear storytelling structure. As her memoir unfolded it wasn't the typical "...and I was born ... and died" approach. Yes, a story needs a beginning and an end. Her story was unique. She began with an opening that defined the theme in the book. She then fluidly moved to major life events. Guess what? Not in chronological order. She began building intrigue by providing her life story through defining events. As she did so, she opened questions to be answered and pull the reader forward -- and that is what you call a page-turner. The reader wonders okay how are we going to get back to this plot point? After building, for example, a chapter where she alludes to her own "death," she then successfully plunges back into her past and how this history makes her who she is now. Brilliant! So the point? Don't take a strai...

My associate and author Scott D. Roberts calls this too much exposition. I am a little simpler: I call it too much minutia. One of the biggest mistakes I see writers make is to bog down their writing in what Roberts aptly puts as too much exposition. What this means is that writers tell the reader everything and anything to "decorate" a description -- and it has absolutely nothing to do with storytelling. For example during a critical scene you start describing what the character is eating, how he/she enjoys it, and it has absolutely nothing to do with driving the story forward, then the real question is: why is that in there? Ask this question for every scene: is it relevant to the plot? If it's nothing but an interesting piece of fluff -- or your writer's ego enjoyed writing about the pie in the window that had nothing to do with the story, take it out. Every element of every scene or chapter should be a part of the story -- and it should drive the story forwar...

This is a statement that probably only fiction writers can truly appreciate: when I write my characters become fully dimensional. Yes, the people peppering my stories take on real personalities. Here is another phrase you can identify with: Joe wouldn't do that ... or Joe would do that. Are you feeling me here? When I work on fiction, my story's characters become people. In fact, some of them are based on people I know. I recently memorialized my over-chatty daughter (who I absolutely adore) in my new screenplay project. The little girl talks fast and a lot. Now it's a comedy so her bullet-paced speech is over-the-top to be sure, but none the less based on my seven-year-old's rapid fire mouth. It's just interesting how our imaginations conjure up such dimensional characters that we understand them. People who don't write might suspect we're a tad bit crazy with a dab of lithium on top. Writers though right now are nodding. They get what I'm saying. I can...