This is how you write a love letter.

I have nothing to add to this. It's just perfect.

If you ever find the occasion to write a love letter to someone; it really is a lost art; you could do worse than to start here. Then work your way to the poetry of Pablo Neruda who frankly smokes any other poet or song writer I've ever heard when it comes to love.

Writing the Love Story: Jim and Pam

Just a short post tonight.

I'll be honest, I love a good love story.  The depth and breadth of what may be considered a love story is astounding. The things people have done for and out of love. The things endured and surmounted.  War stories, ghost stories, desperate fights for survival, wherever there are people, there's always a love story to be found. Most fiction writers write about people at the center of powerful and dramatic events. The love stories that they write center on heroes and heroines, people on whom the fate of the world, or at least the world of the story rest.

What I like about the love story between Jim and Pam from "The Office", is that they don't fit into that mold, and are all the more appealing for that. They're just two coworkers in a utterly unremarkable business.  It was one of the more realistic love stories I've ever seen, because I've seen that dance before in my own work place happening to people I know. There's all the elements of mutual attraction but bad timing, Emotional hurdles to be crossed. People that everyone can see belong together finally getting together, which doesn't happen as often as it should. What I take from Jim and Pam's' story is simply this; Love is not the domain of the mighty alone. A peasant may love as deeply and completely as a king. Love is not dependent on being important or powerful or beautiful. You just have to be sincere. I find that a very hopeful thing.

Sexy Badboys or Good Looking Scumbags?

                When it comes to storytelling, you will rarely find anything truly new under the sun.  Once you allow for the changing language and styles and times, you will find that most of the characters in fiction have existed in various forms for thousands of years. The last century gave rise to something sort of new though. In the past the lines between good and evil were pretty clearly defined.  You could tell the good guys from the bad pretty easily by the way they acted and the things they did. There was a belief that if you worked hard, lived a good and moral life, did right by your family and community that everything would be alright, that the good would prosper, and the evil would be punished.  Then we had the Civil War, brothers fighting brothers, then reconstruction, World War I and the Spanish Flu epidemic, Millions dead. Then the Great Depression…there came a point when people just couldn’t hold on to that belief anymore against the mountain of evidence to the contrary? When you lose that surety how do you know right from wrong anymore? Bank robbers are bad guys,by definition, but how do you feel when the Bank just took your home, about the guy who took the Banks stuff? This gave rise to the various “folk hero” bandits like Bonny and Clyde and John Dillinger.  Maybe the first of what might be considered “Sexy Bad Boys” (and Bonny)

                So that’s the back story. But how do you write a …good..sexy bad boy and not just a good looking scumbag? Because there is a difference. I have a theory about that. We all learned about the competing theories of nurture and nature in child development in High School.  I think of it like this; a person’s nature is like Spring Steel. It has a form that it always wants to return to.  His “Nurture” is the force that attempts to hold the spring steel of a person’s nature to a form. When a person’s nurture aligns with his nature you will see a very strong and pure expression of who that person is. A good “Sexy Bad Boy” character is one who is a good person by nature, perhaps twisted to bad by his upbringing or environment, but with something inside of him actively seeks to return to good.  His story arc will be the process of forcing back the influence of his nurture so that more of his nature can assert itself, probably with the help of the good guys.

                Take Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer for instance. Before he was turned he was a decent enough guy if maybe a bit milquetoast. He took care of his mother, wrote poetry, and wanted to fit in. When he was turned into a vampire, he lost his soul and went on a 200 year killing spree, because well, Vampire, but even as a vampire, he wasn’t like the others who all seemed bent on ushering in the apocalypse.  Unlike Angelus, he had sympathetic aspects to his personality He was a caring and attentive boyfriend to Drusilla, he liked Manchester United and the Clash. After he got chipped so he couldn’t hurt humans he started hanging out with the Scooby’s, and more of his good nature started to show through. He protected Dawn. He brought flowers when Joyce died.  He fought on their side against Glory when he didn’t have to.  He still did plenty of bad stuff too, but for a guy without a soul he was pretty ok. When he got his soul and got past the whole first evil thing he became a pretty Stalwart hero. But he still had that bad boy edginess to him that the girls like.

      Now look at Prince Joffrey from Game of Thrones. Good Looking Scumbag. His nature is evil. He is a Sadistic, Cowardly, Arrogant Bully. That’s his nature. His upbringing was being ignored by his “father” and doted on and spoiled by his mother.  There were social restraints on him for a time, but his innate cruelty was always trying to get out. Once he became king he indulged it on every occasion. He was never going to be a good person. Not with the love of a good woman, or time to mature, or with the responsibilities of Fatherhood.  His nature would always be trying to force its way back to bad. As opposed to Tyrion Lannister whose good nature asserts itself through a largely cruel upbringing. 

                For writers I would suggest taking a honest appraisal of a characters nature. What do his past actions tell you about him? Let go of the idea that being handsome or wealthy or capable of tossing off snarky dialogue forgives all sins. People do not really change their natures; maybe a handful in a million, they only conform for a time to the pressures placed upon them. If you are determined to write fanfiction about one of these bad boy characters then you need to go back and work in some indicators that they have within them a good nature. And try not to be a Sansa.

Thoughts on Writing a Thriller

                Writing a good thriller can be a bit more demanding than writing a comedy, romance or action adventure.  You can follow a sort of formula with those, and even though your audience will generally have an idea of what’s going to happen, they can still be entertained. With a thriller, you have to keep them guessing, and you have to have a very tight control of your pacing to keep your audience on the edge of their seats.  You can’t really write a thriller to formula; however I did have some basic ideas to begin with. It calls for switching the perspective from which you write your stories back and forth between the good guys and the bad guys.

                From the early days of computer gaming levels and enemies were like problems you had to solve.  Through experimentation you learned the patterns and timings and actions you had to take to win, and once you had solved the problem  the game had posed, you could beat it pretty much every time.  In a thriller, the sides present problems for each other and while they're more complicated than those old video games it's still that struggle to solve what the other sides throwing at you.  You start with a problem for the bad guys.  The secret CIA list with the names and locations of all our operatives is very well protected. How do the bad guys get it? Because bad guys are evil and unscrupulous they can use any means necessary to crack the problem, from a traitor on the inside to blackmail, or hacking. For the purposes of the story, you create the security around the list, and then you figure out what it would take to beat the security.  This will always be successful; otherwise you don’t have a story.  The bad guys don’t act until they have a perfect unbeatable plan, and the hero generally doesn’t enter the story until after the bad guys have made the first move.

                Now it’s the hero’s turn. He has a problem. The bad guys have an unbeatable plan that they have worked out in every detail.  The hero will generally be working from behind with limited information and resources.  He has to figure out how to break down the bad guys’ unbeatable plan. This could be something large scale like a Tom Clancy espionage thriller, or smaller and more personal, like a detective trying to solve the perfect murder, or find the kidnapped socialite before the serial killer finishes her. In this case the criminal’s problem was how to commit the perfect crime and get away with it. When the hero begins unraveling the bad guys carefully constructed plan, the problem switches sides again. How do the bad guys stop the hero from interfering enough to jeopardize their perfect plan? Do they try to kill him? Maybe the killer runs him off the road after he shows up asking questions. Maybe they frame him for the murder. And so on, back and forth.

                Now since things never go according to plan in real life, a good thriller introduces unforeseen elements on both sides.  Usually the earlier one helps the hero like in the action thriller Diehard, one of the first terrorist John McClain took out happened to be the one carrying the detonators for the bad guys’ explosives.  That was a break for McClain and  a wrench in the works for the bad guys plan. Later, the shoe will be on the other foot, and something unexpected will happen to screw the good guys over. Towards the end  in Diehard, John could not have anticipated that reporter going on the news and outing his family to the terrorist, allowing Hans Gruber to discover that he already had McClain’s wife hostage.  This is usually the point where the good guys really have to step up their game to pull out a victory.

Finally, you have to end it. As big and dramatic as you know how. You’ve been keeping up the pace all this time right? Ratcheting up the tension? Raising the Stakes? Then let her rip. Yippee Kai Yay…

Empowerment

     When we talk about empowerment in the creative arts it’s usually in the context of female empowerment, sometimes extending to other minority groups gaining the strength to overcome disadvantageous conditions. To see a character like Katniss Everdeen, or perhaps Honor Harrington as leaders and strong warriors overcoming impossible odds is inspiring to girls reading their stories and wondering what they can accomplish in life. Personally, I hold to the idea that a well written story needn’t stop at its demographic. It can inspire everyone.  

     Too often, however, I see the styling’s of empowerment with none of the substance. I used to think of this as Spice Girls empowerment, although for you younger folks that might be Katy Perry Empowerment.  It’s the “You Go Girl” “You’re a smart, sexy, sophisticated girl on the town and you’re going places, Yeah!” school of feel good empowerment. Unfortunately, saying it doesn’t make it so, any more than someone saying I’m a loose cannon, a maverick who plays by his own rules but gets the job done makes me Dirty Harry. It’s the emotional equivalent of a sugar high, and it will not sustain you when you need it to. Real empowerment requires the earning of Real Power, not just the semblance thereof.

     I’ve never really publicly jumped on the bandwagon of trashing Twilight. I mean, what’s the point? It’s been well and truly panned by people far more eloquent than me.  Of the many things wrong with that series one in particular stood out with me.  Edward never taught her how to drive. It was just “Oh you’re such a terrible driver, I find that exasperating and yet cute and adorable. Now get your ass in the passenger seat.”  This is all well and good so long as he is available to drive her around. What would happen though if they were attacked by multiple vampires and the only way she could escape was by jumping in the car and burning rubber while he held off as many as he could? Well, my guess is she runs into a tree 100 yards down the road and dies because he never took her to a big empty parking lot after dark and practiced with her until she got it down. 

     There are millions of different kinds of power whether it’s money, or learning jujitsu or Spanish, or how to drive safely at high speeds. It’s not something you can just wish into being. It’s real and it’s useful and it’s yours to keep independent of anyone else. Real power is earned through time and effort. Sometimes someone helps you gain it. Sometimes it’s something you do for yourself.   Sometimes it’s only a change in the way you fell about yourself and is as simple as making a choice and sticking with it.  In Hunger Games Katniss made a choice not to let her family starve. She stopped reacting and hoping to be saved and started acting on her own to control her own fate. That was empowering.  She chose to break the rules of their oppressors by entering the restricted area to hunt. That was empowering. She made a bow and learned to hit what she was aiming at. That was empowering.  All this was real power and was there for her to call upon when she needed it to survive.

The Sex Talk

There are some who say that writing is like having sex.  That while enthusiasm and creativity will serve you well, at some point you really need to know what you’re doing. Others might claim that sex is more like writing. There’s foreshadowing, rising action, falling action and if you’re doing it right, a climax.  Okay, I just made that part up, but as long as we’re on the subject, let’s talk about sex in stories.

     Since the vast majority of fanfics involve relationships of a romantic and/or sexual nature, knowing how to write those scenes in a way that enhances your story and moves the plot forwards without being tacky or gratuitous is a pretty important skillset to master.  If your intention is just to write “porn without plot” I think they call it these days then no problem, all you need are people, a place and a pretext as shallow as “X and Y are snowed in. What will they do all day?” If you’re writing an actual story with a plot and character arcs and dialogue and scene transitions, then you’re going to need to answer a few questions like “WHY are these people having sex? And “Why are THESE people having sex?” and “Why are these people having sex here and now?” and “What if anything might happen because these people had sex?” Was anything important happening that these people missed because they were busy having sex? What kind of sex were they having? Tender romantic, rug in front of the fireplace lovemaking or Full On Buffy and Spike knock the house down sex and why are they having that kind of sex and not the other? You can see there’s a lot to think about when the sex is part of the story arc, and not just thrown in like a Michael Bay action sequence.

     One thing that I would recommend is to not try to write sex into a story until you have the requisite real life experience under your belt to know what you’re talking about.  I know that a lot of fan fiction writers start young.   Somewhere between middle and high school they begin to feel confident enough with their writing skills and knowledge of their chosen Fandoms that they want to try their hands. They want to enjoy the benefits of being part of the creative community that exist around a given work.  So they write the stuff the bigger kids are writing without knowing what the bigger kids know. There is a reason most romance novels are written by women over 30.  They are old enough to have a certain amount of sexual experience and therefore a base of reality on which to build their fantasy encounters.  You will rarely  see the Viking Lord of Hawkfell Island having a 24 hour sexual marathon with the fiery and defiant daughter of the Earl of Wintershire, no matter how rugged and virile he is. Why? Chaffing.  30 year old women know about chaffing and they don’t like it. Also rug burn. And sleepiness. And sandwich breaks, and yes, even boredom. Even Cassanova would run out of moves after an hour or two. I’m joking here, but it’s sort of true. There are things about sex you are only going to learn through personal experience, and not just physically, but emotionally as well and those are even more important for writing your characters. Like how one feels the morning after having slept with someone that in the light of day they know they probably shouldn’t have.  Or how it feels to find out what you thought was love was just sex to the other person.  Or how having sex with someone you love differs from hooking up with someone you’re just attracted to. There are a lot of things that you’ll only learn through life experience, and until then, your writing will just be guesswork and imitation of other writers.

     This is beginning to run long, but I’d like to take a moment to talk about the overuse and misuse of rape in storytelling. Even professional writers in Hollywood use it badly, generally as a line bad guys cross to show the audience they’re really evil, or as a way to enrage the hero into taking the fight to the next level and beating the enemy. This takes a female character and turns her into a plot device instead of a person.  Within fan fiction, the use of rape has become very casual, and I can’t help thinking it’s because the writers don’t really know what it is. Maybe they don’t know someone it’s happened to. They don’t understand the damage it does both to the victim and the people who care about her.  

      It’s bad enough that so many writers use it to show how evil the rapist character is but the ones who use it to start a relationship? That is just so utterly, mind bogglingly wrong to me when I see descriptions like “What happens when Voldemort orders Snape, Draco and Lucius Malfoy, to teach Harry Potters Mudblood friend a lesson.  What will they do when she shows up on the doorstep of their Bachelor pad with a baby? Then it’s all “Three Deatheater’s and a Baby.” The fact that you had to use rape to get characters together should be your first clue and the only one necessary that two characters don’t belong together.  I’m of the opinion that if you take a woman by force or deceit, you’re a bad guy period. I don’t really care if you have other good qualities. You don’t get to be loved. You don’t get to have good things happen to you. You get to have Karma step on your neck. In fact, if you were to take the above scenario, have one of the Death Eaters defy Voldemorte and help Hermione escape, that would be your first indication that there was something of worth within them and they weren’t quite beyond redemption. Then maybe you could build a love story from there.

     Okay, as to the actual writing of the sex, I’m not going to really go into that except to say I would err on the side of romance novel sex over video that Uncle Jerry didn’t hide in his attic as well as he though he did, sex. Let’s face it, porn is tacky.  No one ever won an Oscar in the category of best adult film screenplay.  You can do better than that.