The Sloth Punch

    Last time I talked in general about filling your writers playbook with the basic tool set of your genre.  Mastering that skill set in itself will allow you to become a very solid writer, but there is always room for new ideas. Today I'm going to cover a "play" that you may have seen in a movie or television show. I'm certain it has a proper literary name, but I like to think of it as "The Sloth Punch" .  Years ago, there was a kids superhero cartoon. In one episode, a villain invaded their headquarters and proceeded to beat them handily.  The fight raged back and forth in front of this statue of a sloth in a superhero costume in an action pose.  As the last hero was beaten, the villain turned around and BAM! dropped to the floor unconscious. "Great job Captain Sloth!" said the heroes, for the statue was not a statue. It was a very, very, slow Superhero. "I may be slow" said Captain Sloth, "but I sure do pack a wallop."

    In the context of writing, a "Sloth Punch" is a plot device that starts early, but doesn't take effect until much later in the story. It rewards your audience for paying attention.  The alert reader or watcher gets this fun little moment where they know what's about to happen before anyone else.  Here's an example from a standard issue romantic comedy.

In the first scene we see a well dressed, handsome if arrogant looking businessman named Alan (the heroes romantic rival) getting out of a cab in front of a restaurant. He doesn't tip the driver.
Alan:  "Thanks a lot, asshole,I'm running  late now.  Look Abu, Achmed, whatever the hell your name is "
  Driver: "It's Ibrah-"

Alan: "Whatever, you all look alike to me. If your gonna drive a cab in this country, learn to  fucking drive ok? If I miss my reservation I'm going to call your boss and have him fire your sorry ass.  god! Why do we even let you people into the country"....and so on."

Then he goes into the restaurant, and he's all charming and the love interest thinks he's a great guy. He's not a great guy. Her dad owns his company and she's his ticket to the top Fast forward 90 minutes into the movie. The Heroine is going to get on a plane to Europe to take over the companies Paris branch. The hero and the rival are racing to get there before she takes off and make the big romantic I love you speech.

Alan runs out of his building and hails a cab. "To the airport, and step on it."
And the Sloth Punch lands. Of all the cabs in Los Angeles he had to get into this one right?
 Spoiler Alert: Alan doesn't make it to the airport.

A few minutes later, the post credits clip finds Alan on the side of the road in the middle of  the desert. (This Romantic comedy is set in LA) "Hellooo....Anybody...."

Here's another example from the movie Training Day with Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke: This seemingly random event...

Seems like a filler  "Stuff that happens to cops" scene that gives Denzel a chance to throw some hard core tough guy dialogue around. It isn't until much later that this random event becomes absolutely pivotal

Bam! Sloth Punch.

Building the Playbook

          If you have a favorite writer, who's fairly prolific, and you've read or watched pretty much everything they've ever put out, you have probably noticed patterns emerge within their writing.  There will be scenes or bits of dialogue that get recycled into different stories.  I think that this is not so much a lack of fresh inspiration, but a function of a writer knowing what works for him and using that whenever possible. Different in the details each time of course, but with the same overall structure.  To me it seems comparable to the way a quarterback may build a repertoire of passing plays and running plays and offensive formations that he does well and can use as needed to put together an effective drive down the football field. A good writer has his own playbook of comedy bits and dramatic exchanges and various blocks of writing that he can do well and use at will to make a good story.

          Today I'm going to talk in general about things that should be in every bodies playbook. Later I'll get into specific plays with some examples drawn from books and video. For writers who aspire to write romance there are standard beats you have to master. The cute meet for instance,  arguments both mild and vicious, sincere confessions of love, breakups both amiable and ugly, awkward meetings after breakups, reconciliations. to name just a few. Watch enough romantic comedies and you'll pick all of these out readily enough. You should be able to write conversations with friends outside of the relationship. Friendly ribbing and one-up-man-ship , and support between guy friends, Good Will Hunting had some great examples of that.  The female equivalent of that with optional sassy gay friend. Mystery writers have to master the big reveal, that ones pretty much non-negotiable. Action writers should know how to write fight sequences both personal, and expansive, but also know when to skip to the aftermath like in the Hobbit  or HBO's production of Game of Thrones, when the story demands it.  A writer specializing in thrillers will probably want to master sequences of extreme tension like the secretary that the FBI is making plant he bug in the office of the sinister banker moving terrorist money and he catches her, then she tries to explain herself, and you don't know if he believes her, or if he's just toying with her, then she almost makes it to the door, and he stops her, and she can almost feel the bullets in her back, and he tells her not to forget her purse.

           I asked a friend of mine with nearly 70  good sized stories under her belt, what the most important thing for a writer to master would be, and she told me ending it right was hardest part of a story. That making sure that all the plot threads were tied together smoothly and that it built on everything that came before it,  and closed the story on the right note was the trickiest part for her.  That's something to keep in mind from the very beginning. Keeping a tight control of your pacing and character development  will put you in a better position to get your story across the finish line in good shape. The less you have to fix at the last minute, the better. So learning how to end your story in a way that makes your reader feel their time reading it was well spent is a critical skill set.

     So that's the basics. Learn to use the tools of the kind of story you want to tell. Learn to use them well. Practice writing those kinds of scenes even if you don't end up using them in stories.  Then start expanding on that knowledge.  Build your playbook until you're ready for anything.