Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 232

Person of Interest: “Asylum” and “YHWH” and the Shape of Story

The last two episodes that make up the fourth season finale of Person of Interest, “Asylum” (Andy Callahan & Denise The) and “YHWH” (Dan Dietz and Greg Plageman), are another crisis point, which brings up the problem of the long running series: How much worse can things get without the turning point of the season finale being just one more horrible thing that happens to people we love?

I’ve always thought the four act structure (three act screenplay structure, five act television episode structure) was arbitrary because the turning points depend on the length of the story. Go too long without something to make the story new (a turning point), and it becomes the same-old-same-old. But add too many turning points and the very things that make the story new become the same-old-same-old. If your story is based on the same-old-same-old, say NCIS or Murder She Wrote, you’re fine because the people who like that kind of story go to it because it’s comfortable. But if your fan base likes a story that progresses, then you have a problem if you don’t know how long it is.

The essential thing about structure is that it shapes the story, and if you don’t know how long the story is, you can’t shape it. Some showrunners like John Rogers of Leverage just plan each season as its own novel, but some, like the Nolans of PoI, plan each season as an act. It’s planning for acts that can bite you in the writing butt.

We talked about the crisis point in the Season Three finale, a wrenching episode that evicts our Gang from the library, stripping away their identities and leaving them separated in a cold city with antagonistic eyes everywhere. It’s a true crisis, shattering their world. But now at the end of Season Four, we have another true crisis, this time separating them from the Machine, and the story is getting a little fried around the edges. Watching the last two episodes again tonight, I could hear the creaking of the plot. Greer is still a bastard, just like he was last year. Samaritan is still entrenched in the US government, just like it was last year. Shaw is still missing. Control is still being a bitch. Even though technically things are much worse, they don’t feel much worse. In fact, for most of these two episodes, it feels tired.

I think that’s because the stakes just aren’t there, or rather they’re there, but they’re being reheated. I found myself fast forwarding through anything with Greer in it (until the part where Root takes out Martine, that’s a keeper), fast forwarding with anything with Control in it (although I take guilty pleasure in watching her shoot that zealot), and slowing down to watch Root and Finch reconnect with his old student (I love that scene), and Elias manipulate Dominic, and Reese and Fusco outsmart everybody. The truth is, I’ll watch the same-old with very minor changes, but I need the same-old with the characters I love. Greer is one-note and boring (not the fault of the actor, who is excellent), ditto Control (ditto), but Root is forever fascinating, Finch forever vulnerable and endearing, Fusco forever the heart of the series, and Reese forever badass (Reese thanking Fusco is a lovely note in this, too). In these two episodes, Samaritan isn’t just taking over the world, it’s taking over too much of the story, making it feel cold and chaotic.

Until the end. I don’t care how many times I’ve seen this, I weep when the Machine calls Finch “Father,” thanks him for creating her, and apologizes for failing. I weep when I see Finch’s horrified face as he realizes he created a living entity and treated it like a machine. And I am completely rooting for them as they head out into Samaritan gunfire, implacable once again. As long as this show focuses on its people, there’s nothing better on TV.

Having said that, I think it’s good that this is the last season. It pains me to say that because I love this show, but I think a third crisis, a third “oh my god they killed Kenny the world,” would be a death blow. Having been given the gift of knowing this is the end, they can write a real climax and resolution, giving a coherent shape to five acts of amazing story and catharsis to viewers, and letting our Gang go out in a blaze of glory.

I hope.

Links to all the PoI posts.

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Person of Interest: “Terra Incognita” and Time in Story

We’ve been talking about time in story so much, I thought “Terra Incognita” would be a good episode to look at to discuss time and reality disruptions, specifically the differences among flashback, memory, dream, and hallucination, and how they can break or–in this case–make a story.

For linear, cause and effect story telling, I start with the assumption that readers/viewers want the story they signed up for, the stuff that’s happening in the now. (Patterned storytelling is an entirely different matter.) That means that everything in a linear plot that’s not happening in the now of the story as part of the ongoing plot is an interruption. Any interruption weakens the flow of a linear story, and much more than that, weakens the reader/viewer’s connection to the story. Think of it as going out for a steak dinner, and being interrupted every ten minutes with the offer of sushi. It’s not that sushi is bad, you might really like sushi, it’s that you wanted a steak dinner, and there’s a steak dinner right there in front of you, and people keep shoving raw fish in your face.

My personal approach to this is No Raw Fish, but that’s not the same thing as No Back Story or No Time Disruptions. It’s not that I bar all use of flashback, memory, dream, and hallucination, it’s that there better be a really good reason it’s there, and that reason does not include “It was the only way to get that information to the reader.” No, it wasn’t. It was the easiest way and it screwed up the story. Stop doing that.

A prime example of this is the flashback. A flashback stops the story in the now and drags the reader back to tell her what really happened in the past, which is an incredibly dumb thing to do in linear storytelling because . . .

1. The stuff that actually happened in the past is irrelevant. Ask three people you had a conversation with an hour ago what happened during that conversation and you’ll get three different stories because there were three different people participating with three different worldviews and experiences to draw from to interpret it. Reality for them at that point isn’t what really happened, it’s what they remember happened. The same thing applies to the characters in a story: their memories are what’s going to inform their attitudes and drive their actions. What actually happened is lost in the past and irrelevant; what matters is what they think happened and how that makes them act now.

2. You have carefully built the tension in your plot, and the reader is really invested in OH MY GOD WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN NOW???? and you say, “Hold that thought, I want to show you what really happened twenty years ago,” and you show her, and then you say, “Remember how excited and worried and enthralled you were back before the flashback? Yeah, feel that way again.” And the reader says, “Screw you,” and goes off to eat a pint of ice cream because you’ve frustrated and annoyed her.

Flashbacks kill story.

So when can you mess with time and reality? When it’s part of the story in the now:

Dreams: You know, just don’t. The character may be having the dream in the now of the story, but the use of dreams is so hackneyed and often so contrived in storytelling that it’s best to never go there. There’s a reason “It was all a dream” makes readers and viewers scream.

Memories: If your character experiences a memory, that memory was evoked by something in the now of the story, so they’re part of the now. As long as the memories do not become separate scenes (at which point, they’re flashbacks), as long as they stay connected to the action/event of the main story that evoked them and are brief, they’re not disruptions of the story. Instead, they’re disruptions of the PoV characters’ experience of reality within the story. That is, they’re the place in the story where the PoV character stares into space. Memories should be brief because if they go on too long, the other characters in the scene will start asking the PoV character if she’s smelling toast.

Hallucinations: Think of hallucinations as memories of things that never happened, but your character’s mind plays them anyway. The good thing about hallucinations is that they’ve probably been caused by something that happened in the the main story: the character took drugs or was mentally incapacitated in some other way. The bad thing is that hallucinations invite you into the Dream School of Bad Writing, so unless they’re done carefully, they’re as annoying as dreams.

PoI did theirs carefully.

Reese’s back story is a lot of PTSD from first his military and CID days and the loss of his first love, Jessica, and then his anguish over the loss of Carter, who died in his arms. None of that stops him from fighting the good fight, and he’s still loyal to the Machine Gang, but he never lets anyone get close, either, which is breaking him down, leading him to a crisis in this story. This episode is one of the rare stories that’s all about internal conflict, not as subtext but as text, told in Reese’s wished-for memories and hallucinations as he freezes to death. The wished-for memories and the hallucinations don’t interrupt the story because they are the story; the subplot here is the number who lost everything and is alone because of a murderer who was driven mad by rejection and loss and loneliness, all echos of Reese’s terrible detachment and loss. Reese’s antagonist isn’t the guy who shoots him, it’s his longing for connection, made flesh by his hallucination of Carter in the car with him, so he can finally say everything he needs to say to her, hear the things he needs her to say, heartbreaking as he struggles to deny that he needs them. It’s one of the most beautiful stories in this series, and it’s also an outstanding example of the way to distort time and reality in the now of the story to devastating effect.

But it’s also important to remember that this story is always grounded in the now. This is not Reese sittin’ and thinkin’, this is Reese trying to put a cold case to rest because it was Carter’s and he wants to feel close to her again. That’s a real bullet in him, and he really is bleeding and freezing, in pain because he wanted to be close. And finally, that’s really Fusco behind those headlights, coming to save him because he is not alone.

Weakest Parts

• Anything with Root and Finch, who seem to be in here just to remind people they’re still in here, although it’s always fun to see them work together.

Smart Story Moves

• Beginning in the memory, and making it clear that it’s a daydream because Fusco says, “Wake up.”

• The use of black and white to show Reese’s memories and hallucinations, a fairly subtle effect in a show with a palette of mostly neutrals to begin with.

• Making the number one of Joss’s cases, tying the emotional plot to the action plot.

• Showing Reese imagining what Joss did through her case notes as he retraces her steps, trying to get close to her again.

• The Machine flashing the “Out of Range” screen, working on two levels.

• Reese ‘remembering” the things he wished he’d said.

• Everything Carter tells him in his wished-for memory.

• That incredible ending: “You never did.”

Favorite Moments

• Carter. Everything with Carter.

• Root showing up in a wedding dress: “Congratulations?”

• Fusco’s headlights.

And now a Table of Contents:

Links to all the PoI posts.

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Book Done Yet?: Second Sentence Submission

So why is this —

“At one AM on the morning of her thirty-third birthday, Detective Nita Dodd walked past two dead bodies and her ex-lover to enter Hell, where she met the Devil.”

–a lousy first sentence?

Because after the first sentence comes the second sentence.

Let’s go back to my MFA classes with Lee for a moment. So I’m workshopping the first scene from Tell Me Lies which is still in draft form at that point.

And Lee says, “About this first sentence.”

At that draft stage, the first sentence was “The crotchless black lace bikini underpants lay on the yellow formica counter like a bat in butter.”

“Terrific sentence,” he says, and I brace myself because I know there’s a kicker coming.

“Now where are you going to go?”

Oh, just hell.

The problem with a KILLER first sentence is that you have to follow it. And if the first sentence is really killer, the second sentence is going to be explaining all the crap you put in your first sentence. Like whose underpants and whose Formica counter and why it matters, which means instead of hitting the ground running and moving headlong into my story, I was hitting the ground with a splat and then having to pick myself up and doing the fiction-writing equivalent of dusting myself off: explaining my first sentence.

Yeah, that got rewritten.

So here’s the first sentence I brainstormed yesterday and immediately rejected:

“At one AM on the morning of her thirty-third birthday, Detective Nita Dodd walked past two dead bodies and her ex-lover to enter Hell, where she met the Devil.”

Great, right? Not even close. Because the second sentence is going to have to explain that Hell is just a bar and the Devil is this guy who got shot but not really and the ex-lover isn’t that important and neither is one of the two dead bodies and . . .

That first sentence is a splat that’s going to take me at least another half dozen sentences to pick up and dust off. It’s a terrible first sentence.

But as the first move in trying to brainstorm the disaster of the previous first sentence–

“Detective Nita Dodd spotted her brother as soon as she got out of the car.”

–it’s progress, moving to the opposite end of the first line spectrum. I need to be somewhere in between there. So I’m cogitating.

Which brings us to that second line, the one you can submit to the editor if she likes your first line. It has to keep going. It cannot stop to explain anything, you hit the ground running, now keep running:

Tell Me Lies: “One hot August Thursday afternoon, Maddie Faraday reached under the front seat of her husband’s Cadillac and pulled out a pair of black lace bikini underpants.They weren’t hers.”

Fast Women: “The man behind the cluttered desk looked like the devil, and Nell Dysart figured that was par for her course since she’d been going to hell for a year and a half anyway. Meeting Gabriel McKenna just meant she’d arrived.”

Faking It: “Matilda Goodnight stepped back from her latest mural and realized that of all the crimes she’d committed in her thirty-four years, painting the floor-to-ceiling reproduction of van Gogh’s sunflowers on Clarissa Donnelly’s dining room wall was the one that was going to send her to hell. God might forgive her the Botticelli Venus she’d painted in the bathroom in Iowa, the Uccello battle scene she’d done for the boardroom in New Jersey, even the Bosch orgy she’d painted in the bedroom in Utah, but these giant, glaring sunflowers were going to be His Last Straw. ”

Maybe This Time: “Andie Miller sat in the reception room of her ex-husband’s law office, holding on to ten years of uncashed alimony checks and a lot of unresolved rage. This is why I never came back here, she thought.”

First sentence plants the story, second sentence moves it along.

No splatting.

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Book Done Yet?: First Sentence Submission

My mentor for my MFA, Lee K. Abbott, was a terrific teacher. Half of what I babble about in here, Lee taught me. Sittin’ and thinkin’? That’s pure Lee. And now as I’m ripping apart the beginning of Nita again, I’m thinking of something else he used to torture us with: The One Sentence Submission.

“Suppose,” he’d say, “that you could only send the first sentence of your story to an editor. And if he or she liked it, then you could send the second sentence . . .”

Those of you who are writers probably went looking for the booze right about now. Or chocolate. Whatever calms your racing heart as you contemplate the disaster that is your working draft.

So I looked at the first sentence of my draft. I could spend some time here talking about how this is still discovery draft (because it is), but that’s irrelevant because I showed it to people (that would be you). Once you show you work to people, you have a mandate not to waste their time. So here’s how I wasted yours:

“Detective Nita Dodd spotted her brother as soon as she got out of the car.”

Yeah, that’s not good. Well, it’s 90% not good. It does get my protagonist in the first sentence and her title helps get the story started but after that, all it tells you is that she has a brother and she rides in cars. It does absolutely nothing to establish her as a character.

I know some of you are saying, “Wait, that’s too draconian.” No, it’s not. As your mother always told you, you only have one chance to make a first impression. Don’t start with “It was a dark and stormy night.” Or “Detective Nita Dodd got out of the car.”

I am capable of writing more interesting first sentences. Most of my category first lines are terrible–well, I was still trying to figure out how to load paper in the printer at that point in my career–but I did better when I got to solos:

Tell Me Lies: “One hot August Thursday afternoon, Maddie Faraday reached under the front seat of her husband’s Cadillac and pulled out a pair of black lace bikini underpants.”

Welcome to Temptation: “Sophie Dempsey didn’t like Temptation even before the Garveys smashed into her ’86 Civic, broke her sister’s sunglasses, and confirmed all her worst suspicions about people from small towns who drove beige Cadillacs.”

Fast Women: “The man behind the cluttered desk looked like the devil, and Nell Dysart figured that was par for her course since she’d been going to hell for a year and a half anyway.”

Faking It: “Matilda Goodnight stepped back from her latest mural and realized that of all the crimes she’d committed in her thirty-four years, painting the floor-to-ceiling reproduction of van Gogh’s sunflowers on Clarissa Donnelly’s dining room wall was the one that was going to send her to hell.”

Maybe This Time: “Andie Miller sat in the reception room of her ex-husband’s law office, holding on to ten years of uncashed alimony checks and a lot of unresolved rage.”

So if this is my first-sentence style, what do they all have in common?

• They start with the protagonist.

• She’s in an uncomfortable place.

• She’s in trouble.

• She’s angry.

• She’s in action.

Evidently when it comes to protagonists, I have a type.

So breaking that down:

1. I always start with the protagonist because I want my reader attaching to her. This works because the reader, consciously or subconsciously, is looking for somebody to root for. So I put her in the first sentence–I got your girl right here, folks–and that way there’s no mystery about who this story belongs to.

2. One of the strongest ways to make a reader/viewer attach to a character is to saddle her with misfortune she did not cause, to put her into trouble she doesn’t deserve. Humans have a strong sense of justice pretty much by the time they can sit up and grab a sippy cup, so seeing something that isn’t fair can strengthen that reader-protagonist bond. That means that when we see somebody like Maddie, who’s nice enough to clean out her husband’s car, realize she’s being cheated on, we’re gonna be Team Maddie unless she does something to screw that up.

3. What she does with that misfortune is the next step: if she weeps or whines, we’re not going to want to stick around. If she stands up and says, “No,” gets mad, moves toward a goal, even if only by implication, we’ll root for her because we love a fighter.

So put her in the first sentence, put her in trouble, put her in motion.

And now back to Nita. Nita’s sick, but not in trouble, and she doesn’t really go into action until she talks to Vinnie and Nick.

So we cut the first scene, the one where she gets out of the car. Then the second scene between Nick and Vinnie gets pushed back. The story starts when Nita walks into the bar (“A protagonist walks into a bar . . .”) and confronts Nick. Then Nick and Vinnie can talk in the next scene. And Nita and Button and maybe Mort in the next scene? Hmmm. But I think starting in the bar is a good idea.

“At one AM on the morning of her thirty-third birthday, Detective Nita Dodd walked past two dead bodies and her ex-lover to enter Hell, where she met the Devil.”

That’s not going to work either–it’s too cute and over-the-top–but it’s a lot better than “Nita Dodd got out of the car.”

Back to cogitating.

Tomorrow: Book Done Yet?: Second Sentence Submission. While you’re waiting for that bit of brilliance, how about posting great first sentences that you have known in the comments? You know, for inspiration. (Here are some good ones.)

[Person of Interest post on “Terra Incognita” will go up on Tuesday; we’ll be talking about time and storytelling. Guess how I feel about flashbacks.]

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Cherry Saturday 5-7-2016

This month is Older Americans Month.

(That’s me and Milton.)

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The Case for Sittin’ and Thinkin’: No for Me, Yes for Krissie

It’s not easy being my friend.

Krissie wrote me about the book she’s finishing today [details redacted to prevent spoilers on the next Anne Stuart novel):

“So okay, I’ve shut up my internal editor but a raven named Crusie is sitting on my shoulder and saying “nevermore” and “no flashback” and cawing in my ear, so I figure I better confess my sins (not changing them, just confessing).

“We’re getting to the big hot sex scene. [Heroine] locked the [minion] in the [redacted], [hero] is making his way across the island, back to the house, after . . . killing . . . the Big Bad.

“And we’re having some sitting and thinking, which you deplore.

“However, to me it feels like opera or a Broadway musical. The soprano/heroine sings her song of doubt and longing. The tenor/hero sings his song of doubt and longing. The two come together on stage and sing their duet

“I know you hate sitting and thinking scenes, and in general it’s more interesting to have conversations, but sometimes, in some stories, people are alone on the stage. I mean, maybe Hamlet would have been better if he’d been saying, “you know, Horatio, to be or not to be is an interesting question.”

“But we spend a lot of our lives alone in our heads. Probably most of our lives, even the most gregarious of us.

“So I’m thinking my characters are having their arias and the duet is coming up.

“So there.”

First, Krissie gets to write her book any way she wants; she listens to her Girls, not me, and that’s exactly right for her books.

Second, here are all the reasons sittin’ and thinkin’ is exactly wrong for mine.

“[T]o me it feels like opera or a Broadway musical:”

Krissie trained in theater and has lots of stage experience.

I ran the tech crews.

That means she thinks of the characters as actors on a stage, and I think of the actors as not interesting unless they’re colorful and moving in front of great scenery in terrific costumes. Even in a stage play, I get bored with long monologues, especially Hamlet’s; I taught too many undergrads to be interested in college boy angst. He killed your father, Hamlet. Take him out.

But one of the most poignant moments for me in Shakespeare isn’t Hamlet gazing at his navel on the battlements, it’s Macbeth meeting Macduff and saying, “Please don’t fight me, I’m destined to kill you and I’m so sick of blood, I don’t want to kill again.” It’s the moment where Macbeth, the monster, regains his humanity, appalled at the horrors he’s inflicted on Scotland and especially on Macduff. He’s the hero we met in the beginning, and he’s asking Macduff to please spare him from another murder because he’s sick of the carnage. It breaks my heart every damn time I read it or see it, and it would be infinitely less heart-breaking if he was just sitting there thinking about it. And then Macduff gives him the bad news and Macbeth knows he’s going to die, and he still fights on. He could run away, but that’s just not in him, he’s still the hero he was in the beginning, just irrevocably damaged. He’s going to Hell, but he’s going to go fighting. Thank god, he doesn’t monologue, he just picks up that sword and achieves greatness.

Because here’s the thing: Nobody changes because they have an idea. They have an idea or something changes because something happens, usually something that involves action with another person. The eureka moment that comes later is the least interesting thing about the change for me; it’s seeing the change happen that’s fun on the page.

But here’s the other thing: All writers conceive of story in their own way (there are many roads to Oz). Krissie’s work is much more character-centered than mine, steeped in darkness; she really is writing Hamlet and Macbeth, she just redeems them through love. Me, I like people moving briskly in front of bright colors, doing more discovering than thinking, and then realizing in the heat of battle that they’re crazy for each other and probably snarking about that. Krissie loves the dark and I love the light, which is amusing to both of us because Krissie is the most cheerful, loving person you can imagine, and I am a dark, snarky bitch and pleased to be so. So much for write-what-you-know.

“But we spend a lot of our lives alone in our heads. Probably most of our lives, even the most gregarious of us.”

Yes, but sittin’ and thinkin’ is not story. It’s character.

Which I think is another way Krissie and I differ. It’s not that she’s not interested in story–she’s a natural storyteller–or I’m not interested in character–I can’t start a book until I have a protagonist clear in my head–it’s that she shows story through character and I show character through story. Which means her sittin’ and thinkin’ scenes aren’t just there to show character, they move the story through the decisions and changes that happen in that character’s head. And my action scenes aren’t just there to tell the story, they’re there to arc the character and showcase her strengths and weaknesses. We both do both of these things, every good writer does, but our emphasis is on the things about story we’re drawn to, and we’re drawn to different things.

“So I’m thinking my characters are having their arias and the duet is coming up.”

And I’m thinking my characters just fell off a rock, and they have a fight with a giant mutant goat coming up, during which there are going to be huge changes to their relationship which will result in a lot of drinking and a terrible dinner with her mother.

“So there.”

Damn right. There are many roads to Oz. Take the one that gets you there.

[Note: This is not a request for anybody to take sides and decide which way is best. They’re both best. They’re just best for different writers and readers.]

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Book Done Yet?: The Unbearable Slowness of Set-Ups

Putting up all of these WiPs has given me a good look at a common problem in first drafts: the terrible slowness of setting up the world. It’s a conundrum: I have to hit the ground running with the plot but I have to establish the ground on where the plot is happening, not just the geography but the population. And although I have the first act to do that completely (roughly the first third of the novel) before I have to stop introducing new things and just start powering through the action, I really need to do some things in the first two chapters (roughly 10%), some things in the first chapter (roughly 5%) and some things on the first page (roughly first 200 words). It’s almost impossible to do that well in a first draft, which is why every first draft I’ve ever written has needed to be cut back. A lot. Usually by about ten percent, sometimes by as much 25%.

That means that the first page has to establish the mood, tone, world, and–most important of all-protagonist. The reader comes in looking for somebody to root for, and I don’t want to make her wait. I’ve never gone back and looked at all the openings of my books, but I’m betting the later ones all start with the heroine heading into some kind of conflict. Why conflict? Because two of the best ways to show character are action and what other characters think of my character.

So I have . . .

• The first page of Nita’s draft ends when Button asks, “Is that a dead body?”

That gives me Nita in the first sentence, the fact that she’s a detective and the setting is a crime scene somewhere called Demon Island just after midnight, and she has a new partner who’s anxious to please her, a power imbalance that Nita accepts as her due but doesn’t exploit. Also it’s in the north because it’s cold. I think there’s some hook in her being a detective and her brother being the ME; that is, I think that’s something that’s mildly interesting that a reader might want to know more about. I think there’s some hook in the contrast between Nita and Button; although that needs to be more interesting later, this is the first 200 words and I need the strong contrast to characterize both. I like the bit about the streetlight because that’s good clue to how balanced Nita is, she can look past a corpse and notice damaged infrastructure (and also because that’s going to be a read-a-different-way-once-the-book-is-finished kind of easter egg, although that’s not reason enough on its own to put it in there). I think the only crucial thing that’s missing is Nick, but that’s one of those choices you make writing a romance: do you introduce the heroine and hero in different scenes so that the reader can anticipate their meeting, or do you start with the meet? I like separate scenes, I’m big on readers getting a chance to participate with anticipation.

• The first chapter ends with Nita saying, “I’m not finished with you,” a massive understatement that the reader knows more about than Nita does, since I think the foreshadowing for the romance is there. I’m not into one-look-and-it’s-love plots, that takes all the fun out of writing romance. I am a fan of the plot that pits the two against each other and then forces them to work together. I’m a huge fan of showing a relationship begin and grow through hard work and intense pressure; I think it’s a good microcosm for long term relationships, showing how they cooperate and protect each other. I think this first chapter needs to be cut back to make that a lot more clear: They’re both going after Joey’s killer for different reasons, so they’re going to end up on the same path.

• The second chapter ends with them both falling asleep, so that has to change, but it is a good 10% of the book which is my rough guideline the point at which everything has to be established. We need to know protagonist, antagonist (even if he or she isn’t named or on the page, there has to be a sense of something working behind the scenes against the protagonist, in this case the unnamed person who paid Ralph to shoot Joey), goal, setting, mood, tone, a sense of the community or communities, and above all, enough hook that people will keep on reading. The sad truth is that most people in stores or on the net reject a book after the first page, and very few will keep reading after a first chapter if they’re not intrigued by something. I always think that’s character, but different readers are grabbed by different things. Something has to be there, though. So by the end of the second chapter, Button’s shot somebody and she and Nita are at the beginning of an odd couple relationship; Nita and Mort have a brother-sister bond that’s appealing; Nick isn’t just the Devil, he’s Daglas and Rabiel’s boss and they make a good team, plus now he has Vinnie, mixed blessing that he is. The big drawback to what I’ve got is that between Joey getting shot before the story starts, and Button shooting the demon in the second to last scene in the second chapter, there’s not much action, just a lot of people talking. I like the part where Nita shakes Nick’s hand; I think this needs more physicality throughout. And to be cut. And I think maybe the chapter should end when Nick sits down at the breakfast table or, depending on how much I cut, at the end of that scene when Nick says, “It kills demons.” Except that’s at the 15,000 word mark, which means I’d need to cut at least 4,000 words. Which is probably about right. I don’t think I can claim I’ve achieved a full set-up until something strongly links Nita’s goal with Nick’s.

The good news is, this is all business as usual for a first draft, so nothing to worry about. I’m also trying to get a better grasp on Nick; Tom Ellis is lovely but he’s wrong for what I want, or at least he’s only part of what I want. So that’s good, too: I’m sharpening up my concepts of the characters. I think Button’s going to stay the same: an amalgamation of Rachael Harris and Melissa Rauch because they’re both cute, semi-fluffy, little blondes who will cut a bitch. I need more dimension to Mort, but that will come. Vinnie’s pretty much there, and the rest of the supporting characters are fine where they are for now.

So basically, I need to keep writing to find out who these people are and what they’re doing. You know, the fun part.

And now, back to Demon Island, where Nick and Nita just fell off a big rock. Because it was there. IT’S A FIRST DRAFT, I DON”T HAVE TO KNOW WHY.

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Person of Interest: If/Then/Else: Point of View as Meaning

My love for “The Devil’s Share” as great emotional storytelling will probably never be surpassed, but “If/Then/Else” gets my vote for the most mind-boggling forty-five minutes of scripted TV I’ve ever seen. And it’s all because of point of view, the wonkiest of writing techniques.

Point of view is a pain in the ass to navigate because it’s always a win/lose choice:

• Go with first person and it’s immediate and intimate, drawing the reader in. But you get no distance at all and you’re stuck with only what that character can see, hear, or feel.

• Go with third person omniscient and you’re God: you see, hear, and feel everything, skipping from head to head, creating an overview of your story world. But you lose intimacy because you’re in all those heads; omniscient PoV by its very mechanism makes the reader an observer, not a participant.

• Go with third person limited, and you get the best of both worlds, intimacy with distance, the possibility of switching PoV from scene to scene (never within a scene) to created a more dimensional world while keeping the reader closely tied to the protagonist of the scene. But as with so much else in life, splitting the difference also means splitting the impact. You get a sense of intimacy with the character but you’re not really part of him or her; you get a sense of the world as a whole but nothing as grand as you do with omniscient. And it’s SO easy to slip out of; headhopping and authorial intrusion plague this viewpoint like ticks in a spring meadow.

And once you’ve picked a PoV lane, you have to deal with the central idea of point of view: you’re seeing this story through this character’s viewpoint, and because of this, the story is that character’s perception. True or false, reliable or unreliable, that character’s view is your view of what’s happening. The PoV character you choose determines not just the content of the story, but the impact of the story.

All of which brings us to “If/Then/Else,” one of the best explorations of PoV in a TV episode, combining almost omniscience (the Machine can see the entire building through the security cameras) with almost first person (we’re deep within the Machine’s simulations, not objective reality).

The show has featured the Machine’s POV from the very beginning: starting with the second episode, the credits introduce the cast from the computer’s viewpoint, enclosing their heads in color-coded squares, listing the vital info underneath. When the Machine is under attack in Season Four and shuts down, the credits shut down, making it clear that Machine view isn’t just a stylistic touch, the Machine is a character. But it isn’t until “If/Then/Else” that you realize just how much of a character the AI is. Root knew from the beginning; her joy at bonding with the Machine at the end of the second season looked like lunacy to reader/viewers then, but she knew she’d found a partner and that she’d never be alone again. (Okay, she was nuts and thought the Machine was God, but she got that it was a sentient being.)

“If/Then/Else” is the point in the story when the rest of us catch up to Root. It’s a brilliantly clever way of making the Machine human, taking the “artificial” out of Artificial Intelligence, and making us fall in love with her because she’s no longer an “it.” It’s also just great storytelling and great fan service. If you’ve stuck with PoI for three seasons, this is your reward.

The story begins with the stock market crashing, the Gang racing to stop it, and Greer sneering his plan to stop them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then Shaw ends up in a subway car with a bomb and Samaritan takes over the building: “It’s a trap.” They take refuge in a break room, under heavy fire, and time slows down as the machine runs through strategies . . . and then there’s a flashback. Grrrr. Okay, it’s a great flashback, but still. Then Samaritan closes in, Shaw gets arrested and they lose the code, and . . .

. . . Finch is killed.

Here’s the reason I love that move (after the first time I saw it; the first time I was appalled): We know that PoI does not do Gotchas. That is, we know that they know that we know that he’s not dead. This is not going to be a stupid plot move, not a moment of false suspense, not schmuckbait. This is going to be like everything else on PoI, important. But Finch cannot be dead. So the screen goes to Machine View and says, “Simulation terminated.” The scene resets, and we’re back in the break room, and the clock on the screen shows us that only seconds have passed: We’re in the Machine’s POV and it’s running simulations, trying to find the best way to rescue its gang. And then another freaking flashback “A second is like an infinity to you.”

The team comes out blazing again, this time going in opposite directions, Shaw gets arrested again, they break into the computer room and

Reese is killed.

And then Root asks Shaw if there’s any chance for them before stepping out into a hail of bullets . . .

Now the Machine starts another simulation, and its true power is revealed. This isn’t the second simulation its run in as many seconds, it’s Simulation #833,333. The Machine isn’t just fast, it’s a superpower.

This time they’re sticking together. And then this happens:

On first viewing, this is just funny fan service. Actually it’s funny on every viewing. It’s just not until I watched it for the second time that the elephant-shaped other shoe dropped: the Machine has a sense of humor.

Fusco kissing Cocoa Puffs is funny, their exchange afterward is funny, none of it really happened, which means that the Machine made a joke. Not only that, it made a joke based on its knowledge of the people in the Gang. The Machine Gang isn’t the Machine’s operators, it’s her family.

We’re still in the simulation, more seconds pass, Shaw manages to get the code, but their chances are dropping, time is running out, and something brilliant happens: the Machine starts conserving time by short-handing the conversations, showing how deeply it knows not only the characters of the members of its team but also their relationships. And again, it’s funny as hell. “Playfully witty sign-off.”

They enter the computer code, establish their escape route, but then they’re trapped. Which is when the Machine starts calculating on the screen their survival chances: 2%.

So here’s the thing about that: We trust the Machine, we believe the Machine always knows the odds, so it’s a terrifying moment . . .

And then we get another damn flashback. “The lesson is that anyone who looks on the world as a game of chess deserves to lose.” Yes, it’s a great flashback, but still.

Then we’re back, the screen says “Contacting analog interface,” the simulation starts all over again except this time the dialogue is different, it’s not a simulation, this is the real thing, Root saves the Degas, Shaw saves the train, they get the code, Finch uploads the program, the stock market stabilizes, the day is saved, Finch starts the generator, they cut the cable, but Samaritan is there, Reese is hit, Root tries to flirt again, but Shaw is there and the chances of survival skyrocket into the 90th percentile right there on the screen (one of the very few moments watching TV that I actually said, “YES!” out loud), and we know they would because Shaw is a badass, she’s the hero who kisses the girl and guns down the baddies, it’s going to be okay, she rallies the troops, but they’re trapped, no way out, so Shaw kisses Root and sacrifices herself, going down in a hail of bullets as the Machine reads “No valid option.”

Shaw dies.

Or at least she takes several bullets as the elevator door crashes down and there’s a sound like a shot. Root refuses to believe she’s dead, and once again Cocoa Puffs is the only one who knows what’s really going on, but my god, that’s a sucker punch. And it’s also another example of the beauty of doing this from the Machine’s POV: if the Machine is human, and she is, then she’s fallible; she’s not God, she’s just the smartest member of the Machine Family, and even she can’t save Shaw. When the Machine finally shows her humanity, she shows her vulnerability, too, and by extension the vulnerability of the team at the moment of their greatest danger.

You cannot tell this story from any other PoV than that of the Machine. You can deliver the action from another PoV, but you cannot tell this story with this impact, with these layers of realization, in any other PoV than that of the Machine. The biggest emotional roller coaster of the series (so far) is told from the PoV of a computer program, and absolutely everything else that follows–the action sequence, the character interactions, the dialogue choices, the humor, the horror, the impact of the stunner of an ending–comes directly and solely from the Machine, which is now a complete character with passion and humor and drive.

THAT is the power of point of view.

Weakest Parts

• All the “As You Know” dialogue. The beginning really bogs down with it.

• Freaking flashbacks. I’d actually blocked them from my brain, perferring to think of this as perfect.

Smart Story Moves

• The Machine PoV that changes as things get desperate. She doesn’t just change her approach, she changes the way she thinks.

• Keeping the data on the screen to remind us we’re in the Machine’s PoV, to show us how wickedly fast she is, and to keep us on the edges of our seats because of that damn probability percentage.

• Moving that probability of survival up so fast and so high as soon as Shaw enters: it’s an absolutely exhilarating story move before the gut punch of the ending.

Favorite Moments

• The Degas: the Machine knows his Finch.

• “And Martine, enjoy yourself.” Bastards.

• Fusco kissing Root: “Why not? We’re in a simulation.”

• Shaw kissing Root: Shoot!

Ominous Moment

Anything with that bitch Martine in it.

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Person of Interest: Wingman: Multi-Thread Plotting

One of the major problems of this season is that it’s so damn complex. Finch has to be a professor and deal with students, Shaw is still selling perfume and driving the getaway car for thieves, Reese is buried under paperwork while trying to save people, and only the Machine knows what Root is doing. And then there are the numbers . . .

“Nautilus:” Samaritan is recruiting, luring a brilliant young mathmetician into danger to dismantle a Blackwater analog that’s in competition with Samaritan. Finch tries to save her, but in the end, it’s Samaritan who rescues Claire and enlists her on its side. This is not good.

Which brings us to “Wingman.”

The gang is still in disarray, all of them going in different directions, and that fragmentation is nicely captured in the fractured storylines:

• Finch has rejoined the Gang, but refuses to follow the Machine’s orders because she ordered the hit on the senator, which in retrospect would have saved the world, but hey, that’s the past.

• Reese is having trouble being a color-in-the-lines cop, and Fusco is getting fed up with him, not to mention the new captain is on their case to solve some cases.

• Shaw just wants them all to get over themselves and get back to work.

• Finch is running out of money.

• The number of the week is a pick-up artist and Fusco gets to be his client while trying to figure out what his problem is. It’s very symmetrical: the number figures out Fusco’s problems with women, and Fusco figures out the number’s problems with the people trying to kill him.

• The Machine sends Root to take Finch on a scavenger hunt, neither one of them having any idea of what’s going on.

• Reese starts cracking cases to get back in the captain’s good graces and to cover for Fusco who’s off with the number.

• Finch has to pretend to be a badass to buy arms he has no idea what to do with.

Chaotic, right? That’s the point. Structure in fiction is meaning. The way a story unspools tells part of the story. In this case, the Machine Gang is fractured, so the story is fractured. And as the Gang begins to come together again, so does the story.

Yeah, that’s great in theory, but chaos as a symbolic representation of the state of the Gang only works for so long before viewers start getting restless due to the WTF? syndrome. So why do we stick around for “Wingman?”

1. We really like these people, and they’re all under pressure, but this time, it’s comic. Person of Interest is fun tonight!

2. There’s enough repetition and therefore pattern in the chaos to keep us from getting confused. Fusco and Shaw stick with the number, as Fusco strikes out with three women. Reese hunts down three murderers. Finch and Shaw meet with three crooks. The rhythm underneath the seemingly unconnected scenes creates that feeling of authority in the text: somebody’s in control of this story.

3. The individual scenes are terrific, each one just interesting/fun/exciting enough to hold our attention even though we’re not sure how it all goes together.

4. And then it all goes together, Reese and Shaw converging on Fusco and the number, while Finch and Root follow the bread crumbs put down by the Machine to foil many bad guys and take control of a large cache of weapons and several duffel bags full of cash.

5. And just to hammer the point that the center is beginning to hold again: A great new center of operations in an abandoned Art Deco subway platform. They are off the grid, under the radar, and back together again.

Weakest Parts

• They pretty much nailed this one, too. SO helpful staying in the now of the story.

Smart Story Moves

• The Pick-Up Artist is a good guy, giving Fusco good advice.

• Finch refusing to sell a rocket-launcher, which seems like a crisis but turns out to be part of the Machine’s plan, too.

• The use of the rule of threes to organize the different plots and subplots.

• Using the structure to tell the story, the fragments all coming together to make a whole in the end.

Favorite Moments

• Finch being a badass, channeling Reese: “She’s none of your concern.” So wonderful.

• Fusco trying to be smooth. And then getting better, slowly. Also, looking good, Fusco.

• Reese’s third homicide dovetailing with Fusco’s number.

• The captain wondering about all the shots to the knees (Finch has done good work there in training his sociopaths to aim for the knee.)

Ominous Moment

• “What’ll we do with the missile?” “I’m sure we’ll think of something.”

New PoI Post

May 4: 4- 11 If/Then/Else (Denise The): Point of View as Meaning (And one of the best TV episodes of all time.)

The post Person of Interest: Wingman: Multi-Thread Plotting appeared first on Argh Ink.

Person of Interest: Panopticon: Starting All Over Again

In any long-running series, no matter what the medium, writers come up against the same conundrum: People want the same but different.

They want the same things that have made them love the story over the course of several films/years/books, they don’t want anything they love to go away (SAVE BEAR!).

But at the same time, everything they love about the story is the reason it’s starting to feel shopworn: we’ve been here before. “Didn’t they do that in Season Two?” “I love X, but if she says/does Y one more time . . .” “Really? Another number of the week to save?”

So the key is to change up the stale parts while keeping the parts people love. The problem is the stale parts are the parts people love. Change is good, unless you don’t want that part changed. Then change is bad and the writers have ruined everything.

Which brings us to Person of Interest, Season Four. BIG changes: Decima and Samaritan have won and the Machine Gang is on the run, everybody in new identities working new jobs trying to stop Samaritan from turning the country and the world into an AI-driven dystopia. The library has been invaded and destroyed, Finch has lost his millions (billions?), and the people we love are all in places that they’re not comfortable with (except for Root who appears to change jobs weekly, depending on where the Machine wants her; she’s having a fabulous time).

So Panopticon, begins with PoI’s “You are being watched,” but now our old watchers are the dispossessed, hiding from the new watcher, Samaritan. The original idea of a panopticon was hideous enough: a building with a central watchtower, surrounded by rooms or cells; the watchtower trained lights into the rooms so the person in the watchtower could see everyone without being seen. It’s a totalitarian concept, but it did have more than surveillance at its center: the idea was that since the people in the cells knew they were being watched, they’d modify their behavior to please or at least not annoy the watcher in the tower.

But Samaritan’s a secret, so its only goal is to surveil and then punish anyone who transgresses its AI idea of the greater good. Where in previous seasons, the antagonists were individuals targeting individual numbers, a corrupt police organization, the CIA, and Decima, this season, the Big Bad is a Big Computer; Greer and Martine are Samaritan’s enforcers, they’re not the ones making decisions. And the biggest decision Samaritan makes is to take out its rival, the Machine.

So in three years, the story has evolved from Good Guy versus Bad Guy to Good Machine vs Bad Machine, Decima and the Machine Gang playing out that titanic struggle on the human level. Even if the Gang managed to take out Greer and Martine, Samaritan would keep on going; they need to end that machine. But as Root says, its servers are in hundreds of buildings all over the world. Our Gang has an impossible task.

This is what a crisis turning point does, it turns everything up to 11. The thing about the last acts of a story that is so hard to balance is that they have to be upsetting; everything that’s gone before must be challenged, terrible things have to happen so that people will change, good last acts are tense.

And yet they have to be pleasurable enough to watch/read, so that people keep watching/reading. The Machine Gang isn’t the only group with an impossible task here: pity the writers’ room, too.

(This is also, by the way, one of the many reasons I write standalone novels and not series. It’s hard enough pulling this off in one story. Over a series of stories? That’s just asking for it.)

So here’s what “Panopticon” has to do for Person of Interest: Make everything new without changing anything people love.

Good luck with that.

Weakest Parts

There are no weak parts. This is the pilot all over again, except with people we know and love and an antagonist we hate and fear. Perfect.

Smart Story Moves

• Starting out with Martine as the human face of the Machine, omitting Finch’s “You are being watched,” in place of a journalist saying to a hot blonde, “Imagine if the world had utterly changed and no one had noticed a thing . . .” And then the computer on the screen is Samaritan. Samaritan hasn’t just taken over the world, it’s taken over OUR world of PoI.

• Greer talking directly to Samaritan, following its orders, the smug puppet foil to Finch.

• Showing the Gang in rapid succession in their new jobs, all with complications and frustrations. Their situations have changed, but they haven’t, so we’re back in business with the people we love.

• The reversal from Finch’s statement to Reese–“You need a purpose”–to Reese’s statement to Finch–“You need a purpose”–as Finch tries to refuse the Hero’s Call the same way Reese tried in the beginning. Finch, like pilot Reese, is running from life, traumatized by the damage he thinks they’ve caused in the past. They’ve flipped roles which means the power structure has shifted, too, which is new, a good change because we want to see how it play out. We know Finch will be back just as we knew Reese would join up in the pilot; the juice is in seeing how that happens.

• Repeating Samaritan’s screen shots to show its still disregarding the Gang, which implies that can change at any time.

• The genius of the central plot involving old VHS antennas, fusing the number and the fight against Samaritan.

• “We are the store, Ben, you and me,” and Finch getting that look. No long discussions, just action and reaction. And Finch takes the phone.

• New year, new antagonist: Martine and her cold dead eyes, the human face of Samaritan even more than Greer.

Favorite Moments

• “If our friend has a plan, I am not seeing it.” Phone rings.

• The callbacks to the pilot like telling the punks not to hold guns sideways because . . .

• “You have a god in this fight, Harold.”

• Root saying, “All lives matter.” CHANGE.

• “What happened?” “I saved your ass, that’s what happened.”

• “I’m trying to save a kid.” “You had to put it that way.”

• “Perhaps I can be of some assistance.” A real Giles moment.

• Elias. We’re getting the old band back together. Things we love . . . Plus the expression on Elias’s face at “I’d like to hire you.”

• “You put a lot of trust in your friend.” “I do. In all the time I’ve known him, he’s never let me down.” Things we love . . .

• Reese, playing by the rules; Elias, playing with semis.

• Reese as Fusco’s partner. The possibilities are endless. People we love. (Plus a nice moment in Reese sitting down at Carter’s desk.

• The music. Jetta’s “I’d love to change the world” as Finch finds a book in the library through clues in the typos in his dissertation and Shaw meets Romeo, the thief, who needs a wheelman, and Finch finds . . ..

• Ohmigod, the hidden subway room: it’s gonna be the library only better.

Ominous Moment

Martine, not buying the whole gang war bit.

Next PoI Posts:

May 3: 4-3 Wingman (Amanda Segel): Multi-Thread Plotting

May 4: 4- 11 If/Then/Else (Denise The): Point of View as Meaning

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