Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 234

Cherry Saturday 4-23-2016

Today is Take a Chance Day.

Or not.

The post Cherry Saturday 4-23-2016 appeared first on Argh Ink.

Person of Interest: 4C, Character in Crucible

One of the most heinous crimes a writer can commit in relationship stories is the Big Misunderstanding. After spending many chapters/episodes building a strong relationship the reader/viewer can invest in, instead of looking at the very real, character-driven problems that might test a bond, the crisis descends into a misunderstanding that any solid relationship would defuse with an intelligent question. So forget the “I saw you kissing that woman” “That was my sister” stuff; if you want to test a relationship, give it a real test, something that just talking won’t solve. That kind of test almost always goes to character: In this situation, no matter how much this character believes in this relationship, he or she has to walk away.

There’s an excellent example of this in the first season of Sense8. Lito and Hernando are clearly in love, clearly committed, and clearly meant to be together. When Daniela moves in to become not just a perfect beard for Lito’s not-yet-out actor but also a much-loved sister, they become a family of three. So when Daniela’s abusive boyfriend blackmails her with pictures on her phone of the two lovers, she agrees to marry him to protect them. Lito accepts this reluctantly because it’s the only way to save his career, the thing that defines him. Hernando cannot. In a beautiful scene, he tells Lito that he will always love him, but he can’t stay with somebody who would let Daniela live a life of pain and fear to save a career. And he leaves.

This is not a Big Misunderstanding that would go away if they just talk. Lito clearly believes it is and tries his damnedest to talk Hernando out of going, but this is the line Hernando cannot cross. It’s his character that makes him walk away, not a misunderstanding. He just cannot do it. Lito’s realization that his actions are forcing Hernando, a man he not just loves but respects and admires, to leave him is a major turning point for his character. He goes after Dani not just to get Hernando back, but because he doesn’t want to be the kind of person Hernando can’t respect, and because in the end, he loves Dani too much to let her suffer.

And that’s the real key to the character in a relationship crucible: if it’s truly a crucible, if this is not just a Big Misunderstanding but something so intrinsic to who this character is that he or she cannot remain in the relationship, then that character will have to change to save the relationship. It’s the old “you make me want to be a better man” line: the realization that the bond is more important than strongly held beliefs will shift belief and make the relationship bond stronger because of that crucible. Or it’ll destroy the relationship entirely, but since we’re talking about Reese and the Machine Gang, we’re going to go with stronger. Think of that as the key to writing the crisis in a relationship: the characters do not return to where they were before, they are even more strongly bonded because they’ve survived the crucible.

But there’s also a second problem with the Big Misunderstanding: in romances, everybody know the lovers will be together at the end. In PoI, everybody knows Reese is going to rejoin the Machine Gang. There is no “Will they or won’t they?” They will. Therefore the only way to build real suspense into breaking a relationship bond is to presesnt the break in such a way that the reader wants to know how the breach is going to be healed. If just talking doesn’t solve it, what going to have to happen to make one or both or all parties in the relationship change?

Which brings us to PoI. Reese isn’t throwing a hissy fit here, he’s never believed that the world is a good place. But he believed they were saving people, and then they couldn’t save the one person they loved best, the person any one of them would have died to save. Trapped by his inherent cynicism amplified a thousand times by overwhelming grief and immense guilt, Reese isn’t going to pretend he can save the world anymore, he’s going to lose himself in it.

So he leaves the gang behind, despite Finch’s entreaties. And Finch lets him go because working with the Machine always has to be a choice. It’s not a misunderstanding, they both know exactly what’s going on, and neither of them can fix what’s broken. This is all established in the two episodes previous to “4C,” a two-part story that reveals that Machine Gang is up against something much more brutal and powerful than HR just as Reese leaves them. So the double-episode has an A plot that’s all about a new Machine that various groups (the government, Vigilance, Decima) are trying to take control of, but the B plot is Reese leaving the Machine Gang, Fusco trying to bring him back, and his ultimate departure at the end of Alethia, his belief in his ability to change things and in the Gang broken.

Previously on Person of Interest:

“Lethe:” Simmons is dead, but the Gang isn’t recovering, especially Reese, whose failure to save Carter eats at him as he quits the gang and heads for Colorado, Fusco on his tail. Meanwhile Finch, Shaw, and Root are given a new number for Arthur Claypool, a brilliant scientist whose mind is so deteriorating from a brain tumor that he can’t even recognize his own wife and who is being stalked by Vigilance. The episode ends with a huge reversal when Arthur convinces the Gang that his wife is really dead, and they realize that the woman pretending to be his wife is really the government’s Control.

“Alethia:” Root rescues Finch, Shaw, and Arthur, but is captured by Control and tortured, ending up deaf in one ear. Decima and Vigilance both target the Gang; Reese and Fusco come back in time to save them, but not to thwart Decima who ends up with Arthur’s AI, Samaritan. Reese resigns from the Gang even though the threats from Vigilance and Decima are overwhelming.

Which brings us to “4C,” Reese’s flight from the Gang. The only things standing in his way are a blonde flight attendant, an annoying computer nerd, assassins from three different countries, and the Machine. In other words, Reese is toast. By putting Reese on an eight-hour flight to Rome that cannot be diverted, the Machine forces him to re-evaluate people in general and what he does in particular. The Machine doesn’t want to talk him out of anything, it wants to put him in a crucible where through the actions he’ll have to take, he’ll be forced out of his guilt and misery into looking at what he does and who he helps. Action is character, and Reese has been immobilized by grief for so long that he’s forgotten who he is. The Machine uses muscle memory to remind him of the reason he exists.

So at the end of “4C,” Reese is back in the Gang not from a sense of duty or guilt but because he’s accepted that saving people is part of who he is, and the most efficient and effective way to save people is to go back to those he cares about: Finch, Shaw, Fusco, Bear, and the Machine. But he hasn’t returned to the person he was before, he’s irrevocably changed by Carter’s death but also by the events on the plane. He isn’t just agreeing to help Finch with the numbers as he did in the beginning, he’s accepting that the Gang is where he’s supposed to be, that his purpose is to help the Machine help others. His bond has been tested in the crucible and made stronger.

Weakest Parts

Lotta on-the-nose dialogue:

Holly: “I could have been a teacher, but no. I wanted to see the world. Meet interesting people . . . You know what this job has taught me? That people are horrible . . . . Whatever happened to people helping other people?”

Reese: “Holly, I hate to tell you this. You’re good at your job.”

Gee, Reese, remind you of anybody you know?

And then there’s this:

Reese: “You computer guys. You build something you can’t control, and when it backfires, you won’t accept responsibility. . . . You barely made anything better. Does it look like you’ve stopped the violence?”

Owen: “Okay, are we still talking about me? Because it seems like you’re mad at somebody else.”

And then at the end:

“I need to get back to work.”

Saying he wanted to buy a suit was all the story needed.

Also Finch landing the plane. I’ll believe Reese will save everybody but Finch landing a passenger jet by remote control? Uh, no. (Also, did we know before this that Finch flew prop planes?)

Smart Story Moves

• Making this is an action-based story with a comic victim. The show was going to the same dark place Reese was; this approach lifts it (and him) back up to the light.

• The slow build from the usual tension of flying, to the obnoxious guy, to the unconscious air marshall in the bathroom, from the banal to the dangerous in six minutes.

• Tying the screen on the plane showing the flight path to passengers to the Machine PoV showing the flight path with the “Mass Casualty 94.6%,” shorthanding exactly how much trouble Reese and the number (and Holly and everybody else on the plane) are in.

• Giving Reese a number he wants to strangle more than the assassins coming for him. This isn’t a save-the-innocent story, this is a save-the-idiot-who-made-a-fortune-in-bitcoin-by-dealing-with-drug-lords-and-the-CIA terminally clueless yet brilliant victim who has the worst possible personality for Reese to deal with, which is comedy gold. (Cue song from Galavant.)

• Playing the claustrophobic plane setting–Reese and the number are trapped–with Shaw roaming the larger setting of New York beating the crap out of people to get the bigger picture.

Favorite Moments

• Reese hitting the “Listen, sweetheart” guy, which then turns out to be a clue since the Machine uses the guy’s phone to send the “4C” clue.

• “Mr. Dark and Stormy.”

• Anything with Owen, especially the way he keeps changing his story. I love Owen. This guy is the new Rick Moranis.

• Finch to Shaw: “Would it be too much for you to snap a twig?”

• “You seem like an angry guy. Do you want to talk about that? I feel like you want to talk about that.”

• “Department of International Homeland Security.” There’s a reason Reese needs Finch.

• Reese giving Holly the remote for the stun belt and telling her to use it to beep him.

• Holly whacking the assassin with the coffee pot.

• Shaw being a badass ALWAYS.

• The idea that there are three different sets of assassins–Columbian, Israeli, and American–trying to take this nerd out, and Reese handles all of them without getting much but annoyed (and most of that at Owen). He really is really good at this.

• Shaw meeting with Hersh. “I always liked you, Hersh. Even after you killed me.” I know he’s a vicious killer, but it’s so sweet when he asks Shaw if her new employers are treating her okay.

• Owen saying, “NOT THE FACE!” as the American killer comes to finish him off. I love Owen. Owen should be a recurring character like Leon.

• Holly, coping with everything. I love a heroine who copes.

* “So what is it you really do again?” “I help people.” “You want to help me get a drink?” Reese almost smiles.

• Taking Owen off the plane in a suitcase. You can tell that made Reese happy.

• This nice moment in the sun as Reese says good-bye to Holly the next day.



• Finch’s suit.

Ominous Moment

There isn’t one. How about best moment ever? “I miss her dearly, too,” and “While I’m in Italy, I thought I’d get fitted for a new suit.” The way Finch draws in his breath and then hurries to offer his own tailor is the best non-hug on TV. And then they walk down the street together, and the world is safe again.

Next week’s PoI Posts

April 25: 3-16 RAM ((Nic Van Zeebroeck & Michael Sopczynski): Writing Great Back Story

April 26: 3-23 Deus Ex Machina (Greg Plageman & David Slack): Climax as Turning Point (The Point of No Return)

And of course, this:

[I found the preview on io9 first; there are over 100 comments on the post and every one of them is saying what a great show this is. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an internet post where every single comment was hugely in favor of something. Tells you how damn good this show is.)

(Also apologies that this is SO late. I was writing a not-book.)

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Book Done Yet: The Devil Is In the Details

So I spent a good chunk of this week researching equilibrium, bicarbonate of soda, and goats.

A first draft is really just getting stuff down on paper and sorting it out later, but if you’re throwing in details like “She can see blood on your hand if you’ve killed somebody,” eventually you’re going to have figure out WHY she can see blood. Or why does he make the air around himself warmer and she make it cooler? And then there’s the fact that he’s the Devil, which is was the starting point of the premise and which I’m battling in every scene now. I am so not a Devil-as-hero writer (that would be Krissie). So I don’t need to know everything in the discovery drafts, but at some point, I’m going to come up against a story move that means that I have to back off and consider the whole world of the story in all its glorious, messy detail.

This is the world building problem that Salpy was talking about in the comments to the last PoI post:

“Isn’t this exactly what you’re supposed to do, though, when you world build? Take your premise to its extension and see if it still holds up? And if it doesn’t, start plugging in the holes!!”

Well, yes and no. Your first job as a storyteller is to tell the story. Building the world is important, but not nearly as important as plot and character and theme and all that good stuff. You’ve probably read stories that were completely realized worlds and not much else. You can’t prioritize world-building, it’s always in service to your story. BUT . . .

If the world doesn’t work, if there are inconsistencies or plot holes or questions that throw your reader out of the story, then world-building becomes vital to story and moves to the top of the first draft to-do list.

So I blithely created a heroine who’s always cold and a hero who gives off heat because . . . because that’s what the Girls in the Basement sent up. Keep writing, don’t look down, worry about that later. And he’s the Devil but he’s human. And dead. And a rogue demon built an island as a hellgate because . . . I dunno, but whenever I type “rogue demon” I think of Wesley saying, “I’m a rogue demon hunter,” and Cordelia saying, “What’s a rogue demon?” And I wanted a Macbeth plot, the hero and the heroine crossing in their arcs. And . . .

Crap, that’s a lot of stuff. So I’ve been thinking (and not getting blog posts up on time, sorry about that).

For example, Nick’s going to become alive again, but not because he’s with Nita. There has to be a reason some force is making him vulnerable and human again, and I’m not a fan of LURVE as scientific method. Psychologially, just being back on earth again after 500 years is going awaken memories, so I’m good with him glomming on to the illusion of physicality–enjoying food, touching people, etc. But I also need him to evolve from keeping the illusion of having a human body (since his is a skeleton mouldering in the grave) to actually having a human body so that when he gets shot again, this time he bleeds. I know he’s going to think it’s the antagonist doing it to him, but I’m not sure that’s it. So I can plot his character arc as he becomes human again psychologically with a physical arc as he gains a body again, but until I know why the hell that’s happening, I can’t really use that to plot. More than that, until I know HOW it happens, I don’t know how this world works as far as living and dead.

And then there’s Nita. When she shakes hands with (touches, really) people who’ve killed someone, she can see blood on their hands. The easy way out is that she’s psychic, but that doesn’t tie it to the overall plot, which means it’s not going to work. This is a story about demons and alternate dimensions, but this power she has is nothing to do with that, she’s just psychic, too? No. Unity dictates that it has to be all of a piece, along with the fact that she’s cold all the time.

That’s the push-pull of the first draft. You have to be able to go anywhere, do anything without censoring yourself, but at the same time you have to know how your story world works or you can’t go far enough.

And that’s even before I got to the classification of demon goats (Capra baphometus? Capra baphometa?) and why bicarbonate of soda probably isn’t going to cure Nita’s iron poisoning unless it’s Hell’s bicarbonate of soda and god knows what the scientific name for that is. But here’s a nice video on equilibrium I found very helpful in figuring out hellgates and what happens to demons when you cut off their heads:

And the classification of hellhounds is Canis lupus cerberus. Or as Nick calls him, “Stripe,”so now all I have to do is figure out how hellhounds work. I added a hellcat, too. I can’t imagine Nita living without a cat, especially if it’s a stray that nobody likes which would be right down Nita’s alley, so now in addition to the hellhound world building, I have to figure out how a stray hellcat got to the island.

The good thing is, after a lot of heavy thinking and heavy googling, I’ve pretty much got a grasp on my storyworld (helps tremendously that I put it on an island in a lake too treacherous to cross by boat). All I’m missing is the answer to the question that Nick keeps asking: Why would a demon risk everything to open an illegal hellgate onto a cold, rocky island in the middle of nowhere?

I’m working on that one.

[NOTE: The post for PoI “4C” will be up within the next 24 hours. As I was writing it, I realized it was a great example of how not to write the Big Misunderstanding, so I scrapped what I had and started over.]

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Person of Interest: The Devil’s Share, Rip-Your-Heart-Out Storytelling

Sorry this is late. Life happened.

Previously on Person of Interest:

“The Perfect Mark” is one of those everybody’s-crooked con stories that was probably pretty good but by this point, the HR story is so compelling that it just got in the way of the good stuff, culminating in the shootout in which Lasky dies, Carter shoots his killer, and gets the dying crooked cop to point out the head of HR: Quinn. Best part of the entire episode: That fistbump between Reese and Carter in the car. It’s a beautiful thing.

“Endgame:” Great story-telling as Carter works the Russians, HR, and the FBI like puppets, ending in the home of a judge she’s gone to for a warrant for Quinn’s arrest. The judge is HR, Carter’s surrounded by cops, and then she drops her last bombshell– she’s recorded everything–just as Reese comes through with back-up, paying off that fist bump.

About this time the producers and showrunners were warning that somebody was going to die in the next episode and showing pictures of a bloodied and beaten Fusco. So I did a blog post on the most effective person to kill, narratively speaking: “Killing Characers, aka Please Don’t Kill Carter.” It’s interesting to read that now because, even as I analyzed it and came to the conclusion that the best possible narrative choice was killing Carter, I desperately wanted them to make a weaker choice. I loved Carter so, she was the woman I wished I could be, the woman I’d want to write about, and she just did not deserve to die, damn it.

“The Crossing” Carter brings down HR and that rat bastard Simmons shoots her and Reese at the end of the episode. Reese is critically wounded, but Carter dies in his arms. God damn it. I still can’t watch this episode again, even though it’s an outstanding one. I just can’t stand to see her fight the good fight so ferociously and then get taken down in the end. It’s just too damn painful. Even so, I remember stand-out moments: Fusco refusing to give in to torture, the phone call from Shaw that she’s saved his son but can’t save him, the way he weeps as he thanks her and then turns on his captors, the moment in the morgue when Reese is about to sacrifice himself to save Carter and kisses her good-bye, the sheer intensity of these people as they risk everything to bring down evil . . . it’s a stellar, stellar hour of story. And then they break my heart.

Which may be why I keep watching “The Devil’s Share” over and over: I can grieve with the rest of the Gang as they reel from the shock and try to deal with the aftermath. It’s an aftermath that will stretch throughout the rest of the run of the show, they never forget Carter, but the immediate aftermath of grief and loss and vengeance is distilled down into forty-five minutes of brilliant emotional narrative.

So how does this story so perfectly capture grief?

• It begins with the loss of somebody that not only the characters loved, but the reader/viewer loved. The characters then become our surrogates, giving us catharsis through their grief and vengeance. Beyond that, they keep us from mourning alone, bringing us into their devastated community.

• The opening montage of wordless action captures that numb feeling that hits after loss, the sense that you’re underwater, and nothing is real, everything silent and in slow motion. I don’t like montages, but this one is perfect because it creates in the viewer/reader that deadened sense of horror.

• The visuals in the montage–Carter’s funeral, Shaw’s stony face, Finch and Fusco devastated, Reese getting out of the hospital bed, the violence as Reese goes for vengeance–all summed up in a series of pictures. The aftermath of loss is so full of banal detail, and this story elides right through all of that to get the central narrative of bringing down Simmons and saving Reese. To quote another great narrative, attention must be paid. I’ve seen this episode at least a dozen times, and I weep for Carter and those she left behind every damn time I watch this montage, which is what this kind of narrative is supposed to do: evoke cathartic emotion.

• The use of grief to bond a new team together to save Reese, bringing Root into the fold as the one person who’s not consumed with vengeance, giving them all a sympathetic foil.

• The focus on the individual characters and what Carter’s death has done to them, especially Reese, and even more especially Fusco. When he stands over Simmons and refuses to kill him because of Carter, he gives her a perfect eulogy and the promise that the impact she’s made on the world of the show will not die with her. I weep during that one every time, too.

• The final vengeance against Simmons can’t be delivered by any of the team; Carter wouldn’t like it. But Elias can deliver the death blow from outside the law, not because he’s a criminal, but because he loved Carter, too. And the reader/viewer gets catharsis in the end, very satisfying catharsis, without any damage to the main cast, or to Elias, for that matter.

Or to sum everything up in one sentence: Give the reader a reason to grieve, and then give her space to fully experience it and characters to share her sorrow. Killing a character and then not paying that character the respect of real, shared grief and catharsis makes both the sacrifice and the character smaller. Attention must be paid.

Weakest Parts

There are no weak parts. This is perfect story.

Smart Story Moves

Everything in here including the flashbacks. (Yeah, that’s how good it is.) But to be specific:

• Starting the story with the beep of Reese’s hospital monitors instead of the Machine, showing everything is wrong.

• The choice of “Hurt,” the Johnny Cash song over the montage. The montage had to be swift, cold, and wordless to capture that feeling of loss, but the measured, mournful grief of the song sells the emotion home.

• Lingering on the photo of Carter’s beautiful face at the funeral, reminding us of what we’ve lost.

• The Machine giving Finch the new number: Simmons.

• The flashbacks (I know, I know) showing the dysfunction of these four dangerous people. The flashbacks disrupt the narrative, but that’s important here because it captures the disjointed feeling of grief, while also showing how damaged Finch, Reese, Shaw, and Fusco are, and how Carter’s death is going to knife through them.

• Putting the focus of the story on saving Reese instead of avenging Carter, especially framing it as “Carter would want justice, not vengeance.”

• Drawing very careful lines from scene to scene; it’s a very complex story, a lot of different characters and different threads, and the connections are always very clear and easy to follow.

Favorite Moments

• Finch: “I want to know about grief. I want to know how it works.”

• Root telling Lionel where his name came from.

• “You sure the big guy’s here?” BOOM. “Pretty sure.”

• The team blazing its way through the hotel lobby, especially Root blasting the Russians: “Okay, that was kinda hot.”

• Finch’s soft voice talking Reese down. “We save lives.” “Not all of them.”

• Handing off the airfield address to Fusco, and then following it up with his talk with his therapist about the devil’s share, and then following that with his speech to Simmons that proves Carter’s legacy is lasting “I’m not going to let you undo all the good she did,” and then Fusco’s moment of redemption as he walks the captured Simmons through the squad room: two and a half years from the crooked cop who was going to execute Reese to the honest cop who refuses to execute the murderer of a partner he loved. That’s a character arc.

• Shaw going to steal more blood for Reese.

• Elias in the hospital: “There remains a debt . . . . I don’t think she liked me. But I liked her very much. You killed her.” And then “I’m just going to watch.”

• Bookending the beginning by ending on Simmon’s hospital machine flatlining.

Ominous Moment

“We have a larger fight ahead of us. I think we should be together when that begins.”

New PoI Post

Tomorrow: 3-13 4C Melissa Scrivner Love & Greg Plageman): Character in Crucible (

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Sunday Notes

So that iZombie double episode finale. HOW GREAT WAS THAT????

Honestly, it’s as if Person of Interest got stoned and said, “You know what? Screw computers, let’s do zombies. Only we’ll be FUNNY. ABSURDLY FUNNY. And kinda hot with all the hook-ups. And sweet because of the great community. And then tragically sad because good people die. But still SO MUCH FUN. Yeah. Zombies.”

Plus the close knit community:

Gilda: “We all hate my dad, we’ve all seen Major naked.”

Clive: “I haven’t seen Major naked.”

OMG THAT FINALE!!! Also, how good a sport is Rob Thomas to die in a zombie battle like that? Somebody changed his wikipedia page to put in his death date and cause of death (ZOMBIES!). Somebody changed it back, of course, but still. And I loved the zombies singing “Unwell” at the end while they ate his brains. Good times.

Thank god it was renewed.

So where was I? Right, Sunday notes.

Here are the remaining PoI dates after the last season begins again (air dates in parentheses)

May 16: “B.S.O.D.” (May 3), “SNAFU” (May 9), “Truth Be Told”[ (May 10)

May 18: “ShotSeeker”(May 16)

May 26: “6,741” (May 24)

June 2: “The Day the World Went Away” (May 31)

June 9: “Synecdoche” (June 7)

June 16: “.exe” (June 14)

June 23: “Return 0” (June 21)

in other news, I’d forgotten how overloaded my brain gets during first drafts, trying to encompass entire worlds, juggling characters and plot points while the Girls in the Basement send up new stuff. So I crochet. I used to drive, but then I rear-ended somebody while plotting, and now I crochet. (If they ever get those self-driving cars on the road, I am getting one. I could even take notes!) So far since the end of January when I first saw Lucifer and thought, “No, no, not that, this,” I’ve started four sweaters and two afghans and finished two shawls that were fast because they were color experiments (see I CAN finish projects).

Also, goats can weigh up to 175 pounds. Google is my friend.

Speaking of unfinished, there is no WIP this week because I’ve been writing. But there’ll be one next week. I’ve still got the beginning of Lavender’s Blue, and a very bad novella opening called “Ghost of a Chance” and of course the book I’m not writing, now called The Devil in Nita Dodd. It’s not like I’m running low on unfinished books. Or sweaters.

Back to work. Have a good week!

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Cherry Saturday 4-16-2016

Today is Librarian Day.

Take back that overdue book. Along with some chocolate. I’m pretty sure librarians like chocolate.

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A Word About Curio

One of my worst habits is taking notes on graph paper (I like graph paper) and then losing the paper. Or making so many changes that the whole thing becomes meaningless. And as the words mount up, so does the paper. Then back in the computer I’m making sticky notes to myself, and long pages of notes that are just words that I never look at again.

This is not efficient. Curio is efficient.

(For the record, I am not affiliated with Zengobi in any way, I just love Curio.)

So here’s what I do.

I open a file in Curio called “Nita’s Plot” or “Nita’s Curio” or whatever.

I hit that plus sign at the top to add a new board choosing from all kinds of backgrounds (I tend to stick with plain white or a grid). I can do multiple copies of a board–say I want to do a map of an act first from one PoV and then rewrite it for others–and I can drag and drop them to stack them so they’re organized (click on the little triangle to the left of the board name to show all the boards underneath it). I can drop in images or videos (I never use videos, but Curio supports them), use any font on my computer, access any color I want for bubbles and type, make images transparent so I can overlay them . . . basically do anything except edit images (for that I have Acorn). And if I change my mind about where a scene goes or how I want to code it, I just drag and drop to get what I want.

The process is pretty simple:

• I start with one box for each scene, color-coded for the PoV characters–yellow for Nita, blue for Nick–so I can see at a glance if I have my PoVs fairly evenly distributed and if most of them belong to Nita, my protagonist.

• The boxes for Nita’s solo scenes are on the left, Nick’s solo scenes on the right, the ones they share are down the middle so I can make sure I’m not keeping them apart too much.

• The notes in each box are for protagonist vs.antagonist and who wins because if I can’t fill that in, I have no conflict.

• The boxes behind the character boxes are color coded for setting, yellow for the diner, green for the nature reserve, aqua for Hel Bar, and so on.

• The symbols in the boxes and their relative sizes show the arcs of some of the plot lines: stars for Nita coming to accept the supernatural, hearts for the romance plot (still very small because this is the first act), spirals for reversals.

The idea is that I can look at this graphic and see the shape of the first act, complete with symbols that show the escalation of the different plot points.

I also do all my digital collages in Curio, but we’ve already talked about that. Basically, it’s second only to Word in importance in writing my novels.

One caveat: I only do this when the majority of the scenes have been written in rough draft form; in this case I have 22 scenes written out of the 27 in Act One. Otherwise, the outline starts driving the story which is very bad. But once I have a rough draft, this kind of map is hugely helpful.

Of course you can do the same thing in pen and ink. I recommend doing that in a sketchbook. SO much easier to find than pieces of paper, plus sketchbook paper is usually sturdier and will allow you to tape extra pages and pictures in, like these pages for Liz:

You can see why I prefer Curio.

And now back to actually writing the book . . .

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Book Done Yet? Pulling Plot Threads Together

So we talked about pulling plot threads together in the last episode of Person of Interest, and by no coincidence at all, I’m trying to get an overview of doing the same things in Nita’s book.

I have

• Nita’s plot–to find Joey’s killer and bring him or her to justice, and

• Nick’s plot–to close the hellgate and find whoever built it and bring him or her to justice, and the

• Romance plot

I’m good with all of those starting separately, but I need to see how they’re going to dovetail. So of course, I went to Curio and did a map . . .

Of course, that’ll change, but it’s a start. The two problems I’m looking at right now are that Nita says, “no, I don’t believe you’re the Devil” for all of Act One, and that’s annoying since we know he is the Devil, and they’re apart for Act Four. For Nita, it makes perfect sense that she’d refuse to believe, but if that’s all she does, it’s flat. She has to keep denying in the face of proof, and that makes her dumb. So cogitating on that one. I think I can make Act Four work even if they’re apart: it’s short. Other than those two things, I think it’s going to work.

Of course I don’t have the subplots in there yet . . .

ETA: Plot lines as requested, Deb:

ETA: Link to Curio webpage:

https://www.zengobi.com/products/curio/

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Person of Interest: Mors Praematura (Helen Shaver): Fusing Multiple Story Lines

I began to watch a John Sayles movie called Lone Star several years ago, and almost turned it off in the beginning because it kept switching to new characters with new problems. I can’t remember now how many–six? eight?–but I was completely confused. Fortunately, the writing was great and the actors were exceptional so I stuck around. And as I watched, those multiple stories slowly converged, and as they converged, they added layers to each other. What had seemed like fairly straight forward character stories became complex, what happened in one story shifted the other, plot points took on different meanings, and I couldn’t look away. As I remember, I didn’t understand the impact of everything until the very last lines of the very last scene. It was a perfect inverted pyramid plot, everything resting on the final words.

This episode reminded me of that the first time I saw it.

In the beginning, it seems as though the writers are just throwing everything at the screen, something they can get away with because we already know most of these people and at this point would watch them wash cars. We’re also used to watching subplots unfold as the main number plot plays out, so PoI has more time to string the multiple plots out. But by half way through the episode, they’ve begun to merge and at the climax they all (but one) come together, creating a scene sequence that’s infinitely more interesting because of the plots that have been developed separately before it.

1 A. Root tazes Shaw; the Shoot Plot begins

2 B. Machine hears Vigilance planning, the Machine Plot begins

3 C. Reese looks for evidence in Shaw’s apartment; the Reese Rescue Plot begins

4 D. Finch works with the new number, Timothy Sloan; the Number Plot begins

5 A. Root and Shaw start their mission.

(That’s the first five minutes.)

6 D. Finch investigates Sloan as he talks on the phone to Reese

7 C. Reese discovers that Root has Shaw.

The story slows down here to invest us in Sloan, the number who’s trying to find out how killed his foster brother.

8 E. Carter dealing with Lasky; the HR plot begins.

9 C. Reese meets with Fusco, gets more info about Root and Shaw.

10 D. Finch and Sloan find out about his brother’s storage unit.

11 A. Root and Shaw go underground to cut their future escape route.

12 D. Finch and Sloan discover the storage unit.

13 A Root and Shaw break into a CIA pick-up site.

14 D Finch and Sloan discover the writing on the wall in the unit and almost die, saved by Reese

15 BD. Reese, Finch and Sloan discuss Vigilence

(Two of five plot merged).

16 A. Shaw gives Root to the CIA agents, leaves with her

17 E. Lasky finds out how much trouble he’s in while Carter watches.

18 A Shaw and Root arrive at CIA black site.

19 BD Reese and Sloan search the apt and find the code book, Vigilence shows up and takes Sloan

20 D Finch finds out that Vigilence is going kill Sloan’s brother than night

21 ABD Sloan’s brother arrives at the black site and meets Root.

(Three of the five plots now merged.)

22 ABD Shaw puts Root in truck with knife to escape

23 ABD Finch sends Reese out to stop Vigilence’s assassination attempt.

24 ABD Reese arrives at the intersection and sees Vigilence.

25 ABD Root sets Sloan’s brother free

26 ABCD Reese sees Shaw.

(Four of five plots now merged.)

27 ABCD Shaw, Root, Reese, Vigilance, Sloan . . . well, everybody but Carter and Finch

28 ABCD Root sets the brother on his way with a new identity.

29 ABCD Reese faces down Vigilance, saves Sloan.

30 E Lasky confessed all to Carter

31 BD Resolution of number plot

32 AC Resolution of Root/Shaw plot

So we begin with five PoV protagonists:

Root, the Machine, Reese, Finch, and Carter.

In the 15th scene, it’s clear that the conversation the Machine overhears is the plan to kill FInch’s number.

In the 21st scene, Root meets the number’s brother and those three plots merge.

In the 26th scene, Reese sees Shaw at the climax, merging his plot to save her with Root, the Machine’s, and Finch’s plots to save the number, followed by the big climax in scene 27, followed by Root saving the brother and Reese saving the number in 28 and 29.

The plots split again for the resolutions, first of the number plot, then of the Root plot, although the resolution with Root is more set-up for following episodes than a “This is the end” scene.

The key to keeping the plots separate in the beginning is that the only PoV character who knows what’s going is the Machine, which is probably why there’s only one Machine PoV. So four protagonist pursuing four presumably different problems that turn out to be four aspects of one problem, the fun happening as they begin to come together. The one plot that never merges is the Carter/Lasky plot which is important to the season/novel arc, but irrelevant to this story arc. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be in there–in a long form like this you have to keep all the plates spinning–just that if this was a movie instead of an episode, those scenes would go.

A diagram of the plot looks like this (filled-in ovals are scenes):

You can see that the writers bounce back and forth among five plots (again, remember that we’re already invested in these people so they can do that), and then begin to pull them together by the one/third to one/half point in the story. The success of this story doesn’t rest as much in the individual plots, although they’re important, as it does in the story movement that brings them together because the underlying idea in this story is that the Machine has moved from number-of-the-day to multi-tasking, which means something’s happening that we don’t know about that’s making her step up her game.

Weakest Parts:

• Maybe the Machine PoV at the beginning, but I’m not going to quibble. This was a really well-crafted episode.

Smart Story Moves:

• The Machine’s Swiss Watch approach to each of the missions, echoed in the writers’ Swiss Watch approach to the episode: Structure as Meaning.

• Keeping Shaw and Reese’s recognition of each other to a minimum: “Shaw.” “Reese.” “Gotta save somebody.” “Know the feeling.”

Favorite Moments:

• “I suppose it’s too much to hope she tazed herself.”

• Shoot, all the moments of their beautifully dysfunctional romance starting now.



• Root eating an apple while Shaw fights, then tasering the guy when he gets up again.

• “Did you see a man heading his way? Wearing a nice suit?” “Yeah.” “He’ll be fine.”

• “I’m not smiling at you.”

Ominous Moment:

The Machine is playing three different games, and Finch is blocking one of them.

New PoI Posts:

• April 18: 3-10 The Devil’s Share (Amanda Segel & Jonathan Nolan): Rip-Your-Heart-Out • Storytelling

• April 19: 3-13 4C Melissa Scrivner Love & Greg Plageman): Character in Crucible

The post Person of Interest: Mors Praematura (Helen Shaver): Fusing Multiple Story Lines appeared first on Argh Ink.

Person of Interest: Razgovor: Establishing Character Through Relationships

I wrote a book once about a depressed divorcee. Well, she perked up fairly quickly, but she was depressed in the beginning. And that taught me a valuable lesson: Never write a depressed protagonist. They’re usually immobilized, unhappy, and frankly, depressing. It’s nice to have a 180 arc, but it’s possible to start too low.

I think the emotionally-stunted Shaw presented the PoI writers with much the same challenge. Shaw isn’t depressed, she just has a personality disorder that makes it difficult for her to feel emotion. And that in turn is why it would be difficult for us to feel emotion for her: there’s nothing for us to relate to.

So why do so many of us love Shaw so much?

One reason is because the depth of her personality is revealed in her relationships.

Relationships are an excellent way to characterize because they’re action: we’re not told what kind of a person a character is, we see it in the way he or she interacts with others. We use this all the time in every day life. The classic is the date who is rude to the waitress; that’s the only date that person’s going to get. My go-to example for action-as-characterization is also a relationship example: If somebody says “I love dogs” (a relationship declaration) and then kicks a puppy (a relationship action), which do we believe?

But we also evaluate what other people in relationships with that character say. If one of the people I trust says, “Not that guy,” I’m not going to trust that guy. But if somebody I don’t like says, “Not that guy,” I’m going to look at that guy more closely, the old “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” in effect. That’s why one character on her own, sittin’ and thinkin’ is not very interesting, and another character on his own, sittin’ and thinkin’ is not very interesting, but those two characters together in action can be great story. (One comment I loved on the first scene between Nita and Mort was that some people liked Nita, a very Shaw-like character, because Mort, a much more accessible character, obviously not only loved her but liked her.)

That means that relationships are one of the best methods for characterization because they’re played out in action and conflict between characters, developing both. So let’s look at Shaw, the most isolated character in the PoI cast. (Okay, maybe in a tie with Root.)

The problem with a low-affect character like Shaw is that we have difficulty establishing an emotional connection. Shaw’s never afraid, never sad, rarely happy. She’s excellent at anger but even that is a cold, calculated anger; we never see Shaw in a rage. But the flip side of all of this is that when something finally does reach Shaw, the impact is enormous. It’s one of the biggest reasons we connect with her in her introduction in “Relevance.” Cole dies in front of her, having obliquely said he loves her (“Just you.”) and the look on her face says she’s shocked, but more than that, she’s in pain. As she tells the bad guys later, “I had one friend, and you killed him.” (It should also be noted that having Sarah Shahi play Shaw is a big factor, too. With this and Life, Shahi pretty much has the Grim Bitch We Love role staked out.)

Shaw eases that pain the only way she knows how–she kills the bad guys–and the experience doesn’t transform her–she’s still a low-affect killing machine–but it does change her, and the PoI writers show that in their usual subtle, effective way: While she’s on her vengeance quest she refuses Finch’s card, but at the end, she takes it. She still drives off and leaves them stranded in the cemetary, but she takes the card. For anybody else, that a polite gesture. For Shaw, that’s a turning point.

And of course that turning point leads to her joining the Machine Gang in Season Three, another huge step in her evolution from completely emotionless and solitary to I’ve-got-emotions-somewhere-around-here-but-they’re-buried-deep and the-only-one-I-like-is-Bear. When those emotions are finally dragged to the top, it’s because of Shaw’s core identity: She needs to save people.

That seems an odd motivation for somebody who kills so many (until Finch convinces her to shoot them in the knees instead), but Shaw makes that clear early in “Relevance” when Cole tries to tell her that there was something wrong about their last kill. She tells him that the guy they killed was selling information to terrorists, that they saved people with that kill. She doesn’t enjoy the killing–she doesn’t enjoy anything–but working to save the country was her second choice after she washed out of med school (for not having emotions, as we find out later). She’s not emotional about the saves, it’s just what she does. Until the number is a little girl. We can argue about why Gen is the one that gets to her–my take is because she admires how tough and smart and determined the kid is, seeing a kindred spirit, coupled with the overwhelming forces against her–but there’s no doubt that Gen does. And this episode shows beautifully that while Shaw may have very low affect emotions, once they’re engaged, they fill the screen

Shaw’s character could so easily have been a one-note reversed stereotype, the Anti-Mother, but because of the way she forms relationships–first Cole, Gen, and Bear, and the slowly Carter, Zoe, Finch, Reese, and Fusco–she becomes not just a fully rounded character but a fully rounded character with complicated relationships she’s willing to kill for, even though she’d die herself before she’d admit that. And of course the best relationship of all, the one she fights tooth and nail against, is the one that began when Root holds that hot iron up to her face and Shaw says, “I kind of enjoy this.” Shoot may not be a traditional romance–they’re two borderline homicidal sociopaths plus Root is just nuts–but the depth of that bond is so beautifully built that even if the rest of the Gang goes down fighting, I better see Shaw and Root and Bear in that bar in Cuba, frowning over drinks with umbrellas at the end, with the Machine ringing the pay phone. Shaw’s come through too much to just die in the end.

So to build a distant (or any other kind of) character:

• Put her in juxtaposition to people she will be forced to relate to (if you give her a choice, she’ll say no).

• Show how that relationship is tied to the character’s core identity, the way she sees herself subconsciously (Shaw may not like kids, but she has to save them).

• Test that relationship by showing how the character reacts when its threatened.

• Show character arc through relationship arc: as the character becomes more comfortable with the other person and the relationship, show the character becoming more vulnerable (that hug at the end gets me every time).

Weakest Parts

THE FREAKING FLASHBACKS.

I know, I know, I keep bitching about how they kill the pacing (they do) and take me out of the story (they do), but these are particularly egregious because they tell us nothing that Shaw didn’t cover in two lines with the drug dealer back in “Relevance.” I think part of the problem here is that Person of Interest made the same mistake that Arrow did: they baked flashbacks into the regular story structure. (If Oliver Queen had any brains, he’d have bought that damn island and turned it into a Club Med by now.) That means the writers tend to put them in regardless of need, and there is zero need for them here. These flashbacks aren’t even a Wound from the Past (bleah) because Sameen isn’t wounded, it’s just an illustration that even as a little kid, she had an abnormally low emotional affect. So what? What matters is what she is now, not what she was then. GRRRRRRRRRRRR.

• Carter infodumping her plan on Reese. Argh.

• Not sure why they wouldn’t have killed Shaw on the spot instead of waiting, but I’ll give them that one. I want Shaw alive.

Smart Story Moves

• Showing Shaw’s investment in Gen in her conversation with Finch–“Gen. Her name is Gen.”–and her relentless determination to get her back.

• Showing the main plot and the subplot converging by showing Reese and Carter meeting at a street corner. Outstanding visual storytelling that also deepens the tension, followed up by Gen (Shaw and Reese’s number) being threatened by Sills Simmons (Carter’s antagonist). Just a great, great move.

• Brilliant use of subplot: “New gun, Lasky?” Carter’s working with a kid who doesn’t know what he’s getting into, either.

• Keeping Shaw and Gen isolated. PoI doesn’t always save the number (a smart series move) so their isolation increases the danger and the tension, plus Shaw and Gen are so alone for the first chunk of the story that Shaw almost has to bond with her because she reluctantly admires the kid so much. So when Gen gets taken, Shaw rolls out with a this-time-it’s-personal fury that is magnified a thousand times because it’s never personal with Shaw.

• Excellent use of rat bastard antagonists, and then brilliant combination of Gen’s antagonists (Russians) and Carter’s (HR) to make the finale really cathartic and satisfying.

• Establishing Shaw’s dysfunction through Gen’s questions, which are important to Gen because she’s trying to stay alive and needs to trust Shaw.

• Shaw’s blood transfusion; they gave her a back story that helped establish her dysfunction, but they use it for story all the time. Multi-tasking.

• “I’m just not wired for this kind of stuff, kid.” Perfect character arc through action.

• The theme of everybody spying on everybody else, all of which ties back to the Machine watching everybody.

Favorite Moments

• The opening with Shaw. “Here’s your liver.”

• Gen and Shaw treating each other with equal suspicion, both calling BS on each other.

• “Shaw just got made by a ten-year-old.”

• Shaw bugged Finch’s office.

• “I thought you might be a robot.”

• “To be honest, I’m only in it for the dog.”

• Shaw coming out of the steam to rescue Gen.

• “Hey, Finch. How much do you know about chemistry?” “Enough.”

• Carter in the bar, the baddest of bad ass moments, using Lasky’s gun to own him. “You work for me now.” Gorgeous writing and great acting.

• “Don’t sell it, okay?”

• That hug.

Ominous Moment

It’s always bad when Root tasers you while you’re sleeping.

New PoI Post

April 13: 3-6 Mors Praematura (Helen Shaver): Fusing Multiple Story Lines

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