Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 237

Person of Interest: The Pilot: The Beginning Is a Promise

Some day, I’m going to do a post analyzing my top five TV pilots, and when I do, this episode will be one of them, along with the Leverage pilot and the first episode of the UK’s Life on Mars. (After that, I’m still cogitating.) It does everything a long form story beginning should do, and it does it brilliantly.

I think the show at its inception considered John Reese to be the central character (I’d argue now that it’s Finch) and that’s why the opening does the short hand of here’s-Reese-healthy-and-happy-and-here’s-Reese-now. Since I’m not a fan of flashbacks (who knew?) I could have done without that happy-Reese part because the subway scene is so well done. One of the strongest emotions to evoke in your reader/viewer is outrage, the this-is-not-FAIR response in the reader or viewer. It’s what powers Cinderella (“She’s the nice one and she’s being treated badly!), Harry Potter (“He’s such a good kid and he’s being treated badly!”), Buffy (“She’s trying so hard to have a normal life and on one will let her!”), Leverage (“He’s in agony over the death of his son and that bastard used it to manipulate him and then tried to kill him!”) and so many more fairy tales, books, and film stories. Injustice is gonna get ’em every time. And that under two minute subway scene is brilliantly unjust.

It’s particularly smart that injustice in this first scene comes at the hands of white trust-fund snots; there’s no excuse for the way they’re behaving, they’re just sociopathic punks. So when after trying to avoid the conflict, the tramp gets up and kicks their butts six ways to Sunday, the reader/viewer is cemented to him: he’s Our Guy. (When he does it again later in the epsiode, it’s just plain fun. Never underestimate the power of Fun.) This scene also foreshadows the later gun buy since Anton mentions it in Reese’s hearing, and it also establishes Reese as dangerous man. All this in under two minutes. That’s a terrific introduction to Our Hero without feeling like it’s an introduction.

That scene gets us to the police station and the second of the important characters in the first season PoI community: Detective Carter, the smart cop with a heart, who tries her best to reach Reese in a scene that’s so pivotal there’ll be a callback to it in Season Three. The fact that Carter is the only truly emotionally healthy character in the entire episode could be chalked up to the fact that she’s The Woman, but she’s also tougher than the rest of the guys, more focused than the rest of them, and more thoughtful than the rest of them, clearly a character to reckon with. And that’s all done in another minute.

Then a lawyer shows up and escorts Reese out of the building (while the fingerprint guy is showing Carter the record that’s come up and asking, “Who you got down there, the Angel of Death?”) to meet his future better half, Harold Finch, in a deserted park at dawn, a fairly blatant setting-metaphor for the new life being offered him. Reese tries the hero’s Refusal of Call at the eight minute mark, but Finch is stronger and smarter than he is and draws him in, not with money although he offers him that, but with what he knows he really needs, a purpose to his life. More than that, he’s offering Reese, a man with a savior complex, “the chance to be there in time.” Seen through the lens of four subsequent seasons, that offer takes on an entirely new level of importance as the Machine Gang races to save the world in Season Five, but it all begins with this pilot episode and this first offer of the chance to be there in time for this one individual victim.

That’s the first twelve minutes of a forty-three minute story, and it’s important not just because it sets up the episode but because it sets up the first season and, beyond that, the entire series.

We’ve talked here before about the beginning of a story as a promise the writer makes the reader. It says, essentially, “This is the tone of the story you’re about to read, this is the setting, this is the character you’ll be following, this is the fight you’ll be watching, this is the world you’ll be vicariously living in.” It sets up the expectation of the rest of the story.

So this beginning says, “The tone of this story will be tense and intelligent, the setting will be a cold and crowded city, the protagonist will be a damaged, isolated man outnumbered by the forces fighting against him, and the world will be a hyper-realistic modern jungle seen repeatedly through the eyes of an AI.” Swap out “a damaged, isolated man” for “a team of damaged people cut off from the rest of society” and you’ve got the beginning of Season Five. The people of PoI always work outside the system, always work under the radar, are always out-numbered, and know that they are going to be defeated sooner or later; as Finch tells Reese at their first meeting, if he agrees to work with Finch, they’ll both probably end up dead. Until then, though, they’ll keep heading back into the fight against overwhelming odds, and the subtext is that the fight is always worth dying for.

The series moves on from the simple story of the pilot, growing ever more complex with each season, but it never moves on from that promise at the beginning of the pilot: it’s the bedrock that story rests on.

The episode’s save-the-innocent plot that follows this beginning is nicely done with great reversals and some truly tense scenes, but it’s there in service of the main conflict: it shows Reese that this is what he needs, giving Finch the win in the real protagonist/antagonist struggle of the episode, not the conflict between Reese and the corrupt police organization, HR, but Reese vs Finch for Reese’s future. It also brings in the fourth member of the community, the crooked cop Fusco who takes Reese out to the wilds of Oyster Bay to execute him and finds himself out-smarted, out-gunned, and out-sourced into doing good for the Machine-Gang-to-be, another beginning move that’s going to pay off in huge ways throughout the remaining seasons.

So this pilot:

Introduces the main characters in vivid ways that lead the reader/viewer to want to now more about them.

Presents the protagonist/antagonist conflict as not just an external battle of one man trying to co-opt another man into working for him, but extends it to a much larger battle that can be played out over an entire first act/season: the battle to determine what that man’s future will be. Which means it also

Sets up the character arc of the main characters, and in so doing

Foreshadows the community arc of four people coming together as a team.

Establishes the setting, which is not just New York, but New York seen through the eyes of the Machine.

Establishes the Machine as the organizing principle, directing their actions and overseeing their lives, subtly foreshadowing the five acts/seasons to come. In this first episode, it’s just a computer program, an easy-to-understand concept that’s going to be blown wide open by the end of the season/act, evolving into an extremely complex concept by the end of the story in Season/Act Five.

Sets up the structure (number of the week) of that first act/season.

Symbolizes through the structure the meaning or theme of that first act/season (saving Reese; saving the solitary, guilt-ridden Finch; saving the surrounded-by-corrupt-cops Carter, saving the lost and despairing Fusco) by making each episode a single example of salvation that arcs the big one of the first season. Then it continues to expand on that beginning structure for the next three seasons and (fingers crossed) into the last season.

And it does all of that in forty-three minutes minutes. Even if you don’t watch the rest of the series, the Person of Interest pilot can show you everything you need to know about elegantly introducing a compelling long-form story by making the ending inherent in the beginning.

Weakest Parts:

The damn flashbacks to Happy Reese.

Smart Story Moves:

• The careful set-up of reversal after reversal, none of which are gotchas.

• Having Reese ask “Where is the Machine now?” as subtle foreshadowing for the first season finale, creating a bookend for the season.

• Upping the stakes by having the victim’s young son with him; upping our hatred of corrupt cop Stills who smiles and plans to kill the boy, too.

• Showing the big shoot out as gun flashes seen from the outside, the Machine’s POV.

• Reese shooting Stills with Fusco’s gun, the first in a number of long-game moves Reese makes that show that Finch isn’t the only smart guy on the team.

• Finch offering Reese as much money as he needs to leave so that staying is a free choice, the only way that Reese can be a classic hero on a classic hero’s journey.

Favorite moments:

• Reese handing the trust-fund punks their asses. That never gets old.

• Carter sympathetically giving Reese a cup of water and then taking the cup for fingerprints and DNA.

• The library as secret fortress

• “I don’t like firearms.” “Neither do I, but if somebody has to have them, I’d rather it was me.”

• Ripping off the trust fund punks, especially the part where he shows Anton’s friend what’s wrong with the way he holds his gun.

• Standing in the middle of the street to save the kid in the car.

• “I offered you a job, Mr. Reese. I never said it would easy.”

• Reese telling Fusco he’s going to let him live because he’s loyal. “Do you have your vest on, officer?”

• The little boy’s ball rolling to Reese’s feet while he’s holding a gun on the thug, and Reese smiling and kicking it back while my heart pounded.

• The playback on the tape machine in court.

• “Is that where he is, Witness Protection?” “No, Lionel. He’s in the trunk.”

Ominous Moment:

Finch’s statement that “we’ll probably both end up dead.” Please don’t let that be foreshadowing for Season Five. I love these people.

Next PoI Post: “The Fix” tomorrow; we’re talking about supporting characters.

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Sunday Notes

I finally went to take the office picture and couldn’t find my phone. Then I wandered off.

Happiness post is up at ReFab and this one has very short videos of a rescued baby fox. Go there for your moment of happiness when they release her into the wild again.

Seven thousand words of a WiP (discovery draft of the beginning) of Haunting Alice are up on website for a limited time. Don’t tell people because it’s a rough draft and only those of you who have been through the process here (so many times) will understand that it’s unfinished and just discovery stuff. I may never get back to it, but this way you get to see Alice as an adult. Okay, yes, I’m feeling guilty about that office photo.

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Cherry Saturday 3-19-2016

Today is National Quilting Day.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about patterned structure and found a great quilt to use as an example by googling. This week, I needed another picture for this post and found a great example of quilt squares by googling, and then realized both examples were by the same woman. I think I’m a fan. It’s Cath Hall of Wombat Quilts, so thank you very much, Cath!

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Person of Interest Binge Watch

I’ve always meant to do posts on Person of Interest because it’s not just good TV, it’s groundbreaking TV both in terms of content and in terms of storytelling. It has one of the best communities ever put on film. It’s interesting and exciting and funny and heartbreaking. The showrunners and writers reinvent the show every year, upping the stakes to the point where this coming season, the fifth, nothing less than the fate of the world is at stake, so it’s a great lesson in how to escalate over the long run. And although I’ve seen some of the episodes a dozen times, I see something new every time. Then this week, the show announced its final season, thirteen episodes burned off in six weeks starting May 3, and I realized that if we were going to do this before the last season aired. I’d have to start now.

The good news is, all four seasons are on Netflix. The bad news is, there are ninety episodes to get through before May 3 and that’s less that seven weeks. Just like the Leverage posts we did, I’m choosing specific episodes that will allow me to analyze the series as a novel with the last act yet to come. So . . .

PERSON OF INTEREST TENTATIVE BLOG POST SCHEDULE

March 21: 1-1 Pilot: Premise as Frame for Story (Jonathan Nolan)

March 22: 1-6 The Fix: The Useful Recurring Character (Nic Van Zeebroeck & Michael Sopczynski

March 28: 1-7 Witness: Reversals (Amanda Segel)

March 29: 1-19 Flesh and Blood: The Well-Rounded Antagonist (Amanda Segel)

April 1: 1-23 Firewall (Greg Plageman & Jonathan Nolan)/2-1 The Contingency (Denise The & Jonathan Nolan)/2-2 Bad Code (Greg Plageman & Patrick Harbinson) : Climax as Turning Point (Things Get Worse)

April 4: 2-16 Relevance (Amanda Segel & Jonathan Nolan): Handling a Complex Character

April 5: 2-21 Zero Day (Jeffrey Hunt)/2-22 God Mode (Richard J. Lewis): Handling Complex Story

April 11: 3-3 Lady Killer (Amanda Segel): Utilizing a Large Recurring Cast

April 12: 3-5 Razgovor (Kenneth Fink): Character Arc through Relationships

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

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 (

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)

May 2: 4-1 Panopticon (Erik Mountain and Greg Plageman): Rebooting a Story After a Turning Point

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

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

May 9: 4-20 Terra Incognita: Story Out of Time (Erik Mountain/Melissa Scrivner Love/Multiple Timelines

May 10: 4-21 Asylum (Andy Callahan & Denise The): Paying Off Long Running Subplots

May 11: 4-22 YHWH (Dan Dietz and Greg Plageman): Climax as Turning Point (The Crisis/Going to Hell)

The week of May 16 through the week of June 20: Season Five

Clearly that’s insane, but it gives me what I want, eight weeks to study the series as a whole from a writer’s point of view before the show delivers its thirteen episode last act in May and June.

What that doesn’t do is give anybody who’s not already started on the series a chance to actually see all the episodes. And this series is so carefully constructed, that you really do miss something important if you miss most of these episodes, not to mention you miss some really fun stuff like Reese and Zoe pretending to be married in the suburbs, which while a cliche, is so much fun with those two characters it’s all new again. Plus it’s still three episodes a week, which is a lot of TV to watch all on its own. So that’s a lot to ask of people who want to follow along.

On the other hand, it’s my blog and I really want to study this show. So I’m gonna do it.

If you’re not sure if the show is for you, here’s an intro:

Harold Finch is a computer genius who has written a diagonistic program called The Machine for the US government that watches everybody and pinpoints those who are about to commit acts of violence. Because Harold is fully aware of how dangerous to civil liberties The Machine might be, he has programmed it to only give out social security numbers that pinpoint those who might be involved in acts of violence; the Machine does not distinguish between victim and perpetrator, it just says, “Watch this person, he or she is of interest.” The government is only interested in acts of terrorism, but the machine also pinpoints regular crimes about to happen. Because nobody acts on that information, murders are committed every day that could be prevented. Finch begins to work to save the people in New York whose numbers come up, beginning by hiring a burned-out CIA agent named John Reese to act as his muscle. Over four seasons, a crooked cop (Fusco), a brilliant, principled cop (Carter), a demented programmer(Root), a German Shepherd (Bear), and a sociopathic CIA hitwoman (Shaw) join the team, forming one of the best communities in fiction. The team also draws on a smart NYC fixer (Zoe), a hapless, crooked, but very smart accountant (Leon), and a Machiavellian mob boss (Elias). It does not hurt that these people are played by Michael Emerson, Jim Calviezel, Kevin Chapman, Taraji P. Henson, Amy Acker, Sarah Shahi, Paige Turco, Ken Leung, and Enrico Colantoni.

The first season appears at the start to be a crime-of-the-week show, but once you watch the entire series and then go back to the beginning (which I’m warning you now, you will), you can see how carefully the entire series plot is layered in, and how brilliantly the community of damaged people who will come to fight the good fight together is assembled. This is a huge story that’s developed over four years of intricately plotted episodes, almost all of them excellent on their own and some groundbreaking in their approach. It’s not a comedy although there are laugh-out-loud moments, it’s not a caper although the best episodes are the team working together for the Machine like a finely tuned machine themselves, it’s character drama that increasingly becomes science fiction as the Machine reveals itself to be a full-fledged AI, heartbreakingly human-like in the last moments of the fourth season finale. It’s the smartest character-driven drama on TV. And while I hate that it’s ending, it’s ending with a thirteen-episode last act this May and June that I can’t wait to see because the people doing this show are brilliant, and I’m confident they’re going to nail the landing.

Here’s the promo for the first season of the show. Watching it now, I keep thinking, “I had no idea what this simple premise would become . . .”

Edited to Add:

Nicole asked a good question, and as part of the answer, I posted this, which probably should have been in this post from the beginning:

. . . for a shortened catch-up spree, here’s IGN’s suggestions for key episodes:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/08/2...

And io9’s:

http://io9.gizmodo.com/5958702/how-to...

And here’s Indiewire’s seven reasons to binge watch Person of Interest:

http://www.indiewire.com/article/7-re...

Including the not-surprising-to-anybody-who’s-watched-the-show fact that more half of the episodes have been rated 9.0 or above on IMDB and the lowest rated show is 8.2.

And it has an 87% critics rating for the series on Rotten Tomatoes and 93% viewer rating.

You should watch Person of Interest.

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How It Starts

I sent the first 14,000 words to Lani and Krissie, and Lani got back to me with damn near superhuman speed. And her conclusion was (my words, not hers), it’s not baked yet.

Okay, we all knew that, but I needed to hear it. I know I knew it because I kept saying that I was in love with the sound of my own voice, but as Lani pointed out, the problem is that I still haven’t found who Nita and Nick are. I know what they want, but it’s not on the page and worse, they’re not on the page. Everything I’ve written is set-up, but I’m not writing story yet. I’m following my nose as I reveal the world of the story to myself.

This is a good thing. This is a necessary thing in the process of writing story. I don’t know what my story is until I see what I’ve written. The transition of the story in my head to the story on paper–especially actually printing the draft out so I can see it for real–is a huge transformation. It’s never going to be as great on the page as it was in my head, but the page is what’s real.

I think at the bottom of all this is the question: What is my relationship to this story? Am I just fooling around with it to keep from real work, or is this a story that deserves commitment? If it’s the Real Thing, I need to stop playing fast and loose with it, even in the first draft, and treat it seriously as a WiP. That’s harder because the whole thing started by goofing around because I was annoyed by a TV show. It was play, and then I got caught up in it.

So looking at this now, the question is, “Is this real?” Is this something I’m going to invest in, hunker down for months in, even though it’s a supernatural story which generally isn’t my strongest genre? Because if not, the time for playing around is over and I need to get back to work.

I’m trying to think of why I started the other stories I’ve written. Maybe This Time started because I’d wanted to do my own version of Turn of the Screw since my first grad degree in the 80s; that nameless heroine bugged the hell out of me. That was a terrible reason to pick a story, but once I found Alice, I had a real story.

I can’t remember why Bob and I decided to Wild Ride.

Agnes and the Hitman I remember vividly. It was our second book, and we each picked a character we wanted to write. He wanted to do a hitman, and I wanted to do a food writer because my cousin, Russ Parsons, is one of the best and most successful food writers in the world (easy research, also I’d get to talk to Rusty). That worked really well because they were so different, so the idea came with its own built in crunch.

Don’t Look Down was the same process: He wanted to write a Green Beret and I wanted to do somebody involved in movies since Mollie was working on movie sets at the time. The crunch there didn’t work quite as well, but that was our first book and we were still getting the hang of it.

Before that was Bet Me, which was a STUPID premise in a book I’d finished in the early nineties that Jen bought with my promise that I’d rewrite. A fast polish morphed into a year-long rewrite that became a completely different book based on fairy tales.

I could go on, but the takeaway I’m getting from this is that it doesn’t really matter where the story comes from because it becomes its own thing as I write it. No matter what my intentions are–Welcome to Temptation was supposed to be about sexual freedom for women and became about mothering instead, go figure–the Girls in the Basement are hard at work in the background, ignoring what I thinking I’m writing and sending up what I need to write.

And I think I might need to write this book. The fact that it’s fun is secondary–they’re ALWAYS fun in the beginning–but the fact that I like the world and I love the supporting cast and I understand how the supernatural works, and that the biggest problem is that I don’t know my heroine, hero, or story yet, all of that is classic first draft status stuff.

One of the most illuminating things Lani wrote was this: “You can afford to move slower, to have Nita investigate the reality of her world as well as Vinnie’s murder. Have her in search of the truth, rather than just passively receiving it.” I thought the problem was that I was moving too slow, that I need to cut four thousand words from the set-up, but I think she’s right, that I’m moving too fast, that I want to get to the partnership without putting the legs under it. That maybe what this 14,000 words needs is not four thousand less, but fifteen thousand more, so that the end of the chunk that I have now becomes the end of the first act.

I still think it starts with the first scene I have. But I really need to look at this first chunk and at Nick and Nita. I know what they want, but the reader doesn’t. That’s a big, big problem. I know that Nick is literally dead, not breathing, deceased, past his sell-by date, defunct, and I know that Nita is spiritually dead, and that they’re going to bring each other back to life, but none of that is on the page. It’s the reason the second scene is so awful. I knew it was awful, I just couldn’t see why. I know how to fix this.

The big question is, am I going to stop flirting and commit or am I going back to my steady, decades long involvement with You Again? Because this is the part where it stops being fun and becomes real work.

So today, while I haul all the stuff I dumped in the office from the bedroom so I can take that progress picture, I’m going to be cogitating. It would be smarter to go back to You Again, but I’m starting to think that spring might be a great time to write about a woman rising from psychic death and bringing a dead guy with her.

So here’s a question: So much of this stage is waffling around, making a decision and then reversing it. I’m not sure that’s much fun on the blog. There are other things to write about, definitely finishing the office which is going to take me the rest of spring and probably the rest of summer because I’m slow. There’s the Character chapter of Writing/Romance I haven’t started yet. There are TV shows I want to write about, Agent Carter and The Abominable Bride and Limitless and Grimm and Person of Interest which is definitely ending this spring so now is the time to write about it. I’m not sure how valuable posts that keep saying, “No, that’s not it, nope, not ready yet” are, and I’m sure they must be frustrating. So what do you think? We have such a great small community here that I’m good with whatever what you want; we’ve been together a long time and I have faith you’ll be honest if this stuff is boring and annoying. Believe me I can take criticism; I’ve been a published writer for over twenty years, I’m damn near bullet-proof.

And now I must go get the bedroom stuff out of the office because I’m two weeks behind on that progress picture.

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Catching Up

So spring has sprung here in northern NJ, and with it evidently some really hefty pollen. I’ve been flat on my ass due to over-medication for the past two days, although the good news is, I’ve had plenty of sleep, so I’m feeling sprightly today. Also, now I’m just stuffed up, not gasping for air, so HUGE improvement.

My plan for this morning, which I slept through so now it’s afternoon, is to figure out that first 10K/beginning of the first act. It’s running at about 14K which is obviously too long (I can do math), but it’s still in such wonky first draft form that doing a nitpicky edit where I start pulling out adverbs and adjectives and unnecessary sentences wasn’t really going to solve the problem. The problem is, the whole thing needs (to be) tightened. So the following is written and graphed as I’m thinking it through since I have to do that anyway and I need a blog post. That means that the rest of this is long and rambling as I figure it out. You have been warned. (If you drop to the end, I’ll sum it all up in one paragraph, assuming I get to a summing up.)

This first 10K, which from now on will be called the Set-Up, has to introduce Nita and Nick and their goals and bring them together in an uneasy partnership. They’re not going to be fully partners until the mid turning point (point of no return), but it made no sense that they wouldn’t start sharing information once they have a basic understanding of each other and those goals (much like the reader). So the very rough first draft looked like this:

That basically introduced Nita and the problem (there’s a shooting and the major witness says he’s the Devil) in the first standalone scene, then there are seven scenes inside the bar in a scene sequence, and then the beginning of another scene sequence the next morning; that scene is the end of the set-up and turns the rest of the first act into the tentative beginning of the partnership.

The last scene needs to be seriously rewritten, but the big problem is that seven-scene sequence in the middle; it’s ridiculous. So I need to go back and look at that scene sequence as one large scene, even though it’s going be a sequence in the end. I’ve been just following my nose (first draft), but now that section has to have to the coherence of a scene, which means I have to look at those as beats. If I do that, it looks like this:

So it starts with the basic detective questioning. That’s logical.

Then it splits into Nick’s phone call and Nita’s confab with Witherspoon. That starts to weaken the coherence, but does give me a scene in Nick’s POV and the info from Witherspoon, neither of which is a justification for scene.

Then Mom comes in and all hell breaks loose. That’s divided into Nick/Nita/Nick scenes and I’ve switched PoVs in those, trying to get them right. I think they all need to be in one PoV, probably Nita’s, although I like Nick seeing Mitzi when she comes in, in part because Nita wouldn’t see her (description) she’s just think, “Oh, hell, it’s Mom.” Still, even with the move outside time, that’s really one scene.

Then there’s the dinner scene in Nita’s PoV while she’s losing her mind.

And the scene upstairs in Nick’s apt while he talks her down and she tries to put things together.

And then the scene the next morning when it all comes together and she has to accept the supernatural.

So . . .

1. Nick says he’s the Devil and she rejects it.

2. Nick talks on the phone to Hell, and the reader knows he’s the Devil.

3. Nita talks to Witherspoon and learns there’s no logical explanation for what happened.

4. Nita goes back to Nick, but then Mom comes in and throws a fit.

5. Nick takes Nita away.

6. Nita comes back to deal with Mom.

7. Family dinner, trying to make it make sense.

8. Talk with Nick in apt.

9. Talk with Nick the next AM.

I think the first three have to stand as separate beats.

4, 5, and 6 have to become one beat.

And as much as I love the insanity of that scene, I think 7 gets cut. So much fun to write, but I can put the ground covered there into 6 and tighten it up.

That leaves me with 8 and 9; I think Nita needs the sleep and the cold light of day to accept Nick as the devil, but I think I can make 9 basically a coda where she wakes up, sees that it was all real, and says, “I need food” and drags Nick off to breakfast for their first real talk about what the hell is going on.

So

1. Establish the interrogation

2. Establish Nick as the Devil for the reader.

3. Establish Nita rejecting that idea

4. Bring in Mom and blow the whole thing up.

5. Nick as rescuer, talks Nita down.

6. Acceptance

What are those Kubler-Ross stages? Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. (I googled.)

1. DENIAL: Establish the interrogation in which Nita flatly refuses to believe Nick’s the Devil.

2. Establish Nick as the Devil for the reader, introduce his problem, mild conflict with Belia.

3. BARGAINING: Establish Nita still rejecting the idea that Nick’s the Devil and trying to come up with alternative solutions.

4. ANGER: Mom comes in and blows the whole thing up, Nita angry at first and then terrified.

5. DEPRESSION: Nick as rescuer, talks Nita down from panic and disbelief.

6. ACCEPTANCE: Next morning in the cold light of day, Nita regroups.

Five isn’t really depression, it’s more like terror and panic, but close enough. And I know it’s anger to bargaining, but that doesn’t work here. I kind of like this, it’s the death of Nita’s old world. (Two is out of there because it’s Nick’s PoV and his world is still secure; his doesn’t get wrecked until the midway point.)

So Nita moves from calmly in control of a logical world to facing an entirely new world she knows nothing about, but calmly setting out to master it, too.

That makes sense. The family dinner bit, which I still love, just doesn’t fit. So now it looks like this:

The next problem is that the first scene here is boring. Plus it should be in Nick’s PoV to introduce him. So can I make the second scene here the first one and play the first scene in the background, Nita trying to question him while he’s dealing with Belia? That sounds like a recipe for word salad, but if I could do that, I could get everything done, get Nick’s PoV in the second scene, and then have Witherspoon come in and pull Nita away. Then do the Witherspoon scene in Nita’s PoV, then back to the Mitzi stuff in Nick’s?

Okay, definitely, put 1 and 2 together in Nick’s PoV.

Then the Witherspoon scene in Nita’s.

Then the Mitzi scene, the three original scenes I think in Nita’s PoV. Except that the stuff from the dinner is going in there, too.

Then Nita upstairs in the apt, trying to cope.

And Nita the next morning, coping.

Which means the breakfast diner scene has to be in Nick’s PoV which is okay because he’ll be seeing everything for the first time, so I can get that on the page.

That’s a five scene sequence, which is doable, although those first and third scenes are going to be nightmares to fix. Which means, back to breaking down actual scenes into beats.

I can do that.

Here’s the new plan:

Major rewrites on the first and third, then read through the whole thing with the first Nita vs. Mort scene to see if it makes sense, cutting out everything I can to get to about 10K. Nick gets his PoV in the second scene where it’s needed to introduce the reader to him and to establish that he really is the Devil. The rest of the sequence is Nita’s world blowing up, so it really should be in her PoV. Then breakfast the next day can be Nick learning more about the world he’s in temporarily while Nita establishes her new normal. I can take the demons out of that waking-up scene, put them in the previous scene so that the waking-up scene is basically a coda. Set-up established, all the plots in motion, moving on to the breakfast scene where they negotiate the new normal.

I CAN DO THIS.

With any luck, I’ll have the revised second scene by tomorrow, and I’ll set up the critique post. I’m feeling very chuffed about this. I think I’ll make breakfast.

Nothing but good times ahead.

ETA:

Nope, that scene with Witherspoon is all information, needs to be conflict. Mom needs to be in there. So new plan:

I love Curio. It makes this global stuff so much easier.

The post Catching Up appeared first on Argh Ink.

How to Critique a Scene at Writing/Romance

The How To Critique a Scene post is up over at Writing/Romance.

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Cherry Saturday 3-19-2016

This week is National Crochet Week, which is a big deal at my house. Not the week, the crochet. The blanket above is a CAL (Crochet-ALong) starting next month from Janie Crowfoot.

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Book Done Yet: Practice Jumps & Plot Lines

I wrote yesterday about not spending much time on the beginning of a book because it’ll change once you get to the end, and I still think that’s true of the first scene unless I change something concrete in it, like a character’s name or the setting. But getting the first ten thousand words in line is also the beginning, the first ten percent (all numbers are rough estimates), roughly the first third of my first act is where most of my set-up has to happen (this is a Crusie Rule for Crusies only; YMMD). But I also have to move plot during that 10%. So after letting it sit for a couple of days, I went back to look at my first 10K on Nita’s book.

Rough outline:

Scene 1: Nita vs. Mort Outside the bar 2AM

Something weird is happening, Nita should investigate

Scene 2: Nick vs Nita In the bar

He stonewalls her

Scene 3: Nita vs Mort in the bar

Nothing wrong here.

Scene 4: Nick vs Vinnie in the bar

Scene 5: Nita vs Mort at the Morgue 4AM

Scene 6: Nita vs Chloe Car outside the bar 8PM

Scene 7. Nita vs. Mom In the bar

Scene 8: Nick vs Mom In the bar

Scene 9: Nick vs. Mom In the bar, later

Next Day

Scene 10: Nita vs Nick in the bar, later 2AM

Scene 11: Nita vs. Nick, his apartment 8AM

Next Day

Scene 12: Nita vs. Lilith? Nick? His apartment 8AM

Scene 13: Nick vs. Belia His apartment

That’s 13,000 words, much of which must be cut because as you can see from the log lines, it just sort of follows its nose, which is what first drafts do.

So Scene 1 introduces Nita in conflict with Morte, but it still reads talky and repetitive to me.

Scene 2, Nita meets Nick, but not much happens because he’s stonewalling her. Why? I dunno, that’s just the way I wrote it at the time. Then Scene 3 is Nita pulling Morte aside to tell him to shut up. (Yeah, that’s starting to read Morty to me, too. Back to Mort.) Scene 4 is Nick and Vinnie after the cops go, a continuation of the beginning of Scene 2. Scene 5 is Nick, Mort, and Chloe recapping the case at the Morgue.

It’s going nowhere.

So where would I need the first 10K to go?

Get Nick and Nita on the page and working together.

Establish supernatural as real.

Establish two different conflicts, Nick’s with Mammon and Nita’s with whoever ordered this hit on Joey plus the poisonings.

Get Nick’s back story in there and Nina’s family history.

Establish Mort, Chloe, Belia, Mammon, Mom, and Mammon. And some of the others.

Establish place: the island, the bar, the diner, Nick’s apartment

Get that romance going.

So the big arc in the first 10% is to get Nick and Nita working together and starting the romance. Get that romance contract in there.

All of this means that a lot of that first stuff was me jumping up and down on the diving board, getting ready to dive in, so a lot of it must be cut. (This is why word count never matters in a first draft. Most of that stuff is going to go anyway. I’m just writing to get the parts I’ll keep. IT’S A PROCESS.)

So what I need is:

Scene 1: Nita vs. Mort (maybe)

Scene 2: Nita vs Nick in the bar, BUT . . .

the story really starts when Mom shows up in the bar that night, so let’s change the time of day of the Scene 1 to that night instead of early that morning. Nita and Mort are supposed to be meeting their mother for dinner, but they get sidelined by the shooting, so when Mitzi (Mom) walks in, it’s Nita’s first interview with Nick.

Which means that Scene 2 is now a mash-up of 2, 7, and 8.

Except I need Nick’s POV. So Scene 2 is now Nick vs. Vinnie, a mash-up of the beginning of Sc 2 and Sc 4, and Scene 3 is the 2-7-8 mash-up. So . . .

Scene 1: Nita vs. Mort, outside the bar, say 8PM

Scene 2: Nick vs Vinnie, inside the bar, 8 PM

Scene 3: Nita vs Nick, inside the bar, starting at 9 PM (8:30?)

Scene 4: Nick vs Mom (an hour later), inside the bar, 10 PM

Scene 5: Nita vs Nick? inside the bar (2AM the next day?)

That still is a lot of talking, plus I think I need to get Nick dragged back to Hell here, and then there’s the breakfast scene that’s also in Nick’s POV.

Maybe:

Scene 6: Nita vs. Nick, his apartment, 8AM

Scene 7: Nick vs. Nita, Sandy’s Diner, 9AM

Scene 8: Nick vs. Mammon, Council Room in Hell, 10AM

Scene 9: Nita vs. Mort, Sandy’s diner, 10 AM

Scene 10: Nick vs. Belia, his office in Hell, 10:15

Scene 11: late in the afternoon, Nita vs Nick somehow somewhere?

8 and 9 are happening at the same time in different places, so 7 is Nita and Nick together, 8 and 9 are Nick and Nita respectively, and 10 should be Nita and Nick back together again, but there’s that office scene.

Plus, I’m pretty sure that’s more than 10,000 words.

Crap.

Okay, let’s look at plot lines.

Nita’s plot line is (1) with Mort, (3) meeting Nick, (4) dealing with Mom in Nick’s POV, (5) talking with Nick (too much talking?), (6) waking up with Nick, (7) breakfast with Nick in Nick’s POV, (9) breakfast with Mort, (11) talking with Nick? no, has to be stronger than that.

Nick’s plot line is (2) talking with Vinnie about bar/demons, (3) stonewalling Nita in Nita’s POV, (4) dealing with Nita’s mother, (5) talking with Nita, (6) waking up with Nita in her POV, (7) breakfast with Nita, (8) the council meeting, (10) meeting with Belia in his office, (11) talking with Nita again.

Both of those are all over the place.

Nita’s should be about finding Joey’s killer; that’s why she’s talking to Nick. Then Mort brings in the poisonings and somehow ties it to Ralph, the guy who shot Joey, so all of her scenes are about finding out who the Big Bad is while all this personal stuff is breaking loose around her. I can do that.

Nick’s should be about finding the Hellgate and dragging the demons running it back to hell. So he talks to Vinnie about it, then tries to quiz Nita, then her mother shows up and changes everything, so he doubles down on Nita? Figure out why he sees her as key. Questions her at breakfast, observes diner, tells the council what he’s doing, gives Belia new orders, goes back to Nita who tells him about the poisonings, which is when he suggests they work together? And then the TP of the first act several scenes from now is when they become partners in the investigation?

That seems tighter.

Diagramming that out helps a lot (thank god for Curio):

Now all I have to do is rewrite and I’ve got my set-up drafted, sure to change later but a good enough foundation for now. And this is definitely a romance because the subplots 9Nina vs. Moloch and Nick vs. Mammon that will dovetail into Nick and Nina vs. Moloch) are just sketched in; this first 10% is about Nick and Nita negotiating a temporary partnership.

I think.

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Maybe I Should Retire

Working on a book that I know I don’t have to finish is one of the most creative things that’s ever happened to me.

Basically, I’m playing around with a ridiculous story that’s fun to write and probably not publishable. That means that all the tension, all the pressure, is gone with this story because it’s not the one I’m officially writing, it’s really almost a conversation with you all, definitely a conversation with myself. And that means that I can stand to one side and observe the process I’ve been struggling with for over twenty years as a fiction writer. The lessons I’ve had to learn over and over again, smacking my head into the keyboard, are emerging effortlessly this time, like old friends stopping by to remind me how this works.

Like Use It All. Stuff bubbles up to the surface and I used to think “That doesn’t fit” or “I should save that for later” or “I don’t know what that means.” Doesn’t matter. Write it anyway. If it turns out to be useful later, great. If it doesn’t, I got it out of my head. I have no idea why Nita is drunk in the first scene. I’m not worried about it. The reason will either emerge or I’ll take it out in the rewrite. It showed up in the scene, I used it, moving on now.

That ties in with something Ron Carlson, a great teacher and writer, taught me: Don’t Look Down. Back when I was explaining why I couldn’t write this, I mentioned that I didn’t know anything about running a nightclub, about LA, about police departments, yadda yadda. I forgot and looked down, which Carlson taught us never to do. He talked about writing a scene where a character is in the British Library and he realized he didn’t know anything about the British Library, so he stopped. And then he thought, “Don’t look down, keep going,” because he could find out about the British Library later. There are a million things I don’t know about this book, but I’m not looking down because I don’t have to. I’ll probably never finish it anyway, why screw up a good time by worrying about something I’ll never have to deal with? Besides, I probably can deal with it. I’m really good at this stuff.

And then there’s Embrace Sticky Time. There’s a time at the start of a story that’s just marvelous fun because everything I see and hear either sticks to the story or slides off and becomes irrelevant. It’s like one of those special effects in the movies where all the parts rush together and make something new, Ironman or some other intricate thing forming before my eyes, except it’s all moving in slow motion, like drifting through space and gathering things up. I don’t know what Nita’s apartment looks like, but I saw a picture on the net that’s the place where Nick’s living so I grabbed that as it floated past me, and suddenly I was writing scenes there and collaging in things that I saw in the scenes. I didn’t know I needed two evil henchmen until I saw a picture of the Trump sons and thought, “Oh, yeah, they’re in there.” Food, music, the cold in the air, the election, a you tube video on heists, something somebody said . . . this story is amazingly sticky and so much fun because of it. Fun is good. Embrace the fun.

It’s important to become a packrat during Sticky Time because it leads (if I’m lucky) directly into Magic Time which is when the world of the story begins to take on a glow. It’s not just that the characters are talking in my head all the time–there’s always somebody talking in there, my voices are constant and varied–it’s that I can see the people and the places and I hear them and I need to write down just that part, that snippet I got that turns into five hundred or two thousand words because, hey, Use It All. I know I’ve moved into Magic Time when I put down the TV remote–and I LOVE story on TV–because I’d rather be with the story in my head than with the characters I love on the screen. That’s the big rule here: Let go of reality and Move into the Magic. Reality will always be there, lurking in the background, but when the story world takes that first golden breath and rises like the dawn, I damn well better go toward the light.

In the past, I’ve had to learn those things over and over again, but this time, since this isn’t a real book, since this is just me having fun, I saw them coming and thought, “Oh, yeah, I remember you, how’ve you been?” and kept writing. Which is leading me to believe that maybe I should just retire and stop taking myself so seriously.

I could probably write a lot of books that way.

Summary:

1. Use it all.

2. Don’t look down.

3. Embrace sticky time.

4. Move into the magic.

5.

6. Retire. Profit.

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