Tag Archives: fiction

Short Form Storytelling, Part 1: One Story, One Idea

October 25, 2013 James Gilmore Leave a comment

Let’s start with the obvious: What is short form storytelling?

Short form is a story condensed into a brief, compressed format.

Storytellers tend to receive the majority of their training in long form techniques so this article is devoted to preparing you for short form storytelling, specifically the short story and short film.

What is considered short form?

Short form includes such familiar formats as television (30 minute sitcoms, one-hour dramas, etc.), short stories, short films and poetry, whereas long form includes the feature-length film, novel, and epic poem. Of course there are also forms which fit somewhere in the middle, like the long story, novelette, and 70-minute film.

Although the numbers vary depending on who you ask, here are some quick and dirty guidelines to give you an idea of lengths for short and long forms:

	SHORT FORM	LONG FORM
Film:	under 70 minutes	70+ minutes
Prose:	7,500 pages or less	7,500 pages or more
Poem:	up to 2 pages	2 pages or more

Typically a short film is under 30 minutes long but they can run up to 70 minutes. For more information on word counts in prose, refer to Prose Length and Word Count.

Shorter is simpler, but harder

Short form is deceptively difficult. It’s tempting to believe that shorter means easier, and while it does make the story simpler, it actually makes the piece more difficult to perfect. Most writers are accustomed to long form storytelling because that is the easiest way to fully express their ideas. In short form you do not have the luxury to explore every nook and cranny of your idea, so you can only include that which is absolutely relevant and necessary for your story.

In fact, short form is so challenging that many famous literary authors of the 20th century believed that the short story was not only the hardest type of story to write, but also the finest mark of a writer’s ability. Many an author has spent his/her career attempting to perfect the short story. (Short film and poetry have similar stories.)

Short Form is About One Idea

The key to short form is to concentrate on one clearly defined idea and bring it to fruition. The nature of short form does not allow you to cram more than one main idea into a short story without diluting its impact and creating an ambiguous mess. You also do not have the luxury of spending long periods developing characters or fleshing out your B- and C-plots. The longer your story becomes the greater its complexity will be, making it more difficult a story to tell. So keep your story compressed and strong by staying simple and always focused on your main idea.

Only that which is necessary and relevant

Short form is a compressed storytelling format where every ingredient has to carry its own weight. Prose, visuals, events and characters must count absolutely and definitively with no room for extraneous details or events. We call this necessary action. Necessary action means that only material directly relevant to the story should be included. Each element should be lean and efficient. Where possible, make each element count for multiple uses in regards to character, plot and theme.

Why Short Form is Worth the Effort

Although the market for short form storytelling is very select, it can be one of the best ways to improve your craft and learn invaluable skills such as compression (the subject of Part 2 of this article).

A few things you will learn while using short form:

How to tell stories efficiently.
How to say more with less (by means of compression).
How the story creation process works from beginning to end because it takes less time to complete short formats than long ones.

In the end, you may discover a new found joy in working with short form. Not only is short form liberating in its brevity, it requires a smaller commitment than long form and will ultimately lead to a greater understanding of your craft.

Stay tuned for Part 2: Compression, Compression, Compression.

Want to perfect your short film, script, play or story? Contact StorySci to get professional help right away.

books, Minimalist Reviews

Starship Troopers, a sci-fi novel by Robert A. Heinlein

October 14, 2013 James Gilmore Leave a comment

A nearly forgotten military sci-fi classic by author Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers pushes science fiction beyond the commonplace genre novel toward the realm of literary fiction and its penchant for universal truth. By setting the story in a futuristic fictional setting, the author disassociates the book with any specific real-world war, allowing him to focus on a thorough examination of theme and moral philosophy.

Part science fiction novel, part moral essay, Starship Troopers devotes considerable time to philosophizing about the role of the soldier, the military, and the obligations of individuals in a collective society, especially to their fellow man. Drawing from the author’s own experience in the Armed Forces, Heinlein uses his well thought-out universe to constructively criticize the faults of American society through the eyes of a militaristic fascist one.

The novel’s thematic backbone creates a solid skeleton through which to elegantly explore the psychology of the soldier, specifically the infantryman, as he graduates through the various phases of his career from pre-enlisted civilian through mature officer. Heinlein also explores adjacent branches of this theme tree, including the developing relationship between master and student, commander and enlisted man, and father and son. With each new step toward maturity the protagonist sees the military machine with greater discernment and understanding (the military organization being a thematic substitute for ‘the world’ because in this case the military is the protagonist’s world).

Despite being published in 1959, Starship Troopers provides the experience of reading a novel written 10 or 20 years later than its actual publication date. Unfortunately, the dated dialogue continually bursts this illusion, ever reminding us that the novel was written in the 1950s. An over-use of unnecessary dialogue hedges such as “Uh” and “Umm” at the beginning of character responses slows the pace of many scenes and takes the reader out of the world of the story.

Readers expecting heart pumping action and thrilling space battles will be sorely disappointed in Starship Troopers. Heinlein deliberately steers clear of these tropes by means of the anti-“war genre” (e.g., anti-genre) to maintain focus on his themes and the insightful exposure of a combat soldier’s psychological journey. Despite the agedness of the book, many of his philosophical ideas remain universally valid to this day.

Starship Troopers was adapted for the big screen in 1997 by writer Edward Neumeier and director Paul Verhoeven.

Rating: 4.5 / 5

advice, how-to, tools

Powerful Rewriting Tools #1: The Laundry List

February 19, 2013 James Gilmore 1 Comment

Rewriting is difficult. It’s daunting. It can be overwhelming. And every writer has been there.

Rewriting (also called “editing”) is a different skill from writing with its own set of techniques. While the initial writing process utilizes many of your instinctual and emotional creative energies, the rewriting process taps into a separate part of your brain, making use of your logical and analytical acumen. No matter which way you approach rewriting, it is still mentally taxing and a lot of hard work.

To help you through this brain intensive process we are going to bring you a series of powerful rewriting tools, the first of which is called the Laundry List. The Laundry List is a “to-do” list of items that need work in your current draft, allowing you to organize and address each issue with surgical precision and without becoming lost or sidetracked.

Here’s the short version:

Read the piece all the way through.
Reread the piece again, this time making notes in the form of a to-do list.
Rewrite your piece based on only one item at a time.
Address all items on list.

Now let’s break it down:

Step back, let it sit.
You’ve just finished the colossal task of completing a draft and you are feeling on top of the world. Your head is still awhirl with the details as you enjoy a self-congratulatory pat on the back. Don’t jump into rewriting yet. Leave it alone for a few weeks, possibly a few months (3-6 months at most).

Reread it from beginning to end.
Now you can return to your draft with a fresh set of eyes. Dust off the old manuscript and reread the entire piece from beginning to end without stopping to rewrite. Allow yourself to make a few notes along the way but don’t start the actual rewriting process until you have finished your read-through. This will re-familiarize you with the material as work your way through the next step.

Make a to-do list.
Read the piece again, this time making a to-do list of every item, big or small, that needs addressed. Be sure to designate which issues are major and which of those are minor. How you organize your list is up to you, but here are a few suggestions:

OUTLINE: Traditional outline with smaller issues nested beneath larger parent items.
COLUMNS: Place issues under major headings such as character, structure, protagonist desire, etc.
CHRONOLOGICAL: List items in the order that they occur in your story, using some kind of notation to indicate if major or minor.

Rewrite with purpose.
Each item of your laundry list gives you a clear, reasonable goal to work toward and will keep you from becoming overwhelmed. As you tackle each issue only work on one item at a time, no matter how tempting it is to do more. It’s very easy get sidetracked and lost if you don’t stick to your goal.

Start with the big things, end with the small things.
Address major issues first. The bigger, the better. You can go smaller from there. By fixing the major issues you will probably eliminate some of the smaller points on your laundry list and save the unnecessary stress and hair loss of having to cut minor rewrites that have become irrelevant during subsequent revisions of major points. Things like dialogue polishes and punctuation, vocabulary, etc. should be saved for last.

And voila! You have just completed a thorough rewriting of your piece. It takes some work, but by diligently chipping away at your lump of raw material bit by bit until you have your very own Statue of David left in its place. So the next time you are thinking about jumping into the editorial pool start by making yourself a Laundry List and soon you will be on the road to rewriting your next masterpiece.

Until next time, bon courage and keep writing!

advice, tools

Pink Slip: How to Handle Rejection

November 28, 2012 James Gilmore Leave a comment

“The difference between the amateur writer and the professional writer is that the professional didn’t quit.”–Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, rejected 26 times before becoming one of the most inspirational books of all time

Every creative type must handle their worst, most intimate fear when they share their work with others: rejection. It doesn’t matter if you are a writer, filmmaker, musician, actor, painter, or live performance artist, someday you will face rejection by someone, somewhere, and that person may be a friend, colleague, critic, agent or even the viewing public. Some of the rejections will be polite, if not gracious, while others will be cruel and soul-shattering.

THE HARD FACTS ABOUT REJECTION

Everyone gets rejected. And more often than not, everyone gets rejected multiple times. It doesn’t matter what form the rejection is in, everyone will get rejected and how you handle that rejection is the true test of your character. Oprah Winfrey was fired from her job as a TV anchor and deemed “unfit for television” before going on to become one of the most prolific personalities in television history.

Rejection is a matter of taste. One rejection doesn’t mean anything. 50 rejections doesn’t mean anything, for that matter. One of the reason rejection rates are so high is because you have to catch the right organization with the right piece that is the right fit for the right person’s taste at the right time on the right day. Just because one person rejects your work doesn’t mean that another one will. Sometimes the very same person who rejected your work initially will accept it later on down the road. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to revise or polish your work between pink slips, but it does mean that you shouldn’t feel disheartened over a handful of rejection letters

Rejection will make you a better at your craft. Just because someone rejects your work doesn’t he mean (s)he was right, but it doesn’t necessarily mean (s)he was wrong, either. Listen to what critics say about your work. You don’t have to take every piece of advice thrown your way but use their feedback to polish and improve your work instead of letting nasty comments degrade your self-confidence.

It isn’t personal. Rejection can be difficult to handle because in rejecting your blood-sweat-and-tears creative endeavor, you probably feel that YOU are being rejected as a person. After all, your creative work is a part of you. Even if you know on an intellectual level that the rejection isn’t personal, in many ways it’s as personal as it gets, but the person rejecting you probably doesn’t see it that way. To them it’s just business.

You will get used to it. Rejection hurts the most at the beginning. The more rejection letters you get the less they will affect you. After fifty or a hundred rejections or so a pink slip won’t mean much at all. You are building up a tolerance and becoming a professional.

Rejection is a professional matter. Rejection is part of what makes an individual a professional in his or her field. Rejection weeds out those who are unable to compete at the professional level or maintain persistence in their field when setbacks (like pink slips) arise. When you are starting out in your career consider submitting your work to smaller, newer places with smaller pools of work (and talent) to draw from. If you start by submitting to the top places, it will take much longer to receive an acceptance, if ever. The longer you work in your field the better you will become at identifying places that have the right fit for your kind of pieces, eliminating your number of rejections. In the film industry, less than 1% of screenplays are ever sold or produced, meaning movie scripts are ultimately rejected over 99% of the time.

HOW TO USE REJECTION TO YOUR ADVANTAGE

Adopt, adapt, improve. Refine your proposal/query letter between rejections. A poorly crafted or unenthusiastic pitch will scuttle your piece no matter how good it is. Consider hiring a specialist or an editor to help you write a killer intro to your work.

Be patient. Set aside your story for awhile and work on something else so you can return to it with fresh eyes further down the road. Imagine if Herman Melville got fed up with publishers and threw his manuscript into the waste bin—no one would have ever heard of Moby Dick.

Don’t get discouraged. Use rejection as fuel to motivate you to try again and try harder. Joseph Heller named his book Catch-22 because it took 22 attempts to get his book published.

Be persistent. Persist long enough and you will succeed. What do George Orwell, Louisa May Alcott and Richard Adams have in common? They believed in themselves and never gave up on their craft. As a result, millions of people can enjoy classics like Animal Farm, Little Women, and Watership Down, respectively.

REJECTION STATISTICS FROM THE PUBLISHING WORLD

Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling: rejected 12 times, sold 400+ million copies, led to four consecutive records for fastest-selling books in history, and made Rowling one of the most famous authors in the world and one of the richest people on the planet.

Carrie by Stephen King: rejected 38 times and was even tossed in the garbage by the author at one point, sold 100+ million copies in its first year alone and made Stephen King a household name.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett: despite 60 rejections, once published Stockett’s book spent over 100 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

Agatha Christie: started out with 500 rejections in 4 years, now only outsold by William Shakespeare with $2+ billion in book sales and one of the most famous mystery writers of all time.

Chicken Soup for the Soul by Jack Canfield & Mark Victor Hansen: 140 rejections, sold over 80 million copies and now nothing short of ubiquitous, spawning numerous spin-offs.

Dune by Frank Herbert: rejected 23 times, now the best-selling sci-fi novel of all time, spawning dozens of sequels, four movies, and several video games.

The Thomas Berryman Number by James Patterson: after 31 consecutive rejections, the book went on to win the Edgar award for Best Novel while the author followed up by scoring 19 consecutive #1 hits on the New York Times bestseller list with sales in excess of $220 million.

For more statistics on rejected manuscripts see:

Daily Writing Tips: “Famous Books Rejected Multiple Times”

Green Leaf Books: “How Many Rejection Letters is Too Many?”

James Hughes: “Literary Rejections”

Smink Works Books: “Surviving Rejection”

advice

Violence and Story: How Much Violence Should I Put in My Story?

October 25, 2012 James Gilmore Leave a comment

A question came up in a LinkedIn group not too long ago regarding ‘violence’ in one writer’s story. This writer presented a work based on his own life to a writing teacher, who responded by telling him it was “too violent.” Since the writer still felt strongly about his largely autobiographical story, he posed the question to our discussion group: “How Much Violence Should I Put Into My Story?” Today we propose to answer that question.

Here are three simple rules for using violence in your story (in order of importance):

Violence Must Be Appropriate to STORY
Violence Must Be Appropriate to GENRE
Violence Must Be Appropriate to your INTENDED AUDIENCE

All three of these rules are interdependent and what affects one will affect others as well.

(NOTE: When we mention “amounts” of violence we are referring to both volume AND intensity.)

1. VIOLENCE AND STORY
Although violence is often considered an aesthetic value (that is, a matter of taste), it actually plays a distinctive role in your story. If the story is about gang violence among teens on the street and how terrible it is, you will have to include enough violence to communicate the ideas, meaning and thematic elements required in your story. But if you are making a fun action-adventure that is neither realistic nor gritty, then keep the violence down to a tolerable level because the only thing you gain by adding more is a higher MPAA rating.

2. VIOLENCE AND GENRE
Crime dramas, horror flicks and gritty action thrillers inherently require more violence to live up to the audience’s expectations than do other genres, like comedy or romance.

3. VIOLENCE AND YOUR INTENDED AUDIENCE
Obviously, splattering the walls with gore in an educational animated film about a group of hugging teddy bears is not appropriate to an intended audience of young children. Family-oriented films have the least violence because they are intended to be seen by a broad-spectrum audience which includes parents and children of all ages. On the other hand, if it’s a gory horror film, part of the viewer’s expectation is to see the screen painted with a certain volume of blood and guts, lest they be disappointed.

LEVELS OF VIOLENCE
The remarkable thing about violence in art is how we perceive it as consumers. The more explicit the storyteller makes the details of a violent act, the more violent it will be perceived by the audience. To decrease perceived violence, a storyteller may employ a strategy called “cutting away” in which the storyteller avoids providing explicit details by cutting (in film, or the equivalent in prose) to the reaction of an onlooker, avoiding vivid portrayal of the worst details but leaving most of it to the imagination of the audience.

Here is a basic guide to the main categories of violence employed by storytellers in books and film:

1. No Violence: No violence at all. Usually confined to children-oriented materials and programming targeted at females, such as chicklit (print) or dramas which focus on character and relationships. An excellent example of this violence level is Lost in Translation, a film by Sofia Coppola.

2. Comic Violence: The most common violence in animated and family-oriented stories. Usually bloodless and without lasting effects, violence is presented in a funny way to counteract its seriousness. Think Shrek.

3. Bloodless Violence: It’s surprising how much an absence of blood and gore can reduce the gravity of pain and death. Bloodless violence is prolific among big blockbuster films that want to appeal to a broad audience. Return of the Jedi (and all of the Star Wars films) uses virtually no blood at all.

4. Moderate Violence: The most common type of violence used in media, it has some blood but only light gore or detail, such as Lord of the Rings (movies) and The Hunger Games (book). Hunger Games keeps the perceived violence level fairly low for its intended audience (YA, “young adult”) by employing the written equivalent of “cutting away.” The 2012 film adaptation takes this a step further.

5. Realistic Violence: This can be gritty, gory, and even downright gruesome. Just about any specimen of the war genre falls into this category, such as Saving Private Ryan and We Were Soldiers.

6. Gory Violence: The most extreme violence level includes films like I Spit on Your Grave as well as a large bulk of the horror genre in both film and print. At its most extreme end there is a horror subgenre called torture porn.

IN CONCLUSION…
Use common sense in determining the appropriate level of violence for your creative work, and only that violence which serves the story, genre or intended audience. You need enough to get your point across but don’t overdo it.

books, Minimalist Reviews

1632, an alternative history novel by Eric Flint

October 8, 2012 James Gilmore Leave a comment

By James Gilmore

Eric Flint’s 1632 is an alternative history science fiction novel about a small town in present day West Virginia that is suddenly transported back in time to Germany during the devastating Thirty Years’ War in the year 1632. At its heart, 1632 is a romantic view of classic American ideals clashing with and conquering those of the oppressed, war-torn 17th century continental Europe, pushing normal small town folk into extraordinary circumstances.

Eric Flint executes the unusual and exceptionally difficult premise with marvelous ease and methodical reasoning, exploring the promise of the premise with detailed thoroughness. Despite reviews which misleadingly describe the book as “action packed” 1632 is mostly a relationship-oriented piece with a few periods of intense action counterpointed against extended laconic sections of blossoming romance.

The plentiful characters populating the novel surprise the reader with their variance, color, and very human likeability, which makes the exploration their relationships a pleasure, even if the story does get bogged down in a disproportionate amount of romance during the second act. The large cast prevents great depth in character development. Regardless, it’s obvious to the reader that Flint is an author who genuinely loves his characters.

One of the greatest shortcomings of 1632 is its failure to live up to the high stakes generated by the premise. Main characters have things pretty easy and rarely (if ever) actually lose anything of value, while any obstacles that do arise are circumvented without great difficulty. Greater challenges and higher stakes conflict are needed in a world where innumerable dangers lurk in the shadows. Unfortunately, the dangers threaten but seldom actually emerge from the periphery.

Eric Flint’s 1632 may be an acquired taste for most, but don’t hesitate to pick up a copy if you are in the mood for something new, unique and quasi-historical.

Rating: 3.5 / 5

advice, how-to, tools

Turn that Scene on its Head (How to Fulfill Expectations by Defying Them)

October 2, 2012 James Gilmore

stack of books story sci stock photo for exercise Do you have a scene that’s dull, listless, unexciting, or otherwise lacking? Maybe everything is in place but for some reason the scene just isn’t that interesting. Have you ever considered that your scene might be too…predictable?

Believe it or not, this is a problem which afflicts the majority of not-yet-published creative works—the inability to capture the audience’s interest by fulfilling their expectations but doing so in a way they do not expect. Major and minor storytelling elements alike hinge on this very idea, such as plot points, gags, or character reactions, and work by bringing the audience into the story and creating conflict which, as we know, means story.

Although one could write an entire book on this premise, today we will focus on only one specific part of it: defying expectation through character reaction.

If a character reacts to an incident exactly how we expect him/her to there is no surprise and the scene falls flat with predictability, along with stakes, conflict, and the audience’s interest. Now imagine if that same character reacted in the precise opposite way we were expecting. Now that’s interesting! Why? Because now we want to know why the character is reacting differently than our expectations.

Let’s take a white collar worker named Dwight. He is called into the boss’s office. The boss sacks Dwight. Instead of breaking into tears and begging to keep his job, Dwight jumps for joy and celebrates exuberantly, culminating in an awkward bear hug with his stunned ex-boss.

Even in a situation like this the audience’s mind immediately begins to rationalize the seemingly absurd behavior. Often, such a reaction won’t seem absurd at all, but completely reasonable provided the reaction is justified by proper motivation. The scene will then play out the resulting consequences of the character’s surprising reaction and you will be expected to justify it, which may occur within the scene or sometime after.

In short:

incident > reaction > consequences > justification

Next time you are watching a movie or reading a book, pay attention to the characters’ reactions to changing circumstances. You will be surprised at the number of times they react in the opposite way a normal person would in the same situation. Also be aware that sometimes characters need to react exactly as they are expected to in order for a story to develop. Action movies are very good at combining both into a reaction that at first seems expected only to follow it with a reversal which reveals the unexpected.

(Consequently, the “opposite-than-expected reaction” has been a common strategy in TV writing for decades. Any episode of the hit series Lost hinges its entire plot on such reactions. For a more on-the-nose example, take a look at any scene in the original 90210 TV series from 1990s.)

Try It Yourself: Turn Your Scene Upside Down

Take any scene in which one of your characters reacts to a change of circumstance.
Change the character’s reaction to be the exact opposite of what it was previously, defying normal expectations.
Explore the consequences of that reaction.
Justify the reaction through character motivation.
Ask yourself, “Where can I take my story from here with this new and interesting turn of events?”

And voila! Magic happens.

Try it for yourself and share your results. We’d love to hear about it!

books, Minimalist Reviews

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a mystery thriller novel by Stieg Larsson (“Quickie” Review)

October 1, 2012 James Gilmore Leave a comment

By James Gilmore

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson is an altogether pleasurable and smooth read, even in spite of the frequent, overly burdensome exposition and a vast proliferation of details almost too numerous for the reader to continually to keep in mind, requiring an extra dosage of concentration while reading.

As for the character of Lisbeth Salander, she is one of the most fascinating, inescapably magnetic characters in modern fiction, a curiosity or enigma that sucks us into slavering to learn more about her.

The author Stieg Larsson passed away on November 9, 2004.

Rating: 4 / 5

books, Minimalist Reviews

Pirate Latitudes, a novel by Michael Crichton

June 26, 2012 James Gilmore Leave a comment

By James Gilmore

Pirate Latitudes is taut genre novel written by one of the modern masters of suspense, Michael Crichton. Intense and inventive, the action and drama never fail to entertain in a story laden with clever ideas in plotting and execution while widely diverse, fascinating characters populate the novel. Crichton fulfills and defies every pirate cliché by making them his own, transforming each element into something unique and poignant and exploring to its logical, if not surprising, conclusion.

Unfortunately, Pirate Latitudes once again exhibits Crichton’s two major weaknesses: (1) his talent for gullibly accepting stereotypes (valid or not) based on his research, and (2) failing to provide any greater depth or meaning beyond the story itself, which is where the limit of the story’s impact can be felt most.

A thrilling ride for Crichton and pirate lovers; a guilty pleasure for lit-heads.

Rating: 3 / 5

books, Minimalist Reviews

Of Mice and Men, a literary novella by John Steinbeck

June 19, 2012 James Gilmore Leave a comment

By James Gilmore

Of Mice and Men might as well have been called “the ranch of broken dreams.” Presenting itself like a stage play in all but format, author John Steinbeck maintains Aristotle’s unity of place and time by focusing our attention on a microcosm inhabited by two men who share a single hollow dream. Ultimately, their dream collapses due to their own human weaknesses and those of their fellow men. The fundamental core of the story illustrates how human beings latch onto hope, real or imaginary (but in either case perceived as actual), as a goal to strive for, as a reason for living, and how and why reality seldom plays out like our dreams say they ought.

Of Mice and Men packs brutal emotional impact through realistic, layered characters and relationships in this structurally sound novella.

Readers will find Of Mice and Men much more accessible than Steinbeck’s far more brutal Grapes of Wrath, and should be required reading for any serious reader or storyteller.

Rating: 5 / 5

Story Science

Tag Archives: fiction