A Jessica Jones Experiment – Take the TMI Test

So Season 2 of Jessica Jones is out. And this time it’s almost perfect.

As a show, Jessica… how do I say this? Her first season was the only series that’s ever made me rethink Buffy The Vampire-Slayer (see my past rave) and remind myself it isn’t fair to anyone to compare Buffy’s seven whopping seasons of frequently-legendary storytelling to one thirteen-episode arc of focused perfection.

It’s also not fair to compare Jessica’s Season 2 to her first, if only because if it were any show but hers you couldn’t compare it to that first storyline without admitting that would be setting an impossible standard. And Season 2 does have pretty much all the things that made the first what it was:

What We’re Jonesing For

Krysten Ritter. Just enough doors ripped off hinges for a PI-slash-superhero story. Trish trying to be the only anchor in Jessica’s life. Krysten Ritter. Bitter monologues, bitter alcohol, and PI dialogue with more bite than the booze our hero swims in. Malcolm the neighbor (now in a new position), sweet and likable with his own issues. Lawyer Jeri being a greater force of self-destruction than Krysten Ritter’s Jessica, and that’s saying plenty. A world aware of superpowers, and with no idea how to deal with a woman who doesn’t wear a mask or want to be a hero. That jazzy, pumped-up theme sequence that any other show would kill for, if it was worthy of it. And always, Krysten Ritter.

And it took courage not to build another season around the Marvel villain who’s better than Loki—

Yes, I said it. Tom Hiddleston only plays the second-greatest villain in Marvel history.

So it isn’t the new villains themselves where I’d say this season made its one slip. With all the above in play, you can bet this is a show with more than just villainous charisma to offer. (Though of course the last season having all that and Kilgrave’s incredible, Jessica-heart-tearing arc gave it more awesomeness than most storytellers would know what to do with.)

This time: Jess investigating her powers’ history? cool. A connection to our so-reluctant heroine? it delivers one as close as Kilgrave’s ever was, once it becomes clear. Different threads tangling in different ways, so you never know which is going to be driving the story next? that structure works for most other Marvel Netflix shows, even though last time letting Kilgrave be at the root of everything worked so well.

There’s Always Something

Still, I think they missed something. With all due respect to Melissa Rosenberg and the rest of the magnificent people who designed this season, I think there’s a place where I expected them to do better. And I think it’s a lesson worth pointing out to all of us who write or care about quality storytelling.

Readers, you can test this yourself, with a little experiment. And yes, the instructions are completely spoiler-safe… in fact they depend on your not knowing too much too soon.

If you haven’t see Season 2 yet—

(And it really ought to be “yet,” if you’re reading this blog but haven’t seen the story already. Or if you’re not on Netflix, consider some math: Eight dollars for one month, divided by two thirteen-episode seasons of Jessica? At the rate most people tear through those eps once they start, you might have weeks left in that month to look at the other five-and-counting Marvel shows and Netflix’s other offerings, before you have to decide whether to drop another $8. No, Netflix isn’t paying me to present those numbers; they’re just something to think about.)

If you haven’t seen Season 2 yet, the “experiment” is:

See the first six episodes. But instead of watching Episode 7 (called “AKA I Want Your Cray Cray”), skip it until you’ve seen the next one or two. Because all but one obvious minute of that ep is all flashbacks, and it’s there solely to give out Too Much Information, too soon, about the characters and motivations of what we’ve just discovered. Instead, go straight to Ep 8 and maybe 9, and just follow how Jessica has to cope with her situation—without you getting that extra perspective on character that our heroine herself has to build on her own. Then go back and look at Ep 7.

Or if you can’t bring yourself to skip the episode (or you’ve already seen it all), imagine how the show would look without that one filling us in too soon.

It’s a basic belief of mine: the heart of a story is what the characters know and what they can do about it in that moment; their choice in each moment is everything. So any other-viewpoint scenes ought to be used to build suspense, not overshare about someone to the point that the viewer/reader is pushed back from that in-the-trenches challenge that the actual hero is slow-w-w-ly learning to cope with.

Great stories (like Season 1) live within those moments and their pacing. Easy flashbacks or other infodumps cheat us.

For those who have seen the season: I will admit this is a more logical storyline to use those flashbacks in than many tales might be. At the point where the flashes start (with that last word of Ep 6) the story’s just unveiled a huge change of our understanding of the characters, so that stopping to fast-explore it all is easier than working through it normally. I’ll also admit that the truth and the conflict they’re setting up are less about layers above anyone’s Deepest Truth than they’re about facing people’s sheer unpredictability, which means giving us an immediate peak at their contradictions still leaves us with the nitro-volatile questions of what they’ll do next.

But I say the storyline would still have been better if that Ep 7 info had been unpacked and laid out a step at a time, so that we took it in alongside Jessica. She’s the one who needs to deal with it, and we don’t want to jump ahead of her.

Try the season that way, or imagine it, by moving through that point flashback-free. See if you agree.

Too Much Information only swamps what the story’s trying to be. Even a story that’s still as stunning as Jess’s new season.

(One more thing: if you’re trying this, don’t tell Jessica. She’s really not a fan of “experiments” these days, and none of us want her ripping down our doors.)

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The Plot-Device Machine – Movement

I’m about to share with you my all-purpose tool for the all-purpose question that my characters (and I’d bet yours) are constantly asking. That question is, “How do I get out of this one?”

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

Or, it can be how the hero will find a new way into a dilemma that holds the key he needs, or of course how enemies and good old Murphy’s Law can get at him. From escaping traps to staying on the good side of a tempestuous ally, in a hero’s eyes his life is a multilayered challenge that almost seems to be conspiring to push him to his limits.

And readers never stop asking the same questions, because they know his life is!

So much of the nuts and bolts of writing is building the dramatic out of the practical. Would that escape be more intense if he bargained rather than fought his way through? Does the plot touch all the bases of tracking a killer?

When I’m looking for problems or solutions for my characters, I’ve found I have four main options. As a writer you won’t see any of these as new, but I think the key is in seeing the combination of choices, and the ways they can steer a scene or story. (Plus, me being me, they all have their own implications for picking someone’s paranormal or other suspense resources.)

So my plot devices are either about:

  • Movement
  • Knowledge
  • Strength
  • Motive

 

Movement

Yes, I listed movement first, and it’s not because I have a weakness for chase scenes. Stop a moment and think:

How many pages are the hero working his way through a place? #Movement matters. #writing Click To Tweet

On a small scale, mobility can mean chase speeds and barriers, or whether hero or villain can find an unprotected approach to get where he wants. (Try the back door, crawl up the sewers, whatever way’s the weakest link.) On a larger scale, running a business or just getting through the day have their own logistics issues, and a problem anywhere on all those roads—or getting a new and better way around—may well be the most changeable part of the story. Or, you can force the heroine’s boyfriend or mentor to move across the country, even if it’s just to make phone contact less comfortable.

As often as not, part of making a whole scene or more story work is physically placing everything it needs. That can mean having a sense of:

  1. Pacing—of the story, not the people on the move. Do you want to stretch a scene out with escape maneuvers, or sum up a month of military campaigning with a paragraph that explains thinning supply routes? Giving a section more space usually means finding more complications for it, and a longer or rougher ride is an easy way to provide that.
  • Or else, just taking movement out of a scene focuses it on everything else. The more you’re trapped with your enemy, for better or worse, the more you know something’s about to change… though even then something might come between you…
  1. Who wants to bring which things together, and who doesn’t? Is that bystander who sees the approaching figure a cop who thinks standing and shooting at a monster will do any good, or is it Carrie Coed who’s perfectly happy to RUN AWAY?
  2. Speeds, and also distance, to which goals. Letting Carrie run to just “get away” may not be as intense as having her run to her car. So how far from the parking lot is she? How near was the beastie to catching her—and if it moves at a nice suspenseful shamble, the only way to let it gain on her may be to say poor Carrie’s already limping from a previous chase.
  • But then, movement isn’t only raw speed. If Carrie had one of my own books’ flying belts to float up out of reach (assuming the monster didn’t too!), or she had to run around a chain fence while the monster oozed right through it, the chase may take a very different turn.
  1. The big one: check everything for how it can change. Cliché or not, it’s only human for Carrie to stop and stare when the monster pours through the parking lot fence, or maybe even drop the car keys she needed. (Yes, this can be more a chance for “shock,” mixed in with more straight suspense of just following the movement.)
  • Especially, focus on how those characters try to control those. The creature might be smart enough to see that Carrie needs to run to the lot exit now, and try to head her off. But if Carrie had actually dropped her backup keys, and then doubled back to her car with her real ones, she can get to drive straight through the thing—SPLAT.

(Good for you, Carrie!)

 

All in all, movement ought to be a natural part of working out any writing. Wherever the story physically is, distance and barriers are a big part of stretching it out (distance metaphors—we can’t get away from them). And you’ll always find a few aspects of it that can be perfect for twisting the plot.

Especially, it can be part of defining the characters, and the story as a whole. A mobile hero might be the perfect match for a stronger but slower enemy (no wonder Peter Pan can laugh at all those pirates), or a faster, elusive villain can make him the one frustrated. At the same time it can set the scale for the story: Carrie only has to drive across campus to find out why her friends aren’t answering their phones, but the further Clark Kent realized he could fly, the more of the planet Superman patrolled.

If you don’t think #movement can reimagine a whole story, two words: Road trip! Click To Tweet

With all the different pieces of your plot, movement can be just the way to control who gets to act on what.

That is, if they know about it. Which brings us to next week: Knowledge.

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Quiet Scene or Boring Scene? What can make the difference

We call them “character moments” or “pacing breaks” when we write them, or “boring scenes” when somebody else tries and fails. We know the story isn’t complete if it’s all twists and suspense, but making the slower “day in the life” moments work is harder than it looks. Still, I’ve found there’s one tool that does a lot to make those slower scenes more appealing.

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

The first step is to be sure why the scene needs to be there. It’s easy to say “there have to be slow moments,” but a writer–and then a reader–ought to be able to put a finger right on which fact, characterization, or lull or shift of mood a scene is contributing to the story’s sequence. That is, why this moment with the character’s family is a different and better one to show than the home scene he probably had yesterday, and how much room the overall pacing has for them.

The basics matter too. The more you know the character and the issues, and the more you’ve established about them so you can show what small ways this scene changes them–and the reader’s primed to care about those–the easier it is to pull off a quiet scene. Then again, you’ve still got full control over how much has gone by “off camera” before the moment you start the scene, how soon you can end it, and how much you can summarize or “blur forward” to cover a time faster; you’re looking for the right moments and the ideal pace(s) to cover them without wasting space. Or maybe the quiet scene does double service because it’s also the one that’s interrupted by something important, or has it developing in the background.

But most of all, I like to write quiet scenes with the same thing that makes active scenes work: focus. That is, even when the hero isn’t fighting for his life, I still focus on what he wants, right now.

To take the classic example, say the scene’s a typical morning at work. But making it interesting means putting yourself a little more into that character’s shoes.

If you enjoy your work, the scene could just be about being in your element. You’re tending your bar, flying your jet–or writing your blog–and each thing that comes up is just something you can handle, simple and satisfying. Or a variation could be, the work is ordinary or petty, but it barely matters because the people around make the day fun.

Or maybe it isn’t going so well: sometimes work’s just a grind or a case of working through sizzling heat, surly crowds, or even Murphy’s Law kicking each time you’re about to fix the last thing. This time you just want to get through the day, coping with each moment but the real fight is to keep your temper down and a few of your hopes up, and any bright spot there or moment of weakness probably means more than the facts themselves.

Or, the challenges may not be quite so minor or so implacable. If you’ve got one customer that’s hard to please or a chance to impress your boss, coping with that makes the scene develop twists and a scramble of trying one thing and then the next, the same as the major scenes the story’s really about.

Then there’s the other side to scenes like this: besides what’s going on now, what happened last night or before then that’s on your mind, or what are you worrying or planning or hoping is coming soon? A date, an injury, a visit with your family, or Something Odd that you’re so sure won’t mean anything more…

Those are some of the points a quiet scene might make. The first approach shows a happy character with something to lose, while the second’s displeasure might make him someone who needs a change or is likely to see it get even worse. The third intensifies how it could go either way, and it puts more emphasis on a win or a loss and on how the character tries to solve problems, plus anything in the mix that may be part of the larger story. The fourth pairs the one scene with other happenings (and if anything important’s been going on, it should be on his mind) and opens up all kinds of contrasts between them.

But it’s all easier to write when you take a closer look at what the character wants just then–token or specific challenges, or managing his reaction to them, and/or other thoughts. Because whatever those are, right now it’s what changes and arcs those go through that are filling the character’s world. Even if there isn’t much at stake now, doing justice to the struggle for it–by the same rules as the larger plots–is what makes the scene both fun on its own and adding that moment of comfort or stress or whatever it is to the story.

I’ll come back to something I said earlier, and put it a bit differently now: be sure the scene has something new to say. However much you like the character’s moments at work or how he is with his girl, only add scenes where you can put some twist on what you’ve already shown, and keep to that part of it. Does this date have an incident that’s really cute enough to make this the scene to show? Is his time with his father lingering on the things they haven’t quite said before, and letting the scene end at that? Use the “Tarzan Test,” that there’s something more in the mix and that the scope of that mix defines what the tale has become–it’s either large changes or seeing why the small ones are at least a little important for the moment.

Small or not, it’s those steps that make a story more interesting than just looking at random strangers. What someone’s life is, a story lays it down one piece at a time, and it’s the changes and contrasts between them that we want to see. If our hero isn’t charging across the globe saving the world right now… we just need a stronger magnifying glass to see what he is doing.

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Writing Travel Scenes: What to Keep Moving

Do you ever notice how often “the hero’s journey” isn’t just a metaphor? Travel’s a huge part of many stories, sometimes long days or weeks on the road, sometimes brief hops that still get wedged so close into the characters’ real moments they seem like they deserve a place in the story. But there’s always that question: how much do you write up, or do you show it at all?

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

More than anything I’d call this a pacing question, and check that against a writer’s overall style. Some periods just need to take more time–it could almost be a paradox of:

  • if none of the real plot has started yet, skip forward to when it has
  • but when the plot’s just underway, then show more of the journey
  • once things are moving toward high gear, skip to the good stuff
  • and then when the important scene’s near, once again show the approach to it

–Not very helpful, is it? But the pacing theory is that there’s an ideal plot distance away from the more important scenes, not so far that it’s no longer worth showing and not so close the reader’s gotten too eager to rush on, and that’s the sweet spot to take some time in. That is, once you decide which are the more important scenes and what makes other moments just how far away from them. One writer’s cut-to-the-chase’s-warmup is another’s favorite time to pause and say goodbye to how things were.

Part of that’s each writer’s own style. The more you use description and mood overall, the odder it’s going to look if you skip ahead… unless part of your pattern is skipping ahead, because you writer fewer but richer scenes. It all gets mixed together to decide which side of pacing a moment is.

(Another point: one way to give a sense of time passing without showing any of it is to show something else, or rather someone else. So if the story has multiple viewpoints, momentarily shifting to a different one for gives some weight to that passing time, even without the specifics of a villain’s schemes or a mentor’s trust or whatever contrast works with what’s going on now.)

Still, there’s no lack of options for what might fill up the travel time you want to show, to just the degree you want to show it:

Description of course. A lot of travel is having so much time to take in the scenery… and also get acquainted with how hard the seat is, how welcome the meals are, and other points that might not seem as exciting but do plenty to put the reader right in the characters’ place there.

Characterization, using dialog and other tools (and thoughts) to advance our knowledge of the characters, and the characters’ connection to each other– the classic Road Movie claims to be more about bonding with the other folks in the car than anything on the way.

News and clues, any updates on anything that matters, from broadcasts about the killer on the loose to moments the gas tank seems to be a lot emptier than it was before. Even a small hint or reminder can keep a bit of suspense building.

Progressions, whatever people are doing as they go. Remember Luke getting that lightsaber lesson on the way to Alderaan, and achieving his “first step into a larger universe?” Look for anything interesting that’s underway meanwhile.

(Of course, one common progression is the growing sense that they’re on the wrong road, or need to rest or otherwise change their plans…)

and then, Events. There are always small (or not so small) complications or shifts where what the people try to go past–or who’s going past them–step in and break up the pattern. They might be using a scene to make a point that could have been through general description or other methods, or it could the start of a genuine subplot or a taste of what’s up ahead.

A travel sequence could be a few words of “By the time they cleared the forest, he never wanted to smell sap again.” Or it could be pages or chapters, about either the journey itself or the writer’s wish list of how many things could be established or worked out on the way. But those are a few of the choices.

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A Few Words More–or Less?

Does the line need a little more, does a description need an adjective, or maybe a little about a thing’s sound or motion as well as its shape? It all comes down to words.

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

After all, if the writer doesn’t mention something, the reader may never suspect that part of his grand vision was there, or that quirk of dialog that shows how unique the character is… but at the same time, that word might be a misstep or simply a distraction from what’s more important.

One great perspective on finding that balance is the Five Principles of the Puppeteer. –Yes, puppets, an interesting way to look out of the rut writers may be in. Mary Robinette Kowal thinks of words the way she moves her puppets, taking responsibility to choose which motion to emphasize (and what other motions to give the puppet the illusion of how real muscles would react) and what would be a distracting “head-bobbing.”

Another model I like is a certain mobster’s girlfriend’s advice about the right clothes–that they “should call attention to you, not themselves,” that it’s all about the total effect. Or think of a film camera: what objects, what balance of light and shapes, what symbols does the director want to get in the frame and what would clutter it up? (A more exact image might be storyboarding: you choose which things are worth sketching in and which to just leave out, to be implied by the rest.)

Every line written has an opportunity to add another small touch or two to bring to life just what’s there and why. The person or object in the moment’s center might be obvious, but do you fill in what’s behind that, or what’s lying in the corner? you probably work in some sounds with all the sights, but do you mention how the floor feels, or any smells? And do you mention them when setting the scene or later, or drop a mention early and then remind the reader?

And in dialog this applies twice over. On the one hand you have all the things a character might say on the way to his point, and just the pauses and halts that give another glimpse at his personality, and on the other you still decide how many expressions, gestures, and full “walk and talk” descriptions to mix in to keep the moment from becoming pure Talking Heads.

But, keeping the balance… we all know what happens if writing tries to cover everything in a room, or every wasted word that real conversation has.

One trick is, sometime, to not wedge more things into view but color the thing there with an extra word or so. Instead of spelling out how loud and powerful a motorcycle is as it moves in, is it enough to make it a “black motorcycle” or “Harley” and just let that give a sense of vividness to everything around it? A world made up of Harleys and the asphalt is more colorful than bikes on the road–unless it reflexively uses the fancier words every time, not caring when a thing’s less important or already established.

The classic form of that choice is adverb vs verb, and adjective vs noun. If a sentence comes out “John ran down the road,” an easy way to amplify it might be to make it “ran desperately”… but that draws the reader’s eye a little to that second word, a slight distraction compared to some more direct “dashed down” or “panted down.” Also, we all know adverbs and adjectives are the easier way to think of an image’s flavor, so they make the writing look a little more ordinary.

Still, again, not everything deserves the stronger verb or noun–and if they’re still just important enough to not leave out, a throwaway adverb or adjective can do the job. Then of course come the moments when the modifers are the only natural ways to show something (how much do you want to zigzag just to avoid calling the bike “black”?), or when the occasional explosive modifier could liven things up without making the phrasings seem modifier-heavy. For that matter, a style that uses too few adverbs and adjectives can start the reader thinking something’s odd about it, another distraction.

Dialog tags might be the most intense form of this, because the structure of dialog makes tags so conspicuous. Each adjective and adverb there gets framed by quote marks, in what may be pages of short-ish paragraphs to show any patterns of overuse… but the same spotlight makes flashier verbs like he snarled conspicuous too, and at least as easy to overuse. And even though “said” is called an “invisible” tag in comparison to all those, too many of those get noticed too, when many of them might not be needed at all or could be replaced with a separate “He gulped his drink” sentence.

Like the puppets or clothes, it all comes back to priorities. What’s most likely to change the story (of course the big villain doesn’t arrive on just “a motorcycle”), especially if it’s still new? Setting a part of the scene is good, but if those shadows just might have someone setting an ambush or the walls make it harder to run, the view starts falling into place.

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