The Dreaded Rewrite (Thoughts & Ideas)

It’s been said a dozen times over that the first draft isn’t about good writing. You put down the story on paper as completely as possible, and fix the writing as you revise and edit future drafts. It’s also been said that there is a point when you have to let a story go; there’s nothing left you can do with what you have. It’s better to have a good story that hasn’t quite reached it’s full potential than to have an over-polished turd.

But there’s one aspect of writing that falls between those two points that no one ever talks about. Sometimes the story changes so drastically during the drafting process that it becomes a different story. Entire characters are removed, events shifted in a new and exciting way. You have to rewrite.

A rewrite isn’t like a normal draft. You aren’t making the writing better, you’re making the story better. But this leaves you in an awkward position as a writer. Because you are well past the first draft, and you should be focused heavily on making the writing as good as possible. You’re also in the process of putting the story down for the first time again. You are stuck in this loop of dual mentalities, and it makes the entire thing a nightmare to think about. How can you go full force into the new story without worrying about writing if you are also focusing on making the writing good?

I find myself in that place right now, and it’s given me new insight into the writing habits of other authors. You see, I write chronologically: The story begins, events progress, and then it ends. I never understood how so many authors could write the ending first, or the middle. It didn’t make sense… until I found myself unable to rewrite my current project the way I normally do. The story has already progressed to the end in my mind. I just haven’t written it yet. And that means that I find myself trying to write whatever scene I find interesting at that moment, instead of recording it in order.

It’s like remembering your favorite scenes from a movie. You never remember the entire movie in order, despite having watched it that way. I get it now… and I don’t like it. My entire writing process has been turned on its head, and I have to relearn how to write all over again.

Serialized Fiction (Thoughts & Ideas)

In the olden days, they put on radio shows. These shows ran once a week for a brief period (30 minutes maybe), and then they ended with a cliffhanger to keep you excited for the next part. They were small parts to an incomplete story that would be told over months. This worked well, because it brought in more listeners to a fairly new medium of storytelling. It hooked you when you had nothing else to hook you. It was an uncontested method of delivering fiction to the masses.

Then TV tried its hand at storytelling in small time frames. It succeeded by offering small, self-contained stories that featured the same cast of characters. Occasionally they would follow a very loose, secondary story arc, but mostly they were just adventures in a world different from ours. It was a new way to tell stories that had to compete with radios and movies for an audience’s attention.

Television has evolved (for better or for worse) to a more narrative driven medium. A season now consists of a very important story arc over months of episodes, while mostly maintaining the self-contained story aspect in most episodes.

There have been serialized books for a long time now, but they were mostly for younger readers, and they followed the original TV formula. Recently though (since the boom of Independent Publishing) books have gotten the radio show treatment. Many people cite the benefits of “Serials” as being short and easy to read in an afternoon, or during a lunch break. Others have cited them as a waste of time, not having a complete story or coming out so far apart that they forget the series exists.

I think that we (as authors) have been approaching this from the wrong angle. Radio dramas worked because they didn’t have any real competition. In the modern world everything competes for your attention; other books, movies, TV shows, Youtube, facebook, Twitter, podcasts, you name it. Your potential audience needs a definitive reason to stick with your work.

For similar reasons, we can’t use the modern TV formula either. They’re too much like the radio dramas, in that they require you to tune in to every episode. So what’s left?

Old TV. It was a brilliant way to pull the attention away from other media. Produce a work that can be enjoyed every week, but that doesn’t take a lot of time. We should be applying this to books as well (Though not every book. I still believe in the strengths of full Novels.).

Write a story; a self-contained story; centered around the hero you’ve written. Make it short (under 40,000 words, but preferably closer to 20,000 words). Now write another one. And another. Weave in some over-arcing plot that ties them together. Use subtle hints and recurring side characters for this. Make the over-arcing plot simple and easy to follow even if a book or two is missed, because it is the secondary plot. This is your hook. This series, a true “Serial”, grabs readers and thrusts them into your writer’s mind. It introduces people who don’t normally read to you as an author. It hooks them, so that they can’t help but read your longer works.

Now write a novel, or a collection of short stories. Produce a work that takes more than an afternoon to read, and your fans will devour it. You will have more success as an author (studies have already begun to hint at this), but more importantly: You will create more readers in the world. You will improve the state of written fiction by introducing people who “don’t like to read” to longer fiction. You will make them want to read.

Authors shouldn’t be trying to split a novel into multiple parts for a quick cash grab. We shouldn’t be trying to solely cater to fans of bite-sized fiction. We should be using the tools at our disposal to expand the minds of those bite-sized fans, while still catering to them and fans of longer works. We should be trying to better our world through the stories we tell, and not worry about if we can pay rent from book sales. Because if we manage to improve the world, financial success will inevitably follow anyway.

Adverbs & Why Stephen King is an Idiot (Thoughts & Ideas)

This isn’t a “Now that I have your attention” post. I firmly believe that Stephen King is an idiot, or a ruthless businessman thinning the competition. Those are the only two legitimate reasons anyone would tell potential authors to remove an entire Part of Speech from the English language. It’s idiotic, and it means potential authors will never be as good as current ones. It thins the competition and ruins our culture for future generations.

Stephen King is quoted as having once said (in a book targeted at potential authors) that authors shouldn’t use Adverbs. As far as I know (I haven’t read the book because I’m afraid it’s full of this kind of drivel) he gives no reasoning why. He just says “don’t do it, because they are bad”. Except that people have checked, and he uses them all the time in his writing. He clearly doesn’t believe his own words.

Adverbs have a place in the English language. They exist for a reason, and there are some sentences that just can’t be said without them. I’ve written sentences that either have to use an Adverb or make no sense. They can’t be reworded to remove the Adverb. You could remove the sentence completely, but that information is important to the reader.

There are times when an Adverb could be removed and turned into other Parts of Speech with rewording. Sometimes, upon reflection or an editor’s notes, you realize “I could say this better, or in a way that’s at least just as good, yet different.” But that isn’t always the case. Sometimes it has to stay.

When people take the (hypocritical) advice of a single person and start going around like it’s fact, the world becomes dumber. Every time you tell someone to remove an Adverb from their work for the sole reason that Stephen King told you to, you make yourself sound less intelligent. Not only that, but you come across as an asshole too.

Every time someone tells me that I can throw in an incorrect Adjective in place of a correct Adverb and it will be better, I just want to start telling them that replacing every fourth word with “pleasant” will improve their story. Because it makes about as much sense, if we’re being honest.

Let’s stop trying to correct things that aren’t incorrect and focus on actually improving things that need it. Like run-on sentences.

Why I’m a Grammar Nazi

Grammar is hard. I’ll be the first to admit that. Figuring out grammar for a foreign language is mind boggling. So if English isn’t your primary language, I understand when you screw up in typing English sentences.

I will correct you though, because repetition is the key to learning for most people. If I keep telling you how the rules work, chances are you’ll grasp it eventually. And you should be trying to grasp it, as hard as it is, because why bother learning a language if you aren’t planning on using it right.

With those of you of you who do speak and write English as a primary language, the only viable excuse for not understanding a English grammar rule is that you were never taught. While there is no excuse for the poor American Education System, it is a viable excuse for not learning something. But that’s bad, because our culture should be striving to teach the rules for our own language. (I can’t speak for English schools.)

And for those of you who want to argue Spanish as a dominant language in parts of America, realize that it means nothing in the context of this post. American English is the primary language for America. It doesn’t matter where you’re from, or how tolerant we as a melting pot country should be, because we as a country decided upon a single primary language a long time ago. We should be open to multiple languages, but we should understand our primary language first.

I am constantly in search of rules I was never taught. (I just recently learned the exact rules for the ellipses) As a writer I want my editor to have less work to do, but I also love languages. I hope to someday speak several, and I know that in order for me to understand how other languages work, I’ll have to understand my own first.

You don’t have to care about other languages or be a writer to care about communication though. I’m a firm believer that if you don’t plan on being understood when you talk, then you shouldn’t open your mouth at all. Language is about being understood and getting your point across; grammar is a huge part of this. I’m not talking about just punctuation or spelling either, but sentence structure and syntax as well. If you’re commenting on a forum or Youtube video, it’s because you want me to understand your view of something. If you have terrible grammar, I can’t understand your view, which makes your entire post the epitome of pointless.

We live in an age where spelling is at an all-time low point, because everything from our phones to individual websites correct it for us. I have a friend who legitimately believes that he doesn’t ever need to spell anything correctly because Google will figure it out and fix it for him. It’s a sad and terrifying reality. This mentality leads to spelling so poor that spellcheck can’t figure out the intended words.

But what’s worse; what really baffles my brain; is that people who think like that don’t even use spellcheck anymore. I once asked someone on Youtube how he spelled a simple word wrong when the built in spellcheck for comments knew what he was trying to say. He told me that he didn’t care about using spellcheck, because if anyone cared they could figure it out. He stopped caring what spellcheck had to say, because he assumed all people other than him worked just like spellcheck!

So note: when I correct your grammar (on the internet or in person), it isn’t to belittle you. It’s to teach you. I want to understand you, but you have to be understandable if that’s going to happen. And if you’re one of those people who doesn’t care about grammar/being understood, and you type/speak just to see/hear your own words, I implore you to just stop talking. Live your life in silence, because all you’re doing is wasting energy and annoying everyone around you.

Live Action Batman: It can be done (Thoughts & Ideas)

So recently I was reading a post about the various animated Batman incarnations and what made each one good in their own right. As I was reading I came across a quote from the creative minds behind Batman: The Animated Series from the 90s. It basically stated that the cartoon was not going to be campy or high action. Batman wasn’t going to just beat up a bunch of bad guys for 20 minutes. Instead he was going to go back to the roots of the character and focus on detective work, and live up to the title “World’s Greatest Detective”.

Now I personally think that the show failed as a whole in this goal. Several memorable episodes were high action/no real detective work. But my favorite episode stands out as a shining beacon of what the show wanted to be. In it Bruce Wayne puts on face putty, makeup and hair dye to make himself appear homeless. All of this was done to get close to the homeless community and do real detective work. It was an incredible episode that showcased a lot of what I love about Batman.

This got me thinking about the Live Action Batman movies. I don’t believe there has been a truly good Live Action Batman movie to date. Sure a few of them are mediocre movies if you pretend that the guy on screen isn’t Batman, but that kind of defeats the purpose. None of them “feel” like Batman. And it was this line of thinking that made me finally realize why: All of them are trying to paint Batman as an over-the-top, high action, larger-than-life Superhero. He isn’t. Batman is a hero, and a great detective, but he isn’t super or larger-than-life in any way.

In much the same way that I feel it was a mistake to try and be “dark” with 2013’s Man of Steel, I think it’s a huge flaw in your script if Batman is being portrayed as a Superhero. So the following is how I would make a good Live Action Batman movie. (Film makers feel free to rip off this entire post and make this movie. I don’t even need credit.)

 

First the cast:

Batman – The man cast as Batman needs to be able to do 3 things well. First, he needs to be able to pull of the fake Bruce Wayne, the over-the-top billionaire playboy. I’m talking RDJ’s Tony Stark level rich asshole that the audience loves but the people around him find irritating. Bruce Wayne is Batman’s mask, his way of hiding who he really is, and thus needs to be off-putting to others so as to make him less wanted. Second, he needs to be able to pull of the darkness of Batman. This (contrary to popular belief) does not boil down to a scratchy voice. His voice should be lower pitched than Bruce’s to throw off suspicion, but that’s it. Batman is about fear and dominance over cowardly criminals. Make that part of the act. Third, he needs to be able to slip into the brilliant detective role easily. Batman’s true self is that of the genius detective. He needs to sound as if he knows what he’s talking about, even when the words sound foreign to the actor. He needs to be confident in his speech and not stumble over the script. (I don’t have an ideal actor here, because this role is something I’ve never seen done well before. Plenty of actors can play any one of these parts well, but all three is a stretch and this should be a grueling decision.)

The Riddler – He shouldn’t be funny. Don’t hire a comedian to play the role. The Riddler does crack jokes occasionally, but it’s a dry, intelligent humor. He isn’t goofy, he isn’t a trickster. The Riddler is a brilliant man. He’s a linguist, a mathematician, and a scientist. In much the way that Joker is often referred to as what Batman could have become, The Riddler could have just as easily used his gifts to be a rival detective of Batman’s. He serves as Batman’s intellectual foil. While other villains combat Batman with crazy, violence, or money, The Riddler combats him with intelligence. Hire a serious actor, an actor who can play the calculating villain. (Julian McMahon is a perfect example of an actor who can pull this off, though he might not be the best for the role)

Commissioner Gordon – Yes he needs to be the commissioner. We don’t care about his life before he’s commissioner. (I actually do, but not for a single movie) A cop who’s seen a lot of bad stuff in his time, but isn’t a lost cause yet. (Dan Florek would really shine here, but in honesty there are a few dozen candidates) There isn’t a whole lot to this character, because he is a supporting character and shouldn’t have too much screen time. But he needs to be a good actor because his small amount of screen time is vital to the film.

Bit-Parts –  Everyone else in the film needs to be chosen based on how much screen time you plan to give them in future films. (All should be competent actors though) Characters who are important to the Batman mythos but not this story should make small cameos. Not all of them mind you, but three or four would be great. The opening scene is a great place to catch a glimpse of someone who might be The Penguin, or Ra’s al Ghul in a future film. Having mention that a criminal recently caught by the Batman is named Waylon Jones would be a great nod to the larger-than-life side of his rogue’s gallery without actually delving too far into it yet. It should be noted here that Batman does have a larger-than-life side to his enemies. These can be explored in subsequent films, but his introductory movie should be more grounded.

 

The opening scene should be a party. Not at Wayne Manor, we shouldn’t see that so early. Perhaps at a hotel ballroom, or another rich person’s home. The scene should open on a slew of guests conversing and laughing and generally having a good time. After a minute or two of the general party we focus on a loud boisterous man hitting on a beautiful woman. She pretends to be put off by his advances, but it’s clear he has something she’s interested in (namely his money, but we don’t know that yet). After the exchange he excuses himself and heads to the bathroom. It’s here, as he enters the stall (or perhaps when he’s done), that two more men enter the bathroom and begin talking about something that sounds highly illegal. (What they’re talking about specifically I don’t know, but it has to get the man in the stall’s attention as suspicious.)

The man in the stall peeks under the door and catches a brief glimpse of one of the men. When they leave he follows a few seconds later. He steps out into the party and is approached by people who want to talk to him. He tries to placate them as he looks for his target. It’s here that it’s confirmed that this is indeed Bruce Wayne. He ends up offending those trying to talk to him as he rudely excuses himself and leaves the party. He watches as the man whose face he knows gets in a cab. He listens intently for the location he’s being taken to and then pretends to be doing something else as his excuse for being outside. A phone call on a cell phone works here, but I’d go with the unorthodox Smoke Break. But Batman doesn’t smoke, you say. Maybe, but what if it isn’t a regular cigarette? Maybe it’s a fake cigarette as part of his Bruce Wayne persona. And in today’s age it could be an electronic cigarette that can easily be nothing but water vapor. Remember, everything Bruce Wayne does is an act.

From here the movie can either have him leave to pursue the suspicious character or go back into the party to continue his appearance as Bruce Wayne, depending on where the man was going and if the suspicious act seems urgent. (Parts of this plot are intentionally vague for this post)

The next important scene should be of our villain, Edward Nigma. It should become readily apparent to anyone paying attention that this man’s face was in the opening pan of the party, but not seen for the rest of that scene. He should have in both of his appearances up to this point been wearing a dark suit. It should not be a green suit, he’s passing as a regular person. This scene is important in some way as setting up his big crime later, but the details are flexible. So long as he’s plotting the crime or laying a piece of the riddle as he passes by a random crime scene it works. We just need to be introduced to this man, though we still don’t know his name.

From here Bruce Wayne needs to be in disguise in a shady part of town. He should be recognizable to the audience as the same man, but it different enough that we believe others not recognizing him. He should be in the guise of a two-bit thug. He should be keeping tabs on his suspect. It’s during this scene that he realizes the other man is indeed committing a crime. And as he forces himself (it should be a struggle) to stay out of it while in his disguise, the man gets away with it. Bruce makes a mental note to get him later (noticeable by a determined set of his jaw as he watches the man get away). He slinks away to a nearby alley where his car is parked. (A dingy older car that isn’t out of place.) Here he reaches into the backseat and grabs a black bundle.

The next scene has him on a nearby rooftop looking through electronic binoculars at the crime scene as the cops go through it. He should be able to see the crime scene fairly clearly, as the audience should see what he does here. He can’t go to the crime scene directly because the cops don’t like him, even though that isn’t stated yet the audience can guess. It’s during this scene that he discovers something odd and out of place. Something that for now just plagues him as strange, yet later is revealed to be a clue to Riddler’s riddle.

There should then be a transition scene. Something should be revealed to us that’s important to either Batman or The Riddler. No it isn’t either of their origins. WE DO NOT NEED AN ORIGIN STORY. The only thing that’s important about Batman’s origin story is that he doesn’t like guns and his parents are dead when the movie starts. Nothing else matters in the context of the films. We don’t care which alley his parents were murdered in, or even that they were murdered in the first place. We don’t care about his years of training that made him a badass martial arts fighter. He’s Batman when the film starts, and he’s been Batman for a few years. And unless Batman was present for a villain’s origin, we don’t ever need to see that.

This transition scene is an elusive thing in my mind because so many scenes could fit here and be crucial to the overall plot. But it serves as a branch between Batman overlooking a crime scene and the next time he’s Batman on screen. A scene with Commissioner Gordon could work well here in hindsight.

Because Batman should be present for the next crime. He should witness it in progress and stop it. It’s at this point that he notices another strange clue. Alone it once again confuses him. He should also be still there puzzling about it when the cops show up and he has to beat a hasty retreat.

Now we’re introduced to Wayne Manor, and the camera pans down through the dirt and rock to the Batcave. Now we don’t need the giant penny or the dinosaur set up around him here. (What is that penny even from?) It should be simple, elegant. He should have some sort of computer station, a table that he can use for work, and a staircase that leads out of frame. There should be the hint that something (the Batmobile) is just out of frame in a few shots, but we shouldn’t see it.

Batman, with his cowl off, should be at the table. He should have a sketch or photo of the first clue and the actual second clue should be next to it. He shouldn’t be looking at them as if they’re connected, just that he was working on them both and they’re on the same table. He should be frustrated at their meanings. He shouldn’t figure out that they’re connected yet. (This could be a good place to introduce Alfred if you plan to use him in future movies. He could be someone for Bruce to bounce ideas off of. Though to be honest, this entire film works perfectly fine without him, so it’s really a cameo style appearance.)

Now at some point Bruce Wayne should be forced to make another public appearance, either at his company or another event. It doesn’t have to be at any specific point, but any time from here on works. We need to be reminded of his mask.

When the third unusual clue crosses Batman is when he should realize that they’re connected. He shouldn’t solve the entire thing yet, but he should see the strands weaving them together. Perhaps they spell out a time and day, or a location. A part of something bigger.

We need another scene with E. Nigma now. Now we need to find out his name. Now we need to see him in his green three-piece suit and bowler hat. But not neon green like the comics. A subtle dark green. If he stands out too much he’ll be easy to notice. We need to see him committing a robbery of some sort. The audience needs to witness the entire crime from start to finish and watch as Nigma drops the clue with a practiced hand. We should be anxious to see how Batman solves it, because we already know the solution. The audience should be feeling what Nigma is feeling as Batman goes through the crime scene. (Stealing something from Wayne Enterprises means that Bruce Wayne has unfiltered access to the crime scene, and is a lazy way to go here. The Riddler has no idea Bruce Wayne is Batman and shouldn’t plan on Bruce gaining access to the crime scene.) It should be something that Batman should gain access to before the cops, but not his own company. This could be where those clues up to this point have lead.

The clue (or clues) at The Riddler’s personal crime scene should lead Batman to a final showdown. A battle of wits between him and his adversary. An adversary that he didn’t even realize he had before now. The Riddler knows of the Batman’s exploits and his nose for solving crimes. He knows that Batman is smarter than the cops, which is how he knows Batman isn’t a cop, and he wants to test Batman’s skills. He puts Batman through a set of puzzles and riddles, pushing his on-the-fly deduction skills to the test. In the end, if The Riddler can win then Batman will be captured and unmasked for the world to see. If Batman wins, The Riddler will give himself up to the authorities. But there is a twist. More than Batman’s identity is on the line. If Batman fails, a dozen people will die.

The Riddler should keep his face cloaked in shadow during this process, allowing his suit to be seen as his trademark but not his face. He should not wear a mask. Batman should start with a seemingly easy victory on his hands, but should struggle as the puzzles become harder. At one point he should actually get one of the riddles wrong and The Riddler should cackle with glee at his superior intelligence. (By now he’s been calling himself The Riddler to Batman for a while) This is the turning point. As The Riddler throws a puzzle at Batman that the Caped Crusader thinks unsolvable, Batman remembers something. The first clue, the one the police have. It is the key to solving this puzzle, and that realization is enough for his mind to flash to the other two clues and associate them with other riddles or puzzles up to this point. He even gives the correct answer to the previously failed riddle.

The Riddler eventually accepts defeat. Batman has solved every puzzle, answered every riddle correctly. The Riddler throws down something that looks like a detonator. It’s here that Batman realizes the man he’d been competing against was nearby the whole time. The detonator has the antenna snapped off and a small tag affixed. It has a cryptic set of letters and numbers on it. The Riddler tells Batman that he will not attempt to unmask the World’s Greatest Detective, but because Batman did initially answer a riddle wrong, neither will he turn himself in. He then slips out before Batman can stop him.

How you proceed from here is up to you I suppose, but I feel no need to continue. Wrap up any subplots that are going on and roll credits. But one thing about the credits. You know that point when the credits are slowly fading in and out, and then it transitions to actual rolling credits? That is where one more short scene needs to be. I call this the Mid-credits scene.

We see Mister Nigma sitting at a diningroom table, putting together clues to something. The camera zooms slightly out and we realize it’s a computer monitor and it has text in the lower corner. An address. And next to it is the tag that Batman received in their last encounter. A quick glance makes it clear that the tag is a scramble of the address on the monitor. Police bust in the door and arrest Nigma as the camera pans from the computer monitor to Bruce Wayne smiling smugly at his desk.