I've fallen pretty hard on my posts, just like I thought I would. Now rather than posting every Sunday, I'm just going to post whenever I have the time and an idea, with the goal of one post per week. With that being said I do have a post here, somewhere.
The following may contain spoilers for the movie mentioned. Read at your own risk.
I just finished watching (500) Days of Summer (yeah, I'm behind on my movies, so sue me). What struck me as I was watching it, is that this movie should be horrible. From the little back story I have on it, the screenwriter (whose name I won't bother to look up) wrote it based on his relationship with a girl who didn't want any serious relationship with anyone, was up front about it, and yet the guy still didn't listen to what she said. With that in mind, the main character Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a Mary Sue to the nth degree. As far as I can tell, the writer just put himself in the story. This is really the first warning sign.
When a writer makes himself the main character of a story, you can usually bet the ending will be extremely positive for the protagonist or extremely negative for the antagonist. It's not even a particularly bad thing, when done well, but that is rare. What you usually end up with is the main character being put through trials that seem pointless and even self-inflicted with a resolution that could have been achieved long before the audience ever got involved.
Another side effect of Mary Sue-itis (yes, it is inflamed) is a whinny main character.* Being the victim is easy. When you're looking at the world from only one point of view, it's easy to see how everything is stacked against you: your boss is mean, your landlord is lazy, nothing goes right, people never help you succeed. It is something we all do. There's probably a lot of physiology behind it, but the bottom line is that no matter how much we do it ourselves, we are only annoyed by it when others do it. Maybe it's just part of the human condition: "I am the only victim in this world; everyone else has it better."
The last side effect of this problem is static characters. The main character never really learns a lesson.** Even though he seems, near the end, to have learned, any change hinted at by the writer is thrown out the window at the first sign of a happy resolution. This is easy for the writer to do because the character is so much like him that he would rather the character be happy than give the character a proper ending.
The other warning sign, albeit the one you don't see until the end, is that the movie contradicts itself under the guise of irony. At the beginning, after stating that it is not a love story, the movie presents itself as the antithesis to '50's and '60's Motown love songs and to romantic comedies. The truth: it definantly is a romantic comedy. Romantic comedies are films with light-hearted, humorous plotlines, centered on romantic ideals such as a true love able to surmount most obstacles (Wikipedia). It neither attempts to prove or disprove this assertion, but still deals with love and it's effects.
We have a semi-intelligent writer who has been spurned by a woman and come up with a lame character that ultimately learns nothing and barely moves on. Ostensibly this should be a bad movie, yet I enjoyed it and would at least recommend others watch it too. What gives? Basically: good dialog.
(500) Days' (and its writer's) saving grace is conversations between characters. They are witty, engaging and funny enough to elicit a laugh. Had the writer put enough work into the plot and characters as he did into the conversations, the movie would be worth multiple viewings. When the characters interact, I can seem them as real people, whereas by themselves, the strings are visible.
Even with the good dialog between characters, it is still hard to miss the final problem: there are no real supporting characters. Other than the two main characters, every other person in the movie serves as a plot device or commentary on the situation. None of them is real in that they have a life outside of the plot.
So what is there to learn from the movie? 1) Avoid making yourself the main character, 2) Good dialog will do wonders for your writing, 3) Make all of your characters as real as possible, and 4) Only be ironic when it serves a purpose other that irony.
*Because some of the supporting characters do notice that Tom has problems and is being whinny, I would be willing to concede that the writer is poking some fun at himself, but only to an extent. The downtrodden Tom that most of the movie revolves around is proof that the writer wanted to complain rather than tell his story truthfully.
*So Tom is able to move on, but I'm not really counting that as a lesson; it's a plot device.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Here be Clichés
Inexperienced writers* are often given a few pieces of advice: "show, don't tell", "write what you know", "just keep writing". These are perfect examples of clichés. For those that don't know, a cliché is "a saying, expression, idea, or element of an artistic work which has been overused" (Wikipedia). A cliché--while the word seems to have a negative connotation--can be good or bad, and often it's the execution not the cliché itself that is the determining factor. Of the three "tips", I would say that the first two are ostensibly worthless, and the last one is the only one that every got anyone anywhere.
Gladiator, the 2000 Ridley Scott movie, is based on a cliché. A successful man is betrayed by his own people for political/business reasons, his family is killed, and he begins a journey for revenge. It's a story that's been told a lot in many different forms. The reason that Gladiator was successful was because it was executed well. It had good writing, acting and directing. Had the writing been bad, or had the cast not been made up of good actors who did a good job, the movie could be written off as a "clichéd failure".
Even when a cliché is "bad", it can still be somewhat successful. I'd say that "write what you know", when taken literally, is the absolute worst advice in the world. This leads to main characters who are "Mary Sues" and boring as people, or a legion of marginally successful writers who are thrust into situations similar to the stories they write. Stephen King has built a career and made a fortune writing about himself.
I would classify myself as a semi-rabid King fan, but his non-horror work is by and large better than the scary stuff. Both The Shining and Misery are about writers (failing and successful, respectively) caught up in horror situations. Even though the characters are built on the pitfall many inexperienced writers fall into, they are quite successful; and The Shining is probably the scariest book I've read. But they do still run into problems. The characters aren't dynamic and can feel more like set pieces than actors. Unless the writer learns more about himself through the time it takes to finish the story, their character doesn't learn anything about himself. Thus, the resolution is less satisfying than it could be otherwise.
Time period has a lot to do with what is cliché. Invoking the Muses to help in the telling of stories was common in Greek and Roman days, and begins many ancient epic poems. Later Alexander Pope even used it successfully, in Imitations of Horace. Nowadays invoking of the Muses would relegate a writer to the fantasy genera, or a poet to the self-obsessed intelligentsia.
The final use of clichés that I think is important is in use of words and phrases. In the preceding paragraphs, I've used "nowadays", "thus" and "by and large". These are used often by many writers and people who speak. While there isn't anything actually wrong with them, they are familiar and not particularly engaging. In William Zinsser's "On Writing Well", he advocates the use of being original and surprising right down to diction. If you're using the same words that everyone else is using, there's nothing to stand out with. When your word choice is fresh, your writing is much more enjoyable to read.
Finally, the best way to think about clichés is like the use of distortion in rock music: when used by someone inexperienced, it serves to highlight the shortcomings; when used sparingly by someone who knows what their doing, it only serves to enhance the final product. But that is the good thing about writing. The rules aren't set in stone. Everything doesn't apply to everyone, and once you know the rules well, you can break them.
Edit: For a funny and mostly accurate take on common phrases, check out the "Some Werds" track from George Carlin's "Toledo Windowbox" comedy album.
*There's a difference between I'll attempt to make a distinction between "inexperienced" and "young". While inexperience does come with youth, anyone can be an inexperienced writer, while young writers are usually in their early 20's or younger and can have any level of experience, to an extent.
Gladiator, the 2000 Ridley Scott movie, is based on a cliché. A successful man is betrayed by his own people for political/business reasons, his family is killed, and he begins a journey for revenge. It's a story that's been told a lot in many different forms. The reason that Gladiator was successful was because it was executed well. It had good writing, acting and directing. Had the writing been bad, or had the cast not been made up of good actors who did a good job, the movie could be written off as a "clichéd failure".
Even when a cliché is "bad", it can still be somewhat successful. I'd say that "write what you know", when taken literally, is the absolute worst advice in the world. This leads to main characters who are "Mary Sues" and boring as people, or a legion of marginally successful writers who are thrust into situations similar to the stories they write. Stephen King has built a career and made a fortune writing about himself.
I would classify myself as a semi-rabid King fan, but his non-horror work is by and large better than the scary stuff. Both The Shining and Misery are about writers (failing and successful, respectively) caught up in horror situations. Even though the characters are built on the pitfall many inexperienced writers fall into, they are quite successful; and The Shining is probably the scariest book I've read. But they do still run into problems. The characters aren't dynamic and can feel more like set pieces than actors. Unless the writer learns more about himself through the time it takes to finish the story, their character doesn't learn anything about himself. Thus, the resolution is less satisfying than it could be otherwise.
Time period has a lot to do with what is cliché. Invoking the Muses to help in the telling of stories was common in Greek and Roman days, and begins many ancient epic poems. Later Alexander Pope even used it successfully, in Imitations of Horace. Nowadays invoking of the Muses would relegate a writer to the fantasy genera, or a poet to the self-obsessed intelligentsia.
The final use of clichés that I think is important is in use of words and phrases. In the preceding paragraphs, I've used "nowadays", "thus" and "by and large". These are used often by many writers and people who speak. While there isn't anything actually wrong with them, they are familiar and not particularly engaging. In William Zinsser's "On Writing Well", he advocates the use of being original and surprising right down to diction. If you're using the same words that everyone else is using, there's nothing to stand out with. When your word choice is fresh, your writing is much more enjoyable to read.
Finally, the best way to think about clichés is like the use of distortion in rock music: when used by someone inexperienced, it serves to highlight the shortcomings; when used sparingly by someone who knows what their doing, it only serves to enhance the final product. But that is the good thing about writing. The rules aren't set in stone. Everything doesn't apply to everyone, and once you know the rules well, you can break them.
Edit: For a funny and mostly accurate take on common phrases, check out the "Some Werds" track from George Carlin's "Toledo Windowbox" comedy album.
*
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Just a quick intoductory post
Basically this will just be a place for me to talk about writing and language because I'm a nerd like that, and it interests the hell out of me. I'll attempt to update every Sunday, but because it's me that may or may not happen. Afterward I'll whore the post out (which is probably why you're reading this) to try and get people to read it. If you enjoy it show it to to others (page views, page views, page views). I'm not gonna edit much, just for grammar. Any style edits will be retro edits, and whatever's taken out will be left and crossed out, just to see how my writing changes through subsequent edits.
Now, a short list for me to remember so topics: Bernard Cornwell, Roger Ebert, rap, excessive words.
If there's anything you'd be interested in, comment it, I'll see what I can do.
Now, a short list for me to remember so topics: Bernard Cornwell, Roger Ebert, rap, excessive words.
If there's anything you'd be interested in, comment it, I'll see what I can do.
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