Hollywood's Bloated Ending Problem--a quick Romulus note

Hollywood's Bloated Ending Problem (Writing Advice) from Brandon McNulty

Just thought I'd share another video from Brandon.  This one talks about endings, and he makes a good reference to Alien: Romulus.  After my last post, I thought this was kinda interesting.

Not only that, but the videos Brandon McNulty does with these Good vs. Bad are lots of fun.

The New White Board

Once again, I'm writing about my new office.  Having a space and a supportive husband make for amazing improvements in my writing life.  

Now, I just need a little more time and structure.

A few months ago, I told my husband I wanted a white board for my office.  He put it up a month or so ago:

I'm only 5,000 words into this new beast, but I'm enjoying it.  The rough background and inspiration are the craziness of work politics and Graham Greene's Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party. 

Anyway, this is the ramblings of my latest, crazy idea.  The top part of the white board outlines characters, setting, and conflicts.  The bottom part snakes through the main plot parts, starting with,

And, of course, here is the ending:

Not to give the ending away, but, yes, someone will go postal.  And, yes, I'm thrilled about who this character is--I look forward to writing this character's downfall.

I fully recognize that prewriting and outlining and mapping are not for everyone.  On the other hand, I have enjoyed mapping out this project in a short amount of time, seeing who these characters can be, and pushing this plot further than reality or Greene could push this.

So here I go again, on a fun journey through fiction that helps me laugh at reality....

Plot Flaws: Break the Rules.

So, I've talked about a bunch of plot flaws, and in the end, they are really more like tools for the proverbial toolbox.

When the professionals (no, I'm not putting myself in this camp) use them well, we sit back and enjoy the clever manipulation. It's a beautiful discovery how they use the tools and break them.

What I find so interesting is something I discover and rediscover in writing: all the good writers break the rules. And when they do it well, we enjoy it.

How do we do it?

I think the only way we can learn how to break the rules is to learn the rules. Love the rules. Study the rules.

And then break them. Not all at once in one swoop, but one at a time, finding the balance between the expected and the unexpected, the novel and the formula.

So I'm going to end this series on plots!

Break rules like not using no exclamation marks!!!

I'm practicing breaking rules!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Fun Stuff: More Plot Flaws

Willingful suspension of disbelief (also willing suspension of disbelief, but I learned the term as willingful).

This basically means that if you do a good job, the reader will go anywhere with you.  If establish good parameters and establish the world well, the reader will travel with you.  The reader willingly suspends their belief to travel through fiction (and in particular, fantasy and science fiction) to go on an adventure.

And readers know when you start to lie and deviate from the rules.

Basically, we have two rules with which to work.

1. Make the world believable with lots of details.
2. Make the people believable with lots of humanity.

Take The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.  This world is fairly simply.  The rules basically involve talking animals, some magic, and a winter that never ends--which, if you have ever lived in Minnesota or apparently the Northern Plains this year, is fairly convincing.  Also, we travel into this world with a group of kids that learn about the rules with us.  

Then, we need to believe the characters.  The siblings interact like four children who are siblings.  When Edmund betrays the others, we believe it, especially if we have siblings.

The interesting thing about the willingful suspension of disbelief is when a writer breaks them.

Take Brazil again.  You can almost point to the moment in the movie when you can't believe in the world anymore--it has broken from the rules.  We know it, the filmmaker knows it, and we start to roll our eyes.  We know this isn't going to work.

And then, we know the filmmaker is just playing with us.  Terry pushed us and played with us, and we realize it.

And even though Terry broke the rules, we play along.  Mostly, we're okay with it.

Here's a video that should be funny but isn't really.  Nonetheless, it has a great breakdown of the guidelines of suspension of disbelief:

The Fun Stuff: More Plot Flaws

I shouldn't enjoy the flaws as much as I do.  Something wonderful come out of looking at the flaws.  

I find something even more amazing in finding "flaws" that work well.  Despite the rules, I love finding a broken rule that somehow defies logic.  And is beautiful.

Here's another one.

Retroactive Continuity.

This is a new term for me, but the concept is familiar.  Basically, the author--or perhaps team of writers--changes the history to coincide with new plots.

This happens in comic books, I imagine, but I bring up another movie (my, I haven't been reading much these days, have I?).  

I watched the latest installment in the Terminator franchise last weekend.  I love a good Terminator movie, and this one exercised some expansive retroactive continuity.  Kyle Reese travels back from the future to find a new Sarah Connor (not the buff and tough Linda Hamilton we all loved) who is witty but softer and knows about Reese and John and doesn't have the awesome muscles.

Oh, and then John travels back from the future and tries to kill both Reese and Sarah.  Yep, he's the bad guy.  Did I mention that this was going to be a spoiler alert?  Sorry.

Point is that this movie stretches the limits of retroactive continuity.  And yet we expect it.  We roll our eyes and wish Linda were the only Sarah Connor they could use in these movies, but somehow, we go with it.  

This leads me to the next installment, the willingful suspension of disbelief....  Coming soon.