Could this be the cover of my new book? Image courtesy of Paul Downey

Now I’m not going to throw any spoilers around regarding what it is I’m reading or who I’m talking about, but I was just happily reading along when one of the characters got killed. And I didn’t like that. Not one bit. It wasn’t a main character or anything, but the fact that she got killed, and how it ‘just happened’ threw me for a loop. I guess it’s a success on the authors part that I came to care about the character enough to feel hurt and betrayed that she got offed. It wasn’t exactly a ratings grabber either. Not the kind of ‘shock killing’ that shows like 24 and Spooks are so fond of. It wasn’t a cheap death. But it got me thinking about the subject.

Charactericide

Now I’ve developed a bit of a reputation amongst my non-writerly friends as someone who gets a little slash happy when it comes to my characters. Which is actually very unlike me. Because I do get attached to characters and while I am willing to put them through several degrees of torture, I’m reluctant to kill them off. To the degree I will bring them back from the dead if possible. I should start writing comics.

I guess I shouldn’t use the term ‘shock killing’. Because any time a character gets killed should be a shock. As I said above, shows like 24 seems to have an almost sadistic disrespect for the value of human life. People get killed left right and centre all to drag the plot out, in increasingly contrived ways. Don’t get me wrong, I love 24, but when death is treated as a plot device it loses impact. I do think Spooks handles it a little better, at least in the early season’s, before it became an ‘how do we kill off the main character spectacularly’ competition. Cheap Death is something that should be avoided altogether.

Writing Death

I had this kind of experience when I was throwing around ideas with myself about something I’m working on. It was just an offhand idea about killing one of my characters and the method. Like I say, just idle speculation. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. And it wasn’t a cheap death either, or something to move the plot along, it’s just the characters were in this situation, and it unfolded in a particular way and it just made sense. And I was shocked by this. Not so much because I’d grown attached to the character, and didn’t want to see this person die, but more because I felt the impact that this death would have, and the affect it might have on the reader.

If you’re like me, and you write ‘big’ things (sci-fi in my case) where character death is likely (I’m not talking about crime thrillers here, where death is absolutely necessary) then fine-tuning death mechanics is a skill that needs to be practiced. I’ll admit, I write different types of sci-fi, but the situations tend to be the same, the characters are in a near constant state of high peril. Of course, the most necessary element here is – if you’re going to kill a character off – then make it matter to the reader. There are other occasions (aside from the one I mentioned above) where a character has been killed, and it’s had an impact on me. And this is, I think, the biggest failure of 24. Because we don’t really care about the characters. When they die it isn’t a surprise, and even if it is, it loses the impact.

I’ve never really thought about it in terms of my own writing, because like I say, I’m very reluctant to kill characters off. The point I guess I’m trying to make is to create characters that you care about, or more importantly that the reader will care about, and see how it feels to kill them off. Because if killing them off doesn’t have that much of an impact, then the character isn’t successful, right? I guess the only exception to this rule is if the character is deliberately bad (I am hesitant to use the word evil) and their death is cathartic.

Just whatever you do, don’t make the character an annoying f***wit, because honestly, those guys can’t die quick enough for my liking.

Dedicated Space

Still there. Image by Gene Selkov on Flickr

A few weeks back, Matt was talking about forming good habits.  This got me thinking about how to do this.  In fact, the comment I made was to have a terminal solely for writing.  Matt has previously talked about creating a space for yourself and your writing, a bubble within which you can fully connect to the writing process.  Or something.  If you are having trouble with your writing (and again, I mean me here) then this is probably a good start. 

When I first got my net-book, writing is all I used it for.  It can’t run any games, I didn’t have wireless internet when I got it, so that was out, all I was using it for was the writing.  And it worked.  Because I knew, every time I switched the machine on, I was going to do some god damn writing.  In fact, it was because of this that I managed to storm my way through the serialised piece I did last year in eight weeks.  For me that was an achievement.  That was the equivalent of a book, in eight weeks.  This of course made me feel good about myself, which inspired me in my other writing. 

But time wore on, I did get wireless internet, I installed a video player and got a bucket load of anime that had been recommended to me, and then I fell victim to the syndrome.  What syndrome you may ask? 

‘I’ll just have a quick look online before I get started.’

 
Technology.  I have a love hate relationship with it.  On the one hand, it is advancing at a quickening pace, which (in theory anyway) should make it easier and easier to write, make notes, whatever, on the move, in any spare time you have (unless you write cyberpunk of course, in which case you have to keep updating it to stop it looking… dated).  On the other hand, better technology provides more avenues for easy distractions.  Wireless internet everywhere you go, addictive little games on your handheld devices, easy and simple and oh so very distracting, texting, IM, Twitter… 

The other thing I really need to do is to change my mentality.  I get in from work and I think about writing, but I’d rather do something relaxing instead.  Like murder gorgeously rendered people/aliens/monsters on my PS3.  I need to start thinking that the writing is fun!  I know, I know, that might work if you’re a casual writer, if it’s a hobby or whatever, and somewhere down the line I lost sight of that.  Maybe it’s this tortured writer cliché.  Writing cant possibly be fun right?  Writers sit there, agonising over the placement and use of every word, and usually end up dying alone and penniless in some squat, having drank themselves to death, right? 

Exuberance!

 
This is how you need to feel about writing (and again, I mean ‘I’).  It is a creative process after all.  You mould and shape your words to bring this beautiful project to life, after all, what could better than to bring something fresh and new and alive into this dull, depressing world we live in?

As long as it isn’t dark romance involving vampires.  Ugh.

However, this one dream stuck with me. I think mainly because I felt like I could make it work. I’ve had dreams like this before. In fact, one of my first year writing assignments at university was based upon a dream I had that was so disturbingly coherent that I can still recall the exact details to this day. Getting back to the case at hand, part of me just couldn’t let this dream go, and I started to think about how I could de-dreamify it.

But this is me we’re talking about, and of course I wouldn’t even consider starting a new project without it being some behemoth thing that becomes massively out of control before I’ve even written a word of text. The other thing is, as I’m sure you’re aware, we writers are, at heart, lazy souls, and it just so happened that I had a couple of redundant bits and pieces lying around in the ideas box which could, if suitably manipulated, fit in quite well with this new idea that was forming in my mind.

Getting Ahead of Yourself

Is it time to put up another "under construction" sign? Image from Anita Hart on Flicker.

‘But wait!’ you may well cry, ‘What about all those other unfinished projects you’ve got lying around?  You need to finish what you’ve started!’  That’s what my ex told me anyway. Oh, but before we go too far down that road…

It’s true. I am acutely aware that I have a massive pile of other projects that are lying around unfinished. Some are even dormant, I haven’t looked at them in that long. Thinking about it now, I have *counts them* nine projects in various stages of completion. That is – let’s be honest – shameful. While yes, I have two that just need a quick redrafting run over, I have others that have stalled in the writing phase. There have been a lot of posts on this site over the years about procrastination, and could this possibly be the worst kind?  Starting yet another project in order to avoid writing one of the existing ones?

Any writing is good writing. Right?

Quite simple when you think about it. If I’m writing this, at least I am writing. But really people, how many projects is too much?  Or rather too many?  As much as I loathe to admit it, a lot of the projects I have could be classed as franchises. In fact only two of my current ‘active’ projects (though I use the term ‘active’ in its loosest sense of course) could be classed as stand alone. Everything else is subject to sequelitis. I always used to maintain that sequels for the sake of it were evil, but between developing the characters in each and having lots of random ideas that (lazy soul that I am) could be hammered into shape to fit with characters that already exist for me. The other problem I have is that more of my ideas are becoming ‘long term’.

Return of the Serialisation

Way back in the middle of last year I wrote a series of posts on serialised fiction, charting my adventures with a new type of writing for me. Sure I’ve had ideas that could work in TV, but what with a new publishing dynamic coming into effect (internet, e-books, etc.) there could well be a growing market for more episodic serialised prose. It took me eight weeks last year to write what amounted to a novel’s worth of episodes which was the subject of my posts last year. Which is the fastest I’ve ever written, well, anything. Granted, those episodes could use a polish, and a second series would be easy for me to write (considering the amount of material I had), so why don’t I get on with it?

Well the same reason I haven’t even written anything of this new project yet. Its just too big.

Size Matters

There I go quoting my ex again… But in terms of writing, for me it becomes increasingly daunting. A screenplay I feel is the easiest. You aim for about 90 pages of script, and as long as you can plough through the formatting, it doesn’t take that long. Then we have a novel. 70-90,000 words. That’s a lot more, and considering how much editing that takes, well, obviously more daunting. Serialised fiction on the other hand… I don’t even want to think about it. 10-15 episodes of, lets say 10,000 words each… yikes!  And that’s just one series!  And three of my projects are structured this way.

So, opinions. Is this new project a good idea?  Or should I not be so bloody stupid and try and get some of my existing projects polished to a shine?  Feel free to leave any comments below. Also, any thoughts about serialised fiction in general.

The Dreaded Biography

Original image from Alex France on Flickr. Click to see more.

I’ll be honest, I’ve only ever read two biographies in my life, and that was only because of an assignment at university. I didn’t go for the flashy film star biographies, or the ludicrous idea of, say, a Britney Spears biography (she had her first biography out when she was what, seventeen?)  No, I opted for a journalist (John Simpson) and a ‘real life stories’ type, Prozac Nation, by Elizabeth Wurtzel.

As I mentioned above, it’s not a genre I’m really interested in. Why is it that people in general are so interested in the lives of the rich and famous? Well, I started work on another project this week, in order to redress the balance. And it’s a somewhat cathartic exercise.

Writing About Yourself

As we all know, Stephen King (amongst others) states that you should write what you know. And what could you possibly know more about than your own life? Now obviously not everyone leads massively interesting lives close to the cutting edge, but we all have some interesting tales to tell. And it can be a fantastic kicking off point, especially if you’re a little short on some ideas.

Just take an event from your past, write about how it played out, and then develop it from there. This is what I’ve been doing for years. While I’m certainly not a blogger (what do you call this? – Matt), I do write semi regular emails to select members on my friends list about what I’ve been up to, and granted, I embellish almost everything, but as I say, it’s a great exercise. If you’ve been in a situation that you wished had turned out differently, then you can rewrite it. Change the names, change the setting, change the stakes and hey!  All of a sudden you’ve got an interesting story on the go. You know the character (because it’s essentially you) and you know how they work.

Mix it Up

And I’m not saying you have to stick to the rules of biography here. It’s rare that you will come across a book of fiction that details everything that occurs in one person’s lifetime. It’s all about the interesting bits. Also, you don’t have to stick rigidly to the truth. Because what is truth when you come down to it? It’s your story, so write it how you want. As long as it doesn’t turn you into a criminal mastermind.

Wheat and Chaff.

 
It’s good to sort out what you’ve got, and how serious you are about it.  While I am a firm believer that all writing is useful, there will come a point somewhere down the line where you discover that something you’ve written (be it a short story, a poem – if you’re primarily a prose writer – or an outline for something) doesn’t really fit with the rest of your work, and it may be time to – shock horror – abandon it.  This need not especially be because it’s crap, but because you may have other work which you can invest yourself in more easily, or because it isn’t as marketable as your other work. 

And now that you have your serious marketable stuff, you need to dive head first into editing. 

The Eternal Struggle

 
I have set aside huge swathes of time the past few weeks (easy to do when I don’t actually have a job) to sit down and get some serious editing done.  As Matt mentioned a few weeks back, editing does require a lot of time and focus if you want to do it well.  Editing isn’t something that can be done piecemeal.  And this is what I did. I went back to my most complete project and hammered out the editing for part one (first third of the book).  Now I’m not claiming to be some doyen of the editing process – far from it – but since we are massive list fans here, I thought I’d highlight some of the techniques I’ve used on this ultimate draft. 

1. Be ruthless.  And by this I mean really cut deep.  Down to the bone if necessary.  And when you’re done being ruthless, cut away some more.  I found this to be very useful.  I can meander a lot when I write.  I can be deliberately evasive and get myself into word spirals and just plain confusing at times.  And while when I first wrote it I thought it was ‘big’ and ‘clever’, reading it back now feels, I don’t know, forced and cocky.  If you set out with this mindset, then you are far more willing to go into editing and cut scenes, events, even characters as need be, which leads us to…
2. Streamlining.  I can get very convoluted at times in my writing.  In my defence though, for me it falls into the ‘show don’t tell’ category for me.  And as I was reading through my work I discovered a lot of extraneous scenes that showed what my character does for a living, but in doing so it sort of broke the flow of the narrative, and really, do you need to see the guy do his thing more than twice to really grasp it?  There was one chapter in particular that epitomised this.  The character goes to a club to meet one of his friends.  I spent about four pages just getting him through the door.  And a lot of the material was redundant.  So I slashed it down.  It can be painful, but you have to get used to it.
3. Shake it up.  Move huge chunks of text around.  If you’re not sure it’s going to work, then experiment.  Try switching two scenes over to see if the events work any better.  That’s what Cut and Paste are for.  Again, for me, I had two scenes like this, and the order they were in meant more convoluted back tracking.  So I switched them round and found that the scene worked better.  It was cleaner, flowed smoother and took less time.  As much as it pained me to have to rethink certain parts of it to make the new flow work, I do feel that it is now a much stronger piece of writing, which is the ultimate goal, is it not?
4. Extraneous for a reason.  Ok, so this one I’m not quite so on top of.  Yes, I do have a lot of extraneous encounters that really serve no purpose in the plot, but I throw them in to make the journey a little more noteworthy.  But going back to point 1, I was more ruthless than I have been in the past, and while I didn’t remove the scene entirely, I did streamline it and actually tie it in to a plot thread that comes up later on.  It may be a bit lazy, but as a counterpoint to this…
5. Make it work.  If you are so fond of a scene that you really feel the need to keep it in, then make it work.  I had to get really creative to make this scene work in the larger scheme of things, but in doing so I actually clarified massive areas of the overall plot that I’d kept deliberately vague before, because I wasn’t quite sure how it worked.  All because of this one page scene that I didn’t really want to lose!

So those are my personal tips for the editing process, and they’ve been working for me so far (especially the first one.  Always the first one!)  Of course, if you have any extra points to add, then drop them in the comments below.

Well, as fun as it is throwing ideas around, developing plot lines, characters and making endless amounts of notes, there does come a time when you have to stop procrastinating (though in this case it was somewhat useful, trying to get everything sorted before the real work began) and just get down to it. 

So yes, this week saw the birth of the first draft of the actual script.  Joy. 

Is it Drafty in here?

This did however throw up a debate, which got me thinking.  My first sprint through gave me about 15 pages of script in my first session, which I then sent to my collaborator.  I’ll be honest here, while I think it’s going well, a lot of the dialogue is questionable.  But hey, first draft script, it’s meant to be, right?  That’s what redrafting is for, isn’t it? 

Yes, it is drafty in here! Image courtesy of Sharon Drummond.

My collaborator read through it and agreed that it was going in the right direction, but wanted to stop and work on the dialogue, especially in the two scenes which I found most troubling to write.  And here is where we hit the debate. 

I personally want to plough through to the end, get the first draft finished, and then go back and work out the kinks.

He wants to work out the kinks as we go, just to have a more solid ‘first draft’. 

So which is the right way to go? 

For Sake of Argument…

 
Well this is writing of course, and there aren’t really any right or wrong answers.  It’s all about what works for you.  But let’s look at both sides of the discussion. 

If you do stop and toil on scenes, getting them just right (or at least to a very high standard) then you’re obviously going to feel better about how that first draft turns out.  You don’t have to do so much fretting about redrafting (which we all know is a pain in the arse anyway).  You get a clearer definition of what is going on, and it can feel more ‘finished’. 

Not wanting to take sides, this isn’t how I personally write (though my own methods are probably pretty flawed anyway) I err on the other side. 

I want to sprint through to the finish, get to the end while I still have the drive and the impetus to do so.  Hell, I know it’s not going to be perfect, in fact I know there are some scenes that I’m going to have to rewrite (and I spend some time working on that in the back of my head) but as I’m sure you’re aware, I am a serial drafter.  I don’t want to stop and go back and agonise over the details of a scene unitl the end, because I feel it breaks the flow.  My collaborator feels that there is no point in leaving scenes behind, and having wooden characters and stilted dialogue early on, so why not perfect it now?  Well, I should say ‘deal with it’ now. 

Counter-Intuition all over the place

 
He feels it is very counter intuitive to do this, while I feel it is counter intuitive to do the opposite (and so a healthy working relationship is born!)  While I do understand his point, and where he’s coming from, I come from a more prose-y background.  Writing a script (while far from easy) doesn’t feel as heavy as writing a book.  As I said, I got through about 15 pages of script in a little over an hour.  How long would it take me to write 15 pages of prose?  Significantly longer, I feel.  While I do tend to go back and redraft more while writing prose (if for no other reason than as an avoidance tactic to delay writing new stuff) when scripting I prefer not to.  The way I look at it is, it doesn’t matter how ‘perfect’ you think you might get a scene, by the time you get to the end, there is a good chance you’re going to have to go back and change it all anyway. 

Looking back at some of my other work, particularly my scripts, there is very little material remaining from my original draft.  Even what I thought of at the time as golden, just capturing the essence of what the scene is, and needing no changes… Well, yes, I had to go back and change most of it. 

It is like this for most writing, no?  It’s a wonder anything gets done. 

I’m not saying that I want to completely ignore everything once it’s been written. Even during the first draft, I will go back and do little tweaks here and there. But I don’t want to get bogged down with just one or two particularly problematic scenes, when there’s the rest of the script to get through. 

So now I turn the discussion over to you.  Which course of action do you follow, or do you feel is most effective?

Now however, I face the second challenge when it comes to The Enemy. I have to write new stuff. From scratch. Gulp.

Out of Shape

So, as I mentioned in my last post, it has been a long time since I actually wrote anything. Even longer since I generated new material. There is something much safer about editing isn’t there?  The ‘hard work’ has already been done (though some may disagree)  Editing isn’t as stressful. Let me go back to my overused exercise analogy. Editing is like doing a familiar workout. It can still be tough, but you know the routine, you’re familiar with it. Generating new material is like starting an entirely new workout. You might have some rough idea of where it’s going to go (especially if you’re one of those planners, and not an improvisational writer) but it’s long, it’s tough, and it’s very daunting.

Well this is where I am right now. I’ve come to the end of what’s familiar, and I’m staring at this massive blank expanse before me.

Where do I go?

The man with this plan is Jez Nicholson. It's probably not a writing plan, but a writing plan could look like this! Click for original photo.

This is the major flaw in being an improvisational writer, isn’t it?  I do have some idea of where the story is headed, but there is that unfortunate gap between where I am now in my writing, and where I have more concrete ideas. And I need to fill the gap. How to do that though?

Easiest option would be to just put it to one side and hope it writes itself, right?

Well we can’t do that, can we?  Or should I say, I…

Options Options

I was going to make another list here but honestly, I couldn’t think of one. Making mental notes and brainstorming are my usual processes, but I’m not sure how well they’d work here.

So I guess I’ll have to plan, right?  It would have been so much easier if I’d done this in the first place. But how do you do this?  The planners amongst you will no doubt scoff, and mutter things like ‘I told you so’ and ‘this is what you get’, but even planners can’t (surely) plan out every beat that a story goes. Sometimes you’ll reach a point where you have point A, and then Point B, but no bridge to get you there. The simplest advice is probably just to go straight from point A to point B (especially in script writing). It’s that maxim again isn’t it?  Start a scene as late as you can, and end it as soon as you can. Short, snappy, to the point.

Which is very good advice, which I should probably follow more often. But sometimes, just sometimes, you can’t do that. Sometimes the void is too big.

Filler

I’ve never been a fan of filler, neither in content and especially not as a writer. If it isn’t interesting to write, then its not going to be interesting to read, is it?  But the filler needs to be written. The in-between bits. And the challenge is to make it interesting. And this is I think the problem I have with my piece. I know where I need to get to, but to get there, the characters have to make a rather uninteresting journey. ‘Make it interesting!  Throw some curveballs in there!’ you might scream. If you’re partial to sporting metaphors. Thing is, I have so many random curveballs in the narrative as it is, throwing in more will only complicate things further.

So, I am not so much offering half baked advice this week, more asking for it. How do I proceed, dear readers?

I’ve recently been reading The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. The main character in this is a writer and he notes that the first thing any writer learns is the art of procrastination. Both Matt and myself have talked about this before, but it is true, is it not? There is always something else to do. Something that takes priority over sitting down and torturously laying your soul out on paper.

But procrastination is The Enemy. Probably the most insidious enemy because it pretends to be your friend. Like Lucifer whispering in your ear saying, “It’s ok to put your writing off, and do something else. We all know writing does itself anyway…”

Or something.

It isn’t true though is it? Not by a long shot.

Climbing back on the Horse

Perhaps the worst thing is that the longer you put it off, the bigger that horse seems to get. Right now, I’m not looking at a horse, I’m looking at a behemoth. No way I can climb back on that, so why should I try? Well this is a pathetic excuse, and I feel pathetic for thinking it. But what are the options available? Well let’s make a list shall we, because we do so like lists!

It's a horse. That you have to get back up on. Sorry, it's the best I could come up with. Image courtesy of Marilyn Peddle.

1. Baby steps. No brainer? Not really. Its all well and good saying, “ok, I’ll set a little bit of time aside each day/week to get a little writing done, and then build up from there”, but does this work in practice? I’m sure for some people it does. It’s like that gym metaphor. You can’t just do a marathon from scratch, you have to train yourself up. I’ve always thought that doing some writing is better than doing no writing at all. This can backfire though, right? You might do a little writing, then look at it and find it so terrible that it puts you off writing even more. Very counter productive.
2. Walking before you can Crawl. Yeah, because when you look at the vast expanse of a whole book stretching out before you, the enormity of the task can put you off. Easing yourself back into it with some shorter fiction is better right? Even if it’s unrelated and you don’t really plan on doing anything with it (Matt did a post on this a few weeks back) its still getting those rusty writing muscles back into play, right? Personally, my writing falls into a few huge ‘super projects’ and writing away from these feels… counter intuitive. Time spent writing something else feels… wasteful.
3. Sprint. One of my problems is I think too much about stuff. Matt wrote about when to show your work, and about not showing first drafts. I guess one of the reasons I’m more comfortable showing my ‘first draft’ is because really, it isn’t. I do my first few drafts in my head. Very very dangerous. When you draft in your head, when it comes time to set it down on paper its like… It feels like copying something out, kinda dull and tedious. So just write! Just write for an allotted period of time. Non-stop. Just push through it, and see what comes out.

Well, it’s a start. Does anyone have any other options to add to this? Any advice to help get me back on the horse? We shall see how things go and I shall update on the writing situation at… some indeterminate point in the future…

I started to do some work on it, then left it alone, to work on other things.

But as I said, recently, I dug it out again. Scrapped pretty much everything I’d developed for it and decided to start afresh. New back story, new direction, shed those excess characters. In doing so, I found a new freedom. And this was in some ways… terrifying.

Facing the Fear

Lets be honest, writing is a daunting process. There are times I look at the book I’ve written, wondering how I ever managed to write the whole thing. I look at the book I’m writing, and wonder if I’ll ever reach the end (based on my current productivity rate, I’m going to say no). I believe it was David Mamet who once said something along the lines of “Ninety percent of your first draft will get scrapped”. Which makes things even more daunting. Not only do you have to somehow motivate yourself to get through a project, but you have to do so knowing deep down that only about ten percent will make the final cut. Tough odds.

This is kind of what I did with this project I went back to. This is a screenplay though, so it doesn’t have an excessive word count, like most of my writing. I’d split it into three parts, just to make it more manageable, and looking at it, parts two and three are terrible. Like, how could I ever even think that this was good writing? And what I had left I’d changed to such a degree that I have been reluctant to work on it because frankly, I have no idea where I’m going with it. While before I had a group of characters working towards a roughly common goal, now they’re all off doing their own thing. And I know exactly why this has happened. I have been subconsciously influenced (or perhaps inspired) by Mass Effect 2.

Image courtesy of Abulic Monkey

Fractals

Which leads us onto fractal writing. I felt that this is what I’d done with my script. I’d taken each of these characters, and really, what I could do is write each of their stories separately, and the choice could be made to follow one character’s path through the narrative, or another. Fractal writing like this has already been done, to a very limited extent. Remember Fighting Fantasy books? You’re in Scorpion Swamp and you can choose to go east or west? Well, each direction results in a moderately different story. The same (albeit on a (seemingly) more advanced scale) is apparent in the writing of video games, especially RPGs. You can make choices, which influence the way the game unfolds. Or at least you’re given the illusion that the choices you make have a huge impact on the turn of events. In reality, it wouldn’t be possible to provide an unlimited number of outcomes (it would require far too much in terms of both writing and programming), so while on a small scale you can be given far more options, in terms of the big stuff, it’s essentially yes or no, good or bad. I was given further food for thought on this topic when reading about the fourthcoming release of L.A. Noire, which has a script that runs up to 2200 pages. People who know me and my writing will look at this figure and think that’s probably just a normal script for me. But since video games are becoming a more mainstream form of entertainment, and they are becoming bigger and more complex, then you do need more options in terms of dialogue, and that is where the writers come into it.

So how do I relate this back to more ‘regular’ writing? Well, I’m sure I’m not the only one out there who has written something, and then during the drafting process, made a small change which has resulted in a whole different branch through which the story can unfold. So which way do we go? Well, naturally, since we writers can be a lazy bunch, we tend to try and stick as close to what we’ve already written as possible. This is what I was trying to do with this project. Only thing is, as we all know, it sucked, so a change has to be made. I guess I feel I’ve gone a little overboard with wanting to follow every path though.

Experimentation

Fractal writing need not be such a bad thing though. It is obviously hugely experimental, that’s for sure. While those Fighting Fantasy books were very limited, they did at least provide different paths to unfold (albeit to the same destination). I know Matt has tried various writing experiments over the years, some involving branching narratives, but has anyone else tried? And had some degree of success? I remember back at university reading 253 by Geoff Ryman, which is probably as mainstream a fractal book that I’ve read. The major problem of course is the sheer volume of writing you’d end up with. And of course the number of different endings.

I wonder if it can work in any other medium than in video games. Obviously the degree of interactivity means that it is certainly the most forgiving medium for fractal writing. Does it have any place in the others though? In literature? Or cinema?

Has anyone else experimented with fractal writing, taking different paths, different narratives within the same story? I’d be interested to know.

Anyway. I touched upon the subject of fluidity, and different approaches that could be made regarding back story. Now personally, I favour having a rigid back story. The Canon so to speak. It may sound like a drag, sorting out the back story before you get to work on the actual writing, but if you have it all laid out beforehand, you can speed through a story faster. I guess a rigid back story is like a safety net. It’s always there, so you know that there’s something. I’m not saying you have to have all the minutiae written out for every character, but a definite outline I always find useful. Quite handily, I opted out of a rigid back story in my most recent effort, and went for the alternative.

Fluidity

What if you write more on the fly? Is it really that bad to come up with the back story as you go along? It can offer a little more freedom with characters and how they behave if you don’t have a set-in-stone back story for them.

I’ve written about improvisational writing in the past, and the dangers it can pose, and fluidity here is somewhat similar. Of course, with back story you do have to have some sort of loose framework. Enough structure that allows you to navigate, and fill in the gaps as you go. Being fluid with the back story can also be an advantage. For example, if you have a rigid back story, what if you hit a plot point that cant be resolved with that? I’ve hit this problem before, and I have gone to huge lengths to write around it, creating implausible scenarios and adding maybe thirty-forty extra minutes of screen-time (this was a screenplay idea I was working on) in order to try and get myself out of this hole. If you work with a more fluid back story, then you will encounter this problem far less frequently.

Fluidity, see?

Dangerous Waters

See, the water represents a fluid backstory, and the ice is a rigid backstory, but then it can get all fragmented and... nevermind. Fantastic image from George Grinsted (click for more)

There are of course dangers here. Especially if you try to move between the two. There isn’t much middle ground, and if you’re not careful, your back story can get fragmented all over the place. Making even minor changes can result in a ripple effect, which can result in having to rewrite huge swathes of material later down the line. Or it can open up huge plot holes. TV shows do this all the time. By either introducing siblings to main characters that have never been mentioned before, or completely changing a characters backstory, just to get some new plotlines going. Heroes did this a lot, which is one of the reasons it tanked.

On the other hand, it can allow you to experiment. Writing is after all about experimentation, is it not? Until a piece of writing is actually published, it can always be altered, and improved upon. If you do hit a wall in the narrative, then you can return to your back story and experiment. I’m not saying that you should completely change a particular character’s back story (unless its an emergency, I’ve had to do that in order to give a character, you know, motivation), but making small changes here and there to experiment can be helpful.

Above all, Experiment

Yes, I am aware that I have somewhat contradicted myself, but sometimes you have to. You may just experiment as a thought exercise, just to open up new avenues, or you may need to in order to get past one of those trouble plot issues. Sometimes even the most rigid of back stories need to be changed. Or at least clarified. I know that the few major back story changes I’ve made in my own work have been for the better. Also, remember that it’s your work. Unless you write non-fiction, it’s your world that you’re creating. You’re not going to rewrite the holocaust (unless you need to) so, as ever, experiment…