From the trenches of television to writing a novel
If you’ve enjoyed television drama like The West Wing and Sports Night, and movies like The Social Network and Charlie Wilson’s War, and the play, A Few Good Men (later made into a movie) you’d be familiar with the work of Aaron Sorkin, one of the world’s top screenwriters. Others include brilliant UK’s playwrights, Tom Stoppard, Alan Bennett, Dodie Smith, Alan Ayckbourn and the list goes on. 
Great screenwriters are skilled writers: choosing the perfect word, developing characters that we will love, hate, cheer on and who linger in our thoughts long after the movie or play is over, building tension and breaking our hearts. These people perfect their dialogues into a sparsity that captures the essence of meaning. Sound familiar? Yep, it’s what we fiction writers aspire to do every time we write.
I like reading ‘how-to’ books by screenwriters – I believe we can learn so much from them. That’s why I asked Ben Marshall, Queensland screenwriter, YA author to come onto my blog today to talk about writing character. Ben is also a 2013 winner of an Australian Society of Authors Mentorship and will be working on his YA novel, The Pricking of Thumbs with YA author, Alyssa Brugman.
Ben Marshall – screenwriter, YA novelist.
Take it away, Ben…..
Sheryl has suggested that I illuminate the arcane arts of the television script-writer in a way that might offer insights into other forms of creative writing.
It’s a huge area to cover so I’ll stick to telling you what works in terms of story creation in what I do for a living – writing soap opera.
When you have to create two and a half hours of television drama a week, week after week, month after month, year after year, there are certain fundamentals that help.
The first is character. In the industry, we refer to soap as ‘character-driven’. We’re not writing Hollywood here, but kitchen-sink drama, and on a budget where an entire week of soap would equal about fifteen seconds of blockbuster feature film.
(Please note that just in story terms, we write multiple storylines – as many as six or eight at any given time. A feature film generally has three plots, the A story, the B romantic subplot, and C, the comedy relief – so every week we write the equivalent of three feature films worth of story. There we are, sitting around a table, six of us racking our brains to keep people emotionally engaged with the stories being played out on the small screen.)
It’s tough, but when you have created a foundation of interesting, clearly delineated characters, full of plausible internal conflicts, the stories practically write themselves. By ‘clearly delineated’ I mean that any given character produces instant recognition of ‘type’. But they will only leap off the page if you understand what drives them – what gets them out of bed in the morning and keeps them moving forward.
Take, say, the misanthropic doctor. It’s a character thumbnail not uncommon in film and television, and is a good one because on the one hand a doctor is driven to care for their community, and on the other hand they dislike people. Strong drive + clear internal conflict = watchable television.
Example: the doctor may be an Asperger’s personality type who enjoys the problem-solving of tricky diagnosis, which provides the drive. Lacking the ability to read emotions in others, however, and being frustrated by ‘less intelligent’ people provides the misanthropy, and therefore the internal conflict.
As writers though, we also need to also understand the origins of the drive and the conflict. If you know a character’s background, especially their parents, you also understand how and why they act as they do, what they fear and what they hope for. You also know how they would react in any given situation, and what obstacles to place between them and their goals.
In brief, a character must be fully motivated in undertaking every action he or she takes – so much so that we, the reader or viewer, think, yes, of course that’s what they’d do. We must see the goal, understand why it’s important, but cringe when the character’s internal conflict prevents them making a bee-line for it. When the character tries, we hope they succeed but fear they will fail. When the character fails, we will understand why they failed. Above all, we the viewer or reader must care about the character and, therefore, what happens next.
Do you know how your characters would react in any given situation? If you don’t, then you need to. You need to know and care for them like they were blood, despite their faults. Faults are crucial because they expose vulnerabilities we empathise with – this character, stumbling from one bad decision to the next, is our avatar and we love them because we love ourselves and others.
The Pricking of Thumbs
I don’t use the L-word lightly, by the way. Love is at the core of all good writing. If love and passion isn’t driving your writing, then stop and leave it to those to whom it is.
If you’d like to read more about Ben’s work – here’s the link to his work-in-progress, The Pricking of Thumbs. Sounds like a fabulous read!
LEST WE FORGET … the lies of the ‘Children Overboard’ affair
Children and their parents rescued after the sinking of SIEV 4 – ‘The Olong’. These are the well-loved children who were supposedly thrown overboard.
The recent offensive and divisive comments by Coalition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison (and his colleagues) has once again stirred the cesspit of racism in this country.
I say once again, because ex-Prime Minister John Howard did the same thing back in the days of the so-called ‘Children Overboard’ case, when he as Prime Minister and his ministers (including Immigration Minister at the time, Peter Reith) accused asylum-seekers of deliberately throwing their children overboard so the Australian Navy would be forced to rescue them. Their lies were exposed when top Navy personnel spoke out at an Inquiry and when a set of electronic photos taken on that fateful day by Australian Navy sailors were given to the media anonymously. They show the whole sequence of events. The one I’ve used is from the set captured that day – proving children were not thrown overboard deliberately.
And were you aware that these photographs photos were kept from public knowledge by Prime Minister John Howard’s Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet’s office – which stipulated explicitly (so as to) ‘not humanise the asylum seekers’. (!)
Senator John Faulkner, Labor’s Senate leader and chief questioner at the un-thrown children/SIEV-X inquiry said (in part of his speech, reported by journalist, Margo Kingston July 23, 2003) …
“The response to boat people or asylum seekers was the main focus of the Howard Government in the lead up to the last federal election. The Government’s strategy was based on politicising the asylum seeker issue for electoral advantage. It wasn’t just the Tampa episode, or the bald-faced lies about children being thrown overboard, it was a systematic campaign to engender public fear about asylum seekers and the need to protect our borders against them at all costs.”
John Howard’s scare tactics appealed to the sort of people who don’t think for themselves, or who are swayed by ill-formed talk of terrorism and by the rattling of right-wing and narrow-minded shock-jocks in this country.
Last week, after a Sri Lankan man, an asylum seeker was arrested for the indecent assault of a university student on a campus in Sydney’s north. The man was not one of the asylum seekers on bridging visas who were residing at the campus during the summer break, nor was one of the clients of the Red Cross whose task it is to look after them (and their behaviour) in the community.
Scott Morrison MP – Liberal Party (image from the Mamamia blog site).
MP Scott Morrison called for special ”behaviour protocols” for those released into the community and the mandatory notification of police and residents in areas where they were housed. He knows full well his remarks will stir up the ignorant, the racists and the xenophobic in our community - he also knows that asylum seekers living in the community on bridging visas are about 45 times less likely to be charged with a crime than other Australians. Unlike many Catholic (and others) priests and brothers accused and convicted of child abuse over the years. (One wonders why communities weren’t warned when these pedophile criminals were moved on through the dioceses?)
You would be forgiven for thinking that Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and his party have chosen the road of politicising the asylum seeker issue for electoral advantage.
Now where have we heard that before?
For more, check out (MamaMia blog) Mia Freedman’s take on the issue: I smell an election year and it stinks.
For some honest and fearless journalism in this country, read Australians for Honest Politics.
And keep speaking out against racism when and wherever you see it.
INTERNATIONAL BOOK GIVING DAY
International Book Giving Day is a day dedicated to getting new, used and borrowed books in the hands of as many children as possible.
To find out how you can join the fun, check out this link…. INTERNATIONAL BOOK GIVING DAY
Talk about Tense!
It’s my very great pleasure to welcome author, Nathan Luff to my blog to celebrate the launch of his new novel, Bad Grammar. (Age group: 9-12. Pub. Walker Books 2013)
Nathan Luff
Marcus is a warrior in the game world – a legend. He is a shy nobody in the real world – a loser.
But he’s just been mistakenly enrolled in Bad Grammar, an outback boarding school for bad kids. This place is not a resort. It’s a last resort.
I can’t wait to read Nathan’s book knowing what a great sense of humour he has and how this translates into his stories. Check out these reviews: “Four out of five stars. A funny fast-paced book, full of outlandish characters and incidents, and frequent asides from The Warrior’s Guide to Everything, this is a recommended read for young adventurers.” Australian Booksellers and Publishers Magazine. “It’s not all fun and games because, as with any good adventure, there is danger and mystery galore.” Deb Abela, author.
In this post, Nathan’s going to tell us who he sorted out what tense to write his novel, which we all know can be tricky to decide sometimes. Take it away, Nathan!
With my new novel, Bad Grammar, I decided to write it using present tense. This was a challenge, as I’d never written in this style before.
I actually first wrote the opening chapters of Bad Grammar in past tense but I just couldn’t get into the story, not until I went back to the start and rewrote the first line:
I dump my schoolbag, fly up the stairs and burrow into my messy cave of a bedroom, ready to deal with the dragon.
From there, everything seemed to flow. Still, I was nervous, as writers often are, that I was doing everything wrong.
I wondered if there were any tips for how to write present tense prose, and a Google search exposed me to the passionate debate people have about the efficacy of this style of writing. Some people HATE it. They find books written in present tense to be very jarring on the reading experience. They can’t enjoy the story without being aware of the writing. Then there are a lot of people who don’t even notice it.
Where do you sit on the debate?
If you have a look around you’ll see there are a heap of contemporary books, particularly for young audiences, being written using present tense. The Hunger Games and the Chaos Walking trilogy are great examples. It is becoming common enough that I think young readers have adapted to it and no longer find it a self-conscious style of writing.
So what are the benefits? Why bother writing in this style if it divides people?
Well, as anyone will tell you, it adds a sense of immediacy to the story. As I also wrote Bad Grammar as a first person narrative, the reader is experiencing everything at the same time the main character, Marcus, is. It’s such a great way to connect reader and character – it’s a literary umbilical cord between minds. That sounds a bit freakier than it is! I think it’s a very useful tool. Marcus doesn’t have a chance to think about what is happening, to analyse it, or to form any judgement. You are getting his immediate reaction to things, and that is very exciting from both a writer’s and a reader’s perspective, especially because sometimes people’s immediate reactions surprise even themselves.
For books that are heavy with action, as Bad Grammar is, present tense is especially effective. Anything could happen and there is no pre-empting of the action, so it can catch us unawares. At the end of the story, the character could die because we know they don’t have to survive to narrate the story back to us.
Another question often asked is, ‘Is it easy to write?’
The answer is both yes and no. My training is in screenwriting, and scripts are always written in present tense, so I think this definitely helped me embrace this style of writing.
You get used to it but the biggest problem is dealing with gaps in time. With past tense, it is much easier to skip periods in the story where nothing exciting is happening, however, when you are experiencing the story in present tense, it is harder to cheat time. Essentially, you are writing in real time. I found I ended up with fewer scenes and some carefully chosen chapter breaks.
I found I also ended up with a lot of shorter sentences. Think about the way you think. We don’t always think in long elaborate sentences, especially if something exciting is happening. We don’t have time for that. Rather than tapping into someone dialogue rhythm, you are trying to tap into his or her thought rhythms, and this is both a challenge and a fun exercise.
Things can get tricky when a character is talking or thinking about an event that happened in the past. You have to be careful of tense in these instances. Another thing I found tricky was when I was editing Bad Grammar, whilst also writing another manuscript (in past tense)– my brain got a little addled here. It can also be hard reading in past tense and writing in present. This is why I binge write, so I emerge myself in a story and style with little distraction.
It’s my belief that the story you decide to tell that will dictate what tense you need to write it but my advice is not to be scared of present tense. It certainly has its benefits.
Bad Grammar is out now and available at all good bookshops (if your local bookshop doesn’t have it, it is a bad bookshop. Get them to order it in, so they can be good again).
Thank you, Nathan! Check out links to the rest of Nathan’s blog tour here. Nathan was one of the fabulous authors who stepped forward to help out by being a Roving Reporter for the SCBWI Conference Blog last year (which I really appreciated!) 
Nathan and the rest of the Roving Reporters
The Next ‘Big’ Thing
The Next Big Thing is a chain of book and author recommendations. Sandy Fussell, author-extraordinaire tagged me on her blog and even though Christmas got in the way and I missed my due blogging date, I’m finally organised. Will endeavour to tag some of my writerly friends when the crazy festive season is over. Okay, here goes!
My ‘Next Big Thing’ is a little chapter book – they’re short stories written for children in the first few years of independent reading – a most important task for an author.
What is the title of your next book?
Sufi, the camel. Thank you to John Danalis for the inspiration of his camel image from Oman.
Ali Berber and the Forty Grains of Salt is a chapter book for 9-10 year olds. It will be published by an educational publishing house (details next year). This particular one will be part of a pack combining science with literature – two of my favourite topics.
Where did the idea come from for the book?
The brief was a story dealing with the Properties of Matter. Yep, not something that most people would think you could write fiction about. But hey, I’m an author, give me a topic and I could probably write a story about it. As you can see from the title, the matter I chose is salt. And what an interesting thing is salt!
What genre does your book fall under?
A folktale set somewhere in Arabia, some time in the far distant past.
What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
Inspiration for my character, Ali.
That’s easy! My main character, Ali Berber is the spitting image (in my head) of that handsome, young Indian actor playing the main character in the movie version of The Life of Pi. His name is Suraj Sharma.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
How a young merchant, Ali Berber parts with a treasure, gains a prize, solves a problem with science, wins the heart and mind of Princess Portia and avoids the head-lopping habit of her father, King Aloysius.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
This is where I grin widely. Usually a book takes a LONG, LONG time to write – this one, I thought about for a week, wrote the chapter overview in a day and wrote the story in a weekend. It’s 3400 words. And it was a joy to write … kept me grinning all the way through, which is a very good sign.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
I love how the educational publishers here in Australia ensure they come up with the very best publications. And I really like how they like to integrate the curriculum with literature; and that what matters the most are THE WORDS. E.g. I’ve never been asked to take out longer, unusual words! No dumbing down here!
Also, I’m lucky to have two scientists in my family – one a Geo-physicist and one a Physicist working on climate change research in the Antarctic. How lucky is that, considering I didn’t study science myself – only an amateur, observing and curious type of scientist, am I. Probably a good thing for an author.
PS I’m working with a wonderful editor, an ex-teacher who believes that all books for children, even those being used as part of the curriculum should be fun, interesting, well written and most of all, be a great read!
