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Workshop:  Definition of Action & Homework for the Ambitious Apprentice

 

 

(1999 comment: Here is a post about a MS I was asked to read and analyze. JL)

... approximately 27 pages that I read with avid absorption before I realized that in 27 consecutive pages, NOTHING HAPPENED.

The first couple of pages take an opening Situation, closely focused on a POV character who is set up to be a Hung Hero. She's in jail and helpless.

The Situation changes when the CONFLICTING ELEMENT enters her awareness right at the beginning of the story, and that's perfect.

That CONFLICTING ELEMENT is a man who comes along and legally extracts her from jail to transport her somewhere else where Justice Will Be Done. That's his work-a-day job, transporting prisoners.

Good, strong opening, nicely paced, plenty of development of Situation, Character, Relationship, and Theme.

It's such a good opening I rode along for 27 pages not realizing that after that first Change in the Situation - nothing else changed the Situation. The Hung Hero is once again completely Hung.

There are several interesting conversations which mask this defect nicely . The Relationship is sketched out and gradually widened and deepened.

But the PLOT stands stationary.

So I'm writing this follow-up note on something I wrote to this workshop way back at the beginning of the year.

This is a Lichtenberg Original you won't find in books on writing: DEFINITION: ACTION = RATE OF CHANGE OF SITUATION.

(1999 comment: we have had another go-round on ACTION=RATE OF CHANGE OF SITUATION in this workshop recently while analyzing Margaret L. Carter's new werewolf novel, Shadow of the Beast. and after reading this below, you should re-read that discussion on how to apply this definition to a novel. Action=Rate of Change of Situation is a definition which applies to physical action and psychological action and emotional action -- and it is one cornerstone of the "genre" I call "Intimate Adventure" )

The way to create a "page turner" of a good read is to make certain that each scene Changes the Situation.

If the Scene does not Change the Situation - then delete that scene. Get on with the next scene that will change the Situation.

If your Hero is in jail, or tied up, or hung by the heels, or boxed in, the NEXT SCENE is where he/she gets out of jail, cuts off his bonds, unties his heels, or breaks the box. Everything in between can be skipped unless it leads directly to un-hanging the Hero (such as the scene where the Hero in jail tricks the jailer into hanging the keys where he can get them with the pole the janitor left by the bars.)

If the character you've chosen as your POV character can DO NOTHING to change the Situation - then you have chosen the wrong POV character. It's somebody else's story.

If the part you are writing does nothing but develop character or relationship, then you're not telling a story yet, you're just clearing your throat.

I'm using "jail" as a metaphor here. There are legitimate stories that are set entirely inside jail, or about jail breaks from inside, or studies of isolation etc. That's not what I'm talking about. In stories like that the Situation isn't that they are in jail. The Situation is that they are Being Forced To Adjust To Jail (such as learning how to buy bootleg cigarettes or whatever) -- or the Situation is that they are tunneling out of jail and need to buy time by fooling the Warden. Or the Situation is that they're in jail for a crime they didn't commit and have to prove that on legal appeal.

When the Situation is "Our Hero Is In Jail And Can't Do Anything About It" - - you have a Hung Hero -- not because the Hero is in jail, but because the Hero can't do anything to change the Situation.

Story doesn't happen until the Situation changes. The POV character of any story is the one whose decisions, actions and mistakes change the Situation.

This is true even in Romances where the greatest aspiration a POV Character can have is to BE RESCUED.

But today, even in the Romance field, the POV character has to do something that makes her worthy of being rescued - show some quality or ability. Getting rescued has to be the result of something the POV character did.

When you have this kind of a quagmire problem with a piece you're writing, you solve it by changing the POV character, or by skipping up along the timeline to the point where the Situation starts to change in response to someone's actions, or in desperation, you change opening Situation into something the POV character you want to write about can do something to change.

Any change you make at this level - to Situation or POV character - is going to change your THEME, so do it carefully. Your THEME is the reason why you want to write the story, and if you change the Situation so that the THEME wanders away from the reason why you want to write the story -- then you won't want to write the resulting story!

Listen to your subconscious -- feel your way into the material -- which means you may have to write 30 pages of stationary Situation -- but always look back on each scene and measure the change in the Situation that resulted from that Scene.

How you measure the Change In Situation is to state it in words, articulate it. Before this scene - this was the Situation. Now this other thing is the Situation. And they're different.

You can mentally graph those changes scene by scene, and the slope of the curve is what they call Pacing.

Pacing has to go up and down to form peaks that are the internal Climaxes of your story. A "climax" is a point where the Situation changes markedly.

If you want a lesson in how to do this, watch 1-hour television shows and write down what happens in each scene and where the commercials are placed.

(1999 comment: Margaret L. Carter showed you how to do this in her post on Shadow of the Beast by outlining David Gerrold's Trouble With Tribbles in this manner. )

THE AMBITIOUS APPRENTICE'S HOMEWORK: NOTE: how the Pacing rises to Climaxes of various magnitudes depending on how long the commercial break is going to be. Then outline an episode of your own for that tv series using that same pacing.

Live Long and Prosper,

Jacqueline Lichtenberg