by CWC Marin administrator | Mar 31, 2019 | Classes and Workshops, Craft, Events, Member News
[Note: This event has been rescheduled from April 3 in Berkeley to June 5 in Oakland.]
On June 5 at 6 pm, I’ll be leading a two-hour workshop for the California Writers Club in Berkeley — Setting That Works: How Memorable Setting Can Advance Plot, Reveal Character, Echo Theme, and More. We’ll be gathering at WeWork, 1111 Broadway, Oakland. (If you were at the CWC Marin meeting this past November, you saw an earlier version of this workshop.)
We all know that the primary job of setting — in fiction, memoir, and narrative nonfiction — is to immerse readers in the scene. So they can visualize it, feel it, smell it.
But the most memorable and effective setting is more than a pretty, or gritty description. It’s lean and strong because it’s working hard. Doing two or more jobs. Not just showing the reader where the story is taking place, but also advancing your plot, unifying various elements of your story, revealing character, echoing theme, setting mood, and more.
In this hands-on workshop, we will review the different ways setting can strengthen your story, and do several writing exercise putting what we learned into action.
One of the most common jobs of setting is defining, revealing, or changing character. For example, in Larry McMurtry’s western, Lonesome Dove, the characters are so defined by the setting, they almost couldn’t exist elsewhere.
The story follows two retired Texas Rangers and their fellow cowboys as they drive a cattle herd from Texas to Montana, facing bandits, Indians, disease, and the harshness of the landscape. The challenges of the Old West breed a certain kind of character — a loner, macho, self-reliant, independent.
You can read about the other jobs that setting can do in Setting That Works: How Memorable Setting Can Advance Plot, Reveal Character, Echo Theme, and More.
Sign up here.
by CWC Marin administrator | Mar 31, 2019 | Craft
We had the pleasure last Sunday to participate in C.S. Lakin’s workshop — “10 Key Scenes to Frame Up Your Novel.” She not only helped me strengthen my novel’s structure, she was lively and entertaining too. It was especially fun to see movie clips that demonstrated the placement of key scenes. (Now, in addition to reworking my book, I have a list of movies to watch.)
Thanks to all who participated and made it such a stimulating afternoon.
Below are five key takeaways. Why five? Well, one of the takeaways from the workshop was benefit of using round numbers.
1. Your protagonist needs a goal and if he or she doesn’t have one, you’re in trouble. The goal can evolve over the course of the book, but you have to have one.
One example she referenced was McFarland USA, based on a true story of a cross country team from a poor, primarily Latino high school, in California’s Central Valley. At the beginning of the book, the goal of the team’s coach, Jim White, played by Kevin Costner, was to coach at a prestigious school. But by the end, when his McFarland team has won the state championship, he turns down an offer to coach in Palo Alto. His goal evolved, but he had one from the beginning.
2. The advantage of mapping out these 10 key scenes is that they are the most important to making the story work — they are the big rocks that you need to put in place first.
She told one of my favorite stories, but one I’d heard in relation to time management and priority setting, not novel writing. Here’s my version of that story:
A teacher takes out a clear jar and pours a pitcher of rocks into it. To the top. She asks the students, “Is it full?” They say yes. Then she takes another pitcher, full of pebbles, and empties it into the jar. The pebbles settle into the spaces around the rocks. When she asks again if the jar is full, this time the students say no. Then she pours in a pitcher of sand, and then water.
“What is the lesson here,” she asks? The students raise their hands enthusiastically and when she calls on one, he says, “it mean that when you think your life is full, that there’s still more room.”
She says, “No, it means that if you don’t put the big rocks in first, you’ll never get them in.”
Same is true for writing a novel. The big rocks are these 10 key scenes.
3. Key Scene #1 (Setup) introduces your protagonist and shows him or her engaged in their “normal” life, the life that is about to change as a result of Key Scene #2 (Inciting Incident), which disturbs the protagonist’s path and starts him or her on a new journey.
4. While novels are more flexible than screenplays, you still want your midpoint to come as close to the middle as you can. The midpoint is where the protagonist is balancing on the knife’s edge. Once he or she commits, there’s no going back.
The movie clip she showed to illustrate this was from Casablanca, where Rick, played by Humphrey Bogart, changes from the selfish, bitter bar owner, who’s been a bystander as the war takes its toll on others. Ilsa comes to the bar and Rick is drunk and he treats her poorly, reminding her that she abandoned him in Paris. Ilsa, in tears, pleads with him to understand, telling him that she left because she had learned her husband, Victor, was still alive.
This is the point where Rick decides not to be a bystander any longer, to take a side, to help Ilsa and Victor.
At the midpoint, the character is forced to look within and ask the hard questions, like “What am I doing?” or “How do I go on from here?”
5. If you want to do a twist that will surprise the reader, but not make them angry, you have to set it up early in the book. You have to lead readers to believe in a certainty when it’s not the case. You can make a list of things you want the reader to assume and place misdirection accordingly.
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Bonus Takeaway: Movies I either need to watch to study scene structure: Truman Show, Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, Shawshank Redemption, Nell, McFarland USA, Ever After, Strictly Ballroom. Did I miss any?
Here are the slides from her presentation. Click on the image for the pdf. (Note: the movie clips were removed, since they did not translate to the pdf. And they made the file too big to upload.)
You can find more excellent resources at livewritethrive.com.
by CWC Marin administrator | Mar 15, 2019 | Classes and Workshops, Craft, Events, interview
A Conversation with Author, Coach, Editor, and Teacher C.S. Lakin
C.S. Lakin is an author, coach, editor, teacher, and more, and on March 24, she’ll be presenting “10 Key Scenes That Frame Up Your Novel” at Book Passage, a workshop for the California Writers Club Marin. (Find out more and register at cwcmarin.com.)
Earlier this week, I spoke with her on the phone — she lives in Morgan Hill — to learn more her about her writing and her workshops.
When she answered the phone, she said, “This is Susanne.”
Q: I assume Susanne is the “S” in C.S. How did you come to be called C.S. when you so enthusiastically call yourself “Susanne.”
I started writing fantasy and used a pen name because many fantasy fans are male and most of my protagonists are male. I wonder if J.K. Rowling would have been as successful if she wrote under the name Joanne.
Q: My first question, well, my second one now, is about you — your journey to becoming a writer, editor, teacher. How did you come to focus on structure?
First of all, I’m very excited about doing this workshop. I look forward to meeting you all.
I’ve been writing for 30 years — it took me 23 years to get my first book contract. As for what got me started, well, I always loved editing. When I started doing that professionally, about 14 years ago, I got all riled up because I had clients who wanted me to polish their novels, but so many of them were structured poorly. The premises didn’t hold up. The characters didn’t ring true. All those important foundational elements were subpar. I was being asked to put frosting on a bad cake.
I began focusing on critiquing — not line editing. I’m interested in story. Novels have an expected structure, very much based on five turning points. Most writers know them intuitively, but they don’t necessarily think about them.
I encourage writers to take a different approach — what I call a layering method. We start with your first ten important scenes, then layer in the next ten.
Q: Can you give a sneak preview of one of the ten scenes you’ll be talking about?
Most writers know you have five turning points — an inciting incident, midpoint, dark night of the soul, climax, resolution. We’re going beyond that.
Michael Hauge, a Hollywood story consultant, says that modern stories are simple: they’re about one character pursuing a short-term goal. Every movie and every book has this same basic structure. You start with the setup, and then you go to your inciting incident, which triggers the story, moves the character out of what they were doing. If it’s a mystery, that’s when the dead body shows up.
Unfortunately, all too often, beginning writers spend half the book doing backstory.
Q: How do writers harness the formula without making it too formulaic? We’ve all read books or watched movies where the formula is too obvious.
People love formula. If you write Harlequin romances, there’s a strict formula. The danger is trying to be too original and rejecting the formula. Readers expect structure. They get antsy if it’s not there. They know intuitively there should be an inciting incident early on.
I used to buck the whole idea of structure. I wanted to be original. I didn’t understand structure is not only necessary but desirable. Think about a building. If you follow engineering principles — foundation, shear walls, and so on, you can create a basic structure that could turn into a fancy house, a restaurant, a museum. How you style it is what makes them different. But they all have that solid foundation.
Screenwriting is extremely precise — if you’re writing a two-hour movie, it’s 120 pages. A page a minute. When you turn to page 60, the midpoint must be there. When we watch movies, we’re so trained, we expect the midpoint right at that moment.
I’ve become a firm believer in structure after critiquing hundreds of novels.
Q: What are you writing these days?
I’m writing a sci-fi thriller called Lightning Man, so I’ve been reading and diagramming books. Best sellers.
I wrote a summary of each of six books, mapped out each scene. Across the top, I wrote scene 1, scene 2, scene 3, and so on. And then a scene synopsis for each book. I could see that what happened in all six books was the same. Usually, the first scene was high action that highlighted the protagonist, showcased their skills, abilities. Then the next scene something happened that changed everything, kicked us into the story.
The twist in Lightning Man is that the protagonist, who has been struck by lightning many times, has suffered memory loss, and he doesn’t know, until the end, that early in his life, he killed his 9-year-old brother while out on a boat. He thinks he’s an only child. He is angry at his parents for splitting up, but he doesn’t understand why. Meanwhile, I’m dropping hints along the way that tell another story. Other people know about what happened with his brother, but he doesn’t. Until he does.
Q: One last question. You’ve written dozens of books. You’re a writing coach and editor and blogger. You teach workshops. When do you sleep?
I sleep plenty. I also write fast. A lot of times I’ll write a novel in two or three months. I pick up an index card and write the scene. That’s because I’ve already mapped out the structure.
As important as structure is, I would add that there are two equally important things you need. One is an amazing concept. Something unique. If I tell you my elevator pitch, you should say “wow.”
I recently wrote a dark comedy The Menopause Murders. The protagonist is a woman suffering from menopause, and when she kills people, it relieves her symptoms. Her husband is the lead detective assigned to catch The Tacoma Terror. That’s a wow premise. He knows it’s her. She knows he knows. It’s a comedy. I have a co-writer, a very funny man. The book has publication offers, and you can see a sneak peak at themenopausemurders.com.
The other thing you need is a twist. Something surprising at the end of the story.
Like The Sixth Sense. Like The Planet of the Apes, where Charlton Heston discovers the Statue of Liberty in the sand, and we learn that the planet of the apes is really Earth.
You want to have this I-didn’t-see-that-coming moment.
Q: Like Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent?
That’s exactly what I was thinking of. A great twist that’s at the heart of the book. Something that the reader does not suspect but almost seems inevitable once you see it.
Q: But how do you create that twist? I’m thinking about the novel I’ve just about finished, which has a strong premise, but no twist as dramatic as Presumed Innocent.
The trick is how can you make things seem different than they really are.
A great example is Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper. The premise is that the parents have a young girl with leukemia, and they have another baby for only one reason — to be a donor for the older sister.
The story starts with the younger sister suing her parents. There’s a high-stakes legal battle. In the prologue, we’ve seen this younger sister, Anna, thinking about how she might kill her older sister. We think Anna hates her sister. The twist is that the older sister, fighting leukemia, has begged Anna, please kill me. But Anna doesn’t want to. The beginning is misleading, on purpose. You think the whole book through that she hates her sister, because she’s thinking about killing her at the beginning. But the author misleads the reader, so the twist is surprising. That’s what I’m aiming for in Lightning Man.
To fool your reader, you might make a list of things readers assume. What can you make readers think it’s true, when it’s not?
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[Register for “10 Key Scenes That Frame Up Your Novel” here.]
