It’s a Monday night and I’m having a time. Burke has begun taking art classes, which affords me a rare thing – a night on my own. Like most wild rambunctious chaps, I spend it watching reruns of Columbo, doing my Czech homework, and reading.
Tonight’s an educational night to be sure. Už tři týdny se zabývám hrozným instrumentálem. Jsem v pekle. For those who don’t read Czech or who don’t want to spend four seconds translating that, just suffice it to say that if I go to the bad place when I die, the coursebook Czech Step by Step will be there waiting for me covered in spiders.
After Czech homework is done, it’s time to read. Again, this is not so much for pleasure tonight as it is to learn. You see, I am losing the plot. Again.
I have written a few books, mostly novels. And while the writing within these books is generally solid and the characters somewhat interesting and not so 2D, I do have a problem: I lose the plot. That is, I end up going on some insane journey within my story and end up in some random place with no idea how I got there. That is not a fun experience when you drink too much and it can be frustrating when you’re writing too.
To be clear, we’re talking about fiction. With my Hammered Histories, I have a much better instinct when it comes to defining and understanding a narrative and knowing what to slice out – even if it means doing that oh so famous story-cide and killing my darlings. No, no. When I am writing a longer work of fiction, all manners of things happen to my characters. The Iraqi diner owner ends up in Brazil with the Romanian hairdresser – who also happens to have an ongoing boundary feud with the guy who runs the video store. The stumbled-upon corpse has two death certificates in city hall – one from the Revolutionary War and one from the Civil War! (I thought that sounded neat and justified that I’d figure out how it was possible in any way later on. Spoiler alert: never did.) The long lost sister has a long lost brother.
You get the picture. Fun to write? Yes. But six months into writing when I was not halfway through a novel and it was already 230 Word pages, I knew I had a problem to deal with. Also, if you’re not careful, then writing first drafts can become a ‘I’ll deal with that later’ issue. And that can be a minefield. How to organize and edit?
Enter Save the Cat.
When I was a young, idealistic (read: very very stupid) man, I never liked the ‘how to write a book’ books. First, I always thought it weird that these books were written by people I’d never heard of (John Crupike instead of Updike). Second, the beret-wearing, finger-snapping douche that inhabits my soul at times thought using these books an inorganic way of creating, Odin forgive me, art.
OK, before you throw virtual bananas at me, just settle down. I was young and we are all stupid when we are young. (I once thought of voting for a Republican.) I of course came to the realization that most people have never heard of most of the incredibly intelligent, creative people out there. And just because your name doesn’t rhyme with Sbeven Ming doesn’t mean you don’t have good or even great advice to give. Second, there’s not a lot of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ ways to work on something creative. So when I wrote a screenplay a few years ago, the producer/director who read it (in MS Word) gave me access to an online screenplay software.
“Write your story out in this,” she said. “It should come in at about 100 pages tops.”
When it came in at 258 pages, I knew I had a problem. I had no idea how I would not only cut 160 pages off of a screenplay, but how I would cut the right 160 pages off a screenplay.
For this, I used a book called Save the Cat. This is one of many books that offers writers organizational help writing books and screenplays. It splits the stories not just into acts and plots, but in beats – little points along the road of the story that have to happen in order to make the story work and keep on track. For the screenplay, it worked. I cut 162 pages (crying the whole time), I sent it back. There was more work to be done for sure, but now I had a tight, cohesive story to work with. I sold the screenplay and I think they had a script doctor rewrite almost everything. For all I know it could be a gay hockey romance at this point – which would be awesome.
Anyway. Tonight I am reading Save the Cat for horror in the hopes that I can rein in what I’m writing. And with any luck, I will edit, cry, and sell. But if you’re also dealing with the lost plot blues, I can’t recommend Save the Cat enough.
Also: jestli se také zabýváš dlouhými příběhy, můžeš se ke mně přidat v pekle.
