Never Second Guess Your Instincts

As I wrote my new book, Caesar's Ghost, some parts cried for the present tense and some cried for the past. I just followed my instincts while writing. But then, as I went through the subsequent drafts, the Brutal Old Bastard (BOB) of my inner editor began to carp and criticize. Why here, not there, in the present? Why there, not here, in the past?

Now, I knew BOB was right on the money about not jumping tenses in a single paragraph--a source of confusion for readers. And I could understand BOB's preference for consistency: dream sequences or diary entries, for example, in the present tense. BOB might even be okay with all action scenes in the present--lending the scenes more urgency.

But, through the rewrites, BOB kept attempting to gain total control. Some scenes resisted--almost violently--my efforts to change tenses. My fingers would not hit the keys that would have changed the scenes. And it was time to let BOB know that he wasn't running the show, just helping to produce it. In fact, when given full control, BOB tends to trip on the feet of his rules.

I reached a compromise solution. I'd change any part from present to past tense--unless my fingers screamed in protest. And I'd devise a subtle way of highlighting my segues from the past to present tense. 

Many of BOB's rules are sound, while others are the barks of another century's harridans. 

Readers and viewers are fluent in the language of mixed time lines:

So I listend to BOB, with all due respect...but I followed my heart and my fingers.

DVDs: Modest Collection, Immodest Desires

No, that isn't my own small collection...


That's a starting image for the number of DVDs I think anyone should have before claiming a decent collection. After all, in the US alone, 44,000 films had been made as of 2012. So a modest collection would surely contain more than just one or two hundred. If we throw in collectible films from other countries round the globe, possibly our number might come closer to...1000?

Ridiculously incomplete and yet we have only so much money...space...and time. When I started to build my collection this year, it didn't take me long to see the very real risk I ran of collectoholism. Man, I wanted everything! I wanted not only the great stuff but every little oddity that I'd even vaguely thought I should have a look at--films or TV shows:



I put the blocks to this crazy urge when I had a dozen DVDs I knew I'd never watch again. In fact, rewatchability became my first criterion. And from it came the others that still guide me in my quest. Any DVD I buy must meet one or more of these guidelines:

1) It is something I know I can rewatch with increasing pleasure.

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2) It is an acclaimed masterpiece that bears further study and belongs in any serious collection.







3) It is a film that was butchered by the studio in its original release--but is now available in the great director's cut.




4) It is the sort of film I don't usually watch--but which I know deserves a try.



5) It is a film/TV show that was important to me long ago.




And so it goes. May I grow in turn as my collection grows.

Aggress me? I'll show you the egress, you--bird!

We don't often find dialogue half that bad. And, in my own opinion, that's a goddamned crying shame. More such inspired lunacy would help us forget the bland chatter spewed by cardboard cutouts in book after book.

Now, if you Google the words bad dialogue you'll find plenty of posts on the subject. And some of them offer some excellent tips: avoid over-use of adverbs in attribution (he said robustly/hurriedly/passionately, etc.)...don't make dialogue do the work of careful exposition (John, could get me the brandy you've always kept in your rolltop desk's second drawer except for eight months after the death of your third wife, Estelle, the church-loving nymphomaniac who loved Mike Hammer novels?)...try not to sound like a music store geek emulating Tarantino (You friggin' love toy-lovin' Wop, I'll have a Big Mac with double the sauce, then groove my bop around Jay-Z and pistol whip your useless Dick, you Gaga-porkin' loser!)...

A writer who slavishly follows these rules and paints by numbers carefully will avoid such howlers as the one that I used as a headline. But nine times out of ten we'd have been better with a howler instead of the drivel we're served. Instead of offering a hundred examples of things to do or avoid, I propose two general rules that can help spare us no end of boredom:

1) Follow David (Rambo) Morrell, who advised writers to 'Enter a scene late and leave early.'  In other words, cut to the chase and get right down to business. Likewise with your dialogue.
     Let no account of a phone call include the usual opening pleasantries: 'Hello?' 'Hi, John, this is Joe Bob.' 'Why, JB, you old scoundrel, I haven't seen you in a dog's age.' 'I know, how're Betty and the kids?' Etc. BORING! Either skip the pleasantries completely, cutting to the chase: "I need to see you," I said when he picked up the phone. Or: "After a short round of civilized chat, I said: 'Do you still want me to kill her?'
    Or let's say the characters do meet for lunch. Spare us their seating and banter while they order and wait for the food. Try: ' By the time the food came, we'd grown hungry to figure the best way to murder his wife.'

2) Our characters are more likely to sound like real people if we consider the emotional content of a scene. If every scene should move a story forward, so should every line of dialogue. Something's happening if it is doing its job. And real people are affected when things happen around them or to them. It must always advance the story--and never simply supply information.
    Best example: In a key episode of Breaking Bad, Season 1, Walter White has agreed to 'take care of'' the surviving drug thug chained up in his partner's basement. But Walter still hasn't broken bad completely yet and is desperately searching for a reason not to kill the guy--who'll pose a real threat to Walter's family if he lives. Throughout the episode, Walter flashes back to an apparently banal conversation with a fellow teacher about a weird chemical equation: how all a corpse's body parts don't add up to the live person's actual weight. Could the missing part  be the human soul? A moving question since Walter, as we knew him, is quickly disappearing from one show to the next. BUT WAIT: Walter dropped a plate while serving the drug thug a sandwich, then threw the pieces in the trash. Remembering the dialogue about the missing part leads him to remove all the plate's pieces and try to reassemble them. He is horrified to see that one piece is missing--held by the drug thug, who'll use it the next time White comes close.
    And so it goes, and should go: even the simplest dialogue, if packing emotional content can shatter us as well as Shakespeare.