Table Of Content

S Y N : Cinematic Techniques to Supercharge Your Writing, by HOOT OUR OVEL C. S. Lakin Copyright©2014 by C. S. Lakin Cover designed by Ellie Searl, Publishista® All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. Ubiquitous Press Morgan Hill, CA Books by C. S. Lakin Writing Craft Writing the Heart of Your Story: A Guide to Crafting an Unforgettable Novel Say What? The Fiction Writer’s Handy Guide to Grammar, Punctuation, and Word Usage Contemporary Suspense/Mystery Someone to Blame Conundrum Innocent Little Crimes A Thin Film of Lies Intended for Harm Fantasy/Sci-Fi The Wolf of Tebron The Map across Time The Land of Darkness The Unraveling of Wentwater The Crystal Scepter The Sands of Ethryn The Hidden Kingdom (2015) Time Sniffers Praise for Shoot Your Novel “With such an extensive amount of experience in the screenwriting and filmmaking process (since childhood), it comes as no surprise that C. S. Lakin writes with a trustworthy authority and wealth of insight when it comes to the craft of building dynamic scenes within novels. The pace and flow of Shoot Your Novel makes it easy to follow and the various tips and pointers strewn throughout are succinct. Of particular note is the smart curation of novel excerpts, authors, and filmmakers she cites as examples for the tips she suggests. If you have trouble understanding some of the pointers/tips theoretically, the excerpts always make it more clear. Having myself adapted The War of the Roses for both film and stage (internationally), I can say that I have actually used quite a few of the techniques Lakin discusses, and the one I like the most is the use of portraying "daydreaming" when writing from the POV of a character, effectively blending past, present, and future in one single scene. Well worth the read!” —Warren Adler, best-selling novelist of The War of the Roses and Random Hearts “With Shoot Your Novel, Susanne Lakin does something wonderful. While lots of us in the business of helping writers and storytellers recommend adding vivid images to scenes, Susanne goes much further to reveal how employing the tools and techniques of movie directing, editing, and cinematography will give your fiction deeper meaning and greater emotional impact. Her book is an essential tool for any serious novelist. . . Unique and terrific!” —Michael Hauge, Hollywood screenwriting coach and story consultant, author of Writing Screenplays That Sell and Selling Your Story in 60 Seconds Table of Contents INTRODUCTION Chapter 1: It’s All about the Angle PART 1: STATIONARY CAMERA SHOTS Chapter 2: Setting Up the Scene Chapter 3: Determining the Detail With the Three Basic Distances Chapter 4: A Bigger Perspective Chapter 5: Slip in a Slide Show Chapter 6: Series of Shots for Quick Action Chapter 7: The Punch Is in the Details PART 2: MOVING SHOTS Chapter 8: Honing In on a Key Moment Chapter 9: Open the Reader’s Eyes and Heart Chapter 10: Take the Reader Where You Want Her to Go Chapter 11: Seeing through the Character’s Eyes PART 3: ORCHESTRATING THE SYMPHONY OF SHOTS Chapter 12: Putting It All Together Chapter 13: Using a Filmmaker’s Eye Chapter 14: Color and Shapes to Shape Your Novel Chapter 15: Altering Time and Perception Chapter 16: The Sound of . . . Sound Chapter 17: Movies in Our Characters’ Heads Chapter 18: Conclusion ABOUT THE AUTHOR INTRODUCTION Point and Shoot So, a man walks into a bar, accompanied by a large piece of asphalt. He goes up to the bartender and says, “I’ll have a whiskey.” He nods at his friend and adds, “Oh, and one for the road.” If I told this joke to you and a group of your friends, I’m not sure you’d laugh as much as I’d hope, but one thing I am sure of—you would each have pictured this playing out in your head, and each would have seen a completely different “movie.” Maybe you pictured this taking place in a Western saloon, with the man dressed in cowboy boots and wearing a Stetson hat. He probably had a Texan drawl, and maybe was chewing tobacco as he spoke. Maybe one of your friends imagined a Yuppie high-end urban bar, with soft leather upholstery and smelling of expensive Cuban cigar smoke. However you envisioned this briefly described scene, no doubt your friends “saw” something wholly different in their minds. Here’s the point: if you had watched this in a movie on the big screen, you and your friends would have seen the exact same things. You wouldn’t be arguing later whether the piece of asphalt was black or gray or the man was wearing that hat or not. The film itself provided all the details for you, leaving little to your imagination. Tell It Like You See It With fiction, though, writers are presented with an entirely different situation. The reader reading your novel will only see the specifics if you detail them. And even if you do, it’s likely she will still envision many of the scene elements different from what you hoped to convey. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, leaving out details and allowing the reader to “fill in the blanks” is part of the reader-writer relationship. In a way, a novel becomes much more personal than a movie, a little bit of a “choose your own adventure” quality. Many love novels just for that ability to “put themselves” into the story, whether it be by relating to a protagonist, seeing people we know in the characters presented, or feeling like we are going through the trials and perils presented by the plot. The challenge and beauty of the artistic palette a writer uses raises numerous questions: How much or how little detail do I (or should I) put in my novel in order to help the reader see the story the way I see it? And how much should I leave to the reader’s imagination? How can I best write each scene so that I “show” the reader what I want him to see? How can I write scenes that will give the emotional impact equivalent to what can be conveyed through a film? The joke I told was short and didn’t give much detail. It had no power or punch, no strong feel of action or movement. I doubt you will remember it a month from now. Other than the man walking and talking and nodding, the “scene” was stagnant, with little to stir the imagination or evoke emotion. Maybe your own writing feels this way to you—often—and you don’t know what to do to make it better. Maybe you’ve read a dozen books on writing craft and have attended countless workshops at writers’ conferences and you still can’t seem to “get” how to write powerful, evocative scenes that move your readers. Well, if you sometimes feel like strangling, stabbing, or decapitating your novel because of flat, boring, lackluster scenes, you can shoot your novel instead! Show, Don’t Tell—But How? Sol Stein in his book Stein on Writing says, “Twentieth-century readers, transformed by film and TV, are used to seeing stories. The reading experience for a twentieth-century reader is increasingly visual. The story is happening in front of his eyes.” This is even more true in the twenty-first century. As literary agent and author Donald Maass says in Writing 21st Century Fiction: “Make characters do something that readers can visualize.” We’ve heard it countless times: show, don’t tell. Sounds simple, right? Wrong. There are myriad choices a writer has to make in order to “show” and not “tell” a scene. Writers are often told they need to show, which in essence means to create visual scenes the reader can “watch” unfold as they read. But telling a writer to “show” is vague. Just how do you show? How do you transfer the clearly enacted scene playing in your mind to the page in a way that not only gets the reader to see just what you want her to see but also comes across with the emotional impact you intend?