Tagged

I've been tagged by Erica Orloff, author of The Roofer (one of my favorite books), and Mafia Chic (soon to be produced by Warner as a pilot for a CBS TV show), and many many other fine books you can find on her website (see links). I'm supposed to come up with five interesting or unique things about myself.

One of these five is fictional. See if you can guess which one.

1. When I was in my early twenties, one New Years Eve at midnight, I kissed twenty-seven different women (all strangers) at The Phoenix Hill Tavern in Louisville, Ky. Several of them came back for seconds.

2. I dressed in drag at a Halloween block party one year. Full makeup, black spandex pants and black boots, turquoise Rayon top with 36Ds, shoulder-length black hair. I was a knockout (I won the costume contest, btw).

3. In 1983, I took a trip to LA and watched a taping of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Drummer Buddy Rich was on the show that night, and I met him and 'traded licks' for a few minutes backstage after the show.

4.When I was 11, some creepy guy took my picture in the park one afternoon. The next morning the photo took up a full 1/4 of the front page of the nationally acclaimed Courier-Journal (Louisville's daily newspaper). I was a celebrity at school that day!

5.I was in the movie Stripes with Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, and John Candy. A few other nitwits and I (including Bill), went to the wrong restaurant for lunch. Universal had catering brought in, but we got the wrong info somehow. The assistant director was pissed!

Okay, I tag Aaron Lazar, Joe Konrath, Kristy Montee (PJ Parrish), Kathy McGee and Lainey Bancroft. Like me, everyone is allowed one secret fictional entry among the five. Have fun!

The Scene Worksheet

SCENE: ACT: POV:

SETTING (period, duration, location, level of conflict):

EVENT:

GOAL (WHAT DOES THIS CHARACTER WANT?):

MOTIVATION (WHY DOES THE CHARACTER WANT THIS?):

CONFLICT:

VALUE SHIFT (+/- or -/+, i.e., WHAT CHANGES BY THE END OF THE SCENE):

IS THE GOAL MET? (YES, BUT...OR NO, AND FURTHERMORE...)

EMOTION:

WHAT DO WE LEARN ABOUT THE CHARACTER?:


This is a tool I came up with to help develop scenes. For those of you who outline, you can use it from the get-go. For those of you who don’t outline, like me, it can be used to make sure your scene has all the proper elements on rewrite.

Any suggestions for additions to my worksheet?

Splitting The Scene, Part Six: What Sells Better Than Sex?

The short answer: Nothing.

Let’s take a look at the long answer though.

Why is there no such thing as a friendly game of tennis? Tennis (singles tennis, the nitty gritty as far as I’m concerned) is a sport where one individual is matched against another. Skill, physical ability, and mental fortitude all play a part. You can talk about football, basketball, baseball etc., all you want; but, to me, one man or woman battling against an equal opponent is far more compelling than when a team does the same thing.

Why?

It’s one on one. There is one winner, one loser. On any given day, exactly 50% of the people playing tennis lose. No such thing as a tie in tennis. If you put two players on the court, they will battle until one is victorious.

Why is winning so important?

I think it’s part of human nature to want to be a champion, or want to root for one.

What does any of this have to do with writing fiction?

Plenty.

Conflict is the essence of drama. I’ve read some ensemble pieces that I like but, for the most part, the stories I think are most compelling are the ones that pit a single hero against a single antagonist. The hero might be part of a group (say, a police agency), as might the bad guy, but when it comes to the final showdown these two are isolated, one against the other, like ill-fated locomotives on a collision course. Like Borg and McKenroe in the finals at Wimbledon (yeah, I’m old).

Someone has to lose.

If you’re writing commercial fiction, that “someone” is most likely the antagonist. Readers know this. They know that the hero is going to win eventually.

So how does a modern writer do it? How do we keep readers turning the page when the outcome is surely inevitable?

With conflict, my friends. Not a little, a lot. We can plant a seed of doubt in the reader’s mind, stack the odds so overwhelmingly against our hero that the reader thinks hey, maybe this is it. There’s no way Nicholas Colt can make it out of this one alive. Of course, deep inside they know that he will. But they have to find out how. They have to turn another page.

What sells better than sex?

Conflict.

Read the front page of any reputable newspaper.

Get some conflict on every page of your manuscript, and you’ll be on the right track.