Imagine, if you will, The Fugitive with Ace Ventura as the lead.

While much of the plot of this exciting movie could remain intact, the entire flavor of it would be radically different. Scenes would change, dialog would be altered… and, despite the plot similarities, chances are pretty good these two versions would wind up on completely different shelves in your local video store. Which isn’t all that surprising.

Because when we watch a movie or read a book it isn’t really plot that we invest ourselves in. It’s character. The characters set the tone, and our acceptance or rejection of those characters is essential to our acceptance or rejection of the story itself.

Great characters make us laugh and cry or even frustrate and infuriate us. Great characters make us squirm in suspense and excitement. Great characters take us on an emotional rollercoaster ride and are absolutely essential to our suspension of disbelief.

WELL, SURE, BUT…

Whenever I spout off about the all-important need for great characters, someone invariably disagrees. True writing success, they say, lies not only in great characters, but in your ability to come up with a great plot and structure, compelling dialogue and so forth.

And they aren’t wrong. In fact, I couldn’t agree more.

But the simple truth is this — and I’m not the first to say it: your characters define all those things. They are your story. Even if you succeed in giving us a wonderful plot and structure, you’ve got nothing unless your characters jump off the page. In writing fiction of any kind, characters are everything. Everything.

It is impossible to imagine Gone With the Wind without the feisty, self-centered yet courageous Scarlett O’Hara. Or Citizen Kane without the domineering presence of Charles Foster Kane.

But not only are these lead characters all-important, every character that surrounds them seems to be full-bodied and alive. The authors have somehow managed to pump life into every single character that occupies the page.

Now the question is this: how do you and I do the same thing?

CREATING COMPELLING CHARACTERS

Truth is, I can’t tell you how to do this, but I can tell you how I do it — and I’m often complimented on my great characters. But my method, like any other method taught out there, is not surefire for everyone who tries it. In fact, many people will reject it out of hand as being far too simplistic. And they may be right. Yet it works for me. And, who knows, it might just work for you.

There are writing gurus who will tell you that the only way to create a great character is to sit down with a legal pad or a bunch of note cards or a character chart and start filling in the blanks.

How old is the character? What’s his occupation? What are his likes and dislikes? What school did he graduate from? Where’s his hometown? Who were his best friends in grammar school. What kind of parents does he have? Does he have any siblings? The list goes on and on and on.

All of these questions are designed to help you get under the skin of your character. To help you understand him or her to the fullest extent possible so that when you write your scenes, your character will be alive in your own mind. And if he’s alive in your own mind, then surely he’ll be alive in the minds of your audience.

Well, yes. Of course. But, I’m sorry, call me lazy, call me stupid — I just can’t bring myself to sit down long enough to answer all these questions.

Oh, I’ve tried. But halfway through I find myself wondering, what’s the point to all this? I may say my main character attended Dartmouth — but how exactly does that bit of information help me unless it’s directly related to the story at hand?

I have yet to figure it out. Instead, I approach the task in this way:

CHARACTERS ARE ATTITUDE

Let’s go back to Scarlett O’Hara for a moment. How did I describe her? Feisty, self-centered yet courageous? You could throw in flirtatious and childish as well. These are all attitudes that our audience can immediately latch onto and understand. We don’t need to know that she comes from a pampered Southern background and a rebellious Irish father to understand — and perhaps identify with — that attitude. Her attitude alone is enough to draw us in.

Why? Because attitude is action — the character in a state of being. Giving your character an attitude — preferably one that conflicts with the other characters in your story — is a great way to help you and your audience understand who that character is.

CHARACTERS ARE EMOTION

Adding emotion to your character can help your audience identify with him or her. Looking at Scarlett O’Hara again, when Gone With the Wind opens we see the flirtatious and selfish side of Scarlett’s personality. But as the opening scenes continue, we discover that despite all the attention she’s getting from the men in her world, she’s actually in love with another and has been rejected by him. Scarlett is wounded by that rejection yet hides the hurt from all but the object of her affection.

This is an emotion/reaction we can all identify with. If we haven’t experienced it ourselves, we have seen it in others we know and love. The emotion is what gives depth to… the attitude.

CHARACTERS MUST HAVE A GOAL

Every character must have a goal. Not just the main character. This is a given. Without a goal, your main character will wander aimlessly and your audience will disappear.

But every character that inhabits your story should have a goal. The character’s goal is often what defines both attitude and emotion.

Let’s take a relatively minor character for example. A grocery store clerk. The hero is buying a carton of milk. For a beat of conflict in an otherwise innocuous scene, we might give the grocery store clerk a goal: she wants to go home. She’s been on her feet all day long, the new shoes are killing her and all she wants to do is punch that time clock (and maybe anyone who gets in her way) and get the hell out of there.

This goal can help you define the character’s attitude. Is she weary? Is she grouchy? And how does this affect (read: conflict with) the hero?

Giving such a minor character a goal and an attitude/emotion may seem silly, but the result is a much richer story with much richer characters.

CHARACTER IS ACTION/DIALOGUE

Defining an attitude/emotion and a goal are all wonderful, helpful things. But none of them mean squat if we don’t see these things in action.

Sure, we can have Joe Blow say our hero is a selfish, manipulating bastard, but that means nothing unless we see this for ourselves. The way your character acts and speaks is what finally defines her/him.

When I describe Scarlett O’Hara as flirtatious and self-centered, these attributes are defined by what Scarlett says and does. She flirts with just about every man who enters her world, she manipulates them into paying attention to her despite the unhappiness this brings to the other women around her. By seeing her in action and hearing her words, we quickly understand the attitude and emotion she brings to the story.

The cliche, Show Don’t Tell, couldn’t be more true here. We must always show our characters acting and reacting — not simply talking about their motivations and desires.

ME + IMAGINATION

Defining a character’s goal/attitude/emotion/action are all wonderful things, but how exactly do we go about doing that without resorting to those cards and charts and character sketches the writing teachers tell us we so desperately need?

Again, this works for me. It may not work for you. And it’s deceptively simple:

Every character I write is me. From the hero and heroine down to that grocery store clerk, every single character I write is… me.

Yes, you say, but isn’t that a bit limiting? Doesn’t that make for a rather monotonous set of characters?

Maybe. But I have yet to hear any complaints. If my lead character is a divorced father of three who finds himself unwittingly involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the government, the first thing I ask myself when approaching a scene (even though I’m happily married and wouldn’t know a conspiracy if it jumped up and bit me) is this: how would I react in this situation.

Then I add the color (read: attitude/emotion). How would I react, if… I was a self-centered bastard… a no-nonsense cop… an officious political hack. And I apply this technique to every character I write.

In short, I’m like a method actor playing all of the parts. By using myself and a healthy dose of imagination, I can approach characterization from the inside out. And once I’m able to get into the skin of my characters, it’s much, much easier to create someone whom I, and hopefully the audience, can identify with.

FINALLY…

If you still feel like you have to drag out the cards and charts, then so be it. If knowing every single little detail about your character is important to you, then by all means write them all down, cover your entire wall with important tidbits of information. I would never belittle anyone for doing what feels right for them.

But while you’re at it, take into consideration the things I’ve talked about here. Remember attitude, emotion, goal and action.

Because these are the things that will make your characters leap off the page and propel your audience through the story. The key to success is to get your audience to say (and I’m cringing as I write this):

Frankly, my dear, I do give a damn.

One of our best American writers, Elmore Leonard, has famously said that he tries to “leave out the parts people skip” when he’s writing. Anyone who has read a Leonard novel knows that they are lean, move quickly, and certainly don’t require any skimming.

But what exactly does that mean?

People start skimming when they lose interest. When they want you to get on with things. When they’re not as engaged by the story as they should be.

So how do you keep them engaged? I have a few ideas:

Keep your prose style simple and economic and clear

You can certainly be clever and artistic, but never sacrifice economy and clarity for the sake of “art.” Much of that art, in fact, is writing in a way that the sentences and paragraphs and pages flow from one to the next, giving the reader no choice but to hang onto every word.

And clarity is always important. If a reader is confused about what is going on, she may well give up on you.

Don’t bog your story down with too much description

Descriptive passages can be quite beautiful, but your job is to weigh whether or not they’re necessary. Poetic writing is often wonderful, but are you slowing the story down?

Gregory MacDonald, the author of the Fletch books, among others, once said that because we live in a “post-television” world, it is no longer necessary to use the amount of description needed in the past. We all know what the Statue of Liberty looks like because we’ve seen it on TV. We’ve seen just about everything on TV, and probably even more on the Internet.

So, I think it’s best to limit your descriptions to only what is absolutely necessary to make the story work. Meaning: enough to set the scene, set up a character, or to CLARIFY an action.

Let’s face it. Saying something as simple as, The place was a dump. Several used syringes lay on the floor next to a ratty mattress with half its stuffing gone is often more than enough to get the message across.

If you can, describe a setting through the eyes of whatever character controls the scene (meaning POV). If you include the description as part of that character’s thought process, colored by his or her mood or personality, the description then becomes much more dynamic and also reveals a lot about that character.

One man’s dump, after all, may be another man’s paradise. And showing how a character reacts to a place is much more interesting than a static description.

Tease your readers

One of the biggest mistakes I see aspiring writers make is that they try to reveal too much about character motivation and story too soon. Your job – as crass as it might sound – is to manipulate your reader. To keep her reading. Turning those pages.

Imagine meeting someone for the first time and they tell you everything there is to know about them. Where they were born, where they went to school, how many affairs they’ve had, how many brothers and sisters, their favorite color, their favorite food –

– you get the point.

What makes people interesting to us is that all of these things are revealed over a long period of time. We get to know them gradually, rather than all at once. They are a mystery that we have to unravel.

The same holds true with storytelling. You manipulate your readers by constantly creating questions in their minds. Why is she doing that? Where is she going? What happened to her in the past that makes her afraid of confronting him?

If we know it all up front, we”ll lose interest fast.

Give your characters a series of goals

Most stories will involve a central character who wants something. In a thriller, for instance, that may be something very big. The hero wants to stop the bad guy from, say, blowing up the federal building.

But if that’s all the story is about, then I’m yawning already.

If you give the hero a series of goals, smaller points he or she must reach – both internally and externally – before finally reaching that ultimate goal, then your reader will never lose interest.

A great example is the third DIE HARD movie. DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE.

The bad guy has something nefarious up his sleeve. But in order to distract the police from that ultimate goal, he sends them on a series of wild goose chases involving high explosives. Because our heroes are moving from one goal to the next, we’re never bored. In fact, we spend much of our time on the edge of our seat.

In the meantime, the main hero suspects that something is up, and as he tries to puzzle it out, we’re right there with him. We have only as much information as he has, so we’re not about to abandon ship until he (and we) knows the truth.

But more importantly, we also have a dynamic relationship playing out on screen between two characters played by Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson. These two men must work together reluctantly, and because we find them engaging, our stake in the outcome of the story is even higher.

Which brings me to my final point:

Create compelling characters

If you don’t create characters who are interesting in themselves, who have internal struggles we can relate to, who have fears we understand, who have a goal that makes sense to us on a personal level, then it doesn’t matter how cleverly you plot your novel. We won’t care.

If you need help creating compelling characters, take a look at my article on Creating Characters that Jump Off the Page.

Hopefully all of the above will help you “leave out the parts people skip.” And if you want to find out how the master himself does it, go pick up an Elmore Leonard novel today.

But be warned. He does it so well, it’s seamless. So you’ll have to pay close attention…

Let’s talk about sex.Those of you who are uncomfortable with the subject, feel free to bail out now. I’m likely to get pretty raunchy.

Still with me? I thought so.

When we make love, most of us have a particular goal in mind: that moment when our entire body seems to stem from one central point, when every nerve-ending tingles wildly as fireworks assault our brain.

That moment, of course, is orgasm, and anyone who has experienced one (or two or three), — especially with a willing and enthusiastic partner (or two or three) — knows that it can be an exquisitely pleasurable sensation.

But are all orgasms created equal?

Of course not. The quality of our orgasms is directly related to the quality of the fun and games that precede them, not to mention our emotional bond with our partner, and our willingness (or unwillingness) to surrender ourselves fully to the moment.

Orgasm is the cherry on top of the sundae — and that cherry wouldn’t taste nearly as good if we forgot to eat the ice cream first.

So what, you’re probably wondering, does any of this have to do with writing?

YOUR WILLING PARTNER

Writing is an extremely intimate act. In his book, On Writing, Stephen King describes it as a form of telepathy. We put our thoughts on paper, and days, months or even years later, someone literally reads our mind.

Think about it. With a simple arrangement of words, we have the potential to pull our audience into our mind where they can be stroked and fondled and toyed with — sometimes gently, sometimes rough.

The result is often a partnership so strong and emotionally satisfying that neither of us ever wants to let go.

Who of us here can forget those times when we’ve read a book or watched a movie we didn’t want to end? And when the end did come, we felt drained, elated and thoroughly satisfied, much like we do after a night of unbridled passion.

Getting to that place wasn’t an accident. The writer of the book — at least in most cases — didn’t merely fumble his way toward climax. If he (or she) did his job, every step was carefully choreographed to lead us around the third act corner toward the final pay-off. And the quality of that pay-off is related to one important thing:

THE GENTLE ART OF LOVEMAKING

We’re often reminded in how-to books that the typical story is broken into three acts: Set-up, Confrontation, and Resolution. Sounds pretty cold and uncaring, doesn’t it? Not to mention dull.

But what if we were to beat the lovemaking analogy into the ground and refer to the three acts in this way: Seduction, Foreplay, and Climax.

Certainly puts a whole new slant on things, doesn’t it? And if we’re to have a successful story with a successful and satisfying ending — one that keeps our partners wanting more — we must pay careful attention to these three words.

Seduction.

The beginning of a story, any story, cannot and should not be referred to as anything other than a seduction. It is our job to make our audience want us.

How do we accomplish that? First we start with character. We must create characters that our audience won’t mind, figuratively speaking, getting into bed with. Particularly the lead. Is he or she someone we find attractive? Does he have a problem or flaws we can relate to? Are his life circumstances universal yet unique enough to pique our interest?

The next element is mystery. Every story should be a mystery. Remember the girl in college the guys all wanted but knew so little about? A big part of her allure was the hint of mystery she carried. No matter what genre you’re writing in, you should never, never, never put all of your cards on the table at the beginning of the game. Instead you must reveal them one at a time, each new card offering a clue to the mystery of our characters and their stories.

The third and most important element of seduction is giving your characters a goal. And not just your lead. Every single character you write should have a goal of some kind. Put two characters with opposing goals in a room and you have drama.

But the goal of your hero must be compelling enough to intrigue us and hold our interest. In The Fugitive, Harrison Ford is wrongly convicted of killing his wife, escapes to find her killer, and soon discovers he’s being hunted himself by a relentless cop who doesn’t care whether or not Ford is guilty. All three elements of seduction are satisfied and guess what? We’re hooked.

Foreplay.

Once we get our audience into bed, however, we certainly can’t let them down. As you would with a lover, you explore and tease and make new discoveries — which can often lead your partner (in this case, the audience) to discover something about his or herself that, until that moment, remained dormant.

The foreplay in the second act is a continuation of the seduction but on a deeper, more intimate level. This is when we really begin to understand and root for the characters, and when their stake in the outcome becomes more and more important. Surprises are sprung, secrets are revealed, and our emotions and feelings build with each new scene, gradually working us toward the moment we’re all waiting for:

The Climax.

And this is why we’re here today, class, to talk about that most crucial of Act Three moments: the time when all of the work you’ve done for the last three hundred or so pages comes together like the pieces of a puzzle, where plot and subplot intertwine to create the only ending that makes sense within the context of the story you’ve told — a thrilling and, hopefully, explosive orgasm of emotion. The final kiss; the final death; the final revelation that sends your audience soaring.

But you can’t get there without laying the proper groundwork.

A wise writer once said that the first page of a novel sells that novel and the last page sells the next one. This is certainly true, but what he doesn’t say is that what comes between is what sells that last page. Without masterful seduction and foreplay it is virtually impossible to reach a satisfying climax.

Act Three is a culmination of all that came before it, and if the preceding two acts are anything short of spectacular, you’ll be lucky if your audience even sticks around for number three.

It’s all up to you.

Every time you sit down to write, you must remember that your audience is your partner, your lover, and in order to make them happy you must seduce, thrill and, most importantly, satisfy.

A button is a term used in television writing, and it’s a technique used basically to keep you so interested in the show that you’ll come back after the commercials.  The oldest use of buttons in movies are the old serials, which were usually divided up into twelve or so chapters, with each chapter ending with a cliffhanger.  And television does pretty much the same thing.  You have the commercial cliffhangers, the weekly cliffhangers and the season cliffhangers.

For those who were around and cognizant during Dallas, the most famous cliffhanger of all is “who shot JR?”  The season ended with JR being shot by an unseen assailant, and everyone went nuts, rocketing Dallas into the stratosphere of popular television shows.  A more recent show (although not THAT recent) is Alias.  I had never watched this show before and just finished up the 1st season.  Wow.  Not only is it well acted and directed, it’s smartly written and shot.  An all around great show that I watch for inspiration simply because I think the writing is so smart.  Alias is the perfect show to illustrate all the best tricks of writing that television/movie writers use.

Now most hour long shows are divided up into four parts.  Back in the old Quinn Martin days, with shows like The Fugitive, they even labeled the shows Act I, Act II, Act III, Act IV.  Don’t get confused by this and think it’s some new kind of structure.  These were just labels.  The shows were still constructed using three acts.

Anyway, at the end of each “act” a show goes to commercial.  And right before it goes to commercial, something happens — some story point, some piece of action, some line of dialogue, some revelation — that prevents you from changing the channel.  And that story point, that piece of action, dialogue, revelation is the “button.”

Obviously, books are the perfect place to do this.  If you read one of my thrillers, you’ll find that I end almost every chapter with some kind of button.  Something that kicks things up a bit and makes the reader think, “Oh, shit.  Just one more chapter and I’ll go to bed.”

And, of course, that’s what I want them to think.  The best emails I ever get are the ones in which the reader tells me she’s mad at me because I made her stay up all night.  I’m a manipulative bastard.

But buttons aren’t limited to thrillers.  Love stories are full of them.  Mysteries.  Literary fiction.  Sometimes they can be in your face and sometimes they can be subtle.  The key is to give the reader enough of a kick to keep them wanting to read.

So, where can we find examples?

Well, a lot of you are probably already doing this in your own books and screenplays.  You might not call them buttons, but you know they’re there.  And you purposely structure your chapters so they’ll end on a question or a revelation, etc.

But, if you’re new to the concept, I invite you to take a look at an excerpt from one of my books.  The buttons in Kiss Her Goodbye are not exactly in your face, but they’re definitely there:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/15104451/Kiss-Her-Goodbye

The first chapter ends with a guard being shot, and we know things are very serious.  You’ll also note that the scene has a Leave Early feel to it.

The second chapter ends with the main bad guy showing up and announcing his intentions, and the third chapter ends with the hero about to call the bad guy on the phone.

Hopefully, these will serve as good enough examples, but be sure to look at other books, movies and television shows and see if you can recognize the buttons at the ends of the chapters.

You’ve written your book (or screenplay!). You’ve labored over it for months or years and polished every syllable until your masterpiece is ready to hit the marketplace. Now comes the hard part: finding someone — preferably an agent — to read it.

“Find” is actually the wrong word. What you really have to do is attract readers. And to attract readers you have to call on all your skills as a salesman.

“Salesman?” you cry. “I’m a writer not a salesman!”

Uh-huh. Glad you’ve enjoyed your stint in fantasyland, my friend, but it’s time to take a step into the real world.

At this point, you have a product that needs to be moved and there’s only one way to move it: Advertising. Any good salesman knows all about the benefits of advertising. From the biggest corporation with their multi-million dollar commercials to the guy standing on the street holding a sign for the local car dealer: Big Savings! Today Only!

Advertising is what any good salesman uses to attract buyers. You go to a used car dealer to see what’s available and what happens? The salesman comes over and guides you toward the latest lemon while he tries to smooth-talk you into buying it. And, boy does he make it attractive. It has the latest this and the latest that and it’s only been driven by a little old lady on weekends, and this baby purrs. His sales pitch is his advertisement.

And that’s exactly how you get people to read your book. Your sales pitch. You have to prepare your pitch both verbally and on paper and you have to present it with confidence and polish.

You’ve all probably heard of a Svengali Deck, otherwise known as TV Magic Cards. For those of you who haven’t, a Svengali Deck is a special deck of playing cards that allows the user to perform a dozen or more amazing card tricks without having to develop any sleight-of-hand skills.

In the old days, magician/pitch-men used to stand on street corners or at swap meet booths and demonstrate the wonders of this deck of cards by showing you an eye-popping trick. This trick would be brief and straight to the point — just enough to show off the virtues of the deck and get you digging for the cash to buy one.

When you prepare your all-important sales pitch to entice readers to your book, you have to approach it with the same economy and magic the magician/pitch-men use. You have to get your story across in a few simple words and those words must have eye-popping appeal. They must have that wow quality that forces the reader to say, “I’ve gotta read that!”

That’s where your logline comes in.

A logline is a one or two-sentence summary of your story. Probably the best place to find a sample logline is to look in your TV Guide or local equivalent, which are full of brief story summaries. But let me give you an example.

Since I come from a screenwriting background, where loglines are as common as beautiful young starlets, let’s take a look at a movie logline:

After he’s wrongly convicted of murdering his wife, a high-powered surgeon escapes custody and hunts down the real killer, a one-armed man.

This, of course, is from The Fugitive. Maybe not the liveliest logline in the world, but it tells you just about everything you need to know about the movie. We know who the lead character is, what his dilemma is and, most importantly, what he hopes to accomplish.

What we have above is essentially the spine of the story — the sentence the entire movie hangs on. Sure, we could talk about the relentless U.S. Marshal who is after the doctor; we could talk about the train crash and the chase sequences and the experimental liver drug, but when it comes to the logline, none of that really matters. We don’t have time for it.

Like that TV Magic card trick, your logline has to be simple and to the point and it has to attract the reader to the possibility of a great read. When I look at the above logline, I think, ‘Wow, that sounds like it could be an exciting story.” And, of course, we all know it is.

The anatomy of a logline is this: The lead character has a problem and must achieve a certain goal in order to solve that problem. Who, What, How. Who is the lead character, what is his problem and how is going to solve it.

Let’s take a look at The Fugitive again:

Who: A high-powered surgeon.

What: Wrongly convicted of murdering his wife.

How: He escapes custody to hunt down the real killer.

Chances are pretty good that you’re scratching your head right now and saying, “But my story is much too complex for that.”

This may be true, but when you’re at a party trying to convince someone to read your book, you don’t have time for much detail. At least not for that initial grab.

After you have their attention, then you can launch into a slightly more complex version that really sells the book.

Let’s take a look at a fairly complex story: The Godfather.

We all know The Godfather is full of vivid characters and great subplots and big moments, but what really is the essence of the story?

Here’s what I get:

When his father is gunned down,  a gangster’s reluctant son must seek revenge and take over the family business.

Who: A gangster’s son

What: His father is shot.

How: He seeks revenge and takes over the family business.

The story plays on a rich canvas, but it is much less about Vito Corleone, the Godfather, and more about Michael, the up and coming Godfather. It is the story of his ascent (or descent, depending on your POV) to the leadership of the Family. Much of the story leads up to the moment Vito Corleone is shot, then follows Michael as he gets revenge and eventually takes over as head of the organization. Everything in the story hangs on that simple logline or spine.

If you follow the usual marketing strategies, you’ll be sending out query letters and making phone calls and throwing your pitch at just about everyone in your path.

A really concise, well thought out logline will help you get the results you want.

Patricia Storms once said that all writers are magicians.

When I read her quote on the Paperback Writer blog awhile back, I had to stop a moment and think about this. And, by God, I think she may be right.

When I was about ten years old, my father took me to a magic show in Hollywood called IT’S MAGIC. There were about twenty magicians on the bill, one after another showing us their biggest and best tricks, sawing women in half, floating balls in the air and, yes, pulling rabbits out of the hat.

I loved the show and, afterwards, my father immediately took me to Bert Wheeler’s Magic Shop, where I picked up a trick called multiplying billiard balls. Only the billiard ball size were too large for my small hands, so I got the pint-sized version.

I practiced that trick for months. And, if I do say so myself, I got pretty darn good at it. I still have a picture of me at twelve years old, decked out in the homemade tux my mother made for me, showing off my sleight of hand dexterity with those Bert Wheeler multiplying balls.

Thing is, the mechanics of the trick weren’t very tough. I’m not going to spoil it for you by telling you how it was done, but let’s say that just about anyone could do the trick with a few minutes practice.

But I have a feeling it wouldn’t look much like magic. It would probably look like some guy ham-handedly struggling to multiply those billiard balls, and the gimmick behind the trick would be obvious to any but the dimmest of spectators.

Real magicians, you see, practice day in and out to make their sleight of hand smooth and undetectable. So that it looks like REAL magic. So that people watch and say, “Wow! Do that again!”

And that’s what writers try to do as well. We work very hard behind the scenes, manipulating words and phrases and characters and plot lines and trying our best to make it all look seamless and — hopefully — get our readers (and our editors and publishers) to say, “Wow! Do that again!”

A lot of people think that all they need to know is how the trick is done and they, too, can be a magician. They’re unwilling to put in the real practice necessary, and the moment they learn the trick, they’re ready to perform. To get in front of an audience of their friends and family and show off.

First time writers often think that the moment they’ve put that first story down on paper, they’re ready to be published — “How do I get an agent?” is the most commonly asked question of professional writers next to “Where do you get your ideas?”

But are you ready for that agent any more than that first time magician is ready to perform?

Writing, like magic, takes years of practice. And a willingness to fail again and again until we get it right. Until what we do seems not like simple trickery, but REAL magic to those who read our work. When the words draw them in and transport them to another time and place, a time and place filled with characters who are alive and breathing and the suspension of disbelief is so deep that we, as writers, can get away with almost anything. Can make them believe that a woman can be cut in half, that rabbits can materialize from nowhere, that those billiard balls can multiply between our fingers…

The great writers, like the great magicians, elevate craft to an art. And as we read their work, we can’t help but think, “How did he do that?”

But knowing the “how” is only a small part of the trick. It’s knowing what to DO with that “how” that really counts.

Making them believe, like Patricia Storms, that what we do is magic.

One of the best ways to construct a plot is to use a very simple technique that almost makes the process seem effortless.  All you have to do is ask yourself a series of “What-Ifs.”

What if a Neo-Nazi terrorist organization got hold of a nuclear bomb?

What if they planted that bomb in an American football stadium?

What if a fledgling CIA analyst uncovered the plan and couldn’t convince his superiors that he was right?

What if the bomb actually went off, destroying half an American city?

What if the terrorists planted evidence making it look like the Russians were at fault?

As you can see, this series of What Ifs practically lays out the structure of The Sum of All Fears. And as we plot out What-Ifs like these and turn them into scene and sequence, each and every one of them forms a question in the reader’s mind.

Let’s look at some of them again:

What if a Neo-Nazi terrorist organization got hold of a nuclear bomb? (Reader: What are they going to do with it?)

What if they planted the bomb in an American football stadium? (Reader: Will someone stop it before it explodes?)

What if a fledgling CIA analyst uncovered the plan and couldn’t convince his superiors that he was right? (Reader: How will he stop the terrorists?)

And so on. Each What-If you present, each question you put into the mind of your reader helps compel him forward through the story. He turns the page for one very simple reason: he wants to find out what will happen next.

The longer you take to reveal the answers to these questions, however, the stronger the hold you’ll have on your audience. It’s important not to gave away too much too soon, or your audience will have nothing to look forward to.

But you have to be very careful here. Remember the TV show Twin Peaks? The whole series was based on the premise, “Who killed Laura Palmer?” With each episode, more and more clues were provided — along with a lot of wacky characters and a lot more compelling questions — but after a dozen or so episodes, the Palmer premise began to wear thin.

Why? Because the writers kept the answer from us for so long that we began to lose interest.

Warning aside, you must always remember to take it slow. And as you answer each of these story points, make sure you replace them with questions that are even more compelling.

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. Every story — no matter what genre — should be an unfolding mystery.

While you can certainly get away with a short story having only one plot, novels and movies will almost always have a number of plots going at once.  One of those plots is dominant, of course, but what about those smaller, all important sub plots?

In The Godfather, we watch as a violent power play is made against Don Corleone by a rival Mafia family. His young, clean-cut son, Michael Corleone, volunteers to take revenge, and the movie follows Michael’s descent into the dark world of the Mafia and his eventual emergence as the new Godfather.

There are a number of subplots in the movie, but the one that most strikes a chord is Michael’s relationship with two women. The first is Kay, who is decidedly not Italian. She’s his lifeline to the outside world. His connection to “reality.”

But as he’s drawn deeper into the violence, Michael’s ties to her become more and more tenuous, until he finds himself completely cut off from her — and the outside world — as he hides out in Sicily.

In Sicily, Michael meets a young local woman who steals his heart. She’s his soul mate, his true love, whom he marries. Then, in another act of revenge, a car carrying his new bride is blown to bits, plunging Michael into an emotional darkness he’s never known.

He goes back to the U.S. a considerably different man, but rekindles his relationship with Kay and eventually marries her — a marriage that is obviously doomed.

This particular subplot would probably have a tough time standing on its own. Its reliance on the main story line is obvious enough, but what really makes it great is that it parallels and impacts Michael’s descent. Kay represents Michael’s relationship to the “civilian” world, while his marriage to the Sicilian woman illustrates his rediscovery of his roots.

The tragic twist in this subplot is one of the major causes of Michael’s emotional retreat and his rise to power. He becomes a man so cold and ruthless that he’s able (in Part II) to put a hit out on his own brother.

And that’s what all great movie and novel subplots do. They rise organically from the main storyline, attaching themselves to your hero and impacting his ability to reach his goal. Great subplots are so closely woven into the fabric of the story that we often have a hard time discerning them.

Even lesser movies than The Godfather recognize the need for a solid subplot.

A favorite of mine is a dark, direct-to-video thriller called Resurrection, which was written by Brad Mirman, the writer of several good thrillers. To some, Resurrection plays like a poor man’s rip-off of Seven, but I much prefer Mirman’s take on the hunt for a serial killer because of its inventiveness — something I think Seven’s rather cliched story lacks.

Resurrection is essentially about a couple of cops hunting for a serial killer who is taking the body parts of his victims and building them into a representation of Christ. Each of the victims is named after an apostle and the killer’s timeline runs him straight toward Easter, the day of resurrection.

The subplot is a minor one, but it certainly deepens the lead character. He’s a cop who, after the tragic death of his son, has discarded his faith in God and is quickly losing his emotional connection to his wife.

During the course of the movie, his wife attempts to repair their marriage and his faith by inviting the local priest over for a pep talk, but our hero soundly rejects the man and any notion of accepting help from him.

Then, while looking for a clue to the killer’s plan that seems deeply rooted in Biblical lore, our hero must finally seek the help of the priest. But as he enters the church, he hesitates, as if the mere act of stepping foot in the place is a betrayal of his son’s memory.

Again, this subplot is powerful because it is so securely attached to the main storyline that it can’t exist on its own. The two plots feed off of each other and both are stronger because of it.

A lot of movies today treat subplots as an afterthought. Stories are often built by a committee from a “hot” idea, the characters created to fill out a plot that’s stretched so thin that the slightest jolt could snap it apart.

Subplots are haphazardly tacked on in a weak attempt to keep the whole mess together, and their paint-by-numbers obviousness is one of the greatest contributors to the collective snore rising from the audience.

Many storytellers today have it backwards. Yes, start with a great idea, but rather than try to force characters and subplot into that story, try creating the characters first, then let the story grow from them. Characters are story. And any great plot or subplot is driven by the characters’ wants and desires.

Remember this as you sit down to write and, with time and patience, you too can give us writing the caliber of The Godfather and Resurrection. Not a bad place to be.

Structure is one of the most important parts of any story, whether it be for the screen or the page. This essay was originally written with screenplays in mind, but I approach my novels in the exact same way. Let me explain:

A friend of mine had a house built on the side of a hill in the Pacific Northwest. Beautiful view. At night, he’d stand on his deck and look out at the valley spilling out below him, moonlight reflected on the surface of the ocean beyond.

The house itself was a marvel of wood and glass and filled with just about any convenience you can think of, fully automated by a mainframe computer. People who visited usually stood around wide-eyed and slack-jawed, completely amazed by the place. It was that impressive.

A few months after he moved in, my friend was walking barefoot across his carpet when he noticed an odd bump in the floor. He explored it with his toes, then crouched down and ran his hands along the bump. Alarmed, he pulled the carpet back and felt his stomach clutch up when he discovered a crack in the foundation that ran the entire width of the house – a crack that literally split the place in half.

Frantic calls got him nowhere. He was told very matter-of-factly that the only way to fix it was to tear down the house and start from scratch with a new foundation. It turned out that the original contractor had used substandard cement that, coupled with a serious design flaw, couldn’t withstand the weight of the house. A week later, the storm of the decade washed half of it into the valley. Pieces of my friend’s dream were scattered from his perch on the mountainside all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

Despondent, my friend moved in with his parents while he contemplated what to do next. His father, a retired firefighter, said, “Can’t build a house without a solid foundation. Can’t have a solid foundation without a foolproof set of plans.”

And he was right. You can’t. And you shouldn’t.

When my friend told me what his father had said, it brought to mind something very similar that I (and many others) have been saying for years –- about writing, not houses. And if you’ve spent any amount of time trying to become a professional writer, you’ve heard it before:

Writing a story is like building a house. You can decorate it to your heart’s content, but without a solid foundation, it’s bound to fall apart.

WHAT STRUCTURE IS

When people ask writers what structure is, the most common response you hear is this: a beginning, middle and end.

Well, duh. Any moron knows that. We’ve all seen enough movies and read enough books to know that you’ve gotta start somewhere, end somewhere else and that a bunch of stuff has to happen in between. Otherwise what’s the point?

The trick is knowing where to start, where to end, and what to put in-between. If you’re laying a foundation with a faulty plan or substandard material, you’ll still have your beginning, middle and end, but there’s a pretty good chance that your story won’t stand up to much scrutiny.

Several years ago I read an article in Writer’s Digest by a writer named Gary Provost. Mr. Provost wisely compared a story to a basketball game, in which the players have an overall goal – to win the game. To reach that goal, they must face the challenge of several smaller goals, traveling from one end of the court to another in order to score baskets and, of course, to prevent the opposing team from scoring. All during the game, the two teams have conflicting goals and will do anything they can to stop the other from succeeding.

Mr. Provost was, I believe, trying to describe the nature of conflict in storytelling, and he did it in a way that not only tells us about conflict, but about structure as well. The two are so closely intertwined that it would be difficult not to discuss them both in the same breath.

Structure is a series of goals that lead to an overall goal. You can’t have your players wandering around for no reason. They have to have a purpose in life. They have to know what their objectives are and must be willing to fight (conflict) to reach those objectives.

A MAN WITH A PURPOSE

Let’s look for a moment at the movie, The Fugitive. While not a perfect action-thriller, it comes pretty close, especially in terms of structure.

It opens with a woman being killed. Her husband, a prominent doctor, is arrested and convicted for her murder, but he’s an innocent man. The real killer is a one-armed man, with whom he fought at the crime scene.

On the way to prison, there’s a terrible bus crash and the doctor escapes. Seizing this opportunity, he begins his quest to clear his name. And the only way to do this is to find the one-armed man.

This setup is the “beginning” of the story. Act One. It defines the main character, his situation and his overall goal, to find the real killer. Not only is this the character’s overall goal, it was the writer’s overall goal as well. It was the writer’s job to figure a way to get his hero to this goal in a dramatically compelling way. Not an easy task.

To accomplish that, the writer had to structure a series of sub-goals (think basketball) that would eventually lead his hero to the end of the game. Conflict helped him do that.

Let’s break it down:

In Act One of The Fugitive, what’s the first sub-goal? Not the hero’s goal, but writer’s.

Stuck? I’ll give you a hint: to get Dr. Kimble arrested. Plain and simple.

Kimble’s wife is killed, he fights with the one-armed man, the one-armed man escapes and Kimble is left behind with no alibi and blood on his clothes. The next thing he knows he’s arrested for murder.

In the process of setting up the character’s main objective, the writer uses this smaller goal as a kind of navigating point. The first act is a series of these navigating points, and by breaking the act down in this way, the writer is able to execute his story in more manageable chunks.

The second sub-goal in Act One is to get Kimble convicted of the murder, followed by a third, and slightly bigger goal (turning point) — the bus crash and escape that end the act and allow the hero to begin his quest toward his overall objective.

GOALS, GOALS AND MORE GOALS

The part of the story that usually makes or breaks the writer is the “middle” part, or Act Two. This act is commonly known as the confrontation act, and carries the bulk of the story. Again, like Mr. Provost’s basketball game, Act Two is filled with many sub-goals and, hopefully, a formidable force to keep the hero from reaching those goals.

In The Fugitive, Kimble has escaped in Act One, but Act Two brings him a whole new series of problems. His immediate objective is to get to safety and to take care of a gash in his side caused by the bus wreck. He runs through the woods in his prison garb, exchanges it for a truck driver’s overalls, then sneaks into the nearest hospital and tends to the wound.

These scenes are filled with conflict because Kimble is being pursued at the time by a new character the writer has introduced — Kimble’s nemesis, U.S. Marshall Sam Gerard, a hard-assed fugitive hunter. Gerard’s overall goal is to bring his man in. He’s the opposing team, trying to score those baskets and win the game.

So in Act Two, the first sub-goal is getting Kimble to the hospital. This sub-goal was created by conflict – the bus crash, gash and police pursuit — as Kimble reacts to and battles against it.

This, in turn, leads to yet another sub-goal or navigating point: the first confrontation between Kimble and Gerard. At the hospital, Kimble steals an ambulance, gets cornered by Gerard in a viaduct and jumps to certain death in order to escape. Again, by using this first confrontation as a navigating point and writing toward it, the writer was better able to manage his story.

Since we’re limited by space here, rather than continue through the story scene by scene, let’s look at some of the sub-goal/navigating points that helped the writer make it through Act Two:

Kimble survives the jump and heads back to Chicago.

He contacts a colleague, who helps him with money.

He goes to the prosthetic ward of a Chicago hospital and gets a list of one-armed men.

He calls several of the men, narrows down the list, and discovers one is in prison.

He goes to the prison, discovers it’s the wrong guy, but is confronted by Gerard and must escape.

He breaks into the one-armed man’s apartment, finds photos and evidence that raise questions about a drug Kimble’s own hospital had been testing, a drug Kimble knew was defective.

He goes to his hospital to investigate and discovers his colleague is behind his wife’s murder – with Kimble the intended target.

Each of these is a sub-goal/navigating point that helps the writer build his story. Moving parallel to this are a series of goals involving the Gerard character. By moving from one to the next, the writer is able to build a series of sequences, each affected by one preceding it.

By going beyond the simple “beginning, middle and end” and structuring your own story this way, your foundation becomes as solid as a rock, and the process is much easier to handle.

Like those before it, Act Three, the resolution, will have its own navigating points, the biggest of all being the hero’s success or failure to achieve his overall goal.

Have your eyes glazed over yet?

Hey, nobody said writing a screenplay is easy.

AH, BUT IT DOESN’T STOP THERE

Structure doesn’t end with these navigating points. When we break our story down further, each scene should have a goal and a structure of its own.

That’s right. In a well-written screenplay, each scene has it’s own setup, confrontation and resolution. These elements may not be as fully formed as they are in the overall script, but they’re there. I urge you to take a very close look at any well-written movie and see for yourself.

But don’t strain yourself too hard. There’s such a thing as overkill…

ARISTOTLE’S MODEL AND THE WHAMMY BOYS

Listen to new writers talk about structure, and it’s fairly obvious they’ve been listening to blow hards like me who insist that each story is comprised of three acts and that each act contains an approximate number of pages with a couple of turning points along the way.

Aristotle wasn’t an idiot, and based on my observations over the years, I’d say his model holds up pretty well. Even so-called five act stories are really three-act stories in disguise. And on closer scrutiny, even the infamous Pulp Fiction with its “revolutionary” time shifts follows Aristotle’s model.

Trust me, it’s true.

So it’s probably a good idea to have that model in the back of your mind when you write your novel or screenplay. After enough reading and writing and movie-watching, the three-act structure becomes ingrained in our system. So ingrained that we often forget it’s there.

When you’re at that point, a good way to approach structure is to design your story so that it loosely follows Larry Gordon and Joel Silver’s whammy chart, which, boiled down, goes like this:

Something must happen every ten minutes or so.

That something doesn’t necessarily have to be a shot of action as Gordon and Silver insist (hey, maybe you’re writing a love story), but it should be something compelling.

In other words, when you structure your story, take those sub-goal/navigating points I’ve been blathering on about and spread them out across the landscape of your screenplay so that each of them falls every ten minutes or so. Put a couple of the larger ones at the end of act One and Two and you’ll do okay.

This isn’t as formulaic as it sounds. Really. In fact, I think as you work out your story you’ll be surprised to discover that these navigating points often take care of themselves in a very natural, intuitive way.

THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD

Anybody confused? I hope not. For those of you who are, simply think of what it’s like to drive across country. It would be impossible take the trip in one long haul, never stopping to rest and refuel. Before we get started, most of us pull out the map and mark our route and, to carry an analogy way too far, lay the foundation for our trip. We know exactly where we’re going and how to get there, but we’re always looking for places to stop along the way to make the trip a more pleasant experience.

So, go on, get out of here. Get your map, mark your route, and start driving.

And whatever you do, don’t get lost.

The first ten pages of a book or screenplay are absolutely crucial to the success of that work.

That’s a bold statement, sure, but true.  If you do not hook your reader in your first ten pages, it is unlikely that they’ll read the next ten.

If you send your manuscript to an agent who claims to “read all submissions,” (and good luck finding one) be assured that if he or she doesn’t see something promising right up front, not only will he/she not continue reading, but you’ll spend a lot of time waiting for a phone call that will never come.

Some agents won’t even read past the FIRST page if it doesn’t hook them.

So how, exactly, DO you hook them?  I have a few ideas:

Your voice.  Every writer has a unique voice.  A particular way of saying things that makes us know right way who’s writing.  Stephen King is a great example.  Years ago, when he wrote THINNER under the pen name Richard Bachman, I remember picking up the book in the bookstore and thinking, jeez, this guy writes just like Stephen King.  And it was good, of course.  I was hooked from page one.  If you work to develop a voice that is smooth, professional and, most importantly, entertaining, you’ll have gone a long way toward making those first ten pages sing.

Make it a mystery.  I don’t care what kind of story you’re writing.  EVERY story is a mystery story.  And by mystery, I merely mean that you don’t reveal everything up front.  You tease your reader, planting questions in his/her mind, questions that he wants answers to.  But then you take your time answering them.  In a typical cop story, this might be “who killed the waiter and why?”  But it could also be, “Who rejected Allison?  Why is she afraid to ride the bus?  What happened to her that was so traumatic?” Your job is to plant seeds in those first ten pages and use the next 390 to watch them grow.

Start with action. And by action I don’t necessarily mean a chase scene or gun play.  I merely mean to begin IN MOTION.  You might have a couple waiting to hear from a doctor, or a man driving to a place he’s dreading, a woman getting a phone call from an old lover.  Whatever the case, do not start with a stagnant scene — like someone waking in the morning.  Start with the story already in motion.

If you follow these three suggestions, I think you’ll be a long way toward making those first ten pages engaging and rewarding to the reader.

But once you’ve got them hooked, the trick is to keep them hooked until the very last scene.