Entry tags:
On openings
I spent some time yesterday taking notes from the post with an editor's critiques of fantasy novel openings that I linked in yesterday's post.
Looking at my notes, it seems to me that the starting of a fantasy novel (at least in today's fashion, and according to this editor) should focus on a character and an immediate, clear problem, mystery or tension with stakes high enough for the character to get the reader interested or intrigued, then pull the 'camera' out and give a quick overview of the situation and surroundings for context, flavored with the character's emotions. We should learn something unique about the character, world or concept.
Which, honestly, is the opposite of what so many self-pubbed books do. I think they're taking inspiration from movies and comics, which, at least in my memory, tend to start with overall establishing shots, then narrow into the character.
This, and an opening I critiqued on r/fantasywriters yesterday, made me think of Mad Max: Fury Road. I just rewatched the second minute of it (YouTube), and that's a great opening. Why the second minute? Because the first minute is a narration over the opening credits filling us in on the story of the first Mad Max and, I believe, wholly unnecessary. The first video I linked starts with Max saying "It was hard to know who was more crazy: me, or everyone else." That's all you need to know.
The visuals start with Max and his car silhouetted against the desert. Max seems hunched, bestial, drawn in on himself We can't tell if he's brooding, looking for danger, or relieving himself. There's a bedroll laid out beside his car. As soon as he finishes his line above, we hear young female voices saying "Hello? Where are you?" echoing so we know they're probably not real, but in his head.*
The camera pans down, keeping Max and the car in frame, but showing us a rock with a two-headed lizard on it, so we know mutations are a Thing here. The voices whisper again, and Max says "Here they come again." A voice whispers his full name, he continues "Worming their way into the black matter of my brain." We know he's in a bad, bad state mentally. Voices again, "Help us, Max. You promised to help us." He seems to be hunching in an attempt to escape form the voices.
The lizard scurries toward Max, and he stomps on it, cutting the voices off instantly. He scoops it up with his foot with an explosive, jerky motion, not bending or squatting down to get it. As the camera starts zooming in to him, his narration continues: "I tell myself...they cannot touch me." We know he's wound up tight and can go off at any moment.
Boom, instant cut to a closeup of the back of his head, in its hood. The narration says, "They are long dead," and he abruptly turns his head so we see part of his profile, unkempt hair and beard, and the lizard sticking out of his mouth as he eats it raw. He's definitely bestial, and at this point (if you have been under a rock and know nothing of Mad Max), you're pretty sure he's the crazy one, as he bears all the stereotypical hallmarks of what we think of as crazy. (We don't really see the lower half of his face due to his beard and his hood, which I have to wonder: is it meant to hint at the cage he shortly ends up wearing over his face?)
Then we hear a car zoom as he moves in a flash, and we can't tell if it's a sound effect meant to (a) connect him to his car by making his movements sound like a car or (b) something he's heard that makes him spring into action. (Or (c), both). The camera work so far, except for that one quick cut, has been slow and lazy, but now it's an explosion of cuts and quick pans as he throws his bedroll into his car, gets in, starts the car. We get quick shots of chains on the car door, the turbo booster thingy with black exhaust in the background which rotates as the scene cuts to what looks like a homemade tire with the outer part wired onto the rim. The soundtrack has car noises, but they're distorted and growling like animals.
No idea yet if he's moving because something in his head told him to, or he sensed something else. Are we in his head, or outside of it watching him?
Max and the car disappear below the hill the camera is standing on, and we get a quick view of the desert vista with the car's dust cloud in the foreground. The sound of his car vanishes into the distance and it's silent...all right, it's all in his head.
Then we hear an engine and a dune buggy-like vehicle jumps from over the camera into shot, chasing Max, with weirdly dressed people on it shouting, followed by other weird vehicles.
Max isn't the crazy one. Maybe he wasn't hiding from the voices at all (or only from the voices.) His narration is now thrown into a new light, maybe it's not about his internal state, maybe it's his external state. (Or, well, his external world reflects and refracts his internal world.)
We never actually see more than a sliver of Max's face or any detail of what he's wearing. He's just a hairy, hulking brutish shape eating lizards and hallucinating. We get more detail of the car and the lizard than the man. But we already know he's haunted by something in his past where he either abandoned or couldn't save someone, and he's running from it, which sets up his motivation for later actions and big character change, and that he is also in danger and running from an external threat, which sets up the first conflict and what Max thinks he needs: escape from his past failures and escape from his pursuers.**
That's exactly modern story theory, where the main character has a Want and a Need, where Want is what he thinks he needs for things to be perfect, and Need is what he really needs for long-lasting character change for the better. Max's Want is escape, his Need is redemption and he will achieve his Need by turning back when he has his chance to escape and helping people who are similar to the voices from his past.***
So Max's entire story arc is set up in one minute, even though we don't realize it yet. Max isn't even who the movie is about. The movie is actually Furiosa's story, with Max as a frame, but he gets a character arc. Which is straight out of the John Truby The Elements of Story book where you set up a character web with two primary and two secondary characters. Max and Furiosa are the two primary, but I'd have to re-watch the rest of the movie to check who the two secondary ones are. They all reflect each other's characteristics and conflicts, and usually a secondary character states the theme of the movie to the hero.
If you want to see Truby's entire formula laid out in a paint-by-numbers style, watch The Hitman's Bodyguard, where it's so...painfully...obvious if you've read Truby's book.
ANYWAY, while you don't have to conform to Truby for a novel (although there are some people who say you should, but fuck 'em...I say, while finding Truby useful in starting to construct a story), most Hollywood movies tend to, because so much money is at stake, the investors and studios want surety that they'll see a profit, and they tend to stick closely to what they think are tried-and-true formulas. So keep that in mind: just because the movies do it, you don't have to.
Aaand now I've drifted from the point, because I'm basically thinking out loud here, which is the opening of Fury Road as it fits with the opening advice I pulled out of my notes.
It should focus on a character and an immediate, clear problem, mystery or tension...
In the first minute, it focuses on Max (and his car, which is an extension of his person), and on mystery: the voices from his past and how he's haunted by them.
...with stakes high enough for them to get the reader interested or intrigued,
Is Max unstable, or is it the world? There's something wrong about the world, with the two-headed lizard, and the way he just...eats it. Who is this man, and how has he been brought to this state?
...then pull the 'camera' out and give a quick overview of the situation and surroundings for context, flavored with the character's emotions.
Max is jumpy and frightened of something, the world is weird, his car is bashed together with homemade parts, but also has a turbo engine that can do great things (*coughMaxAnaloguecough*)
We should learn something unique about the character, world or concept.
It's not (just) him, it's the world, and now we swing into a chase scene that sets up the wider story.
We get, in order:
--character motivation and emotion
--a slightly wider context for that character
--genre (post-apocalyptic action)
Very little description, well, ok, movies have the advantage of pictures and sound and color grading. But the lingering shots always focus on Max or something that affects Max, and we don't really get details: before the two-headed lizard, Max could just be a drifter in our modern world. Then the lizard, which tells us both that he's capable of quick, explosive action and that he's reduced to eating lizards (dual purposes, the lizard tells us about the world and about Max), then the quick shots of the car, and we realize this is a dystopian post-apocalyptic world revolving around cars. We know it's an action movie even before the chase begins, as the quick cuts from bedroll to turbo thingy to tire all belong to action genres. The whole thing is compact and tight, spare, and it tells us everything we need to know about the world and Max before the pursuers jump into the frame and we start learning the wider context.
There's probably more that could be said, but I'm getting hungry and want to eat lunch now.
* Gah, I just realized that this scene may have come out of my subconscious when I was starting Deadwater. You'll have to wait and see how. :)
** Fuck fuck FUUUUCK it's not always fun to recognize where your subconscious got its influences from.
*** FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK
Amusingly enough, the famous Mad Max car gets captured quickly and Max never sees it again, IIRC, but its purpose there is dual: the glimpses of how its modified let us know what sort of world this is, and it provides continuity from the previous movies, so we know that this is Max, and to separate him from his prior self/worldview. Triple purposes, which is why it's so big and prominent in the opening.
Looking at my notes, it seems to me that the starting of a fantasy novel (at least in today's fashion, and according to this editor) should focus on a character and an immediate, clear problem, mystery or tension with stakes high enough for the character to get the reader interested or intrigued, then pull the 'camera' out and give a quick overview of the situation and surroundings for context, flavored with the character's emotions. We should learn something unique about the character, world or concept.
Which, honestly, is the opposite of what so many self-pubbed books do. I think they're taking inspiration from movies and comics, which, at least in my memory, tend to start with overall establishing shots, then narrow into the character.
This, and an opening I critiqued on r/fantasywriters yesterday, made me think of Mad Max: Fury Road. I just rewatched the second minute of it (YouTube), and that's a great opening. Why the second minute? Because the first minute is a narration over the opening credits filling us in on the story of the first Mad Max and, I believe, wholly unnecessary. The first video I linked starts with Max saying "It was hard to know who was more crazy: me, or everyone else." That's all you need to know.
The visuals start with Max and his car silhouetted against the desert. Max seems hunched, bestial, drawn in on himself We can't tell if he's brooding, looking for danger, or relieving himself. There's a bedroll laid out beside his car. As soon as he finishes his line above, we hear young female voices saying "Hello? Where are you?" echoing so we know they're probably not real, but in his head.*
The camera pans down, keeping Max and the car in frame, but showing us a rock with a two-headed lizard on it, so we know mutations are a Thing here. The voices whisper again, and Max says "Here they come again." A voice whispers his full name, he continues "Worming their way into the black matter of my brain." We know he's in a bad, bad state mentally. Voices again, "Help us, Max. You promised to help us." He seems to be hunching in an attempt to escape form the voices.
The lizard scurries toward Max, and he stomps on it, cutting the voices off instantly. He scoops it up with his foot with an explosive, jerky motion, not bending or squatting down to get it. As the camera starts zooming in to him, his narration continues: "I tell myself...they cannot touch me." We know he's wound up tight and can go off at any moment.
Boom, instant cut to a closeup of the back of his head, in its hood. The narration says, "They are long dead," and he abruptly turns his head so we see part of his profile, unkempt hair and beard, and the lizard sticking out of his mouth as he eats it raw. He's definitely bestial, and at this point (if you have been under a rock and know nothing of Mad Max), you're pretty sure he's the crazy one, as he bears all the stereotypical hallmarks of what we think of as crazy. (We don't really see the lower half of his face due to his beard and his hood, which I have to wonder: is it meant to hint at the cage he shortly ends up wearing over his face?)
Then we hear a car zoom as he moves in a flash, and we can't tell if it's a sound effect meant to (a) connect him to his car by making his movements sound like a car or (b) something he's heard that makes him spring into action. (Or (c), both). The camera work so far, except for that one quick cut, has been slow and lazy, but now it's an explosion of cuts and quick pans as he throws his bedroll into his car, gets in, starts the car. We get quick shots of chains on the car door, the turbo booster thingy with black exhaust in the background which rotates as the scene cuts to what looks like a homemade tire with the outer part wired onto the rim. The soundtrack has car noises, but they're distorted and growling like animals.
No idea yet if he's moving because something in his head told him to, or he sensed something else. Are we in his head, or outside of it watching him?
Max and the car disappear below the hill the camera is standing on, and we get a quick view of the desert vista with the car's dust cloud in the foreground. The sound of his car vanishes into the distance and it's silent...all right, it's all in his head.
Then we hear an engine and a dune buggy-like vehicle jumps from over the camera into shot, chasing Max, with weirdly dressed people on it shouting, followed by other weird vehicles.
Max isn't the crazy one. Maybe he wasn't hiding from the voices at all (or only from the voices.) His narration is now thrown into a new light, maybe it's not about his internal state, maybe it's his external state. (Or, well, his external world reflects and refracts his internal world.)
We never actually see more than a sliver of Max's face or any detail of what he's wearing. He's just a hairy, hulking brutish shape eating lizards and hallucinating. We get more detail of the car and the lizard than the man. But we already know he's haunted by something in his past where he either abandoned or couldn't save someone, and he's running from it, which sets up his motivation for later actions and big character change, and that he is also in danger and running from an external threat, which sets up the first conflict and what Max thinks he needs: escape from his past failures and escape from his pursuers.**
That's exactly modern story theory, where the main character has a Want and a Need, where Want is what he thinks he needs for things to be perfect, and Need is what he really needs for long-lasting character change for the better. Max's Want is escape, his Need is redemption and he will achieve his Need by turning back when he has his chance to escape and helping people who are similar to the voices from his past.***
So Max's entire story arc is set up in one minute, even though we don't realize it yet. Max isn't even who the movie is about. The movie is actually Furiosa's story, with Max as a frame, but he gets a character arc. Which is straight out of the John Truby The Elements of Story book where you set up a character web with two primary and two secondary characters. Max and Furiosa are the two primary, but I'd have to re-watch the rest of the movie to check who the two secondary ones are. They all reflect each other's characteristics and conflicts, and usually a secondary character states the theme of the movie to the hero.
If you want to see Truby's entire formula laid out in a paint-by-numbers style, watch The Hitman's Bodyguard, where it's so...painfully...obvious if you've read Truby's book.
ANYWAY, while you don't have to conform to Truby for a novel (although there are some people who say you should, but fuck 'em...I say, while finding Truby useful in starting to construct a story), most Hollywood movies tend to, because so much money is at stake, the investors and studios want surety that they'll see a profit, and they tend to stick closely to what they think are tried-and-true formulas. So keep that in mind: just because the movies do it, you don't have to.
Aaand now I've drifted from the point, because I'm basically thinking out loud here, which is the opening of Fury Road as it fits with the opening advice I pulled out of my notes.
It should focus on a character and an immediate, clear problem, mystery or tension...
In the first minute, it focuses on Max (and his car, which is an extension of his person), and on mystery: the voices from his past and how he's haunted by them.
...with stakes high enough for them to get the reader interested or intrigued,
Is Max unstable, or is it the world? There's something wrong about the world, with the two-headed lizard, and the way he just...eats it. Who is this man, and how has he been brought to this state?
...then pull the 'camera' out and give a quick overview of the situation and surroundings for context, flavored with the character's emotions.
Max is jumpy and frightened of something, the world is weird, his car is bashed together with homemade parts, but also has a turbo engine that can do great things (*coughMaxAnaloguecough*)
We should learn something unique about the character, world or concept.
It's not (just) him, it's the world, and now we swing into a chase scene that sets up the wider story.
We get, in order:
--character motivation and emotion
--a slightly wider context for that character
--genre (post-apocalyptic action)
Very little description, well, ok, movies have the advantage of pictures and sound and color grading. But the lingering shots always focus on Max or something that affects Max, and we don't really get details: before the two-headed lizard, Max could just be a drifter in our modern world. Then the lizard, which tells us both that he's capable of quick, explosive action and that he's reduced to eating lizards (dual purposes, the lizard tells us about the world and about Max), then the quick shots of the car, and we realize this is a dystopian post-apocalyptic world revolving around cars. We know it's an action movie even before the chase begins, as the quick cuts from bedroll to turbo thingy to tire all belong to action genres. The whole thing is compact and tight, spare, and it tells us everything we need to know about the world and Max before the pursuers jump into the frame and we start learning the wider context.
There's probably more that could be said, but I'm getting hungry and want to eat lunch now.
* Gah, I just realized that this scene may have come out of my subconscious when I was starting Deadwater. You'll have to wait and see how. :)
** Fuck fuck FUUUUCK it's not always fun to recognize where your subconscious got its influences from.
*** FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK
Amusingly enough, the famous Mad Max car gets captured quickly and Max never sees it again, IIRC, but its purpose there is dual: the glimpses of how its modified let us know what sort of world this is, and it provides continuity from the previous movies, so we know that this is Max, and to separate him from his prior self/worldview. Triple purposes, which is why it's so big and prominent in the opening.