A Perspective on Shifts in Tone in Stories

by Bill Johnson

I was recently a judge in a screenwriting contest. I noted a particular issue in scripts by inexperienced writers. They often used a shift in tone to create a dramatic effect. For example, a script with a realistic tone shifting to a comic tone. Or a script with a realistic tone shifting to a melodramatic tone.

These shifts can have the effect of disrupting the flow of a story.

To understand why this happens, consider that the foundation stone for what I teach about writing in A Story is a Promise is that a story creates movement, and the movement transports the audience.

That movement can be simple: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. Or complex: Mulholland Drive. Memento.

To understand this jarring effect, consider that you have grown up in Portland, Oregon, you are downtown, and request an Uber ride to the Portland airport, which is East. The driver shows up and gets on Highway 26, driving West.

You're going to have a visceral reaction to this. The direction of the movement of the vehicle is wrong. At a minimum, you're probably wishing you called a cab. If you are a young woman, alone, and it's night, you are probably having more desperate thoughts.

The reaction to a shift in tone in a movie, novel, or play is more subtle, but the reaction is the same. You go from sitting back to enjoy the ride to wondering why something just happened. You have been bumped from the story.

I'm not suggesting a movie can't have a twist. In the recent film Arrival, the main character appears to be having flash back about the birth and death of a daughter. These are actually flash forwards. I was tremendously impressed by the skill with which this was pulled off. But the issue of how we and the aliens in the movie interpret time was part of the story. The twist arose from the nature of the movement of the film.

Years ago Peter O'Toole was in a movie where he's an English aristocrat who believes he's Jesus Christ. He hangs himself on a cross. His extended family is desperate that he have a heir to continue the family lineage.

At the end of the film, Peter appears to be normal and goes off to attend a session of the House of Lords. But when seen from his point of view, he's switched from thinking he's Jesus to believing he's Jack the Ripper.

While the movie has a comic tone, Peter's family has always been in deadly earnest about the need to reshape his personality. The movie always had a realistic tone under the comedy.

A more recent example comes from the Men in Black series. In the first film, there's an overall comic tone but the character played by Tommy Lee Jones gives the story a moral center. He looks at humanity and individuals with a clear gaze. It's a wonderful film.

The most recent film, Men in Black: International, has one of the main characters played as a buffoon. Buffoons carry no dramatic weight. So the plot ambles along until the movie is over.

That shift in tone from comedic with a serious undertone to borderline slapstick deflates the action. It might have worked in a stand alone film, but as part of a series it just feels like the movie is going West when the airport is East.

Whether a dramatic effect is within the scope of a story's overall movement or not is situation where a writer might need to lean on skilled readers to convey whether an effect was amazing or disconcerting.

The recent online commotion over the ending of Game of Thrones is an example of what happens when the expectations of an audience are violated.

                                 *********************

Bill Johnson is the author of A Story is a Promise & The Spirit of Storytelling, available on Amazon and Smashwords.

Elizabeth Lyon on Style and Voice

Visual Storytelling, Clark Kohanek, February 5th, PDX

Writers employ story structures, plot designs and character arcs to explore, examine and reveal their creations. Directors, Art Directors and Cinematographers use similar tools that parallel these structures, designs and arcs, to express their vision. We’ll examine aspects of their craft as it pertains to writing and explore the psychological dimensions of symbol, analogy and metaphor in relation to visual subtext, in context, to content.

Clark Kohanek is a freelance illustrator, storyboard artist, writer and director. Clark has worked for a variety of advertising agencies, production companies and studios over the last 22 years. (i.e. Weiden&Kennedy, Universal Studios, Anonymous Content, Dark Horse, Disney, Jerry Bruckheimer, Tim Robbins, Bryan Singer to name a few.) Clark’s 2012 micro-budget sci-fi film called CONTAINED opened a door to 20th Century Fox – Bad Hat Harry, which paved the way for action sci-fi THE 37TH PARALLEL, an elevator pitch that turned into a 2015 studio pitch tour to SONY, DREAMWORKS, UNIVERSAL, LEGENDARY, LIONSGATE, MGM, to name a few. Clark recently completed - JUNKIES - an animated horror-comedy being pitched to Sony later this month. Clark currently works and lives in Portland, Oregon though travels teaching visual storytelling and screenwriting workshops at various writing conferences throughout the year.

                                     ********************************************


This meeting is Tuesday, February 5th at the new Willamette Writers PDX chapter location: The First Congregational United Church of Christ in downtown Portland (1126 SW Park Ave, Portland, OR 97205).

This meeting is free to members of Willamette Writers and full time students under 25, and $5 for guests, including MeetUp guests.

For more information about Willamette Writers, visit
willamettewriters.org

For more information about Clark, visit
https://clarkkohanek.wordpress.com/https://clarkkohanek.wordpress.com/

Creating Narrative Tension in a Novel or Script

A short video by Bill Johnson about how to create and sustain narrative tension in a novel, screenplay, or play. A story that lacks narrative tension risks being episodic, a series of events that fail to have dramatic or emotional impact. Bill is available to teach a narrative tension workshop online and to review manuscripts. Originally this video was created for an online class taught by Bill Johnson for Pennwriters. 

For more information about Bill, visit his website at http://www.storyispromise.com

Environment as Character, Notes on Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird

              by Bill Johnson

Just as a story's main character can be described according to their dramatic truth (the issue that drives them), a story's environment can also be described in the same way.

Harper Lee's description of the town of Maycomb in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird is a wonderful example of language that evokes the feeling of a time and place.

"Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it."

To say a town is old is descriptive, but to say it is tired is evocative. It evokes what it feels like to experience the town.

"In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square."

Grass growing on a sidewalk quickly conveys a sidewalk seldom trod upon, and a courthouse that 'sags' conveys age more efficiently than several photo-like details. Even the buildings can no longer manage to stand up straight.

"Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer's day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square."

Mules pulling carts in the town square suggests a time period, and that the mules are bony suggests poverty.

"Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum."

Beautiful details. The description of the ladies as 'like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum,' is lovely, lyrical, and evocative. A reader can feel like he or she has met these ladies.

"People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County."

A day longer than 24 hours, wonderful way of evoking a long, long day and a way of life, and so different from our time.

"But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself."

This reference to a President Roosevelt line conveys the setting as the Great Depression.

"We lived on the main residential street in town- Atticus, Jem and I, plus Calpurnia our cook. Jem and I found our father satisfactory: he played with us, read to us, and treated us with courteous detachment."

Note how Scout saying she and her brother found their father 'satisfactory' evokes how they felt about him at the time of the story, and also leaves open that later she will have a different feeling about her father.

Next comes the description of the family servant, Calpurnia. I'm including it because Lee uses the same techniques that she used to bring the town to life.

"Calpurnia was something else again. She was all angles and bones; she was nearsighted; she squinted; her hand was wide as a bed slat and twice as hard."

Again, a rich, potent evocation of a character, not merely a description.

"She was always ordering me out of the kitchen, asking me why I couldn't behave as well as Jem when she knew he was older, and calling me home when I wasn't ready to come."

This evokes a child's view of Calpurnia's world The body of the novel will explore that world.

"Our battles were epic and one-sided. Calpurnia always won, mainly because Atticus always took her side. She had been with us ever since Jem was born, and I had felt her tyrannical presence as long as I could remember."

Details of environments that do not evoke a time and place in a novel risk being an invitation to readers to skip ahead. Like other great authors, Harper Lee knew how to dramatically evoke the world of her story and its characters in To Kill a Mockingbird.


Copyright 2018 Bill Johnson


*************************

To read some of my longer reviews of popular movies, check out my writing workbook, A Story is a Promise & The Spirit of Storytelling, available on Amazon's Kindle and Barnes and Noble's Nook.

Writing a Novel With a Message, Notes on Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451

by Bill Johnson

Some novels are written to convey a direct message to a reader. One such novel is Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.

In this novel, it is the job of fireman not to put out fires, but to burn books. Writing about a society that would destroy books is a commentary on life in the 20th century.

The novel opens with a sentence that meets the prime directive of a first sentence: give your reader a reason to read a second sentence.

"It was a pleasure to burn."

The immediate questions, what is a pleasure to burn; and what is 'it.'

To get answers, we must continue reading.

      "It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed."

This raises the question, what is being 'eaten' and 'changed' to create this special pleasure. Who will experience this pleasure?

"With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history."

This sentence introduces the main character and how he feels as he holds this 'great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world.' This is someone who loves his work. It also raises questions, what is this 'charcoal ruins of history? What is being burned and destroyed?

"With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flames with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black."

We know now that he is burning a house, but why? For all the intensity of the moment, he's described as having a 'stolid head.' We're learning more about the character and more about the situation, but both are still mysterious to a reader. Why is a fireman burning this house? What is the meaning of 451?

"He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmellow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house."

We now have the shocking revelation of what he is burning, books.

"While the books went up in sparking whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning."

This is the end of a first paragraph. Our fireman thinks of roasting marshmellows while burning books. This conveys who he is and a potential arc, what could change this man?

Second paragraph...

"Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by flame."

Now the author gives this character a name, after first conveying who this man is.

      "He knew that when he returned to the firehouse, he might wink at himself, a minstrel man, burnt-corked, in the mirror. "

Here is a man who enjoys his job.

"Later, going to sleep, he would feel the fiery smile still gripped by his face muscles, in the dark. It never went away, that smile, it never ever went away, as long as he remembered."

The author is making the point how rooted this character is in his unexamined personality.

Double line space in the novel.

"He hung up his black beetle-colored helmet and shined it; he hung his flameproof jacket neatly; he showed luxuriously, and then, whistling, hands in his pockets, walked across the upper floor of the fire station and fell down the hole."

The subtext of 'black beetle-colored helmet' conveys how the character is insect-like.

"At the last moment, when disaster seemed positive, he pulled his hands from his pockets and broke his fall by grasping the golden pole. He slid to a squeaking halt, the heels one inch from the concrete floor."

This man's life runs on habit and routine.

     "He walked out of the fire station and along the midnight street toward the subway where the silent air-propelled train slid soundlessly down its lubricated flue in the earth and let him out with a great puff of warm air onto the cream-tiled escalator rising to the suburb."

This conveys the novel is set in the future.

     "Whistling, he let the escalator waft him into the still night air. He walked toward the corner, thinking little at all about nothing in particular. Before he reached the corner, however, he slowed as if a wind had sprung up from nowhere, as if someone had called his name."

This is a turning point, that something is happening in the life of this unconscious character.

     "The last few nights he had had the most uncertain feelings about the sidewalk just around the corner here, moving in the starlight toward his house. He had felt that a moment prior to his making the turn, someone had been there. The air seemed charged with a special calm as if someone had waited there, and only a moment before he came, simply turned to a shadow and let him through."

The author wants reader to recognize this moment.

A few moments later...

"The autumn leaves blew over the moonlit pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seem fixed to a sliding walk, letting the motion of the wind and the leaves carry her forward."

The description of the girl is ethereal, poetic.

Moments later...

"Her dress was white and it whispered." She "....stood regarding Montag with eyes so dark and shining and alive, that he felt that he had said something wonderful."

Again, evocative, poetic language. Montag the beetle is having feelings new to him.

Moments later...

She tells Montag she is 'seventeen and crazy.' And she lets him know that, unlike his neighbors, she is not afraid of him. This information is a revelation to him.

And then she asks, "Do you ever read any of the books you burn?"

The set up for this novel and Montag's role is in place. Will he wake up from his insect-like existence?

As she continues to speak about a life and world alien to Montag, he responds, "You think too many things," said Montag, uneasily.

Back in his home, he won't let himself think about what is hidden behind a grill, and he reflects about a clock, that it was "...moving also toward a new sun" Just as his life appears to be moving forward into a new world.

In his bedroom, Montag reflects, "He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask..."

Montag realizes his wife has taken pills to commit suicide. He makes a report and two technicians clean out her system and leave to handle the other nine calls they've received about suicides.

This conveys much about this world.

It comes out that his house has a TV that fills three walls and his wife desires a fourth wall so she can feel fully immersed in the world of TV. TVs had only been around for a year when Bradbury wrote this novel, but the novel is prescient about how people would want to use this technology to enter a cocoon.

Montag comes across Claire, who is on her way to see a psychiatrist for being anti-social.

And then Claire is gone, and Montag goes to a house to burn books, but the owner of the books, an elderly woman, refuses to leave. She not only refuses, she lights a match to set her house and books on fire, killing herself.

At home, Montag reveals to his wife what he has been hiding, books. Books that speak about a world that Montag no longer remembers.

The fireman is now at risk of being burned.

Fahrenheit 451 is a wonder example of a novel with a prescient message about what can happen when life is replaced by an artificial reality. Bradbury understood the message he wanted to convey.

Bradbury brings this world to life with a clear, evocative, poetic vision that is always in the service of the story he is telling. Bradbury is rightly revered as a storyteller.

To read more essays on the craft of writing, visit http://www.storyispromise.com


Copyright 2018 Bill Johnson

5 Ways to Rratchet Up the Tension in Your Fiction

What’s the secret to writing a story that grips readers? Tension. Finding ways to ratchet up the tension in your story will keep readers flipping pages because they simply have to know what comes next! As the author of four nail-biting suspense novels, Patchell shares some practical tips on how to increase the story tension and keep your readers enthralled.

 

Chris Patchell is the bestselling author of In the Dark and the Indie Reader Discovery Award winning novel Deadly Lies. A former tech worker turned full-time author, Chris Patchell pens gritty suspense novels set in the Pacific Northwest.

 

About the Meetings

The Portland Chapter holds monthly meetings for writers in the Portland metropolitan area. Members from other chapters are always welcome as are writers new to Willamette Writers.
Unless otherwise stated…

Meeting Time

The Portland Chapter meets on the first Tuesday of each month except for August when we head to the Willamette Writers Conference.

Meeting Location

Meetings are held at the historic Old Church in downtown Portland.
The Historic Old Church
1422 SW 11th Ave.
Portland, OR 97201

Meeting Format

• 6:30-7:00 p.m., Meeting Setup, Signup, Fellowship and Refreshments
• 7:00-8:15 p.m., News and Announcements followed by the Program
• 8:15-8:30 p.m., Book signings, silent auctions, or other events in the back room
•  

Meeting Cost

Monthly meetings at all the chapters are free for members of Willamette Writers. Fee for nonmembers to attend meetings at the Portland chapter meetings is $5 (suggested donation).