How Not to Write: AFTER (Part One)

Tessa McProtagonist and Dime-Store Christian Grey sit on a dock looking bored.

I’m going to get in trouble for this one, but I got a request, so I’m not about to turn down a challenge.

To be clear, I’m only looking at what happened with the movie, not the book or the fanfic.  I won’t ever pull apart a fanfic publically, and I would do a book, but 1) I wouldn’t be reading After of my own volition, so I’m not the audience for that book, and 2) A big issue with a book adaptation is getting a broad enough audience to do okay in the box office, so you also need nerds who haven’t read the books to go see it. However, since I’m interested in writing, I’ll mention a bit about the way structure would play out with regard to how readers may respond to these techniques.

In brief, After is about a girl named Tessa who goes off to college and (spoilers) meets a British guy (Hardin) who makes a bet that he can get her to fall in love with him. In the book version, the bet is between Hardin and his friend Zed over who can bang her first, and in the fanfiction Real Person Fiction, the bet is between Harry and Zane from some boy band. Maybe you’ve heard of them.

So right off the bat, the movie has eliminated a major plot tension in which Tessa is being pursued by two different guys. That in itself is fine, since apparently there will be a second love interest in the sequel. But Zed has no personality in the movie anyway (much like most of the characters in the movie). But as a result of nixing that plot is a very bland “pursuing” of Tessa, punctuated by red flags and a few flavorless hints that they’re doing sexy things.

The problem with adapting movies out of fanfiction turned books is simply this: You can’t swing a lot of fanfiction staples on the big screen. You can’t get the heat to the same level of the book without sentencing yourself to an NC-17. You can’t have your “bad boy” be as dangerous as he is on the page because the producers are looking for a broader audience. You can’t hook new viewers into the story with sloppy story structure and weak characterization (which I’ll explain in more detail below).

I’m not saying you can’t do a movie based off of books that were based off of fanfic. People do it all the time… However, these movies are largely just bad, in writing, tone, characterization, and tension. I can’t imagine that they’re really pleasing that many people. Maybe the hardcore fans, but if they gutted one of my favorite slash fics to make it palatable to a larger audience, I’d be disappointed! Movie producers and screenwriters need to work harder to actually adapt the material and realize the risks of trying to grab that broader audience while pleasing core fans.

TL;DR—How Not to Write

In this part, I’ll issues of cover structure, pacing, and narrative tension. In the second part, I’ll deal with more specific problems of character development and thematic resonance. On with the tips:

• Don’t use fanfic structure in lieu of movie/book structure.

Fanfiction is a particular genre unto itself, which is something that visual mediums just do not seem to understand. It works because your audience knows these characters already. Even in RPF, even in AU fanfic, fandom has an assumption of who these characters are. Story structure can be tight, loose, or non-existent. The fans are here for the interstitial moments, those in betweens, the extended character connection.

None of which you can actually have in an independent movie (and usually not book, but it depends) without first establishing characters and creating empathy for characters. If, in a book, you have a blank slate of a character (say, Bella Swan), at every point, the reader is still privy to the character’s thoughts, ad this affords them enough intimacy with that character to buy into their story. In the book version of After, the audience does know Tessa’s thoughts. They are aware of her thirst! In the movie, we get a single line of voice over at the beginning (ripping off Twilight, honestly), and the rest is blank stares. It’s completely bewildering that from the events on the screen Tessa would go anywhere willingly with Hardin. That means that the writing and styling of every scene absolutely must create these characters from scratch (via dialogue, action, and dress) and build the sense of tension and cause and effect if the movie is to work as a narrative.

After as a movie is extremely tedious because there is very little happening apart from Tessa and Hardin just wandering around and being lovebirds. Combined with removing the Zane/Zed factor, all these passive scenes result in just not enough happening until 30 minutes until the end.

You have to tailor your structure to the medium you’re working with and be deliberate about the choices you’re making. If After is going to pare down the main plot of the book and fanfic, and cut the narration from Tessa, they have to be prepared to shore up the movie with more action.

• Don’t rely too heavily on passive action.

Piggybacking on the previous tip, After has a problem with too little of everything. The movie relies almost entirely passive action (scenes that DON’T increase tension or forward conflict or risk) and not enough dramatic action (scenes that deliver tension, conflict, uncertainty, etc.)

Example: Habitual actions from characters tend to be passive. Tessa and Hardin swim. They cuddle. They take a bath. They walk somewhere. They talk about feelings. They dance. These are passive action scenes.

Hardin arguing with Tessa in class or pushing boundaries, the fight with Tessa’s mom, and the bet being revealed. These are dramatic action scenes.

Problematically, taking everything out to make it palatable means there’s nothing left. The screenwriters need to infuse more dramatic action into this movie. I would suggest: 1) delaying payoff in Tessa’s will-they-won’t-they, and having Hardin have to work harder to get with her, 2) introducing Tessa’s internship earlier to give her something to work for, and 3) having her mother involved in her life more regularly (phone calls or doing laundry at home). The latter would keep more tension going because Tessa would always actively be hiding something from her mom, making those conversation rife with tension because there’s a risk if her mother finds out.

That’s it for now. Check back in later for the second part of How Not to Write: After for discussion of characterization and theme.

How Not to Write: Thirteen Ghosts

Several Pissed off Ghosts Reaching for You

At the turn of the millennium, moviemakers had a thirst that could only be quenched by remakes of 60ish horror movies. The House on Haunted Hill gave it a shot, with a decent cast and questionable pacing (and a truly heinous sequel), but Thirteen Ghosts had so much potential that its flaws ended up so much more disappointing.

Essentially, this movie, and the 1960 original, is about a house full of ghosts, and the family that inherits it from the father’s eccentric uncle. The 2001 version adds a psychic, PETA for ghosts, and a few plot twists. Interestingly, the remake begins some interesting world-building and smartly uses the house as a villainous character, perhaps more so than the actual antagonist or the ghosts themselves. However, with twelve ghosts, the psychic (Dennis), the father (Arthur), the nanny (Maggie) and his two children, and Kalina the Ghost Activist, there is no time to reveal all of the backstory and lore planned for the film, let alone develop full character arcs for the father or his children.

Furthermore, the movie is so determined to have its “twists” that there are a couple of logical problems that are never resolved. While Thirteen Ghosts is a cult favorite and very entertaining and rewatchable for what it is, with some edits, this movie could be elevated to a staple of the horror genre rather than just a guilty pleasure flick.

TL;DR—How Not to Write

Although I doubt that anyone is going to remake this movie again, even with every franchise ever being remade, I think there are some improvements to the writing that would really make this story shine. Ideally, the format would change from a 91 minute movie to a 13 episode limited series on a streaming television show, not unlike The Haunting of Hill House. There are so many ghosts, and so much backstory, that unfolding the tale over a single season would allow for a stronger, scarier, and more satisfying story.

In some order, here are my recommendations:

•    Don’t center static characters.

Problematically, Dennis is the only dynamic character in this story. And he isn’t even supposed to be the lead. This happened because his is the only character we have clear goals and motivation for and because his character is introduced first and thus can be identified with first. His beginning (working with Cyrus and trapping the ghosts for money), his motivation (crippled by his power and feeling like an outcast), his middle (helping Arthur on the promise of getting the money he’s owed), and ending (sacrificing himself so Arthur can live to save his kids)—We know Dennis.

Arthur meanwhile is pretty one note as a protagonist, despite ostensibly being the lead. Even if we kept 13G in movie format, there would need to be some change for the main character from beginning to end. Arthur has no real motivation in this movie other than needing money, and then later, wanting to save his kids. We’re missing that crucial element of how this incident changes him and them. In the movie, he is grieving, but it seems like it’s been years— not six months— since his house burned down and he lost his wife. However, since his wife dying is what prompted the change in him and their circumstances, it would be reasonable for Arthur to begin the story as more emotionally shut off and distant from his kids. This would make the closure of the ending, as they survive, get closer, and see the spirit of his wife again, much more emotionally impactful.

We need both of these men to be dynamic and fully interacting with the other characters, and if the kids, Maggie, and Kalina are going to be centered in any way, they need to have worthwhile character arcs.

•  Don’t treat your audience as stupid.

Thirteen Ghosts repeats the rules of the story multiple times from various characters. This isn’t necessary. Lay the pipe you go and make it possible for the audience to figure points out themselves. There are so many details, but having a character run in with a book to tell you things you is lazy and inefficient. If there is to be any element of mystery, your main characters should be figuring things out as the audience does. If people don’t get it, and you need to repeat it, you didn’t show it well enough.

•  Don’t Treat Twists as a Substitute for Good Plotting

Thirteen Ghosts really loves its twists, but with a little thought, the logical problems created by these twists shouldn’t really exist. Maggie is the nanny who doesn’t clean or cook, but apparently looks after the younger brother (badly). Since the family is having trouble with bills, it doesn’t make any sense how they’d justify paying for her when the older sister Kathy could look after her brother. Secondly, Kalina has a complete and abrupt character turn in the final act that means, upon rewatching, her behavior doesn’t foreshadow properly or line up with her final character actions. Moreover, the family never finds out that she betrayed them or that she died, so what did it matter in the long run?

Basically, the creators of 13G wanted Maggie to be their sassy black character, and they needed a traitor to facilitate other plot elements, even if it meant her character makes no damn sense. A simple flip would solve this and allow 13G to keep its major twists intact. My suggestion would be to make Kalina the black character (May I suggest Aleyse Shannon?), keep her focused on her purpose, her smarts, and her rage. Give her motivation for her activism. Have her fight with Dennis over what he’s been doing. But then, the nanny, Maggie, can be the white woman who betrays them and was working with Cyrus all along.

It would make more sense if a despondent Arthur didn’t look too closely when his uncle sent a clever, Latin reading grad student to be their nanny for cheap. It would answer why she doesn’t look after the children much, and she could still “find” letters in Cyrus’s study to encourage Arthur to sacrifice himself. Finally, it would give Maggie’s character a purpose to even be there.

A betrayal from Maggie would mean so much more than a betrayal from a character the family doesn’t even know. A last minute save from a smart Kalina would do more service to her character than it ever did for Maggie, who apparently just touches some knobs at random and wrecks the infernal machine.

Ideally, I’d also like for this version of Kalina to team up with Dennis’s spirit to finish dispersing the spirits that escaped from the house at the end. Ideally, I would take the time to introduce each ghost with pieces of their backstory as the drama with the family, Dennis, and Kalina unfolds and each character gets their due. But the bullets above are a few quick fixes that would help the next version of Thirteen Ghosts tap into that deep place horror can go: A mix between human drama and fear that creeps under your skin.

If you have movies or shows you'd like for me to try to dissect and correct, leave me a comment and I'll see what I can do. (Not everythig can be fixed.)

HOW NOT TO WRITE: The I-Land

How Not to Write: The I-Land

The I-Land has a number of problems: Lazy dialogue, stiff acting, bizarre pacing, shoddy world-building. A lot of it could be overlooked, if the show had made better effort at characterization, but there are so many characters and so little time devoted to them, that the show is totally unable to save itself. Neither Yosemite Republican Warden nor Woke!Twist Ending can rise to make this watchable.

Below I’ll make a short overall critique/summary, and at the end (if you want to skip ahead), I’ll give some writing advice that would help improve The I-Land.

What The Fresh Hell

We open as our dark-haired lead wakes up on the beach with a conch shell. Don’t worry too much about that shell, because it will never really impact the narrative, since the characters never read the words printed on it. It’s just a pretentious literary reference to Lord of the Flies. The woman runs into a Red-headed woman, who immediately hates her and holds a knife on her, Dark Hair disarms Red Hair, and it becomes clear that they and the other ten randos wandering around on the beach all have amnesia.

The pacing, as I mentioned, somehow manages to be too fast and too slow. Because the characters come to the island as blank slates, there’s a real need to spend some time nailing down their characters before things happen. Instead, they wake up, sit in a circle, and have some really repetitive arguments before going off to search. Or some of them do. Some of them sit their asses on the beach and go swimming. So now, we’re Survivor.

For some characters, you don’t get any development them until right before they die. I’m pretty sure Moses’s only personality trait is being hungry which makes fuckall sense when you finally get his backstory. Taylor is lazy and sullen. Brody is rapey. K.C.’s only trait is hating other women (which also makes no sense with her backstory but wuteva).

So the beginning manages to be boring, and then graduates to confusing as things start happening rapid fire: Shark attack! Rape attack! MATH!!!

By the time we hit the second episode, another woman is assaulted, and I still can’t remember all of their names. Which is what happens when you have 12 main characters and do no work to earn your scenes. The dialogue lampshades this, having our lead Dark Hair (aka Chase), refer to Brody and K.C. as Rapist Guy and Red-headed Chick. Because at this point, that’s really all they are at this point (and through most of the series).

Another major way this show fails in characterization is how all of the characters IMMEDIATELY hate the lead, for no reason, and don’t act the way normal people would. They get mad at her for finding things on the island, but don’t seem curious or motivated to explore and secure their location. It is utterly ridiculous to suggest the lead is unique just for being curious about her surroundings and wanting to know what’s going on. It’s also weird that they don’t know her from Adam, but every time she suggests they try to do something, they are suspicious of her. By the time they have a real reason to be mad at her, it has no impact at all. Why would anyone trust these people?

Later on, it seems as though the writers ended up making this choice because apparently, they are all criminals (which I called by the end of the first ep, fine… I was hoping it was a reality TV thing, but okay), and so apparently, criminals don’t have any survival skills or brains and are inherently bitchy to each other, even when they have no memory of who they are. They don’t make the effort to explore until another pair of people on the island basically tell them that there’s a village to find. It’s especially jarring, since one of the main themes is redemption, but since the vast majority are, even without their memories, lazy, mean, and prone to violence, uh, I can’t imagine anyone walking away from these mixed messages as anything confused.

Then, because pacing is a myth and there is no god, they manage to blow their wad in the third episode, in which the tell us over and over what’s happening, as though it’s so complicated (it isn’t), effectively killing any tension. When Chase gets back to the island, you wonder if she can get them to believe her when they hate her… but of course, some people show up and end up explaining the thing that she’d been trying to convince them of. I mean, who needs narrative tension, amirite?

The group hated Chase and continues to hate Chase. At this point, everyone is running around while they’re getting their memories back. Great plan. We move from a mystery about what’s going on the island to a bunch of people wandering and having hallucinations specifically about their crimes. If they’d done this gradually, I might say it was a bit clever, but since we haven’t had time to get to know them outside of this, it’s hard to really be that invested as their (three day) illusions of who they are shatter, and K.C. gets a mini-Lifetime Movie for her backstory just dropped down as looooong as it can be among everyone else’s flickers of memory.

Most of these memory reveals don’t make things slide into place in that good way when you’ve been trying to figure a story out. It doesn’t build the characters, either, in the way OITNB does with flashbacks. The rest unfolds in similar fashion… boring, nonsensical, and unsympathetic. Chase starts to grow on you, if only because everyone is such a dick to her, and SPOILERS:

She’s actually innocent. (Which apparently makes all the difference in someone’s character, as ppl who break the law are all inherently bad.) I think that if they’d focused their narrative on her and Cooper, who turns out to be her husband, then they could’ve made this work, but instead it’s a huge mess with a lot of horrible people who have no reason to be so horrible because they don’t remember why they were horrible.

If this was meant to allude to Survivor or Lord of the Flies: It fails. You have to give groups logical reasons to form over time. They can’t just be psycho from the beginning and pick allegiances at random. Having a conch shell doesn’t do it.

If this was attempting to capture the mystery of Lost: It fails. It doesn’t work just because you introduced some random codes, that you later explain don’t really make sense. And the number 39 wasn’t that clever, man, even if you did more than just introduce it and then forget about it until the final episode.

If the deaths are supposed to move us: They don’t. I can’t care about characters who I don’t know, or who have no personality traits. The only one that really bothers me is Taylor because it is just so CRUEL and undeserved.

If the twist ending was meant to be shocking and poignant: It isn’t. It wasn’t earned, and a moral out of nowhere that makes no sense with anyone’s motivations isn’t going to shake us to our core about climate change.

TL;DR—How Not to Write

So, yeah. The I-Land is pretty godawful. But as a concept, it isn’t irredeemable. Even with a shoestring budget and a limited run, some better writing choices could have saved this and made it popular. Maybe people might even want more than the limited series, as it was in The Haunting of Hill House.

In some order, with the most important piece of advice last, here are my recommendations:

• Don’t ignore pacing. You have to establish a status quo and characterization before you disrupt it. Since the narrative begins with a big disruption, you need to let things settle to let us get comfortable and find attach to the characters before you start pulling out rapists, sharks, and secret messages. It’s like shampooing your hair—Settle, disrupt, and repeat.

• Don’t grind your narrative to a complete half to explain things or drop in backstory. Honestly. You can earn an infodump after some time has passed, but not multiple ones, and not as often as this show does. The 39 steps thing isn’t nearly as clever as they think, nor is the “find your way back,” and therefore there was no need to just sledgehammer the point home by having characters draw attention to it.

• Don’t disperse your viewer/reader’s attention with too many characters in focus. Learn which characters are leads and which are supporting. When you have a limited amount of time, even if you are truly masterful as a writer, it is incredibly difficult to juggle a large number of characters. Dialogue, development… It can’t be done quickly, and the more characters you have, the more time you have to devote to balancing the reader’s/viewer’s feelings. Problematically, a lot of ensemble cast work doesn’t seem to get this. Glee never did, and its tone was all over the fucking map. Arrow is grimdark all the time. Walking Dead used to, but failed in general to manage the size of its cast compared to ongoing tragedy, so can we keep caring if one guy has plot armor and people come and go underdeveloped?

• But most importantly, and building on the previous point, DON’T try to make your characters wholly unlikable or perfect. People will read, watch, and stand almost anything if they’re really hooked into those characters. I know people who stayed in fandoms for years beyond the subject material failing them because they were so invested in the characters. However, you can have characters who are pretty much a dumpsterfire mess, and have them be very popular. We have Bojack Horseman, we have Jessica Jones, we have Lucifer Morningstar (angelwing dumpsterfire)…. House, Rick Sanchez, Snape… Seriously. You can have flawed leads, but you need to make them engaging and relatable.

Get that kind of investment for the characters early on, and you can actually cover up for some errors. Pacing only has to be good enough to get us through the main plot points. Logic only has to be good enough to withstand the moment it has onscreen. I’m not saying to make your story a drunken disaster on purpose, but focus on characterization first, and then let that guide your plot, and a number of ills will ease, I swear. It wouldn’t make The I-Land perfect, but you could make it more watchable.

But Netflix still shouldn’t have spent money on this.

Midnight Voss: Writer, Reader, Teacher, Professional Malcontent

I have been writing stories since I was eight years old. More recently, my resume has expanded. Find out what I can do for you...       

I've been teaching writing since 2004, in argumentation classes, literature classes, and one-on-one writing consultations at every stage of the writing process. For several years, I have worked successfully as a ghostwriter of twelve novels (under nondisclosure), and I have begun teaching online workshops for chapters of the Romance Writers Association. Together, Ivy Quinn and I co-authored a dragon-shifter urban fantasy, Frozen Ashes and Smoldering Shards, which appeared in the USA Today Bestselling Sirens and Scales boxset. 

On this page, you can find lists of my services, testimonials from writers I have worked with, reviews and blogposts, links to my class schedule for the upcoming year, and announcement for upcoming projects.

Comic Reviews: IvyQuinn vs Beronica, DC/Archie Fanfiction

Old School Harley and Ivy beside Betty and Veronica dressed up as Harley and Ivy

Harley and Ivy Meet Betty and Veronica

A rollicking blast of a crossover comic, wherein Harley and Ivy go undercover in Riverdale to prevent Hiram Lodge from wiping out Sweetwater Swamp, but instead end up accidently swapping bodies with Betty and Veronica. A little problem like suddenly being underage won’t derail their plans, however. Betty and Veronica, though? Not thrilled to be stuck in the bodies of two famous Sirens and stuck in Gotham City with all the pissed off criminals who want to do in Harley and Ivy.

Game Reviews: Love Bites

I’d like to introduce you to my new obsession. Okay, to be fair, I’ve been fiddling around with Visual Novel type app games for some time. Unfortunately, most of them aren’t that well-written, they’re expensive thanks to micro-transactions, the art suffers from balloon-boob or bodies-don’t-work-that-way syndrome, and most of them only give you maybe one or two same-sex options. More important are the “not well-written” and “expensive,” though, which is why I’ve become loyal to Winter Wolves.

Not all of their games are impeccably edited, but they always have good art and interesting plotlines. Love Bites… god, how can I describe it without spoiling?

The premise is this: Twins Brandon and Kaitlyn both just graduated from college and are planning on getting work for the summer to save up money before going out on their own. Unfortunately, whichever twin you choose to play has fallen under some kind of weird affliction. As the weeks progress, you start to change and race to find out what has happened to you. Potentially helping you in this endeavor are your step-sister Sabrina, your former teacher Nadia, and students you knew from school Viktor and Tyrone.

You can romance any of the major characters as either twin. Or, you can, through your choices, get a non-romantic ending.

Comic Reviews: Open Earth

Scene over Earth, with a floating space station. In the right corner, two young men and one woman stand with the man in the middle draping his arms over the woman and the other man's shoulders.

Open Earth is a short story, essentially, about the first generation of humans born in a space station orbiting Earth, after we have managed to ruin the planet/blow ourselves up or something. The main action centers on Rigo, as she tries to grapple with wanting a special attachment to her friend Carter, when the first generation is predominantly polyamorous and against partnered attachments.