 Drama: September 13, 2006 Issue [#1259] |
  Drama
This week: Edited by: Elisa: Snowman Stik  
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| In this day and age, most (if not all) of us have at least heard of the term "organized chaos." Though an oxymoron, it describes hectic everyday life and how complications take shape in drama writing. See how a logline can help you take even further control of the organized chaos in your writing. |
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Have you ever sat there, staring at your writing, wondering how in the world your characters wound up in such a convoluted mess? Did your fingers and/or writing implements run away with the story? Are you ever tempted to blame these impossible scenarios on your characters?  At one point or another, we've done at least one of those things. In response, we either run away from the project like our pants are on fire, or we tackle the tangled web of complications. Here's how a logline can help with the latter so you're not doing the former.
If you're in a complicated jam when it comes to your writing, referring back to a logline has advantages over revisiting previous pre-writing. Why's that? There's three main reasons. First, a logline is concise, barely taking up any room. It takes up a quarter of a page (handwritten) at the most. Many types of pre-writing can span a full page or more. Second, it's easier to change a logline if you decide to change a major element in the story as you write it. With various forms of prewriting, you may have pages of ideas that can end up for naught if you make major changes. Finally, the logline makes you focus primarily on the plot, which is the very thing you try to complicate in a given story.
Since the first advantage is self-explanatory, I'll discuss point number two. Let me make something clear about loglines. Yes, you can change them as the story progresses, but I wouldn't recommend changing it very often. When you first write a logline, make sure you word it correctly. It may take a few tries to find the correct wording for a logline so it details the conflict in a concise, informative manner. Changing a logline after that point would be appropriate if the wording makes no sense at all or if you wrote in a particular complication you want to keep that doesn't make sense in light of the overall conflict. So before you change your logline, you have to decide if it's going to be worth changing the direction of your story in such a significant manner.
There's also the advantage of the logline's focus on plot. Unlike characters, plots do not have quite so many possibilities. Many combinations of character traits exist, but plots and sets of complications are not as numerous. With drama, certain complications can change the genre classification to something else (mystery, comedy, etc.), so combinations of complication within the drama realm are easier to pin down. In my previous newsletters, I gave several examples of how complications change across genres, but there are so many complications that are mutable like that. You can have an amusing character in a drama, but he or she won't provoke you to snicker throughout the piece. A comical complication, such as being injured by failing in a flamboyant stunt, can possibly make the story funnier than you intended for it to be.
So how can you harness the power of your logline? Here's one editing exercise you can use. Take out your logline and have it ready, be it on one side of your desk or in a window on your computer. From there, dig up your story and read through it to find all the complications. Either type them out under the logline or write them down on a sheet of paper. Once you have all your complications written down somewhere, compare/contrast them to your logline. If you see any complications that make no sense when compared to your logline, scratch it out. Here's an example.
Logline: A dyslexic young man stumbles across a note written in a mob code and struggles to decode it when he suspects he should not possess it.
Complications:
 A mobster dies during his daily routine.
The man is making slow progress in his treatment for dyslexia.
Random, unmarked packages end up at his house.
The man's eyesight begins to deteriorate.
The number of violent deaths in the community skyrockets.
Of those five, the first and last one would be most reasonable to scratch out since neither directly relate to the young man's struggle. They could be included as minor events for foreshadowing what could happen to the young man. As major complications in the plot, though, they're more likely to get in the way and create a block for you the author more than anything.
So remember, when your story runs away from you, you can always turn to your logline for help. If nothing else, it will help you find the right balance of complications for your story. 
Until next time,
(sig courtesy of Gaby  |
Check out these pieces that maximize the potential of the complications they use.
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So, did I make things complicated enough last time? Let's see what you have to say on that subject.
From Waltz Invictus  : That was a very... complicated... newsletter, Elisa. Good pointers, though, and I liked the way your examples explained how the same plot complications would work in other genres. Thanks!
From Vivian  : Interesting newsletter, Elisa. I like how you used the same information in different examples of genre. ~~ Viv
Glad you two enjoyed the newsletter! Yes, it can get complicated following complications, but if you don't, it turns into a royal mess. I was actually inspired to show the flexibility of complications while sitting around trying to think up some common types of problems seen in drama. The complications I kept brainstorming, though, crossed genres. Thus, I decided to show how complications can be applied anywhere and how they would work in different genres.
From Brians Next Novel Almost Done!  : Good newsletter, Elisa. My first novel was a contemporary drama, and I followed a lot of what you said here about determining how many complications ought to arise, when, to whom, etc. It is much the same with the novel I am working on now. I am having to be careful with how many complications I present to the reader and how freuqently or infrequently I present them. The beauty of rough drafts is you can always go back and edit or--if you are fortunate--simply re-organize the order of some of your scenes. It is a fun dilemma to have though when you have a story you feel is really going somewhere. You can start playing with what could happen if this happens to Character A and that happens to Character B, etc.
If you're really lucky, Brian, you can even change a few words to make a specific chain of complications work. It's a very rare thing, though, and most of the time we have to subtract or add. I've found that adding complications almost never happens, but when there's a plot hole the size of Lake Okeechobee in your story, sometimes you have to fill in the blank. And yes, timing of complications is so crucial. If you pile them on too soon, the reader will be lost. If you drag the story on and throw the first complication into the pot a quarter of the way through, the reader might end up too bored to make it to that point.
And another word on loglines! Yay!
From Chewie Kittie : Hey Elisa,
I just wanted to thank you for your newsletter on loglines. I know this is really late because you did it in June or July, but I am working on a novel and I started losing focus and I combed through my saved newsletters for help. I vaguely remembered your
piece about the loglines, and when I found it, it was even more helpful than I could have hoped!
You completely got me over the hump and helped me find my direction in my novel.
So, THANK YOU!!!
You're very welcome! As far as I'm concerned, time is never an obstacle for finding something useful.
For the next newsletter, I'd like you to ponder these three words: description, dialogue and action. What do these words have in common? They're the three most vivid types of lines you can have in a written prose work. So what do they mean to you? Do you think you can create some examples for us?
And if you happen to miss or misplace a newsletter, feel free to stop by "The Drama Box" [13+]. |
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