Frost's Writing 101

As it stands, all 101's can be found in this post.

Dialogue 101

I've been reading the promos this go around(10.1) and it would seem people are struggling on dialogue, and subsequently, the action that surrounds.

Pardon me if I delve straight into this... (No quotes have been pulled from promos. This are all original examples)

It would seem that I'm seeing either too little, or too much. Yes, there are points in which too little and too much are in fact perfect, but we will get to that.

Let's get to an example for too little:



Courtney steps over to Bill, a slight worry building in her eyes, and lays a hand on his shoulder. Bill turns away, trying to hide the agony on his face.

Courtney: Is everything alright?

Bill: Yeah.



So, yes, I've seen things like this. In this case, too little should be turned into none at all. There is something wrong with Bill, but he doesn't want to say. Instead of having Bill reply, delve into an internal dialogue or an action paragraph with Bill analyzing his thoughts and problems.

Less can be much more if used correctly.

Here's an example of too much:



Bill and Courtney sit out on the front porch, staring out at the peaceful horizon. They've been together for three years now, ever since the Prom back in high school. Bill had loved her before then, but that dance was the first time he'd said it.

Courtney: Aren't you glad we finally decided to be together at prom three years ago?

Bill: If I hadn't of told you I loved you, I'd hate to see where we'd be now.



Don't act like you don't recognize this problem. I've seen it quite a few times in various forms. We've either got whole plot points being discussed in one dialogue paragraph from a character, plot points being retold to us by dialogue, and many others.

Actions can be louder than words, people. Which, weirdly, works for writing... when everything is words. Still, if something can be explained to the reader, and, or, another character in the story, by action alone... opt for the action.

Save dialogue for fleshing out personality or for revealing news in an intimate way. Or for comedy.

The only large chunks of dialogue that should be seen are by the characters we know that talk a lloooot. Even then, try and break it up into pieces. By the way, your character should NEVER be the one that talks a lot. Seriously. Those characters, by far, become the most annoying the quickest.

So, as you can see, these are very broad, albeit crappy, examples. But these two things can be applied to almost all situations involving dialogue.

That, and I'm lazy.

Ask around, though, I know my stuff and I'm willing to help. If you'd like more in depth coverage on dialogue, post a point of your promo you'd like evaluated.

This will be much easier for me than pulling examples out of my ass.

101:

The Relationship Between Dialogue and its Surrounding Action

Because, yes, dialogue and action are linked. You can't have sex without a penis and... an orifice. Dialogue is your penis, and action is the orifice.

Let's start with the basics. The beginning of a promo and how to properly set up your surroundings. We'll use Hannibal Frost(I'm an attention whore) for this example and... some city at night. I, as much as some others here, love to use the streets and a city under nightfall as an opening.

I know how to write, but I forget what everything is called. Stupid me. What we mostly write in is the present tense, correct? I'm switching to the novel style past tense for my newest actually promo, but seeing as how most use present tense, I'll go with that.

The streets are bathed in a pale light, casting shadows off the grime and muck littering the city.

That's our opening sentence. Usually, pale lighting can be linked with either street lights or the moon. A pale light tells us that its obviously nightfall. So, there is no need to tell us its night time, its the moon creating the pale lighting, or its the street lights. Just from that sentence, most educated readers will be visualizing all three.

With the closing of that sentence, we've gathered that the city is a dirty one. This automatically fills the reader's head with thoughts of nastiness. Only a bit more detail is needed.

The streets are bathed in a pale light, casting shadows off the grime and muck littering the city. The stars above can barely be seen through the inner city smog that hides them. Tragedy seems to have struck this urban jungle, turning it into a wasteland.

So, now, the scene is definitely set. Not once did I say its nighttime or say one damn word about the buildings. The word tragedy, and subsequently, wasteland, have automatically told the reader that this city looks a bit worse for the wear.

I know this will cut down on your length, but a good flow of words is more important. So now that we've set up our scene, lets set up the character.

Hannibal Frost kicks rubble out of his path as he attempts to navigate the remains of the city. The only sound for miles is that of a windstorm brewing. The thick, polluted air being shifted tickles the three day stubble on his face. Annoyed by the sensation, Frost grabs the collar of his matte black duster and shields his face against the oncoming winds.

Okay, so, without directly telling the readers "Hey, Frost looks like this...!" we now have a feeling for what he looks like in a way that moves the story along. We now know that the air is polluted, windstorms are common, and enough of Frost's appearance to garner a mental picture.

That's the most important part of action/description. Make sure it moves the story along. Inner thought will obviously move the story along if its sticking to the main, and or sub, plotlines. Description and action are a little trickier, though. Dealing with description, only take extra time to describe something if it is a key to the plot. If it doesn't help move the story along, or isn't extremely funny, the readers don't give a shit.

Unless you're writing science fiction. It's actually required that those writers painstakingly describe everything. Weird, i know.

Now the, relationship between dialogue and action. The more you tell the readers, and other characters in the story by way of description, the less you have to say to another character. If you've already covered something in the description that the main character knows, but a secondary character doesn't know, for the love of god, don't repeat it. Find an interesting way to let the secondary character know. Because the secondary character isnt reading your story, we are.

Frost, upon seeing the corpse of his best friend, turns to his newly found survivor, Jack.

Frost: That's my best friend's corpse! OMG!

Jack: ZOMG!

Okay, sorry, I'm arguing with my girlfriend and its effecting my writing. Not one of you really writes exactly like that, but you get my point with how redundant that little example was. I've seen forms of that redundancy.

Frost, upon seeing the corpse of his best friend, turns to his newly found survivor, Jack.

Frost: There's nothing left here.

Jack nods, and they head out.

Jack doesn't neeeed to know about that being Frost's best friend. We, the readers, do. We need to feel Frost's pain in the obviously post apocalyptic world. So, next time, think about whether a character really needs to know something that the reader already knows. Besides, heres a little trick, if the reader feels smarter than a character or two in the story, it makes the reading experience more rewarding.

Here's another example. This example will tell the reader something that also needs to be explained to a secondary character. I'm not really gonna try to do my best writing here. I'm just going to get the point across.

Frost had seen this before. The rotting flesh falling from the bones of these victims in record time was beginning to be all too common. Whatever destroyed the city, was directly effecting its residents, at a terrifying pace.

Frost turns to Jack, and directs his attention to the body sprawled out on the floor.

Frost: Notice anything weird about this?

Jack covers his nose and mouth with the collar of his shirt before bending down to inspect. He slowly begins to nod as he looks over the body.

Jack: I've seen this before; accelerated decomposition of the skin and underlying tissue. They're rotting in only hours.

Frost nods, and winks at the audience, signaling our end of the scene.

So, now you've got Jack, who's obviously(and without telling the reader) revealed himself to either be a doctor, a really smart guy who previously had no life, or someone from CSI: Miami.

We've done three things here: Shown our secondary character what he needed to know, revealed his past occupation, AND given the reader something special. What is that something special? They figured out that something was wrong with the bodies before the fucking DOCTOR did. The reader, at least subconsciously, feels really good about himself right now.

Alrighty, these examples can be applied to everything and anything when writing your story. Don't copy the examples, take the lessons learned and remember them as your writing. Or just write away so as to not interrupt the creative process and go back over it thinking "How could I kill two birds with one stone here?" or "How could I simplify this without taking away from the writing?"

As always, I'm here if there are any questions.

Match Relevance 101

Well, I'm going to try and put as much into this as I can.

Match relevance is a problem for most people, and I'm not sure I can help fix it. I can only give you my take on it and what I do with it.

Symbolism.

That used to be my answer for match relevance.

Say it's Hannibal Frost going up against somebody in an Ultra Violent rules match. In my story, supposing Frost didn't talk much about his opponents, I'd have him become increasingly more violent until... it was completely obvious... that he had become Ultra-Violent in whatever it was that he was doing.

Say Hannibal Frost is going up against Skyler Striker. Striker is a family man(seems before 10.1 anyway). So, in my promo, I would have Frost pick apart the ideals behind having a family. And, if I felt like it, Frost would pick apart an actual family.

Lesson is, and this is no simple little lesson, relate to your opponent's ideals and traits through symbolism or through action. Well, I say relate, but really what you're going to be doing is directly attacking who your opponent is without even saying his name.

Yes, if we've got some thinking going on in an action paragraph or two, its okay to bring your opponent's name up. Because why wouldn't your character be thinking about the match ahead?

My only other solution to match relevance that I can completely endorse, as it is my new direction, is have FMW be the main goal in your character's life. I'm not going to divulge anything about my new story arc, but i'll give you a general idea.

Of course, who isn't striving to become the FMW World Heavyweight Champion? I know I am. But have it mean MORE than just a belt. Somebody's LIFE needs to hang in the balance, somebody's future needs to hang on the balance. If the FMW Championship is a life or death situation for your character, or somebody your character cares about, it brings the readers into it just a little bit more.

Instead of the reader saying "Oh, just another guy who wants to prove he's the best", the reader could very well enjoy that something extremely important to your character hinges on your winning the big belt.

Of course, it doesn't have to be a life or death situation. As much as I'm turned off on a certain FMW superstar at the moment, his idea was done quite well. He needs the money and FMW is his ticket to get it.

But, whatever it is your character is going after, it has to surpass all other wants and needs over the course of your career. A generally over arcing story line will give your promos a guideline to follow and won't have shit just running all over the place. If your storyline involves FMW in an intimate way, then there's your match relevance.

Of course, you can always go with "I want to be the best." But give us an extremely good reason as to why. What's happened to your character to make him think this way? Why should we care if he satisfies his ego or not?

These questions tie into match relevance more so than you'd think.

But that's all I got.

If I get some specific questions, I might be able to help more.

Thread successfully split. Enjoy, Hanny.

Thank you a thousand times, sir.

How the hell did you get this to post in my name?? That's friggin' cool.

We hacked your account and reposted it.

Not really, they probably just split the topic into a new thread, and made it sexy.

Oh, makes perfect sense.

Also, minimum banter and spamming here so the 101's will be easy to find and navigate through.

Can we get a 101 on scenery?

I kind of need help with that.

Sorry I didn't see this.

The first part of the second 101 has a good little section on scenery. If it's not enough just let me know and I will try and write up a lone standing 101 for it.