Table Of ContentS Y N : Cinematic Techniques to Supercharge Your Writing, by
HOOT OUR OVEL
C. S. Lakin
Copyright©2014 by C. S. Lakin
Cover designed by Ellie Searl, Publishista®
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Ubiquitous Press
Morgan Hill, CA
Books by C. S. Lakin
Writing Craft
Writing the Heart of Your Story: A Guide to Crafting an Unforgettable Novel
Say What? The Fiction Writer’s Handy Guide to Grammar, Punctuation, and
Word Usage
Contemporary Suspense/Mystery
Someone to Blame
Conundrum
Innocent Little Crimes
A Thin Film of Lies
Intended for Harm
Fantasy/Sci-Fi
The Wolf of Tebron
The Map across Time
The Land of Darkness
The Unraveling of Wentwater
The Crystal Scepter
The Sands of Ethryn
The Hidden Kingdom (2015)
Time Sniffers
Praise for Shoot Your Novel
“With such an extensive amount of experience in the screenwriting and
filmmaking process (since childhood), it comes as no surprise that C. S. Lakin
writes with a trustworthy authority and wealth of insight when it comes to the
craft of building dynamic scenes within novels. The pace and flow of Shoot Your
Novel makes it easy to follow and the various tips and pointers strewn
throughout are succinct. Of particular note is the smart curation of novel
excerpts, authors, and filmmakers she cites as examples for the tips she suggests.
If you have trouble understanding some of the pointers/tips theoretically, the
excerpts always make it more clear.
Having myself adapted The War of the Roses for both film and stage
(internationally), I can say that I have actually used quite a few of the techniques
Lakin discusses, and the one I like the most is the use of portraying
"daydreaming" when writing from the POV of a character, effectively blending
past, present, and future in one single scene. Well worth the read!”
—Warren Adler, best-selling novelist of The War of the Roses and Random
Hearts
“With Shoot Your Novel, Susanne Lakin does something wonderful. While lots
of us in the business of helping writers and storytellers recommend adding vivid
images to scenes, Susanne goes much further to reveal how employing the tools
and techniques of movie directing, editing, and cinematography will give your
fiction deeper meaning and greater emotional impact. Her book is an essential
tool for any serious novelist. . . Unique and terrific!”
—Michael Hauge, Hollywood screenwriting coach
and story consultant, author of Writing Screenplays That Sell
and Selling Your Story in 60 Seconds
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1: It’s All about the Angle
PART 1: STATIONARY CAMERA SHOTS
Chapter 2: Setting Up the Scene
Chapter 3: Determining the Detail With the Three Basic Distances
Chapter 4: A Bigger Perspective
Chapter 5: Slip in a Slide Show
Chapter 6: Series of Shots for Quick Action
Chapter 7: The Punch Is in the Details
PART 2: MOVING SHOTS
Chapter 8: Honing In on a Key Moment
Chapter 9: Open the Reader’s Eyes and Heart
Chapter 10: Take the Reader Where You Want Her to Go
Chapter 11: Seeing through the Character’s Eyes
PART 3: ORCHESTRATING THE SYMPHONY OF SHOTS
Chapter 12: Putting It All Together
Chapter 13: Using a Filmmaker’s Eye
Chapter 14: Color and Shapes to Shape Your Novel
Chapter 15: Altering Time and Perception
Chapter 16: The Sound of . . . Sound
Chapter 17: Movies in Our Characters’ Heads
Chapter 18: Conclusion
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
INTRODUCTION
Point and Shoot
So, a man walks into a bar, accompanied by a large piece of asphalt. He
goes up to the bartender and says, “I’ll have a whiskey.” He nods at his friend
and adds, “Oh, and one for the road.”
If I told this joke to you and a group of your friends, I’m not sure you’d
laugh as much as I’d hope, but one thing I am sure of—you would each have
pictured this playing out in your head, and each would have seen a completely
different “movie.” Maybe you pictured this taking place in a Western saloon,
with the man dressed in cowboy boots and wearing a Stetson hat. He probably
had a Texan drawl, and maybe was chewing tobacco as he spoke. Maybe one of
your friends imagined a Yuppie high-end urban bar, with soft leather upholstery
and smelling of expensive Cuban cigar smoke.
However you envisioned this briefly described scene, no doubt your friends
“saw” something wholly different in their minds. Here’s the point: if you had
watched this in a movie on the big screen, you and your friends would have seen
the exact same things. You wouldn’t be arguing later whether the piece of
asphalt was black or gray or the man was wearing that hat or not. The film itself
provided all the details for you, leaving little to your imagination.
Tell It Like You See It
With fiction, though, writers are presented with an entirely different
situation. The reader reading your novel will only see the specifics if you detail
them. And even if you do, it’s likely she will still envision many of the scene
elements different from what you hoped to convey.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, leaving out details and allowing
the reader to “fill in the blanks” is part of the reader-writer relationship. In a way,
a novel becomes much more personal than a movie, a little bit of a “choose your
own adventure” quality. Many love novels just for that ability to “put
themselves” into the story, whether it be by relating to a protagonist, seeing
people we know in the characters presented, or feeling like we are going through
the trials and perils presented by the plot.
The challenge and beauty of the artistic palette a writer uses raises numerous
questions:
How much or how little detail do I (or should I) put in my
novel in order to help the reader see the story the way I see
it? And how much should I leave to the reader’s
imagination?
How can I best write each scene so that I “show” the reader
what I want him to see?
How can I write scenes that will give the emotional impact
equivalent to what can be conveyed through a film?
The joke I told was short and didn’t give much detail. It had no power or
punch, no strong feel of action or movement. I doubt you will remember it a
month from now. Other than the man walking and talking and nodding, the
“scene” was stagnant, with little to stir the imagination or evoke emotion. Maybe
your own writing feels this way to you—often—and you don’t know what to do
to make it better. Maybe you’ve read a dozen books on writing craft and have
attended countless workshops at writers’ conferences and you still can’t seem to
“get” how to write powerful, evocative scenes that move your readers. Well, if
you sometimes feel like strangling, stabbing, or decapitating your novel because
of flat, boring, lackluster scenes, you can shoot your novel instead!
Show, Don’t Tell—But How?
Sol Stein in his book Stein on Writing says, “Twentieth-century readers,
transformed by film and TV, are used to seeing stories. The reading experience
for a twentieth-century reader is increasingly visual. The story is happening in
front of his eyes.” This is even more true in the twenty-first century. As literary
agent and author Donald Maass says in Writing 21st Century Fiction: “Make
characters do something that readers can visualize.”
We’ve heard it countless times: show, don’t tell. Sounds simple, right?
Wrong. There are myriad choices a writer has to make in order to “show”
and not “tell” a scene. Writers are often told they need to show, which in essence
means to create visual scenes the reader can “watch” unfold as they read.
But telling a writer to “show” is vague. Just how do you show? How do you
transfer the clearly enacted scene playing in your mind to the page in a way that
not only gets the reader to see just what you want her to see but also comes
across with the emotional impact you intend?
