This was the subject of my latest Vlog entry, but to help build it I wrote out my thoughts here as well. If you do hop to my Vlog, please take a moment to Like and Subscribe.
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The first question anyone gets when they say they’re working on a novel or a story or a screenplay is usually either “You write? No….” or “Oh. What’s it about, then?” And that’s a tricky question, because “about” means a lot of different things.
For one set of folks, “What’s it about?” really means, “Gimme the elevator pitch.” And if you’re unfamiliar with the phrase, an Elevator Pitch is a short 30 second summary of a product or work or anything at all, meant to be delivered in an elevator to a busy executive while he’s running between appointments.
The typical one runs something like this:
“It’s a thriller where everyone’s already dead! Think Ghost meets Silence of the Lambs!”
The whole idea with an elevator pitch is to encapsulate a story idea in one quick run. Just enough to grab someone’s attention. It’s the core concept in one way or another. The grabber. But it isn’t what the story is about.
From here, we go to the second implied meaning of “What’s it about?” – the plot. What happens in the story. Again, as an example:
“Picture an empty beach is September. Everyone’s bundled up except for Trish, who’s there in her bathing suit, staring at the ocean. She’s dead. So’s the other three folks with her: Two more phantoms and a smiling aspect of death with a carnival mask.”
This could go on and on for a while because here, we’re describing plot. The Events of the story, in order, laid out like cheeses in a buffet. You go from one to another to another. It’s what happened. And I admit, it’s the part of writing I’m usually good at. Pitches are hard because they’re poems – haiku with a time limit, no a syllable constraint. Just plotting things out – things go from A to B to C – feels natural to me.
It’s both the benefit and hindrance of learning to write via screenplays. It’s all about “What happens? How does the character react? How does this lead to the next scene?”
But that’s not what a story is about. That’s something I don’t often know until I’ve finished writing it, or if someone directly asks, and pushes past the pitch and the plot. And an anecdote I found on-line illustrates this well. I’m paraphrasing it because, for the life of me, I can’t find the original:
To help keep her sane, a young lady has been writing fanfic about her favorite shows as a sideline to her day job. The fic has been getting quite popular and she’s really chuffed about it. Eventually, he mentions this to her father. She’s nervous. Her dad’s a writer – a published author – and she’s worried what he will think.
The first thing he asks is, “Well, what’s it about?”
And when she starts telling him about the plot, he smiles and says, “No, I meant – what’s it about?”
That’s when it hits her, and she says, “It’s about two people finding comfort in each other during the worst times imaginable. It’s about creating a relationship that gives us strength.” She was overjoyed. Her dad took her work seriously enough to ask about the core of the story– the ‘about’ – instead of dismissing it outright.
First – Kudos to her dad for being the best. But that’s the heart of the story. It can be simple – “It’s about taking a chance when you find it” – or – “It’s about realizing responsibility and blame are not interchangeable.” You can also try for something profound – “It’s about self-discovery, and how you recover from learning you are not the hero of the story, but one of the background players” or “It’s about how the only true, pure rebellion is the individual struggling against a world seeking to erase their identity ‘for the greater good.’”
My challenge is to remember this definition of ‘about’ as I’m writing. Too often, I’m worried about getting from A to B, or finding a way to pitch the work to someone. If my story isn’t about something, doesn’t say something or describe something more than just actions on a page by fictional people, does it have any value? Does it have enough value for someone to pay money for it?
Now – there’s the counter argument. “It’s not about anything! It’s just fun! Bang-bang, space ships, heroes who are lost princes. Yah!”
Well, I disagree. Even things written just for pure entertainment are ‘about’ something. Here’s the danger – if you don’t have an ‘about’ in mind when you write, others will fill it in for you. So that ‘old fashioned space opera’ you wrote just for fun wasn’t about anything – but someone reading it can say, “Yeah, this is about how pure bloodlines and divine monarchies are the only way to save us!”
And that may not be your intent. But if you aren’t clear about your intent, how’s anyone else going to see it? How will they know what this was really about?
So, I’m going to be safe. I’m going to try and find what something is about as I write it. When I find it, I’ll hone the work, so folks can understand – clearly and simply – what happens, and what it’s about.
Biomechanoid Blues 