Every episode of Into the Storymaze = writing ideas or writing-in-progress; something creative I’m excited to share; a highlight my comic books; and a quote that’s worth a think.
Playwright and filmmaker Mark Bellusci and I had much fun with a podcast called Street Writers, which featured “Take A Swing At This”: practical ways to keep our writing fresh. Here’s one called “Reversals.”
Dan: I'm putting us in reverse. On creative screenwriting.com, Mike Fitzgerald wrote a really cool article called Learning from Stoppard. And it was about the fact that screenwriter Tom Stoppard had come in on the screenplay for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The one with Sean Connery in it.
And Jeffrey Boam was another accomplished screen writer, who I think really gets most of the credit for that. But Tom Stoppard, who did Shakespeare in Love and a lot of other things came in and did this massive edit on it. Boam’s work is still a part of it, but Stoppard hit all these points of escalation and antagonism and obstacles.
Mark: Not to take credit, because I started as a playwright, but that's what Tom Stoppard is. He's a playwright so he's used to bringing life into characters and his stuff is brilliant.
Dan: One of the things they really talked about in here was the idea of reversals. And the reversal is where you're really changing the tone of something quickly.
It started me thinking about the power of the reversal in anything that you write. If you're just going along in a straightforward way, with a scene or even business writing, and you're making your steps along the way.
This happens and this happens and this happens — it's flat as all get out. But if you can reverse things in the moment, you can suddenly create the tension to recapture the audience's attention.
This probably goes to the way actors think about things, as well. If you're answering a phone and it's great news and you're already in a great mood when you answered that phone…what is it? There's nothing going on there.
But if you start the scene in a bad mood, and then you get great news? There's that reversal. There's tension. Even the business writing, how do you make this apply to that?
Instead of just like methodically going across, “Here's the five steps to create this business solution…” — what if you were to set up a situation first where it's dire. But then you reverse it. Or vice versa.
The example they gave in this article, from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade…
There's a scene where Indiana Jones grabs an airplane right off the Zeppelin. Sean Connery's the father and in the original screenplay, the Boam draft, the father says, “Can you pilot an airplane?” Indy replies, “Well, let's find out together!” Which is just doom and gloom. If you went right with that, then it would just be confirming the fears. But the rewrite became a reversal.
Dad: I didn’t know you could fly a plane.
Indy: Fly, yes. Land…no!
Dan: See you go from that initial delight to…reversal! “Wait a minute. What do you mean?”
Tension is part of writing.
Mark: Take an analogy of a bicycle ride. And you're on a long ride. And you want to get from here to wherever. You've charted it out where the hills are, and so you have this kind of progression going along.
That's every screenplay. You kind of know, you kind of need to build up. “I need to have the shock here. I need to get to that next level.” But what you're saying in my mind is along that route, are the unexpected potholes you hit and that on this beautiful downhill coast, you hit a pothole and get knocked to the side of the road.
Now you gotta get back up and enjoy that ride. But you got to get past the fact that your rim is bent. And then on the other side of it you're in the middle of some major climb, and then you see there's a shortcut where you avoid the rest of the hill. It almost feels like you have your planned progression.
And then you have all these little direction changers, and stuff like that. And you have to look for those or else it gets too predictive in its approach.
Dan: I think we just got a behind the scenes view of all your “On Da Bike” photos on Instagram. “Damn lovely photo with the lake, but that's where I hit the pothole on my way!”
Mark: Your tip is you check yourself every few pages or every couple of minutes in your thing and see if it's too direct on the path, in one direction or the other.
You're going too dour, get some humor in there. You're going too fast, too easy …throw a little bump in the road.
You know all those times you’ve woken up in a creepy old cabin in the woods and been forced to compete in a Magic-style card game against a murderous monster? Then Inscryption is your mother’s milk. A horrifying Entity taunts you from across a long wooden table and deals out cards with various twisted creatures as their symbols: stoats, roaches, rats nests, larva, wolves.
Conjuring them to your play hand requires blood or bone — which must come from sacrificing one or more of the card creatures. And, oh yeah — some of those cards seem to be possessed by living spirits, so there’s that.
In between games, the Entity entertains you with disturbing mini-games where you can power up your cards — for another sacrifice on an altar or in the flames. And when you lose a round or fail to keep the Entity properly amused — well, I started off describing it as a “murderous monster” for a reason.
Take heart, though — you get reincarnated into the deck as a playable card. Brutal, bizarre, totally on-point in its demented world-building — deal yourself in.
Herewith, a true time capsule item: the ONLY LETTER I ever wrote to a comic book — and it got published!
It’s good to see I did not waste the opportunity to assume the God-given right of every comic fan to be a total know-it-all. 🤣 I still think Firestorm is a pretty kick-ass character — and I credit the book with either feeding or inspiring a long interest in nuclear power. (Bad, good, and complicated.) There’s a quaint nostalgic innocence to the fact they printed full addresses in those days.
“If at first the idea is not absurd, there is no hope for it.”
- Albert Einstein
Amazing Times
I’m D.G. Chichester. If that looks pretentious, feel free to just call me “Dan.”
I earned my storytelling cred writing comic book titles like Daredevil, Terror Inc., Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD and Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, along with digital widgets in the world wide web of advertising. I like weird tales, so if things here bend that way — now you know why!
Folks seem to like the comic book adventures I’ve written, so if you haven’t checked one out — please do. Many are now available in fab collected editions.
For the eager moments between newsletters…
As much as anything we were figuring ourselves out in real time! And having fun.
I really appreciate how you both break these concepts down and make them easily understandable. Thanks for sharing.