“Students,” he said sternly, peering nearsightedly over his glasses at his audience like an annoyed owl and stabbing the air with a forefinger for additional emphasis, “I want to talk to you today about two writing sins which have yet again come to my attention, and which we can add to the already-lengthy list.” He paused at the chorus of groans and held up a pre-emptory hand for silence. “That’s quite enough. Need I remind you of the words of the immortal Stephen King regarding writing sins?”
“Only God gets it right the first time, and only slobs say, ‘oh well, that’s what editors are for,’” they responded dutifully.
Ah, you know, I still miss teaching. More than five years retired from a 35-year career, most of which I thoroughly enjoyed, and I still yearn for moments like the hypothetical one above. I don’t miss the politics or the pedagogical bullshit which, in later years, veered sharply into utter insanity on the order of the Mad Hatter’s tea party, mind you, but the teaching and the kids… yeah, those I miss. (Why did I retire, then? you ask. As well you might. In a nutshell --- because this is not really the point of today’s epistle --- and as you might expect, it was because I was so disgusted by the watering down of academic and behavioral standards by well-meaning but hopelessly out-of-touch administrators and politicians that I could not, in good conscience, be a part of it anymore. Sauve qui peut and all that.)
Anyway, back to the point of today’s epistle: those two writing sins. (My students often accused me of branching off on tangents during my lessons, an accusation I stoutly deny. Or at least, mildly refute.) I have even come up with catchy titles for said sins, which I herewith triumphantly present for your entertainment and edification: Barn Door Writing, and Fire Hose Writing. I have to point out that these sins seem to be slightly more prevalent in film and television than in the printed medium --- if it doesn’t become obvious to you why that should be, don’t worry, I’ll explain why later --- but can be, and are, still present in books.
So. Barn Door Writing (BDW). This is what happens when a writer hasn’t thought things through properly in constructing the plot. They’ve left gaping plot holes which result in continuity errors and gaps in the logic of the storyline. And to compound the sin, they make no effort to explain or remedy them, just either ignore them completely or gloss over them as though they didn’t exist, with all the calm, contradictory illogic of a toddler. (“Why did you hit your sibling?” I once asked one of my children. “I didn’t,” they replied with remarkable sangfroid. “Yes, you did,” I retorted. “No, I didn’t,” they said. “I SAW you!” I exclaimed heatedly. “No, you didn’t,” they maintained. Well. What can you say in the face of that? That’s the moment when it was reinforced to me not to bother arguing with small children.)
Now, every writer experiences BDW… in the story’s early drafts. That’s what first, second, third, ninety-eighth drafts are for: to eliminate the BDW and reinforce a story’s interior logic. The idea is that you gradually eliminate BDW so the final product to reach your reader’s sweaty little hands is as bulletproof, as tightly scripted, as is humanly possible. Note I’m not saying characters have to behave in perfectly logical, predictable ways; no, no, no. People aren’t logical. Often they’re predictable, sure, but other times… not so much. But don’t allow your characters’ illogic to get you out of sloppy writing. People may be illogical, but there’s usually a remorseless logic to the chaos the universe often inflicts on them.
Fire Hose Writing (FHW) often arises out of BDW. (You could say it’s BDW’s ugly stepchild.) This is when writers bombard their audience with a stream of so much going on, so incredibly quickly, that the audience is left gasping to keep up with the pace and doesn’t have time to sit there puzzling out those pesky examples of BDW. (“Wait a minute… in the last scene, didn’t the protagonist say/do…?”) You can see that FHW is going to occur much more often in film and television, if only because with written stories, readers can go at whatever pace they darn-well please, going back to reread the previous page or chapter whenever they like. Sure, viewers can do this too, to a certain extent, by pausing the playback and doing more or less the same thing, but if those canny film and television writers have turned the stream on to full fire hose mode, viewers don’t have time to sit there puzzling out the bits of BDW they’ve just seen; in today’s action-packed special effects extravaganzas, film is a pretty immersive experience, and bombarding the audience into submission with full-on FHW seems to be a favourite trick of far too many screenwriters, to cover up their lazy/sloppy BDW.
Have BDW and FHW always been around? Sure they have. The deus ex machina, a writing term which comes down to us from the ancient Greeks, refers to writers solving BDW by what we would quaintly term Acts of God i.e. events which tie up our sloppy plot by simply solving them through the wanton use of wholesale miracles. (I’m not saying I don’t believe in miracles, I’m just decrying their indiscriminate use by writers whose spouses have just called them for dinner, so the writers need to wrap things up fast, but they’re fresh out of inspiration.) Simply because sloppy writing has been around since the Dawn ‘O Time doesn’t justify your using it as a crutch.
So cast off the shackles of BDW and FHW, writers! You have nothing to lose but your chains, as one obscure writer said. Sure, it takes more creative energy and time, but you’ll wind up with stories you can be justifiably proud of.
“Only God gets it right the first time, and only slobs say, ‘oh well, that’s what editors are for,’” they responded dutifully.
Ah, you know, I still miss teaching. More than five years retired from a 35-year career, most of which I thoroughly enjoyed, and I still yearn for moments like the hypothetical one above. I don’t miss the politics or the pedagogical bullshit which, in later years, veered sharply into utter insanity on the order of the Mad Hatter’s tea party, mind you, but the teaching and the kids… yeah, those I miss. (Why did I retire, then? you ask. As well you might. In a nutshell --- because this is not really the point of today’s epistle --- and as you might expect, it was because I was so disgusted by the watering down of academic and behavioral standards by well-meaning but hopelessly out-of-touch administrators and politicians that I could not, in good conscience, be a part of it anymore. Sauve qui peut and all that.)
Anyway, back to the point of today’s epistle: those two writing sins. (My students often accused me of branching off on tangents during my lessons, an accusation I stoutly deny. Or at least, mildly refute.) I have even come up with catchy titles for said sins, which I herewith triumphantly present for your entertainment and edification: Barn Door Writing, and Fire Hose Writing. I have to point out that these sins seem to be slightly more prevalent in film and television than in the printed medium --- if it doesn’t become obvious to you why that should be, don’t worry, I’ll explain why later --- but can be, and are, still present in books.
So. Barn Door Writing (BDW). This is what happens when a writer hasn’t thought things through properly in constructing the plot. They’ve left gaping plot holes which result in continuity errors and gaps in the logic of the storyline. And to compound the sin, they make no effort to explain or remedy them, just either ignore them completely or gloss over them as though they didn’t exist, with all the calm, contradictory illogic of a toddler. (“Why did you hit your sibling?” I once asked one of my children. “I didn’t,” they replied with remarkable sangfroid. “Yes, you did,” I retorted. “No, I didn’t,” they said. “I SAW you!” I exclaimed heatedly. “No, you didn’t,” they maintained. Well. What can you say in the face of that? That’s the moment when it was reinforced to me not to bother arguing with small children.)
Now, every writer experiences BDW… in the story’s early drafts. That’s what first, second, third, ninety-eighth drafts are for: to eliminate the BDW and reinforce a story’s interior logic. The idea is that you gradually eliminate BDW so the final product to reach your reader’s sweaty little hands is as bulletproof, as tightly scripted, as is humanly possible. Note I’m not saying characters have to behave in perfectly logical, predictable ways; no, no, no. People aren’t logical. Often they’re predictable, sure, but other times… not so much. But don’t allow your characters’ illogic to get you out of sloppy writing. People may be illogical, but there’s usually a remorseless logic to the chaos the universe often inflicts on them.
Fire Hose Writing (FHW) often arises out of BDW. (You could say it’s BDW’s ugly stepchild.) This is when writers bombard their audience with a stream of so much going on, so incredibly quickly, that the audience is left gasping to keep up with the pace and doesn’t have time to sit there puzzling out those pesky examples of BDW. (“Wait a minute… in the last scene, didn’t the protagonist say/do…?”) You can see that FHW is going to occur much more often in film and television, if only because with written stories, readers can go at whatever pace they darn-well please, going back to reread the previous page or chapter whenever they like. Sure, viewers can do this too, to a certain extent, by pausing the playback and doing more or less the same thing, but if those canny film and television writers have turned the stream on to full fire hose mode, viewers don’t have time to sit there puzzling out the bits of BDW they’ve just seen; in today’s action-packed special effects extravaganzas, film is a pretty immersive experience, and bombarding the audience into submission with full-on FHW seems to be a favourite trick of far too many screenwriters, to cover up their lazy/sloppy BDW.
Have BDW and FHW always been around? Sure they have. The deus ex machina, a writing term which comes down to us from the ancient Greeks, refers to writers solving BDW by what we would quaintly term Acts of God i.e. events which tie up our sloppy plot by simply solving them through the wanton use of wholesale miracles. (I’m not saying I don’t believe in miracles, I’m just decrying their indiscriminate use by writers whose spouses have just called them for dinner, so the writers need to wrap things up fast, but they’re fresh out of inspiration.) Simply because sloppy writing has been around since the Dawn ‘O Time doesn’t justify your using it as a crutch.
So cast off the shackles of BDW and FHW, writers! You have nothing to lose but your chains, as one obscure writer said. Sure, it takes more creative energy and time, but you’ll wind up with stories you can be justifiably proud of.
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