Writing a Book Like a Movie

A few weeks ago I wrote a review of Locked Within by Paul Anthony Shortt. This month he's doing a blog tour to talk about the book, and today I have him here to discuss his methods for writing a vivid, action-packed scene in clear detail.

Without further ado, here's Paul!

Writing a Book Like a Movie

Thank you for having me on your blog, Audrey! I’ve loved reading your blog all this time since I started out way back in 2010. Seems like a lifetime ago.

I’m an extremely visual person. Even when listening to music, I can’t help but picture a scene in my head, whether it’s from a movie that used the music, or a scene I’ve come up with for a story of my own. Early on in my efforts to become a published author, I used this tendency to help craft my book.

When I write, I imagine the scene in my head, like I’m watching a movie. I’ll spend weeks imagining and choreographing key scenes in my mind, listening to music to keep me in the mood. Then, when I get to that point in my writing, I know I have the scene already set.

This is perhaps one of the most useful tools I have, and it was invaluable when writing Locked Within. It’s actually a pretty simple process. Starting with a character, I pick an actor who could “play” the part, and keep that image firmly in mind while I write that character’s actions, thoughts and dialogue. I find it helps keep a unique and consistent personality throughout the story.

The same applies for setting scenes and describing locations. I use Google Maps and its Streetview feature as my “location scout” in this regard. Keeping photos of the location, or a suitable stand-in, helps me visualise the scene precisely and pass that detail on for the reader. Believe me, just having a few details set in stone for you, like the colour of a storefront sign or height of a wall, can add a whole new dimension to your writing. It may not make it to the final draft, but having that knowledge ready while you write, I feel, gives your description a depth and focus that the reader will, in some way, appreciate.

I love action scenes. They’re some of my favourite scenes to write. Having a firm concept of what happens in the scene and where all the pieces go as the scene progresses is essential. There’s nothing worse than your character taking the same action twice in the middle of a fight, or pulling out a weapon that they’d dropped on the previous page. In cases like these, an ability to properly picture the scene in your imagination is crucial. Again, think like the director of a movie. You’re shooting the scene. Make sure your actors are in the right positions and they have all the props they need.

The time you take to plan these scenes out may delay your actual writing, but believe me, it will pay off. If nothing else, knowing in advance where all your pieces are going to move will help keep your writing consistent.

Another advantage to writing like your book is a movie comes from pacing and plot structure. Movie audiences are impatient. They have two hours to take in an entire story. That leaves comparatively little time to set the scene and introduce characters. Today’s readers are quite similar. Gone are the days of 400-page novels with 100 pages of world building and character introduction before the action starts.

Agents and publishers know that most potential readers will flick through the first ten pages or so, either in the bookshop or the sample pages on the likes of Amazon. If those ten pages don’t grab the reader, they’ll put the book down and check out something else. Learn from the great movie makers. Make those ten pages count. Work hard. Make each word gold. Write an opening so engaging, so seductive, that the reader won’t want to wait until they’ve bought the book to keep going. If you can set your scene, your characters, and a hint at the story to come in those first few pages, you’ll hook your readers for sure.

About Locked Within:
The supernatural realm and the mundane world have existed side by side since the dawn of time. Predators walk the streets, hidden by our own ignorance. Once, the city of New York was protected, but that was another age.

Now a creature emerges from the city's past to kill again, with no one to hear the screams of its victims. The lost and the weak, crushed under the heels of the city's supernatural masters, have given up hope.

But one man finds himself drawn to these deaths. Plagued by dreams of past lives, his obsession may cost him friends, loved ones, even his life. To stop this monster, he must unlock the strength he once had. He must remember the warrior he was, to become the hero he was born to be.

His name is Nathan Shepherd, and he remembers.

About Paul:
A child at heart who turned to writing and roleplaying games when there simply weren't enough action figures to play out the stories he wanted, Paul Anthony Shortt has been writing all his life.

Growing up surrounded by music, film and theatre gave him a deep love of all forms of storytelling, each teaching him something new he could use. When not playing with the people in his head, he enjoys cooking and regular meet-ups with his gaming group.

He lives in Ireland with his wife Jen and their dogs, Pepper and Jasper. Their first child, Conor William Henry Shortt, was born on July 11th, 2011. He passed away three days later, but brought love and joy into their lives and those of their friends. Jen is pregnant again and is expecting twins.

Website: http://paulanthonyshortt.blogspot.com

Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread

Hi everyone! This past month I've had a lot going on, much of which I can't talk about right now, so I've been a bit silent online. But now it's Thanksgiving, and today I'm making one of my favorite contributions to Thanksgiving dinner: chocolate chip zucchini bread.

It's definitely not a typical holiday choice. I love pumpkin and apple pie. I'm a very very big fan of mashed potatoes too, though I'm not really a gravy or cranberry sauce person. Thanksgiving traditions are great, and I enjoy celebrating some things the way most everyone else does, but I like adding my own flavor to the mix as well.

So generally, if possible, I make a dessert bread. Chocolate chip zucchini bread is my absolute favorite. It doesn't dry out and it's very sweet. I got the recipe from a friend, and today I'm sharing it with a group of teenage girls, who will be coming over soon to bake with me. Let the mess and silliness begin!

Do any of you contribute an unusual dish to your Thanksgiving meal?

Writing the Book You Want to Read

What is the one story idea you want to read more than any other? If only one plot could exist in all the world, what would you want it to look like? What book would truly be the very best book you could think of?

Is that the book you're writing?

I used to think about those questions years ago. I tried to come up with all the very best ideas and mash them together into a single plot. Generally the results were either derivative or nonsensical.

But then for a long time I forgot those big questions and followed the lure of Shiny New Ideas—a unique setting with unexplored consequences or a dream that captivated me and needed to be told. And these were good ideas, fun ideas. They were books I would have enjoyed reading had someone else written them.

There's nothing wrong with writing a good book, especially a book you love.

When I began to write The Never Silent, though, I went back to those questions I had ignored for so long. I added new questions, too, that would further define what I wanted to create. And then I constructed my new plot with intention, structuring each piece around my answers.

This is one way of writing a book. It's not the only way, and maybe not even the best way. But I really like how it's turning out.

At first, writing The Never Silent was like writing any other book. It was just as much of a challenge and still is.

Now I'm editing. I'm in the process of going through each scene to add in a bit more description. I'm having more fun than I probably have any right to, but for some reason I've always loved the early stages of editing.

There's more to it than that, though. As I was going through one of my scenes the other day I had an experience I have never had before while writing. For the very first time I felt that the book I was working on was THE book I wanted to read.

I don't know if that means other people will feel the same way. I don't know if this book is any better than my others or if it's the one that will finally be published.

What I do know is that I'm accomplishing something that's meaningful to me, and that is making all the difference.

Book Recommendation: The Scorpio Races

If you'd asked me a month ago to list off as many fantastical creatures as I could think of, water horses would not have been high on the list, if I remembered them at all. I'd seen them pop up a few times in minor plot lines from some of the books I'd read, but until The Scorpio Races, I'd never read a book specifically about them. Now, though, I have a feeling they'd be pretty high on my list.

The Scorpio Races, by Maggie Stiefvater, is about a girl named Puck and a boy named Sean, living on an island called Thisby where the capaill uisce—horses from out of the sea that devour human flesh—are caught and raced. Both have desperate need to compete in the races and win, but in the annual November races, not everyone survives.

Sean is the son of a racer who was killed by the water horses. He enters the races to be with Corr, the red capaill uisce he rides but that does not belong to him.

Puck is recently orphaned, and without the prize money she doesn't know how to care for herself or her family. She's the first girl to enter, and the only rider racing on an ordinary horse.

I picked up The Scorpio Races on a whim, not knowing what to expect. I recognized Maggie Stiefvater as “the author of that werewolf series,” but wasn't familiar with any of her other work. To my pleasant surprise, The Scorpio Races was the most beautifully-written book I'd read in a long time. I frequently found myself noticing a perfect analogy or a beautiful line of description. None of the writing felt tired or mundane. The book impressed me enough that I expect I'll seek out more of her work in the future.

As for the story, it was compelling and developed at a good pace. I never felt that the relationships between characters were rushed. Their actions made sense, and Maggie Stiefvater made good use of the tension she'd created through the conflicting desires of her cast of characters.

Most of all I enjoyed the atmosphere of the book. There's a wild magic in the ocean, and this book captured the untamability of the sea. The island was as fully developed as any of the characters, and the water horses demonstrated perfectly how one can fall in love with danger, but must respect it or be consumed by it.

Bottom line: Good books always leave me inspired, and this one has inspired me to work all the harder on crafting the language in my books. It's a beautiful story too, and not to be missed.

What's with the Bunnies?

I like soft, cuddly animals. I feel like I should say that right off. I have a cat, and she is the princess of the house. And I like real bunnies too. Every time I see one I want to smoosh it's little face. (In a totally non-lethal way of course.)

But lately, everything's coming up killer bunnies.

It started with a video game. My husband and I are casual gamers. (That is, I'm casual. He loves games like I love books.) Sometimes we'll pick up an mmo to play together for a while, and the mmo of the season happens to be Guild Wars 2.

I'm not going to go into much about the game, apart from saying that so far it's one of the best I've played. The point is that whoever designed one of the starting areas must have had a bunny obsession. Within the first ten levels of playing in that area, I captured bunnies to sell to giants, was turned into a snow leopard and hunted bunnies, and—my favorite, by which I mean NOT my favorite—was attacked by bunnies.

Yes. Knocked over by hungry bunnies who would steal the bunny food I was trying to gather for their farmer.

Now typically I'm very pro-animal. I hate seeing animals suffer, even fake animals. In video games I go out of my way to avoid killing little helpless critters, even though they're nothing but pixels on the screen. But I'm telling you, as those hungry little rabbits knocked me down over and over, all I could think was “Die, bunny, die!”

And suddenly I remembered all the bunny terror in the media. Jimmy Carter's bunny attack. Anya's bunny phobia on Buffy. The Rabbit of Caerbannog.

Suddenly, marauding bunnies didn't sound like such an insane idea after all.

So here's my question for all of you: What's YOUR contingency plan for the bunny apocalypse?