Come Over To The Dark Side

When I see a plane flying overhead, my first thought is not oh, look, people going on holiday. No. My first thought is that could crash. It doesn’t help that I used to have very accurate premonitions about air crashes some years ago, and one terrifyingly spooky one about the first space shuttle disaster. But that’s a whole other story …

Anyway, as the yellow smiley badge says: shit happens.

It does. Shit does indeed happen. That doesn’t mean I go through life expecting things to go wrong; I am just very aware that they could. It’s actually a pretty useful defence mechanism. Looking at any given situation and understanding how it could go wrong allows you to take pre-emptive action to forestall that bad outcome.

For a creative writer, I would say this attitude is essential. In fact, it’s more than an attitude – it’s a positive skill. No one wants to read about things going right. You may want a novel to end with everyone living happily ever after, but you certainly don’t want the road to the final page to be a smooth one. Happy doesn’t work in creative writing just as it doesn’t work in TV drama. Would you tune into your favourite soap if all the characters kept getting along with each other?

Probably the biggest bugbear of the creative writer is not knowing where to start. Where do the good ideas come from? If you’re struggling, I would suggest you start looking at the world with a cynical eye. The seeds of a good story are out there right now. I often see people jump out of their car to get cash from the ATM, and they leave the engine running. Someone could jump in the car and steal it. Is that a story? Not in itself. But what if they park up later on, open the trunk and find …

I watched a film many years ago called “Very Bad Things”, starring Christian Slater. It was the epitome of the idea that if things can go wrong, they will. It piled bad upon bad in a plot that made you wince ever harder. As the film progressed, I almost didn’t want to watch any more because I couldn’t conceive of how the situation could worsen, yet I knew it would. It was ghastly and hysterical, totally compulsive, and a master class in the dramatic “what if?”

That’s all this is about, really: the dramatic “what if?”. All creative writers should know about this, but I don’t think it asks the full question. It might open more doors to ask “what if things go horribly wrong?” You may want to add “before going beautifully right”, but the wrong has to come first. It probably shouldn’t be like the film I just mentioned because that was relentless, but it does need to be a genuine rollercoaster. Take your characters and screw with their minds.

When you sit down to write, make it wrong. It’s no more Mr Nice Guy. Make shit happen. And enjoy doing so.