Transcript: Richard Hatch and P.N.
Pat Elrod
February 2000
Reprinted with permission from the author and BattlestarGalactica.com/BattlestarPegasus.com
This is a transcription of a panel on book collaborations that took place at Visioncon in February of 2000. The participants, Richard Hatch and P.N. Pat Elrod have each worked on writing projects with partners, and both bring a unique point of view to the process. Hatch has authored many works, including, with Christopher Golden, the Battlestar Galactica novels, Armageddon and Warhawk. Elrod has worked with Nigel Bennett (LaCriox of Forever Knight) on Keeper of the King and His Fathers Son, as well as a dozen other of her own novels.
Hatch: Collaboration is a relationship; its partnership;
its collaboration. That means you have to understand that no matter how strongly you
feel about something you have to be willing to let go. Its like when you invite
other people on to the ship, if you keep trying to make everybody do it exactly your way,
then everybody becomes an order-taker and you become an order-giver, and nobody wants to
function that way. Collaboration means that two people give way from two points of view
and they come off with a third. Hopefully moving from a point of view to a viewing point.
It means you see a broader perspective, a broader circumference of this premise.
What I was lucky with, number one,
Chris (Christopher Golden) has done a lot of collaborations, so hes skilled at doing
that, hes good at doing that, and he enjoys doing that. A lot of writers dont.
They feel very strongly about what theyre doing; they feel violated if somebody
comes in and takes it off in different direction. What was nice with Chris is we spent not
several hours, but several weeksif not three or four monthsgoing over the
story. I brought my story to him, then we talked about it, going back and forth and
exchanging ideas. We had to develop a relationship first to establish trust. So those
three or four months were just hearing ideas, getting to know each other, me seeing
his thinking, him getting to know my thinking and getting to a deeper understanding of
what this story that I was bringing to him was all about.
I hate to say it, but communication is
difficult in this world, because you think youve said something absolutely crystal
clear and somebody gets a totally different message from it. Someone can take the same
exact words and say it the exact same way and get a totally different understanding of
what that means. So we had to get on the same track. You test each other, you come up with
an idea, you bandy it back and forth, hell go off and think about it, hell
come back with his ideas or feedback or things to enhance it, and just by doing that you
start to see how what youre saying is effecting him and whether hes
understanding the deeper essence of what youre communicating. After a couple of
weeks I knew he was getting it, understanding what I was saying and he would throw stuff
at me and I would come back to him, and hed start to realize I was understanding
where he was coming from. And this was one of those rare times where it worked. Ive
done lots of things with other people and many times theyve ended up being a
competition, very adversarial, you try to out-do each other, or get territorial. Someone
doesnt want you to change anything. They have such a strong vision of where it has
to go or should go, that theyre not open to your creative insights.
Again, if you find the right person and
you can develop that relationship, you develop a syntax, a means of languaging, a way of
communicating ideas back and forth so that the two of you are understanding what you mean
by those words and phrases that youre using. Once you develop that communication,
built that bridge between the two of you, then you can move into the story you want to
communicate on. If you try to do the story too quickly and you havent developed that
bridge, youll be ripping your hair out.
Elrod: Actually, it was the opposite for my particular project. Your experience was totally different from mine, so this is fascinating to me.
Hatch: (chuckles) Howd it happen to you?
Elrod: Nigel Bennett and I were guests at a convention in 95, and
unknown to me a book packager named Bill Fawcett, was talking to my best friend Teresa
Patterson (co-author of Robert Jordans Wheel of Time World Book and the
world book for Terry Brookss novels) who was running the convention. Bill wondered
if Nigel might be interested in writing a vampire novel, but worried that Nigel might not
be able to write. Teresa suggested that Nigel be teamed with a writer andGod BLESS
that womansuggested me as a possible collaborator. Six months later Im
guesting at another convention with Nigel and I dont know that hes been
contacted by Bill by then. Nigel and I got to talking about writing. This is the first
time I learned that hes done any for himself, so I gave him my
Handy-Dandy-How-to-be-a-Writer Kit, something I share with others in the
business. Then six months later were doing another convention and he waves me over
just before hes about to go on stage for his first appearance.
Pat, Pat-I need to talk with
you!
Now the last time someone said that to
me I was about to get fired, so I asked, About what?
Its about writing.
Being secure on that topic, I relaxed,
and afterwards we got together in the green room. Nigel said, This guy approached me
about writing a vampire book and youre on the short list of collaborators.
I go all casual and say, I think
I can make time for this, and inside Im turning handsprings and bouncing off
the walls. I love the guys acting work, and hes very sharp, a very smart man,
it would be a totally wonderful thing to work with him on such a project. It was a great
thing that only might happen, though. I didnt get my hopes up too much, the decision
of who was best for him to work with was his after all.
But a few months later I got the phone
call, Nigel said the papers were signed, were ready to roll, lets get started.
So after I scraped myself off the floor since Id been hovering around the ceiling in
celebration, Bill flew me up to Toronto and I spent 2 days in a hotel room with the two of
them hammering out our first outline. We each brought our laptops, I had a tape recorder
going, and the 3 of us were throwing ideas all over the place of what we wanted in the
novel. I call it a story-storming session. The purpose is to get as many possibilities out
as possible and speculating where they can lead in terms of plotting and characters.
Its very much a development thing. Anything goes.
So we eventually came up with an
interesting premise of Lancelot as a vampire in modern Toronto who has to go after the
Holy Grail again, and this time hed better find it! Nigel absolutely lit up, he
loved the idea.
Then Bill said, Oh, we need a
heroine for Lance to rescue.
But I said, Nowe need a
female partner to help him solve the mystery. Ninety-eight percent of Nigels fans
are women, if you screw up on the heroine hell get the blame!
Nigel was looking a touch worried at
this point. What sort of woman would be good in the part? There were not a lot of tough
female role models that either of them could relate to.
Then I said, Classic Avengers:
Mrs. Peel. And they both went Ooooh! So we got that totally right! We
have a Mrs. Peel with Rosie ODonnells mouth on Geena Daviss body. This
is what I call casting. I think of the right actor Id like to see
playing a part should the book be a movie, then as Im writing I visualize this
actor. If I see Bette Davis playing a role, then her characters dialogue almost
writes itself.
Hatch: So when you get an idea and youre trying to write a story, you get an idea for these characters before you start writing? Based on movie stars?
Elrod: Sometimes. Only sometimes. Other times it doesnt work
and then the right ideaor castingwill hit like lightning. It took me awhile to
work this method out, and I dont always rely on it because some characters just leap
out of my head full grown. Now and then I use this as a shortcut when Im pressed for
time. The key of it is to help make the spear carriers just as interesting as the main
characters for the time they are on the page.
Now at the beginning of this project
with Nigel, Ill admit I was a bit in awe of him, and he was getting top billing, so
whatever he wanted to put in the book, it was my job to make it work. Our first 6-hour
session we worked on the bare bones of the hero, figuring out his particular abilities,
his weaknesses, ditto for the main cast-it really helped to think in terms of acting here.
I used to be a drama major and so Nigel and I had that common syntax that youve
mentioned. At the end, we had the hero, heroine, a bad guy, several supporting
charactersflipping through a phone book for their names!and a general outline
of what we planned to be doing. The next 6-hour session, the following day, we refined all
that-and even better, Nigel was so hyped about the project that he came in with the first
pages of chapter one! He was up half the night just tapping away having a real good time.
Later as we began to work in earnest about it, hed send me 10 pages and Id
turn it into 20. He says I do the establishing shots and Pat does the close ups and
adds in the grace notes which I thought was very sweet! I dont
know what grace notes are, but I LIKE the sound of it! And you knowto this day I
still dont know whether or not hes ever read any of my booksbut
obviously he felt comfortable about working with me, which is of prime importance in any
duet project.
This was a total half-and-half
collaboration, a real partnership effort. He brought stuff to the story that I would never
think of putting in because I just dont know that stuff. Hes had a different
upbringing than I, but we mesh together, probably because of my small background in
university drama, and were able to communicate on those levels. For you who want to be
writerstake a dramatic class and learn about dialogue. I see so many writers fall
flat on their ass because they dont know who to write a good conversation with the
characters playing off each other the way actors do when on stage. (To Richard) Correct me
if Im wrong on this!
Hatch: No, thats the way to do it! Was that the first time you collaborated?
Elrod: Absolutely.
Hatch: Youd never done that before?
Elrod: Well, sort of, a little bit when I was married, but we had to remove all sharp instruments, blunt objects, and firearms from the room! (Audience laughter)
Hatch: Oh, my God! So it can be tough!
Elrod: Only because at that time I went into it like a teacher about correct a backward students paper. My ego was in the way, and thats the wrong attitude to pull when youre going to do this sort of job. You are totally right about the give and take of the work and making sure you are open to the other persons ideas and input. That was my mistake, but Ive not repeated it since, and I certainly avoided that working with Nigel. One of the rules we have during story-storming sessions is to never use the word no in response to any idea thats thrown out. Thats something I learned from master cartoonist, Chuck Jones. When he was getting ideas in for his wonderful cartoons, theyd have the most outrageously funny stuff thrown in because the creators knew they wouldnt have to hear that word. I keep that in mind for my solo works as well! No is the worst word in the world to hear when youre trying to invent something out of nothing.
On Technique vs. Creativity:
Hatch: Talent is talent, it can be very raw, or someone can
develop great technical skills. I was collaborating with a writer who is very technically
proficient and very skilled and has been writing for 20 years. I wrote articles for
publications, Ive been quoted, theres actually a book where many of my
writings are in it. Aside from acting I teach and lecture all over the country at
universities and I lecture and speak at corporations, businesses, churches, stuff like
that, doing 3-day seminars teaching people how to go out and be more successful with their
life. Writing is one of the key things that I do regardless of whether one wants to be
professionally published.
In that regard, its a real
important thing to learn how to find your voice in the world. Until you find your voice,
youre lost.
Everything you do is two steps removed
from who you are. People can misinterpret who you are and you end up in the wrong place
with the wrong people doing the wrong job.
So the key for every writer, for every
artist, for every human being regardless of whether you make it a career is to find your
voice. Who are you? What are you about? What is your unique vision? What do you see? Most
people dont value what they have to see or feel or think, and therefore they hold it
in. Theres wonderful stories that people are walking around with that they never
share.
The key, again for me, has been helping
other people to do that and at the same time having to go out there myself and begin to
take writing to the next level.
I was always writing, but not necessarily doing it in a professional way, and I
wasnt submitting it to publishers. I was asked, because of the teachings Ive
done, to submit my work for publication, and I wouldnt worry about the spelling or
punctuation, none of that stuffand once I worked with this writer who was more
concerned about the technical end than the story. I said to her I know writers who get all
that correct, but are terrible writers! I know film makers who go out and make these
glossy films about nothingyou dont care about them. I know people who get up
and speak and have these eloquent words and have this wonderful way of
communicatingthat will put you to sleep. I know people who get up and speak a little
roughly, dont have all the perfect words to use, dont enunciate every word,
and youre sitting there spellbound because what they have to say comes from their
gut and their truth and theyre so powerful at expressing it.
The key, of course, is to bring both
together, develop your technical skills but not lose your connection to your heart, to
your creativity, to your spirit. The trouble is, sometimes you get with someone who is
very technically proficient, and they get very arrogant and condescending and get an
attitude with you. What pissed me off was that I felt suppressed. I felt there was more
concern over the structure of it than what I had to say. I understood that this was
something I needed to learn, but help me communicate and then help me learn through my
communicating how to do the technical things. Maybe its not structured quite
correctly. Help me to work with that. But if you come at me with this attitude of
how much better I am or more skilled or more knowledgeable or trained"
than you are, immediately, the minute Im working with someone like that it turns me
off, and I walk away.
Ive worked with may different
kinds of people and its hard for a writer whos been around a lot, whos
done a lot of training to actually develop that. When you work with a young writer or
someone whos inexperienced, its hard not to get a little bit of an attitude.
But I must say, for me Ive worked best with someone who is very forgiving, very
nurturing and supportive, and who doesnt see any lack ofif you want to call
ittechnical training as a deficit. They look and embrace the work, help you nourish
it, help you in a nourishing, supportive, forgiving way. If I had a teacher I
wouldnt want one sitting there in a scathingly beating me up for every little
mistake Ive made. I dont learn well that way and when I teach, I teach in a
very forgiving way.
Unfortunately, when you submit your
manuscript and you dont submit it correctly, editors wont even read it, they
wont even get to the story. So you need to develop both, the technical side as well
as your creative artistic side. The two come together, but one cannot suppress the other.
One cannot be in the place of the other. For me, I need somebody who has the compassion
and understanding and can help build that bridge.
When I was working with Chris,
whos written many, many books and developed many things, he had no attitude, no
arrogance, was not condescending, wasnt saying, oh, heres an actor coming in
trying to write something. And I wasnt writing something for the first time. All the
things Id written before, I wrote all that stuff myself, the trilogy of stories I
wrote, the Battlestar Galactica stuff I wrote, the synopsis Though he had far
more success in the world out there writing books, when we came together, he didnt
have an attitude and was open to my story. He would come back with ideas of how to enhance
this or to make this more dramatically exciting at this moment in time. Chris is very,
very good with dialogue, weaves it very, very effectively into what he writes. We would go
back and forth to get it right, but the publishers editing was terrible! You know
how many grammatical errors are in these books? I had someone write to me about 200 or so,
especially on book two!
Elrod: You had a nit-picker fan?
Hatch: I did! When youre writing and putting this together its your job to do that, but ultimately the editor is supposed to go through it.
Elrod: Im telling you some of those editors were selling french fries the week before! Ive dealt with them!
Audience member: When youre reading it for the 300th time, half the time youre not even reading exactly whats written, but the memory of whats been. Its easy to miss! Youve got to have somebody look at it!
Elrod: I have some good editors, but I dont trust them to catch everything. I got Strunk and Whites Elements of Style and memorized itall professional writers will have this thin book on their desk! Youre talking the technical aspect, I related this stuff to Nigel about in terms of acting. You may be the greatest actor in the world and doing Shakespeare, but you dont want to miss your blocking mark on the stage and fall into the orchestra pit. But you will hit your mark because this tech is stuff running in your head on the sub-conscious level while you act your lines. Thats what I do as a writer. On a sub-conscious level I put in a period at the end of a sentence. After a little practice, you no longer even think about it, its automatic as breathing.
Hatch: Most people are pretty sensitive about what they write and
are not very comfortable sharing what they write. Its hard enough to open up and say
anything meaningful. My first step is to get them through the fear, release them from that
fear, learn to start trusting their own voice, then start listening to what their own
creativity, their own heart wants to say.
You walk around in the world, you
experience things, you know people, you see things and theres millions of stories
out there. You can take a little bit of something from a person you know and youre
not going to write his story, but theres something about that person that triggers a
story and you take that character and give them a whole life. It moves you into a whole
new topography, a whole other area that you didnt expect to go into, because that
character in a sense is leading the way. Its character-driven.
I dont like to lay out my
beginning, middle, ending; I really like to find compelling characters, Ill get a
feeling, and idea for a basic premise, and then I let go and allow these characters to go
places and show me things. A lot of times I find that Ill do a lot of writing
exploring the area of the characters before I hook in. Its like you catch a ride.
Something in the story and the character reaches this defining moment that all of a sudden
ignites the real story that wants to be told.
Elrod: When Im working I try to find wheres the best
place to start the story. Wheres the best dramatic moment for it? Once I filled up a
ream of paper on it working out this problem, a ream on one lousy short story, but I
learned so much from it that my third book was THAT much better for all the effort I put
in.
I finally realized that where Id jumped in for the beginning was the final climax of
the story! So I had to back write everything to lead up to that point! A lot of people say
to write your climax first, then figure out a way to get to it. Im nearly always on
a tight deadline and it saves me time. When beginning one of my books I knew the ending
would feature a big machine gun fight, lots of action. Then I had to answer why do they
have machine guns? Why not shotguns? What led to this horrible conflict? Who were the
people involved? By the time I back-storied up answering all those questions I found I was
on page one. I was able to finish that sucker fast-which made my editor happy!
Hatch: I was trying to do something unique. I wasnt just
trying to write another Battlestar story, but trying to write something that
would really get into the heart and soul and spirit of this premise and really help us to
see these characters in a way we had not seen them before. To take them to the next level.
Elrod: I like the telepath thing you put in!
Hatch: Some people didnt like that and I said let me tell
you why its there. I didnt just bring it out of nowhere. If a story is already
created and somebody inserts this thing they have on it, not from it, but on it, its
like you want to force a character to do things he normally wouldnt have done, but
because you have this point of view that may have nothing to do with this character, you
should really do it in another book!
But I took that from the Adama
sequences where he was dealing with Count Iblis, and if you remember when they were
battling each other, Adama moved the thing on the table. Well, people didnt pay
attention to that fact that he was actually able to use telekinesis. That opened up for me
the questions Where did that come from? What was that about?
So I took these little things that
happened there and answered, This is just the people developing their minds
and were finding out that the powers of the mind are pretty substantial. Weve
only begun to explore that world. In Battlestar were dealing with a
technology thats at least a thousand years ahead of us for them to be moving through
space. I would hope to think that there we would have evolved to a point where we would be
using a great deal more of our minds. I would think the ability to do those things would
make sense and would no longer be fantasy. Its plausible.
I wanted to go in and touch upon that,
the training that would develop those abilities. Readers dont want something to come
out of nowhere. I always think things come as an evolutionary process. So I took threads
and feelings, things that actually happened in the original episodes, and these are the
threads woven through the fabric of this piece and developed more fully.
Elrod: And you can do things in a novel that you cant do within the limits of a 40-page script on a TV screen.
Hatch: Yes! We went into the thing of Who are the Cylons? One of the problems of so many things we do, well get into one character, but sometimes what we dont realize is that its through the eyes of one that we meet all these other characters. And sometimes the so-called secondary characters are as important as first tier of characters.
Elrod: This is something I picked up from watching Babylon 5:
Straczynski did a script-writing seminar, and I got a truly good thing out of it:
What does each character want? And how far are they willing to go to achieve
it? And if I point to someone in this room and ask What do you want?
They might panic and blank, because a lot of us really dont know what we want. And
if you dont know what you want, how the hell are you going to believably write a
character who does know what he wants?
I had a sort of savant-type character
in one series, a math whiz, but with absolutely no social skills. She was also in need of
more development. So I went back to the basic question: What does she want? I thought a
long time about that, getting inside her skin and imagining what her day-to-day life must
be like. And I finally came up with she wants to be respected. The reason she works for
this horrible gangster who drills holes in people at the drop of a hat, he respects her.
Shes loyal and does everything for him because she has his respect. Thats why
this otherwise nice girl is in this awful place and everything in her world revolves
around this fulfillment of her desire-even if she herself is unaware of the desire itself.
Hatch: That character developing you did, for you to get in touch
with that-in writing its not what you say, but the intention. I want your
respect. I may never even say respect, but the intention, the way the words come out
of a character, the underlying agenda of that character will come out. To really crawl
inside the characters and get in touch with those things-how many people in life are
tapped into that?
Most of us dont want to deal with
our agendas, we dont want to look at our real intentions that are driving us in our
life, wherever its taking us. We think were going one place, but perhaps
underneath were trying to prove to the world how intelligent we are. At some point
we bought into this belief that were stupid. And we need to prove to the world that
were not, so that agenda drives that character in every place they go, in every job,
every kind of training, through all the degrees that they get. Why did they overcompensate
by trying to prove their intelligence? I know of characters who became great world-wide
achievers because they were really trying to overcompensate for this deep inner fear, this
feeling of rejection, this not feeling important enough. Sometimes the agenda drives them
to ultimately transmute, to healing it, getting to the other side of it. But getting into
those areas-youre wondering what am I going to do with this character?
and Im lost here and youve lost the scheme or the juice, go back
to the character and explore that character more fully and find what Pat said there. That
is such a great thing: What does that character want?
Elrod: Look at the Molari character. What did he want? He got it,
and ends up as that worlds version of Hitler. He got what he wanted, but not the way
he imagined it. And that was such a wonderful twisting of that character, and then he
turns into a self-sacrificing I must save my people character. You could tell
the writer was fascinated by what this guy was doing.
Now Im doing that stuff, because
Im taking lessons from Straczynski to incorporate into my work. We steal from
everyone! Writers are the biggest thieves in the world! But only YOU can do your own
particular point of viewand if youre willing to mesh it with someone else, you
can come up with something bigger than either of you could have ever imagined alone.
You do have to put the ego aside. By
the time Nigel and I teamed up, Id learned enough to do that. This was primarily his
book, and I was okay with that, but in the end our creative partnership resulted in
something that turned out to be larger and better than our input would have been working
solo. I think it surprised us!
(To Hatch) Now on your book you had already up with the plot
Hatch: I came up with the story, and the whole evolution story of the Cylons, how they evolved, why they evolved, the stuff with Count Iblis, I wrote all that.
Elrod: Whoever meshed it together, its very seamless, and
that was something I consciously had to strive to do. Nigels writing styles
different from mine and I had to play chameleon to match. Im grateful to have had
the opportunity to develop that skill.
Hatch: We do have unique ways of speaking and the hard part is
that I feel very close to these characters, to this whole story, the whole premise. In a
sense its very hard to write with somebody who may like the show, but its not
something theyve studied or been with for 20 years. They dont have this deep
understanding other than what they seeits what you dont see thats
the most important.
Writing brings up feelings and thoughts
and pictures inside of you and reveals a world that is unseen. If the writer does his job
he stimulates your imagination to create that world where theres not enough words to
describe! In the rhythm and the phrasing you are able to open a doorway that brings up
this deeper context of the story you want to communicate. I had that feeling about Battlestar
and I wasnt sure he did, so I would speak for hours talking about what these
characters would be doing and what they wanted.
Elrod: Now you had a harder task to do, because youre working on novels for Battlestar Galactica, with millions of people familiar with the series. You not only had to capture the essence of something already well established in their minds, but also take it a step farther. Certainly people must have expected more from you since you had an insiders perspective to the characters and their workings. And you accomplished that very well. In my collaboration, Nigel and I didnt have that hanging over us since were making up things up as we went. If we had tried to do a Forever Knight book it would have upped the pressure on us because many fans are very set in their ideas of how something should be done. Wed have been sweating bullets trying to keep to the truth of that series. Its a whole different animal. Each has its own creative demands.
Hatch: It would have been a totally different collaboration had Chris and I been working on a different project, then it would have been in a sense a more equal collaboration. In this case, I had the stronger insight into the story and the characters and the things I wanted to say, especially in Armageddon where I was resetting the tone, to relaunch the series 20 years later with the original cast. I wanted to say where would we truly be 20 years later. I also wanted to take things that were never resolved or explained in the original and bring those threads forward and evolve them.
Elrod: Youve got characters flying Cylon raiders as part of the fleet
Hatch: Flying Cylon raiderswhat do you mean?
Elrod: Well, if Ive got a battlestar with a limited number of Vipers and I find a useful Cylon craft, I just put it on our radio frequency, and say dont shoot at them, those are our boys, paint the things pink, whatever it takesuse them. Youve got limited resources, so you play scavenger, use anything you can find to survive. Youve got that one scientist developing a Colonial Cylon and I sayyes!thats what I want to see! Cobble this stuff together, build Cylon robots that will shoot other Cylon robots in order to preserve human lives.
Hatch: I think its one of the important points in the story is that I wanted to take back in 1970, but there were certain violence codes that were very, very strict in TV. Literally, we were told you couldnt kill humans, or you could only kill 1.2 humans per episode. (Audience laughter) But it made the Cylons look very benign.
Elrod: Or really bad shots!
Hatch: Or very, very bad shots! Michael Straczynski probably explored this better than any writer in recent memory, where nobody is all good or all bad. You weave back and forth over the line. Were always having to deal with the dark side of our own beings and coming to terms with that. Sometimes to others we are horrible people, we are terrible, but we think of ourselves in a totally different light, thinking of ourselves as being heroic.
Audience member: Look what he did with Bester. To us hes totally evil, but from his point of view hes doing the greatest good.
Elrod: To himself hes not evil, hes doing his job, hes good at it, trying to protect his people. Hes the self-sacrificing hero.
Hatch: What she said is right, from his point of view hes
not evil. Im sure if you look at cows and lambs, they must view us as monsters.
Were higher up on the food chain and we eat them. Parasites live in our body, they
need to do certain things to survive, and we may look at them as some horrible things, but
theyre just doing what is natural to their evolution, to what they are.
It is an interesting thing is to look
at other races and realize that they may be destroying us, but they may have benevolent
reasons. The earth might look at us as parasites. We cause it a great deal of pain. If I
was the earth, I might try scratching to get them the hell off before we do any serious
damage!
That is where its interesting to
write from, really explore the in-between area. Why do you think people always find the
bad guy more interesting? Because on some level we can explore our own dark side that we
usually repress, The truth is we all have to come to terms with our fallibility, our
weaknesses, our flaws. Its hard for us to take responsibility for that, but great
stories come out of characters having to come to terms with the things we do to get what
we think we really want or need to have to prove our agenda. Im writing a story
exploring that, its a very dark comedy where people end up doing horrible things. It
happens step by step, but they get caught up in this series of circumstances because they
have this need to prove something. In trying to prove it, they get desperate and out of
desperation they end up doing things they never in a million years thought that they would
do, and it gets so hideous and so sick
Elrod: I want to read this! (Audience laughter) On the topic of
bad guysand this is something I picked up from Nigel since he plays a lot of
villains. I asked him how he approached someone like LaCroix, who is truly evil. He said
one of his directors told him find the right shoes and youve found the
character (audience laughter). He also told me No matter how horrible that
villain is, find something you like about him. Nigel liked LaCroixs sense of
humor. What do we like about Alan Rickman in Die Hard? He was so sneaky, but
charming and loaded with self-confidence. We love that!
In turn, find something you dont
like about your hero! Do this for all your characters and youll have readers who
cant wait to find out more about them. Give the character something that the reader
can identify with.
Like Ive got a tough, bad-ass
vampire, but hes afraid of heights, so what happens, he ends up crawling up the side
of a building in a high wind! People will relate to his terror. You can catch
readers focus by showing them the characters honest emotions. Too many writers
are afraid to extrapolate from their own emotions to do that. But a reader can always
tell, consciously or not, whether youre being honest with them. You have to be
willing to get emotionally naked and share your truth with them.
Hatch: We root for characters. When characters fall from grace they get caught up in serious circumstances with incredible challenges, we root for them to find their way back. How they find their way back becomes very interesting story-telling. Characters should make bold choices. Create a wonderful character you can really relate to and love and care about and put him in extraordinary circumstances to see what happens!
(Audience applause as panel ends.)