Pornography For Writers

Yes, Virginia, pornography can help you write better.
While popular legend would have you going blind, I think my idea is much better.
Now granted, this article is basically nothing but me telling you what I saw on television, but it’s such a good idea, such a great little story that I hope you’ll keep in mind during your writing, I think you will forgive me.

I was watching a documentary about film making and the director was telling a story about his first days in the golden age of Hollywood. He was in the studio system, which meant that you usually learned your trade from another, more experienced director.
This young director was no different. The studio executives tell him who he’s going to be working with - it’s a great, much loved director, and so naturally the young filmmaker is ecstatic. He is going to learn the art of direction from one of Hollywood’s legends.

The first day arrives, and the young man is shown into the office of his new mentor. Handshakes, introductions, brief history, all are given in due time, and the young man is chomping at the bit to learn his first film making secret.
The Hollywood Legend walks over, grabs a stack of film reels and gives them to the young man. “This will teach you all you need to know about filmmaking!”

The young director, very excited to be holding such knowledge in his hands, scurries to a nearby screening room, loads up the first reel, turns out the lights and starts to play the film.

Much to his surprise, it’s porn.

He’s taken aback by this, but figures that his mentor knows what he’s talking about, so the young director watches the porn. There’s feet in the air, heads a bobbing up and down, just crazy, crazy sex going on, and the young director is scribbling notes, taking notice of the camera angles, when they’re doing a close up, when they cut to another scene, etc.
The next day, the bleary-eyed and weary young director takes the reels back to the older director.
“You’re finished?” the old director says.
“Yes.”
“Did you watch them all?”
“Yes.”
“And what did you learn?”
The young director gets out his notes and starts to recite them, and the old man starts screaming at him.
“No! No! No!” he says. “Wrong! All wrong!”
The young student is crestfallen. His first assignment and he didn’t get it right. Not even close.
He takes the film back, watches it again, then comes back, even more defeated.
The old director puts his arm around the younger man.
“It’s okay,” he says. “No one ever gets it right.”
“But what was I supposed to learn?”
“To get to the fucking point!”

(cue laughter here)

Granted, it’s probably a story that has been tossed around Hollywood for decades, but the director who was the subject of the documentary was telling it in such a way that it leads me to believe it’s true. Or at least he thinks it’s true.

One of the major gripes of editors and even readers is that you, the writer, never get to the fucking point. You open a book or a chapter or even a scene and you are so enamored of your own grammatical and story telling skills that you dilly-dally around and never get around to the action. To the conflict. To the core of why that scene or chapter even exists.

The days of Dickens are gone, my friend. Dickens, being the genius that he was, could set the stage with long, long, long pages of back story and exposition. But those were the days before television, before film, before our attention spans got shorter than the point of a number two pencil. And besides, he was getting paid by the word. So you really need to, in the words of the pornographer, get to the fucking point. Look at the first paragraphs of your scene.

Do they jump in the middle of the conflict?
Does the action start almost immediately?

If not, you need to heed the pornographer’s advice and get to the point. You may have to kill your babies, get rid of some of your best poetic flowing sentences, but you’ll grab that reader, right there in the aisle of their local Barnes and Noble and they’ll take that book up to the counter and buy it because they can’t wait to see what happens next.

Homework: Take out your most recent chapter or story. Look at the first sentence. Is it dialogue or exposition? If it’s exposition, is there a way you could open the scene with dialogue? Dialogue is usually more action and conflict oriented than exposition.
For example “Put down that gun, Shorty.” grabs the reader more than “It was a dark and stormy night, and the rain drenched Shorty, fell down his collar..”
Forgive the crappy sentences, but I am sure you get the picture. Seeing Shorty about to blow someone away is much more fun than Shorty walking in the rain, getting the back of his neck wet.

Now, if your opening sentence is dialogue, I want you to read the first page and see where the action really begins. Are the characters just talking about the weather or something else unimportant? Find the first sentence that has conflict. Find the first words spoken by someone who is pissed. Find the first sentence that will shock the hell out of the reader.

That’s probably where your chapter or scene should really begin.
Again, you gotta get to the fucking point.
Your readers will love it, and they will keep turning the pages, I guarantee it.