Writing lessons from Perfect Dark: Onryou

[Xantar]

For your convenience, this writing lesson has been divided into three posts. The first post is about how I go about starting to write something. The second describes one of my favorite ways to develop intelligent characters through their dialogue. The final post is about doing plot twists and foreshadowing. Feel free to ignore whatever parts you don't care about.

A few preliminary notes: I do not claim to be a good writer. In fact, I regard my fanfics to be simply junk not comparable in any way to real literature. I write them purely for fun, not to make a grand contribution to the human race. If people happen to enjoy reading them, that’s all the better. But I honestly don’t see that there’s all that much to learn about the art of writing from reading my junk. All the same, since some have indicated that they would like me to teach a lesson or two, I’m happy to provide whatever help and advice I can.

The following little essay uses my Perfect Dark fanfic to teach some elements of storytelling. That’s not the same thing as writing literature, so if you’re looking to learn how to win a Pulitzer, you’ve come to the wrong place. Likewise, I assume that you know all the rules of proper grammar and spelling.

A final caveat: if you haven’t read my Perfect Dark fanfic, then this essay will spoil every single surprise contained within. If you don’t care, by all means read on. Depending on the success of this essay, I may write another one soon with fewer spoilers or based on a different fanfic that you might be able to read instead.

Getting started

The first thing every good writer does before a single word has been laid to paper, even before knowing exactly what it is he or she wants to say, is decide exactly what it is he or she wants to create. This is true of any work, fiction or non-fiction, and it goes deeper than just deciding to write a school report or a poem. Is the school report going to be a straight telling of the facts, or is it going to take an overt stand? Is the poem meant to be performed before an audience or read individually and carefully?

This essay is about writing a novel similar to "Perfect Dark: Onryou," so I’ll talk about the decisions that one has to make before starting. The obvious first question is, "What genre does my story belong to?" In other words, is it science fiction? Fantasy? Romance? A blend of genres? And is it a story with lots of action and excitement or something more sedate?

Another question is, "How am I going to tell my story?" In other words, is it going to be done in first person or third person? Is the narrator going to be detailing the thoughts inside the character’s head? And is the story going to be told through the perspective of one character, many characters or just objectively like a newspaper report? Will it be told retrospectively or in the present as the story unfolds? Depending on what genre you choose to write in, you may already have some idea of the answers to the question of style.

Finally, and perhaps most profoundly, a writer must decide what’s most important to the story: the characters, the environment or the plot. All three of them are essential to a story and must be addressed to some extent by the writer. However, one of them must take priority in the end.

For "Perfect Dark: Onryou," the question of genre was already answered for me (science fiction/conspiracy thriller). That also helped my answer the other two questions. A story with a lot of action such as this one is best told in the present. And because it involves some kind of conspiracy in which no character knows everything, there is a lot of potential to be had in telling the story through multiple perspectives. And thus I also decided to give priority to the plot. That was an easy decision. The plot has to be important when you have conspiracies. Besides, the story takes place in Chicago. There’s not very many interesting things to be done with the environment. The characters are a group of elite operatives which can be interesting, but in the end they are pretty much like the rest of us except that they’ve gone through extensive training. What I also decided to do was to streamline the storytelling quite drastically so that character development and environment description was sacrificed in favor of plot. Someone looking to win the Nobel Prize might not have done that, but I was just looking to write a fun story.

[Xantar]

Showing Intelligence Through Dialogue

That doesn’t mean that I could ignore character development completely. Having characters who are at least not flat is important to a good story. That makes the reader care to some extent about what happens to them. There is more to the characters than Hikaru being quirky, Logan being emotionless and Carrington being a loving old father. A story in another genre addresses this by setting aside character developing moments. In other words, other stories will contain events that can be deleted without affecting the overall story and are there only to develop the characters. But since I was writing a story where the plot took priority over everything else, I couldn’t put in irrelevant character development moments. The character developing has to take place while the plot is also being advanced.

One of the most efficient ways to develop character is through dialogue. The way characters say things, what they choose to say and what they choose not to say, speaks volumes. I’m not talking about just having someone use the n word to show that he’s racist. Those kinds of two-by-four-to-the-head tactics get tiresome after a while. Dialogue works through much more subtle ways. If I detailed every character trait that can be demonstrated and every method that can be used with dialogue, this post would go on for a hundred more pages. Instead, I’ll just talk a little about how to make characters look smart. Every single character in the story had to be intelligent. Complicated conspiracies have to be created and uncovered by intelligent people or else the reader starts asking how these people got to where they are. In the following, I’m going to talk about just one way to make people look smart. Once you get used to thinking in storytelling terms, you will be able to come up with ways to show other traits.

Carrington smiled sheepishly and said, "I think I had something to say, but I don’t any more."

Hikaru laughed. "You didn’t need to say anything, Dad." Then her face turned serious. "Can anything ever be the same after this? People don’t even have to be born to live anymore."

He looked her in the eyes and said, "Hikaru, I know this may be hard for you to believe, but I really don’t care what you are. It was quite a shock to find out, to be sure, but it couldn’t have been any better for you to find out. But you’re still the same person I took in as my daughter so long ago. That won’t ever change."

She impulsively hugged him. "Thank you, Daddy." She drew away from him and then turned toward the door. Before she took a step, she said, "Aren’t you going to tell me to be careful?"

"Do I really need to do that?"

She smiled back at him and then walked away.

Here we see Hikaru and Carrington talking to each other and saying certain things while the other knows what’s really being said. When Carrington admits that he had something to say but won’t say it, Hikaru knows exactly what he wanted to say ("It’s good to have you back. And be careful"). Moreover, Carrington recognizes that when Hikaru asks if people can be the same again, she’s really asking if she herself can ever be the same again. This little mind reading establishes the close bond between them, and it also makes them look intelligent. They don’t have to have everything spelled out for them to understand what’s going on. Real people who are intelligent talk the same way. They don’t just listen to the words but also pay attention to the tone and expression of the other person, responding to what the other person really means to say. You probably do it, too. Pay close attention next time you talk to someone you know pretty well.

Some of the best conversations involve Logan because he is inherently a very neutral personality but at the same time understands the subtext of what’s being said very well. Take this short exchange for example.

"You're here to find some sort of information, I take it," he said.

"Something like that," Hikaru said. Then she had an idea. "Janitors have closets don't they?"

Logan nodded and then looked around the corner at the dead guard's body. He didn't say a word but only picked up the body and carried it to a door.

When Hikaru asks about a janitor’s closet, Logan immediately understands that she’s looking for a place to hide something and moreover that it’s so big that it can’t just be hidden in, say, his pocket. So he immediately goes looking for a dead body. As a bonus, this also establishes that he is a consummate professional who is used to dealing with these things.

"Tell me about your parents."

Another sip of the tea, and then a moment of silence. "My parents, huh? Well…I’m sorry, I’ve talked about them a lot. But I never know where to start with them. They were both short. They were immigrants from Japan, you see, and the Japanese are a bit shorter than westerners. My mother was very warm, I remember that. My father often smelled of oil. He was an engineer, a mechanic. My mother used to sit me on her lap. She shook a lot when she laughed. It was very comfortable on her lap." More silence.

"Those are all childhood memories."

"There aren't any others."

"I'm sorry."

In this last example, Anna and Hikaru are discussing their memories. At this point, when Hikaru says that there are no memories of her parents other than childhood ones, Anna immediately understands what this means (there are no adulthood memories because Hikaru’s parents died when she was a child). The previous two examples were somewhat more ostentatious: they make a point of demonstrating how well the characters understand each other. This time, Anna’s perceptiveness is demonstrated by a single line, almost a throwaway one at that. These kinds of instances are very easy to work into a conversation, and they work very well, too.

[Xantar]

But once again, the plot is most important. And in this story, the most important aspect of the plot is the twists. Coming up with all those revelations and making them work plausibly is what I worked hardest at. This fanfic called for a particular kind of plot twist. It had to impact the story somehow, change the way events work out from the way they would have happened before. The old "I was abused as a child" trick isn’t going to cut it. Remember, the plot takes priority, and the twists have to affect the plot or reveal something about it. The trick in a story like this is to have the right number of such revelations. Having just one can make the entire story seem like a gimmick. Having too many becomes implausible and forced. It is true that I started out writing with the central plot twist about Hikaru’s true identity in mind, but I knew that wouldn’t be enough. After all, that revelation was going to come at the middle of the story. Without any more secrets to the story, an entire half of the fanfic would be devoted to just drawing out the consequences of that revelation, and that doesn’t really make for a good story. Thus, I filled in the spaces in between with stuff about how Hikaru was actually dead and her killer worked for UM and her parents weren’t really what she thought they were and Logan had done a terrible thing in the past. The powers of coincidence were stretched a little, but that’s the way it works in any story like this. The trick is to know how far you can take it before it starts becoming flat out ridiculous, and that is not something I can tell you how to do. You just have to write for a while and get a sense for yourself.

Plot twists are also no fun without a little foreshadowing. If there are no clues that something is afoot, that things aren’t quite what they seem, then the revelation will seem arbitrary and unnecessary. Take the classic plot twist about Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. If you watch the Star Wars movies carefully, you’ll notice Darth Vader getting puzzled every time he gets near Luke and that he and Obi Wan Kenobi seem to know each other among other things. Thus, when we finally learn who Darth Vader is, we think, "Aha, so that’s how it goes." Of course, foreshadowing can’t be overdone or else it gives away the revelation altogether. That’s also no fun. This is the tight balancing act that I had to travel when writing "Perfect Dark: Onryou," made all the more important because the story sinks or flies on its plot. The more foreshadowing I could fit in, the more fun the plot twist would be when it was revealed. But if I went just a little too far, it wouldn’t work. To this end, I employed some subtle and underhanded techniques to supplement the conventional clues. Here’s a partial list of underhanded foreshadowing techniques that I used

Simple math. If you plot out events on a timeline, you see that Joanna disappeared the same time Hikaru’s parents died and that the girl Logan killed is the same age as Hikaru.
This one takes some figuring. A bio-android with bulletproof bones can hit something else as hard as he likes without possibly breaking his hand (after all, he would have to punch with greater force than a bullet to do any damage to himself). And there are very good chances that whatever he punches will break, especially if it’s something like human bone. Yet, Hikaru gets into a fight with one such bio-android and suffers nothing more than some bruises. It could very well be that Stoker, the agent who died in the prologue, had his arm broken from the impact of a punch.
In one instance when Hikaru is looking at Joanna’s files, she looks at the portrait in the file and thinks, "Where are you, Joanna?" At this moment, she is situated in such a way that Joanna’s face in the picture is staring right back at her.
At one point, Eric Pearson vows to make Hikaru die a slow, lingering death. We now know, of course, that he has already done it.
Hikaru takes special note of the scars on Eric Pearson’s face. The flashbacks reveal that she deeply wounded her killer’s face.

Some of them are very subtle to be sure, but that’s the whole point. The reader isn’t supposed to pick up on them until after the secret is revealed at which point he or she is able to go back and find all the clues.

[Angrist]

Ok I'll be the first to vote and reply.

I have to admitt that I haven't read all of it, but the parts that I did read gave me an impression.

I have my own writing style. I write what I think is cool, and I think it's pretty good. So do others, while they sometimes have some tiny comments. I don't always change it after those comments.

You suggest things like 'show intelligence through dialogs'. So I actually have to think about how I can show intelligence through dialogs? I just write my dialogs and see if they're intelligent enough. I don't have to think about it, it just happens. Perhaps that's because I read a lot. I know what is good. When I write, I try to write it interesting enough. I don't think I need writing lessons. So I voted 'no'.

I also don't think writing lessons will help people that 'just can't write'. Sure, they might get something better than expected after following those lessons, but it still won't be a good story. Writing is in your feeling, not in your knowlegde.

Sorry Xanny :)

[Xantar]

No problem. I only did that because some people asked for it.

I agree that a lot of thinking doesn't really benefit your writing. I myself don't spend a lot of time thinking about how I can make people look smart while I'm actually writing. I just do what feels right, and it generally works out. All I was trying to do here was show why some things work and give people an impression of why good writing goes beyond just having a neat story and being able to use proper grammar.