The Die Hard Guide to Writing
by phill
Last night, as I watched the second instalment of the Die Hard series for the first time (having been a fan of the first and third movies since primary school [and let's not talk about 4.0]), I was struck with the similarity of John McClane’s predicament with that of a writer. Anyway, the thought persisted this morning, so I figured I would get it out on paper. So here it is:
The Die Hard Guide to Writing.
“You’re the wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Story of my life.”
One of the best things about the Die Hard series is that the protagonist, John McClane, is an ordinary guy who just happens to have the experience as a cop to get the job done. So are writers! The authors that you look up to are (mostly) normal people that have the experience required to get the job of writing books done. So don’t get stuck in the mindset that the authors you read have superhuman abilities. They’ve been beaten and battered by their words as much as you have, they just kept at it.
Who are you then?
Just a fly in the ointment, Hans. The monkey in the wrench. The pain in the ass.
Speaking of keeping it at it, that’s one lesson that Die Hard teaches us in spades. Just like John McClane, you have to put one foot after the other and keep hammering away at that opposing force until it gives. Writers can find a lot of excuses for not being able to write: writer’s block, an absent muse, a less-than-optimal environment, the list goes on. But when it gets down to it, the only thing keeping you from sitting down and grinding out those words is yourself. One word begs another, and another, and another. If you set your mind to overcoming the adversary–whether it’s a blank piece of paper or a terrorist group–you’ve won half the battle already.
“Come out to the coast, we’ll get together, have a few laughs…”
How many breaks does John McClane get handed to him? There aren’t many memorable deus ex machina in any of the Die Hard series. All he’s got are his wits and a refusal to give up. When writing, it’s a similar story. You aren’t going to get awards handed to you, no breakthroughs are going to come without some effort on your behalf. But when they do come, like when McClane sees the fuel release on the aeroplane wing, you need to be prepared to grab onto them and take advantage of the moment.
“You just killed a helicopter with a car!”
“I was out of bullets.”
In these moments you’ll be able to pull off a piece of writing that you might have thought impossible. In the midst of typing away, the characters (read: helicopter) and plot (read: car) will come together in a way you never would have realised could work (read: massive explosion). But work they do, and not only that, but they work in simple, elegant ways. But you’d never have known that if you hadn’t gotten down to the dirty. A lot of people recommend planning any pieces of writing to a pretty fine detail, but if we look at McClane’s modus operandi, we see this might not be the optimum case. All around him, special forces and police scramble to try and apply their rigid procedures for dealing with terrorist situations to the case at hand but get nowhere! Whereas McClane is able to be flexible and retain his ability to deal with new developments. By remaining open in your planning stage, you allow yourself the opportunity to take advantage of new ideas as they come along, rather than having to try and cram new ideas into a pre-made plot.
“McClane, I know what you must feel.”
“I wanted to help those people tonight. I was pretty goddamn useless.”
You will fail. There will be times when you are standing out on that airfield, waving those tiny lights for all your might and still the plane will come crashing down over you. There’s nothing you can do about it except pick yourself up again and get back to the job. Find the gold, find the hideout, expose the true enemy, and save the girl.
“Morning.”
“Good morning.”
“You having a nice day, sir? You feeling all right? Not to get too personal, but a white man standing in the middle of Harlem wearing a sign that says “I hate niggers” has either got some serious personal issues, or not all his dogs are barking. Hey! I’m talking to you! Now you’ve got about ten seconds before those guys see you, and when they do they will kill you, you understand? You are about to have a very bad day.”
“Tell me about it.”
Sometimes you have friends to help you to do that, and also to keep you from doing really stupid things like walking down main street with a really offensive sandwich board. But you still need to keep your wits about you. Not because friends can be enemies (although if there’s one thing Die Hard 2 taught us, it’s that), but because they may not provide you with all the answers. While you can rely on friends to give you feedback and critique, you mustn’t rely on them to do more than that, or you’ll just end up writing their story, not yours.
“Yippie-kai-yay motherfucker.”
Writing is hard, easily just as hard as saving the world from terrorist plots. But when all spelling errors have been executed, timeline confusion defused, and the plot line landed smoothly, you can experience the satisfaction of having worked your damn hardest and come out the other end broken and sore, but victorious.
At least until the sequel.
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Comments
Dammit Phil, now I need to watch those movies again!
@Ryan: Take notes, there’ll be an exam at the end of Die Hard With a Vengeance. :D
Great timing. Original Die Hard was on tv the other night (not sure about the west coast)
I hadn’t seen the first one before, only the third (which i thought was the second one) and the fourth, which i only managed to watch because bruce was still sexy in it. :P
hmmm now i’ve forgotten what i was gonna say. oh yeah. this post is rad!
@Elena: The fourth was pretty dire, I think they needed to stick with something less abstract than an electronic ‘Firesale’. Give me a threat of explosion over that any day!
Thanks for reading and retweeting! Oh and hey, have a great Christmas if I don’t talk to you before then! :D
Excellent post, Phill.
“By remaining open in your planning stage, you allow yourself the opportunity to take advantage of new ideas as they come along, rather than having to try and cram new ideas into a pre-made plot.”
I put this point into action a few weeks ago.
And say what you want about 4.0, but I didn’t mind it. Sure, the abstract “firesale” schtick was a stretch, but everything else made up for it.
Well said, and nicely paralleled. Bruce’s characters have always appealed to me because they’re regular people for the most part, not superheroes (Unbreakable aside) and they give you a sense that you could do the things he did if put in similar situations. Writing, as you’ve put it, is just like that. Regular people doing extraordinary things as the result of determination and hard work, not gadgets or super powers.
Not only are they all of these things, but DH & DH2 are two of my favourite Xmas movies. DHWV is just insanely amazing.
“Just the fax ma’am, just the fax.”
@Todd Thanks man! Yeah, to be honest Brucey made up for anything else in that movie anyway. And the Kevin Smith cameo wasn’t too shabby either :D
@Steve Heh, I haven’t seen Unbreakable yet? I think perhaps because someone killed the twist for me (same with Sixth Sense! Bastards!). But yeah, I think sometimes it’s a result of books/novels being in such tidy packages; people can get a bit caught up in the finished product, without realising that there is a lot of grind that has gone into it.
@Cian I fucking love that line so much. :D
OMG! Starting from Aditi, you are the hilarious of them all. Anyway..what’s the benefit of buttering you up without a reason :)
Wow, I happened to see the link to this blog from DA, and I’m so glad I did! This is amazing. I never thought about it this way. I’m a person who always waits for inspiration, I’m now trying to plan the plot ahead (which always leads to a failure..) and so forth, but reading this… It makes me think… My first ”book”, I wrote it without planning things – no plans for the characters, no plans for the plot, no plans for like anything – I just wrote. And it worked so damn well. But now, trying to write a sequel to that story… eh, I’ve made plans and everything, but I always get stuck after a couple of chapters, and I ain’t happy with the content. So maybe I should throw away my plans and just… write!
Thank you so much for writing this, I’m gonna add this to my bookmarks and refer to this every now and then. <3 Thank you!
@Laura: Not a problem, mate! If I were you I wouldn’t throw out all your planning. You put a lot of effort into it by the sounds of things! But if that’s what you gotta do, then give it a try! You can always reference back to them if you find yourself running out of steam. Good luck with your writing! (:
My best friend / writing buddy have long, long been students in this school of thought. I hope to die a graduate. If you want to be a writer you have to be that guy.
@Jon: And you’ve always preached it my way as well, which I’m very thankful for. Consider this a pay-it-forward kinda deal. (:
Cuts straight to the point and perfectly explains why I never write with my shoes off :D
Excellent!
@JD: Glad you could stop by. Heh, exactly! You just never know when an idea/terrorist might attack. :P