No, this one is not about #MeToo or complaining about suits or agents or the thousand other aggravations that accompany working in the industry.  This is an actual writing tip.

Truth is I became a much better novelist after I spent a few years in Hollywood writing scripts.  So here is one of those things I learned.  It’s called Hanging a Lantern on It, and it works like this.  If something is likely to bump a reader or a viewer your best course of action is to forthrightly acknowledge it.  If you do that your audience will generally go along with you for the rest of the ride because they now trust that you thought about whatever the something might be and you’re not just hoping they won’t notice.

To illustrate this I’ll use the example from what I wrote today on the upcoming Wild Cards book Three Kings.  http://www.wildcardsworld.com  My view point character has terrible scars from potentially life ending injury that happened in another book.  The character with whom he is interacting remarks that “this one came close” (from context it’s clear she meant to killing him.)  He responds “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.”

I had a feeling that was a very American phrase so I checked urban dictionaries & with British friends. They had never heard it before.  The line was what I wanted so I didn’t want to lose it, but I knew it might bump a British reader or editor. So I had the non-view point character flag it by asking what the hell it meant.  Fortunately character who used the phrase has been living in the United States so I simply had him say the words that perhaps he was too long in America & he then explains the meaning. So now something that might have thrown the reader out of the story becomes a way to give us more background about one of the characters and, hopefully, removes the curse.

This is sort of an adjunct to another piece of great advice I got from a boss on a show.  Coming from novels I had a tendency to want to hide the football, be very subtle and at one point as he was giving me notes on a script my boss said to me, “Melinda, just say the words.”  Walter Jon Williams http://www.walterjonwilliams.net has another version of this which is also a great version — “Remember, a simple declarative sentence is your friend.”

A word of warning though.  This is not to be used it when it’s an actual plot hole.  Trying to paper that over will piss off your audience and rightly so.  Plot holes have to be addressed and answered when you’re plotting well before you ever start to write.

Hanging the Lantern is for those smaller moments when a reader/viewer might find themselves getting bumped, like that pebble in your shoe or a rough tooth that you keep probing.  Because no matter how minor the irritant it can result in throwing a person out of that suspension of disbelief that is essential if creators are going to sweep them away into whatever world we have created.