Post #196 December 23, 2019

“It’s Better to be Simple and Clear than Complicated and Ambiguous”

Point number 7 in our storylab list of good storytelling practices is stated above, for which I am indebted to the website storysci.com for details.

Storysci.com states the need very clearly: “Simplicity creates clear understanding in the minds of the audience.”

Some writers feel (mistakenly) that they must tell their stories in some kind of high-falutin’ literary prose style to be taken seriously.  My advice: get over yourself.  Your job is to tell the story…period.  Do whatever it takes to tell the story, in an engaging, entertaining and memorable way.  Nothing else matters.

Especially in sf and fantasy, some writers spend so much time building their imaginary worlds, they feel they have to dump all of it into the story.  While this isn’t specifically an issue with simplicity, it can slow a story down.  Storytellers work the details of their setting into the story itself.  Or you can do what I have done, as so many sf/f writers have done (like Frank Herbert with Dune) and put your world-building details in an appendix.  That way, the story can proceed at its own best pace.

As a storyteller, you are trying to ‘transport’ your readers to an imaginary place.  Simple, active-voice prose is almost always the best way to do that.  What do I mean by ‘active vs passive voice’?  Here’s an example: (ACTIVE) “Harry ate six shrimp at dinner.”  (PASSIVE) “At dinner, six shrimp were eaten by Harry.” 

According to storysci.com, one mistake some storytellers make is to try and tell too much without spending enough time on the story details that make up the big picture. Sometimes, the info dump slows down the story too much and the reader lose the thread of the narrative.  My best advice: Forget the big picture, the philosophizing, the stream of consciousness and just tell the story.  This happened, then this happened, then that happened….Allow your readers to engage their own imaginations in filling out the details. 

Clarity is vital to a storyteller.  You want your readers to ‘see’ and ‘hear’ and even ‘taste’ and ‘feel’ what it’s like to be in your story, fighting off the aliens, rescuing the hostages, surviving the breakup of the planet or fleeing the storm that just moved in.  Simplicity means not only fewer and simpler words, but more importantly, well-chosen and descriptive words.  Analogies are commonly used. This is like that.  Here’s a rather lengthy sentence from a novella I’m writing now, part of my upcoming Quantum Troopers Return series:

“Energized by movement and the upcoming prospect of some action, the atomgrabbers of 1^st Nano, constituted as Operation Selene Hammer, boarded Badger and Prairie Dog and hung on as their hopper transports lifted off the crater floor and scooted forward, flying so low over the rubbly, black terrain that Glance felt he could stick his hypersuit boot out and kick the tops off the mountains.”

Here, I am using a sort of analogy to describe the feeling of what it is like for a quantum trooper to fly at a very low altitude over the Moon’s surface en route to beginning a mission, so low he could almost reach out and kick the mountain tops.  A lengthy sentence, perhaps, but hopefully each word conveys the feeling of being there and being anxious for the mission to begin.

Simplicity in storytelling is always the best way.  Use just enough of the right words to move the story along and immerse your readers in your imaginary world.  Active voice, short sentences unless otherwise needed, descriptive words, analogies with your reader’s common experiences, all of these are good tools to use to build and carry your story forward. 

Do be shy about letting your readers do some of the imaginary work.  Your role as storyteller is just to help them get there.

With the upcoming holidays, The Word Shed will take a two-week break.  The next post, item #8 on our list of storytelling practices, comes on January 6, 2020.  It’s called “Say as much as possible with as little as possible.”  Kind of a good follow-on to today’s post.

See you then and have a great holiday.

Phil B.

 

 

 

 

 

Post #195 December 16, 2019

“Know What Your Story is About”

Not too long ago, I finished a science fiction short story called ‘Second Sun.’ (Soon to be available in my newest collection of short works Elliptical Galaxies, uploaded on January 17, 2020…look for it!).   In this tale, the basic story is about a saboteur who comes to a space station orbiting Jupiter with the intent of sabotaging the station and destroying it, preventing it from fulfilling its mission.

But there is an underlying story here.  It turns out the saboteur’s mother is a member of the station crew.  Our saboteur, long estranged from his family, now has a conundrum: whether to continue his mission or succumb to long-buried family memories.  The underlying story is about the persistence of family and memory and our struggles to reconcile those memories with who we are now or what we have become.

The sixth tip in our story lab sequence of good practices for storytellers is in the title above.  Know what your story is about.  In my case, I had the basic plot of the saboteur’s mission and would he be able to complete this mission?  But I also had to know there was a sub-story of family and memory and reconciliation at work too.  How would this affect the saboteur’s mission?  You’ll have to read ‘Second Sun’ to find out.

Storytellers work on multiple levels of meaning.  As the website storysci.com says: “At some point you will have to know what your story us about—not just at its core but at every level—in order to weave your story around it.”

This requires some thinking.  I like to think of this a different way.  Try to live inside the world of your story.  Know your outline, plot and setting so well that you can lie in bed late at night and “be” there in your mind.  What do you see?  What do you feel?  What do you hear? 

Motivation is at the heart of any good story.  What is the hero motivated to do?  Does your plot allow the hero to follow his motivation?  Remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?  From the bottom of the pyramid, it goes like this: physiological needs, safety needs, love and belonging, esteem, self-actualization.

Does your hero act and react logically at each of these levels?  For our saboteur, who became estranged from his family due to the accidental death of his father and his mother’s extreme and overbearing, overprotective reaction to that accident, he’s able to attend to his physiological need as any adult can.  He winds up joining a sort of future terrorist, anarchist group (called the Guardians), sworn to oppose the mission of the Jupiter (and other similar) stations. 

Being a member of the Guardians gives our hero-saboteur a sense of ‘safety’ and love and belonging that became missing in his own family.  Being trusted to carry out important missions for the Guardians also adds to his esteem and self-actualization needs.  The story conflict develops when these already-met needs come into contact with his mother—his original and native family—and he must sort out what and who he really believes.

This story works on multiple levels and the storyteller needs to be well aware of all this, or you’ll wind up with a mess at the end, hanging, unresolved plot lines that go nowhere, characters that don’t ring true and aren’t very believable.

Readers treated like this usually won’t return to that author.  Trying to read their work is a waste of time.

A good storyteller knows not only the sequence of events that comprise the plot.  They also know the intimate thoughts and innermost fears and worries of their characters.  They know what it feels like, sounds like, even tastes like to be aboard a station in Jupiter orbit threatened with destruction by an unstable terrorist.  And the storyteller knows and feels the inner turmoil experienced by the saboteur-terrorist as he wrestles with family memories, inner demons and the dictates of his mission.

And you thought you were just telling a story.

The next post to The Word Shed continues our story lab and comes on December 23.  We examine storysci.com’s tip #7: “It is better to be simple and clear than complicated and ambiguous.”

See you then.

Phil B.

 

Post #194 December 9 2019

“Have a Central Theme to Your Story”

Continuing our story lab, we come today to the fifth element of good storytelling; having a proper theme.  The theme of any story is like your spinal cord, a scaffolding upon which all other elements of the story can be hung.  The best themes are simple, able to be stated in a sentence.

Earlier this year, I wrote a science fiction story called ‘Second Sun.’  In this story, a future saboteur comes to a space station with the intention of destroying the station.  However, the saboteur encounters his own estranged mother aboard the station as a crewmember and winds up sacrificing himself to prevent the station’s destruction in the end.  What’s the theme of this story?  That family ties are stronger than personal circumstances.

Your story should be about something.  I’m indebted to the website Storysci.com for these thoughts: the central core or theme brings unity to all elements of the story.  Of particular importance is the notion that your theme should be explainable in a few words or a sentence.

The theme is best exemplified by the actions, words and thoughts of the main character(s).  It often involves conflict: with another person, with himself, with society, with fate.  In my story above, we see several of these conflicts at work.

Realistically, every word you write in your story should contribute to the theme, amplify it, employ it to provide significance to the story.  The theme is why you want readers to read the story.  The theme is usually something universal: bad guys lose in the end, war is bad, you can’t go home again.  That universality is what readers identify with.  “Hey, that could be me in that predicament.”  Or “hey, that same thing happened to me once…maybe I should pay attention here.”

Themes are what resonate with your audience and the more universal the theme, when done well, the stronger that resonance.

The website literarydevices.net provides these short examples:

1. When the astronaut landed on the moon, he felt loneliness. Thinking there was no one else, he became a little forlorn, though the view of Earth was stunningly beautiful.
   (Theme of loneliness)
2. The space travelers were travelling to the moon, when their spaceship suddenly ran out of fuel. They were all frightened to learn that they wouldn’t be able to return to Earth, and could only land on the moon.
   (Theme of fear)
3. The bus was travelling at a great speed when it was stopped by a gang of robbers. The passengers were ordered to get out, leaving their precious belongings in the bus.
   (Theme of fear)
4. Their marriage ceremony was taking place in a grand hotel. All the eminent people of the city were invited, the reason that the celebration was excellent.
   (Theme of happiness)

Several years ago, I ran across an article in the November 12, 2016 edition of the Wall Street Journal entitled “Novel Findings: Fiction Makes Us Feel For Others.”  The author was Susan Pinker.

 

It seems that in 2006, a study at the University of Toronto connected fiction-reading with readers’ increased sensitivity to others.  To measure how much text the readers had seen across their lifetimes, the readers took an author-recognition test—a typical measure for this type of study.  The more people read, the better they empathized.

 

In 2009, the same team of psychologists reproduced the study with a sample of 252 adults, controlling for such variables as age, gender, IQ, English fluency, stress, loneliness and personality type.  In addition, the subjects took an objective test of empathy called the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” test.  The purpose of all this was to see how long-term exposure to fiction influences the subjects’ ability to intuit the emotions and intentions of people in the real world. 

 

Once the variables were statistically controlled for, fiction reading predicted higher levels of empathy.  Such readers also lived larger in the flesh-and-blood social sphere, with rich and enduring networks of real people to provide entertainment and support than people who read less fiction. 

 

Later studies confirmed that reading fiction causes a spike in the ability to detect and understand other peoples’ emotion. 

 

The experimenters then assessed participants on several measures of empathy.  Non-fiction, along with genre fiction—science fiction, romance, horror—had little effect on the capacity to detect others’ feelings and thoughts.  Only literary fiction, which requires readers to work at guessing the motivations of characters from sometimes subtle fictional cues, fostered empathy.

 

As one of the investigators put it, “What matters is not whether a story is true or not.  Instead, if you’re always enclosed in a bubble of your own life and interests, how can you ever imagine the lives of others?”

 

So now there is solid scientific support for what readers, editors and authors have known for generations, probably for thousands of years.

 

With a strong theme in mind, create a memorable character, give him a big problem to solve and drop him in a believable setting and you are doing your part to help Humanity evolve and grow. 

 

And you thought you were just telling stories to amuse yourselves.

 

The next post to The Word Shed comes on December 16.  In this post, we’ll look at item #6 in our story lab of basic storytelling elements: Know what your story is really about.

 

See you then.

 

Phil B.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Post #193 November 18 2019

“Story Basics: Proactive vs Reactive”

The next point to consider in our story lab overview of storytelling basics is this: make your protagonist proactive not reactive.  The website Storysci.com has this to say:

The more proactive your protagonist is, the more invested in him/her your audience will be. They will want what (s)he wants. A protagonist is proactive when (s)he is the one to take charge and initiate events that advance the plot. The opposite of this is a reactive protagonist who responds to events forced on him/her by the plot. A reactive protagonist will not only make the audience feel like something is missing in your story, but they will fail to build a personal connection with the protagonist as well.

This point speaks to the believability of your protagonist.  Readers want to engage with your hero, in some way.  It’s easier to do this when conflict develops as a result of your hero trying to achieve his or her goals.   Remember what we said about conflict last time: conflict is the natural result of one character’s desires intersecting an obstacle. Conflict increases proportionally to the amount that each side pushes back.

In other words, your hero should have a goal or goals to achieve and actively do something to try and achieve them.  Nobody wants to read about a wimp who just lets life happen to them and does nothing to achieve anything or prevent bad things from occurring.  Conflict occurs when your hero acts this way and is prevented from achieving his goals.  That which prevents him from achieving his goals could be his own nature, another character, fate, society, the law or mischievous gods atop Mount Olympus.  But it is in the striving and failing (at least initially) that your hero becomes real to the reader, because we’ve all been through this.

Clearly, this point speaks to how well you know your hero.  How well have you thought out his nature?  Is he an introvert?  Is he a gung-ho Type A personality who is forever making messes that others have to clean up?  Is he just careless, scatterbrained?  Hopelessly romantic?  Whoever your hero is, understand his personality well enough and his goals well enough, to put him in situations where he is trying to achieve those goals but often falls short.  And when he does fall short, what does he do then?  Cry a river?  Buckle down and work harder?  Try another tactic?  Whatever you choose, make sure your hero is actively working to move forward but is all too often stymied in his efforts.

Your reader wants to feel or see or know that they could have been there in your hero’s shoes.  It could have happened to them.  How do you achieve this?  The technique starts with understanding your hero intimately.  Write down his likes and dislikes.  I often spent time describing in a character bio what their early life was like.  Joe Blow was the third son of a plumber and spent many hours helping his Dad cleaning up spills and flooded basements and he could solder a pipe elbow at the age of eight.  Maybe Joe is good with his hands and wants to do something manual.  He wants to open his own business but he doesn’t have a good head for numbers or business operations.  What does he do?   Maybe he tries his luck at running a business but fails miserably and goes deep into debt.  Now what?  Does he become bitter?  Does he become homicidal and kill someone, then spend half a life running from the law?  There are all kinds of possibilities.  But just make sure you show Joe trying to actually do things, either setting up his business, staying up late trying to puzzle out double-entry bookkeeping or trying to keep one step ahead of the collection agencies and the police.  And to think all this came about in part because Joe helped his Dad solder pipe joints and clean up flooded basements.  I spend time developing early-life background for many of my characters because I feel that this is such a formative time for what we become later.

The Word Shed will take a two-week hiatus for the Thanksgiving Holiday, so there won’t be posts for November 25 or December 2.  In the next post on December 9, we’ll continue our story lab with Story Basics Point #4: have a central core to your story.

Have a great and blessed holiday and I’ll see you then.

Phil B.

 

 

 

 

 

Post #192 November 11, 2019

“Story Basics: Conflict”

The website Storysci.com says this about conflict:

Conflict is the natural result of one character’s desire intersecting an obstacle. Conflict increases proportionally to the amount that each side pushes back. It drives the story forward and keeps the audience interested. Without it, nothing in the plot would be worth mentioning because story without conflict is not story, it’s summary.

Not all story conflict is between people.  Maybe your main character crash lands on an alien planet and has to survive all kind of natural forces or creatures trying to eat him or her.  In Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama, the big alien cylinder-ship is the cause of much of the conflict.  But most conflict in stories is between people and this is a storytelling tradition that goes back all the way to Gilgamesh.

Your characters have to want something.  They have to want to do something.  Otherwise, you don’t have a story, as the quote above says.  I just finished a science fiction short story called “Second Sun.”  In this story, the action takes place on a station in orbit around Jupiter.  The station has a mission and the main character (the story is told first-person POV) has a goal of destroying the station and preventing the mission from being accomplished.  However, he learns upon arriving that his own estranged mother is a member of the station crew.  Here’s the conflict: does he continue with his mission, destroy the station and kill his own mother?  Or does this encounter resurrect long-lost feelings and cause him to change his mission in some way, a way that allows him to still fulfill his assignment and yet save his mother (and his self-esteem) from destruction.  The conflict in this story operates on multiple levels: inside the mind of the terrorist-anarchist main character, with and against the station crew and with/against his own mother.  But conflict is at the heart of this story.

How do you engender conflict?  How do you lay the groundwork?

The first thing to do in laying the groundwork is to develop believable, credible characters.  To do this, I often (even for the story mentioned above) write small character bio sketches.  In this way, my characters have a background I can refer to and it’s consistent.  You want your readers to empathize with the character in some fashion.  Is he going to complete his mission?  Is he really going to be responsible for the death of his own mother? 

Next, give your believable characters something to achieve, something to strive for.  Make it important, even life-threatening or altering.  It’s not enough to say Joe Blow is striving to get to the drugstore before it closes and buy a candy bar.  Give him a reason, a critical, existential reason to do that…if he doesn’t, the teen-aged home invader holding his daughter captive may slit her throat.  Now there’s conflict.

 Let’s stay with the example of your daughter being held hostage.  What might happen if the drugstore is closed.  Ah, now we have plot complications.  Maybe the distraught father swipes a candy bar from a neighbor kid.  Maybe he breaks into the house next door and ransacks the cookie jar or pantry.  More complications.  Maybe he can’t call the police because his phone’s not charged and the invader has cut all landlines (does anyone use landline phones anymore?).

Start with an inherent conflict between the desires or needs of one character and how that is impacted when it meets the desires and needs of another character.  Then describes what happens or better yet, show what happens, when these needs clash. 

Even better, as matters escalate in this conflict, maybe one of the characters changes in some way.  Maybe your distraught father is able to trick the home invader and drug the candy bar with rat poison.  Or maybe be comes to empathize with the invader such that he can talk him into surrendering to the SWAT team outside.  And after this ordeal, the distraught father (grateful beyond words that his daughter is safe) begins taking an interest in helping wayward youth.  He’s changed in an important way.

Now you have the outlines of a story.  As I said in the opening post to this series, “We don’t often think much about our skeletal frames unless something’s hurting, but your skeleton is what holds you up and the same is true for storytelling basics.  They hold up a story…or not, depending on how well you take care of them.”

The next post to The Word Shed comes on November 18 and deals with point #4 in our story lab checklist of Top Ten Storytelling Basics: make your protagonist proactive, not reactive.

See you then.

Phil B. 

 

 

 

 

Post #191 November 4, 2019

“Story Basics: Show, Don’t Tell”

Several posts ago, I started a series on story basics…kind of a story lab.  I’m indebted to the website Storysci.com for some of these details.  For point #2, I included this:

Instead of telling the audience that something is happening, show them by devoting screen time (or page time) to the illustration of these events. Telling (aka “summary”) is not very interesting in comparison to the audience experiencing the same thing. You don’t need to state what is going on directly. The audience will figure it out for themselves, and in so doing will create a stronger bond with the story than if you simply told the audience that it happened.

Think about going to Disney World.  Your next-door neighbor just came back and gave you a detailed description of what it was like to ride Space Mountain.  You listen and think: wow!  That sounds great.  Then you visit the Magic Kingdom yourself.  You ride Space Mountain.  Is there any way your neighbor’s description can compare with what you’ve gone through?

Of course not.  Your own experience includes so much more.  It was gut-wrenching.  It was visceral.  You now know what it feels like, what it smells and tastes like, what it looks like.

This is what you should be striving for as a storyteller.  Readers read stories, among other reasons, to vicariously experience things, people and places they would not ordinarily be able to experience.  To describe these things, it’s always better to show them happening to engaging characters than tell the reader what Joe Blow is experiencing.  Let Joe tell the reader.  And before you let Joe speak of his experiences, do your homework and make sure the reader can really empathize with Joe in the first place.

Having said that, it’s clear that you can’t show everything.  The story would be 1000 pages long (and some are). This means you have to pick and choose what to show and tell.  Therein lies the artistry of writing and storytelling.  Choose to show experiences happening to Joe Blow that reveal what Joe is like as a person and that advance the plot of the story, or ideally both.  How does he react to Space Mountain?  Is he terrified because of some childhood trauma?  Does he want more of the same?  Which way would the story go if he refused to even board the roller coaster?  What would that say about Joe?

When you are showing what happens to Joe and describing his reactions, use active voice as much as possible.  Active voice: “Joe screamed his head off when he rode Space Mountain.”  Passive voice: “Joe’s head came off when he screamed as he rode Space Mountain.”  Okay, so maybe that isn’t the best example.  But showing what happens to Joe is more immediate, more experiential, in active voice.  It’s all about putting your reader into the mind and senses and feelings of a character.  Anything that makes the reading more immediate and more real is what I mean by showing, not telling.  In active voice, the subject performs the action stated by the verb.  In passive voice, the subject is acted upon by the verb.  Remember Mrs. Warner in high school English?

One final point about showing vs telling.  Human beings are predominantly visual creatures.  A lot of our brainpower is devoted to interpreting what we see.  But we have other senses.  Often impressions that come in through those senses are the most powerful and impactful of all impressions.  As a storyteller, use that.  What does it really feel like to Joe as he rides Space Mountain?  Does he strain his neck?  Wet his pants?  Throw up?  And what does it sound like?  Is he screaming his lungs hoarse?  Is his mouth dry?  Is his heart pounding so hard he can hear it even over the screams of others? 

When showing, try to engage every sense you can.  Remember Marcel Proust and what happened when he smelled a madeleine?  Just the smell of a cookie dipped in tea resurrected whole chapters of childhood memories.

The next post to The Word Shed comes on November 11.  In this post, we continue our story lab and deal with Conflict.

See you then.

Phil B.

 

 

 

Post #190 October 28 2019

“Story Basics: Beginnings, Middles and Endings”

There’s an old saying about beginning at the beginning.  Often in my writing, I don’t do that.  I’ll begin right in the middle of the action.  But don’t forget the beginning.  If you drop a reader in the midst of some critical, page-turning action, you will have to bring the reader up to speed at some point. 

The website storysci.com says this: the beginning sets up the story.  The middle carries the story as our hero tries to achieve something important to him or prevent something bad from happening.  The ending pits the hero against his main adversary in one final contest and the hero either vanquishes his foe or fails magnificently. 

Recently I began writing a new science fiction short story called “Second Sun.’  Here’s my beginning paragraph…

Not everyone was happy about having a second Sun.  That’s why the Guardians sent me to Bernini in the first place.  Kisan Malakel, engineering inspector 1^st class for the Concordance.  I had an official job to do and that was to make sure everything aboard station Bernini was up to spec…the gas pulses streaming off Saturn’s atmosphere were coming in on schedule…the deflector controls were receiving and diverting the pulses properly into Jupiter’s atmosphere…the King of Planets was bulking up on schedule so the thing could be ignited on time…that all aspects of the Second Sun project were proceeding according to calculations.  Oh, I had a job all right.  But my real job was to sabotage the whole works, sabotage the deflector system, and get away before station Bernini was likely destroyed by an incoming pulse.

In my beginning, the ‘hero’ is a man named Malakel.  He’s come to do a job.  He briefly describes that job, then tells you that this is not his real job, that it’s a cover.  His real job is to destroy the very thing he’s come to inspect.

Right away, the reader is (I hope) intrigued. It’s not what you’d expect.  Moreover, the beginning paragraph drops you right into the middle of a potential conflict, for there are surely people who don’t want Malakel to destroy their station and will work to prevent it.  The beginning sets up the premise, hints at the conflict and leaves you wondering how it will all work out…all in the very first paragraph.  Plus, it’s just different enough to pique your interest.

It should go without saying that beginnings are critical to capturing a reader.  Just as in public speaking or teaching, both of which I do a lot of, the first few minutes are vital to setting the stage, establishing rapport with the audience and giving them some reason to keep listening.  You should do the same thing for your readers.

In the military, there’s an old axiom about training and how to make it work: (1) tell ‘em what you’re going to tell ‘em; (2) then tell ‘em; (3) then tell ‘em what you told ‘em.  A lot of this applies to storytelling as well, although point (3) applies to the repetition so essential to learning, but not so much in storytelling.  Point (3) is really the climax and resolution of a story, where the hero meets and defeats his adversary.  Storysci.com calls this “the promise of the premise.”

Human beings as readers and listeners of stories expect a story to have certain characteristics.  We just wired that way and it goes back thousands of years.  You deviate from the formula at your peril. 

In the same way, understanding why the scaffolding is constructed this way will give you a much stronger frame to hang your story on.  It’ll keep you on course to produce the best story you can and allow you to focus on the other elements of a good story, the next of which is Point #2 of Story Basics: Show, Don’t Tell.

We’ll look at this one in the next post to The Word Shed, which comes on November 4, 2019.

See you then.

Phil B.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Post #189 October 21 2019

“Story Basics We Often Forget”

With this post, I want to go back and remind ourselves of what we’re doing as writers.  The craft of storytelling is as old as man but just because it’s old doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be reminded of some essentials from time to time.  We don’t often think much about our skeletal frames unless something’s hurting, but your skeleton is what holds you up and the same is true for storytelling basics.  They hold up a story…or not, depending on how well you take care of them.

No matter if you are a writer, filmmaker, game master, or stand-up comedian, here are the top 10 most important basic points of storytelling you need to bring your story to life.

I’m indebted to the website Storysci.com for the following list:

1. Include a beginning, middle and end.

This occurs at every level. Just as a trilogy has three parts, so does an individual story have a beginning, middle and end. The same goes each and every scene within that story. How can you tell the difference between a beginning, middle and end? A beginning sets up the story. It’s a blueprint or road map to the rest of the plot. In a good story it won’t be obvious. The middle develops the story from the point of setup to the climax. It plays out the “promise of the premise” and shows how the new status quo introduced at the end of act one affects the world of the story. This takes us to the end. An ending centers around the obligatory confrontation between protagonist and antagonist. It concludes by answering all the questions raised in the story, even if the answers are new questions (aka, cliffhangers).

2. Show, don’t tell.

Instead of telling the audience that something is happening, show them by devoting screen time (or page time) to the illustration of these events. Telling (aka “summary”) is not very interesting in comparison to the audience experiencing the same thing. You don’t need to state what is going on directly. The audience will figure it out for themselves, and in so doing will create a stronger bond with the story than if you simply told the audience that it happened.

3. One word: Conflict.

Conflict is the natural result of one character’s desire intersecting an obstacle. Conflict increases proportionally to the amount that each side pushes back. It drives the story forward and keeps the audience interested. Without it, nothing in the plot would be worth mentioning because story without conflict is not story, it’s summary. 

4. Make your protagonist proactive, not reactive.

The more proactive your protagonist is, the more invested in him/her your audience will be. They will want what (s)he wants. A protagonist is proactive when (s)he is the one to take charge and initiate events that advance the plot. The opposite of this is a reactive protagonist who responds to events forced on him/her by the plot. A reactive protagonist will not only make the audience feel like something is missing in your story, but they will fail to build a personal connection with the protagonist as well.

5. Have a central core to your story.

Your story ultimately needs to be about something, and that something is the central through-line (also called the “spine”) around which everything in your story is based, especially the theme. The central core brings unity and order to all the elements of your story. For example, the film Love, Actually has a central spine about love, from which it thematically branches off into different types of love. Or the novel Catch-22 whose central core explores the concept of the same name in various circumstances.

6. Know what your story is about.

It doesn’t matter if your story is based around a character, plot or theme. At some point you will need to know what your story is about—not just at its core, but at every level—in order to weave a story around it. For example, on the surface your story may be about a father-son road trip and the hilarity that ensues, but underneath that veneer it’s actually about father-son relationships and an estranged parent bonding with his troublesome child while also exploring other related thematic material, such as what it means to be male in today’s society.

7. It is better to be simple and clear than complicated and ambiguous.

Simplicity creates clear understanding in the minds of the audience. They won’t view it as overly simplistic if it smoothly and adequately conveys your story. A common mistake storytellers use is to try and tell too much without spending enough “screen time” on each segment. Set aside the big picture to work on the simple steps needed to get there. Want to see this point in action? Pick up a copy of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

8. Say as much as possible with as little as possible.

Convey maximum information using minimal text (story) to do it. Implicit over explicit. This requires the use of subtext: whereas text is what is said, subtext is what is not said. Without subtext, your story will be dull and shallow. Some subtext occurs naturally but very often you have to work at it. For examples, a brother and sister talking about their lives at college but not talking about the recent death of their father colors the scene very differently than if they were just catching up like old friends. It also tells us their emotional state—that they aren’t ready to confront the truth about their father’s death.

9. Get in late, get out early.

Start as late as possible in your scene or story to provide both audience interest and optimal conflict, and then end the scene as soon the conflict has run its course. This doesn’t mean truncating valuable exposition or foregoing a beginning, but it does mean opening where the vital information starts. And once the scene or story has said all there is that needs to be said, get out! Don’t hang around and dawdle or you will be diluting your story’s final punch. For example, the audience doesn’t need to witness an entire 4-hour board meeting. They only need to see the handful of minutes that count. In short: focus on where the action is happening.

10. Characters, characters, characters.

Even if you have a plot-driven story, your characters are what make a story really shine. A bland or passive protagonist makes for a boring story. Interesting and unique characters are memorable, if not timeless, even when relegated to smaller roles. Go the extra mile to give each character distinction, depth, and history. Consider writing character bios for each member of your cast and see if it gives you further insight into how to portray them.

In the coming posts, I will deal with each of these basics in turn.  When we’re done, we should have yet again a better grounding in what makes a story go.

The next post, covering a story’s beginning, middle and end, comes on October 28, 2019.

See you then.

Phil B.

 

Post #188 October 14 2019

“Story Themes”

Every work of fiction has some kind of theme.  The author may not know what it is and it may be muddled or it may be crystal clear and well thought out.  This post considers what themes are, why they’re important and what they mean to a hard-working writer on a day to day basis.

Wikipedia says this about themes: The most common contemporary understanding of theme is an idea or point that is central to a story, which can often be summed in a single word (for example, love, death, betrayal). Typical examples of themes of this type are conflict between the individual and society; coming of age; humans in conflict with technology; nostalgia; and the dangers of unchecked ambition.^] A theme may be exemplified by the actions, utterances, or thoughts of a character in a novel. An example of this would be the thematic idea of loneliness in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, wherein many of the characters seem to be lonely.

I write a lot of science fiction.  Beyond what Wikipedia says above, there are certain continuing themes that are common to many sf stories and more or less unique to the genre.  Again, from Wikipedia, examples are first contact, time travel, AI and robotics, space war, alternate histories, parallel universes and so on.  I have often written stories with these themes and ideas and I still do.

To me, a story theme is what the story is about.  It’s the point of the story.  It’s why the author is writing this story.  Most themes should be able to be stated simply: unchecked ambition can lead to ruin…there are limits to everything but sometimes they should be pushed (a recent story of mine had this one)…what might an aging parent do for a loved child if time travel were available.

What does all this mean to the working writer on a daily basis?  I have several thoughts on this.

1. The theme of your story is like the spinal column in your body.  It supports everything and helps invigorate and gives meaning to what you’re doing.  Sometimes, I write down my theme as clearly and simply as I can and post it at my desk while writing a story.  This reminds why I’m doing the story. 
2. Ask yourself this: what’s the point of the story?  Why am I writing this?  What am I trying to get across to readers?  Every story has a theme, sometimes implicit and unsuspected but lurking in the background nonetheless.  Writers should be explicit about their themes, at least to themselves, to avoid writing scenes or whole chapters at cross-purposes.  This only confuses readers.  Recently, I’ve been reading an sf novel by a very well known and respected sf author.  The individual scenes are pretty well done but there’s no obvious story line, no obvious narrative being carried forward.  Let’s not confuse narrative or story line with theme.  However, I have the impression that the scenes are written in and of themselves without any thought as to how they support the narrative line.
3. Ask yourself this: does any one change or grow or learn anything during this story?  If your characters can be seen to change or grow as a result of what happens, your readers will be able to empathize better with them.  Your characters will be memorable.  Part of what I am talking about is being able to draw realistic characters and carry a strong narrative line, but theme is what informs all of this.  Theme is the framing and the characters are the drywall and the plumbing and wiring, to use a familiar analogy.  If you were a plumber without schematics, you might wind up running your piping in all kinds of directions.  That happens to stories without a strong theme as well.
    
   In future posts, I want to go back to basics.  Let’s explore how good storytellers carry their stories forward in engaging and memorable ways.  The basics of storytelling really haven’t changed in 10,000 years, from the time of Og and Grog around the campfire.  In fact, it’s no secret that real stories began as oral traditions. 
    
   Look for more on these critical basics in upcoming posts.
    
   The next post to The Word Shed comes on October 21, 2019.
    
   See you then.