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.