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.