Story ideas but no story? Great character but nothing else? Action-packed scenes but no idea about the primary character?
Is all the writing advice for developing a story driving you
insane?
Maybe this episode can help.
Welcome to the Write Focus, a podcast for writers at all
levels who want to improve their skills. We focus on process, productivity,
craft, and tools.
Listen on Podbean, best version.
Listen on YouTube. Glitch city.
This episode—in fact, the whole Write Focus blog and
podcast—developed after an email conversation with a newbie writer asking
questions. Find our blog at thewritefocus.blogspot.com.
My credentials? Well, I listed them in the first episode,
but a question came in asking for more information. For 30 years I was a
professional purveyor of English composition (Ha! I enjoyed that description.)
I worked at the high school and college levels. For most of that time, the
students in my courses didn’t want to write OR read any of the required
coursework, so they had little incentive to do their best. My job became
scaffolding writing techniques for students so they would become successful.
Those techniques had nothing to do with programmed writing and everything to do
with discovering what was unique and individual to each student. Now that the
intensive career is over, I can concentrate on pursuing my own particular loves
in the world of writing. Since 2015 I have self-published over 20 works of
fiction along with several guidebooks for writers at all levels. The guidebooks
draw on my own experiences, the successes AND the failures, and the knowledge
and expertise gained from a Master of Arts degree in English literature and
composition and those 30 years of experience. Credentials OVER. From now on, I
will point any questions to the opening of this episode.
Which is our 3rd episode. Officially Series 1, Episode 3. 1 :
3. (2:00)
This 3rd episode continues from the first two,
which are answers to questions that a newbie writer asked.
One question was about my process of writing novels (which
is different from writing nonfiction).
For years I tried, seriously tried, to follow what every
writer in the major markets said about story development and character
revelations and more. Whenever I applied it, I failed. It clogged up all
creativity. I gradually found what worked for me and what did not. All writers
have to discover this. It’s a matter of practice.
Dean Wesley Smith, one of the Pro Writers that I
consistently follow, uses something that he called Writing Into the Dark. He
published his method with that very title, Writing into the Dark, and you can
find it on major online distributors. Smith’s advice reinforced what I came to
believe about my own creativity and writing style.
Smith writes one clean draft, gets it proofed, then launches
the story into the world. What he means by “clean” is that he doesn’t write
gobbledygook like “put something romantic here” or “another red herring here”
or “a fight scene”. He works through the problems as they occur. (3:00)
One thing to remember is that every story is different.
Writers can define themselves as plotters or pantsters or puzzlers.
Serious Plotters plan the whole book in advance, every
chapter, every scene in a chapter, blocking all the details before they write
the first sentence. True pantsters launch without any plan and never plan at
any point; they save everything for revision. Puzzlers write an intriguing
scene, figure out where it lands in the course of the novel, then write another
scene and another and another, then determine what needs to be written next and
go from there. They begin as pantster but quickly become plotters.
I launch every book
the same, with a general idea of story arc, a clear idea of my tagline or
theme, and the goals, motivations, and conflicts for my primary characters. About
50 to 100 pages in, my process begins to alter. That process may change twice
or three times in a single book. I launch totally into the dark, plot the next
scene, plot the arc of the story, then I may abandon that and go pantster again.
I may plot several chapters in detail, follow that plotting, then head into
later chapters as a total pantster. I may be a pantster for the majority of the
book then plot the ending.
Whatever method you choose—and it’s a choice—the ONLY thing
that matters is that your ideas AND words are flowing. If they aren’t, switch
it up.
Many people give advice about the Snowflake method or Save
the Cat or the Beats or Plot Points with their pinches. Or even following the
story structure taught in colleges and universities, known as Freytag’s Pyramid
with rising action and falling action. These are ARTIFICIAL constraints used to
analyze finished stories that are now handed out as gospel. They are not
gospel. They are methods. Each has helpful insights into plot,
but none of them have to be followed blindly. You can mix them up. You should
mix them up.
About 15 years ago I discovered Christopher Vogler’s The
Writer’s Journey which is based on Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. (5:04)
This story arc offers the best plotting method for me. When
I explore other plot structures, I see their weaknesses based on this as well
as where those structures actually follow the Hero’s Journey, whether that is a
literal or metaphorical adherence to the structure.
The 12-Stage writer’s journey can be applied to Jane
Austen’s novels and films, Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Dorothy
Sayers, Stephen King, virtually anything on current and past fiction bestseller
lists, Finding Nemo, Shrek, Last of the Mohicans (the film with Daniel Day
Lewis—that long drink of water), anything action-adventure, anything romantic,
anything mystery and suspense.
Here it is in brief.
1] Ordinary World – present the character in daily life.
This is to show how the character will change through the course of the book.
My struggle is to keep this stage extremely short!
This step meshes with writing advice from ages ago about
“starting at the first moment things are no longer normal,” meaning that the
character encounters something that changes the ordinary progression of life.
Of course, we have to show the character in that ordinary
progression before we explode it.
2] Call to Adventure – this is the event that starts the
conflict. (6:12)
3] Refusal of the Call – Most people don’t want to change
their life. They try to return to things as they were. This stage shows that
attempt as well as how the change cannot be stopped. More action. More angst.
4] Meeting with the Mentor – this can be a friend or an
actual wise person. I once had a taxi driver speak the words of wisdom to the
protagonist. This can be the character thinking words of wisdom while on a
phone call to a sister or brother who tries to convince them not to go down a
path. The mentor’s advice doesn’t have to be followed.
5] Crossing the First Threshold – whatever event occurs
here, the protagonist cannot return to the Ordinary World from this point. Pure
action or pure internal revelation.
6] Tests, Allies, and Enemies – this seems like a single
short stage. Nope. It can turn into a series of chapters. This will form the
bulk of the middle third of your novel. You can drop back and add in a new
mentor or two, cross another threshold then restart the TAE as many times as
you need. It’s up to you.
7] Approach to the Inmost Cave – nearing the crisis point.
The bad part is coming. The angst in deciding to risk everything to achieve the
goal is all that matters here.
8] The Ordeal, the Dark Moment, the crisis point. It’s about
the 65-75% mark of the story.
9] The Reward – the moment when the protagonist realizes
that yes, this journey is changing, is life-threatening or emotionally
threatening. BUT—and it is a powerful BUT—the reward makes all the hardships
mentally and emotionally and physically worth everything. (7:56)
10] The Road Back – things are settling, but hardships still
occur.
11] The Resurrection – Evil resurrects and nearly kills the
protagonist (either nearly killing a relationship or nearly killing the dream
or nearly killing the person). AND the protagonist resurrects (relationship /
dream / healing of the physical body somehow).
12] Return with the Elixir – which is pretty much
self-explanatory.
These 12-steps are the story arc that I have in mind when I
first start writing. I don’t develop anything other than a brief sentence or
two and sometimes not even that. I may launch into the story without having Stages
10 and 11 figured out, or even the Ordeal, which is Stage 8. I do have an idea
where I want my primary characters to be at the end. How they get there,
however, can be a mystery.
You should have a character arc for all of your primaries.
If you have subprimaries—characters who recur constantly and have their own
viewpoint scenes BUT who do not control the majority of the story—they should
also have a character arc. You definitely need a character arc for your
antagonists (not the villains. Just the antagonists who create the central
conflict that lasts from beginning to end). Yes, a thing like an EMOTION or a
PAST EVENT that creates trauma can be an antagonist. (9:12)
My work process is currently this—and this is the method
that I used to help my students with their compositions, the ones that revealed
their individual selves on the page.
Sketch ideas and develop the tagline (or the theme or
thesis) and the basic character information. (For a composition, this would be
the topics for the body of the essay).
Write the rough draft, following the sketched ideas. Create
the MasterBook while writing. The MasterBook keeps up with character and
setting details, basic sequences of events and any clues (like red herrings in
a mystery or quest elements in a fantasy).
Read through the rough draft to see how it works for pacing.
Make brief notes as you read. Use the 12-Stage Journey to determine pacing and
flow of story. Suspense and tension get the story moving, but down times are
necessary for your primaries. Those downtimes offer opportunities to develop
character angst and to reveal relationships.
Write the good draft. Add details for depth, for sensory
experience, for character development and interaction, for relationship
building—whether you have to destroy it before you can re-construct it, and
more. This is actually the REVISION stage.
Revision means looking at the manuscript with New EYES. You
want to make it clearer and better. You want to make it STANDOUT by being
different from the expected.
This is where my students began to excel. When they looked
at their compositions, considered what everyone else would say, and tried to
say something different. Something NOT commonplace. Not pedestrian. Where truth
lives. (10:37)
As you read through the rough draft, look for places where
the story events or character reactions are too predictable. You know the ones:
you’ve seen those story lines or behaviors on TV or in films. Avoid those.
In the crucial points of the story—the opening action, the
first major stress point, the betrayal, the twist on expectations, the Ordeal,
the last action—you should surprise the reader. Use Kate Wilhelm’s Law for
originality. The first thing you think of is what is in the rough draft. Toss
it out. Most people will think of that idea, too. Toss the second idea; many
people will think of that. Only a few will anticipate as far as a third thing.
To be totally original at the three major points (opening action, betrayal or
twist, and Ordeal), you have to totally surprise all readers.
Character reactions have to be consistent. A hero will not
unexpectedly become a coward. An honorable person will not lie without a good
reason for that lie. You have to present the intellectual and emotional thought
processes for that character to behave against type.
If you have multiple viewpoint characters, then you need to
consider which character is best to present a scene. Whichever character has
the MOST to LOSE is the best choice for the viewpoint. This allows more
interesting motivations and opinions to be expressed.
Does the story slow down because the pacing dragged? Or did
the pacing speed through something that you actually needed to write a few more
hundred words for? (12:03)
As you consider adding, also consider subtracting whatever
is repeated more than three times. Your MasterBook tracking will help here.
Overkill on description needs to be wiped out. A scene you loved that doesn’t
develop the characters or the story needs to vanish.
Editing is the next stage. BUT—well, Wow. We’ve reached the
end of this episode, and we still have a lot to talk about.
Editing. Basic Publishing. Basic Marketing ideas. So, we’ll
talk about these after our next episode, Horror Stories for Writers. I already
have three horror stories to talk about, and I haven’t even thought seriously
about drafting it.
Join us next Wednesday for The Write Focus.
If you find this podcast helpful, please drop a comment at winkbooks@aol.com. Resources mentioned in
this episode are listed in the show notes, with links or enough information to
find the information.
RESOURCES ~ Amazon links given because I’m lazy
Dean Wesley Smith Writing into the Dark
Christopher Vogler The Writer’s Journey
Joseph Campbell Hero with a 1,000 Faces
Kate Wilhelm Storyteller
LINK to Episode on PodBean
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