Nov 26 2018

Reading as a writer reads

I sometimes wonder why we get so excited about holidays. For me holidays are not about lying in the sun or sun tans. It’s about reconnecting with family, getting away from the pressures of current day life, dining out, some healthy walking and … catching up on my reading. So on my recent holiday to the Canaries we ate well, walked miles and miles, and read a lot.

Really, I didn’t have much choice. My family banned me from reading emails, or using my phone or ipad for the duration of the holiday. Okay, I relapsed once to check flight times and download some KDP data to work on later. But generally I was tech-free for two whole weeks. How many of you can do that?

But technology isn’t the subject of this month’s blog. Instead I chose my holiday activity of reading. Stephen King once said that writers should read a lot to master their craft. As writers, we can appreciate the skills of other writers and learn from them. I know to progress my skills I need to read more fiction than I currently do. I do read a lot — but it’s usually technical material. So on my holiday this autumn I picked five authors to read from my sci-fi genre. I finished three of them and enjoyed them. The other two I started but soon put them down. It wasn’t that these two were particularly badly written. It’s just that I’m a fussy reader and it was taking too long to get into the story.

It struck me that if I am so fussy about what I read then so are many others. Obviously, to be a successful writer you need to capture the hearts and minds of your readers. But getting this done in the first line, first paragraph, or first page or the story is hard. And if you don’t achieve it by the first ten pages you’ve probably lost the reader.

In this respect, readers are very different from the audience in a cinema. Members of the audience are unlikely to walk-out in the first ten minutes of a movie. On the other hand, a reader in a book shop, or on Amazon, may only spend a minute or two reading a short sample of the text before choosing to buy or put down the book.

Of course, I’m not the first to stress the importance of the opening scene. There are many books on writing that say the same thing. And if you are looking to sell your story to an agent or publisher the chances are they will reject a book out of hand if they are not impressed within the first few pages. Clearly, how you open a story is important and there are some techniques you can use to capture interest.

One technique writers use is called in medias res. Here the hero/heroine is thrown into immediate danger to capture the interest of the reader. This technique is often used in action movies. For example, in Indiana Jones and The Raiders of the Lost Ark the opening sequence in the Peruvian jungle puts Indiana into a host of death defying incidents as he first recovers and then loses the golden idol. But this technique does not necessarily always work, particularly when we don’t know the hero/heroine. Why should we feel immediate empathy for a character in potential danger when we have barely met them? Finding this empathy in the first few lines or paragraphs of a story therefore requires real writing skill and imagination.

Another technique is to raise a question in the mind of the reader about why a character is behaving in an odd way? For example, why is he standing naked on a bridge in the middle of the night? How did he get there? What is he planning to do? To find out the reader has to read on, and by the time the reader learns the answer the writer has posed another question to pique the reader’s curiosity.

A good opening line is one way of capturing the readers attention. Here are some well-known opening lines from some great writers:

Call me Ishmael. —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.—George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. —Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

It was a pleasure to burn. —Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

They shoot the white girl first. —Toni Morrison, Paradise (1998)

All children, except one, grow up.—James Matthew Barrie, Peter Pan

One of the things writers are warned against is starting with the weather. It’s not that it doesn’t create a mood; it’s just that the technique is overused and cliched. But to prove that there are no rules in writing that can’t be broken, here are some exceptions:

It was raining in Richmond on Friday, June 6.—Patricia Cornwell, Postmortem.

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. —Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford

While opening lines are important, I don’t think writers should necessarily become obsessed with them. Otherwise there is a danger of writing paralysis setting in driven by trying to meet an impossible standard of perfection. If we can’t get past the first line how are we going to finish the draft?

The time to consider the opening line and hone those critical opening paragraphs is when the first draft of the story is complete and you start the editing process; not when you’re writing the first draft. You need to get the story up and running and in the first draft and for that purpose any opening line will do. The opening can be perfected when the story is complete.

May 19 2018

Story Drivers

Last month I published my third novel, AndroDigm Park 2067. Much of my time since has been taken up with marketing with little time left for writing. But now it’s time to start thinking again about the next novel. I have two very different ideas I am currently exploring and it’s difficult to choose which. Any story idea is at best simply a seed. There’s a lot of a work that needs to be done before we can see if that seed can grow into something more interesting. One way is to do enough work to turn it into a story premise. That is, a brief overview of the story world, main character and story-line to be able to make an elevator pitch. My thoughts are, if I can’t convince myself the story has merit, there is precious little point in spending a year writing it. And an elevator pitch is a great way of testing it. Clearly, I’m not a Hollywood producer. Nor do I intend to ride up and down in elevators to test this. But I’m the type of writer that needs to find my story before I write it. And finding a great story premise requires a lot of thought and planning: weeks, hopefully not months.

Thinking through some of my ideas caused me to think about different story-lines and the story drivers behind them. The main driver in any story is a highly motivated protagonist who wants something badly and will go to extraordinary lengths to get it. The first Act of any story is all about the protagonist discovering the motivation and passion for what he/she wants and finding the courage to pursue a quest. In some cases it is thrust upon him/her. In others, he/she needs to be persuaded by others to follow the quest.

The spark that ignites this process is called the story catalyst. It’s also sometimes called the inciting incident although, as I’ve explained in previous blogs, the inciting incident can mean different things to different people. For me the catalyst or inciting incident is the moment in time when the protagonist is first confronted with the big opportunity, problem, or puzzle that will eventually become the central focus of the story.

I have been thinking about story catalysts. And I believe there are three types that fit three different types of protagonists.

The opportunity. This usually fits with a protagonist that longs for something (or needs something) in their life when the story opens and by the end of the story they will have found it. An opportunity comes along and offers them the chance to escape from the status quo forever. For example, Erin Brockovich in the movie of the same name simply wanted a job to support her children. But when the opportunity arose she was driven to find justice for her pro bono case victims and in the process turned herself into a highly paid lawyer. In Star Wars, A New Hope, Luke longed to go to the space academy, but it was only after his aunt and uncle were slaughtered did he get the backbone to respond to the catalyst (Lei’s message conveyed by R2D2 ‘Help me, Obi Wan…’ ). By the end of the movie Luke has transformed from a shy farm boy into a hero.
The problem. This type of protagonist may well be happy with their life when the story opens, but a big problem strikes that threatens him/her or his/her loved ones. The protagonist’s motivation here is to get back to the status quo before the problem arose. For example, in Taken the hero is driven by the need to rescue his kidnapped daughter from sex traffickers. In The Huger Games, Katniss volunteers for the games and faces almost certain death to protect her younger sister. Her objective was then to try to survive the games and resume her life in her District. Sometime these characters can transform and return to their starting world more confident and assured. For example, in Romancing the Stone, Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) transforms from a lonely writer to the type of heroine she writes in her novels and in the process wins the love of Jack Colton (Michael Douglas).
The puzzle or mission. This catalyst usually fits the hero for hire. These heroes act out of duty and professionalism rather than from personal involvement with the victim or those at stake in the story. They are chosen by the role they play and the special skills they possess. Most detective stories fall into this category: for example, Sherlock Holmes, Colombo and Poirot are all professionals solving a problem. All-action heroes such as James Bond and Indiana Jones also fall into this category, as do law officers and military specialists. These types of heroes are brought in to do a job and they rarely transform during the course of the story.

Serendipity may play a part in the choice of protagonist where the catalyst is an opportunity of problem. Luke was fortunate to find R2D2 with the message from Leia. John McClain was unlucky to be visiting his estranged wife at an office party when the terrorists broke in. But in the case of the puzzle or mission, the detective or all-action hero is brought in to solve the case or complete the mission because they are the best at what they do.

The main driver in all these stories is what the protagonist wants. It usually falls into one of the following categories:

To find or recover some object of desire. This is what Hitchcock called the McGuffin. Examples are: the Holy Grail, the Golden Fleece, the ark of the covenant, the plans to the Death Star, the thirty-nine steps etc.
To prevent something bad from happening. For example, in Die hard John McClain (Bruce Willis) wants to stop the terrorists that have taken hostages in a tower block.
To escape from somewhere or some condition.
To achieve something (e.g. to climb Everest, to become the world Champion, etc.)
To solve or redress some injustice. For example, Richard Kimble wants to prove his innocence in The Fugitive. Most detectives want to catch the criminal and find justice for their victim.
To win or resolve some relationship (e.g. Most love stories are about finding the person that completes them although at the outset neither of the parties will know or acknowledge this.)

Alongside what the protagonist wants is why he/she wants it. For example, they may be driven by love, duty, justice, self-preservation, passion, curiosity or glory, or they may be driven by less admired qualities such as self-interest or revenge. Even heroes are not perfect and their motives may change during the course of the story.

Finding the protagonist’s story objective and motivation are key aspects of understanding a story. But it is also important to understand the antagonist forces that will oppose him/her from reaching their objective. Without opposition there is no conflict and without conflict there is no story. Fear of what antagonists may do is also one of the principal sources of tension in a story — the source of most surprises and excitement. Understanding the antagonists is therefore part of understanding the story. Truby suggests there should be about four antagonists in a story. Although an antagonist force doesn’t have to be an enemy or even a person. It could be a force of nature, or someone close to the protagonists that thinks they are acting in their best interest, or the protagonist’s own shortcomings. Anything that blocks a protagonist from reaching their objective is an antagonist. In a love story the antagonist is normally their opposite love interest.

So, the first stage of turning an idea into a working story premise is finding the story driver — what the protagonist truly wants and why he/she wants it. It sounds simple, and it is. But there are thousands of story-lines that have been written and re-written with the same story drivers. The real difficulty is finding a combination of character, driver, motivation, and antagonists that appears new and exciting to the reader. That is a big challenge for any new writer.

Apr 23 2018

AndroDigm Park 2067 – published!

It’s a great feeling to publish a new novel — somewhere between nirvana and just plain relief that it’s finally out. AndroDigm Park 2067 is a project I started over two years ago. The title changed from that original title several times, but the story remains the same.

So let me explain the strange title. AndroDigm in my book is the name of the largest global cyber corporation. Its name is a fusion of the words ‘Android’ and ‘Paradigm’. There are many ways to define a paradigm, but the one I like is: “a set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitute a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in the intellectual disciplines.” (The Free Dictionary by Forlex).

So the AndroDigm corporation is all about changing the way society views and accepts android technology and, of course, making money.

AndroDigm Park 2067 is a work of fiction, but any writer writing about the future is entitled to make some assumptions as to where technology may possibly take us. Even in today’s technology human-looking androids have been developed that can mimic human behaviour and artificial intelligence systems can easily outperform human analysis. A world where intelligent Androids are economically viable as replacements for human workers is not unthinkable.

How do you think human’s will react? In the early 19th Century, Luddite workers destroyed machinery in the cotton and woollen mills of England because they thought the machinery threatened their jobs. Might we find a similar reaction by humans in the 21st Century? The catalyst for my story is the murder of the AndroDigm CEO at a violent Action Against Androids demonstration and the story is all about the investigation that follows.

Another aspect of this future world is the domination of the cyber and media companies and the growing number of super rich. If technology can create intelligent human-looking androids, then perhaps it can also create a paradise park for the super rich to play where any fantasy creature is possible, including dragons.

Why 2067 in the title? Well it’s exactly a hundred years since the ‘Summer of Love’ (1967) when a hundred thousand hippies descended on San Francisco professing love and peace. Why wouldn’t any self-respecting government and the large corporate businesses not want to take advantage of the feel-good factor from such centenary celebrations?

So there you have the title and a snapshot of the story world for the novel. But stories are about people and you’ll find that the characters in the story are just like you and me with their own faults and prejudices. Technology might change but human behaviour will always remain the same. I could tell you a lot more about my characters and their story. But that would spoil your enjoyment. AndroDigm Park 2067 is now available at Amazon in both print and kindle formats and at other retailers in print format.

Nov 4 2017

The importance of the B Story

STC Recently I was going through some of my old books on screenwriting and story telling and I picked up the ‘Save the Cat Goes to the Movies’ by the late Blake Snyder. I found the book inspiring the first time I read it some years ago, and as I started to read it again I found a new insight.

But before explaining the insight, I need to explain what the book is about. Snyder put forward the view that the success of any film is based on two important factors: structure, and surpassing the expectations of its genre. In the book, Snyder takes five examples of iconic movies in each of 10 movie genres to analyse their structure and the genre variations. Each of the genre are given catchy names by Snyder that represent the most popular movie genres:

Monster in the house: Alien; Fatal Attraction; Scream; The Ring; and Saw.
Golden Fleece: The Bad News Bears; Planes, Trains and Automobiles; Saving Private Ryan; Ocean’s Eleven; and Maria Full of Grace.
Out of the Bottle: Freaky Friday; Cocoon; The Nutty Professor; What Women Want; and Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind.
Dude with a Problem: Three Days of the Condor, Die Hard, Sleeping with the Enemy; Deep Impact; and Open Water.
Rites of Passage: 10; Kramer v Kramer; Ordinary People, 28 Days; and Napoleon Dynamite.
Buddy Love: The Black Stallion; Lethal Weapon; When Harry met Sally; Titanic; and Brokeback Mountain.
Whydunit: All the President’s Men; Blade Runner; Fargo; Mystic River; and Brick.
Fool Triumphant: Being There; Tootsie; Forrest Gump; Legally Blonde; and The 40-year-old Virgin.
Institutionalized: M*A*S*H; Do the Right Thing; Office Space; Training Day; Crash.
Superhero: Raging Bull; The Lion King; The Matrix; Gladiator; and Spider-Man 2.

Some of the genre may seem oddly labeled at first. An Out of the Bottle movie refers to a movie based on magic. A Golden Fleece movie refers to a quest story movie about an object of desire – the fleece or McGuffin. A Whydunnit movie refers to a detective type story about a secret that takes a dark turn. Most of the rest of the descriptions are self-explanatory.

Now the insight. I was surprised to see one of my favourite movies, Lethal Weapon, categorised under Buddy Love and not under some action-movie type heading. In Snyder’s view there are many variations of this genre: whether it is a traditional love match of ‘boy meets girl’, two cops on the trail of a crook, or a couple of goofy pals hanging out together. The story dynamics are the same: an ‘incomplete hero’, a counterpart he needs to make his life whole, and complications that keep them apart but actually binds then together.

The incomplete hero in Lethal Weapon is Roger Murtaugh, a veteran policeman who’s facing retirement and is not coping well. The counterpart is Martin Riggs, a cop with suicidal tendencies. Together they uncover a drug-smuggling operation and as the story unfolds their friendship grows. There are therefore two storylines going on. The first, or A story plot, is the uncovering the drug-smuggling operation. The second, or B story is the relationship between the two detectives. Snyder however seems to put the B story first in determining its genre.

Why do I find this so interesting? It’s because stories are often classified as either plot-driven or character-driven stories. Most literary fiction falls into character-driven category. Most genre stories (Action, Romance, Thriller, Horror) fall into plot-driven category. We know what these labels mean, but in reality the labels make poor descriptors. All stories are in fact character-driven. Without a protagonist with an overall story objective there is no plot driver. All stories must have a plot or they have no direction or purpose. So the labels of character-driven or plot-driven stories are at best an emphasis of the story on either the internal or external storylines.

Now consider what Lethal Weapon would have looked like if Murtaugh and Riggs had just been regular cops? It would have been just another action movie that you would soon forget. What makes it great and original is the relationship storyline – the B Story.

And this is the same with all great stories. There is often more than one storyline (or story arc) going on in a story. And one or more of the main characters may well undergo a transformation (a character arc) as the story progresses. Plot (the cause and effect sequence of events in a story) is simply a combination of the events from all the storylines and arcs. So to understand plot fully, you may need to break the main events down into their separate storylines and character arcs, rather than consider plot to be one single time line of events.

The idea of breaking a story into more than one storyline is not new. Michael Hauge’s Six Stage Plot Structure uses the concept of an inner journey (character arc) and outer journey for the protagonist. Christopher Vogler’s The Hero’s Journey also has a separate Character Arc for the hero. So if it helps to analyse story by adding a third story line for a key relationship between two main characters it makes sense to use it.

Great stories have multiple layers of complexity: a plot, sub-plots, character arcs, and relationships. How you choose to plan and organise your story is up to you.

Feb 11 2017

Mythic Metaphors

Recently, I finished the first draft of my third book. It takes time to distance yourself from a manuscript before you can objectively edit it, so I picked up a project that had been working on for some time. The idea behind the project is to create a high-level story blueprint to see if a story idea or concept is worth taking further. The blueprint brings together some of the ideas of my favourite movie industry gurus, such as Michael Hauge, Syd Field, Blake Snyder, Chris Soth and Paul Gulino into one simple document.

While working on the project I wondered how I might also incorporate some of the ideas of Christopher Vogler. I had researched Vogler’s writings and presentations on the internet and thought I understood the hero’s journey. But there is nothing quite like reading the original material first hand; so I bought ‘The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers’. I’m so pleased I did.

‘The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers’ draws on the psychology of Carl G Jung and the studies of Joseph Campbell to set out the hero’s journey under the mythic story structure. The journey can be shown in twelve stages as shown below:

If you don’t write fantasy adventures like Tolkien or Homer you might be inclined to dismiss this approach. Don’t. Aspects of the hero’s journey permeate all stories and all genres and any writer may find these ideas useful. Vogler himself uses it to analyse movies such Titanic, The Lion King, Pulp Fiction, The Full Monty and Star Wars. The Hero’s Journey is really a model full of mythical metaphors that can be used to describe any stories that take the hero into a strange new world. It doesn’t have to be a fantasy world. For example, the worlds of business, finance or law; the fashion world; the world of politics; or for that matter the world of love.

Vogler’s structure is a quest structure in twelve stages. For simplicity, I will refer to the hero as ‘he’ but of course it would be just as relevant to use a female hero. Our hero is called to an adventure, where he crosses into a strange new world where he will be tested many times. He approaches a dangerous inner cave where he will be tested again in a life-threatening ordeal, before claiming his prize and taking the road home. But before he can return with his prize he must pass one final test (the climax) where he faces death (of his old self) and (symbolic) resurrection. Thus the hero emerges a new man that has learned what it means to be a hero. The hero’s journey is thus a journey of transformation as much as the physical journey, the transition occurring in the same twelve steps.

Vogler noted that the steps may not necessarily occur in the order stated, nor do all the steps necessarily apply to all stories. The terms such as death and resurrection, the ordeal and the reward are metaphors that can be used to describe any kind of story. Similarly the mythic archetypes such as the Shape Shifter, the Mentor, Threshold Guardians and more provide a rich vocabulary for describing all types of modern day characters.

The point Vogler makes is that the Hero’s journey is not a story by numbers approach, but something much more flexible. There are mythic elements present in all stories. That’s why stories are so appealing to the human spirit.

Oct 20 2016

Endings

endings Dan Wells is famous for his seven point system for structuring stories. The approach is set out in a series of five videos that are still available on you-tube. Just search for ‘Dan Wells’.

The Well’s system is not vastly different from a number of other systems based around a three-act structure, with major plot turning points at the end of the first and second acts. At the mid point the main character usually learns an important truth, which strengthens his resolve. Wells does not identify a separate inciting incident (or call to action), but treats it as part of the first turning point. In practice, there can be a significant delay between the inciting event and the main characters decision to move into the new story word of Act two. But does it really matter? They are clearly part of the same sequence of events (call to action, debate, more pressure, decision, forward action) that kick starts the story.

The story starts with a ‘Hook’ (the opening state of the main character) and finishes with a ‘Resolution’ (the final state of the main character). The pinch points are the places where the antagonist usually makes himself/herself felt.

The relevant story sign posts are arranged chronologically as follows:

Hook (Do second)
Plot Turn 1 (Do fourth)
Pinch Point 1 (Do sixth)
Mid Point (Do third)
Pinch Point 2 (Do last)
Plot Turn 2 (Do fifth)
Resolution (Do first)

What I like about Dan Wells approach is that in analysing the structure of the story he starts at the end (the Resolution). How is the story resolved? What has the main character become? And then asks how does the story start and what is the state of the main character (the Hook). The story is the movement between these two points, with the main characters making important decisions at PT1 and PT2 and stiffening his/her resolve at the mid point. In the process the main character may undergo a transformation of character from weakness to strength or vice versa (the character arc).

Starting with the end of the story seems like a good idea, since everything in the story is leading to this end result. But that doesn’t make the design of the end necessarily any easier. Currently, I am struggling with the ending of my third novel. At the start of writing I had a clear plan and an outline. But as I near the final Act, I have started to question the strength of the ending.

One writer once said that how a book starts sells the book to the reader, but how a story ends determines whether the reader will buy your next book. Endings have to fit the theme of the story and the type of ending the reader expects, without being too predictable and boring. That might sound like a contradiction, but it’s true. For example, most romance stories have a ‘happily ever after ending’ as a genre requirement, but readers still want some element of surprise in the ending to be satisfying.

That brings me to the ‘twist’ ending. In thrillers or horror stories there may well be a twist ending to surprise the reader. The master of the twist was undoubtedly Alfred Hitchcock. He revelled in manipulating audience’s expectations by providing either too little or too much information about a character. So the bad guy maybe really a good guy, or vice versa. Or the audience may know what’s coming, but the main character is blissfully unaware. Nowadays, movies are more likely to rely on fast action cinematic sequences and gore to surprise their audiences rather than such plot devices. That’s a shame, because no one seems to do endings as well as Hitchcock.

That brings me back to my current novel work in progress. I am truly excited about where the story has got to, but if I am to rework the ending I know I need create some distance from the story. That means putting it to one side for a short time and focusing on something else. Writing is not just about writing your story. The time you spent thinking about the story is just as important. I would rather spend a day thinking about one or two great ideas than churning out 2,500 words of garbage. So pausing for more thought about the ending is not a bad idea.

I find often that the best way to refocus the mind on the story is a long walk, and I plan to do a lot of walking in the near future. Don’t expect any Hitchcock like twist ending from me. I like happy endings. But perhaps with a bit more thought I can make my ending more enjoyable and less predictable.

If you’re currently writing a story, how confident are you that you’ve got the right ending? Or maybe, if you’re a ‘pantser’ you’re waiting to write the first draft to find out. Endings are annoyingly difficult to write, but satisfying when you get there.

Aug 12 2014

Theme – the magic ingredient within a story

In my last blog, I tried to define story as:

“ …a tale about a character or characters, set in a particular environment or time, who struggle to deal with an important problem or opportunity that comes into their live(s) and which sets in motion a sequence of events and actions that logically lead to a climatic ending consistent with the theme of the story.”

In my view, a story should all ways have a satisfactory ending consistent with the theme of the story in order to provide the reader with the necessary emotional pay-off that they expect. So what is theme? Basically, theme is what the story is all about. Not the plot itself, but the underlying message that the story is illustrating through the actions of the characters. It is usually a moral message the reader can relate to. For example: good will overcome evil; love conquers everything; family are more important than personal gain; absolute power corrupts; freedom is worth fighting for, etc.

In children’s fairy tales, fables and parables the theme is usually very obvious. In a complex novel the theme or themes might be less obvious. Some writers have said not all stories have a theme. I disagree. All stories have at least one theme. Without a theme a story is just narrative without a sense of purpose.

That doesn’t mean that the main character should be a paragon of virtue. Most main characters have some flaws, and part of the story is how they change as a result of the actions that effect them: the character arc. Some main characters may well go from bad to even worse. They may succeed with their goal; but may lose something more important to them in the process. Even with these types of stories there is a message. The issue is whether the message resonates with the reader. Where the message doesn’t resonate with the reader the impact on the reader may be one of shock. The question is whether the reader wants to shocked like this or not.

What should a writer do to incorporate theme into a story? The answer is that the writer doesn’t incorporate theme directly — it is part of the story already. The writer shouldn’t have to think about it too deeply. And the last thing they should do is to get preachy with the reader. It is what the story is about.

Jul 19 2013

Outline and outliners

How do you measure the progress you’re making on writing a book? Do you think in terms of the word-count you’ve written or the number of scenes you’ve completed? The answer possibly lies in the type of writer you are. If you’re an organic writer (or ‘pantser’) that believes that any form of outlining is too restrictive and waste of time, you’ll probably focus entirely on word count. If you’re a writer that uses some kind of scene outline then you may prefer the latter. But what is an outline?

In my school/college/university days outlining an essay was simple. You made a list of points you needed to cover in the essay, and then you started writing the essay, crossing off the points as you went along. You could write a novel the same way, although I suspect it would take a lot more time to come up with the list of points. In practice, most writers use notebooks or files to collate their notes and research and it may take a considerable period of time before the author is ready to commence. But some writers will go further and organise their research and information into some form of story structure or scene outline that will form the skeleton for their novel. But even here, practices vary enormously.

One of my favourite books on writing is James V. Smith Jr’s ‘The writers little helper’. Smith covers a whole range of topics on writing, but when it comes to outlining he advocates you don’t bother. He argues that outlines can become a mission in themselves without adding to the creative aspects of writing. Instead he suggest a Ten-Scene Tool to sketch in the ten most important scenes (or master scenes) in your novel. These include, the opening scene, the point of no return complication, other pivotal complications, the climax and the ending. His rationale is that the Ten-Scene Tool forces you to simplify your central story line. This is not to say that the other scenes you will have to write are not important; but that they are less pivotal and are there to set up the master scenes and provide texture. In my mind, this is still an outline albeit at a helicopter level of detail.

Contrast this approach with that of Karen S Weisner’s in ‘First draft if 30 days’, where she sets out a six stage structured approach to produce a scene by scene outline of 50 pages or so. Far from believing an outline restricts creative development, Weisner believes that the brainstorming process continues throughout the writing process and that it is easier to modify an outline of fifty pages than it is to modify a manuscript of 200–400 pages. Considering she is an award winning novelist of more than twenty books, the system clearly works for her. Whether you agree with producing this level of detail or not (which for me came as a bit of a shock) you will find her approach fascinating. She uses some twenty different worksheets, which are set out in the Appendix C to her book. Even if you are the most ardent pantser writer in the world there is probably something you can take away from this book. She has also written ‘From first draft to Finished Novel’, which picks up from where her earlier book finished. Both books in my view contain a great deal of good practical advice for a newbie novelist.

For the current novel I am working on I have an outline currently consisting of 46 planned scenes, which are summarised on scene cards in my Scrivener file. The amount of detail on each card is relatively high level: a heading and couple of sentences of explanation. As I continue to write, I expect the number of scenes will increase, because I have a tendency to split scenes into smaller units, and new scenes will be necessary as transitional scenes are incorporated and more detail is fleshed out. On the spectrum of outlining, I probably currently fit somewhere between the two extremes of Smith and Weisner.

Which approach is right for you? Only you can tell, but for me it is worth experimenting with to find out.

Mar 15 2013

Story forming

In my last blog , I mentioned I had eight ideas to develop a new storyline for my second novel, but didn’t know which one to choose. After teasing out these ideas further into rough outlines of about three-quarters of a page each, I narrowed the story choice down to three. Then using some mind mapping software to flush out my ideas further (I tend to think visually), I made my choice.

At that point, it was difficult to resist the urge to fire up my computer and start writing my second novel. But I didn’t want to repeat the large number of re-writes that I had with my first novel. Therefore I was determined to take the outlining process a stage further and produce a story board of the principal scenes of the book. Some authors who like to plot, use scene cards and pin boards to produce a visual representation of the story line. Unfortunately a pin board is not a particularly attractive feature in a dining room that has to double as my office. So I decided to experiment using story boarding software. The software I chose was Storybook Pro. The principal benefit from this approach was that the story scene structure could be viewed on screen and a detailed outline of the story (about 16 pages in my case) could be produced in hard copy by printing out the scenes. The software was relatively easy to use and did not disappoint.

Most of the storyboarding was completed within a week. But when I read the outline, I realised the storyline I had produced just didn’t work. There was something missing. If I had not gone through the story-boarding route and started writing I am sure that sooner or later I would have recognised what the problem was, but I would have probably wasted 25,000-50,000 words to find it.

So what was my problem you might ask. The story just wasn’t exciting enough; and the reason was I had a light weight antagonist. Not all stories or genres need a strong antagonist. But my story definitely needed one. And if you have a bad guy, he has to have his own story; he can’t just turn up in the final battle scene to make the hero look good. Story forming is therefore not just about a plot-line, but it is also about the characters and how that plot-line affects them. In my case, I had casted the hero and heroine and threw them into the plot, but had forgotten about one of the most important characters of all – the antagonist.

In some genres, particularly action stories or horror stories, the antagonist is absolutely vital. For example, in the action movie Die Hard, what would John McClane (Bruce Willis) have been without the evil Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman)? In the Dark knight where would Batman (Christian Bale) be without the Joker (Heath ledger)? In other genres, the antagonist may be not be a character but something more abstract like the elements or environment.

So I have learnt and important lesson, and still have some work to do on character development before I can start writing in earnest.

JMJ Williamson

Writer of Speculative Fiction

Tag Archives: story