Storytelling: An Unfortunate Series of Events

Have you ever tried to plot a story?

It usually ends up being a series of interconnected events that charge the story onward until that final THE END moment where you expect the reader will stand up, slap the book closed, with a heavy breath and go "OH MY GOD" (Insert other deity or whatever you happen to believe in) and then follow it up with phone calls to the nearest 87 relatives telling them about what an awesome book they just read.

And stop...

So that is unlikely to happen, for many reasons, but that's not the topic of this blog post.

If you're anything like me, you may try to see that as a story. Sorry friends, that one has jumped up and bitten me on the ass so hard I have trouble sitting down to write.

Think back a minute. Storytellers, the good ones, didn't get a bunch of people around a campfire and go on about shrimp tacos, shrimp grits, shrimp fritters, and the like until the defining moment.

They were showmen (and women) and they livened it up. They brought the characters to life within themselves. The plot didn't happen. It came alive, through inflection, faces, dramatic effect.

Well, you're a writer, so you don't have any of that stuff available to you, though I welcome you to make all the funny faces you want for the pictures on your back covers.

What you do have, and the point of this post, is to explain HOW it should come together. A series of events are like the bones of a plot. You need meat on them, ligaments to connect them together, and then ultimately, the biggest draw is how you present it, the skin, the part that everyone can see, though they may not agree completely on what is inside (And that's a good thing. It gets people talking).

To sum up, what I am striving toward, and what I'd like other writers to do is to make sure they have more than event A >> event B >> event C.

If it feels stilted to you, it probably is. No, this doesn't mean give me explosions, incest and drama on every page. Good God... The Little Engine That Could doesn't need that crap. What you do need is to make sure that people are following along for the ride, with the characters, right there waiting to know what happens next.

Set the scene. Let them know the smell of the wind, the color of the girl's hair in front of the boy. The way that an ice cream truck's jingle makes the old man feel right before he knows he's going to die.

Then you have the reader hooked, and once you've done that, the game begins. Writing is a game. It's where you play with the reader's heart, and you make all the rules save one. They can close it at any time. Make them pick it back up, not out of a feeling of accomplishment of getting through your 900 page tome, but because they rush back to it, wanting to see, and smell and be that character, or be with them.

Voice and other indescribable things

So let me start by saying everybody likes to talk about voice when it comes to writing. It's one of those intangible things that makes everybody stand up and take notice, but not everybody seems to have a grasp of what voice is.

In reality, it's more than one thing.

Characters have a voice. If they don't, then everybody you write is the same person: You, but a poor copy of you.

Distance yourself from your characters. You can share traits with them, feel their pain, revel in their joy, but the bigger, more important thing to consider is how the reader will do all those things.

You should be able to write a person who disagrees with your world views without becoming a caricature of that perspective.

It is not easy, but how do you create a reprehensible villain without being one yourself? Which... by the way brings me to a quick side note. Reprehensible villains are great for Disney. They make for stilted fiction.

Give the villain a cause, a reason to be, otherwise they are simply twisting their mustache while chaining the hero to the train tracks. Most evil things don't think they are evil. Maybe they don't care. Maybe their morality is twisted onto a different plane. For an example, see Damon on The Vampire Diaries. He's done some nasty crap. People love him.

Back to the original point, however.

The next type of voice is the author's voice. This is where you, as the creator of works of fiction, straight from your imagination and into pixels and pages, get to shine. You have a way with your words that is hopefully your own.

Sure, you may emulate a famous author, to some degree, but you should strive to be yourself. Learn from yourself as much as you learn from others. Pick up hints as to how to make your writing better, but trust in your inner voice to shine and when you hear the same thing over and over again, work to make your voice better, clearer, and work out your style.

Beta readers, critique partners, they may try to change you toward their own style, and in some ways, finding a compromise could work, but you have to be true to yourself... that is, unless you suck.

If you do, don't worry. We have all sucked at writing. Some of us still suck at some aspects of writing. No one person is all things. No one character is all things.

Write. Improve. Edit.

Taking Feedback

Dear Blog... It's been entirely too long since my last confession. I am here to make amends with a new post about how to take proper feedback and be respectful.

Sure, all of us at one time, and I'm speaking to writers specifically, have written that little nugget of joy that puts a smile on our face. We look at the clock, see it's 1:00AM and go to bed proud. We may even send it off to a critique partner, a friendly writer, or a spouse or sibling.

Desperately we are wondering if they love it too, and how it will fair in once our words hit their minds. If you're anything like me, you are hoping they'll gush, tell you that you're next in line for a Hugo and how wonderful you are.

If you're like me, when they tell you that they found a few mistakes, and that some of the word choices conflicted, or that they thought there needed to be a bigger build up, more description, or other little nitpicks, you have at least at one point wondered how they couldn't see how brilliant you were.

I mean, there were subtleties that wouldn't be apparent for 30 chapters, dialogue that had secret hidden meanings, and obscure words found 3 pages deep on thesaurus.com

One of the hardest parts of being a writer is learning how to take feedback. Sometimes, the reader is flat out wrong. Not everybody likes every genre, every style, POV, or any of the various things that set books apart. However, themes should be something to watch out for. If you are hearing the same thing over and over, it may mean that you need to check out your little darlings with a critical eye.

You are not married to a scene. Very few authors want to publish a line of dialogue. The story is important, and while you must stay true to it or it can cause you immeasurable grief in things like tears, lost sleep and stress, you need to look at the picture from a different perspective. Don't argue. This is the truth from their perspective. Thank them for the feedback.

I have false started my current novel at least five times, perhaps more. I am going on a pace of about 8000 words per week, and meeting or exceeding that goal every week if only by sheer will and the fact that through the thoughtful critique of my trusted friends, family and peers, I can now see things with a different set of eyes and find the things that are not working, or when I do miss them, find the way to listen to them and fix the problems without putting my own value on every word in my manuscript. 

The last thing I'll leave you with is this. When getting feedback from a loved one, don't be confrontational. Many times they are only trying to express themselves in ways that make sense to them. Take the pain with the love and make yourself a better writer as a result.

You call that a masterpiece?

Carpentry...
Yes, you read that right. I'm going to discuss carpentry.

So many of us who write look to our spouses as a form of writing support group. Writing is hard. No, it isn't usually "Where is my next meal coming from?" hard, but it is taxing at a deep level. So much of what we do is tied to us. We judge ourselves in our work. We throw ourselves into it with both feet.

Then, we make one of the biggest mistakes we can. We turn to our spouses and say "Honey, can you read this section I just wrote and tell me what you think?"

At least I do that. It sucks, and it's wrong.

Why? You ask.

It's wrong because we are like carpenters. We build things. They can be simple stories, or span galaxies, with new languages, different races, and space ships, or even finding a new way to retell a classic. In any case, we are creators.

Carpenters can look at a joist, or a stud, and immediately say "I'd have done that differently. Look, the nail head is crooked, and it's not square." Admit it. How many of you have read a book and looked at pages and gone on to think "That was awful. They messed that whole scene up. I could have done it better." I bet there are lots of us who do that. Sometimes, I get trapped in a story that is so compelling, I don't want to come out, but those other times, woo, I can't help but feel the story keeps bucking like when I first tried to learn to drive stick shift.

Carpenters are craftsmen and women like us. They see the pieces and how they fit. My wife is not a carpenter. She's not a writer, though she's an avid reader. When I put a piece of my writing in front of her, out of context, and slightly changed from the last time she saw it, she has no way of telling what it's supposed to do. She likes stories, not intangible pieces that come out of nowhere, as far as she's concerned. Like the average homeowner, she would rather see a completed room, or better, how the house looks when it is all put together.

So, in short, let our spouses be what they are and let's not try and change them. If they like to read, the way my wife does, we can't force them to be writers, or to look at thing with a writer's eye. They are no substitute for critique partners or beta readers. They are, however, crucial for that support that comes from someone who takes care you in other ways. Mine has brought me lunch at my computer, and taken on extra parenting duties to let me get my creative juices flowing, and it means so much when she does that. She can't see the subtle foreshadowing because it isn't foreshadowing anything that's not simply in my mind, or written twenty drafts ago. It's a jumbled mess, but she knows that I'm putting together something that's going to be great, and she tells me so when I am feeling like it's not coming out the way I'd like it to.

Like it or not, we need each other. We're a guild of like minds, off in different directions, but able to spot the things each other is doing, and the hows and the whys. We are much like carpenters. We craft stories, and like them, our work should be around a generation after we're gone -at least if we do it right.

The Last Page

All right, so maybe title is confusing. I'm not actually talking about the last page of the book, or whatever story you may be working on.

No, I am talking about the importance of the components of a story. Too often, people think that this great concept of theirs is the key to getting their story out there, and making them a recognized and well liked author. Sure, that can work, but it takes so much more.

Stories are not composed of concepts alone, or themes alone, or characters alone. Each part plays a role in making the story come together, find itself and be told in the best way. Writers have to do more than have a story to tell; they have to tell it in a novel and convincing way. The reader has to come along for the journey, and not be handed a fact sheet.

This brings me back to the title of this post. You can't have a concept as your only striking element or else you have an incomplete story. Just as nobody should (I'm looking at you now) read the last page first, or omit it altogether, nobody should have to wade through an incomplete story that has a great premise, but misses on the key elements of bringing the reader through the emotional journey of the main character or characters. That is just as important as the last page of the book, because without that, the story is not finished.

Other Authors

Communication with other authors is essential, in my opinion. Sure, there were days that you could sit at your desk, quill in hand, and write great stories by candle light. I'm sure there are still a select few who might do just that, but I think that to become a great writer, you need to get out there and talk to people, find out what they are doing, what they are reading, and how to make yourself a better writer.

Simply being a critiquing reader has made me better, both in being able to take criticism and give it, as well as somehow getting the superhuman ability to read at approximately five times faster than I had before, perhaps out of necessity.

Recently, a friend of mine got me started on Twitter, and I took to it exactly as she thought I might. I'm on there almost every day, reading what other people are talking about, whether it is how their cat smells, or about this awesome new scene they have just written, and that alone, the connection with people doing the same thing you are makes it stick.

You are not alone, sitting in a dark room, trying to come up with some scene in your head for your characters. You are sharing your talents, little by little, and doing the same things thousands of other people are, and trying to make the reading landscape a little better, one well placed comma at a time.

Rewrites Part 2

So, when last our heroes met, we discussed the necessity of rewriting things, for clarity and for making sure the story gets put into the mind of the reader.

Well, my story up and took a turn on me, and it came to me in big bright visions (all right, that's malarkey).

I've recently restarted my story, remembering that the important parts are getting across the story, and not getting hung up on reusing all the bits that you have made over the numerous rewrites in order to bolster word count.  I am reusing some, but being pretty sparse about it.

I cannot stress enough the importance of voice and perspective, because without those, the story will never come.  It will feel stifled, and flat, and there will be nothing to it, despite the grand visions of the dreamer.  It has taken me months to find my voice, and even now, I am not sure if it will stick, but I won't stop. 

There are dreams to give life to as stories.