Monday, December 22, 2008

It's the Story, Stupid.

by M A N

Truman Capote said that he was like a semantic Paganini, that he could just throw words up into the air and they would come down in the perfect way.

Must be nice, huh? Like most mortals, I toss my words into the air only to struggle with them for hours after they've tumbled haphazardly across the page. I guess that makes me more of a semantic Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Even so, I learned how to consistently write well. Not brilliantly, but well. I have a sense of rhythm, cadence, and can usually put words on paper in interesting ways. My high school teachers and college professors always told me so, so it had to be true ('cause they would never lie). So, armed with the confidence they instilled in me, I spent those nomadic years following my college graduation writing numerous short stories and one very epic, very unfinished, novel. Yet, no one wanted to publish them. I couldn't give them away. So what was the problem? I knew how to write, had a decent grasp of English grammar, and knew how to operate the spell check. So why the hell wouldn't anyone publish my stories?

It's because they weren't stories.

They were, as one kind editor told me, just book reports. There was nothing there. Every rejection slip I received (that wasn't a simple form letter) said the same thing: you can write, but you can't tell a story.

At the time, for the life of me, I thought that they they the same thing. I mean, aren't they? Isn't that what writing is, telling a story? Obviously, the answer is an emphatic "no." It would be like someone claiming to be an architect when all they know how to do is drive a nail into a board with only three hits of a hammer. A good skill to have, but that doesn't mean you can design a bridge.

Most of you might be thinking to yourselves, well, duh. But for me hearing this was like a slap to the face. It never even occurred to me that writing and story telling were two totally different things. But now that I knew that they were, I had to ask myself a very horrifying question: "Do I even know what a story IS?" Again, the answer was an emphatic "no." Turns out, that when it came to telling a story, I couldn't write my way out of a wet paper bag with a needle-sharp number two pencil. I mean, what is this "conflict" you speak of? You're telling me that all my stories have to have fist fights? I was clueless. All the things that go into making a story were nothing but vague, abstract concepts to me. All those years my teachers and professors were teaching me how to write, no one bothered to teach me how to tell a story.

Fortunately, I've had some wonderful and patient people sit down with me and explain the basic elements of story telling. Now, I won't go into what makes a story here because, honestly, I'm still learning myself and there are others much more qualified than I who can give you a better understanding (you're reading KFM, so chances are you've already got a head start). But it's just something to keep in mind when you're slaving over your world building or fine tuning the description of your antagonist's handlebar mustache. Good things in their own right, but is there a story? It doesn't matter how detailed and well-crafted your world is, if there's no story, no one will care.

47 comments:

Mary Ann Lewis said...

Thank you for this post. I've been reading books on story-telling and writing by Stephen King, Russell T. Davies, Kate Wilhelm, etc., to improve my own writing. When I try to explain what I've learned to anyone else, the person looks at me like I've from Mars.

"You just write, don't you?"

Don't I wish.

OutOfContext said...

This week I've heard two different screenwriter's quote Alvin Sargeant who said his headstone will read: Finally, a plot.

Alex Epstein said...

In my book, a story is:

a character we care about

with an opportunity, problem or goal

who faces obstacles and/or an antagonist

who stands to gain something (stakes)

and stands to lose something (jeopardy).

I find most scripts that fail, fail on one of these points.

Phil Freeman said...

So, a question for fiction writers (not screenwriters) writing this: How much plotting do you do before you begin the actual writing process? I have lately been working on a novel that's not sci-fi as much as "today extrapolated, with more jokes," and before I wrote a single actual sentence I wrote 100-word summaries of every chapter. In other words, I knew where I was going before I got started. Does anyone else do this? Does anyone go out of their way to not do this?

Taellosse said...

@pdf: I'm not really a writer (though I've done a bit of writing), but I have seen a number of authors who respond to this kind of question with, "whatever works for you." Some write detailed and extensive outlines before they begin writing the first chapter. Some have no idea where things are going until they write them, and are often surprised by the turns a plot will take as they go along. Others don't even begin at the beginning--they start with an evocative scene and write a story around it, both before and after. Yet others may do some hybrid, or something else altogether, or change depending on the particular story they're writing.

If having condensed synopses of every chapter before you start works for you, then that's the way you should write.

Anonymous said...

Alex Epstein: I see where you're coming from, but that's a lot of bullet points. Plus, it's vague enough that you can pretty much say that any story you like fits that description. It seems more like a way to analyze stories after the fact. I don't know how useful it is to think about for storytelling.

For that, I've always liked what Ira Glass has to say. (The man knows something about stories.) Here's part 1.

Anonymous said...

If you want to know what "story" is and how to make stories work, read "Techniques of the Selling Writer" by Dwight Swain. Published back in the 60s, about 100 reviews on Amazon.

Go look for yourself.

Anonymous said...

Sort of anti-climactic... it was all set up. A good set up. Well written (although I would use like-metaphors sparingly, also adjectives - but that's my problem not yours).

"What is story?" Yes. Great question. You ask it well. And then you fizzle out. You let other, better writers explain it for you? Damn, my man. That's your fricken problem! You need some proverbial balls if you want to be a writer. And some imagination. That's how you make writing interesting. And even in book reports, please try to answer your thesis. I give you a C -. I’d fail you, but that’s just cruel.

Anonymous said...

Let me tell you a story.

One day I read a comment on a blog. It was written by a bitter and small-minded person clearly jealous of the blog writer's talent and success. I immediately dismissed it and went back to what I was doing. The comment writer, I can only assume, resumed his sad and miserable existence.

Beginning, middle, end. All you really need for a story, right?

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