Larry Brooks's Blog, page 30

The Flipside of Hero Empathy

Or… why you should be following “The Following” (the Fox Television series).

Consider a workroom with twelve boxes and a desk.  Six of the boxes are labeled “Core Competency: …” and after that semicolon there is a different name for each: Concept… Character… Theme… Structure… Scenes… Voice.

These are your tools.  Everything under the writing sun awaits in one of those boxes.

The desk is where you’ll use what’s inside the boxes.  Where you’ll write your story.

The other six boxes contain jugs of secret sauce.  These, too, include a semicolon… “Story Physics: …” and after each there is again a specific flavor of sauce: Compelling Premise… Dramatic Tension… Pace… Empathy… Vicarious Experience… Narrative Strategy.

Six boxes of tools, with six flavors of secret sauce to lubricate and empower them to deliciousness.

That’s the whole storytelling enchilada for you, right there.  How you use these boxes — your process — has a million variables.  But the essential nature of what’s in them… that’s non-negotiable.

When you open any one container you find a vast array of choices waiting to help you.  All the genres are in the Concept box.  All the ways you can create conflict awaits in that big bottle of Dramatic tension.  And so it goes.

Which is to say, you can break it down and label it any way you want.  No matter, though… before you are these 12 different yet inter-dependent categories of tools and parts and story essences (physics, the cause that creates effect)… and within them are hundreds, maybe thousands, of nuances and combinations.

Mix and stir as you please.  We live and die by our storytelling choices in this regard.

Here is one of these recipe options, and it’s huge.

You’ll pull this one out the “Empathy” container.  Your reader needs to feel something for your hero.  Causing them (the reader) to root for that hero.  Essential, 101-level stuff.

Here’s the twist, though.  Equally obvious, but rarely applied.

In the Dramatic Tension container you’ll find something called “the antagonist,” also known as the villain, the bad guy, the obstacle to the hero’s quest.

Now mix those two together, empathy and antagonist… and you have a VERY powerful ingredient for your story: the depth with which your reader roots AGAINST the antagonist.  Even, in the purest place of their most truthful self, loathes and hates  your villain while fearing her/him.

Passionately so.  Can’t wait to see them go down.  In a ball of flames.  Drenched in their own blood.  In the name of justice and all that is fair and right and deserved.

Is your villain detestable, or just someone with a different point of view?  You get to decide.  And certainly, not all stories lend themselves to a hero you’d like to see fry in an electric chair… slowly.

But it’s good when it happens.  REALLY good.  Because your reader has another reason to keep turning the pages, to get emotionally involved, to care.

The Following

I mention this killer (literally) television program because it offers one of the most compelling, interesting and deliciously hateable villains, maybe ever.  Right up there with Hannibal Lector, that guy with the mask in the Halloween movies and Dick Cheney.

The program is not for everyone, so vet this if you’re on the bubble.

But if you want to see how a writer (plural in this case) can grab the reader/viewer in such a way that the “rooting against” factor is every bit as strong and compelling and addictive as the “rooting for” factor, this is the show.

Next week is the second to last episode.  Catch it all soon on Netflix, or now via On Demand from your cable career.

Bottom line: Are you tapping into the emotional gold mine that villains present?  And doing so strategically, without resorting to mustache twirling and caricature?   Perhaps you should.

It’s all just more Story Physics… with a dark twist on human nature.  And that is not only our opportunity as storytellers… it’s our job.

The Flipside of Hero Empathy is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

A Short Post on Short Stories…

… linking to a longer one.

Two months ago I put out an open request for topics to be covered here on Storyfix.com.  There were 76 responders, with over a hundred topic suggestions.

The most requested topic was this: story story structure.

Specific questions come in frequently — daily — and almost always I’m able to point toward a post on the topic in question.  Not that I expect (or hope) that anyone will wade through the over 500 posts on this site to find what they want… though, that said, there IS a search bar (just to the right of this sentence) that can help.

So if you’re a short story writer, and/or a short story question-asker… CLICK HERE.

More topics from that list to be addressed soon.

Thanks for your support and readership.

Larry

A Short Post on Short Stories… is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

Case Study: A Concept on the Brink

These are my favorite posts — case studies from story evaluations that demonstrate how a great concept can easily turn into an underwhelming story… and how this process can spot it and turn it around.

Yes, it’s okay to learn from the pain of others.  Actually, from the resurrection of the stories of others.

This one is from my $35 Conceptual Kick-Start Analysis program.  I hope you’ll give it a read, because not only does it expose one of the most common traps killer concepts tend to stumble into, it’s also a sneak peak of the format of the evaluation itself.

You can read it here: Case Study.

Thanks go out to this author for enthusiastically agreeing to share it with us here on Storyfix.  Any comments you may have that have that contribute toward the continued development of the story are welcome.

Here are the main points I’d like you to notice:

- The realization that a concept is NOT necessarily the drama itself, but rather, the STAGE upon which the drama will unfold.  A situation, a setting, a speculative proposition.  The trick is to develop a a DRAMATIC STORY that unfolds UPON that stage, rather than being ABOUT the notion of the concept itself.

A huge difference, that.

- And then, to see that the dramatic story itself is NOT simply showing the character wandering through a strange new world, having adventures, experiencing the compelling nature of the conceptual situation/setting itself.  This is particularly true — and particularly frequent — in science fiction and fantasy stories, since that’s where alternate realities tend to proliferate.

Enjoy.  Hope you get something out of this.

*****

If you’d like to see how your concept and resulting story plan measure up to these criteria, click HERE for the $35 Conceptual Kick Start program, or HERE for the Amazing $100 Story Empowerment and Analysis Adventure, which goes deeper into the full architecture of your story plan.

Case Study: A Concept on the Brink is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

The Risky Middle Realm of Character

Avoid at all costs.

Writing great characters is tough stuff.  In my view, the most challenging part of great storytelling.  You can get all the other complicated stuff exactly right – concept, structure, theme, scenes – and your story can still just sit there, a bowl of perfectly prepared oatmeal, without a lot going for it.

Nobody leaves the house in search of oatmeal.

This might be one of those new ways to look at it that unlocks your inner bestseller self.

Think of your characters – your major ones, at least – as vehicles.

For what?  For a vicarious experience.

Your hero isn’t a tour guide as much as she/he is a surrogate with a mirror — when the reader looks in, they see themselves.

Through them your reader will be transported into the character’s story world, face their problems and chase their goals, elude their pursuers and demons, drink the wine of their victory or feel the sting of defeat.

It’s your job to make the experience memorable, visceral, and dripping with vivid emotional awareness.

This is as linear and inevitable as math… if the character isn’t feeling all that much, neither will the reader.  That’s what those other things – concept, structure, theme and scenes – are there for.  To optimize the vicarious reading experience.

That’s a 404 subtlety in a 101 writing workshop.  Get there quickly.  Cause your reader to disappear into the character, because what the character is going through is just so… deliciously… something.

It doesn’t have to be pretty.  Sometimes the best vicarious experience is one you’d never want to actually live through.

Think of your character as occupying a spot on a continuum.  

A continuum is a finite linear scale of opposite extremes at either end, gradually dissolving toward each other.  One end is utterly dark, the other blindingly light.  The middle… dawn or dusk.   Shades of gray.

Or… one end believes passionately, the other is full of atheists   The middle offers agnostics and those who are spiritual but not religious.

Here’s one we can all relate to: the continuum of happiness.  At one end there is suicide, the other, pure bliss.  The middle… probably a lot like reality.  Be careful with that one, we get enough reality when we’re not reading.

Another: the continuum of wealth, however you wish to measure it.   One end is dirt poor, the other, filthy stinking rich.  Microsoft kind of rich.

Just examples.  I’m confident you now fully understand, if you didn’t already (after my post on vision I take nothing for granted) the notion of a continuum.

So now let’s apply this tool to our story building.

In this context, we need to define the continuum of character experience in terms of emotion… and then be mindful of where your protagonist resides on that continuum at any given moment in the story.

The idea is to move them around.

Since you are the creator (your chance to play god) of this fictional being, you get to not only mold your hero and main players any way you want (including in your own image)… you can put them through anything you want.

You can send them to heaven, or you can put them through utter hell.  In great stories, both are often in play at various stages.

At one end the character experiences darkness: fear, hopelessness, anxiety, threat, danger, regret… all the things we hope to avoid in life… and love to read about.  Not because we’re sadistic, actually it’s quite the opposite: like the terror of a killer roller coaster, somehow we feel more alive for having lived through it.

At the other end of this continuum the character experiences bliss: ecstasy,  hope, redemption, laughter, joy, love, peace, passion, fulfillment, fame, fortune… absolute and pure upside.

Here’s the ticket.  The trick.

This is the guideline/mantra to paste onto your screen as you decide what your character will experience in the novel:

Avoid The Middle.

The middle of that continuum, that is.

In Part 1, place your hero toward one end of the continuum.  Make us feel one of those two extremes.

And then, at the First Plot Point… change it.  Either make it worse… or give us a glimmer of hope.  Hope that must be pursued in the face of opposition.  Hope that demands a stiff price, with stakes that demand and are worthy of heroism in the face of that risk.

Even in the most mundane and vanilla of existences (which, when you think about it, and are honest about it, leans into the dark side of this continuum), there awaits the possibility of darkness or bliss, often behind closed doors.

Take us behind those doors.

This, in a nutshell, is what your story is about: the hero’s pursuit of resolution.  Your job is to make that ride as vicarious as possible… by being the pilot of the continuum itself.

Allow your reader to experience the continuum, a state of extreme being, through your hero.

In terms of the writing process… this becomes your target.  The blinders come off and a world of storytelling possibilities will manifest before you.

Avoid the middle.  Give your hero something extreme to live through and, thus, feel.

It’s known as the hero’s journey… and when you look at it closely, it aligns with this very principle: the hero’s journey is the movement from one end of the continuum to the other.

And you are the cruise director.  Give them their money’s worth.

*****

If you’re intrigued by this whole notion of  story physics (vicarious experience being one of six primary categories of story physics), please consider my new book (out in June), “Story Physics” (Writers Digest Books).

The Risky Middle Realm of Character is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

“Stay Tuned For Our Next Episode…” or Not.

You’re heard me rail and wail about episodic storytelling.  

I’ve called it toxic, referred to it as a dreaded story-killer.

Still think that, by the way.  But what the heck IS it?

The differentiation between what is episodic and what is not is thin and in constant motion.  It is made all the more complicated and obscured by the fact that, in any good story, there is indeed “stuff that happens” along the way… stuff that actually looks, smells and plays just like the very episodic context I’m preaching against.

Confusion becomes paradoxical.  But there’s a rule of thumb that helps: do you have a compelling CONCEPT in play?

The ticking off of “stuff that happens along the way” (exposition) that is in support of, pursuit of, and in context to a compelling CONCEPTUAL IDEA (not premise) is, in fact, the stuff of narrative.

Episodic scenes that simply unfold without context or connection to a compelling CENTRAL DRAMATIC CORE QUESTION… ONE  QUESTION, becomes that dreaded episodic approach.

The following may help.

This is the kind of issue that needs frequent revisiting from different angles.

A Story fix reader emailed me today, saying that she understood what I’m talking about (episodic storytelling versus, well, non-episodic and therefore better storytelling) in theory, but when it came to her story plan she found herself without clarity.  That line was wrapping itself around her outline and choking the life out of it.

This is, edited, expanded and paraphrased, my response to her:

Hi Jane (not her name) — great question.  This is one of the toughest things to wrap our heads around, the easiest “trap” to fall into, and often, we don’t even know we’ve done it.

My favorite “episodic” example is this hypothetical: you want to write a novel about your summer vacation.  Literally, “what I did on my summer vacation.”  Why? Because it was your best summer ever.  You did all kinds of stuff.  You fell in love.  Then had your heart broken.  Went to Paris.  Fell in love again.  Got sick, almost died.  Fell in love a third time with the doctor that saved you.  Came home a new and refreshed woman.

Sounds like a great novel, right?  But a reminder here… “Eat, Love Pray” (which played just like that) was NOT a novel.  It wasn’t even fiction.

All of the above “could” be a novel… but unless you added something to it, it would be an EPISODIC novel.  And probably, a bad, most likely publishable novel.  Not always, not certainly… but likely.

A-list authors can do it, we can’t.  Don’t imitate them on this one.

Why?  Because a story like that is just a bunch of stuff that “happens,” in a certain order, without a CONCEPT in play.  And while the hero did have a “problem” in this story (in fact she had several of them… and THAT is the storytelling problem here)… she didn’t have a CORE problem.  She had episodic problems.  Stuff that “Happened” to her.

This story has no core dramatic thread.  The key word: CORE.

There is no SINGULAR dramatic question being asked in the story.  It just goes from one thing to the other.

This is why weekly television is NOT a novel, because each week plays like a mini-drama, then it’s on to the next thing.  But a story like “The Following” (the current Fox hit, which is fantastic) DOES play like a novel, even when it has a weekly episode… because the whole thing is in CONTEXT to a SINGLE and powerful dramatic core, asking a single (though complex) dramatic question: will Kevin Bacon stop, and survive, the unfolding evil game playing out at the hands of the psycho bad guy cult leader serial killer?

The key: eEach “episode” takes us CLOSER to THAT resolution, that confrontation.  None of the episodes stand alone in terms of drama.  Each is a stepping stone toward the COMPELLING higher level of dramatic, conceptual question.

In the summer vacation example above, each episodic DOESN’T take us closer to anything, other then the end of her trip.  Each “thing” that happens to her stands alone, rather than expositionally-forwarding the narrative along a path TOWARD an inevitable resolution.

And what IS that question?  It’s your concept.  Your premise.  Your “idea” on steroids.  It is the SOURCE of dramatic tension… not just the STAGE for it.  Understand that difference and you’ll be on the road to avoiding the dreaded “too episodic” verdict.

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Click HERE to see if your Concept leans into episodic storytelling… or not.

“Stay Tuned For Our Next Episode…” or Not. is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

What’s Your ‘Vision’ For Your Story?

The third question I ask on the Questionnaire given to my story coaching clients, after genre and voice, is just that.

Half of the writers presented with that question can’t answer it.  They either email me about it, asking what this means, or they answer this way: “I don’t know what you mean by vision.”

Half.  I kid you not.

To that I say… OMG.

This is like a chef admitting they don’t have any idea what is going to happen to the food they prepare.

I have to be careful here.  I don’t want to insult, talk down to or discourage writers who don’t understand the question.  It’s unthinkable and scary, but that’s just me, the crusty old writing teacher dude.  Not understanding the question is different than – darker than – not having an answer relative to your story.

Because it actually is an answer.

Imagine this:

A newly graduated business major, summa cum laude, goes for an interview as a management trainee.  One of the first questions asked is, “what’s your vision for your career?”  And the newly graduated business major answers, “huh?  What do you by that?”

Or worse, answers “do you have a vision for your career” with, “well, not really.”

End of interview, either way.

You’re about to get married.  You and your beloved seek out a counselor for some pre-marital advice.   A good thing.  The counselor asks – and she absolutely would ask – “so what’s your vision for your life together?”  And your betrothed answers, “uh… I don’t understand the question.”

Which translates to, “nothing special.”  I have nothing special in mind.  Three hots and a cot.   I don’t have a vision for our life together.

You’ve bought a vacant lot in a nice neighborhood with the intention of building a house on it.  One day a neighbor shows up and asks, “new house, eh?”  You nod.  Then he asks, “so what’s your vision for it?”

And you say, “I don’t know what that means.”

Which translates to: I have no blueprint.  I have idea what this house will look like, how many floors it was have, whether it will be brick or logs, what those kooky building codes have to do with anything, whether you’re going to live it or flip it or plant your mother-in-law in it, it hasn’t even entered my head whether or not my house will fit into this neighborhood, I’m just gonna hammer some sh*t together and see what happens.

Will the house get built?  Maybe.   But not without the approval of the plan by the community association, which in this case isn’t happening.

If they are to be great, if they are to work at all, we must write our stories in context to something solid.  And a vision is one of those solid foundations.

Beginning a novel is like working on a business plan. 

Entrepreneurs seek funding, writers seek publication and readership.  Both require strategy.  And the strategy, when it works, includes a vision for the outcome.

Without a vision, nobody is going to invest in you.  Without a vision, you’ll be out of business in a month.

To not know what this means, instinctively, is a very bad sign.  It means, basically, that you’re not ready for this.

You could argue that a vision might emerge during the process.  A concept, yes, definitely.   But how how can something emerge when the opening paradigm is that the writer not even understanding what a vision even IS, or what it means to the process?  That’s like saying to an athlete who wants to enter the Olympic Games, “just start practicing, maybe somewhere along the line it’ll dawn on you which sport you want to compete in.”

Modeling Vision

Here’s an example of what a vision for a new novel or screenplay looks like:

“I see this story reading like a Baldacci novel, deeply rooted in today’s politics , with rich characters and high stakes, entertaining as hell because it’s scary as hell.  I see this, best case, being published by a Big Six house and getting some cache, leading me to a subsequent contract and ultimately a career in this business.”

Just by saying that you’ve signed up to abide by certain criteria for your story.  A good thing.

Here’s what not having a vision says:

“I don’t really know or care what happens to my novel.  I don’t really know or care who will like this, or why they might.  I don’t really know what this story will turn out to be, in which niche it will play, or why a publisher will ever be interested in it.  I’m writing this in a vacuum.  For me it’s a literary experiment, a table for one, I don’t care about the outcome.”

All the wrong things.

The Correlation of Vision-less Storytelling

I’ve evaluated nearly 300 story concepts and architectural plans in the past year.  Of the nearly half who said they didn’t understand the question about vision, the stories that followed were broken in all of them.

All of them.

Not because they were bad ideas leading to bad concepts.  But because the path toward an outcome was muddy, compromised, created in ignorance of, or apathy toward, the criteria that a positive outcome demands that you meet.

One of the smartest and best prose-wielders I’ve come across in this program was the most guilty of vision-void writing.  Her answer was the classic “I don’t know what you mean by this” response, in this case imbued with a certain sub-text of being above it somehow.

The story that followed violated nearly every applicable principle in the storytelling book (including mine).

She was trying to invent her own Olympic sport.  Which just never works.  We can invent a unique voice and approach within the arena of a given niche/genre/sport, but when you try to play basketball with a hockey puck wearing a figure skating tu-tu, the seats will be empty except for the guy shooting a Youtube video.

The thing was, when I called her on it, when I said that without a vision there was no reasonable destination, that the outcome was not rosy, that she really shouldn’t try to invent a new literary form, she said she didn’t care, this was the story she wanted to tell and the way she wanted to tell it.

We all get to choose.

And – here is the worst part – she expects it to be great.

But… IMO it will sit there, for all eternity, without a publisher… until she finally hatches a vision for a reasonable outcome, even if ambitious, and for the nature of the story that could lead to such an outcome.  And that vision will substantially change both the story and her approach to it.

That’s why we need a vision for our stories.  If you envision a bestseller, the odds are orders of magnitude better that you’ll actually write one.

A viable vision will put her back on the path to success.  Because that path has signage and precedent to guide us.

Without vision we are blind and alone.  And the abyss awaits.

What’s your vision for your story?

*****

Click HERE if you’re up to having your story analyzed in context to your vision for it.

*****

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What’s Your ‘Vision’ For Your Story? is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

The Real Skinny on Conflict: Five Links and a Sample Chapter from “Story Physics”

Since we’ve been all over this subject lately, I think this is timely. 

A reader contacted me about going deeper into an exploration of the differences between IDEA… CONCEPT… and PREMISE.  The differences are huge, and critically important in context to story development. 

And yet, in casual conversation – even among agents and editors – the lines blur to the point of being synonymous. They may not know or care… but we absolutely should.

The following is a chapter from my new writing book, “Story Physics: Harnessing the Underlying Forces of Storytelling,” which comes out in June (Writers Digest Books).

Below that there are five links to prior Storyfix posts on the topic.  Use the Search bar (to the right) to find even more.

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Idea vs. Concept

Wherein we acknowledge that there is a difference, and it is everything.

Every spring, professional baseball players gather in Arizona and Florida for Spring Training.  Every single day they drill on basic fundamentals: fitness, batting practice, game situations.  And every day they improve.

This chapter is like that.  We’ve discussed this topic before, but now we’re going deeper, to a professional level of understanding.  This is a potential deal breaker.

I had lunch recently with a writer friend who is awesome.  She brought her lovely sister, and I brought my lovely and awesome wife—the prevailing awesomeness was almost overwhelming—and over omelets and gluten-free bread we had a grand time commiserating the experience of writing serious stories seriously.

Like most writers, my radar for “what if?” propositions is always rotating, and I got a hit when the conversation turned to the ladies room at one of the area’s hottest bars, the kind where all the women look like they’re on the opening episode of The Bachelor and all the men look like the buzz-cut, cheesy, golf-shirt-wearing guys whose reality television housewives are, for some reason, always chasing down.  It was their story, but it resonated with me as a potential idea.

At first blush it looked like a winner.  There was a time when I might have actually gone home and started writing it.  Because I believed that, if I did things properly, applied the right dramatic forces in just the right places with just the right touch, I could make any idea into a winner.

Hear this: You cannot make any idea into a winner, any more than you can make any kid into a professional athlete, any tune into a chart-topping hit, or any honest Joe into the President of the United States.  An idea that doesn’t have winning DNA needs to be morphed into one that does.

The good news is that DNA is ours to breed into the idea, by turning it into a concept with massively inherent potential.

The ladies talked about a woman who has served as the hostess in the ladies room at that famous local club for the past ten years.  This woman was beloved by all who had washed their dainty hands or reapplied makeup there.  I immediately pictured Viola Davis in an Olive Oyl (not a typo) pillbox hat, dishing out towels and smiles and sage advice for dollar tips.

Oh, the sights she must have seen in the room, the stories she must have heard.  She, it was suggested, should write a book.

A book of anecdotes and lessons learned.  An episodic book without an over-arcing plot, which I would have to totally dream up. (See how easy it is to be seduced by the belief that this type of story can become a novel?)

Not yet discouraged, I went in that direction.

A “what if?” descended on me: What if this woman heard something in that bathroom that she shouldn’t have heard?  What if she overheard whispers about someone in the bar who wasn’t supposed to be there, doing things that shouldn’t be done? And what if something happened later in the evening inside that bar, something bad, lighting a fuse toward the elimination of anyone who knew who might be at the center of it all?

Suddenly Viola Davis (I find myself always casting novels with stellar actors, even at the very first spark of inspiration) was the heroine running for her life while working to help the bumbling detectives find the bad guy before they found her in a dumpster.

I pitched the idea to the table, and resoundingly heard what most writers hear when they spout an off-the-cuff idea, especially to people who aren’t writers (although one of the three is, in fact, a great writer): Oh my God, you should write that!  Really!  That’d be so cool!

It was breakfast, mind you.  No alcohol involved.

Notice that while the initial idea energized them, it was the addition of a concept that got them out of their chairs.

We brainstormed for a while—always a fun exercise—taking it through the First Act to a proposed First Plot Point, at which time the food arrived and we turned our attentions elsewhere: to why some writers drink and others simply go mad. Sadly, these sometimes seem to be the only two available options.

But notice what happened here: The original idea was quickly subordinated to a conceptual story idea.  I had no guarantee that the ladies would have been as enamored with the latter as they were with the former, which—wait for it— wasn’t a story at all.  It was just an idea.  A door opening to a path that led to something else.

We had to turn the idea into a concept before it was worthy of consideration as a project.  And that, dear writer friends, is precisely what you need to do each and every time an idea explodes in your brain, before you start writing something from that idea.  Getting to the point where you can recognize this paradoxical moment is entirely the point of your writing journey.

This is the most common mistake I see: manuscripts based on ideas, rather than on concepts.

On the way home my wife asked me, “So, are you going to write that story?”

I didn’t have to think about it.  My answer was a firm, no-looking-back no. The reason had everything to do with story physics.  They just weren’t there for me.

Ideas are just that, and nothing more. 

They are aromas, not foods.  Promises, not deliveries.  Seeds, not gardens.

Ideas acquire value when they point us to something more substantive than whodunit gratification, when they put you, the writer, into a place that transcends immediate gratification and allows you to go deep and wide.

Ideas should scare the crap out of you.  Or, at least, they should excite you to the point of obsession.  When you link a compelling “what if?” proposition to a deeper realm of time-tested passion … now you’re on to something.

That’s the story you should write.

And while that first idea of the bathroom hostess did indeed lead to an idea about an innocent woman overhearing something dark, that idea was, for me, still void of anything magnetic or compelling enough to keep growing it.  I had no real passion for the ladies room at this club, nor for the social dynamic that becomes the social arena of such a story, which was the story’s original energy.  I’ve never been inside a crowded ladies room full of preening cougars—and yeah, that sounds kinda interesting, I admit—but who am I to write this story?

If you happen to like it, have at it. It’s all yours.

If I’d been harboring a thing for ladies restrooms … maybe it could have flown.  But no.  Perhaps someone who does have that closeted fascination could have grown that idea into something workable.

Great stories demand our passion.

Not that you have to have lived every story you tell.  What I’m saying is that you should bring a longstanding, or at least overwhelming desire to have lived it.  Starting a book on the heels of a breakfast conversation is like getting married after a conversation in the checkout line at Costco.

It happens.  It never ends well, even in the most romantic of fiction.

The desire to live vicariously in our stories needs to be matched by our passion for the landscape upon which the story will unfold.  That’s what makes it work.  In Nelson Demille’s Night Fall, for example, he brought back his iconic ex-military hero to investigate the hypothetical cover-up of an exploded airliner (this was based on a real case, TWA Flight 800, which exploded over the coast of Long Island on July 17, 1996, claiming 230 souls and igniting conspiracy theories about a cover up).  There was only one reason to do that: Demille had a passion for it.  Perhaps he was furious about what he thought was the truth.

What floats your boat?  How would you live your life differently if you could start over, what would you do, who would you be, where would you go, what would you embrace? These are the questions a writer should ask before taking any “what if?” idea seriously. Consider hatching an idea from your passion, and then develop a concept that allows you to stage it and explore it.

This crystallized for me one morning while reading about a new J.J. Abrams television show, Alcatraz, in which criminals who seemingly disappeared from an island fifty years ago show up in present-daySan Francisco and start killing people.  They’ve traveled through time.  They might be ghosts.  But the dead bodies they leave in their wake are real, and they must be found and stopped.

Now that interests me, both on a “what if?” level and a time-tested passion level.  I wish to hell I’d thought of it.  Time travel is one of the most intriguing premises I can think of … and yet, I’ve never written a time travel story.

Hmmm.  I should look at that.  Because the passion for it is there.  All sorts

of thematic, dramatic possibilities await within this realm.  All I need now is a killer “what if?” proposition that keeps me awake at night.  (A side note: Alcatraz tanked, cancelled after one season, despite the strength of the idea and the craft of the people who made it.  As William Goldman said, “Nobody knows anything.”  That said, we should pursue that which interests us to the point of obsession and leave our passing fancies on the shelf.)

The books I’ve published were all, to some extent, grounded in something I have an obsessive, passionate interest in.  Something I know.

Don’t jump too fast at your “what ifs?” 

They are like items on a menu … the picture is appealing, and you know it’ll taste good.  But will it nourish?  Will it fill you, does it check something off your bucket list, will it give you focus and joy and challenge?  Is the idea worth a year of your life?  Do you want to be remembered for this story?

These are the questions you need to ask, relative to the initiating idea, before you ask “What if?”

Write from a place of passion and obsession and innate, time-tested curiosity, a place where issues collide with the conceptual, set in an arena that fuels the drama as much as any characters you can place within it.

Write the story you should be writing. If a story is worthy, you should be feeling the story physics tugging at you even before you write a word.

Copyright © 2013 by Larry Brooks. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means. 

Story Physics is published by Writer’s Digest Books, an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.

*****

Links on this topic:

http://storyfix.com/the-hierarchy-of-clarity

http://storyfix.com/good-to-great-nail-a-better-concept-to-empower-your-story

http://storyfix.com/the-secret-to-a-successful-concept

http://storyfix.com/when-bad-ideas-sabotage-killer-concepts

http://storyfix.com/the-fix-is-in-the-square-one-story-killer

http://storyfix.com/nanowrimo-21-still-struggling-with-concept

 

The Real Skinny on Conflict: Five Links and a Sample Chapter from “Story Physics” is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

A Webinar, Three Spiffs, and a Promise

(Check for an update on the “Side Effects” Deconstruction at the end of this post.)

I truly believe that writing workshops can change your life.  Or that they should change your life. For many a killer workshop can become the primary catalytic event in the entire writing journey, a moment of clarity that flips the switch from hazy notion to bona fide Epiphany.

Those Epiphanies are the best part.   I like to think I specialize in them.

So let me cut to the part when I invite you to attend my Webinar this week, and then overtly and proudly bribe you to do so.  Officially it’s a spiff, a premium bonus for your money and time, but bribe has a certain literary panache to it, don’t you think?

I do this with great confidence.  Because what you don’t know (until now), is that my goal for this Webinar is to OVER-DELIVER.

Here’s the 411:

My 90-minute live workshop runs this Thursday, March 21, at 1:00 Eastern.  It’s being hosted by Writers Digest University, the best in the business.  Tuition is $89… but keep reading, there’s a discount for Storyfix readers.

This week’s title:

“From Good to Great: How to Apply the Principles of Story Physics to Craft the Best Fiction of your Life.”

This is not a rehash (“Good to Great” has been used before, but more as a theme and a generic goal than a branded product description; the context here is about the standards for an outcome).

Let me tell you what you’ll get… why you should drop everything and tune in.  Or if you can’t, opt-in anyway because the webinar is recorded and you’ll get the whole thing, uncut, at your convenience within a few days later.

You can read the official course description, and sign up, HERE.

You’ll see that this is a somewhat advanced course, taking the power of the Six Core Competencies to an applications level – with a focus on WHY this will make your story better than if you don’t.

WHY has everything to do with the power of STORY PHYSICS.  And when was the last time you heard THAT covered at a writing conference?

In fact, here’s the titles they wouldn’t let me run:

           What to DO to your story to make it Better than all the other stories in the Inbox, so it will actually SELL…

Beat the pants off the story to be read after yours, or before it, by out-writing the guy with his name on the title page…

How to turn a vanilla concept into a triple chocolate thunder story that requires a beach towel for a napkin and a CPR kit applied by a psychologist when the read has finished…

How to write a story that changes lives…

How to give yourself a shot at immortality, or at least an A-List career and a shot on NPR…

How to legitimately aim WAY higher than self-publishing…

How to Know and DO what Grisham, Baldacci, Connelly, Demille, Stockett, Brown, Collins, Scott Z. Burns and other Bestselling authors and screenwriters Know and DO…

How to Finally Understand what all those Rejection Slips Weren’t telling you…

Yeah, I’m pitching this really hard. 

Because I believe in it.   It’s proven, hard-core, center-of-the-writing-proposition stuff.  This is a 90-minute experience that can, if you hear it and let it in, completely change your writing life, by putting your story on steroids.

I won’t soft-peddle it, I won’t mince words about what is required to bust out and cause your story to pursue the realm of greatness.  Nobody else is saying this stuff, quite this way.

In fact, I’ll tell you right now: it’s story physics. 

The forces the ignite and drive all the components and principles and parts of a story, including your genius prose.  And if you’ve never heard of them, it won’t matter, they are in complete control of how your story works.

And they don’t land on the page by accident.  They happen through choices – informed choices – made by the authors who understand them.

This workshop will define and present those choices to you.

And we’re offering three incentives, in case this outcome isn’t enough of an incentive, to help you pull the trigger on this and join the fun.

The Discount

Storyfix readers get ten bucks off the regular fee.  Your cost is $79… just find the Discount box (on the left) on the WD shopping cart form and enter this code: WDS321LW.  (This discount expires the next day, and it not valid for post-airing archive purchases… but does apply to access if paid pre-broadcast.)

The Freebie

All participants will receive a personal critique (by me) of answers to three key questions about their story… answers that will either send you down a path of greatness, or not.  I’ll tell you which, and why.

Or, if you’d like deeper feedback on your story than that…

The Spiff that Would be an Opportunity

As you know I offer a $100 Story Coaching Service that looks closely at your story’s concept and infrastructure, as well as the other core competencies.  If you’d rather have than THIS as the spiff instead of the Freebie 3-question format described above, just send me your online receipt showing your registration…

… and I’ll do THIS level of Q&A evaluation with you for HALF price ($50… or $75 for a 3-day turnaround).  Use Paypal (to storyfixer@gmail.com) with that transmission, and you’re in.  (I can also invoice you through Paypal, which allows you to use a credit card without having to have a Paypal membership.)

This deal gets you the 90-minute webinar AND the Coaching document for a total of $129 (paid separately – $79 to Writers Digest… $50 to me).  Keep in mind, the Coaching alone costs $100 (and is worth orders of multiples more, based on feedback)… so this is your chance to get the Webinar, as well, for only twenty-nine bucks.

The Secret Strategy

Don’t tell anyone, but here’s an even better deal, especially if you’re in a writing/critique group, or if you teach a writing class of any kind (this material is very student-friendly, too): have some other writers over, serve coffee and turn the volume up on your laptop.  You all get the 90 minutes of Webinar for ONE discounted tuition, and a whole truckload of material to kick around, debate and use as benchmarks for your team critiques.

Divvy that up any way you’d like.

So there it is.  Four ways to beat the system and get a career-empowering mentoring experience for your writing.

I promise to rock your writing world by tearing down the wall between you and your highest dream.  I’m not saying it will be easy, but the code will be broken, the gates swung wide and your adrenaline turned up to 10.

Quick note on “Side Effects” Deconstruction

I just bought and read the film script for “Side Effects.”  An early draft, actually, which illuminates a before-and-after feel for how the script evolved and the edit was completed.  I’ll be posting an article on this, discussing what we can learn from it, very soon.

You can order a PDF copy of the “Side Effects” script, or dozens of other current and classic films, for $15… HERE.  (No commission to me.)

A Webinar, Three Spiffs, and a Promise is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

“Side Effects” (deconstruction #4) – The Debatable First Plot Point

(NOTE: this post is loaded with links that will take you back to basic introductions to the story structure concepts being referenced here… I encourage you to go there if you’re new to, or foggy about, any of these terms.)

Relative to my last post, my wife said, “You sound like a whiny little bitch.”

Some of you may have thought the same thing with regard to my announcing that the “Side Effects” deconstruction is over.

Okay, she didn’t say that… but I realized that’s how I may have sounded.  But the blow-back was clear, and on two fronts — you really did appreciate this (a Sally Fields moment for me), and, you want more.

With the Beat Sheet (scene log) and the summary of the story milestones up and available,  the structural stuff about this story has been covered.  But just as valuable is a discussion of some of the finer points of the story, especially when they translate to an upward view of the learning curve.  So I’m delighted to continue on that track, intermittently with posts on other stuff, over the next couple of weeks.

The finer points are what separates the published from the unpublished, so this is where the gold is.

The movie (“Side Effects”) is still out there.  I encourage you to see it, and warn you that after reading this deconstruction you’ll want to see it again.

The FPP in “Side Effects”

Some stories give us a First Plot Point that is as obvious as spotting an NBA center at a convention of jockeys.  But when a story is peppered with Part 1 Inciting Incidents (“Side Effects” has two, possibly three, depending on what you are about to read), and when the agenda of the story is mischievous and cloaked in stealth (totally the case in “Side Effects”), the FPP can be slippery.

Which is perfectly okay.  Brilliant, even.

This film has a highly debatable First Plot Point (the link here is different than the one above), in terms of what story beat represents it, and where it falls.  In my deconstruction I suggested that the FPP was when Dr. Banks prescribes Albixa to Emily (the anti-depressant drug that becomes the McGuffin of this story), thus lighting the fuse on the whole caper.  He’s been manipulated into doing so, and thus it represents the transition from setup to response.

Debate potentially enters the conversation, though, when you look at what I have already labeled as the first Pinch Point — when Emily stabs her husband to death.  Clearly this is the more dramatic story beat, certainly one that changes the story for the hero (Banks) in a more visible and actionable way than does the Ablixa prescription moment (my FPP nomination) described above.

Compounding this potential confusion is the location of this murderous moment within the story.  The optimal position of the First Pinch Point is the 3/8ths mark (37.5 percent in, squarely in the middle of Part 2).  In “Side Effects,” it happens at the 33rd percentile point.

Which is early.  In this case, perhaps confusingly so.

Which poses the question… is the husband’s murder an early Pinch Point, or a late FPP?

Could be either, and by either standard, since it actually does fit the definition of both milestones.

If the murder is the FPP, then the earlier prescription of Ablixa (which also fits within the classic definition for the FPP) becomes another (the third) Inciting Incident.  Given that (per definition) the “quest” launched by the FPP is that of the hero, and that the earlier (by about ten minutes) Alibxa prescription moment doesn’t visibly begin the hero’s quest in terms of his own awareness (in fact, we don’t even realize that was a potential FPP until later)… gray is cast on which point it was.

Certainly, the husband’s murder fills the FPP bill (as well as the Pinch Point criteria), other than its location (it’s quite late for an FPP, even in a film; a book FPP target is optimally at 20 percent, in a film it’s 25%).  It visibly launches Banks’ problem and the quest that springs from it (classic FPP criteria), it is defined by the conflict it injects into the story (ditto), and it clearly separates a Part 1 setup context from a Part 2 response context.

Just as clearly, in this story, it does everything a Pinch Point is designed to do.

It can’t be both.  A story needs both… and they are always separate story beats.

So which is it?  What’s the point of this discussion?

My answer: it doesn’t matter.

Until Scott Z. Burns weighs in on this, we’ll never really know what he intended in this regard.

Which is my point: we may not ever really know, the audience won’t care from a technical point of view… but THE WRITER MUST KNOW.

The writer needs to be clear on this.  Because success — the optimizing of story physics — depends on a clear contextual shift from Part 1 (setup) and Part 2 (response), with the FPP — like a 21st birthday separating adolescence from adulthood — being that story-changing milestone.

We can be sure Scott Z. Burns was clear… even if we’re not.  Even if he gave us a handful of killer Inciting Incidents that may or may not muddy the water in this story.  The muddiness is by design… it is the narrative strategy (one of the six key realms of story physics) of this film.

And that is the other tasty morsel of learning here.  

As writers we have options.  We always have the latitude, freedom and creative leeway to do it however we want.

Up to and including self destruction, if we don’t understand these structural/contextual principles and apply them purposefully and strategically.

*****

Need more basics? Use the SEARCH FUNCTION to the right, enter “First Plot Point” to link to over 100 posts that cover this and related topics (including those linked within this post).  The further back into the archive you go, the more basic and introductory these discussions will be.

Or you could just buy my book, “Story Engineering,” which covers story structure in depth, as well as the other five of the Six Core Competencies of storytelling.

“Side Effects” (deconstruction #4) – The Debatable First Plot Point is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

In Lieu of… the Q1 StoryFix Newsletter

Wherein we catch up on Storyfix-related stuff.

THE OLD NEWSLETTER

Over 4000 of you have subscribed to my quarterly newsletter.  About two dozen of you are confused about the difference between these newsletters and the twice-weekly (roughly) posts on this site.

The newsletter is for news.  A round up the latest , some media referrals, and a chance for me to rant about whatever.

The posts are all about content and craft.

The posts remain available via directly-delivery subscription, via RSS or email. Click on the FEEDBURNER icon to the right.

As for the quarterly newsletter… I’ve put it on indefinite hold.  Reason: the economics, which don’t pencil out.  The third- party newsletter vendors charge a pretty penny for distribution to over 4000 recipients.  I will get it going again when I find a vendor with pricing that works for me, and the existing database will plug right in.

Meanwhile, another issue: You know that little pop-up window, the irritating one that appears when you arrive at this site, asking you to sign up for the newsletter?  I get one to three emails a day informing me that mechanism “broken.”

Yes, it is.  That signup form connects to… nothing at all at the present time.

Trouble is, I have no freaking idea how to SHUT DOWN that dang popup window.  If you know WordPress and can point me toward the means of disabling it, I’d love to hear from you.

Lame, I know.  But I don’t have a webmaster, and WordPress is about as user friendly as the cockpit of the space shuttle.  Seriously.

NEW WEBINAR… SOON!

My next Writers Digest University live online webinar is THURSDAY, March 21.

CLICK HERE to get the skinny.  It’s going to be hugely and immediately useful – comparable to an entire weekend workshop, or several dozen Storyfix posts – for writers at any level.

Let me add this to the significant nuts and bolts description you’ll find via that link.  Out of 1000 pitches submitted to agents, about 250 will get a “request for pages” response.  Of those, about ten will receive an offer of representation.  Of those, two to five might sell to a publisher.

Not because of the writing and execution – that’s a given, you have to bring that to the party to even get past the parking attendant – but because of the STORY.

Agents and editors aren’t looking for the next great writer, they’re looking for the next great STORY.  And the bar for that is quite high, and the path to it anything but simple.

Rough odds.  Just keeping it real here.

This webinar is more than “how to write a good story.” the old fashioned way.  This webinar is about writing a novel or a screenplay that is good ENOUGH to survive these cuts.  What it takes to emerge from an inbox full of decent stories to become a potential success.

There are criteria and benchmarks for that level of storytelling, which are rarely discussed or defined (the general conversation is about basics).  Such an understanding resides beyond the intuitive and is a rare thing indeed, leading toward a story that is a whole in excess of the story’s parts.

This webinar is about THAT.  About what it takes to write stories at THAT level.

Which I’m betting is your goal.  And am sure it should be.

Then again there’s always luck and good timing.

Writers Digest is allowing me to offer you a TEN DOLLAR DISCOUNT when you sign up for the webinar on their site (which is the only place you can sign up).  Just enter this code –  WDS321LW – in the space provided, and the $10 discount off the regular $89 tuition is yours.

Please join me for this experience. We’re going to cut right to it. If clarity and direct access to the truth about what your story needs to be to land an agent and a publisher and then – this is for self-published authors, too, ESPECIALLY – how to grab readers and generate referral word of mouth… then I invite you to join me.

A REFERRAL

I heard from a StoryFix reader today, telling me he’s reviewed “Story Engineering” on his website.  His opening hook in that review reads like this:

 “When I read first Larry Brooks, and after I got over my very British attitude to his very American style, my first reaction was, ‘this is crap’, and I set out to prove it.”

Yeah, I winced, too.  Despite looking like I can bench press a Volkswagen (can’t do that, though I can lift the end of one off the ground), I’m a sensitive guy who’s genuinely just trying to help.

The book actually gets that a lot.  It’s human nature to reject that which challenges your paradigms or illusions.  And the truth hurts when you realize you don’t actually know what you thought you knew, or enough, about storytelling.

Which is why I urge you to read the rest of this guy’s review.  Click HERE to read his thoughts on how “Story Engineering” turned out to be his friend, despite his first impression.  (Also, the most recent review of SE on Amazon is pretty cool, too… that’s why I do this.)

Then read more from his website, which is killer stuff.  The author (David Powell) has also just self-published his first novel (a conceptual literary drama), which you can get HERE, for only $1.56 on Kindle. Haven’t read it yet, but the concept is compelling (take note), and based on his blog, he deserves a shot.

THE DECONSTRUCTION OF “SIDE EFFECTS”

That was going just fine… until the last post.  A post that I spent – not an exaggeration – over 10 hours preparing, include two more viewings of the movie.

Talk about economics that don’t pencil out.

Exactly ONE person responded (thank you, Robert).  The three previous posts in the series received 21, 27 and 17 comments, respectively.  Which is actually sort of thin, given the intentions and the amount of work required.

Not sure what went wrong, but I think this deconstruction is done.  The learning is all here and available (check the archive)… the beat sheet, the story milestones (placement and discussion), wrestling with the concept and execution, all in context to the principles that make this story so much more than what it seems at first, and more than the tepid market response it’s getting.

“Side Effects” is actually TOO smart for the mass market, I believe.  Which means that we, as writers, need to dive in and soak up what it teaches us, despite our targeted reading level.

If you want more on “Side Effects,” leave a comment with a specific focus.  Meanwhile, I’ll put all the unused dishes away from the proverbial party that everyone left early, and move on.

Going forward… I’ll be addressing the topics that came in (in abundance) in my recent call for Storyfix post ideas.

SEARCH BAR

Yes, this site has one, and it works.  It’s newly placed and titled in the right column, right under the intro section.

STORY PHYSICS 

My forthcoming writing book is pre-selling pretty well.  You can find it on Amazon HERE.  It releases mid-June in paperback and Kindle (and the other digital venues).

My new novel (“Deadly Faux”), by the way, will be released by Turner Publishing in October.  See the cover to the right and click on it to go to Amazon, where you can pre-order.  That would be nice.

In support of the launch all five of my earlier novels are being republished this fall and early in 2014, also by Turner Publishing.  It’s like a rebirth with a better body (trade paperbacks, new covers, etc.).

Those, too, are up on Amazon, though the covers (which are on the Books page) aren’t posted there yet.

Gotta go… somebody parked a Volkswagen in front of the mailboxes, and the Mail dude is asking for help.

Thanks for playing.  More soon.

Larry

In Lieu of… the Q1 StoryFix Newsletter is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com