Larry Brooks's Blog, page 32

A Pep Talk

This little gem is going viral, and quickly.  You’ll see why.

Writers need pep talks as much as any demographic niche out there, at least in terms of dreams and careers and dealing with rejection.  There are worse things to be, darker situations, certainly… but as one writer to another…

… here’s a pep talk for you, a writer.

Enjoy.  And share with your writer friends… and anyone else who needs one.

The Pep Talk

A Pep Talk is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

Beware the Under-Cooked Story Concept

“I see this a lot.”

I’m a little wary of opening with that, but I have to confess, it’s the first thing that keeps popping into my head when I want to address – again – the recurring and story-killing issue of writers using an undercooked “concept” as their opening point of reference for their story.

Story ideas that aren’t really concepts at all.

I write about this issue… a lot.

Because I do see this… a lot.

In fact, I’ve analyzed six story plans in the last 24 hours, and four of them suffer from this conceptual short-selling.  To an extent that the story itself won’t be publishable until the writer understands how they’ve tanked the story before it even gets underway, simply by virtue of trying to write it without a compelling concept.

The Questionnaire I use in my story coaching work asks the writer to define their “concept” in two different ways, and then again, in several more that reference the concept to see how it will actually show up and play out in the story.

Get this wrong, and the story tanks.  Or at best, the drafting process becomes a search for a stronger concept, which, without a vision for an outcome, is a tough way to proceed.  Especially when the writer isn’t even aware that they’ve created this labyrinth of dramatic options, most paths leading nowhere.

Without a strong concept a story becomes episodic. 

An examination of a life through a character.  A look at theme by simply seeing it in various forms.  A shifting focus from one source of dramatic tension to something else entirely, episode by episode, without a baseline core story driven by a conceptual proposition driving it all.

You rarely see these in bookstores.  Almost every published story has a core, conceptually-driven dramatic narrative.  A specific hero’s quest.  And yet, among the unpublished this remains an unspoken benchmark, smothered in reviews that focus on other things and writing teachers who take this for granted in introducing authors to the craft.

It’s so much more fun to talk about writing novels that transport us to other places, explore important issues, live another vivid life.  But that is only one of the six realms of story physics – vicarious experience – leaving five others un-addressed and seamlessly integrated, like the heart beating inside a lovable puppy, to the untrained student eye.

Weekly television shows get away with it.

It’s why they’re called episodes.

Perhaps that’s the seductive problem… we think we can package “The Good Wife” or “Girls” into novel.  A story “about” a woman working in a law firm.  A story of three girls trying to make it in New York.  The “adventures of Carrie in “Sex in the City.”  But you can’t leave it at that.  On TV these character-driven “soft” stories deliver on and pay off on a concept every single week.  If/when they become a full length feature (or a novel), there will be a singular dramatic question driving it.

Rent the “Sex in the City” DVD, you’ll see that Carrie and the girls have a specific mission and quest, a hero’s path, with a specific goal.  A concept.  (Big dumps Carrie as a result of the advice of pals – that’s a specific problem… this isn’t “the adventures of Carrie in New York,” this is a concept, driven by a dramatic question: will Carrie win back the affection of Big before he moves on?)

Episodic storytelling in a novel – the outcome of conceptually under-cooked story ideas – is almost always a deal killer in print.

A Baseline Awareness

I’m blown away at how many writers – beginners and advanced, even published – don’t get what a concept is, and what it means to a story.

Everybody seems to think they have an answer to the question: “What is your story’s concept?”… and yet, what I see are actually more like ideas that have yet to evolve into a concept… themes that are mistaken for a concept… character snapshots that are mistaken for concept.

Too often they are under-cooked.  Writers are describing the stage, without opening a conceptual door to a drama that will unfold upon it.

So let me be clear. 

An “idea” is not inherently a concept.  Not until it transcends the simplicity of a singular arena or theme or character, and moves toward the unspooling of conflict-driven dramatic tension.

Too often the writer answers this instead: “What is your story about?”  That’s not necessarily a concept, either.  Let’s look at a bestseller to help (no pun) illustrate.

What is “The Help” about?

● Three African-American maids in the south.  Yes, it is about that.  But is that a concept?  No.  It’s an idea.  A starting point.  Could go anywhere.  And that’s the problem… when a writer begins with something this vague, it often does go anywhere, several places, either at once or in sequence… and the story ends up being about some combination of nothing and everything.  Such stories become an episodic “The Adventures of So-And-So,” which, like any other story, isn’t an effective novel until that becomes much more conceptual.

● Racial prejudice in the South.  Yes, it is.  But is that a concept?  No.  Not yet.  This is more theme than concept.   Could be anything, most likely a series of rather unconnected stuff happening to the characters.

● A book project between a young and wealthy writer that requires  the participation of the black maids being oppressed by their white employers in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi.  Now this is a concept.  Because it describes more than what the story is about, it opens the door to a dramatic question.

 

Notice that the first two answers – an idea, and a theme – do not pose a dramatic question.  And that the much stronger answer, the one that really is a concept, does.  “Will Skeeter enlist the help of the maids to finish her book, or will they accept the status quo, thus derailing Skeeters dream and keeping themselves in bondage?”

It’s about, at a conceptual level, Skeeter’s book, her quest… not the theme or the setting.  The themes emerge from that concept.  They almost always do.

And thus, we discover the bar you’re reaching for: what is the dramatic question that naturally and compellingly springs forth from your conceptual starting place?

As an exercise, answer the question right now: what is the concept for your story?

This becomes a powerful acid test for your story concept.  Remember, concept arises from the potential range of the idea… and a dramatic question emerges from that concept.

From there, the dramatic question leads to the definition of a hero’s goal and quest… and in turn to the identification of an obstacle to that quest… and then the stakes of that quest… and then, the sequence of that quest.

No dramatic question, no story.   No conflict arising from it, no stakes… no story.

No conflict-driven hero’s quest, a singular problem to solve and/or goal to strive fore… no story.  It really boils down to that.

Or, if you have a whole list of dramatic questions without priority or hierarchy – the determination of a core story – then you risk an episodic “adventures of…” story model.

And you better be Jonathan Franzen to pull that off.

If you do know the dramatic question and the core story it leads to, because the concept has already put it out there, then you are in conceptual territory.

But if you don’t know… if there are a whole bunch of potential dramatic questions at hand (which puts you at risk of exploring them all, which will almost certainly kill your story through episodic storytelling)… then chances are you are still at Square One, staring at what is really an idea or a theme that is not yet imbued with concept.

And, you’ll either realize now or later, you’re not ready to write the story yet.

Another Acid Test

Ask, in context to your concept: what is my hero’s core story goal… what opposes it… why… and what is at stake?

Don’t be confused, your novel or screenplay can and even should be about multiple facets of the hero’s experience.  But don’t confuse any of it with the core story.  In successful novels there is always a core hero’s quest, something to achieve and/or survive, in the form of a problem to solve, a goal to reach, or some combination of both… with an antagonist (bad guy, or opposing force) blocking that path.

Keep asking the right questions about your concept. 

What dramatic question does it pose?  What hero’s quest emerges from it?  What opposes the hero on that path?  What are the stakes?

A great idea can take you to these.  For some, the writing of drafts is a path toward discovering these answers.  Whatever works for you.

The most important thing is your awareness of these questions, and the ultimate need for answers.

The sooner you know what the concept of your story is, an answer that resides well above and beyond your idea, arena or theme, the closer you’ll be to actually bringing it alive on the page.

****

Sometimes another set of eyes – schooled eyes – can be just the ticket to help put you over the top on this, perhaps the most important storytelling variable of all.

Click HERE to see if your story concept is at this level yet… or not.

Click HERE to see if the plan for your story’s narrative results in a compelling core story, well told… or not.

****

Click HERE to see an excerpt from the film “Adaptation” (2002), on this very subject. (WARNING: do NOT click if f-word language offends you.) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beware the Under-Cooked Story Concept is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

The Hierarchy of Clarity

By now you probably know what I do: I write fiction… I write books and blog posts about writing fiction… and as a “day job,” I coach writers and their stories.  It is from beneath this last hat that I write this post… because this is what I see: writers who are not clear about what they are doing with their story ideas and concepts, if there is one… or what this even means.
And so, if you’ll permit me to rant – picture me at your writing conference, up there pacing behind a podium, shirt soaked through, sweat flying off my forehead, the guys in the next room sending word for me to turn it down… that’s how it looks – in an effort to clarify what clarity means, and why it is essential.
A great story IDEA is essential, in whatever form it arrives. Let’s be clear on that.
What you do with that idea, how you expand it into a story, is even more essential.  It is the lack of awareness of that very criteria – what constitutes greatness… what to DO with a great idea without watering it down… when to know when you’re there, or not – that is what I see being misunderstood, and mishandled, almost every day.
And it’s something I learn from each time I do.  My goal here is to share that learning with you …even if it feels like I’m drilling it to your brain with a blunt industrial tool.
Sometimes that’s what it takes.  I’ve been doing this for decades, and I still can’t get the sound of that drill out of my head.
And to be honest, it keeps me sane.  Because it’s that sound, that clarity, that propels me forward with a growing passion for storytelling.  Because it keeps hope alive.
Without clarity, hope is a crap shoot.  And the crap is winning.
This is long and chewy.  Buckle in.
****
A Manifesto
Relative to our stories – past, current and future – we are always in one of four places, occasionally with feet in more than one camp.  The only time you’re not is when there is no story at all, past or future, on your writing radar.
Let’s get clear on that.  It is the first thing, among several things, that you absolutely need to be clear about: where you are in the story development/writing process.
The first of those four phases is INTENTION. 
And your intention, if not clear, can kill your story before you write a word of it.
You are looking for an idea.  A starting place.  Or if you think you have it, you are somewhere between declaring it and making time for it to become a story.  A pretty safe place, unless the story won’t stop haunting you.  Nothing at all happens, other than living with that particular anxiety, until you move on.
The risk here is this: you want to write a story, any story, more than you are certain you have a great story to tell.  You believe you can make your idea great.  And so you contrive, you force the mundane in the general direction of the impatient vision of greatness. 
You walk out of the writing conference energize, pumped up, ready to being making your dream come true.  And so, that night you begin writing a story that wasn’t there that morning. 
And thus the chicken droppings seek to become chicken salad.  Be aware of the difference, be clear on the difference… success begins with the raw ingredients.
You need to be clear on the difference between an idea and a story.  Because here in this first phase, if you aren’t clear, one of two things is inevitable: you will return to square-one to find that clarity, or you will lose your way, perhaps without awareness, and very soon.  The equivalent of swimming further out to sea, with no ship in sight and no hope of landfall.
You need to be clear on whether or not you are ready to move from idea to story.  Do you know what this really means, what it involves?  The clearer you are on that, the better off you and the story will be. Writing a story is a journey, a long one, fraught with risks and traps… you better pack, you might want to be armed with knowledge, and you may benefit from either a map, a GPS or a learning curve. 
An idea sustains you for about a chapter, or five.  From there, much more is required to qualify as a story.  Where and how that transition happens in a story… this is perhaps the MOST IMPORTANT THING you need to be aware of as a writer.
Nothing wrong with setting out butt-naked on this path, without a clue… as long as you are clear on what this means.  It means you’re already swimming in the next phase.  You’re signing up for a different experience than the writer who holds the story is already clear, legitimately, in their head. 
Be clear on that, too.
The next phase is THE SEARCH FOR STORY, and this is a whopper. 
Be clear: the search for a story idea (the first phase we’ve just dispensed with) is a very different animal than the search for the story that grows out of that idea. 
For many this is the writing process itself, the creation of a draft, leading to another draft, and on it goes.  For others – myself included here, with a learning curve that brings me to this place – this phase is the exploration of story possibilities and options, heading toward the stringing together of a story sequence through a series of expositional beats, laid out over an established grid of story physics-optimizing parts, milestones and contextual missions. 
Also known as story structure… the principle-driven, story physics empowered guide to “what to write, where it goes, and why.”  The more clarity you have on that, the better off you’ll be.
Yes, you can make it all up as go. But however you do it – picture a chef making up a recipe, trying this and that, a dash here, a dash there, setting the cooking temp and timer with a blindfold on – it won’t work as well as it could – as well as it should, as it needs to in a competitive professional endeavor – until it  all unfolds in a certain way, in a certain dramatic/contextual order. 
Be clear this, too.  Because if you’re not, many false, half-empty (void of story physics) destinations await.  You may be alone with your process, but we’re all stuffed into the same padded cell with the criteria for what makes a story work.
And then, however you’ve searched – drafter or planner – you actually find your story. 
One that opens the door to the power of story physics, and naturally falls into expositional alignment with a smooth application of story structure.  No forcing.  No contrivance.  No lack of drama or stakes or emotional resonance.
Somehow, somewhere, sometime, you find that story.
While this isn’t really a phase – it’s more a milestone, an Epiphany, a sudden shift from one phase to the next – it is critical to a successful storytelling effort.  And you have to be clear on what it means, on what a discovered, fully-realized story really demands, entails and offers.
Because if you aren’t clear, if you think you’re done before you’ve actually found the core story that has risen from your initial idea… or if you never really get that you’ve found the story… or if you fail to recognize an acceptable benchmark for having found a story at this level… you remain in a sort of search-for-story Twilight Zone, a vehicle floating in space with no place to land.  Sooner or later you just pull it over to the curb and hope for the best.
Failed, unpublished, unsatisfying stories come in two flavors: the unfinished (because the writer wasn’t clear on what constitutes being finished, the nature of the high bar of story excellence), and the underwhelming, even when finished.  When the idea and concept itself, while perhaps fully realized, didn’t pack a compelling punch.  A chicken dropping wearing the hat of a chicken salad. You need to be clear on what this means to the agents and editors who will judge your story, to the readers who will embrace or reject it, and to yourself.
They won’t care about your pretty sentences.  Or the setting.  Or the strong themes.  If the story doesn’t push them off their chair, you’re done.
Be clear, you can’t make a compelling story out of anything at all, even if it compels you.  What’s compelling to you is not the criteria for commercial success.  You need to play a longer game than that.
Your idea, and the concept that springs from it, need to have chops.  Teeth.  Explosive potential.  Simply executing the hell out of a vanilla, trite, been-there-read-that idea – even within genres that seem to do this all day – isn’t enough these days.  No more than anyone can walk in off the street and compete for a place in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, a starting spot on the defensive line with the Jets, a role in the next Spielberg film, or a book contract. 
Oh, that… you need to be clear that what you’re doing is just that significantly competitive and challenging and compelling… and you better show up at the tryout with the real thing – a story idea with chops and promise and inherent dramatic power – to show the judges when your name is called.
When you do legitimately find your story, hopefully that story, you enter a third phase: the POLISH. 
You start to hone the story you’ve discovered and embraced and make it the best it can possibly be.  You pound on it, sharpen it, test it, twist it, make it all shiny and perfect and fresh and powerful and deep and surprising and titillating and scary and unforgettable.  
And just as important, you make it credible.  Logical.  You make it work.  Without making stuff up because you have to, without huge stretches in logic (like 14 year old heroes who out-smart the local police to find the bad guy).  Contrivance is the hallmark of the forced story.  You need to be clear on that.
What this involves is directly related to the previous phase, because how you’ve searched for your story defines what you now have before you in the way of polishing it.
And then, at some point in this process… you’re done.
The story has been WRITTEN.  Many writers never get to this point.  Oh, they think they do, but too often they mistake an abandoned search for story or a misread of the map that was supposed to bring you to this point for this phase, the final realm of the writing experience.  Sometimes without ever really realizing that it’s an illusion.
Intention… Search… Polish… Retrospect.  Relative to your story, you are in one of those four boxes, always.
Are you clear on where you are on this path?  And what is required of you in each phase of the process?   Are you clear on where the bar resides, what is looks and feels and smells like?  Will you know it when you see it?
Of course, this is the marriage of art and craft, so total clarity is never assured.  Or so it goes.
But that’s actually not true.  The criteria is clear.  The targets are there.  The tools are there.  Be clear on that.  Just as clear as you may not be on how significantly challenging it will be to get there.
So what? you’re asking.  I’ll tell you so what.
Yes, you can and will bounce back and forth between these four phases of the story experience – it’s called starting over, or revising, or realizing you aren’t done yet when you thought you had – but that’s always a good thing, it puts you back in the game. 
Realizing you aren’t clear is what leads you, ultimately, to becoming clear.  It’s thinking you’re clear, when you’re actually not, that will kill your dream.
It’s when you think you’re done writing and you’re not… it’s when you think you’re done searching and are now polishing, but in fact are finishing a story that really hasn’t yet been fully realized, that it depends on contrivance and leans into apathy… it’s when you don’t know what the criteria and benchmarks are for really being done, at a level that matches your aspiration. 
Even then, being clear on when all this is the case is a good thing.
It’s called being rejected.  Over and over.  It’s called insanity, the kind only writers know.  A dark unrealized dream as the parent of a story that never walks the path you envisioned for it.
Usually, there’s a reason waiting to be claimed.  To teach you.  To make you better next time.  Or even to jump back in at Phase Two (the search for story) and make it all right.
That’s my day job.  Finding out what isn’t clear.  To the reader, to the story, or to you.
A summary of what needs to be clear:
It’s like being clear on making a bomb, because you are clear on the principles of chemistry that makes stuff explode. These are the guys who survive bomb-making. 
Your story, to some extent, needs to be a bomb, one that explodes into the consciousness of your reader.
You can’t ever really be clear on most of the things that reside down the execution road until you are crystal clear on certain larger and higher issues the precipitate that moment of requisite story-level clarity.
Read that sentence again.  Be clear on what it means.
You have to be clear on how to climb a mountain before any notion of clarity about which route to take to the summit will serve you.  Making it up as you go… that might just kill you.
Are you, as a writer, clear about what you need to be clear about?
First… you need to be clear on the kind of story you are writing.  The genre.  The target readership.  The unique standards and expectations and criteria of that niche.  What makes something fresh when it also needs to be so familiar. You can’t invent, or reinvent, anything in this business.  Be clear on that.
Then… you need to be clear about where you are starting your story, and what you are starting with. and what this means.  One of the things it means is an awareness of what you are not yet clear about.
Maybe your start with an idea… you need to be clear that an idea needs to become a concept, and then a premise, and then a dramatic sequence.  How to achieve that clarity is an open field cluster-f**k of massive proportions, but you do get to choose.  The criteria for excellence don’t care what process you choose, they will kill your story either way if you do it wrong on a final draft. 
Be clear on that. The end-game, the criteria, is absolutely the same for story pantsers as it is for story planners.  Same structural benchmarks and milestones.  No exceptions.
And when you are clear on what you know and what you don’t know – never underestimate the value of the latter – you are engaged in the Phase Two search for story process, by any other name, in a manner that will allow you to survive it.  Because you’ll be empowered to know when you’ve found a story that works.  Not until.
And right there is where most who get lost, get lost.
Be clear on this: your draft won’t be optimized, it won’t be the absolute best story it can be, until you are clear about how the story will end, and what transpires to get to that point.  The effort to attain that clarity is the search for story. 
Be clear: stories that are really documentaries and diaries of the search… they ramble in quest of their core dramatic focus and spine, and then when they find it, then they head toward the finish line… those stories never work as well as stories that are rewritten, or revised, in context to full clarity on that very ending.  Successful writers who say they do it this way – the story just leads them somewhere — are confusing and/or selectively omitting elements of their own process description (or maybe they really did just stumble upon something that finally worked)… odds are almost certain that they’ve revised the first half upon realizing how the second half will unfold.  Call it a rewrite, or not… it’s the same requisite step.
You need to be clear on what you’re looking for in that search.  Certain structural contexts, sequences and transitions.  Certain story forces that suck the reader into the narrative experience.  None of this is random – these forces and dramatic paradigms are universal, generic, and always available to the writer.  Some shoot for them, others simply hope they’ll show up rather than inviting them into the narrative. 
Are you clear on what those are?
You need to be clear on what to do with these elements once you identify them.  Clear about how to unspool a concept once you’ve empowered it with the requisite juice.  Nothing kills a concept quicker than a writer who tries to turn it into something else mid-stream… because “that’s what came to me as I wrote.”  That results in one of the most dreaded of story killers: EPISODIC exposition.  You need to be clear on what that means.
Yeah, story shifts do happen as you search for the core story, the optimal focus.  And when it does, you need to be clear on what to do then.  Simply pressing forward into a new context of episodic scenes… that’s not it.
You need to be clear about what to strive for in your story.  On the level of story physics you have in play – the compelling nature of your premise, or not… the level of dramatic tension in play, relative to a dramatic question that has been posed, or not… the nature of the story’s pacing… the degree to which the reader will become emotionally involved, or not, because they relate to and empathize with your hero and the journey you’ve put before them and that hero… the vividness of the vicarious experience you’re delivering to the reader, or not.
Because you see, it isn’t as simple as “I have an idea, so I’ll start writing and see where it goes.”  That’s just a start.  Just a process, among other available processes. You need to be clear on that.  You have options.  You have targets that will save your butt.  You need to clear on how much else is involved, and that it won’t just land serendipitously in your lap mid-draft.  You have to conjure it up from a basis of contextual awareness of what an effective story needs to be.
Clarity is required. 
If you don’t seek it out, nurture it…  if you don’t apply it… it will find you.  Long after you’ve finished the story and lived the consequences that lack of clarity almost always bestows.
That is, if you’re lucky.  Some people never know what blocked their path, long after the dream has died.
*****
I can help you in two ways.
First, this site covers almost everything you need to be aware of when planning and writing a story.  As do my two writing books: “Story Engineering” (2011), and the upcoming “Story Physics” (June 2013), both from Writers Digest books.
Second, I can look at and evaluate your story, in several forms.  I don’t need to read the whole thing to see if there are vulnerabilities in your idea, concept, structure or vision, which means you can get there for pennies on the traditional story coaching dollar.  Or I can read your whole draft, which is a lot of pennies, but at least you’ll know. 
In either case, if you let it in, if you go deep, you’ll be clear.  And that’s everything when it comes to giving your story its best shot.

The Hierarchy of Clarity is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

How to Engage Your Reader — A Guest Post by Matthew Turner

There was – apparently – a time when a writer merely wrote, sat back, and let the good times roll. That time is no more, at least not for 99% of us.

These days writers are marketers, publishers, formatters, designers, and most importantly… engagers. To stand out from the crowd you need to communicate with your readers, make them swoon, and have them become your biggest endorsers.

This is no easy task, and it needs genuine love and affection, but any writer is capable of it.Engage Your Reader

It won’t take long before you acquire a few readers. Some people have many, and others just a few. No matter what the number, I urge you to involve your readers as much as possible. Be a person who adores connecting with other people, even if you’re introverted and shy.

I too am quite the introvert. I do appreciate meeting new people, though, and I love to connect with like-minded folk. As such I’m always open to new connections. I try to get to know them and allow them to get to know me too.

Here are just a few benefits engaging with your reader can have:

New Friends
Endorsers
Feedback
Social Sharing
Sales
Ideas
Beta Readers
Critique Partners
New Events, Organisations, People, etc
Learn New Stuff

All of these have benefited my world. They include people I didn’t know prior to creating my Blog. I’ve met them recently, but they’re a very important part of my life.

How To Engage

These are just a few ideas that I’ve personally partaken in. I urge you to find other means, create your own, and build it around YOUR Platform. This is what I did for my debut novel, Beyond Parallel, and although I’m sure not all will work for you, I hope they provide some inspiration.

1: A Short Story

I created a short prequel (set the night before Beyond Parallel begins) that is FREE and aimed at engaging with my readers. The story is short, the engagement is high, and I include a host of behind-the-scene features.

This took a little time and cost a little money, but I loved the process. It helped me connect with some new people and further establish relationships with others.

2: Facebook Group/Page

I started this way too late, but a Facebook Group/Page for your book is a great idea. It allows you to upload pictures, updates, and special features that only those who follow are privy to.

It’s all about the journey. I’m going to create my second novel’s Facebook Page ASAP. I want my readers to be part of my daily world. Writing… editing… events… people love being part of a journey.

3: Polls & Surveys

People love competitions and freebies, but I think they like polls even more – as long as it’s for a worthy cause – like your book.

Allow your readers to vote on your book cover, help choose the name of certain characters, tighten up your book descriptions, and create promotional material. Whether you have a small or large following, having your reader be part of the process will make them feel special. Too few writers do this, in my opinion.

4: Regular Emails

More importantly, emails that DO NOT sell. Around launch day, sure, but make the majority of your emails helpful and fun.

Share your journey, ask them to leave feedback, and tell them about your worries, excitement, and everything in between. Email is a great way to connect with people, but most are wary about what it represents. Be one of the cool folk who use email to engage.

5: Give More Than You Take

The whole point is to get people to buy your books, but don’t let this take over your life. If you love what you do, people will love you back. Money is a byproduct of this.

Create a free ebook, do regular giveaways, meet with your readers, and provide special, secret tips that can help them become writers themselves. You don’t have to giveaway expensive prizes, merely give more than you take.

Value Thy Reader

I look at this way: my readers -whoever they are and wherever they are – are my most valuable asset in the whole wide world. Without them I couldn’t justify writing, at least not without having another job.

I do the above because I enjoy it and love connecting with people. I also love it when fellow writers do this. I feel part of their world, which makes me loyal and eager to share and help where I can.

How do you involve your readers in your journey?

Do any writers engage with amazing effect?

Please, share your thoughts below… thanks for reading.  Matthew Turner

*****

Matthew Turner is a writer from Yorkshire, England. His debut novel, a coming-of-age tale entitled Beyond Parallel, is currently available.  From the same mold as Sliding Doors, Beyond Parallel is an emotional roller coaster flips between two parallel stories.

How to Engage Your Reader — A Guest Post by Matthew Turner is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

The Trifecta of Storytelling Power

Beyond Craft… Embracing Greatness 

Oh what a tangled, slippery-sloped, viper-infested, self-sabotaging path we fiction writers tread.

What seems so simple — because we read excellent stories all the time, and they really do seem, well, if not simple, then at least clear and clean, and therefore not beyond our means –  turns out to be anything but.

The blank page both calls to us and mocks us.  And so we fill it up with what we have to offer, arising from the pool of what we know, fueled by dreams we dare not utter aloud… sometimes soured by what, either in ignorance or arrogance or simple haste, we’ve chosen to ignore.

Because, in spite of all the books and workshops and websites and analogy-loving writing gurus out there, we cling to the limiting belief that there are no “rules.”  The mere mention of that word causes you to rebel, even conclude that principles and standards are really “rules” with polite sensibilities, and from there we decide that we can write our stories any way we please.

Because this is art, damn it.

Often we don’t find that out that what we have to offer isn’t good enough until the rejection letter arrives.  Or the critique group pounces like Simon Cowell on a bad day.  Or when a story coach doesn’t tell you what you want to hear.

As one of the latter, my job involves telling writers — frequently — that their story is coming up short, and why.  That the wheels fell off, very often at the starting gate.  It’s the “why” part that allows me to sleep at night, because I’ve been on my share of the sharp pokes this business delivers.  But like a doctor giving a screaming kid a vaccination shot, I take solace in the hope that once the sting subsides the writer will see the pit into which they are about to tumble.

And you can’t write your way out of the pit.  No, the pit requires avoidance rather than rescue.

The Trouble with Craft

Craft — the mechanics and architecture and sweat of putting a story together — is complex, if nothing else than for its sheer immensity.  It’s anything but simple.  Even in those stories that inspire us, bestsellers and favorite authors and even the classics, we’re witnessing the symmetry and fluid power of simplicity on the other side — beyond — complexity.

In my work I’ve sought to put fences around it all, create labels and levels and subsets of supersets and connect those dots in ways that facilitate navigation on that  aforementioned path.  (My friend Randy Ingermanson is nodding now, as he’s doing the same thing, and very effectively, with his Snowflake story development model.) Six core competencies, six realms of story physics, and about five dozen subordinated corners of the craft aligned under those twelve flags.

Trouble is — just like in love and careers and gambling — you can get them all technically right… and your story can still fall flat.  And that’s the thing — the holy grail of “things” we need to understand — that separates craft from art.  Unpublished from published.  Frustrating from rewarding.

So without minimizing any of the myriad corners and nuances of craft — indeed, they remain eternal, consistent and the non-negotiable ante-in — allow me to simplify.  To break it down into three buckets, three qualities, three goals, that any successful story will embody to some extent.

Three things about your story… things that readers will, upon finishing your story, notice.

Three essences to shoot for.  Three qualities to evaluate about your story plan, and then your story execution.  Three things to grade yourself on.

If at least one of those grades isn’t an “A,” then you’re not done.

The Fiction Trifecta

One of the reasons I ask my clients to pitch me their concept and their First Plot Point is that, almost without exception, I can assess two things from the answer: the writer’s understanding of these three critical elements, and the potential for the story to deliver them, in whatever combination, with sufficient power and artfulness.

Here they are.  No surprises here.  But be honest, have you really evaluated your story on these things, regarded alone as criteria?  Have you asked yourself what your strategy will be to optimize one or more of these things?  Now you can.

In no particular order, because each stands alone as a potential windfall:

Intrigue - A story is often a proposition, a puzzle, a problem and a paradox.  When you (the reader) find yourself hooked because you just have to know what happens… or whodunnit… or what the underlying answers are…  then you’ve intrigued your reader.  It may or may not have an emotional component to it — mysteries, for example, are usually more intellectual than emotional, they’re intriguing because the clues will always lead somewhere, and we want to know where, even see if we can get their first.

Mysteries, as a genre, are almost entirely dependent upon reader intrigue.  Not necessary “dramatic intrigue” within the story itself, but rather, the degree to which a reader is “intrigued” with the questions the story is asking.

But this kind of intrigue isn’t limited to mysteries.  Sometimes the intrigue is delivered by the writing itself.  A story without all that must depth or challenge can be a lot of fun, simply because the writer is funny.  Or scary.  Or poetic.  Or brilliant on some level that lends the otherwise mundane a certain relevance and resonance.  Make no mistake, this, at is core, is a form of intrigue.

Emotional Resonance - When a story moves you, which so many great stories do, it’s because we feel it.  It makes us cry.  Laugh.  It makes us angry.  It frightens.  It’s nostalgic.  Important.

Les Miserables isn’t the classic it is — book, stage and now screen — because we must find out “what happens.  No, it works because it makes use cry.  John Irving’s Cider House Rules is a modern classic because it pushes buttons, makes us choose, forces us to behold the consequences of our choices.

Same with The Davinci Code, another modest success.  Every love story, every story about injustice and pain and children and reuniting with families and forgiveness — name your theme — is dipping into the well of emotional resonance for its power.

Vicarious Experience – reader, meet Harry Potter.  Go with him on an adventure to a place you’ll never experience otherwise.  Or Hans Solo.  Or James Bond.  Or Sherlock Holmes or Merlin or some alien with an agenda.  The juice of these stories isn’t the dramatic question or the plucking of your heart strings as much as the ride itself. The places you’ll go, the things you’ll see, the characters you’ll encounter, the things you’ll see and do.

Of course, emotional experience can be a ride, as well — a story about falling in love, or getting fired, or winning the lottery — and when that happens you’ve been given an E-ticket on the Slice of Life attraction.  These stories strike two of these Trifecta chords by making us feel the experience of falling in love, or feeling loss or simply walking a mile in shoes that seem compellingly familiar.

The common factor here is this: something compelling about the story.

Either intellectually, emotionally, or on some other level (usually the result of a combination of these three gold standards).  An allure that resides beyond the tricky or original or otherwise “interesting” nature of its concept.

Your concept, however tricky or original or interesting, isn’t compelling until it lands on one or more of those three powerful forces: intrigue… emotional resonance… vicarious experience.  A story about aging backwards, about going to another planet, about a secret code… about something conceptual… isn’t enough.

Until you juice it with some combination of the Trifecta elements.  Until that happens, that’s all it is: a concept.  And in this business, concepts are commodities.

Which is why a “compelling premise” is only one of the six realms of story physics.

It functions as the stage, the landscape, upon which these truly powerful essences can emerge to transform a story into magic.

Or better stated… into art.

When these three essences become the goal, the criteria of your concept and your craft, then you have a real shot.  Because now you’re risen above a bevy of concepts — rehashed, reheated and retreaded — crowding the inboxes of agents and publishers out there.

They’re not looking for the next great “idea.”  Or even the next great voice.

They’re looking for the next great story.  And intrinsic to that definition you’ll find The Trifecta… three compelling story essences that are waiting to make your story work.

And when it does, it really is art, after all.

****

About this post…

It’s been a while.  So long, in fact, that when I went into WordPress to post this I actually had to look up my password.

I’ve agonized over this one.  Wanting to launch the new year with something big, something important.  It didn’t come to me until today, when one of the stories I’m coaching sent me, in a bit of a flurry, to this topic.

I just want to share… that after an intense few months of story coaching, of year-ending nit-picky stuff, it was good to get away from my desk (I was the guy in the corner at McDonalds with a mocha and an iPad for three hours) and focus… to be a writer again.  To wrestle with thoughts and words.  To engage with the subject matter, and you, in a way that forwards the conversation and contributes toward our mutual momentum.

That’s what writing is.  Engaging.  With others.  With issues and dreams.  With ourselves, in so many ways.  And with life itself.

It was a good day, and I hope you like the post.  Chances are there’s a typo in there somewhere — those buggers haunt me, and I’m usually too impatient to wait on a proofreader — but it is what it is.  Sooner or later we all have to hit the SEND button.

My best shot, for now.  Write on.

 

 

 

 

The Trifecta of Storytelling Power is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

Top Ten Storyfix.com Posts of 2012

First, though… I’d like to reflect on the year we’re tucking into bed.  The Top 10 list follows, if that’s what you’d rather read.

Globally, nationally, it was a tough, dark year.  I’m not here to break that down, you know how it went. This is a writing website, so let’s talk about that.  Our words are weapons, the most powerful of all, and I’d rather empower you to wield them with responsibility, however you define that, than wound half of you with my own impassioned opinions.

We are a nation and a world divided, and we must come together and heal.  Let us use our words for good, for change, and for art.

My 2012 was spent ramping up for an exciting 2013.

I have three new books coming out (a new writing book, a new novel and a book on relationships), and all of my five previously published novels are getting a second shot under a new imprint (Turner Publishing).

Storyfix underwent a face lift, and an editorial re-boot.  The posts are deeper, more craft-driven.  Guest posts are enriching this experience (thank you, Art Holcomb).  The new year will bring video-tutorials, online workshops and the continued honing of my story coaching outreach, which I intend to be the most accessible, affordable and genuinely effective in this business.

If you have thoughts on where you’d like to see Storyfix go in 2013, please post your comments below.

Vote for the best writing blogs of 2012.

The annual Writers Digest “101 Best Websites for Writers” ranking is seeking nominations.  Perhaps the only truly objective, and certainly the most credible, qualitative survey in this niche.

To nominate a site, Send an e-mail to writersdig@fwpubs.com with “101 Best Websites” in the subject header, and then make your case for your vote.

And/or…

Vote for your favorite writing blog HERE (note: this site takes a LONG time to download).  Not remotely the same level of industry cred, but hey, there’s nothing wrong with a popularity contest, either.  I hope I’ve earned your support here, as well.

These 2012 posts make my case:

http://storyfix.com/staple-this-to-your-forehead

http://storyfix.com/the-killer-three-headed-story-beast

http://storyfix.com/novelists-the-data-on-normal-and-the-path-to-extraordinary

http://storyfix.com/the-commodity-of-courage-a-guest-post-by-art-holcomb

http://storyfix.com/mastering-the-fabulous-f-word-in-fiction

http://storyfix.com/questions-you-should-ask-yourself-before-you-write-a-scene-any-scene

http://storyfix.com/the-seductive-but-deadly-sin-that-wants-to-kill-your-story

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

http://storyfix.com/when-your-passion-kills-your-plot

http://storyfix.com/the-three-layers-of-story-engineering-architecture-and-art

Honorable mention (four more that belong in a crowded Top 10):

http://storyfix.com/structure-vs-strategy-dont-get-mislead-by-celebrity-author-speak

http://storyfix.com/the-learning-curve-that-keeps-on-curving

http://storyfix.com/so-whats-your-storyies

http://storyfix.com/the-question-you-should-ask-before-you-ask-what-if

Thank you for being a part of my writing life.  I wish you great success in the coming year, as a writer, as a parent and partner, as a citizen, and as a person engaging with life in a way that only writers understand.

*****

Only a few days to grab a year-end discount on one of my story coaching programs… HERE.

 

 

 

 

 

Top Ten Storyfix.com Posts of 2012 is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

CPR and Life Support for Your Part 2 Story Segment

Or… “How To Give Your Story a Better Middle” 

Get ready to go deep.

This story structure stuff is hard.  It’s also the key to getting your story published.  So we must accept hard, and step into it with keen hunger for a competitive edge.

Hard, because it’s like throwing a ball or singing a song.  Anybody can do it.  Few do it well enough to get paid for it.

Hard, because the difference between good and great is a mushy, less than precise pair of variables called context and nuance.

Context… being one of the most layered, complex and empowering of all the tools in the writer’s quiver.  Nuance… being an evolved sensibility that is the outcome of combining those basics with that context.

A mouthful, granted… but work with it.  Because the key to everything is in there.

Today I had the opportunity to go deep into this issue – both context and nuance – with one of my story coaching clients. I’d analyzed his story plan, and my feedback landed on his Part 2 quartile (which follows the all-important First Plot Point, leading up to the story’s Mid-Point), telling him it felt flat and contextually off.

He wrote back stating (I paraphrase): “But Larry, in your book you say that Part 2 is when the hero should be RESPONDING to something.  And that the First Plot Point CHANGES the story.  My story does that.  He responds to that change in the story.   So I’m confused… can you explain?”

In that explanation I realized how important this particular issue is.  Because at a glance, they are one thing – the story changes, the hero responds – but under the harsh light of analysis, and in the hands of a master storyteller, there is so much more to it.  More enough to be something else entirely.

In short… if your First Plot Point is off, your Part 2 doesn’t stand a  chance.  Which is why – I say again – that FPP is the most important moment in your story.

Here’s the easy – the surface – interpretation:

The First Plot Point does indeed change the story. It launches the core story spine, in that it initiates the hero’s story-quest (key nuance here: story-quest is different than life-quest), by igniting or shifting the hero’s current life plan and direction, giving her/him a problem to solve, a goal to strive for, a quest to embark upon, a battle to fight, or whatever twist on these notions fits your story.

Getting a new job changes your life.  But only when you realize that you must change to keep the job does that shift ignite a near-term story-quest.  A subtle but critical differentiation.  The latter launches a journey.  A story.  The former only serves to set-up that journey.  A non-writer might shrug and call that semantics… but as a writer, you need to know and command the context and nuance of that differentiation.

The contextual mission of your Part 2 scenes is to show what your hero does next.  How she/he RESPONDS to this new direction, this sudden or shifted quest.  RESPONSE is the target context of your Part 2 scenes. Your hero becomes, in essence, a wanderer (drifting through choices and options)… a victim (they can’t yet fight back with any success)… a flailing and desperate example of prey (things just keep getting worse for them).

Here’s the scary part: You can get all that right… and still end up with a story that doesn’t work.  What’s next explains why.  And it has everything to do with the nature of, and the relationship between, the First Plot Point and the Part 2 scenes that follow it.

Get the first one wrong, and the other is stranded without a compass.

What will make the First Plot Point work:

If your First Plot Point changes the story (which it should), even significantly, but does not launch your hero down a new or shifted path, facing a problem or the pursuit of a goal, with obstacles and antagonism in play, and clear stakes hanging in the balance… if those requisite pieces aren’t there, then chances are your “Big Story Change Moment” was really an Inciting Incident.

And if that happens, your Part 2 scenes are screwed.

Because the primary contextual mission of the First Plot Point is to imbue the story with those newly ignited layers: problem, goal, quest, opposition, stakes and a narrative journey that combines them into a dramatic sequence.

This can be tough to nail down.  It demands that the author know what the CORE STORY is, and that right there at the FPP is where THAT is launched.

An example: the core story is about a man whose wife and children have been kidnapped.  Our hero is instructed to rob his own bank, where is the branch manager, and bring back the money without alerting the authorities, or bad things will happen.  A thriller.  With a problem, a goal, opposition, and something for the hero to DO about it.

But… the core story isn’t the kidnapping.  The core story here is how he responds to the journey placed before him – robbing his bank, keeping the kidnapper from doing bad things, and to create an outcome from all that.

The kidnapping, as huge a change as it represents, isn’t the First Plot Point here.  Because it has no story-defining meaning yet.  The hero has no idea what he must do… which IS the core story.

It’s an easy mistake to make: have the kidnapping BE the FPP.  But if the First Plot Point was simply to show the family kidnapping… yes, that may technically change the story… how can the hero react fully to just that?  No story is on the table yet.  If you made that mistake, you would find yourself continuing to set-up this story well into Part 2, resulting in a flawed, unbalanced structure that takes too long to find its wings and its pace.

The kidnapping here is an Inciting Incident, a key part of the setup of the story (meaning, it should be prior to the FPP in the latter stages of Part 1).

The optimal First Plot Point, then, should be the moment when his story-mission, his new quest, his highest level of problem, the newly hatched goal… when all of that hits the page, then that is the FPP.  Appearing after the kidnapping/Inciting Incident.  That is what launches the core story, and thus, is the FPP in this story.

Why is this important?  Because the placement of the FPP is critical.  Too early and the setup is thin.  Too late and the story launches too late.  The FPP has a target optimal location: the 20th to 25th percentile.  If you select the wrong story beat for your FPP, then the better/best FPP will be in the wrong place.

Which can kill the whole thing in the eyes of an agent or a publisher.  They won’t tell you: “Sorry, your first plot point is off target” – they don’t think that way, even though you need to – but they will say, “things got slow, it takes too long for anything to happen, the story is too internal for too long, not thrilling enough.”

Bottom line: It’s easy to insert what is actually an Inciting Incident at the intersection of Parts 1 and 2, simply because the story changes, and call it your FPP.  But in that instance, your FPP won’t be good enough.  Change, without core-story-launching meaning, isn’t enough to fulfill the mission of the FPP.

What will make your Part 2 scenes work:

Two things: First, a properly empowered First Plot Point.  Because that defines everything that happens in Part 2.  Get the FPP wrong, your Part 2 scenes won’t be what they should be.  Then, be careful how you define and implement the contextual mission of your Part 2 scenes, relative to the mission of RESPONSE.  This is where nuance comes into play.

There is passive response… and there is active response.  The first is usually mistake, at least if it lasts too long… the second is what jacks up the tension and pace of your story.

I see this one a lot in my story coaching work.  A First Plot Point is in place.  Maybe it’s solid, maybe it’s more of an Inciting Incident.  Either way, too often I see a protagonist who, in the intended context of responding in Part 2, simply does nothing at all.

The story has indeed changed.  Which means the hero’s situation and experience of each ensuing moment has changed with it.  If your hero sits there and simple notices it all… that’s not a good Part 2.

The mistake here is to simply show/describe the new story world, the new environment, the sudden change in the hero’s near-term life… all that the hero now exists within… without having the hero DO anything as part of her/his response to it.

Example: our bank manager gets the news about having to rob his bank in order to save his family.  He goes to work, is quiet that day.  Can’t call the cops.  Can’t say anything.  Can’t get any work done.

We see that situation and this dark new environment… scene after scene.

And nothing happens.  The guy DOES nothing.  He’s frozen with fear.

It’s even worse if the author made the mistake of having the FPP be the kidnapping, without the ensuing instructions for the hero.  Part 2 then becomes an extension of the Part 1 setup, causing the core story to delay in its launch… which is bad.

The author thinks – because they understand the contextual mission of Part 2 only at a surface level – that the hero shouldn’t really do anything.  So we get 10 to 15 scenes where his fear and his helplessness is front and center… but nothing happens.

Fleeing is doing.  Swinging back is doing.  Begging for your life is doing.  Going to the cops is doing.  But thinking about it all, observing the darkness around you… that’s not doing anything.

You get one or scenes of that at the most before your story suffers for it.  Even then, the story has been put on hold.  Frozen. The author’s finger is on the Pause button.

A better Part 2 might show a quickly passing period of this frozen shock and awe, but then the hero must RESPOND to his new situation.  He must DO something.  And because this is only Part 2, where he shouldn’t yet be overtly heroic or successful in what he tries, these well-intended actions and decisions don’t work.  Even running away – which is doing something – doesn’t solve anything.

The hero’s moves in an effective Part 2 should serve to deepen and complicate the problem.

Because while it’s true that in Part 2 the hero is RESPONDING and REACTING… it’s also true – here’s the empowering part – that the TENSION and PACE of the story should be INCREASING here… things are getting more dire, more urgent, more complex… through the sequence of these Part 2 scenes.

Again, none of this works if the First Plot Point itself isn’t sufficiently expositional and clearly the launch of a quest for the hero. If all it does is change the story.  If the FPP isn’t strong, the hero is responding to things that are actually still part of the story’s setup context… meaning your core story won’t launch until the Mid-Point arrives… which is WAAAYYY too late.

From the 101 to the 404

There it is.   The 101 class introduces you to the First Plot Point and the contextual mission of all four parts of your story.  But what seems obvious and easy here… isn’t.  There is much more depth and layering to both of those definitions.

The 404, where the professional author must operate, is all about a deeper context and nuance.  The hero faces a newly shifted near-term story-journey… a problem or a goal has been put into play, even if not yet fully defined… a pathway opens up, sometimes forced upon the hero… there are obstacles in the way and a lurking, manipulating antagonist with opposing goals and a selfish moral compass… and there significant stakes hanging in the balance.

What the hero DOES will define the consequences for both she/he and the antagonist blocking their path toward the goal.

These are the tools.  The sensibilities.  The 404.

The outcome of the work they do are what makes a story powerful… or not.  They shape the story physics that will result in a desired reader response: a compelling premise… dramatic tension… optimal pacing… empathy for the hero that results in rooting for the hero… a vicarious experience for the reader… and a narrative strategy that puts in all into play with – wait for it – empowered context and artful nuance.

*****

Need a little more 101 before this 404 level of execution works for you?  Check out my book, “Story Engineering,” and my new book, “Story Physics” (June 2013).  Or feel free to use the Search function at the right of this column.

*****

Check Out my Year-End Coaching Specials

My year-end holiday backlog slump is your opportunity to save a few bucks.  Each of these discounts are available for paid orders received before midnight on 12-31-12. Once you’re in, you can then start the coaching process at any time during 2013, your call on that.

For $75 (regularly $100)… get “The Amazing $100 Story Coaching and Empowerment Experience” all(click to check it out).  The highest value story feedback opportunity… ever.  Even at the regular price.

For $1000 (regularly $1500)… I will do a full manuscript analysis of your novel or screenplay, with in-depth feedback against a 12-point criteria-based framework (the Six Core Competencies, and the Six Realms of Story Physics).   That’s a 33% discount on an already high-value/return price point.

NEW: The First Quartile Analysis program (your Part 1, up through your First Plot Point… 100 pages maximum, same basic Questionnaire format used in the $100 level analysis, applied to your executed Part 1 scenes): normally $400… discounted to $300 for payment received by the end of 12-31-12.  Those first 100 pages are the most critical in your story… get this right and the rest will be empowered to work.  I can help you make that happen.

Use Paypal to get started (payee: storyfixer@gmail.com, or email me if you’d like an invoice first (which doesn’t require a Paypal account and will enable your credit card for payment).

*****

Vote for your favorite writing blogsite… HERE.

 

 

 

 

CPR and Life Support for Your Part 2 Story Segment is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

The Tools We Choose to Use

I can’t not go there today.

My wife is a painter.  She reads a blog for painters by Robert Genn, who shows he’s an artist with words, as well.  The following is from that blog – The Painter’s Keys – (you can see he’s already wielding words artfully), and his salutation indicates it’s for us, too.

All of us.

An open letter from Robert Genn:

Dear Artist:

I’ve always been fond of brushes. Traditional tools going back to primitive times, for the past five hundred years or so, brushes have more or less standardized into a classic form; gently lathed, finely finished, long-handled and short, balanced for holding in various ways and points of view. Brushes come easily to men’s hands as well as those of women and children. In all shapes and sizes, their soft parts help to describe the personalities of those who use them.

Even in the hands of madmen, brushes can do little immediate harm. But, like pens and pencils, they have the potential to be mightier than swords. Every time we pick one up we reinstate our membership in a great brotherhood and sisterhood.

From the first Stone Age flint or adz, man distinguished himself as the most creative and inventive of the tool-making animals. The axe, the shovel, the ploughshare, the book, the brush, the cello, the scalpel, and the CT scan evolved to serve purposes that could not always be visualized by the generations before. Tools within tools within tools now take us across skies and straight up into space so we can look back at the gift of our mother earth. Is there no limit to mankind’s ability to create tools? And do we not have a choice which tools we will use?

Our accumulated culture and the breadth of our character determine the tools we use. The camera tool and its various iterations, for example, permit the re-enactment of lethal confrontations, the depiction of imagined evils and the greatest depths of fear. The camera tool can visualize for us the solving of problems by both violence and gentility. Whole industries glorify the use of our tools, and just cleaning our tools can give some of us a thrill.

Future anthropologists, arriving from another planet, may dig in our middens and determine we were “The People of the Gun.” A brilliantly conceived tool, the gun has evolved to reach a remarkable range and power. Plain or sophisticated, outsized or miniaturized, concealed or openly brandished, apart from its legitimate use for shooting pop cans off fences, the gun has always been a tool for taking the lives of other beings.

Understanding how it is possible to fall in love with our tools, it’s time we study how this gun tool is now out of hand. Do we not need to rethink its value and its presence among us? Can we outgrow the gun?

Best regards,

Robert

PS: “We must all work to make this world worthy of its children.” ()

Esoterica: In the time it takes to paint a small picture, someone, somewhere, will lose his or her life to a gun. Like mental illness and fanaticism, gun ownership is worldwide. And wherever home ownership of guns is highest, gun deaths are also the highest. Let us return to our gentle tools. To brushes and violins, to cellos and palettes. If mankind has a destiny, it should be for greater things than guns.

Read this letter online and share your thoughts about choosing our tools. Live comments are welcome. Direct, illustratable comments can be made at rgenn@saraphina.com

The Tools We Choose to Use is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

For my newsletter readers:

What a week.  What a frustrating, crappy week.

Best intentions… I sent out a newsletter with two free gifts. Happy Holidays to all.

Turns out one of the links was broken (my fault), and (when fixed) both links were limited to 100 downloads a day (not my fault, other than selecting the wrong place to do the delivery).  To give you an idea how frustrating for all this was, including me, I received a “notice of non-delivery” for EVERY failed download attempt… over 1000 of them.

If you think I’ve been idly sitting here twiddling my thumbs on this, you’re wrong.

I quickly researched an alternative delivery method, found one, and then sent it to the newsletter subscriber list.  But then, TinyLetter.com, the email distributor (the subscriber database is too big — over 4000 — to use traditional email, it crashes it), stepped in to FREEZE that email (because I’d sent out an ill-fated rescue email earlier that day, prompted a robot on their end to stop the presses, fearing it was SPAM), and now they won’t respond to my requests for help.

Message to TinyLetter.com — bad service gets lip service online.  Here’s yours.

Anyhow, the downloads are now hosted on THIS website, and the direct links are here:

CLICKBANK 101_tips_REVISED

Revised Search For Story Proposal 2[1]

Read the Intro (at least) on that last one… reads like a killer post, and delivers serious perspective. And… it sold the book.

I apologize for the inconvenience.  Hope you enjoy these.

Larry

 

For my newsletter readers: is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

Questions You Should Ask Yourself Before You Write a Scene. Any Scene.

One of the stories I was coaching this week had this little wrinkle: the main character’s quest was interrupted by a flashback scene showing the hero as a boy delivering newspapers, falling off his bike and being laughed at by a group of girls standing on the opposite corner.  After that we were back in the thick of the hunt for the adult hero’s blackmailer.

I kept waiting for that flashback scene to connect to the story.  It didn’t.

I asked the writer why it was in the story.  He said because it had actually happened to him, back in the day, and he’s never forgotten it.  Yeah, I countered, but why is it in this story, in which the hero has no issues with women laughing at him.

He said he thought it contributed to characterization.  He said he thought it was cool.

It didn’t.  It wasn’t.

The scene didn’t have have a purpose in this story.  It contributed nothing.   It was a misstep, a faulty creative decision on the part of the author.  The scene didn’t connect, it didn’t drive the story forward.  It was not only a flashback, it was a side-trip.

Side-trips are almost always a bad idea.

I told the writer he needed to cut it.  When I told him why, he asked me this: “Gee, can’t I put anything I want into my story?”

My answer: “Yes, you can.  But if you want it to be published, and to be successful… then no, you can’t.”

Scenes are always strategic in nature.  

When a story works, its scenes have a reason to be.  A purposeful mission to fulfill.

The best writing tip I know, if I HAD to boil ‘em all down to just one essential, universally reliable and devastatingly effective piece of conventional wisdom, is this:

Make your scenes read as “mission-driven.”  Write them with a specific NARRATIVE purpose in mind.  Not just characterization and setting.  Not just the passing of time or the execution of logistics that need no explanation.  

Have each scene CHANGE the story and the reader’s experience of it, even just a little.

Do this at the story design level — each of the four parts of your story has a unique contextual mission – and at the scene execution level.

Especially at the scene execution level.

Because even if the Big Picture of your story is contextually spot-on, a wandering or pointless scene can drag the whole party into a dark corner.  You might get away with one or two weak scenes, but any more than that… that’s like a Shakespearean actor with a speech impediment.  The whole suffers from its weakest links.

Scenes are like position players in a violent, constantly moving sport where strategy is as critical as speed and strength.  They have a role to play.  Imagine a wide receiver running rampant in the open field.  An infielder throwing the ball to any base he chooses, regardless of where the runners are.

Imagine one singer in a barbershop quartet suddenly getting it in his head that he should rap.

Imagine a chapter in Harry Potter showing the kids eating lunch.  Just that.  A bowl of borscht and some chit-chat.

Your scenes own the whole story in their brief moment in the spotlight.  Writing a great scene is always a question — a carnal union – of knowing (the mission) and executing (creative narrative choices that determine clarity and effectiveness).

Scenes never stand alone.  

Scenes have an implied mission by virtue of where they fall in the story, and are framed by what preceded and what follows.  Direct, implied or even delayed connections are required.

If the scene is a major story milestone — hook, inciting incident, first plot point, first pinch point, mid-point, second pinch point, second plot point, major climax, aftermath — it shoulders the weight of the whole thing while spinning the story toward the ensuing, now-shifted narrative path.  It functions like a 21st birthday… everything is different after that.

The question you should ask before writing any scene becomes: is this a tent pole, weight-bearing moment of story architecture, or is this scene mere connective tissue, the canvas that bridges one tent pole to another?  The answer defines everything about the nature and content of the scene itself.

But always, in both cases, there should be a mission.  A purpose beyond character.  Some bit of exposition contributed to the story.

That becomes your first and most important question to ask before writing: what is the mission of this scene?

My advice, to both planners and pantsers: don’t write the scene until you know.

Here are more questions you should ask about every scene:

In addition to demonstrating character and setting — something done differently in early scenes versus later scenes, yet is incumbent upon every scene in a contextual sense — what single element of exposition does this scene contribute to the narrative?

Is there, in fact, more than one expositional mission for the scene?  There shouldn’t be (one scene showing a car crash and a drug deal and a sexual encounter… not a good idea), especially after Part 1.  If so, consider creating separate and sequential scenes, even a series of scenes, to deliver them.

If there is no obvious mission (example: guy intends to break up with girlfriend… so you have a scene of him driving over there… then the next scene — or an extension of the driving scene — actually shows the breakup speech; if the driving scene isn’t necessary, CUT IT), why are you considering this scene at all?

If your scene is there simply to create or reinforce setting and show characterization, or to fill in blanks that the reader is fully capable of filling in themselves, consider adding that context to scenes that DO have q clear narrative mission as their main purpose and point.

Knowing the scene’s mission, you now cut into the scene (begin it) at the last possible moment, avoiding obligatory chit-chat that doesn’t setup the “moment” the scene delivers.  In fact, the later into the sequence a scene begins, the better.  And the only way to succeed at that is to write it with the point in mind.

Ask: How does the scene CHANGE the story?  If it doesn’t, look closer at it.

Is your scene part of a dramatic sequence?  Is the sequence broken up by cutaways to another point of view?  

Each beat of a sequence that contributes NEW INFORMATION is worthy of its own scene, as is each POV CUTAWAY.  A bar fight sequence, for example, showing the action from different points of view, each with something new and unique to chip in (the bartender calls the cops… a guy in the hall pulls a gun… one of the fighters has a brain aneurysm  etc.), would in execution play as a series of short punchy scenes, EACH with its own expository mission, each yet connected to the others.

Do you know how to set up a scene to empower the scenes that follow?  Know how, and when, each scene connects to the whole.

When a scene CHANGES a story, versus simply adding layers to it, is the new context or direction clear?  Does it shift things as you intended? Or does it change it gratuitously, which is rarely a good thing.

Where in the scene does its moment of revelation (fulfillment of the mission) occur?  The later the better… even down to the last sentence.

Is the scene for the reader, or for you?

Remember what William Goldman told us… about the need to “kill our darlings.”  You can do that in the planning stages, or you can whack them in an edit.  Either way, sideshow and non-connected scenes should be axed if they don’t overtly and consciously forward and strengthen the narrative.

That is rarely a happy accident of simply writing along.

The best scenes know precisely why they are there, what they need to contribute to the story at that particular moment in the narrative sequence, and how to frame and deliver that moment, or that fact, or that nuance, to best contribute to the overall storytelling experience.

The best scenes are always contributing to characterization.  But, with the possible exception of opening scenes, rarely is characterization the point.

Even pantsers benefit from this.  Because you still must face the blank page before you commence writing a scene, and this knowledge gives you an edge: don’t begin it until you have an expository mission in mind.  If you’re well into the flow your story, you will.

After the mission is clear… then what?

Once the mission is identified, the questions sound like this: What is the best creative STRATEGY for this scene?  Does it leverage previous scenes, and thus remains bound in alignment to them?

Tarantino is a master of this, of the optimization of a scene’s mission.  Check out the opening scene in Inglorious Basterds… there is really only a singular narrative mission there, and he takes nine delicious moments to execute it.  It wasn’t a “pantsed” scene that finally discovered its purpose (that’s the risk of pantsing, in a nutshell), Quentin knew precisely what had to happen in that scene — the daughter had to narrowly escape with her life — and the scene he build with that in mind could now be optimized in terms of tortuous dramatic tension and the introduction of the villain.

Mission in hand, you should now ask: When should I cut IN to the scene?  How much setup and foreground ramping is required?  How much chit-chat between players?  How might setting and peripheral factors play here?  What does the reader need to know, and how much will they already know?

Does the scene have sub-text to offer, and do I really understand what that means?

What’s the payoff — the strategic reason to deliver this scene?

Does the scene offer a cut-and-thrust into the scene that follows i?  The goal should be to force the reader to keep going, instead of tabling the book on the nightstand at the scene’s conclusion.

At the structural level — is the scene aligned with the proper context of the “Part” in which it appears (each scene resides in one of the four contextual parts of a story, each of which has a UNIQUE context that flavors the scenes within it):

- Part 1 scenes are all about SET-UP introducing the main players, foreshadowing, showing pre-First Plot Point lives and worldviews, while mechanically setting up the dominoes that the FPP will soon topple.

- Part 2 scenes, which follow the First Plot Point (which changes the whole story by LAUNCHING the core story experience for the hero), turning the hero into a RESPONDER (to the FPP), and a bit of a wanderer, maybe even a victim (for the time being), someone who needs to drop back, assess, find new information, take stock of what this really means and what’s at stake.  Here in Part 2 your hero shouldn’t be too eager to attempt much in the way of heroics, and if they do, chances are they won’t work very well.

- Part 3 scenes, which kick in after the context-shifting Mid-Point, evolve the hero into WARRIOR mode, a pro-active attacker.  Here we see the early emergence of their inner hero, battling a foe who is, like them, also upping their game.

- Part 4 delivers scenes in which the hero brings a steep and strategized learning curve to the problem, with a view toward taking risks and then taking charge, leading to a collision of desires and an explosion of consequences, some by design, others considered collateral damage.  This is where the hero is instrumental – the main catalyst — in the RESOLUTION of the story.  No more victim, no more wandering and wondering… action is required.

When your scenes fit into their respective parts, both in terms of contextualmission and action, they are in lock-step with the story itself, like flaps on a wing that know just when to lower, and at what angle so they can land the airplane safetly.

A story is a machine with dozens of moving parts called scenes, all of them defining the reading experience.  

The balance and harmony of the story contextual parts is never random, there is timing and power and noise and comfort and navigation in this dance.  With within the context and focus of each scene’s mission… there are no boundaries.

Here is where you and your Muse get to soar.

*****

I know, it’s complicated.  If you’re interested in the world’s most affordable, and possibly most effective story coaching, click HERE.

Questions You Should Ask Yourself Before You Write a Scene. Any Scene. is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com