Larry Brooks's Blog, page 36

The Moment That Makes or Breaks Your Story

I’ve been reading a lot of story outlines and summaries lately, as part of my new coaching service (more on that soon).  And I’m noticing something.  Something sad and disturbing.

Sad, because the story might otherwise be awesome.  But it isn’t working as well at it could, as it should, because the author doesn’t get it.  The author thinks they can write their novel or screenpaly any way they want, in any order, with any sequence of exposition… and you can’t. 

Not if you want to optimize its power and get it sold and read.

It’s disturbing because the solution is out there, too often ignored, just as often misunderstood. 

There is a principle you can use to optimize your story in a structural sense, and the centerpiece of it is what I’m ranting about today.  Success is a function of understanding one of the key structural milestones in your story, or maybe just the willingness to accept that its there, ready to make or break you.

Mess this one up, and it will break you. 

It’s the MOST IMPORTANT MOMENT in your story.

It’s called the FIRST PLOT POINT.  Which is something different, something more, than the better understood concept of an inciting incident. 

A review is in order.

I’m seeing writers who are students of story architecture getting this wrong.  Or at least, not fully grasping it.  You can get it sort of right, but not really nailing it. 

Which is why, if you think you get it, you should keep reading.

The First Plot Point is often a matter of clarity and degree, which means if you haven’t delivered on its full and highest mission, you’re leaving some of the raw power and potential of your story on the table.  You’ve just compromised story physics, especially in terms of dramatic tension and pace. 

That’s what the FPP does: it allows you to optimize, rather than compromise, the story physics of dramatic tension and pace.

Even if you think you have a First Plot Point in play and in the right location, if you don’t fully harness the nuances and missions of this milestone, you may just be writing an Inciting Incident in its place. 

And an Inciting Incident – which can occur anywhere in your Part 1 set-up quartile – isn’t a First Plot Point… unless it is. 

Let’s say you’re writing a love story.   

You spend the entirety of Part 1 introducing us to the characters, making us empathize with them.  Root for them.  Foreshadowing the love story to come.  And then, at your FPP, you have them meet.

Is this an effective First Plot Point? 

That depends.  What you’ve just done is change your story, you’ve moved it forward.  Everything is different from that point forward, which you’ve read (here and elsewhere) is the mission of the FPP.

But unless OTHER things are ignited here, it may simply be just that: a change.  A step forward.  A mission not yet full realized. 

It may just be an inciting incident.  Necessary, thrilling, effective.  But not the First Plot Point… unless other things suddenly manifest in the story, as well.

That’s the problem, in a nutshell, that I’m seeing.   

Writers are simply twisting and evolving their story at the FPP, with the intention of it being the FPP.  But they’re not meeting the criteria.  They’re writing an inciting incident instead.

The primary mission of the FPP is not just to change the story.   

There is so much more that an effective First Plot Point must deliver to the story. 

Sure, the FPP changes the story, but it does so in a specific way.  And that’s what’s too often missing, or at least vague and weak. 

This connects to the most basic truth about fiction: it is based on conflict.  On dramatic tension.  You need to know your core story, what the story is ultimately about in terms of dramatic tension, before you can craft an effective FPP.

In our love story example, even though the two people meeting is indeed a change for them, it may or may not introduce conflict.  The stakes of their relationship may not be in play yet. 

Both of those things need to be put in play, via the FPP.

Let’s look at a thriller concept.   You’re on vacation, and your wife disappears.  Incidint Incident.  Soon, you get a ransom note.  Inciting Incident.  Then, you get your marching orders – you need to rob the local island bank.   

That’s the First Plot Point.  Because it FULLY introduces the nature of the conflict, with stakes in place, and thus creates your hero’s goal.

If you have the wife getting kidnapped as your FPP, then your setup is too long, and it compromises pace and tension.   

The higher mission of the First Plot Point is this: to alter or launch the hero’s story-specific journey, by introducing or expanding a problem and/or a specific goal, and ALSO showing the presence of an ANTAGONISTIC force that promises obstacles that the hero will face. 

The FPP launches a problem-solving, goal-specific quest or journey.  There is a bad guy (or force) that will block that path.  And – this is CRITICAL – this all happens in the presence of STAKES and consequences. 

The goal, and the stakes, can be survival, attaining love, attaining riches, finding justice, finding answers, discovering truth, discarding old baggage, solving a crime, preventing a crime, winning, losing.

Leaving for Australia with the family is an inciting incident.  Having the plane go down on a remote island near Bora Bora is a First Plot Point. 

Meeting the prospective love interest is an inciting incident (in the romance genres this happens in the first scene or two, but it’s an inciting incident when it does, the best romances give us an FPP that presents a higher level of problem and need).  Finding out they’ve just been engaged to your brother is a First Plot Point.  Or not… maybe that’s an inciting incident, too, but then at the 20% percentile that engaged prospective lover confesses they’d rather be with you, and your brother now wants to kill you. 

That’s a First Plot Point.  Because there’s a problem.  A goal.  Stakes. 

Not writing a thriller or crime novel? 

Writing a character-based, wannabe Jonathan Franzen slice-of-life novel?  Know this: you are not immune to the need for conflict driving your story.  And the first and fullest reveal of that conflict – often in the form of the hero’s situation getting more complicated – is at the FPP. 

The FPP launches the story journey because it presents a problem and/or a goal.  It doesn’t just change the story.  There are stakes now, there is opposition now that has its own conflicting agenda, and is prepared to block your hero’s path (that path being the spine of your narrative from this point forward).  There is pressure, urgency, perhaps a ticking clock. 

In the film “500 Days of Summer,” a love story, the FPP occurs when the girl casually informs the guy she isn’t interested in a long term thing.  The whole Part 1 was showing us that he IS looking for that, and believes he’s found it with her.  Her comment launches his journey, defines the stakes, and exposes the antagonistic force… all with a simple comment. 

It doesn’t just change the story, it DEFINES the core story.

If your FPP isn’t right, then your story may be weak on dramatic tension and pace.    

The FPP shifts the context of the narrative from the Part 1 SETUP to the Part 2 RESPONSE.

Response to what?  To the First Plot Point.  To the newly defined or elevated problem or goal.  To the pressure and opposition at hand.  And in light of the stakes you’ve shown the reader (this being the source of hero empathy, which is another essential element of story physics). 

If an inciting incident does the very same things, only earlier, then you still need an even more dramatic, more urgent and shifted scenario at the FPP.

Look at your story.  Look at that point in your story… what happens?   

What changes for the hero?  Is it simply, and only, a change, or it is a change imbued with a quest and journey for the hero?  With problems to solve, foes to conquer (including the dreaded inner demons), obstacles to navigate, with stakes in play?

For story planners, the First Plot Point is the most critical thing to understand before you craft the rest of your scenes.  Not only does it have these criteria in place that will lead you toward a powerful dramatic architecture, it also informs the scenes in Part 1 (which are all leading up to the FPP) and then in Part 2 (which are all responses to the FPP), as well as the entire second half. 

For more organic writers – who are just as bound by the force of story physics as planners – the First Plot Point is what you are searching for in your drafts.  Once found, it defines the revisions of your Part 1 and the very nature of the rest of your story.

The First Plot Point is the lynchpin of your story.   

It is its mechanical heart, that beats so the soul of your story can soar. 

The dead don’t have souls, and your story might just be dead, or on the verge, without a beating dramatic heart pumping the life-blood of your fiction into every page. 

If you want more on story architecture, please consider my bestselling book, “Story  Engineering: Mastering the Six Core Competencies of Successful Writing” (Writers Digest Books, 2011).  And look for my new book, “The Search for Story,” coming from Writers Digest Books in 2013.

The Moment That Makes or Breaks Your Story is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

When Your Passion Kills Your Plot

 I wanted to call this one, “The Great and Silent Story Killer,” but I chose to put the real two-by-four-between-the-eyes point in the headline instead. 

Because passion is an intoxicant.  A promise without a plan.  And its addictive.  It is cheering rather than playing the game. 

Good to have, worthless as a story planning asset.

In fact, your passion for a story, the very thing you might believe is your biggest asset going into the writing, might instead be silently, insidiously overwhelming it to the point it smothers the story entirely.

Like a lover who drowns you in affection, yet gives you nothing that you need.

A politician can rant for years about how a proposed tax cut can help the middle class.  But can he shut himself into a room in the back of IRS headquarters and rewrite the tax code that will make it happen?

Not a chance. 

Some of us want to save the world with our novels.   

Some reign that back a bit, we merely want to save a few souls or at least unburden our own.  We are serious about this.  Our novel is important, it is necessary, a story that must be told.  It matters.

If you asked Kathryn Stockett what her novel, “The Help,” was about, you might get two answers.  The first is a thematic target and rationale, the other a window into the story that reflects a narrative plan: 

The Help is the story of black maids in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi and their oppression and injustice at the hands of their prejudiced white employers. The story will show the strength and humanity of these women, and how they helped change the course of racial history in this country.

Yeah… but where’s the story? 

The Help is a story of a young writer looking to break into publishing, who senses a story in the experiences of the black maids of 1962 Jackson, Mississippi.  She struggles to enlist their help for a book that sheds light on these secret injustices, and in doing so discovers both darkness and humanity that exceeds her vision and, in writing it, threatens her own position in the community.

Now that’s a story.  Theme will EMERGE from this story organically. 

A writer needs both answers, always.

Because great craft and an understanding of the mechanisms, architectures and chemistries involved – a compelling dramatic premise… tension and conflict… antagonism causing that conflict… optimal pacing… heroic empathy… a vicarious reading experience (the ride)… stellar craft in execution… 

… that’s the real work behind the thematic promise. 

These should be the things the writer talks about FIRST, and become most passionate about once the work is underway.  Because inherent to this understanding is the certainty that the thematic promises – exciting and important as they are – aren’t even in the ballpark until these players are in the shower. 

Thematic power is the product of dramatic effectiveness.  If your passion is on the wrong end of that sentence, then your story needs a bodyguard, because its life may be in danger.

What is your story about?   

That last word is a loaded gun pointing at the heart of your manuscript.  Your answer exposes you, strips you naked in the light of your story’s commercial and mechanical viability.  It tells you what you know, and by its absence, also exposes what you don’t know. 

Which is how to make this story compelling in execution… through plot.  

Passion without plot will drag your manuscript to the bottom of the Priority Mail bin on its way back to you.

A great story is about a problem, not an ideology.  It’s about a person, your hero, who has something to win or lose in squaring off with their problem and their issues.  An external antagonist (bad guy) who stands in their way.  A journey to take as the battle builds, ebbs and flows, and allows the hero to grow into the nametag (Hero) and begins to act in a manner that solves the problem. 

Your hero doesn’t need to be a soldier in the problem, but the problem issue needs to contextually bear on whatever conflict-driven path you put them on. 

Read any published story, these dynamics will be there.   

Read any unpublished story, and they might not be.

Too many writers don’t even consider this when approaching a story about pain and injustice and healing and finding love again.  All of those targets are themes, and when they work, they are the product – the outcome – of a story well told.   

A story with a plot.

I’ve been seeing a lot of this lately in my work as a story coach.   

I have a couple of programs in play where writers send me either an entire manuscript for review, or just a few pages of summarized outline and intentions.  I’ve done about 50 or so in the last couple of months, and I see a trend. 

A disturbing trend. 

Writers are summarizing something that isn’t a story.  Instead, they’re describing the issue they want to write about.   Passionately so.  World peace.  Finding love.  Finding one’s true self in a cold cruel world.  Resolving family stuff.  Forgiveness.

I read these opening paragraphs intended to convey the idea and concept of the story, and I have to ask… “Nice theme, but where’s the story?  Where’s the concept?  Because a concept is NOT a theme, though it may lead to one… and vice versa, a theme is never really a concept, it’s an intention, a goal for an outcome.” 

Paragraphs then ensue describing the politics of the day (in historicals), or the backstory of the hero and the dysfunctional family.  About how the character feels.  And, in a misguided attempt to resolve the story, about how the problem (if there is one) is resolved when the hero one day wakes up and realizes something.   

As if the juice of the story resides there.  It doesn’t.  It resides in the power of the conflict you bring to it, and in the hero’s ACTIONS to make things right. 

Still no story.  The writer is practically weeping onto the page.  This pet issue of theirs, their NOVEL, will be their cathartic salvation, and they get all of their pain and rage and passion into it.  Often because it’s their story.

But into what?  There’s still no story, I tell them.  No hero’s problem.  No external antagonist.  No overriding problem to solve, just a litany of internal issues holding them back.  Nobody, and nothing, to root for. 

They don’t see what I mean, until I tell them this:

A story is about a character, a hero… not a theme.  Theme only emerges from the vicarious emotional participation on the part of a reader who empathizes with (and roots for) the hero as they face a problem, a challenge, a need, and launches them down a path of reaction to this new quest, under pressure from the antagonist, with a ticking clock,  then proactively managing it toward their desired end.  

Variations on this model abound.  Without really ever shifting it.

That’s a story.  Hero, problem, antagonist, respond, change, attack, regroup, grow, DO SOMETHING HEROIC, solve the problem. 

The word “theme” isn’t in there.  It doesn’t mean anything… until it does.

A story is about characters DOING things.  That’s it in a nutshell.  The sequence and sum of what they DO is the story.  Its not what they see, what they feel, it’s what they DO in response to pressure and stakes and need. 

What the story means is sub-text, not the narrative point guard.  And in that little model you’ll notice that it isn’t there.  Themes – the messages and focuses you are so passionate about – are OUTCOMES of your narrative efforts, like fruit from a planting. 

Bad dirt, no water, no sun, no care or craft… no fruit.  And here you are, having promised everyone a lovely fruit salad. 

Once you realize that the power of your intended thematic outcome is in your hands, you must comprehend the limits and the upside of what this means. 

This isn’t about bombs and criminals and murders… this is about ANY story.  Because they ALL need conflict, they all require a PLOT.  And they can all lead to strong thematic resonance. 

Plot is the stage upon which your characters reveal themselves.

Characters are the catalytic moving parts of the plot. 

Emotions are the currency of everyone’s involvement in the plot.

Stakes are the consequences of the ACTIONS of the characters in context to that involvement. 

A good story coach won’t care much about your theme, or the issues.

We’re looking for story, in all its phases, contexts, forms and functions.  Just like a doctor doesn’t care about your upcoming promotion… the doctor just cares that you’ll be upright and breathing when the day arrives. 

******

About the Storyfix newsletter… it’s now a bi-monthly distribution, to ensure rich content.  The July-August issue will be out around August 1… you can sign up HERE.  

Coming soon… an announcement about how you can have your story basics – premise, concept, basic structure and narrative plan, including your 9-sentences – evaluated for… well, you won’t believe how affordable and easy it is.  Just answer a few questions and submit up to 10 pages of outline or beat sheet… I’ll tell you how your core competencies and story physics are lining up, and how to take them to the next level.  

There’s never been a story coaching concept like this… it’s like a physical exam and a training protocol prior to entering an extreme sporting event (and believe me, writing a novel or a screenplay is totally an extreme undertaking), telling you where you’re strong and where you’re vulnerable before you actually finish the work.    

Have your story appraised and improved… so you can not only get it right, but get it nailed, too.  It’s called “The Amazing $100 Professional Story Coaching Adventure,” and based on feedback from the beta test, it changes the game for writers who are serious about getting it right.

Coming soon!

When Your Passion Kills Your Plot is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

More Goodness from Art Holcomb: “Forget Jagger – Learn How to Move Like Sorkin”

I’m a lucky blogger.  When I take a hiatus, which has just about run it’s course, I have folks like Art Holcomb and Jennifer Blanchard (InkyBites) ready to step in.  Here’s another winner from Art, who (like Jennifer) never disappoints. 

Back soon.  Larry

***** 

Forget Jagger – Learn How to Move Like Sorkin

A Guest Post from Art Holcomb

All writers have their gods.

It’s just the way we’re wired.

When I was a boy, it was Robert Heinlein and Harlan Ellison and Tennessee Williams because I loved the language and the cadence and the way they could drop me out of my everyday life into the fantastic with the simple turn of a page. I would read them with a pen and notebook at hand and try to figure out the magic that they brought so easily to their stories because I desperately wanted to be able to do that too.

I tend to read different authors now (with the possible exception of  the eternal Ellison) and, as a screenwriter, I found myself seeing patterns in the types of screenplays I enjoyed. Films like A Few Good Men and Charlie Wilson’s War and television like Sports Night and The West Wing stand out above the crowd as profound examples of the power behind iconic dialogue and burning-white issues.

And this led me Aaron Sorkin.

Among his many other talents as an Academy Award ™ winning screenwriter and playwright, he is a master at the art of dialogue.  His words can pour over you like a song or buffet you into submission with images dense, meaty and vibrantly alive. To be in love with both what a writer says AND the way that s/he says it is a rare treat, and Sorkin brings it every time.

And since dialogue offers considerable challenges to both scriptwriter and fiction writer, I know that he has something that can speak to every writer’s struggles.

While I’ll leave it to you to discover (or rediscover) Sorkin’s exceptional body of work, I wanted to share a rare opportunity for writers: a chance to have a master discuss not only his own work, but to walk you through his technique and process.  Below is a reprint of an open letter from Sorkin and an excellent example of his dialogue style from his brand-new HBO series The Newsroom. (Sorkin’s teaching points are in italics below).

I find something new each time I read this piece. 

I think you will too.

I’ll see you at the end.

********

How to Write an Aaron Sorkin Script, by Aaron Sorkin 

A song in a musical works best when a character has to sing— when words won’t do the trick anymore. The same idea applies to a long speech in a play or a movie or on television. You want to force the character out of a conversational pattern. In the pilot of The Newsroom, a new series for HBO, TV news anchor Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) emotionally checked out years ago, and now he’s sitting on a college panel, hearing the same shouting match between right and left he’s been hearing forever, and the arguments have become noise. A student asks what makes America the world’s greatest country, and Will dodges the question with glib answers. But the moderator keeps needling him until…snap.

Will: It’s not the greatest country in the world, professor, that’s my answer.

Moderator: [pause] You’re saying—

Will: Yes.

Moderator: Let’s talk about—

*Start off easy. First get rid of the two noisemakers.*

Will : Fine. [to the liberal panelist] Sharon, the NEA is a loser. Yeah, it accounts for a penny out of our paychecks, but he [gesturing to the conservative panelist] gets to hit you with it anytime he wants. It doesn’t cost money, it costs votes. It costs airtime and column inches. You know why people don’t like liberals? Because they lose. If liberals are so f**kin’ smart, how come they lose so GODDAM ALWAYS!

*The use of inappropriate language has a purpose—the filter’s off*.

And [to the conservative panelist] with a straight face, you’re going to tell students that America’s so starspangled awesome that we’re the only ones in the world who have freedom? Canada has freedom, Japan has freedom, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium has freedom. Two hundred seven sovereign states in the world, like 180 of them have freedom.

*The fact-dump that’s coming now serves several purposes. It backs up his argument, it reveals him to be exceptional (what normal person has these stats at their fingertips?), but mostly it’s musical. This is the allegro.*

And you—sorority girl—yeah—just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day, there are some things you should know, and one of them is that there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we’re the greatest country in the world. We’re seventh in literacy, twenty-seventh in math, twenty-second in science, forty-ninth in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, third in median household income, number four in labor force, and number four in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next twenty-six countries combined, twenty-five of whom are allies. None of this is the fault of a 20-year-old college student, but you, nonetheless, are without a doubt, a member of the WORST-period-GENERATION-period-EVER-period, so when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world, I don’t know what the f**k you’re talking about?! Yosemite?!!!

[Cell-phone cameras are everywhere— people are tweeting and texting away.]

*Now we slow down and get a glimpse into his pain. The oratorical technique is called “floating opposites”— we did, we didn’t, we did, we didn’t… But rhythmically you don’t want this to be too on the money. You’re not just testing the human ear anymore; you want people to hear what he’s saying.*

We sure used to be. We stood up for what was right! We fought for moral reasons, we passed and struck down laws for moral reasons. We waged wars on poverty, not poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were, and we never beat our chest. We built great big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases, and cultivated the world’s greatest artists and the world’s greatest economy. We reached for the stars, and we acted like men. We aspired to intelligence; we didn’t belittle it; it didn’t make us feel inferior. We didn’t identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election, and we didn’t scare so easy. And we were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed. By great men, men who were revered. The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one—America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.

*To resolve a melody, you have to end on either the tonic or the dominant. (Try humming “Mary Had a Little Lamb” right now, but leave off “snow.” You’ll feel like you need to sneeze.) So Will ends where he started. Then, just to acknowledge that he just sang an aria— which is unusual in the course of a normal conversation—he turns to the moderator who’d been needling him and casually asks…*

Will: [to moderator] Enough?

*******

Did you find something there that you can use? Does it make you think of your dialogue differently now?

One of the lessons in the piece is clear: there are always greater depths available for our characters and ever more chances for us as writers to make a real impact.

Until next time, keep writing!

Art

Art Holcomb is a successful screenwriter, comic book writer and frequent contributor to Storyfix.com.  A number of his recent posts appear in the Larry Brooks’ collection: Warm Hugs for Writers: Comfort and Commiseration of The Writing Life .  He appears this summer at the San Diego Comic-Con and the Greater Los Angeles Writer’s Conference, and begins teaching screenwriting and graphic novel writing classes at the University of California in Fall 2012. His most recent screenplay is FINAL DOWN (a NFL team disaster film) and his short story OLIVER AND THE FOUR-PIECE, REGENCY-STYLE BEDROOM SET OF DOOM is being adapted for the screen.

More Goodness from Art Holcomb: “Forget Jagger – Learn How to Move Like Sorkin” is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

How To Become A Badass Creative Writer — a Guest Post…

… by Jennifer Blanchard of InkyBites

On StoryFix, Larry is constantly giving you all the information you need to write a badass story: a story that “works,” that shines in all 6 Core Competencies and is publishable.

But being a badass creative writer? That takes more than just the ability to write an amazing story.

Sure, writing an amazing story is a huge part of it, but you can’t just write one story if you want to be a successful author. You have to write several.

And one problem a lot of writers have is they don’t know how to get into a creative flow that will allow them to keep coming up with amazing stories to write.

Wouldn’t it be great to have consistent creative flow? It starts with fueling your core source of creativity: yourself.

If you want to be a badass creative writer, along with writing a story that “works,” you need these 5 things:

1. Discipline to Write Much and Often

Write as much as you can as often as you can. The only way to get better as a writer is to write. The most badass of creative writers (Larry, for example) have made writing a habit and from that habit, creative genius was born.

2. A Writing Routine

Badass creative writers know that in order to come up with their best ideas, they need a writing routine that gets them writing on a daily basis. Doesn’t matter if it’s a blog post, an article for a magazine or a piece of fiction, badass writers are always working on something.

If you want to follow suit, write as much as you can and do it every day.

3. The Right Creative Fuel

If you want to have the energy and mental clarity you need to write every day and be creative when you need to be, you have to nourish the main source of your creativity—yourself.  That’s right, your body, mind, soul and heart are what gives you creative ideas and words that flow onto the page.

When you’re nourishing your body with the right foods and lifestyle habits, you’ll become a badass creative writer a whole lot faster than you will fueling your core creativity source with junk.

You can’t eat junk and expect to achieve creative flow.

Junk food stifles your creative efforts, making it hard for you to focus, find the right words or even sit through a writing session without getting fidgety.

Eat whole, real, unprocessed food and you’ll see a huge difference in your mood and your ability to make writing happen when you need to.

4. Movement

Your body was made to move, but being a writer sometimes means you have a semi-lethargic lifestyle. Doesn’t have to be the case thou. There are plenty of simple things you can do to get more movement into your day.

Badass creativity lies within a body that’s nourished and stress-free.

Exercise is a great way to relieve stress and light your creative flame. And it doesn’t have to be traditional forms of exercise, like going to the gym or running on a treadmill.

Some ideas for non-traditional exercises include:

Walking the stairs—don’t just take the stairs at work, but take a 10-15 minute break (either during lunch or whenever you can get away) and walk up and down the stairs until your break is over.
Stroll outside—it’s a beautiful time of year, so get outside and enjoy it. Walk around your neighborhood or find a park to walk at. Being in nature and having time to just walk, think and dream can really inspire your creativity.
Add movement in when you can—waiting in line at the grocery store? Do some calf-raises using the handle on your shopping cart. Do lunges while you brush your teeth. Get in as many crunches as you can during commercial breaks. There is plenty of time in your day to get some movement in, you just have to be a little creative about it.

5. Creativity Exercises

Badass writers know that sometimes creative flow needs to be cultivated, so they use creativity exercises to help them, such as Morning Pages, 10 Minutes of Gibberish or meditation.

These types of exercises can help clear the clutter from your mind so you can concentrate on the important stuff (writing).

What steps will you take to become a badass creative writer?

About the Author: Jennifer Blanchard is the founder and Resident Creative at InkyBites, where she’s currently running a blog series to help you Recharge Your Creative Batteries in 31 Days. 

****

Many thanks to Jennifer, who is one of the kindest and most generous writers I’ve met online, and is also a passionate spokesperson for craft and, as you’ve just read, the writing life.  Please support her by visiting her new site, InkyBites. 

Also, to my newsletter subscribers… the July edition will be a bit late because of my book deadline (made it) and the final assembly of a new submission package of multiple projects with my new agent, the wonderful Andrea Hurst. 

Thanks for stopping by today, always appreciated.  Larry 

 

How To Become A Badass Creative Writer — a Guest Post… is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

The “Box” is Just a Punk — A Guest Post by Art Holcomb

Once again our friend Art Holcomb knocks it out of the park.

 *****

Writers learn the same way our characters learn.

Consider for a moment some of the great characters of fiction: Jay Gatsby, Yuri Zhivago, Atticus Finch, Scarlett O’Hara, Philip Marlowe, James Bond, Harry Potter . . . and Winnie-the-Pooh.

These heroes spend most of their fictional lives failing at everything they try.  And while they eventually find a path that leads them to success, most of those failures come as they try to solve their problem by doing something that’s comfortable,

Something “in their wheelhouse.”

Something similar to what they have already done.

But leaps of faith, “crazy” risks, and bold moves are the ways that heroes solve their problems.  Marlowe and Bond made incredible leaps of physical and intuitive prowess. Zhivago is unyielding. And both Potter and Pooh never stop, never quit until they get what they want.

These risks and acts of faith are not unlike the ones you took when you got up the courage to announce to the world that you were going to be a writer.

The world probably thought this was risky “out of the box thinking” and they were right.

But, sometime in your life, a bold move was called for and you made it.

Now you may be once again at a crossroad.  In your desire to find an audience, you look at how others have found success and are deconstructing stories and reverse engineering the work, trying to find the secret that made these tales popular.

As a teacher and professional, I can tell you that this is a valuable exercise.

But as a writer, I’m telling you that there is a danger here. 

It is vital that you learn about plot and structure – the tools that make your stories powerful on so many levels – and such exercises can teach you that.  Understanding story engineering will always serve your stories regardless of genre, format or interest. But that has to be matched with STORY ART – the creative aspect and personal perspective that make your stories unique.  The thing that only you can bring to the story. Concentrating on structure makes your story sound, but it cannot make it truly and uniquely yours.

For example, let’s consider the vampire story craze. 

Several years ago, both Hollywood and the publishing world decided to ride this tsunami hard. At present, brick-and-mortar bookstores have dedicated entire alcoves to pouty YA vampire tales.  But if you spend any time with these books at all, you’ll see that many of them are interchangeable in terms of story, characters and dialogue – imperfect clones of the source materials. Written that way because publishers, authors, or news outlet said that this was the way to success.

So now, you decide to sit down to write your vampire story . . .

And suddenly, you’re back “in the box” with all these other writers.

Warm.  Comfortable.  Safe.

Boring.

Spending up to a year writing a vampire novel for a market that’s already saturated.

So, here’s my thought – something I want you to try:

Once you’re committed to learning and using excellent story engineering . . .

FORGET the BOX.  Just forget it. You’re better than that.

That warm cozy feeling inside the box is just the mean temperature found at the center of the herd.

You don’t want to be in the box. 

 Frankly, you don’t want to be anywhere near the box. 

The box is bad. 

The box lies to you.

The box talks smack about you when your back is turned. It sleeps with your spouse, drinks from the carton.

Face it, the box is just a punk.

Twilight.  Hunger Games.  Harry Potter. 

Take any of the literary phenomenons of recent years, stories that have spawned countless spin-offs, rip-offs, homages and pretenders.

What they all have in common is that they, while all the time using excellent story engineering principles and structures – all had a very unique spin on the concept.

You can tell a Meyers, Collins or Rowlings story a mile away.

So, remember – the rule is: If you can’t do it better, do something else.

Or better yet, just plain do something original.

Instead, take the skills you’ve developed – your knowledge, unique perspective and your distinctive storytelling sensibilities -and really use them – in a way that is uniquely and breathtakingly yours. By all means, continue to write your series if it’s successful and meaningful, but take a portion of the precious time you have in order to write something really different. 

Try that new approach.  Build a new literary concoction.

Tackle a new format.

Decide to write your “secret story” - you know, the story you think about just as you nod off at night.  The one that suddenly wakes you up.  The one that frightens you.  The one you’ve put away more than once for fear of what your spouse, girl/boyfriend or parents might say.

The one that is secretly, uniquely and undeniably yours.

Along the way, too, be naturally suspicious of how you judge success.  When you have nothing to lose, you write like you have nothing to lose.  But once you’re successful for the first time, the great “I need that second sale” fear can overtake you.  Once you have a publication and (hopefully) the money from the sale, you can sometimes become desperate for that next sale.  Hungry for it.  Needful of it in a way you may have never known and it will change the way you look at your writing.  You can go from being consumed with “what is good” to “what will sell” in a New York minute.  Changes will be considered, concessions will be made, and you can suddenly find yourself in the unenviable position of being published, but unfulfilled.

Then, once again, you’re in the box.

You always have to do both.  The safe and the insane.

Of course, you have to chase that next sale, just as I do.  But, like your hero, you have to do something new, adapting all the time to your ever-changing circumstances.  The synthesis of what you’re doing now and what you’re not doing now creates your future.

Regardless of their successes, the writers named above all came to view their work in a different way because they sought the truths that can only live in fiction.

The same is there for you.

You must entertain and enlighten.  You must enthrall and amuse.  And as your heroes continue to stumble on their way toward glory, you must keep the box at bay every day.

I think it was the Dalai Lama who said:

“Every day out of the box is a good day.”

Well, maybe not the Dalai Lama, but you get the idea.

Art Holcomb is a successful screenwriter, comic book writer and frequent contributor to Storyfix.com.  A number of his recent posts appear in the Larry Brooks’ collection: Warm Hugs for Writers: Comfort and Commiseration of The Writing Life .  He appears this summer at the San Diego Comic-Con and the Greater Los Angeles Writer’s Conference, and begins teaching screenwriting and graphic novel writing classes at the University of California in Fall 2012. His most recent screenplay is FINAL DOWN (a NFL team disaster film) and his short story OLIVER AND THE FOUR-PIECE, REGENCY-STYLE BEDROOM SET OF DOOM is being adapted for the screen.

The “Box” is Just a Punk — A Guest Post by Art Holcomb is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

An Empowering Perspective on Writing Scenes That Work

Having viewed four movies in four days, I am reminded of the learning (for novelists) that is avaiable there.  In particular, the art and craft of defining and shaping scenes, which are the building blocks of dramatic narrative.

Novelists too easily, and too often, don’t regard scenes for what they are: the delivery of story.  Novelists get to fill pages with expository backfull and transition, forgetting that these are placeholders for scenes and, therefore, just as critical to pace and exposition.  And that the scenes we do write are defined not by our words as much as they are by what happens in them.

Consider how scenes in movies are created, — they aren’t written and then shot — and how this differs from the process  novelists use. 

Just this morning Jeffrey Deaver spoke to this in a feature in our local daily (he’s coming here for a signing at The Poisoned Pen, the top gig in the book signing world) — movies are written by committee.  Of course, novels aren’t… but perhaps, if we’re seeking ways to be better, we should look at how the film process in this regard might add value to what we do, especially when it comes to scene writing.

Maybe we should write our scenes by committee… a committee of one, with multiple perspectives and focuses on how the scene is set, staged, written, acted and edited.  Instead of just splashing it onto the page within the flow of our creative momentum and then moving on.

Each scene should be viewed as an opportunity to tell a story within a story.  Something driven by an expository mission, and interpreted by readers as the sum of many interactive forces comingling toward an outcome.

Long before cameras roll, each and every scene in a film has been vetted and molded by several specialists. 

The screenwriter, of course, who creates the bones of the scene and determines the expository goal.  Then the director, to make sure it works within the big picture, that it’s shootable and won’t bust the budget (and — this one being very important to novelists — to make sure the writer hasn’t created a sidetrip, an agenda or has lost track of the spine of the story).  Then the set designer, to make it beautiful or scary of whatever is required, in collaboration with the cinematographer.  Then the actors, to make sure the lines ring true to the character and the unspoken context speaks volumes. 

Then, during shooting, everyone is on their toes to adjust things.  Because what’s on paper, even after all this input, may yield to a better idea.  Something to speed things up, deepen tension and texture, add to characterization, tweak the lighting, adjust the wardrobe, assure continuity.

And then, it all comes together in the editing bay (theirs are catered, ours aren’t.  Here’, everything is subjected to another round of analysis… trimming here, adding music and sound effects there, maybe cutting the dang thing out of the story altogether.

That’s often a good option for us, too.

Imagine what we could do, as a committe of one, if we viewed our scenes with this level of detail and creative standards?

Our scenes are the intersection of our intentions and our effectivness.  And you know what they say about best intentions — if the moment falls short, none of the planning means a thing.

Take another look, ask yourself if the scene you’ve planned — or even better, the scene you’ve written – is the best scene it could be… or if you should listen to another voice. 

In our case, it’ll come from within, and it might just be right.

An Empowering Perspective on Writing Scenes That Work is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

“Your structure is off…” — What Does That Even ‘Mean’?

You may have heard that.  In fact, you may have heard that from me, either by virtue of having me evaluate your story, or through your own interpretation of the story architecture principles I espouse here.

It may confuse you.  It may even piss you off.

Not everyone understands the difference between a principle and a rule. Truth is, there are no “rules” in art… but we can lay no claim to art until the principles that underpin effectiveness have been put into play.

That’s not a paradox as much as it is a major lightbulb going off.  If you haven’t heard that glorious little “click”  yet, keep reading, I’m pointing you toward the on switch.

In storytelling, however, what we do have instead of rules are options.  Creative choices.  And for those — to ensure that we don’t shoot ourselves in the foot — we have principles.

Principles are there to keep us safe, to empower our work.

When someone tells you your story structure is weak, it usually means one of the following: pacing is sluggish… not enough tension… no discernible character arc… too one dimensional… not complex or layered enough to sustain interest.  Dull as dirt.

Truth is, you’ll probably hear one of those dark critiques before you’ll hear about your structure.  But pay attention to both,, because one is cause and the other is effect.

Structure is the means toward pace, tension, arc, depth and compelling interest.  It is the roadmap, the paradigm, that allows them to happen in an optimal way.  To mess with structure — to believe you can make it up as you please — is to put these outcomes at risk.

The more you understand about cause and effect in your fiction, the better your stories will be.

The principles of story structure set you free to be great.

Step off a cliff and you will fall.  Do it with the right gear, something that mitigates the very physics you seek to defy, and you have a shot at living to leap another day.

Really?  Why can’t we simply write a story any dang way we please?

We can… provided the story aligns with the basic principles of fiction.  Trouble is, basic as the principles are, too many writers don’t consider them when facing the very  choices in a story that will define its ultimate effectiveness.

They just write it.  Something comes to them in the flow, and they put it in.  And then they move on.

Think of every airplane you’ve ever seen.  There are hundreds of designs, sizes and shapes.  Some have two wings, some have four, some barely have any.  Some have propellers, some don’t, some have strange tails (just as some writers tell strange tales… sorry about that typo in the first edition of this post),  some are shaped like a flying pachyderm.  Some don’t even have pilots.

There are no rules, if that’s how you want to intrepret it.

But… they all align with certain principles, or they cannot fly.

Same with our stories.

Why do certain things need to be in certain places, in a certain order, and in specific context to other certain things?

When you see this — story structure itself — as an application of principles rather than a constriction borne of rules, then you’re onto something.  This shift is perhaps the most critical milestone is a writer’s development, because without it one remains alone and without a compass in a sea of creative choices that will drown your story in a heartbeat.

Principles, not rules, give us access to the physics of storytelling.These universal literary forces don’t care if you understand them or not (kind of like gravity and the certainty that the sun will rise in the morning), they will always be there to influence your story, to either drag it down or lift it up… depending how you apply them.

What do bestselling authors know that you don’t?  It isn’t the freedom to break  what you might perceive to be rules.  Rather, they understand the awesome power of applying the principles of literary physics within a story.  It is the certain knowledge that it is the principles themselves that bestow freedom to our choices, in context to the certainty that to violate them is a sure route to literary suicide.

If that sounds harsh, it won’t once you understand what specific principles I’m talking about here.  If you don’t recognize them as essential, then you don’t understand fiction.

And if you want to call them rules, in that case… it doesn’t matter.  They don’t care, they’ll still kill you if you ignore them.

Here are the best of those principles.

A story without a hero to root for will not work well.  We don’t have to like our heroes (as readers), but we do need to root for them to keep us engaged.

Conflict — dramatic tension — is what makes a story more than a character study.  Plot is what gives characters something to do… and what your characters do becomes the optimal way to illuminate character.  Thus, these two elements of story physics — dramatic tension and hero empathy — depend on each other to work.

Compelling pace is more effective than stories with misguided pace.

The more vivid the world you create, the more vicarious the experience you deliver to your reader, the more succcessful the story will be.

These aren’t rules, they are principles of story physics.  Understand the difference.

That’s my belabored, over-written point today.  Understand the difference.

The real issue isn’t the physics, it’s the author’s relationship with the physics of storytelling…which include a compelling premise or concept, dramatic tension, pace, hero empathy, vicarious journey, and strength of execution (the latter being the goal of, and the sum total of, the Six Core Competencies of successful storytellingg.

When, perhaps unknowingly, or from a desire to break rules and do something you believe to be out of the box, by definition you are thus confused about what commercial creativity even means.  It’s almost impossible to cite an example of a story that has proven successful without those physics in play.

Better, then, to understand how to harness these story forces to make your story as good as it can possibly be within parameters of your own making.

Sometimes you get lucky, you tap into one or more of the elements of story physics intuitively as you unspool your narrative, but more often you succeed when you are conscious of these forces and don’t allow yourself to settle… when you push your story with a view toward optimizing the very forces that will give it wings.

And how do you do that?

By understanding the elements, context and mission of story architecture, as it manifests on the page via structure.

Where you start, what comes next, what comes after that, what and where and why to twist and evolve the story, how to end it… you optimize them not from the pure genius of your learning-curve savvy intuitive self, but from a proactive application of the role and inevitable presence of story physics in your vetting of, and ultimately your selection of, the elements and moments of your story.

Story structure isn’t a rule.  It is the means toward freedom to create without risk.

It is a set of principles that are illuminations of the truth about what makes a story work.

“Your structure is off…” — What Does That Even ‘Mean’? is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

The Universal Fairy Tale — A Guest Post* by Art Holcomb

Art Holcomb is a regular contributor to Storyfix.  He’s a professional screenwriter and storyteller, and teaches writing at the university level, among other dark and scary places. 

The nice thing about having a regular contributor like Art is that he can bring us cool stuff from elsewhere, meaning this is a guest post* within a guest post. 

I’ll let Art explain.  L.

*****

There are few things in life that I see and must immediately possess.

 This was one of them.

 To provoke that kind of response in me, the item must be both immensely valuable and unique.  I came across this guest post in the Huntington Post on April 16th (excerpt reproduced below) that sent me immediately to the Amazon Book site. What I found there is so simple and perfect that it belongs in the library of every fiction writer. 

This booklet takes but minutes to read, but I guarantee that you’ll be returning to it again and again as you write.  Although written for screenwriters, it relates easily to all types of fiction and  ranks up there with Larry’s STORY ENGINEERING and other books as a must-have reference and guide.

I’ll be using it in my screenwriting and graphic novel writing class this fall at UC Riverside, and at less than half the price of a fast food lunch, it’s one of the great values for writers everywhere.

My only regret – that I didn’t write it myself.  Enjoy!

Art Holcomb

*****

The Screenwriter’s Fairy Tale by Todd Glick 

PREFACE

When my first book Something Startling Happens: The 120 Story Beats Every Writer Needs To Know hit Amazon’s Top 5 for Film and Television books in December of 2011, and then #1 on Kindle for Screenwriting, it blew my mind and humbled me. You see, originally the information in that book wasn’t meant for the world at all. It was my own secret passion project to sharpen my writing skills. When you see the book on the shelves now, it’s all clean and tidy, but in reality the research process accumulated messy reams of dog-eared and tea-stained legal pads, a scratched stopwatch, a casualty of spent pens, and piles of over 300 scuffed-up DVDs of classic films.

This new work you’re about to read went through a similar process.

Why did I research so many movies? I wanted to get to the bottom of how stories worked so I could tell better yarns. The process reminded me of my teenage years. I loved peeking underneath the hood of my beat-ta-crap Chevy to see how the heap was put together. I would disassemble the individual parts that smelled of oil and gas, and study how they fit to make the engine rumble.

I’m that same way today with stories.

When you immerse yourself that deeply into figuring things out, you can’t help but walk away with a few insights. When I emerged from those four bleary-eyed years of story engine analysis, the knowledge I gained helped propel my stories towards the top of major screenwriting competitions, attracted options and script sales, and launched my book into the bestseller list, which led to other writing deals. But the coolest thing I gained from this whole journey, by far, was the worldwide emails from screenwriters who loved the book and benefited from it. It was those positive messages that inspired me to share even more insights.

Thus this new fable.

I adore screenwriters — we noble story warriors who toil countless hours alone in our rooms and in coffeeshops because we love movies so damn much. We savor how the stories make us feel, and we want — so desperately — to make others feel that same way. What a beautiful, precious cause.

This fable is dedicated to you.

In just a bit, you’ll be reading the exact same four-act fairy tale I wrote for myself to help me assemble the bare bones of a story; it’s also the template I use to write all my treatments. It’s a distillation of what I’ve found to be common in all successful movies — an archetypal story pattern used since the ancient Greeks. To help you even further, I included a matching paragraph-by-paragraph example of the Academy Award-winning film, The King’s Speech.

If you find The Screenwriter’s Fairy Tale useful, I’d love to hear from you. I’m at writerwrench@gmail.com. Oh, and please tell others about it.

All the very best, Noble Warrior.

CHAPTER ONE

Once upon a time, in every great movie ever made, there was an incomplete Boy who lived his normal everyday life in his normal everyday world. This Boy, who was orphaned in some way, desperately wanted something and thought that if he got that particular something, it would fix his incompleteness. He didn’t realize, however, that he had a much deeper problem on his hands — he possessed a stubborn flaw, which he was blind to. In fact, this flaw prevented him from getting what he really needed in his life: true happiness or enlightenment.

Going about his usual business, the Boy interacted with friends or a love interest and discussed that thing he desperately wanted. Some of his friends were nice and helpful, while others were mean. But just when the Boy was going to continue on repeating his same ol’ everyday habits, a predicament interrupted his life — a predicament that would eventually lead to the exposure of his flaw. The Boy found this predicament unsettling and feared it. In some cases, however, the predicament thrilled the Boy — he saw it as an opportunity. In this circumstance, his disquieted friends expressed fear for the Boy instead.

Soon after, the Boy met with a mentor. Sometimes the mentor was older and wiser and offered words of wisdom. Other times, the mentor appeared wise, but offered the wrong advice. Mulling over his chat with his mentor, the Boy realized that he still lacked something in his life. But the Boy didn’t understand why he lacked this something because his flaw still blinded him. In the midst of all these happenings, a bully made his presence known — a powerful adversary who would eventually find a way to exploit the Boy’s flaw in order to defeat him. As the Boy tried to maintain his bearings within his unraveling world, a startling life-changing event propelled him into uncharted territory.

End of excerpt.

Buy today for only $2.99 at Amazon.com.

*****

Do you see the four-part structure here?  (My screenwriter friends call it a three-part structure, but that’s more tradition than accurate).  Do you see the flow?  The set-up?  The First Plot Point?  The dramatic tension unfolding?

I think it’s brilliant, one of those truisms masked as cleverness wrapped in analogy packaged in metaphor and delivered as a frosted exercise in parallel interpretation.  Obvious, of course.

****

If you missed The Hunger Games deconstruction, click HERE for a menu of the posts in that series.

If you missed my June newsletter and would like to see what delicious writing mysteries I’ve shared with my secret cult of subscribers, click HERE.

Coming soon: The Amazing $100 Professional Story Coaching Adventure… get ready to save yourself a LOT of work.

QUICK NEWS FLASH: my book, Story Engineering, just won the General Non-Fiction category in the 2012 Next Generation Indie Book Awards (sharing the top spot with another book, which isn’t about writing; scroll down to find the category, this is separate from the Grand Prize in that category… confusing, I agree).  Also, my book, Warm Hugs for Writers, was a finalist in the ebook category. 

The Universal Fairy Tale — A Guest Post* by Art Holcomb is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

Hunger Games (11) – Epilogue: What This Story Teaches Us… Summarized

You don’t have to like The Hunger Games – book or film – to appreciate its craft.  And more importantly, to learn from it.

Most who don’t like it (some of whom were summoned forth from this series to berate me for focusing on it) are put off by the subject matter (teenagers pitted against each other to the death), and sadly, perhaps missed the point, the thematic metaphor and thus, the skill with which Suzanne Collins created this juggernaut.

Simplicity, naivety, and blinders do not serve the emerging novelist.  It’s impossible to challenge and stretch the reader’s mind and world if one’s own mind defies challenge of any kind.

Non-writers get to do throw these babies out with their personal tastes in bathwater.  But no matter what that bathwater tastes like, real writers need to recognize craft when they see it.  Machinations, manipulations and applications of forces.  Such recognition is every bit as critical as practice — write write write, says the writing teacher, as if that’s all it takes — as we strive to improve our ability to craft great fiction.

Here’s what stuck to my wall as we eviscerated this story:

Narrative point of view is a choice.

Make it carefully.  You might be cutting off a viable contributing source of dramatic exposition.  Collins did just that with her first person voice, but the filmmakers added a behind-the-scenes POV that birthed an entirely new subplot, and while they were at it, added to the vicarous tension stemming from what the hero was going through.  We (the viewers) saw it coming before Katniss could.

It’s perfectly okay, by the way, to mix POVs within a story.  You can have chapters rendered in third person, while others are told in first.  Just make sure it’s the hero narrating when you try this, and make sure these occur in clearly separated scenes and/or chapters).

Or, you can show multiple POVs in all third person chapters.  But again, make sure they stand alone as segregated blocks of exposition.

The core story isn’t always what it seems.

Or better put, a love story trumps a thriller focus every time.

Katniss fleeing through the woods only offered so much story potential.  But from the beginning the Games were merely a catalyst for what proved to be the core structural thread of the story, which was Katniss’ emerging relationship with Peeta.

Your twelve year old probably didn’t care, but that’s the brilliance of this.  The story works on two levels, and together they became a sum in excess of their parts.

This dual narrative form happens all the time out there… start watching for it.

Sub-text counts.  Big time.

I’m thinking that without the screamingly obvious parallel between the sadistic nature of the Games and those citizens who tuned in to watch them, not to mention the supposed rationale the Capital city used to justify them, and our own world of reality television and media spin… without that sub-text, THG is just another chase story. 

The Bachelor without tears and heartbreak?  That’s a rating disaster in the making.  The audience — us — craves and delights in that suffering.  Impossible to admit, horrific to see when you love a teenage hero. 

This sub-text is what elevated THG above and beyond its surface YA genre to cross over as an adult contemporary bestseller.

Watch and learn.  This is how you jump genres.

Story Physics will never fail you.

We all understand the need for conflict (at least I hope so… if you don’t, start digging though the archives here, that’s the most basic 101 criteria in all of fiction).

But there are at least four other major categories of story physics that can make or break your story, and too often — because they can naturally manifest as collateral forces stemming from your plot — we take them for granted.

Hero empathy — our feeling for, and subsequent rooting for Katniss (both are essential chunks of story physics) are major factors in this success of this book.  Combined with an intriguing premise (the Games) and powerful themes, this element alone stands at the front of the class in this regard, right up there with the characters in The Help.

Don’t settle for this to simply appear in your story.  Shoot for it, design your premise and your character to optimize these forces,

Aim high, write with courage.

A significant factor in the appeal of this story connects to the conceptual premise premise.  These same intended themes, the same characters and many of the dramatic elements could have been pursued, say, by a reality television show depicting teens chasing each other around a suburban mall.

But Collins didn’t settle for the familiar or the mundane.  And she went deep enough to license the contrived.  Her story landscape — her arena, both literally and figuratively in this sense — was fresh, frightening, edgy, and a ripe metaphor for life.

Many stories can be set anywhere.  

Again, choose wisely, using THG as inspiration.  Take us somewhere we’ve never imagined, somewhere we’d love to go, somewhere that, while riddled with its own realities, jars us into recognizing something of ourselves and our own reality in the process.

The best historicals do this.  The best science fiction and fantasy does this.

See the new film, Prometheus, just out this week.  It’s a great story, but it’s an even greater vicarious experience.  That’s the juice of that story.  Combined with the plot, you have significant thematic weight, which wouldn’t happen if either the setting or the underpinnings of the story would have been… less courageous.

Even the best thrillers and romcoms utilize vicarious experience to snag our interest.  W hy do you think so many are set in Hawaii? Answer: vicarious experience, which is one of those key elements of story physics, available to all of us in nearly any story we might write.

*****

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series.  I know I’ve learned a lot,  hope you have, as well.

Thanks to those who have chipped in some nominations for the next deconstruction, which is coming soon.  I’m narrowing that down now.

Meanwhile, I encourage you to start deconstructing stories on your own.  See if you can break them down into the core 9 sentences, and in doing so, begin to recognize the power of story physics at work.

Just like medical students spend half their time in anatomy labs peeling back the layers of specimens that once lived and breathed, we too can benefit from seeing what works — often hidden to the untrained or uncaring consumer eye — from the inside out.

Next up – a guest post from our favorite drop-in guru, Art Holcomb.

Hunger Games (11) – Epilogue: What This Story Teaches Us… Summarized is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

Hunger Games (10) – The “Risk Taking” in this Story

As someone who advocates writing fiction from a context of structure, mission driven elements and aesthetic discipline driven by market standards, I am sometimes pitted against others who advocate “taking risks” with our stories. 

As if, somehow, these philosophies are not aligned.

I suppose it depends on how you frame the issue. 

Is breaking certain principles and laws in this life a risk… or is it suicide?  The question applies to our stories as much as it does anything else.

Is jumping off a bridge onto a freeway a risk, or is it certain death that will appear, to anyone looking in, to be suicide?  Because the act violates all the known laws of physics and survival, which is always suicidal. 

That analogy, without compromise, accurately frames the question of risk taking in our stories.

Don’t be fooled or seduced.

Those who encourage us to take risks are not suggesting that we write stories that violate the basic tenets of dramatic physics, structural integrity or creative license.  Go ahead, write a story with no conflict, lackluster pacing,, zero inherent compelling interest and nobody to root for… then see what happens. 

That manuscript lying  on the freeway, right  next to the guy who just jumped off a bridge?  That’s his novel.

No, risk taking, in this context, has everything to do with courage and with bold vision.

It has to do with the bucking of belief systems, social boundaries and the occasional use of creative narration techniques.  It relates to the boldness with which an author takes a theme and explodes it into a dramatic framework that challenges, frightens, disturbs and, while doing so, grips and entertains.

The Hunger Games is a prime example of this, as was The Davinci Code.

I’ve heard from some writers waxing outraged about THG, saying that the book is obscene, and that as authors we have a responsiblity to hold our fiction to higher standards.  Same with Davinci, people seem to take pride in hating it, as much because they don’t believe Dan Brown is all that good (they’re wrong, based on results, which stem directly from his bold vision) as because their world view has been challenged.

The risk, then, is this: whose standards are they? 

Yours?  Society’s?  Risk comes when we challenge norms, speculate on alternative realities and show consequences, and do so in the full knowledge that it very likely will piss off a certain percentage of the market.

Both Suzanne Collins, who wrote a story about children killing children, and Dan Brown, who wrote a story suggesting that the largest religion in the western world is based on a conspiracy to hide the truth, took significant risks.  IF that’s all you see in these stories, then frankly, you didn’t get it.  You didn’t get what about 50 million other readers did get.

For Collins and Brown, let’s just agree that the risk they took paid off, at least in terms of commercial success.  There are still plenty of haters, the fact of which, I’m assuming, makes both Collins and Brown smile widely from the comfort of their 40,000 square foot homes with a helipad and a killer view.

Neither book, by the way, played the slightest bit casual with story physics. 

In fact, both stories are models for it.

It’s gut check time: are you being seduced in the wrong way by the “take-risks-in-your-writing” mantra?  Are you tempting fate by jumping off a literary bridge?  Or are you framing this properly as a challenge to take your book to new places, with bold ideas that explore relevant themes, and then empower the storythrough a fierce adherence to the very principles that will make it work?

Here’s hoping it’s the latter. 

May all your risks turn out to be… survivable, and just possibly, a catalyst for your success.

*****

Last minute Webinar pitch: you really need to consider opting-in for my Writers Digest University webinar, this coming Thursday, June 7, at 1:00 (Eastern/US).  Here are a bunch of reasons why.

First, the title: THE ELEMENTS OF STORY: TRANSFORMING YOUR STORY FROM GOOD TO GREAT.  Unless you know everything there is to know about how to do that (I know I don’t, but I know a LOT), you”ll find a wealth of insight that may be positively Epiphany-like to your writing career.  The workshop clarifies the nature of, need for, and process of rendering and combining an 11-point roster of story forces and requisite elements before a story can be optimized… borfe it will work as well as it possibly can.

When was the last time you attended a workshop that bit off that level of content?  It’s the most basic, and challenging, of what we need to understand and implement as storytellers, rarely seen or heard out there… this webinar will put it all on your screen and in your head for you to consider.

Go0d news… I have a DISCOUNT for you, simply for being here on Storyfix.  When you register, you’ll go to a SHOPPING CART page to sign up, where you’ll find a DISCOUNT WINDOW.  Enter the code — WDS322 — and you’ll get a 15% discount of the regular $89 price.

You’ll also receive, at no additional cost, a critique of a 2-page story summary or pitch, to help ensure that your concept and approach does indeed create a dramatic landscape upon which all these story forces and elements can be fully realized.

You can register HERE, as well as learn more about the workshop.  Hope to see you there!

Hunger Games (10) – The “Risk Taking” in this Story is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com