Context for your Writing Apprenticeship
(I am posting this here in the main thread – it already existed as a back-end page – at the suggestion of a reader. It was offered via link in my last post, which was an important one for newer writers especially – and frustrated ones in particular – as literally a prologue to the post itself.
I know how this works, my guess is very few readers clicked through to it. Sort of like not reading the instructions in the box when you get home from Best Buy. But this has some context worth considering. You can click through to the post it preempts, or simply scroll down here, it appears right after this one.)
I have to say, I’ve been amused in the past when people have left a review of one of my writing books complaining that the whole thing could have been covered in a simple article. Writers are not immune to the wide spectrum of human behavior that embraces everyone on the scales of genius, hubris and crazy.
Okay, fine. Pretty much anything can be reduced to its core elements and logic within a limited space. Like, an article or a post. Remember when you told your kids the facts of life? Just sayin’.
It’s just that not everyone can wrap their head around complex theories and multi-element models – some of which seem to contradict that which you have been taught or have been led to believe –without some context and elaboration, even repetition through a strategic breakdown of the content. Sometimes it takes an entire wing in a bookstore to shatter the wall of resistance and the deeply rooted hold of old limiting beliefs – not to mention blind adherence to what some people say, including famous writers who want you to believe their genius is more magic than mechanics – that bind people to the truth.
So now, for cynics or those in a hurry or if you’re just plain curious, here is the principle of story structure for novelists especially, reduced to its core essences… in just under 2000 words. To be honest, I tried to cover this ground in less than 1000 words, but I couldn’t touch all the requisite bases in a way that delivered value.
This isn’t something I’ve made up – I’ve seen references to Larry Brooks’ Story Structure out there… while perhaps flattering (or not), this simply refers to what I’m doing right here, and in my books and workshops and generally on this website. Which is to offer my take on these core elements of craft, arranged as accessibly and logically as I can render it, in a field in which clarity is sometimes in short supply and peripheral opinions are thick as thieves.
And yet, there are still people that tell me they just don’t get it. Right alongside people who tell me that they reject it… it being the existence of an omnipresent story structure model that is visible within nearly every single successful novel you can find. Which is why I keep trying to clarify.
The rationale is this: if pretty much all traditionally-published novels are built around these principles, including bestsellers by authors who aren’t even sure how they got there, what are your chances in this marketplace if you try to invent a new form of storytelling all by your lonesome? That’s like trying to reinvent the hamburger, folks, or even the filet mignon… diners go to those restaurants because they know what they want, and they’ll enjoy the nuance but not a variance from the core thing itself.
Even the titles of famous writers who claim this is heresy and formula – they’re everywhere – end up applying these very same principles to their own work. It’s not exactly hypocrisy – even when it smells just like hypocrisy – it’s actually a case of vocal nay-sayers arguing about process, actually selling you their process as the superior or only option, rather than more accurately focusing on product. They don’t want to consider that their process could actually be made more efficient and effective, as opposed to just sitting down and writing whatever they feel and want to write… and gee, look how wonderfully that turned out for them? That’s what they’re selling you, and leading you down a slippery slope in doing so.
Do it just like Stephen King does it. Or Famous Author X, who claims there are no principles involved, just his particular brand of genius. Just be sure you know and can leverage what Stephen King knows.
Not many do.
If an author infuses these principles into their stories early in the process, that simply means – it actually proves – that those principles have become second nature to them. Derrick Jeter didn’t talk much about his swing, but that doesn’t mean he advocates just standing in there and taking a hack at anything that looks close to the strikezone.
And if it took them many drafts to get there – and they always get there, if the book is out in the marketplace – then that very process of rewriting and editing was about nothing other than (besides some wordsmithing) bringing the errant early story back into closer alignment with the principles of story structure that they can’t or won’t admit to.
Story structure is like gravity. Until you honor its force and truth, nothing really works of you’re trying invent a flying machine. If all you’re doing is taking a walk, then maybe you don’t need to think too much about gravity. Just ask yourself which is a closer analogy to writing a novel: inventing a flying machine, or walking around the block.
It is so much easier to be perceived as a genius of some kind than acknowledge a principle that actually and naturally infuses your story with narrative power. Better to have people believe that all of the narrative power of your work was a product of you, not of a principle that you put into play.
I know one guy, pretty successful (in a genre-club sort of way) and out there on the periphery of the writing workshop circuit, who begins his sessions with a denial of anything that shows us what works and what doesn’t – in other words, principles, which he prematurely lumps into the dark corner of rules, which of course nobody wants to consider – in favor of… wait for it… learning “how to” like he learned it, and then doing it like he does it. Which is… what, exactly? Paying your dues like he paid his? Breaking down his own novels because, hey, this is how he does it? When in fact, he didn’t invent that paradigm at all, he simply backed into “what works – because that is what works – after his own dance with trail and error.
He didn’t invent it. But he’s now practicing it, no matter how he finally encountered it. It doesn’t have be a religious experience after a decade or two of trial and error, applying what you’ve learned.
Because you can learn it right at square one, if you open yourself to it.
Thing is… internalizing these story structure truths become the raw grist of storytelling genius. (This is true for that guy, too, he wasn’t born with it, no matter what he tells you.) Once you begin to think this principle-driven way, to plan your stories this way, you will have stepped into a sort of genius in your own right.
Suffering is optional.
Learning this stuff can cut decades off of your learning curve.
If you’d like elaboration, just type “story structure” into the search function to the right, you’ll be shown a menu with well over 50 articles on the topic, including a couple of graphics that say it all on one page.
For now, on to the 2000 words on the subject I’ve promised you. CLICK HERE to go back to that post.
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