WRITING ADVICE – Lisa Cron #16: Story is Character Action, Plot is World Action

In 2008, I discovered how little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, Lin Oliver speak at a convention hosted by the Minnesota Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. To learn more – and to satisfy my natural tendency to “teach stuff”, I started a series of essays taking the wisdom of published writers and then applying each “nugget of wisdom” to my own writing. During the six years that followed, I used the advice of a number of published writers (with their permission) and then applied the writing wisdom of Lin Oliver, Jack McDevitt, Nathan Bransford, Mike Duran, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, SL Veihl, Bruce Bethke, and Julie Czerneda to an analysis of my own writing. Together these people write in genres broad and deep, and have acted as agents, editors, publishers, columnists, and teachers. Today I add to that list, Lisa Cron who has worked as a literary agent, TV producer, and story consultant for Warner Brothers, the William Morris Agency, and others. She is a frequent speaker at writers’ conferences, and a story coach for writers, educators, and journalists. After reading her book, WIRED FOR STORY, I was overwhelmed by the information, so I distilled it down to 23 of the most important points she made. For the next few Elements of Cron and Korea and Cron, I’m going to share what I found – not so much for you, but for me!
Action Plan 1: Story is how a character reacts and acts to the plot, which is what happens.
As strange as it may sound, I forget this sometimes.
Let me back up. I write from an outline of my story, not a “literary” outline, but a storyboard I create with small, yellow sticky notes (invented, I might add, through a tangled, lawsuit-strewn path, by 3M (which actually stands for Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing), which world HQ is 25 miles from where I am writing this!)
Ahem…
Once I set up the outline, I write from it. Not slavishly, as I allow for my characters to occasionally do something I hadn’t foreseen, but it IS like putty – hard to reshape once I’ve got it down.
I’ve forgotten recently, that my characters are “alive” in the sense that while I’m writing a story, I’m trying to move them along a predetermined path, but they also need to react to what’s going on around them out of the personality I’ve created.
I’m a Christian (in case you haven’t figured it out!), and I know that while God gives me free will, He has also laid out a plan for my life. I’m free to choose not to follow the plan, but He does know what’s best for me and I would be wise to follow His will.
My current work-in-progress is a case to point. I’ve brought back two characters that readers liked in “Road Veterinarian” and though Thatcher left a note with Dr. Scrabble reading, “You and I are not finished yet”, this new story doesn’t allow them the intimacy they had in the Northwest Angle. So, now what? Scrabble asks Thatcher out on a date – and she turns him down. Why? The problem is that it has nothing to do with the story, and now he’s disappointed. What am I supposed to do with that development?
As well, this story is complicated by a number of factors, including a resurrected dinosaur called a Korean Tiny Terror and a possible infectious disease (which I haven’t even gotten to yet in the story, and what the heck does that have to do with Scrabble – he’s a veterinarian!)
On the other hand, she has “…doctorates in invertebrate zoology and molecular biology from UBC, Vancouver, with undergraduate studies in nanochemical engineering, wildlife management, and forestry.” So, she’s smart.
He is, too. Though I don’t reveal it in the first story, besides having a doctorate in Veterinary Medicine, he also has undergrad degrees in Cellular and Molecular Biology, Animal Sciences with an emphasis in Animal Biomedical Science and, Veterinary Technology.
But neither one has much experience with paleontology…
OK, so you see my problem. I get off track. I am a science geek and I love research, but in this story series, I am easily distracted by the SCIENCE rather than focusing on the story.
To write a good story, I need to concentrate on the character’s reaction to what is HAPPENING (plot). I tend to overwrite things that are happening. In this case, I also have many characters – Thatcher, Scrabble, Hosik, Hulan, and Jang. The story’s going to be long, BUT I need to start killing some of these people off in order to get back to the story of Thatcher and Scrabble. Maybe I can let Jang live, even though she’s the most disagreeable of the lot of them.
But…hmmm…I need to get back to the story because in writing this, I’ve gotten some clarity on what I need to do and what I have been doing. In this case, they aren’t the same and have been bogging down the story. I’ll be letting you know what happens!Image: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/51ddbf8fe4b0bf85e2f4edd2/t/592c2f0b414fb5ddd3a1259d/1496067864402/BookImage.jpg?format=300w