Storytelling Secrets

Hey there, I’m belatedly fulfilling my promise to periodically post about the craft of writing fiction.

In all matters, I try to make my thinking as accurate and actionable as I can. That is, I want my advice to be true, and also useful. I don’t want you to have to interpret what I say; I want to provide information you can immediately deploy. So “Show, Don’t Tell,” and “Write What You Know,” and “What’s Your Story Engine?” etc. are all fine as far as they go, but what they really mean is a function of what you can actually do with them.

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I’m going to focus on the doing, the actionability.

Some of the best advice I’ve ever come across is Bruce Lee’s dictum: “Absorb what is useful, discard what is not useful; make it uniquely your own. This advice is so sound that it’s impossible not to implement! Even if you violently disagree and reject Lee’s framework, you’re still following it. Do the same with anything you hear from me, or from anyone else.

Final thought before we dive in. As discussed more below, the efficient acquisition of any skill will involve three layers: theory, drills, and practice. This post is primarily theory, with a bit of drilling in the application of theory to aspects of various novels, movies, and television shows. Read this post (theory); keep writing your own story (practice); but don’t make the mistake of neglecting the drills—the controlled application of theory. Drills are the most efficient bridge between understanding theory and applying it in the real world. Again, more on theory, drills, and practice below.

Okay, here we go…

INTRO:

Once upon a time…And then one day…

I learned this simple structure from Michael Arndt’s eight-minute video Beginnings: Setting a Story in Motion. Great video—though his long one on endings, mentioned below, is even better.

Once upon a time is your ordinary world. And then one day is the inciting incident, the event that throws the ordinary world out of equilibrium and forces the hero to take action. What are your story’s Once upon a time and And then one day?

Who, what, where.

Stories are basically three things: who, what, and where. Who is the characters. What is the plot. Where is the setting.

To seduce your reader into your story, you have to parcel out some combination of these three things. That’s not so hard—but the tricky part is doing it in such a way that each bit of information you provide to seduce your reader into and ground your reader in your story makes the reader crave more information. The best example I’ve ever seen of this craft element is Ken Follett’s opening to The Key to Rebecca. More on that opening below, and here’s a short video breakdown I did on the topic a couple months ago.

The show is about X, but it’s really about Y.

This is a good framework for understanding what you’re trying to do. X is the genre or surface elements. Y is the underlying theme.

The Godfather is about the mafia…but it’s really about whether a man can escape his fate (and/or maybe it’s about the dark side of the American Dream). Blade Runner is about robots on the loose in a future dystopia…but it’s really about what makes us human. Breaking Bad is about a high school chemistry professor who starts cooking meth to provide for his family when he gets diagnosed with terminal cancer…but it’s really about self-actualization, and how far you would go to become the person you most authentically are. Game of Thrones is about swords and sorcery and warring medieval families and magic…but it’s really about power—how it’s acquired, how it’s used, what it does to the people who have it.

Story engine.

I learned this one from the a Master Class course taught by the Duffer Brothers—the guys who created Stranger Things. Theirs was Find the boy. Jaws is Kill the shark. The Great Train Robbery is Steal the gold. A Clean Kill in Tokyo is Save the girl.

(I like three-word expressions of story ending. Three words, three syllables, boiled down to the essence.)

It’s a little tricky to identify the story engine at the right level of detail. Why did Wynona Ryder want to find Will? Well, he was her son, so of course she wanted to find him. But “Because her son,” can’t immediately be expressed as action. Chief Brody wanted to kill the shark to protect the town, but in this story “protect the town” is too general, too amorphous.

My own rule-of-thumb test? If you could stop the story, step inside it, and ask the protagonist what she’s trying to do, her answer will is likely the story engine. Ask Chief Brody what he’s trying to do and no way will he answer, “Save the town.” He’ll say, “Are you kidding me? I’m trying to kill a damn shark, stop distracting me!”

And note that when characters encounter obstacles in pursuit of the object of the story engine, their attempts to overcome those obstacles become mini story engines in their own right.

Introducing a character in character.

You always want to introduce your character doing whatever is most relevant to her place in the story or the journey she’s going to take. So in The Godfather, we first encounter the Don in his office, surrounded by his men, listening to the plea of a supplicant. All of which is the 2+2 equation (more on this concept below) that allows us to conclude that this is a man of power who commands respect.

Also note the power of the final scene happening in the same place as the opening scene. The Don’s office in The Godfather. The pool in the Sopranos pilot. Walter White in bed with Skylar in Breaking Bad. The character has gone on a journey that has changed him. At the end he is home again—changed. Or as T.S. Eliot said in Little Gidding:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

I could go about The Godfather, but I’ll just add this. The character arc in the story belongs to Michael. How do we meet him? He’s a civilian, the odd man out in his family, engaged to a non-Italian girl. He tells Kay a bit of horrifying family history, then adds, “That’s my family, Kay. It’s not me.”

That’s the key! That’s everything you need to know before going on a journey that’s about fate, or blood being thicker than water, or however you want to describe it. If Michael is determined to not be part of his family, we sense right away that this story will be about his effort to keep or expand that distance. John Yorke has a great analysis of the absolutely perfect five-act structure and character arc in The Godfather in Into the Woods (more on which below).

Think about how Jeff Bridges’s character is introduced in The Fabulous Baker Boys. Or Walter Matthau’s character in The Bad News Bears. What do we know for sure about them as we first meet them? What can we sense and infer? What does our initial impression suggest about the character arc to come, what the character wants vs what the character really needs?

Ask these questions about the introduction scene of other characters you love. Ask it about the characters in your story.

“Show, don’t tell.”

For the most part, this old adage means you should just describe what’s happening and trust the reader to interpret—no need to interpret yourself. “Just the facts, ma’am,” as Sergeant Joe Friday used to say. For example, “Joe slammed his palm on the desk so hard that a water bottle fell over” is better than “Joe looked angry.”

Which is also an example of Andrew Stanton’s 2+2=4 as described in his TED talk, The Clues to a Great Story (more on which below). That is, give the reader or viewer some information but not all, which creates the insidious effect of simultaneously nourishing the reader and famishing her for more. So if Joe slammed his hand down, my guess is that he’s angry—but I have to keep reading if I want to know for sure, and if I want to understand why.

Stakes: external, internal, philosophical.

External is physical (for example, life and death); internal is emotional (for example, fulfillment in love vs forlornness); philosophical is a universal theme such as “money makes the world go round” vs “love makes the world go round.”

A ton of what I know about stakes is from the Michael Arndt video I mentioned earlier: Endings: The Good, The Bad, and the Insanely Great. His analysis of the stakes in Star Wars, The Graduate, and his own first script, Little Miss Sunshine, is fascinating and bears repeated viewing.

And as always, as a drill, apply Arndt’s external/internal/philosophical stakes rubric to other stories you love. I did this with the movie Working Girl and it was a great exercise.

What you’re trying to do vs how you want to do it.

I think a critical aspect of a storyteller’s mindset is distinguishing between what you’re trying to do and how you’re trying to do it. That is, between the purpose of your scene and its execution. It’s possible to have a valid purpose and lame execution. The data dump, resume-style of character building is a classic example. Yes, I need to know those things about the character, but if you just dump the facts on me without accomplishing more, it’s dull. You have to find a way to weave in the data dump so it’s accomplishing more than just the dump. In fact, the more things a given scene or passage is accomplishing, the better the writing. If a scene or passage is accomplishing nothing, it needs to be cut. If it’s accomplishing only one thing, it needs to be done in some other way so that it accomplishes more. Good writing will always accomplish at least two things.

A great example of the data dump concealed in dramatic dialogue that’s simultaneously accomplishing multiple purposes is in James Cameron’s movie The Abyss (here’s the script). On the surface (no pun intended), this is an action adventure story about a deep-sea rig. But what it’s really about, its heart, is a broken marital relationship repaired by shared danger, a husband and wife who think they hate each other but are in fact deeply devoted to each other (remember the difference between what the characters think they want—here, divorce—and what they really need—here, to rediscover their mutual devotion—and introducing characters in character). Read the screenplay and see how Cameron introduces this husband and wife, Bud (Virgil) and Lindsey, in Scene 31 starting on page 12. I’d argue that the primary purpose of this scene is to convey the characters’ resumes and that they’re married. But it does so much more than just that—it conveys plot elements, aspects of their relationship, aspects of their personalities, and of course the critical info delivered at the end. And among other things, this is a master class in 2+2=4. Read the screenplay or watch the scene and ask yourself what you know from the scene and what you can infer or sense. Ask yourself how many purposes this one exchange of dialogue is carrying out, and see if you can articulate them. Ask yourself how else Cameron could have achieved the same purposes (there are many such possibilities—“How are you doing, wife of mine?”—but I doubt any could be as good as what Cameron came up with).

Read any novel you love or watch any movie or TV show you love and you’ll see this principle at work throughout. The relevant drill would be to ask, “What do I know for sure from this passage or scene, and what am I sensing or surmising?” Both will always be there, and in great writing, you’ll initially see only the tip of the iceberg, but in such a way that you’ll get a sense of something vast beneath the surface.

STRUCTURE:

Five-act structure.

Most of what I know about structure I learned from John Yorke’s book Into the Woods. Yorke frames things in terms of five acts, which is an excellent guideline but not something I’d call a rule. I like to think in terms of five acts but many people prefer three. Some people say the only thing you need to know about structure is beginning, middle, end (that’s not nearly actionable enough for me, but whatever works).

Act 1 is your ordinary world (Once upon a time), which ends with the inciting incident (And then one day). Act 2 is the action the protagonist takes in response to the inciting incident, the initial plan. Act 2 ends when the initial plan fails. Act 3 is the new plan and the acquisition of an elixir, literal or metaphorical. Act 4 is the return journey, pursued by forces stirred up by the acquisition of the elixir. Act 5 is total mastery and home again, changed.

Again, a great example of five-act structure is The Godfather. But this structure is so sound and flexible that it’s also the framing for There’s Something About Mary. You’re laughing so hard it’s easy to miss the classic story structure, Ted’s character arc, how in the course of trying to get what he thinks he wants (Mary) he winds up with what he needs (to stop being selfish).

Turns in scenes.

John Yorke talks about how stories are fractals. Meaning, for example, that a story has three acts, each act has three scenes, each scene has three beats…or five or whatever, but the point is that the pattern reveals itself at each level of generality. Within a single scene, this means there will be a beginning, then a turn, then a resolution.

One of the best examples I know of is Mickey going to Rocky’s apartment, hoping Rocky will accept Mickey as his manager. You could describe this single scene as having its own three-act structure: from Mickey’s perspective, hope, increasing desperation, despair. From Rocky’s perspective, ambivalence, increasing anger, fear. Or think of it as possibility of togetherness to no possibility to togetherness—and then wrapped up with that beautiful denouement of forgiveness and union.

Another great one is Guardians of the Galaxy—the scene where our heroes agree they have to take on Ronin. Hilarious fractiousness, to hopelessness, to conviction. And, like the scene with Mickey and Rocky, wrapped up with a beautiful tonally correct denouement, with Rocket saying, “Here we are, standing up, like a bunch of jackasses.”

Interestingly, both the Rocky and the Guardians of the Galaxy scenes have an “all is lost” moment built in, which obviously makes the final turn and last “act” of the scene even more powerful.

And of course The Godfather, where Michael tells Sonny, Tom, Clemenza, and Tessio that he’ll kill Solozzo and McCluskey. Again with that perfect denouement: “It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.” And Jaws, where Quint tells Brody and Hooper the story of the USS Indianapolis. Watch for the turns—the emotional charge or stakes of the scene are heading in one direction and then something happens to change that direction, taking it somewhere new.

But in some ways the quieter, less consequential scenes are better examples, because they have less to work with. Like the one in Aliens where Ripley shows Hicks and the sergeant she knows how to use a loader (note too the 2+2=4, and how while the scene itself is satisfying—its own punchline—it’s also the setup for the real punchline: “Get away from her you bitch!” Or the one later where Hicks teaches Ripley how to use his weapon—emotional charge of despair (“Hicks, I’m not going to end up like those others. You’ll take care of it, won’t you?” “If it comes to that, I’ll do us both”) to faint hope (“Listen, let’s just make sure it doesn’t come to that, all right?”) to determination (“Hey, I want to introduce you to a personal friend of mine. This is an M41-A pulse rifle…”).

The most memorable scenes, the ones you can watch again and again even if on the surface there’s not that much going on, seem always to have these turns. Again, think of it as a kind of three-act structure. Foreplay, sex, afterglow.

CHARACTER

Try asking some of the following questions about your main characters and see where it takes you. And don’t neglect the drills: ask the questions of books, movies, and shows you love and know well, too (but note that action movies aren’t usually as good for analyzing character because action movies usually have shallow character arcs. Though initially reluctant, John McClane is a wiseass man of action at the beginning of Die Hard, and pretty much the same at the end. Eddie Murphy is unchanged throughout Beverly Hills Cop, though he is the catalyst that changes the characters around him).

What does the person want (think he needs) vs what does she really need?

Rocky thinks he needs to win but what he really needs is respect. Michael Corleone thinks he needs to defy destiny but what he really needs is to embrace it. Rick Blaine thinks he needs to stick his neck out for nobody but what he really needs is to renounce selfishness and reengage with the world.

What is the ghost that resulted in the lie the character clings to, the lie that keeps him from going after the truth he needs?

This is another way of asking the previous question. There’s a lie the protagonist has convinced herself is truth, the lie she uses for whatever psychic/emotional purposes…and there’s the truth she needs to face (whether she’ll be able to face it is a separate question. Woodrow Call in Lonesome Dove couldn’t).

What is her style for getting what she wants?

This was a big help for me in understanding my own characters. Rain, Dox, Delilah, Larison, Livia…they all have distinct styles for getting what they want, even if the goal is the same. Which is why they’re all fun to throw together. Firefly would be a great example of this. Actually, of what the ghost/wound is, too…think Mal and losing the war. What false lesson did Mal learn from that defeat? What truth is he avoiding?

What is his intention in each scene?

Characters should always want something—even if, per Kurt Vonnegut, it’s as trivial as a glass of water.

What are the four levels of character—public, private, secret, hidden?

I learned this one from Robert McKee, who learned it from Madmen creator Matthew Weiner. Public is how the people at work know your protagonist—people at church, casual friends. Private is how family and close friends know her. Secret is what even the private people in her life don’t know and only she does. And hidden is the level that even she can’t or won’t face, the unconscious, the daemons that are not the conscious motivators, but the unconscious drives that most affect her behavior.

PRACTICE!

As noted earlier, the efficient acquisition of any skill will involve three layers: theory, drills, and practice. Theory is what you get from how-to books, seminars, books, videos, etc. Drills are controlled application of theory—scales if you’re learning piano; repetition of a technique with a cooperative or semi-resisting partner in martial arts. Practice is the freewheeling use of what you’ve learned via theory and drills (and practice itself is of course a form of learning). You read a book about how to generate power in a left hook; then you practice on your heavy bag or with a partner wearing focus mitts; now you’re using it in a boxing match or on the street.

In writing, the theory is as usual the how-to books, videos, posts like this one, etc. The practice is your writing. And the drills are the application of everything you know about the craft to books, movies, and shows you know. So for example, now that you know the Once upon a time…And then one day rubric, apply it to a bunch of stories you know. Same with the It’s about X, but it’s really about Y. It’s not homework and it shouldn’t feel like homework—it should feel fun, because it is fun and besides, if it’s fun you’ll do more of it! And the better you get, the more fun it gets, which means you’ll do more of it…and so on.

Another way to think of this is: read like a writer. That is, read books or watch movies and shows that in whatever way seem like the one you’re contemplating, and ask yourself what’s working about them and what isn’t. If something moves you, ask why—not in terms of what being moved says about you (not that that’s uninteresting; it’s just not so relevant to writing for an audience), but in terms of what you can learn about technique.

Some of these questions will be small: why is this such a powerful sentence or passage? And others will be big: why did this story need to be told, why is the world better for it? As you gain more awareness of the techniques behind the magic, you’ll be able to apply what you’ve learned to your own writing.

I think this advice applies to all art—writing, acting, photography, painting, cooking, etc. Find the best exemplars of what you aspire to and see if you can distill out what’s essential to it. That’s reading like a writer.

For a great example of how someone figured out the magic tricks behind the magic, watch this 90-minute video Endings: The Good, The Bad, and the Insanely Great by screenwriter Michael Arndt. It is in fact insanely great! Arndt spent a lot of time analyzing movies before he was able to distill out one constellation of elements that can make a great ending—and apply them to his first script, Little Miss Sunshine.

FURTHER STUDY:

For structure, a book I’ve found exceptionally helpful is Into the Woods, by John Yorke. This one is about movies, but the story principles are universal. It also has great insights about character.

A super important concept is 2+2=4, the notion of indirectly engaging people’s innate storytelling grammar. Here’s Pixar’s Andrew Stanton talking about the concept at his TED talk, The Clues to a Great Story.

Here’s a Robert McKee video on character, and how important it is to understand what your character thinks she wants vs what she really needs. I’ve read all McKee’s books and attended four or five of his seminars and webinars and he’s always great. In fact, anything by Robert McKee.

Speaking of McKee, here is a GREAT breakdown of dialogue in one of the greatest movies ever—Casablanca. All about the difference between text and subtext—what’s said and what’s really meant.

For some great insights about how much you need to know about your characters vs how much makes its way onto the page or screen, here’s a great analysis of some of the characters in The Godfather: Why Did Michael Lash Out Against Tom?

One of the best how-to lessons I’ve ever encountered is this video by screenwriter Michael Arndt on what makes a great movie ending. Arndt spent a lot of time analyzing movies before he was able to distill out the elements that make a great ending—and apply them to his first script, Little Miss Sunshine. But the video is about far more than just endings—really it’s more about how to deploy external, internal, and philosophical stakes to create a great story with a great ending. So while it’s nominally about punchlines (I don’t mean just comedic ones; I’m talking about emotional payoffs), Arndt talks much more about good setups, without which a punchline will never work anyway.

Another great one from Michael Arndt is Beginnings: Setting a Story in Motion.

The best opening of a novel I’ve ever come across is Ken Follett’s The Key to Rebecca (excerpt below; my video discussion here). Watch for the 2+2=4, and how Follett doles out critical information on who, what, and where in a way that draws you into the story—while insidiously, simultaneously making you crave ever more information. Just to give you an idea of what I mean, look at the first six words of the story. What do they tell you for sure? What do they suggest? What about those six words makes you want to keep reading?

(Needless to say, it’s worth asking these questions—doing this drill—with anything that’s like what you’re trying to write.)

Okay, those are my long but initial thoughts. If there’s more you’d like to hear, ask in the comments and I’ll keep going. But you have to keep going, too. :)

OPENING TO THE KEY TO REBECCA:

The last camel collapsed at noon.

It was the five-year-old white bull he had bought in Gialo, the youngest and strongest of the three beasts, and the least ill-tempered: he liked the animal as much as a man could like a camel, which is to say that he hated it only a little.

They climbed the leeward side of a small hill, man and camel planting big clumsy feet in the inconstant sand, and at the top they stopped. They looked ahead, seeing nothing but another hillock to climb, and after that a thousand more, and it was as if the camel despaired at the thought. Its forelegs folded, then its rear went down, and it couched on top of the hill like a monument, staring across the empty desert with the indifference of the dying.

The man hauled on its nose rope. Its head came forward and its neck stretched out, but it would not get up. The man went behind and kicked its hindquarters as hard as he could, three or four times. Finally he took out a razor-sharp curved Bedouin knife with a narrow point and stabbed the camel’s rump. Blood flowed from the wound but the camel did not even look around.

The man understood what was happening. The very tissues of the animal’s body, starved of nourishment, had simply stopped working, like a machine that has run out of fuel. He had seen camels collapse like this on the outskirts of an oasis, surrounded by life-giving foliage which they ignored, lacking the energy to eat.

There were two more tricks he might have tried. One was to pour water into its nostrils until it began to drown; the other to light a fire under its hindquarters. He could not spare the water for one nor the firewood for the other, and besides neither method had a great chance of success.

It was time to stop, anyway. The sun was high and fierce. The long Saharan summer was beginning, and the midday temperature would reach 110 degrees in the shade.

Without unloading the camel, the man opened one of his bags and took out his tent. He looked around again, automatically: there was no shade or shelter in sight—one place was as bad as another. He pitched his tent beside the dying camel, there on top of the hillock.

He sat cross-legged in the open end of the tent to make his tea. He scraped level a small square of sand, arranged a few precious dry twigs in a pyramid and lit the fire. When the kettle boiled he made tea in the nomad fashion, pouring it from the pot into the cup, adding sugar, then returning it to the pot to infuse again, several times over. The resulting brew, very strong and rather treacly, was the most revivifying drink in the world.

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