10 Essentials of a Dynamite Story #1
JOB DESCRIPTION: NOVELIST
You have to reach up out of the pages of your book, grab your Loyal Reader by the lapels and yank him out of his world into a place he’s never been, where he’ll be introduced to engaging people—both good and bad—who are in big trouble of some sort. And those people will haul Loyal Reader along with them as they face obstacles, grow, change, make stupid decisions, hurt the people they care about, are courageous, noble, selfish and intolerant, who behave really badly and surprisingly well and all the gradations in between. When those people finally get to the two little words The End on the last page, they absolutely will NOT be the same people they were when you intoned “Once upon a time” in Chapter one. But guess what, neither will Loyal Reader. If Loyal Reader isn’t transformed in ways both small and profound by the journey of your story, the conflicts overcome and the companionship of your characters, you need to back up to once upon a time and start over.
Sound easy. Of course not! But if it sounds hard, console yourself with the clear and certain knowledge that it is even harder to do than it sounds. It is, indeed, the hardest work you’ll ever do. It’s the most gratifying work you’ll ever do, too. Hey, this is why you became a novelist!
Let’s back up to two weeks ago when I said there are three legs on a Novel-Writing-Stool.
As novelists, we must:
1. Draw pictures in our readers’ heads.
2. Tell a run-away train story.
3. Introduce our readers to characters so real they become cherished family members.
Remove any of the legs of that stool and you wind up on your backside on the floor. If you don’t draw pictures, the reader will never see the story. If you don’t have a story to tell, maybe you should consider going into real estate. And if you don’t have characters to love/hate, the reader won’t care about the first two.
Which brings us to the run-away train story. We’re going to have to unpack this piece by piece for a few weeks because it is arguably the most complex part of the process.
You can come up with lists unnumbered about what constitutes a good story. (That’s why God created Google.) Over time, I’ve compiled my own checklist, which is probably a lot like and very different from the others.
We’ll talk about each one of these in more depth as we go along, but here are Ninie Hammon’s Essential Elements Of A Great Story. We could make that into an acronym, but unfortunately it doesn’t spell anything. NHEEOAGS? And I hate it when people twist and torture the names of things just to make the acronym work. But that’s a blog for another time. Here are the 10 Essentials:
1. Setting. So perfect the story absolutely couldn’t have happened anywhere else on the planet.
2. Protagonist/Antagonist. The good guy and the bad guy: white hat, black hat.
3. Conflict. There are only four to pick from: man against man, man against nature, man against God or man against himself. Those four are all you need; every story ever told has used one of them.
4. Genuine emotion. If your characters don’t feel anything, neither will Loyal Reader.
5. Unexpected twists and turns. Predictability is booooring.
6. Great dialogue, both internal and external. What your characters say must sound like people actually talk! And we need to know what they’re thinking, too.
7. Recognizable theme. What is your story about? Courage? Greed? Does it make a point about the nature of reality? Theme arises organically from the story, but some writers START with theme and wrap a story around it. I’m one of those writers.
8. Inciting incident. Your characters are sailing along on smooth water and your job is to get them into the rapids fast. The creek between the two is the inciting incident.
9. Resolution. After the climax, then what?
10. Authentic voice. We have to hear your voice so clearly it becomes the canvas on which everything else is painted.
Next week, we’ll start unpacking this list. Come and join me. And do leave a comment to let me know what you think or to ask questions. I’d love to interact with you.
