Better Storytelling Part One

We all have an innate sense of what makes a good
story. Even as children we can discern between what’s interesting, what’s
interesting to just us, and what isn’t interesting at all. If a kid comes home
and you ask him what happened at school today, nine times out of ten the answer
will be, “Nothing.”




But sometimes the answer will be, “Charlie brought
his pet tarantula to class and it got out of its cage and Mr Sellers screamed
and jumped on the table and then he lost his balance and fell out of the window
and broke his arm so now we have to have Miss Reedy for the rest of term.”




My point being not only that kids don’t seem to
speak with any punctuation, but also that a kid knows when he’s got something
to tell you.  We all do. We all have the
urge to find someone with whom to share a story when something remarkable
happens.


That internal barometer, however, can get buried
under a lot of doubts and insecurities when the story you’re telling isn’t
something you’ve observed for real but instead is something you’ve made up.




When you experience a story for yourself and make a
judgement that it’s interesting to you, then it becomes a lot easier to
confidently pass the story on to others in the belief that they too will find
it of interest.




A story that comes out of your imagination doesn’t
have quite the same seal of approval (even though that seal of approval comes
from you).








So we try to find other ways to makes sure it has
the qualities of a good story. And usually the first place we start is the
quality of the writing.




But at its heart a story has to have something more
than good writing. Learning good grammar and narrative techniques to improve
the flow and pace will obviously be beneficial, but that in itself will not
make what’s happening on the page more interesting.




In order to make the adventures of Timmy Timkins
appeal to the reader, his hopes and dreams need to be worth reaching for.




If a character’s goals come down to basic human
desires (love, success, happiness etc.) then you can be fairly sure people won’t
question the motivation behind all the shenanigans. Some motivations are easier
to accept than others. The clearer and stronger the need of the character, the
easier it will be to get the reader on board.




If Timmy wants to be the first to the top of a
mountain, then we all know people do this sort of thing and are celebrated for
it. But if you’re going to write a whole novel about it, leaving it just as a
personal desire to climb tall things isn’t going to be very captivating.




Readers will accept it, but will they care?




The further you get from the basic human desires
(sex, money, status etc.), the fewer people will automatically just click with
your character’s goals. If he wants the person he loves to love him back, then
most people will be able to connect with that feeling. If he wants to
hang-glide non-stop around the equator, a lot of people are going to be like, “Okay,
well good luck with that.”




That doesn’t mean you should only write about the basic
human desires (having babies, collecting shiny objects, tweeting incessantly
etc.), it means you should evaluate what it is your character wants to do and
work out why they want to do it. If it isn’t the sort of thing that would
feature in most people’s top ten basic human desires (eating chocolate, eating cake,
eating chocolate cake etc.) then it’s the writer’s job to convince readers
otherwise.




And in most case you will find the underlying
reasons are indeed things we can all relate to.




Timmy wants to climb the mountain. Why? Just to say
he did it? That might be what he claims, but do you believe that’s all there is
to it? It’s certainly an impressive achievement, but who is he trying to
impress? Will he get to the top, climb back down and then quietly get on with
his life? What’s driving him to want to be the centre of attention?




Sure, we all want to be admired and thought of as
cool, but few of us run up a mountain and shout, “Look at me!”




Why does he want to do it? Who is he trying to
impress? What is his relationship with doing dangerous things? Once you dig a
bit deeper hopefully you’ll find more universal reasons for his behaviour that
readers will relate to.




These things don’t need to be spelled out immediately.
In fact it can often be more rewarding to start with a character seeming to be
driven by basic human desires (sniffing marker pens, popping bubble wrap,
obsessing about One Direction etc.) and to gradually discover a deeper, more
personal reason.




Knowing what drives a character and how important
it is to them is the sign of a story that has potential to be important to lots
of other people too.



Part two of this series will look at Competition. A
good story has more than one character because it’s only when we compare
ourselves to others that we see the best and worst in ourselves.

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