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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Lisa Cron
Started reading
March 3, 2018
Opposable thumbs let us hang on; story told us what to hang on to.
We think in story. It’s hardwired in our brain. It’s how we make strategic sense of the otherwise overwhelming world around us.
Neuroscientists believe the reason our already overloaded brain devotes so much precious time and space to allowing us to get lost in a story is that without stories, we’d be toast.
Stories allow us to simulate intense experiences without actually having to live through them. This was a matter of life and death back in the Stone Age, when if you waited for experience to teach you that the rustling in the bushes was actually a lion looking for lunch, you’d end up the main course.
A story is how what happens affects someone who is trying to achieve what turns out to be a difficult goal, and how he or she changes as a result.
And to that end, here are the three basic things readers relentlessly hunt for as they read that first page: 1. Whose story is it? 2. What’s happening here? 3. What’s at stake?
As John Irving once said, “Whenever possible, tell the whole story of the novel in the first sentence.”
Elmore Leonard famously said that a story is real life with the boring parts left out.
MYTH: Beautiful Writing Trumps All REALITY: Storytelling Trumps Beautiful Writing, Every Time
Happily, theme actually boils down to something incredibly simple: • What does the story tell us about what it means to be human? • What does it say about how humans react to circumstances beyond their control?
MYTH: The Plot Is What the Story Is About REALITY: A Story Is About How the Plot Affects the Protagonist
Given the primacy of the universal, it’s ironic that only when embodied in the very specific does a universal become accessible,
It’s the story’s job to show us the theme, not the theme’s job to tell us the story—especially since theme is a rotten storyteller and, when left to its own devices, is much more interested in telling us what to think than in simply presenting the evidence and letting us make up our own
They had mistaken the story for what happens in it. But as we’ve learned, the real story is how what happens affects the protagonist, and what she does as a result.
The most common mistake writers make is using body language to tell us something we already know. If we know Ann is sad, why would we need a paragraph describing what she looks like when she’s crying? Rather, body language should tell us something we don’t know. At its most effective, it tells us what’s really going on inside the character’s head.
BEFORE THERE WERE BOOKS, we read each other.
Julian Barnes sums it up nicely: “Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren’t.”8
Proust observed, “The only true voyage of discovery … would be not to visit strange lands but to possess [new] eyes.”
Why, then, do writers lob generic problems at their protagonists all the time? Sadly, it’s often because they’re following one of the great myths of storytelling. MYTH: Adding External Problems Inherently Adds Drama to a Story REALITY: Adding External Problems Adds Drama Only If They’re Something the Protagonist Must Confront to Overcome Her Issue
Ironically, often the same writer who swears that it would crush her creativity to pause to outline or work out character bios will start the story at the exact spot in the protagonist’s past where, instead, she should be digging; that is, at the moment his worldview was knocked out of alignment,
Some lucky pups are simply born with a natural sense of story, the way some people have perfect pitch. They can toss off a laundry list and it comes out so nuanced and moving that you’re weeping over the plight of poorly sorted socks.
MYTH: You Can Get to Know Your Characters Only by Writing Complete Bios REALITY: Character Bios Should Concentrate Solely on Information Relevant to Your Story
It’s what Fitzgerald meant when he so famously said, “Character is action”—meaning the things we do reveal who we are, especially because, as Gazzaniga reminds us, “Our actions tend to reflect our automatic intuitive thinking or beliefs.”13 Story is often about a protagonist coming
Notice that both our main characters have a clock that just started ticking. That means we’ve found our beginning. Each one is standing on the shore of “before,” staring into the distance, trying to make out the shape of “after.” The story will chart the path in between.
And the best preparation for writing any story is to know with clarity what your protagonists’ worldview is, and more to the point, where and why it’s off base. Thus you have a clear view of the world as your protagonist sees it and insight into how she therefore interprets, and reacts to, everything that happens to her. It’s what allows you to construct a plot that forces her to reevaluate what she was so damn sure was true when the story began. That is what your story is really about, and what readers stay up long past their bedtime to find out.
Sounds exactly like a story to me. And the key word here is visualizing. If we can’t see it, we can’t feel it.
Feel first. Think second.
In short, it’s the story’s job to poke at the protagonist, in one way or another, until she changes.
If we don’t know there’s intrigue afoot, then there is no intrigue afoot.
MYTH: “Show, Don’t Tell” Is Literal—Don’t Tell Me John Is Sad, Show Him Crying REALITY: “Show, Don’t Tell” Is Figurative—Don’t Tell Me John Is Sad, Show Me Why He’s Sad
THERE’S AN OLD SAYING: good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment.
A story is an escalating dare, and its goal is to make sure your protagonist is worthy of her goal.
Which means, of course, that if the whole Swahili thing doesn’t come up again, it will turn into one of those lonely elephants, wandering the halls of the story, looking for something to do (damage, most likely).
keep in mind that to the reader, everything in a story is either a setup, a payoff, or the road in between.
read what you have and at the end of each scene to jot down the answers to these questions:
