Damn Fine Story Quotes

“At its most basic and bare bones, a story is this: Characters do shit. Characters say shit. Repeat until end. And even in that, there maybe exists a needless deviation—we often separate action and dialogue but, really, dialogue is action. Talk is a verb. To communicate is to do something, perhaps one of the most vital forms of “doing something” that we have available to us as humans. We often dismiss that, though, right? Oh, that’s just talk. We pretend like words are not meaningful, like they’re just hot air. But that’s not true at all. Dialogue and communication are as vital as any other action, and in fact contain layers—because dialogue can be savvier, more sinister, more affecting.”
― Chuck Wendig, Damn Fine Story: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

“To go back to the game metaphor from before, there exists a component of storytelling where it is you and the reader (or viewer, or whoever) sitting on opposite sides of a chessboard. You’re always trying to outwit each other. And sometimes you need them to outwit you—the audience needs that power, needs to be invested. They want to do work, and they want (sometimes) to be victorious. Other times, they want the shock of loss, the joy at being outplayed. And at those times you misdirect and distract, and as they’re thinking you’re moving your piece one way, you move it another and shock them with your prowess. But the trick is making all of this organic. It has to unfold naturally from the story—it’s not JUST you screwing with them. It’s you fucking with them within a framework that you built and agreed upon, a framework you’ve shown them, a place of rules and decorum. In this context, consider the game space. Like, say, a chessboard, or a D&D dungeon. The game space is an agreed-upon demesne. It has rules. It has squares. Each piece or character moves accordingly within those squares. It has a framework that everyone who has played the game understands. And yet, the outcome is never decided. The game is forever uncertain even within established parameters. Surprises occur. You might win. Maybe I win. That’s how storytelling operates best—we set up rules and a storyworld and characters, and you try to guess what we’re going to do with them. We as storytellers shouldn’t ever break the rules. Note: Breaking the rules in this context might mean conveniently leaving out a crucial storyworld rule (“Oh, vampires don’t have to drink blood; they can drink Kool-Aid”), or solving a mystery with a killer who the audience couldn’t ever have guessed (“It was the sheriff from two towns over who we have never before discussed or even mentioned”), or invoking a deus ex machina (“Don’t worry, giant eagles will save them. It’s cool”). You can still have chaos and uncertainty within the parameters—creating a framework, like building a house, doesn’t mean it cannot contain secrets and surprises—but you stay within the parameters that you created. Again, it’s why stage magic works as a metaphor when actual wizard magic does not. With stage magic—tricks and illusions!—you can’t really violate the laws of reality. But it damn sure feels like you do. Stories make you believe in wizard magic, but really it’s just a clever, artful trick. The storyworld is bent and twisted, but never broken. And, of course, your greatest touchstone for all of this is the characters, and their problems and places inside the storyworld. The characters will forever be your guide, if you let them. They are the tug-of-war rope, the chess pieces, the D&D characters that exist as a connection between you and the audience. They are your glorious leverage.”
― Chuck Wendig, Damn Fine Story: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

“Furthermore … WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND THE EMOTIONAL JOURNEY”
― Chuck Wendig, Damn Fine Story: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

“I have a distaste for the term “supporting characters.” It’s not that it’s a bad term, exactly, but it does call to mind a jockstrap or a bra—something created only to lift and support something else, that’s purely architectural and not alive with that precious spark of life we assume characters should have.”
― Chuck Wendig, Damn Fine Story: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

“For me, the most efficient and compelling way to do that is to identify, right out of the gate, the character’s problem. And this is how the audience will see the character. The character is her problems. We remember her conflicts because that is who she is and why we are witnessing this particular segment of her life. Remember that thing I said (in the interlude on page 9!) about how a story is defined by the break in its status quo? So, too, is a character defined by her problems—and her problems represent exactly that breach of status quo I’m talking about.”
― Chuck Wendig, Damn Fine Story: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

“a joke needs to do its job. A joke needs to be funny. It’s great if it’s also thought provoking or somehow profound, but those are not the uttermost functions of a joke. A joke that’s not funny is not a joke. Now, a story is different in that a story doesn’t need to be funny. That said, a funny story needs to be funny. A sad story needs to be sad. An adventure or a thriller needs to be exciting, and a scary story needs to be (drumroll, please) scary. Going in and telling a story means knowing what the story needs to do, and then tweaking it to do that. Comedians don’t just blurt out hilarious shit all day. They aren’t joke robots. They craft their humor. They practice their bits on stage and in front of people; they tweak the timing, they change the silences and applause breaks, they fidget with word choice. And a story is like that, too. Sure, it sounds natural and spontaneous, like you’re just some erupting story volcano, but the truth is, stories are practiced entities. The best tales are those that have gone through countless drafts and countless retellings to get that precious bowl of bear porridge just right.”
― Chuck Wendig, Damn Fine Story: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

“Put differently, a joke about Einstein only works if the person knows who Einstein was. (Note: Racist, sexist, and otherwise bigoted jokes use this in the worst way, playing off of not just shared understanding, but shared prejudices.) Context and familiarity matter, and they matter in the stories we tell, too—if people cannot relate, or cannot be made to relate to the characters or the setting or the situation, they’ll be left scratching their heads and saying the same damn thing: “I don’t get it.” Every joke has its audience, and you tell it to them. Every story has its audience, too.”
― Chuck Wendig, Damn Fine Story: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

“What fun would a murder mystery be if the murderer was plain to see up front? Mystery relies on feeding us options and opportunities for guessing right—and guessing way wrong. A red herring is the literary technique of boldly played misdirection—the origin of the idiom is that, if you wanted to get hounds off your scent, you could use the skin of a red herring to draw their attention, thus drawing them away from their actual target. 5”
― Chuck Wendig, Damn Fine Story: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

“Look for the little story.
Look for the story about people.
Then you wrap it in a generous swaddling of space ninjas and swamp monsters and explodey-boom-boom-pyoo-pyoo-zap.”
― Chuck Wendig, Damn Fine Story: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

“Stories drag you through the mud of multiple emotions and through the thorn-tangle of thinky thoughts.”
― Chuck Wendig, Damn Fine Story: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

“This is not a book of writing advice. It’s not here to help make you a better writer. Rather, it’s here to help you become a better storyteller.”
― Chuck Wendig, Damn Fine Story: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative