I want you to think about Ed Smylie, who helped save the Apollo 13 astronauts with his duct tape contraption. What if the authorities had come to Ed, but instead of saying, “Look, we need to fit the round CO2 scrubbers into the holes for the square ones,” they’d said, “We want you to do something; it involves thinking.”
Ed would have blinked. Waited. “Yeah?”
“That’s it. Something. A lot is riding on this.” And then maybe they urged him on with a significant wave of their hands.
Can you see Ed at this point?
“Sure.” He’d say. “I’ll get right on that.” Then he’d wonder who put these guys up to this practical joke.
Do you see how impossible it is when you frame things that way?
To come up with solutions, you have to have a clue about what it is you’re trying to do. Even if it’s just a rough idea. It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to fix a space ship, roast hotdogs, or write a story.
Once we have a rough idea of what we want to accomplish, the mind automatically kicks into gear to perform its wonders. Until we do that, we’re going to be like Ed in the example above—staring at a blank wall, wondering if our superiors aren’t a bit cuckoo.
So what are we trying to do?
Think about your reader. Is it a woman? A teen? A crazy dude? Do you remember my book tour with Larry Correia in 2009 and the guy who, during a booksigning / doughnut party at a Phoenix Barnes & Noble, proclaimed my book to be true? Aliens really were eating our souls and enslaving humanity. They were lizards living in the hollow portion of the earth.
The point is: what are your readers hoping your story provides them? In fact, since you’re the first audience, what do YOU want from your stories? Why do you read?
I want you to write down five stories you really like. Movies, TV shows, novels, short stories, plays—I don’t care the genre or type. Just write down five. Do it now. Here are five random stories I like.
- The Incredibles
- The Good Guy by Dean Koontz
- Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
- The Sound of Music
- Runelords by David Farland
This is going to be a powerful exercise for you. It was for me the first time I did it in a class on interior design.
A few years ago, Lovely Wife and I were building a house. We wanted to make our living space sing. We wanted our surroundings to make us happy, but we didn’t quite know how to go about doing that. So we took a class on interior design, hoping to learn the principles involved.
Except when we showed up in the first session and saw the many different design styles, it overwhelmed us. Some styles were ethnic (Southwestern, Asian, French, Gothic, Pygmy), some philosophical or religious (Zen, Feng Shui), many were artistic (Modern, Arts & Craft, Minimalist, Art Deco, College Room Mate ), a lot were mixtures. Some were about making statements and creating moods, some about practicality (here’s a taste of those styles). How in the world were we going to learn this?
Luckily, we had a very perceptive teacher. She knew that most of us were there, not to learn all the styles, but to decorate our own houses. So in our second session, she brought dozens of home magazines. She spread them out on the tables we were sitting at and told us we would go through the magazines. When we found a picture or image we liked, we were to rip that page out and put it in our personal stack. So for about 45 minutes we looked and ripped and looked and ripped. Lovely Wife and I each ended up with a pile of a few dozen pictures.
Then the teacher told us to spread our pictures out in front of us and look for things that the images had in common. Colors, features, design elements.
I spread my pictures out. Lovely Wife spread out hers. And it was like magic. Boom! Right there in front of us. I loved arches and eyebrow windows. Loved dark blues and purples mixed with creams and whites. Loved the color of blond wheat and a navy blue sky. I loved wood. Loved Arts & Craft with a few tweaks.
Lovely Wife’s pile was equally revealing.
The teacher then said, “This is your personal style. This is what’s going to make you happy.” She told us that when designing the rooms in our house, that we should think about their function and merge them with these elements. And if any of us were to work with clients, we’d do something similar with them and find out their wants and likes.
With our styles now beginning to be fleshed out, Lovely Wife and I went to work. Some of her elements and colors overlapped mine. Some didn’t, like her idea of sleeping bliss: a bed with sheer red drapes hanging from some lamp shade contraption in the middle.
I told her I didn’t know if I could keep my man card and sleep in that bed. She decided I should keep my man card, but said she couldn’t sleep in a plain-walled zen room. We compromised. She got textured red on the walls. I got a bed without too many frills. We came up with designs for our spaces that did what we wanted them to do.
But we couldn’t have done this if we hadn’t identified what we were after.
So I’ve adapted that visual art technique used in the design class for our purposes. It’s just as powerful with literary arts. Which is why I want you to write down five stories.
I want you to take a moment and identify what you’re after, in a big picture general way.
I can’t do this for you.
You and I are different. Just like Lovely Wife and I are different. While our tastes may overlap in some places, they’re going to diverge. You don’t want to write my stories. You want to write YOURS.
So write down five stories. Then write down what you really enjoyed, over all, about each of those five stories. You might do this on five pieces of paper. What did you enjoy with each of the main story elements—character, setting, problem, plot, and text? What kind of an experience did they give you? What drew you to them in the first place?
You don’t need to go all crazy detailed on me with this and do a twenty page report. Just hit the highlights. The stuff that will fit on one page without writing in four point font.
When you finish that, step back and look at all five pieces of paper side by side. What common elements do you see? Circle them.
This is your style. This is what, in general, you’re going for.
If you found the exercise insightful, do five more stories. Ten is such a nice number.
I’m going to predict that 99% of the things you identify have to do with what the story did to you. The stories made you laugh, smile, scream, want to fall in love again. They made you curious or jealous or feel some type of desire (be a Ninja king, strong, beautiful). Maybe they gave you insight. Maybe they affected you so profoundly that it changed, if even in a small way, how you decided to live your life.
Stories–the ones people pay money for; the ones people stay up until four a.m. reading with a flashlight; the ones people tell their friends about–make people feel things.
A while back I wrote about this in three parts. I believe the things you’ll read in those short posts, if you don’t know them already, will change how you think about stories. They did for me. And it all begins with lipstick.
- Lipstick
- Getting specific
- My big draws
Okay, I hope at this point you are getting a general idea of why readers pay money to read the stories we create. Why YOU pay money and spend countless hours reading what others write.
This is the first step in being able to produce on purpose, not on accident. This is the first step to becoming the Ed Smylie of fiction—understanding what you, as a writer, are trying to do.
This week, keep your eyes open. Notice what stories do to you. Notice how you feel about different characters and plots. If you feel like taking it farther, notice the effect of different beginnings and ends of novels, chapters, or scenes. Notice the effect of different ways authors describe characters, places, and actions.
Of course, while knowing these general objectives is critical, it’s not enough. You need to know what you’re reaching for with the current story, the current characters, the current plot. How do you translate all this general stuff to the specifics of the story in front of you? Do you have to define everything up front? And what if you don’t know what you want in the current project anyway? What if you are clueless and have nothing but a handful of random ideas that for some reason are generating electrical sparks? What do you do then?
In the next post, I’ll talk more about those questions and where the how-to’s fit into all of this, and then we’ll get into the principles of invention.
For more in this series, see How to Get and Develop Story Ideas
This topic reminds me of how so many fiction authors claim they aren’t writing for the money. They tout the rich rewards of educating young people or creating enduring tales that will transcend lifetimes. And while those are wonderful goals, and I share them without reservation, I would also like to get paid for my work.
Computer programers speak of the elegant solutions they devise in order to solve computing problems, and their work can be beautiful in its way, but they aren’t shy about demanding a paycheck. And I feel the same way.
You’re right, the business of writing is a business. We either deliver what our customers want or we sell no products.
— david j.
And even with those who truly don’t write for the money, they still want compensation. They want to see their story affect people. They’re asking people to trade their time. And so it’s still a basic economic act.
I feel your wrong here for the simple reason that it’s just how your looking at it. Look at it either way but just because someone else has a different take doesn’t mean their wrong.
“It’s all about the food. With out it you would die so the only reason your getting money is so you can have food and not die.”
The economy of it may come first in your reasoning, it may come second and it may even feel like implied background to the over all picture.
-rehcra
Rehcra,
Dawson is complaining that some customers don’t like what he has to offer. That they “should” like it. What would you say to a guy who makes wasabi ice cream and then complains that a lot of retailers or ice cream eaters he offers it to don’t want it?
When I say “economic act”, I’m not saying people should write thinking about dollars. I’m saying that writing for the purpose of being read starts with the assumption that you’re going to be asking folks to trade something of value for the opportunity to read your story. Are you saying that it doesn’t?
First I’ll have to point out that not only have I not read any of Dawson’s blogs but that I have no clue who Dawson is.
Second; What if the wasabi ice cream is the best ice cream flavor ever in Dawson the Ice Cream makers mind? Does he have a valid complaint now that people preconceptions about Ice Cream flavored like Wasabi seem to differ so greatly from what he sees as reality?
People lately often make economics god. As if all things start and revolve around it. But the truth is the economy revolves around us not the other way around. Only in our minds do we revolve around the economy. Chasing the revolution may be best for some but others may just see it as a less important given. The sun will rise you don’t have to worship it in any way. And yes their is very little we can do to change that revolution but its actually easier to go against the grain of the economy then to try and change human nature.
All ideas do not need to start with the economy. They can’t escape it but a good book is still a good book no matter how many of it are sold. And a bad book is a bad book despite the acclaim it may get for being a best seller.
-Rehcra
p.s. That was a lot more pointless and off topic then I had planned.I didn’t even answer your main question (It doesn’t have to START with that consideration.) but I decided to post it anyway 🙂
Rehcra,
I don’t know that we’re talking about the same thing. Dawson is the author of the article I linked to in this blog. Go read that, if you haven’t already, to see what I’m responding to.
As to your point about Dawson’s love of wasabi, his job then is to find those that are like-minded or try to convince those who aren’t to give him a try. But in no case is it reasonable for him to demand customers like and purchase his product.
It seems to me that Dawson is complaining that his intended audience does want swearing (and shagging and slaughter), but that there are “gatekeepers” that are trying to prevent Dawson from giving his audience what they want.
The question I have is, who is more correct, Dawson or the gatekeepers (about what the intended audience wants)? Sometimes people just do things because that is how they have been done for a long time. Is that why the gatekeepers are doing it? Or do they really understand the wishes of the intended audience?
JohnW,
First, why must the market be monolithic?
There are indeed YA customers who want swearing, shagging, and slaughter. And there are probably just as many who don’t.
It’s folly to think all readers are alike. It’s folly to think you’re selling a book to every YA reader or school librarian that exists because there is no book in the history of the world that will appeal to all readers. Tastes vary too much.
What anyone selling anything quickly learns is that they’re trying to sell into a specific demographic. On a basic level: sell water to the people who are thirsty. Not to those who aren’t.
Just because Dawson writes one kind of story and finds some customers like it that doesn’t mean that all readers will. Dawson’s job is not to convince every reader to buy his book, just those whose tastes run that way.
So both the the publisher AND Dawson could very well be right about what readers want. There is more than one segment to every market.
Second, Dawson’s making a mistake when he suggests that the reader is the ONLY customer in this supply chain. Publishers and parents and school librarians are customers in a supply chain. The customer is the person who makes the decision to trade. Or has a huge influence on the decision. When trying to make any sale, you MUST convince the decision maker the trade is going to bring them value. And in a supply chain, you have decision makers at every link in the chain.
Who are the decision makers?
Unless you’re going direct, that will include publishers, librarians, and parents. Their tastes matter. You can’t ignore them as customers. They, along with the readers, ARE your customers.
The first customer, unless you’re going direct, is the publisher. They have a target market in mind. They have huge incentives to deliver product that their intended market will like. But even if they’re way off, it doesn’t matter. They are your first customer.
If you think they’re wrong about what their customers down line want, then it’s your job to convince them of it or find another distributor who is a better fit for your stuff.
Which takes us back to the first point. It may be that there are people clamoring for your product, but that market might not be one that a specific publisher is interested in for a number of reasons, including the fact that many of the decision makers down line don’t want so much shagging, swearing, and slaughter.
There’s a reason why the rating system on movies has persisted all these years. Despite all the problems, many parents and children use them.
I can tell you that my wife and I have a huge decision making influence over what my young girls read. And, as a parent, I believe I’d be abdicating my responsibility not to. There are a LOT of parents who feel the same way.
I’ve talked to many school librarians who recognize the fact that parents have huge influence in decisions about what their kids read. These librarians want the kids to read. And so they select and search out books they know the parents are likely to feel comfortable with and avoid those they won’t.
Dawson’s an idiot if he thinks parents shouldn’t be involved in their kids’ lives. Or that a lot of parents don’t care about the levels of shagging, swearing, and slaughter their kids are exposed to. And since they are decision makers, those tastes ripple back up through the supply chain.
If Dawson wants to include certain things, bully for him. But he’s going to have to convince decision makers all the way down a distribution channel. That’s just how supply chains work.