“The Only Law of Literature” by James Maxey

ByJohn Brown

james-maxey

You already know how I feel about writerly rules. So when I read James Maxey’s “The Only Law of Literature,” I had to share it.

I want to quote the whole thing here. But I’ll resist and quote only the conclusion.

[In response to critiquing stories that don’t work for you] All the literary analysis of writing techniques, of style, of world building, of creating characters–it all has it’s place, but it’s almost completely useless as a guide to writing a good book. You are never going to be able to think or study or analyze your way into writing a book that people love.

There is only one law of good literature: Write what you’d love to read.

Not what you have read and loved. What you love, but haven’t yet read.

To quote myself from the Impish Idea thread:

Every thing you write should be a love story. Not a romance. But a story written because you loved it.

Follow your passion. Don’t worry about pleasing everyone. Fill your book with the stuff that makes your heart race and leave out the stuff that bores you. If you don’t make it into print, at least you’ll have a book you can look at with pride as being truly your own.

Once you’ve learned this secret, everything else falls into place.

Go read the whole post.

It’s important to learn craft. You cannot get away from it. But craft is only useful as a tool to tell this cool, wonderful, poignant, amazing thing we’ve invented and discovered.

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  • Jennifer Nielsen and “The Rules of Personality”

    ByJohn Brown

    Jennifer Nielsen is the author of Elliot and the Goblin War, the forthcoming Elliot and the Pixie Plot (Sourcebooks, August 2011), and The False Prince (Scholastic, April 2012).  She’s also worked for many years with a troubled youth program. I recently sat in on one of her presentations on characters and personality at a writers conference and quickly found myself scribbling down insights. Later I convinced her to share some of that here. Enjoy. You can learn more about her at www.jennielsen.com.

    The Rules of Personality

    In the Mockingjay series by Suzanne Collins, 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen is selected as one of the contestants for the brutal Hunger Games held by the Capitol each year. Katniss is resourceful, fierce, intelligent, and compassionate. It is these traits she uses in her attempt to survive the Hunger Games. She is joined in the games arena by Peeta Mellark, who is clever, protective, and likable. Like Katniss, Peeta’s traits help him in his fight to survive.

    These characters are excellent illustrations of the importance of character in a story. What if Suzanne Collins had not given Katniss her compassion? For those who have read the story, they know changing that single trait would have dramatically changed the plot.

    It’s for this reason that character is so important in the creation of a story. If you change the plot, the character will remain the same. But if you change a character, the plot will inevitably change with it.

    In order to create a believable human sketch, a visual artist would have to understand the physical body, muscle structure, proportions, etc. In a similar way, for a writer to create a believable character, he must understand the basic rules of personality.

    But to create a believable characterization, there are some important things for the writer to understand about personality. Personality is the traits of a person’s core self. For example, there are many different types of people who value and practice honesty (the “trait”). But personality will determine how that trait is exhibited. An extrovert is far more likely to state the blunt truth while an introvert might create an opportunity for the people to discover the truth on their own. So although the trait is the same, there is no single way in which it might be expressed.

    In other words, while the presence of a trait is important in developing character, the way it is expressed is equally important. A person’s stubbornness might be demonstrated as passive-aggressiveness or outward defiance. A person’s jealousy might be expressed in withdrawal or by vicious repercussions. It’s personality that determines the way character traits are expressed.

    There are four important things to understand about personality. The better writers understand this, the better they can understand the characters they created.

    #1 Personality is Stable.  The core of who a person is remains about the same throughout a lifetime. The way a trait is expressed may evolve or adapt as the events of life unfold, but the core self doesn’t change much.

    For example, a shy child may hide behind her mother’s legs and refuse to talk. As she grows into adulthood, she will probably learn to manage her shyness and interact in the world. But she will likely never be the outspoken, bold, center stage person.

    #2 The Intensity of the Trait Matters.  When creating character, most writers stop at listing the presence of a trait. However, that is rarely good enough because it’s really the intensity that matters. Someone who has a hard time forgiving others and holds grudges is probably fairly normal. But increase the intensity of the trait and you may create a villain who’ll go to extreme lengths for revenge.

    #3 People Rarely Behave Out of Character.  Occasionally, writers finds themselves in a position where in order to make the plot unfold the way they want it to, they must force their character into behaviors outside of anything they’d normally do. This almost always fails the believability test because in real life, people rarely act out of character.

    Consider the example of the shy woman. Is it possible that she would willingly get up in front of a crowd and speak with boldness? Of course. But is it likely? No. It’s far more likely that she would find someone else to deliver the message for her, or find another way to communicate the message.

    When I’m speaking about this issue to groups, a common response from writers who are facing writer’s block is that this is the root of their problem. They are trying to force a character into a behavior not consistent with their personality. The entire scene becomes forced as the character literally balks at the writer’s attempts.

    #4 People Tend to Rework the Same Issues Throughout Life.  Everyone has “issues.” Some are more major than others, of course, but we all have them. And whatever it is that we battle, we likely battle it throughout life, even if the way we experience that issue evolves.

    For example, the teenager who becomes explosively angry is later the man who may take out his anger on his wife or children. In later life that trait may evolve so that he turns his anger inward and develops a drinking problem. Or perhaps the man matures and mellows. Perhaps he’s learned to manage it, or perhaps he’s too tired to create the same fuss as when he was younger.

    In April 2012, I’ll release a series with Scholastic that begins with Book 1: The False Prince. The protagonist in this story is a defiant boy named Sage who must use his own cleverness, determination, and strength to survive a contest that will name the winner as the false heir to the throne.

    As the writer of this series, it was important for me to understand Sage’s personality if I was going to create a believable character. One of his core traits is his instinct to rebel. It’s a more intense than would generally be found in his peers, so I needed to respect the fact that he would rarely back down from a fight, regardless of the consequences. There is one scene in the book where Sage steals an item from his master that Sage believes was stolen from him. He refuses to tell anyone where he hid it, even though he knows the consequences will be serious. I didn’t want those consequences to happen to Sage, but he would not have had things any other way. To attempt to create a story where he gave in to the master would have cheated the character, the story, and the reader.

    Likewise, writers must understand that creating great characters begins with understanding the rules of personality. And when it’s done right, whether it’s Katniss Everdeen, or any of your favorite characters, the reader will always remember them.

    *

    JOHN SEZ: I particularly like #2 because homo-ficti need to be a little bit larger than life.  A litter more courageous. A little more finicky. A little more skilled. A little more outrageous. Exaggeration is one of the key tools for developing characters.

    The statements about the core part of personality being stable and long-lasting, and folks dealing with issues for a long time, are interesting to me as well. It seems like this is where deep motives lie. 

    Of course, I know I don’t start with personality grids when developing characters. But I do eventually try to peg my characters.  I’ve found that having a dominant impression, a type, helps a great deal when working with them, even if my characters mix or bend the types.  If I know that this one is a wise-cracking farmer, that one a quick-tempered tailor, and that one a no-nonsense baker, it makes them easier to work with.  It makes it easier to envision how they might react in a given situation.

    In fact, I think I’ve created my most enjoyable characters when I didn’t try to make them super complex. They might have had things that occured in their past that affected them greatly. They might be dealing with terrible dilemmas now.  They might have a number of interesting details about them.  But if I can peg them in my mind as this or that type of person, it seems the scenes flow more easily.  I can improvise the dialogue and their reactions much better in my mind as I write.

    Sometimes I can capture that type with a description, e.g. “scary smart farmer.” Sometimes it’s enough to get a voice or a photograph or link them to someone I know.  Sometimes I’ve linked them to animals and that gave me the center.  Very often they form as I write them. They often have to come on stage first and have me start writing them for everything to coalesce.

    Check out Nielsen’s site. I love the first line of Goblin War. I mean not only does she get all these fab illustrations for her book, but then she opens it with this: “When he was 8 years old, Elliot Penster started an inter-species war.  Don’t blame him.  As anyone who has ever started an inter-species war will tell you, it’s not that difficult to do.” Elliot is trick-or-treating at the moment, everyone thinking he is dressed up as a hobo, when in reality he’s just wearning his normal day clothes. Hum. A little homo-fictus anyone?

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    Writing update: 5/16/11 – outlines & writing vividly

    ByJohn Brown

    Finished chapter 5 of CURSE last Saturday. Huzzah!

    The writing is a blast, even though it still requires work. Along those lines, I’ve been meaning for some time to write up the techniques and principles I use when drafting.  So I think I’m going to do a semi-regular post on a weekly basis where I share these tidbits as I run into them. It will be kind of like director commentary, although I’ll have to be careful not to toss out any spoilers.

    This week I’ll talk about using chapter outlines and writing vividly. 

    Bullet Outlines & Chapter Outlines

    Up to this draft, what I’ve done is work from a bullet outline.  Each bullet is a short statement of what needs to occur.  Sometimes it’s very general about the story arc–presentation of the problem, struggle, and resolution.  Sometimes it’s a very specific step.  Sometimes it includes cryptic notes.  For example, here are some bullets for SERVANT:

    1. Talen goes to village, they suspect him
    2. Talen runs, sabin catches him by his hair and pulls him back, field stone size of liver. Plant idea of him catching Hatchlings
    3. Woods back home, freaked
    4. Father is not as concerned, strange, sends him out to field–Talen starts to think about catching the Hatchlings himself

    As you can see, it gives me a roadmap (which often changes) so I’m not starting from nothing when I open up my chapter document.  But it’s very general.  When using this, I often have to use a number of takes to get the scene written because those first takes are me imagining the scene. In fact, my first take is usually a sketch of the scene with me blocking out my goals for the scene and how I expect the events to occur. However, in this last go at CURSE I wrote a chapter outline.  It took me about 25 hours, and the outline for CURSE ran 32 pages. I’ve pasted the first two chapters below.  You can see they’re still mostly in summary, but they represent the initial sketch of what’s going to happen.   

    1.               The Village of Plum – TALEN

    It’s past midnight, behind enemy lines. A thin moon hangs in the sky. Talen, Sugar, River, and five of Shim’s best soldiers crouch in the black shadows of the tree line running along the road to the village of Plum (Sugar’s former village), watching for soldiers or a village guard.

    Talen jokes with Sugar, telling her he wanted a dance tonight, not a sneak behind enemy lines, even if it was in the dark. He’s more than half serious. As they’ve worked together over the last three months since the battle in the cave, he’s become attracted to her.

    Also during those three months, the clans of the New Lands split into two factions. Five clans, led by the Fir-Noy, believed Shim, the leader of the Shoka clan, was being controlled by sleth. The remaining four clans followed Shim. The Fir-Noy faction immediately took up arms, initially to protect themselves, but they soon began talking about ridding the land of the sleth curse. Tensions rose, and in a series of altercations a number of people on both sides were killed. Now both factions have mobilized forces to establish pickets and patrols along a border between them.

    A few days ago, Argoth received word from his spies that something was afoot in the Fir-Noy clan, as if they were preparing for a strike. Futhermore, they’ve decided to excavate the grounds about Sugar’s old house. Argoth knows Purity had her own cache of weaves under the hearth of her old home, the location of which she revealed to Sugar just before she died. Argoth has begun to train up an army of dreadmen for Shim. But he’s stretched thin. He needs all the lore he can get. So he’s sent Sugar and the others to retrieve the items before they’re lost. They’ve come on the evening of the annual apple dance festival, hoping the Fir-Noy would be less vigilant. So far, they’ve been right. In fact, Talen begins to feel like it’s been a little too easy.

    As Talen and the others prepare to move forward, Sugar puts her hand on Talen’s arm. He can feel Sugar’s Fire and soul, and her touch only enflames his desire for both. He’s alarmed by this intensity, and finds it hard to focus, so he moves his arm away.

    “You’re going to give me a boost up,” she says.

    Up ahead in front of the Fir-Noy village stands a thick timber pole probably 11 feet high. Fastened to the top of that pole is what looks to be a skull.

    “You brought us round the wrong side,” Talen says. Their objective was the ash ruins of Sugar’s burned out house, not this pole. 

    “You can’t think we’d come all this way, and I’d leave without it.”

    It’s her father’s skull. The only thing of his that remains. Talen, not wanting contact, motions at one of the taller soldiers with them. “He’d be taller.”

    “Come on,” Sugar says and moves forward in a crouch. They move out of the shadows and into the moonlight, watching the village. Sugar climbs up on Talen’s shoulders and cuts loose the bonds holding her father’s skull. The whole time Talen’s desires make the experience uncomfortable.

    Once Sugar has the skull safely in her sack, the group keeps to the deeper night shadows of the tree line and moves around the edges of the village fields until they come to a ditch. Along the way, one of the soldiers touches Talen, and he feels that same overpowering desire. Something is not right inside of him. He knows it. But there’s nothing to do about it now as they follow the ditch to the ash ruins of Sugar’s house.

    Sugar and Talen sneak over to the hearth of the burned out home. River and the five Shoka soldiers take up watch. Soon Sugar finds the secret cache, but as she’s removing the items, they hear a sound come from one of the surrounding houses. Talen and the others stop and listen. Suddenly Fir-Noy soldiers burst out of the door. They overwhelm one of Shim’s soldiers and rush straight for the others.

    Talen and the others turn to run, but Fir-Noy soldiers begin to pour out of four other houses. Then a Fir-Noy dreadman emerges and shouts it’s the boy that’s wanted. They can slaughter all the rest. It’s clear these soldiers were waiting for them, but there’s no way they could have know Talen and the others were coming, unless they were betrayed. 

    2.               Hue & Cry – SUGAR

    Sugar stuffs the last item in the secret cache into her sack and rises. The Fir-Noy are shouting, but River charges a gap in the quickly forming mob. She fights ferociously. The others race after her, Sugar and another soldier bringing up the rear. Sugar and the others are multiplied, but they’re not fast enough to avoid the soldiers completely, and Sugar is forced to fight and kick to break her way through. When she finally does break past the men, she finds she and the last soldier have been separated from the others and there’s no way to immediately join back up.

    Sugar and the soldier run, but he’s wounded. He tells Sugar to run on without him. She refuses, then a company of Fir-Noy round the corner of a house. The soldier turns to face them and tells her once again to run. In her mind’s eye, Sugar sees the same situation unfolding before her as when the mob came after her mother and da. She ran then and regretted watching her father get butchered. She isn’t going to run now. Besides, she’s multiplied. So instead of running, she rushes over to the soldier and, with lore-given strength, picks him up, puts him over her shoulders, and, despite his protests, speeds away.

    Sugar knows she won’t be able to outdistance her pursuers like this, but she also knows the villager Stout keeps a horse in the barn just ahead. She turns the corner on the barn, puts the soldier down, and tells him to get the horse. Then she darts back out into view of the soldiers following and leads them away. She glances back and sees the soldier slip into the barn. It’s the best she could do for him. If he can get on Stout’s horse, he’ll have a chance to escape.

    Sugar looks to see how she might join back up with Talen and the others, but it’s impossible now. And while most of the Fir-Noy soldiers chased after Talen and the others, a good number are chasing her. Furthermore, others in the village are coming out of their homes. She speeds past them. All over the village dogs begin to bark, but she hears one cluster that sends fear down her spine. The villager Solem keeps a pack of prize-winning sight hounds. He emerges from a barn with his pack on a leash.

    “There!” a man shouts. The barking of Solem’s dogs rises in pitch.

    Sugar increases her speed then hears Solem. “Stu, boys! Take her. Get the wretch!”

    The dogs shoot out after her.

    So how has it worked?

    So far it’s worked very well. Having that initial sketch done means I take a lot less time finishing each chapter.  However, it doesn’t change the general drafting process for me:

    1. The chapters still change as I write. I find cooler ways to accomplish what I need. I also run into things I haven’t imagined yet and have to invent them. For example, on chapter 2 when Sugar is having issues, I realized I didn’t know exactly where the houses lay in the village, so I had to sketch that. It presented opportunities and images.  For example, I thought about the Fir-Noy bowmen being on the roofs. I hadn’t imagined that before, but it was so cool to me, I had to put it in.  Then I felt I wanted Talen and her to huddle together at first. I had to run through a few options about how that played out before I found one that felt right.  
    2. I still find I need to sketch out my goals for the chapters and an initial blocking of what happens. This is much shorter than it’s been on previous drafts, but I still find it helpful. Blocking scenes helps.  This is me just figuring out where everyone is and how they move. Sketching this first helps me write faster.
    3. I still have to do takes, although I move through them more quickly.  

     As you can see, I find the sketch/draft method incredibly helpful.  Just like a painter, I sketch out what I’m thinking of painting. That might require a few sketches where I add in more details.  Then I switch over and begin to paint.

     

    Writing Vividly

    On another note, I read “Stories are made out of scenes; Scenes are made out of nouns” by author James Maxey again. I really like this essay. Everyone is always talking about verbs, but nouns are such powerhouses.

    Speaking of which, here is the opening to Maxey’s “To The East, A Bright Star” which was published in Asimov’s.  It has one of my favorite beginnings. And part of the reason is what Maxey talks about with nouns.

    TO THE EAST, A BRIGHT STAR

    There was a shark in the kitchen. The shark wasn’t huge, maybe four feet long, gliding across the linoleum toward the refrigerator. Tony stood motionless in the knee-deep water of the dining room. The Wolfman said that the only sharks that came in this far were bull sharks, which were highly aggressive. Tony leaned forward cautiously and shut the door to the kitchen. He’d known the exact time and date of his death for most of his adult life. With only hours to go, he wasn’t about to let the shark do something ironic.  

    Tony waded back to the living room. Here in the coolest part of the house, always shaded, he kept his most valuable possession in an ice-chest stashed beneath the stairs. He pulled away the wooden panel and retrieved the red plastic cooler. Inside was his cigar box, wrapped in plastic bags. He took the box, grabbed one of the jugs of rainwater cooling in the corner, and headed up the stairs to the bathroom. He climbed out the window above the tub onto the low sloping roof over the back porch.

    This all reminds me of Swain’s thoughts on bringing the material to life, which I thought Maxey did so well in those paragraphs.

    Few of us read voluntarily about the primer-level doings of Dick and Jane.  Simplicity is a virtue in writing, true; but never the primary virtue.

    What is?

    Vividness.

    How about brevity?

    It’s important too.  Within reason.

    Within reason?

    Who, just learning this business, knows where or when or how to be brief? In the wrong place, brevity can destroy you.

    So?

    As in the case of simplicity, brevity is never the heart of the issue. Vividness is.

    How do you write vividly?

    You present the story in terms of things that can be verified by sensory perception. Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch–these are the common denominators of human experience; these are the evidence that men believe.

    Describe them precisely, put them forth in terms of action and of movement, and you’re in business.

    Your two key tools are nouns and verbs.

    (p25 Techniques of the Selling Writer)

    Of course, there’s more–the telling detail, metaphor, working memory overload, details from the point of view. But it all plays into being vivid.

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  • Generating Story 9: Creative Q&A with Author Ian Creasey

    ByJohn Brown

    So how do writers use questions in their story development? Let’s hear first from Ian Creasey, whose short fiction has appeared in magazines such as Asimov’s, Realms of Fantasy and Weird Tales, and has been reprinted in several Year’s Best SF anthologies.  His excellent collection Maps of the Edge was published last year. 

    Stories Are Made Of Scenes

     by Ian Creasey

    I’d like to begin by thanking John for the opportunity to write a guest post about the technique of using questions to help create stories.  This is not a “where do you get your ideas?” post.  Rather, it assumes that you already have a basic idea, which you want to develop into a complete story.

    I’ll use one of my own stories to illustrate how the question technique works in practice.  The questions themselves are sufficiently general that they can be applied across a whole range of stories.  What tends to change is the order in which they are asked.  I find that stories sometimes start from an idea for a specific detail, in which case the process involves working backwards to develop the appropriate context.  In other cases, the initial idea is rather abstract, and the task is to flesh out the premise with sufficient detail.

    My example story is “The Report of a Doubtful Creature”, which was published in Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show (November 2009).  I mention the publication date, because this was actually the seed for the story.  The year 2009 marked the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth, and also the 150th anniversary of the publication of Origin of Species.  I live near the Yorkshire town of Ilkley, which Charles Darwin visited just before the first edition of Origin was published.  I therefore decided to write a story about Darwin’s visit to Ilkley, with the aim of getting it published in November 2009, exactly 150 years after the first edition of Origin of Species in November 1859. 

    So I had a story I wanted to write, without any notion of what its plot might be.  The technique of asking questions helped me to shape the story, and I’ll list some of those questions here. 

    Who is the story about?

    For my particular story, the answer is already in the premise: it’s about Charles Darwin.  But other times, it’s not immediately obvious who a story might be about — for instance, if the initial idea is to explore a technological or social development, then there is a wide range of people who might be affected.  In this case the standard advice is to ask, “Who is the most hurt by this development?  Who has the most to lose?”  That person is often a suitable protagonist (or antagonist) for the story.

    What is the story about?

    In this example, it’s fairly obvious that the story has to be about evolution.  There’s not much point in writing a story targeted for the anniversary of the Origin of Species, if it’s not about evolution!

    What is the conflict?

    The Origin of Species is a famously controversial book, symbolising a clear conflict between science and faith.

    Wow… so far it looks easy, doesn’t it?  It may appear that I’ve cheated by starting with several questions to which I already know the answer.  But in fact I’m illustrating the point that if you have the germ of an idea for a story, then there are already some questions and answers implicit in your premise, no matter how vague it may initially seem to be.  It can be useful to state these answers explicitly, to help crystallise the starting position.

    What is the specific example?

    This is what John calls a “power question”, a key question that can be widely applied, and which cuts right through to the essentials.  The question “what is the specific example?” can be asked in many contexts (e.g. in considering how to show characterisation), but I find it particularly useful when framed as, “How does the conflict manifest itself?”

    This isn’t mathematics: there’s no right or wrong answer.  But you need some kind of answer.  It’s a classic beginner’s mistake to write a story entirely in abstract terms: telling the reader about the conflict, without showing it.  Stories are made of scenes.  There should be at least one scene which dramatises the overarching conflict by putting a specific example onstage.

    A short story will typically hinge upon a single scene that illustrates the core of the conflict.  A novella or novel may require more instances, e.g. a small-scale scene near the beginning, and a large-scale scene toward the end.  But the principle of needing specific examples still applies.

    If I say that I’m going to write a story about evolution, and the conflict between science and faith, I’m speaking in general terms.  I need a specific example.  The device I chose was to have Darwin encounter a strange creature, which might possibly be a fairy.

    What are the stakes?

    This is another “power question”.  It’s a way of saying, “Why does this story matter?  Why should the reader care?”

    There are different ways of addressing the question, depending on whether you develop the story on a top-down or bottom-up basis.  If you start from specific details, then you may need to establish that those details represent important issues.  Conversely, if you start from the big issues, then you need to establish that your illustrative details are sufficiently representative.

    For my story, the question of evolution (i.e. science vs. faith) is already a high-stakes issue.  So the crucial task was to establish that my specific example adequately represented the issue.  Basically, if fairies exist — so what?  Why would that affect evolution?

    Here is the answer from the story, in Darwin’s words:

    “My theory of natural selection requires that life proceeds by common descent.  All creatures are related, however distantly.  So any particular creature must possess living relatives, of some kind; and ancestral forms should be preserved as fossils.  Any beast, however unprecedented to man’s eyes, must fit somewhere within the Linnaean taxonomy.

    “If fairies exist as material creatures, what genus do they occupy?  Where are their fossils?  (The fossiliferous strata contain an imperfect sample of past organisms, yet surely we could hope for one example to be retained from the entire fairy lineage.)  If the traditional description be correct — like a small man with wings — it is clear that fairies cannot fit anywhere within the existing genera of Mammalia.  We could only accommodate them within Animalia by supposing an entirely separate line of descent, one which has left no close relatives, no intermediate forms, and no fossils.  The evidence does not support it.

    “It would be simpler, therefore, to suppose that fairies were a separate creation.  After all, why should we require all creatures to be related?

    “We indeed require it, for if we allow that any creature may be a separate creation, then we must allow the possibility to all creatures.  How could I argue that a wolf must have descended from canid predecessors, if I cannot argue likewise for a fairy?  Any opponent could simply say, ‘The wolf was independently created in its current form, just like a fairy.’  I would have no refutation for such a critique.  Even those who accepted the Wolf might balk at the descent of Man from simpler progenitors, if given the excuse of the Fairy.

    “My hypothesis must explain all creatures, or it explains none.  Everything, or nothing.  The thought burned in my mind: If this fairy truly exists, it will destroy my whole Theory.”

    What choice does the protagonist face?

    This is another “power question”.  A story tends to feel more meaningful if the protagonist faces a genuine choice — a difficult decision.  The nature of the choice obviously depends upon the overall conflict, but its onstage manifestation is determined by the specific example that illustrates the conflict.  So when deciding upon an example, it’s helpful to bear in mind the choice that the example implies.

    In my story, what choice did Darwin face when he encountered the fairy?

    “A thought struck me that it would be simple to let the creature escape, thus avoiding the revelation of what it might be, and what it might imply.  The temptation seemed to hang in the air before me, needing but a single step to reach out and grasp.”

    Where does the encounter happen?

    Once the specific example has been selected, and its importance has been established, our questions move to the realm of practicalities.  We must decide how the example is “staged”.

    Stories are made of scenes.  The scene begins when the protagonist encounters the situation, whatever the situation is.  So the author’s task is to decide where and when that encounter takes place.

    For my story, I needed Darwin to see a fairy.  How could that happen?  Maybe he goes out for a walk, and simply happens to see one.  But that feels rather coincidental: too obviously contrived by the author.  Also, at the time the story takes place, Darwin is ill: he’s in Ilkley to take the “water cure”.  So he’s not likely to be wandering very far.

    I decided to introduce a secondary character: a woman who had captured the fairy.  She knew that Darwin was a famous naturalist, so she asked him to come and see it.

    It’s important for a short story to remain focused, and not become cluttered with too many characters.  It’s dangerous to answer every question by introducing a new character.  But in this particular case, it was a useful solution.  I started off with only a protagonist, Darwin.  He didn’t have anyone to interact with.  By introducing a secondary character, I allowed myself scope for dialogue, interaction, and contrast.

    Conclusion

    I’ve deliberately ended this post on an anti-climactic note, because although stories conclude with a climax, this doesn’t mean that the climax is the last thing you work out when writing it.  Personally I find it easier to begin by shaping the overall structure of a story, including the ending, before I work out all the nitty-gritty staging details.

    The questions that I’ve listed here are, obviously, not exhaustive.  But I hope they give an indication of how an abstract idea can be turned into a detailed narrative.  In my opinion the most important thing to remember is this: Stories are made of scenes.  The most useful questions are those which help you envisage a particular scene.  Once you can imagine the scene in your head, half the task of writing it is already done.

    John sez . . .

    So are you curious about his story yet?  If so, “The Report of a Doubtful Creature” is available to IGMS subscribers at http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=issue&vol=i15&article=_003 . You can also learn more about Ian and his work at www.iancreasey.com.

    I’d like to thank Ian for taking the time to write up his process on this story. I though he made a number of interesing points. Did you notice what he said about envisioning scenes? Did you see that at least one of his questions is particular to this story and might not be used on any other?

    Understand the core principles. Get a list of core questions. But then realize you’ll need to use creative Q&A as you go with all sorts of questions, large and small.

    For more in this series, see How to Get and Develop Story Ideas

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  • New presentation materials

    ByJohn Brown
    Super Author Kristan Higgins
    Super Author Kristan Higgins

    The RWA conference was a blast. It was a wonderful time to hook up with writing friends, to make new ones, and to listen to insights and advice from folks who are selling tons of books.

    Brenda Novak, whose latest book hit #48 on the USA Today list,  gave a great presentation on generating emotion in the reader.

    RaeAnne Thayne, whose book is currently the #5 best selling book in the USA this week, shared lots of helpful tips on ways to make this your most productive year ever.

    Kristan Higgins, whose latest book hit #20 on the USA Today list, gave a presentation on the role and delights of secondary characters and how to use them. She also gave a humorous and insightful keynote speech about one of the most satisfying reasons to tell stories–to help others.

    Lynn Kurland’s presentation on world building was short, but sometimes short is more powerful. I came away remembering that one key to great world building is remembering that nobody will care much about the world if they don’t care for the characters!

    There were others presenting, but I wasn’t able to attend. I’m sure they were equally good. I had a great time.

    I promised those that attended my presentations that I would post the PDFs here. Enjoy!

    Make Them Beg for More — Triggers and Delay

    The Story Setup

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  • |

    Story insights from the director of Pixar’s Up

    ByJohn Brown

    How would you like to listen to a master story teller for almost an hour? You can. Radio West recently interviewed Pete Docter who directed Pixar’s recent motion picture Up.

    Docter has been with Pixar since the beginning and he shares a number of insights into story telling. He talks about the importance of emotional hooks, getting ideas and developing them via the creative Q&A process, and editing a story from schlock to greatness, and much more. What a wonderful interview.

    Click here to listen.

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    I want to be Scott Westerfield

    ByJohn Brown

    Laura Miller at Salon.com has it all wrong when she says promoting books with movie-style trailers is a silly idea.

    Here, watch this book trailer for Scott Westerfield’s Leviathan.

    Yeah, I know you want to–go ahead, watch it again.

    Miller looks at book trailers, sees that the vast majority of them are lame, lame, lame (actually, this is the FIRST I’ve seen that’s any good). Sees that they reach no markets and then concludes that all trailers are silly. It’s true: lame trailers ARE a waste of time and money. But ANY advertisement (print, video, audio, whatever) that’s lame is a waste of time and money. Making killer trailers that nobody sees is an even bigger waste of time and money. But that’s true of ANY killer advertisement that nobody sees.  

    Look. I’ve never read Westerfield. Don’t know much about him or his books. But I saw that clip and now want to read that book. Hum, trailer worked for me. I AM a reptoid mutant, but I suspect there are others out there like me. I mean, come on. Good gravy, woman–“Do you oil your war machines? Or do you feed them?” Killer!

    Movie trailers, book trailers–any advertisement–isn’t about delivering what the person is going to experience on the spot. If that were the case, then you’d never show a print ad of a meal at Olive Garden because it doesn’t deliver the goods right there on page 10 of Woman’s Day. Nope, all you’d do is go around giving out samples in places with Italian mood.

    Miller’s error is not understanding the difference between making an offer and delivering on one. What an ad is supposed to do is make the offer. Let you know this thing is available. Because you’re not delivering the actual experience,  you can make the offer via all sorts of media. Now, if you can give them a taste, that’s great. But you don’t need to deliver the full deal right there.

    So what do you need in an offer? You need the offer to say, “Hey, I’ll deliver this type of experience.” It needs to call to some action, either directly or by implication–“buy this” or “be here.” You also need it to say, “You can trust this will be worth it” and make the consumer believe that’s likely to be true. It communicates this last bit by being a quality piece of work.

    Making an offer is exactly what book covers do–they make the offer and give the consumer a little taste. And book covers matter. This has been proven over and over. Just like most people, when I see a cool cover, I pick up the book and check it out. When I see a lame one, or one that offers something I’m not interested in, you’re going to have to threaten me to pick that book up. Or it better dang well have some righteous word of mouth. It’s that simple. We all judge books by their covers because the cover is making an offer. And lame offers don’t get very many takers.

    Book trailers are nothing more than deluxe book covers. The cool thing about them is the cool thing about movie trailers–you can make the offer by providing a little taste. You do that by giving the audience the story situation, the pitch. You do it by communicating the feel of the experience and raising curiosity. You do it by making it a pro job. The good  ones make you laugh, say cool!, or raise curiosity and expectation.

    And that Westerfield trailer does that.

    Dang, “Do you oil your machines? Or do you feed them?”

    Run that on TV. Run it on the radio. Put it up on sites where people are likely to see and click. Confirm it in print. Make the offer to real people. Get it infront of young readers. I’ll stake my eyebrows that ad can sell as many books as a good movie trailer can sell movie tickets.

    Crimeny, now I want to be Scott Westerfield.

    Edit, I lied

    I have seen another book trailer that’s as good as Westerfield’s. Do you remember this: http://thesecret.tv/movie/trailer.html ?

    Very effective advertising for the book. I think the content of the book is crap, but that trailer made me pick it up just to see what it was all about.

    Do you notice that this one and the Westerfield one combine extreme professionalism AND they make the pitch in a clear and grabbing way? The pitch for both was what the book was about. For fiction it’s the concept. For non-fiction how to it’s the promise.

    So many of the book trailers lack one or more of those things. For example, look at the book award finalist for THE FALLEN: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsLE6bNaIrk. I don’t know what the heck the book is even about after a long 2 minutes. They’re trying to make a movie.

    Something else. On both of these you have a voice over PITCHING the book to you just as someone might do it in person or to an editor. It’s a powerful method, I think.

    Notice also how short the Westerfield one is. Just over a minute. Westerfield’s really is like a query pitch or cover copy–in just a few lines tell me what your story is about. We get genre, setting, character, and the story problem or concept.

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