Wednesday, December 27, 2006

SECRETS OF WRITING: The Grail

THE OBJECT OF DESIRE

Every story is about one thing. Desire.

All human beings desire something. All stories are about someone wanting something and their quest to obtain that object they seek.

I call this object the Grail. After that cup the Knights in King Arthur legends sought. Because it symbolizes the very thing that all stories are really about. We are all creatures of want. From the moment we are born we want something. We scream for it. Whether it be air, water, mother’s milk, food, sex, peace of mind, money, love, happiness...every story is about a character trying to get something, or keep it from other people.

The Hero and the Villain of your story have conflicting motives when it comes to the Grail.

The Grail is whatever the hero thinks will restore balance to his life. There may be a visible grail in the story. A material object. But the Grail can be something intangible like friendship or trust.

All stories are about A wanting C and B stands in the way.

Once you understand this simple concept it becomes a lot easier to understand how to construct your story.

Action, Crime, and Suspense stories usually employ a physical Grail. Examples are a piece of microfilm, a suitcase full of cash, a nuclear bomb, plans to a new secret weapon, or incriminating documents. Writers call this kind of grail “MacGuffins”. Sometimes the Hero is already in possession of the MacGuffin, but doesn’t know how to use it. So the Grail in such stories is knowledge. Knowledge restores the balance.

Romance stories have an obvious Grail: love. The Villain is either a rival lover, parents, society, or nature, threatening to keep the lovers apart.

Sometimes the Grail is a person or a living creature. The Grail in Jaws was the shark, doubling as Villain and Grail. In cop movies the Grail is the capture or death of the criminal (Villain).  In some stories, the object is the rescue or capture of a person who only serves as the Grail and not as an Villain. Charles Bronson did a movie called Breakout, where the Grail was a man in a Mexican prison that Bronson was supposed to “break out”.

Most writers view Grails as physical objects of desire. But since all stories are about someone trying to get something, or not get something as the case may be (refusal is an action), we can define any object of desire as a Grail. It doesn’t have to be a material thing.

When you set down to create a story and are stuck for where to begin. It’s not a bad idea to think about what the Grail might be. That makes it easier to then formulate the motivations of the Villain and the Hero. Once you have those things figured out, everything starts falling into place.

UNCONSCIOUS DESIRE

It’s often the case in a story that the main character is conflicted. Their desire to win the grail may be against their own better judgement. They may unconciously want to fail. More often than not, the unconscious desire is radically different than their conscious desire.

When unconscious desire is employed, it can add a lot of dimension to the work. The object of the unconscious desire becomes the true grail in the story and all the hero’s conscious desires are ephemeral.

The true grail in these scenarios becomes the “Super objective”. No other MacGuffin or Grail really matters when you’re dealing with an unconscious desire, because the U.D. is what the story is about.

When you’re dealing with a super objective, the conscious desire is a front. A ruse, even.  Sometimes the false grail is to establish that the Hero has sold out his personal values for what he perceives to be a higher purpose. But the story teaches him that his “heart’s desire” is more important than what he’s been fighting for. During the Crisis, he realizes what his heart’s desire truly is after a series of events makes it clear to him, and this is when he makes his choice.

This desire is usually at odds with the interests of other protagonists in the story, but as far as the premise is concerned, choosing to follow it is the right thing for him to do in this story.

REMEMBER: The unconscious desire is the only desire that matters when it’s used. 

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Secrets of Writing: Time

THE TIME FRAME

Time affects your story as much as the Milieu does. A story takes place in a span of time. It can be anything from a second to a thousand years. You need to decide how much time there is to play with.

Once you make that decision, it sets the timeline in which the events of the story unfold. This gives you parameters in which to work. Parameters are a good thing, because it helps you decide how much time your hero has to perform his quest. It also makes the story seem more real. We all live in time. We relate to time limits. We do not relate to endless time. Or time having no meaning. In this modern world especially, time is very important.

THE TICKING CLOCK

This device is probably the most widely used and even critical device in storytelling. Especially when it comes to thrillers or suspense stories.

We all understand that we have a limited time in which we’re to live. We will die eventually, but we hope it’s in the distant future. The ticking clock gives the characters in the story a deadline in which they must achieve some result. If the deadline is missed, it might be fatal.

Fatal to the hero, their loved one, the world, whatever you set up as the crisis that must be solved.

You can employ one or more ticking clocks to a story. Each sub plot can have a ticking clock, but you don’t want to burden a story with too many. You want the reader’s focus to be on that one deadline. Anothing more than one can be a distraction, unless it is part of a sub-plot or a new ticking clock is established after one ends.

A classic example of the ticking clock is the bomb set to go off by a certain time and the hero has to find it. But the T.C. can be as simple as the time a student has to finish his exam, or as complex as the time it takes to woo someone before the risk of taking too long bores the other person.

You need to remember that the protagonist of your story are the eyes of the story. And in an effective take using a ticking clock, we have to feel one with the character. We have to care that the ticking clock is counting down.

The main purpose of the ticking clock is to add pressure on your character. Pressure is the key to making a story exciting. We’ll delve into this subject later.

Night and Day

There are environmental considerations to the time frame, as well. If your story takes place at night, you have to consider the limitations that imposes. Lack of light in certain places can work for or against your hero. The fact that most people are sleeping means less bystanders or witnesses around. But it also means people are home and might call the police when they hear a commotion going on outside. There are other considerations to night. A married person should normally be with their spouse. What if they aren’t? This could be telling.

Day time imposes other considerations. Sunlight can be good or bad, depending whether or not you’re a vampire. It can mean hot weather, it can mean more people are out on the street. More witnesses to the action. More bystanders who can get killed. This can impact on your story. You have to be aware of the effect daytime has on your plot. It adds to the realism.

Personally, I like to set a lot of my action scenes at night so there will be less bystanders around. It gives you less to worry about. It also lets you play with mood, lighting, and contrasts. But sometimes bystanders are nice to have around.

And sometimes the sun becomes an element in the story. Such as a man lost in the desert with the sun beating down on him as he struggles to find water. The moon can be an elementr too, providing light, or causing a person to become a werewolf.

The sun and moon establish the passing of time, as well. A rising or setting sun gives is a sense of time passing.

Weather

Technically, this is an environmental subject, but I’m including it under the Time Frame because weather can hinder your hero as he races against the ticking clock. A blizzard can make it real hard to get from here to there. Same goes for a hurricane, or fog, or a rain storm.

Weather also adds a sense of atmosphere to your story and can make it seem more real. Too many stories have perfect weather all the time. It makes things a little too convenient. As we’ll explain later, you want to put pressure on your characters. You want to make it really hard for them to reach their goal. Otherwise, the story is boring. Weather is a good way to put pressure on your characters. Especially since it’s a hard thing to change.

And the ending or starting of a storm also gives the impression that time has passed.

REMEMBER: Time is valuable! Night and Day have implications. Weather creates limitations. 

Monday, December 25, 2006

Secrets of Writing: The World of the Story

THE WORLD

The World of your story, also known as the milieu, is the reality in which the story takes place. If it’s set in a Seattle high school in 1942, that’s a different world than a Detroit High School in 2004. If you set your story on the island of Manhattan in 1600, that’s a different world than Manhattan today.

Your Milieu must be a place audiences can believe in. It can be as fantastic as you want it to be, but it must obey certain rules, contain certain truths, or your readers won’t buy into it and they’ll lose interest.  In tourism terms, it can be as enjoyable as Maui or as unpleasant as Falluja. It’s all up to you.

Your world becomes attractive to the reader when you make it believable. You can set your story in Hell, and it can still real to us as long as it’s fully drawn. It has to feel right. It has to feel whole. The Milieu must live!

Your Milieu also establishes the limitations imposed on the characters. Limitations are good things to know because they’re the tools you’ll use to increase the pressure on your story’s protagonist.  People respond to limitations and stress, because most of us have to live with them every day. You can’t make things too easy on your characters or it’ll get boring.

Every world has elements that impose restrictions on the character. For example, Maui is an island. You have to leave it by boat or plane. You can’t walk or drive away from there. And it’s expensive there, so if your character is short on money, they will have limits on what they can do.  In 2005, Falluja is a war torn city with crushing poverty, crime and terrorism. Those are things that would make it hard on the average person, if they were thrown in that environment.

To make your world live and breath it’s a good idea to answer some, or all, of the following questions.

1. Time and place: Is your story set on a cruise ship in the Caribbean? Does it take place in a ghetto on the planet Zander? Is it happening among the social gatherings of the of the French Bourgeoisie in 1887 or does it happen in a Gay Disco in 1978? The place should be clear in your mind so you have a point of reference to draw from. It must be real to the reader so they’ll have a feel for the milieu. If you choose a place you are unfamiliar with, like say...Addis Ababa, make sure you do your research so you can write about it with authority. Otherwise, it will seem generic and unreal to the Audience. If you’re creating your own world, make a list of all the things unique and interesting about the place and try to incorporate them into your story.  This will give the world the life it needs to make it believable.

One of the reasons J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth remains so popular is because he spent an incredible amount of time making sure he knew his Milieu inside and out. He wrote volumes of notes, compiled the histories of families and places, created languages and alphabets. Middle Earth feels like a real place to many people. So does the Vampire society of Anne Rice’s novels. She thought everything through and researched her history and locations well.

How many stories have you experienced that took place in a generic locale and you felt no connection to it? Making a believable Milieu goes a long way to making the story enjoyable. If you don’t connect to the Milieu, you don’t connect to the story.

2. Economics: What kind of financial realities do the characters have to deal with? Are they rich or poor? Are goods available for money, or is there rationing? What is the economic system the Milieu employs?  Remember that economics affect your characters just like they affect you and me. If there’s anything that smacks of unreality, it’s characters who have no apparent job, yet always have money for every situation and live in an expensive looking place. People respond better to what they can relate to. In most people’s experience, cash flow is limited.

3. Politics: Naturally, the politics of your Milieu can have a major impact on the story. If you set it in a society under a tyrannical ruler or government, such as the Milieu we saw in 1984, Brazil, or Schindler’s List, its going to have an impact on your characters. Just as economics play a part in shaping how your characters survive in your world, so does the politics. If the politics are modern day America, you still need to examine whether this will affect your Hero. If your Hero is an illegal alien in South Texas, the politics of the Milieu are possibly going to affect him.

4. Power: This is somewhat related to the previous question but not necessarily. In the world of your story, certain people may have power over your character’s lives, but not necessarily politically. They could be doctor treating your hero, they could be the banker who decides whether they get that loan, they could be the hero’s boss, or their parents. The power structure of your world is important to the character’s life, especially if it is part of the plot in any. So examine how it affects them and the story.

5. Morals, Ethics, and Laws: What are the unique morals, ethics, and laws in your milieu? If your story is set in the Disco era of the late 70s, failure to pass around a joint could be construed as bad manners, whereas in the late 80s, smoking a joint would be considered bad morals. Ethics? In a strict Moslem Family it’s not unethical to kill a daughter who is promiscuous. Nor is it unlawful or immoral. But it is in the Western Milieu. So, you can have a conflict of Milieus within your story. There have been cases in the U.S. where this has happened and the parents were arrested. In the Milieu of their family, this was not wrong, but it was in the eyes of the society they chose to live in. Morals, Ethics and Laws will have an impact on your character in some way because it will either determine their choices, or affect the consequences of their actions. You can’t really ignore them or people won’t believe in your Milieu.

6. Values: What are the moral values in your Milieu? By what standards do people live, or are there any? Values gives the story and characters some grounding. That’s important for realism’s sake. People who have no values are hard to relate to or care about. Empathy is a very important factor in a story. If you can empathize for a character, anything bad that happens to them is almost meaningless. We decide we care about someone when we can relate to them on some level. So it’s important that they have values we might agree with, even if they’re not like us in other ways.

7. Rituals: How do people go about certain tasks in your world? When people meet, here in the west, they usually shake hands. In Japan, they bow to each other. These are rituals, but there are so many others. Giving a woman flowers on a date is a ritual. So is having turkey on Thanksgiving. In your Milieu there will be rituals of some kind and they can be used to establish the uniqueness of your world, as well as define the way characters interact. You can also use them to symbolize elements of your story. You can use them to give insights into the culture of the characters.

8. Backstory: When you’re dealing with other Milieus, dimensions, or history, it’s a good idea to know what the story behind these things are. This is called
the backstory. It may be necessary to put the backstory in your plot somewhere, in a non-obtrusive way, so your reader can understand the history that shaped your world. It will usually have an effect on the story, regardless. If you wrote the tale of a black man in Mississippi circa 1952, the backstory of that place would have an effect on your plot. No doubt about it. The same goes for any story or situation. Why are your characters there? Why did they choose to do what they’re trying to accomplish? What background shaped their personality. It’s all important. A blank slate is boring. Give us something to ponder.

Research your Milieu

I cannot stress the importance of this more. Research is critical. If you’re writing about something you made up, like an alien world, it’s still a good idea to research how similar cultures, economies, religions work as a model for what you create. Depth is everything.

Besides, research provides you with ideas and insights that will help your creative process as you build your story. Many good characters, plot twists, and scenes can come from real life examples you can find by doing research. And research is one of the best the best cures for clichés there is. Clichés come from ignorance. Research is education.

If you were to write a story about a cop working in the Mission District of San Francisco, talking to cops in that district and hearing their stories would give you tons of material and ideas, in addition to getting the facts straight. Then, you’d have a fresh story, instead of something inspired by half-baked memories of old TV shows.

Ideas write themselves when you know your world. Research not only deters clichés, it’s also a good cure for writer’s block. Reading expands the mind, provides fresh insights. And talking to people with useful experience can give you a zillion story possibilities.

Your Milieu will live when it has depth. Depth comes from knowledge and experience. If you’re not an expert on the world you’re writing, make certain you are before you get too far into it. Your readers will thank you for it.

And finally, the rules of your world need to be internally consistent. Internal consistency means authenticity. Don’t establish rules then break them for no reason. You’ll destroy the credibility of your Milieu and all that work will be for nothing.

REMEMBER: Believable worlds make for interesting stories. 

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Secrets of Writing: The Premise

THE PREMISE

The premise is an important component because it serves as the soul of the story.  It’s the point. Without it, you have what is known as a “shaggy dog” story, which is a rambling mess without a clue of where it’s going.

The premise is the destination your story needs to reach at the end. Try to think of a story as a desert highway stretching out before you. At the end of the road is home (the premise). You want to go home. If you follow the road, you make it. You validate the premise.

But...if you drive off the road and go somewhere else, you’re lost. You failed the premise and you’re out in the desert without a clue.

A premise is an argument and it’s your job to prove it. We’ll get into how that’s done in a minute, but let’s take a look at some examples of a premise.

THE WIZARD OF OZ: “Home is where the heart is.” Dorothy ran away from home to save her dog and ended up in a beautiful, sometimes scary place known as Oz where she met a lot of people she came to love as friends. But in the end, she knew that there was no place she’d rather be than home. To her, home was where her loved ones were, even though Oz was much nicer and more interesting than Kansas when you get down to it .

KRAMER VS KRAMER: “Family is more important than a career.” Mr. Kramer found himself becoming a father for the first time when his wife left him with his son. Until then, he was too busy to give his kid much attention. Now he had to learn all the things a parent must know, including responsibility for your family. It made him less effective at work, so he lost his job and had to get another. But in the end, his family was the most important thing to him and it also made him more fulfilled as a human being.

MY FAIR LADY: “Men and Women need each other.” In this story Henry Higgins is a middle aged bachelor with no time for women. That is, until he decides to teach Eliza Dolittle how to speak and act like an educated lady. Higgins falls in love with her. The story shows that men and women can be independent, but they still need each other to be complete human beings.

FORREST GUMP: “Don’t give up your dream and you’ll eventually be rewarded.” Forrest Gump wanted to marry Jenny, and he didn’t bother with any other women until she finally came around. He also stuck with the service until they discharged him and did all right. He stuck with the shrimp boat even though he was failing at it and eventually came out rich in the end.

JFK: “The Government is not on your side.” This film mixes fact with speculation to show how a conspiracy involving corrupt individuals in and around the government changed the course of American policy and mired us in the Vietnam war, all to make some rich people richer. The premise of this movie suggests the government serves the interests of the elite, not the common man. But it should be the other way around.

So, the premise creates an argument which you have to prove to make the story work. If you fail to make your premise convincing, your story is going to fall flat.  If you lack a premise, people will come away from your story feeling they’ve wasted their time. Premises give a sense of worth to a story. The reason is…

Stories are metaphors for life

Fiction has the power to give meaning to the meaninglessness of life. Life is chaotic and hard to understand for many of us. Fiction can bring order and sense to it all. You, the writer, have the powers of a god when you craft a story. You decide what happens, when, and how. You must construct events in a logical, but unpredictable pattern that points inevitably to the conclusion raised by your premise.

Because stories are about life, understand that life means change. Every second of our existence brings us closer to new experiences. It brings us closer to love, sex, money, pain, illness, joy, fear, despair, triumph, and yes...even death. No matter how dull your personal existence may be, change is going to affect your life one way or another. But more importantly, for the Audience, change is something they need to see. Anything static is boring. Stories that don’t affect the characters or don’t make a difference are generally dull stories. There are exceptions to this rule. But we’ll explore that later.

Your story needs to effect change on the main characters whether they like it or not. And the changes need to verify the argument of the premise. This is done is by employing the power of choice.

The choices your character makes in the course of the story should further enhance the statement of your premise. This way, the Audience lives through the Hero’s experiences and witnesses the validation of the premise.

Fact is neutral. Stories are interpretations of facts. You cannot do any documentary without coloring it to your opinion or a theory. You can’t tell a story without choosing which “facts” you want to present. Reality is superior to our little paper world. We can only objectify reality through the subjective lens of our minds.

What a good writer does is create meaning from all the events of the story by confirming their premise.

REMEMBER: Until the premise is put to the test of the story’s conflicts, it’s nothing more than an theory. Your job is to prove it.

THE COUNTER PREMISE

In order to make your premise believable, you have to present compelling arguments for the opposing side. Otherwise, your story becomes preachy and one sided.

This is done via the counter premise.

In most cases, the counter premise is the Villain’s agenda. In Kramer Vs Kramer, Mrs. Kramer was trying to get custody of the son. The argument she used in court was that she was a better parent because she now makes more money, she’s the mother, and that Mr. Kramer cared more about his job than his family. Her lawyer points out that Kramer lost his job and was now making a lot less, so he isn’t a good provider. In other words, “Your career is critical to your family’s well being.”

This is the counter premise. In the end, the premise wins the argument because the boy chooses his father and the wife sees he has become a better parent because of his choices. His choices validated the story’s premise!

Another example, JAWS. In Jaws the premise is: “Nature can be a real Mother! Adapt or die!” The counter premise is: “Man doesn’t have the right to mess with nature.” In order to get the shark, which is the force of nature in the story, they have to go to the shark’s element. The sea. It becomes clear that man does not belong out at sea. He is vulnerable, unequipped to survive in the ocean without his precious technology. Indeed, even with his technology, nature can kick his ass. The hero of the story barely survives, only with cunning. His choice is to adapt as best he can. And by making this choice, rather than giving in, he validates the premise.

The counter premise needs to be a compelling argument. Perhaps as compelling or almost more so than the premise. When the counter premise is used properly, the Audience worries about the hero. Your hero is the champion of the premise, whether he’s aware of it or not.

Finding your Premise

When you begin to formulate your story, you may not know what the premise is. That’s okay. You can find out what it is when you have more of the plot constructed. The premise isn’t something you need to have in mind from the beginning. Even if you have it in mind, you may find it changes as the story unfolds. Stories by nature are organic. As characters come alive, as scenes take shape, new meanings and insights can form. This can alter your original premise. So first, figure out who your characters are, what they want, what the Grail is, then start putting scenes together. Soon after, you’ll start to see a pattern take shape. The Premise will come into clarity. Then you can fine tune the story until your premise and counter premise battle it out with the kind of effectiveness your story needs.

Whatever you do, never tell the audience point blank what your premise is. If you need to have a character say it out loud, you’re showing how ineffective you are as a writer. The audience should be able to get the point on their own. Once you start preaching, you start boring.

Once you’ve found your premise, evaluate the scenes you’ve come up with and see if they can’t be modified to make the arguments that you need to make. In the Star Trek film GENERATIONS, the premise is explored in almost every scene. The film’s premise is:
“Life is short, so make your mark the best way you can.” Picard is always regretting the fact that he never had a family. This is echoed by Kirk, as well. To these men, a family is how they would have liked to made their mark. But by the end of the story both men realize their destiny is to save the world and bringing justice and peace to the galaxy. They recognize they’ve mattered in the scheme of things and find their peace in that.

If you study this film, you’ll notice the writers squeezed the premise into almost every scene. It gives the story more resonance.

You can also use subplots to play off the premise with themes. A subject we will delve into at length in a later chapter. Just remember that a story without a premise is a story without a soul.

REMEMBER: The story must show conflict between the Premise and the Counter Premise.  A strong Counter Premise makes for a strong story. 

Friday, December 22, 2006

Secrets of Writing: Conflict

All stories arise from conflict. As we stated earlier, the hero wants something. Either the prevention of a loss, or some kind of gain.  He goes on a quest to obtain the object of desire. What makes it a story is the conflict that stands between the hero and his goal. That is the crux of your story. Conflict keeps the story moving. Lose the conflict and you lose your audience.

Imagine a story where someone wants to be rich. So they buy a lottery ticket and win. Now they’re rich. The end.

Is that a story? Yes. Is it an interesting story? No.

Why? Because there’s no conflict. People expect some kind of struggle. Life is not so easy for most of us. We have things standing in our way, between us and the object of our desire. How we over come these obstacles is the conflict. We want to see how a character overcomes their obstacles. That’s what makes the story interesting to us. Good stories are often a life lesson of sorts.

I like to think of conflict as the salt in the story. Any cook will tell you that salt brings out the flavors in food. Without it, the food is bland. The same principal goes with fiction. A story where nothing happens is a boring story. A story where everything comes easy to the characters is just plain full, unless there’s a catch.

Conflict is not action. Many writers mistakenly confuse the two, and thus end up with stories full of meaningless action scenes. Conflict is the reason most action occurs. Conflict is when two forces are in opposition to each other. These forces can be emotional, mental, physical, spiritual, sociological, or elemental.

We begin to understand a character through their response to conflict. How each person reacts to any given situation defines their character. We respond to how characters deal with conflict because we can relate to it. Conflict is in our face every single day in one form or another. And when it’s not, we’re bored.

How a character deals with their conflicts helps us gain perspective on our own lives. It can either serve to validate or repudiate our own choices. If we really disagree with the choices a character makes when dealing with his conflict, we form negative opinions about that character. If we love the choice they make, we love the character more. It’s that simple.

So how your characters deal with conflict will have a lot to do with how your audience is going to feel about your work. Remember one crucial thing, however. Conflict is not action. They are two completely different things. We’ll discuss the nature of action in a later chapter.

TYPES OF CONFLICT

Conflict comes in several forms. You have to choose the type that best serves your story. Every form of conflict has implications on the level it affects. They are:

INTERNAL: The conflict a person has with themselves. Inner turmoil. Moral dilemmas. Overcoming trauma. Psychological problems. This conflict is not with other characters, though it can affect other characters in the story. The Internal Conflict is best showcased in the novel, where the Audience feels they are in the mind of the character, because they are visualizing based on the chosen words of the writer. Comics can also handle the internal conflict effectively through use of captions. The art work can show the struggle of the character in many different ways. But the film and theater mediums are much less effective dealing with this form of conflict which is why so many novels don’t translate well to film. Novels that deal mainly with external conflicts always translate better than those which deal with internal ones.

PERSONAL: This is between the Hero and his friends and lovers. It’s about inter-personal relations between individuals. It does not involve larger issues like peer pressure or the rules of society, but rather, the problems people have relating one on one. This is the conflict best showcased in the theater. Though comics handle it well.

SOCIAL: Social Conflict is between the parent and the child, between the doctor and the patient, between the Hero and society. When you’re dealing with larger issues than just inter-personal relationships, this is the conflict of choice. Stories that deal with concepts like authority, injustice, persecution, assimilation, etc. are playing in the realm of the social conflict. This is best shown in films, but every medium can use it effectively.

ELEMENTAL: Between man and the environment, between the hero and a force of nature. The hero deals with an elemental force which has no persona. It could be anything from a giant meteor heading toward earth or a pack of rabid Chihuahuas.

THE NATURE OF CONFLICT

By itself, conflict is impersonal. Even if you’re dealing with a war. People understand the concept of a war, but they don’t see what it has to do with them unless you apply the exercise of conscious will on it, through your main characters. Then it becomes tangible.

What this means is, many people can feel something looking at scenes from a war. But the people dying become abstract. We can feel sorry for them, but it can be hard to identify with them unless we are pulled in through the story. That happens when our characters become our eyes into that world. When the characters become our eyes, the story becomes more real for us.

Conflict needs meaning to be powerful. So it has to be important for the characters. When the characters become emotionally involved with the conflict, we become emotionally involved. IF, and I repeat, IF we care about the characters. We’ll get into that in the characterization section.

If I said two guys were fighting down the street, they’d be faceless individuals in your mind and meaningless to you on a personal level. You don’t know who they are or why they’re fighting. But if I said your best friend is fighting your worst enemy, suddenly the idea draws you in because it now has personal meaning.

That’s how you involve the Audience in the conflict. By making the characters people they can identify with. You do this by showing their dynamic will in action.

The story of a guy who just wants to have a decent life isn’t very exciting. It’s a very passive, run-of-the mill desire. There’s nothing special about it. Nothing to make the character’s struggle interesting.

But...when you show that he will fight the most incredible odds to secure that peaceful life, then the story becomes interesting, and so does the Hero. You transform the conflict by showing his dynamic will in action against it.

When you’re writing a story about personal and/or social conflicts, you’re really pitting the will of your characters against each other. And through that use of will, we learn who they are and what they’re made of.

In an internal conflict, the character uses their will against their own innate nature. They may have a phobia about fire. To get out of a building they’re trapped in, they have to walk through a fire filled room. They must force themselves to do something they’re afraid to do. They’re battling their own desires for a better good.

Lack of internal conflict limits a character’s dimension. Single minded individuals are only common in bad fiction. Not in life. Everyone has inner demons of some kind. We’re conflicted. Often we ask ourselves if ywe’re making the right decision.  According to scientists, reason and emotion are completely intertwined. When someone suffers brain damage to the emotion centers of the brain, they lose the ability to make logical decisions.

This is because we learn by our mistakes. If we no longer fear negative repercussions, we’d do anything without thought. So you need to be aware of a characters fears, their needs and desires. Their emotional hot buttons.

It will have a big impact on the character’s choices. And it will help us understand them.

REMEMBER: All stories arise from conflict. Conflict is transformed by dynamic will. 

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Secrets of Writing: Story Vs Plot

WHAT IS A STORY?

This is a subject many writers disagree on. The difference between a plot and a story has been argued since Aristotle stirred things up back in Old Athens. For the record, I’m going to take the side of writers like George Bernard Shaw who said: “There are only two stories. ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Jack and the Beanstalk.’”

Translation: “Boy Meets Girl” and “The Hero on a Quest”.

However, I part company with Mr. Shaw on the number of stories. There is only one story. The Hero on a Quest. Because Boy Meets Girl is about one or more characters questing for an object of desire. Love.

Man Vs Nature is often quoted as another basic story. But that story is about a hero questing for peace and quiet, or better weather. When you really think about it, all stories are about characters trying to get something. Either an abstract, like peace of mind, or a material object, like a bag of money.

The definition of “quest” is: to seek for something, or a mission to perform a goal. Therefore, we find many completely different plots all end up with the same basic story. Examples:

JURASSIC PARK: Scientists seek to survive when monsters get loose.
STAR WARS: A young man seeks justice in a troubled universe.
JAWS: The sheriff of a beach town on a mission to kill a monster.
THE GODFATHER: A young man seeks to create order in a troubled world.
THE WIZARD OF OZ: A young girl searches for home when she is lost.
GONE WITH THE WIND: A young woman seeks love in a troubled world.
CITIZEN KANE: A reporter seeks for the secret to “Rosebud”
FORREST GUMP: A retarded man seeks for love in a troubled world.
SCHINDLER’S LIST: A Nazi seeks to save Jews from injustice.
BATMAN: A hero seeks to create justice in a troubled world.
HARRY POTTER: An orphan seeks to create order in a troubled world.
JAMES BOND: A spy seeks to create order in a troubled world.
LORD OF THE RINGS: A hobbit seeks destroy a ring and restore order to a troubled world.

As you can see, in all these stories we have a character, or characters, seeking to obtain something or achieve a goal. They are all heroes on a quest.

Notice that all these stories involve people wanting something. That’s because from the moment we are born, we want something: Air, food, love, money, sex, entertainment, excitement, power. It’s a common thing to all humans. Our desires is what defines us.

Characters in stories are motivated by one of two things: Making a gain or preventing a loss.

Ultimately, when you boil a story down, either people want to get something they don’t have, whether it be peace of mind or wealth. Or, they want to prevent something from being lost. Example: In Lord of the Rings, Frodo and company want to prevent the loss of their way of life because Sauron wants to take over the world. So they set about to destroy the ring. The Villains of the story, Sauron and Gollum, want to prevent the destruction of the ring which would be a loss for them.

Boil down any story and you end up with this formula: A>B

A (the hero) wants C (the Object of Desire) and B (the conflict/villain) stands in the way.

Just as there is one basic story, there are only three possible endings to a story. Success, failure, or neutral results. But we’ll get to that in a later chapter.

If you understand there is only one kind of story, it makes it a lot easier to focus on your goals. You now know that in every story, your hero is trying to achieve something. You have to decide what that is. It doesn’t have to be limited to one goal, as we will discuss later, there are usually multiple goals in a story, but they are usually part and parcel of the same thing.

We are all trying to get something. We are all motivated by desire. We are creatures of need. Hunger is something everyone can relate to. Stories satisfy us when we can identify with a Hero and his desires, even if we disagree with his motives or methods.

To make your story unique, you elaborate on the one story in a way the Audience has either never seen, or never expected. But it has to be in a manner they will agree with and enjoy.

Therein lies the rub.

REMEMBER: Every story is about “A” wanting “C” and “B” stands in the way.

WHAT IS A PLOT?

There is only one basic story, but an infinite variety of plots. Plots are like a machine. You start with a bunch of parts, which are the story elements, and put them together until the thing works. The purpose of this machine is to arouse the Audience’s expectations. To move them in some way.

A plot is the mechanism of the story. It makes the story tick. A plot that’s well constructed hums along and has lots of power. A bad plot coughs, sputters, even falls apart. That’s why you have to learn how to be a good plot mechanic, to make it all run smoothly.

Plots come in two levels. There is the basic plot, or synopsis, which is the plot boiled down to a paragraph. And there’s the expanded plot, or the outline, which is the sequence of events around which a story is decorated and embellished. The plot’s plot, if you will.

A plot is what many people call a story. And it’s not wrong to call it a story. Every plot is a story. It’s merely a story dressed up as a plot. It gets confusing when writers argue the difference between plot and story. My definition keeps things simple. Why get complicated?

In case you’re confused by the above ramble, I’ll explain it another way. A plot is the story blown up and embellished with events, characters, and scenes. Think of the story as an evergreen and the plot as all the blinking lights, tinsel, and colored glass balls needed to turn that bland evergreen into a Christmas tree.

Every Christmas tree is unique, because the size of the tree can be large or small, the choice of decorations are as varied as the tastes of the decorators. But everyone knows it’s a Christmas tree when they see it.

A plot, like a Christmas tree, will be as unique as the imagination of the writer can make it.

The decorations are the characters, scenes, and techniques used to make the story more exciting. Once they’re all in place you have a plot.

TYPES OF PLOT

In classic story structure, plots take one of two basic forms:

The Progressive Version is where the conflict keeps getting more and more intense for the hero as the story progresses until he reaches a point of no return. This is the crisis of the story where the whole outcome is determined.

Examples: DIE HARD, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, STAR WARS.

The Sequential Version is where the hero has a series of adventures that each advance the story, explore the premise, and lead us to an inevitable conclusion. This form is hard to pull off and maintain direction.

Examples: FORREST GUMP, HUCKLEBERRY FINN

REMEMBER: There is only one story, but a zillion plots. 

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Secrets of Writing: Structure Explained

Back by popular demand. I’m working on the print version of this series with an editor. But since the blog disaster wiped out the articles, I will be reposting them here.

WHAT IS STORY STRUCTURE?

We are, by nature, a creative animal. We’re driven to make our mark on the world in some fashion, beyond our need to survive. Some people satisfy their creativity in the business world, in cooking, in decorating their home.  Some satisfy it with music or dance. We’re going to focus on that most ancient of trades...storytelling.

Mankind, as we know it, has been on earth for at least 70,000 years. We can safely assume that somewhere in the midst of that time, people started telling stories. It probably originated around the campfire when we lived in caves and hunted with flint spears. Stories began as one hunter bragged about some sabretooth he killed, or a fish that got away. As people’s tastes became more sophisticated, the demands on a story grew. The teller of the tale would elaborate. The fish that got away got bigger. Then, maybe a monster attacked him while he was trying to catch the fish, which is why he lost it. But people learned when someone was making things up, so the storyteller had to get more clever in how they spun their yarn. And that was the birth of technique.

We don’t know when people first started formulating story technique, but we know from recorded history thay were doing it in Ancient Greece, about 2,500 years ago. The first known plays were performed there, in honor of the god Dionysius. Stories were acted out with pantomime and dialog before a live audience. Writers quickly saw the need for improving their craft when actors started speaking their lines. Before then, stories were told by one performer, who was usually the author of the piece. When writing was used to record these stories, you had a new medium where flaws in a story became more brutally apparent.

The philosopher Aristotle was one of the first to write a treatise on the subject of storytelling.  In “De Poetica” he laid the groundwork for the theory that we now know as Story Structure.

Story Structure is the foundation upon which all stories are built. It is the framework that holds a story together. You cannot write fiction without employing it. However, if you don’t understand the principles of story structure, you can easily make a mess. This is one reason why so many stories are bad. The authors of these narratives didn’t employ the principles of structure appropriately.

It’s kind of like that old biblical parable about the man who built his house upon the sand, while another built his house on stony ground. The house built on the beach got destroyed because the foundation was built on unstable earth. The same thing happens to a story built with a poor structure. It falls apart.

The last thing any good writer wants is to spend days, months, or years on something that’s ultimately weak. Aside from the blow to your self esteem and the rejection of the public, it doesn’t do your career a whole lot of good.

There is a big problem with structure however. It’s such a vast and complex subject, many people mistakenly think of it as a formula. Aristotle and some of the theorists who followed didn’t help matters by actually defining the formula, as they saw it, rather than revealing structure as a series of principles. Think of it as a form, rather than a formula. Structure is the form your story takes. It’s a shape that has mass.

A solid structure holds together like brick and mortar. A weak structure is like jello and tissue paper.

Formula is used by those who want to safeguard their structure, but they end up sapping it of life. Life is not a formula. And it is often surprising and full of unexpected turns.

Stories that feel like life are what we call organic stories. They seem to build in an natural and believable way. These stories might employ technique, but it is usually invisible. You don’t see the manipulation and the tricks. You don’t see the wires and the man behind the curtain. These kind of stories suck you in completely and make you believe they are real.  To get to that level of skill usually takes experience, but it also requires understanding how formula works.

Formula writers mistakenly believe that plot twists have to occur on a certain page, characters must be introduced a precise way, etc. By dogmatically following these formulas, they end up creating predictable, by-the-numbers plots that don’t do a whole lot to satisfy the audience. You can see this kind of writing in many Hollywood action films. There stories where you can guess what happens next or who the villain is before they’re revealed.

You don’t want to write that kind of tale. Which means, you have understand how to structure things so it does not seem prefabricated, but hand made.

REMEMBER: Story structure is a series of principles. It’s not a formula.

TYPES OF STORY STRUCTURE

There are three basic types. Classical, Minimalist, and Surreal. This series focuses on Classical Structure which is the most popular form with readers and audiences. But it’s important to understand the other two so you can decide if you want to play with them.

CLASSICAL: This is the one most widely used in fiction, especially in film. It has proven to be the structure that creates the greatest emotional response in an audience. We have thousands of years of fiction to prove it. Classical story structure means change for the characters. They don’t come away from the story without their lives being affected in some way. All the questions in the story are answered. All emotions raised are satisfied. In Classical structure the emphasis is mainly on external conflict and causality. The Hero is proactive. The time chronology in the story is usually linear. There is a consistent reality.

In other words, things move from a beginning all the way to the end. When things happen in the story, it’s for a reason. We understand who the characters are, what they want and why they want it. Any sub plots are resolved and everything makes sense in the end.

The reason these stories are more satisfying is that’s how people want life to be like. And these takes serve to show us something that enlightens or educates us in some way. We leave the experience feeling as if we had a good meal for the soul.

MINIMALIST: This form of deals with stories that do not affect change in the character’s lives. They come away the same as when the story began. These stories usually have open endings, unresolved climaxes. Some of the questions in the story get answered, but some are left for the audience to think about. The emphasis in Minimalist Structure is usually on internal conflict. The protagonists are often reactive, rather than proactive. And there can be more than one Hero.

SURREAL: Also known as Anti-Structure. This form deals with conflicting realities. It delves into absurdity. Reality has no meaning. There are no rules. Anything goes. And like Minimalist stories, nothing really changes. The characters are pretty much the same going in as they come out. Time is usually broken up and random. Coincidence occurs more often than causality. These kinds of stories are often annoying. And they often feel fake and manipulative.

It’s possible for a story to fall somewhere between two of these forms. No story has to be purely one form or another. It’s possible to use elements of one form or another, but you have to decide going in which form is the dominate one.

When choosing to do a story in one of the other two forms, it’s best to start out with a classical structure before you lead your story into the other form. This way, the audience won’t be too jarred by what you’re about to do.

Take a look at the fiction out there, the movies you have at home, and study their structures. It will tell you a lot about them.