Not letting these stand in my way because I can’t let go of my desire to tell stories.
Been awhile since I’ve been here in any regular capacity. It seems, as I expected, that the Cafe has survived quite nicely and even thrived in my absence. For those who don’t know, here’s the short version: I got sick, really sick, and had to take some time to get healthy before I could think straight about what I needed to do to be a writer. Let me tell you up front that coming close to dying can truly change one’s mindset. Anyway, I’m a lot better and the outlook is good.
All right, enough about that. It’s old news at this point for anyone who knows me and tedious going for everyone else who doesn’t really care. I mentioned it to give some context to why I think about certain things and how they may’ve changed.
Now [rubs hands together], let’s get back to it, shall we? (more…)
As I’ve said before, whenever I write a story, I want to connect with the reader. I like the storyteller approach, and I want the audience to feel like I’m talking directly to them, or at least give the illusion that my main character is.
For me, first-person point of view is the ideal vehicle to accomplish this. First-person is a “warmer” viewpoint than third-person in that it provides direct access to a character’s thoughts and feelings. It makes it easier to sympathize with a protagonist if a reader is experiencing his or her trials and tribulations in real time. (As much as reader time is real time.)
I can, and have, written in third-person, but when I do, I am very aware of an increased distance between myself and the story. I’m not as in tune with my characters, and the feelings and reactions I write in third-person never seem quite as authentic as they do when I’m tooling around in a first-person protagonist’s head.
That means I have to write this post in the first person.
What’s really important when I’m choosing which story to write is how best to tell it. Whose Point of View is most important? Is that character reliable enough or not to tell the story? Because if not, that changes everything. I usually tell tales in the past tense because I dislike present tense. Not intensely but enough that it doesn’t appeal to me.
See, for me, it’s about telling. That means one person is relating what has happened. That’s how we generally tell stories over lunch, having drinks, in any number of situations. I think that if a character is telling his reader or viewer what’s happening as it’s happening, then she’s not focused enough on the events of the story. Maybe that’s crap, I don’t know, but it’s how I feel about it.
I just don’t like limiting myself to one narrator or point of view in a story. I want the reader to either a) want more by switching POV or narrator or b) want more because they really like the narrator or POV. So I have to be as interested as possible in what I’m writing.
Random rolling of multi-sided dice isn’t how I decide these things but you probably already knew that. Rather what I do is look at the overarching story and figure out which of the seven stories told and retold it is:
Boy Meets Girl (Boy Loses Girl, Boy Finds Girl Again)
Man v. Nature
Man v. Machine
Man v. Society
Rags to Riches
Love Conquers All
Portrait of the Artist
(Okay, I have to ‘fess up and say that I cannot find any sort of agreement on what the Seven Basic Plots are. Everyone seems to be referring back to a particular book that I don’t agree with. For the purposes of this post, let’s say this list is it. Afterwards you can argue as much as you like about how wrong I am. This is what I remember of the talk I heard Kurt Vonnegut give in the middle ’80s. All right?)
So. Where does the story fit and who among the characters I’ve devised is best suited to tell the story? I have to look at where the character fits into the story itself then decide if I like that fit. If I don’t like it how could I expect the reader to? Next, since I don’t want to use first person (usually) I will decide who are the important characters to follow. No more than three, really, and if I can keep it to one or two I like that better. It’s fun as a reader to know what else is going on in a story that the ‘main’ character might not. Build up some suspense. Also gives ‘em a break. After all, I don’t want to waste anyone’s time.
Then it’s all about beginning to write. It may be that I’ve chosen wrongly and the character I want to follow isn’t interesting enough. That’s happened quite a bit. Happened with last year’s NaNoWriMo novel. It just does, I guess. So then I reassess if the story is worth pursuing if I change point of view or which character is the main one.
I will look at my bookshelves for a story that’s similar to the one I want to tell. I may even pull it down off the shelf and skim through it, looking for a solution to present itself.
Humans are a storytelling species. Stories are how we make sense of the world. Stories turn raw data into intelligence. We cannot make decisions without telling ourselves what stories we would like to make true.
My federal counterparts hire contractors to do the information collection and repackaging work that I do for the state. On occasion we share information on points of mutual interest, and I’ve seen some of these contractor-generated reports. And I gotta say, I’m much better at it than the feds are.
Why? Because I never forget that I’m telling a story [0].
I have a template that I follow which uses your basic inverted pyramid structure. We begin with generalities: what is the issue and why do we care about it? I’ll introduce the stakeholders and run through the issue history from a couple of different angles, and the deeper I get into the document, my descriptions get more specific. I wrap up with conclusions and recommendations. Pretty basic, right? By the end you know the story– what is the problem, how did it get there, who is to blame, and where do we go from here. You probably learned this in English class.
On the federal level, though, it’s all about getting paid, and they’re not ashamed of it. The first page of the document usually describes the contract, and every section thereafter is in contract order [1]. The document is specifically designed so that you can lay it on the table side-by-side with the contract and check off that every contractual obligation has been satisfied, in order. Good job, well done, you’ll have a check in 30 days.
The contractors work hard. They use the same resources I do, mostly, and collect the same data. They are without a doubt dedicated and passionate about their work. But the structure of the contract precludes their ability to tell the story, and they write a report as a series of unconnected collections of data. They never even see the story, which means they can’t identify and fill plot holes, they never ask, “What if?” and they end up missing out on critical insights and promising lines of inquiry.
I feel sorry for the federal project managers who have to read the reports and try to make decisions based on them. All the information is there, but the serious skull work of making sense of it all is yet to be done. One of the reasons I am careful to tell stories is because I know my bosses are busy people. They don’t have the time or the attention span to do a lot of synthesis. I have to lay it out in plain language, and the best way I know to do that is to tell a story.
[0] It’s a factual story, and every point in it has to be backed up in reality somewhere, which often means a six-page memo has 200 pages of attachments.
[1] Which would be fine if whoever wrote the contract knew how to structure a story. But they don’t.
Like a lighthouse, stories can guide us through some dark places and help us avoid dangers we would not see.
After Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 — his dystopian novel of a world where books are burned — he reportedly told interviewers “I wasn’t trying to tell the future, I was trying to prevent it.”
Fahrenheit 451 is a cautionary tale, like so many of my favorite stories. If you think about it, some of the best stories are those that warn us of some great danger — real or imagined.
Ancient literature — From dealing with the devil to receiving wishes from a djinn, we are advised to be careful when dealing with supernatural creatures. The outcome is often not what we want, and it may cost us our souls.
History — We know to beware of Greeks bearing gifts, because — as the people of Troy found out only too well — a gift from an enemy can be a trap.
Fairy tales — The stories of “Little Red Riding Hood” or “Hansel and Gretel,” tell children to stay out of the woods because they are filled with dangerous animals and dark-hearted crones.
Science fiction — Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein warns of the hubris of human scientific advancement. As does the more recent Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. Just because we can do something, does that mean we should?
My writer friends may take exception with this, but I don’t think the world needs stories.
Stories are a luxury.
This idea that stories (and any other form of art) are somehow a necessity is false. It’s a notion that we artistic types often perpetuate because we’re trying to assuage our own insecurity about the career path we want to pursue. It’s as if we still need to be convinced that being an artist is legit and worthwhile.
Here’s the stone cold truth, people: Art is not a required staple. It is not food nor is it shelter. The world will continue to spin even without the stories we tell.
Imagine ancient man, sitting at a campfire with his family and friends. It doesn’t take much imagination to consider what happened next. He started telling a story. Whether it was a recounting of the days hunt, or a wish for a plentiful summer, it is highly likely that early man told stories.
And we still do today.
But are stories really necessary these days? We’re connected as never before in a web of communication. We have facts and data at our fingertips. Scripted television seems to be dying, replaced by reality shows. The media has made celebrities of people whose lives are recorded and viewed for our pleasure.
This week, we’re asking the writers in the Cafe to ponder the imponderable: “Why does our world need stories?” Can humanity survive without them? Are they necessary to our existence? Are they a frivolous luxury for the rich and idle who are not working?
We hope you enjoy our responses to this question. As always, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section.
Your mileage is going to vary when it comes to subplots. I feel like authors who can handle large casts of characters, or who write long-running series, or both, have a greater license with subplot. They can weave them through several stories, and slide them in more carefully.
For me as a writer, subplot is a balancing act. I have to be careful not to let side details overwhelm the story.
First, let me be clear: I love subplots. There is not a single thing that I don’t love about the stories within the story — mostly because life is a series of subplots, of character back stories and minor quests.
As a reader, I love to know what else the main character has going on. Yes, sure, this romance is nice and all — but tell me more about what’s going on about her father’s assassination. Author, you’ve been dropping hints for chapters now, and damn it, I need to know!
Also, I love the catharsis at the end of the huge story reveal. When the main plot and most of the subplots get wrapped up in a nice little bow. When done right, there’s this exhale, and it’s all clear. The whole story has focus: the threads are wrapped and the stragglers aren’t a big deal, and it’s amazing.
(In a really good book, there’s also the element of, “I totally didn’t see that coming!”)
But subplots don’t always work. Sometimes they feel tacked in for “depth,” like the hypotenuse of the love triangle that was never really a question. Other times they distract from the plot, either because they ended up more interesting than the plot (at which point: whoops, that draft needs more time to stew) or because the author preferred the subplot.
I’m guilty of both, but I’m really guilty of the latter. I have the bad habit of falling in love with characters and wanting to share all those interesting things about them, even when they’re not relevant.
It may take a lot of coffee to work through Writer’s Block. Are you prepared for that? Picture from here.
Writer’s Block is the invention of a scribe who couldn’t turn an assignment in on time, who had too many other things on his mind (yeah it was a man who invented the cop-out, go figure), or was just plain lazy.
Well, maybe not. Maybe being blocked is real. Maybe. But there are ways around it, over, under, through it and the determined writer has to be prepared to find those ways. Most of those ways are constituted in actually doing the work.
Anxiety is what it is. One isn’t necessarily ‘blocked’ but rather is anxious about either the work or something associated with it. Overcoming it is basic problem-solving:
1- What do you want?
2 – Why can’t you have it?
3 – What are you prepared to do to get it?
Being blocked is when the writer gets to the second question and says “I don’t know!” and that’s where the cop-out is. Right there? See it? I. Don’t. Know.
Block is continued when the writer doesn’t have any idea of how to overcome the anxiety that has afflicted him. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do to get what he wants, which is to Write. So instead of calling bullshit and working through the ‘block’, some writers crawl into a bottle (liquor, pills, whatever) and go down for the count, making the anxiety worse.
The best cure I’ve found for being blocked is to actually write. Not what I want to write, but something else, something light and fluffy and not at all related to what I should be working on. The old brainbox is stuck on something, some problem, and it’s all rooted in the subconscious. Time to dig our your Freud, kids, and examine what’s in your head. For instance, I’m writing this post in early June because I’m stuck at a point in my novel where I need to solve a problem that’s going to get out of hand if I don’t think it through a little better.
So yeah, writer’s block is real and has been studied and studied and studied by people smarter than you or me. Being blocked is no excuse. It’s a cop-out to say “I’m blocked so I’m not writing.” That’s an unacceptable response to your craft if one is a serious writer. A lack of inspiration is one thing and also easily solved by a writer who wants to write: go somewhere and open your mind.
You need stimulation but don’t go overboard. You still need to sit down and write. Remember the recipe for a good story: butt in chair, fingers on keys.
The coolest thing about being a non-fiction writer is all the research I get to do. I love being a lifetime learner; it’s like I’m getting paid to grow a little smarter every day.
When I’ve done my research, when I’m confident of my facts and my references, and the story has revealed itself to me, the words come easy. If they come grudgingly, or not at all, it’s a signal that I have to go back to the library, or the museum, or archives, and figure out the missing pieces. My notes are sprinkled with questions I need to find answers to: What if this were the case? What would account for the timing here? What did these people do, and how did they do it, and would they have done it under these particular circumstances, and most importantly, how can I figure out what those circumstances were? It’s like detective work, only without the dead bodies and wisecracking medical examiners.
It’s storytelling about what is, not about what should be, and that’s a powerful thing.
