The Science of Story

If Shakespeare had an iPhone...

noreply@blogger.com (Windy Dave) — Wed, 20 May 2015 13:34:00 +0000

I would like to take this opportunity to flag up the brilliance of a tweet I got from Teri Carson (@dizzydentfilms). Not just for its humour, and of course succinctness, but because there is a lesson for us all in these 140 characters – a lesson in story delivery in subtext.

So, before I oversell the thing, here’s Teri’s tweet:

“Honk all you want. When I got shit to tweet I don't give a fuck what color the light is..”

You think… You read it again… The penny drops… You laugh. And you get a picture – a picture of a girl sitting in the car, waiting at a red. She’s texting on her phone, so she doesn’t see the traffic lights change, and there is a guy in the truck behind getting mad with her, and he starts letting her know about it by leaning on the horn. She is unmoved and is determined to finish her tweet before pulling away...

Now look carefully at the words I used to describe the picture she created. None of the words I used appeared in her tweet. You had to make that whole scenario up for yourself from the verbal clues she gave you. And THAT is master storytelling.

You give the audience only signposts, and they do the rest themselves. Stories are not about giving information, but holding it back and having the audience project it for themselves.

Thank you Teri! Love it!

If you'd like more of Teri, go to her blog at http://dizzydentfilms.blogspot.com and of course, she’s always welcoming followers on Twitter…

For an entire chapter on all types of story subtext and the methods writers use to embed subtext in their stories (and another example like this one, taken from a newspaper small ads column and which I find hilarious) you might like to consider The Story Book, Chapter 4.

Cheers!

David

The Delivered Story; The Interpreted Story

noreply@blogger.com (Windy Dave) — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 18:34:00 +0000

Whenever you absorb a story, you are actually experiencing *two* stories. Or at least, two versions of the same story. This is well accepted in academia, and was first documented by the Russian Formalists in the 1920s, (Victor Shlovsky, Vladmir Propp et al) who called the first version the Syuzhet and the second version the Fabula. Great words, but let me try to simplify it to what can help a writer deliver better story today.

The first version is the delivered story. All the tangible sensory stimulation you receive from having the story communicated to your eyes and ears. So, in a film, this includes the music, images, dialogue, action, character behaviours, the poster, the trailer, the reviews you read, the blog-post, your knowledge of the star's personal life - everything that contributes to what you think about the story.

In a book, of course, the written words are the total sensory stimulation. Here is, allegedly, the shortest novel ever written:

"For Sale. Baby's Shoes. Never Worn."

In this case, the total delivered story is just those six words (and whatever else you might overlay if you know it was (allegedly) written by Earnest Hemmingway).

But of course, there is more to every story than just what you are delivered. There is the second level - the Fabula - or the interpreted story. This is everything you know from the delivered story PLUS everything else you add to the delivered story in order to make a complete production of it in your own head.

The delivered story

+ Your conclusions from understanding the delivered story

== The Interpreted story

The delivered story is the same for everyone; it is objective and denoted. We can point out all its elements and quantify it.

The interpreted story is a unique and individual production, produced in full inside the head of the receiver as a result of interpreting the delivered story.

The skill of a writer is in crafting the delivered story - that's what you write - but just enough so most target audience will fill the knowledge gaps in similar ways, and create for themselves in mind a wonderful, complete interpreted version of your story.

So, what interpreted story did you get from Hemmingway's six words? most people get a sad story comprising a child tragically lost in pregnancy or shortly afterwards. If pushed, they can describe the couple and envisage numerous events going back to their meeting, the circumstances surrounding the conception, the onset of the tragic problem, what happens afterwards and so forth; but the interpretation is essentially the same for most people.

However, those six words could just as easily have spawned a comedy story in mind, in which the grandparents have bought the new born baby a pair of baby shoes, only to find that the kid has giant feet, coming in at size nine from birth, causing much mirth and a driving need to sell the shoes.

However, very few people get anything like that from this delivered story. We all interpret the knowledge gaps in the same way... and that is master storytelling.

As a writer, the thing to bear in mind here is that we humans *love* to fill in knowledge gaps. We adore puzzles and questions and projecting and speculating and subtext and getting the right answer. As a writer, your job is to craft knowledge gaps. They are the tool of your trade. You bed knowledge gaps into your delivered story in order to inspire interpretation; in order that that the complete, interpreted story is found in the subtext and built beautifully in the mind of your audience.THAT is the skill of a fine writer.

So learn about knowledge gaps. Learn about the relationship between gaps and subtext. Learn about the relationship between gaps and morality.

The more knowledge gaps there are, the more your audience will love your stories.

What is a Story?

noreply@blogger.com (Windy Dave) — Mon, 03 Nov 2014 11:14:00 +0000

When I first started my research degree in story theory, the thing that surprised me most was that there is no single definition for the term 'story'. At least, not one that all the authorities agree, and certainly not one which would cover all the examples that you and I would intuitively agree are 'stories'. 2,300 years since Aristotle and even the dictionary isn't right.

Of course, like every other narratologist, I have come up with my own definition, but for this blog post, I won't be trying to sell you that. I thought I would use this space to capture the top lines that most story boffins DO agree. The common elements that comprise the mainstream and which are useful to know if you are a writer of fiction. Please note the scope I'm setting. I'm not trying to include 'the story of medicine' or a poem or a recipe or an argument or the story of 'last summer' or Japanese Kishotenketsu conflict free narratives, or
all the myriad other things that may or may not be stories. I'm talking about a definition that will help an aspiring writer do good things for their story telling by understanding where the centre of the mainstream flows.

So, let's look at the simple contents of a generally 'good' story:

1) The vast majority of fine stories feature a protagonist trying to achieve a goal. His/her world is thrown out of balance, and this has given the protagonist clear aims. By the end of the story we know whether the protagonist achieved his or her aims or not. This is usually the main plot; the spine of the story. Everything in a story is linked to this spine and contributes to it.

2) To make the protagonist's journey interesting, s/he is faced by obstacles that must be overcome in order to achieve this aim or aims. By 'obstacles' I don't simply mean a 'bad guy', I mean any forces of antagonism that directly oppose the protagonist's progress towards those aims. Antagonistic forces basically come in four flavours: internal (mental self-doubt, delusion, cowardice...); relationship (conflict with other people); institutional (conflict with, for example, police, hospitals, schools, councils, bookmakers...); and external (conflict with uncontrollable factors, such as the weather, acts of God, the actions of random strangers...). For more on antagonism see my blog Conflict and the Word Count.

Also note that the forces of antagonism are fundamental to the power of your story. The good guys can only be as impressive as the forces they have to overcome, so building strong, believable, clever, powerful antagonism is a very important part of a fine story. It should appear absolutely impossible that the protagonist can find a way to win. Often writers are lovely people; gentle pacifists who greatly empower their good guys and unconsciously limit their baddies from the get-go, because they love their hero and hate their bad guy. See my blog post on Antagonism here.

Now, I could stop here. Strictly speaking, that is it. Those are the two points that define the substance of a story. Protagonist with a clear aim; antagonism standing firmly in his way; an irresistible force firmly set in direct conflict with an immovable object.

However, let's add a few more points that raise a basic 'story' to a 'much better' story.

3) Generally, a fine story will depict the protagonist changing and learning and growing across the course of his or her story experiences. By the end of the story, the protagonist's 'life values' would have significantly changed - for better or for worse - when compared to their starting position. The poor village boy decides to take on the dragon that terrorises the community. He slays the dragon, and ends up with a princess, a castle and a shed load of money.

This is known as character growth, and characterises most fine stories. Better still, the very finest stories have a protagonist who learns a lesson about morality (see 4, below) and applies this moral learning to overcome the antagonistic forces and thereby achieve the character growth. More on Character Growth here.

4) A good story is usually a moral argument. The story broadly addresses the questions: how should a person lead their life? And how should a person treat others? The moral issue provides the theme of the story, and the 'bad guy', if there is one, is often not simply out-and-out evil. He is adopting an understandable (but self-centred, misguided or disagreeable) stance on the moral issue. In Juno, for example, the moral issue is 'teenage pregnancy'. The eponymous teenage protagonist must take responsibility for her pregnancy; the conflict comes from the moral position adopted by the other characters, and the tension comes from the decisions Juno has no choice but to make. Often the protagonist, in their desperation to find answers, becomes immoral themselves. For more on this, see my blog post on Morality in Stories.

5) Last, but by no means least, the finest stories are delivered in subtext. What is written by the author is a minimalist set of cues and triggers that cause the whole story to be imagined in the mind of the receiver of that story. The gaps between the minimalist cues and the imagined story generated in mind are the solid gold of brilliant story telling. It's the subtext that provides the resonance with a human mind and gives a story the implicit grip and engagement that fascinates. More on my favourite topic of Subtext can be found here.

In evolutionary terms, in the real world, it is gaps in our knowledge that ring alarm bells and make us emotional. A knowledge gap is a sign of risk or opportunity and arouses us until the knowledge gap is filled. Gaps in stories trigger these same emotions, and this is where the absolute substance of story power resides. A knowledge gap in your writing generates subtext for your reader. Read my book Story Theory for more on these deep waters!

What does this mean to you?

And that's it! Check in with these basics in your own writing. It's not rocket science, and there's a lot to be said for keeping it simple. If you keep the protagonist and his aims to the fore, ensure everything is relevant to these aims; and set them head on against conflicts provided by the forces of antagonism, then show us how the protagonist overcomes the forces of antagonism and how s/he grows in achieving those aims by the end, you will probably have a fine story in front of you.

Try this with your story: Fill in the bits between the chevrons:

My story is about <name of protagonist>. His/her goal is to <insert aims here>. However, s/he is blocked in achieving these goals by <insert forces of antagonism here>. Only one of the protagonist or forces of antagonism can win; their aims are mutually exclusive. At climax, <insert key conflict event> happens, leading to <resolution for protagonist happy or tragic ending>, depicting a significant <positive or negative> change in life values and moral understanding for the protagonist.

These are the basics. If you cannot easily fill in the gaps, it is more than likely that your story has problems you need to solve before heading into first draft. A common example would be if you aren't sure who your protagonist is. In this case, you don't know whose story you are telling and you aren't ready to write it.

For more on all of this, see my book The Story Book; available the world over on Kindle, published in hard copy in the UK and in Chinese shortly in China!

Best of luck!

David

The Rise of the Arrogant Artist

noreply@blogger.com (Windy Dave) — Wed, 03 Sep 2014 16:19:00 +0000

Have you noticed that a lot of the most successful people seem self-centred? A little arrogant, perhaps? Obnoxious, even. Is there something we humble, peaceful, generous, gentle arty types can learn from this..?

When I meet successful writers, they often seem to have an unshakeable belief that they are right. 'Here's my art,' they say. 'That's what you're getting, World, and I couldn't care less what you think about it.'

That's not true, of course. The artist cares deeply about what people think, and often they are, underneath it all, humble, peaceful people like the rest of us. However, they appear to have an arrogance because their art is pushed out by a passionate, blinkered drive that makes it what it is and, for that artist, the product cannot possibly be any other way. It's not arrogance, it's ownership. It's taking responsibility. And that's exactly the way it should be. For art to satisfy, it must first satisfy the vision and inspiration of the artist. The seeds of creativity that drove the artist to devote blood, sweat, tears and years must be realised with integrity for there to be any point in doing it.

If you think about it, once the artwork is available to appreciate, the artist shouldn't really have any say in what people think. It is what it is. The wise and productive artist puts it out there - publish and be damned! - gives himself or herself a quiet hug for keeping that integrity, then moves on to the next one. 'Fire and forget' is my motto. If your artwork happens to resonate with a proportion of the population, great! You will make some money. If it doesn't, you've satisfied your soul... and that is the only audience that matters.

Success is not measured in money. It's measured in fulfilment. And what you should aim for, in an ideal world... is both.

So what's the point in learning stuff about my art if I must simply satisfy my heart?

Good question. The problem with the above is that most writers are not able to bring their story to life in a way that satisfies their inspiration. Once it's done and they read it back, it doesn't quite deliver what they felt inside. And that is really frustrating. So they rewrite. Then re-read. And it kinda works. So they rewrite. And re-read. And rewriting is fine. Essential. Unavoidable. But it isn't a very good 'method' for problem solving. Three or four rewrites and six months later, you've forgotten what the hell gave the thing a beating heart in the first place, and it starts to go cold and become really hard work. Until it dies on a shelf as you put it down to experience and move on to something new and exciting.

When a writer asks me to read their story and tell them what I think, I refuse. I won't do it. I ask them what they think, because that's what's important. It must stay in their ownership. I get them to pitch a short version of the story. I ask them questions about the characters and motivations and, bit by bit, I try to get them excited again by connecting them back up with the original inspiration. I then talk to them about specific areas of story power and story theory that will help them understand where the core power is. That way they can find out what is bugging them, understand how that might be addressed and then stay on the spine of their inspiration. And that can be learned. Like a painter can understand the limits and potential of different paper, brushes, colours and media, and a composer can learn the limits of an instrument or an orchestra, so a writer can learn where the power of a story lies and can use that knowledge to to remain faithful to the inspiration across the long haul of writing it down.

And you mustn't be scared to put it out there! So many of my clients are really just after reassurance. They want to rewrite forever rather than face the judgement that surely follows completion. Rejection... terrifying. Best just never finish, right...?!

If you want success (whatever success means to you) you MUST have the courage of your artistic convictions. There's only one person who can tell your story and that is YOU. There's only one person who can decide if your story is right or not and that is YOU. If you love it, then it's right.

So be arrogant. Be superior. You ARE the God of your story, and you mustn't be ashamed of that. Be the God. This is your art and you must guard its integrity because You Know Best. In fact, ONLY you know the definitive truth of your story, so it's not arrogance, it's standing up for what you know to be right.

Yes, learn the craft of story, because that will help you to identify the inspiration in your story and keep true to it through the long haul of writing it down. But remember this:

Nobody can give you advice on how your story should go. the moment they do, it is no longer your story.

Have I Got News For You...

noreply@blogger.com (Windy Dave) — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 18:57:00 +0000

I am very excited to announce the birth of my new book, entitled Story Theory: the psychological and linguistic foundations to how stories work. It is published NOW. On Amazon in the US Here. And on Amazon in the UK here. It got it's first 5 star review within 24 hours, I'm pleased and relieved to say, and I didn't write the review and I don't know the person who did!

That decidedly un-snappy title is deliberate, because I want to set your expectations. This book is effectively my PhD thesis for the layman. For those with an interest in story theory and the academic side, this is solid gold. You'll be luxuriating in the sheer geeky nerdiness of it all for months. For those who want practical advice for writers.... hmmm. Not so much. You will only want the second half of the book, as this provides some unique story understanding to take into your own work.

Story Theory is original thinking and 'new knowledge' that you will not find anywhere else. However, this is not a practical 'how to' book...

Here's what Stewart Ferris, the MD of the publishing company that published some of my earlier books, has to say about it:

“An intelligent and thought-provoking book that shows not only where stories come from, but how to harness the power of story, the techniques writers can use to enhance that power, and how stories are an integral part of what makes us human.”

Which is about right, but make no mistake - it's an academic read. I'm telling you this, because I don't want to sell it to anyone who wouldn't enjoy it. Go directly to The Story Book for more practical information.

I hope you love it. Let me know!

David

Why is Genre Important to Success?

noreply@blogger.com (Windy Dave) — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 10:46:00 +0000

Genre is a real tricky devil... and absolutely key to your success.

When we start out on a writing career, we don't see it like that. Genre is a restriction. Something to at least ignore and probably rebel against. You gotta be unique. You're going to prove yourself by doing something different. The only reason you would ever want to know the rules is so you can break ‘em good.

Weeellll, it's not quite like that. You do need originality but you also need to be professional. There's definitely a place for you to be different, but you also need to be commercially switched on. And it is through understanding the role of Genre that you can know the time and place to be creative and different and the time and place to be compliant and run on the rails of genre.

Every story divides into two 'levels'. One level allows you to show how professional you are and how you have mastered your craft. The other level allows you to be different and show off your creative originality. These levels are firstly, the top level arcs across the whole story (what the story is about) and, secondly, the detailed content of the sequences (how that story is told).

The top level arcs, defining what your story is about, should be fixed within a genre.
The detail of the individual scenes/chapters - how you deliver those arcs - can change infinitely with your uniquely different creative brilliance.

For example, if I tell you I'm going to go to Paris, you know exactly what I'm doing overall. The top level arc is a clear message, instantly understood. You will know if I've achieved my aim if I get to Paris. However, the detail of how I get there - the scenes along the way - involving bike, walk, plane, train, hitch, characters, disasters comedy - whatever - how it takes place in the detail is infinitely up for creative originality.

My creative brilliance is separated from a clear genre message. The rules of the genre are obeyed, buy my originality can express itself within that genre.

The trick is to define the top level material – the big picture that can be marketed – smack down the middle. Know your genre, be cynical and professional and and live in the middle of the mainstream. Really. Do it. Make it a rule (you know I don’t like rules…) Then within those boundaries, in the detail of how you deliver your story chapter by chapter, scene by scene, be as inventive and different as you possibly can.

Why not be different at the top level? Let's say, for example, that I am the most brilliantly amazing talented soccer player the world has ever seen, but I want to show the world just how brilliant and original I am, so I refuse to be limited by the laws of the game and I keep dribbling the ball (brilliantly) over the lines and out of play, then guess what… I'm a useless footballer. Hold on — I thought we agreed I am the very best footballer? (Thank you.) Yes, David, you are. But commercially, you're utterly worthless if you won't accept the genre rules.

I hate that it’s true, but I could barely give you a single piece of better advice if you want commercial success. Become professional and understand your craft within the context of a genre, and then become creatively brilliant and mind-blowingly original within the boundaries of that genre.

Why? Because we, the public, as consumers, like to know what we're getting for our investment of time and money in a story. I don't go and see a film randomly or pick up a book without any pre-commitment evaluation, and neither do you. You read reviews; you look at the marketing material; read the back cover; hear the interviews; look at the trailer, the poster, the title, the star, the character... You want to know if it's the kind of thing that will suit your likings. And that means genre.

But before you get anywhere near getting assessed by the public, you as a writer, have to sell yourself and your material to an agent/publisher/producer. And I promise you, you are dead in the water if you don't have a clear genre. They will only take on a clearly defined genre piece, because they know they can't sell it if they don't. Look at it like this: When your publisher sells a book to a retailer, the first thing the buyer asks is: Which shelf does this go on? If it isn’t COMPLETELY obvious where it goes in the shop, then it’s rejected. Instantly. It could be brilliant but sorry, if the buyer can’t tell what genre it is, then neither can the public and it won’t sell, so he won’t buy it from the publisher.

Don't forget, the retailers/buyers don’t read the content. They look at that top level marketing-by-genre potential and decide 100% on that whether they can sell it. The content is secondary and entirely irrelevant to the sales process. Hand the buyer a Lee Child novel and – boom. No problem. He knows where that goes. He know the public will understand this book and what you get from it. They will be looking at the Crime section in the first place, because that's the kind of thing they like, and if you put the right cover design and title and author and character under their nose... Ka-ching! Lee Child is bang in the middle of a genre and he writes a book a year in that same genre, with an unchanging lead character and has done so for the past 18 years. And that equals commercial success (to the tune of close to 20 million novels sold). He never EVER tries to be clever with genre. And that’s the cleverest thing he can do.

Copy Lee. Set yourself apart from the competition by living exactly in the middle of the mainstream - THAT is genuine originality, because there’s nobody there. They’re all trying to be really clever out on the edges, inventing new genres and trying to be 'different'. Ironically, the middle of the fairway is the place where you find space to define yourself. Living there makes you different. Go to the centre of the mainstream. That will really set you apart.

(My full conversations with Lee Child are featured in The Story Book.)

Of course, if you aren't too bothered about commercial success, fine. Do what you like. But if you want to sell stories and make money, have no doubt about it: the commercial decisions are made firstly by genre, and then by content. Be absolutely clear and down-the-middle with your genre - what kind of story it is. Which shelf you live on. Then be unique and original and brilliant and different in the content - how you deliver that story.

Character Growth (When You Don't Want Your Characters to Grow)

noreply@blogger.com (Windy Dave) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 10:46:00 +0000

If you follow my work, you will know that it is an attribute of the very finest stories - the ones that win Oscars, BAFTAs, Booker prizes and the like - that a character changes and learns and grows across the course of a story. (For more detail on this, read my Character Growth Blog .)

However, what if you don't want your characters to grow? What if you need them to stay exactly as they are in order to write a sequel? How can we use the power of character growth, but not actually allow any character growth?

John Sullivan told me, in discussion about his wonderful series, Only Fools and Horses, that the last thing he needed was character growth, because when writing a series across years and dozens of episodes, character growth can trap the characters against a ceiling. They can only grow so far, then they become fulfilled. They have undergone the change that made them so interesting, and have nowhere else to go.

That is why a truly great story - great because it does feature character growth - is often followed by a poor sequel. The protagonist has already made his life journey, is fulfilled and has learned his life lessons, so there is no room for further growth in the sequel, so the second story disappoints.

Now, John made a big deal of being 'uneducated' in 'how to write', and had, shall we say, a significant distrust of story theory (which made our conversations somewhat interesting...), but it didn't stop him from being brilliant. He played on character growth with every episode of Only Fools and Horses, without letting his characters actually grow. He played on the pathos of failing to grow by having Del Boy and Rodney offered growth... but fail to improve themselves, and despite their efforts and the golden opportunities offered, they endlessly fell back down life’s ladder. This was brilliant story-telling, because it gave us, in the audience, a chance to see the decisions they should take to advance themselves (so in this sense there was character growth in the story), but their failure to learn and grow was both hilarious and frustrating... and allowed them to slide back down to square one so the beginning of the next episode could always start with a clean slate.

John would also use forms of character growth that didn't fundamentally change the character of the character, if you see what I mean. So, for example, Del Boy having a baby was an emotional plot line that would be considered as a form of character growth, but still meant he could be precisely the same Del Boy at the beginning of the following week without any change to his fundamental character.

I had a similar conversation with Lee Child. For his Jack Reacher novels, the eponymous protagonist had to end up exactly where he started if Lee was to produce another book to the same successful recipe (as he has done every single year for the last 17 years). Interestingly - given the success of his series - Lee often used character growth without allowing Jack Reacher ultimately to grow. Jack Reacher would begin the story as a drifter, wandering into a new town. During the course of a story that has him work for good as a vigilante against the corrupt authorities, the criminals and the bullies, he would perhaps find a girl, fall in love, become integrated into a community, become appreciated as a local hero... At the end of the story he might be lying in bed with a woman who loves him, children who worship him, a mayor who wants him to join the city council... but inevitably, he would walk away from all this good stuff that might fulfil him. He’d tear it all up, spirit himself away in dead of night, and hit the road, to drift on to the next town. It’s just the way he is... but this hugely convenient character flaw that had him dismantle all that lovely character growth also allowed him to return to the same starting point as he drifts into a new town to begin his next adventure. Expert story telling.

The other fine dynamic for using character growth but avoiding protagonist change is to allow a character other than the protagonist to learn a lesson and to grow. Look no further than my old favourite, Back to the Future, in which the protagonist, Marty McFly, doesn't grow at all. The character growth that gives the story all its amazing power comes from Marty's father - George McFly, who learns to be assertive - and changes his life fortunes to the positive as a result. But Marty remains the same. Imagine trying to continue George McFly's adventures into the sequel from that end-point. That would be really, really difficult, because he's ended this adventure having grown and become fulfilled. His story has been told, and there's no more that can be satisfactorily told. His journey to fulfilment is complete. That's why they moved on to the next generation and to a whole new character (Marty's son) to have someone they could advance up life's ladder.

How can I use this in my writing?
So characters do not have to change and grow, but you can still use the power of character growth in five ways without your character growing:

1) Have a secondary character change and grow (e.g., George McFly).

2) Have very definite negative character growth in the antagonist (a tragedy shines a light on the positive learning and growth the character should have undergone).

3) Offer your protagonist the opportunity to grow... but then have him turn it down (Jack Reacher), take something else he perceives to be of more value (e.g., money instead of the love that was on offer...), or fail to make the most of the opportunity (Del Boy).

4) Use forms of character growth, such as marriage or parenthood, that do not implicitly change the character of the character.

5) Use issues of morality to allow your character to grow through conflict in a specific area of life - carefully chosen so as not to impact areas of life used in the next in the series. So, for example, if your protagonist learns lessons about morality in dealing with relationships in one episode, and in drug dealing in the next, the growth in each doesn't affect the other. (See my post on Morality in Stories for more...)

Much, much more on the inordinate power of character growth and learning in my book, How Stories Work (2014).

The C Word...

noreply@blogger.com (Windy Dave) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 09:00:00 +0000

The most obvious difference I see between the successful writers I have met and the aspiring writers is confidence. Confident writers are focused and productive. They say, “This is MY story. I’m writing it MY way, and I don’t care what anyone thinks.” They put their blinkers on, they put the hours into what they think is right, and deliver. After that it’s part luck and part commercial savvy that decides whether the final product attracts deals or not, but this is the right approach to any artistic endeavour. So if self-belief and an uncompromising approach to writing is the way to go, what can a writer do to get precious confidence without getting tainted by someone else’s directions?

The wrong thing to do, which I see a lot in the writers I work with, is to go on endless courses or read a pile of books on ‘How to Write’. They inevitably provide you with a set of rules that seem to apply to famous stories. As soon as you buy into this, your story becomes driven by structure. It becomes a little unnatural and it loses its spark, and you have your creative instinct damaged by someone else’s rules.

That paragraph may seem odd coming from a man who gives courses to aspiring writers, but I am very careful in my approach. The word ‘education’ comes from the Latin ‘to draw out’, and for writers, with precious, highly personal inspiration, the difference between ‘drawing out’ and ‘forcing in’ is a critical distinction. In my experience, what writers really need is not help from the outside to change what is inside. It’s help in making the best possible use of the inspiration that is already there.

The questions writers really want answering are: “How do I make the most of my story ideas? How do I tell my story to its absolute best? How do I guide my ability to tell stories without damaging my natural talent? It takes me months to find out what’s bugging me in my story. How do I understand and solve story problems quickly and effectively? What gives one story power and another one not? What are the story tools that are available to writers that make stories grip and intrigue?”

There is only one person who can tell your story the right way, and that is YOU! Yes, you need knowledge of the craft of story so you are empowered to tell your story your way. Then you will also have the confidence to send it off and, importantly, take rejection knowing that what you’ve done is right irrespective of what the rejection letter says. Many of the writers I meet are hugely restricted by fear of rejection. So much so that they don’t even finish their work. Once it’s finished, it’s judgement day, and that is unbearable, so people keep writing and re-writing for years rather than face the dreaded judgement day. Again, confidence is the issue. If you know you have been true to yourself and true to your story, then you cease to care about external judgement. You listen, of course, in case something constructive resonates with you, but ultimately your own personal judgement is all that matters, so if others choose to reject it for their commercial agenda, so be it. Of course, rejection hurts, but it also goes with the territory, so grasping the rejection nettle and taking the consequences is something you simply have to do. John Sullivan gave me all you need to know about ‘How to be a writer’:

1) Write the best stuff you can.

2) Send it off.

3) Go to 1)

What happens after that is out of your hands, so just go to 1) ,do 2) and forget it. Over time you will improve, and one day something will click. When it does, the weirdest thing happens: the pile of rejections become a massive badge of honour, and the glow you feel from success becomes magnified ten-fold by every single rejection you collected along the way.

Writers who become clients of mine are always surprised when we start work because I won’t read their story. I’m working to help the writer take responsibility for themselves; to find and shape the inspiration that comes from within. There’s only one right way to write your story, and that’s your way. If you think about it, there simply can’t be any other way to write your story. So forget the gurus and take responsibility. Yes, learn about story so you can squeeze the most from your ideas. Write every day, and say to yourself every day:

“My Story. My Way. And balls to the lot of you.”

Say it now. Say it out loud and mean it. Not only will you laugh at yourself, but take responsibility for your own development and suddenly life as a writer, and your path forwards from today, becomes very clear indeed...

Now. Go To 1).

The Hunger Games - Story Analysis

noreply@blogger.com (Windy Dave) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 13:47:00 +0000

!This Article Contains Spoilers!

The Hunger Games is something of an enigma. As you watch it, you love it, and it kinda keeps you gripped, because the premise is so good, the characters are very strong, and the key question provides excellent tension. But it is low rated by public opinion on IMDB, and leaves you feeling a little unsatisfied by the end, although strangely attracted to it at the same time. Here's why.

Firstly, let's outline that key question, because that is what gives it its attraction, and is also what lets it down, because they blow the power of that key question halfway through the story.

In a futuristic world, The Hunger Games is an annual entertainment put on by the repressive government ('The Capitol'). Each of the twelve districts must donate two people between the age of 12 and 18 to the games. All 24 of these young people - 'tributes', as they are called - are set free in a televised terrain where they must kill or be killed on reality TV. Only one of the 24 can survive, and return home a hero. But it isn't simply survival of the fittest. If a tribute appeals to the audience, they can gain practical help in the field from 'sponsors', so having public appeal is also a key factor. The story follows the journey of the two tributes from District 12: Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson). The tension in the story comes from our knowledge that, although their relationship is steadily growing and intensifying as the story progresses, only one of them can survive. As the story goes on, they begin to fall in love (or are they? Is it just a ploy by Katniss for sponsors?). The key question looms large over us and tightens its grip because we know, at some point one of them... is going to have to kill the other one. Excellent, excellent, gripping, powerful story.

So why – oh, please why – did the writers have the ‘Capitol’ introduce a new rule halfway through the game by announcing: ‘actually, just this once, we’re going to let two people survive the games, provided they are from the same district.’ What the hell would you do a stupid thing like that for?! The story is now shot to pieces. Oh! Two can survive now! Well, I wonder who on earth THAT could be?! Might it turn out to be - ooh, let me think now - might it be... Katniss and Peeta (the only district partnership we even know the names of anyway!)? Now we know who will survive. The jeopardy is decimated. The tension is gone. The story is over. There is no other subtext to carry the story. Finished. Forget it. Go home.

And it's SO good up until then! It's a crime! What doubles my horror at the way they utterly blew the story power is that they then, just in time for the very end, they bring it back in again! The Capitol make another announcement: 'Errr. We've changed our minds, and now only one can survive.'

Yes, it gives the story traction again, because now we feel the tension again - one of them will have to kill the other, but we've had an hour of knowing the outcome, so putting the doubt back in for what turns out to be ONE MINUTE is hardly going to rescue the thing. Clearly, the writers saw that they had to do this to create any kind of cleverness in the ending, so they put it back! Which just makes taking it out in the first place all the more unbelievable!

What makes it even worse is that the Romeo and Juliet ending we are offered at climax (it's not what happens), whereby Katniss and Peeta choose to commit suicide together - thereby removing the power of the Capitol, making their love sublime for all eternity, making them into martyrs and causing a furious revolution in the districts - would have made this film an all time classic – BUT only if they'd kept that tension gripping us throughout. If the jeopardy had been there the whole way through we would have remained utterly gripped by the knowledge that one of them MUST die, doubly gripped as their relationship grows, and totally knocked out when they choose to commit suicide together to confound the Capitol and undermine their power.

Now, I understand why they did it. They wanted to force a love story into the reality television show, and by announcing that two from the same district could survive, this was done, but the same 'love dynamic' could have been introduced by having Katniss, recognising the power of gaining sponsorship, feign her love for Peeta as a strategy all by herself. This would have shown her character growth and cleverness. As it is, that one announcement makes it a weak story and one of the worst errors and biggest missed opportunities I have ever seen.

Apart from that trashed key question, the other serious issue is that there is no other subtext. All the story participants - the characters, the Capitol, the audience, author, you, me - everyone - know just as much as everyone else. Yes, the Capitol are sneaky and evil - but the moves they make are instantly communicated to all participants. There's no difference in the information held by the different story participants, Katniss and Peeta are trustworthy towards each other, even in the early stages when we know that they fell out in previous years and Katniss has good reason not to trust him now. Even the excellently dubious character who is to coach them - Haymitch (Woody Harrelson) - a previous winner of the games from District 12 - doesn't have an agenda and doesn't do anything dodgy, despite his clear dialogue with the Capitol. It just doesn't go anywhere. Despite the nature of the dog-eat-dog games, everyone knows everything that is going on. The human mind feeds off subtext - it's what we look for in a story, and this is why Hunger Games leaves a nagging hollow feeling you can't quite explain.

Another negative is the real evil bad guy - President Snow. Katniss, through her anti-establishment rebellion, comes to his attention, and he shows his displeasure and orders that her 'hope' is removed. But nothing happens! There's no clear action taken as a result of the top man's displeasure or orders. No plan. No action. Nothing changes. The bad side of a story has to be proactive and threatening. Unfortunately, as it is... nothing changes as a result of his displeasure.

I suspect - and hope - that the problems of this first film will be remedied across the course of the trilogy. The Harry Potter series is a little like this. Most of the individual films are rather difficult to enjoy in isolation (unless you've read the books), but the story power across the seven is awesome. Similarly with The Hunger Games, the potential is immense, and terrific foundations are now in place, but this first film, taken on its own, is not as powerful as it could have been with more subtext, and with the tension being allowed to persist throughout through our knowing that one of the two heroes must die at the hands of the other. If it had been allowed to persist, the lovers could still have been refused to play their game, choosing to live or die together, but refusing to kill one-another, but the power of the story could have been maintained throughout and magnified with this one simple story flaw being removed.

Shame. Still - greatly enjoyable, and I suspect the trilogy will satisfy in story terms by the end.

The Greeks have a Word for it...

noreply@blogger.com (Windy Dave) — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 21:55:00 +0000

I recently read Aristotle's 'Poetics' - the earliest known work of story theory. It was weird to be spoken to about story theory by a man who died 2,300 years ago, and extraordinary to find him speaking perfect sense in ways that still influence Hollywood today.

Let's see if a modern story can be seen to live up to Aristotle’s key elements, defined literally thousands of years ago. Here they are. An effective story has three essential elements:

Firstly, we have the Harmartia - a ‘fault’ or ‘flaw’ that disturbs the protagonist’s balance of life.

Secondly, the Anagnorisis - the ‘realisation’ of what this flaw means to the protagonist and the action that will be required to restore balance.

Thirdly, the Peripeteia - a reversal of expectation that pays off the story and brings the world back into balance at conclusion - but in a way that is unexpected (in the sense that it didn’t work out the way the protagonist intended and/or the audience thought it would).

So, taking Back to the Future as my example story, do these ancient structural imperatives hold up?

Marty McFly is going about his normal day when he is accidentally sent back in time (Harmartia - a fault which spins his world out of balance).

As he comes to terms with the challenges of getting home, he interferes with his parents' meeting when they were teenagers. Even if he could get home to 1985, he is going to be wiped from existence if his parents don't hook up. He realises (anagnorisis) he must get his parents to fall in love before he leaves, or else he will not exist in the future and will simply disappear.

Marty knows his Mum-to-be likes a strong man. And his Dad-do-be is weak. So Marty plans a big charade with his Dad-to-be to make him look strong in front of his Mum. The peripeteia (reversal) comes when he finally gets his parents together - but not in the way he planned - the charade goes wrong and his father is forced to demonstrate genuine strength. When he finally does get home to 1985 we are surprised to find that his family and quality of life have gone way upmarket compared to the life he left. His impact in 1955 has influenced his father's character and he is therefore born, 17 years later, to a stronger father and a whole different life.

Take a look at your own stories or story events. Do your sequences/chapters/scenes or entire stories live up to Aristotle? I've found that the Peripeteia is particularly significant. I analyse stories that bug me - they have conflict, great characters, key questions - lots of boxes ticked, but something not right... and often the problem is predictability. If a story is great, the chances are it is because it has a wonderful cleverness to it - and that will be the Peripeteia - a beautiful twistiness compared to expectation - shining through.

I imagine that anyone who has remained influential for 2,300 years probably knew what he was talking about, so I'd pause and think about this one if I were you...!

Kindle and Illustrations...

noreply@blogger.com (Windy Dave) — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 15:44:00 +0000

Here's a heads up for all of you who may have written a highly illustrated book in the past and been frustrated that Kindle is realistically only suitable for text-based books.

My highly illustrated children's books sell very few in hard copy, and I'm very pleased to see my first one out there as an iBook. It needed adapting for the iPad/tablet/etc, specifically because you can only view one page at a time, so double-page spreads don't work, but but well worth the effort, and hopefully will make some sales!

There are good instructions on iTunes on how to build the book - fairly easy, I gather, although if you want someone to do it for you, contact me and I'll put you in touch with The Grateful Ted, who did mine for me! Also a great advantage is that the illustrations are multi-lingual, and the little text there is can be translated to Spanish, Japanese, Vulcan - whatever - with relative ease, so suddenly your book can go global with no print costs, no distribution, no storage, no nothing. It's just out there. Forever. Selling...

So if you made a 'Photographic History of Lingerie Through The Ages' do get in touch - I'll help you with that one... Or an illustrated children's book like mine, now's the time to dig it back out and pimp it up for the iPad! Take a look here:

Oopsie - I Forgot!

On iBooks/ iTunes Here

Subtext – The Most Critical Tool in the Story-Teller’s Box

noreply@blogger.com (Windy Dave) — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 10:46:00 +0000

What is subtext? Why is it important? Why is subtext fundamental to a story’s quality.

All writers are told that subtext is the ‘untold’ or ‘underlying’ story, and that stories must be delivered in subtext. Make no mistake - this is true. Without subtext, you literally have no story. However, what the great and the good fail to tell us is how in the world we are supposed to go about telling an ‘untold’ story? How do we bury our story, and still tell it, apparently without mentioning it?

So they give us examples. A character takes a girl by the hands, looks her in the eyes and says, ‘I love you.’ And the audience gasps, because they know that he’s about to leave her for another woman. This is all well and good, but still doesn’t help us understand how to deliver our stories ‘in subtext’.

What we need to know is what writers do to generate subtext.

Creating Subtext

Subtext results from what I call ‘knowledge gaps’. When you craft into your story a difference in the knowledge held by different participants, you introduce a knowledge gap – and simultaneously create intrigue and engagement. This is most easily expressed from the audience or reader perspective:

If the audience knows more or less than any character in the story,

you have story delivery in subtext.

So there are two basic forms of subtext, based on whether the audience knows more or less than a character:

Revelation Subtext

Take a mystery story. We follow the detective through all the events, we see all the clues, and we try to predict whodunit. Then the detective arrests the blonde, and we think, ‘Wha-what? The blonde? But she’s innocent! She’s the victim!’ and our minds go racing back through all that has gone before to try and establish what the detective spotted that we didn’t. The audience knows less than the detective, and revelation subtext is built into the story.

Privilege Subtext

As the detective bravely climbs the dark staircase towards the attic, his candle blows out and a chill runs through us all, because we know that there is an axe-wielding maniac waiting for him behind the door at the top. Knowledge gaps whereby the audience knows more than a character generate Privilege Subtext.

Within these two types there are at least ten mechanisms for introducing knowledge gaps. By introducing a mysterious character; by using a subplot to influence another plot; by raising questions in the mind of the audience (particularly ‘I know what the protagonist wants - how is he going to get it?’); by playing on audience pre-conceptions (just because he looks like a policeman doesn’t mean he’s not a criminal...); subterfuge (a character with a secret, an alter-ego, lies and deceit are all wonderful examples of subtext);

Other less common types of subtext exist, using implication and suggestion, metaphor and allegory, and a character’s subconscious aims, but we are best to leave these for another day.

The more the audience has to work to make up the story for themselves in the knowledge gaps, the finer the story is perceived to be, so make it your business to understand subtext. The quantity, depth and persistence of knowledge gaps in your story directly relate to how well your story engages an audience.

This is my specialist area and the subject of my PhD thesis. for full details and in-depth examples, take a look at section 4 of The Story Book.

Cheers!

David

Does Advertising Work?

noreply@blogger.com (Windy Dave) — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 07:31:00 +0000

So listen, people. I didn't just write The Story Book. I originally got published for writing humorous travel books.

To encourage you to take a look, I've asked the publisher to reduce the price of the kindle edition of my first ever published book - for a limited period only - to a derisory 99 of your English pence.

So show me some love, and I'll return the complement with funny, positive, uplifting writing that I personally promise will brighten your winter blues. Don't take my word for it - look at the sample reviews below and then click the button! This offer must end!

Buy the Book or Ebook from the UK

Buy the Ebook from US Kindle Store

"One of the funniest books I have ever read." City Talk

"Interesting, raucous and very, very funny. When it came to the end it was like saying goodbye to an old friend." TalkSport

"A seriously funny man with a great gift for story-telling." Spirit FM

Still not convinced? If you click on the left there are plenty more reviews on Amazon. Straight five stars across the board on Amazon.com. Here's the latest example:

5 out of 5 Stars. This is a DANGEROUSLY funny book!, October 5, 2012

By Andrew "The Unreconstructed Rebel" (Dover, Germany) - See all my reviews

(REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: Ocean Boulevard - Adventures On The High Seas: An Epic and Exhilarating Journey All the Way... from a Boy to a Man (Baboulene's Travels) (Kindle Edition)

This is far and away one of the funniest books I have ever read. The author is a comic genius. I literally fell out of bed laughing.

When I rose from the bedroom floor it seemed advisable to take a break from reading in order to recover my composure, and to give my laugh-exhausted innards a chance to resettle. I did a little cooking and then sat down for a small meal.

Unfortunately I also opened the story again and was soon in the throes of hilarity once more, to the extent that I inhaled my hamburger. Only the mercy of God allowed me to clear the blockage before I turned blue.

I'm telling you, this is a DANGEROUSLY funny book . . .

Are You Receiving Me...?!

noreply@blogger.com (Windy Dave) — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 11:30:00 +0000

When a writer gets inspired, he takes the world he wishes to communicate and telescopes it down, through the limiting lens of language, into a written form. What we get as readers - perhaps 100 years later, perhaps a world away - is a pile of paper with symbols on it. The reader doesn't get given a world by the author - the author isn't there - the reader gets a lot of words to interpret, and draws the author's world out of himself.

Reception Theory...
...is a branch of literary theory that deals with the critical role played by the reader in the literary process. Without a reader, the pile of paper bequeathed to us by a writer is a dormant, useless object - as lifeless as a stone. It takes a reader with adequate ability to bring meaning to the writers words and generate a version of the writer's world in the form of mental structures in his mind, created exclusively from the reader's own knowledge and experience. A child may know all the words in an adult book, but cannot make sense of it because he doesn't have the necessary life experience and knowledge to create the intended structures in mind. And - get this - because we all have a different profile in terms of life knowledge and human experience, every single reading of a text produces a unique individual production of the writer's world. Every single reading of a text is a unique interpretation. A new version of that story personalised to that reader at that time of reading. Even two readings by the same reader will be different from each other.

A receiver of a narrative is not simply a reader of text but a producer of story.

Wow.

How Can I Use This as a Writer?

Well, if a reader draws on his own life and human experience to produce a version of your story, you, as a writer, must write about the shared human values and experiences that will stimulate and excite the mind of your reader. What kind of writer activity does that to best effect?

To do this, we have to write in two ways: Firstly, Denoted information. We provide solid, factual information that is interpreted the same way by all readers to create a consistent story framework. If I tell you a story about a 'BEAR', you will get an image in your mind. But this is not enough information. She got a Polar bear; he got a fluffy teddy; you got a koala; I meant Angry Grizzly. So the denoted information must be clear and solid in order that the framework of the story is the same for everyone whatever their life experience. If I say I am about to be attacked by an angry Grizzy bear, we're all aligned with the same denoted picture in mind because we all have a common understanding of what an angry Grizzly bear 'means' to a person.

Secondly, Connotated information. This is where we get to the very substance of story. This is the information the reader brings to the party himself that fills in the gaps we deliberately leave in-between the planks of our clear and solid denoted framework. Let me put some more structures in your mind. I tell you I am being attacked by an angry Grizzly bear. I am cornered in a college music room and have only instruments to protect myself. You have a clear (denoted) picture of the situation because you know what an angry Grizzly 'means' and you know what a college music room is like; but now, you do something more. Your human understanding of the position of being cornered by an angry Grizzly has you responding emotionally and appropriately. The human in you wants to survive the bear attack, and your mind instantly searches for answers. There are possibilities that are unstated, and you instantly begin filling in gaps yourself - projecting possibilities, running through a mental list of musical instruments to find which I could possibly use to protect myself from being torn to pieces by a bear. THIS is story - not what I said, but what I didn't say. Not what I gave you, but what you gave to yourself from the threat you perceive that stimulated your human emotional response. If you are being attacked by a bear in a music room, what do you do to protect yourself? You can guess, and you do guess instinctively, but now we are getting somewhere as a writer, because the reader will read on, because he wants to know what happens next, and he instinctively feels a need for more information. This is the need you must work on as a writer. You have (presumably) no experience of bears in music rooms, so the story has stimulated you to new mental structures and new mental stimuli. The human brain likes this.

Mental stimulation through story comes from knowledge gaps. Show someone a gap in knowledge in your (denoted) story framework - work on human emotions to raise questions and create unknowns - and your readers will project knowledge into the gap and test it whether you ask them to or not. Then they read more. They cast around your story, desperate for new and more information to fill knowledge gaps because there is nothing like a gap in knowledge to make a person feel uncomfortable, insecure, intrigued, curious... and utterly engaged in the process of finding out the information that goes into that gap in knowledge and fills in the denoted framework from their own experience. This is story. And your reader needs to know what happens next...

What happened next? Me and the bear are forming a band. He's an amazing lead guitarist. Giraffe on drums. Mole on piano. Three hippos in short skirts on backing vocals.

Did you get a picture...?! Of course you did. But if I said that in my band there was a dremble-fogger mindi-lobbing furiously on a lingle, it wouldn't mean anything, and you won't get a picture (not the same as anyone else's, anyway!); not because they don't exist - they do - I invented them - but because these things are not part of our shared life experience. I sincerely hope not, anyway. Those dremble-foggers can give you nightmares when they mindi-lob...

How to Write... How NOT to Write...

noreply@blogger.com (Windy Dave) — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 10:42:00 +0000

Many writers fear story theory. "It will damage my natural talent!" they cry. And I understand entirely. As I return to writing fiction again with a decade of story theory in my head, how will my 'formal' knowledge influence how I write now? Am I ruined?

Perhaps more importantly, how do I feel about the things I've said to aspiring writers on this blog and in my paid work as a story consultant now I'm trying to write under the influence of this kind of knowledge myself?

The Big Idea
I think the main thing that hits me is that my knowledge of story theory doesn't impact my early writing process at all. The fundamental fact that kinda undermines all theories is this: do you have a killer idea for a story? If you don't have a great story idea, or characters with compelling conflicts, all the knowledge in the world is absolutely no use to you. I guess this is why so few story analysts are writers of fiction themselves: they don't have any winning story ideas.

Write it... Or Analyse it?
And the first thing you must do when you have a story idea is let it pour out of you. If it feels good, don't stand there thinking about it - get deeply immersed in it! This is the joy of writing - the creativity, the world you build in your mind, the imagination and escapism - it's all brilliant, and I don't think I stress strongly enough in my story seminars or books the importance of just being yourself and getting stuck in. This is your story, you must draw it from your own heart, and the very last thing you should do is let someone else get their hands dirty in amongst your natural ability at this stage.

I feel my analytical work makes it seem like developing a story is a very formal - almost scientific - process, but it really isn't and it really shouldn't be. Just write. Write lots. Get stuck in and follow your heart. It doesn't matter if you throw away 90% of what you write, but write you must if you are going to find out if your stories work or not.

I get lots of inspiration and new ideas from getting into the detail, so I just write - without editing and without polish - in order to get deeper into the characters and possibilities. I accept that I will not keep much of this rough content, but I get a great deal of progress out of it. Then it's back up to the top level analysis view to see how things are shaping up. I think my analysis work might encourage people to spend too much time thinking and not enough time writing. Juuuust get stuck in!

Productivity - the Key Differentiator
Too many writers wait for inspiration. These people rarely become professional. Successful writers work very, very hard to dig for inspiration by forcing themselves to write at the coal-face every day, even on those days when they have no inspiration at all. The successful writers work the hardest, in a very real sense, and I have no doubt that sheer dogged determination to keep delivering a word count and to hit deadlines is a massive differentiator in those writers who can:

a) find inspiration when none is arriving by itself; and
b) be productive enough to produce a book a year and thereby turn professional.

So my advice is this: write from the heart; write lots and let it flow. Then re-write using your head, your story theory knowledge and the dustbin. Be confident in yourself - there is no 'right and wrong' - if you write from the heart you will be fulfilled, irrespective of commercial success. Yes, learn the craft of story in order to help optimise your ideas and speed your process, not to dictate your ideas or BE your process.

So, what am I writing?
Thank you for asking... I'm currently writing my third humorous book. I've never really spoken about my humorous writing on this blog but if you are interested to see if a story theorist can actually write, here is the link to my first book of humorous tales. This book got me my first proper publishing deal. This is a fine book, in my opinion, and judging by the reviews, people do seem to like it. I do hate marketing so make the most of this - I don't plan to do it very often!

OCEAN BOULEVARD (Amazon- UK - Hard copy and Kindle)

OCEAN BOULEVARD (Amazon.com Kindle store)

"David Baboulene is a seriously funny man with a great gift for storytelling. One of the funniest books I have ever read." City Talk.

I hope you love it! Feel free to let me know what you think!

David

The Writer's First Tripwire...

noreply@blogger.com (Windy Dave) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 08:33:00 +0000

One of the first traps that a writer often falls into in their early career looks like this.

Most writers get confidence in their early writing from some success with some short pieces. A writer might place an article or two, a short story published - 1500 words that get roundly admired. Then he does it again and feels a terrific - and well justified - sense of achievement as he receives the accolades of people who have genuinely enjoyed his work and he maybe even trousers his first payment for writing. Feels great, right?!

And it is at this point that the writer decides to set about the novel or screenplay he's been brooding over for the last few years. They open a new document, take a deep breath... and begin with their own version of 'Once upon a time...'

And this is the mistake. The trap is sprung. The writer is in trouble, and he doesn't even know it.

Writing 100,000 words or two hours of screenplay is a totally different discipline from writing a short piece. With 1000 words, we can begin at the beginning, write through to the the end, read it through, rewrite it, reorder things, screw it up and start again - whatever. Our writing method is simply to rewrite; read it again; then re-write again until it reads cleanly and no further changes are necessary. This is manageable, because even the most fundamental of changes can be managed and accommodated across the arc of the whole story.

So we set about our first full-length work in exactly the same way. Unfortunately, this rarely - very rarely - leads to success. To get to the end of a 100,000 word first draft, and then read it through and realise there are one or two wonderful changes you'd like to incorporate is a major new piece of work. To successfully manage all the ripple effects of even the smallest of changes is very, very tricky, and to do this two, three, four times is simply not sustainable in one lifetime. The vast majority of stories that are written this way end up dying in a drawer somewhere as the writer loses all sight of what the story was about, loses all vitality and connection with the heartbeat of the story and has no mental energy left to lift themselves for yet another re-write of such an enormous beast.

There is a saying that there are no writers, only re-writers, and there is no doubt that this is true. But there are limits, and a full length work needs to be approached in a different way if it is to have the best chance of getting itself finished. In my experience, the most effective method looks like this:

1. Begin with an idea. Question that idea to develop it. Ask what if? What if? What if...?

2. Focus on the ending. Once you are armed with your ending, you have your story. And from a working point of view, once you have your ending, you know where the goal is, so all the component story events (chapters/sequences/scenes...) can be geared to that ending.

3. Once the idea has grown into a series of 20 to 30 component events leading to a clear ending, start pitching the story to people. Tell it out loud. It might not be something you want to do, but it is the single most valuable exercise in story development. Tell your story (that is what it is FOR!!) and you will learn SO much about it - the improvements will amaze you.

4. If there are frustrations in your story, think about meaningful conflict, character growth and subtext in every event and across the story as a whole. The source of your frustration will almost certainly be in one of these areas. Learn about these key story elements in order to speed up your writing process.

5. You are now ready to write the first draft. Even this process, because it is slower, will generate new ideas, so be prepared to go back up to the previous level and rework the story at the event level.

If you follow this process - without writing a single word in earnest until you know your entire story from front to back and have broken it down into manageable chunks - subsequent changes to the drafts will be minimal and editorial rather than fundamental, and your chances of becoming the proud creator of a fine, finished product will be greatly enhanced.

This is a brief, blog version of the method. An in-depth analysis of a proven story development method can be found in The Story Book; A develoment method discussed in step-by-step detail, from the seed of the idea to the distributed film, with Bob Gale on how he and Robert Zemekis developed their story: Back to the Future.

Two Types of Key Question

noreply@blogger.com (Windy Dave) — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 22:24:00 +0000

Leading on from my last post on The Subtext of Character Growth, I would like to refine - and hopefully clarify - the information by using this post to identify two types of key question. I am calling these an 'Event' key question and a 'Character Development' key question. Let's look at two simple children's stories and see what's going on.

Event Key Question
As discussed, the classic story structure we learn in our first year of story theory looks like this: an inciting incident raises a key question in the mind of the audience. The key question is pushed and pulled in the battle between the forces of protagonism and those of antagonism until the climax when we find out the answer to the key question. So, for example, the tortoise challenges the hare to a race (inciting incident). The key question is raised: 'who will win the race?' At climax, we find out the answer to the key question (the tortoise won the race).

This is a key question raised through an event. A 'plot' level key question - and although this is very clear and simple and is a fine mechanism, found in many great stories, it is evident that the very finest and most highly rated stories often do not have a clear and evident Event Key Question. So what do the finest stories have instead?

Character Growth Key Question
In the more highly rated stories, we in the audience are asking ourselves: 'What will happen next?' and we are gripped, but there is no clear and identifiable inciting incident raising a key question that carries us forwards. The Ugly Duckling is an example of such a story. A duck is born. It is different from the other ducklings, and suffers bullying, ridicule and social exclusion. No obvious key question is raised. So why are we intrigued?

Because we are powerfully locked on to the question of fulfilment for our protagonist. We are aware that our protagonist has a yearning - an ambition - with which we empathise. In life, we naturally crave a sense of belonging; we desire successful relationships and we feel secure if we fit in with communities and groups. So we want the duckling to be fulfilled as we desire to be fulfilled ourselves. We recognise the character suffering in these terms, and we are gripped by our own feelings about these issues in our own life, so we want to see what will happen to the protagonist's fortunes. The duck becomes a beautiful swan, achieves a sense of belonging in a group of other glorious swans, and the bad guy animals who ridiculed and excluded the ugly duckling look foolish and rather ugly themselves. The Ugly Duckling becomes fulfilled through an unexpected reversal in fortunes, and we are heartened and satisfied by the story and by the 'life' lessons we have understood. So the key question is there, but it is: "Will the protagonist find fulfilment?"

This is kinda important, because every single story of all time has either an 'event' key question, or a character growth key question, or both. Always and forever. Although a character growth key question tends to characterise the very finest stories, I would suggest that the easiest high power stories to write are probably those that have both. The Hare and The Tortoise is based around a very clear key question (Who will win the race?) but also has a second strand of character growth. We (and The Hare) learn a life lesson along the lines of 'more haste less speed'.

So as a writer, I would suggest that when you find a story idea that has potential, you need to look for how the story idea is going to describe a character arc of growth up the ladder of human values, and how that character arc is going to be achieved in the context of the real world challenges presented by the plot level 'event' that look like they will take the protagonist downwards in life.

Or to give an example from a story that has both, let's look at - guess what - Back to the Future. Marty McFly is sent back to 1955 in a time machine ('plot' event) raising the key question: 'Will he ever get back to 1985?'. Answer at climax - yes, he will); but the real story lives and grips and engages us on the question of George McFly's character growth. When George grows from weak and unassertive to take out Biff with one punch, he grows into a strong and confident man, and it is this life growth that defines the whole story.
Will George find fulfilment? He certainly does, and there is the Character Development Key Question.

The Subtext of Character Growth

noreply@blogger.com (Windy Dave) — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 07:29:00 +0000

Story theorists down the centuries have faced one recurring problem. They discover early on their journey to becoming a guru - in a eureka moment of intense revelation - that most stories are based around a key question. It works like this: An inciting incident raises the key question in the mind of the audience; the key question keeps the audience gripped across the long haul before being answered at the climax to the story. This, he decides, IS story structure. Act l is the bit up to the inciting incident. Act lll is the climax where the answer to the key question is addressed. Act ll is the bit in between where the forces of protagonism and antagonism battle for supremacy. Simple as that. This is the template for story power.

Now, it's true that most stories indeed have this basic framework. Take Back to the Future. The inciting incident is when Marty McFly is accidentally sent back in time, raising the key question: 'Will he ever get home to 1985 again?' The issue is then thrown into doubt as the forces of protagonism and antagonism battle it out through act ll, and the question is finally addressed to our satisfaction at climax, when Marty does, indeed, make it back home to 1985. Classic story structure.

The problem for a story theorist is that there are exceptions. And as the exceptions mount up, we find that it's actually the very finest and highest rated stories that do NOT have a framework based on a key question. Stories I have discussed recently in Writing Magazine and on this blog, including Hugo, The Kings Speech and The Shawshank Redemption have no obvious key question - at least, not one that is up front and in your face. And this is not only inconvenient for story theorists who want to make a science of story, it's a bummer for the film studios, too, because even an accountant can tell if a story has a key question, so for decades the studios have only been giving the green light to those that do. This implicitly throws out the very best stories with the trash, which, in turn, is why there have been an enormous number of formulaic and somewhat mediocre stories since the key question became the God of story decisions around the early 1980s.

So what do the very finest stories have instead? Well, what these stories have is Character Growth. Great stories all appear to resonate psychologically through the evident growth of a character towards personal fulfilment. As human beings, we very naturally strive for fulfilment, and are driven (often subconsciously) to advance ourselves in terms of social values. We love stories that show us the journeys of others up the ladder of life. The key question mentioned above in Back to the Future is a 'plot' question, not a character question, but think of the basic 'life values' at stake in Back to the Future in terms of character growth: Will George get it on with Lorraine and have children? Will Marty be born? Will the bad guy, Biff (who we know from the sequel intends to promote his own gene pool at the expense of Marty's) succeed in getting Lorraine and power? And think how clearly Marty's family have progressed in social/fulfilment terms by the end; and all because George overcame his daemons and became strong and assertive (character growth).

In The Shawshank Redemption, we don't know what the story is about in terms of any key question, but we do have lots of questions about our protagonist and his 'life values': Will he find justice? Will he find freedom? Wow. Justice and Freedom. Fundamentally important subjects, but when we ask ourselves: 'What is going to happen next?' what we really mean is: 'Will our hero progress in life despite the forces of antagonism railed against him?' And as long as someone somewhere learns a life lesson and climbs the ladder of life (or fails to learn, but the opportunity missed is clear to the audience), then we tend to like the story more.Andy Dufresne, in Shawshank Prison, learns patience. He learns to use what he has - time and hope - and turns these into a single devastating escape attempt, wealth and beautiful revenge.

In Hugo, for example - a story with no key question, but five Oscars including Best Screenplay - it’s not just one character that climbs the ladder and finds fulfilment. It’s all of them:

Hugo himself goes from alone, grieving and living in fear to having a family, friends, safety and a sense of belonging. A boy gets a family - how basic is that?!

Papa George journeys from lost and forgotten to being recognised for his achievements.

Even Sacha Baron Cohen‘s wonderful bad guy, Gustav, goes from an injured, cruel and heartless child catcher to a happily engaged friend to one and all.

Mama Jeanne, Tabard, Madame Emile and Frick, Isabelle - everyone is progressed in terms of human values. This is why we feel uplifted and satisfied by the end.

As writers, how can we use this? When you view the story in the light of Hugo’s life values and character growth it turns out it does have an inciting incident: the death of Hugo’s father is a huge blow to Hugo's life progression. But how does that raise a key question? The obvious one is impossible – “Will Hugo get his father back?”

Because we know Hugo can’t get his father back, the key question – subconsciously but powerfully – is, “Will Hugo find himself a family?” The knock-on effect of this subconscious drive also means that the story does have a protagonist after all. The focus may switch firmly to Papa George by the end, but we are always watching out for what it all means to Hugo. When he ends up getting a family, we love the story. (Indeed, most of the characters, in a sense, 'find a family'. That is the overriding theme of the story.)

A story with a clear key question based on an 'event' (such as travelling through time) rather than through character fulfilment (finding freedom or a family) can still be a great story. However, it seems that the stories that win Oscars and Booker prizes tend to wrestle with the subtext of character growth: 'Will the protagonist overcome the odds and achieve fulfilment (whatever that means for him)? How will he do that? What form will that advancement take?' And as long as every event keeps addressing his fortunes, the story will grip and intrigue in the best ways possible. Better still, is when the character growth is intrinsically connected to the moral argument of the story. For more on this, read my Morality blog post here.

This is quite tricky to get your head round - and not easy to explain in a small word count. If you'd like to know more, it's addressed in more depth and with the help of some interesting layman's psychology, in the early chapters of The Story Book.

Subtext through Character Growth. The single most important factor in truly great stories.

A Story about Actors and Auditions...

noreply@blogger.com (Windy Dave) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:24:00 +0000

Here's a little story about an actor who brought his own ideas to an audition...

I just had a fascinating weekend with Craig Hinde (Director) auditioning for the lead roles in my film HeartStoppers. Auditions are a very strange and unusual dynamic between human beings; potential stress and pressure for actors, and very difficult for us too. How can we ever be sure we got it right? Anyway, before we get to the story, here's a perspective on the events that should be interesting and useful to actors and writers alike.

For me, the key thing I look for in an actor is that sparkle and life that will bring some ideas and creativity to the role; someone who will take it beyond my vision and explode the character into three dimensions in ways I couldn't have envisaged BUT... will limit their imagination and creativity to ideas that do not undermine the story or the director. If an actor thinks s/he has better ideas than those in the script and gets angry or goes all sulky if you won’t take on their suggestions then big problems can ensue in rehearsals, on set and in the overall vibe amongst the other actors and crew. This is a seriously difficult balance for an actor to strike - too much is not right and too little is not right - but if you can strike that balance, you'll get every role you apply for.

Actors:

If you are going for an audition, I believe you need to show that you are outgoing and dynamic and will take ownership of the character, but at the same time you must reassure the director that you will also be happy to be ‘directed’ and can accept that your ideas might need to be changed or rejected for reasons you might not fully understand from the information you have.

So here's what happened. We had a good example of what I'm saying with one of the leading male auditions. The actor had some decent experience, but had got my lead character – ‘Max’ – a bit wrong. Max begins the story without confidence. He’s got a sort of magical knack for playing Cupid, but he's not partnering people up with flare and self-belief. He’s a slightly timid character who is bullied by his boss and even trampled by the customers he is helping. He has a gift, but it kinda happens to him – he doesn’t wield his capability with pride and swagger. This actor didn’t get that. He felt that the character was smooth and cool – like ‘Hitch’ in the film of the same name - helping losers to become suave, like him, to get what they want. He therefore delivered the character very differently from my vision during the script reading. This isn't 'wrong' - it's just his interpretation. His interpretation might be brilliant and there could be times when this might be exactly what's required (in other words, this is the kind of proactive approach to a role that I like to see from an actor). But not in this case, because the story relies upon Max growing from a starting point of timidity to a summit of confidence by the resolution, so he couldn’t start with the personality the actor was giving him. All wrong. Would the actor deflate and feel devastated – or take on board what I was saying? He explained how he viewed the character - revealing another misinterpretation. He thought the kiosk in which Max works was a burger bar. All wrong. The kiosk is a matchmaking business. Burger bar? Where did that come from? Just shows how we all interpret a text differently.

But here’s the thing. I explained to the actor that he couldn't change the character to his vision of him because it would fundamentally change the dynamics required for the story to work. We then asked the actor to do the reading again – this time re-creating his version of Max to match the character my story required. He turned around and nailed it with a whole new persona. He got the job. He brought ideas and creativity, and although it led to some slightly awkward conversations, he took on board immediately the points we were making that required him to adapt. He didn’t take it personally – he didn’t see our request for change as ‘criticism’ – he was talented enough to take it on, understand it, change and develop – and he turned himself into the Max the story needed there and then in front of my very eyes. Wonderful! His attitude made it very easy to discuss the role and the character – he even put me on the spot a bit concerning Max’s backstory. I felt sure he would bring ideas that would work, and would accept a negative response if his ideas would not work. Perfect.

And his wrongness might prove to be righter than my rightness - if that makes any sense at all. I think the kiosk possibly should be a Burger Bar! I'm working with the idea and I suspect this might just solve a couple of story issues I had and bring genuine improvements to the story!

So here's what I think we need to take on board:

Writers:
Be flexible to change. You want people to bring their ideas and creativity to your story. If you have written your story well, so that every event or character facet in that story is justified by a contribution to the bigger picture, you can assess a proposed 'improvement' or idea very accurately. If the publisher/producer/guru/actor - ANYBODY! - wants to make a change, you can say 'yes' if the change is a genuine improvement, or you can say 'no' with confidence because you know exactly what the impact on the story will be. And when you defend your story with knowledge and certainty even Mr Speilberg will back off, because it becomes so clear that you know your own story inside out. Many publishers and editors and producers suggest changes. The best thing ever - for them as well as you - is when you can say 'no', and mean it, and know exactly why the story has to stay as it is.

How to Pass Auditions:
Bring personality and vibrance to an audition and to a character. And yes, bring ideas and suggestions, but make sure the director knows you are perfectly happy for these ideas to be rejected and reassure him/her that, ultimately, you will accept direction. When you suggest an idea, say out loud: 'I'm not precious about it - just a suggestion. I understand if you think it doesn't work in the bigger picture.' They LOVE to hear suggestions, but couched in these ego-free terms. On the one hand, a director does not want to have to direct you so much he has to drag the acting out of you. On the other hand, he doesn't want to have to fight you back into line to deliver the part appropriately. He wants you to take responsibility for delivering the role and show dynamism... but listen and accept direction so he can guide your dynamism into perfect shape.

You are helping to deliver someone else's story. If you can add to the character or to the story's power, that will be welcome, but if you are going to be too insistent on your ideas being accepted, you'll either fail the audition or ruin the story!

Don't be too hard on yourself if you don't get a role. There are many, many reasons for rejection, very few of which are to do with your talent or ability.

HUGO - Story Analysis

noreply@blogger.com (Windy Dave) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 15:01:00 +0000

WARNING - Contains spoilers!

Hugo - a `U` certificate (MPAA `G` in the USA) film that is as entrancing for a 7-year-old as it is for a 70-year-old - has a very different structure from anything else you might see this year. People love the film - but what do they say when you ask them what the story is about? They enthuse about the magic of the world to which the film takes us. They love the theme of clocks and clockwork. They adore the setting in Paris and the fantastic artwork and cinematography. But none of that is the story; it's all the other stuff. Let's try and focus in.

What is the story's key question? Well, it doesn't have one. Who is the protagonist? Well, we are surely led to believe it is Hugo, and yet by the end, the protagonist is undoubtedly Papa George. What is the story about? Well, some people would say it's about the history of cinema. Some would say it's about the life of the film maker, Georges Melies. Some would say it's about Hugo's quest to finish building the automaton he started to build with his father and uncover its secrets.

So given that Hugo has such a disjointed story, how come it is so highly rated by the public? Well, for us story tellers, it simply re-enforces the key point in what makes the very best stories - hands up if you know what that is?

Character Growth. In all great stories, at least one character, somewhere and somehow, climbs the ladder of life towards fulfilment. It is the number one factor in making a story that audiences appreciate. And despite all the difficulties with the story of Hugo, they all fade into insignificance because:

Every major character learns, develops and grows through the course of Hugo.

Think about it: Hugo goes from alone, grieving and living in fear to having a family, friends, safety and a sense of belonging.

Papa George goes from lost and forgotten to recognised for his achievements, talents and contribution to the world.

Even the (wonderful) bad guy, Gustav, goes from an injured, cruel and heartless child catcher to a happily engaged friend of one and all.

Even the supporting and secondary characters - Mama Jeanne, Tabard, Madame Emile and Frick, Isabelle - everyone (I guess with the exception of Hugo's father and Uncle, whose deaths trigger the story), are carried onwards and upwards in terms of human values and fulfilment by the events that comprise the story. This is why we feel uplifted and satisfied by the end.

Character growth. Look at any great story and I'll bet you a beer at least one character changes and grows through the telling (or fails to change and grow but the lessons to learn or the opportunity offered are evident to the audience).

Make sure at least one of your characters changes and learns and grows, and your story will have a greater chance of being a winner.

The Story Structure Choo Choo

noreply@blogger.com (Windy Dave) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:37:00 +0000

People seemed to rather like my somewhat academic post on Reception Theory. So let's see if we can push it any further and still get a positive response. Try getting your head around this...

In psychological terms, there are three elements to a text:

a) The words;
b) the things the words label, indicate or signify;
c) the conceptual meaning those words generate in the mind of the individual.

Words and what they label and signify are clearly variables and therefore not useful for analysis in themselves (imagine if they are in a foreign language - the words don't signify anything and the text becomes a useless scribble. Language is simply an agreed set of conventions shared by a community). No, a text is a dead pile of paper until it is brought to life through reading and the tangible value of a text is in the conceptual clouds of meaning that it can generate in the mind of the reader. If I give you a signifier: say, TRAIN you instantly have an image in mind and structural mental concepts bolted all around it to do with carriages, stations, track, ticket inspectors, passengers, drivers, signals, timetables and innumerable other things that make the signifier TRAIN meaningful to you in the real world.

But what exactly is the '8.15 Brighton to London' train? We all know, conceptually, what it is. But tomorrow it will be a different locomotive, different passengers, different driver, different carriages. It might not even leave at 8.15. But we all know what we mean.

This is structure. Everything you can think of (in the peculiarly human, imaginative sense of thinking) exists only in linguistic patterns and only in terms of the other mental concepts you can place around it to give it a meaningful context. And it is ALL in the mind. But - and here lieth the problem - meaning is four-dimensional. The structures change continuously over time. When we absorb a text, we read one word at a time and the structures the words generate change and grow with every new word we add. Structure changes in mind, second by second, forever.

Let's take our train a little further. Every turn of the wheels forces new clouds of smoke into the sky above the smokestack. The smoke emerges in powerful billows, builds and grows, then as the train moves on, the smoke settles and floats a while, then dissipates in the distance. The smoke and its precise shape at any given moment can only ever be a snapshot of precisely that moment on that one and only journey. As readers, our eyes run like a train along the rails, taking in a journey of words. Every word we read billows cloud-shaped structures of meaning in our minds. We read sequentially, and each word we take in forces the smoke-like structures of meaning to change and grow. Strongest at the point of immediacy; but as we read, we forget. Like the smoke that changes above the smoke stack and dissipates in the distance, we cannot remember our precise mindset when we took on a new word and its meaning to the story at a particular moment along the way; we only retain the broad essentials that we need to understand the story going forwards. We end up completing a story, and we derive learning and pleasure and new understanding from completing that journey, but we don't remember the precise shape of our understanding of the story at any particular point, because it was ever-changing and amorphous. The journey was a unique, personal one-off experience, not an object that can ever be fixed. It never had a single, unified, grand structure that defined it.

And in the same way that a snapshot of the smoke billowing from a train's stack cannot possibly tell us anything about the individual journey that is being made by that train (let alone any individual passenger's feelings on that journey), so any structure that claims to represent any story is lost like wisps of smoke into far distant skies.

Stories are mental concepts. The text is merely the track along which our eyes run. Stories are the journey-in-mind - they have a time dimension. There is never a single representative structure that defines any story because it changes over time. There couldn't possibly be a single journey-defining shape of the smoke. Ever.

Structuralists have noticed that every time they find some rails they can successfully deduce information about a journey. And they go on to presume lots of things about the signals, stations, ticket inspectors, drinks trolleys, carriages and the rest of it.

However, the real structure of a story is not about the rails; it's not about having three acts, a turning point on page 27 and four types of conflict. Story structure is different for every reader. It is more like the smoke above the stack. Ever-changing, indefinable, unique at every single moment and never, ever available for definitive structural analysis. A journey is about the way people feel and what they experience, not about the rails on which the journey took place.

Interview with The Creative Penn

noreply@blogger.com (Windy Dave) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:24:00 +0000

I was recently privileged to spend some time with Joanna Penn - an author who has taken full advantage of new media to provide some of the best known author support resources on the internet.

She interviewed me one sunny day in London and then edited my ramblings very kindly to make me sound like I know what I'm talking about.

Below I have added a couple of points that aren't as clear as they could be in the video, but first, here's the video:

To add a couple of points to my answers, one of the finest ways a series writer (like John Sullivan - Only Fools and Horses or Lee Child - the Jack Reacher series) incorporates character growth into the story without his protagonist growing out of any chance of a sequel is not only to have a secondary character change and learn and grow instead of the protagonist. One of the best techniques for keeping your main character unchanged is to have him win through to the opportunity to change and grow and then turn it down. Jack Reacher does this a lot, actually, and I forgot to mention it. As part of his crime-busting adventures he might, for example, meet a wonderful woman and having become a hero in the town he could easily settle down there and become a family man with the keys to the city... but he isn't ready for that. He is still brooding and troubled, and (usually at dead of night) tears himself sadly away, slips out of town and disappears for ever... All ready to rock up in another troublespot to fight crime and climb the character growth ladder from a good low starting position all over again in the next book.

Many great stories either have a secondary character doing the changing and the growing (Marty's dad, in Back to the Future) or the lead character is offered the chance to change and grow (to the point that we in the audience recognise the opportunity) but for some reason - such as Jack Reacher's ongoing search for himself - does not take that opportunity (Robert Neville in I Am Legend has to kill himself to realise the benefit to humanity of the journey he has taken).

This is really important - the most powerful stories have a character change and grow across the telling of the story, and yet the reason sequels often fail to grip is because the protagonist has already made his life-defining journey - his character has grown. In my opinion, my first book (Ocean Boulevard) is the most powerful, because it describes a journey from a boy to a man; life defining character growth. Whilst the second book (Jumping Ships) is very funny and appears pretty popular, it's not as good as Ocean Boulevard because the protagonist (me!) can't go from a boy to a man more than once. After that, it is 'adventures of a man', and the character growth is limited.

So be careful with character growth. It's the most powerful story component... but the character, once fulfilled, won't be able to make the same growth again.

Do Writers Make Any Money...?

noreply@blogger.com (Windy Dave) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 08:51:00 +0000

Many of the published authors I know - quite understandably - like to give the impression that they are fully professional, but the truth is they are earning less than £10k a year (with the occasional exception we shall come to in a minute...)

OK. So if I'm going to be brutal about this, who better to start in on than Me. I am able to say perfectly honestly that my book sales are in the thousands each month, and I am top 10 (and even number 1!) in some Amazon categories. All very impressive and worthy and yes, I'm very proud of that; BUT... at an average net profit of around 50p per book, that still doesn't amount to a decent living. As George Bush once said: Do the math: I would need to sell 100,000 books a year to get £50k before tax, and then pull off the same trick year after year after year to call it a living. I have five books out there, and yet I still take extra work as a story consultant, I give seminars, write articles and I take writing contracts for corporations in order to turn my earnings into a 'proper' living.

I think it is important that aspiring writers understand the world they are entering - one of the very biggest disappointments in my career was when, having finally got a proper professional publishing deal that would put my books in the shops, I still couldn't 'turn pro'. I was so massively proud to get a deal, and yet I couldn't give up my day job.

As a writer, as you mooch about on Twitter and Facebook and look enviously at the blogs (and sometimes, the self-hype) of 'successful' authors, remember this: The writers making serious money are either:

a) celebrities with a sideline in books (David Beckham, Katie Price, etc. sell more books than all of us 'real' writers put together...);

b) writers with major film deals for their stories;

c) authors with at least six published books in the shops.

As a rule of thumb, if you ain't heard of someone from their writing, they ain't making a decent living from their writing...

So How Can *I* Make Money?
The VERY best way to plan realistically and to be sure to make money yourself is to plan towards c) above. Aim to write every day in order that you produce a book every year in order that you start to make a living from pure writing in 6 years.

This might seem like a ridiculously long time, but in publisher terms, this is normal cycle times to plan against, and pushing very hard to get a deal on your one and only first novel is not going to get you far unless it is quite extraordinary. Bear in mind that even if you got a deal tomorrow, it would be around 2 years before your book hit the shelves anyway. So a five-year plan is the best timeframe to have in mind if you want to succeed. Get this:

500 words a day, six days a week will give you back a 100,000 word book in 8 months. Polish and edit for four months == a book a year. Now, that's manageable, isn't it?!

Fire and Forget
It also helps enormously if you don't sit at home watching the letterbox. Fire and forget, is my motto. In other words, remember How to Be a Writer in Three Simple Steps:

1) Write the best stuff you can.
2) Send it off, and forget it;
3) Go to 1.

Forget the submission. Get on with the next one. Rejected or accepted, you have a lot of work to do, so move on and keep busy. Expect rejection (there WILL be rejection...) and be pleasantly surprised when (not if...) you get something other than rejection.

Writing is very much a 'more haste, less speed' world, but you can't get anywhere without product, and if you work hard,you increase your chances of overall success with every year that passes. And stick to a genre! Become known in the one field. That might not be something you want to do, but if you want commercial success, you have to stay within a genre (See my blog post on the critical importance of Genre HERE).

The writers I know who get success are highly professional. They are highly productive. They hit one genre. They don't daydream about being a writer - they get stuck in and do it. They are single-minded and they work very hard at getting product out there. Does this describe YOU?!

Masochist: "Whip Me!" Sadist: "No!"

noreply@blogger.com (Windy Dave) — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 12:42:00 +0000

In case it's not obvious from the title, this blog is about Discipline. I regularly catch writers out at my seminars. They have fantastic 'plans', but not nearly enough writing is actually going on. Lots of thinking, not a lot of doing.
"Let me guess," I say. "You're planning a year out, right? And you're going to use it to write a complete work."
The year out is the top answer, or a carefully planned overseas retreat somewhere sunny, or a five-year plan to a career change that will allow them to turn pro... They are surprised that I know their plans, but are also genuinely yearning for the year to come when they can go full-time, act like a professional and really immerse themselves in their novel.

Well, if you are in this space, awaiting some perfect world in which you will write soulfully and immersively and professionally, I have news for you...

9 out of 10 of the people who work like this won't ever get that year out. The 1 in 10 who do will be hugely shocked to find that, when given the time to write full-time, they actually can't manage more than around 4 hours a day anyway. The fact is, you can't deliver effectively for more than this; not every day. Most pro writers deliver an average of around 2000 words a day, and guess what... you can do that now in your daily life. Make time - today - and tomorrow - and the next day - and just do it. Don't wait for the mythical year off. Don't wait for the retreat. Don't dream it. Do it. Now.

When I had an office job, I used to get up at 5.30am and write for 1.5 hours. Then another half-hour on the train and another at lunchtime, and still did right by my employer (sort of...) and by my family in the evening. Steven King said this: 'Talent is as cheap as table salt. The difference between the talented and the successful is the work they are prepared to put in.' Do you want to be successful - or are you merely talented?

Whatever it takes, if you're serious, you must write every day. 2000 words a day can bring you a substantial book - 100,000 words - in 50 days. Let's say you can do half that - no, half it again - 500 words a day. You do 500 words every day - that's a single page of A4 every day - you'll have a 100,000 word book in under 7 months. Polish it and edit it and rewrite it - that's a book a year, no problem at all...

Discipline, folks. If you have talent, productivity is the secret of success.

David