Author Archives: Melanie Anne Phillips

What’s in Your Story’s Mind?

As with people, your story’s mind has different aspects. These are represented in your Genre, Theme, Plot, and Characters. Genre is the overall personality of the Story Mind. Theme represents its troubled value standards. Plot describes the methods the Story Mind uses as it tries to work out its problems. Characters are the conflicting drives of the Story Mind.

Genre

To an audience, every story has a distinct personality, as if it were a person rather than a work of fiction. When we first encounter a person or a story, we tend to classify it in broad categories. For stories, we call the category into which we place its overall personality its Genre.

These categories reflect whatever attributes strike us as the most notable. With people this might be their profession, interests, attitudes, style, or manner of expression, for example. With stories this might be their setting, subject matter, point of view, atmosphere, or storytelling.

We might initially classify someone as a star-crossed lover, a cowboy, or a practical joker who likes to scare people. Similarly, we might categorize a story as a Romance, a Western, or a Horror story.

As with the people we meet, some stories are memorable and others we forget as soon as they are gone. Some are the life of the party, but get stale rather quickly. Some initially strike us as dull, but become familiar to the point we look forward to seeing them again. This is all due to what someone has to say and how they go about saying it.

The more time we spend with specific stories or people the less we see them as generalized types and the more we see the traits that define them as individuals. So, although we might initially label a story as a particular Genre, we ultimately come to find that every story has its own unique personality that sets it apart from all others in that Genre, in at least a few notable respects.

Theme

Everyone has value standards, and the Story Mind has them as well. Some people are pig-headed and see issues as cut and dried. Others are wishy-washy and flip-flop on the issues. The most sophisticated people and stories see the pros and cons of both sides of a moral argument and present their conclusions in shades of gray, rather than in simple black & white. All these outlooks can be reflected in the Story Mind.

No matter what approach or which specific value is explored, the key structural point about value standards is that they are all comprised of two parts: the issues and one’s attitude toward them. It is not enough to only have a subject (abortion, gay rights, or greed) for that says nothing about whether they are good, bad, or somewhere in between. Similarly, attitudes (I hate, I believe in, or I don’t approve of) are meaningless until they are applied to something.

An attitude is essentially a point of view. The issue is the object under observation. When an author determines what he wants to look at it and from where he wants it to be seen, he creates perspective. It is this perspective that comprises a large part of the story’s message.

Still, simply stating one’s attitudes toward the issues does little to convince someone else to see things the same way. Unless the author’s message is preaching to the audience’s choir, he’s going to need to convince them to share his attitude. To do this, he will need to make a thematic argument over the course of the story which will slowly dislodge the audience from their previously held beliefs and reposition them so that they adopt the author’s beliefs by the time the story is over.

Plot

Novice authors often assume the order in which events transpire in a story is the order in which they are revealed to the audience, but these are not necessarily the same. Through exposition, an author unfolds the story, dropping bits and pieces that the audience rearranges until the true meaning of the story becomes clear. This technique involves the audience as an active participant in the story rather than simply being a passive observer. It also reflects the way people go about solving their own problems.

When people try to work out ways of dealing with their problems they tend to identify and organize the pieces before they assemble them into a plan of action. So, they often jump around the timeline, filling in the different steps in their plan out of sequence as they gather additional information and draw new conclusions.

In the Story Mind, both of these attributes are represented as well. We refer to the internal logic of the story – the order in which the events in the problem solving approach actually occurred – as the Plot. The order in which the Story Mind deals with the events as it develops its problem solving plan is called Storyweaving.

If an author blends these two aspects together, it is very easy miss holes in the internal logic because they are glossed over by smooth exposition. By separating them, an author gains complete control of the progression of the story as well as the audience’s progressive experience

Characters

If Characters represent the conflicting drives in our own minds yet they each have a personal point of view, where is out sense of self represented in the Story Mind? After all, every real person has a unique point of view that defines his or her own self-awareness.

In fact, there is one special character in a story that represents the Story Mind’s identity. This character, the Main Character, functions as the audience position in the story. He, she or it is the eye of the story – the story’s ego.

In an earlier tip I described how we might look at characters by their dramatic function, as seen from the perspective of a General on a hill. But what if we zoomed down and stood in the shoes of just one of those characters, we would have a much more personal view of the story from the inside looking out.

But which character should be our Main Character? Most often authors select the Protagonist to represent the audience position in the story. This creates the stereotypical Hero who both drives the plot forward and also provides the personal view of the audience. There is nothing wrong with this arrangement but it limits the audience to always experiencing what the quarterback feels, never the linemen or the water boy.

In real life we are more often one of the supporting characters in an endeavor than we are the leader of the effort. If you have always made your Protagonist the Main Character, you have been limiting your possibilities.

Story Structure – Part 7 (video)

In this episode, I describe the difference between story structure and storytelling. Story structure has no subject matter involved – it is simply a map of the relationships among concepts. For example, if two concepts are in opposition, it doesn’t matter if they are night and day or sweet and sour, protagonist and antagonist or conscience and temptation. Similarly, if a goal is to obtain stolen diamonds and another story’s goad is to obtain a secret code, they are both goals of obtaining something – the structure is the same, only the specifics of exactly what the characters are trying to obtain is different , and that part is therefore storytelling. It is hard, sometimes, to determine what is structure and what is storytelling, for example, if someone wishes to become more compassionate as a goal, that is different than someone wishing to obtain the quality of compassion. Why? Because in the first case, the character wants to become a different kind of person, while in the second case, the person simply wants to add an attribute to their list of traits. We have often described “becoming” as a goal by saying that to become something, you can’t simply be like it is, but you also must “not be” like it isn’t. So, someone who simply adds the quality of compassion does not necessarily become wholly compassionate. They might simply have achieved a duality of having both a sense of compassion and also still have a conflicting quality of not caring.

Of course, that’s all “black belt” level structural stuff – too nit-picky for most purposes. But still, consider Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story and give some thought as to how they differ and how they are the same. They differ in storytelling, they are very similar in structure.

Here’s the link to the video which covers the more practical story development considerations on the topic:

http://storymindguru.com/dramatica-unplugged/7%20Story%20Structure%20vs%20Storytelling.htm

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Why a Story Mind?

Before asking any writer to invest his or her time in a concept as different as the Story Mind, it is only fair to provide an explanation of why such a thing should exist. To do this, let us look briefly into the nature of communication between an author and an audience.

When an author tells a tale, he simply describes a series of events that both makes sense and feels right. As long as there are no breaks in the logic and no mis-steps in the emotional progression, the structure of the tale is sound.

Now, from a structural standpoint, it really doesn’t matter what the tale is about, who the characters are, or how it turns out. The tale is just a truthful or fictional journey that starts in one situation, travels a straight or twisting path, and ends in another situation.

The meaning of a tale amounts to a statement that if you start from “here,” and take “this” path, you’ll end up “here.” The message of a tale is that a particular path is a good or bad one, depending on whether the ending point is better or worse than the point of departure.

This structure is easily seen in the vast majority of familiar fairy “tales.” Tales have been used since the first storytellers practiced their craft. In fact, many of the best selling novels and most popular motion pictures of our own time are simple tales, expertly told.

In a structural sense, tales have power in that they can encourage or discourage audience members from taking particular actions in real life. The drawback of a tale is that it speaks only in regard to that specific path.

But in fact, there are many paths that might be taken from a given point of departure. Suppose an author wants to address those as well, to cover all the alternatives. What if the author wants to say that rather than being just a good or bad path, a particular course of action the best or worst path of all that might have been taken?

Now the author is no longer making a simple statement, but a “blanket” statement. Such a blanket statement provides no “proof” that the path in question is the best or worst, it simply says so. Of course, an audience is not likely to be moved to accept such a bold claim, regardless of how well the tale is told.

In the early days of storytelling, an author related the tale to his audience in person. Should he aspire to wield more power over his audience and elevate his tale to become a blanket statement, the audience would no doubt cry, “Foul!” and demand that he prove it. Someone in the audience might bring up an alternative path that hadn’t been included in the tale.

The author might then counter that rebuttal to his blanket statement by describing how the path proposed by the audience was either not as good or better (depending on his desired message) than the path he did include.

One by one, he could disperse any challenges to his tale until he either exhausted the opposition or was overcome by an alternative he couldn’t dismiss.

But as soon as stories began to be recorded in media such as song ballads, epic poems, novels, stage plays, screenplays, teleplays, and so on, the author was no longer present to defend his blanket statements.

As a result, some authors opted to stick with simple tales of good and bad, but others pushed the blanket statement tale forward until the art form evolved into the “story.”

A story is a much more sophisticated form of communication than a tale, and is in fact a revolutionary leap forward in the ability of an author to make a point. Simply put, when creating a story, and author starts with a tale of good or bad, expands it to a blanket statement of best or worst, and then includes all the reasonable alternatives to the path he is promoting to preclude any counters to his message. In other words, while a tale is a statement, a story becomes an argument.

Now this puts a huge burden of proof on an author. Not only does he have to make his own point, but he has to prove (within reason) that all opposing points are less valid. Of course, this requires than an author anticipate any objections an audience might raise to his blanket statement. To do this, he must look at the situation described in his story and examine it from every angle anyone might happen to take in regard to that issue.

By incorporating all reasonable (and valid emotional) points of view regarding the story’s message in the structure of the story itself, the author has not only defended his argument, but has also included all the points of view the human mind would normally take in examining that central issue. In effect, the structure of the story now represents the whole range of considerations a person would make if fully exploring that issue.

In essence, the structure of the story as a whole now represents a map of the mind’s problem solving processes, and (without any intent on the part of the author) has become a Story Mind.

And so, the Story Mind concept is not really all that radical. It is simply a short hand way of describing that all sides of a story must be explored to satisfy an audience. And, and if this is done, the structure of the story takes on the nature of a single character.

Story Structure – Part 6 (Video)

In this episode I explore the structural reasons why men and women respond differently to the same story. Pretty controversial stuff, until you hear the details! Hint – it all has to do with the reasons men and women will empathize or sympathize with the main character.

Here’s the link to the video:

http://storymindguru.com/dramatica-unplugged/6%20Audience%20Reach.htm

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Why Dramatica Works – Part 1

Over the past twenty years I have written innumerable articles and recorded over one hundred hours of video explaining what the Dramatica is , how to use it and even how it works, but I have never made a concerted effort to describe why it works.

Understanding the difference between “how” and “why” is both a subtle endeavor and a crucial one.  For the “how” just deals with the nuts and bolts of Dramatica’s model of story structure, but the “why” describes the reasons behind the form and elements of that model.  In other words, rather than trying to teach Dramatica for what it is, perhaps the best way to learn Dramatica is to understand why it is as it is.

To this end, I considered where to begin.  What concepts should I start with?  Perhaps an overview of the “big picture” view of the model or maybe with elements that most closely connect with more traditional approaches to story structure.  And then, the obvious slapped me upside the head: I should begin my explanation right where Chris Huntley and I began our exploration so many years ago.

At that time, we knew virtually nothing about how stories worked and came to the problem with fresh and ignorant eyes.  We dabbled in structure for a couple of months, then put it away for ten years before returning to it again, but this time in a nearly four year full-time effort.  Each day posed new questions about the elements and forces that drove the underlying framework of stories.  We struggled to make sense of what we saw, to grasp why it should be that way, and then to conceive of some manner of documenting it, modeling it, fashioning a function system that described, measured, and predicted it.

Still, I realized that the focus of this approach should not be to create a documentary of our efforts but rather to create an idealized path of discovery inspired by the steps we took but refined and guided by our current understandings having finished our journey and having arrived at the comprehensive perspective we enjoy today.

And so, while I will refer to the questions we asked and the answers that were ultimately revealed, the purpose of this initial article and its successive siblings is to seek the essence of story structure in its pure form, both by its nature and by the natural laws under which it self-organizes.  With this as our direction and destination, let us begin our journey….

Enigma

To set the stage.  In 1979 and on into 1980 Chris Huntley, Mark Sawicki and I wrote and produced a feature motion picture.  We had all met at the University of Southern California in the Cinema department.  I had left before completing my degree and was working in the industry.  Chris and Mark were still attending when we began.  The result was a modest horror movie called “The Strangeness” which, while something of an accomplishment for a budget of thirty thousand dollars, suffered from some rather glaring story problems.

Shortly after its completion, Chris and I decided to write the script for our next effort.  But before we did, we thought we should seek to understand what was actually wrong with our previous story so as not to repeat the same mistakes in the new one.  To that end, we reviewed our characters and plot.  Though we could clearly feel that it was sometimes diverging from some unseen track or dramatic river channel, it was far more a sense of something wrong than a true grasp of what was wrong.

So, we went back over our notes from writing classes we had taken while at the university.  What we soon discovered was that every instructor had their own vague notion of story structure, but in terms of anything truly definitive, they were all lacking.  The best they had to offer were specific tips, tricks and techniques for story development which they had derived from many years of personal trial and error.  In short, our instructors were as clueless as we were.

That being the case, we briefly considered studying the writings of famous investigators of the nature of story – folks such as Joseph Campbell and even Aristotle, not to mention a number of contemporaries who were proselytizing their own brands.  But before taking such steps, we determined that if our instructors (who were already familiar with these systems and explanations) had no clear answers, then perhaps it might be better to approach the subject untainted by the conclusions of others.  Though we might waste our time re-inventing the wheel, we argued, we also would have the best chance of uncovering something new in places everyone else “knew better” than to look.  And so, we met in a small one-room studio “granny house” in the backyard of the home I was renting to ponder the unknown and seek some better grip on the mechanics of story than we had so far encountered.

In regard to our movie’s story, we sensed that our plot, while not excessively clever, wasn’t too far off “the mark” – whatever that was.  But when it came to characters, though we had an interesting assortment of personalities, there was something false about the way they acted and interacted with each other.  No fault of the actors – we could clearly see that in some cases parts of their scripted personalities seemed to be missing, while in other cases their conversations and actions seemed unmotivated, untrue or inconsistent.

Now we come to the first “why” we asked -“Why do characters ring true in some stories and ring false in others?”  We gave it some thought, but try as we may, we could not fathom what was wrong, we could only sense it.  So, we attacked the other side of our question and decided to look at  really successful characters in other stories that were in a similar genre to ours.  It was our assumption that perhaps we might solve our problems by measuring our characters against the template of characters that worked.

To this end, we decided to first investigate the characters in what wast the most popular film of our time: the original Star Wars movie (now called “Episode IV –  A New Hope). As a first step, we listed the principal characters – the ones who seemed to be central to the forces that drove the story – the ones the story seemed to revolve around.

Our initial list included the following:  Luke Skywalker, Obi Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, C3PO and R2-D2.  In our writing classes we had been taught about the Protagonist and the Antagonist – two archetypes that we were told must be present in every story.  It made sense to us, so we figured we’d look over our list and identify the Protagonist and Antagonist, which seemed a pretty easy task with something as melodramatic as Star Wars.

It seemed pretty obvious to us and the rest of the movie-going world that Luke was the Protagonist and Darth the “over-the-top” villain.  For now, let’s go with that, as it was our initial understanding though it later proved to be massively incorrect in regard to Darth.  Turning our attention to the other principal characters in our list, we wondered if the fact that there was a Protagonist and Antagonist in every story might indicate that there were also other character types that must, or at least commonly exist in stories.

As we had not read historical explanations of archetypes, we had no grounding from which to begin our considerations, so we simply set about trying to ascertain the “essence” of each character.  In my notes from a writing class I took from Professor Irwin Blacker, he proposed the concept that every character in a screenplay should be a “one hundred percent” character, meaning that each character should embody some essential human quality so that all that it thought or did was exemplary of that quality.  For example, one character might be 100% “hate” while another was 100% “hope.”  In this way, Blacker explained, we are able to examine the value and flaws of all our own shared traits.

With this small thread as our guide, we sought to label each of the characters in Star Wars as to that quintessential quality they represented and explored.  Beginning we those we knew, Protagonist represented our drive to achieve a goal at all costs.  Antagonist represented our drive to prevent that effort from succeeding – an enemy with an agenda in total opposition to that goal.  Now, this didn’t quite ring true to us, even then, for the Protagonist was for something (destroying the empire) but the Antagonist wasn’t so much trying to prevent the empire from being destroyed as to destroy the rebel alliance.  In other words, they were both protagonists, weren’t they?  What was the difference?  What different human qualities did they represent?

For a moment we thought maybe it is as simple as Hero and Villain – that the Protagonist was just a good guy while the Antagonist was a bad guy.  But that also didn’t hold up since there were many characters who represented the quality of “goodness” and quite a few who represented “badness.”  So, we left that one unresolved for a while and moved on to other characters figuring that just identifying Luke and Vader as Protagonist and Antagonist was sufficient for now and we could work out their specific qualities later more easily, perhaps, once we discovered what the other characters’ 100% qualities were.

Obi Wan, for example, appeared to be a mentor, teacher, or protector.  But this confused us, as those labels didn’t really describe human qualities so much as the jobs he did.  Han Solo, on the on hand, was pretty much a cut and dried skeptic.  He didn’t believe in the force, didn’t believe in the rebel’s cause, and was only out for himself.  So skepticism and perhaps selfishness were in his potential trail list.

Around this time we began to suspect that perhaps not all characters were 100% but might be fifty/fifty such as Han might be half skepticism and half selfishness.  If so, then things were a bit more complicated than we had been led to believe.  (If we had only know JUST how much more complicated, we would likely have given up right then and there and taken jobs in some other industry where we had some natural talent!)

We strove on, however, and considered the other principal characters.  Chewbacca seemed to be all emotionally driven and wild, in contrast to Princess Leia who was the “ice-princess” – pretty much devoid of emotion and also the opposite of wild: staid and controlled as the two hairballs on the side of her head.  Perhaps we were onto something here.  Just as Protagonist and Antagonist were opposites, maybe Chewbacca and Leia were also opposites.  But who was Han’s mirror image?  Well, it had to be Obi Wan or one of the droids, C3PO or R2-D2.

It might be Obi Wan.  After all, he believed in the force and Han didn’t.  And the two of them argued a lot, so it made a certain amount of sense.  Yet they didn’t particularly seem a balanced pair.  And then there were the droids.  What quality did each represent?  And though they bickered, were they really in opposition? For that matter, did characters always have to be in opposition?  Did each character need a mirror image opponent who exemplified the opposite human quality, such as greed and generosity or kindness and meanness?  And finally, did all human qualities have an opposite one, or did the human mind itself have “orphan” qualities that stood alone, without opposition.  In short, is there symmetry in stories; is there symmetry in the mind?

Well these questions were clearly too tough for us to answer, so we put aside characters for a bit to focus on plot instead.  And here we also made some progress.  One of the first things we discovered was something we called the “rule of threes.”  This notion was that when you had two characters in opposition, they would meet three times in a story: First, to introduce their conflict, second to engage in conflict and part with no clear winner, third to have it out in a battle royal until only one remains alive, or in power, or simply just left standing.

After trying out the rule of threes we discovered that opposing characters might meet more than three times if their relationship and/or opposition was extremely powerful or complicated, but they had to meet “at least” three times or there would be a plot hole.  So we revised our rule to so state.

And then we hit a brick wall.  We couldn’t get a step farther in understanding plot and couldn’t see anything new in characters.  After a few hapless days, Chris wisely suggested we simply hadn’t had enough life experience to crack this nut, so we should put it aside for a few years until we did and then revisit it.  I agreed, and we turned our attention to that second screenplay which, when completed, contained most of the same problems as our first script and even some new ones we hadn’t had before.  While interesting, we kinda figured that our time trying to understand story structure was wasted.  And so it lay for almost ten years while Chris and I went on to our individual careers in the business.

That’s the end of this first installment in “Why Dramatica Works.”  It illustrates how structure is not easy to see and, prior to Dramatica, was more an intuitive endeavor than an intellectual one.  Now I may have gotten a few incidental facts out of order or perhaps ahead of where we actually were at the time, but give me a little slack – it was almost a third of a century ago.  The important thing is noting the questions that arose:  Is there a fixed structure to stories, or at least a fixed set of dramatic building blocks?  Do things have to be in opposition (is there symmetry)?  Do characters represent jobs or human qualities or both, and which is best used to identify them?  If there are other archetypes beside Protagonist and Antagonist, what are they, and do they have to be in all stories or just CAN be in any story?  And finally, are there rules of plot that determine how things will come into conflict, how conflicts will resolve, and the order in which events should or even must happen?

In the next installment we’ll come back ten years later in 1991 when we once more picked up the quest which, within six months, had turned into a full-time effort lasting three more years and become (so far) a twenty year career of finding new ways to explain and employ the Dramatica model of story structure we ultimately designed.

 

 

 

The Creativity “Two-Step”

The concept behind this method of finding inspiration is quite simple, really: It is easier to come up with many ideas than it is to come up with one idea.

Now that may sound counter-intuitive, but consider this… When you are working on a particular story and you run into a specific structural problem, you are looking for a creative inspiration in a very narrow area. But creativity isn’t something you can control like a power tool or channel onto a task. Rather, it is random, and applies itself to whatever it wants.

Yet creative inspiration is always running at full tilt within us, coming up with new ideas, thinking new thoughts – just not the thoughts we are looking for. So if we sit and wait for the Muse to shine its light on the exact structural problem we’re stuck on, it might be days before lightning strikes that very spot.

Fortunately, we can trick Creativity into working on our problem by making it think it is being random. As an example, consider this log line for a story: A Marshall in an Old West border town struggles with a cutthroat gang that is bleeding the town dry.

Step One: Asking Questions

Now if you had the assignment to sit down and turn this into a full-blown, interesting, one-of-a-kind story, you might be a bit stuck for what to do next. So, try this. First ask some questions:

1. How old is the Marshall?

2. How much experience does he have?

3. Is he a good shot?

4. How many men has he killed (if any)

5. How many people are in the gang?

6. Does it have a single leader?

7. Is the gang tight-knit?

8. What are they taking from the town?

9. How long have they been doing this?

You could probably go on and on and easily come up with a hundred questions based on that single log line. It might not seem at first that this will help you expand your story, but look at what’s really happened. You have tricked your Muse into coming up with a detailed list of what needs to be developed! And it didn’t even hurt. In fact, it was actually fun.

Step Two: Answering Questions

But that’s just the first step. Next, take each of these questions and come up with as many different answers as you can think of. Let your Muse run wild through your mind. You’ll probably find you get some ordinary answers and some really outlandish ones, but you’ll absolutely get a load of them!

  a) How old is the Marshall?

a. 28

b. 56

c. 86

d. 17

e. 07

f. 35

Some of these potential ages are ridiculous – or are they? Every ordinary story based on such a log line would have the Marshall be 28 or 35. Just another dull story, grinding through the mill.

Step One Revisited

But what if your Marshall was 86 or 7 years old? Let’s switch back to Step One and ask some questions about his age.

For example:

c. 86

1. How would an 86 year old become a Marshall?

2. Can he still see okay?

3. What physical maladies plague him?

4. Is he married?

5. What kind of gun does he use?

6. Does he have the respect of the town?

And on and on…

Return to Step Two

As you might expect, now we switch back to Step Two again and answer each question as many different ways as you can.

Example:

5. What kind of gun does he use?

a) He uses an ancient musket, can barely lift it, but is a crack shot and miraculously hits whatever he aims at.

b) He uses an ancient musket and can’t hit the broad side of a barn. But somehow, his oddball shots ricochet off so many things, he gets the job done anyway, just not as he planned.

c) He uses a Gattling gun attached to his walker.

d) He doesn’t use a gun at all. In 63 years with the Texas Rangers, he never needed one and doesn’t need one now.

e) He uses a sawed off shotgun, but needs his deputy to pull the trigger for him as he aims.

f) He uses a whip.

g) He uses a knife, but can’t throw it past 5 feet anymore.

And on and on again…

Methinks you begin to get the idea. First you ask questions, which trick the Muse into finding fault with your work – an easy thing to do that your Creative Spirit already does on its own – often to your dismay.

Next, you turn the Muse loose to come up with as many answers for each question as you possibly can.

Then, you switch back to question mode and ask as many as you can about each of your answers.

And then you come up with as many answers as possible for those questions.

You can carry this process out for as many generations as you like, but the bulk of story material you develop will grow so quickly, you’ll likely not want to go much further than we went in our example.

Imagine, if you just asked 10 questions about the original log line and responded to each of them with 10 potential answers, you’d have 100 story points to consider.

Then, if you went as far as we just did for each one, you’d ask 10 questions of each answer and end up with 1,000 potential story points. And the final step of 10 answers for each of these would yield 10,000 story points!

Now in the real world, you probably won’t bother answering each question – just those that intrigue you. And, you won’t trouble yourself to ask questions about every answer – just the ones that suggest they have more development to offer and seem to lead in a direction you might like to go with your story.

The key point is that rather than staring at a blank page trying to find that one structural solution that will fill a gap or connect two points, use the Creativity Two-Step to trick your Muse into spewing out the wealth of ideas it naturally wants to provide.

Be a Story Weaver – NOT a Story Mechanic!

Too many writers fall into the trap of making Structure their Story God. There’s no denying that structure is important, but paying too much attention to structure can destroy your story.

We have all seen movies and read novels that feel like “paint by numbers” creations. Sure, they hit all the marks and cover all the expected relationships, but they seem stilted, uninspired, contrived, and lifeless.

The authors of such pedestrian fare are Story Mechanics. A Story Mechanic is a writer who constructs a story as if it were a machine. Starting with a blueprint, the writer gathers the necessary dramatic components, assembles the gears and pulleys, tightens all the structural nuts and bolts, and then tries to make the story interesting with a fancy paint job.

But there is another kind of writer who creates a different kind of story. These Story Weavers begin with subjects or concepts about which they are passionate and let the structure suggest itself from the material. They see their players as people before they consider them as characters. Events are happenings before they become plot. Values precede theme and the story develops a world before it develops a genre.

A book or movie written by a Story Weaver is involving, riveting, and compelling. It captures the fullness of human emotion, and captivates the mind.

Although some writers are natural born StoryWeavers, there is still hope for the rest of us. In fact, you can become a StoryWeaver just by practicing a few select techniques until they become second nature.

First, clear your mind of any thoughts about characters, plot, theme, and genre. Avoid any consideration of character arc, hero’s journey, acts, scenes, sequences, beats, messages, premises, settings, atmosphere, and formulas. In short – don’t give structure a second thought.

Now work to create a world in which people live and interact, things happen, meaning can be found and the environment is intriguing. To do this, we’ll progress through four different stages of story creation: Inspiration, Development, Exposition, and Storytelling.

Stage One – Inspiration

 

Inspiration can come from many sources: a conversation overheard at a coffee shop, a newspaper article, or a personal experience to name a few. And, inspiration can also take many forms: a snippet of dialogue, a bit of action, a clever concept, and so on.

If you can’t think of a story idea to save your life, there are a few things you can do to goose the Muse.

First of all, consider your creative time. Some people consistently find inspiration in the morning, others in the afternoon, evening or even in the dead of night. Some people are more creative in the summer and can’t write worth a darn in the other three seasons. There are authors who work in cycles and those who come up with ideas in spurts. The key to using your creative time is to keep a log of your most fertile moments and then plan ahead to keep that kind of time open for further inspirations.

And don’t neglect your creative space either. There are authors who go off to a mountain cabin to write. Some like lots of noise or babble, like a city street below their open window or an all-news station on the radio as background. There are writers who prefer a cluttered room because it engenders chaos, which leads to serendipity. Others can’t think a lick unless everything is orderly, neat and in its place. Creative space includes the clothes you wear while writing. There are those who wear hats when developing characters and others who pantomime action sequences to get in the feel of it.

Open yourself to different writing media. If you only use a desktop computer, try a laptop, a palm organizer with a folding keyboard, long hand on a pad, or a digital voice recorder. And don’t be afraid to switch around any of these from time to time and mood to mood.

If you still can’t come up with an idea, try the Synthesis Technique. In brief, you want to subject yourself to two disparate sources of information. For example, put a talk radio program on while reading a magazine or watching television and let the odd juxtaposition spur your notions.

Finally, if all else fails, try using Nonsense Words. Just jot down three random words, such as “Red Ground Rover.” Then, write as many different explanations as you can for what that phrase might mean. For example, Red Ground Rover might be:

1. A red dog named rover whose legs are so short his belly rubs the ground.

2. The Martian Rover space vehicle on the red planet’s surface.

3. Fresh hamburger made from dog

Your list might go on and on. Now most of these potential meanings might be pure rubbish, but occasionally a good idea can surface. If the first three words don’t work, try three different ones. And, in the end, even if you don’t find an idea directly from your explanations of each phrase, you’ll have so stocked the creative spirit that you will find yourself far more prone to inspiration than before you started the exercise.

Use these inspiration techniques to come up with a log line for your story. A log line is simply a one- or two-sentence description of what your story is about in general. They are the same kind of short descriptions you find in TV Guide or in your cable or satellite TV guide.

A sample log line might be, “The marshal in an old western town struggles to stop a gang that is bleeding the town dry.”


Stage Two – Development

Once you’ve been inspired enough to create a log line, you can move into the second stage of Story Weaving: Development. Here is where you take your basic concept and flesh it out with lots more detail.

In Development you’ll begin to populate your story with people you might like to write about, work out some of the things that will happen in your story, and establish the world or environment in which it takes place. These efforts will ultimately result in your characters, plot, theme, and genre.

There are many Story Weaving techniques for the Development stage, but one of the most powerful is to project your world beyond what is specifically stated in the log line.

As an example, let’s use the log line from above: “The marshal in an old western town struggles to stop a gang that is bleeding the town dry.” Now let’s see how we can expand that world to create a whole group of people who grow out of the story, some of whom will ultimately become our characters.

The only specifically called-for characters are the marshal and the gang. But, you’d expect the gang to have a leader and the town to have a mayor. The marshal might have a deputy. And, if the town is being bled dry, then some businessmen and shopkeepers would be in order as well.

Range a little wider now and list some characters that aren’t necessarily expected, but wouldn’t seem particularly out of place in such a story.

Example: A saloon girl, a bartender, blacksmith, rancher, preacher, schoolteacher, etc.

Now, let yourself go a bit and list a number of characters that would seem somewhat out of place but still explainable in such a story.

Example: A troupe of traveling acrobats, Ulysses S. Grant, a Prussian Duke, a bird watcher.

Finally, pull out all the stops and list some completely inappropriate characters that would take a heap of explaining to your reader/audience if they showed up in your story.

Example: Richard Nixon, Martians, the Ghost of Julius Caesar

Although you’ll likely discard these characters, just the process of coming up with them can lead to new ideas and directions for your story.

For example, the town marshal might become more interesting if he was a history buff, specifically reading about the Roman Empire. In his first run-in with the gang, he is knocked out cold with a concussion. For the rest of the story, he keeps imagining the Ghost of Julius Caesar giving him unwanted advice.

This same kind of approach can be applied to your log line to generate the events that will happen in your story, the values you will explore, and the nature of your story’s world (which will become your genre).

Stage Three – Exposition

The third stage of Story Weaving is to lay out an Exposition Plan for your story. By the time you complete the Development Stage, you will probably have a pretty good idea what your story is about. But your audience knows nothing of it – not yet – not until you write down what you know.

Of course, you could just write, “My story’s goal is to rid the town of the gang that is bleeding it dry. The marshal is the protagonist, and he ultimately succeeds, but at great personal cost.”

Sure, it’s a story, but not a very interesting one. If you were to unfold your story in this perfunctory style, you’d have a complete story that felt just like that “paint by numbers” picture we encountered earlier.

Part of what gives a story life is the manner in which story points are revealed, revisited throughout the story, played against each other and blended together, much as a master painter will blend colors, edges, shapes and shadows.

As an example, let’s create an Exposition Plan to reveal a story’s goal. Sometimes a goal is spelled out right at the beginning, such as a meeting in which a general tells a special strike unit that terrorists have kidnapped a senator’s daughter and they must rescue her.

Other times, the goal is hidden behind an apparent goal. So, if your story had used the scene described above, it might turn out that it was really just a cover story and, in fact, the supposed “daughter” was actually an agent who was assigned to identify and kill a double agent working on the strike team.

Goals may also be revealed slowly, such as in The Godfather, where it takes the entire film to realize that the goal is to keep the family alive by replacing the aging Don with a younger member of the family.

Further, in The Godfather, as in many Alfred Hitchcock films, the goal is not nearly as important as the chase or the inside information or the thematic atmosphere. So don’t feel obligated to elevate every story point to the same level.

Let your imagination run wild. Jot down as many instances as come to mind in which the particular story point comes into play. Such events, moments or scenarios enrich a story and add passion to a perfunctory telling of the tale.

One of the best ways to do this is to consider how each story point might affect other story points. For example, each character sees the overall goal as a step in helping them accomplish their personal goals. So, why not create a scenario where a character wistfully describes his personal goal to another character while sitting around a campfire? He can explain how achievement of the overall story goal will help him get what he personally wants.

An example of this is in the John Wayne classic movie, The Searchers. John Wayne’s character asks an old, mentally slow friend to help search for the missing girl. Finding the girl is the overall goal. The friend has a personal goal: he tells Wayne that he just wants a roof over his head and a rocking chair by the fire. This character sees his participation in the effort to achieve the goal as the means of obtaining something for which he has personally longed.

Stage Four – Storytelling

By the time you’ve created an Exposition Plan for each story point you worked on in the Development phase, you’ll have assembled a huge number of events, moments, and scenarios. There’s only one thing left to do: tell your story!

Storytelling is a multi-faceted endeavor. It incorporates style, timing, blending of several story points into full-bodied scenes, sentence structure, grammar, vocabulary, and good old-fashioned charisma.

Later in this book we’ll explore a number of different storytelling techniques in great detail. But in this introduction to StoryWeaving I want to address the primary storytelling problem writers encounter – a passionless presentation of what would otherwise be an intriguing story.

Story Mechanics often get stuck at this point in story development. They are so taken with the “perfect” structure they have created, they tend to anguish over the opening sentence when finally sitting down to write the story. Eventually, after writing with the problem for far too long, they write one great line and then become so intimidated by its grandeur they are afraid to write anything else lest it not measure up to that initial quality!

Fact is, you’re only as good as your own talent – GET OVER IT! Don’t grieve over every phrase to try and make yourself look better than you are. Just spew out the words and get the story told. Something not up to snuff? That’s what re-writes are for!

Another common problem is the inability to let loose, emotionally. Each of us is born a passionate human being. But we quickly learn that the world does not appreciate all our emotional expressions. In no time, we develop a whole bag of behaviors that don’t truly reflect who we really are. But, they do help us get by.

Problem is, these false presentations of our selves appear to be our real selves to everyone else. They cause others to give us presents we don’t really want, drive us to make friendships with people we don’t really like, and even marry people we don’t really love!

This false life we develop is a mask, but by no means is it always a well-fitting one. In fact, it chafes against the real “us.” The emotional irritation could be eliminated if we removed the mask, but then we might lose our jobs, friends, and lovers because they might find the actual people we are to be total strangers and not someone they like.

So instead, we just tighten the mask down so hard it becomes an exoskeleton, part of what we call “ourselves.” In fact, after a time, we forget we are even wearing a mask. We come to believe that this is who we really are.

Now, try getting in touch with your passions through that! The mask dampens any emotional energy we have and our writing dribbles out like pabulum. Even the most riveting story becomes dulled by such storytelling.

Want to really be passionate in your storytelling? Then try this: Lock the doors, take the phone off the hook, search for hidden video cameras, and then sit down to write. For just one page, write about the one thing about yourself you are most afraid that anyone would ever find out.

By writing about your most shameful or embarrassing trait or action you will tap right through that mask into your most powerful feelings, and a gusher of passion will burst out of the hole.

Once you know where to find the oil field of your soul, you can drill down into it any time you like. Of course, every time you draw from that well you put more cracks in the mask. Eventually, the darn thing might shatter altogether, leaving you unable to be anyone but yourself with your boss, your friends, and your lover. Downside risk: you might lose them all. But, you’ll be a far better writer!

And finally, go for broke. Exaggerate and carry everything you do to the extreme. It is far easier to go overboard and then temper it back in a re-write than to underplay your work and have to try and beef it up.

Remember, there is only one cardinal sin in Story Weaving, and that is boring your audience!

Having outlined all four stages of StoryWeaving, we’re now ready to explore specific tips, tricks, and techniques that you can employ to instantly improve your writing, break away from the mechanics, and become a true StoryWeaver.

Story Structure – Part 2 (Video)

Here’s a link to the next class in my 113 part series on story structure.

In this episode, we explore how story structure came to be in the first place, beginning with the earliest storytellers and evolving into a linear, step-by-step logical and or emotional throughline leading from premise to conclusion.