Storytelling Trick 1 – Building Size (Changing Scope)

 50 Sure-Fire Storytelling Tricks!

By Melanie Anne Phillips
Creator StoryWeaver, Co-creator Dramatica

Trick 1

 Building Size (Changing Scope)

This first technique holds audience interest by revealing the true size of something over the course of the story until it can be seen to be either larger or smaller than it originally appeared. This makes things appear to grow or diminish as the story unfolds.

Conspiracy stories are usually good examples of increasing scope, as only the tip of the iceberg first comes to light and the full extent is ultimately much bigger. The motion picture All The President’s Men illustrates this nicely. Stories about things being less extensive than they originally appear are not unlike The Wizard Of Oz in which a seemingly huge network of power turns out to be just one man behind a curtain.

Read All 50 Storytelling Tricks

The “Influence Character” in a Nut Shell

Stories have a mind of their own, as if they were a person in their own right in which the structure is the story’s psychology and the storytelling is its personality.

Characters, in addition to acting as real people,, also represent facets of the overall Story mind, such as the Protagonist which stands for our initiative to effect change and the Skeptic archetype which illustrates our doubt.

Yet in our own minds is a sense of self, and this quality is also present in the Story Mind as the Main Character.  Every complete story has a Main Character or the readers or audience cannot identify with the story; they cannot experience the story first hand from the inside, rather than just as observers.

This Main Character does not have to be the Protagonist anymore than we only look at the world through our initiative.  Sometimes, for example, we might be coming from our doubt or looking at the world in terms of our doubt.  In such a story, the Main Character would be the Skeptic, not the Protagonist.

Any of the facets of our minds that are represented as characters might be the Main Character – the one through whose eyes the readers or audience experience the story.  And in this way, narratives mirror our minds in which we have a sense of self (“I think therefore I am”) and it might, in any given situation, be centered on any one of our facets.

Yet there is one other special character on a par with the Main Character that is found within ourselves and, therefore, also within narrative: the Influence Character.

The Influence Character represents that “devil’s advocate “ voice within ourselves – the part of ourselves that validates our position by taking the opposing point of view so that we can gain perspective by weighing both sides of an issue.  This ensures that, as much as possible, we don’t go bull-headedly along without questioning our own beliefs and conclusions.

In our own minds, we only have one sense of self – one identity.  The same is true for narratives, including fictional stories.  The Influence Character is not another identity, but our view of who we might become if we change our minds and adopt that opposing philosophical point of view.  And so, we examine that other potential “self” to not only understand the other side of the issues, but how that might affect all other aspects or facets of ourselves.  In stories, this self-examination of our potential future selves appears as the philosophical conflict and ongoing argument over points of view, act by act.

Ultimately we (or in stories, the Main Character) will either become convinced that this opposing view is a better approach or will remain convinced that our original approach is still the best choice.

No point of view is good or bad in and of itself but only in context.  What is right in one situation is wrong in another.  Situations, however, are complex, and often are missing complete data.  And so we must rely on experience to fill in the expected pattern and to project the likely course it will take.  Entertaining the opposite point of view shines a light in the shadows of our initial take on the issues.  Psychologically, this greatly enhances our chances for survival.

This is why the inclusion of an Influence Character in any narrative is essential not only to fully representing the totality of our mental process but to provide a balanced look a the issues under examination by the author.

Your Unique Genre

Write Your Novel Step By Step (shadow)Your Unique Genre

(Steps 32-35)

In these steps you’ll identify as many genres as you can that have elements you’d like to include in your novel. You’ll list these elements and then draw upon them to fashion a unique genre for your story that reflects familiar aspects of overused genre formulas yet creates an individual identity and feel for your novel.

Read Steps 32-35

Your Thematic Message

Write Your Novel Step By Step (shadow)Your Thematic Message (Steps 29, 30, 31)

Your thematic message will explore a particular human quality such as greed, denial, or living in fantasy. The message need not be about something bad, but could be about the value of a positive quality. This value is usually wrapped around a personal issue expressed through your Main Character. In these steps, you’ll explore your Main Character’s personal issues and select one to be the focus of your novel’s message.

Read steps 28, 29, 30

Overcoming Habits

Useful for characters, writers and anyone:

It is extremely difficult to overcome a habit in one’s mind before one acts upon it. Those who try to change engage in a terrible inner fight in the internal realm. Further, whenever one fails to prevent the habitual action, it tends to cascade into a series of further habitual behavior, as if a dam has burst.

Essentially, we all have limited psychological capital that we can spend on battling with habitual attributes, and if we engage in the battle internally and lose, we will have squandered our complete reserves and have nothing left to stem the tide. Since we have lost spatially, we look toward time, toward our next psychological payday, usually the next calendar day, after a good night’s sleep. But until then, we simply stand back and engage in the habitual behavior, which actually reenforces it beyond its strength in the original battle, making it all the more difficult to overcome it the next day.

A better way is to move the battle to the external realm, allow the first instance of a bad habit to occur and then battle the second from happening. While an alcoholic or overeater may say the first drink leads to a binge, it is my opinion, based on narrative psychology, that only happens because all the power to resist was already spent in the internal battle.

Habits cannot be broken – the carry too much inertia. Rather, they must be diminished and diluted until they cease to be a force at play, dissolving back into the psychological stew from which they originally emerged. To this end, do not battle the first instance internally, but the second instance externally. By giving in, the habit plays itself out in the first instance before it has become a compulsion. Holding back and battling it just puts up a dam that will ultimately be breached, creating a far more powerful flood that does far more psychological damage, limiting further ability to resist.

Let the first instance happen, then fight the second. While you won’t always be successful, you will have a greater statistical degree of success, eventually leading to the gradual establishment of a new habitual pattern that hinders the original behavior rather than reenforcing it.

For characters, examine these struggles; for writers, use this method to get your work written, for everyone else, use it to clean up your act to your personal level of self-comfort.

Your Thematic Topic

wp602ef169_06Write Your Novel Step By Step

Step 27 – Your Thematic Topic

In this step, you’ll explore how a thematic topic provides the glue to hold your characters, plot and theme together.  Then, you’ll identify the best candidates for a thematic topic in the story materials you’ve developed so far and incorporate them into your novel.

 Read Step 27…