Creative Writing, Story Development, Story Structure, Narrative Science
Category Archives: Creative Writing
Need inspiration or a cure for writer’s block? You’ll find it here. This category focuses on the creative process from organizing your writing time to developing your ideas and finding your author’s voice.
Browse through the list or use the search box at the top of the page to find just what you are looking for, and may the Muse be with you!
A novel can be extremely free form. Some are simply narratives about a fictional experience. Others are a collection of several stories that may or may not be intertwined.
Jerzy N. Kosinski (the author of “Being There,” wrote another novel called “Steps.” It contains a series of story fragments. Sometimes you get the middle of a short story, but no middle or end. Sometimes, just the end, and sometimes just the beginning.
Each fragment is wholly involving, and leaves you wanting to know the rest of the tale, but they are not to be found. In fact, there is not (that I could find) any connection among the stories, nor any reason they are in that particular order. And yet, they are so passionately told that it was one of the best reads I ever enjoyed.
The point is, don’t feel confined to tell a single story, straight through, beginning to end.
Rather than think of writing a novel, think about writing a book. Consider that a book can be exclusively poetry. Or, as Anne Rice often does, you can use poetry to introduce chapters or sections, or enhance a moment in a story.
You can take time to pontificate on your favorite subject, if you like. Unlike screenplays which must continue to move, you can stop the story and diverge into any are you like, as long as you can hold your reader’s interest.
For example, in the Stephen King novel, “The Tommy Knockers,” he meanders around a party, and allows a character to go on and on… and on… about the perils of nuclear power. Nuclear power has nothing to do with the story, and the conversation does not affect nor advance anything. King just wanted to say that, and did so in an interesting diatribe.
In summary, feel free to break any form you have ever heard must be followed. The most free of all written media is the novel, and you can – literally – do whatever you want.
Although it is important to work on the particulars of your story you can lose track of the big picture in doing so exclusively.
Step back from time to time to take in your story as a whole. See it as the readers or audience will and appreciate it not just for how it works but for how it feels and what it means.
Even when a story has memorable characters, a riveting plot and a fully developed genre, it may still be coming apart at the themes.
Theme is perhaps the most powerful, yet least understood element of story structure. It is powerful because theme is an emotional argument: It speaks directly to the heart of the reader or audience. It is least understood because of its intangible nature, working behind the scenes, and between the lines.
When mis-used, theme can become a ham-handed moral statement in black and white, alienating the reader/audience with its dogmatic pontifications. When properly used, theme can add richness, nuance, and meaning to a story that would otherwise be no more than a series of events.
In this article, we’ll separate the elements of theme by their dramatic functions so we can understand the parts. Then we’ll learn how to combine them together into a strong message that is greater than the sum of the parts.
What do we really mean by the word, “theme?” In fact, “theme” has two meanings. The first meaning is not unlike that of a teacher telling a class to write a theme paper. We’ve all received assignments in school requiring us to express our thoughts about “how we spent our summer vacation,” or “the impact of industrialization on 19th century cultural morality,” or “death.” Each of these “themes” is a topic, nothing more, and nothing less. It functions to describe the subject matter that will be explored in the work, be it a paper, novel, stage play, teleplay, or movie.
Every story needs a thematic topic to help hold the overall content of the story together, to act as a unifying element through which the plot unfolds and the characters grow. In fact, you might look at the thematic topic as the growth medium in which the story develops. Although an interesting area to explore, the real focus of this article is on the other element of theme.
This second aspect of theme is the message or premise of your story. A premise is a moral statement about the value of or troubles caused by an element of human character. For example, some common premises include, “Greed leads to Self-Destruction,” and “True love overcomes all obstacles.”
A story without a premise seems pointless, but a story with an overstated message comes off as preachy. While a premise is a good way to understand what a story is trying to prove, it provides precious little help on how to go about proving it.
Let’s begin by examining the components of “premise” and then laying out a sure-fire method for developing an emotional argument that will lead your reader or audience to the moral conclusions of your story without hitting them over the head.
All premises grow from character. Usually, the premise revolves around the Main Character. In fact, we might define the Main Character as the one who grapples with the story’s moral dilemma.
A Main Character’s moral dilemma may be a huge issue, such as the ultimate change in Scrooge when he leaves behind his greedy ways and becomes a generous, giving person. Or, the dilemma may be small, as when Luke Skywalker finally gains enough faith in himself to turn off the targeting computer and trust his own instincts in the original Star Wars movie (Episode IV). Either way, if the premise isn’t there at all, the Main Character will seem more like some guy dealing with issues, than an example in human development from whom we can learn.
Traditionally, premises such as these are stated in the form, “This leads to That.” In the examples above, the premises would be “Greed leads to Self Destruction,” and “Trusting in Oneself leads to Success.” The Point of each premise is the human quality being explored: “Greed” in the case of Scrooge and “Self Trust” with Luke.
We can easily see these premises in A Christmas Carol and Star Wars, but what if you were simply given either of them and told to write a story around them? Premises are great for boiling a story’s message down to its essence, but are not at all useful for figuring out how to develop a message in the first place.
So how do we create a theme in a way that will guide us in how to develop it in our story, and also sway our audience without being overbearing? First, we must add something to the traditional “This leads to That” form of the premise. Beside having a thematic Point like “Greed” we’re going to add a Counterpoint – the opposite of the point – in this case, “Generosity.”
Arguing to your audience that Greed is Bad creates a one-sided argument. But arguing the relative merits of Greed vs. Generosity provides both sides of the argument and lets your audience decide for itself. Crafting such an argument will lead your reader or audience to your conclusions without forcing it upon them. Therefore, you will be more likely to convince them rather than having them reject your premise as a matter of principle, making themselves impervious to your message rather than swallowing it whole.
To create such an argument, follow these steps:
1. Determine what you want your story’s message to be
We all have human qualities we admire and others we despise. Some might be as large as putting oneself first no matter how much damage it does to others. Some might be as small as someone who borrows things and never gets around to returning them. Regardless, your message at this stage will simply take the form, “Human Quality X is Bad,” or “Human Quality Y is Good.”
If you are going to create a message that is passionate, look to what truly irks you, or truly inspires you, and select that human quality to give to your Main Character. Then, you’ll find it far easier to come up with specific examples of that quality to include in your story, and you will write about it with vigor.
This is your chance to get up on the soapbox. Don’t waste it on some grand classic human trait that really means nothing to you personally. Pick something you really care about and sound off by showing how that trait ennobles or undermines your Main Character.
As a last resort, look to your characters and plot and let them suggest your thematic point. See what kinds of situations are going to arise in your story; what kinds of obstacles will be faced. Think of the human qualities that would make the effort to achieve the story’s goal the most difficult, exacerbate the obstacles, and gum up the works. Give that trait to your Main Character, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised to see it take on a life of its own.
Of course, you may already know your message before you even get started. You may, in fact, have as your primary purpose in creating the story the intent to make a point about a particular human quality.
No matter how you come up with your message, once you have it, move on to step 2.
2. Determine your Counterpoint.
As described earlier, the Counterpoint is the opposite of the Point. So, if your story’s message is “Being Closed-Minded is Bad,” then your Point is “Being Closed Minded,” and your Counterpoint is “Being Open Minded.” Similarly, if your message is “Borrowing things from others and not returning them is Bad,” then your counter point is “Borrowing things from other and returning them.”
Note that we didn’t include the value judgment part of the message (i.e. “Good” or “Bad”) as part of the point or counterpoint. The idea is to let the audience arrive at that conclusion for themselves. The point and counterpoint simply show both sides of the argument. Our next step will be to work out how we are going to lead the audience to come to the conclusion we want them to have.
3. Show how well the Point does vs. the Counterpoint.
The idea here is to see each of the two human qualities (point and counterpoint) in action in your story to illustrate how well each one fares. To this end, come up with as many illustrations as you can of each.
For example, in A Christmas Carol, we see scrooge deny an extension on a loan, refuse to allow Cratchet a piece of coal, decline to make a donation to the poor. Each of these moments fully illustrates the impact of the thematic point of “Greed.” Similarly, in the same story, we see Feziwhig spending his money for a Christmas Party for his employees, Scrooge’s nephew inviting him to dinner, and Cratchet giving of his time to Tiny Tim. Generosity is seen in action as well.
Each instance of Greed propagates ill feelings. Each instance of Generosity propagates positive feelings. As the illustrations layer upon one another over the course of the story, the emotional argument is made that Greed is not a positive trait, whereas Generosity is.
4. Avoid comparing the Point and Counterpoint directly.
Perhaps the greatest mistake in making a thematic argument is to directly compare the relative value of the point and counterpoint. If this is done, it takes all decision away from the audience and puts it right in the hands of the author. The effect is to have the author repeatedly saying, “Generosity is better than Greed… Generosity is better than Greed,” like a sound loop.
A better way is to show Greed at work in its own scenes, and Generosity at work in completely different scenes. In this manner, the audience is left to drawn its own conclusions. And while showing Greed as always wholly bad and Generosity as always wholly good may create a rather melodramatic message, at least the audience won’t feel as if you’ve crammed it down its throat!
5. Shade the degree that Point and Counterpoint are Good or Bad.
Because you are going to include multiple instances or illustrations of the goodness or badness or your point and counter point, you don’t have to try to prove your message completely in each individual scene.
Rather, let the point be really bad sometimes, and just a little negative others. In this manner, Greed may start out a just appearing to be irritating, but by the end of the story may affect life and death issues. Or, Greed may be as having devastating effects, but ultimately only be a minor thorn in people’s sides. And, of course, you may choose to jump around, showing some examples of major problems with Greed and others that see it in not so dark a light. Similarly, not every illustration of your Counterpoint has to carry the same weight.
In the end, the audience will subconsciously average together all of the illustrations of the point, and also average together all the illustrations of the counterpoint, and arrive at a relative value of one to the other.
For example, if you create an arbitrary scale of +5 down to -5 to assign a value of being REALLY Good (+5) or REALLY Bad (-5), Greed might start out at -2 in one scene, be -4 in other, and -1 in a third. The statement here is that Greed is always bad, but not totally AWFUL, just bad.
Then, you do the same with the counterpoint. Generosity starts out as a +4, then shows up as a +1, and finally ends up as a +3. This makes the statement that Generosity is Good. Not the end-all of the Greatest Good, but pretty darn good!
At the end of such a story, instead of making the blanket statement that Greed is Bad and Generosity is Good, you are simply stating that Generosity is better than Greed. That is a lot easier for an audience to accept, since human qualities in real life are seldom all good or all bad.
But there is more you can do with this. What if Generosity is mostly good, but occasionally has negative effects? Suppose you show several scenes illustrating the impact of Generosity, but in one of them, someone is going to share his meal, but in the process, drops the plate, the food is ruined, and no one gets to eat. Well, in that particular case, Greed would have at least fed one of them! So, you might rate that scene on your arbitrary scale as a -2 for Generosity.
Similarly, Greed might actually be shown as slightly Good in a scene. But at the end of the day, all of the instances of Greed still add up to a negative. For example, scene one of Greed might be a -4, scene two a +2 and scene three a -5. Add them together and Greed comes out to be a -7 overall. And that is how the audience will see it as well.
This approach gives us the opportunity to do some really intriguing things in our thematic argument. What if both Greed and Generosity were shown to be bad, overall? By adding up the numbers of the arbitrary scale, you could argue that every time Greed is used, it causes problems, but ever time Generosity is used, it also causes problems. But in the end, Greed is a -12 and Generosity is only a -3, proving that Generosity, in this case, is the lesser of two evils.
Or what if they both added up Good in the end? Then your message might be that Generosity is the greater of two goods! But they could also end up equally bad, or equally good (Greed at -3 and Generosity at -3, for example). This would be a message that in this story’s particular situations, being Greedy or Generous doesn’t really matter, either way; you’ll make the situation worse.
In fact, both might end up with a rating of zero, making the statement that neither Greed nor Generosity has any real impact on the situation, in the end.
Now, you have the opportunity to create dilemmas for your Main Character that are far more realistic and far less moralistic. And by having both point and counterpoint spend some time in the Good column and some time in the Bad column over the course of your story, you are able to mirror the real life values of our human qualities and their impact on those around us.
The word “narrative” is bandied about today as a catch all for stories, both fictional and in the real world. But what does it really mean? In fact, “narrative” means four distinctly different things that share the same root.
The four faces of narrative can be thought of as Creative Writing, Story Development, Story Structure and Narrative Science. These labels describe a spectrum that runs from the passion of self-expression at one side to the logic of self-awareness at the other. Let’s briefly stare into the face of each….
Creative Writing
As human beings, we are all driven by the desire to share our passions and understandings with others. We want them to empathize with our feelings and follow our logic: to know who we are and to see the world from our points of view.
While these drives are true for any means of communication, creative writing is the process of expressing ourselves through words. What we create might range from a simple emotional juxtaposition of words intended only to represent what is in the heart (the written equivalent of modern art) to a highly structured story with a fully developed argument and a clearly defined point.
Regardless of the balance between passion and point, this first face of narrative is the Muse itself.
Story Development
Most written communication does not flow onto the page devoid of consideration. Rather, the words come forth at times, and at other times one gives thought to how the concepts expressed are hanging together and where they might best lead next.
When an author, be it a personal diarist or successful screenwriter, cogitates either in advance of writing, during the process, or after the fact in order to improve the work in another draft, he or she is wearing the face of Story Development.
Story Structure
Unless wordplay is random, unless there is no intent involved, then the face of Story Structure rears its head. And the head, not the heart is where it belongs. Story Structure describes the underlying mechanics of a story, the cogs and processes that lead an audience down a path and bring them to embrace (or at least understand) a message about life and the best way to lead it.
Story structure exists because those cogs and processes provide all the essential techniques and points of view that we, as humans, use in our own minds and in our associations with others to identify problems, refine our understanding of them, and seek to discover the solutions that will resolve them.
Narrative Science
If we look beyond the conventions of story structure to ask why these same cogs and processes appear repeatedly in narrative after narrative, we discover that story structure is a model of the mind itself. Every character, plot point, thematic issue or genre mood is a facet of our own minds, isolated in nature and made tangible so that we might better understand ourselves.
At the most basic level, narrative science allows us to understand human psychology, both of individuals and how when we come together toward a common problem, we self-organize into group minds in which each individual comes to specialize in once aspect of our narrative selves in order to bring the greatest clarity to the group as a whole. In essence, when we gave into the face of narrative science, we stare into a mirror.
Though I might conclude this brief introduction to the four faces of narrative with some grand intellectual framework, my own Muse calls at the moment. And so I rather bring this to a close with a short bit of my own creative writing, pertinent to the subject:
In Verse
by Melanie Anne Phillips
If you could look into infinity,
all you’d see was the back of your head.
And if you were living forever,
you’d clearly be nothing but dead.
But if you step out of the universe,
where time is the flip-side of space,
You could be everywhere,
though you’d never been there,
and you’d stare,
right back into your face.
The success or failure in achieving the goal is an important but short moment at the end of the story. So how is interest maintained over the course of the story? By the progress of the quest toward the goal. This progress is measured by how many of the requirements have been met and how many remain.
Requirements can be logistic, such as needing to obtain five lost rubies that fit in the idol and unlock the door to the treasure. Or, they can be passionate, such as needing to perform enough selfless acts to win the heart of the princess.
The important thing is that the requirements are clear enough to be easily understood and measurable enough to be “marked off the list” as the story progresses.
In this step, list the requirements that need to be met in order for the story’s overall goal to be achieved.
Red herrings are designed to make something appear more or less important than it really is. Several good examples of this technique can be found in the motion picture The Fugitive. In one scene a police car flashes its lights and siren at Dr. Kimble, but only to tell him to move along. In another scene, Kimble is in his apartment when an entire battalion of police show up with sirens blazing and guns drawn. It turns out they were really after the son of his landlord and had no interest in him at all. Red herrings can inject storytelling tension where more structurally related weaving may be lethargic.
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.
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.
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.
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