.:. Another Likely Story

Yes, everyone and their writing group has read this, but whateves, it still deserves my marginal bump to its pagerank.  Originally posted at The Pixar Touch.

#1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.

#2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.

#3: Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.

#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.

#6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?

#7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.

#8: Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.

#9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.

#10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.

#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.

#12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.

#13: Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.

#14: Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.

#15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.

#16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.

#17: No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on - it’ll come back around to be useful later.

#18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.

#19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.

#20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?

#21: You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?

#22: What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

Me: I hate every single word I've ever written.
Writer Friend: Good.  It means you're developing taste.

And she's right, and that's what we were discussing.  There comes a stage between taking levels of Writer where the clouds part but instead of receiving some kind of beautiful vision, what I see instead is ... all my screwups and all the potential pitfalls in front of me.  But I don't actually know how to not screw up, because that's the next level.  There's no way out except punching on through, so yes, I'll just have to write it out, because I want that next level more than anything else.

Comments closed as this post is a reminder to myself, not a complaint.

Quote as found on Diane Duane's blog:

“Lightly men talk of saying what they mean. Often when he was teaching me to write in Greek the Fox would say, ‘Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that’s the whole art and joy of words.’ A glib saying. When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the centre of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you’ll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”

-- C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

"... the Osbourne Brothers' bluegrass classic, 'Rocky Top' [says] in two lines what poets and writers 'Anna Karenina' themselves to death to convey, about a girl who's 'wild as a mink, but sweet as soda pop/I still dream about that.'" -- Singer-Songwriter Neko Case.

And that is the kindest, cleverest way I have ever been reminded to cut down on the purple prose a tad.

A really nice post, with links to other posts, about how learning and growing has got nothing to do with the state of "flow."  It's when things are hard that we're learning.

... the feeling of flow is different than the feeling of getting better. If all you seek is flow, then you’re not going to get better. There is no avoiding the deliberate strain of real improvement.

Writing gets harder as I get better.  But that's okay, because it means I'm getting better.  I'm writing a techno-thriller right now, and it's like pulling teeth to write, but I am determined, because see above.  Also, it's all kinds of fun, because nobody said it couldn't be hard and fantastically enjoyable at the same time.

I highly recommend the blog in question (Study Hacks), by the way, as I find it to be insightful wrt the learning and practicing process.