Better Storytelling Part Two

In the first part of this series I discussed the need for a strong purpose behind a character’s goals. In this post I will be talking about competition and rivalry.

There are stories where characters are isolated or are in competition with themselves. These kinds of stories are hard to write and can easily come across as self-important and self-indulgent. Everything’s about him, nobody else counts, he has to do it all by himself.

That’s usually not the intention, but it’s hard not to come over like that if every sentence starts with the same subject.

However, once you bring in a rival to your main character, things not only become more dynamic, they also help the reader see the main character more clearly.

Read more »

Forcing Readers To Like Characters: Admiration

No matter what kind of personality a character has, helping others will win approval. Batman and Superman have very different approaches to fighting crime, but both are regarded as admirable.

As long as you show the character being helpful, you can get away with all sorts of other questionable behaviour.

This is sometimes referred to as ‘save the cat’ or ‘pat the dog’. You see the character do something nice and you like them for it.

But this is the concept at its most basic, and most transparent.  A superhero who helps random people makes sense, it’s part of the job. An accountant who suddenly risks his life to get a cat out of a tree to make your character come across like a good guy, is going to feel like the obvious 80s movie device it is.

Read more »

Reader Meets Character

In order for a reader to like a character that reader has to feel like they know the kind of person the character is.

This is easiest to achieve using archetypes, stereotypes and clichés. The cynical but brilliant detective, the unfairly betrayed wife, the shy but sweet nerd... You feel like you know these characters because you really have known them, in one guise or another, all your life.

And while the received wisdom is too avoid the overly familiar, I don’t think it can be denied that lots of successful books use character-types we’ve all seen many, many, many times before (maybe with an added twist, but not always); and these variations on Cinderella or Philip Marlowe or whatever can be very successful.

But often the reason writers fall back on the tried and tested is because they don’t really know how to get the reader to know the character quickly without resorting to the shorthand of referencing traits already out there.

Read more »

Putting Emotion In Story

The travails and adventures of your characters should have more than a superficial effect on the reader. Ideally, the impact should be somewhere between enthralling and devastating.

But how do you convert words on a page to tears in eyes, lumps in throats or hearts in mouths?

There are two basic ways to transfer emotion from page to reader: sympathetic and empathetic.

Read more »

Good Endings Are Hard To Find

Readers want you to tie up all the loose ends, bring things to a close, make it satisfying and logical, and they want it to feel right.

And they don’t want to hear any nonsense about realism and how sometimes in life there is no answer, no proper endings, no closure. But then, ending a story isn’t about realism.

And they all lived happily ever after... What the hell does that even mean?

The end is just a place for passengers to disembark. Journey’s end. But what you need to have achieved in order to call it an ending isn’t always so obvious.

Read more »

Good Story Requires Incomplete Exposition

Exposition is where you explain things to the reader in the text. It’s a necessary part of storytelling to help the reader understand what’s going on in a story, especially when it comes to stuff the reader won’t automatically know. The MC might work for a government department and the reader needs to know what the department does, so you have to find a way to get that info to them. When handled badly it can read very clunky.

But there is also another expositional technique that gives the reader information in a very high impact and emotional manner. This is where you reveal something that the reader is able to convert into an understanding of the situation without you having to explain it.

Read more »

Two Sides To Every Story. At Least.

Tension is a key element of drama. Tension is a question. It’s an outcome you want to know. It’s anticipation. Tension comes in different sizes and shapes.

“There’s a bomb on the bus!” is a different kind of tension to “Are you waiting for someone?”

The big, explosive stuff (physical or emotional) takes care of itself. You may need to manage it, but tension will be present. My daughter’s been kidnapped! — very hard to underplay.

This post is about working tension into smaller, more intimate scenes.

Read more »

Writing A Bottle Scene

There are times in a story when not much is going on. Your character is isolated or apart from everyone else, away from activity or the main plot.

Readers may find this sort of scene dull or pedestrian and the suggestion will be to zhoosh it up somehow. This advice will most times be right. However, sometimes you want a scene to be low key or concentrated down to a few ingredients.

There’s nothing wrong with this, often the strongest character moments come in the quieter moments. But that doesn’t mean you should have long scenes over a cup of coffee and endless banter, nor does it mean you need a bomb on a bus and SWAT teams flying in through windows to make it exciting.

One of the best ways to see how to make the most of a limited situation is to take a look at what TV shows call a ‘bottle episode’.

Read more »

Making Your Readers Care Like Your Characters Care

In any story the main character will have something on their mind. They will worry and fret based on how important ‘the thing’ is to them.

Just because they happen to think this thing is worth obsessing over or getting upset about doesn’t mean the reader will also.

Showing the character really worked up about this thing won’t automatically make the reader feel the same way.

Read more »

Writing Great Characters

You know how important a great main character is to a story. Sherlock Holmes or Elizabeth Bennett or Becky Sharp. Whether they’re fighting at the edge of a cliff or having a quiet moment of reflection or making a total ass of themselves, you want to be there with them. That’s the sort of thing you want to create, right?

Read more »

Finding Your Voice

Having a strong voice that people will enjoy spending time with is a key part of writing a story. Lots of books on writing will encourage you to have a unique and distinct voice. Not many of them will tell you how to go about developing one.

So how do you make sure your voice is strong and consistent and interesting?

Here’s how I would do it.

Read more »

Ebook Evolution

Personally I don’t believe you need to win the reader over with your first line or your first page. I don’t buy a book sight unseen, start reading without knowing what it’s about, and if I’m unimpressed by the first 250 words, chuck it in the bin.

The only people who read like that are agents.

Not that I’m not fussy about what I read. I may skim through boring bits, or give up on a well written book if it annoys me with its subject matter or unconvincing characters. But I’m not so demanding that I expect immediate brilliance from word one.

Read more »

Drama Is Not Optional

Drama is the key ingredient to all stories.

Drama is wanting something you don’t have (or have and don’t want).

The harder the journey, the obstructions, the opposition, the greater the drama.

If people tell you your story isn’t dramatic enough, it probably means things are either too easy for the character, or what they are in pursuit of doesn’t seem worth the effort.

An easy way to make things more dramatic is to raise the stakes. More to lose, more drama. Harder to get, more drama. Better opposition, better drama.

However...

Read more »

Coincidence Is Part Of Storytelling

Coincidence is an important part of most stories. People have to meet, things have to happen at the appropriate time, connections need to be made.

In some cases ridiculous coincidences that would never happen in real life are the only way to make a story work in a satisfying manner. The need for fantasy/wish fulfilment in storytelling is a very strong instinct within all of us. It’s why we like stories in the first place.

Read more »

An Author's Art

There are some works of art that you will love. You can see why this book or film or painting or whatever has the reputation it has. You feel it.

Then there those things that are admirable, that are impressive, but your appreciation is detached and objective. You get it, but you don’t feel it.

And of course there are some works or art you have no idea what all the fuss is about. That’s natural—after all, art is subjective and we all have our own preferences.

When it comes to making art—in the case of myself and most of the readers of this blog that art being in the form of the written word—what kind of art do you want to make?

Read more »

Condition Of Your Transition

The simplest kind of story is where the goal of the main character is clear and all-encompassing. He has nothing else to distract him, at least not for very long. It’s all about the thing. 

This kind of story is usually a genre piece, a crime, a romance, a mystery, something like that is driving the MC, and their emotional state is pretty easy to work out.

However, not all stories are that single-minded. Often a character will switch moods, or have more than one thing to deal with. And when they switch, whether because of time passing, or having to deal with different people, the writer has to transition the reader from one mind-set to another.

This is a good thing, even the most engaging stories can become monotonous if there’s no variation in tone. But if you just go from one emotional state to another without due care, it can be very jarring for the reader.

Read more »

Writing Without Too Much On The Nose

Story shouldn’t be obvious or predictable. Nobody enjoys being told about things that just happen in a nice convenient fashion, no matter how realistic and lifelike it might be. Don’t write on-the-nose.

On the other hand, story shouldn’t be vague or obtuse. Nobody enjoys being confused or bored, no matter how brilliantly the baffling events of Chapter One are explained in Chapter Sixteen. Don’t write wishy-washy.

Don’t be obvious. Don’t be vague. So what does that leave?

Read more »

Hello The Future

For my last post of the year I thought I'd put down how I see things going in 2012 (should be good for a laugh in twelve months' time). I've always been enamoured of culture and the arts, and I think the battle between what Old Money wants to keep the same, and what New Technology wants to see take over, is a fascinating one. My hope is things come to a head in 2012. I'd like to be part of the generation that saw the world change (hopefully into something better).

I already spend most of my time interacting with people I've never met, I think the society that could develop would be a great way to bypass the vested interests that tell us what to think and what to buy and who to hate.

Read more »

Dead Story Walking

You’re writing a scene and it’s active and energetic. The character has a goal, he’s motivated and the stakes are high. He’s putting maximum effort into getting the job done.

And yet...

On his tail are one or more highly incentivised adversaries, doing whatever it takes to bring down our hero.

And yet...

Everything is in place, all the elements for a good scene are present. And yet... it doesn’t work. The action feels flat, the outcome feels predictable, and even though it’s all vivid and clearly conveyed, it’s boring. Why?

Read more »

Chapter One: Magician by Raymond E. Feist

The latest genre in my series of first chapter dissections is Fantasy. As with the other books I’ve analysed (here), I will attempt to work out how a debut novelist managed to create an opening to his story that successfully pulls readers in.

Raymond E. Feist’s Magician (1982) was hugely successful, and is still considered one of the great fantasy books today. Coming up with a swords and sorcery epic at a time when fantasy of that kind had pretty much been done to death shows there’s always room for more stories, in any genre. It's such a good book that it encourages you to read the many sequels and follow-ups, all of which are terrible.

The storm had broken.

Read more »