Knowing your story

Know the story before you fall in love with your first sentence. If you don’t know the story before you begin the story, what kind of a storyteller are you? Just an ordinary kind, just a mediocre kind – making it up as you go along, like a common liar.

JOHN IRVING

The task of learning, rediscovering and writing

Today, I picked up a short story I wrote about four years ago. It was perhaps one of the first short stories I wrote. At the time, I didn't like it very much - in fact, I didn't like much of what I wrote - but there were people who did see something in it, even if it wasn't perfect, and their comments helped shape the story into something that was more ordered.

Re-visiting the story and the critiques it received, helped me to figure out that I was missing some steps in creating what is called the story: That it takes far more than a little creativity to craft and hone words into something that is readable and structured in a way that is admissible as a story. (In my rather humble opinion, Katherine Mansfield could do it, where Woolf couldn't).

What I learnt from looking over it from such a distance - four years is a long time, after all - is just how much I have continued to learn about what actually makes a successful story; how to structure and plot, and that even when writing shorts, the same basic principles of storycraft still apply. In other words, there is no short-cut to writing a story.

Now. The task at hand is to re-write a long-forgotten story using these newly discovered writing tools. 

How to Live a Better Story

This absolutely wonderful post at Simple Mom, is an inspiration; a breath of fresh air and a challenge to blow off the old, dusty cobwebs to think about the way life works, or indeed how it happens to some people and not to others. The challenge is to think about your life in terms of the type of story you are currently living and the life you would like to be fashioning for yourself.  The beginning is all about asking the right questions, and in preparation for this, a dream list of whatifs. Here's my list of five:

What if I sold my house and traveled the world for a year

What if I took life a little less seriously

What if I found one fact or object every day to be astonished at/by

What if I worked harder at my daily writing routine

What if I could never be hurt by the words and actions of others

The original article is well worth visiting. I love it.

The World of Words - religion

I love the way people use words, and all the more fascinating if it's a off-beat usage. When I came across a quote by the Dalai Lama, I couldn't resist exploring the word 'religion'.

It's a word that conjures up images of extreme opinion, of having faith in something that isn't seen, an inner world of peace, a higher order, the reading and interpretation of words that cause people to disagree with passion. 

Religion - from the online dictionary

a. Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.

b. A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship.

2. The life or condition of a person in a religious order.

3. A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.

4. A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion

The quote below is a reminder that religion needn't necessarily denote spirituality. It's something you carry around without belief in fastidious wordsmithery; it's an intrinsic part of the person you are. It can be used to describe an ability, a characteristic of personality, and therefore something that empowers you.

“My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”

Dalai Lama

Kafkaesque: from the novelist Kafka: Kafka-like

Kafkaesque

Resembling situations from the writings of Franz Kafka, marked by a disorienting, senseless and often menacing complexity (1883-1924), German-speaking Jewish novelist born in Prague, Austria-Hungary.

His most enduring works include The Metamorphosis; a story about a travelling salesman, George Samsa, who wakes to find himself transformed into a giant fly-type insect.  Kafka talks to the reader in terms of nightmarish visions, via a dream-like state where anything could happen for no apparent reason: the chaos theory of literature.

Possibly my favourite of his novels is The Trial. It's here we see the precursor to the Orwell's 1984. The protagonist in this hell is arrested, but has no idea why or even, by whom. The sense of disorientation is perhaps best illustrated in this scene when he visits the painter, Titorelli;

“…he rushed after her, seized her by the skirts, whirled her once around her head and then set her down before the door among the other girls…”

As far as sense and understanding goes, it flies out of the window. We are in the same dream-like state that Kafka has created, and the laws by which he is writing are transcended for the greater good of this fictive dream, and does it work? Hell, yes. What Kafka does is place the reader squarely in the nightmare reality of Joseph K, to feel his confusion, his isolation, as he finds himself at the mercy of totalitarian rule. Reading the novel isn't a light undertaking, this is no Alice in Wonderland. Upon entering the dream, the reader is immediately filled with a sense of unease, not least because it touches our most basic humanistic fears.

Reading a Kafka novel is the equivalent of finding the normative from the chaos that is M C Escher's Relativity

The Art of the Multi-tasker

While planning for my new project, I realised that the first part is relatively easy. You have ideas for two or three characters in your head, they have names, faces, characteristics. Heck, something even happens (this, the inciting incident on the plot chart), and then it takes a bit more effort to think of something beyond what it was that demanded your attention in the first place.

The plot arc looks lop-sided, with one-third scribbled on and the other four-fifths blank, that's how much logic you're left with when the imagination takes over! But it feels like there's nothing else to write about. The mind goes suddenly blank, and then you think...

Then what!

When the question is supposed to be

What if?


Today, the answer seemed to be to write what is already known about the story - the introduction. I knew that I had a cracking opening sequence, and wanted to get it onto paper. I wrote a few hundred words that exploded onto the page, introducing the main characters and their reaction to the inciting incident, whilst creating a book full of questions. And now, I had a bit more substance to progress with the initial goal of the day: The planning process.

Perhaps writing and planning aren't meant to be tasks undertaken in isolation, but carried out simultaneously.

Writing tip

Quickly write your first draft, understanding it's only a starting point, and  not a polished piece of faultless prose that's being created - it's the beginning of a journey.

Brainstorming

I was ready to create an adult world where love and romance is hot and steamy, but it didn't materialise. Instead, I came up with ideas for a YA novel, and so, this is the story that I'm going to go with - call it gut instinct or whatever else you like, but if that's the story that arrives in your head, and knocks to be let in, it must, at least be given some worthy consideration.

Brainstorming is a funny old pastime.

Grounding the Plot

At the moment, I'm at the plotting stage of a new writing project. I always find the beginning very difficult to navigate. There are too many possibilities wandering around; the imagination becomes something that is wild and untameable. Some ideas are far too fanciful, some breathtaking with no real substance, some meandering forever, going nowhere at all. It seems a gigantic task to pluck several beings, with given characteristics and house them in their settlements, whether colourful and exotic lands, watching them soar the skies, ramble through forests and over mountains, or make them urban creatures living in squalid accommodation, allowing them to walk along dark, creepy alleys and dull-lit streets, drinking in lowly pubs and visit seedy motels.

Sounds like being a kid in a candy store, but it can become overwhelming. In trying to impose some order on the chaos, I have my plot graph already lined up, and a to-do list for when the brainstorming session dies down.

1. Outline story in two or three paragraphs.

2. Plot five point arc: -

• Inciting incident
• Primary incident
• Midpoint
• Climactic Event
• Resolution

* I am also re-visiting a favourite book:

Plot and Structure, by James Scott Bell