250 Things You Should Know About Writing Read online

  Story is also not a square peg jammed in a circle hole. Every tale has an organic fit. The medium matters in that it lets you operate within known walls and described boundaries.

  5. Stories Have Shape, Even When They Don't Mean To

  You put your hand in a whirling clod of wet clay, you're shaping it. Even when you don't mean to. Sometimes you find a shape the way a blind man studies a face. Other times you know the shape at the outset and move your hands to mold the tale you choose to tell. Neither way is better than the other. But the story never doesn't have a shape. A story always has structure, even when you resist such taxonomy.

  6. The Story Is A Map; Plot Is The Route You Choose

  A story is so much more than the thing you think it is. I lay down a map, that map has a host of possibilities. Sights unseen. Unexpected turns. The plot is just the course I... well, plot upon that map. It's a sequence. Of events. Of turns. Of landmarks. The story goes beyond mere sequence. The story is about what I'll experience. About who I'll meet. The story is the world, the characters, the feel, the time, the context. Trouble lies in conflating plot with story. (Even though I've done it here already. See how easy it is to do?)

  7. On The Subject Of Originality

  The storyteller will find no original plots. But original stories are limitless. It's like LEGO blocks. Go buy a box of LEGO bricks and you'll discover that you have no unique pieces -- by which I mean, these are the same pieces that everybody gets. But how you arrange them is where it gets interesting. That's where it's all fingerprints and snowflakes and unicorn scat. Plot is just a building block. Story is that which you build.

  8. The Bridge Between Author And Audience

  The audience wants to feel connected to the story. They want to see themselves inside it. Whether as mirror image or as doppelganger (or as sinister mustachio'ed Bizarroworld villain!). The story draws a line between the storyteller and the audience -- you're letting them see into you and they're unknowingly finding you inside them. Uhh, not sexually, of course. You little dirty birdies, you.

  9. But Also, Fuck The Audience Right In Its Ear

  The audience isn't stupid. It just doesn't know what it wants. Oh, it thinks it knows. The desires of the audience are ever at war with the story's needs, and the story's needs are, in a curious conundrum, the audience's needs. You read that right: this means it's the audience versus the audience, with the storyteller as grim-faced officiant. In this struggle, fiction is born. The conflict of audience versus writer and audience versus itself is the most fundamental conflict of them all. The audience wants the protagonist to be happy, to be well. They want things to work out. They want conflict to resolve. The story cannot have these things and still be a good story. Good story thrives on protagonists in pain. On things failing to go the way everyone hopes. On what is born from conflict and struggle, not merely from the resolution. The audience wants a safety blanket. It's the storyteller's job to take that safety blanket and choke them with it until they experience a profound narrative orgasm. ... did I just compare storytelling to erotic asphyxiation? I did, didn't I? Eeesh. Let's just pretend I said something else and move on.

  10. No Tale Survives A Vacuum Of Conflict

  Conflict is the food that feeds the reader. It's a spicy hell-broth that nourishes. A story without conflict is a story without story. As the saying goes, there's no 'there' there. The storyteller has truly profound powers, though: he can create conflict in the audience by making them feel a battle of emotions, by driving them forward with mystery, by angering them. The storyteller operates best when he's a little bit of a dick.

  11. The Battle Between Tension and Release

  Tension is how you ramp to conflict, how you play with it, how you maneuver around it, how you tap-dance up to the cliff's edge, do a perilous pirouette, and pull back from the precipice. You're constantly tightening the screws. Escalation of tension is how a story builds. From bad to worse. From worse to it can't get any worse. From it can't get any worse to, no, no, we were wrong, it's still getting worse because now I'm being stampeded by horses that are also covered in burning napalm. But it isn't just a straight line from bad to awful. It rises to a new plateau, then falls. Having just witnessed it, birth is a great (if gooey) analog. Each contraction has its own tension and release, but the contractions also establish a steady pattern upward. Some have said narrative arcs are sexual, ejaculatory, climactic. True, in some ways. But birth has more pain. More blood. More mad euphoria. And stories always need those things.

  12. Peaks, Valleys, Slashes And Whorls

  It's not just tension. All parts of a story are subject to ups and downs. Rhythm and pacing are meaningful. A good story is never a straight line. The narrative is best when organically erratic. One might suggest that a story's narrative rhythm is its fingerprint: unique to it alone.

  13. In A Story, Tell Only The Story

  The story you tell should be the story you tell. Don't wander far afield. That's not to say you cannot digress. Digressions are their own kind of peak (or, in many cases, valley). But those digressions serve the whole. Think of stories then not as one line but rather, a skein of many lines. Lines that come together to form a pattern, a blanket, a shirt, a hilarious novelty welcome mat. Only lines that serve the end are woven into play. Digressions, yes. Deviations, no.

  14. Big Ideas Do Well In Small Spaces

  The audience cannot relate to big ideas. A big idea is, well, too big. Like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Or Unicron, the giant Transformer-that-is-also-a-planet. (I wonder if anyone ever calls him "Unicorn," and if so, does that irritate him?) You must go macro to micro. Big ideas are shown through small stories: a single character's experience through the story is so much better than the 30,000-foot-view.

  15. Backstory Is A Frozen Lake Whose Ice Is Wafer Thin

  Backstory in narrative -- and, ultimately, exposition in general -- is sometimes a grim necessity, but it is best to approach it like a lake of thin ice. Quick delicate steps across to get to the other side. Linger too long or grow heavy in the telling and the ice will crack and you will plunge into the frigid depths. And then you get hypothermia. And then you will be eaten by an Ice Hag. True story.

  16. Characters Are The Vehicle That Carry Us Into (And Through) The Tale

  The best stories are the stories of people, and that means it's people -- characters -- that get us through the story. They are the dune buggies and Wave Runners on which the audience rides. Like Yoda on Luke's back. Above all else, a story must have interesting characters, characters who the audience can see themselves in, even if only in a small way. Failing that, what's the point?

  17. Villains Have Mothers

  Unless we're talking about SkyNet, villains were children once upon a time. Which means they have mothers. Imagine that: even the meanest characters have mothers, mothers who may even have loved them once. They're people, not mustache-twirling sociopaths born free from a vagina made of fiery evil. Nobody sees themselves as a villain. We're all solipsistic. We're all the heroes of our own tales. Even villains.

  18. Heroes Have Broken Toys

  Just as villains see themselves doing good, heroes are capable of doing or being bad. Complexity of character -- believable complexity -- is a feature, not a bug. Nothing should be so simple as unswerving heroism, nor should it be as cut-and-dry as straight-up-malefic motherfuckery. Black and white grows weary. More interesting is how dark the character's many shades of gray may become before brightening.

  19. Strip Skin Off Bones To See How It Works

  A story can be cut to a thin slice of steak and still be juicy as anything. To learn how to tell stories, tell small stories as well as large ones. Find a way to tell a story in as few beats as possible. Look for its constituent parts. Put them together, take them apart. See how it plays and lays. Some limbs are vestigial.

  20. Beginnings Are For Assholes...

  The audience begins where you tell them. They don't need to begin at the beginning. If I tell the s
tory of a Brooklynite, I don't need to speak of his birth, or the origins of Brooklyn, or how the Big Bang barfed up asteroids and dinosaurs and a flock of incestuous gods. You start where it matters. You start where it's most interesting. You begin as late in the tale as you can. The party guest who comes late is always the most interesting one. Even still, it's worth noting...

  21. ...If You Jump Too Fast Into Waters Too Deep And The Audience Drowns

  Jump too swiftly into a narrative and the story grows muddled. We have to become invested first. Go all high-karate-action and we have no context for the characters who are in danger, and no context means we don't care, and if we don't care then we're already packing our bags in the first five minutes or five pages. The audience always needs something very early to get their hands around. This always comes back to the character. Give them reason to care right at the gate. Otherwise, why would they walk through it?

  22. Treat Place Like Character

  For setting to matter, it must come alive. It must be made to get up and dance, so shoot at its feet. It has a face. It has a personality. It has life. When setting becomes character, the audience will care.

  23. Always Ask, Why Do I Want To Tell This?

  Storytellers tell specific stories for a reason. You want to scare the kids around a campfire. You want to impress your friends with your exploits. You want to get in somebody's pants. You hope to make someone cry, or make them cheer, or convey to them a message. Know why you're telling it. Know what it’s about -- to you above all else, because then you can show everybody else what it's about. Find that invisible tether that ties you to the story. That tether matters.

  24. It's Okay To Bury The Lede

  Every story is about something. Man's inhumanity to man. How history repeats itself. How karate-ghosts are awesome and how you don't fuck with a karate-ghost. But you don't need to slap the audience about the head and neck with it. The truth of the story lives between the lines. This is why Jesus invented "subtext."

  25. Writing Is A Craft, But Storytelling Is An Art

  Writing isn't magic. Writing is math. It's placing letters and words and sentences after one another to form a grand equation. Writing is the abracadabra -- the power word made manifest -- but the story that results is the magic. That equation we piece together tells a tale and the arrangement that leads to that tale is where the true art lies, because it takes an ice scraper to pretense and throws an invisible-yet-present tow line from present to past. Writing is craft and mechanics. Storytelling is art and magic.

  25 Things You Should Know About… Character

  1. The Character As Fulcrum: All Things Rest Upon Him

  Without character, you have nothing. Great plot? Robust storyworld? Potent themes? Elegant font? Matters little if your character is a dud. The punch might be delicious, but not if someone threw up in it. The character is why we come to the table. The character is our way through all those other things. We engage with stories because we relate to them: they are mirrors. Characters are the mirror-side version of "us" staring back. Twisted, warped, uncertain -- but still us through and through.

  2. The Cure For All That Which Ails The Audience

  A great character can be the line between narrative life and story death. She's a powerful Band-Aid, a strong swaddling of gauze to staunch the bleeding. Think of the character like duct tape: she can piece the whole thing back together. I will forgive your sins of a so-so plot, of muddy themes, of a meh-ehhh-enh storyworld if you're letting me live for a while with a great character. But don't think character will close truly grievous injuries. A sucking chest wound -- meaning, poor writing, asinine plot or perhaps a duller-than-two-dead-goats storyworld -- will only swallow your great character into its gory depths.

  3. And Yet The Character Must Be Connected

  Don't believe that all those other aspects are separate from the character. The character is -- or should be -- bound inextricably to those other elements. The character is your vehicle through the plot. The character carries the story. Theme, mood, description: focus them through the prism of character, not vice versa. The character is the DNA in every goddamn cell of your story.

  4. You Are The Dealer; The Character Is The Drug

  The audience will do anything to spend time with a great character. We're junkies for it. We'll gnaw our own arms off to hang out once more with a killer character. It's why sequels and series are so popular: because we want to see where the character's going. You give us a great character, our only desire becomes to lick him like he's a hallucinogenic toad and take the crazy trip-ass ride wherever he has to go.

  5. Tell Us What She Wants

  It is critical to know what a character wants from the start. She may not know what she wants, but the audience must have that information. Maybe she wants: her enemies destroyed, freedom from oppression, her child returned to her, true love, the perfect falafel, a pet monkey, the ultimate wedding, a secret subterranean base on the motherfucking moon. She can want a number of things, and it's of the uttermost importance that we know what it is. How else will we know how far she's come? How else can we see the stakes that are on the table? How else will you frustrate the piss out of the audience by standing in her way?

  6. Not About Likability But Rather, Livability

  It doesn't matter if we "like" your character, or in the parlance of junior high whether we even "like-like" your character. It only matters that we want to live with him. We must see something that makes us want to keep on keeping on, following the character into the jaws of Hell and out through the Devil's lava-encrusted keister. For the record, the "Lava Keister" sounds like either a roller coaster or a Starbucks drink.

  7. The Give-A-Fuck Factor

  It is critical to smack the audience in the crotchal region with an undeniable reason to give a fuck. Ask this up front as you're crafting the story: why will the audience care about this character? You have unlimited answers to this. Look to the narratives all around us to find reasons to care. Anything can fly. We love underdog stories. We love tales of redemption (and takes of failed redemption). We love bad boys, good girls, bad girls, good boys, we want to see characters punished, exalted, triumphant, rewarded, destroyed, stymied, puzzled, wounded. We gawk at car crashes. We swoon at love.

  8. Rub Up Against Remarkability

  You must prove this thesis: "This character is worth the audience's time." The character must deserve her own story -- or, at least, her own part within it. You prove this thesis by making the character in some way remarkable. This is why you see a lot of stories about doctors, detectives, lawyers, cowboys, bounty hunters, wizards, space rangers, superheroes... but you don't see quite so many about copier repairmen, pharmaceutical assistants, piano tuners, or ophthalmologists. The former group is remarkable in part by their roles. The latter group can be just as remarkable, however, provided you discover their noteworthiness and put it on the page or the screen. What makes one remarkable can be a secret past, a current attitude, a future triumph. It can be internal or external. Infinite options. Choose one.

  9. Act Upon The World Rather Than Have The World Act Upon Him

  Don't let the character be a dingleberry stuck to the ass of a toad as he floats downriver on a bumpy log. We grow weary of characters who do nothing except react to whatever the world flings at their heads. That's not to say that characters shouldn't be forced to deal with unexpected challenges and left-field conflicts -- but that doesn't prevent a character from being proactive, either. Passivity fails to be interesting for long. This is why crime fiction has power: the very nature of a crime is about doing. You don't passively rob a bank, kill your lover, or run a street gang. Simply put: characters do shit.

  10. Bad Decisions Are A Good Decision

  Nobody ever said an active character had to be a smart character. A character can and perhaps should be badly proactive, making all the wrong moves and affecting the world with his piss-poor decisions. At some point a character needs to take control, even if it means t
aking control in the worst possible way. In fact...

  11. This Is Why Jesus Invented Suspense

  Tension is created when characters you love make bad decisions. They lie, cheat, steal. They break laws or shatter taboos. They go into the haunted house. They don't run from the serial killer. They betray a friend. Sleep with an enemy. Eat a forbidden fruit. Jack off in a mad scientist's gizmotron thus accidentally creating an army of evil baby Hitlers. Tension is when the character sets free his chickens and we know full well that those chickens will come to roost. But the chickens will come home changed. They will have knives. Prison tats. And evil wizard powers. Don't let tension wriggle free, soft and pliable, from external events. Let the character create the circumstances of suspense.

  12. How You Succeed Is By Not Having Them Succeed