storytelling | The Creative Penn

Writing Fiction: This Is How You Write A Story

February 2, 2018 by Joanna Penn 5 Comments

We are readers first, so it's easy to assume that once you've read thousands of stories, it will be simple to write a story. I certainly used to think that way!

But the truth is that a story can be both more simple and more complicated than you think. In today's article, fantastic author Michaelbrent Collings outlines how you can write a story. You can also listen/watch an interview with Michaelbrent here on how to write fast and never get writer's block.

Whenever I teach writing – at a convention, a symposium, or during private coaching – I start off with the question, “What makes a story?”

Almost inevitably I get responses like climax, rising action, characters, setting, and the rest of the answers so many of us learn while we teach ourselves and/or are taught by someone else the art and craft of writing.

At this point I nod, say, “Thank you for that,” and then add, “but you're wrong.”

All those items people mention are great. But while they are generally in a story, they are not the story itself. They are milk and flour and eggs and sugar – all of which are required items for a cake, but put any or all of them out on little silver platters for your next party and see how many takers you get for your version of “cake.”

Those things you set out are in it. They ain't the thing itself.

So what is a story?

Most of us actually know what a story is on a subconscious level – we tell stories all the time without thinking about them. But consciously knowing what makes a story will a) focus your efforts, and b) make it much more difficult to achieve that blissful state known as “writer's block.”

So here's what a story truly is:

A beginning.
A middle.
An end.

That's it. Final, full-stop, done and over. You have those and you have a story, and anything else is either unnecessary but nice (“What yummy frosting!”, or unnecessary and not-so-nice (“Why did you choose to put escargot on the cake?”).

That said, the above definition of a story is still not very helpful, is it? So let me see if we can explain it a bit better. Let me tell you not the chemical attributes of the cake, but why each makes the cake more delicious.

Let's say it this way:

Every story is about a guy (or a girl) who…
… wishes for something (the beginning),
… THEN…
… desires something (the middle),
… THEN…
… achieves that thing – or doesn't (the end).

And because I'm a baker who wants more cake in the world (if you don't like cake, you are Pure Evil), I will discuss these further so you can make your own cakes, and spend less time in the kitchen doing so.

1. A GUY WHO

Every story starts with a PERSON. Every. Single. One.

[N.B. For clarity and convenience I call this person my “Guy Who,” and I use “guy” instead of “gal,” or “cis-something” or any other nomenclature simply because it's what pops in my head. Fill in your own preference, and I won't judge you for using it because it's easiest for you; just as I hope you won't judge me ill for using this one.]

At this point in my teaching, people raise their hands to show me examples of movies or books that are not about people. The movie WALL-E is an example that pops surprisingly often; “The main character isn't a person, it's a robot!” is a common refrain.

But it's not true. Because WALL-E isn't a robot, he's a person in a robot suit.

Ditto any other movie about “non-human” characters. Be they aliens, monsters, inanimate objects, or anything else – they are either people on their face, or people hiding in a costume.

And this makes sense, too. Picture what a robot (for ease of use) is really about. The “story” of WALL-E then goes like this:

“Once upon a time, there was a trash-compacting robot on a post-apocalyptic Earth. It [NOT “HE” OR “SHE” – if you're contending it's a robot, then you have to follow the Official Robot Rules of Reality™] was a robot that had been design to compact trash, so that is what it did. One day it stopped because it broke and there was no one to fix it.” ALT ENDING: “One day it stopped compacting trash because the sun went nova and consumed Earth.”

This is the only way a “story” about a real robot could go. Because robots (or sharks or lamps or whatever) have no motivation beyond stimulus-response (on a biological level), or laws of physics (on a mechanical level).

Even if you're talking about dolphins – creatures we know have a high level of cognitive function, you're not telling a story about Krtchkcck-whistle, King of the Lower Regions, Finder of Shells and Survivor of the Great Fish Famine in the Year 87423 of Our Lord Pchkckckckc; you're telling a story about frickin' Flipper, who is basically an anthropomorphized (or anthropoporpoiseized – yeah, I went there) version of Michael Phelps with a hero complex.

In sum: EVERY. STORY. STARTS. WITH. A. PERSON.

But what does that person do?

2. THE WISH (the beginning)

Every story is about what our Guy Who wants something. So, just as it does with all of us, that “want” is born as a wish.

A wish is that state of wanting something without actually working for it. I wish I could play the harp – indeed, every time I hear one during a wedding or at the mall (oddly, malls seem to love harps), I think, “I wish I could play the harp. So beautiful.”

Total harps I own: zero.
Total harp lessons I have taken: zero.
Number times I have even just googled, “Is it hard to play the harp: ZERO.

And this kind of wish is how all stories start.

An easy example is STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE. Luke Skywalker starts out the story wishing he could join the Resistance and become a Jedi like his father, and thus escape the farming life and stop having to drink blue milk every morning.

But he does nothing to accomplish it.

In fact, Obi Wan even says, “You must come with me and learn the ways of the Force” – literally offering to pave the way for Luke to have his wish and more.

What does Luke say? “I can't go. I have to do Farming And Whatnot. Who will drink all the blue milk if I'm gone?” He literally has so little motivation that EVEN GETTING HIS WISH FOR FREE IS TOO MUCH WORK.

But then something happens. Sometimes it's an obvious thing – Luke's family are murdered by stormtroopers, and all the farm equipment is destroyed, thus destroying his reasons to stay – and other times the Guy Who just changes his mind for no discernible reason. Either way, our Guy Who moves to…

3. THE DESIRE (the middle)

What is the difference between a wish and a desire? Simple: a wish is something you do alone in your room while staring at the ceiling and picking lint out of your navel. A desire is something you get out and work for.

Luke leaves Tattoine. He helps Ben find a ship to do this, then picks up a lightsaber and uses it to defend himself from an intergalactic whiffle ball. He finds out the Resistance is doomed because it's leader has been kidnapped, and rather than throw up his hands and say, “There goes my dream!” he does whatever it takes to return the conditions of the universe to a point where his dream can be realized.

Everything Luke does for the middle 60% of the movie is about working, about checking off the steps to reach his goal. It's literally a “to do” list:

MY DESIRE: To join the Resistance and become a Jedi like my father

I need: lightsaber.
Got from Ben. Check. [Note to self: get intergalactic whiffle ball if possible.]
I need: the Resistance (hard to join if it's not there!)
Needed: Princess
To Do: Rescue princess
Needed: Yavin (because Resistance is there)
To Do: Destroy Death Star
I need: to use the Force ('cause that's what makes a Jedi, yo!)
To Do: Practice with whiffle ball.
To Do: Listen for Force communications, which is high-level stuff.
I need: blue milk (I'm surprised how much I miss it!)
Action item: find blue cow (maybe on Yavin?).

A lot of people dread “the middle,” because for them, it turns into a painful slog wherein they have to figure out “middle stuff.” But if you think of it like a To Do list, it's a lot easier. In fact, the middle is the coolest part!

Think of any movie trailer. Think of any description on the back of any book cover. IT IS ALL ABOUT THE COOL BITS IN THE MIDDLE. No end bits, hardly anything from the beginning.

The middle, the desire, isn't the hardest part – it's the best part.

And after the work is done, our Guy Who moves on to…

4. THE ACHIEVEMENT, or FINAL FAILURE (the end)

The end is simply the answer to the question, “Did our Guy Who achieve/earn his wish?”

Did Luke become a Jedi? Yes. The minute he checked off all those columns, he was a Jedi. And, interestingly, this happened in the very movie where it was set up. People say he wasn't a true Jedi in the first movie, but I disagree:

Did he join the Resistance? Yes. He saved Princess Leia, then blew up the Death Star – saving the Resistance and joining it in the process (ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!)

Did he defend against intergalactic whiffle balls (LIGHTSABER ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!), then turned off his targeting computer and fully entrusted himself to the Force (HALLUCINATION ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!). He was a Jed.

He set all the conditions, and fulfilled all the requirements. He was basically lacking a cool black outfit and [SPOILER!] a final fight with his dad. But those were just putting the last icing flourishes on the cake.

Of course, the opposite is true – our Guy Who can also fail.

The moment Michael Corleone closes the door in his wife's face at the end of the book/movie THE GODFATHER, he literally closes the door on the embodiment of his dream, and the desire that has created all the drama of the story as he constantly grapples with the question of what matters most: family, or Family.

THE GODFATHER is about Michael Corleone, a Guy Who wants to be good.

He failed. And that's a story, too.

CONCLUSION

Stories are magic in effect. The best ones weave themselves into our lives, and become a part of our emotional and spiritual DNA – literally, for DNA exists primarily to map out the next generation's characteristics by weeding out the ones that don't work as well, and thus ensure our children's survival; and what do we do with our best stories if not pass them down to our children as maps for them to follow as they live out their own stories?

Stories are magic. But only in effect. In creation and in practice, they are fairly simple. And that makes sense, because every one of us has a lifetime of creating our own stories.

I (my own personal Guy Who) want to…
… graduate.
… get a job.
… get married.
… have kids.
… beat that one friggin' level on Call of Duty.

You know, the Big Ones.

We create our stories. We are, in fact, the embodiment of Story, with a beginning (birth into a world of potential wishes and dreams), middle (our lives as we define who we want to be and who we are willing to work to become), and end (that last moment, that last breath, where we pass away with a smile or a frown).

And when we remember that, we realize that we have all the tools we need to make up new stories.

Now go forth… and write.

Does thinking about story structure help you to feel more confident writing yours? Please leave your thoughts below and join the conversation.

Michaelbrent Collings is an internationally-bestselling author of nearly forty books, as well as a produced screenwriter and member of the WGA.

If you would like to find out more of Michaelbrent's tips and tricks for story writing, check out his online course at michaelbrentcollings.thinkific.com, or visit him at his website, WrittenInsomnia.com – “Stories That Keep You Up All Night.”

How To Use Story In Your Non-Fiction Author Business

February 11, 2017 by Joanna Penn Leave a Comment

Storytelling is not just for fiction authors these days.

Increasingly, businesses and brands are using the power of story to engage people. If you write non-fiction, then you can use story to bring life to your books … and your marketing. In this article, Melissa Addey, author of The Storytelling Entrepreneur, explains how.

Over the past decade, storytelling has become part of the communication toolkit of even the most corporate of businesses. Here’s why:

Stories improve recollection of information, so if you want people to remember what you say, frame it in a story.
Stories create a sense of involvement and community, so if you want to create a loyal fan base of customers, tell them stories.
Stories create motivation and enthusiasm for learning, so if you are trying to pass on knowledge, do it through a story.

Stories work: and who better to harness the power of stories than writers? Here are five great ways you can use stories in your business:

1) Selling your books

People absolutely love to know how art gets made. I spoke with Skylark Galleries, an artists’ collective who have galleries on the South Bank in London. They said that people browsing the artworks were always asking about what inspired the artist, or how a particular piece came to be made. The items with interesting stories behind their creation sold more readily than those without.

I spoke with Skylark Galleries, an artists’ collective who have galleries on the South Bank in London. They said that people browsing the artworks were always asking about what inspired the artist, or how a particular piece came to be made. The items with interesting stories behind their creation sold more readily than those without.

This is something to bear in mind when selling your own creative works: can you sell the story of the work as well as the item itself?

Joanna shares snippets of how she does her fiction research on www.JFPenn.com, including travel videos from interesting destinations. I have a trip planned to Beijing to research my next historical novel set in the 1700s, so you can guess the kinds of images I could bring back for my next newsletter!

If you want to see proof of stories selling objects, visit the Significant Objects Project, a brilliant repeated experiment where writers are asked to create a story about random objects bought from thrift stores for a couple of dollars. The items are then re-sold on eBay with the story attached (making it very clear it is fiction) and the price paid for each object ends up being 30-40 dollars on average.

Sharing some of my creative inspiration on Instagram/jfpennauthor

Make sure your creative works are seen as significant to potential buyers.

2) Engaging with your customers

Sharing stories is a two-way street, so actively encourage your readers to tell you their stories. Examples could include: What are their favorite books in your genre and why? What era do they love in history? What do they struggle with in their daily lives (for non-fiction)?

You could run a survey or a quiz, perhaps even with a nice prize up for grabs. There are a few food companies who do this very well, for example by asking customers for their testimonials and photos and then printing those on their packaging. Could you use a customer’s name in one of your books?

By hearing their stories, you connect more deeply with them. (Oh, and you get your customer research done by gaining a better understanding of your target audience!).

3) Communicating on social media

Social media works best when your brand acts as a consistent ‘character’ in how it responds and communicates. So make sure you have a consistent tone and way of behaving. This works best when you are being yourself, rather than ‘pretending’ to be someone that you are not just because you think it fits your genre better.

You can go one step further and give some of your characters social media accounts. They don’t even have to be modern characters: there are multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts supposedly belonging to the Dowager Countess from Downton Abbey: with close on 100,000 followers between them, since her acerbic style of speaking and contrast with the modern era fits social media beautifully. A missed opportunity by the TV channel’s communications team, who should have thought of it first!

4) Creating your own creative and or business vision

You can’t make the most of your business and creative ideas if you don’t have a direction to head in. You need a compelling vision of what lies ahead of you so that you can write a practical business plan to take you there. Your vision is a story and the more powerful and realistic you can make it the more committed you’ll be to it and the more accurate your business planning can be to get you there.

Take the time to craft a truly spellbinding story for yourself.

Use all your senses and perhaps even create props to inspire you. I saw an exquisite photograph years ago and said that when I was a full-time writer I would have it on my wall. When the moment came I remembered my promise to myself and ordered the photograph. It sits above my desk, a reminder that part of my vision has come true. Want an Oscar for screenwriting? Buy a golden statuette for your desk to inspire you!

5) Facing bad times

We all face bad times or moments of confusion, when we are uncertain about the journey we are on and whether it’s heading in the right direction.

This is a time when you need to re-frame your own personal story, the one you tell yourself about what you are doing and who you are.

Open up your view to a wider image: see this difficult time as just a small step in the larger and more positive whole journey. Use the structure of fairy tales to consider: is now a moment of trial to make you stronger as a character? Is it a moment to ask for or accept help from another person?

Is it a time to choose a new path to follow – and what traits or tools will you need to stock up on to take it?

Storytelling in a business context has been proven as a powerful tool and as a creative person, you are perfectly placed to make the most of it in your entrepreneurial endeavors. Happy storytelling!

Do you have any questions or comments to make about how to use storytelling in business? Please do leave a comment and join the conversation below.

Melissa Addey wrote The Storytelling Entrepreneur while the Writer in Residence British Library. It details how you can use storytelling skills at every stage of the entrepreneurial journey, as well as how to find stories within your business and how to communicate your values more authentically.

Melissa lives in London with her husband and two little children who love books as much as she does. If you’d like to try her writing, visit www.melissaaddey.com/free

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Wired For Story. Using Brain Science To Hook Readers With Lisa Cron

August 14, 2012 by Joanna Penn 30 Comments

OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn

Podcast: Download (Duration: 29:07 — 16.6MB)

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Why has 50 Shades of Grey sold millions of copies when it is not ‘great' writing?

Why is a great story more important than beautiful language? In today's interview with Lisa Cron, we get into what makes a great story and how we can write more effectively.

Lisa Cron is the author of Wired for Story, The Writer’s Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence. She has also worked as a story consultant, a publishing professional, a writing coach and literary agent.

Lisa has always been drawn to the power of story. She mentions ‘A Wrinkle In Time' as a book that changed her life. Stories fascinated her, even in advertising. She has always worked with story – in publishing and television. The interesting thing is why some books don't work, and the mistakes are similar. This ties into neuroscience, which is how the brain works and how we process information. Writers are the most powerful people in the world.

What is story anyway? They aren't primarily for entertainment. They were designed to teach us how to live. We think in story and evaluate everything based on story. We can envision the future and plan for it. It tells us what to hold on to. So we make sense of the world through story and learn through it effectively. This helps us with what are the keys to how people respond to a strong story.

Why we are wired for story?

The neurotransmitter dopamine, for pleasure, is triggered through curiosity. We feel pleasure via the brain's reward system that pulls us forward through the story because we have to find out what happens. Because we could learn lessons that can help us in our own lives.

Beautiful language or amazing story? Why 50 Shades of Grey is so popular and literary fiction doesn't sell so well. People can't put 50 Shades down, but it is not well-written. Great language is fantastic but it's not what pulls us into a story. Writing is taught as if the goal is to write ‘well' but it should be about how to tell a great story. Language should be there to stimulate curiosity and dopamine in the brain. EL James gets some things right – she lets us know what Ana thinks is going to happen, so when it doesn't happen that way, we know how she feels. This draws us into the story more because we want to know how it feels.

With literary fiction, the danger is that you end up with a beautifully written ‘who cares'.

Why would we slog through something that doesn't give us a dopamine rush? I mention Umberto Eco as a literary writer. I bought The Prague Cemetery but I couldn't get past the first chapter.

What do writers get wrong in story? The big one is that writers don't know what the book is about. A story is virtual reality. I'm going to step into a problem and I'm going to solve it. So you need to know who the protagonist is and what they want. The story has to follow that path – solve the plot question and what's inside holding them back.

Everything in the story gets its meaning based on how it is affecting the protagonist. So dramatic events mean nothing without the personal impact. We evaluate everything in the story based on how its affecting the protagonist. It gets emotional weight from this. You can also go into the reactions and how it changes the character.

What show, don't tell really means

People think it means ‘show' me people being upset e.g. Joe threw the cup against the wall (to show anger). It should be show me WHY he's angry, not the emotion of anger. e.g. he had a bad day at work, but more than that – why. So the scene would be more about what happened at work, not just jumping to show Joe throwing a cup. Or when a character changes their mind, you have to explain why, not that Joe stroked his chin and looked out the window. Don't show thinking, show how the decision is made. This brings us to story, the things we can't say. It can be physical, e.g. body language, but use that to show us something we don't already know.

How is the story question going to resolve? Keep in mind the “and so” test. Ask yourself – what is the point? Why does the reader need to know this? What insight does it give the reader into the situation or the character. You have to leave out what doesn't matter. Only tell things that pertain to the story question, otherwise you lose the curiosity. The vicarious thrill of ‘experiencing' something through a book – why I write about murder and violence – is so we don't have to experience it ourselves but we still want to know what makes people tick.

You can find Wired for Story on Amazon and at all other book sites.

You can find Lisa at WiredForStory.com and on twitter @lisacron

The Art And Craft Of Story With Victoria Mixon

November 12, 2011 by Joanna Penn 12 Comments

Podcast: Download (Duration: 30:50 — 18.0MB)

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I love talking to professionals who can break story down to elements we can reuse as writers. It can be so easy just to write away without considering some of the key aspects of what we need to convey. Thinking about these in advance can save us time in the editing and rewriting process.

Victoria Mixon is a professional writer and independent editor and has worked in fiction, nonfiction, technical documentation, and poetry for over thirty years. She is the author of “The Art & Craft of Story: A Practitioner's Manual” which we're talking about today. Victoria's blog was also voted one of the Top 10 blogs for writers.

In this interview, you will learn:

What Victoria does: She basically helps authors take their story and develop them further into something that an agent or publisher would consider publishable.
The principles of story have been internalized by authors who have been writing a long time but new authors need to consider how to improve and deepen their stories. It is recommended to plan at least a little and a lot of what you write will be cut out in the final draft, but it's good to know where you're going otherwise your story will just fizzle out.

Reader addiction

How do you make the reader care? Sympathetic characters aren't necessarily nice. There has to be conflict between two choices that are very hard to resolve. The bouncing back and forth between intense needs is a very human thing. The more powerful and important the needs the more the reader can identify
Generating addiction in a reader. It's a push/ pull mechanism. The push is based on the tension in the plot and the characters which generates a tension inside the reader. Alternate this with a reward to pull them on and you have a way to hook them into your story.

Character arc and the series

I wrote recently about issues with continuity in a series including how some characters don't seem to have an arc within one book.
Victoria recommends creating someone who is so complex and has powerful needs with multiple conflicts. The protagonists of big thrillers have the need of seeing justice done vs saving themselves from being killed. This can be played out multiple times with different variations and sub-plots.

Turning a one liner into a story

Victoria takes my own one-liner and expands it. My third book in the ARKANE series will be based around ancient Egypt and the plagues of Exodus set in modern times.
The important need is to stop the world being destroyed but this conflicts with the need to save the protagonist's own life. The protagonist must be forced to choose. This is the tension. We also talk about sneaky foreshadowing that makes the reader think you're smart!
Take your idea and ask questions and create conflict, within the rules of your genre, to a point.

On Kindle sampling and hooking the reader in the first 2 pages

It's not just ebooks, we have always done this with books in stores as well. The powerful hook is critical and a lot of writers start way too early. The hook has to be the point of the actual beginning of the store, the crux point where the characters are forced into it. They have to go down this path. Not when the character is born but throw the reader right into the story. You may not know what this is until you have written the first draft as you have to find the key point of no return.

On self-editing and developmental help

Authors with little experience will need more editing and development help than established writers. The first draft often includes a lot of back-story or notes that won't go into the book but you need to know it as the author so you know how your characters behave. You also need to answer a lot of questions for yourself but it might not be used later.
There is a lot of moving scenes around a lot in redrafting. Victoria works in MS Word and breaks it down into chapters for more manageable chunks. [I'm now using Scrivener which is awesome for ease of moving things around.]

On writing fast and writing quality

Literary fiction takes a long time to gestate in a writer's mind which is why genre is where people make a living. You can set your characters up with a series protagonist and then just put the characters into a situation. Get plotting sorted and then you can just write. You will have to do editing but you will be able to write much faster than a literary tome. You do lose some of the depth but you get speed. [Victoria also mentions the interview on literary fiction with Roz Morris]

You can find Victoria and The Art of Story and her other books at VictoriaMixon.com or on twitter @VictoriaMixon

Storytelling Techniques With Clare Edwards

January 9, 2011 by Joanna Penn Leave a Comment

Earlier in the year, Clare inspired me on this podcast when I was feeling particularly down about my creative life. Now she has some new ebooks available on Story so I invited her back on to tell us about it. She is a wonderfully enthusiastic teacher!

Clare Edwards is the author of A Sprinkling of Magic: Inspiring stories and metaphors for business and life

In the video, you will learn:

Why story is so important in a world of information overload. Readers need an opportunity to create for themselves. We only have a few seconds to grab people's attention. Stories are the most well accepted form of communication and the way we are hard-wired to listen to stories. We want to know the ending.

Consider why you want to tell this story. What is the purpose and the message I want to convey. Once you're clear on the why, you can start to add the building blocks. How do you want your readers to be feeling once they've closed the book? What emotion do you want to evoke in them? You can use language that evokes this emotion.
Think about what is most important. If you have to cut some of your story, what aspects would remain? What is vital?
In considering shorter form e.g. blog posts, the same aspects apply. You want people to keep coming back like Scheherazade's stories. You need to keep people with you emotionally. Bring people up to some solution or positive outcome by the end. Your ending needs to be as strong as your beginning.

Finding analogies and metaphors encourages people to think for themselves. It widens the reader's experience. Simple metaphor is a statement that isn't literal e.g. the decision was hard to swallow. We don't literally swallow decisions. But extended metaphor is even more important so an example would be Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist where the message is finding happiness inside but the story is of a journey through the world. By using extended metaphor, people can find their own extended meanings. Use the formula “X is like Y” so a high performing team is like a symphony orchestra. Brainstorm examples of, or things like the message I want to get across and choose the aspects the audience will connect with.

You can find Clare and her story e-books at ASprinklingOfMagic.com.