“Comparison is the Thief of Joy” – Theodore Roosevelt

Good vs. Evil. Right vs. Wrong. Love vs. Hate.

Luke vs. Vader. Werewolves vs. Vampires. Obama vs. Romney.

The Past vs. the Present.

The actual plot of “Lost” vs. whatever the Hell was going on there.

What it all comes down to is Opposition – the classic conflict within Life Itself. It is the basis for all perception and the very foundation of Story.

Because conflicts – the very building blocks of all stories – begin with a single comparison.

Whether it is a cool breeze on a hot, summer day or two armies rushing to oppose each other on a battle field, comparison exposes the differences between all things and, without it, conflict cannot exist. Duality exists in nearly every part in our lives and we enjoy the emotion of experiencing and embracing it’s inherent differences .  All sports, warfare, love, art and human interaction stem from our ability and our inherent need to differentiate between things. With difference comes opposition and judgment about which is better – and with judgment comes the heft and weight of emotion that drives our stories.

The Taoist philosophers believe that the descent of man from his purest state began the moment that he started naming things as he sought to describe the world.  It began with the simplest of distinctions, such as  “Night” and all that is “Not-Night”, “Me” and all those that are “Not Me” and, most important (for motivational purposes), “Mine” and all that is “NOT-YET-mine”. From the earliest moments of life, we learn by comparing.

As a child of the 1960’s, I had a poster on my bedroom wall of a poem entitled Desiderata  by Max Ehrmann, which went from being a minor work in 1927 to become a devotional for the Counter Culture Movement.  While the piece as a whole is still worthy of daily contemplation, one passage serves our purpose here regarding the twin fundamental truths about comparison and human nature:

“If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for there will always be greater and lesser persons than yourself.”

This is Human Drama in a nutshell, and an essential truth that you must not abandon in your writing.

So . . . what does this have to do with Teddy Roosevelt?

As creators, we must all be thieves of joy, using the distinct differences and specific desires of our characters to produce compelling conflict.

Because isn’t this what story structure is about? The upsetting of the apple cart? The ruination of the serene?

Each “World-Before-Story” we create in Act I is interrupted by the Inciting Incident, throwing things out of balance, and the remainder of the tale is all about seeking that vital and illusive New Balance. In our finest moments, we force our heroes to spend all of Acts II and III finding a middle ground that they can – and must – live with.

But it isn’t all about the conflict.  The power of contrast and comparison is at play in every step of the process.  Let’s take Roosevelt at his word and explore the power of comparison:

(1) Through Characters – as we write, the differences between now and then, hero and villain, right and wrong must be eventually clear to the reader so that they can choose up their sides in the contest.  What good is a hero that you cannot root for, or a villain to root against?  Your characters are, at their essence, the embodiment of your different IDEAS, and the comparisons you create for them are the way of testing their validity in story form. The specific sides need not be clear from the outset, and must not be in certain genres such as mystery and horror, but the contrasts and the characterizations must be clear enough for the reader/viewer to recognize the differences between the individual players.

(2) Through Scene – each scene must be necessarily different from the next and inhabitable enough to really place the reader/viewer there alongside your character.  The journey should be more of a cross-country drive – with many distinct and unique stops- than an airplane hop across country.  You need to sit inside each scene for a while and look around and truly get to know the place before you write.  Remember: you took your characters here for a reason – make the most of it. And make sure the locations have a character of their own as well and, through your descriptions, their own personality.

(3) Through Dialogue – make sure your characters truly sound different as they speak.  Do this by learning about speech patterns, rhythm and cadence.  Do not resort to accents or caricature to get this across.  Few things are worse than hokey dialogue that the reader must stumble through or the viewer must rewind to understand. Seek to write roles that are natural but different enough from one another that you could tell them apart without attribution.

(4) And through Your Own Voice – your work will be compared to others.  It has to happen in order for you to gain a following. Sometimes it seems that Hollywood and Big Publishing are merging into one great, shambling beast, and even as they cry for new and different voices, they continue to produce books, films and TV that all seems the same. Certainly, the marketplace loves to homogenize through their notion of “the-same-but-different” so that financial risks can be minimized, but that must mean little to you in the privacy of your own creating. Always give them something that can only come from you, and keep refining, improving and submitting until they finally “get you”.  It may take a while longer than pandering to the common denominator, but you’ll smile more often in the process.

By showing the reader/viewer the distinct nature of your characters and their world, we increase their ability to identify with your creations and your art. How well you use comparison and contrast in your writing dictates the power of your work and the efficacy of your message.

Until next time, don’t stop.

Never Stop.

Art Holcomb is a screenwriter and comic book creator. His most recent comic book property is THE AMBASSADOR and his most recent project for TV is entitled THE STREWN.

“The Thieves of Joy” – A Guest Post By Art Holcomb is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

We’ve heard the phrase: it’s a no brainer.  Writing a story that works is the absolute opposite of that.

So let us attempt to put a fence around, if not quite sequential-ize or formula-ize, the nature of the successful storytelling process.

It all breaks down into three unique but dependent phases of story development.  The key word there is dependent… because they are, in the final analysis, sequential.  And thus, if you begin in the middle, the task is complicated by the process you’ve chosen.

Somewhere along this path – you get to decide where and when – the process evolves from three-by-five cards and yellow sticky notes and flowcharts… towards leaning into and finally becoming the act of drafting itself.

Which means if you start there, you need to know that you don’t get a free pass on the preceding development part, that you are creating the recipe while you are cooking the stew.

Not saying it doesn’t work, it does.  For some.  We all get to choose.  At the end of the day it’s all story development.

Either way… the process is both iterative and evolutionary.

Blank spaces in your flowchart (or in your head) become bullets which become phrases that turn into sentences that expand into paragraphs… that sometimes without realizing it, are suddenly full-blown scenes.  And then need to be blended into the whole, in context to the scenes that surround it.

Or you can do it backwards.  Scenes pop into your head, then you retrofit a mission and that all-important context.

Or not.  That being the source of a huge percentage of the rejection slips out there.

You can throw it all into a pot, stir it and heat it to boiling… or you can impart it all to a blueprint with the anal-retentive precision of a computer programmer under a deadline… or some combination in between… doesn’t matter, because the end-game is what it is, and that high bar is both blind to and oblivious to your chosen process.

The Three Realms

At any given moment in the storytelling process, you are either in:

1.  The conceptualization phase…

2.  The sequencing and execution phase…

3.   The revision and polishing phase.

Yes, we do bounce back and forth.  And it’s a good and normal thing to do.  But, like a triathlete who at any given moment is either swimming, biking or running, knowing the difference is fundamental to the game being played.

Conceptualization Phase

The conceptualization phase (which I’ve also dubbed the Search for Story phase)  is the creative dance between story idea, story concept and story premise (each being a different animal), leading toward a general story landscape and a compelling core dramatic question – where character and conflict collide – that can be pitched in a few lines in a manner that is compelling.  It’s what the story is about, without short-changing it.

In 99.9 percent of the cases in which the writer, when asked “what is your story about?” gives an incomplete or less than compelling DRAMATIC answer (like: “it’s about the effect of poverty on taxation…”), or says, “well, it’s kind of complicated…” this is a symptom of a writer still dwelling, perhaps swimming in, the initial story conceptualization phase, usually without realizing it.

Moving on, and then settling — executing a story that hasn’t fully experienced the Search for Story phase, lead to a killer core dramatic question — is seductive.  Yet, itt is the Great Killer of stories.

Let me repeat: until you’ve nailed your core dramatic question, or what that even means, you haven’t got a story.

Sequencing and Execution Phase

The story sequencing and execution phase is, literally, plotting it out in the order of narrative presentation, strategically setting up, exploring and resolving the core dramatic question through your characters.

This is when we identify the major story beats, in context to what we know from the initial conceptual phase planning (the search for story), and put them in the right spots, and then coming up with bridging story points that connect them.  It’s literally the identification of scene content, driven by (when done properly) the contextual mission of the story beat you’ve chosen for any given moment.

Consider this.  In fact, paste this on your monitor:

This is where dramatic arc and character arc become one in the same, and do so within the context to a fully developed conceptual story landscape.

If you want to break this down even further… the search for story includes finding the right sequence in which to tell it.  And when you’ve done that, via outline or draft, only then are you executing the story you’ve found.   Both of these are part of the second phase of story development.

You cannot search for story and execute the story at the same time.  Any more than you can hunt the goose and cook it at the same time.  Anybody who claims to do so – and they’re out there, some of them quite loudly – is really talking about revision and execution.

Read those last three paragraphs again.

Because right there is the 404-level understanding that many less experienced writers don’t get.  It’s one of the keys to writing publishable fiction, and it’s a loaded sentence.

Either way, whether it’s in an outline or a draft, when that happens you’re on to the third phase.

Revision and Polish Phase

Once on paper, you need to optimize what you have through revision and polish.  If your outline is solid, you won’t have as much challenge here as you will if you used drafting to get to this point.

In that latter case, the line between searching for your story and executing it is often a fuzzy one.  And it’s a line over which many writers get tripped up.

If you’ve outlined it, and you’re happy with the outline, it’s time to write the first draft, moving from search to execution.  If you’ve reached this point through drafting, it’s time to revise (as part of execution) and then polish it.

This is always true: the more you know about your story, and the more criteria you bring to it – however you get there – the closer to the finish line you will be.  Understanding where you are in these three phases of story development is the most empowering thing you can do to get there… safely.

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Click HERE to see where your story currently resides on this three-phase story development path.

Left-Brain, Right-Brain, or No-Brain At All is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

A great concept is the raw grist for a great premise.  Not necessarily the premise itself.

Idea… concept… premise… for writers these are separate and essential things.  Unless they aren’t separate (an idea can arrive in the form of a concept and/or premise).  Which rarely happens.

The order in which they arrive is not set in stone.

Premise evolves FROM a concept… even when it begins the other way around in the writer’s head. The risk is to hatch a premise that does not connect to an underlying concept that energizes it.

Example of a premise without a concept: guy falls for girl on a space station, where they are the only two inhabitants.

Example of a concept that is not yet a premise: what if two people assigned to a space station are both a human clones but neither one knows?

Story very close to that: Oblivion, in theaters now.

Concepts can be arranged hierarchically.  Go deep enough and you end up with a premise.

Fail to go high enough and you leave dramatic opportunity on the table.

The most common weak link I see in the story deconstructions I do: a misunderstanding of what the phrase “dramatic tension” means, and a resulting lack of it in the story.

Great stories always have external tension that become the fodder to make internal tension transparent.

External tension drives story architecture.

Plot is not a dirty word.  It is synonymous with dramatic tension.

Show me a story with no plot and I’ll show a short story, or an unpublishable novel.

The concept acts as a “battery” that fuels the premise and the narrative itself with energy.  The concept is not the appliance itself, it is the electricity that runs it.

A rich concept can yield multiple stories, or multiple takes on an obvious story.

You really can’t hope to turn a concept-light, tepid premise into a great story through stellar execution.  A cow’s ear is still a cow’s ear, even in the shape of a silk purse.

The Hunger Games, without the games, is just another teenage love story.

That said, a story that is concept-light but strong on premise (example: The Help) can be twenty million copies worth of wonderful.

Premise is like personality: hard to define but you know it when you see it.

The most common storytelling mistake is an under-cooked premise.

“Story” is a relative term.  Not all of them are worth telling.

Your lyric, poetic, brilliant writing voice… it’s never the point.  In fact, it can kill your ambition if you think it is.

You can’t reinvent this game.

Some claim there are no rules, but there certainly are one helluva solid set of principles driving how you write strong fiction.  Depart from them at your own peril.

Plot is the stage upon which character is allowed to reveal and explore itself.

Developing a story on autopilot is the enemy.

Paranormal abilities should never be the thing that solves the crime in a story.

Don’t kid yourself, it’s been done before.  So what’s your fresh twist?

When a major story beat involves the hero “suddenly realizing” something… that’s a bad sign.

“Write what you know” is good advice.  Write what you love is better advice.

Reading novels is not a particularly empowering way to learn to write novels.

Never underestimate the power of vicarious experience delivered to your reader.  Give your readers a ride.

The more you do it, the closer you get to it, the less glamorous and more blue collar this storytelling gig becomes.

Settling is the great killer of stories.

Narrative side trips are a close second.

Changing lanes is next.  If your murder mystery becomes a ghost story on page 214, see the next statement.

If you pants your story, then discover it becomes something other than what it began as, you absolutely need to write a new draft that uses the new context from page one.

Not knowing what makes a story great makes the whole thing a crap shoot.  Somebody will eventually win the lottery using random numbers.

Many of the novels on the bookshelves are not as good as the one you wrote and cannot sell.

Self-publishing is a new, unproven frontier.  One that hasn’t fully evolved.  And one that brings unforeseen risks, because traditional publishing at least provided an infrastructure to vet the work.  That’s why Youtube won’t ever compete with the films we pay money to see in theaters.

There are more multimillion dollar success stories coming out of traditional publishing, even today, than the ones you hear about from the digital self-publishing world.  The odds of a jackpot are no better on Amazon.com.

Do not copy the way A-list writers go about their work… they have a different bar, and it’s lower than ours.  (Look at the way Nelson Demille — one of my favorite authors — decided to end his #1 bestseller, Night Fall… if we tried that we’d get laughed out of the mailroom on its way back to us.)

Deus ex machina — look it up.  Then avoid it in your stories.

I am sometimes drastically misunderstood.

The word “troll” has been completely redefined in the last ten years.

All writing lessons are good, except one.  Listen to it all, pick what you like.  Soon your wall will be full of what sticks.

The one that is not good: if you don’t know anything about what makes a story work, don’t worry, just put your butt in a chair and start writing, it’ll come to you eventually.

If you live long enough.

The knowledge is out there.

You may or may not get it by being a voracious reader of fiction.  Probably not.

Process does not define story.  It does, however, define the amount of blood required to write one that works.

Suffering is optional.

Coincidence may happen in real life, but it can kill your story.  Usually does.

So which comes first in “romantic suspense,” the romance or the suspense?  (Wait, that’s not a statement…)

Literary novels need conflict, too.

Literary fiction leans into conflict that resides internally to the character, something that becomes the core story and the foremost challenge to the protagonist.  Literary novels are NOT plot-free.  Structure, stakes, pace and story physics are still required.

To the guy on Amazon who said he wants to come to my house and throw books at me: I’m still waiting for you show up.  That’ll be fun.  But not for you.

“The Adventures of X” story is the hardest of all to write at a publishable level.

Setting, time and place are planks used to construct a stage, hammered together with ideas.  But you can only look at the stage for so long before you long for something to happen, and the nails need to be solid.  Solid what?  Answer: hero-driven drama.  And when you add that, the story is no longer primarily about setting, time and place.

Stories that explore a time or place or culture as the primary intention of the author are… usually boring.

Episodic storytelling is almost always a story killer.  There is only one kind of story in which that works, and it’s the hardest type of story to write.

It’s a dead heat in the race to win the title of “most important word in fiction,” between conflict and context.

Meanwhile, subtext can make or break you.

A good novel is rarely – as in, never – the life story of a fictional character.  (See above, on episodic.)

One of the most toxic, misleading sources of writing guidance for newer writers is the language of book reviews.  A “novel about the depression,” for example (which is how reviewers might frame it), doesn’t begin to define what the novel has to cover to work.  Example: The Great Gatsby.

“Show, don’t tell,” is golden.  Unless nothing happens in a particular transitional story beat (like a time shift forward)… then just tell it.

Your high school writing teacher was wrong about a whole lot of stuff.

First person narrative is not only okay, it’s hot.

Mixing first and third person… perfectly fine, IF they are never mixed within a single scene.

Your high school writing teacher is rolling over in her/his grave right now.

I do mishandle the word deconstruction.  Deal with it.

There has never been a successful final draft written without the writer knowing how the story will end.

There is only rarely a first draft that ends precisely as the writer thinks it will.

You can – it’s entirely possible - nail your story in two drafts (1.5, draft and polish)… IF you understand what you’re doing from a story architecture perspective, and at a deep level… if you let this drive your story discovery and planning process.

Conversely, if that doesn’t happen, it doesn’t mean you don’t know what you’re doing.

Paradox, I think they call it.  A wonderful word for writers, and about writers.

The journey may or may not be the thing.

The trick isn’t to write ABOUT something.  The trick is to write about something HAPPENING.

Key words from the title of this post: almost always.

Bold Storytelling Statements That Are Almost Always True is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

“Strive for perfection.  Settle for excellence.”  

(Don Shula, football player, coach and restaurateur… who knew there is no “n” in that word?)

Ask and ye shall receive.  Sometimes.

One of my goals today was to come up with a worthy Storyfix post.  I was jonesing for something with intimacy, a little one-on-one commiseration – it’s been a while - but thought-provoking.

And there it was, in my email inbox.

Quick backstory: I’m teaching three workshops at the Willamette Writers Conference (August 2 – 4, Portland OR… it’s a massive affair with a wing full of agents and some really killer breakout sessions, please check it out).  In preparation for promo and program materials they asked me for a short description of my sessions.  Of course, I ignored the “short” directive and pounded out three missives… which were distributed today to participants via email.

Which brings us – me – full circle to today’s post. Hopefully some morsel will stick to your writing wall in the form of something… useful.  It’s good to go Big Picture now and then.

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“Beyond Craft… Embracing Greatness” — read the blog post here (from the Willamette Writers site).

Session Descriptions

FRIDAY 8:30 -10:00 (double room) – STORY PHYSICS 101

Writing salable fiction is a full circle proposition.  We begin wanting to touch lives, maybe change the world, and to do it with high style.  We yearn to reach our readers as we entertain and enlighten.  And so we immerse ourselves in craft, learning about structure and voice and the nuance of character, applying trial and error informed by workshops and books and the collective wisdom of a closet full of critiques and rejection slips.  Maybe we reach a point where we believe we “get it,” or maybe that journey continues… it’s usually both.  But at some point we return to that initial intention, armed with our learning curve but still relying on instinct to create stories that work.  This workshop will offer a peek behind the curtain of craft into the realm of Story Physics (where that instinct awaits), the forces and essences of cause and effect that move readers toward a state of total immersion and emotional resonance.

SATURDAY 8:30 – 10:00 (double room) – CHARACTER VS. PLOT

Welcome to the eternal dance between character and plot, sometimes disguised as trade-off or debate.  When done properly, it becomes a narrative union that becomes a sum in excess of the parts.  Great stories blur the lines between character and plot, making each both dependent upon and expansive of the other.  This workshop will use well known examples (books and films) to demonstrate this critical codependency within the context of expositional (sic, and deliberate… sometimes the best word isn’t really a word at all…) creation, identifying and avoiding traps that can cause a good idea to under-achieve on the page.

SUNDAY 8:30 – 10:00 (double room) – FIX YOUR NOVEL WITH ONE MORE DRAFT

Nobody expects a first draft to work at a salable level. Beyond that, though, the number of drafts required before you can legitimately stamp “FINAL” on it depends on three things: what you learned from and about that first draft… in context to what you know about what the story – any story – ultimately requires… and the process by which you evolve it toward that benchmark.  This workshop delivers criteria, targets, benchmarks and reference points that apply to all drafts of a story, and will show how their integration and implementation – it doesn’t have to be one step at a time, draft after draft – is what charts a path, and the number of pit-stops, toward that destination.

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If you’re connected to a writing conference, or you are looking for a presenter for your regular meeting and/or private writing soiree, and some of this sounds like juicy good fun to you, contact me at storyfixer@gmail.com.

Three Workshops and a Blog Post is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

A guest post by Kerry Boytzun

There are writers — some who claim to know, others who simply don’t know — who aren’t buying into the notion of a “first plot point” as a useful or even necessary story milestone.  Those who believe that an earlier inciting incident is sufficient, wherever it appears, and that a gentile dramatic slope from that point onward will suffice.

What these people are missing is an awareness that the human mind thrives on figuring out life experience in a manner that aligns with the principles of story physics, including a moment when “everything changes.”

Which is the reason the FPP exists.

A story without proper, optimized story physics – on this and on other levels – feels flat.  Because we, the humans reading it, are not drawn to it (empathy and vicarious experience, also elements of story physics) at a basic psychological level.  It’s like food — if it smells bad, or simply doesn’t smell good, we aren’t as hungry.

Story physics aren’t random suggestions.  As Larry suggests, they are natural law.  The reasons they work align with the reasons we’re alive in the first place — to discover, to experience, to learn, and most of all, to feel.

And when we feel, we adapt, and we survive.

And so it goes… our stories contribute to life itself.

For example, one can only completely experience water by getting wet, drinking it, swimming in it, using it, and in the extreme, drowning in it or even dying of thirst.  These are all experiences, things we can relate to emotionally even by simply imagining them, without actually going through them.  When a story delivers a heightened level of perception (the realm of vicarious experience), we experience it on a level that becomes intimate… and thus, the story works.

And you, the writer, have just tapped into the psychologial power of story physics.

The six realms of Story Physics provide a framework to understand what we are experiencing, and thus attract us to a story that delivers them.

Say you wanted to understand the circle of Victim-Victimizer, which is a life principle that touches us all.  

Those two words — victim-victimizer — are one and the same. The Victim refuses to be responsible for themselves, regardless of what the cost. For example, a “victim” decides to go hiking without wearing the proper attire to protect themselves from the elements and, due to a late spring snowstorm, freezes to death in the mountains. Let’s say the victim was ignorant of late spring snowstorms. Okay, maybe, but did the victim seek to learn about mountain weather before going hiking, or just decide to wing it? This is what the people at the funeral will think about, and perhaps the victim pondered up until the moment of his death.

Maybe even after that, too… a story we have less empathy with because, well, nobody can say what that’s like.

Note how Story investigates at least part of what the victim will ponder up until his death and what the funeral attendees will be wondering.  Story trumps real life in that regard… in a story we get to do it right, or at least to strive to understand where and why it goes wrong, without actually suffering.

The above example may not be the most elegant, but it should show that a Story has a mind of its own and the Story Mind is working to resolve things as if it were an advanced consciousness, using different “characters” to play different roles to figure things out.

This is the psychology that makes vicarious experience — one of the six realms of story physics — so effective.  And why empathy is the stuff of bestseller.

I’m not alone in these thoughts. The creators of Dramatica said this very thing regarding the Story Mind.

The storytelling options in this regard are wide open.

To dismiss a proper FPP by claiming that the story “started” on page 4 is to not mine the gold of the story physics involved.  Or get confused in a jungle of jargon and rhetoric relative to story structure.

Let’s say you and I were at the funeral of poor Bob, who died of hypothermia on that mountain. How far back in time will we go in discussing Bob’s predicament in order to make sense of it? That’s the key when it comes to storytelling. For Bob, there was the point in time that he was too far up the mountain to make it back before he froze to death… what did he do in order to try to survive in that moment? How did that moment of realization feel?  The moment when everything changes, and now you must respond to the new problem before you.

That would be the First Plot Point in Bob’s tragic story.

Let’s say the searchers that found Bob said he back-tracked the way he came but he either ran out of time, or it got too dark and he fell down a ravine and was too weak to get out.  The obvious question now is: why did Bob go out without adequate clothing in the first place, and did anyone see him before he headed out? In trying to make sense of it, we’re going farther back in time, BEFORE the FPP in order to figure out and make sense of Bob’s FPP.

Why?  To tap into story physics.  To enhance our empathy.  To make the vicarious experience more visceral. To feel the dramatic tension of it.  To ride along (pace).

To me, anyone saying their story starts on page 4 just doesn’t get what a story really is, and without story physics on their side it will be hard to enlist the reader at the emotional level required.

Shakespeare said, “what’s past is prologue.”  Amen to that.

Life is about making sense of experience and the feelings that attach to them…  and taking that understanding with you.

Ultimately,  so are stories.

The Psychology of Story Physics is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

Or… why you should be following “The Following” (the Fox Television series).

Consider a workroom with twelve boxes and a desk.  Six of the boxes are labeled “Core Competency: …” and after that colon (one of those amazing double-edged words in the English language, this one with a smirk) there is a different name for each: Concept… Character… Theme… Structure… Scenes… Voice.

These are your tools.  Everything under the writing sun awaits in one of those boxes.

The desk is where you’ll use what’s inside the boxes.  Where you’ll write your story.

The other six boxes contain jugs of secret sauce.  These, too, include a colon… “Story Physics: …” and after each there is again a specific flavor of sauce: Compelling Premise… Dramatic Tension… Pace… Empathy… Vicarious Experience… Narrative Strategy.

Six boxes of tools, with six flavors of secret sauce to lubricate and empower them to deliciousness.

That’s the whole storytelling enchilada for you, right there.  How you use these boxes — your process — has a million variables.  But the essential nature of what’s in them… that’s non-negotiable.

When you open any one container you find a vast array of choices waiting to help you.  All the genres are in the Concept box.  All the ways you can create conflict awaits in that big bottle of Dramatic tension.  And so it goes.

Which is to say, you can break it down and label it any way you want.  No matter, though… before you are these 12 different yet inter-dependent categories of tools and parts and story essences (physics, the cause that creates effect)… and within them are hundreds, maybe thousands, of nuances and combinations.

Mix and stir as you please.  We live and die by our storytelling choices in this regard.

Here is one of these recipe options, and it’s huge.

You’ll pull this one out the “Empathy” container.  Your reader needs to feel something for your hero.  Causing them (the reader) to root for that hero.  Essential, 101-level stuff.

Here’s the twist, though.  Equally obvious, but rarely applied.

In the Dramatic Tension container you’ll find something called “the antagonist,” also known as the villain, the bad guy, the obstacle to the hero’s quest.

Now mix those two together, empathy and antagonist… and you have a VERY powerful ingredient for your story: the depth with which your reader roots AGAINST the antagonist.  Even, in the purest place of their most truthful self, loathes and hates  your villain while fearing her/him.

Passionately so.  Can’t wait to see them go down.  In a ball of flames.  Drenched in their own blood.  In the name of justice and all that is fair and right and deserved.

Is your villain detestable, or just someone with a different point of view?  You get to decide.  And certainly, not all stories lend themselves to a hero you’d like to see fry in an electric chair… slowly.

But it’s good when it happens.  REALLY good.  Because your reader has another reason to keep turning the pages, to get emotionally involved, to care.

The Following

I mention this killer (literally) television program because it offers one of the most compelling, interesting and deliciously hateable villains, maybe ever.  Right up there with Hannibal Lector, that guy with the mask in the Halloween movies and Dick Cheney.

The program is not for everyone, so vet this if you’re on the bubble.

But if you want to see how a writer (plural in this case) can grab the reader/viewer in such a way that the “rooting against” factor is every bit as strong and compelling and addictive as the “rooting for” factor, this is the show.

Next week is the second to last episode.  Catch it all soon on Netflix, or now via On Demand from your cable career.

Bottom line: Are you tapping into the emotional gold mine that villains present?  And doing so strategically, without resorting to mustache twirling and caricature?   Perhaps you should.

It’s all just more Story Physics… with a dark twist on human nature.  And that is not only our opportunity as storytellers… it’s our job.

The Flipside of Hero Empathy is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

… linking to a longer one.

Two months ago I put out an open request for topics to be covered here on Storyfix.com.  There were 76 responders, with over a hundred topic suggestions.

The most requested topic was this: short story structure.

Specific questions come in frequently — daily — and almost always I’m able to point toward a post on the topic in question.  Not that I expect (or hope) that anyone will wade through the over 500 posts on this site to find what they want… though, that said, there IS a search bar (just to the right of this sentence) that can help.

So if you’re a short story writer, and/or a short story question-asker… CLICK HERE.

More topics from that list to be addressed soon.

Thanks for your support and readership.

Larry

A Short Post on Short Stories… is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

These are my favorite posts — case studies from story evaluations that demonstrate how a great concept can easily turn into an underwhelming story… and how this process can spot it and turn it around.

Yes, it’s okay to learn from the pain of others.  Actually, from the resurrection of the stories of others.

This one is from my $35 Conceptual Kick-Start Analysis program.  I hope you’ll give it a read, because not only does it expose one of the most common traps killer concepts tend to stumble into, it’s also a sneak peak at the format of the evaluation itself.

You can read it here: Case Study.

Thanks go out to this author for enthusiastically agreeing to share it with us here on Storyfix.  Any comments you may have that contribute toward the continued development of the story are welcome.

Here are the main points I’d like you to notice:

- The realization that a concept is NOT necessarily the drama itself, but rather, the STAGE upon which the drama will unfold.  A situation, a setting, a speculative proposition.  The trick is to develop a a DRAMATIC STORY that unfolds UPON that stage, rather than being ABOUT the notion of the concept, or simply the stage itself.

A huge difference, that.

- And then, to see that the dramatic story that ensues is NOT simply showing the character wandering through a strange new world, having adventures, experiencing the compelling nature of the conceptual situation/setting itself.  This is particularly true — and particularly frequent — in science fiction and fantasy stories, since that’s where alternate realities tend to proliferate.

The Wizard of Oz was about a lot more than… “gee, I guess we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Enjoy.  Hope you get something out of this.

*****

If you’d like to see how your concept and resulting story plan measure up to these criteria, click HERE for the $35 Conceptual Kick Start program, or HERE for the Amazing $100 Story Empowerment and Analysis Adventure, which goes deeper into the full architecture of your story plan.

Case Study: A Concept on the Brink is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

Avoid at all costs.

Writing great characters is tough stuff.  In my view, the most challenging part of great storytelling.  You can get all the other complicated stuff exactly right – concept, structure, theme, scenes – and your story can still just sit there, a bowl of perfectly prepared oatmeal, without a lot going for it.

Nobody leaves the house in search of oatmeal.

This might be one of those new ways to look at it that unlocks your inner bestseller self.

Think of your characters – your major ones, at least – as vehicles.

For what?  For a vicarious experience.

Your hero isn’t a tour guide as much as she/he is a surrogate with a mirror — when the reader looks in, they see themselves.

Through them your reader will be transported into the character’s story world, face their problems and chase their goals, elude their pursuers and demons, drink the wine of their victory or feel the sting of defeat.

It’s your job to make the experience memorable, visceral, and dripping with vivid emotional awareness.

This is as linear and inevitable as math… if the character isn’t feeling all that much, neither will the reader.  That’s what those other things – concept, structure, theme and scenes – are there for.  To optimize the vicarious reading experience.

That’s a 404 subtlety in a 101 writing workshop.  Get there quickly.  Cause your reader to disappear into the character, because what the character is going through is just so… deliciously… something.

It doesn’t have to be pretty.  Sometimes the best vicarious experience is one you’d never want to actually live through.

Think of your character as occupying a spot on a continuum.  

A continuum is a finite linear scale of opposite extremes at either end, gradually dissolving toward each other.  One end is utterly dark, the other blindingly light.  The middle… dawn or dusk.   Shades of gray.

Or… one end believes passionately, the other is full of atheists   The middle offers agnostics and those who are spiritual but not religious.

Here’s one we can all relate to: the continuum of happiness.  At one end there is suicide, the other, pure bliss.  The middle… probably a lot like reality.  Be careful with that one, we get enough reality when we’re not reading.

Another: the continuum of wealth, however you wish to measure it.   One end is dirt poor, the other, filthy stinking rich.  Microsoft kind of rich.

Just examples.  I’m confident you now fully understand, if you didn’t already (after my post on vision I take nothing for granted) the notion of a continuum.

So now let’s apply this tool to our story building.

In this context, we need to define the continuum of character experience in terms of emotion… and then be mindful of where your protagonist resides on that continuum at any given moment in the story.

The idea is to move them around.

Since you are the creator (your chance to play god) of this fictional being, you get to not only mold your hero and main players any way you want (including in your own image)… you can put them through anything you want.

You can send them to heaven, or you can put them through utter hell.  In great stories, both are often in play at various stages.

At one end the character experiences darkness: fear, hopelessness, anxiety, threat, danger, regret… all the things we hope to avoid in life… and love to read about.  Not because we’re sadistic, actually it’s quite the opposite: like the terror of a killer roller coaster, somehow we feel more alive for having lived through it.

At the other end of this continuum the character experiences bliss: ecstasy,  hope, redemption, laughter, joy, love, peace, passion, fulfillment, fame, fortune… absolute and pure upside.

Here’s the ticket.  The trick.

This is the guideline/mantra to paste onto your screen as you decide what your character will experience in the novel:

Avoid The Middle.

The middle of that continuum, that is.

In Part 1, place your hero toward one end of the continuum.  Make us feel one of those two extremes.

And then, at the First Plot Point… change it.  Either make it worse… or give us a glimmer of hope.  Hope that must be pursued in the face of opposition.  Hope that demands a stiff price, with stakes that demand and are worthy of heroism in the face of that risk.

Even in the most mundane and vanilla of existences (which, when you think about it, and are honest about it, leans into the dark side of this continuum), there awaits the possibility of darkness or bliss, often behind closed doors.

Take us behind those doors.

This, in a nutshell, is what your story is about: the hero’s pursuit of resolution.  Your job is to make that ride as vicarious as possible… by being the pilot of the continuum itself.

Allow your reader to experience the continuum, a state of extreme being, through your hero.

In terms of the writing process… this becomes your target.  The blinders come off and a world of storytelling possibilities will manifest before you.

Avoid the middle.  Give your hero something extreme to live through and, thus, feel.

It’s known as the hero’s journey… and when you look at it closely, it aligns with this very principle: the hero’s journey is the movement from one end of the continuum to the other.

And you are the cruise director.  Give them their money’s worth.

*****

If you’re intrigued by this whole notion of  story physics (vicarious experience being one of six primary categories of story physics), please consider my new book (out in June), “Story Physics” (Writers Digest Books).

The Risky Middle Realm of Character is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

You’re heard me rail and wail about episodic storytelling.  

I’ve called it toxic, referred to it as a dreaded story-killer.

Still think that, by the way.  But what the heck IS it?

The differentiation between what is episodic and what is not is thin and in constant motion.  It is made all the more complicated and obscured by the fact that, in any good story, there is indeed “stuff that happens” along the way… stuff that actually looks, smells and plays just like the very episodic context I’m preaching against.

Confusion becomes paradoxical.  But there’s a rule of thumb that helps: do you have a compelling CONCEPT in play?

The ticking off of “stuff that happens along the way” (exposition) that is in support of, pursuit of, and in context to a compelling CONCEPTUAL IDEA (not premise) is, in fact, the stuff of narrative.

Episodic scenes that simply unfold without context or connection to a compelling CENTRAL DRAMATIC CORE QUESTION… ONE  QUESTION, becomes that dreaded episodic approach.

The following may help.

This is the kind of issue that needs frequent revisiting from different angles.

A Story fix reader emailed me today, saying that she understood what I’m talking about (episodic storytelling versus, well, non-episodic and therefore better storytelling) in theory, but when it came to her story plan she found herself without clarity.  That line was wrapping itself around her outline and choking the life out of it.

This is, edited, expanded and paraphrased, my response to her:

Hi Jane (not her name) — great question.  This is one of the toughest things to wrap our heads around, the easiest “trap” to fall into, and often, we don’t even know we’ve done it.

My favorite “episodic” example is this hypothetical: you want to write a novel about your summer vacation.  Literally, “what I did on my summer vacation.”  Why? Because it was your best summer ever.  You did all kinds of stuff.  You fell in love.  Then had your heart broken.  Went to Paris.  Fell in love again.  Got sick, almost died.  Fell in love a third time with the doctor that saved you.  Came home a new and refreshed woman.

Sounds like a great novel, right?  But a reminder here… “Eat, Love Pray” (which played just like that) was NOT a novel.  It wasn’t even fiction.

All of the above “could” be a novel… but unless you added something to it, it would be an EPISODIC novel.  And probably, a bad, most likely publishable novel.  Not always, not certainly… but likely.

A-list authors can do it, we can’t.  Don’t imitate them on this one.

Why?  Because a story like that is just a bunch of stuff that “happens,” in a certain order, without a CONCEPT in play.  And while the hero did have a “problem” in this story (in fact she had several of them… and THAT is the storytelling problem here)… she didn’t have a CORE problem.  She had episodic problems.  Stuff that “Happened” to her.

This story has no core dramatic thread.  The key word: CORE.

There is no SINGULAR dramatic question being asked in the story.  It just goes from one thing to the other.

This is why weekly television is NOT a novel, because each week plays like a mini-drama, then it’s on to the next thing.  But a story like “The Following” (the current Fox hit, which is fantastic) DOES play like a novel, even when it has a weekly episode… because the whole thing is in CONTEXT to a SINGLE and powerful dramatic core, asking a single (though complex) dramatic question: will Kevin Bacon stop, and survive, the unfolding evil game playing out at the hands of the psycho bad guy cult leader serial killer?

The key: eEach “episode” takes us CLOSER to THAT resolution, that confrontation.  None of the episodes stand alone in terms of drama.  Each is a stepping stone toward the COMPELLING higher level of dramatic, conceptual question.

In the summer vacation example above, each episodic DOESN’T take us closer to anything, other then the end of her trip.  Each “thing” that happens to her stands alone, rather than expositionally-forwarding the narrative along a path TOWARD an inevitable resolution.

And what IS that question?  It’s your concept.  Your premise.  Your “idea” on steroids.  It is the SOURCE of dramatic tension… not just the STAGE for it.  Understand that difference and you’ll be on the road to avoiding the dreaded “too episodic” verdict.

“Stay Tuned For Our Next Episode…” or Not. is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com