Which Story to Write?

I don't know if very many other authors or would-be authors, like myself, have this problem as I do. Do you find yourself in this scenario?

You think of a great idea for a story that seems unique and you get excited about it, telling others about the idea and they agree it is something they'd love to read one day. So, you start writing it and you don't get very far with your first draft before you realize your brain just won't conjure up the creativity needed for you to keep going.

You bang your head against the wall to see if that will jog the creative juices, but it is of no avail. You cannot, for the life of you, get this story off the ground. You have no choice but to put it away and think of something else entirely to write next.

My current writing project seems to be fine, so I don't think this is an issue for me right now, but this has been how my year as a writer has gone until recently. I started out writing a Young Adult high fantasy about winged people until I realized the story was boring me to tears and sounded as flat as a plank. Then, I started a sci-fi apocalyptic story about cyborgs and destructive robots only to not be able to think of what to actually write. Then, a zombie apocalypse novella that somehow got away from me and I don't even know how that happened.

I was starting to think something was seriously wrong with me because I couldn't finish anything. I still might have this problem, but I can say that I feel my current YA vampire historical novel is a project I can at least finish in the first draft stage. I have the motivation to do it and am truly loving to write the characters. Finally, although it's likely it won't be finished until next year. So, I will have spent one full year not getting a first draft finished. 

I shake my head at myself, but I wonder how unusual is this for authors. Does this happen to anyone else? I really don't see authors admitting this, so it makes me feel like it's just me who has ever gone through this. I hope I'm not the only author who struggles with picking the right story to focus on and has to sift through quite a few to land on the right one. Surely, the norm is not to come up with the perfect idea out of the blue and just sit and write the story until it is done. That would be a little too perfect for this imperfect world, right?

Do you ever struggle to find the right story to focus on? 

Review: Wired for Story by Lisa Cron (Part 3)

Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence
by Lisa Cron

Genre: Nonfiction/Fiction Writing Skills

Publication Date: July 10, 2012

Source: paperback purchase

| Amazon | |Barnes &Noble |

Imagine knowing what the brain craves from every tale it encounters, what fuels the success of any great story, and what keeps readers transfixed. Wired for Story reveals these cognitive secrets—and it’s a game-changer for anyone who has ever set pen to paper.

The vast majority of writing advice focuses on “writing well” as if it were the same as telling a great story. This is exactly where many aspiring writers fail—they strive for beautiful metaphors, authentic dialogue, and interesting characters, losing sight of the one thing that every engaging story must do: ignite the brain’s hardwired desire to learn what happens next. When writers tap into the evolutionary purpose of story and electrify our curiosity, it triggers a delicious dopamine rush that tells us to pay attention. Without it, even the most perfect prose won’t hold anyone’s interest.

Backed by recent breakthroughs in neuroscience as well as examples from novels, screenplays, and short stories, Wired for Story offers a revolutionary look at story as the brain experiences it. Each chapter zeroes in on an aspect of the brain, its corresponding revelation about story, and the way to apply it to your storytelling right now.

  

Here's Part 3 of my very long review of Wired for Story. Read both Part 1 and Part 2 if you haven't yet to make more sense of this part of the review.

My Review – Part 3

Those who are famous for writing often say writing means going deeper in order to dig out the real core of who you are and what message you're trying to get across. In Chapter 5 of Wired for Story, you'll discover just how you can dig up your protagonist's inner issue that drives his every thought, word and deed.

The truth is, everyone of us can only see and comprehend the world around us through our own eyes. We simply aren't privy to any telepathic abilities or technology that allow for reading other people's thoughts, thus we see the world through our own filter. That filter got that way from our personal life experiences and upbringing. We can only see it the way we believe it to be at any given time.

And, so does your protagonist. He will interpret everything that happens to himself and anyone else through his own messed up filter. If he experienced a life-altering moment in his past, then everything from that realization on will be tainted by that shift in his perspective. What you need to do as a writer is pinpoint the moment when that shift in his perspective caused his whole worldview to go off the rails. That's how you dig up his 'inner issue.' And, it's how you will write your entire narrative.

When you develop your protagonist's bio, make sure you pinpoint this moment in his life as well as the time when he first felt the desire to accomplish his story goal. These may end up being one and the same thing. I'll use an example found in the book: in It's a Wonderful Life, George Bailey's worldview gets skewed when he watches his father get beat down by the town misanthrope, Mr. Potter. He then believes he'll become a failure if he stays in Bedford Falls, thus spurring him to want to leave town and become the success his father never could be. The story eventually leads him to realize just how wrong he was, both internally and externally.

Even if you never show the reader that scene in real time or a flash back, it should be referenced or implied so the reader understands what motivates the character and shapes the direction of the story. And, when you can zero in on this motivation and its cause, you can lead your character to huge emotional growth by the end of the story. If you know anything ahead of time about how your story will end, it should be what your protagonist will have learned by the end. Give him an “a-ha!” moment of realization, thus knocking his worldview back into alignment, again.

In Chapter 6, the next important thing we learn about telling a gripping story is the need to be specific. The cognitive secret here is that we don't think in the abstract. “We think in specific images,” says the author. What it means is that anything abstract or conceptual must be made specific in order for the reader to care.

But, why is this? Our brains are lazy and will only think about things that matter to us. So, you need to make the general more specific in order to hook the reader to the emotional appeal of your story. If I said, “A lot of people died years ago in a country far away,” how much interest and emotion does this conjure up in you? Not much, I'm supposing. But, if I said, “280,000 people died in Indonesia in one of the deadliest tsunami/earthquakes in recorded history on the day after Christmas in 2004,” your ears perk up. You might actually care about news like that.

In what ways do writers write in generalities?

1. The specific reason a character does something is often neither implied nor stated outright. Without knowing reasons behind actions, those actions tend to fall flat.
2. The specific thing a metaphor is meant to illuminate is often too vague. Metaphors should be instantly grasped by the reader, or they get missed.
3. The specific memory that a situation invokes in the protagonist is sometimes left to the reader's imagination and, ultimately, never processed.
4. The specific reaction a character has to a significant event can be totally left out, leaving the reader wondering if the character is capable of human feeling and emotion.
5. The specific possibilities that run through the protag's mind as he struggles to make sense of what's happening are often absent so the reader can't even infer what the options are.
6. The specific rationale behind a character's change of heart end up completely omitted, so as to leave the reader wondering how Doug went from being a total wad to giving everybody at the office gift certificates to Starbucks.

Writing a good story is all about making the reader care about the story and the characters. But, keep in mind, less is more. If you clog up the story with too many specific, unnecessary details, you will cause your reader's brain to tune out. We can only process so many things at a time. How the brain functions and what its limitations are will determine how effectively you've crafted your story. And, when those specifics have nothing to do with your protagonist and his inner issue or goal, they will be treated like generalities by the reader. Ignored.

That's it for this part. Now, I'm halfway finished with this super long book review! Tune in next week for Part 4.

Have you noticed you have trouble getting to the heart of your story? Do you see areas in your writing where you could be more specific about why your characters act the way they do?

Review: Wired for Story by Lisa Cron (Part 2)

Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence
by Lisa Cron

Genre: Nonfiction/Fiction Writing Skills

Publication Date: July 10, 2012

Source: paperback purchase

| Amazon | |Barnes &Noble |

Imagine knowing what the brain craves from every tale it encounters, what fuels the success of any great story, and what keeps readers transfixed. Wired for Story reveals these cognitive secrets—and it’s a game-changer for anyone who has ever set pen to paper.

The vast majority of writing advice focuses on “writing well” as if it were the same as telling a great story. This is exactly where many aspiring writers fail—they strive for beautiful metaphors, authentic dialogue, and interesting characters, losing sight of the one thing that every engaging story must do: ignite the brain’s hardwired desire to learn what happens next. When writers tap into the evolutionary purpose of story and electrify our curiosity, it triggers a delicious dopamine rush that tells us to pay attention. Without it, even the most perfect prose won’t hold anyone’s interest.

Backed by recent breakthroughs in neuroscience as well as examples from novels, screenplays, and short stories, Wired for Story offers a revolutionary look at story as the brain experiences it. Each chapter zeroes in on an aspect of the brain, its corresponding revelation about story, and the way to apply it to your storytelling right now.

 

In case you're unaware, I wrote the first part (Part 1) of this book review last week and now I'm continuing on with Part 2 today....

My Review – Part 2

Last week, my review of Wired for Story got into what a story should revolve around in order to consider it an actual story and not just a set of random events. This week's review covers the information in Chapters 3 through 4 about what elements your story needs to have to make it connect with readers.

Emotions are the glue that makes your story and characters stick to the roof of your reader's mouth as he or she laps them up like peanut butter. If your reader isn't having an emotional response to your story, chances are he/she will deem it as unimportant and move on to the next one. Brain science reveals that we cannot even make simple decisions in our lives without emotions driving us to pick a blue shirt over a brown one to wear because it's a nice, sunny day today.

So, how do you make meaningful emotional connections with the reader? Show how what happens to your protagonist affects them and what they do as a result. In every scene you write, your protagonist must react in some way the reader can understand in that moment. The reaction must have an effect on how the protagonist will achieve her goal, which will draw out a very visceral reaction in the protagonist.

Brain scientists have discovered that everything we experience pulls on our emotional heartstrings because, as a species, we are wired to ask ourselves, unconsciously, “Will this help me or hurt me?” We real folks feel everything and when we read about fictional people kind of feeling stuff, but not really, we check out of that story in a hurry. But, why? Because it bores us. We have no interest in anything we cannot feel. We end up not knowing what to think of it and that makes it hard for us to process.

Okay, now we understand this because it does make sense, after all, doesn't it? When you think it about, yes. But, don't we need to delve a little deeper into story to tell a story? Of course. Now, it's time to write characters that have ambitions, or goals to achieve. A protagonist without something to achieve is flowndering and leaves the reader feeling nothing. But, why do protagonists need goals to achieve? Because we real people are always driven to achieve goals, be they the kind in which we want to eat pancakes for breakfast to the kind in which we want to become the next president of the United States.

The thing is, when we read, we slip into the skin of the protagonist for that time and become them. What they want, we want. What makes them happy, makes us happy. Our brains light up on fMRI scans the exact same way when we read about a story happening to somebody else as when it actually happens to us, literally. Basically, our brains can't tell the difference.

So, we cannot find meaning in anything that happens to a character if we don't know what she wants. Was that slap on the butt flirtation or harassment? If your character is a stalwart feminist aiming to take down “the man” and all his “boys,” and the man slapping her is her coworker, then, yes that was harassment. If he is her playful husband teasing her about her new Buns of Steel workout and how hot she looks, then it's flirtation. See how knowing the character and what drives her, you can find the meaning in everything that happens to her?

And, everything that happens to her will be colored by her story goal. It will strengthen in the reader's mind what she is focused on and how what she must go through to achieve her goal will emotionally impact her. But, is it enough to just know what the character wants? Inevitably, the reader will ask, “Why does she want this?” Give your character a reason why they want what they want—a motivation behind it because it will resonate better. Nothing in a story happens in a vacuum just as in real life.

There's so much more that I can't even get into from Chapter 4 because it reaches some serious depths, but this is a tasty sample of what you'll find therein. Next time, for Part 3 in two weeks, I'll get into the chapters on how to probe into your protagonist's inner issue and the importance of writing specifics into your story.

To be continued in Part 3....

Did you ever think story was so complex? It really goes so far beyond our awareness because when we slip into story, that part of our brain that analyzes things shuts off, thus keeping us blind to why the story is resonating with us. Funny, isn't it?

Review: Wired for Story by Lisa Cron (Part 1)

Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence
by Lisa Cron

Genre: Nonfiction/Fiction Writing Skills

Publication Date: July 10, 2012

Source: paperback purchase

| Amazon | |Barnes &Noble |

Imagine knowing what the brain craves from every tale it encounters, what fuels the success of any great story, and what keeps readers transfixed. Wired for Story reveals these cognitive secrets—and it’s a game-changer for anyone who has ever set pen to paper.

The vast majority of writing advice focuses on “writing well” as if it were the same as telling a great story. This is exactly where many aspiring writers fail—they strive for beautiful metaphors, authentic dialogue, and interesting characters, losing sight of the one thing that every engaging story must do: ignite the brain’s hardwired desire to learn what happens next. When writers tap into the evolutionary purpose of story and electrify our curiosity, it triggers a delicious dopamine rush that tells us to pay attention. Without it, even the most perfect prose won’t hold anyone’s interest.

Backed by recent breakthroughs in neuroscience as well as examples from novels, screenplays, and short stories, Wired for Story offers a revolutionary look at story as the brain experiences it. Each chapter zeroes in on an aspect of the brain, its corresponding revelation about story, and the way to apply it to your storytelling right now.

 

This is going to be a several-part review of this book, so Part 1 begins with this post. It is just THAT amazing of a book and I'm doing an in-depth preview of what you can expect to find if you decide to read it. Hopefully, you will.

My Review – Part 1

When I first stumbled upon Wired for Story, I wasn't sure if it was a book that I had likely read before, or something really revolutionary. I liked the idea of the premise—that this writer's resource would explain the science behind why some stories sizzle and others fizzle for seemingly no apparent reason. So, I took the bate and bought this title, diving right into it when it landed in my mailbox.

I have to say this resource is more like 'something revolutionary.' Imagine reading a reference book that tells you how your human brain responds to storytelling and why. Wouldn't you want to read that if you're like me and want to have every possible advantage when it comes to fiction writing? Sure, you can just hope to get it right one day, but it makes more sense to put the right tools in your tool kit rather than just hope that if you close your eyes and swing away, eventually you'll hit the fastball.

There's a real scientific reason why our brains get so excited about some books we read more than others. It isn't just because Book A is 'better' than Book B. It's really because Book A is more effective at stimulating your brain's dopamine production than Book B. And, there are quite a few reasons why effective storytelling creates this wonderful dopamine rush in our brains, making us fall in love with books and the characters that drive them.

First of all, we humans have a biological survival mechanism implanted in us that requires story. Without it, I would not be typing this right now because humanity would have gone extinct long ago. We learn vicariously through the experiences of others and we have to or we would be toast. Story evolved because it was first meant to teach us where it wasn't safe to build our homes, according to the other humans already in the area, or why we can't grow the same crops in Nebraska that we can in California. Somebody will tell you a story first so you don't have to find out through trial and error for yourself and risk starving to death.

But, story doesn't have to be fact in order to enthrall us. Our brains learn and love just as well when we know the story is completely fictional. But, how do we give the dopamine rush to our readers they need to feel satisfaction when reading our story?

Start with anything that makes them want to know what happens next. That pique of curiosity is like catnip for humans and is how any good book beginning does its job of hooking the reader. But, make sure you zero in on your point right off the bat, or the reader ends up with lower than normal dopamine levels because they are so confused, they want to stop reading. Introduce a character, set up a conflict for that character, put something important at risk and make sure the reader knows things aren't as they ought to be from the get-go.

What is a story? Why is it that when we write stuff happening, it falls flat sometimes? A story isn't simply what happens to a protagonist, or even what he/she has to do to achieve their goal. It's how the protagonist has to change internally in order to achieve it. Story is about something inside the character that is changing. Otherwise, it is a non-story about a bunch of stuff happening. And, the way to zero in on how your character has to change in order to achieve their goal is to ask a story question and answer it. Will Katniss take down the Capitol? Will Scrooge learn to be a humanitarian? Will Harry finally defeat Voldemort?

You're pretty curious, aren't you? You're licking the dopamine right off your fingertips—it's so good. Wired for Story is about finding your focus as a storyteller and creating a story around that focal point in order to hook the reader in and make them drunk on their own dopamine.

To be continued in Part 2....

I hope you are effectively hooked! I'll be back with Part 2 next week, so stay tuned. What do you think about brain science and story? Does it surprise you to know how fundamentally important is the role of a storyteller, after all?

  

Review: The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman

The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Expression
by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi

Genre: Nonfiction/Fiction Writing Reference

Publication Date: May 9, 2012

Source: Amazon Kindle store

| Amazon | | Barnes &Noble |

One of the biggest problem areas for writers is conveying a character's emotions to the reader in a unique, compelling way. This book comes to the rescue by exploring seventy-five emotions and listing the possible body language cues, thoughts, and visceral responses for each.

Written in an easy-to-navigate list format, readers can draw inspiration from character cues that range in intensity to match any emotional moment, including situations where a character is trying to hide their feelings from others. The Emotion Thesaurus also tackles common emotion-related writing problems and provides methods to overcome them.

This writing tool encourages writers to show, not tell emotion and is a creative brainstorming resource for any fiction project. 

 

My Review

When I first learned about The Emotion Thesaurus I was intrigued. Was this like a regular thesaurus, but for emotions? Would I be able to look up any type of human emotion and find varying ways to portray it through prose that would help me avoid being redundant and stale? The answer to these questions is a definite YES.

What a brilliant idea it was to create this amazing resource for fiction writers! The authors of this title are the owners of the popular writing craft blog, The Bookshelf Muse. They've been helping authors with their writing craft for a good while now, and this book was naturally created through their blog posts first, then compiled for ease of use in book reference format.

Here is why The Emotion Thesaurus is a must-have reference if you write any kind of prose in which you need to convey emotion accurately and compellingly:

Say you're writing a scene in your novel in which your main character is experiencing a crisis moment. She has just discovered another trusted character has been lying to her through his fat teeth. You want to get into your main character's head-space and illustrate just how deeply she is hurt by this other character's betrayal.

You flip open either your paperback or ebook version of The Emotion Thesaurus right to the Table of Contents page. Panning down the ToC, you spot the word “Hurt” and turn to its corresponding page. You read a definition of the word, followed by a long list of outward, physical signals that are apparent when a person has been hurt emotionally, like:

          Physical Signals

          Eyes widening, yet brows are furrowed

          Swallowing hard

          Lowering the head, the neck appearing to shrink

You also find a long list of internal sensations one experiences when hurt, like:

         Internal Sensations

         Dizziness

         Stomach hardening, nausea

         A painful tightness in one's throat

Beyond all this, you also see sub-lists of “Mental Responses,” “Cues of Long-Term Hurt,” “Cues of Suppressed Hurt” and an additional writer's tip for each emotion chapter. These authors thought of everything you can do, think, feel, react and stubbornly hang-on to for every major emotion we humans experience.

Back to your novel—you realize now that you can rewrite this weak sentence, “She was so hurt by Barry's betrayal and wanted to throw up,” to a more powerful, “Her head began to spin. She swallowed down hard on the painful realization. He'd been lying to her? She gagged on the knot in her throat, clenching her stomach to keep its contents from rising.”

If you find your ability to convey emotion becoming stilted and repetitive, this book is the answer to your problem. I've been using it every day as I've been writing my current novella, and it has gotten me through those emotionally turbulent scenes better than I ever would have without it. Highly recommended.

My score: 5/5 stars.

Book Review: Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass

I've been thinking for a while about reviewing the books on writing craft that I've read in the past on this blog. I've been reviewing sci-fi/fantasy novels on my book blog for over year, so I figured reviewing books relevant to this blog might make sense. The following review is not just a testimonial meant to convince you to buy the book, but is my way of outlining what the book actually contains in very condensed form.

Writing the Breakout Novel
by Donald Maass

Genre: Nonfiction/Fiction Writing Reference

Publication Date: August 15, 2002

Source: paperback purchase

| Amazon | | Barnes &Noble |

Take your fiction to the next level Maybe you're a first-time novelist looking for practical guidance. Maybe you've already been published, but your latest effort is stuck in mid-list limbo. Whatever the case may be, author and literary agent Donald Maass can show you how to take your prose to the next level and write a breakout novel—one that rises out of obscurity and hits the best-seller lists.

Maass details the elements that all breakout novels share—regardless of genre—then shows you writing techniques that can make your own books stand out and succeed in a crowded marketplace.

You'll learn to: establish a powerful and sweeping sense of time and placeweave subplots into the main action for a complex, engrossing storycreate larger-than-life characters that step right off the pageexplore universal themes that will interest a broad audience of readerssustain a high degree of narrative tension from start to finishdevelop an inspired premise that sets your novel apart from the competition Then, using examples from the recent works of several best-selling authors—including novelist Anne Perry—Maass illustrates methods for upping the ante in every aspect of your novel writing. You'll capture the eye of an agent, generate publisher interest and lay the foundation for a promising career. 

 

My Review

When I finally got around to reading this book after buying it, I was at a point in my writing self-education where I wanted to become a better storyteller, not just a better writer. I had already smoothed out my technical writing skills well enough and found my fiction still lacking quite a bit. What did I need to do to write a compelling narrative? There was something still missing because when I wrote fiction, it continued to fall flat on the page. It was my story that was failing, or so I had discovered when I cracked open this gem of a book.

The first thing Maass teaches is the foundation of a story—the premise. Don't pursue just any old premise right out of the gate. It needs to be developed into a premise that is strong enough to withhold the structure build on top of it that is your actual written story. For that, it should have one of four elements: plausibility, inherent conflict, originality and gut emotional appeal. Once my premises could pass this litmus test, I found I could fix any flaws in my manuscripts without having to rewrite them.

Second, raise the stakes of the story, meaning make the characters lose things that are valuable to them, or threaten to. In order to do that, Maass has you ask, “How could things get worse?” Make the danger immediate and put your characters on the chopping block. Otherwise, your reader won't care enough. He also talks about time and place, which could be considered less important in writing breakout fiction. But, if you can capture the psychology of time and place by describing how setting makes characters feel, it can have deeper impact and won't be used solely for visual imagery.

The chapter on 'Characters' could be the most illuminating. Engrossing characters are larger-than-life and they say what we can't say and change in ways we can't. They have inner conflicts of conscience and are celebrated by readers because of their strengths. Your main character should be the one who changes the most by the events of the story. After all, a story is about events that cause a character to transform, at least internally.

Maass delves into plot and different contemporary uses for plot, how to handle multiple viewpoints, subplots, pace, voice and endings. He also devotes a chapter to advanced plot structures showing how authors of various genres, like science fiction and category romance, can enhance their plotting to catch the eye of the gatekeepers in the biz.

Lastly, is the chapter on theme. Maass believes all novels are moral and shows you how to build a theme for a novel step by step. Thankfully, he shows how to avoid becoming preachy and how to let the characters do all the talking, or acting for that matter. Their job is to convey theme through their words and deeds, a powerful combination that drives the story's message home to your readers much more effectively than an author on a soapbox.

As much as I'm interested in writing a breakout novel, I didn't read this book strictly for that reason. I read it because I wanted help taking my fiction to “the next level.” I don't want anymore false starts on my manuscripts that have to be shelved because the premise is too weak, or I don't have a well-developed enough character goal. I'm not saying this book is the final word on story craft. But, it could open your eyes to concepts you simply never knew before and lay the groundwork for more advanced story-writing education.

My score: 5/5 stars.