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Why do we spend so much time on form and so little on content?

The Storytelling Trumps Writing thread got me thinking: Why do we spend so much time and energy discussing the minutiae of writing prose, when the much more difficult part of writing is the storytelling? Constructing a narrative; pacing, tone, characterization. This is the hard stuff.

The obvious answer is that it's easy to discuss the easy stuff: how to use commas, whether to use dialogue tags or italics. Storytelling is hard and there are no easy answers.

But that doesn't mean it can't be treated as a craft. TV writers churn out dependable entertainment on a regular basis. A lot of TV shows follow a formula, and they keep people tuning in week after week. So clearly it's possible to do this.

What are some ways that we can break down a story into simple component parts that follow a relatively straightforward structure, that helps us achieve the end result of writing a solid (if perhaps unspectacular) story?
 

Philip Overby

Staff
Article Team
Advice that I see come up a lot is using an "action/reaction" format. Meaning you have something happen and then have your characters react to it.

I'm a big Desperate Housewives fan (yeah, so what...) and something that got me hooked on the show was it's simple format. You have four distinctive characters as your main ones and each follows a storyline that is relatively simple (usually):

1. Something happens
2. They try to cover up it up
3. Eventually someone finds out
4. Everyone reacts to it

It's a pretty simple formula, but it tends to work. Hey, even Breaking Bad, which I now think is my favorite show ever, does the same formula (in a way):

SPOILERS BELOW!

1st Episode:

1. Walt finds out he has cancer (action)
2. Reacts to it by deciding to produce meth with a former student Jesse (reaction)
3. Some dealers are angry with Jesse and force him to show them the lab, they want the formula to the meth (action)
4. Walt poisons them instead of showing them (reaction)

Oh, what's going to happen in Episode 2?!

The audience is hooked to find out. I think the basic format is have something happen and then have everyone react to it in some way. If your characters are strong, then it gives you a chance to develop them based on how they deal with each problem.

Real life situation:

1. Phil has a tooth ache (for real, I do) (action)
2. Phil takes a hammer and smashes it out (reaction)
3. He goes walking down the street with blood coming out of his mouth (action)
4. Everyone thinks he's a zombie and run away from him (reaction)

So from this short piece of action/reaction we learn that Phil is:

a. Possibly insane
b. Has a tendency to make rash decisions instead of just going to the doctor like a normal person.
c. Lives in a world where people believe in zombies.
d. Could either embrace his new zombie-hood or try to disprove it (what will he do?)

I think this works on a basic level as far as simple storytelling. Present a problem, react to it, create a new problem based on that reaction, react to it.

Easy, right? :)
 

T.Allen.Smith

Staff
Moderator
Yes there are some basic formulas & story archetypes. However, I'm a firm believer that story telling is one of those things you just can't teach.

Yes you could give blocks of story ideas that can be assembled and reassembled by anyone, but as the OP pointed out, the result would be unspectacular. So what's the point?

The technical aspects can be taught, even by someone that can't handle story content well. That's why it is the focus of writing instruction.
 

Chime85

Sage
Well for me, story writing does not just come in the form of events; obstacles and conclusions, there are many different aspects to a story. I personally prefer story’s which draw me into the scenario of the characters, especially in the written word.

A good story also includes settings, feeling the environment around the characters. The most amazing thing could be happening, a sword fight between six clowns while the seventh is umping on a pogo-stick with a crossbow, another is a monkey who gambles whilst the fish can solve the rubix cube in under 10 seconds.
But, if all this is taking place in an empty dimension of solid white, it loses its impact. There is no sense of placement or how these events coincide with anything around them.

If part of the story involved a rich and carefree man stealing bread from a struggling, dirty and old bakery, we have a collision of events which are the making of a good story. If later we, as the reader, are told that the bakery is struggling due to the owner owing gambling money to said rich man, which is adding to the situation and drawing the reader into the lives of the people involved.
Of course, this is only a light example of something that may be the start of something huge. The story could continue down the path of the rich man offering an “out” for the bakery owner, letting him pay off his debt by way of servitude, or giving up his youngest for adoption (actually, those don’t sound too bad for off the cuff hehe). There are many ways in which the setting of these events can be played with in the writing of this story.

Sometimes, the focus of creating the perfect sentences gets in the way of great story telling. By all means, good writing can be very engaging, but if there is no sense of reality for the reader or development of plot, then perfect sentences are lost.
 

Carl

Dreamer
I agree that good story telling is almost impossible to teach. I would still like an idea about what makes for a good story. I know what grabs me in stories and doesn't let go. My question I guess would be what grabs everyone else? What makes it impossible for you to put a book down?

For me it is pretty simple the writing has to flow. The story needs to be told in such a way that I feal like I am sitting there instead of sitting on my couch with a cold beer. I want the suspense so thick I catch myself holding my breath waiting to see what is going to happen next. I want the humor to blind side me out of no where so that i can't help but laugh until is snort (does happen from time to time). To me this is story telling everything else is writing. So how do we as aspiring authors make the leap from just writing a story to creating the epic story that people can't put down even with their wife screaming at them to come to bed? Honestly, I have no idea.

I find my self, at the moment, still trying to figure out how to just write a story. So by all means if you guys can drop a layout for the ones that aren't epic but just so-so please do so. Some may be having the same issues I am having right now.
 

JCFarnham

Auror
There is a reason why so many professionals dedicated to teaching amatuers the craft focus on the storytelling--Brandon Sanderson does it frequently in his college lectures, and I'm sure others do through the medium of those residential courses and writers retreats and even university creative writing courses.

Good storytelling is so much more important than being able to construct language well. Though prose goes an awful long way to helping before someone comes in with the argument of not seeing the story through the terrible prose, etc. I always tend to mention this to this argument polished crap is still crap.

The easy route isn't always the best way. Though I will admit a ridiculous amount of people find it hard to construct decent prose.

Both need to be taught, learned, mastered, but STORYTELLING is where its at. Or should that be crafting something COMPELLING is where its at? Making everything as invisible as possible in the hope that your idea alone can hook me is far too risky. Surely it's better to present a complete package? Impeccable prose and a great idea, that follows through.

I'll say it again. Polished crap is still crap.

The perfect example of my argument is the Inheritance Cycle. Paolini couldn't write to save his life, but of the people I know who read the whole series, they stuck through it, because they found the story compelling. I can say exactly the same for Twilight and fellows.
 
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Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
You can't be taught storytelling. But you can be trained.

What does that mean? It means storyteling is pretty complex and stylistic, impossible to break down into a scientific process that can be explained and reproduced. Most writers probably couldn't even articulate their technique.

But if you work with someone competent, long term, to do solid critiques of your work, you can definitely be trained to go from polished crap (btw, thanks for that visual) to publishable and successful. At least with the right attitude.

I don't think anyone here wants to talk training committments, but as a community, good discussions of storytelling could help some people on the self-training tract. And a good workshop group can do that, too.
 

BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
Not sure if this is on topic completely or not:

Regarding technique vs. storytelling, where does adding tension and emotion come in?

Your story isn't going to be any good if you don't have tension and emotion. However, it seems to me that learning how to incorporate these components into your story is technique.

Sidebar question: If you have great tension and emotion, what else do you need to make the "story" good?

Just some musings. Thanks.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
BWFoster, whose emotion? Making your reader emotional and making your characters emotional are separate things. It's pretty common to see readers describe emotional, conflicted characters as whiney, while the scenes with a powerful emotional effect are often delivered through action or dialogue. I think a reader's emotions are evoked through storytelling, while character emotions involve elements of both storytelling and technique.

Some related elements include immersion. Suspense. Surprise.

Also, I think it's a common misconception that story means plot. I'm pretty sure it doesn't. But maybe someone else has a good formal definition.
 

BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
BWFoster, whose emotion? Making your reader emotional and making your characters emotional are separate things. It's pretty common to see readers describe emotional, conflicted characters as whiney, while the scenes with a powerful emotional effect are often delivered through action or dialogue. I think a reader's emotions are evoked through storytelling, while character emotions involve elements of both storytelling and technique.

Some related elements include immersion. Suspense. Surprise.

Also, I think it's a common misconception that story means plot. I'm pretty sure it doesn't. But maybe someone else has a good formal definition.

Since we're discussing it so much, it would definitely help to agree on a definition.

As for your initial question: A primary goal of my writing is to invoke an emotional response in my reader. One way I attempt to do this is emphasizing emotional context and the emotions of my characters.

As far as your point about readers describing emotional characters as whiny, two thoughts:

1. It could partially be poor technique. If a character isn't relatable enough, the reader is going to see the character's emotions instead of experiencing the character's emotions, leading them to feel the character is whiny.

2. Relatability is a key component is the reader feeling the character's emotion. Not all readers are going to relate to all characters. (Caveat: at my skill level, I can't make every character relatable to every reader. Perhaps true masters of the craft can.) For example, a reader who is a womanizer isn't truly going to relate to a character who shows empathy and concern in their dealings with women regardless of how well I write the character.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
My only point was that they're separate. Even at points where the reader's emotion was drawn from action, it does so by drawing on the character's established framework. But readers don't automatically match the character's emotions, nor should we always want them to.
 

Chilari

Staff
Moderator
Technical aspects of writing are tangible. It's easy to tell if someone is a competant writer because bad grammar or bad spelling is something quantifiable; if it consistently breaks the rules, it is wrong. Storytelling does not have such quantifiable rules which are easy to identify. But that's what the Showcase is for: you refine your storytelling by getting feedback, by finding out what works and what doesn't. And in some cases what works for in one context doesn't work in another. It's variable, contextually sensitive, and thus difficult. And since it is so variable, there's not always something you can pick out as being an issue a lot of writers have in common regarding storytelling. Something like pacing, certainly you can discuss it, but you can't always look at a piece of writing and determine whether the pacing is good or bad - some will find it too fast, others too slow, and those opinions may well change between a 500 word passage and the 7000 word chapter it is part of, because the context of the 500 word passage changes when you can see the chapter around it.

But then there are the threads about whether something is cliche and whether it matters, and that's about storytelling. To a degree, the threads about things like whether to continue with a trilogy if book one is rejected, and the discussions that arise from that, can have an impact on storytelling too, because if you're aware of the potential wasted time in creating a trilogy when it all hinges on book one being accepted, you may well change book one into a stand-alone story rather than just as "part one" of a larger story. So storytelling is considered even if the thread isn't necessarily a "storytelling" thread.

Storytelling is an art that develops over time. I would agree it can't be taught, but I would say it is best developed with guidance. That guidance can come in the form of a creative writing tutor, forum discussions, feedback from beta readers, but there's no golden rule, no "this is the right way and that is the wrong way".

So I'd argue that while we may not create threads called "storytelling question", quite a lot of what we're all doing here is working on improving storytelling through discussion, by giving and receiving feedback, and of course by actually writing.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
I don't know, Chilari. I do see questions about plot that get solid answers sometimes, but I don't see a lot, for example, about pacing out character development. Admittedly I could spend more time in the Showcase, but I think most critiques focus on micro issues and don't address the bigger storytelling issues at depth.
 

BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
I don't know, Chilari. I do see questions about plot that get solid answers sometimes, but I don't see a lot, for example, about pacing out character development. Admittedly I could spend more time in the Showcase, but I think most critiques focus on micro issues and don't address the bigger storytelling issues at depth.

This also might be a function of seeing only a portion of the work. If I'm reading your entire novel, I can pick out character development and plot issues. If I'm reading an excerpt on the Showcase, I simply don't know enough about your world or your characters to make such comments.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
This also might be a function of seeing only a portion of the work. If I'm reading your entire novel, I can pick out character development and plot issues. If I'm reading an excerpt on the Showcase, I simply don't know enough about your world or your characters to make such comments.

That's definitely one big issue, but I don't think it accounts for the degree to which storytelling issues are underemphasized. If someone posts a scene, we could still address scene structure. And I think people tend to post early passages where there's little established context.
 
I don't know, Chilari. I do see questions about plot that get solid answers sometimes, but I don't see a lot, for example, about pacing out character development. Admittedly I could spend more time in the Showcase, but I think most critiques focus on micro issues and don't address the bigger storytelling issues at depth.

I think you're right. In order to usefully critique story structure, one has to have a good understanding of story structure, which, as has been established, is hard. This means that most critiques focus on the easy stuff.
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
What are some ways that we can break down a story into simple component parts that follow a relatively straightforward structure, that helps us achieve the end result of writing a solid (if perhaps unspectacular) story?

We can talk about three act structure and stuff like that, but for me, the following are the smallest and the most fundimental story components that make up a story. I've mentioned them before. They're called scenes and sequels.

Jim Butcher explains them better than I can.

jimbutcher: SCENES
jimbutcher: SEQUELS

But here's the short break down.

Scene for a POV character have.

A Goal
An obstacle to that goal
Results - There are only 4 possible results when going for a goal: yes, no, yes but, no but. Yes is never used until the end. No obviously means the POV character failed in their attempt at the goal. In the latter two results the POV character will pay an additional price for the perceived victory and or attempt at the goal above and beyond just failure.


Sequels - are a reaction to the results of a Scene.

First there's the Emotional reaction.
Then there the logical reaction where options of what to do next are thought up.
Then the POV character thinks about the consequences to taking each of those paths.
Finally they make a choice which leads into the next scene.

One thing about sequels is the middle steps can be skipped in certain situations like if a gun is pulled out. No need for the POV character to have a prolonged discussion with themselves about what to do next. Usually it's just run, dive for cover, or some other sort of instinctual reaction.

Here's a little application of the scene sequel. I'm sure everyone has heard this story or a form of it before.

A farmer buys a pig at market and wants to get it back to his farm. When he gets to the fence to his farm, he finds the pig is too fat to fit through the opening, so the farmer goes back to the market and brings back a teeter totter, places the pig on one end and tries to lift it over the fence. But the farmer is too light, so he goes and brings back an elephant to step on the teeter totter and lift the pig over the fence. But the elephant wont step on the teeter totter, so the farmer goes and brings back a mouse to scare the elephant into stepping on the teeter totter. But the mouse won't jump on the elephant, so the farmer goes and gets a cat.... and we can see where this goes from here. The next is a dog, then a lion etc... it can go forever. But in the end, the dog barks at the cat. The cat jumps at the mouse. The mouse jumps on the elephant causing them to step on the teeter totter, lifting the pig over the fence. The End.

To me this is the fundamental construction of a story.
 
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Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
I can see Scenes and Sequels, to some basic extent.

I find the setup, payoff and aftermath structure to be pretty helpful. A scene (and in turn, a story) has certain moments which are the important "payoff" moments for the readers, and everything else is designed to build up to deliver those moments and wind down from them. Then on the larger scale, one scene's payoff or aftermath might be considered part of the setup for another.

Under that structure, I fill out a blank outline with loose spacing for the "payoff" moments that I can think of for the book, with one column for the plot and another for the character interactions. Then I try to space out the appropriate "setup" and "aftermath" events for each and merge them as much as I can.

I learned that structure from listening to a friend in college who was doing script writing.
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
I learned that structure from listening to a friend in college who was doing script writing.

FYI and for anybody who cares, here's a amazon link to a book on it. Amazon.com: Elements of Fiction Writing - Scene & Structure (9780898799064): Jack Bickham: Books It describes some of the more complex applications of scenes and sequels in novels. There can be scenes within scenes, sequels within scenes, scenes that don't resolve until later and the same with sequels. it can get quite complex when dealing with multiple plots.
 
As for story and plot - I tend to think of plot as the dramatic structure. The various points where something happens/changes/is revealed and that keeps the reader guessing. The story is the whole package - in particular, your own unique way of portraying a world and its inhabitants.
 
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