Showing posts with label ideas. Show all posts
Monday, December 29, 2014
Repost: How To Find Your Writing Muse
If you�re lying awake in bed, and you look over at your sleeping partner with their tongue hanging out, snoring, making odd farty noises, and your heart starts beating faster and you think, �Of course! What a brilliant idea for a horror story,� then congratulations, you have a genuine muse on your hands.
Sadly, that�s not the case for everyone. Having someone who can inspire great ideas and put thoughts in your head that lead to marvellous stories is something we would all love, but the muse as an independent being who feeds out creativity is a rare and unreliable creation.
So where can you go for a refill when your well runs dry?
For most of us the real muse is ourselves, or to be more specific, our viewpoint. Having opinions and ideas about the world and the stuff that goes on in it, is what fuels a lot of storytelling. An objective and simplistic tale told in a balanced and reasonable manner doesn�t have the inner spark of a story told by someone with strong beliefs and firm ideas, even if those ideas are complete hogwash.
If you�re writing a romantic story about a man and a woman, what is it that you�re really writing about? What do you feel about relationships or dating or marriage or whatever?
It�s easier to put those thoughts aside and just write and see what turns up on the page. The muse in this case is seen as an otherworldly force who will whisper in your ear and if you�re lucky what they whisper will be a 600 page international bestseller. And occasionally this is what happens.
Will it happen to you? Probably not. Will it happen to me? Definitely not. However, you have every right to play those odds if you wish.
Stating what you think about something beforehand is often difficult for people. It can be embarrassing, or others can use it to make you feel foolish (You really think that?!). But I have found if I sit with a writer and just ask them questions about the subject matter they�re planning to write about, they, like everyone, have very definite ideas and opinions.
If you asked me about romantic relationships, I might say I think it puzzles me that a woman asking a man out is still considered odd. Even though men might say they have no issue with it, they tend to find it a little threatening, an attempt to take control. And while we should all be assertive about the things we want, if the woman I�m with makes me look like a follower rather than a leader, what will my friends think? Maybe an assertive but understanding woman will allow her man to take charge when they�re out with friends, just so he doesn�t feel embarrassed, but what if he starts to like being top dog and wants things to be like that at home too?
My point being my interest in women asking men out (not whether it�s right or wrong, just my view that it is an interesting idea to me) acts as my muse. It leads me to a certain issue in relationships, which might not even be central to the story I�m writing, just part of the make-up of the characters. The scene where a woman asks out a man scene may not even appear in the story. But that muse only exists because I asked myself what I thought about the premise.
This can be a tricky thing to do on your own. Possibly sitting down with someone (preferably who doesn�t hold the same views as you) and asking them conversationally what they think about a subject, and using that to investigate your own position, can help.
Of course, some people have no problem working out what they think about these sorts of matters. In fact they have too many views and won�t shut up about any of them. Having a muse surplus is not helpful. You have to be able to cut through the background chatter and focus in on the meaty parts you can get stuck into.
And once you have your muse, your definite spark to start your fire, you don�t want to over sell it. Acting like you have the one true answer and there�s no other approach is going to read as anodyne and one-note. That�s why you have a cast of characters, to challenge and shape your muse.
Having a viewpoint, no matter what it is, fuels ideas and creativity. Sitting on the fence, taking an even-handed apporach, waiting for your subconscious to do the work for you, are approaches which will peter out into a dithering mess.
Things that don�t seem right to you, or when people seem to miss the obvious, these are your muses.
When things annoy you, excite you, or make you laugh, those are the things to investigate in narrative form. That part of your brain that you don�t really understand, that decides what you approve of or what you don�t, that�s where your muse lives.
Sure, your muse can be an opinionated idiot who says dumb things, and gets you into all sorts of trouble if you go round spouting these things in real life, but when you�re writing, there�s no better friend to have sitting on your shoulder.
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This post first appeared back in March 2012. New post soon(ish).Monday, April 14, 2014
All Character, No Plot
Occasionally I will get questions from new writers and by far the most common concern plot. The aspiring novelist will have a very strong grasp of who they want to write about and where proceedings will be set, but actually coming up with a plot seems daunting.
For some people the events that take place are the first things they come up with, but if that isn�t how it works for you then having an intimate knowledge of your main character is still an excellent route to working out what the story will be about.
Bear in mind that even the most inexperienced of writers is still a hugely experienced reader. We have all been reading, hearing and watching stories for many years. But while everyone feels confident in their ability to judge whether those stories are good, bad or indifferent, when it comes to our own writing it becomes much more tricky to gauge.
If you have a strong sense of how a story will go that�s all well and good, but if you don�t then here are three steps that will help demystify the process.
First, what does your character want?
At this point try not to focus on what external forces might come into this character�s world. A new guy at work, a phone call from the president, the death of a close friend�these things will certainly give the character something to do, but the point of the plot isn�t to keep the character busy.
A character will have an inner need (what they want within themselves) and an external need (events that force them to act).
It is important to work out the inner need first. If you know your character well then you will have a good idea of what is lacking from their life. You can be quite vague�maybe they want to be happy, or find love, or overcome their shyness�you just need to identify the one area that the character would most want to sort out.
Once you have a broad idea of what they want you need to narrow the focus down to what physical action, object, event, thing, would fulfil that need. Maybe it�s a job, or a person, or a large diamond�some tangible thing will make them feel better. It will require some brainstorming and throwing out a lot of ideas that seem okay but not quite right. Don�t settle until something sparks more than a passing interest (it will come eventually).
Second, what is stopping the character from getting what they need?
Whatever the character wants, it is important that they can�t get it. Not just because they lack motivation or drive or opportunity, but because you intentionally put huge obstacles in the way. The bigger the obstacles the better.
Let�s say my story is about a father who wants to reconnect with his estranged daughter, what could prevent him from doing that? She refuses to talk to him? That would make it difficult but it hardly suggests an interesting story. But if she�s kidnapped by his enemies then that would make it kind of hard for him to sit her down and have a heart to heart with her.
I�m not getting her kidnapped because I want to write a thriller about a man with a certain set of skills hunting down a bunch of bad guys to save his little girl (although that�s how it might appear to the reader), I�m creating an external series of events that force the character to go to great lengths to satisfy his inner need.
You need to go to that kind of extreme, even if you don�t know how you�re going to resolve the problem, in order to get the mental juices flowing. The more difficult the obstacle the more inventive the solution. That�s not to say you won�t come up with insurmountable problems that you�ll give up on and have to start from scratch, that�s all part of the process, but the simple and obvious won�t be much fun to write, nor will it be much fun to read.
You have to spend time just staring at the middle distance trying to come up with a way to solve the puzzle you�ve set for yourself. Sometimes the ideas will come quickly, sometimes they will take time and sometimes they won�t come at all. Persevere.
Third, what order does stuff happen in?
You have an idea of what the character wants, both internally and externally. You�ve come up with something that makes it seem very unlikely they�ll get it. But how do you create an interesting and involving journey for the character?
You can try just winging it, and some people have enough of an innate sense of storytelling to work this way. But if you don�t feel very confident doing that, or you�d like a guide on your first time out, then you can do what writers have been doing since the year dot.
Take a story you like, that�s similar in approach to what you hope to write, and copy the structure.
This doesn�t mean plagiarise the story. If the story starts with man in a tower with a gun about to shoot the Queen of England, don�t start yours with a guy in a tree about to shoot the King of Norway.
But work out the point of the scene. Are we seeing an assassination to show us how good the character is at his job? Or are we establishing his role in the organisation? Or maybe things go wrong and he�s betrayed by his own side. Whatever you think is really going on, make your scene about a similar quality in your character. Doesn�t matter if your interpretation is wrong. Doesn�t matter if you have to make changes to fit your story better. Doesn�t matter if you skip a scene that you don�t like. Just do your version.
And then the same for the next scene.
This is somewhat time consuming, but as a teaching tool it can be very effective. Bear in mind that once you have a first draft built on this method you will be itching to change things, lose scenes and switch the order. In fact you may figure out that the structure doesn�t work for your story well before you finish the first draft, but you will also find your brain buzzing with possible alternatives.
The point isn�t to produce a mirror image of a book that already exists�I guarantee you won�t be able to make that work�but you will very quickly start seeing that what a scene does on the surface is very different from what�s going on in terms of the overall narrative.
Different books will have different structures so choose carefully. A John Grisham novel is as different to a Margaret Atwood book as a log cabin is to the Empire State building. The same basic principles apply, but very different methods and materials are used in the construction.
This isn�t obvious from most books on writing, which tend to simplify things down to one method (because it�s easier to fit into a 150 page book). And most of the time that method will tend to favour the Grisham type of approach because it�s just easier to see how things fit together in that sort of book. That doesn�t mean it�s good or bad to do it that way, but it might not be what suits your story.
There is no one way to write a book, no guaranteed template for a bestseller, no magic number of pages that specific events have to happen by. Show me a book that succeeded using a particular method and I�ll show you two that used the same method and failed miserably.
But by writing out a scene to fulfil more than one function�what�s happening in the moment, what�s being set up for the future, what�s being affected by the past�the interconnectedness of events will start to emerge so that rather than having to think about what the plot should be, your character�s first action will lead to the next and the next and the next.
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Monday, October 7, 2013
A Nice, Ripe Story Idea
Sometimes a story idea comes fully formed, or at least with enough detail of where it needs to go that you can�t wait to get writing.
Other times a character or a setting makes a strong enough impression on your imagination that you feel like you have the starting point of a story, but beyond that you have no clear indication of where to take it.
If you start writing with not much more than the germ of an idea it might work out, inspiration might strike when you need it�some writers indeed are only able to work in this fashion�but most people will struggle to fill three hundred pages off the back of a vague notion, even when that notion is full of potential. And there�s nothing worse than getting a hundred pages in and realising you�ve run out of steam.
So, how can you fatten up your idea, getting it into the kind of condition that means the ideas will lead you one to the next, rather than you having to force yourself to strain your brain to come up with stuff?
Firstly, I�d say that if you have too many ideas then that isn�t really a problem. Even if everything seems muddled up and unclear, I would recommend getting it on the page (in whatever order) and then sorting it out in rewrites. It will still be a difficult task, but not one requiring inspiration, just hard work.
When it comes to having a half-formed idea, the most common advice given to writers in this position is to put the idea away and just wait it out. If there is something worthwhile in there, then the subconscious will work on it and draw it out. Eventually.
Certainly there�s a great deal of truth in this. Lots of writers have gone back to an old idea they found in a drawer and this time it all clicks. Leaving any piece of writing and coming back to it will reveal new aspects to you and the same goes for ideas. But it�s a slow process and not everyone has the time or patience.
One way to jump start the brain is to take whatever you have and write a one or two line summary of the story like what you might find in a TV listings magazine. Those short summaries of movies give you an idea of where the story is headed without very many details.
The idea isn�t to come up with a precise logline that sums up your story (obviously not possible since you don�t know what your story is about), but to write a dozen or so summaries off the top of your head and see if anything takes your fancy.
A good way to get started is to read a bunch of them, preferably for movies in a similar genre to what you�re interested in writing. Even if you don�t come up with a usable storyline, you will probably come up with a few more ingredients to thicken up the broth.
Another useful exercise is to write a short story version of the idea. This is especially useful if you have a character in mind but no idea what to do with them. It doesn�t have to be a miniature version of the novel, it�s more to do with getting a sense of what kinds of things the character gets up to.
You should bear in mind a short story can be a hundred words long or a dozen pages; the important thing is that it should be about them doing something, and that something should be eventful enough so that it would be worth repeating to someone (even if the character only goes home and tells his cat).
Keeping the character alone and thinking about stuff, like a long, descriptive tone poem painting a picture of the world isn�t going to be very helpful. You have to push the character into active behaviour involving other people to really get the creative juices flowing.
If you can�t think of something interesting for them to do then consider the thing that this character would never allow to happen. It could be seeing an animal being treated badly or a husband cheating on a friend or a drunk get in a car. Everyone has a line that you cross at your peril and your character has one too, so work out what it is and then put them in just such a predicament.
This scene doesn�t have to appear in your novel, but hypothetical situations full of woulda, coulda, shoulda are very wishy-washy. Make the character face their bugbear, write it out, and you will not only learn more about them, but their reaction will give you a much stronger idea of whether you can build a story around them.
The last thing I would suggest is to work on the ending. A lot of people don�t like to think about this part of the story as they want the characters to organically come to whatever conclusion feels right. If you have enough going on at the front end (i.e. enough to get you started writing) there�s nothing wrong with this approach. But if you�re stuck at the starting line then an idea of where you want to end up can provide the impetus to set off into the deep blue yonder.
By ending, i don�t mean a vague impression of how you�d like the story to conclude (boy gets girl, world gets saved, innocent man gets freed or what have you), I mean a specific image or idea that strikes you as cool or interesting or in some way satisfying. You may not know how you�ll get there, but as long as you find the idea interesting it will be enough to get things moving.
The image you had in mind might well end up somewhere else in the story and not be the ending, or it might not make it into the final version at all. The purpose isn�t to know how the story is going to finish, it�s to create enough momentum to keep the story moving forward. Once that momentum takes over you can steer it in any direction you wish.
As with all of these suggestion it doesn�t matter if things go nowhere. You won�t have wasted much time (in fact probably saved some by not going long with ideas that weren�t as strong as you�d hoped) and nobody gets to see the weird stuff you come up with but you (and you already knew you were weird).
Hopefully one of these methods will light the spark that changes an idea into a story. Then you just have to write it.
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Thursday, March 14, 2013
The Little Reasons A Story Works
It�s not enough to have something dramatic happen in a story. The reason why it happens is also important.
In terms of impact on a reader, there�s a big difference between a character getting upset about losing their house to the bank and getting upset because their favourite tv show got cancelled.
What happens keeps the reader interested in the short term. Why it happens is what keeps them interested over the course of an entire novel.
For the big things, the major plot points, the premise, the reasons why it�s happening will be something the writer is probably already aware of and working on to make sure its importance is clear.
The guy doesn�t want the girl to leave because he loves her, the secret agent wants to find the bomb before it kills everyone, the cop wants to catch the serial killer because yada yada.
Obviously, being aware you need a reason is only part of it. You still have to come up with decent ideas and execute them well, but as long as you know where to make those reasons clear and interesting, you�ll have as good a chance of making it work as is possible.
However, the big moments aren�t the only moments in a story. Characters have to go about doing stuff, getting to places, interacting with each other. Those scenes also require characters to have reasons for doing what they�re doing.
Since those moments aren�t of such great consequence, it can be easy to let them slide. Make them as short and quick as possible and get them out of the way. You need a guy to go to the store because once he gets there he finds the place overrun with Martians and the story gets going. So he tells his wife he�s going to get some milk and off he goes.
And that�s perfectly plausible. It won�t have readers throwing the book down in disgust, they�ll keep reading, probably, as long as things don�t get too pedestrian. But not turning them off isn�t really where you want to aim for. The question is, will it keep them engrossed and turning the pages?
Because flat, generic, emotionally bland scenes don�t tend to hold the attention. And just because we haven�t got to the bit with the aliens yet, doesn�t mean it�s okay to coast.
If, for example, the wife wants him to get five things from the store and tells him to write them down so he won�t forget, and he gets pissed off because she has no faith in him and he refuses to write a list but she texts him the list, so he takes a photo of a dog taking a dump in the street and sends it to her... well, maybe you don�t have to go quite that far. My point is you can create tension and emotion and reveal character and have a dynamic already in place using the smallest of scenes.
That way, when he does get to the Martians in the 7-11, he�s not going to arrive like he�s idling in neutral, and the reader isn�t still waiting for the story to start.
In real life, people do things for the same reasons as everyone else. If I say I�m eating a sandwich you won�t require an explanation, you�ll just assume I�m hungry and eating is what you do when you�re hungry. As a writer, though, there is room in the seemingly ordinary to stimulate the reader�s interest.
If a man says he�s going to the bank, there�s no reason why the bank scene can�t be interesting and engaging.
If man says he�s going to the tanning salon, there�s no reason why that won�t be an entertaining scene.
But if a man says he�s going to the bank, but he drives past the bank and pulls up outside a tanning salon, you�ve already got the reader�s interest before the scene has started.
You can get away with giving characters the usual, familiar reasons for doing things, but the potential for the unexpected or unfamiliar to engage a reader often goes unexploited.
If you look at any moment in a story and the reason why the person is doing what they�re doing, and then just ask yourself if the reason could be something more interesting, or if the character�s mood could be better shown, chances are you�ll be able to engage the reader and start building momentum so that you�re already up and running by the time you get to the take off point.
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