We all have gotten stuck at some point with the feeling that something is wrong with our story. So we ask questions like "what would make this story more believable? What would make it more enjoyable? Should I remove this scene from my plot?" We can ask others for their input, but what they say doesn't always settle our own feelings and can result in greater confusion or internal conflict. I think that feeling your way through writing a story can work to a point. But it takes an awfully long time, we can't always find the solution we feel we want, and we may feel differently later. Emotions are our responses to things, and it's much more difficult to process our emotions if we can't figure out what we're responding to. Thus, it's important to understand the basics of how stories work. So often we get so focused on finding the solution that we don't stop to wonder why our story currently feels wrong (not just what feels wrong) and why any imagined solutions would make it feel right or better. If we know what a story is, what it's supposed to be, we can figure out better why our story "just doesn't feel 'right'". I hope this post will help you figure out what it is that you're responding to in your struggles, and you will become a much more confident and skilled writer as a result. Here are the 4 things every writer should know: 1. What a story is A story is an event. Usually, it's a macro-event filled with a ton of micro-events. For example, in The Avengers film the macro-event is the Avengers becoming a team, but micro-events include Loki stealing the Tesseract, Black Widow's conversation with Bruce Banner, and Thor's fight with Captain America and Iron Man; in the Bone series the macro-event is the Bones' adventure saving that world, but micro-events include the Bones being swarmed by locusts, fleeing rat creatures, and meeting Gran'ma Ben and Thorn; in Super Mario Bros the macro event (if you beat the game) is Mario's adventure to save the princess, but the micro events include going through pipes, stomping on Goombas, and beating Koopa. You can have multiple stories on one piece of media; some people would argue that in The Avengers Loki's rise and fall was also a macro-event shown through micro-events. Characters are intrinsic to stories because in order to understand an event you either need to see something causing it or something being affected by it (or somebody causing and/or affecting). For example, in order to understand what a character has said you either need to see the character saying it or see someone responding to it; in order to understand an earthquake, you either need to see the underground rock breaking along a fault, or see the ground shaking from the earthquake; in order to understand a dictatorship, you either need to see the government's working or how the people are affected. So characters are intrinsic to stories. You also need to note that stories are essential to understanding characters: for instance, you need to know micro-events on what's happened to a character and how they respond in different situations in order to understand them and relate to them. You cannot understand characters without story just as you can't communicate story without characters. So good characters are necessary for good story, and good story is necessary for good characters and being able to relate to them. Thus, any perspective that you can benefit either character or story and harm the other in the progress is faulty. The popular question "which is more important- character or story?" thus gets thrown out the window. Read more about what a story is here, or about the problems of the popular question, and the relationship of character and story, here. 2. The one rule for believable storytelling Follow the rules of the story's universe. This includes character development. For instance, a character who's a pacifist probably won't murder a villain; so have them spare the villain unless they get a stronger want to kill them than to not kill. If in the story characters who die can't be brought back to life, keep your protagonist dead unless you come up with an acceptable reason in the story's world for otherwise. If the sun in a story circles the planet fully every ten years, mark it at ten years and don't let a battle go on in pitch dark for twenty years. This sounds simple, but this one rule is broken all the time. And if a story's impossible in one key place, the rest of the story couldn't happen. If the pacifist wouldn't actually kill the villain, the world's being saved or being rid of that villain is a lie, and all that proceeds from it (villain's friends rising up for revenge, reward from the underworld, pacifists' regret) couldn't actually happen. If your story feels unbelievable to you, or you aren't believing it yourself, you probably are detecting that a rule in your story's universe is being broken, whether that's character development or something else. Read more about the one rule for believable storytelling here. 3. Follow the story arc I use the term story arc to describe the collection of the micro events of a story. The whole arc is the macro-event. Once you know the macro-event, you can determine what micro-events help perpetuate it, and then show only those micro-events. In other words, when you know what your story is you can determine what drives it; anything that doesn't drive the story isn't benefiting it. For example, if the macro-event is how robots saved the world, the boy-girl romance is irrelevant. So don't show romantic dialogues between the two unless it is a part of how the robots saved the world. If the macro-event is how love bloomed in the face of the world's danger, the robots aren't the main focus. So don't have big, elaborate fight scenes that don't help show how love bloomed in the face of the world's danger. The purpose of following the story arc is that we can keep the focus on the main story and tell it as quickly as possible. Extra stuff wastes time and is distracting from the main plot (it may even confuse audiences as to what the main plot actually is). If you've heard people say that you should be able to describe your story in one sentence, that's sort of what this is; you need to understand the macro-event, and that macro-event is probably describable in one sentence. If your story feels aimless or part of the story doesn't feel relevant, you may need to step back and reevaluate your macro-event. Read more about understanding story arc here. 4. The strengths of different story media Each media has different strengths. A novel cannot get across an exact image like a photograph (where novels can, it's through comparison or reference to something we already know, like the Eiffel Tower). But this allows a strength for novels if, for instance, the story needs to have something that will terrify any reader; with the right wording, readers will interpret that thing in a way that terrifies them personally (or try to ignore it if they don't want to be scared), whereas that thing in a photograph won't terrify everyone because everyone will have different personal responses to it. If I want an audience to think that a structure is the grandest in the world, we will have debate if it's shown in a movie. I'll give my reasons it's the grandest, others will give their reasons, and we'll settle that it's really a matter of personal opinion. Since novels are open to interpretation, all readers will agree that the structure truly is the grandest because they'll all be seeing their personal interpretation of what would be the grandest. If you want to get across precise visual and audio information, on the other hand, movies are much better. They show visual, audio, and time's passing as they are, and so they aren't open to interpretation (though the visual arguably is if the film is animated). The strengths of media are important to understand so we can utilize them effectively and match the focus of our stories to the strengths of our forms. If you feel like you can't communicate what you want to, you may need to re-evaluate how you're using your story's form. The strengths of different media is a huge topic that I devote about half of this site to. You can find an introduction to the topic here. In conclusion... I could very well state these as the four pillars of writing. If you know what a story is, how to tell a believable one, what a story arc is, and the strengths of different story media, you've got a solid writing foundation to continue growing from.
Thank you, and I wish you the best in all your storytelling endeavors! If you enjoyed this post, check out Are Stories Just Propaganda?, Software and Hardware: Tools Not Trade, or Themes: Intrinsic to (Most) Stories. Want to keep up on the latest posts and news? Subscribe to the newsletter! Check out my latest project: a medieval musical comedy that YOU can get involved in! Check it out!
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