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Start Again?

10 Tuesday Apr 2012

Posted by in Advice, Ann, Inspiration

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We as storytellers often get very attached to our words and ideas. We write something, and even if we’re willing to revise it, we still won’t change it that much. If we’ve written words, we want to fix those words. If we have written a character or a plot point, we try to shape those over and over again, to get the right image.

What if you started over completely?

Author Jodi Meadows mentioned recently that she had wholesale “deleted” the first draft of the third book in her series. Why? She had made so many changes to the first and second books after they were edited and revised for publication that the third book would require an intense amount of revision just to fit with the other two books. Instead, she decided to start over.

Are words sacred? Sometimes it feels like it, especially when we’re carving out time to tell our stories and just starting. Every hundred and thousand words feel like they were written in blood. But the truth is, they weren’t. Storytellers are creative people, and although it might not always feel like it, our creativity is endless. However, that creativity can be stifled, and it can be stifled by our own stories when we stubbornly hold on to a story that isn’t quite right.

A while back I realized many of my stories had the themes or plots or other elements in common. The stories themselves probably wouldn’t be recognizable as “same” to someone else (unless they were really analyzing them), but I saw those similarities. I realized–no, not that I had a limited amount of stories in my head and I was completely unoriginal–but that there are themes, plots, and other elements that I will hammer out over and over. Why? Near as I can tell, it’s because there is this formless, unspeakable idea in my mind, and I keep writing it over and over again in different ways until I finally hit upon it in a way that will satisfy my subconscious and my muse. Then I will theoretically move on to something else.

(It might also be that you’re attracted to a certain theme or story type. The advice still holds true.)

Are you stuck on a story that just doesn’t seem quite “right?” Try approaching it in a completely different manner. Change characters, settings, or story arcs, and see what happens. (If you’re feeling really brave, you could even change your medium.) You aren’t wasting words. You’re exploring ideas. You might not keep one or the other, or you might keep both. What you discover in your multiple versions might help another, or they might be completely distinct to one another. You might even find yourself able to take a story, such as Jodi did, and restart it from the beginning–same world, same characters–and turn it into something new.

Be brave. Every time you challenge yourself, you improve yourself as a storyteller and you are not wasting your words.

What You Know Can Help You Write

06 Friday Apr 2012

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On Tuesday, Ann talked about six techniques you can use to interact with your story without working on your story. Her post inspired me to change my plans for this week and write today’s subject. I’ll come back to finish up my thoughts on antagonists some time in the future.

It’s possible–likely, even–that you possess detailed knowledge about something, be it a hobby, an academic subject, or a specialized (or not) occupation. That is knowledge you can include pretty easily into some stories you might tell. It can even be the background, inspiration, or major element in a story.

Now, before I go much further let me clarify that I’m not advocating the old advice, “Write what you know.” No. I think that is generally terrible advice and instead advocate the “Write what you want to read” approach introduced to me by my friend Sean (who I think heard it elsewhere).

What I am saying is “What you know can inform what you write.” Some extreme examples of what I mean are John Grisham,  a lawyer who now writes bestsellers about lawyers doing stuff, or Tess Gerritsen who is a doctor most famous for her mystery novels starring a city medical examiner. You needn’t go quite that far, of course, to find inspiration in what you know, what you’ve done, and what you’ve lived.

Whatever you know, whatever you do (both occupationally and leisurely), you can integrate something from your life into your stories to give them that added touch of realism–or to heighten the drama.

The things you know and do might not be appropriate to all stories, genres, or media, of course, but you can almost certainly pull from your experiences to add gravitas, weight, and depth to your stories.

Let me indulge here in a personal example. Some years ago I worked in the on-call courier business in Portland, Oregon. I have all kinds of stories–vignettes, really–from my five years on a bike, in a car, and behind a desk in the Portland courier biz. For the longest time, I considered that universe–of snarky beer-swilling bike messengers and bitter beer-swilling car couriers–as a background to a movie screenplay, novel, or other long-form narrative. In truth, though, the nature of on-call delivery is more appropriate for episodic narrative. Were I to go back to that time I’d consider turning my experiences–and those of other messengers and couriers in Portland and elsewhere–into a webcomic or other short-form storytelling medium.

Instead of writing about being a courier, though–instead of writing what I know (or knew, really; I imagine much has changed in the past nine years)–I use those experiences to feed into my stories and settings I create today. No, I don’t focus the action around couriers, but over the body of my work it’s hard to not see couriers and messengers sneak in here and there–almost always in important ways. It’s something that is, or was, a significant part of my life, and it’s something I feel comfortable going back to and talking about.

Your own knowledge is probably very different from mine, of course, but my base advice remains the same. You know something you can include in a story. Slip it in when you can!

Six Ways to Interact with Your Story that Aren’t Writing It

03 Tuesday Apr 2012

Posted by in Advice, Ann, Inspiration

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Sometimes, you need a break from your story. Not a real break, but a break from the pounding of words on the narrative you’ve been plotting. Sometimes, you need to let your plot sit and bubble while you figure out what happens next. Sometimes, you need to dig deeper. Sometimes, you’re in the middle of a revision, and you know you want to improve something, but you just don’t know how.

During these times, instead of abandoning your story completely, consider these ideas on how to interact with your story without writing your story:

1) Visit a local (or, if you have the means and ability, far off) place that reminds you of a setting, character, or situation in your story (or the actual place, if it’s based on a real location). This could be a park, a city, a pub, or even a section of the museum. Even if your story is set in a fictional world, there are places you can go that might remind you of these places. A lot of my fictional cities tend to be hybrids of Seattle and San Francisco, which means I can visit them and be inspired. A science museum might give you some atmosphere of your science fiction setting, as could hiking in the mountains for your high fantasy. If you’ve got a Victorian setting, maybe there’s a tea room or museum you could go to draw in atmosphere.

2) Try doing something your characters are doing. Just reading about something isn’t the same as doing it. (Stay safe and legal, folks. Our characters are often doing dangerous and daring things, and while I think we all owe it to ourselves to be daring, I don’t want anyone breaking an arm on my advice.)

3) Create art related to your story. Whether you draw it or make a collage, even if you don’t think you have visual artistic skills, you can put together something that keeps your mind on the story or characters.

4) Write something related to the story. Vignettes about your characters, songs, poetry, setting descriptions, news articles, literature in your world, love letters, undirected freewriting–whatever it is, it doesn’t have to be part of the story at large. I think we often get hung up on the idea that everything we write on a story must appear in the story, and that’s just not true.

5) Create a soundtrack. Find music that fits your characters, story, mood, or themes and put together a playlist. At one time, I used to play my character’s theme songs (which I’d spend hours deciding on) right before I began to write a scene from their point of view, although nowadays I tend to listen to instrumental sets that fit the story’s mood.

6) Read books related to your story–but don’t default to this one in replacement of option 1 or 2 unless those one are completely undoable. I know it’s easier to look up information about the forests in Wikipedia, around the web, or a library book, but it wouldn’t be the same as going to your large city park or hiking trails and experiencing it for yourself.

These suggestions are the most obvious ones to me. Please feel free to share your ideas below.

Ninja Ambush!

03 Friday Feb 2012

Posted by in Inspiration, Mike

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You just hit the wall, stuttered to a stop, became bored by where your story is taking you, or just can’t find the transition from where you are to where you need to be. Whatever the cause, your productivity on your story just ground to a halt. You are stuck.

Now what?

I have two words for you, my friend, guaranteed to get you out of any logjam or smash through any writer’s block…

Ninja. Ambush.

If you’re bored or lost or uninspired at this point in your story, imagine what your audience is going to feel! It’s time to up the tension level and kickstart your story back into high gear.

Because the ninja are here to ambush.

It’s possible but unlikely that a literal ambush of ninja is appropriate for your story. Chances are, you’re going to need to be a little more liberal with your interpretations, here. What the ninja ambush really means, of course, is to throw in something unexpected that can stir up the story, raise the tension, and shore up any lagging interest on the part of your audience or yourself.

Your Regency romance, for example, is probably not the best place for Japanese warriors to suddenly attack. In that case, maybe the “ninja” in your story are visitors from another country (no, it needn’t be Japan). The “ambush” here, then, is their sudden appearance in your characters’ lives and the ripple effect of their arrival.

Actually, a fair number of stories begin this way, when a stranger shows up and disrupts the protagonists’ lives. That’s not what I’m getting at here, though. What I’m talking about isn’t something to build your plot around but rather to give it a kick where it’s lagging.

And, of course, the “ninja” needn’t be people at all. The sudden arrival of anything that might give your protagonists pause can serve as your ambushing ninja–be it escaped animals from the zoo or the sudden discovery of some artifact.

Let me throw out a few words of caution about using the ninja ambush technique, though.

First, the ninja ambush doesn’t need to make sense to the characters (or your audience) when it happens, but it needs to make sense within the larger context of the world you’ve built. If you are telling a Regency romance and suddenly murder a character with an actual ambush by ninja, you are going to lose your audience. Even if you never bother to explain why the ambush happened, you at least need to know and have a good explanation for it.

Second, the ninja ambush needs to help push the story forward, not derail it. Don’t use it as filler. Remembering my first cautionary point above will go a long way toward helping you with this second point. The point of the ninja ambush is to give your protagonists a new obstacle that nonetheless helps them advance along the plot once they’ve overcome it.

Third, this is a trick. It’s meant to help you out of a tight squeeze, not a replacement for a plot. If you find yourself needing to use more than one ninja ambush in a story, unless your story really is about fighting and warfare in a setting where ninja are appropriate, you probably need to do more work on your plot. Just like how you shouldn’t live off energy drinks and four hours of sleep, neither should you fill your stories with sudden and inexplicable events–no matter how exciting they might be.

Want some examples from existing media? (There are spoilers beneath the cut for The Last Samurai, Dracula, The Adoration of Jenna Fox, and Inception. You’ve been warned!)
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Works in Progress

03 Tuesday Jan 2012

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Welcome to Story Papers! Mike and I enjoy concocting stories in a variety of formats, and we wanted a place where we could talk about the creative processes and storytelling–and learn from others, too. These are things that have and haven’t worked for us–and I must begin with the standard disclaimer that there is no one true path as a storyteller. Something I mention here may not work for you, but I hope in those cases, that in itself may bring its own inspiration.

What’s the difference between being a writer and being a storyteller? Writing encompasses everything from how-to articles to fiction, whereas storytelling is a specific piece of that pie, and usually includes writing as a medium, but it certainly doesn’t have to. In my case, I’ve had stories in my head for as long as I can remember, and I’ve tried to express them in various prose fiction (flash, short stories, novels), roleplaying games, and even illustrations. I’ve found novels to be my true love in storytelling, and despite a difficult and identity-altering burn out a few years ago, I’m returning to them. I know now that I need a different kind of relationship with them than I have in the past, with less of a focus on getting published (and all that entails), and more of an approach of playing around and experimenting.

So that’s what I’ve been doing.

One of my latest experiments has been re-approaching the same scene seeds or situations over and over (how many of us do this for real life moments?). Each time, I change the point of view, the dialogue, the overarching theme, and even the background.  It’s incredibly inefficient and messy and I have scene bits scattered between physical notebooks, cloud documents, and hard drive documents….

I’m loving it.

You’ll see that technique here as well. Improving a craft is about experimenting and pushing beyond our perceived capabilities, and we may broach a topic one week only to revisit it from a completely different (and contradicting) viewpoint shortly after. You won’t find a lot here about publication, marketability, time management, or the nuts and bolts of grammar, but rather a focus on creativity/creation in storytelling and activities that encourage (or discourage) that.

We aim to update twice a week on average. Any more than that and I feel like we’re both distracting ourselves and you from the stories we all want to tell.