Fiction Workshop 11 Getting the story right

As an editor who both selects texts and works on them with writers to improve them I find a frequent problem is that there is no story. The writing can be technically perfect and perhaps also aesthetically pleasing but what actually happens?

The trick is to be able to tell anyone who needs to know what your story is about. This video explains it all beautifully.See it here.

You should be able to tell your story in two lines or a couple of sentences. Even if you're a "panster", someone who never plans their work in detail, it can be quite useful to know how your story ends.

If you're a planner, the brief outline may be useful:

Inciting incident

·         Complexity 1

·         Complexity 2

·         Complexity 3

Crisis point (the point of no return)

           Climax (Filling the gap between the crisis and the resolution

Resolution

However, this will not be useful at all if you are not absolutely clear on what your story is about.  Not only is this important when you are shaping your story it is also crucial when you come to pitch your perfectly formed story later. As well as being able to write a story that is convincing you must be able to persuade others that it has merit.

Editors can fix poor writing. They can't always help you to fix your story.

More on story shape next time.  

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Fiction Workshop 3 A basic plot shape

This is based on the theory presented in Robert McKee’s Story. It is really written for the film industry but is also very useful for fiction writers. I suggest you read the whole book and then go back and reread Chapter 14. The shape he suggests can be condensed into:

• Opening.

• Growing complexities 1, 2, 3…  
• Crisis  
• Climax     
• Resolution

Some notes

1. A short story will probably only have three growing complexities. A novel will have more and will also include sub-plots – more about those later.
2. Note the climax is the gap between the crisis point and the resolution. This is where the car chase tends to be and in commercial literature one more awful thing will happen just before the resolution.
3. The climax usually happens somewhere between 2/3 and 4/5 of the way through the story.
4. The resolution often lets a story down – it may be too melodramatic, unbelievable or a bit of a damp squib. This happens if you’ve not really worked out what your story is about before you start.
5. Some writers plot in detail, others – ‘pansters’ – just put their characters together and see what happens. Stephen King is a panster but his plots are technically perfect. If you’re a panster you might use the template above for editing your work rather than creating it.   

To do

1. Reread a story that you like and work out if this plot shape fits the story.
2. Use the template to write a brief bullet-pointed outline for your story.      

Where we get ideas from

That dreaded question: “Where do you get your ideas from?” We don’t know, do we? They tend just to arrive. Or is it a little different in classroom within a university? Perhaps anyway that whole question is the subject of someone’s PhD thesis.  

Writing with constraints

My students have to work with many constraints. They meet at a fixed time each week. They have a strict deadline for their final project. Knowledge and skills have been squeezed into a closely defined collection of learning outcomes and particular ones are tested in particular modules. At the same time, they must demonstrate a good grasp of what has been learned formerly and they are given credit for their general writing competence.  They must endeavour to demonstrate that if they wish to receive high marks. There is little space for a shortage of ideas.

The classroom creative writing exercise

We ask them to invent a character, create a setting or write a few lines of dialogue, each time giving them the loosest of themes. Most get on well. A few find this impossible. I personally enjoy being in this position and several concrete ideas have come out of creative writing exercises in workshops. Many students refer in their reflective statements to an exercise in class that kick-started a whole thread of narrative.

Everyone has a story

What people know is always interesting. All lives are fascinating. Those who have low literacy skills often also have low esteem and believe they don’t have a story to tell. The Ministry of Stories works with this. Show people they have a valid story and they find the literacy skills to be able to tell it. They’re motivated to learn.  

Bombardment of ideas

Ideas come at many writers from all over the place. It’s not often when they’re sitting at their desk though a professional that writers stumble upon ideas.  

We’re aware all of the time that there are stories to be had and our “What if?” and “What’s happening here?” questions help us. Are those two people who dress in red and white all the time Father Christmas and his wife on holiday? What if somebody who had a gun in their handbag were shown into the wrong anteroom and came face to face with Hitler? Why is that women hanging around and the edge of the restaurant and why are the staff being so dismissive of her?

And when do we think these things?

Usually when we’re driving, ironing, cooking, walking the dog or dining with friends. Rarely when we’re at our desk.    

A shortage of ideas?

I’m fine for novels. I have three more historical ones planned, one contemporary slightly paranormal one after that and my science fiction trilogy is begging expansion. However, I’m in a massive editing cycle and like to punctuate that with writing flash and short fiction.  I have a few ideas but not as many as I need. What do I do?  I open Twitter and write a story about the first picture I come across. I rarely struggle. So it seems, it can be forced.

Reading Lists – how they grow

We have a delightful system at the University of Salford, called LaSu, where we can add books to our reading lists as we find them. This makes a great deal of sense – as proactive researchers we should always be on the lookout for suitable material for our students. These, though, should be books mainly for background reading and not what we would expect students to buy. We need to establish which books students must have and read towards the end of the academic year before. We can’t expect them suddenly to purchase the one we read yesterday.  Or can we? Perhaps we can if it’s absolutely brilliant? I’ll come back to that.

A student contacted me recently because she could only find the 2011-212 lists. Technically, we are still in 2011-2012. Semester 3 is not yet finished. Naturally, though, she wanted to know what she was expected to read in 2012-2013. We had been asked not to add any new books into our essential lists after March 2012, as that was when the students were presented with module options. However, they weren’t aware of this.  

The books and other materials on our lists are divided into “essential”, “core” and “further reading”. Essential are the ones that students are expected to buy. Core works are stocked in multiple copies in the library and are referred to in our courses. Further reading texts are for those students who have a deep interest in the course and some spare time. The library will stock fewer copies of these.       

I’m teaching a course on the young adult novel in Semester 2 next academic year. I’ve just finished reading a novel that gets the balance of fast pace and emotional closeness exactly right. These are two qualities required in young adult novels but it’s often difficult to do both at once. Later today I’m going to blog about it, do a review on Amazon, add it to my reading list and put a mention of it into the week where I tackle the tension between pace and emotional closeness. I don’t think I dare ask my student to buy it though now. Maybe it can be promoted to essential for 2013-2014.

However I have to remember my own MA days. Okay, we were all mature students and probably had better cash flow than the 18-22-year-old undergraduate. Robert McKee’s Story came out just a few days before the second year started. It was the must-have, must-read book for anyone involved with stories. There is now quite a lot of ambivalence about McKee. Story was written for the film world. Expensive seminars are now delivered and some in the film world are cynical about their content let alone their cost; they are not cheap. Yet McKee has a lot to tell us about how stories work and he certainly appears on a few of my reading lists. I’m really quite glad our course convenor got us to buy it.

So, our reading lists grow. They reflect the proactive research of the teachers who offer their wisdom to their students. I’d actually be rather worried about a reading list that didn’t change for several years.   

“Leap into Books” at Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College

Yesterday I worked with four different groups of mainly primary age children on this wonderful initiative run by the college. Children mainly from the college’s feeder primary schools come into school during the Easter break and spend three days engaged with story and reading.
Several publishers support the event by offering books. Sponsorship is also gained from other sources and hard-working Adrian Thompson engages creative practitioners to deliver high quality workshops to the children.
So, there I was talking to my four groups about story. We looked at the standard forms of character – hero, friend, enemy and mentor, and talked through how stories work because of the tensions between the characters and follow a pattern of hook, complications, crisis, climax, poke and resolution – though I didn’t quite use those terms.
The children had lively imaginations and were engaged throughout.
One very intelligent young man pointed out that the story of Cinderella was flawed. That shoe could probably have fitted many feet. And anyway, how come it didn’t turn back to rags when the rest of Cinders’ costume did? I then remembered Philip Pullman’s I was a Rat. This is about a boy who had been a rat who wasn’t around to get turned back.
We had shades of Hamlet too, as one girl had the ghost of a dead father talking to a son and requesting revenge. Well, that Billy S. always was a good story-teller. And anyway, aren’t there only seven stories after all?
One group invented a Popeye-like Captain Cucumber who imbued his mentees with superpowers if the ate their vegetables.
I had a great time, and I think the students did too. Their creative energy was strong and they invented some great stories. Behaviour and concentration were fantastic and I was very impressed at how confident they were about telling their stories to the rest of the group.
Read more about Laisterdyke BEC and Leap into Books.
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