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Writing the story

Where do ideas come from? How is it structured?

Where do ideas come from? It's the 'what if' game. We all played it as kids, and I watched my own kids and now my grandchildren do it today. "What if we were policemen?" "Yes, and what if we found some money?" "And what if it turned out it was stolen?" "And what if we - - blah, blah, blah." They build their fantasy world to play in, then weave a story as they play. The actual playtime is not as important as the story.

How does this work with real stories? My new book, Mysterious Ways begins with, "what if a con man hides in the disguise of a traveling preacher?" "And what if they start really expecting him to perform in the role?" "And what if before he can skip town an old black man figures out who he really is and holds his feet to the fire making him do it?" and the story is off and running.

Or how about this one? My book Don't I Know You? asks the question "What if there was a man that everyone thought they knew as soon as they saw him?" "And what if it turned out that wasn't always a good thing?" "And what if people started identifying him for things he hadn't done because they mistook him for someone else?"

The what if game that we played as kids still works. But where does the ember of a story idea come from, that live coal that bursts into flame when we blow on it? Actually we can start at any point in a story. We can have a character and we want to tell his/her story. That was the case with the one I just mentioned, the man that everyone thinks they know.

We can have a setting that fascinates us so we populate it with characters and see what story we find there as I did with To Keep a Promise. It was set in the little town of Clarendon, known in the late 1800's as Saint's Roost for its pious nature in the middle of wild cattle country. In it the setting ended up being as fascinating as the story or the characters themselves. I guess the town actually ended up being one of the characters. This is not uncommon in historical fiction.

We can have an outcome or a moral that we want to demonstrate and decide who is to do what and how we are going to be able to make our point.

We can have a historical event driving the story, a romantic triangle, or a mystery to be solved. There can be any number of sparks that will get the project underway.

We can start the process at the beginning, middle or end and work through it front to back, or build it forwards and back from any point. The process of developing the idea depends on where that idea comes from, what our burning ember is . . . where it causes us to begin with our story.

Wherever we begin we have to end up with some very specific things. If we are writing a genre story there are things readers expect to be in them, things we have to deliver. Those are specific to romances or traditional westerns or fantasy, among others, and if we desire to write those, we have to find out what those expectations are and how to make them happen. I won't go into them here.

In addition to what we might call the 'rules or conventions' of a specific genre, there is a structure that stories should be built upon. This is where we'll spend our time. Regardless where we begin in the process we need to start shoehorning our ideas into the classic story structure. It is the most dependable, reliable way to make sure our story works. I've seen those who also equate it to a three act play, and that concept works well.

Act 1 - the setup and the trigger

The setup introduces us to the characters, where they live, what they do and gives us a reason to care about them, particularly about the lead characters. Often the novice writer will just open talking about the scenery, the beauty, describing characters. Like Snoopy's classic beginning, "It was a dark and stormy night - - - "

Well, why not, we have to set it up? The reader has to know where they are, don't they? This approach would be the same as an offstage narrator beginning to describe what the scenery on stage looks like as the curtain opens. People don't care about the scenery until they know what is going on. We have to get them invested in the plot and get them invested quickly, but we can't just begin talking about the plot either, that's be like that offstage narrator explaining what is about to take place in the story. That works for a lawyer in a trial explaining what they intend to prove and how the prosecution or the defense is going to proceed, but it doesn't work in a story.

If we can't start talking about the scenery or the plot, how do we start? Stories are told through people. When that curtain opens we have to get somebody onstage, and we don't want that narrator describing them to us. We want to set them in motion, delivering dialogue, and we'll sprinkle in our description as they do, fleshing them out as their actions draw the reader in.

How much description is appropriate? Not lines and lines of it, that's called an information dump and it's a storyline killer. I love the comment of Elmore Leonard when he said "I don't write the stuff people skip over.

I believe the best I've read on that subject came from Stephen King in his book "On Writing." He said our job is not to create artificial characters for the reader to try and visualize, but give them just enough description to delve in their own memories and call up someone they know better and can call to mind more vividly than anyone we could possibly create. He said he didn't want someone trying to see the little cheerleader he went to school with that is inspiring some part of a story, but the cheerleader they went to school with themselves.

It's walking a tight line. Too little prompting and the reader is likely not to visualize anything at all and the story will suffer from a lack of realism. Too much, and they are working with our artificial creation, not their own vivid memories. But when it is done well it invokes other senses, senses that we couldn't even write into a story. It may even build in old pain or happiness into the story, something we didn't even intend to put there, but which adds a real depth of feeling and emotion.

Our most immediate job is to get the reader interested in a character, wondering what their relationship to the story is going to be. We do that in the setup, pull the reader onstage with us, get some interaction going . . . then we pull the trigger.

The trigger is the explosive incident that blasts the plot into motion. It is big, overwhelming, and changes the character's situation in the largest way possible. It will drive us the rest of the way through the first act ending it with our focal character in as much trouble as he/she can possibly be in, and with as little hope as they could conceivably have.

Using my own books again, (which I'm sure some of you will want to find over in the bookstore so you can research this process in greater detail) Mysterious Ways introduces you to the rogue and scoundrel Amos Taylor as he acquires the clerical suit that will be his disguise. Hopefully you find him likeable in spite of his lack of redeeming qualities as we will want to at least hope for him to change. The first act reaffirms his characteristics and sets the stage for what is to follow. The trigger is when the old black man, Joseph Washington, tells Amos he knows who he is and that he has taken action to see that he can't run and can't hide, but is going to have to continue his charade as a preacher for real, like it or not.

In another of my books (entitled Don't I Know You?) the character Larry Smith demonstrates his remarkable ability to be recognized by everyone in the first act and hooks up with a likeable sidekick who will become essential to his survival. The trigger happens when all of the good-natured back slapping and free meals ends and a man comes after him with a gun, sure he is the man that got his sister in a motherly way.

To Keep a Promise shows there is latitude in the way this can be sequenced as the trigger is pulled in the first few pages. The heroine, Janie Benedict is left alone and helpless after her husband is killed on the way west. She is totally distraught and the book is hardly underway. The first act continues as the supporting characters appear in the form of two wandering cowboys who will take her under their wing. Even though the order changes somewhat, the first act ends with her unsure and discouraged, and the reader totally interested in the characters. Each chapter in the first act, or for that matter throughout the entire book should lead up to a resolution found in the next chapter. We should never make a book easy to put down at any point.

The best thing I've ever been told about a book was when a lady was reading Promise as she waited for her grandchild to be born. She was called to the delivery room that the grandchild was arriving and she yelled, "Wait a minute, I've just got a few pages to go and can't stop here." What a compliment!

Act 2 - making the trip

The curtain closes, the music comes up, act two is ready to begin. Why won't the audience / reader walk out at this point? Why won't they put down the book and go watch tv? Hopefully we've left the character in such a strait, gotten the reader so invested in the story, that if there were any point in the book where it could be put down, this certainly wouldn't be it.

Act two is the longest, most involved part of the story, book, play or movie. It's the journey through the maze. Here we have our focal character trying different ways to solve his/her problem only to be blocked each time. What's the problem? That depends on the crisis we used as the trigger to set the story into motion.

We know what a maze is, even if we have not experienced one personally, we've tried those paper trail things where you take a pencil and try to draw a line to the way out without crossing the lines that represent dead ends. Frustrating, but not nearly so frustrating as the real life maze I was in once at a carnival. It was made of mirrors, and not only were the dead ends there, but they didn't look like dead ends. Drove me nuts.

We need to create that same frustration as our focal character tries different passages that look promising, but is blocked each time and forced back, not to where they were, but to an even lower and lower starting place. In Mysterious Ways Amos keeps thinking he has found a way out of his situation, usually through nefarious means, only to be blocked and stymied. His frustration level continually escalates.

Mid-Point - somewhere near the middle of the book, play or movie, it begins to look as if the character may be able to solve his/her problem, hopefully by some solution the reader does not approve of. Maybe it is by cutting corners, making spiritual or moral compromises, settling for less, or just outright skullduggery. In Mysterious Ways, the obvious solution is to just kill the old black man that is holding his feet to the fire. Simple.

Hand in hand with the mid-point solution comes the mid-point crisis. The focal character is walking through an open door out of the maze when that door is slammed and locked. Not only that, but it is done in such a way that the stakes escalate tremendously. His/her solution is not only foiled, but the focal character is presented with a new set of circumstances that will change the rules for the rest of the journey. In Mysterious Ways, Amos is revealed to the community and put on trial. He is forced into a desperately low situation that looks absolutely hopeless.

Here we find the red-herring solution. This generally comes just before we hit the final crisis or the climax of the book, story or movie. It hopefully fools the reader and the focal character themselves into thinking the problem is finally solved. It is hopefully a very unsatisfying solution, but it does work. An astute reader may realize there are still quite a number of pages in the book and realizes this couldn't be it. For that reason they can't put the story down because they know something big is coming.

Indeed it is as the second act always ends with the climax, the huge life or death crisis where the character has to confront his/her demons and defeat them. In Mysterious Ways - - - no, you'll need to find that out for yourself. Suffice to say Amos does indeed come to face with his demons, the curtain closes, the music comes up, and the reader is left to wonder. No putting the book down here.

Act 3 - high point and resolution

Act three brings the highest point in the story and the resolution. When the curtain opens we find the focal character on his/her knees, totally bereft, beat into submission. Okay, any more of this and we will have totally depressed the reader so it's time for us to get the character off the hook. We do this by a miraculous event, divine intervention, a superhuman effort, the more startling the better. The demons are defeated and success is achieved. We give the reader what they have been waiting and hoping for.

This brings the final point, the resolution. There are books that resolve on less than happy endings, or leave the ending up in the air, but for the most part people like "happily ever after." The resolution quickly follows the climax, usually a few pages in a book or a few minutes in a movie.

In the movie "Sixth Sense" the moviegoer was led through a maze in which 99% of those watching bought into the carefully placed misdirection that led them to the climax. Suddenly and forcefully the moviegoer was let in on the secret, the focal character was dead. The entire movie suddenly changed. Nothing had been what it seemed. The resolution was brief, but for me it was so overshadowed by the sense of disbelief that I had been fooled so badly that I could hardly wait until the chance to see the movie again to see if some cheap gimmicks had been used to mislead me. No, the clues were all there.

Seeing it again, it was clear that Bruce Willis was dead. In fact those few people who were not fooled thought the movie stunk, because there was no climax for them.

What if I had been misdirected by cheap gimmicks or means? What if it had not been in front of me the entire time? The reader or moviegoer will not forgive that. They love to be fooled, but it has to be honest, clues in place, the chance to not be fooled always there. Alfred Hitchcock was a master of that, a master of using our own imagination, our own intellect against us.

You can take this template and try it against books, TV shows and movies, and see how it is followed. The shorter the work, the shorter the journey. In a short story, or perhaps a one act play, the trigger point throwing the plot into action precipitates a short journey to a red herring solution that leads immediately to the climax and a surprising resolution.

Rules are made to be broken

Exactly right, they are, and my response to this point would be a simple question, who are you? What have you published? Stephen King and Tom Clancy can break all the rules they want and their books and stories will sell to editor, and to readers. But a newcomer who decides to break rules or conventions for effect runs an overwhelming risk that they will simply be perceived as not knowing what they are doing.

When we are untried and untested, we have to prove we can write within the accepted conventions before we can prove we are capable of successfully breaking them. Doesn't mean we can't do it and get away with it, but in a world where 85% of all submissions are rejected out of hand without the story being given a full read, why would we want to take a marginal shot at 15% of the potential chance of success?