Writing stories for an audience – Story Framework Design

These story writing lessons were originally posted at the beginning of 2009 in a series of postings. The feedback quickly made it clear that my stance on story writing was different than many others’. To clarify, I now add a caveat to these lessons:

There are many ways to write a story, but something in the human psyche means that only a few formulae are actually entertaining to a broad audience. The assumption of these story writing lessons is that your intention is to write to entertain your readership. There are plenty of other reasons to write and even to write stories: To exorcise your own feelings, to practise writing, to convey a message to an audience of one. But if your intent is to entertain a wide readership, I commend the following lessons to you.

On at least two occasions I have been requested to post up story writing lessons or run workshops for story writing here on Sal’s. Not having a clue where to start and not being qualified in any sense to be advising anyone on their story writing, I instead decided to take an overview of the common feedback I’ve given in my various story reviews over the past 18 months (12 months of which is captured in Neverdead’s Bookcase). I’m not particularly interested in writing lessons on linguistic mechanics, so instead I’ve prepared three lessons on Story Framework Design. This seems to be an area where I’ve repeatedly given the same feedback over and over again to writer after writer. Now, rather than give the feedback again, I can just refer authors to these lessons and save myself the effort.

As a final challenge to those who disagree with the ideas I present in these lessons, or think that there are other ways to entertain without “following a formula” I challenge anyone to name a highly regarded story which doesn’t follow this guidance.

Lesson 1: Storylines and Timelines
Lesson 2: Decisions, decisions
Lesson 3: Character – Desire – Barrier


Lesson 1: Storylines and Timelines
Why I Hate So Many First Chapters

The aim of this story writing lesson is to demonstrate how a short consideration of the Storyline and Timeline of a story can make the difference between a dull, linear telling of events and an interesting and engaging read.

This lesson is based around my own story, Medic! I had the basic idea outline for this story bobbling around in my head for several months, and it simply consisted of a few lines into which I intended to wrap the story. I’d recommend, if you haven’t already read the story, that you read this lesson before proceeding to the final product.

The story is about a conscientious objector in some generic war who becomes dehumanised by the inhumanity of the war and that this is illustrated through the lines of dialogue he exchanges with two of his patients. In the first exchange the victim says, “Hey Medic, I don’t know your name” and the medic replies giving his name. In the final exchange, after whatever dehumanising events take place, he’s asked the same question by another wounded soldier, but instead of giving his name, he completely dehumanises himself, “Medic. Just call me Medic” or “My name is Medic.” This is all I had of this story for about 6 months or so.

Then, the time came when it felt right to write it up. At the time I was commuting to and from work on a train, so I had a little notebook in which I marked up my ideas. I replicate the contents of the notebook for this story below:

The notes are in the order that I wrote them and the numbers were added subsequently to wrap a timeline to the events.
So, to summarise, the story as it stands at the moment would proceed:
1 We meet the protagonist, Thomas and his best friend Peter as they are being drafted together.
2 There’s a scene in which Thomas receives his approval as a conscientious objector and preserves his principles by not lying about his religion
3 Thomas and Peter are assigned to the same unit and discuss basic training
4 Another soldier is injured by a landmine
5 Thomas introduces himself by name to the soldier
6 There’s a firefight
7 Peter gets injured
Thomas tries his best to comfort Peter, but eventually he dies
Thomas undergoes a dehumanising transformation
8 Another soldier is injured
Thomas calls himself “Medic”

At this point, there’s a straightforward chronology to the story but it starts very slowly. The first 3 scenes or story steps don’t give the reader much interest to hold onto. These are going to have to go and emerge later in the writing, if at all possible. They may even get killed off altogether.

On the next page of my notes I start fleshing out some opportunities to compress the scenes together and to do some preliminary dehumanising.

That is the last of my notes. After that, I started typing up the story. But all the while, I had the idea that any scene could drop into almost any part of the story. I made some changes of substance – such as having the enemy soldier left to die, rather than actually killed. But mostly it was a matter of pulling the scenes around into a much snappier sequence. The whole of the first three scenes were compressed into some reminiscing dialogue between Thomas and Peter. The landmine got dropped as too random and instead got compressed into the scene where the Sergeant tests the pacifist resolve of the medic. The only scene that couldn’t move was the one with the punchline.

It’s like I had a deck of 8 (or slightly more) cards and I could throw them up in the air and build a story out of them in any sequence. I wanted to bracket the whole story around the two responses to “What’s your name?” and selected the sequence based on what I thought would give the best impact to the reader and to compress the story into the shortest space.

You’ll note also that in the final piece, there’s no need to resort to flashbacks, time jumps or anything nasty like that. The scenes can be seamlessly played out in my chosen sequence without clunky jumping around.

Now, if you haven’t already, go and read Medic! and you’ll hopefully agree that the impact of the storyline and timeline is much greater in the finished version than in the early draft outline. Enjoy!



Lesson 2: Decisions, decisions
Why I Hate Linear Plots

Ever wondered why your plot line doesn’t quite excite? Perhaps your characters are monotonous, one-dimensional and unempathetic. It’s possible that what you’re lacking is decisions. That is, decisions for your character. You’ve thought up a great story line and interesting, well-characterised performers to act it out, but somehow they just drift through the plot from event to event in a linear, unsurprising and uninteresting fashion.

To get out of this rut, challenge your characters to make meaningful decisions that (appear to) influence the plot. By decisions, I mean that they need to be taken in the teeth of a dilemma. Need to go down to the local shop to buy some milk? Well, make sure your character will have to miss their favourite TV show if they do. Now it’s a decision, albeit a dull one. How about something a bit stronger – falling in love, a common theme in stories. But much more powerful if something will have to be sacrificed if that love is pursued. Your family will disown you, your society banish you or your existing spouse will be hurt and you’ll lose your own children. Get the idea?

Now, try to turn every action by any character into a decision. Not just an action, but an active choice, weighing the consequences of the action against the alternatives, including inaction. That’s right, every action. Not just key story turning actions. Every action.

Once you’ve mastered this, turn it up a notch and make the outcome of the bigger decisions something other than the character intended. Your revenge-consumed psychopath tools up for the show down with his arch-nemesis, loads up with guns, knives and everything needed to dispatch his foe. He sneaks into the apartment and kicks down the door and… finds the muzzle of a gun held to his temple, his enemy right behind him.

I was thinking of these ideas the other day when I happened to watch Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. In one scene, Indy and his father, Henry Jones, are captured by Nazi soldiers. They are tied together, back to back on chairs, in the middle of a castle hall. With no means of escape, Indy remembers he has a lighter in his pocket, which only Henry could reach. Eventually, Henry manages to get the lighter out to burn through their ropes, but fumbles with it and accidentally drops the burning lighter. He attempts to blow it out, but instead fans the flames setting fire to the carpet. The only refuge away from the carpet is, ironically, in a fireplace, so they bounce and scrape the chairs along until they are safely snuggled in the fireplace. Then, they accidentally bump a secret lever which spins the fireplace around revealing another room. Feeling relieved to have escaped the burning hall, they then see that they are in a secret Nazi control centre, so quickly bump the lever again, preferring the burning room to the Nazi guns.

This sort of thing goes on throughout the whole film. In the space of seconds, each decision is reversed and every attempt to make progress leads to unexpected twists and turns.

Taking these ideas will raise the suspense and interest of your stories, breathing life into the characters and adding emotion to your plotlines.


Lesson 3: Character – Desire – Barrier
Why I Hate Incomplete Stories

The premise of every story has been said to be able to be simplified to a simple formula:

There may well be sub-plots and side-stories in any given story, but in essence, apart from a handful of avant-garde artistic pieces, this formula holds true.

The chapters, scenes or acts in a story consist of the character facing and either overcoming or being overcome by one or more barriers. As this sequence of rising and falling fortunes progresses, the story eventually culminates in either an up (overcome the ultimate barrier) ending or a down ending (character is finally overcome). One of the key skills that separates the skilled story artist from the mere story writer is the ability to draw energy (thrills or other emotions) from handling the shifting rhythm of beats in a story. One Story Mat author who exemplifies how to pull the reader’s emotions along with each shifting outcome is Finway. In most of Finway’s stories (such as The Race and A Great Lament) you’ll find your emotions drawn from high to low back to high until the final blow lands in the story climax and you feel completely relieved or overwhelmed by the ending.

In essence there are four possible endings (there are, of course, many more, but these are the four basic possibilities).



When you go back and look at your own stories and consider which type of ending they have, you may find examples where you can’t fit them into one of these categories. The reason could well be this: What you have written isn’t actually a story. All too often the postings here in the Library are simply scenes or vignettes. I’m guilty of this too – there’s no story as such to my pieces, The First Of November, GRB or Wrong Number. There is room for vignettes and scenes, but don’t make the mistake of believing that they are actually stories. Remember: story = character plus desire versus barriers.

I have one piece of advice for the younger writer. If you want to impress your teacher in a story writing assignment, try out one of the ironic endings. They give a mature feel to a story. If a story is described as being adult themed (if not specifically erotic in nature) it’s likely to have an ironic ending.

If you try out the concepts in this lesson, you might also like to combine them with the lesson I gave on Decisions, decisions. The two concepts work very well together, with character decisions being used to drive outcomes against barriers to desires.

Good luck to all my fellow story writers. I hope these lessons prove useful to at least some of you. Your feedback is more than welcome.

Due to the increasing number of Sals members exploring their creative ability with poetry, I decided a helpful guide would be a good starting point for new comers and existing fans of The Library. Until a few months ago, The Library was a place for stories which were non-Runescape related. However, it's nice to see people are broadening their horizons by trying new styles and experimenting.

This is not an extensive guide, but a brief summary on how to get started with poetry, it's compiled of three lessons, which are:

• An Introduction.
• Figurative lnaguage and poetic devices.
• A step by step guide to compiling your poem.

An Introduction:
So, what is poetry anyway?

My personal definition of poetry an imaginative piece of writing which has a personal significance to the writer. Unlike creative fiction, poetry is expressive of deep feelings and experiences. Whereby, each poem composed has relevance to the poet and his/her world. Therefore, because of the nature of poetry, it makes it difficult to form an objective opinion simply because it's so personal.

There are three key aspects of poetry which are crucial to criticize and they are:

• Sound : Sound is important because poetry is written to be read, it's very much an art form in the sense that it can be 'performed' and brought to life through the reader. Therefore, getting the tone/sound is significant to produce an overall good form. The use of rhyme and certain words, for example, may use certain sounds to give specific meaning within the poem and an insight to context. The following are 'devices' for sound you can use to give your poetry better form and rhythm:

• Alliteration. Alliteration is the repetition of initial sounds in a word. Some examples include, 'Appreciate April' because they both contain 'Ap' at the beginning of each word, or it could contain three, for example, 'Appreciative April Applauses'. It's a very catchy technique to use in poetry, especially as a title.
• Assonance. Assonance is when you closely place vowel sounds, for example, 'Hear the mellow wedding bells'- The Bells, Edgar Allen Poe. Here there is a repetition of the vowel 'e' placed in a consecutive conjunction to create an assonance.
• Onomatopoeia. Onomatopoeia refers to 'sound' words and are used in poetry to emphasize a common sound for sound effect. For example, rather than stating, "With a BOOM! the city set ablaze" or more-so dramatic than stating, "The city was set ablaze" even though the same point is stated, the overall effect with the use of onomatopoeia makes it more impressive.
• Rhyme. Rhyme is when words sound the same, for example, 'Place' and 'Case' are rhyming words. Rhyme is a good technique to use because it enhances the overall rhythm or 'flow' of the poem.

• Structure : Most modern poetry is now 'free verse' which means there is no set structure/form to the poem. However, some examples of poetic structure include:

• Haiku. A Haiku is a Japanese form of poetry, it is a 17 syllable verse form consisting of three metrical units of 5, 7 and 5 syllables.
• Sonnet. A sonnet is a 14 line verse which often has several rhyme schemes.
• Limerick. A Limerick is a 5 line poem which is light-hearted and written for intended humour.

• Themes : Much like literature, poetry also contains themes, despite the lack of plot. Themes in poetry can be either simple and straight forward, or subtle and ambiguous. Poetry can have one theme, or several themes running in conjunction with each other, for example, themes which are commonly used together are:

• Love, death and life.
• Constraints and society
• Nature, beauty and harmony
• Crime and punishment

Figurative language and poetic devices:
What does it mean and how are they used?

Figurative language is the opposite of literal language and is used to create an 'image' so to speak. Figurative language is used in conjunction with literal language to create a 'sense' or 'feel' for a setting, character, event or object. It is a creative form of expression and a technique used to create imagery which is subject to the occurrings in a poem or story.

Writers use devices such as:

• Comparisons
• Metaphors and Similes
• Hyperbole
• Opposites
• Personification

Although figurative language can be effective and create depth in your writing if used correctly, it can also lose it's emphasis if it is not done within context or correctly.

SlashingUK, whom is well know here wrote a piece titled, 'The First of November' to explore his use of figurative language, especially in the form of Metaphors and Similes, therefore, I will be using segments of the creative story to give examples on how figurative language is used.

Firstly, I'd like to explain the difference between a Metaphor and a Simile:

• Simile. A simile is used when you want to make a direct comparison of two things which are completely unrelated, for example: "It stunk like the worst kind of excrement, rot, sick and phlegm all mixed together" - The First of November (SlashingUK). Here Slash has made a direct comparison of the smell to that of excrement, rot, sick and phlegm. This line in particular is a Simile and not a Metaphor because it is clearly a direct comparison, you can tell the difference because a Simile will contain the words 'like' or 'as'. This above sentence would have the same meaning if it was conveyed in the literal sense, such as: "The stink was terrible" both sentences are informing the reader that there is in unpleasant smell, however, the noticeable difference is the first sentence creates a 'feel' of the setting; the reader can gain a physical sense for the smell due to the figurative language and alas, the writer is able to convey the severity and degree of unpleasantness this smell has caused.

A picture may convey a thousand words, however, it's a lot more difficult to create a physical image in the readers mind with non-visual material. This is when figurative language play an important factor. It is used to bring the piece to life, to make the experience very 'real' in a physical sense, as you can see portrayed in the line taken from Slash's The First of November.

• Metaphor. A metaphor, like a Simile, is also a comparison. However, the main difference is, it's indirect. For example, a Simile is a comparison using the words, 'like' and/or 'as', however, a Metaphor is a comparison which is 'to be'. For example, a Metaphor will create a comparison to two unlike things by saying it 'is'. For example: "...a brown paper bag because the label has all the allure of a desperate hooker."- The First of November (SlashingUK). Here Slash has compared drinking scotch out of a paper bag to a 'desperate' hooker. There clear distinction that makes this a Metaphor and not a Smile is the fact that he used the words, 'of a desperate hooker' and not, 'like a desperate hooker'. Using a comparison of two unlike things by saying they 'are' that thing, rather than like it, makes it a Metaphor.

Note: Using Metaphor and Simile in your writing.

Although Metaphor and Simile is used in writing to express creativity, if it is not done correctly, or a term I like to use, 'over-used' then it starts to lose it's significance to the piece and the overall effectiveness. Including figurative language to breakdown the literal language in a creative piece can involve the responders on a personal level and engage them to seek greater meaning and purpose within context. However, using it repetitively can cause a 'flowery' feel which can consequently distract the audience and weaken the plot (with poetry it's more acceptable to a certain degree because there is no real 'plot' in poetry, but themes).

Composing the poem:
A step by step guide.

I will be explaining how you go about composing your poetry in step by step instructions. Although most modern poetry is free verse and much of it is expressive and individual to the poet, however, it is still important that you take the time to gather your thoughts and plan your work to ensure your final product is satisfactory.

Steps:

• Finding inspiration. The first step to composing a poem is coming up with the idea or 'inspiration' so to speak. Inspiration can be gathered from anywhere, it may be a line you read in a book, or a scene you saw in a movie, perhaps an event that has happened in your life recently; regardless of what it may be, use the idea as a basis for your poem. Once you have the idea in your head, you should write it down, take the time to plan by writing down words and phrases; it can be any word or phrase that pops into your head. At this stage, your idea's do not need to be solid or organised, it's simply a brain-storming exercise

• What is it about? In the second step, you well need to consider what you want to achieve with the poem, what themes will you cover and what is your purpose. You will need to consider several things, such as, who will your responders be (as poetry is written to be heard) and plan your poem accordingly. What will the poem be about? You'll need to refer back to your brain-storm words and phrases. Will the poem be about love and relationships? war and suffering? nature and serenity? Before you can begin to write anything, you need to consider the purpose of your piece.

• Choosing your poetic style. Although most modern poetry is written free verse, you may want to consider other styles to experiment with, for example a Sonnet or a Limerick.

• Write down your thoughts and words. Firstly, I recommend writing whatever comes to mind, keeping in line always with your theme and purpose. Do not ponder too much, just let the words flow through your fingers as you write; you can always go back and edit it later. Once you've freely expressed your thoughts in writing, read over your progress so far and you may want to change/replace certain words at this point which would be more fitting.

• Read your poem out loud. Once you've written down your thoughts and ideas and found the appropriate words, take the time to listen to the poem by reading it out loud and ask yourself the following questions: Does the poem roll off the tongue and flow nicely? Does it have rhythm? You will find that the poem will sound a lot different when you read it out loud, if at this point you decide that some of the words don't sound as good when spoken, you might choose to go back and edit it to something more appropriate.

• Figurative language and imagery. You want to portray a setting and 'feel' of the poem for your responders, therefore, take this time to read through your poem and make additions. For example, "The water was cold" can be changed to, "The water was so cold, it stung like a thousand knives plunging through your body". In this case the cold water is compared to that of stabbing knives by using a Simile. Although both phrases mean the same thing, the latter invokes imagery and involves the responder by making them react emotionally.

• Using poetic devices. Depending on whether is is appropriate to the style of poem you are composing, you may want to use poetic devices such as assonance, alliteration and rhyme. However, do not abuse the use of poetic devices because it can often weaken the overall quality of the poem.

• Convey a message. You may choose to portray a powerful message at the end of your poem, it may be in the form of a 'moral learned' or something similar. This is a powerful way to not only conclude the poem, but also summarise the ideas and themes of the poem.