Into the unknown…

So… What’s next?
Next is coming up with an idea for a ’story worth telling’.
How is that done?
Unfortunately, that’s a tough question. Books on authoring get rather abstract at this point. In fact, things don’t really get back to what I would call … a ’step-by-step’ approach again until they finally start talking about finding an agent. That’s well after your transcript is already 100% finished.

So, take a deep breath. Here is where we step into the scary unknown.

At some point during my reading binge, I decided I wanted to write a story about an anti-hero – a thief named Cirellio – and that’s about it. That’s … about how much J.K. Rowling started with for her Harry Potter series, so I figured it was as good a start as any for me, too. Armed with that idea, I had also read about a lot of different methods to help me get started.

Here’s what I remember:

1. The ‘questionnaire’ approach.
Ugh. This will be the hardest questionnaire you’ve ever had to fill out.
Q. “What will the title of your novel be?”:
A. Dragon-slaying Damsels with Laser Swords. No, wait! On second thought, let me write a little bit and I’ll get back to you on that.
Q. “What is the goal or goals for each of your characters?”
A. Gee. That really depends on the conflict or conflicts that concern each character and the world or worlds around them at any given time, whether or not they misinterpret the nature of those conflicts, whether or not they are even aware of their end goals, and countless other factors. I’ll … have to get back to you on that, too.
Moving on…

2. The ‘laundry list’ approach.
You get to select different conflict styles, structures, dramatic through-lines, narration techniques, ways to drive the plot forward, et cetera, from a ‘laundry list’ a bunch of stuffy double-doctorate scholars have provided for you. If you want to turn the creative writing process into textbook pabulum, this is the way to go. Like the ‘questionnaire’ approach, the ‘laundry list’ approach is something you can do to analyze an already existing story; it doesn’t work very well the other way around. Asking me to say, “This story will have both internal and paranormal conflict,” is suggesting I already have a story seared well into my mind. And selecting “Man vs Man” or “Man vs Machine” is no help. I certainly don’t want to confine my stories to a simple ACT I, ACT II, and ACT III structure, either. I would like to think a real writer can masterfully interweave and transition between as many of these elements as they wish without ever giving this silly laundry list a thought. Why limit yourself?
Next!

3. The ’start with an ending’ approach.
Ah. This is far more conventional. Ever been disappointed by a story’s ending? Ask yourself, “Did I like that ending? What could the writer have done to make it better?” Keeping that frame of mind could be the springboard for a novel. Another way to approach this is to think of important turning points in your life and try to transpose those emotions into a heartfelt ending. Or you could try to think up some kind of stunning twist no one has ever thought of before (although that’s quickly becoming a cliché). There’s really an infinite number of ways to approach this method. Once you have an ending, you have what I would call an ‘anchor point’; a tangible target scene you can start writing towards. The tiny problem I’ve found with this approach: If you have a fixed ending already set in your mind, it might heavily limit the versatility of your storyline and characters. And, even worse, the characters might go off somewhere and do something they wouldn’t have otherwise done or shouldn’t have otherwise known to do, all because of your knowledge of the inevitable future, and you might have to inject a healthy dose of prophecies here and there just to avoid plot holes.

4. The ’start with a beginning’ approach.
There are many ways to approach this method. You can try to lushly describe a location you’ve pictured in your mind to start from, or try to invent some major event that might have shaken things up in the past, and make up stuff as you go until a clear goal manifests itself … I suppose I could have easily started my novel with Cirellio sneaking into a house and stealing some item of high importance or value, and try to piece together what that item might have been, and how it would have effected his future. The problem: I’ve found that there’s no way to know for sure whether or not the scene will be the true starting point of the story or not. So this method can be subject to many, many rewrites. On the bright side, it definitely creates an ‘anchor point’; You just have to write ‘from’ it instead of ‘towards’ it.
Some books suggest a variation of this approach as a must; as a necessary tool to mercilessly grip the attention of the reader to increase sales. Because nobody will otherwise bother with your book. Because, you know, they have approximately one-tenth of a second attention spans. And they are too busy chatting it up on their cell phones or playing poker on their PDAs to care about the concept of a good story with proper pacing and suspense. That is, unless your first paragraph ‘POPS’, greedily clawing at the eyes of the reader with some sort of desperate attention-hungry gimmick. Gimmicks not unlike pop-up web ads, actually. I don’t know about you, but I think this breed of readership (with all of the attention-span of a ham sandwich) doesn’t sound like a very ideal audience to write for. Some publishers even step around the intentions of their own writers, going as far as to include a cliffhanger scene as a ‘teaser’ page, forcing the unfortunate reader who picks up the book into a corner where they have no choice but to purchase the book if they ever hope to find out what happens next.

5. The ‘draw a map’ approach.
I want to go over this one with you later. I like this method.
~~~~~~~~~~

I’ll tell you right now, no combination of those methods worked for me. I had to find my own way, which I will go into detail about in the next post. But these proved to be excellent tools to keep well in mind after I had already gotten a good start on my story.

If I am missing any methods you have heard of, be sure to drop a line!

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~ by cirellio on March 15, 2008.