On Being Self-Directed

Chances are no one is standing behind you with a weapon to your back forcing you to write. Sure, you may have a deadline--self-imposed or otherwise--but if you didn't sit down every day for at least fifteen to twenty minutes to write, the world would keep on spinning.

Wouldn't it be kind of great, though, if we did have that kind of motivation? If writing suddenly became a life or death matter? Because if our lives actually depended on getting one thousand words on the page, we would most certainly rise to the occasion under that kind of pressure.

But life doesn't quite work that way, and if you really want to get one thousand words on the page you might just have to say "no" to something or re-arrange your schedule or get up early or stay up late.

We have to act in our own best self-interest, doing the right thing (writing) for the right reasons. We don't have to write; we want to write. We get to write. We choose to write. 

No one is going to force our butts in the chair. The Scrivener file (or MS Word or Mac Pages document) isn't going to open itself. The words won't pour out until we turn the faucet on. 

It's all up to us.

Be Brilliant!

~Katie~   

Workshop: Premises (Part 1)

The following post originally appeared in the May 2018 newsletter. If you're not already a subscriber, the link is in the sidebar. -->

In one of my favorite books on storytelling, John Truby discusses the idea of premises. The premise, he says, “is your story stated in one sentence.”

Many publishing houses prefer “high concept” premises, or those stories that can be reduced to a simple description that audiences will both understand and want to see. In film, this is known as a “logline.” In publishing, it’s sometimes referred to as an “elevator pitch.”

According to Alexandra Sokoloff, the premise “should give you a sense of the entire story: the character of the protagonist, the character of the antagonist, the conflict, the setting, the tone, the genre. And – it should make whoever hears it want to read the book. Preferably immediately.”

Here are the three movie premises she provides as examples:

1. When a great white shark starts attacking beachgoers in a coastal town during high tourist season, a water-phobic Sheriff must assemble a team to hunt it down before it kills again.

2. A young female FBI trainee must barter personal information with an imprisoned psychopathic genius in order to catch a serial killer who is capturing and killing young women for their skins.

3. A treasure-hunting archeologist races over the globe to find the legendary Lost Ark of the Covenant before Hitler’s minions can acquire and use it to supernaturally power the Nazi army.

Chances are, you know exactly which movies she’s referencing just by these simple (one-sentence) descriptions.

Book/story premises work the same way. Here are a couple of Truby’s examples:

1. A boy discovers he has magical powers and attends a school for magicians.

2.  When an Egyptian prince discovers that he is a Hebrew, he leads his people out of slavery.

Often, as writers, we fumble over the ideas when someone asks what our book is about. After all, a lot happens in two hundred pages. But the clearer we can be about our novel’s premise before we begin writing, the better.

The premise for Cross My Heart:

A young perfectionist falls in love with the proverbial “bad boy,” making her rethink everything she knows about life and love.

And for Collateral Damage:

A young cop falls in love with a classmate while he’s working undercover, inadvertently dragging her into the crossfire as he tries to take down a local drug dealer.

Nailing down the premise before you start drafting is prudent because

if the premise is weak, nothing else is going to help the story.

So how do we come up with a million-dollar premise (or, at the very least, a premise that people will want to read)?

Truby suggests:

1.  Write a story that will change your life.

“If a story is that important to you,” he says, “it may be that important to a lot of people in the audience.”

2.  Examine every possible story path.

“Don’t jump on a single possibility right away, even if it looks really good,” he says.

Explore your options, don’t censor yourself, and choose the best one.

3. Identify and analyze the story’s potential challenges.

You’ll have to confront and solve these problems early if you want to tell the most effective story. Otherwise, Truby says: “be prepared to confront any narrative challenges as the story unfolds.”

4. Find the Designing Principle

The designing principle is your story strategy, or how you will tell your story.

“The designing principle is what organizes the story as a whole. It is the internal logic of the story, what makes the parts hang together organically so that the story becomes greater than the sum of its parts. It is what makes the story original.”

This is a bit more abstract than the premise, but Truby has a great formula for determining the designing principle.

Designing principle = story process + original execution

Here are two of his examples:

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

Premise: When three ghosts visit a stingy old man, he regains the spirit of Christmas

Designing Principle: Trace the rebirth of a man by forcing him to view his past, present, and future over the course of one Christmas Eve.

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE

Premise: when a man prepares to commit suicide, an angel shows him what the world would be had he never been born.

Designing Principle: Express the power of the individual by showing what a town and nation would be like if one man had never lived.

To Be Continued. . . .

Resources:

Alexandra Sokoloff. “What’s Your Premise?” Screenwriting Tricks for Authors. 2010

http://www.screenwritingtricks.com/2010/02/whats-your-premise.html

John Truby. The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller. Faber and Faber. New York. 2007

On Heroes -- Writing Tips

In every story, your hero should:

1. Be real.

2. Be inspiring.

3. Have something to hope for, a cause to chase, a reason to push on, and/or someone to save.

4. Have the capacity to change.

5. Face unsettling problems.

6. Have a past or a secret.

7. Have an impact on the world and/or the people around them.

*Fewer things should happen to your main character, and more things should happen because of them.

Be Brilliant!

~Katie~

On Time

This wasn't what I was planning on blogging about today, but it's too important not to share.

From Seth Godin in “The Difference Between Time and Money”:

“You can't save up time. You can't refuse to spend it. 

You can't set it aside. 

Either you're spending your time. Or your time is spending you.”

There are a lot of excuses floating around as to why we’re not getting our projects completed (or starting them in the first place). The biggest?

“I don’t have the time.”

But what if you made the time? What if you cut something from your schedule that wasn’t currently serving you or adding value to your life? What if you replaced that with genuine, focused work toward your goal or dream? What would your life look like then?

What if?

Be Brilliant!

~Katie~

Source: "The Difference Between Time and Money"

Success

The Only Guarantee

I was perusing the Writer’s Café at the Kindleboards site a couple of weeks ago. Truth is, I hadn’t visited in ages (a few years, even), and I was interested in seeing what was going on in the “indie world” since I’ve been so out of touch.

More specifically, I wanted to know what’s working these days in marketing (and what isn’t) and what’s selling (and what isn’t)—though I’ve never made a point to write for trends (and don’t recommend it, though, if you haven’t heard the news, young adult publishers are tentatively reading vampire fiction again).

Anyway, while I was reading through some of the posts, I was reminded of how quickly things change. How what sells one day doesn’t necessarily sell the next. How the advertising approaches that worked last month may not work this month. How the algorithms that catapulted us to bestseller status with our last release may not show up for the latest book we publish.

In essence, not much has changed at all, only now the marketplace is even more crowded. And yes, there are still those posts on the Boards from people looking to make a quick dollar and thinking mass publishing mediocre work is the key to all life’s treasures.

I was mostly reminded, though, that there’s no point in pursuing this particular publication avenue unless it’s something you’re passionate about. And really, there are no guarantees with either indie publishing OR traditional publishing, so, in the end, why not focus on the writing? Because in this industry, that’s the one thing you CAN control.

I know, it’s a far cry from the writing coaches and presenters out there promising you can write fifty books in one year and retire at thirty-five.  I don’t know, maybe you can?

Or maybe it has to be about more than money or awards or accolades or someone seeing our names on the spines of a book on the shelf at Barnes and Noble.

Maybe it’s better to love writing for the sake of writing (creating for creating’s sake), and letting those other chips fall where they may.

I wrote my first novel fourteen years ago. I went the traditional route. I wrote a few more books. I went the Indie route. I went the “time to take a break” route. I’m back with the idea that somehow a mix of the two (hybrid) is ideal (for my personal goals, anyway).

I’ve watched young adult lit explode onto the scene (because there was barely a “Teen” section at Barnes and Noble when I first started writing). I’ve watched the trends cycle up and around and back again. I’ve watched traditional bestsellers rise and fall and Indie bestsellers rise and fall. And what I’ve learned from this is that things are never going to work out the way we want or expect them to. Sometimes we’re pleasantly surprised, sometimes we’re disappointed, and sometimes the best thing happens to us even if it doesn’t make sense or look like it at the time.

After all, Kierkegaard did say:

My point is this:

We can’t control the industry or who chooses to publish us or how our book is received, but we can do the hard work of writing the best story we’re capable of at the time, letting it go, and then writing the next best story we can, knowing that we’re only going to learn more about ourselves and the writing process—that our characters will grow deeper and our content richer with every new project we tackle.

If we go into this industry with anything else in mind, we’re begging for frustration and disappointment, with a few “highs” sprinkled in, if we’re one of the lucky ones.    

So . . . keep your eyes on the creation—the art, the writing, the story—until it’s time to look up and assess your options. Figure out what’s best for you and your project, then put your head back down and start working on the next one.

In this game, the work is the only thing that matters—the creation is the prize.

It’s the only guarantee we have.

Be Brilliant!

~Katie~

Character History

*This originally appeared in my March 2018 newsletter. If you're not a subscriber yet, the link is in the sidebar. --> 

A well-developed character does not exist in the vacuum of a single story.

Not even close.

They arrive at the inciting incident as fully formed beings. They step into chapter one with the proverbial suitcase in hand—all of the baggage they carry with them that they have amassed over the years. This includes thousands of thoughts, feelings, and memories of events that have come together to shape who they are.

They come to your story with hopes and dreams and ideas, something they are striving for, something they are working toward, and these things have grown out of who they have become (and are still becoming, since one of the main functions of the plot is to change the character in some way). A character’s past, including the choices they have made, holds everything that brought them to the moment your story opens.

A past informs your character’s motives (why they do what they do).

A past informs your character’s attitudes (how they respond to the events and people around them).

We (the reader) don’t need to know everything about your character’s past, but you (the writer) should have a solid idea of the kind of person you’re dealing with before you sit down to tell their story.

It’s likely you will need to share some of those key past events as the plot unfolds, but keep in mind that “info dumps” should be avoided, and the memories the character is reflecting on can’t be “convenient” to the story. Attitudes and actions must ring authentic.

The memories shared throughout your narrative will be most effective if, while the character is considering them, the meaning changes based on new information or a new attitude. It may be that the character didn’t fully understand something at first, but now they do.

But most importantly: a character should act out of their true emotions, hide from their true emotions, or feel paralyzed because of their true emotions, and this all stems from their past. Who they were, who they are now, and who they are in the process of becoming is because of their past.

The key takeaway? Know your character’s history.

Knowing why they do what they do will help them act naturally (both in character and out of character, when the time comes) as the plot unfolds. And the more believable your character (and their choices), the more memorable they will be.

Be Brilliant!

~Katie~