Fiction Problems

I have a story idea,  but I don't know what to do with it.

Story ideas abound, if you know what to look for. Indeed, a story ideas are a dime a dozen unless they come with a n ending.  Then the story idea is golden and worth developing.  That ain't easy.  But . .every story starts with a single idea.

Creating a story requires plenty of work on your part.  It also requires a lot of creativity.  It doesn’t matter what type of a story it is. It can be a short story, a novel, a memoir, a script, a screenplay or a poem.  It will require creativity.  And planning!  A story can’t be a bunch of paragraphs thrown together without thought as to how they fit together.

Artists draw a preliminary sketch to see what the finished painting will look like and to guide its creation. Composers sketch out the movements of the symphony to guide their serious composing. 

Writing a story is an act of creation just as the painting and symphony are acts of creation.  And like the painting and the symphony, the story needs advanced planning.  

All these types of stories face the same problem.  The writer has to deal with development of characters, plot events, scenes, dialog, arcs and other elements.  This plethora of elements brings us to a monumental problem: How can you build a plan with all this stuff going on?

I've built such a plan and explaining it is quite lengthy.  In fact, it requires a short book namely, my Beginner's Guide to Planning a Story

What can I do about it?

A plot is an important element in a story.  If fact, if there is no plot, there is no story.  Here’s a definition for a story by a sci-fi icon, Ben Bova.  It's from his book The Craft of Writing Science Fiction.  Bova states: “A story is a narrative description of a character struggling to solve a problem.  Nothing more than that.  And nothing less.”

The part of the definition that reads “ . . . struggling to solve a problem” refers to the plot. The plot, in other words, involves a problem and a struggle.  This sounds pretty simple and straightforward, but it’s also deceiving.  Developing a plot can be a difficult task.

To put it simply, a plot gives the characters a job. Without a plot problem to work on, your characters are unemployed,  No matter how skillful the were developed, without a a plot problem to work on, the characters will be boring. 

Inexperienced writers often make several common mistakes when developing a plot:

Lack of a clear structure

Starting too slowly

Weak central conflict

Undeveloped characters

Let’s dive into an explanation on why developing a plot is so hard. First you have come up with the plot problem and plot ending, both are hard to do.  Next you need a series of plot events that will connect the inciting event with the climax.  These events are the journey the reader will take when she reads your story.

Consider a blown-up balloon filled with air (almost an infinite number of nitrogen and oxygen atoms).  With a marker, you make an X on the upper left side of the ballon.  This is the inciting event.  You make a second X on the lower right side to indicate the climax. 

Here is why creating a plot is so hard.  Each atom inside the ballon represents a possible plot event.  There are almost a really large number of atoms which means a really large  number of events. That means there are a really large number of possible paths that can connect the two points on the outside of the balloon.  And you have to pick the small number of events that make a believable path through the balloon. 

Sources: Beginner's Guides: Developing a Plot and Planning a Story

There may be nothing wrong with the story design or the ideas.  These ideas may be great, the characters and the plot are terrific but your problem may be with the storytelling.  Even with the great ideas and terrific characters and plots, if the storytelling bores the reader, the story is a failure.

For instance, let's say the story design calls for a hero and a villain to engage in an exciting  life-or-death struggle at the climax, but the storytelling shows a scene filled with insults and little  action.  In this case, the storytelling hasn't lived up to the promise offered by the story design. In other words, the storytelling failed.

Storytelling has a number of techniques that can be deployed to keep the reader turning the pages.  These include foreshadowing, point of view, show-don't-tell, character arcs and emotions.

Consider a story with great characters, a gripping plot, set in an intriguing world and yet it has poor reviews with lots of one  and two star ratings.  What happened?

It is difficult to be precise with this vague story set up, but it's easy to list a number of possibilities as to what happened. 

* The character arc was ignored or suppressed

* The emotional arc was flat or non-existing

* The dialog was insipid

* The conflict seemed contrived

* The character flaws were ignored or forgotten about

* The world-building went on and on endlessly

* Scenes that neither change anything nor deepen character

 The bullet items above relate to storytelling issues.  The objective of storytelling is to get the reader involved with the story and keep her interested enough to keep her turning the pages to find out what happens next.

Storytelling is a complex weaving of all the story design elements into a cohesive whole.  While it may sound difficult to do (and it is) it can be mastered through practice.  Every story you write provides a bit more of that experience and  ensures the next story will be told even better than the current one.  

The reader’s job is to create mental images from the author's words.  Thus, the reader builds an image of the characters, the world and the action.  It is the writer's responsibility to provide the necessary words for the reader to develop those images. With no imagery, the story won't resonate with the reader.

What really hooks the reader is the emotional journey of the characters.  Readers want to watch the protagonist struggle with the plot problem and then succeed at the end. They want to root against the antagonist as he beats the hero over and over again only to face defeat at the end. 

As the storytelling progresses, the author must constantly ask herself two guiding questions:  “Can the reader see what’s happening?” and “Does the reader care what happens next?”  Keeping these questions firmly in mind, will help ensure the reader's concerns are addressed.

As an exercise, take one page from your story.  Underline every sentence that helps the reader ‘see what’s happening.’ Circle every sentence that makes the reader ‘care what happens next.’ If you can’t underline or circle much, add 3-5 lines that do.  

Source: Beginner's Guide to Storytelling.

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One of the main purposes of a plot is to generate conflict within the cast of characters.  The main conflict in the story has to be between the protagonist and the antagonist.  And it has to realistic.  It can't be contrived.  The way it make it realistic is to give the hero a strong motivation and give the bad guy an equally strong motivation.  Strong motivations will naturally tend to generate conflict.  

Unmotivated characters will appear to just going through the motions, faking it another words,

While the conflict can be between two characters and often is, a three-sided battle provides more opportunities for conflicts.  This three-sided combat also leads to the concept of a conflict triangle.  Each of the three characters is now striving against two opponents. Character A and Character B can represent the protagonist and antagonist.  Character C can be a sidekick or even a third main character who tries to outwit both A and B.

 This is a very powerful technique to increase the conflict and the resultant tension in a story.  Over the course of the story, the architecture of the triangle can change.   An example of this can happen if Character B becomes an ally of Character A against Character C.  

Why all the conflict?  Because conflict produces tension and tension causes emotions.  Conflict, tension and emotions keep the readers turning the pages.

Beginner's Guide to Developing a Plot

While this problem may simply be a dialog problem, it may be more complicated than that.  Perhaps the characters all sound alike because they are all alike.  Characters have to be different from one another and those differences will make them sound different,

Possibly, the problem is the character's biography, or lack of.  A biography for the character serves a dual purpose.  Besides providing background information, it allows the author to understand the character, and that understanding is vital when dealing with the character in stressful situations.

Nothing tells the reader the author is an amateur more quickly than reading about a make-believe cardboard character, one that isn't a “real” person.  A 'real' character needs:

* A personality

* Dreams: what does she dream of achieving?

* Memories: These are influencers that characters have.

* A personal philosophy

* A dominant reader emotion

* A flaw (or two)

Sources: Creating Your First Novel  and Beginner's Guide to Creating Genuine Characters

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