Four Useful Lies Just about Writing

Most writing “experts” favor a particular way of looking at plot, and wish adhere to it for years or an entire career. That’s all well and good, but its important to realize that any way of modeling story is simply that—a model, not the depths and living essence of story itself.

Problems arise once young (or experienced!) writers mistake a simplified structure for several deep and eternal truth. It’s more better to examine several structures, see what their strengths and weaknesses are, and try to glimpse the truth they are trying to convey.

The actual “truth” of story is on the far side any structure, but they all point in the same direction, toward that misty, hidden metaphoric mountain all storytellers have been climb since the beginning of time. As long as we don’t mistake the finger for the mountain, the structures can be quite useful indeed.

The worst story model that is at all useful mightiness be” “It has a beginning, middle, and an end.” Well, yes, but so makes a piece of string.

More helpfully, try: Objective, Obstacle, Outcome. In another words, a character wants something, and thing stands in her way. She tries various things to resolve the difficulty, leading to an ultimate climax.

This one is even as more useful:

Situation, Character, Objective, Opponent, Disaster. Exploitation the classic James Bond film “Goldfinger” as an model (action films are nice for this, because their structure is normally crystal clear):

Situation: Once gold is being bootleg from European country in large quantities,

Character: Private secret Agent 007 James Bond

Objective: Is allotted to find out how it is being done. But little makes he cognize that

Opponent: Businessman rich person Aurous Goldfinger

Disaster: Is importing gold to finance his real operation, the destruction of Fort Historian with an atom bomb!

Can you see how this model helps to clarify the several basic aspects of your story? The hero must have a goal, and there must be forces in opposition. Moreover, the hero’s initial goal and his ultimate goal may well change over the course of the story, as they grow to understand the situation more fully. A story structure like this one implies several internal and external motivations, and sets up a dynamic structure that about writes itself!

The really better writing structure would-be be what is acknowledged as the “Hero’s Journey” created by Joseph Campbell, and explored by anthropologists and writing mavens about the world. There are many interpretations of it, but in essence, it can be delineated as:

1)Hero Confronted With A Challenge.
2)The Hero rejects the challenge
3)The Hero accepts the challenge
4)Road of Trials
5)Meeting allies and gaining powers
6) Confront evil and defeat.
7) Dark Night of the Soul
8) Leap of Faith
9) Confront Evil and triumph
10) Student Becomes The Teacher

This pattern mechanically implies the yearnings, fears, obstacles, efforts, deep depression and exultation of actual human lives. This is the reason that this pattern, more than any other, is useful to writers several new and experienced. Because it mirrors our lives, a writer can most easily adapt her own understandings of life and the universe into her work. If you organize your activity into this pattern, readers or viewers all over the earth wish instantly recognize your efforts as “story.” Whether it is a “good” story wish depend entirely on the skill and creativeness that you bring to the task—the unquantifiable quality of “art” that is on the far side direct description.

There are, of course, galore another patterns, and an ambitious writer or student would-be do well to list several of them side by side, and analyze what they are saying. None of them are “truth,” but all are useful fingers inform toward that mountain.

About The Author

NY Times bestselling writer Steven Barnes has lectured on story and creativeness from UCLA to the Smithsonian. He created the Lifewriting high-performance system for writers. Get a FREE daily writing tip at: http://www.lifewriting.biz and http://www.lifewrite.com.

This article was announce on Dec 02, 2005