The Art of Story

Humans have been entertained and learn easily from imaginations in story form. Story telling is an art. The best of stories are those that pull readers in and allow them to engage or identify with the characters who live out the circumstance.

It’s the characters who manifest the plot of any good story.

Imagine a play where the director with script in hand decided to visit with the cast before any were selected for their roles. Imagine that he sits in a large empty theater, divorced of sound and shadowed in dim light. Each character, to complete the audition, has to come out on the stage in full light and explain why they should be cast to a specific role.

Let’s say the story could go anywhere, that it has no specific plot as yet. All that is known is the name of the character and that a simple biography of a life is given.

Can the director create a play by interviewing a slough of actors in such a manner? Not knowing where the plot leads?

Sure! At least for me this is true. I believe in large part that it’s the characters who dictates to the writer what actually happens.

That’s not to say we can’t plot and that we can’t write from an outline. It’s not to say that we don’t have a notion of where the story goes. It’s much better when we do. But for me, opening the heart of each character is a study in motivations.

That’s the way this writer has learned best to understand himself and explain the world around me.

What’s your method?

Hidden Behind Pretense

It’s a given that you must have tension to build a story.

You have to have reason, in other words, for the story to take place.

To have reason you had to have motive and to have motive you have to see into the privacy of lives hidden behind pretense. In many classic stories we see characters who pretend to be what they are actually not. Their motives are held inwardly cloaked with an outward expression.

Knowing this trait exists in most of us, a writer learns to hold motives inside lead characters, not giving everything away until the plot exposes the truth of each player.

What do you think? Comments are most welcome.

I believe the trait that most often results in success for writers is the inner, sometimes inexplicable drive to write, regardless of circumstance. If you do this in story form, acting out the answers to our questions through the actions of characters then you are a writer of fiction. If you explain in logic and back your statements with research, then you are a non-fiction writer. Without debate, a fiction writer of great quality can be as truthful in his explanations of the nature of man as can the logician. Fact is, the logicians can often fall far short of truth if bias rules their expression.

It Doesn’t Matter

The real dilemma comes when the issue of working is resolved. The real dilemma for most writers I believe is the necessity of marketing the work produced.

It’s reasonably easy now to self publish. We have many options on the internet. But to market one’s output in a sea of published works can be quite challenging. Part of the reason is because the initial drive, the collective hours of habit were put into producing a product.

Now We Have to Market It?

Many writers panic at this realization. Writing after all is quite often an introvert’s art.

We have a set of tools today that we didn’t have when I started out. We refer to these tools as Social Media. It includes quite a number of companies who offer variations on ways to connect. It can be a maze and it can be a wall of fear as well.

Here’s a principle I’ve found that helped me understand and learn to apply this significant tool box so readily available. It’s like going for a swim off the end of a dock. First you have to jump in. If you start from shore, that’s okay, but wade in until you are swimming. You won’t drown on the internet.

We learn by doing.

The Only True Writer’s Credential That Matters

As a publisher, I don’t look for writers who have a list of credentials following their surname. It’s the quality of the work that matters. We have an axiom on web content that is often expressed as “It’s all about rich, original content.”

I think that fits what I look for in other writers. I want to find writers who have learned to fully express their deepest emotions, their fears and their doubts and who can write their perceptions clearly. I think, as a publisher, I just represent an audience of readers.

An Emerging Seed

The soil that holds them back, strange as it may seem, is the nurturing ground that tests both their endurance and their desire to manifest.

Any plant that puts out seeds puts out more seeds than take root and among those that take root, fewer still break ground in environments that will see them through to great essence of expression.

If plants had free will (How can we know?) many seeing their lot for existence might quit. I’ve seen pine and juniper that grew from nothing but cracks in a rock and overcame their dearth in birth to widen the crack further as they seek every vestige possible to sustain their meager existence.

The trick for every early-stage writer is to believe so she can push through the soil of life. The push is the action, the steps taken regardless of circumstance and how the writer fells from one day to the next.

I’ve quit a thousand times, but I picked it up again because I couldn’t seem to live otherwise.

There is always someone more fortunate, blessed or just plain lucky by outward appearance, living environment or situation in life.; but all writers have the choice to stay or delay, to quit or perform–even without recognition.

Staying always produces a result, no matter how small; quitting results in nothing.

If you persist, if you do the artwork of writing you will someday emerge. We wouldn’t have Ann Frank otherwise. The number of known writers who failed in their beginning years but were found and are now recognized far outways the number who gain their place in history by sheer fortune.

So persist, practice what is in you.  If your day is full, write anyway.

Every Thing is a Gain

We simply cannot know at the beginning how the world will treat us.

A dancer takes his first undisciplined step by mimicking anther’s performance. Because he made the choice and exercised the discipline, he eventually performs on stage.  A great pianist follows a similar path. A painter, the same.

We start in the elementary understanding. When the seed is planted in fertile ground and the vessel finds ways to nurture it,  it grows by doing and eventually flowers into visible experience.

A master persists beyond the first flowering. Over time with much doing, he bears a lifetime of style, gaining true essence. No future crop can exist but that the ground for it was cleared and the first seed planted.