Story writing, NaNoWriMo & updates, o my!
Geeking out on the basics of craft, what I’ve been up to, sorry it’s been so long, and a sneak peek
Reading time: approximately 13 minutes
Hello my darlings! How have you been? I very much hope you have been well. 🤩
I have been busy! And I want to tell you all about it.
…yes, in lieu of the next story in the City. I’m working on a story that will be from 15-year-old Gerrald’s point of view, a little less than a year after he was sent down to the Ossuary—an unusually late age. It takes place about 20 years before “Postmortem”. The rough draft exists, but I haven’t been able to revise yet. Ooo, you want a sneak peek? Here are the opening lines:
It’s Triumph Day, and I hate everything.
I mean, whatever. I shouldn’t care anymore. I really don’t. I don’t care. I don’t. It’s just—I can feel it. Like I close my eyes and I’m there. I remember singing. I remember my whole family there, singing along with the whole Arena. I’ve sung for the glory of the Alb Nation at the Opening Ceremonies every year since I was two. Every time its just this force, this power moving through all of us, through my family, through me. It makes me feel like I’m invincible because there’s thousands of us, all together with one purpose. And like, it’s all of us, every Alb that’s ever been, every Alb that will be, every Alb that is, united. That’s what they say every Triumph Day, and on that day it’s 100 percent true. I’ve felt it. I’ve felt it in my bones, like I felt the stone of the Arena reverberating through my feet from the crowd cheering and stomping. I can remember last year’s celebration perfectly. It was just after my fifteenth birthday.
“So what is Triumph Day again?” Netty asks.
I hate everything.
Angst turned up to 1000. I have a big soft spot in my heart for Teen!Gerrald.
I’m doing NaNoWriMo this year! I’m not trying to write a 50,000 word novel in a month—my October was way too busy with Life Events [visiting parents, house repairs big and small, a head & chest cold that still won’t completely die] to prep for an undertaking that large. Instead I’ve set myself the task of writing roughly a dozen 1500-word story-seeds, all set in Tehama. I figured this would be a good way to generate some new ideas about characters, settings, and how life works in the City. And it has been! So far I have tiny little rough draft scenes about:
Arla, a liz scientist trying out a groundbreaking new process that has alienated her from her liz peers, forcing her to work in a yuld lab in the City Commons. Her family is being passed over for grants and promotions, and they tell Arla to quit being selfish and stop her controversial work.
Gemma Lee, Tehama’s first Mayor, deciding to let her political opponents leak the secret of her hybrid-ness and to be sent down to the Ossuary to stand with her people instead of fleeing the City ahead of the scandal.
Isleah Sai is a yuld poet who’s family is part of the Reunification movement, a secret society dedicated to opening up the Ossuary and accepting hybrids back into the main parts of the City. She’s been called on by the movement to write a poem about the true history of the Ossuary, and two months into the project she’s being heavily surveilled and is told to flee the City for her safety.
Callin Warner is an Alb fortune teller who secretly has real psychic powers. If he was found out, he would be killed for his lack of genetic purity. He’s currently employed as the Court fortune teller to the lord Duke of the Alb section of the City, a position that is not by choice and he has no way out of. He uses his position and ability to undermine the Duke’s Court and weaken the Alb Nation’s power in the City.
Orin, Sylvie’s attending healer in “Post Mortem”, applies to an online doctoral program in genetics at a famous university in the Mer Nation. When his application is rejected because Tehama would not give any records of his existence to the university, Orin realizes that he needs to make his own opportunities for himself and others in the Ossuary.
It’s going so well! And it’s fun. It’s also making me very aware of how much I still don’t know about the City. I want to start a longer (perhaps even novel length!) story in the City, but I’m going to need to think out a lot of history and worldbuilding and culture questions first. It’s also making me aware of where my blind spots are as a writer. I’m realizing that I’m bad at thinking up action for characters to take when they are in situations that I’ve never been in. And I’m also bad at having external events happen to my characters because I’m so laser focused on the internal motivations and issues of my protagonist. But these are fixable problems. Last week I built up a list of resources I can get to help me shore up those weaknesses, on top of a set of courses I recently bought by Susan DeFreitas that I plan to use as a blueprint to guide me through the process of writing a longer story.
And it was at that point, my darlings, that I realized…I know what I am doing. I have finally, finally, finally, finally, 40 years after writing my first story on a folded-up piece of newsprint paper, gotten a basic understanding of how story works. Enough so that I am finding tools helpful! Which they never were for me before! Because when you don’t understand plot or scene or structure, a worldbuilding worksheet might as well be quantum theory.
I had this revelation last week too, about the idea that you can’t teach fiction writing—which, somehow, is still a widely-held view. I have always firmly believed that fiction writing can be taught. I still believe that, and I feel like I’ve figured out some of the nuances that makes teaching writing difficult:
The language generally used to talk about the core concepts of writing fiction wasn’t created by writers. Structure, plot, hero, and the like were invented by scholars to study the phenomenon of fiction writing. Even the idea that stories have a beginning, middle, and end comes from Aristotle’s Poetics, which is a treatise on dramatic theory, not a handbook written by a storyteller to teach story. I’m not saying writers can’t also be narraologists, I’m just saying that concepts created and defined for analysis aren’t always the best tools to use during creation.
You can’t teach someone their own process for getting the work done. But you can tell writers: hey, you’re going to have to find your own process, but you don’t need to re-invent the process wheel in a vacuum. Here are examples of different creatives’ processes, and you should try them out. Know that this is going to take trial and error. Know that the only way you will find yours is by doing, and that a working process can have to change at any time for no reason at all. So search out as many different ways to work and get things done as you can and save them all. Pull them out when you need to make adjustments. Also, all the process knowledge in the world won’t help you without understanding the basics of storytelling.
The basics of storytelling are not sentences, nor paragraphs, nor grammar, nor being able to generally write in your native language. I have always assumed that they are. But storytelling didn’t start with writing; it was spoken word first. I feel like when we take writing in a language as the assumed base of storytelling knowledge, the next assumption is that people already know the basics of storytelling. Which leads to my experience, where the true basics are breezed over, and then trying to understand more advanced concepts without a solid base gets more and more confusing.
You can teach someone the basics of storytelling, but they have to comprehend the basics in their own way. Probably actual trained educators are told this at some point about teaching in general? But no one told me that I would need to find explanations of core concepts that made sense to me. I’ve been told a plot is a series of events more times than I can count. I have no idea how to take that definition and apply it to the act of stringing words together to make a narrative. However, I also know that for some people this definition clicks and slots right into their working understanding of storytelling without a hitch. It’s like the old math and the new math. Until I found definitions of storytelling elements that worked for me, I couldn’t finish stories with any reliability, because I was guessing at how to make my writing a story. Every writer will have to find those definitions that work for them, and possibly those teaching writing need to collate different definitions and, like math teachers, be prepared to explain concepts in whatever way the student needs to hear them.
Um, yeah. I think a lot. Probably too much.
For all you writers out there who are curious, here are the things I’ve finally learned that gave me the base I needed to understand how to write a story. Now, these definitions are simplistic, stripped of nuance and complexity, and likely very culturally specific to the US. There is no one way to tell a story, and these definitions are, again, a base understanding. Enough to get me started. I look forward to many years of exploring their deeper meanings and playing with their infinite possibilities in my storytelling. I’m adding this in the hope that these somewhat lesser-known definitions will resonate with someone other than just me. 😊
I need to understand story from the top down, but I need to write a story from the bottom up. Keep reading and I will explain…
Structure isn’t a blueprint—that’s what an outline is. Structure is a map of the change that will happen across the length of your story. It can help us understand what could happen next in the story and why. I found committing to deeply learn the one structure that made sense to me at first blush (by watching movies and trying to map their plots onto it) also helped me understand the general concept of structure as a whole.
Character arc is how the character needs to grow and / or change to get what they want (or need). Depending on which structure you like, there can be a lot of similar points between structure and character arc. Which leads to…
Conflict is a character not knowing how to get what they want (or need). Because if the character knew how to get what they want at the beginning of the story…there wouldn’t be a story. Conflict can be a person or people or distance or inner turmoil or lack of knowledge or illness or half a million other things, but they all boil down to a character needing to figure out how they need to change or act or accept to get around an impasse. And since no one likes change, or to be forced to act, or accepting reality, they often don’t get it right the first time trying.
Plot is a series of decisions the protagonist makes. The protagonist finds themselves in a situation—sometimes they’ve put themselves in the situation, sometimes outside forces put them there—that forces the protagonist to make a decision. Then they take action (which is sometimes what they decided to do, and sometimes some other action entirely. E.g.: I’m definitely not going to kiss her—oops kiss happened anyway). Their action will have consequences, and those consequences lead to the next situation, then the next decision.
This is life. This is how we move through our lives every day. We make decisions, then take action (not taking action is an action). We deal with the consequences. Characters move through a plot using the same process we use to move through life.
Some situations the protagonist finds themselves in could be caused by other characters making decisions and taking actions. Hint, hint.
A character’s decisions will be influenced heavily by their character arc. If they haven’t figured out yet how they need to grow or change or adapt, their decisions are not going to get them closer to what they want. Some of their decisions might bring them some limited success, but these will be minor or dead ends. And, of course, vice versa.
There are broadly two kinds of writing in stories: summary and scene.
Using summary is when an author becomes a master of time, because summary is anything where the action of the story is not unfurling moment by moment. Anything that is important but not emotionally engaging should be summarized, as entertainingly as possible.
A scene is an event. An event is made up of moments. Moments are short spans of time, usually less than a minute. Moments are small actions (She tucked her hair behind her ear. The door slammed.) and dialogue.
In between moments, time is suspended. Nothing happens. You can and will have back-to-back moments, but you can also use the space between moments to drop in description (setting, props, mood, costume, character details) or commentary (backstory, POV character thoughts and feelings).
Tension is created by stuffing the space between moments. The reader wants to know what happens next, and making them wait to find out is what causes tension. (A warning that stretching that space too far can drain the tension. Which you might want to do at some point—it’s your story.)
Tension on all levels of a story can be defined as making the reader wait to find something out (usually either what happens next or some sort of knowledge). The release of tension is finally telling (or showing) the reader what they most want to see or know. If you think that sounds rather psychosexual, well, I don’t think you are wrong. 😅
Scenes usually include the POV character either needing to make a decision, or taking action on a decision just made, or dealing with the consequences of an action. They all kind of hinge around plot decisions one way or another.
See? Start top down to understand how stories work (great for planning and revision). To get words on the page, start from the bottom up. More or less. 😉
Writers are in relationship with their readers through their writing. It’s a particular relationship, one where the writer is asking the reader for trust that in the end, the story will deliver on a promise of an emotional experience. The basis of all good relationships is good communication.
While the writer doesn’t have to tell the reader everything, the writer needs to clearly communicate the POV characters’ thoughts and feelings (physical and emotional). This is how a writer evokes emotion in the reader, because the reader should identify with the POV character(s).
Your particular way of practicing this kind of good communication is your style, and using flair from your natural speaking voice will bring authenticity to your work that will resonate with readers.
These are the things I’ve figured out that has me able to understand storytelling well enough to write stories. All this year I’ve been working on the “bottom up” part of this understanding, and that has been the series of breakthroughs that has really let me move forward.
I hope you’ll be patient with me as I continue learning how to apply all this knowledge! Because the other thing I am learning is that it all takes way more time to do this right than I ever realized. The stories will keep coming, however my usual uncertain time frame is even less certain! But I will try to make these updates more often, and keep you in the loop.
My darlings, if you’ve made it this far, you are a champion! Thanks so much for reading. I’ll talk to you again soon!
P.S. - I’ll put the resources from which I have gleaned all this story learning in a comment on the website version of this email.
💖,
Elnora
The resources I found over the years that helped me pull all this together:
Courses by Susan DeFreitas: https://susandefreitas.com/courses/
"Story Structure 101" by Dan Harmon https://channel101.fandom.com/wiki/Story_Structure_101:_Super_Basic_Shit?fbclid=IwAR0eIiroCXaKr706X1Q71artqq68mBG5t-wAC3wyiv1VLNs71P_EDctoRaM
"Story Structure in Short Stories" by Philip Brewer: https://www.philipbrewer.net/story-structure-in-short-stories/?fbclid=IwAR1ZWS8SKgS_YOl8y_rY4VhtL81A_tBwLsT-Ia9r58VJEPAy7TXlpVufDqI
Rapid Story Development by Jeff Lyons https://a.co/d/i2WQCl5
Method Writing by Jack Grapes https://a.co/d/1i2276b (highly recommend zeroing in on the third concept)
Writing for emotional impact by Karl Iglesias https://a.co/d/bIQqMns
The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne https://a.co/d/1pjqhXm
The reason the plot embryo / story circle structure feels so good to me is because I read a huge amount of Jungian theory in grad school. Understanding Jung’s transcendent function theory (individuation) will make understanding character arc a snap. My recommendations:
"Writing Reflections on Carl Jung" by Scott Myers https://gointothestory.blcklst.com/writing-reflections-on-carl-jung-2c9879e2f186
"Jung on the Transcendent Function" by Sue Mehrtens https://jungiancenter.org/jung-on-the-transcendent-function/
The Portable Jung by C.G. Jung, edited by JosephCampbell https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-portable-jung-carl-g-jung/1123023826 Chapters 2, 5, 9 specifically
Thank you very much for sharing your insights !
I wonder if I'm a fish, because I struggle to see the medium that I swim in. There are depths of feelings below which I want to describe. There are entire realms of experience, imagination, sensation just above out of reach through that mirror surface. Sometimes I jump out of the wet into the void - gasp at the shock of being, feel naked, vulnerable - and want to return immediately to do the things, describe the things that I think I can. How do I do the things I don't yet know how to do.
Maybe I'm an earthworm. I chew my way through the soil, digesting, struggling, doing the thing, but then I can't see the whole, I just perceive what touches me.
Am I a kite pulled along by the story and the elements that come together ? Or am I a bird that has wings but flaps in a disorientated manner. There's a place...way over there... that I want to get to, yet I haven't learned how to ride the rising thermals, I struggle into winds instead of learning how to let them carry me. I'm not a hawk. I'm a booby with blue feet. I'm a loon with a plaintive honk.
Taking workshops and seeking to learn this thing. Let's imagine there's a beetle which gathers seeds instead of dung. There I am. Here I am rolling my seed ball along. I've got a nice collection of seeds. Find a fertile place, dig, dig, dig, plant the seed. Water it. Help what emerges to flourish. Woah, vines growing everywhere. Who can tell if this will be pumpkin or brambles or berries. So that could be my process at present.