The Journey of a Story – Getting the Idea

Today I am setting out on a journey. I’m going to write a new short story.

Because I am a teacher, and teach creative writing as well as English, I thought I’d do a series of blogs about the process of writing the, so anyone who wishes can see how I work and what it might take to produce a story.

Mind you, I’m not saying the story will turn out to be a good one. I’m not trying to blow my own trumpet here and suggest I am a great writer. But to go step-by-step through the process might help others who struggle with writing or are wondering where on Earth to start.

Nor am I promoting my writing method is the only proper one. There are as many ways to write as there are writers. So let’s just say this is one method by one writer. You can take from it what you will. I am what is called a “pantser” in writerly circles. That means I don’t normally plan a story out before I write — that’s what “plotters” or “planners” do. So I’m not going to do much planning before I kick off. Or I might make the exception and do that for this blog.  I don’t know what’s going to happen.

To me, that is part of the fun. Writing a story is like reading it for the first time.

 

Getting the idea.

At the time I’m writing this blog, I have little idea of characters and events. I went to buy a newspaper this morning and in the early light I thought I should write another story sometime. So naturally my thought was what it could be about. I am currently writing a series of novellas about the Greek god Dionysus running a music hall in Victorian-era London. I am almost finished the first draft. Dionysus has his maenad followers with him, and they are also the basis of a series of short stories I’m planning called Tales of the Maenads, a sort of companion volume to the book series.

My maenad stories can be set in any period of Earth’s history. I decided, for no particular reason, that this would be another maenad story involving Nicolas Copernicus. Why? well, I’m interested in astronomy, and he was one of the most influential thinkers in astronomical history. Also, I wanted to find out more about his character.

That meant doing research. I had a couple of books already with chapters on Copernicus. One is the excellent This Wild Abyss by Gale E. Christianson (The Free Press, 1978). This a detailed biography of the astronomer and his work which should prove an invaluable resource. I also have a copy of Copernicus’s book De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), reproduced in its entirety in On the Shoulders of Giants edited by Stephen Hawking (Running Press, 2002). This contains, besides Copernicus’s almost unreadable tome, an excellent biography of Copernicus.

So I read both of these but was still stuck for an actual idea. Copernicus led, it turns out, quite a boring life. He studied medicine and law, was appointed Canon of Frauenberg (Frombork) , wrote a book that revolutionised astronomy but which wasn’t published until the end of his life–literally. The first edition arrived at his bedside on the day he died. And that’s pretty much it. No juicy gossip about him, or questionable activities or notoriety (at least, not until after his death).

There didn’t seem to be anything on which to base story, especially one that would contain the worshipper of a pagan god. Then I realised Copernicus’s blandness could work in my favour. he was one of those helpful historical people whose life is not entirely known, or who was boring enough that incidents might be inserted in their life without upsetting too many historians. If little was known about him, I figured, I could invent “facts” as needed.

A few days later I was teaching and the students were working quietly (yes, in my class they do; I’m that sort of teacher). Bereft of ideas I took out my notebook and summarised what I knew of Copernicus. I jotted some ideas down, then crossed them out because they proved unworkable or just plain silly. I wanted the story to be about Copernicus’s book. I wanted my maenad character to be a servant of his. I wanted Copernicus himself to be a character in it, albeit perhaps a secondary one.

Then the thought struck me: what if someone wanted to steal the book or prevent it being published in some way. But who? The Catholic church at the time (the 1540’s) was actually quite happy for Copernicus to go against dogma and state the Earth orbited the Sun instead of the other way around. It was the Lutherans who were opposed to the idea. But having my bad guys Lutherans would not go down well with part of my potential audience. Besides, Copernicus had a Lutheran student, Georg Rheticus, who was instrumental in having the Revolutions published. My bad guy had to be someone else.

If the new Copernican system upset the old Aristotelian/Ptolemaic one, then it might be another pagan god who didn’t want the truth to be known about the universe.

Here was my idea. The followers of another god, upset that their hold on the minds of mankind would be even further eroded by the advancement of science, might seek to destroy Copernicus’s life-work. My maenad, although a pagan herself, and having doubts about the new system of her own, could realise that truth was better than lies and thwart the evil plan.

Now I had an idea, I continued my research about Copernicus, the city he lived in and other material that would help me flesh out the details. I decided on a name for my protagonist: Renata. Originally I settled on Katalin, but since Copernicus would be referred to as Father Kopernik, two characters with K-names might look odd.

So here I am. I have no idea about Renata’s character or precisely what part she will play in the story. I have little idea of the story itself other than a broad concept.

This is going to be fun.

 

Next part: Writing the first draft.

 

Russell Proctor – www.russellproctor.com

 

 

A Different Way to Write Realistic Characters – Part 3: Affective Memory

In the last two parts of this short series (don’t worry, this is the last) I proposed a method of character creation for the writer which is based on the method actors use to create a persona for stage or screen. It’s called the Method, and was developed through rehearsal by Russian director Konstantin Stanislavsky.

In this last part I’ll discuss two other means that can be used to flesh out story characters, and to help when the writer is a bit uncertain how a character might act in a given situation.

The first is called The Magic “If”.

You’re writing a story. It’s going well, and suddenly you place your character into a situation and wonder how they might behave or react to what is going on.

“Well, let me see…” you think, staring out of the window at the passing parade of human beings, and suddenly realise you have no idea what they should be doing in terms of the story. “I’m not him!” you wail. “I created this person but I’m not him! How would he react?”

And you suddenly realise that you’ve created a monster, someone who doesn’t behave like you at all and so you have no idea what to do. “He’s a serial killer. I’m not a serial killer…how do I know what to do in this situation?”

You just solved your own problem. The Magic If means asking yourself “What would I do if I were in this situation?”

If I were a serial killer…

If I were a King…

If I were in love with a handsome man…

If I were a fifteen year old boy who just got kicked out of school…

There are millions of situations we never encounter. But that doesn’t stop you writing about them. Just mentally put yourself in the same situation as your character and write about what you would do.

And that’s what your character would do.

The other technique for creating realistic characters, linked to the Magic “If”, is called  Affective Memory.

You may have heard the phrase “Write what you know”. It is often regarded as a misunderstood phrase, and it is, since it tends to limit fledgling writers to writing only what they have personally experienced. New writers run the risk of limiting themselves to certain places and character-types, since they think they can’t write about something about which they have no experience.

But, as a number of other writing tips sites have suggested, “write what you know” is about emotions and sensations rather than actual experiences. A writer should write about being scared, sorry, angry etc rather than try to re-create a place or time or situation they have never actually encountered.

The thing, is, I don’t think those sites go far enough. This is where affective memory comes in.

A person who has never lost a family member might find it hard to write about a family member dying in a story. How do they know the sense of loss and gut-wrenching sadness that such an event entails? How do they take their character through that experience if they’ve never done it themselves?

Here’s the problem: you have a great character on the boil, she’s rolling the story along at a fantastic pace, she’s funny and engaging, emotional and thrilling all at once. The readers are going to love her. You love her. “Why can’t I always write characters like this?” you think to yourself, as you slurp coffee and go along for the ride.

And then, in the course of the story, something happens that you have no experience about. And you – and the character – come up against a wall. How will she react in this situation? What would she do? You’ve never experienced this situation in real life, so you have no idea how anyone would behave. How do you “write what you know” now?

Affective memory is applying personal experiences to fictional situations. You, the writer, recall experiences that produced an emotional response at some time in your life and write about how you felt. If you have never experienced the death of a family member, you write your emotional responses to something that you have experienced. Maybe the loss of a pet, or how you felt when you broke up with a friend. Something – anything – that could produce a similar emotion. And write how that made you feel.

Actors and writers are different species. As I pointed out earlier, an actor on the screen usually has to worry about just one character. A writer has to worry about all the characters she creates, and make them real so the audience cares about them. So a writer has a harder job than the actor, in one sense. Using Objective/Obstacle, the Magic “If” and Affective Memory will aid the writer to make characters that are alive on the page.

Russell Proctor   www.russellproctor.com

A Different Way to Write Realistic Characters – Part 1.

(http://shakespeareslines.tumblr.com/)

Everyone who teaches creative writing will tell you that it’s important to have realistic characters. They must be people the reader can relate to — even like — and the reader must be concerned for the protagonist. This is good advice. After all, it’s characters that make the story interesting.

As a teacher, it’s often my job to get students interested in a particular film or book or, God help me, poem. But kids these days seem more interested in action than people. I tell them that all the chases and gunfights in the world won’t make a story interesting if the audience isn’t interested what happens to the people involved in the chase or fight.

“Ah, but, ” they say, thinking it’s possible to outwit a teacher (innocent lambs!), “what about giant robots? What about aliens? We get concerned for the robots in Transformers. We get worried for Chewbacca in Star Wars if he’s in a fight. And they aren’t human.”

I calmly explain that the reason we’re concerned for them is that they may be giant robots or aliens, but they have human emotions. The reason we think Optimus Prime is one cool dude is because he behaves like one. He doesn’t behave like a robot, he thinks and feels like a human being.

It’s not only convenient that we personify aliens with human emotions so that the reader can relate to them. Human emotions are the only ones we can give them. We don’t know how an alien would emote or think. Chewbacca acts like a human because from our limited anthropocentric perspective that’s the only way we can imagine him acting.

So we think Chewie is a cool dude too.

So we need to give our characters emotions that will get the reader concerned for their welfare. If we don’t care what happens to the character, the writer has failed. It’s the same with the bad guys, too. Every protagonist needs a good antagonist. I’ll write about antagonists later, but for the moment I’ll stick with our protagonists and getting the most out of them.

The problem for the writer is, how do we create different characters? How do we distinguish one from the other? Hollywood is full of actors who only play one character or type of character, usually someone very similar to themselves. I won’t mention any names for fear of getting burned at the stake, but as a professional actor I can definitely say that some other professional actors (some big names too) are the same person in every single movie.

For the writer it’s the same problem. We run the risk of writing the same person over and over because that’s who we are, or who someone we know is, and it’s easy to put them down on paper. But in order to give variety, and above all realism, to our characters we need to bring them life, to make them colourful and vivacious.

So I’m going to propose a way of doing this similar to how actors do it. It’s pretty easy but does take a bit of practice and a lot of self-awareness.

I’ll go into more detail in the next blog, but I’ll leave you with a classic example (literally, an example from a classic).

Hamlet.

(http://andretchaikowsky.com/miscellaneous/skull.htm)

One of the most complex characters ever written, from what is arguably the most famous play of all time, at least in the English language, Hamlet is not just one person. He presents as someone different in every scene. This makes him hard to act, but fascinating to watch, as he runs through a plethora of totally different character types in the course of the play.

When we first meet Hamlet in Act One Scene Two, he presents as a depressed and rather lazy university student. However, he quickly moves on to fearful ghost hunter, determined criminal investigator, pretend lunatic, ruthless psychological manipulator, angry ex-lover, suicidal wreck, whining mummy’s-boy, wanted criminal, pious Christian, fierce warrior, resigned fatalist, murderous avenger and repentant tragic hero.

Phew!

(https://www.englishclub.com/english-language-history.htm)

That’s what makes Hamlet one of the greatest fictional characters of all time. We never know what to expect from him. That’s also why he’s so hard to act, as the performer has to justify each of these Hamlets to the audience in a way that stitches together seamlessly.

It’s possible to write characters like that, obviously. Shakespeare did. But Shakespeare was pretty darn good, so what hope do we less gifted hacks have?

That’s what I intend to do in the next few blogs, to show you how an actor creates a character. The same techniques can be used in writing. Stay tuned for more.

Actions Speak Just as Loud as Words

 

Writing dialogue is hard. Lots of writers have written blogs and advice about how to write dialogue, so why should I say anything different?
Did I just talk myself out of writing a blog post?

One trap for the fledgling writer is writing too much dialogue. “Show, don’t tell!” they are urged. “Dialogue is a good way of revealing exposition and backstories.” So the newbie sits down and reels off page after page of dialogue. The scene degenerates into people talking to each other and not a lot actually happening. Much information is given out but the scene is dull.

One trick I use to prevent this occurring is to add action to the scene. I give the characters something to do while they are talking. it could be something as simple as eating breakfast or catching the bus. They talk as they act, and what they do and how they do it can show us a good deal about them and their reactions to what is going on.

For example, take this witty exchange I just thought up:

“Honestly,” said Sally, “you really annoy me sometimes.”

“Why?” asked Bernard.

“You never help with the cooking.”

“But I can’t cook. And you can.”

“But I need help sometimes. You can help with the basic things.”

“Like what?”

“Chopping the vegetables for one thing. “

“Oh, all right. If you insist.”

 

Not Pulitzer Prize winning material, I’m the first to admit, but it’s been a long day already and I’m not in the mood for doing any better.

I think it’s obvious that, while the above dialogue conveys information, it doesn’t convey it in an interesting way. We could learn a lot more about Sally and Bernard if we give them something to do while they talk.

So let’s rewrite it, putting in some actions, and see what happens:

Sally slipped into her raincoat and glared at Bernard, who was still sitting at the table with his newspaper. “Honestly,” she said, “you really annoy me sometimes.”

“Why?” asked Bernard. He didn’t look up: the sports section was particularly interesting today.

“You never help with the cooking.” Her right arm flailed in a desperate attempt to find the arm hole of the coat.

Bernard pulled his eyes away from the football scores and stared at his wife, who had at last managed to shove her arm into the sleeve. “But I can’t cook. And you can.”

Now the collar of the coat was twisted around. Sighing, Sally removed the entire garment and tried again, more slowly, “But I need help sometimes.”

Bernard frowned.

“And you can help with the basic things,” Sally continued.

“Like what?” He picked up the paper again and flounced it out. The rustle of the page almost drowned out Sally’s reply.

“Chopping the vegetables for one thing.”

“Oh, all right.” He glanced at the page. Manchester United won! He resisted the urge to smile. “If you insist.”

We learn a great deal more about Sally and Bernard in this second writing, where we give them things to do that reflect their moods. Bernard is impatient at being interrupted reading the paper. He’s a football fan. He is probably fairly lazy in other things as well. Sally is going out, maybe to work. Her struggles with the raincoat are a reflection of her frustration with Bernard. The mood of the two people is conveyed through their actions, leaving the words to supply information and give us some idea about how the words might have been said. we also are left with the impression that Bernard will conveniently forget to help with the vegetables next time.

I personally find scenes can easily degenerate into two or more people talking to each other. Page after page of words in quotation marks does not, in my opinion, make for great story-telling. But give your characters actions and much more information can be conveyed. The scene moves on. The actions can contribute to the plot. Exposition is all very well, but something else needs to happen as well. Action.

Russell Proctor http://www.russellproctor.com