The Basics - Part One: STORY

Let me begin by stating the obvious: the thoughts on writing, which I am about to put down, have been put down by writers before me, many times over. I have come to discover what works for me and what doesn't and I now wish to put that down, in case it may be of service to some forlorn soul out there in desperate need of a base to build on.

Thus - here I lay the first brick.


The Idea that Inspires

So, you have your white page, you have your writing tool of choice (I pray you didn't go down the dark road and opted for the blood) and you have the good head on your shoulders, which is bursting with ideas and eagerness to share those ideas with the world. Brilliant!

The first step is, quite naturally, to determine which idea you wish to run with. This is, though so natural, an extremely important step since it will determine the steps that are to follow; as they will bring you into a world that you should want to walk or stroll or dash through, it's paramount that you allow yourself the time to be tentative at first, perhaps even feel as though you're about to stumble once or twice or many, many times. Getting to know your world is never easy, and you must be very patient with how it chooses to admit you.

You have snippets of this world in your head: little bright flashes that has revealed themselves to you in all their glory, but that is it. Those snippets need to be placed before you, and the enormous, gaping, empty holes between them need to be filled with other snippets to go with the snippets that are so extremely clear to you already. Daunting, nay?

You stare and you stare at your white page and soon you feel as though you want to rip it to pieces and toss all its mockery into the trashbin and be done with it. Why don't you? Because you can see it. You can see how - if you just sit and stare for a while longer - your world will fill that space, and it will be grand.

It's different for everybody, of course, because we're all so different. For some, all they need to do is place the pen to the paper and it's as though their wrist knows all the moves on its own and they needn't do anything but go along for the ride. For some, the process is slow: one paragraph at a time. And for then some, it's a combination.

The Comfort Zone

What you need to do is find your comfort zone when trying to determine the basics of your storyline. Here's my way of doing it:

For years I wrote without using any sort of real technique when plotting what was supposed to happen in my books; I always had a sense of where I wanted it to be heading, but I never felt as though whether I actually thought the events through or not would have any real impact on my writing; I thought it might even stump me .

I realize that my situation was different from the avarage author's as I - when I began to write longer pieces, two-hundred pages and more - was a fanfiction writer, and posted my stories chapter by chapter; this meant that I had no real control over the storyline from moment to moment, as the previous moment had already been read by people now waiting for the following moment. Because of this I pretty much let the story and the characters take me where they willed and allowed them to end up wherever seemed to fit best with what had come before. The end product - the novel itself - had been edited about three or four times a chapter, but the editing had taken place chapter by chapter and thus had no real impact on the main storyline or the little subplots and foreshadowings that could have been done much more neatly. (Or so I know, in hindsight.)

I will tell you my way of thinking now, as opposed to then, and if you find that you feel the same way as I used to, or can recognize yourself in the way I think now, then you can always use this as a foundation to build your own techniques on:

Feeling I have a good idea, I like to make notecards for every chapter, with room for extra notes as additions are inevitable, as well as changes, once I actually begin to write. The notes are also invaluable to me when jotting down foreshadowing of upcoming events. I will know how long I have been planting subtle hints of an occurrance, and I can choose how long I wish to drag it out in the storyline before the occurrance occurs. Example:

Chapter Thirty-Two: Softly They Tread

Notes: Imogen sees a flicker. Elaborate.

Imogen and Daniel flee the tower, retracing their steps to the edge of the woods. They argue about whether to venture into the woods again, considering what happened last time, or whether they should take the longer, and unknown, route around the woods and across the rocky plains. Finally a light being seen in the highest window of the tower convinces them they should go through the woods, as there are more places to hide. They walk in silence, Daniel not wanting to discuss what happened to him in the Shadows and Imogen feeling too worried about him to really want to know what he's thinking. Suddenly Imogen screams and when Daniel turns around, she's no longer behind him.

What I do in this chapter summary is to mention a little of what's come before, giving me a sense of where in the story I am; I add a few hints as to the mood of the characters, which is a great thing to do, because when reading through the overview you can see if there are any places where the characters feel as though their behavior might be erratic, uncharacteristic or odd. If Imogen had been clinging to Daniel, refusing to let go of him now that they had been reunited after his escape from the Shadows, it would be strange if she's stand-offish towards him in this chapter, for example. More of that in Part Two: CHARACTER.

The Balance

What you want in your story is balance. You want the pacing to be right, meaning you don't want to write two-hundred pages of foreshadowing - telling the reader that something oh-so-huge-and-am-a-zing is about to happen - to move too swiftly through the climax of the story, making the reader wonder what happened to that Hit Over the Head feeling they were expecting.

How do you achieve a nice pace?

It is, as any writing, extremely individual, what's a great pace for me might be too slow for you, and vice versa, but what you should think about is to reveal things at steady intervals and with foreshadowing of the situation that is looming up ahead being firmly planted beforehand; the situation can be a new main character stumbling onto the scene, a sudden rescue being staged, unexpected help from a previously unknown source, all of these being incidents that - without at least some foreshadowing - will feel out of place and too much of a coincidence for the reader to believe in it, leaving them with a sense of having been brought out of the world you've drawn up around them because their belief in it has been swayed.


Foreshadowing is a tool to build anticipation and suspense in the readers mind as they begin to understand that something is coming that will have an impact on the characters and storyline. It's important to use this tool to keep the reader interested in the story, remembering that baiting the reader with every new paragraph is the goal of your storytelling. Strive for them being unable to put your book down, and you will achieve it. Of course, as with most of everything in writing, you should apply it in moderation.


If every chapter of my book is 5 pages long, I would wish the resolution of the flicker to occur somewhere around the 20th chapter, which would bring us 100 pages into a 300 page story. The resolution of the flicker would be the bridge that would take us from Act One and into Act Two, Imogen and Daniel escaping the tower and their captor serving as the end of Act One. I would place a few short mentions of the flicker´as foreshadowing, two or three times in those 100 pages leading up to the resolution - more times than that and it will feel like overkill. If Imogen sees flickering lights every two pages the reader might begin to wonder if it's leading up to her having a complete nervous breakdown or at least turning out to be mildly insane.


The topic of moderation ties in with the topic of pace: don't rush it, but reveal little clues along the way. You don't have to worry about mentioning something briefly in chapter two and picking it up again in chapter fifteen, your reader will remember, and feel all the more clever for it. Of course, if your mention is too brief it will get confusing, and this ties in with the foreshadowing. See how neatly it all works?

Here is how I would write a brief mention of the flicker:

Imogen paused, her eyes focused on the hanging branches to the left of the path where she, for a second, could have sworn that she saw the flicker of a light, too exhausted to burn any brighter. It was gone in an instant, and perhaps it had all been in her head - the woods seemed to play that sort of trick on her - but she concluded that she shouldn't fool herself into believing they were safe, even if the trees stood motionless and dumb around them.

This is one paragraph that deals with the flicker, that sets a mood around the flicker and lets the reader know if they should be expecting it to be friendly or possibly dangerous.

End Note:

What is important to remember when writing anything is not to get stuck on the first line of your story. Not to let that white page taunt you with its bright void.

50 percent of writing is staring into space, 10 percent is getting the thoughts you harvest after the space-staring onto the page and 40 percent is revising it until it's so whipped into shaped that you may hardly recognize it anymore.

Don't be afraid of that first sentence, don't let it stop you if you feel it's not up to par - write on. Write pages after that first sentence, and don't stop until you're done. Don't start revising until all of the harvest is splayed in all its glory before you, and once it is - hack the hell away at it. Toss half of it out, change the other half completely around, have fun, play!

The revisions part can be a liberating process because this is when you get to take complete control over your creation. Your characters can no longer push to get out, they're not running the show, they're out there, exposed, in their little contained world, and you are their Creator - they had better bow to your will or face the death sentence. Sound manic? It can be. But you have to be tough if you're going to have the stomach to kill your babies, and you have to be tough with yourself when deciding what function each and every paragraph serves.

One of the mightiest books I've ever read is "The Crimson Petal and the White", which is over seven-hundred pages long and feels like two-hundred. Every single paragraph is there for a reason, nothing seems redundant, and it's absolute poetry from start to finish. Amazing piece of fiction.

My final advice when concluding this first chapter on The Basics is this: read.


Read books. Read whatever medium it is you wish to write and learn from the true masters. Think about their way of structuring their story, their way of telling it, and though you shouldn't strive to copy them, you should strive for the ability to walk in their footsteps.

Summary

¤ Step one: choose the idea that inspires you the most, that drags you into it and makes you feel like you have to tell it or you'll just have to die.

¤ Step two: if so inclined, find a way that suits you to write your storyline down, chapter by chapter or in broad stroaks so that you know where you're headed and where you're coming from. It's always good to make notes as you go along so that you can place your moments of foreshadoing in the right places.

¤ Step three: find the balance in your story, remembering to use techniques such as foreshadowing for upcoming events, new character introduction, plot twists etcetera, as well as thinking of the pace you wish to set for your storyline's development, as well as your characters'.

¤ Step four: everything in moderation. You don't have to use the tool of foreshadowing a plot twist on every two pages of your story for thirty pages, it's condescending toward your reader and makes him or her feel as though you don't trust their intelligence to pick up on your mentions of upcoming twists, even if the mentions are very brief and happen only two or three times in a hundred pages before the big event.

¤ Lastly - do not be intimidated by the white page. It's your friend. Let it's blankness inspire you to fill it! And read. Read, read and read. And then, read some more.


Books I Strongly Recommend:

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber (the narrative is exquisite)

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (the structure of the storytelling is quite compelling)

The Thornbirds by Colleen McCollough (character development and moderation)

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (she plays with grammar like its made out of clay)

The Story of Pi by Yann Martel (for wonderful twists and turns)

The Strange Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (for truly original characters)

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee(it has it all)

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (she has a very unique way of using punctuation)

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (she knew romance like no other, how to write love in perfect moderation)

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (the wit of Dickens is unsurpassed)