by Larry Brooks
As you engage with the process, remember two things.
First, anything short of total honesty and vulnerability is cheating, and the loser in this shortcoming is you. You are looking for opportunities to improve your story, so don’t give them away by refusing to see or acknowledge the problems others have perceived.
Second, you are revising because you already suspect—or perhaps flat-out know—that your story isn’t working as well as you intended or as it should. This means you can’t give yourself As and Bs across the board at this stage. Frankly, hardly any story out there, even the most lauded bestsellers by the most respected authors, will earn straight As for all twelve essential story elements and essences.
Know this: If you have a bunch of C grades, or lower, among your twelve—or even one, for that matter—your novel or screenplay is probably not salable if you’re an unpublished writer. Works by previously signed writers get editorial input and a second chance, but new submissions do not. The goal is to assess and elevate your story to a B or better for all twelve criteria, so put your most sincere effort into honestly pegging where you are now.
While this may feel like an earth-shattering experience, at the end of the process you will have a game plan that perhaps didn’t exist before, one that will empower your story-fixing efforts toward greater effectiveness. This is the means of finding out what you don’t know, what you fumbled, what you weren’t told in that rejection e-mail, or what simply wasn’t such a good idea after all.
So let’s get started. Let the story fixing begin.
The Value of Knowing Where You Stand
You may soon realize that the biggest benefit of this process is discovering you have a D on your hands for a given story element or essence. Because now you are no longer kidding yourself or working blindly. This is an opportunity to bring something better to your pages.
At that point you’ll be given the chance to use the listed definitions and criteria in Part Two to develop an alternative narrative approach for that element or essence. This will put you on a path toward improving your story, repairing and strengthening it. At the same time you will be improving yourself as a writer. You’ll soon be someone who gets it rather than someone who guesses at it.
It is critical to understand that your grades aren’t the point. Using your new awareness to strengthen the story is. Your grades will do absolutely nothing for you until you use them to make yourself a better storyteller.
Don’t yield to the temptation to simply respin a rationalization of what you have. No one will ever see that rationalization except you. Rather, use your revised story element or essence, created in context to your now-higher understanding, to raise the bar for the revision itself. In doing so you are beginning the revision process here and now, grade by grade.
As you proceed through this book and delve deeper into your revision, applying keener perception and expansion of these principles, you may want to return to this chapter. I recommend you use a separate page to log your grades and the revisions made in response to them, because you might find yourself running out of room. You may even find yourself completely reinventing your primary story thread. These core competencies and realms of story physics combine and interact with each other to the extent that only when you have embraced them all will you be fully empowered and enthusiastic about your story in a more holistic and integrated way.
The Grades
So here we go. Grade yourself on each of these twelve elements and essences, A through F, based on what you know and believe now. Later you will be asked to grade your answers again based on an elevated understanding and revision of each element or essence, as empowered by the definitions, criteria, benchmarks, examples, and discussion you will have internalized.
If you aren’t entirely sure of what some of these terms mean, that’s fine for now, although this lack of knowledge just might be the root of the problem. You will thoroughly understand them soon enough. Just grade yourself to the best of your current understanding.
Story Element or EssenceGrade (A–F)
1. Concept (the presence of something conceptual)
2. Dramatic premise/arc (hero’s quest, goal)
3. Dramatic tension (conflict via antagonistic element)
4. Vicarious reader experience
5. Compelling characterization
6. Reader empathy (what the reader roots for)
7. Thematic weight, relevance, and resonance
8. Effective story architecture (structure)
9. Optimal pacing
10. Scene execution
11. Writing voice
12. Narrative strategy
Some writers may recognize these elements and essences. This list combines what I call the six core competencies and the six realms of story physics, grouped by their natural affinities. A powerful premise, for example, leverages the existence of dramatic tension via an antagonist-driven conflict and is contextually influenced by concept. Characterization, as another example, is measured by the degree to which readers engage and empathize with—root for—your hero along the path you’ve created for her.
The core competencies are the essential building blocks of a story (elements), while story physics are the relative forces (essences) with which the core competencies are applied to achieve the highest level of reader involvement and emotional investment. One is the machine; the other is the fuel.
Like spices stirred into a simmering pot of your favorite recipe, these story ingredients meld into each other to become a sum in excess of their parts, inseparable and dependent. The cook must be in command of both realms—the spices brought to the kitchen and how they are mixed, as well as the method of cooking—before the dish can become delicious and memorable.
Including one less-than-fresh ingredient or getting the proportions wrong results in a meal that disappoints. Our stories can be scrutinized in a similar way.
How did you do?
It’s not impossible, or unexpected, to find that you’ve given yourself all As and Bs. And yet, someone out there doesn’t agree. Make no mistake: You need the agreement of agents and editors (and in the case of self-published authors, critics and readers). This is a fact that can put you in a confusing situation. To move forward, you must open yourself to the possibility that you aren’t yet in command of these story elements and essences, and/or the art of combining them within the context of the narrative flow of your story.
This is the most common dilemma of all. A writer thinks her story idea is terrific. The agent or editor doesn’t agree. Who is right, and who is wrong? That’s less important than who has the power and who doesn’t at the moment of submission.
What follows in Part Two is a solution to this dilemma. For each of these twelve story issues, you’ll find definitions, criteria, discussions, and examples that will allow you to develop a higher level of understanding, one that may lead you to a higher grade and hopefully toward an evolved or simply stronger set of creative choices that will result in a stronger, more compelling story.
That will get you into the storytelling game at a professional level. But to break in, to really deliver the goods in a competitive market, you’ll need more than twelve definitions and their corresponding criteria. You’ll need an evolved story sensibility—what some might think of as talent—that leads you toward a seamless and powerful exposition within the framework of your story. The goal isn’t to land on what you think is a great idea; it’s to understand what the readership you are targeting will be drawn to.
Be patient with this growth process.
These tools cover the gamut of what you need to know in a technical sense, and they’ll ultimately lead you, over time, toward a higher level of artful narrative execution. The degree to which you own these principles, the more you use these tools and recognize them within stories you read, the sooner you’ll reach the point of commanding them yourself.
Remember, in effect you just took a pretest. You’re invited to come back to these twelv
e elements and essences to grade yourself again after you’ve immersed yourself in the expansion, discussion, and criteria-based clarification of each, which is the stuff of the remainder of this book.
Don’t lose sight of the goal. We are working toward a professional level of storytelling. Story selection, apart from your storytelling (execution) skills, is half the battle. When your story comes up dry relative to these twelve criteria—either before or after you’ve submitted it—pay close attention. That’s your evolved story sensibility telling you that this piece may not be strong enough at its core.
Maybe a revision will do the trick.
Part Two
Repair
“Knowledge is power.”
—Francis Bacon, 1597
“What you don’t know can kill you.”
—Murder, She Wrote, 1996
Chapter 4
Strengthen Your Concept
This is where the story-fixing process gets fun. It is also where it gets tricky. Far too many new writers begin the storytelling journey without an awareness that one of the most deadly pitfalls of all awaits them at square one of the process … which is the development of a compelling story concept.
What Is Concept?
In the context of story repair, concept is one of the most likely places to find weakness, so it is the natural starting point for strengthening your story. Unfortunately, concept is also the most overlooked source of failure in a sea of rejected manuscripts.
Concept is like a battery for the story itself, imparting energy and life to whatever is connected to it. And the last thing we want is for our stories to run out of juice before the finish line.
Before we dive in …
The first few chapters of this book divided the reasons behind rejection into two categories, story and execution. Both realms for revision bear reiterating because we’re about to rip into the first one.
Story issues: The big-picture proposition of the story isn’t strong enough, the story doesn’t grab or compel the reader, or it’s been done to death and there’s nothing new or fresh. (This is covered in chapters four through six.) “Story” can be defined as the combination of concept and premise. Weakness occurs when the premise isn’t infused with something that is intriguingly conceptual in nature, meaning there is nothing within the story that creates an arena or a compelling foundation upon which to build.
Execution issues: Your execution of the premise across the entire arc of the story doesn’t deliver as promised. Something is off among the core competencies (often because of the story’s structure, or lack thereof) and available story physics, which are the forces that create reader empathy and response. (This is covered in chapters seven and eight.)
A weak concept can be strengthened and saved.
Almost always, the source of weakness and dysfunction within a story dwells in the nature of the concept itself; i.e., the degree, or complete lack, of something compelling within the concept. It’s hard to turn a boring concept into a compelling premise, and yet, this is the golden ring of revision. We need to do precisely that, usually by adding a conceptual layer rather than by looking to the premise to fix the problem.
The good news is that you can apply a dependable list of criteria to a story concept for benchmarks that open up different avenues for creating a more compelling story execution. The bad news is that weakness in any one of those criteria can cripple it.
With these criteria in front of you, you can elevate your concept from “Meh” to “Oh my!” with a little understanding and creative thought. Letting go of what you have, as tough as it can be, allows out-of-the-box thinking to drive the improvement effort. This renders recognition of weakness as the first step in the repair process, because that recognition allows you to jettison the weakness and replace it with something better. Out-of-the-box thinking is often more productive when there’s a specific target to aim for.
Fair warning, though: Concept is a tricky issue.
Concept confuses many at first glance. The result of that confusion explains half or more of the rejection slips written over any given time period as agents or editors judge the story idea to be simply too dull. The source of writer confusion is that any and all story ideas already have a concept, by default, which makes developing that basic concept a qualitative challenge.
For example, you could write a novel from this concept: “a story about a guy living alone in a big city.” That actually is a concept, just not a very compelling one, which becomes even more obvious when you measure it against the given criteria. At first there’s nothing interesting or unique about the protagonist, the setting, or the situation. It’s flat, and therefore dead on arrival. You don’t need to chuck it, but you do need to enhance it to save it. Good concepts go beyond the banal to offer something fresh and, most of all, compelling, and this example is nothing if not generic and bland.
A better concept might look like this: “a story about a wealthy widower who suddenly finds himself alone after thirty years of marriage and moves to Los Angeles to live with his younger brother, a film director who enjoys life in the fast lane. The man must negotiate his staid values and comfort level with the onslaught of aggressive, sophisticated women who seem to want to rescue him from his depression.” I don’t know about you, but to me that sounds like a significantly more compelling story than the first concept. If you don’t agree, then the issue resides with your story sensibility, which is the key variable for what you decide to write. We live and die by what we decide in this regard, so the key is to look outward, at the readership, rather than inward at what we are drawn to personally. I encounter this particular concept issue frequently with my coaching clients, and often their response to my feedback is something like, “Well, I intended that. It’s obvious that something else will be in play that complicates his situation.”
It’s not obvious. Never assume an agent, editor, or reader will expand the scope of your concept in his mind because it’s obvious to you. If the juice of your concept is layered, define the layering at square one.
The second example meets several of the criteria for a compelling concept, one of which is this: The reader hasn’t encountered this story before, or if she has, this offers a new and intriguing twist.
The acid test of a compelling concept is simple.
If you pitch your concept—without having to add elements of the premise to make it interesting—and your listener responds, “Wow, now that is interesting. I can’t wait to read a story based on that idea,” then you’ve hit pay dirt. If you received that response, then your concept is, by definition, compelling and intriguing, at least to that particular listener. The trick is to offer something that a stadium full of listeners would respond to in the same way. When it happens, the concept has already fueled the ensuing premise—any ensuing premise that leverages it—with compelling energy.
As you are about to learn, a great concept could connect to many possible premises. This notion is one of the criteria that, when applied, will ensure your concept is on fire.
The word compelling, however, is a mixed bag.
Reaching for the bar labeled compelling presents an opportunity to add depth and richness to your concept. Yet, “compelling” always remains a matter of opinion. What is compelling to some may be considered trite and ridiculous to others. That’s why we have different genres. Readers of romances may not find the notion of traveling to a different dimension to encounter an alien life force all that compelling. Even if it’s a romance, if you set it in an alternate universe, then it is also something else.
There are no hard and fast guidelines for attaining a “compelling” level of appeal. One agent’s next Hunger Games is another’s been-there-read-that story. For the writer sitting alone in his office, this leaves little to work with other than his instincts. This is why one of the recurring themes of this book is the development of a cutting-edge, highly market-accurate story sensibility, because without a commercial nose for what masses of readers w
ill find appealing, a writer’s notion of “compelling” may fall short.
The goal of all of this, at its highest level, is to evolve your story sensibility.
You want to be able to look at your existing story concept and say, “Yeah, that’s good. It meets all the criteria,” or admit, “Well, I thought this was cool, and it is cool for me, but I can see now how others might not agree, because the story is nothing special. It’s thin on drama and vicarious experience, and my premise has too little to work with.”
As I've said before, you may like mustard on your peanut butter sandwiches. But good luck trying to launch a chain of sandwich shops based on that concept.
Elevating your story sensibilities becomes the most potent tool of all in the revision of a story. With concept, an idiosyncratic story sensibility shows itself immediately, via the criteria and then via reader reaction to the idea itself. Thus a concept can either make or break your story before you write a word.
For the purposes of this discussion—indeed, as context for the entire fiction-writing proposition—think of the word concept as an adjective: that which is conceptual. The real question about your story idea becomes “What is conceptual about the story idea?” even before you add a character or a plot (which, upon doing so, places you in the realm of premise, a related but different story element).
Here are some examples of inherently conceptual concepts.
These concepts meet the criteria for a compelling concept without delving into premise. Notice how there are no heroes here, no plots, no actual story. Each of these is an idea for a story that has been imbued with a conceptual layer, which renders it immediately compelling, at least to the market sensibilities of the people you are trying to impress. It may not be your thing, which means you shouldn’t write that story … just as you shouldn’t write it if your story sense tells you that you alone hold affection for it. Some of these have been taken from best-selling stories you might recognize, while some are concepts that promised a story the writer(s) couldn’t quite deliver on.