Story Fix

by Larry Brooks

When what your hero does matters, because stakes are involved that touch us emotionally and intellectually, then you’ll be on point with this story.

  Tough stuff, I know. The writer and I both hope that you benefit from this tough-love feedback. And, as you can see, there is a lot to know about your story before you can make it work.

  Even if you’re trying to retell a true story through the lens of a historical novel. A historical novel is fiction, which trumps what really happened. Unless you put “nonfiction” somewhere on the back cover, the principles of fiction will drive its effectiveness.

  How to Tank a Job Interview

  Sometimes when I present a writer with the observation that his story has no dramatic arc, too little tension, and thus, no real plot, he defends what he’s done or disagrees outright. Again, we write what we write because we believe it is valid and powerful, and it still is in the writer’s mind, even at the first hint that it actually isn’t.

  This is exactly like going on a job interview knowing that you don’t possess the necessary skills or experience, and being told by the interviewer that your résumé doesn’t match up to the job requirements.

  And so you explain. You defend. You rationalize. Maybe you even plead for an exception.

  Writers in this circumstance assure me that it’ll all work out in the completed draft.

  Go back to the interview analogy for a moment. You tell the interviewer that you’re a fast learner, you’re really smart, you never call in sick, and you really need the job. And you expect the interviewer to hire you over the throng of perfectly qualified applicants sitting in the waiting room.

  You can guess how that will turn out. It never works, unless the interviewer is your uncle. And it rarely works in a story assessment process.

  There are no benevolent uncles in publishing.

  If you can’t pitch it, if you don’t know the sweet spots of how to pitch and hit them in your story as well, you can’t really hope to write it well enough to work. That’s just a fact. Because while an early draft may well be the place where you try to work out those fuzzy answers, it all needs to be crystal clear and artfully rendered in the draft you hope to sell.

  Which brings us back to the need for revision, which, one would hope, is a step you take before showing it to agents and editors.

  And so you are left with your own ability to assess what will work in the market, what will land you an agent or a publishing contract, or what will draw readers to it in the digital marketplace, using your story sensibilities, juxtaposed with whatever story criteria you accept as valid, for better or worse.

  The most you can do is listen, and then launch a hunt for a higher story sensibility driven by the criteria and story physics that will make the novel or screenplay soar.

  It’s true: There is a market for anything.

  So write what you want … right?

  If you’re an artist first, sure. If you’re a professional, not so much. That’s as crazy as the pilot deciding that instead of flying the planned route to Pittsburgh, she wants to fly to Atlanta today. Worse, she might fly halfway to Pittsburgh before turning south toward Atlanta, then thank you for flying with the airline today when you get off the plane all blurry-eyed and confused.

  Writers do this. They rationalize exactly this, in just this fashion: Because I’m free, I’m an artist, I can do this any way I want. As absurd as the analogy is, it reflects a significant truth about why writers create doomed stories.

  You are a professional. That changes everything.

  Choose a better story.

  Revision allows us to make a better choice about our stories, at the core level, which is the sweet spot.

  What are your goals? I haven’t met a writer yet who doesn’t want his project to succeed, to even become a bestseller. So to be true to this goal, you absolutely cannot write anything you want. Every time we choose our stories we are placing a bet, and the principles of storytelling and a sense of the market define our odds for that bet. Sure, all ten people on the planet who want to live in that unthinkable house you want to build would trade places with you in a heartbeat. But does that qualify your plan as the basis for a major subdivision? Is it something a developer—the perfect analogy for a publisher in this example—would want to invest time and money in?

  At the very least, you may finally understand why your story was rejected, and hopefully, what the specific areas of weakness are and where to find them.

  Armed with this vast new awareness, a quiver of story development tools, and the cold-blooded clarity of criteria, the fate of your story is, now more than ever, truly in your hands.

  Part Four

  Redemption

  Case Studies from the Real World of Unpublished Stories

  Chapter 13

  The Doctor Will See You Now

  A quick word on how to get the most out of the case studies that follow: These projects are real. I haven’t altered them other than to clean up the inherently sloppy nature of the back-and-forth exchange. At times I’ve included correspondence that shows the evolution of the writer’s mind-set over this process, including a few that cushion the blow before they are hit with some sobering feedback.

  The format for these case studies comes from my story-coaching work, which employs a story development questionnaire to define the writer’s intentions and understanding of the story being worked on. In effect it is a pop quiz. If you don’t know your whole and best core story, there is no hiding from that handicapping shortfall. If you don’t understand the vocabulary of writing, if you don’t know a concept from a theme, or a hook from a First Plot Point, you will be outed. Feedback to that effect stings, but it can be a real gift. It can save the writer a year of her life writing a draft that is already in a coma before it hits the page, or it can find and categorize story problems in existing drafts in the same way an MRI can find hidden leaks and growths.

  These are real writers, all of whom have given permission to use their case studies here. That takes real courage, as I’ve selected these projects precisely because they illustrate gaps and shortfalls relative to an understanding of the principles and the necessary discipline of sticking to a core story. For the most part, these stories are early in their development, which is the best time to secure this type of feedback. One is for a finished manuscript, putting the writer in precisely the position you are in as someone who is facing a revision based on feedback.

  You’ll see, if you didn’t already know, that writing a story at a professional level is not a casual pursuit. It is not something a hobbyist or someone totally new to fiction can hope to conquer easily. The truth is that it’s a lot harder and more complex than it looks.

  If you didn’t know that already, you are about to find out.

  One more thing: These examples actually demonstrate the norm rather than the lowest common denominator. After doing more than six hundred of these critiques in the past three years, and after several decades of story coaching on other fronts, I say this from personal experience. This is what happens. My hope is that, by ingesting these case studies, it may not happen to you.

  The Best Learning of All

  As we move forward in our writing journey we gather knowledge and evolve our skills. Part of that process includes reading the published work of best-selling authors and, sometimes, the novels and screenplays of our peers. What we learn there depends on what we bring to that reading experience. If you are new to writing, then perhaps those published stories appear to be nearly seamless; they almost look easy. Sometimes, in the quiet of our hubris, we think we could do as well. And so we learn to duplicate what we see in successful works relative to storytelling craft.

  But this can be like watching heart surgery from the operating room gallery and then trying to insert a valve into the heart of a loved one in your living room. Because it looked easy. It’s a rather dark and absurd analogy, I grant you, but it’s also apt. In the hands of a professional, the complex can appear symmetrically accessibl
e. Chances are—actually, it’s a certainty—your less-than-fully-enlightened eye doesn’t capture all there is to learn when you read a best-selling novel or see a great film. Many of the details, principles, nuances, and creative moves disappear into the whole of the story.

  The theory of spending ten thousand hours of apprenticeship to reach a professional level of excellence has no better testimony than in the field of writing fiction.

  I contend that the more you understand about craft, the easier it is to identify both strengths and weaknesses in the work of others, which turns those works into better teaching tools.

  And so, now that you’ve internalized this information and stand at the gate of storytelling enlightenment, you are about to enter an exciting new world, the realm of the principles screaming out to you from the pages of those same published novels in a way you’ve never been able to see and comprehend before. Your learning curve is about to go vertical, because this very experience—looking for and recognizing craft in the stories you consume, seeing how they did it, recognizing the principles in play—is the second most enlightening opportunity you’ll ever know in your life as a writer.

  This is assuming that you bring along your knowledge of craft as you review published stories. If you’re still guessing or trying to prove these principles wrong, then you’re on your own in recognizing the symmetrical and nuanced beauty of craft imbedded in the complex and distracting ambiance of a well-told story. It’s like looking at an X-ray. It’s almost impossible to see anything of importance until someone with a white coat points it out to you.

  Hopefully you now have a white coat of your own to bring to the discussion.

  You might be thinking, So you said reading stories from this new context is the second most enlightening opportunity I’ll have. Then what is the first, the best learning experience available?

  I was hoping you’d ask.

  The only compromise in using published works as learning models is that any problems and miscues that may have existed during development, any departures and fumbling of the principles, have likely already been caught and remedied. Sure, you may find a typo or two in a published book, but we’re talking story-level issues here, and those have been, for the most part, repaired. There’s no case study of revision-in-waiting to be found in a finished David Baldacci novel or a Steven Zaillian script.

  The richest learning experience awaits in reading the work of newer writers and their unpublished stories, stories that haven’t yet reached up to grab the bar, even stories in development that expose what the writers aren’t seeing, aren’t getting, and may be tripping over as their words tumble into an abyss of their own digging.

  When you read these stories and story plans with an enlightened eye, while embracing all the principles and criteria you have just consumed, this becomes the most affirming, illuminating, and clarifying learning experience of all. Because now you can see how it looks behind the scenes, on the bloody battlefield of story development, where chaos must be confronted and ignorance leading to seductive temptation must be conquered.

  I’m betting you can relate to that.

  And I’m trusting that, in these case studies, you’ll quickly see what I saw as the guy doing the evaluation and giving the often difficult feedback.

  Read and learn. Other than helping your writer friends or participating in a critique group, this may be the best opportunity you’ve ever had to experience a writing epiphany, for realization to manifest before your newly enlightened eyes.

  Put on your story-coaching hat and see how a story looks from the outside, with a view toward understanding what went wrong from the inside.

  Chapter 14

  Case Study One

  When Concept Disappears

  The following analysis is focused on only the concept/premise level of story planning. The concept has potential (it nudges up against the criteria to become a compelling proposition), but notice how it seems to disappear, then quickly reappear before vanishing yet again, as the premise is explained. Concept should imbue premise with compelling energy, which doesn’t happen here.

  Notice, too, how the premise is never truly compelling. It’s a bit soft and slightly vague. If feels pantsed, perhaps episodic, retrofitted to answer the question about premise. To be sure, it’s too vague to cause an agent or editor to leap out of his seat waving a contract.

  Premise is something you need to nail. It is the beating heart of a story. When you do nail it, it can be stated in a few short, glowing sentences. If it needs explaining, chances are it’s not yet focused enough. The drama needs to leap from it; the stakes need to be clear.

  As you read, can you clearly visualize the intended story from these answers? Does it sound like a novel you’d want to read?

  Genre: Thriller

  What is the dramatic concept of your story? (Note: The seed or idea for a story and the concept of a story are usually not the same thing. Also, the theme is rarely part of the answer here.) Try to define the concept in one sentence.

  In a modern-day urban city with a violent reputation, everyday citizens discover collective consciousness and collective memory as a way to combat corruption, racism, and violence through empathy and the ensuing solidarity. Some will use this ability to strengthen and heal themselves and the community, while others will seek to exploit and profit from this knowledge.

  Notes from Larry: This is a killer concept if it’s some sort of paranormal or supernatural phenomenon. If it is, this means your novel is not just a “thriller” but a “paranormal thriller.”

  If I’m taking you literally, though, there is an immediate disconnect between the expectations of a thriller and the description you’ve provided. In essence, what I’m reading—if this is not a speculative paranormal story—is that people come together, as one community, to fight darkness. This is more thematic than conceptual, and not a terribly strong (at a glance) conceptual story landscape.

  Restate your concept in the form of a “What if?” question. (Example: What if a major religion employs a secret sect of killers to keep its darkest secret secure? Notice how that question doesn’t speak to the theme; it speaks to plot and dramatic tension, which is the role of concept.)

  What if a form of collective consciousness allowed us to access our shared, collective memories? What if this ability was a path to combating corruption, racism, and violence? What if this kind of solidarity were used to create societal groupings to do good or to do evil?

  Notes from Larry: Okay, it sounds like you’re going down the speculative/paranormal path, which is good, because that’s a more compelling proposition and thus a more compelling story landscape. It truly is a compelling “What if?” notion. (You will need to change your genre answer, though. The thriller genre has very tight expectations for agents, editors, and readers.)

  One risk I see is the possibility that you will head down a sociological-study path rather than building the narrative around an unfolding dramatic spine. That would result in a theme-driven story, which is risky in any variation of the thriller genre. Your passion for the social issues shines through. Don’t let it trump the story you need to tell.

  The questions your current concept poses—what I’m asking now—are: How does this collective consciousness happen? What triggers it, and what happens then? And most of all (because you need this next part), how does it create a journey for a specific hero (a need, an opportunity, something that launches him or her down a dramatic path), and what opposes that hero’s goal (a villain)?

  That answer would be more conceptual than the one you have. People will be drawn to this proposition, but if it turns out that “one consciousness” manifests in town meetings and posters, that’s not conceptual at all, and not something thriller readers will flock to.

  The premise needs to point toward those answers. This cannot just be a story about “all the stuff that happens to these people once they get their heads together.” One hero, one villain, one goal in between them—that’s w
hat you’re after.

  State the premise of your story. (Note: Concept and premise are different things, much like stone and statue. A statue can be made out of any number of things, including stone. One is substance, the other form.)

  The back channel politics of Oakland City Hall mean nothing to Juvenal, a struggling loner trying to change her life, until a chance encounter and new friendship with a sixteen-year-old boy draws her close to a ring of corrupt and dangerous adversaries. Along the way she discovers an old flame, a hidden talent, and a key that could unlock her fears. She’ll need all the help she can get to lead her young friend out of a dead-end life path—and defeat the powerful political players who would do anything to protect their incomes, jobs, and reputations.

  Notes from Larry: Be clear on this: Juvenal’s story path is her vs. city hall, which means you must connect it to this other stuff—the old flame, the hidden talent, and the “key” to that quest. Otherwise it becomes a sideshow or a subplot. Be clear on the core story and stick to it. This is not a character study (you’re in the wrong genre for that); this is about the drama of:

  Juvenal’s problem/need

  what she does about it specifically

  what she faces (villain) along the way

  how she summons her inner hero to get it done

  That’s pretty much all there is; the other stuff will just slow this down.

  You’ve talked around the primary purpose she has in this story (something about leading her young friend toward something, or away from something) without ever saying explicitly what that “something” is, other than it connects, somehow, to City Hall. This vagueness puts you at risk. The questions here connect to that something, and yet you never identify the core of the story. This reads more like book jacket copy, as if you’re trying to “hook” the reader (me) into digging in, reading more (which absolutely isn’t the purpose of stating the premise here). You haven’t given me enough story, at its core, to analyze. Why save this friend? Why is the friend at risk?