4: Storyteller or Reporter?
"The play's the thing."
- William Shakespeare
Are you an author or a journalist? If you think of yourself
as only one and not the other before you start, you will make
one of the two biggest mistakes possible in writing. What
mistakes are they?
For a reporter, it is forgetting the narrative: the telling
of details in a way that draws in the reader and maintains
the reader's interest. If it is dull, lacking in detail, or
without a string of chronology that goes somewhere, the story
can never be told convincingly.
For the storyteller, it is forgetting the critical details.
Being engrossing to the reader is not enough; bluff and bluster
may impress, but people will always want to look behind the
curtain, and without the substance and coherence of detail,
something for the reader to grasp and relate to, the story
can never seem real to the reader.
The best way to avoid these mistakes is to be both. While
it is the human drama and emotions that drive the story, it
is the facts, the details, the events, that is what makes
the world real. Without both, you don't even have half a
story.
4.1: Before You Ever Say A Word...
Before a writer can ever tell a story, there is one key
detail that must be attended to:
You must have a story to tell.
Now, to the less experienced this sounds redundant, but to
the more seasoned writer, it is a truth that is stronger
than any moral or drama. Without knowing how the story
will end, reach that end, and begin, in that order,
that story will never have the chance to be more than an idea.
4.1.1: The Reason and The Rhyme
Why are you writing? What I mean is, the characters, the
settings, the events, the plot, all have no meaning without
a purpose for the story.
This is not to say that a story must have an Earth shattering
consequence, or a moral that provides the reader an epiphany.
If your story has no deep meaning, you do not need to convey
that to the reader, but it is something you as the author must
be aware of. Without a lesson to teach, a story merely becomes
entertainment.
4.1.2: Reading The Map
"How do I get away from here?"
"Where do you want to go?" answered the Cheshire Cat.
"Oh, anywhere," Alice replied.
"Then it does not matter which road you take, any path will take you there."
- from Lewis Carroll's "Alice In Wonderland"
Before beginning to tell a story, it is of utmost importance
to know how the story will end. Like designing a maze, it
is important to design the exit first, then the side passages
and dead ends.
If you as author do not know where the story will end or the
twists it takes, confusion to yourself and your readers may
occur. When it happens to you, it can lead to mistakes in
the telling and recounting of events, of providing details,
of character behaviour.
I am not speaking against improvisation, but improvising is
best performed by those with much practice and skill, those
who have been working with the basic structures of their
field the longest. Just as jazz musicians improvise around
scales and structures they have played for years, so do
experienced writers. For the less skilled writer, it is
best to define the actions before writing dialogue and
details.
One way to do this is to write an outline of events showing
who is performing actions, what they are doing, when they
are doing it, where they are doing it, and why. The best
and most prominent example of this I can provide is from
Uncle Fester's (aka Greg Sandborn) outline for chapter 14
of his series Nabiki New Horizons. Compare the detail
of his outline for part 14 versus
the actual finished story.
Although Mr. Sandborn is creating dialogue as he goes along,
he has the key events written down. By knowing who, what,
when, where and why beforehand, he does not need to check
for logical or chronological errors, missed details, or any
such mistakes which can hang up story on a minor error.
This is not the only way to write a story, but for those
with less experience, it can a prove a good assistance in
designing a chronology that is consistent and believable.
4.1.3: W5
In any newspaper story or fictional tale, there are five
questions that are always asked and must be answered for
the story to make sense.
- Who?
- What?
- When?
- Where?
- Why?
In shorter stories, there are times where some of these
questions can be avoided or ignored, but for a story of
any length, they must be answered for the story to make
sense and be coherent.
4.2: Start At The End, End At The Beginning
When a reporter writes a story, he interviews many
people and writes down everything, documenting
sources as he goes. No information is discarded,
whether repeated, wrong, or even if seemingly unrelated
to the story. Everything is related to the story,
and by noting every detail, the reporter may uncover
errors, lies, or mistakes in fact.
With facts in hand, the reporter then begins to sift
through them - is this true, is that accurate, and so
forth. Once this is done, facts are organized and told
as a narrative to the readers: the opening to provide a
brief description of what happened, the details to
chronologically order and explain and describe events,
and the ordering of these details in a narrative. This
is because sometimes lesser details require less prominence.
It has been said that writing is "the art of leaving out";
meaning, if the detail or event does not add to the telling
of the story, no matter how important that detail seems to
the writer, it must be discarded. It is only when details
are intended to suggest, infer, or mislead that they should
be included if not relevant to the plot. This is most common
in mystery stories, but can apply elsewhere.
4.2.1: The Opening Of The Story
When you read a newspaper, what part grabs your attention
and makes you read any given article? Is it the third
paragraph? The last sentence of the first paragraph?
No. It is the headline, the big text that succinctly and
quickly tells you what the story is about. But when it
comes to fanfiction, it's not the title of your story that
serves as the headline that grabs the reader's attention.
It is the first sentence, the first paragraph, the first
chapter, that is where you will gain or lose your readers.
A strong opening is the most important part of the story in
relation to getting people to read. With a strong opening
sentence, a reader who might otherwise simply delete your
story may decide to read it.
Story openings generally fall into two distinct types. Each
has its strengths and flaws, but each will work best depending
on several factors, but mostly based on their appropriateness.
4.2.1.1 The Description Opening
"It was a dark and stormy night."
- Snoopy, "Peanuts"
A sentence that tries to describe things in the first
paragraph is at a severe disadvantage. Within a longer
story, an otherwise boring description can be tolerated
by the reader, but as a story opening, it is a killer
of any impetus the reader may have had to read it.
To begin a tale with a description, the writer
must ensure the sentence or paragraph contains
some meaning, some inkling of drive or motiviation,
some sense of things to come.
4.2.1.2 The "Opening Door"
"What's it going to be then, eh?"
- opening sentence of "A Clockwork Orange"
The "Opening Door" is a sentence or paragraph that lends
the feeling that the reader has stepped into a world that
already exists, that it is already well defined and
believable.
For longer novels, either opening can be used, but for a
shorter story, space is more critical and words more
precious. The waste of space that descriptions take can
be a waste of both time and effort, especially when being
concise can better deliver the point of the story.
"Tom!"
No answer.
"Tom!"
No answer.
"What's gone with that boy, I wonder. You, TOM!"
- from "Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain
When a reader sees such an opening, it can feel like the
door to a different world opened with the cover of the book.
To decide upon the opening, think about the opening scene of
the book. Like the opening sentence, it should set the tone
for the entire story.
4.3: Mete and Potatoes
4.4: The Beginning Of The End
4.5:
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