A Story is a Story is a Story - NOT!
Every so often I take a creative writing class. (A good thing to do, I should note.) I take away some new insight from each one, but in the last few workshops I’ve attended, I’ve picked up some strange hints or tips that just don’t fit the way I write. I don’t know this at first, of course, so I gleefully input these new ideas into whatever story I’m working on. Then I happily prance off to my writer’s group, manuscript in hand, ready to share what I’ve written and learned.
My first clue that the story’s gone south is the looks on my friends’ faces. After I finish reading the story, they tend to look at me as if I’d just extolled the virtues of chocolate-covered squid. Sometimes they exchange uneasy glances; there is often pen-tapping and clearing of throats; a few timid souls venture to tell me they like the description of the urn, or the way I introduced the motif of the barking dog. Eventually, because they’re my friends, they give it to me straight. I’ve done it again; I’ve written a story in a style that is so completely foreign to the way I normally write that it’s not only at odds with my ordinary writing voice, it’s at odds with who I am as a person. I’ve written what would have been a perfectly serviceable story if it were written by somebody else.
Should this matter? I mean, if it’s a perfectly serviceable story… But yes, it does matter. I have a set of definite beliefs and attitudes that underlie not only what I write about, but the very way I write. For example, I don’t believe that the protagonist should ever get exactly what he thought he wanted when the story began. This directly flies in the face of the writing advice I give small children — “Think of a character, give him a problem, and have him solve it.” That advice gets the person going, gives the story a definite beginning, middle, and end, and ensures a unified whole. And it produces a good story most of the time. But that certainly is not the way I write, and it’s not the way many other famous writers write either.
How so? Well, I love creating characters who don’t believe they have any problems at all (although we, the reader, can clearly see they are deeply flawed). Through a series of successively bad choices, the character gets into worse and worse straits, until the climax he has created forces him to stop and reassess his life situation. The end of the story isn’t “happily ever after” — the end of the story is the realization that he’s gone off track. Not so much resolution as epiphany.
I also love writing stories in which people get exactly what they wanted — only to discover they’re worse off than before. This sounds laughable and it often is, but nothing that has ever happened in my life has convinced me that the “plan ahead, work hard, and all your dreams will come true” philosophy has any credence whatsoever. If I don’t believe it, why should my readers?
I started off by mentioning that I’d taken a few creative writing classes that didn’t work. I should note that most of the classes I’ve taken have been wonderful, and I highly recommend taking creative writing classes, just as I highly recommend joining writer’s groups. But for me (and again, this may not be true for you) the classes that don’t work are the ones that seductively try to reduce my writing to a formula. ”In step one, your protagonist needs to recognize he has a problem….” No, no, no. Step one is whatever draws the reader in, engages his interest, quickens his blood… It’s whatever you want it to be. Your story is your story.
There are a few rules to writing, and as you continue to write (and read authors you admire), you’ll get a better idea of what those rules are and how they apply to you. But make sure that the story, as it unfolds inside your heart, makes sense to you. You’ll know. The pieces will start fitting like a jigsaw puzzle, and your heart will sing when the last one pops into place.
July 4th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Nice website!!