Developing Story Ideas Read online

  The conviction you hold that makes the story worth telling.

  The narrative elements you mean to work with.

  The story’s main character—whether human, animal, or societal.

  The main conflict, which is your drama’s all-important energy source. Note that this is not a state or a feeling but two active forces pitted against each other.

  How you mean to organize the telling of your story. A criminal trial, a mission of forgiveness, or restoring an old schoolroom clock each involve different human processes. These usually indicate the most appropriate genre and way to tell your story.

  What development, human or otherwise, you expect to chronicle.

  How you mean to affect your audience in heart and mind.

  To use this vital tool, simply complete the sentences in the left-hand column:

  Complete These Sentences

  Explanations and Examples

  1 In life I believe that ______.

  What is your life-philosophy driving this story? Examples: “persistence matters more than talent”; “we learn through our mistakes,” or “give a dog a bad name … ”

  2 The situation/topic through which I will explore my belief is _______.

  What, briefly, are the story’s expository “who/what/when/where” details?

  3 The POV character or characters will be _______.

  Through whose point of view and sensibility do we mainly experience the story? What kind of person is he or she?

  4 The main conflict is between _______and _______.

  What main opposing forces does the story examine? Examples: “between a share-cropper and his worn out tractor”; “between a shy but determined older lady and a brusque handyman”; or “between a formerly untroubled family and a threatening flood.”

  5 My story’s structure will be determined by _______.

  What, organic to the story, can you use to give it an appropriate form? (“a day at the beach”; “flashbacks while describing a traumatic accident”; “rehearsing a magic trick with increasing desperation for an important audience.”)

  6 The development I hope to show is __________.

  Stories need to show a development of some kind or they lack hope. (“I expect to show the refugee emerging from isolation by relating to people using his broken English.”)

  7 The genre will be _______.

  Type of story that the audience will recognize (sitcom, dream, folktale, mystery, rite of passage, etc.).

  8 I want my audience to feel _______,

  Feelings your audience should experience (anger? compassion? sadness? fascination? etc.).

  9 … and to understand that _______.

  Thoughts, realizations, conclusions your audience should reach.

  By its very nature, a hypothesis is always a work in progress, not a one-shot deal. So revise it between drafts, and you will stay on top of the profound changes of direction that creep regularly into any evolving work.

  Interrogating a Story and the Story Effectiveness Questionnaire

  Authoring a story is like giving birth: the experience leaves you drained, confused, and in great need of feedback. What child have I produced? Does it have all its fingers and toes?

  Try to read your draft as a first-time audience would. What can you remember about the story afterward? This is the litmus test, because the human memory cheerfully dumps whatever failed to impress.

  The Story Effectiveness Questionnaire will help you flush out whatever you currently feel about a story—your own or someone else’s. Make your responses concise since long, windy answers are usually covers for doubt and indecision.

  Story Effectiveness Questionnaire

  Characters:

  What are the qualities of the main characters and what do we expect of them at the outset?

  Who is the POV character and is this justified?

  Does POV change? Should it? Why?

  What forces confront the main character(s), and why?

  Which parts of the story could I most easily retell from memory, and which would be harder?

  Potential:

  Does the story feel complete?

  Are any scenes superfluous or not functioning up to potential?

  Are any scenes missing or underbaked?

  Genre:

  With what genre does the story belong, and does it fulfill expectations?

  Are there good reasons to depart from the genre?

  Meaning and Purpose:

  How does the story act—or mean to act—on its audience?

  What patterns seem significant to the story’s meaning?

  Development:

  Who develops in the story?

  Could anyone develop more?

  Comparing the story’s end with its beginning, what changes have taken place and what do they signify?

  The Story as a Whole:

  What is its premise (its content and purpose expressed in one or two pithy sentences)?

  What is its theme? (What embracing truth does it seek to establish?)

  What does it say about the individual in relation to the laws of the universe?

  Identifying Structural and Other Weaknesses

  A story, like a chain, is only as strong as its weakest link, so we are always hunting the weak or the troublesome. Story-editing tools do this and help you find improvements. Sometimes this means modifying the troublemaker, repositioning it, or dropping it. As a reminder, here are the divisions that mainly interest you at this stage:

  Scene Components

  Setup:

  Who, what, when, where? What is the main problem?

  Complications:

  Obstacles; difficulties; twists, turns, and adaptations as each character tries to solve their main problem.

  Crisis and Resolution:

  Problem reaches point where character or characters deal with the crisis, for better or for worse. Things probably change.

  Dividing a Story by Acts

  Act I, Setup:

  Establishing characters, main situation, main problem, and what pressures or forces the main character faces. Probably also establishes whose POV we will mainly share.

  Act II, Complications:

  Obstacles the characters face, adaptations they make, complications in their paths that drive up the stakes.

  Act III, Confrontationand Resolution:

  The story’s major forces come into confrontation at the apex, or crisis. During the resolution we often notice a change or growth in at least one of the characters.

  Analyzing a work should assist your instincts, and not be an academic exercise. Always let a story work on you, and listen to what it wants you to do. All artworks, after the pain and difficulty of the initial drafting, begin making their needs known to their creators, and this is when you feel the pulse of creation.

  Note

  1Salutations to my longtime colleague Chappelle Freeman for pointing this out.

  12 Giving Critical Feedback

  Criticism exists not to disparage a work but to identify its real nature, illuminate its inner workings, and suggest how to enhance its potential.

  Giving feedback is the act of communicating your impressions as an audience to the artwork’s begetter.

  Giving Feedback

  Giving criticism requires tact and respect, especially face to face or in a professional situation, where the author may have years of experience—and layers of prickly defense. To prepare for giving a critique, consider what imprint the work has left on you.

  Feedback Elements

  Impact:

  Degree of impact was …

  The story left me thinking … and feeling …

  Clarity:

  I could see … but not see …

  I could retell … but not …

  Potential:

  The story was/was not complete because …

  All/some parts were functioning, as follows …

  Strong elements were … and weaker were …

/>   Suggestions:

  Effective elements of story were … (summarize).

  And so the changes/developments I suggest are … (summarize).

  Authors often show visible signs of stress while trying to absorb contrary reactions. To soften the experience, you may need to accentuate your subjectivity. A gentle way to proceed is to recapitulate the impressions the story made, point by point. Then you can move cautiously toward synthesizing the values, patterns, and emphases you perceived, and prepare to suggest changes. Authors usually find this progression easier to absorb, and seeing how you arrived at your impressions, become more receptive to suggestions for areas of change.

  Assignment 12–1: Impressions and Feedback

  For practice you can either use one of your own stories or generate a more impersonal one by playing the CLOSAT game. Using the “Testing an Idea” questions, give an oral review of your own or another person’s story, and include constructive ideas for further development.

  Assignment 12–2: Communicating Analytic Feedback

  This is like Assignment 12–1, but goes further. Read or listen to a colleague’s story, then:

  Analyze the characters for their qualities and motives.

  Analyze how the story breaks into scenes and acts.

  Briefly paraphrase the story, accentuating the facets and values that struck you.

  Suggest what, in accordance with what you understand to be the author’s intentions, would strengthen the story. To do this: Explain the story’s intended meaning as you understand it.

  Say how effectively it delivers on its intentions.

  Describe any changes you think would make it more effective.

  Part IV

  Writing Assignments

  The assignments and student writing samples in Chapters 13–21 come from a class I taught at New York University. The samples are useful for illustration and discussion, but are not meant as models for you to emulate. If they look quite polished, it is because I have silently edited the typos and other mistakes that everyone makes during first, rapid drafts.

  Most of the student writing makes lively reading, so gather your own responses together before you read my critique. See how you and I agree or differ, because there are no right or wrong reactions. Your response and mine each come from particular lives sensitized by particular experiences. Anyone attentive to the original, however, should be able to reveal and illuminate additional layers below the surface, which is the proper work of the critic.

  By the way, please make no unauthorized use of work you find in this book—to make short films, for instance—as it would seriously infringe their authors’ rights.

  13 Tale from Childhood

  This book’s purpose is to develop ideation skills, so it asks that you produce outlines, never a polished end product. Such over-attention to detail during the gestation of a narrative idea would only be a distraction.

  The book’s website (www.routledge.com/cw/rabiger) contains additional assignments that teachers or group coordinators may like to consider as alternatives. These I list with a brief description under “Going Further” at the end of relevant chapters. Depending on the level or special interests of the writers, some may prove very rewarding.

  The assignments in this and many other chapters call for bold, even reckless sketch-work, so remember to write in scene-outline form and to stay in author mode. When your critic-self wades in to protect you from imagined ridicule, snuff it out. If you don’t, it will kill off the spontaneity you so need for first drafts.

  To write in scene-outline form:

  Begin a new paragraph for each new scene

  Write in the present tense and third person, eliminating the passive voice wherever possible (see “Active and Passive” in Chapter 6)

  Write in short-story mode using brief, pithy descriptions

  Describe only what the reader or audience should see and hear

  Build atmosphere and mood through visuals and sound effects

  Write no dialogue or author’s comments: let behavior and action work on our imagination

  Where a dialogue exchange is unavoidable, briefly summarize its contents (“The brothers argue briefly over who should go first”)

  Assignment 13–1: An Event from Childhood

  Step 1: Freely describe an event from your childhood still powerful in memory. If possible, choose one you haven’t told anyone before and whose meaning remains ambiguous. Stay true to what you see with your inner eye, neither imposing on its imagery nor resisting any differences in form you may be tempted to make. Describe any feelings you remember, but don’t be surprised if powerful memories are made entirely of images, events, and actions, with no “me” in sight.

  Step 2: Displace your memoir by converting it to the present tense, third person, otherwise known as scene-outline form. Eliminate the passive voice wherever possible.

  Step 3: Write a few lines to say what you think your childhood episode might mean. Put on your audience/critic hat and consider what you have written with some detachment.

  We learn in the cradle to associate stories with the past (“Once upon a time … ”), so try to stay in the present tense, third person. To use a past tense signifies that something has already happened and is thus closed. The present tense, however, brings events into the here-and-now, and the effect is to open a useful space between the author and the tale. This lets you alter, shape, and evaluate your work without feeling enslaved by the material’s origins. Using active-voice syntax whenever possible, rather than the passive voice, will also make your writing more direct and energetic.

  Stage plays and screenplays are always in the present tense, and some literary writing is too—for example William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. Interestingly, dreams are in the present, which may be why good theatre and cinema often stay in one’s memory with dreamlike intensity.

  It may be difficult to interpret some experiences from childhood, however clearly you remember them. Be patient and keep trying, because the memory only retains what has a profound resonance. When you finish a draft, let it sit at least overnight before rereading it. Write more drafts before showing it to anyone. Don’t be surprised when others discussing your work can see meanings you missed. This is why we need collaborators, critics, and audiences.

  The inner eye is the cinema in your head that replays the materials of memory in a starkly truthful way. Work hard to record honestly what your inner eye sees, without mediating or cushioning its visions, and you will write strongly.

  On Giving Feedback

  How a story acts on its audience is always enlightening, so your first reactions as an audience member—whether to a written assignment, pitch, or presentation—can be from a nonspecialist perspective. Tread carefully when commenting on a memoir, because the arrows of youthful experience strike deep and sometimes remain painful. It’s usually safe to reconstruct the thoughts and emotions you had as the work unfolded, focusing typically on:

  The work’s impact

  How you met and responded to the central characters

  Any scenes you could see with your inner eye (see sidebar)

  What the piece left you feeling and thinking

  Opportunities you see for developing its potential

  After establishing initial impressions, the group can move to a more analytical and technical discussion. Consider:

  How the central character emerges from the experience (weak, funny, loved, misunderstood, etc.).

  Whether the memory is in frozen moments, or scenes that develop.

  What type of experience the central character undergoes (shock, transformation, revelation, hurt, etc.).

  Whether the story has a crisis, and what makes it so.

  Whether anyone changes. If so, who changes and how?

  Why this story remains so vivid to the storyteller so long afterward.

  Whether any striking images arise from the story, and what their relationship may be to the story’s meaning.

  I
f you review more than one story:

  Can you see any common denominators or interesting contrasts between stories?

  What part did action play in the stories, and what part dialogue?

  Which story had the most impact, and why?

  Examples

  Example 1 (Vilka Tzouras)

  A young girl with short hair and skinny legs runs down the school hallway muttering words in a foreign language. She’s running around trying to organize for a young boy to show his pipi to the girls. Although no one seems to know what she is saying, they all seem to understand. Finally she manages to round up five to six girls and without much effort convinces the boy to pull down his pants and show his goods.

  They’re all standing in a semicircle around him. Oohs and aahs as they all inspect the sights. The boy suddenly feels flustered, puts his penis back in, and runs into the hallway, where he starts running around in circles. A minute later he is on the floor screaming. He’s just broken his leg. They all run up and look at him without saying a word. Finally, he’s taken away by the school nurse, and the girls return to the classroom.

  The author writes,

  From my point of view the story is extremely enigmatic but I will attempt to suggest some possible underlying themes: A young woman discovers her gender; curiosity, and what happens when you are too curious for your own good; sexuality—what can be said and what can’t (taboos).