Writing fever

Ok, the question of the day is How do you plot out a story? That’s the short version. The longer version is more like How do you plot out a story that contains multiple meaningful strands in such a way that it’ll keep you inspired and amused throughout the long process of actually writing it? But that’s a little messy.

Yesterday I briefly mentioned that finding a plot through the act of writing doesn’t really work. Well, for me anyway. I’ve started lots of stories that went nowhere, then spent days, weeks and months coercing them to go somewhere, anywhere. But those set-ups, no matter how personal and meaningful, simply never amount to anything. This really crushes me because the process is supposed to be quasi-magickal, a journey of narrative discovery. My magick doesn’t work that way. Bummer.

Worse still, the more time I’ve spent imagining ‘better’ plots, the deeper those plots have collapsed into a mire of mediocrity. In fact, as each new ‘improvement’ has popped into my head, I’ve found the original spark gets increasingly diluted to the point where the whole project is meaningless. And my initially-sparkling characters look at me from their initially-sparkling premise and shake their disappointed heads, trapped like General Zod & his gang in Superman II.

We don’t necessarily need to talk about characters now as we try to unravel plotting, but yes we do. In a perfect story, the actual story we all want, the characters and the plot are perfectly entwined. You know what I mean, it’s lesson #1. The events of the plot are there to push the characters’ buttons in ways they need to be pushed. Your characters have buttons, the plot pushes them and the audience (remember them, the point of all this) feels something intense and memorable.

Now, how those buttons get pushed is critical too. The audience is smart. The audience has seen it all before. The audience consists of human beings who know how things really are. Even worse, and this is the one I try to keep foremost in my mind, the audience is bored already. Already! They demand (and deserve) lots of great amazing things right now. There’s a million other things out there demanding your audiences’ attention, just as fervently as they demand yours. Your story needs to be good and different and familiar and astonishing all at once. Maybe that happens when you write totally honestly. Maybe not. I’ll leave that with you for now.

So even our most basic lame structure (Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Girl Is A Vampire) actually needs to be something like A Specific Kind of Guy Meets A Particular Girl in A Surprising and Resonant Incident, Boy Loses Girl Due To An Imaginative and Perfectly Appropriate Flaw, Girl Is Revealed To Be A Vampire In Such A Way That Boy and Audience Are Forever Changed. And that’s still keeping it simple.

So, how do we build one of those? And yes, that’s the original question, still unanswered. Hey, if it was easy I’d be off writing right now …

Writing burns

I am writing.

I’m not sure what I’m writing but writing anything at all, even this, seems worthwhile.

I have stories on the go. I have J---- S--- mid-flight and I have S-- B------ on the run. I have S------ and R---- somewhere in space and Christopher, Livia, Candy, Wolfgang et al everywhere at once. I have Westerns and comedies and love and hate and all get-out.

You know what I seem to lack? Actual stories. An actual story, like a joke, has three steps. Without the three steps, neither a story nor a joke is really worth a toss. You can’t be working on two steps of a joke. You can’t have a joke about two rabbis and an Irishman on the go. You’ve either got all three steps, and maybe you’re tightening it up, or you’ve got nothing whatsoever.

I seem to have dozens of started stories, which collectively add up to nothing. In this context, a story as simple as Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Girl Is A Vampire would be something – anything - a winner. Many writers discuss needing an actual story before you begin your writing. Others believe you can find your actual story through the process of writing it. My experience, being the lessons of those things I actually somehow finished, supports the former opinion and pounds the latter opinion into a bloody, pizza-shaped mess.

But I wish it were that simple. Having an actual story isn’t a free pass to a finished work of narrative art. On the contrary, on the fucking contrary, having an actual story also means having a new world of problems. An actual story needs to be done right. An actual story isn’t going to surprise you. An actual story is going to take work and effort and craft and courage and discipline to manifest. An actual story is a pain in the arse.

Say after me: being a writer is a pain in the arse. There’s no escaping that, unless you’re a writer who’s organised and functional and wouldn’t even be reading this in the first place. How do we embrace this pain? How, when the TV is just there and the webtube is just there and look, there’s a bird and that wall could do with some new art. Sure, we can consider the pain a short-term condition leading to long-term improvement in our condition. Good luck with that. I hate to tell you, there’s no guarantee these words are going to lead to anything other than new kinds of heartbreak and frustration you can’t even imagine yet. To live with the pain, you need to be having just a little, just a tiny little smidgeon of fun.

Now, if you know how to keep the fun in your writing process, word after word, time after gut-wrenching time, please share. You are amazing and I must eat your still-beating heart so I can absorb your mysteries. Here on Earth, fun wanes like yesterday’s erections and all that’s left are the one-dimensional characters and their seemed-good-at-the-time predicament, going nowhere just like me. Some parts of the process are fun, I’m sure I remember that, but creating little fun bridges over the chasms of despair between them is just as difficult as … as … damn, lost my concentration for a sec there.

So, in the absense of solving the impossible upfront, I’m going to consider this: if plotting your story’s three steps is a critical part of the process, what’s a good way to get that shit happening? I’m going to consider that as I go home now, then later while I eat my dinner, then again while I’m falling asleep. And hopefully, when I wake up tomorrow, you might have an answer for me.

If AFL Teams Were One Big Family

Mum on speed - Collingwood

Aggro dad - Carlton

Grandpa with pipe - Melbourne

Grandma with bow-legs - Geelong

Evil uncle with dark, locked shed - Essendon

Crazy aunty with skin condition - Richmond

Fun-loving uncle with tears of a clown - W. Bulldogs

Philosophical aunty with gun collection - St Kilda

Creepy girl cousin in black dress - North Melbourne

Obnoxious boy cousin in V8 Turbo ute - Hawthorn

Flighty girl cousin who married a drummer - Sydney

Perplexed boy cousin who can't find happiness - Brisbane

Dad's old girlfriend who thinks she's part of the family - Adelaide

Mum's old boyfriend who wears bling and wants to kiss everyone - West Coast

The senile old guy from up the street who keeps wandering in - Port Adelaide

The stoned kid hiding under the couch we can't convince to leave - Fremantle