Happy to report… I’m still in France.

Two weeks ago, also while I was in France, I posted an excerpt from my newly released writing book, “Story Fix: Transform Your Novel From Broken to Brilliant” (Writers Digest Books). Here is another one, this from Chapter 13, “The Doctor Will See You Now,” which refers to the three real life case studies — not from published novels, but from unpublished authors — that follow.

This excerpt helps set up the context relative to the value of reading unpublished (and dare I say, unpublishable) novels, provided you are reading with a full awareness of the principles of effective storytelling.

If you aren’t — and if you’ve ever been in a critique group you’ll know what I’m saying here — you may not be able to tell the difference.

Here then, is the excerpt:

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 own 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 O.R. gallery and to go home to try 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 accessible. 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 bestselling 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, has 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 stories tumble into an abyss of their own digging.

When you read these stories and story plans with an enlightened eye, with an embrace of 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 have a writing epiphany, for realization to manifest before your newly enlightened eyes.

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

I have PJ Parrish to thank for my present whereabouts.

My wife and I have been planning a Big Trip to celebrate our 20th anniversary, and the destination — an easy choice — was France. We’ve been researching it for a year, the itinerary growing to a three-week monster with four stops, including the final 10 days in Paris.

Then I read one of PJ’s recent posts two weeks ago, where she told us she was in the Loire Valley in France, sitting on the deck of her chateau (pretty sure that’s not what she said, but it’s what I pictured, because that’s what NY Times bestselling authors do, right?) as she wrote that day’s post.

I hadn’t heard of the Loire Valley, so I looked it up.

Immediately our itinerary changed. Out with Lucerne and Normandy, in with four days in the Loire Valley to tour some of those massive castles and — this time I’ll use it accurately — ancient Chateaus.

I’d like to say I’m sitting on a deck, too, as I write this, but it’s the day before we leave and I owe The Kill Zone at least two posts while I’m gone. So I’ve decided to excerpt my new writing book, “Story Fix: Transform Your Novel From Broken to Brilliant,” which was released in full this week (after two weeks in pre-release on Kindle).

This excerpt is from Chapter 11, “Spinning Hope From Rejection.”  It addresses the quandary we face when our work is rejected — do we simply submit it somewhere else, or do we ponder the story behind the rejection (if there is one) and do a little more work on it.

We join the book on page 168 for the following:

TO REVISE, OR NOT TO REVISE

Then again, every rejection slip does not necessarily signal the need for a major revision. Your story may be perfectly fine as is. The rejection may come from a source you do not understand, and therefore do not value. More often, though, harsh criticism and rejection may actually be the wake-up call the writer needs. And thus, it’s on the shoulders of the writer to know the difference—timing rather than a lack of sufficient craft—and to use feedback in all its forms to accurately assess the story’s strengths and weaknesses and apply that feedback to move forward accordingly. The tools and processes apply to any origin of the need for story repair, however it is conveyed—be it a rejection or simply a depressing hunch that won’t leave you alone.

Worthy stories, some of which go on to success, certainly do get rejected all the time, both by agents and publishers. These are the stuff of urban legend. Do a quick Google search and you’ll find them everywhere. I’ll mention again the quote from esteemed author William Goldman: “Nobody knows anything.”

It’s too true. But it’s also a risky way to place your bet. Because you could rationalize the rejection of your story as simply a case of timing or another agent who doesn’t get it rather than a legitimate red flag that should get your attention. We can be sure that Kathryn Stockett didn’t revise her manuscript forty-six times, one for each instance of rejection. But because she hasn’t talked about it, we can’t say for sure how those rejections colored her subsequent sequence of drafts, if at all.

Right here is where a paradox kicks in: If you don’t possess the knowledge to nail it the first time out, and are now stuck with the need to revise, how can you leverage feedback and rejection in the writing of a subsequent draft to solve those problems? You’re the same writer who wrote that flawed story. How can you suddenly, without elevating your skill set, attempt to hoist good toward greatness? That’s like asking a toddler who has just fallen off his bicycle to simply get back up and try it again, without showing him what went wrong. A lot of fathers have tried just that method over the years—“It builds character,” they say—and it’s always a recipe for further frustration and tears, as well as a few Band-Aids.

You can’t expect to take your story higher with the same skill set as before, at least to the extent that you don’t understand the feedback itself. But you’re here, you’re learning the unique tools and principles that drive successful revision, and that just might change everything about your next swing at the story.

As professional writers we are beyond the need to use our work as a means of personal character building. We require knowledge applied toward the growth of something much more amorphous and elusive: a heightened storytelling sense.

You can no longer be a suffering artist first and foremost, and a professional writer, too.

A starving professional writer, perhaps, but suffering is optional in the professional realm, because there are tools and principles to rely on. Suffering artists can, and do, create their own boundaries and standards for their craft. They can blame those chatty muses they’re always listening to, and in essence they may choose to believe they can do this thing called writing any way they choose. Because it is art. Market expectations and principles be damned. But even the most ardent followers of organic craft align with the principles that make a story work, so process really isn’t the question at all, at any level. Criteria, benchmarks, and principles are what matter, combined with passion, vision, and the perseverance that is surely part of the job description.

In the long and dark list of reasons why a story doesn’t work, why it gets rejected and requires extensive repair, the writer’s need to suffer is a common seed of dysfunction. It leads to procrastination, the claim of unfairness, and an ignorance of the options. Writers who don’t summon the context of the principles of craft as part of their story sensibility, who go about it in the belief they can invent the structures and tropes and forces that make stories work, tend to populate the roster of the rejected, and sadly, colonize the roster of the self-published, casting a shadow over the multitude of very fine self-published books right next to them.

Even when this happens to a small degree, success becomes elusive.

Your art, in this case, wrapped in the limiting paradox of your process, often becomes your excuse for not finding an agent, or not selling when you do. “They just don’t get me” is the graveside plea of the unpublished, unprofessional writer.  While, in the meantime, the professional writer stays in the trenches to learn what went wrong and how to fix it.

So many established authors stand before the collective body of the aspiring to offer up their “process,” and often it includes things like taking a walk, taking a nap, kicking the story around with a friend over beers, downing those beers alone and in abundance, jotting down our dreams, listening to voices in your head, or simply starting your story without a clue about what the ending will be, do it like Author X does it… all these among many other options.

Too often – not always, but sometimes – that seemingly credible information, under the guise of advice, is not what it seems.

Too often these anecdotal truisms are an author’s attempt to explain how good stories are hatched and developed, when in fact they simply can’t. So they imbue a description of their process – what they’d like you to believe about it – with mysterious and romantic little myths instead.

When the name behind these processes is well known, we attach credibility. And with a much higher level of risk, we attempt to cull meaning and clarity from what is spoken with the unshakable confidence of one who has been there.

Much of the time what you are hearing is a lie.  Why?

Because it is only half the story.

The other half – you’ll almost certainly fail, or at least take years to get there, if you write your story without a solid grasp of craft, including structure… which the person telling you that half-truth usually does have going for them – awaits elsewhere.

They leave out the other half, the craft half, because they prefer to describe a catalyst and a means of accessing it, rather than the less adventurous advice of honoring and implementing it.

And thus, the “it” of the proposition remains unspoken.

Truth is, many of those famous names take years to write their novels. They may write 22 drafts (what they’re not saying is that they do this because they can’t seem to nail it with anything less, which is the exact opposite of an astute or informed process). Others are beaten down by their own process to an extent they can’t actually describe it truthfully.

And even if they could. many would choose to contrive a transparent case of inverted hubris, as if they simply submit to a muse, who is, of course, a genius. It sounds so heroic to appear humbly clueless and nonetheless have a New York Times bestseller on your hands.

You’ve probably heard these before:

“I never outline anything. That takes the creative fun out of it.”

“I just start writing and allow my characters to take over.”

“I don’t know how my story will end when I start a story.”

“I just do wherever the story takes me.”

“I can’t wait to get to my office every morning to see what my characters will do today.”

“I don’t write until I have every scene clearly stated on an index card.”

“There’s only three things that matter: a beginning, a middle and an end.”

“I often lose my story in the middle, and don’t know where to take it from there.”

“The best writing advice I can give you is this: just write.  Butt in chair, that’s all you need to know.”

Keynote or interview zingers imbued with half-truths. All of them.

And yet, each of these has an unspoken explanation that comes next, but somehow rarely makes it into the speech or interview. Why? Because…

Some writers don’t really understand how it happened.

Chances are, as an analogous example, Phil Michelson’s coach can explain the perfectly executed physics of his golf swing better than Phil Michelson can. Apply that to famous writers and you now understand why they say the half-valid things they do.

All they do know is how it happened, rather than why it happened. To frame such halfisms as universal truth is risky, and often toxic.

And we, sitting in the audience or reading the article, are the target of that virus.

The only real truth here is that all of these things are valid… for them. 

Hear that clearly. Because to assume their process, complete with 22 drafts and five years of listening for the voices of characters that exist in no other realm than in their head… to assume this thinking is valid for you, too, simply because someone else who you feel is further down the road than you has stated it emphatically, said it with an unimpeachable smugness…

… to internalize these as absolute truths as you own…

… just might be the very thing that is holding you back.

Because for every writer that these holy avowals actually help, there are stadiums full of other writers who try them and find themselves totally lost and irretrievably confused as a result.

Because, pure and simple, they don’t know what (for example, this being a writer who advises us to just write) Stephen King knows.

Which in the real world means: you shouldn’t try to do it the way Stephen King or Diana Gabaldon does it… until you do know what they know.

Process is the outcome of what you understand, and what you don’t. 

That’s a loaded sentence, one that can clear the air of any confusion you may have about your process. Read it again, and pay close attention to that single italicized word.

Everyone, every single author who uttered those quotes you see above, as well as the long list of other process-relevant advice and truth you’ll ever encounter out there, and here on this blog, and on my website, and in every writing conference keynote you’ll ever hear twenty minutes before you stand in line to get that author’s autograph on the novel that is the outcome of the process they’ve just offer up…

… for them and for me and for you… the truth is… all of it is an attempt to describe the means by which they are searching for the story.

And – this being a truly unassailable fact – there is no right or wrong way to go about that.

Process always has two major parts:

First, we must find our best story for our premise. Sometimes continue to search for and evolve the premise itself before that best story can emerge. Sometimes that takes five years, sometimes it doesn’t.

For many this search happens with a series of drafts, for others the use of notes leading to an outline. Both processes strive for the exact same thing, with the exact same criteria defining the outcome.

And then, once we have the story in hand, we must develop and execute it across the entire arc of the narrative, which (as professionals know) is not a structure we simply get to make up as we go. Again, this involves drafts and/or outlines, both of which evolve as the process continues.

Here’s where trouble ensues: when a writer doesn’t recognize where they are relative to those two parts, and when they merge them without the craft-based skill to do so.

And then, without that best premise in hand, they finish a draft and submit nonetheless.

The result: rejection. Which, upon a competent post-mortum, leads back to that moment they decided they had found their best story, instead of soldiering onward in search mode.

And for some, even when they do find their best premise, they don’t really understand how to spool it out across the dramatic arc of the story… so they wing it, in essence trying to invent a structure that is, inevitably, already waiting for them within a true understanding of craft.

Stories fail for two reasons, not always connected: the premise isn’t strong enough, and/or the execution isn’t good enough.

The universal writing conversation rarely cuts through the experiential muck to shine a light on what’s really happening in that regard. 

Everyone, no matter how they do it, engages in the search for story phase, the outcome of which determines the quality and power of the story the writer believes they have found.

Sadly, because the writer doesn’t know better, a chosen process itself can compromise the story; again, because of what you think you know (but is off-the-mark), possibly because you read it an interview (which was only half-true)… or don’t know at all.

If the story development process it too painful, too long, too confused by a lack of clarity about what you are actually searching for… if your process is to head down one narrative road and then, when you encounter serious issues, simply take a turn rather than going to square one, resulting in a story that is nothing other than a series of compensating, written-in-the-dark turns that, at the end of day, make too little sense…

… all of it in context to nothing more than your experience as a reader of novels, rather than as a student of storytelling and structural craft…

… if your process doesn’t serve you, then your process is the problem.

And yet, writers cling to their process like a religious ideology.

Ultimately it isn’t about what you believe… it is about what is true.

What remains unspoken in this conversation is something that resides at the center of any and every process, fueling it and defining it. It is craft, broken down into a list of principles, criteria and benchmarks. Your awareness of this is the very thing that eventually makes a process right or wrong for you.

And surprisingly, it is accessible, learnable and even measurable.

What every single one of those authors who end up behind a dais at a keynote knows, in one form or another, even if they cannot articulate it (and many can’t)… is some sense of the criteria, benchmarks and metrics of the craft storytelling.

Muses, by the way, in any form, have no idea about that. Craft is our contribution to the process, one that must be learned and earned, no matter how the story idea arrives.

With this dirty little secret in place, it all boils down to a question of informed preference relative to our chosen process. Again, with an emphasis on that single italicized word.

If you don’t fully understand the things you need to know about storytelling, then your process doesn’t matter, you’ll struggle and end up re-doing and revising and starting over and over… until one of two things happen: your revisions bring the story to a closer alignment with those standards… or, you begin to grasp what is wrong and what is missing – the essence of craft itself – and then apply that new awareness to the work.

So by all means, listen to other authors. 

Pay attention to all of it. Much of the bluster – “I never outline!” – comes from writers with no more experience or credibility than you. Just know this: they may or may not be describing a valid process… for you.

Suffering is optional. If your goal is to publish successfully, an ownership of the principles of storytelling craft is not.

Just be careful about who and what you believe about it.

*****

Larry’s new writing craft book, “Story Fix: Transform Your Story From Broken To Brilliant,” is now available for Kindle on Amazon.com, and at this writing is the #1 bestseller in the Editing category. (The trade paperback edition releases in October, but can be pre-ordered now.)

Two quick stories today. Followed by an arrow to the heart of writing awareness.

Fifteen years ago I gave a presentation that I hadn’t prepared for, and will never repeat. It was at my mother’s funeral, and because our family tree is more like a shrub, it was to a room full of folks who for the most part hadn’t seen or spoken to her in years.

When the time came to invite anyone in the room who wanted to “share a story about Dorothy,” the room fell deathly silent. I mean, the woman wasn’t exactly Lucille Ball, if you get my drift. You could hear the pastor’s watch ticking.

I decided to break the silence, for her sake if nothing else.

Here’s the story I told.

My mother’s golf swing looked like a slow motion Youtube video. So slow you could read the word “Wilson” stamped on the top of the wood driver mid-swing (this was long before composite clubs, when woods were the size of a stale biscuit). She defended this as something a golf pro had told her during her one and only lesson: swing slow and easy, let the club do the work. I bet she could help with my golf swing but it is always interesting to do some reading online about it, I bet she also loved having something similar to Ace Golf Netting – Golf Course Netting because of her great golf swing but I digress. If my mother were a pro golfer, I would pick her as one of my top fantasy golf picks.

My mother had steadfastly applied that advice, which she perhaps misunderstood. The longest drive she’d ever managed was about 80 yards, the first four of which were airborne and the rest explained by a fortunate downhill slope on that particular fairway.

“Mom,” I said, “do me a favor, please. Just hit the freaking ball. Slam the living sh*t out of it, okay? Just once. Your golf pro won’t care, he died twenty years ago.”

She looked at me as if I’d suggested that Dwight Eisenhower was a liberal chain smoking hippy.

“I’m serious,” I continued. “Live a little. See what happens.”

Prompted by her blank stare I added, “Just let it rip.”

She shook her head, awkwardly addressed the ball, then took what was, for her, the most physically intense undertaking I had ever seen her attempt, short of running to the bathroom after too much Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The swing wasn’t pretty, but the ball took flight.

It flew high and straight for nearly one hundred yards, coming down about thirty yards short of the green, bouncing and then running until it stopped three feet short of the manicured criss-crossed perfection of the green.

Following a frozen moment of disbelief, she dropped her club and ran to me for a hug, nearly picking me off the ground in the process.

She let it rip. One time. For me.

Then three-putted for a double bogey. She was ecstatic.

It was the last round of golf she ever played.

Then there was my son.

Ten years old, his first year of Little League. His coach was one of those guys who wore his Polo collar straight up, whose last game as a player was the day before he was cut from his freshman baseball team. This perhaps explained his enthusiastic use of instructional videos from the likes of a nearby community college coach. There were enough complex hitting principles to make NASA blush, rules more apropos to college and professional players, rules that Coach nonetheless insisted these 10-year olds memorize and practice religiously.

Before the first game my son and I went to the field to religiously practice all those rules. After a dozen whiffs of my underhand soft toss pitches, swings taken from a stance that looked more like a freeze-frame from a figure skating video than baseball, I could see an alarming frustration in my son’s eyes.

I went to him and got down on one knee. He was on the verge of baseball tears, eight years after Tom Hanks assured us that there is no crying in baseball.

“Listen,” I said. “You remember how you pounded the ball two weeks ago? Before all those videos?”

He nodded, struggling for eye contact.

“Do you remember what that felt like?”

He nodded again, eyes wider now. “Yeah, but that was before Coach told us to stand in there like Derek Jeter and swing like Larry Walker!”

Quietly I wanted to suggest to Coach that he consider parking those videos where the ballpark lights do not shine.

“You want to hear a real hitting secret?” I offered. “Something only the pros know about?”

He nodded, wiping his eyes.

“Those videos?” I began. “They’re not wrong. But you don’t need any of that right now. Just get in there and swing the bat. Your way. Trust what you’ve been taught before, the stuff you already know in your gut. Swing like you used to. Hard and smooth. Rip the cover off the ball. The only thing you need to remember are the basics I taught you, beginning with keeping your eye on the ball. Besides that, swing like you mean it. Swing like you, Okay?”

He was ten. Derek Jeter’s batting stance could wait.

He swung at and missed my next pitch. But he swung hard. His old swing. Didn’t say a word, either. He just resumed his old familiar batting stance and waited.

The next swing launched a line drive that hit me squarely in the crotch. As I doubled over I managed to look up at my boy.

He was jumping up and down, turning in happy little circles that only 10-year olds understand.

He didn’t play much that season, because Coach Polo demanded memorization of all those “principles of hitting.” The team came in last place, for precisely the same reason.

Later that same year, around Christmas or so, my son came to me and asked if he could be a pitcher. “Like you were,” he said.

I smiled, it was one of those moments I would never forget. I told him, “Of course you can. There’s only three rules for pitching, for now. First, never wear your shirt collar turned up, you’ll look like a douchbag. Two, no curveballs. Not for four more years. When you’re in the running to turn pro, then let’s worry about all those things.”

He nodded excitedly. “What’s the third rule?”

“When you get out there,” I said, putting my hands on his little shoulders, “you gotta let it rip. I mean really bear down and throw the crap out of the ball. Doesn’t matter where it goes as long as it’s somewhere close to the plate.”

“Let it rip,” he repeated back to me. Then he smiled. “Like you did.”

Memories of the best years of my younger life, a time of hope wearing a Texas Rangers uniform, flooded over me as I held my little boy close, my own eyes resembling his that day on the field, right before he hit me in the crotch with a line drive.

At last, the point for us as writers.

When you’re ready to turn pro, then you need to worry about all the principles and rules. If anyone tells you there are no rules without adding but there are a whole bunch of principles… run.

Advice, in writing or anything else, isn’t always as simple as it seems. For example, in his bestselling writing book, “On Writing,” none other than Stephen King advises his hopeful acolytes to do this: just sit down and write whatever comes to you.

This, my fellow authors, is perhaps the worst possible advice to come from the lips of someone who should know what they’re talking about… ever. Because it is completely without context and setup, the meat of which is where value and meaning reside, leaving his unvetted comment to sit there, easily and too often misunderstood, costing many tens of thousands of less experienced writers years of their writing life trying to make that sketchy advice work for them, before realizing the hard way that King forgot the context.

Which is… when you know what I know, King forgot to mention, then you can “just write.”

“Just write”… only after you’ve been introduced to, have assimilated and digested and totally own, have witnessed in the stories you love and those that succeed, the fundamental principles of fiction and dramatic theory that reside at the core of everything literary, most of which is invisible or at least irrelevant to casual readers who simply want to be scared or seduced or entertained for a few lost hours of reading.

But never invisible or irrelevant to the writer they are reading.

Once all of that stuff is in your head, once it has gelled and become the paradigm and criteria for the stories you write… once you reach that place in your writing journey…

… once you know, to a reasonable degree, what Stephen King knows…

… then and only then is it wise, productive or even reasonably hopeful to just sit and write.

To let it rip, if you will.

Do this too soon, before you truly understand what makes fiction work, and it’s exactly like telling a medical student in her first semester to “just cut, just grab the scalpel and dig in, see what happens.”

This is an apt analogy because what we do in writing a reasonably effective novel is nearly as complex and perhaps even more nuanced than, say, taking out an appendix. This from a brain surgeon by day and aspiring novelist by night who sent me an email to this exact effect.

Because unless you are one of two things – extremely lucky, or a borne literary savant genius – then a story poured nilly-willy from your head without an awareness of what makes a story work, no matter how good your original idea may be, will get you absolutely nowhere other than rejected, provided you even finish such a manuscript all.

So go ahead, let it rip.

At least nobody will bleed to death as a result. Except, perhaps, your writing dream. That might just die as a result of operating without a clue.

Until you are truly informed and ready, keep one eye on the principles that will elevate your work, rather than the hasty, half-blind, hubris-driven advice that will tank it.

And when you are ready, the blissful freedom of writing from your gut and your heart and your passion will become precisely what may have been rightly set aside as you struggled to embrace the very principles that will empower you now.

Let it rip. May that be your process… someday, when the time is right.

Larry Brooks’ new writing book, Story Fix: Transform Your Novel From Broken to Brilliant (Writers Digest Books) releases October 2015, and is available now for pre-order.

Photo by Jason Rogers

Writers tend to despise rules. They quickly reject that which smacks of them (a sort of carpet bombing of anything that seems to dictate what they should and shouldn’t do in a story), and on some occasions, proceed to drift to the dark fringe of their genre in an attempt to reinvent the form.

The last writer to successfully reinvent a genre is buried next to Machiavelli in a cathedral in Florence.

Rejecting what we perceive to be a rule is a choice. But it may not be the choice the writer believes it to be.

Because what they’re messing with may not be a rule at all.

What it is, more likely, is a principle.

Semantics? Perhaps. But when it comes to our beliefs and boundaries about writing, semantics count. So let’s agree that, in writing, there are no rules.

But there are principles. And they don’t care what we believe. They just are. The principles of storytelling are like gravity: they are forces of nature that govern the effectiveness of what we do.

Rules, principles, tropes… whatever, pick what allows you to write with confidence with a maverick sense of creative individualism, if that’s what you require. But know this: when you mess with gravity — which doesn’t care what you call it — it can kill you.

As I write this I’m in a hotel room prepping my Powerpoint for a seven hour “master class” workshop at the annual Willamette Writers Conference in Portland, OR, where I’ve taught for seven of the last eight years. While it may be curious to some why they keep asking me back, I believe it is because of my advocacy and analogy-saturated focus on storytelling principles, some of which are less obvious than others (the principles, not the analogies).

Here, then, are a few of my favorites, some of which I suggest you consider pasting onto your monitor. Preferably not on the screen itself.

That, too, is not a rule, but yet one more principle that will serve you every time.

Successful stories are never primarily “about” something in terms of primary focus (a character, a theme, a location, etc). Rather, they are about something happening.

The best way to illuminate character is to give them something interesting to do.

Conflict is the most important word in fiction, trumping a list of other very important words. Conflict fuels fear and risk and threat and danger, which are the tropes of nearly all modern fiction. Mostly, though, it manifests as confrontation and a collision of agendas, leading to dramatic tension. If your story doesn’t have dramatic tension as the primary engine the narrative, chances are your story won’t work.

Character is the collision of backstory (which creates inner landscape) with opportunities that require decision and action in the presence of stakes.

Concept and Premise are not the same thing. Concept is to premise what sugar and spice are to baked goods. What salt is to popcorn. Concept fuels premise with something conceptual.

Break in — and break through — novels almost always have something highly conceptual driving the premise.

Plot is not a dirty word, no matter what your MFA program would have you believe. In commercial fiction, plot is your ticket in.

When you hear or read someone referring to their book (usually the one they hope to write one day) as a “fiction novel,” disregard all that comes out of their mouth from that point forward.

Your experience as a reader is only a minor and inadequate preparation for your experience as a writer.

It takes most of us ten or more hours to read a novel. It takes two hours to watch a movie. Screenwriters learn on Day One of their journey what it can take some novelists years to assimilate. Watch and learn.

There are twelve categories of skills and essences you must master before you can write effective fiction. Your pretty sentences and paragraphs are just one of them.

Passion for a particular theme can crash your story. Story is a window into theme, not a pulpit for it. Passion is an intoxicant, best used in moderation.

Nothing exposes a rookie quicker than dialogue that sounds like it came from an elementary school play. Check that — there is one thing that outs you even quicker: the mishandling of dialogue punctuation and attribution.

Once exposed to the principles of writing effective fiction — this is especially true relative to structure — the best way to cement that knowledge is to watch it in play in the novels you read and the movies you watch.

Exceptions are out there, but those authors are also buried in that Cathedral in Florence, so make your choices accordingly.

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Larry Brooks writes about story craft, with two bestselling books out on the subject, and his third book – Story Fix: Transform Your Novel From Broken to Brilliant – (with a Foreword by Michael Hague, and generously blurbed by several of the authors here on Kill Zone) releases in October from Writers Digest Books.

I love the analogous notion of a writer’s tool box, chuck full of principles and proven practices and empowered narrative options. But the dark, rarely uttered truth of the matter is that we can get it all absolutely right, we can produce a by-the-book specimen of a mystery or thriller novel, and still not reach the goal of being published, pleasing reviewers or finding readers.

This, unfortunately, is why some writers drink to excess.

Sometimes this dark outcome can be explained by the idea itself not being robust enough, or competitive enough in a market full of stronger and fresher ideas. You can cook the hell out of a killer hamburger, but it may not make you the next Ray Kroc.

Brilliant execution of a too familiar or too vanilla premise – the bane of mysteries and thrillers and romances – may not be enough.

Or, the explanation may be the more obvious one: sub-standard execution chops. The tools were ignored, or at least not plugged into the right socket.

To get on the other side of this, to access the secret sauce that bestselling authors seem to deliver as if by second nature, we need to go deeper to discover and apply a set of more nuanced and powerful tools. Tools that aren’t taught at the 101 workshop but are definitely available once you crack the code on how to access that secret compartment of the author’s tool box, where opportunity awaits.

There a bunch of them, actually.

This weekend one of those principles assaulted me from a side door, which is usually the case. As a writing teacher/blogger it wasn’t new news – I would hope not – but its application within an unexpected venue knocked me over.

Secret weapon, indeed.  Here’s what happened.

I am three months away from my new writing book’s release (Story Fix: Transform Your Novel From Broken to Brilliant, out in October from Writers Digest Books), and the author of the Foreword delivered his draft for my review before sending it on to the publisher.

Tricky, nervous stuff, that. Send your book out to an author who is significantly more accomplished and famous than you and see what it feels like, waiting for their Foreword to arrive. It’s like asking Phil Michelson to play a round with you so he can recommend you to the PGA tour school.

In my case, the author of my Foreword is Michael Hauge, a legend in the craft world right up there with Robert McKee and our own James Scott Bell. He presented the very first writing workshop I ever attended, some three decades ago (the poetry of which was one of the reasons I recommended him for the Foreword), and had already blurbed one of my prior writing books (Story Engineering).

But a blurb is not a Foreword, so the jury was out. His endorsement could be a make-or-break proposition.

To my great relief he got it, and his Foreword exceeded my highest expectation. But that’s not my point today, at least here, or my agenda.

In a fit of glee I showed it to my wife, an avid reader not easily pleased, and instead of jumping on the celebratory bandwagon, all she could talk about was how well written it was. Not my book… the Foreword. How brilliant Michael Hauge is as a writer, walking the walk in a book about how to do just that.

Her first response struck me as Kill Zone-worthy. 

Here’s what she said: “I love how he writes, he’s got the fluidity of Stephen King, it just goes down easy. There’s not a wasted word in there, and yet he sucks you in, you’re with him all the way. He tells you a story, makes you relate, makes you care. You are in synch with him from the beginning, and by the end you’ve felt every word he says. He makes you believe.”

I had to think about that. This was a Foreword in a writing book, not a novel. And yet, my wife was captivated by those 1200 words. Who does that?

Michael Hauge did it, by telling a story that evoked reader empathy through vicarious experience.

Michael Hauge told the story of how challenging it is to write an effective and authentic Foreword. About the context of it, the expectations and the agenda of it. How it made him wonder, made him think, even made him nervous. Emotions we could all relate to. What if he didn’t like the book? What if he had nothing much to say about it? What if he could not deliver what was hoped for, and indeed, expected?

And there is was, the secret weapon that works in any writing venue, even our fiction.

We take the reader with us, we plug them into our own experience and the fear and thrill and confusion and hope that comes with it. That’s what King does so well, that’s what Jonathan Sparks and Dean Koontz and Michael Connelly, and a long list of other names that are still writing their own titles, do so well. That’s what my wife saw as common ground between them.

Vicarious experience was the secret weapon he employed. There’s a payoff to it, too. When got to the part where he said the book itself rescued him, that he could indeed write a Foreword that endorses it with complete transparent honesty and passion, you could feel his relief. Because guys like Hauge are not for sale, they tell it like it is, and the book itself licensed him to use the word “brilliant” in a way that imbued the Foreword with credibility far beyond that which any reviewer could aspire to.

And no, that’s not me sneaking the word “brilliant” into this with an agenda. Rather, it’s the payoff, the entire agenda – all good writing has an agenda – told through the journey of a writer who was worried if he could get there with integrity. The moment of arrival leaps off the page to strike the reader with impact, as it does for any writer who can pull it off.

And, that’s me imparting that message via a story, with a dash of vicarious experience of its own.

In my prior writing book – Story Physics – I talk about those secrets weapons, one of which, one of the rarely acknowledged, is vicarious experience. Another is narrative strategy, which is precisely what Hague had employed, selecting a means toward an end that he knew would work.

Taking our readers into our journey, into the journey of our heroes and villains, making them feel each and every critical moment as they root for something worthy… that is a strategy and a choice – it is a skill – as much as it is an outcome.

It is an outcome that you earn.

By making them believe.

Somewhere, hidden in the writers tool box you keep at arm’s reach, that particular power tool awaits. Plug it into your story, then tell it with intimacy and courage and transparency, use the character’s journey as the vehicle for an experience rendered vicarious… and watch what happens then.

Larry Brooks is the author of six thrillers and three writing books, the most recent (pictured here) coming out in October from Writers Digest Books.  His website is www.storyfix.com.

Put ten writers in a room, ask them about their creative process, and you’ll likely get ten different answers varying by approach and degree, and volume. The gamut includes planners, plotters, pantsers, hybrids, muse-followers and in some cases the prayerful, at least when you can get them to admit this as a last resort.

All of these methodologies work (okay, the last one is iffy), though with a diverse range of efficiency and the measure of Xanax consumed.

Some contend they are writing drafts.

And that this – their way – is the only way, it is what writing is at its core and at its best.

Others, while disagreeing, admit they are planning drafts, which is something other than – preliminary to – actually writing a draft.

A debate often ensues.

It is clarifying, as well as stupendously good news, to realize that all of us, in the early stages of story development, and no matter which process we sign up for, are doing exactly the same thing, at least when expressed as an objective. We are searching for our story, culling it from an original notion, trying out ideas, vetting others, seeing what fits, what works, and hopefully tossing what doesn’t.

Different approaches heading toward an identical destination, at least when – either way – it works.  Too often – also either way – it doesn’t.

Storytelling is not an exact science.

There is no math here. Opinion, imprecision, world view, comfort-level and a default do-whatever-Stephen-King-does ethos become the raw grist of the author’s choice.

The reason this is worth noting is that the criteria for – and the moment of – our rounding the corner toward actually writing the story, versus searching for it, is a milestone portending massive consequences.

Because if we haven’t actually completed the search for story – indeed, if we don’t possess the tools and story sensibilities to know when we’ve truly found the best possible story and its beats – then the search draft at hand cannot possibly be just that: the best possible story that awaits us down the storytelling road, the one where everything works.

Same goes for a story plan.  Story sensibility, rather than process, is the hallmark of creating a killer story.

The search for story is essentially a search for answers…

… good answers, compelling answers, answers that trump more obvious answers, that when viewed in sum actually become the core elements and essences of the story itself.

But answers to what, specifically?

Answers to questions that define what it is we must discover, what we must know about our story before it can work.  Answers that become the raw grist of effective exposition.

This is often – usually – where experience counts, and mightily.

Rare is the newer author who nails these questions with consistency, regardless of their creative process.

Indeed, it is a dearth of compelling answers that explains the percentage of rejection that defines our avocation. It is why so many breakout first novelists have a drawer full of incomplete and rejected manuscripts that are rarely spoken about. It is evidence that the rumored degree of difficulty has not been elevated casually.

Story planners and plotters seek to find these answers before they write a draft, using them as components of the draft, and thus – in theory – reducing the number of drafts required to reach the Valhalla of “Final” in its highest form.

Pantsers, and to a lesser degree hybrid planners who quietly do a little planning on the sly, use the drafting process as the primary means of story search, which quickly separates that particular sub-demographic into three categories:

– pantsers who, within a draft somewhere down the line, finally do find the best possible answers, thus enabling their next draft to become a contextually solid story that embraces foreshadowing, context and nuance;

– or, pantsers who either believe they’ve found those answers, but have actually lowered the bar because, after all, writing draft after draft can be exhausting and life is short;

– or, pantsers who really do hit on that best possible story in the middle of a draft, which then (tragically) turns out to be the draft they submit, half of which is randomly context-free and the last half context-driven, rather than writing one more (at a minimum) fully-informed draft that has the more likely shot.

The latter is like a college student who, after three years of study, still doesn’t know what their major will be, but during one random night in their senior year bolts upright with an Epiphany that envisions their future, prompting him/her to change their major the very next day.

We all know how that turns out. Usually it means one or more extra, unexpected and unplanned for years of school, because worthy majors have prerequisites that begin back at Square One of one’s Freshman year (pre-med students and science majors: remember Chemistry 101?).

A good novel, regardless of how it got good, depends on context, foreshadowing, nuance and optimal pacing to work, all of it beginning at Page 1, and all of which are impossible if you don’t truly understand – and nail – these questions and their answers, including how the story ends.

I can’t squeeze all 54 of those questions into the space parameters of The Kill Zone.

But I will offer the more foundational questions among them, which experienced pros will recognize immediately, and newer writers and some MFA grads, especially those who are “all about character and theme,” might find daunting.

Here they are:

What is the core DRAMATIC story spine the emerges from your premise, and the DRAMATIC QUESTION it poses?

The key word (fragment) here is drama, not character.

In other words, what is your hero’s primary story problem or opportunity – a.k.a. the plot – expressed as a hero’s quest or journey, motivated by stakes and opposed by an antagonist?

Without a good answer to this one and you haven’t finished your story search.  Try to write this manuscript without that answer and you are virtually assured a rejection and a rewrite.

What is CONCEPTUAL about your premise?

Newsflash: concept and premise are different things. Most new writers don’t know or understand this, and a high percentage of practicing writers and their agents are confused by it. But it’s true. A premise infused with the notion of something conceptual makes a story more intriguing, beginning with the pitch itself.

Does your thriller unfold within the walls of the CIA, or the Herman Miller partitions of an accounting office in Sacramento? Is the hero playing for world peace and survival, or the keys to a stolen Buick? Is the femme fatale seeking to steal nuclear detonation codes, or palming a few lottery tickets when her shift at the 7-11 concludes?

What blocks your hero’s path, and what is the agenda of the antagonist?

In thrillers and mysteries, the worst possible answer sounds like this: “The hero never felt approval from his/her father, and has always felt low self confidence and self-esteem.”

Heroes who are their own primary villains rarely work, especially in mysteries and thriller.

That’s about as dramatic as someone crying as they watch The Bachelor. The degree of external drama – conflict leading to tension – defines thrillers and mysteries, and is necessary to some degree in each and every other genre, as well.

How do you set up your hero’s quest, prior to launching it?

This implies you know what a setup is, and how and where the hero’s quest hits the page for the first time in a fully-informed way (hint: it’s called the First Plot Point, and it happens 50 to 90 pages in, after the setup).

Blow this one and a narrative domino effect of Voldemortesque consequences will follow.

What is your First Plot Point, and how does it change/interrupt the hero’s life and thrust them down a sudden, new and urgent path?

It may or may not be big (thought it often is), but more important is what it means, how it causes the hero to drop everything to react and respond emotionally (fear is often involved), literally thrusting them into the core story.

How does the hero respond to that first encounter with their new mission/quest?

If your answer is they begin kicking butt immediately, then a lesson in classic story structure is required. Rather, the hero has to find their own answers, seeking more information, grasping the magnitude of the situation, enlisting help, or simply fleeing or hiding until they can hatch an informed plan.

Meanwhile, the threat looms and evolves.

How does your story change at the Midpoint, thus empowering the hero toward a more proactive attack on the problem?

New information needs to enter the story here, and it needs to change the story while empowering the hero. The Midpoint twist has its own unique context, pulling the curtain back to reveal a clearer understanding of what’s true and in play for either the reader, the hero, or both.

What does your hero do – decisions and actions – that shifts the odds their way, perhaps after playing catch-up until this point?

Stories should escalate in terms of dramatic tension. When the hero ups his/her game, the villain does the same. So the hero has to really ramp it up after the Midpoint, and it’ll have nothing to do with luck, a fortunate deus ex machina or the troops arriving in the nick of time.

How does your hero become the primary catalyst that brings about the resolution of the story?

Simply put, if someone else saves the day, then make that guy the protagonist in your next draft. Or better, put the ball back in your hero’s hands and call a play with his/her name on it.

To make it work, the author must have full awareness and command of your ending. No saving the hero, no having the hero observe the denouement from the cheap seats. This is where the hero gets his/her hands dirty and earns the name tag.

It’s natural not to know all these answers early in the process.

That’s why we call it the search phase of story development, however you choose to go about it. At first these questions work as criteria for the search, and then, when all the blanks are filled in, as a qualitative standard.

The writer’s sense of that defies process, it is what separates the good from the great, the published from the unpublished.

Pantsers need to know what to pants. Planners need to understand what to plan. Either way, answers emerge and the story progresses, for better or worse. And if you aren’t sure, you’ll know soon enough when you submit the work.

With these questions and some stellar answers in your quiver, the story may exceed even your own highest expectations, especially if you don’t settle for the first idea that fits the moment in question. Rather, cultivate a better, fresher and more emotionally resonant answer that will make an agent, editor or reader leap from their chair and throw money at you.

That’s the real story, after all.

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If you want to dive deeper into the middle of your novel, I have an ebook on this subject:

Also, TKZ’s James Scott Bell has a great ebook on this topic, as well.