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.)

Today we’re critiquing a first page submission, UNTITLED. My comments follow.

***

Locked up. That’s how it felt, with Liam’s one arm wrapped around my body and the other around my neck. I flexed my arms. His grip tightened. His sweat was dripping onto me, creating a puddle between my shoulder blades. He was way bigger – no way I could use brute force against him.

“How’s that for revenge, huh?” He snickered into my ear.

I chuckled lightly. He grounded his teeth in annoyance. The class was staring at us, so was our coach, Mr. Randall. Cedric grinned at me from the back. I grinned. “Not good enough.” I wrapped a leg around his, pulling upwards at the same time. His arms flailed as he attempted to regain his balance, failed, and crashed to the floor, dragging me down with him.

I got to my feet immediately and took the Jod Muay stance again. Head bent, arms up, protecting my face, left foot forward. I motioned with my finger, taunting him.

Liam scrambled to his feet. There was an ugly looking bruise on the side of his head. “You little shit-“

“We all know who that is.”

Liam swore and lunged towards me with a punch. I sidestepped and grabbed hold of his wrist. I watched as his eyes widened with surprise. I grinned. Then delivered two punches straight to his kidneys. Liam crumpled to the floor, gasping for breath.

“Ryan! Get off him!”

I turned to face my coach. “Mr. Randall-!”

“That’s enough Muay Thai for today! Your class is over!”

I swore. “Come on, sir! Just a few more minutes!” Hell, I was having fun. And we had barely started.

Before he could reply, Liam’s elbow slashed across the side of my head. Blinding white pain – then anger.

I tackled Liam to the floor, pummeling every inch of his body I could find. Once, twice, a third time. Liam was already half unconcious, barely fighting back.

I felt someone grab my arms and I was dragged away. I kicked backwards.

“That bloody-“

Cedric stepped in front of me, still holding down my arms. “Take it easy, buddy.”

I was still shaking. My face felt hot. “That – That bloody – hurt – “

Cedric put a hand on my shoulder. “Look, fight in the dorm, you know Mr. Randall doesn’t like you-“

“Yeah.” I cut him off, trying to focus on breathing calmly. Half the school teachers hated me. And it wasn’t my fault.

My comments:

This page does a nice job of conveying the tension of physical combat between the two characters in the scene. I sense an interesting main character and story here, but there are a few craft-related issues getting in the way. Some points to consider for revision:

Why do we care?

The first paragraphs in this scene convey the physical aspects of a boxing match, but little more. We get a hint of emotional tension at the end (the illegal punch, the reference to being disliked), but we could use some of that tension earlier. A boxing match without any context isn’t particularly compelling.

Keep the reader’s attention focused

The first paragraph combines a series of rapid-fire actions that shift the reader’s focus from the narrator to his opponent, then back again. That’s okay, but when dialogue is suddenly interjected, (“How’s that for revenge, huh?”), it’s unclear at first which character is speaking, and what he’s referring to. One way to fix that would be to start the second paragraph with an action establishing Liam, followed by his dialogue. For example, you could move the line about Liam tightening his grip around the narrator’s neck, and use it  as the intro to the second paragraph dialogue.

Avoid repeating similar elements

The word “snickered” is followed immediately by a similar synonym, “chuckled.” “Grinned” is also used three times on the same page. Overall, there’s too much grinning and chuckling going on–try to pare that back some.

Watch the word choice

It should be “He ground” his teeth in annoyance, not grounded.

Avoid action whiplash

The focus of the action shifts so rapidly in some places that the reader can become disoriented. For example, one paragraph contains all of the following: (“I chuckled…He ground(ed)…The class was staring…Cedric grinned…I wrapped…”). Too many shifts in focus happen too quickly here. In general, try to limit each paragraph to a single focus of action. It’s possible for a  paragraph to contain actions by multiple characters, but it’s hard to pull off.

Your thoughts?

TKZ’ers, can you add your thoughts and suggestions for our brave Writer today?

Jordan’s excellent post last week, about basing characters on friends or family, reminded me of another writer’s hack–ripping plots from newspaper headlines. The following headline inspired a subplot for one of my books:

 “Nurse Killed Patient Over Grudge”

According to the news story, a nurse in a plastic surgery office had murdered a patient during a plastic surgery procedure. And the motivation?  It turned out that the victim had “stolen” the nurse’s boyfriend 30 years earlier, when both women were in high school. So this murder 30 years later was the nurse’s way of getting some long-overdue payback.

Talk about revenge being a dish that’s best served cold!

That headline spawned an idea that stayed with me, and eventually emerged as a subplot in one of my mysteries.

I was particularly struck by this particular news story, because it underscored how powerful the emotions of rage and jealousy can be. Who would have thought that a jilted girlfriend would actually murder the “other woman” who happened to turn up in her medical care, thirty years later? In addition to fueling a subplot for my story, the article also made me start reflecting on what was to become one of the themes in my books: jealousy and revenge.

What about you? Have you ever based a story on a real-life event, or something you read about in the news?

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