Building A Story

by Shannon Anderson

Since I began writing my novel, I've learned a lot, but it seems there is always more to learn. I'm not sure anyone ever knows exactly how to tackle any particular task of writing. In fact, Ernest Hemingway once said, "We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master." I thought that when I complete my novel, I will have "cracked the code" of writing a novel, but I read an article the other day online that said in essence that each novel is its own puzzle. We have to tackle each one individually. The best way to do that I believe is to understand what story is, to be able to see what we are trying to write about clearly and then translate that vision onto the page. Far easier said than done.

Several students in the creative writing club at WHS are attempting that very thing, writing either short stories or taking a crack at writing a novel. I know from experience that when we write either one of those, the terrain of the story seems to stretch in front of us covered with foggy mist allowing us only a glimpse of what  comes later. We write toward that glimpse of something promising, and if we're lucky, we see the next point on the horizon and write toward it. Sometimes, however, we get lost in the mist. We need help to guide this organic way of bringing a story into being. We need structure, a trellis to drape our living story on, to support it, and give it shape. That is what I hope to do with what I present here, give you options for your trellis by defining what a story is.

According to Bill Johnson, "A story is a promise." Christopher Vogler, on the other hand, says a story is a journey. "A hero leaves her comfortable, ordinary surroundings to venture into a challenging, unfamiliar world. It may be an outward journey to an actual place...that becomes the arena for her conflict with antagonistic, challenging forces." It can also be a journey inward, into the mind, heart, or spirit.

Vogler says, "In any good story the hero grows and changes, making a journey from one way of being to the next: from despair to hope, weakness to strength, folly to wisdom, love to hate and back again. It's the emotional journeys that hook the audience and make a story worth watching. The stages of the Hero's Journey can be traced in all kinds of stories, not just those that feature 'heroic' physical action and adventure. the protagonist of every story is the hero of a journey, even if the path leads only into his own mind or into the realm of relationships."

Robert McKee, author of Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting, says this about what a story is: "All stories take the form of a quest." "For better or for worse, an event throws a character's life out of balance, arousing in him the conscious and/or unconscious desire for that which he feels will restore balance, launching him on a Quest for his Object of Desire against forces of antagonism (inner, personal, extra-personal). He may or may not achieve it. This story in a nutshell."

Robert McKee also explains that a story is designed to move forward in five stages.

1. Inciting incident, then
2. Progressive complications, building to a
3. Crisis, forcing a
4. Climax, where a final decision must be made to bring
5. Resolution

Chris Desmet, published author and my teacher in Madison, says to take your story idea and tell it in those five steps above. In other words, if you can talk it out and "fill in all those blanks, you've got a good story cooking and you've also created a "pitch" for your story." You can also use those five steps to write your one page novel synopsis.

I hope you'll take these ways of defining story to zero in on what will happen in your story, to clear the fog from your landscape so that you can see where you're going. Give your story some structure so that its loveliness is not hidden away but draped on a trellis that showcases the beautiful ideas you are writing about.