Starting a story with an idea-- The Thought-driven Story

Starting with Idea: The Thought-driven Story

 Let's talk today about “idea” as a way to start a story. Some stories, especially those classified as “speculative fiction,” start not with anything concrete like character or setting, but with an idea to be explored.

As science fiction writer Orson Scott Card explains, “Idea stories are about the process of seeking and discovering new information through the eyes of characters who are driven to make the discoveries.”

That’s really the appeal of an idea story. No matter what it turns out to be, it starts as an intellectual puzzle. In the spirit of that sort of intellectual mission, let’s consider some ways an idea can start a story.

Questions. For example, many mysteries start with a scene that presents a question, one of the oldest questions of all, “Whodunnit?” But most authors add some additional complication, like, what could kill a man alone in a locked room? (Edgar Allan Poe’s seminal detective story, “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” was perhaps the authorfirst to pose that question.)

The point of these “idea-mysteries” is to challenge the intellect of the sleuth (and author and reader) to go beyond the expected and familiar to speculate, innovate, and interrelate clues to come up with possible though unlikely solutions.

What-ifs. This is a specialized question that truly is speculative, as it seeks to imagine something that hasn’t happened (and probably won’t). This is more of an experiment than an exploration. A good recent example is The Martian, which poses the question, “What if an astronaut was left behind on Mars?” A great classic example is Oedipus the King, which asks, “What if the detective learns he’s actually the murderer?”

There’s also a what-if variety that experiments with the past. Alternative histories like Harry Turtledove’s The Great War inspire the author and reader to consider how the present might be changed if an important past event were changed. These alternative histories have a point beyond the mere alteration, however. Philip K. Dick’s “Man in the High Castle” takes the question “What if the Nazis had taken over the United States?” to pose the deeper question, “Would Americans resist?”

Themes. A theme is a message, a “moral to the story,” that can usually be stated in a sentence, but is better developed through story events. The film Chinatown, for example, uses the “water wars” of southern California to explore the theme of “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The difficult task in theme-based stories is to avoid being preachy. I’d suggest having the theme in mind and creating characters who have to discover that truth, but only at the END of the story. That way, the theme evolution will be a more organic process.

Perspective. A perspective-based story requires, you guessed it, an alteration of perspective, demonstrating that what you see is dictated partly by where you’re seeing from. Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities juxtaposes the experience of the French Revolution in Paris with that of London, that of a victim with that of an observer.

A variation of this perspective-test is the “fish out of water” plot, where our world is viewed through the eyes of an alien or stranger.

In my opinion, this is one of the most socially important genres, as it forces our notoriously solipsistic species to examine ourselves objectively—something more and more essential in a diverse culture.

Concepts. A concept is the simplest and yet most profound of ideas, often expressed in a single word— Freedom. Dispossession. Exile. The speculative aspect of this comes from recognizing that simple concepts are actually the opposite of simple and that only a story and a character can truly portray the complexities. For example, the film Casablanca explores the concept of “neutrality” through the cynical and detached character of Rick, a symbol of the isolationist United States trying to stay isolated in those dark months before Pearl Harbor.

Starting with the concept but developing it through the complications of a 3-D person within a culture is a good way to avoid the sort of closed system that readers of speculative fiction loathe.

Twists. This story takes something conventional and twists it to produce something both familiar and exotic. You’ll often see this in novels aimed at teens and pre-teens, as connecting the normal with the unusual trains them in the important mental skill of skepticism and imagination.

The trick here is to make the base story perfectly plausible (Harry Potter really is going to boarding school and taking courses, but they’re about incantations and potions), so that the twist is more fun, making the familiar unfamiliar.

All of these idea types pose the risk of becoming just tricks. To avoid that risk, consider that each of these should lead to a deeper question, and that is in the end what we want to explore in the story.

When I read Ender’s Game, for example, the "twist" is clear-- (spoiler warning) the children thought they were training on a videogame to stop an alien invasion, but in the end, it turns out the game was real and they'd just stopped the invasion. But I found the deeper question to be, “Why do we sacrifice our children for war?” That deeper question leads to the plot development that the adults deceive the children that war is just a game.

Another way to make an idea into a full-fledged story is to embody the idea inside a character’s journey. Ask yourself who needs to learn this theme or experience this twist? Oedipus, for example, is an arrogant man who will not accept the power of the gods over him. So he has to be forcibly confronted with the fact that they control his fate.

The most successful idea stories start with an idea… but they don’t end there. The idea is more than just a statement or speculation, but rather a process whereby the reader and characters experience the idea and come to understand what it really means.

Who Needs a McGuffin? (That's an object of desire that can motivate your characters.)

I hope everyone had a great holiday season. Now we can get back to writing!
Be sure and ask if you’d like me to write up an article about some subject you’re interested in. https://www.plotblueprint.com/
 
 A Story Term Defined:  McGuffin

 
In a plot-oriented story, the protagonist has ample reason for action. The story is ABOUT the reason for action, about attaining the goal—they have to solve this murder or disarm that bomb or win that election or renovate that house. When your protagonist has a strong, concrete goal, it’s easy to create plot action—just give the protagonist the goal and present obstacles to overcome.

But in character-oriented stories, super-big important goals like saving the world or restoring justice can distract from the REAL purpose, which is usually to get the protagonist to learn something and change somehow. Trouble is, we don’t want the protagonist just to wander around and worry about some internal conflict, or go to therapy and talk about it… we still want action—the character moving through the story and trying to get something done.
 
In that case, we should consider “a McGuffin” as an external goal—something that is important enough to get the character to act, but isn’t the purpose of the story. 

So writers sometimes install a "McGuffin" into their plots to instigate action.  The term was probably invented by film director Alfred Hitchcock, who used it to identify the wine bottle full of powder that Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergmann risk death for in Notorious.  "What is that?" says Bergmann, staring as he pours the powder into his hand. "Some ore, I presume," Cary responds-- that is, "I don't have a clue, but it's IMPORTANT!"

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Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergmann in Notorious, holding the McGuffin.

 
A McGuffin is just the object of desire. The character's goal might be "I'm going to get that McGuffin!"  But it's usually desired by others too, people who want to take it away.  Therefore, "I want to get a Aston-Martin" hasn't got a McGuffin, because the desire isn't in contest. He can get a Aston-Martin, and so can others, if they have enough money. 
 
But only one person can get the Holy Grail.  And everyone wants it.
 
McGuffin is all about uniqueness and desirability.  It’s not just any chalice, but the one Jesus drank from at the Last Supper (the Holy Grail—yes, that’s what it’s supposed to be).
 
It’s not just any Aston-Martin, but the Aston-Martin driven by Sean Connery in that fourth James Bond film, the car that Connery loved so much he bought it after the film and sold only when he found out it was driving with his windows down that made him go bald, the very special sports car that all the other classic car collectors are vying for... then it's a McGuffin.
 
A McGuffin is usually an object, a prop, not a concept like "freedom" or an attainment like "getting my marketing degree".  It's something concrete that represents something presumably important-- but we might only get a hint about what that Something Important is.  We just have to agree to believe that the McGuffin is desired for some reason.
 
In fact, a McGuffin is important mostly because it's desired, not for any quality within itself.  It's not world peace; it's a Ming vase.  Or it's the demon head in a funny episode on the old TV show Angel.  Angel and Spike were sent to Rome to get this demon head so that... well, who knows? There's some sort of reason, but mostly they know that they have to get this demon head.  And then someone steals it from them, and they have to run around Italy to get it back. 
 
The head isn't important to the viewer/reader... it's only a prop that means that Angel and Spike have to go to Rome and try to find Buffy (their mutual ex) and argue with each other and ride a Vespa together.  Their real goal is to find Buffy and win her away from the other. (They both lose.) The real purpose of the scene is to get them both "moving on" from their obsession with Buffy, so that they can cooperate and not fight from now on.  But they'll never get to Italy and this big emotional transition unless they are chasing the demon head. So the writers put in that demon head as the ‘McGuffin’ that gets them together in Italy.
 
The McGuffin helps advance the scene, but it's just a prop. What's interesting isn't the prop, but why the character wants it so bad.  Does he want this McGuffin because it means he's defeating the other guy if he wins? Or is a means of revenge, or of winning the fair lady's approval?  The motivation is what counts -- "I'm going to Rome to get this demon head, see, and if I should happen to track Buffy down while I’m there and win her back, well...."
 
McGuffins are helpful when they get the character moving, but also to reveal the underlying motivation.
 
So if you're going to use a McGuffin, remember:

  • Make it concrete. In the Notorious film, the McGuffin powder was in a glass bottle, hidden in the wine cellar of the bad guy’s lair. It’s an actual physical object that can be handled and stolen. In the Angel episode, the McGuffin was an actual demon head, hacked off a demon. These McGuffins are physical objects.

  • Make it unique. In the Notorious film, the powder is something only the bad guys have, and it’s the only sample of it anywhere. In Angel, this demon head is the only demon head that will work to solve the problem.

  • Make it represent something important, like collaboration with the Nazis in Notorious. But you don't have to make a big deal about the reason for a McGuffin… it REPRESENTS something important, but might not be important in itself. In the Angel episode, the demon head was the key to peace between two warring tribes, which is presumably important, but not to the two guys—they only mention that  feud a couple times.

  • Make other people desire it enough to fight for it. In Notorious, the Nazis want this ore really badly and are willing to kill for it.

  • Have the characters talk about the McGuffin, and show the actual physical object when you can. 

  • Use the McGuffin to inspire action (chasing after it, finding it, fighting for it, losing it, bringing it home).

  • Make sure the McGuffin inspires the protagonist to do something that really IS important (like “save Ingrid Bergman from her Nazi husband” or "get over Buffy and learn to get along with each other").

  • Make sure the protagonist actually succeeds or fails at getting the McGuffin-- don't just forget about it.

 (In the Angel episode, they lose the demon head about the same time they realize Buffy's involvement with another man from their joint past means that she's moved on and isn't going to end up with either of them.  So they give up, surrender the demon head, and go heartbrokenly together back home to Los Angeles, only to find the head has been delivered to their office by Buffy's new, powerful beau-- just to show them up.)
 
Our protagonists need motivation to get out of their ruts and off their duffs and DO SOMETHING.  We know that they have an internal motivation (Cary Grant to save the woman he hates/loves; Angel and Spike to get over Buffy). But if they don’t take action, and they won’t take action, something external might be needed to give them the push to do whatever they need to do.  For motivation, bring on the McGuffin!
 If you’d like to explore the use of a McGuffin in your own story, let me know! As you can tell, it’s a delicate dynamic—to make it concrete enough and important enough to inspire action without being so big it distracts from the all-important character journey. 
--

 

There's a power in saying it: "I'm a writer."

According to JK Rowling

"I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy to finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one area where I truly belonged.
"I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter, and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."

Of course, now she can say, "I'm the first billionaire writer!" 

or

"I'm the most popular writer in the world."

She's pretty humble, though, so maybe she'd just say, "I'm a writer."​

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Quoting a Song? Here are some rules-

Have you ever wanted to quote song lyrics in your story? Here are a couple posts at Bookbaby:

1. Overview of legalities of using song lyrics.

2. Answers to questions about using song lyrics.


If a music artist wants to record someone else’s song, there is a set fee for that use, but rights and fees are entirely up to the publisher when it comes to printing lyrics in books. If you don’t want to violate US Copyright Code, read on.


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Alternating books!

Does anyone write more than one book at a time? Rachel Caine does, and explains how she juggles several projects at once.

So, real talk. I write four books a year — more or less — plus half a dozen short stories and pitches for new projects. That’s not counting travel, events, and promoting new releases. Up until 8 years ago, I held on to a full-time, high-pressure day job, too. Sounds overwhelming, right? (It does to me, when I put it that way.) But the fact is, with a plan and a solid writing process, it’s achievable.

So how can you juggle such a massive workload? I’ll break down how I schedule writing and revising multiple books in progress. Perhaps you can adopt some of these writing process tips in your own life and work… but remember the cardinal rule of writing: You need to find your own path that works for your life and your particular process. (Also, there are no rules — just guidelines.)

My initial challenge was a common struggle authors face: finding the time. But you don’t find time. You make time. So let’s start there.

Quick Journey to Plot Exercise: Your Turn!

My books are character-driven, so I might say, "Oh, I never plot." But in fact, I've learned to do basic plotting by using a character journey as the big structural apparatus really helps. That is, very basically, what is my character's journey through the story? Like:

Independence to affiliation

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or

Distrust to trust

or

Innocence to corruption

or

Shame to self-acceptance

or where the character starts emotionally/psychologically and where she/he ends up. Let’s try “independence to affiliation.” Chart the main steps involved:

Act 1. Beginning: She is devoted to her independence in the first act, and I show that (how will the reader know this). She should probably be given the choice to accept help but refuse it.

End of act 1 (maybe around ch. 2): Something (what) happens that makes her independence more of a problem than a solution. (What happens and how does she react)


Act 2: Things heat up on the external plane and make her independence or self-reliance a REAL problem, and she gradually has to change in response to 3-4 events in the external plot. Some group or person should probably be giving her help, or trying to, or trying to get her to affiliate.

End of Act 2: In the crisis/dark moment, her need to be independent really complicates the external conflict, and she's in huge trouble (or she's about to lose her goal or lose something essential). In the dark moment, she has to choose to change and ask for help or something that compromises her independence but allows her to receive help from being affiliated with someone or some group.


Act 3: In the climactic scene, where the external plot resolves, her newfound willingness to accept help allows her to conquer whatever the main conflict in the outer plot is.

End of Act 3: Because she has now chosen to affiliate, she is more happy and safe, but also might keep her independence a bit by becoming not just a follower but a leader.


That is, you're going to have certain things happen in the external plot.  If you have a sense of what the main character needs to learn and accomplish-- the journey's start and destination-- you can make each of those plot events push the character down that journey road.


As I start a story, I try to have a really good sense of where my character starts out, and how she'll react to each plot event given that starting point, and usually, of course, the basic endpoint is fairly obvious once I know how she's limited or damaged at the start.


I like to analyze plots, but my own... I'll get bored if I outline too deeply ahead of time. What I'd love to be wild and yet disciplined enough to do is to write wildly and freely in the first draft, and then use journey, outlining, and structure to revise it in a second draft.

 Alicia

 

The Character Interview: Lots of Questions

The Character Interview: Lots of Questions

Here are some questions that will help you discover your character from the inside-out, or from the outside-in... anyway, all the way through.  I address the questions to "you" to avoid the gender-specific pronoun; I am, of course, referring to the character, not the writer. 

Don’t feel you have to answer all of them! Just choose a question or five that sound interesting, and free-write the answer IN THE CHARACTER'S FIRST-PERSON (I) VOICE.  Free-writing means no stopping and no editing- follow the diversions where they lead, because that's where the intriguing stuff is!

Making Memories, and Hooking Them Later

Hi, everyone! I was asked to do a guest post about what I call "Life Hooks"—the recording of memories that lets us yank our life experiences together.

I've never had much of a memory. We moved around a lot when I was young, so every year I'd be in a new place and all those visual cues to memory (the chair my grandmother sat in, the kitchen where I started a fire while making popcorn) were left in the old place.

But years ago, for my parents' 50th anniversary, I was in charge of making up a "memory book" of old photos. There are eight of us siblings, so I delegated each a town the family had lived in along the way, with the assignment of choosing some photos associated with that place and writing down a memory.

What I learned from that process is that we each remember different things, but also different sorts of things. I regret to tell you that what I remember are old grievances (like the time my big brother told me to do a swan dive into the snow off the back porch in Elgin, IL, assuring me that it would just be like jumping onto a big pillow: Note to self, never trust a big brother's assurances).

Mark (that very big brother) remembered the cars we had, and since my dad would buy old junkers that couldn't last, he had to remember a lot of them. Rick, the youngest, remembered a single crystalline experience of going out into the desert and seeing the stars like they'd just burst into flame.  We all remembered… but different things in different ways.

What I also learned was that the very fact of recording a memory brought up a dozen more, and that as my parents paged through the memory book, they recalled events and experiences none of us had ever heard of. It was as if they could live them again—and significantly, they remembered only happy things, or at least things that were amusing in retrospect. 

The memories weren't lost, but they needed a "hook" to become accessible. And that hook was the sharing of our collective memories.

As we baby boomers move protesting and incredulous into our senior years (btw, I just saw a book title, "You're Never Too Old to Rock and Roll," which could be our battle cry), I think we're going to need to find more of those memory hooks.

We were most of us more dedicated to “living in the moment", keeping our options open, and trying new things to get much into ritual and tradition, which are the most common ways of "hooking" memories.  Many of us have moved far away from our homes and families, discarding boxes of junk and mementos on the way. Now we look back at a lifetime and find that we don't have a lifetime's worth of memories available for review.

But of course we do. Experience carves actual pathways through our brains—that's where the memories are stored—and we have them, but it's like they're up on a high shelf in a distant corner of a dusty attic in an abandoned house. We need a way to find them and bring them back into the light of life.

After doing the memory book, I realized that there's something special about the physical representation of memory. I used to scorn my friends who scrapbooked; now I wish I'd been doing that all along, saving the tickets from concerts and films, the cards I'd gotten for my birthday, the scraps of my life which I just threw away.  I know now that the act of recording events, capsulizing them into some piece of paper or photo or memento, and gluing them into a book, would hook my memories together. And then they'd always be right there—not so much in my mind as in this physical book, ready to be taken down and paged through whenever I need a reminder of who I used to be.

What is it about an actual book and actual ink and actual photos? I wonder why those are still so significant in these digital days—why we still jot down a to-do list in the morning, rather than just texting ourselves our schedule; why we page through a young couple's white satin wedding album when we've already seen the photos posted on Facebook.

Maybe the physical act of recording captures the physical experience? My sister-in-law Cher Megasko, a frequent traveler, keeps a travel journal and writes down her impressions as she makes each trip.  She said, "I journal when I travel abroad, taking care to record lots of unremarkable details. I keep track of each drive we take, every restaurant we eat at ... even things like the number of stray dogs and cats. I'm surprised at how often I go back and read what I've written. Sometimes it's just to reminisce, but I also use it to help plan future trips, even if not to the same destination. My travel journal is my younger daughter's first choice of things to inherit when I'm gone!"

The memoirist and writing teacher William Zinsser echoed the importance of both the recording of  the unremarkable, and the usefulness of a physical representation: "When my father finished writing his histories (of the family and his shellac company), he had them typed, mimeographed, and bound in a plastic cover. He gave a copy, personally inscribed, to each of his three daughters, to their husbands, to me, to my wife, and to his 15 grandchildren, some of whom couldn’t yet read…. I like to think that those 15 copies are now squirreled away somewhere in their houses from Maine to California, waiting for the next generation."

My friend Cynthia Furlong Reynolds has also used the physical to capture the ephemeral memories. She once worked to help elderly people record their memories—kind of making their own oral histories-- and told me that they often found it oddly calming.  She remembered sitting with one elderly man with dementia, taking notes as he talked about his past. Then she typed up her notes and made them into a little book, which she printed out for him. She tells me his wife found that when he got agitated, just holding the book of memories calmed him. I think it's because knowing the memories were in this paper-and-ink, permanent form freed him from the anxiety that he might forget.  He didn't have to constantly remind himself about his childhood home, or his mother's name. All that was here in this book and would always be there for him.

Maybe all this "physical" stuff is just a relic of any earlier age… but I don't know. I had two nieces who are close in age – still teenagers-- but not in geographic proximity, and while of course these days, they kept in touch with texts and emails and Facebook messages. But once we were all together, and they showed me the little wooden boxes where they kept the letters they mailed to each other (yes! envelopes and stamps and all), and here they were, children of the electronic era, holding these pieces of paper and reading the letters out loud and remembering when they'd written them.

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Anyway, I'm thinking of printing out some of those photos I have on Pinterest, writing out a note to my mother-in-law by hand for once, maybe even getting a scrapbook and starting—way too late!—to collect the junky little scraps of my days and nights. Maybe then, when my always-bad memory slides into no-memory-at-all, I'll have something to touch and page through that reminds me I indeed did have a life!

What do you think? How do you hook into your memories? How do you remind yourself of what's been and gone? What do you want never to forget?

I'll leave you with a couple pretties to help jog your memories—

Here's a Tim Buckley song about memory, Once I Was.

And a W.B. Yeats poem, "When You Are Old and Gray and Full of Sleep (take down this book)."

 

Alicia Rasley

Lorem Ipsum as poetry

Do you know what "Lorem Ipsum" is? It's nonsense gibberish used as sample to fill in text boxes and book samples, like this:

 

Lorem ipsum (from Gutenberg app page).

Lorem ipsum (from Gutenberg app page).

Well, I came across this Lorem ipsum while checking out some new WordPress app, and Google popped up a box asking if I wanted to translate. Automatically I clicked on it, assuming it wouldn't work-- after all, this is just gibberish, right? Yes, but it's LATIN gibberish-- every word Latin with an English counterpart. So here's how Lorem ipsum looks translated!

That's sort of like absurdist poetry, don't you think? "How I wish football at another office of honey!" There's all sorts of meaning in that!

That's sort of like absurdist poetry, don't you think? "How I wish football at another office of honey!" There's all sorts of meaning in that!