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WIG&TSSIP: Middle

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The Ditchwalk Book Club is reading and discussing Rust Hills’ seminal work, Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular. Announcement here. Overview here. Tag here.

What is there to say about the middle of a story that hasn’t been said a thousand times? Little. So little, in fact, that while Hills’ previous section on Beginning runs six full pages, this section barely commands two pages, and a chunk of that is devoted to a diagram.

If the beginning of a story introduces a situation, then it’s fairly clear the middle will expand on that premise. Despite the obviousness of this continuity, no effort has been spared analyzing the alchemy that goes on in the middle of a story so as to improve the audience’s experience — if not also the bank accounts of the analysts. Whether armed with diagrams, buzzwords or paradigms, proponents of formulaic approaches feast on the middle because it is the meaty bulk connecting beginning to end. Whatever your genre, politics, religion, or favorite ice cream flavor, there’s a time-tested yet cutting-edge storytelling formula just for you — buy now! (All you have to do is add a plot, characters, dialogue, description, setting, tone, mood and your own distinctive voice.)

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WIG&TSSIP: Beginning

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The Ditchwalk Book Club is reading and discussing Rust Hills’ seminal work, Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular. Announcement here. Overview here. Tag here.

It’s one thing to say that every story has a beginning. It’s another altogether to conceptualize and execute the beginning of a work of fiction. As I’ve said elsewhere:

Storytelling problems are storytelling problems: they are expressly not problems of grammar, spelling, punctuation, usage, language or syntax.

They are also not problems of critical study. Learning how to write stories by reading stories (even thousands of stories) can’t be done any more than can learning how to play music by reading music. And if it seems that last sentence should read that you can’t learn how to “write music by reading music,” instead of “play music by reading music,” then you are at the heart of the matter.

Being a storyteller is to storytelling as being composer and musician and instrument (analogous to the distinctiveness of an author’s “voice”) are to music. Where critical analysis can teach how various techniques have been used by various authors, storytelling requires that the author learn when a given technique should be used, and how they themselves will use that technique as part of their voice.

To begin a story, whether for the first time or next, is to do more than simply merge imagination with the tenets of craft. It is also to embark on an inherently solitary and fragile pursuit. So before we entertain Rust Hills’ comments about what the beginning of a story should do, I want to take a moment to talk about the beginning of the writing process.  [ Read more ]

Ditchwalk at Year Two

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Another year has come and gone here at Ditchwalk. For the second straight year any personal predictions I might have made last August have been completely voided by the intervening 365 days. Takeaway: don’t think too far ahead.

The most interesting thing about the past year, from my own myopic point of view as well as the point of view of the greater storytelling universe, is that self-publishing is no longer seen as even a lifestyle choice. Established/commercial pipelines will always exist, but the indy storytelling spirit is now fully legitimized across all mediums.

I can’t think of a better turn of events. Anything that liberates and validates writing is a good thing. We can worry about the ocean of work that’s being produced after we empower everyone who wants to write.

Speaking of which, I think the biggest problem facing publishing at all levels today is the problem of sifting, curating and reviewing content. I’ve looked far and wide for an appropriate place to submit my collection of short stories for objective review, but have essentially come up empty. Yet I’m not surprised. If the value of most stories — as determined by demand — is zero, then making a living as an independent reviewer is going to be economically impossible.

Unless you’re a part of the traditional New York publishing pipeline there’s little money in writing reviews no matter how you approach the task. Which of course leads to ugly practices like ‘paid reviews’ and ‘promoted reviews’ and every other form of marketing fraud you can imagine.

I don’t have a solution here. Reviewing demands credibility — along with considerable craft knowledge — and there just doesn’t seem to be any money in being credible these days. Better to whore yourself out as a celebrity and cry all the way to the bank.

How all this affects future plans is a bit schitzy. On one hand I’m not sure what I’m going to be doing a month from now, let alone six months or a year. On the other hand I no longer concern myself with trying to fit my ideas into a market or medium. Provided I can eke out a minimal level of subsistence I feel completely free to write what I want to write.

As to output, I hope to be considerably more productive. A Neil Rorke novel, a non-fiction book, and maybe a screenplay or two, along with blogging here and at NeilRorke.com.

I’d also like to end up some place where I can plug my electric guitar in for the first time in seven years. I think I write better when I pick at small metal wires that make loud, screechy noises.

Year One post here. Six-month post here. Inaugural post here. Food for thought here.

— Mark Barrett

WIG&TSSIP: Plot Structure

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The Ditchwalk Book Club is reading and discussing Rust Hills’ seminal work, Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular. Announcement here. Overview here. Tag here.

At some point, usually early on, beginning writers stumble across the term plot structure. It’s a loaded term, a deceptive term, a deceitful term, and a necessary term.

The premise underlying most mentions of plot structure is formulaic: follow the prescribed steps and you’ll have a hit on your hands. In the first paragraph of this section Hills addresses and dispenses with that premise in exhaustive fashion, neatly demonstrating that all such formulas are of a kind:

There seems to be no limit to the formulas for the movement of fiction that can be devised: anyone can make up his own quite easily. If any one of them really means anything, then it would seem they must all mean the same thing — which strikes me as a frightening thought.

Underpinning all plot formulas is the rather inescapable truth that anything that is written (or read) must have a beginning, middle, and end. But there’s a critical difference between the beginning and end of what you write and the beginning and end of the story you’re telling. As noted in previous sections, a big part of the craft of storytelling involves deciding what to emphasize and detail and choosing what to glide over and omit.

The temptation to embrace plot structure as a storytelling template is compelling for both novices and veterans alike, in all genres. But doing so puts the writing cart before the storytelling horse. (Which is, of course, the appeal.)

Writers who cling to structure as a guide tend to invent scenes that fulfill whatever formulaic approach they’ve adopted. Scenes are filtered first through the prism of structure, then, if they pass that test, are written and riveted into place. (To be fair, the result may in fact be serviceable — although probably for reasons other than the formula employed.)

The proper approach to plot structure is to embrace the story first, even if only roughly and in your mind. Why? Because understanding what Character X or Character Z is doing during the story is necessary if you’re going to judge which moments to depict and which to elide.  [ Read more ]

WIG&TSSIP: Scenes

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The Ditchwalk Book Club is reading and discussing Rust Hills’ seminal work, Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular. Announcement here. Overview here. Tag here.

In this short section Hills makes a simple point:

Most of what’s said about “scenes” in fiction, for instance, is derived from drama theory.

All you have to do is read Act II, Scene 3 to understand where he’s coming from. The word we use to describe a new place or time in a story comes from the world of live theater. But the mechanisms of such transitions are necessarily different for each medium.

As Hills notes, playwrights must confront the limitations of their medium, but the fiction writer faces few such obstacles. If you want your story to bounce from the mind of a woman standing on the Bay Bridge in San Francisco to a montage of repair work on a spaceship overhead you can get there and back with little effort. (And yes, I know the theater can be incredibly inventive about such things as well.)

For the most part the tendency to create scenes in theatrical chunks is no longer common, both because theater is no longer the dominant form it once was and because mature examples of how to handle scenes abound in fiction. If there’s a tendency toward mimicry today, particularly for young writers, it’s to borrow not from theater but from film, television and even the computer. Yet while the power of the camera and of interaction can be considerable, that power is still constrained by the production demands of those mediums. Because prose uses only words it faces no such limitations.

All storytellers have ideas, images, even whole sequences drop into their heads. Sometimes it’s a character that hangs around a while, sometimes it’s a clever plot twist that springs to mind. What’s important in developing a story from initiating thoughts is considering how best to exploit those ideas in the medium of choice — or better yet, recognizing which medium is inherently best for a particular idea. And how you think of and handle scenes is going to go a long way to determining your success rate.

As an aside, it’s idle speculation on my part, but while re-reading this section I wondered if the appeal of flash fiction didn’t somehow relate to the power of the quick cut, the image, and particularly the panel of the graphic novel. Audiences are always learning how to read mediums in new and more complex ways, and evolution in one medium tends to spill over into others. Flash fiction may not simply be a shorter form applicable to the attention deficits of the information age, it may be the literary expression of the faceted artistic and social conversations we have adapted to and adopted on the internet.

Next up: Plot Structure.

— Mark Barrett

Driving Interactive Interest

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Over the past thirty years or so, as computer and video games have become more mainstream, basic assumptions about the design of interactive entertainment have changed. In the early days, when the majority of the market was hardcore, designers aimed for more hours of play per title because longer games were in demand. (They often did so by rigging games with impossible battles and repetitive chores, but the demand for long games was real.)

Fifteen years ago or so the demands of the market began to change. Consumer research showed players in the aggregate preferring shorter and easier games. While hardcore gamers still existed, they now made up a much smaller percentage of a market that included casual gamers and people new to computer-driven entertainment. Presenting these customers with 100+ hours of hardcore (if not also tedious and unfair) gameplay made no sense, and ran the risk of alienating them from the industry.

Like mountaineers determined to cross another peak off their list, hardcore gamers tend to finish games no matter how grueling the experience. It’s a badge of honor and a way to differentiate themselves from the masses. Casual gamers, on the other hand, tend to explore interactive works like tourists, following their whims and interests for a few hours before heading back to the hotel for a nap. And according to a recent article on CNN’s Tech page, this sight-seeing approach is fast becoming the dominant response to interactive entertainment across all demographics:

“Just 10 years ago, I recall some standard that only 20% of gamers ever finish a game,” says John Lee, VP of marketing at Raptr and former executive at Capcom, THQ and Sega.

And it’s not just dull games that go unfinished. Critically acclaimed ones do, too. Take last year’s “Red Dead Redemption.” You might think Rockstar’s gritty Western would be played more than others, given the praise it enjoyed, but you’d be wrong.

Only 10% of avid gamers completed the final mission, according to Raptr, which tracks more than 23 million gaming sessions.

Let that sink in for a minute: Of every 10 people who started playing the consensus “Game of the Year,” only one of them finished it.

Computer and video games are not cheap to produce, and the best of breed — often called triple-A or ‘AAA’ titles — can be more expensive than big-budget films. Sinking previous development resources into a product most consumers will never fully experience might make sense if the expense was recouped through additional sales, but that’s a huge gamble in even the best scenario. Making the odds worse is the ugly fact that consumers are simply hard-pressed to find time to play and enjoy longer works.

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WIG&TSSIP: Selection in Plot

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The Ditchwalk Book Club is reading and discussing Rust Hills’ seminal work, Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular. Announcement here. Overview here. Tag here.

Call this the companion chapter to Knowing a Character. Whatever you choose to relate and reveal about your plot, there’s a whole lot more you could have written…

The first thing to say is the most basic: a writer can’t help to tell the whole of what “happened” to his character. It follows then that a crucial matter in constructing the plot is the relevant selection of incidents to recount.

The obviousness of this point only serves to reassure the beginning writer that they can’t possibly make any mistakes in selection. Throw out the boring stuff, hook up some reversals, add a dash of cleverness and a back beat of violence and cruelty and voila: a rip-roaring plot.

Because any story profits in pace by having the boring bits excised — where the boring bits are those moments that do not lead to or depict an explosion (think about it) — the tendency among young writers, and particularly young writers reaching for formulas upon which to steady their shaky legs, is to reduce everything to a symphony of show-stopping twists and turns. Laced together with a minimal amount of other stuff grudgingly acknowledged as necessary, this constitutes the conventional ideal of good plotting.

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WIG&TSSIP: Plot in Short Story vs. Novel

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The Ditchwalk Book Club is reading and discussing Rust Hills’ seminal work, Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular. Announcement here. Overview here. Tag here.

The full title of this section is Plot in a Short Story, as against Plot in a Novel. Having elbowed himself ample room to ignore plot in the previous section, Hills returns to the question of plot and his definition of a story as “something that happens to someone”:

What “happens” in a story, the real meaning, is seldom much concerned with the plot.

By ‘story’ here Hills means a short story. Novels, of course, are rife with plot, even if they aspire to literary goals — as Hills notes in comparing the two forms:

But at any rate it [plot] is of very great interest to even the literary novelist: after all, he’s got to get the reader through four hundred pages somehow.

The point remains, however, that meaning and plot are not the same thing. The vast literary real estate of the novel almost necessarily demands that plot act like a kind of superstructure, bridging and supporting the literary points an author wants to make on the road to meaning. For this reason novels lend themselves to a kind of separateness that is the antithesis of the literary short story.  [ Read more ]

WIG&TSSIP: Importance & Unimportance of Plot

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The Ditchwalk Book Club is reading and discussing Rust Hills’ seminal work, Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular. Announcement here. Overview here. Tag here.

In this section Hills pushes back hard against conventional terminology. His goal, as always, is making a place for art at the storytelling table:

Plot is just one of a number of aspects of the short story; and if it is the only aspect a reader looks for, all that means is that plot is all he gets. The modern literary short story must seem very dull to him.

And of course it does seem dull because it’s very seldom (outside of Hemingway) that someone actually punches somebody in the mouth, let alone shepherds the reader through a thrill-a-minute amusement ride.

Much if not most storytelling is defined by plot, and as Hills notes that’s even how we speak of stories when we relate them to others. But it’s possible to do a great deal more in every medium, and that’s what Hills is arguing for. Not as a requirement, but as a right.

To make his point Hills includes a hilarious example about a caveman named Og, as well as other arguments, and in the end I think anyone — particularly in this day and age — would conceded his point. Writers have the right to write whatever they want, including works that minimize plotting to an extreme degree.

I think this caution applies to all storytelling, however, even of the most commercial nature. Plot, as Hills makes clear, is simply one element of a story. Depth of storytelling — impact, effect, resonance — comes from crafting all elements in a manner befitting both the story you want to tell and the intended audience. Clinging to plot, emphasizing plot, driving plot relentlessly only serves to reveal it as a structural element.

Nothing is served by overemphasis of plot. It’s easy to do, it favors cleverness, and it will hold attention in the moment, but only in the moment. Like sex, it’s no substitute for intimacy or a relationship.

Next up: Plot in a Short Story, as against Plot in a Novel.

— Mark Barrett

WIG&TSSIP: The Stress Situation

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The Ditchwalk Book Club is reading and discussing Rust Hills’ seminal work, Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular. Announcement here. Overview here. Tag here.

When I first began thinking seriously about how stories are told I came up with a metaphor that helped me see plot and character as a functional model. My idea what that a character is like a pressure cooker. With no heat under it a pressure cooker is static, stable, unmoved. But add heat and the pressure begins to build. Subject the cooker to enough energy and at some point the release valve is going to be triggered or the cooker will explode.

Granted that’s a bit dramatic, but it worked for me because it had all the necessary parts. A vessel (character), energy affecting the vessel (plot), and a predictable, inevitable outcome (change/revelation) determined by mixing the two.

Because I was writing literary fiction at the time I knew any movement of character resulting from the build up of pressure might be subtle or slight, and preferably ought to be. In practice I fumbled the ball plenty, variously understating to the point of uncertainty and overstating to the point of melodrama, but in general I felt the model held up.

When I first read Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular I was pleased how my own model fit with Hills’ belief that tension is the best method of creating suspense. The pressure-cooker metaphor says nothing about surprising revelations or twists or formulaic models, but simply posits an inevitable progression. Take a character as they are when the story begins and subject them to stress. At some point any character, no matter how resolute or stoic, is going to show the effects of that stress.  [ Read more ]