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Simply Blog

December 21st, 2007    Subscribe To Our Feed

There have been so many blogging courses published and pimped over the last 12 months that there can’t possibly be any new angles left to cover… can there? I have always believed that good blogging is as simple as producing good content. If you can communicate your knowledge and passion through words, audio and video, then you have every chance of producing a worthy blog. Simple, right?

When it comes to keeping things simple, nobody can do it better than arch-rationalist Mark Joyner. His integrated book and web-course, Simpleology, has redefined personal organisation. And now he has turned his sharp gaze onto the art of blogging.

Remarkably, Joyner has arrived late in the blogosphere. He claims that he has just discovered how it can be harnessed to further his own ends, and he has decided to share what he has learned. If anyone is likely to think out of the box about blogging it is the founder of Simpleology, so I’m going to take the new course for a spin.

Writing Fiction

August 14th, 2007    Subscribe To Our Feed

Writing for Readers, not Writers

Fiction writing seems to be something that everyone and his dog is engaged in these days. Firstly, about twenty-five years ago, the arrival of the word processor meant that anyone could two-finger type out a novel, print it and send it off to unsuspecting agents and publishers. Secondly, the establishment of the Internet has spawned a plethora of journals, zines and communities full of people writing fiction. This has produced a polarization in the fiction market. At one end - the most densely-populated end - are the non-subsidized print and Internet literary journals. Despite their best efforts, the vast majority of these seem to exist for the sole benefit of writers - there are precious few people who subscribe to these zines just to read them. For the most part, they are filled with writing by promising beginners and intermediate writers. At the other end of the spectrum lurk the subsidized literary and American University journals. They have deliberately striven to dissociate themselves from the ‘writers’ journals and have been criticized for being elitist, narrowly “MFA-Literary” and nigh on impossible to get into.

The problem is, there seems to be nothing in the middle: nothing to cater for fiction that is neither safe and rule-abiding on the one hand, nor elitist and establishment on the other.

What does this mean for fiction writers first entering the market? Initially, they develop fast. There are so many resources available to them. Developing short-story writers move swiftly from beginner level to intermediate by joining on- or off-line writing courses, or getting peer reviews in well-established writing communities such as EditRED.com, and often go on to enjoy plenty of success. The non-subsidised journals publish a lot of new fiction, but they answer to the needs of all the other developing writers of fiction.

The irony is that as these writers, encouraged by their initial success, start to believe in themselves and hone their skills. They begin to dig deeper and reach for other ways to express themselves through their writing, only to discover that they have outgrown the market that nurtured them through their development. They have simply become too good, or too challenging for the majority of online journals. However they may not yet be good enough, or well-connected enough or “MFA-Literary” enough to be picked up by the top literary journals, which are ultra-competitive. So even though their fiction is of a much higher quality, the rejection letters start flooding in.

What options are left to this ever-growing group of fiction writers? Should they dampen their literary ambitions, prune their “heavier” stuff and return to the safety of the journals they began with? Or do they continue trying to get their best work into the elite journals and accept the struggle with zen-like determination knowing they could spend years trying to place their best stories, while the ones they churn out as a matter of course garner publishing credits with relative ease?

The explanation given by many magazine editors of magazines not supported by grants or universities, is that they depend on their subscribers - the aspiring and intermediate fiction writers themselves - and stand to lose subscriptions if they print more challenging fiction.

For many developing writers, bland, safe, forgettable writing represents the peak to which they can aspire. Writing courses reinforce this approach, since it produces significant short-term results, so more and more writers end up producing more of the same in a mind-numbing fiction, and the whole cycle picks up momentum and plummets into an ever-descending spiral.

What can be done?

First of all, the problem has to be articulated, recognised and discussed. The obvious place is in the writing communities that are full of writers who have the opportunity for the first time in the history of fiction writing to voice their grievances, share their experiences and collectively do something about it. They can demand more of their peers. Communities are raising the standard of short fiction published in online zines because the writers that use them have been given an extra forum in which to develop their craft on a much faster track than submitting blindly to zines until they start getting accepted. If you want to read beginner’s fiction now, there are plenty of opportunities to do so for free in a writing community, and you get to interact with and learn from the authors as well. Just as the techie online forums help web designers to keep up with the latest developments in Javascript or Google algorithms, the writing forums are full of information about writing, publishing and promoting fiction.

Secondly, literary editors will be forced to raise the game and acknowledge the need for greater diversity if their publication is to stand out from the burgeoning crowd of zines. Perhaps an editor’s job has changed. It is no longer to give writers what they want but to show them the range of possibilities in truly great fiction. At the same time, as more people are using the Internet for the purposes of entertainment and education, the great prejudice against reading off the screen is fading into background noise. Genuine readers are beginning to appear. At last editors are beginning to reach the audience for which their zines were always intended.

Finally, following the lead from the most successfully marketed publications on the web, zines will have to mark out their own territory by identifying their specific niche and demanding only the very best fiction that fits the bill. This might sound narrow-minded, but due to the extreme proliferation - we’re talking thousands of literary journals, zines and online projects - the best way to differentiate your zine from the hoards is to create a strong, tightly-defined identity for your publication and demand the highest quality writing that fits into its niche.

Writers of fiction often seek publication as affirmation. If avoiding the deeper, more challenging fiction means you are more likely to “place” it, your development as a writer might well grind to a halt, but at least you’ll get published. If, on the other hand, you are challenged to meet the high demands of a range of tightly-defined fiction journals, which all have their own loyal, hardcore following, you will be challenged to experiment with your idiom, range and approach to writing fiction. This means, writers could go ahead and write something they know will be challenging, in the knowledge that they will be able to find a niche, and a readership, for it.

These niches exist in the literary world; they are just not represented in the literary journals. As Alex Keegan, author and editor of ‘7th Quark’ magazine says, we are left with “barely-readable journals at one end (boring and bland) and barely readable journals at the arts-subsidized end (heavy and elitist). There should be journals out there that have real quality without ivory-tower attitudes.”

Short fiction is a dynamic art form, and the Internet is a quickly-evolving forum for artists to develop their craft, experiment and push the envelope. As we enter the Web 2.0 era, the days of hegemony and elitism enjoyed for so long by the literary establishment are numbered.

#2 Story Structure - The Journey Without and Within

August 13th, 2007    Subscribe To Our Feed

Writing a Structured Story

I remember one of my good friends approaching me after completing a story - the first of his that went on to get published - and saying, in a state of awe and wonder, ‘Structure is everything.’ He had a point. It was certainly addressing structure that had changed his writing from promising to published.

Structure is the weak component of many stories and covers a multitude of sins. Symptoms include:
1. an unidentifiable main character (readers asking, ‘Whose story is this?’)
2. poor scene-setting
3. lack of coherent conflict
4. premature scene climaxes
5. protagonist/plot mismatch, in which the main character’s internal/emotional dynamic would never allow him to do what the external dynamic of the plot requires him to do - or it would allow him to do everything easily, without experiencing much of an internal struggle.

To address these problems, it’s important to drop the idea of structure as a cage you erect around your story to stop it wandering off. It’s not a formula, but a map that you and your reader can use to explore the issues that your story broaches. Maps answer the questions, ‘Where are we?’ ‘What obstacles are around the corner?’ and ‘How are we going to get out of here?’ Your story poses similar questions. Your main character, and your character alone, has to find the answers.

Asking the Right Questions

Most of our understanding of story structure has been gleaned from our own reading. Good stories sweep us along. We rarely become conscious of the story’s underlying structure. It’s only when a story goes wrong that you notice the nuts and bolots sticking through. But it is often difficult to see the nuts and bolts sticking out in your own writing. Analysing the structure of a story can feel forced and unnatural. That’s when it can be helpful to get outside help and critques from other writers in a community like Edit Red.

In an attempt to find a more organic approach to structuring a story, Chris Volger developed the ‘Writer’s Journey’ in which the main character makes his way through a highly-charged (meaningful) sequence of life-shaping events. This led to a ‘12-step’ approach which is often cited by Hollywood scriptwriting courses. The journey in question is really a psychological one, mapping the changes someone we care about has to go through to overcome conflict and reach a goal. So the questions we need to ask are:

1. What does she need to overcome?
2. How does she need to change?
3. What conflicts must be resolved?

In popular fiction the protagonist’s journey is often one that leads to greater maturity, self-knowledge or happiness. In literary fiction the journey might well lead to despair, alienation or disillusion, but will still involve personal change. The protagonist has learnt to do something that she couldn’t at the story’s opening, or has earned something valuable like love, self-acceptance or a home.

It’s easy in stepped plans to miss out a couple of steps and mash a few together - at least it’s easy for me - but this doesn’t really matter. Why not? Because we’re not trying to create a formula to churn out stories. We’re trying to maintain our focus on the main purpose of the plot: to provide your main character with a reason to change or resist change.

For example, your complex detective novel would need to be more than a puzzle for your readers - they have suduko for that. It is the account of your character’s journey toward growth and change. When we are forced to go through personal change, we draw on resrves of strength, endurance and courage. These qualities give meaning to our story, and help our readers identify with the characters we have created and the sruggles they go through. We are all creatures of habit. Novels are not long descriptions of habits. They are a dynamic illustration of a character’s development from one set of habits and values to a set of entirely new habit and values. We track the change, scene by scene, showing our readers how our hero copes with each obstacle on the the way.

Suddenly our story is full of impetus and purpose.

The Internal Journey of the Protagonist

Let’s take a look at how this can work in practice. Remember our priest who was forced into solving the murder of a cardinal in #6: ‘Dull Beginning, Sagging Middle, Lame End’? The murder took place in a cathedral, and the cardinal’s body was discovered just after Mass, as our priest made his exit through the sanctuary. So you already have three powerful ingredient in place:

1. Premise - murder in a cathedral (not that uncommon through the ages, but always fraught with controversy and political tension)
2. Situation - the hierarchy of the Catholic church (the archetype for all stuffy, corrupt institutions and the abuse of power)
3. Plot - a cardinal murdered by a bishop who hoped to be named as his replacement (power corrupts…)

The whole story is to be tied together by the character of the priest who discovered the cardinal’s body. His goal: to identify the perpetrator. His motivation: justice.

So our priest is questioned by the police and gets close to their initial investigations when they suddenly arrest a homeless teenager. Although the police seem satisfied that the case is closed, the priest is far from convinced. He starts to do some digging of his own, and before long an attempt is made on his life - now he knows he’s on to something. He narrows the list of suspects down to a member of the archdiocese then finds a way to get all the main suspects together, in classic Agatha Christie fashion, and tricks the murderer into giving himself away.

Mmm. All the external components for our story are in place: premise, plot and situation. But there’s something missing… something to make us care. We need some emotional involvement. We need to send our priest on an emotional and psychological journey. And we need to be there with him. In short, this has to be more than a blip in the priest’s life that we get to share. It has to be a life-changing experience.

That’s where the internal conflict comes in - whatever internal issue or problem the plot forces the protagonist to confront. This adds an additional layer to your story as well as greater coherence and plausibility. After all, most people aren’t driven to risk their lives to unmask a murderer - that’s why we pay for a police force. Our priest has to have a good reason, however unconscious, for putting his own life on the line.

Coherence - Knitting the Internal and External Factors Together

The overall thrust of story coherence is to have everything in the story working together to create a profound overall effect. This is served when the events in the story are developed to bring the priest’s own unique internal conflict to the surface. This won’t affect the external structure - he will still hunt for clues, put them together and solve the murder. However, each scene will take on greater significance and emotional charge as the story not only progresses toward solving the murder, but also reveals and resolves the priest’s internal conflict.

It is this internal conflict that shapes the course of the plot - his journey - and serves to heighten the dramatic tension of each scene. So the question remains, how can we do this in this story?

The trick, once again, is to ask the right questions. In this case,

1. How is the priest going to be affected internally by this story?
2. What character will be most profoundly affected by the events we have outlined above?

Our story seems to be about challenging authority: firstly, the bishop brings down the cardinal by murdering him and usurping his position. Secondly, the priest disregards the authority of the police and brings down the bishop. The type of person to be least affected by this would be a rebellious type. Such a man would be following his own natural mistrust of authority figures: no internal conflict, no need to change, no dramatic tension. Boring.

So who would be most profoundly affected in this case? Someone who trusts authority. Someone who adheres to the rules laid down by those above. Someone who believes in the underlying goodness of the system. The former altar boy, turned priest, who wants nothing more than to rise to a high position in the institution he venerates. Such a person is going to be wrestling with himself in a story like this one. Such a person is going to have a terrible time. Such a person is goint to have to change.

The priest is loyal to the church, to the hierarchy and to the bishop. In fact, we could tighten his ties to the bishop by making him the bishop’s own personal prodigy. The bishop has hand-picked him form the streets as a boy, nurtured him through seminarium and given him his first position as a priest - a position much higher than a novice would be expected to fill. In return he has earned the priest’s fierce loyalty - a heroic quality in itself. But in this case, it is loyalty that makes the priest prejudiced in favour of the bishop - the murderer!

Now we have the seeds to create plenty of conflict and get plenty of dramatic tension into our scenes. All we need to do now is to knit the internal and external events of the plot together. In other words, we need to have the external events provoke the internal conflict in the priest in order to drive him to challenge his views and feelings for the bishop, the church and authority itself. We need to provoke Peripetia.

The Turnaround - Peripetia

Peripetia is Aristotle’s term for the turnaround. It occurs in a story when everything that seemed to be true turns out to be false; good turns out to be bad; right, wrong. The dramatic tension, the character’s internal struggle, peaks at the moment of peripetia. Everything he believed in turns out to be false; who he is and his place in the scheme of things is exposed as naive and false. Scary stuff.

What we want to achieve is a total turnaround. To make this effective, again we have to knit external and internal elements together. We have to experience the priest’s loyalty and respect for authority before we force him to betray everything he believes in. So, when the police are investigating, perhaps the priest is outraged at the questions that are being asked of his mentor. So what if his surplice was found at the scene of the crime? Our priest can become embroiled in the investigation because he rushes to the defense of the bishop. Then he begins to uncover a few pieces of ambiguous evidence. Things stop fitting the bishop’s story. Still he refuses to believe that his mentor could be guilty. But it’s already too late. He’s already on a road strewn with conflict and suffering. Bad for him, but great for the drama in our story.

In fact, it would be good for our story if he came close to proving the bishop’s innocence. He could quash his own doubts and help everyone else in the case do the same: the cleaner was in a hurry that day and admits she might have dropped the surplice on the floor, herself. The heated conversation between the bishop and the cardinal moments before his death, which was overheard by the teenager shooting up in the confessional, might well have been about football. The teenager was in no fit state to say. By the middle of the book the priest looks as though he has saved his bishop, the reader is thinking, ‘So it was just the junkie after all,’ when he learns something that turns everything on its head - the moment of peripetia.

Now, he can keep quiet and save his mentor, or he can speak up and save the junkie. But the bishop isn’t the man he seemed to be. And the priest’s faith in his own belief system has been challenged. The key dilemma: does he place his deep-felt loyalty above the truth?

It’s important to point out that it’s not the bishop who has changed. He can still be an essentially good man worthy of devotion and respect, who is in the grip of the powerful institution that has corrupted him. Or it may have been an accident, and the bishop’s only real crime is in trying to cover the whole thing up and implicate the junkie to save the good name of the church - two problems solved in one, as it were. And in the heat of the moment… well, you get the idea. The bishop is not evil. It is the priest who has to confront his own internal daemons, and this is where the drama of the story lies.

The choice the priest makes will cause fundamental changes in his identity. If he turns in the bishop, he has come to value truth over loyalty and justice over authority. Thus, the outcome of his choice will determine the answers to the central questions posed by both the internal and external plot questions.

At the end of the story, the events carry a much greater portent than the bringing to justice of another murderer. We witnessed the fundamental change in our protagonist. He can never go back to being the man he was before. We have managed to transform an admittedly complex sequence of events into a real story that resonates deeply on both an individual and universal level. It is by combining character and plot (the internal and external journeys) that we have arrived at the essential stucture of our story.

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