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 May 2007 - What Makes a Story?

I'm currently in Spain. The weather has been exceptional, almost summer like. The evenings are warm and I often go to a coffee-bar in the port, sit at one of the outside tables, order a glass of Spanish red and  watch the sunset. Small groups of people stroll by, families, an old couple holding hands. Children kick balls and chase after each other. I linger over the wine and the evening darkens. The lights around the port reflect in the water like thousands of flickering fingers.

The hoards of summer tourists have not yet arrived. After a couple of weeks here I'm now into that zone where I've lost track of the day. Is it Monday, Tuesday? Who cares? These are ideal conditions for a writer, at least for this writer. Now I'm deep into a new story. The storyline has been sketched and thirty-five pages have been drafted.

I must admit that every time I do this I learn something new, about plotting, dialogue or description, or how to advance the storyline. There are a multitude of helpful books about writing. Many of them challenge me and they continually learn new tricks. A couple that have been helpful are 'How to Tell a Story' by Peter Rubie and Gary Provost, and 'Scene and Structure' by Jack Bickham. In fact, if there is one book I'd recommend to every fiction writer it is 'Scene and Structure'. I find so many of Bickham's principles reflected in great fiction writers and I refer to that book every time I begin a new novel.

In the current story I'm working on I've pulled a few ideas from some books on screenwriting. Syd Fields teaches excellent principles for screenwriters. 'A Writer's Roadmap' by Wendell Wellman has principles that are relevant for novels and screenplays. The thing is, there are some generic structures found in  film scripts that many fiction writers may not be considering. These include the inclusion of plot points and breaking your story into different acts.

All of this may sound academic and formalistic. It is but it isn't. Books on fiction writing only provide fundamentals on which to build a fantastic story. It is both knowing the fundamentals and applying them that counts. Think in terms of a professional athlete, for instance a basketball player. The best ones seem to flow so effortlessly, shooting, rebounding, and defending with liberated spontaneity. One forgets that all of this was learned by practicing the fundamentals for hours and hours. Good fiction writers are like the best athletes. They creatively apply all the basic techniques, but you never notice it.

Today I was sitting on the balcony looking out at the blue Mediterranean and found myself not thinking about techniques so much, but rather the more basic writer question of what makes a story? I think about that question a lot, not only when I'm in the process of writing a book.

Fundamentally, a story is as follows: It is a cause and effect drama where something happens to a character that drives him or her forward on a significant quest, where the tension constantly increases, where the character faces challenges and an enemy, where the character in some way overcomes and then makes an important realization about his or her life.

And that's what fiction writers attempt to do, to develop a compelling and unique story by using the fundamentals in a creative way.

April 2007 - The Writer's Zone

There are a lot of books out there that talk about how to become a writer, many dealing with various aspects of fiction. They talk about such themes as story line, description, dialogue, character development, etc. There is one thing that very few of them do and that is to talk about the writer's zone. The fact is, you can learn about all the techniques of writing, but most of the successful fiction writers that I know or have read about actually go into a special place of thought when they write. For lack of a better word let's call that "the zone".

What I am trying to say here is that once you learn all those mechanical tools they are used to write a story, but the story is actually created in a deep place of imagination. Perhaps a Psychologist could better describe it, but for me it is almost like going to this point that is somewhere between the conscious and subconscious. It is the place you go to when you are daydreaming. The only difference is, the fiction writer goes to that point and then allows a story to evolve while at the same time almost effortlessly letting all the mechanical techniques kick in especially in terms of letting the cause and effect story line unfold. It is not a process of random daydreaming, but the process of going from one interconnected scene to the next as the protagonist faces conflict after conflict in trying to achieve his or her quest.

Some fiction writers say that when they are in that zone it is almost like the characters are telling the story. It is a deep internal reflective place in the mind where the words flow from this imaginary setting out onto paper or onto a computer screen. It is going to a place of meditation in your mind, but not a place of mindless meditation. There is a plot that is taking place and the plot has to drive forward to an eventual conclusion. It is not a place of randomness, although it can be a place where the mind is openly creative.

The problem is, most schools of fiction writing and most of the books dealing with writing do not deal with this topic, nor do they teach how to do it. Once the story is on paper, then the writer goes back and edits the story. Editing is a much more of a conscious process in which all those class room techniques are applied, where the story may be reengineered and then the needed final touches are added to the story. Being in the writer's zone is something very different than editing.

For most fiction writers, it is when we are in this zone that we feel the most fulfilled. It is in that place where we express who we are.

In two weeks I'm going to Spain for two months with a team of editors. We are going to work on a number of my novels. I suspect that I won't have much time to get into the writer's zone. It's frustrating, but the editing has to be done. But I hoping that I can have some moments, even some days to get into that deep place of creativity to let one of my internal stories come alive. There are several new stories that are kicking around in my brain these days.

March 2007 - Dry Writing Time and Going to the Canal du Midi

I am in a dry writing time. The last few months have burned me out, sixteen hour days, working to get manuscripts off to my publisher, planning a trip to the U.S., getting input on the websites, speaking engagements; all of the things a writer doesn’t want to do. A writer wants to write.

As a result my mind is day. I find myself searching for words, for a story, wondering where it is. So I hop in the car and drive south, wanting to go somewhere I’ve never been before and end up in the land of the Cathars, a group considered heretical by the Catholic Church.

I drive to Carcasson and head to the central marketplace knowing that Balzac and Stendhal used to gather here to discuss ideas. It is a cool morning and people huddle in little groups. I find an empty table in a café and order a café-au-lait and a croissant. It comes and I am able to relax. Soft rock is being played on speakers in the cafe, French singers. It somehow all fits. 

The weatherman said it would be sunny today, but a gray mist fills the marketplace, spotting the ink as I write these words. In the middle of the marketplace is a fountain with a Poseidon statue surrounded by four mermaids. It almost feels like the mist is coming from them, but it is not so.

In front of me is an outside market, one long row of stands, sellers of vegetables, flowers, honey, local produce from the Carcasson area.

In the marketplace a man randomly circulates signing some kind of an improvised song, or at least he is singing a known song so badly that it indeed sounds improvised. The words don’t seem to make sense. The amazing thing is that everyone totally ignores him. I’m guessing he is in his mid forties. He is bald and his head is wet from the fine rain. He circulates back and forth. I wonder if they consider him the village idiot, or is one of those unique individuals making some kind of philosophical statement?

I walk up to the Carcasson castle, quite an impressive place. It’s the weekend and tourists flock into the castle, but what catches my eye is a nun dressed in a white habit with a black scarf on her head. She is with six younger women dressed in long skirts and dark shoes. At the entrance of the castle they stop and gather in a semi-circle around the nun and wait for her command.

I drive on and stop in Beziers and meet a historian who runs a bookshop and tourist information office. This is a part-time job and the rest of the time she teaches at a local school. She tells me that Beziers and many of the other towns in this region were “open”, a mix of religions and ideas. She said that at a certain point in history the Pope gave orders to kill everyone here because of the non-adherence to the catholic church by some of the people. The king who was to carry out the order responded that if they killed everyone, then some Catholics would also be killed. The Pope responded, “Kill them all. The lord will know his own.” Once the Cathars were eliminated, then all the choice lands were taken by the church, and mismanaged and fell into ruin.

This story strikes me in how long people remember. The action of one Pope hundreds of years ago is still remembered by the people today and they continue to hold it against him.

I walk along side the Canal du Midi and must say that I am extremely impressed. It was built by Pierre-Paul Riquet, Baron of Bonrepos who was born in Beziers in 1604. In 1660, when Riquet was fifty-six years old Colbert the chief administrator for the king of France gave Riquet permission to build the canal. In 1667 the work began when Riquet was sixty-three years old. Back then sixty-three was like something ninety years old today because of the shorter life spans. That impresses me. This old entrepreneur embarks on a project to build a 240-kilometer canal from Toulouse to Sete so that goods could be moved inland across France. To do this work he employed 12,000 workers both men and women. He planted 45,000 trees and constructed 328 locks and bridges. He did it all with his own money and his own risk. In doing so he left a heritage for his family and his nation. It is a site that is still enjoyed today and considered one of the treasures of France. Impressive. You have to admire the guy.

This is a lovely countryside, a place for a writer to contemplate, to come alive.

The internal dryness is going away. Now I think I can work on a story that has been floating around in my mind for a very long time.

February 2007 - No Snow

Not much snow in the Alps.

January 2007 - Change

Change will happen and yet we resist change, two counter forces tugging at our lives. They are both realities. How do we deal with this?

First, the changes. 2007 will see changes at many levels. At a macro level we can see that governments are in the process of change. Both France and the U.K. will lose their current heads of state. In the U.S. the jostling will begin as politicians will start the process of electing a new president in a year's time. The economy is changing, with Asia emerging and the U.S. facing a "soft landing" after a number of years of healthy growth. And, at a at a micro level, the one that probably means the most to us, is that we will face changes. For sure. Often we can't predict them. Relationships, finances, health, and many other parts of our lives are subject to change in the coming year.

Second, the resistance to change. For some reason we like the status quo. Many times changes are good for us. They can bring positive things to us as individuals and to the world around us. We can endorse the positive changes and at the same time do everything possible to keep them from happening. New Years Resolutions are a good example. Typically our resolutions are made to bring something new to our lives, to redeem or transform something. Yet, why don't they happen? It's because we love to keep the status quo, even when we know it's not the best.

These tugging forces form the base of stories. That's what story tellers deal with: the narrative of people who are living in their routines and then something happens and then they face change. Readers are interested in characters in stories and primarily they want to see how the character faces the change. "Once upon a time something happened," and from there the interest is to see how the main character deals with it. Along with this we like to see how the character develops, and at the end of the story to see what the character has learned. In fact, without a change, and without a character that faces the change we would have no story.

That brings me to a question: What is your story for the coming year? What are the changes you will face and how is this going to impact you and change you? If you just live the status quo you have not story, or at least a story that doesn't generate much interest. May you rise to the changes you will face, may you cause the changes, may you learn from them, and may the world be a better place for you and the people around you.

December 2006 - We see the world in different ways.

From my chalet in the Swiss Alps, I look out and see majestic snow-covered mountains, green forests, and small villages with old wooden farms that have been there for hundreds of years. In the valley below, the Rhone river winds its way toward the Lake Leman, past Lausanne and Geneva, where it eventually reaches the Mediterranean in the south of France.

Traditions and cultures have emerged along this river, and I reflect of how the inhabitants here see the world differently. Up river are small villages where people focus on making cheese, and the annual cycle of tending to vineyards and harvesting crops. Mostly they are Catholic, holding strong to enduring beliefs and traditions. Down river, Lausanne and Geneva both have a Protestant history; but their citizens are markedly different. In Lausanne one might say the people are more ‘Swiss’, whereas in Geneva strong Calvinistic roots mix with a diversity of cultures and nationalities. As a result, each culture perceives the world in a unique way. The Rhone passes through Geneva and moves into France, and the differences begin anew.

We all have a worldview, a paradigm: a theory of how the world should be. We live in cultures formed by complex networks of social systems and institutions. They hand us our beliefs, and we accept those beliefs, often without questioning their origins and validity. Yet, our beliefs have a large part in forming our destiny. They establish boundaries for our lives, and we make our choices within the context of those boundaries. In fact, we could say that our destiny is determined when we consciously or unconsciously chose to live by a worldview.

But what happens when our worldview does not have an adequate answer to the reality we experience? One of the most common and insidious reactions is to deny reality and stubbornly cling to flawed belief systems, which may lead us to self-destruction. Therefore we must ask, is there a better way of seeing the world? It seems to me that the most superior worldview is one that best explains reality; one providing us with the wisest discernment of the world around us. And even more interesting, what happens when we step out of the box and take a different path than that dictated by our culture?