Thanks to my friend CK, I grabbed a craft book recently, something I had not done in years. Back in my earlier days as a fledgling writer, I read dozens of those, and some of them have really helped me understand the essentials like structure, how to add suspense and tension, how to find your voice, how to add emotions to your story and much much more. And it's only when you start to read craft books that the myth of having talent or not dissipates. Because becoming a good storyteller is NOT about good prose—good prose is only one of many aspects. And because we've been exposed to story from an early age, we can easily fall into the trap of thinking we're all story experts and that some are simply better at it than others. While somewhat true, I believe, and have experienced it firsthand, that it is totally a learnable skill.
That being said, it is in fact true that:
We are all story experts.
Wait didn’t I just say the exact opposite? Let me clarify. We are experts, but only from an audience/critique point of view. Many people know if a show is good and if a scene works or not. Most of them though, if they were to sit down and write, would come up with disastrous results.
Why is that?
Well, it's one thing to have great taste, and quite another to craft a good plot, create credible characters, write genuine-sounding dialogue, etc. And why should that surprise us? You can have the best wine expert in the world who, if asked to grow his own vines and make a bottle from scratch, would end up spitting out his own product.
So okay, storytelling is a craft and craft books can actually help you… craft a story. Let's get back to the one I'm reading right now: Story Genius by Lisa Cron.
The author takes an interesting angle. Most of what she says wasn't entirely news to me (that's the main reason I stopped reading craft books: they end up saying pretty much the same thing after you’ve read a bunch) but the way she delivers it had an illuminating effect on my comprehension of The Craft. Her whole argument is built around the importance of having a well-developed character arc. Already, many connaisseurs could argue that there are different types of stories and some books or movies with little or no character arc are still masterpieces. I kinda agree, but in most situations, it’s true that if you want to maximize the impact on the reader/viewer, your protagonist needs to undergo some kind of change. Or if they choose to remain the same, we have to understand why they didn't grow.
Her suggestion is to start by hashing out the protagonist’s Misbelief (similar to what others have called the Fatal Flaw, but calling it a misbelief instead have really helped clarify a lot of things for me), and putting it in direct opposition with their desire, which creates internal conflict, which will drive the plot for the whole story.
For example, if a character's desire is to Find True Connection but that their Misbelief is that the Cost of Love is too Damn High (mainly because the person you love will eventually leave you either by dying or by being an asshole, and the grief will destroy you) then you have a powerful engine for your story.
However, Lisa argues it's not enough to have that. She encourages writers to spend a lot of time creating what she calls “the First Half” of the story, which entirely happens before page 1. You have to know a lot of things to give the Desire and Misbelief meaning:
- How did your MC acquire this misbelief?
- What belief did they hold before that?
- How has their misbelief hindered them in the past?
- What specific events happened to deepen their misbelief?
- What desire did they have before the plot begins? (this one was huge for me because it was the first time I encountered it. And it makes sense: in other words, what was it that your MC wanted and believed would make them happy BEFORE the unavoidable story problem appeared through the hook or inciting incident?
- Ask yourself WHY. At every step, she urges us to dig deeper and fall into rabit holes of WHYs. Why that desire? Why that misbelief? Why that decision? Because motivation enriches a story big time and without it, it becomes a suite of random actions that follow each other with little to no meaning.
All in all, it sounds like a lot of work before you even start to write or even outline your plot. But I have the strong intuition that doing the groundwork she suggests will in fact make the rest a lot easier. When you know your backstory in such minute details and have clarity about your main character’s arc, scenes just pop up in your mind for free. It gives you the scaffolding on which to build your skyscraper.
To be honest, I haven't properly tried her method yet from A to Z, but already some of her tools have helped me fix two short stories in record time. Funny how sometimes, taking a few steps back and going back to basic principles can launch you to greater heights. It would have been easy for me to say: “Yo, I've been doing this for over a decade so I fucking know what a character arc is.” But coming at it from a beginner's mind, staying humble, have given me a precious new suite of tools for which I am extremely grateful.