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This week: The Land of No Story Edited by: Jay's debut novel is out now!  
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This Short Stories Newsletter is dedicated to readers and writers of short fiction and to those who want to know more about the art of telling big stories in small spaces.
This month:
The Land of No Story
Sometimes, it turns out, you've set out to write something that doesn't end up being a full story. What can you do? |
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This past week, I've been rereading Wonderbook by Jeff VanderMeer-- it's a fantastic resource that I cannot recommend highly enough for writers of "imaginative" fiction. It's less of an instruction manual or a roadmap and more of a grand experiment in presenting information in unique and different ways, especially in regards to constructing believable characters and compelling plots. There's some dissection of different existing storytelling methods, as well as lots of suggestions. No one way is presented as "the One True Way," which is refreshing.
So, one of the things that I confronted while I was reading chapters on plot construction, is that I do have some really awkward tics as a writer: namely, that often I will write a situation or scene or story that I find interesting, but that may not actually have very much in the way of story behind it at all. This is, perhaps, something of a known habit-- I'm aware that it's part of my method of "finding" a story, and there's nothing inherently wrong with it, but it put me a little on the defensive, because for once I was actually confronting my own dalliances in the land of No-Story.
No-Story is an awkward place to be-- maybe you've got a great plot and characters who just can't bear the weight of it. Perhaps you've got incredible and talented characters who exist in a vacuum. It can be really tough to confront this habit, or even to admit you have it at all. (From experience!) And the only real prescription for this problem seems to be "Well, put some (plot/characters/setting/backstory) in there; whatever's missing!" -- and that's all well and good to suggest as advice, but I feel like perhaps it doesn't address the core problems that land one in No-Story.
I think, in my case, it's at least in part because I'm afraid to do things which seem too familiar to me, aside from things we all have absorbed via osmosis-- meta monomyth Hero's-Journey is sort of a thing I think most writers need, on some level; my other go-to story reagent is folklore and myth, because it's abundant, weird, and seemingly both infinite and constant. I feel like if I just reiterate on what I take in, I'm not processing it somehow, putting my own spin on it, whatever. And sometimes, I think I do have to go back to basics a little further and be less afraid of doing something that's already been done.
Another thing that I know I do is try to lace things together, even when they're tenuously connected at best. Part of my getting-back-into-good-writing-habits self-rehabilitation 5 or so years ago was finding ways to make things like writing prompts work to accomplish the types of stories I wanted to tell, even if I didn't end up using them for anything greater. So, I might spend a while trying to figure out how to make a contest for, say, a folklore story, into a folklore story specifically for the universe in my novels, and so on. This was an important thing for me to do, I think, at the time, because it really has pushed me to write more and diversify my output-- but at the same time, I'm seeing how this habit has also boxed me in, because I'm less likely to work on a story outside of one of my existing concepts that way.
I think the third component of my No-Story visits is having inadequately defined goals for my characters to struggle through. I think I often rely on characters being in weird situations and wanting to be out of them as a catalyst for action, which tends to leave characters less fulfilling and well-rounded than they ought to be, which can make them difficult to write well.
I think as writers, we do need to be aware of our foibles if we have any chance of working through them, and being able to admit our weak points is as validating as it is frustrating. I invite you to explore your own!
Do you ever find yourself in No-Story? What ways have you found to work around that?
Until next time,
Take care and Write on!
~jay
for more information about Wonderbook:
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An assortment of picks for this issue:
Results from the most recent running of "The Dialogue 500" !
Our first place entry was
Congrats, Patrece ~ !
Second and third places were
with honorable mentions to
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Feedback from last month's issue: "Room for Improvement"
brom21 writes:
I found your article very encouraging. I do try to write every day for at least ten minutes. The trick is that I get on roll and end up writing for a longer period. It never fails. I’ll try going over my old works and compare them to my current material- like they say: practice makes perfect. My goal is to get published like probably every other person. How much time did you spend for your novel?
The novel's been sort of an on-again off-again dalliance-- I embarked on a rewrite as part of this past year's NaNoWriMo, but it's been years in the works and I worry that I'm too fussy with it.  I try to write daily-- but I don't think anyone could stop at only ten minutes! No wonder you run over. I'd suggest giving yourself a thirty-minute window, at least. 
Quick-Quill  writes:
Thanks for pointing out my mistake of show not tell. I see the difference in your example. Is it just semantics? or simply POV? if so I get it now. If not I don't see the difference. To me they were the same only from a different POV. Is that the point?
Still learning.
I have gone through my old work and re-edit. Sometimes I get lucky and get a review on something I wrote. This gets me to read and edit to correct what the review noticed.
Well, tightening the perspective to be closer to the narrator usually does have the effect of being more immersion for the reader-- which would definitely help to demonstrate rather than describe the events. You don't necessarily NEED to tighten the perspective, it's just an easy shorthand way to get the reader closer to your narrator, giving them that and takes very little effort with more practice.
Patrece ~ writes:
I really like the part of your reply to Zeke, where you addressed the "show don't tell" as demonstrating not declaring. It may help clear the murky waters of understanding this concept by seeing it described this way.
I'm really glad that was helpful to you! It really helped me when I read the original remarks from Nick Mamatas and I found that it really made some differences in the way I try to explain problems when reviewing and critiquing, and I think it really does help to use more precise analysis of the problem.
Elfin Dragon-finally published writes:
As others have already said, you've nailed it. I've already gone back and noticed that much of my work needs re-editing because I've grown in my writing. Whether it be the fact I'm a better speller, or just that I understand the English word better and how it flows in story (or poetry) form. I think the more we write the more we understand.
I couldn't agree more-- "The more we write, the more we understand," is pretty much The Process, if it could be distilled down to anything so definite.
pinkbarbie writes:
The difference between my older stories and newer ones is that the older ones are more of showing while in the newer ones, I try to show. I am editing some of my stories and want to continue doing that. Thanks for this newsletter.
As always, you are most welcome! Thank you for writing in!
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Short Stories: February 05, 2014 Issue [#6146]
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