GDLiZy
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Preliminary to a Good Story
Disclaimer: This essay expects the readers to engage with its content. They should contemplate every claim and reasoning. Disagree, contest, and refine your opinion on the matter.
How can an author craft a story whose narratives fall gracefully into their places? How can one create a complex storyline, populated with characters of intertwining fates? Must they wait for the ever-temperamental Lady Inspiration?
How do I write a good story?
Everyone should know great stories are written, edited, revised, and revised, and revised until their authors exhaust their potential. But editing and revision can only actualise existing potential. They cannot create ex nihilo said potential. How then can one write a story with great potential?
Inspiration and experience are the likely candidates. Unfortunately, the former is ever elusive while the latter requires the passage of time. Is it possible for an inexperienced author to write a captivating first draft?
Before I can answer the question, we must first define what our goal is.
Knowing Your Goal
We want to write a good story, but what is a good story?
A concrete answer to this question appears impossible. Some authors wish to examine the human condition. Others wish to construct expansive worlds of exotic cultures and technology. And even more wish to lose themselves in lovely romances. All authors have unique dreams, and what they constitute a good novel must differ.
Take a step back. Look at the bigger picture. Although the specifics of each dream are dissimilar, the general principles are not. Everyone wants to write a story understood by their audience, even if that audience is only themselves.
With that principle in mind, we can construct a few abstract criteria of quality. A good story must:
- Satisfy, exceed, or subvert the audience expectations. An audience of thriller fiction will hardly appreciate literary fiction, no matter how brilliantly written it is. A good story must account for the expectation that confines it under tangible boundaries but also supplies it with various ideas.
- Be consistent and logical. Note that logic is only the expectation of the genre and its audience. A good story must have a clear structure that sustains the narrative. This includes grammar, style, and ways in which authors break them.
- Evoke emotions. A good story must be experienced, not understood. It should permeate the audience with its moods, which persist through and beyond the ending.
Before the Journey Begins
Here I propose what seems to me the most essential part of writing a good story: Planning.
Planning is how we keep our story from meandering in the void of inane nonevents, of meaningless happenstances. One may feel averse to such a concept. To imprison a story and drain its authenticity?
A good story needs to engage with its genre and audience. A story out of bounds will not be appreciated by anyone, just as a story written in incomprehensible language will not be understood by anyone. To plan is to gently guide the story along a path, towards a destination. The guideline will keep the excess chaos at bay while allowing the narrative to tour the scenery without losing its way.
When an author, graced by Lady Inspiration, puts all their faith in her invisible hand, they might create an organic story, but without a clear vision it runs the great risk of becoming obscured by endless spectacles. A story without a unified goal is merely a series of fragments that fail to fit into a neat design, fail to give rise to a satisfying resolution.
But if the author, too fearful of disorder, turns the guideline into an all-encompassing decree, they might reach their destination uninterrupted, but they will find their story contrived and dispirited, hollowed without life and vibrancy. Such an artificial story lacks emotions and is incapable of moving its readers beyond their objectivity.
Too much chaos muddles the meaning while too little freedom constrains the spirit.
Where, then, is the tripping point from chaos to life, from life to death?
Zone of Animated Chaos
Each author has within them their tolerance of chaos and order, whose interplay will provide the platform on which the story will manifest. They might prefer order more than chaos. Thus they create a meticulous scheme for their narrative. Or they embrace the liveliness of their imagination, and they let their subconsciousness lead them along the lightly guided path.
The author, no matter their preference, must remember what their goal is and how to approach it. Whenever they find themselves stuck—when the story no longer progresses, when the characters no longer live—they should take a step back and assess their standing.
Is the story strolling across nowhere, or is it rushing blindly without appreciating its environment? Are the characters lost in the sea of banality, or are they strung around by the invisible playmaker?
I don’t have the formula for the elusive boundary between meaning and randomness. Everyone must find where they are most comfortable. I encourage authors to experiment, experience, and evaluate every so often their writing.
Learn from your mistakes, find newer ways to alleviate them.
Foundation of the Story
It would be too uneconomical to start planning without knowing anything. One can infer what constitutes a good foundation for the story from their goals.
Here is what I believe is essential:
- Motivation and goal: The essence of a story lies in the purpose behind its creation. Before one plans the tangible aspects of their story, they should make clear what they want to accomplish. It could be audience appreciation, catharsis, introspection, linguistic experiment, self-satisfaction, or wonderment. Different goals will come with different sets of expectations. Let them lead you to where you want.
- Genre and audience expectation: With a goal in mind, one now knows the story one wants to tell. However, a story is only understood and appreciated within the context of its surroundings. The author should get acquainted with the peculiarities of the genre they find themselves in. Only when they know their audience can they deliver stories that will move the readers.
- Tangible Narrative: Certain of audience expectations, the author can now control and weave them. The point of the story should materialise. It could be a motif, a climax, a journey, a development, or a theme. Lady Inspiration usually gives the author this aspect of the foundation. The rest must be filled in by the author themselves.
- Story guideline: Here is the story itself. A vague silhouette of it. How much detail the guideline needs depends on its author. It could be snippets of all major events, paragraphs detailing the beginning to the end, or a chronological map of all scenes. The guideline will inform the boundaries and purposes of the writing process, from the narrative to the textual.
Let the list help you along the way. Do not let it imprison you. Your goal is the story, not the completion of the list.
Fear and Planning
Some authors have a pathological need to plan everything, from the general form of the narrative to every minute detail of the scenes to all allusions and symbols. They tirelessly work on their plan, fixing, arranging, connecting, preparing more and more for the eventual beginning. But they never start. The plausibility of inadequacy looms over them.
This danger disguises itself as an excuse, perpetuating the dream of a perfect plan birthing perfect creation. As the design becomes more elaborate, the author agonises over their mountainous responsibility. What if they fail to live up to their grand vision?
Perfection is unattainable. We can only chase but never catch it. A meaningful foundation will facilitate potential, but the story never manifests its full majesty at the first stroke of the pen. Through subsequent revision, editing, and embellishment can the author bring out the best their story has to offer.
The plan serves the story as a piece of advice, not an escape from reality. Be aware of your reason for refusing to write. Is it because the plan isn’t yet mature, or is it because you fear the possibility of failure?
Are you to write a story, or are you to plan it?
No True Pantser
Some authors instinctively resist concrete boundaries. They plunge into their idea with fiery passion and explore the world with carefree nature. The thought of shackling their mind endlessly troubles them, and they refuse to kill the authenticity of their story.
Is this guide ineffective for them? Should they go against their tendency, in the hope that their story might be better for it?
If planning truly appals them, if the implication of imprisonment paralyses them, they shouldn’t force ahead. What works with others might not work with them. Only the author themselves may judge where the zone of balance lies.
However, they should contemplate the reason behind their rejection.
Is their apprehension in service of their story, or is it in service of their diffidence? Do you put off planning because you don’t want to write frivolous words readers will never see? Do you believe your effort wasted if you don’t follow the guideline?
A plan is made for the benefit of the story. If the author finds a better path, that plan has already fulfilled its duty. There is no lost effort, only effort expended to explore the possibilities. Knowing the wrong paths will allow you to find quicker the right ones. Examining the different roads will shed light on why you pick your choice.
Don’t fret. The story might not come out as the best it can be. Yet the first draft isn’t useless. It is instead the basis of the best version it could be.
Always remember why you write in the first place.
