Story

Recently a friend gave me a copy of Robert McKee’s Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. I own a lot of books about writing. In fact I probably own nearly as many books about writing as I do books of writing. There’s something wrong there but I expect many writers can say the same thing. However, this book is so excellent that it’s tempting to say it is the only book an aspiring writer needs. I don’t actually think that is true – writers need constant inspiration and plenty of reassurance from other writers, too. But this is an excellent source of information for a writer at any level --- particularly fiction writers.

The basis of the entire book is that it is our job as writers to tell a story and to tell it well. The second part of that is where a lot of us fail. One of the observations that McKee makes is that many writers talk about being “blocked” --- they can’t write because they are blocked. What McKee says is that writers get blocked because they just don’t have anything to say at that point in time. I understand this all too well. I like to think that, as a writer, I always have something to say but I also know that is not true. I sit down with the intention of writing and nothing happens. Nothing happens because my mind is in other places, I am thinking about other things, there is other stuff I should be doing and that takes precedence over the holy act of writing (thank you, Harlan Ellison). The solution for that, of course, is fresh input, fresh perspectives, new experiences --- and I have to take responsibility for bringing those into my life.

Story is the legacy of humankind. Every day of our life we are surrounded by stories. Every song on the radio tells a little story, every article in a newspaper or magazine or on the news, television, movies, chatting with friends --- all these things bring stories into our lives and every single one of them gives us an opportunity to make a new story of our own.

A good story takes a piece of life and explores its essence, its underlying challenges and lessons, an examination of its values, and it presents it to the reader in such a way that it gives a believable and identifiable perspective that the reader can accept and experience in a way that gives a fresh perspective. There is no such thing as a new story. But each old story can be retold with fresh eyes and details and values that make it seem as alive and vibrant and relevant as it was the first time it was told. The standard story boy meets girl/boy loses girl/boy gets girl back has been told thousands of times and yet people never seem to tire of it. Because it is real and it is us and it is universal.

I have often said here and elsewhere that the virtue of the novel is because it tells the truth unencumbered by the facts. That’s true of every well-told story --- it tells the truth. The facts may shift and change and be refined and re-polished and reinvented to suit the story but the truth at the core remains true. Our mission, as storytellers, is to retell these stories well and truly with fresh perspective and no small amount of craft. Without craft you might as well go do something else because writing without craft is dead writing.

Possibly my favorite passage in the book (so far, I have a long way to go in it) says:

Life on its own, without art to shape it, leaves you in confusion and chaos, but aesthetic emotion harmonizes what you know with what you feel to give you a heightened awareness and a sureness of your place in reality. In short, a story well-told gives you the very thing you cannot get from life: meaningful emotional experience. In life, experiences become meaningful with reflection in time. In art, they are meaningful now, at the instant they happen.

That’s pretty inspiring stuff and charges all who would write with a great and noble purpose. Buy this book. Read this book. Learn your craft.

Thanks for reading.