It is one thing to search for a story and quite another to search for the best possible story. Knowing the difference is the stuff writing careers are made of.
Ask anyone who writes fiction how many issues an author needs to think about, how much stuff there is to know and execute, and you may get an answer that amounts to dozens, even hundreds, of elements. That’s pretty accurate, actually. Few who have tried it are tempted to oversimplify.
Rather than simplify, let’s organize. Let’s put what we need to know into two big honkin’ boxes. One box is full of dynamite, the other full of tools.
Like anyone designing and building an engine (and our stories are nothing if not dramatic engines) we need to know what powers and fuels our stories.
These are the Six Realms of Story Physics:
These realms will make your story explode from the pages. Or reach up to seduce. Or whisper, right before it screams.
Or not. The lack of these, or the mishandling of them, is like pouring gasoline on a book of matches. No spark, no fire.
Execution counts, the concept empowers … but these are the things readers will notice.
Use these elements to fuel your story beats, with the goal of making them sizzle, and your story will be better for it. They will be present on their own, but it’s better when we notice and manage the fuel at hand.
Now let’s look at the tools that run on story physics. Think of them as power tools. They are the means by which story physics actually make it into your story. Each tool is linked to the essence of the story physics it uses.
All of these demand your immediate attention as soon as you have an idea. Because your story won’t work until you’ve covered each base.
Graphic by Bryan Wiggins, wigginscreative.com
You still have to know dozens, even hundreds of things to write a story well. But now they’re in twelve buckets: Six realms of story physics … and Six Core Competencies that define the tools of application. At a glance they tend to overlap, and to the glancing observer they may sound like the same things, but to a professional, they’re as different as muscle strength and a barbell.
That being said, each of them is a matter of degree and nuance. As writers, we wear an entire rack of hats: designer, dreamer, engineer, planner, assembler, quality controller, riveter, tester, taster, caterer, and deliverer, not to mention marketer, promoter, and bookkeeper. These are multiple core competencies that we must, without exception, master at a professional level. What separates the laborer and the artist is, in fact, a command of nuance and the sense of how to best use the forces at hand.
And that’s how you write the best possible story. Not by numbers, not by somebody’s paradigm or series of steps, but by honoring the physics and principles that underpin them, and then wielding them like Michelangelo rocked a paintbrush. Admit it, his work was nothing but physics and tools … color and strokes, rendering an idea he had in his head. It was the integration of it, the heart behind it, and the patience to lie on his back for years on a platform held together by leather thongs … that’s how you write the best possible story.
I can’t deliver the genius. But I can show you the physics and the tools.
So how do we manage these issues of degree and nuance? While structure tells us when and what, is there a way to determine how much? The answer arrives in the form of one’s personal tastes and judgment regarding the physics of it all. Just how hot is hot … how tense is tense … and how smooth is smooth? We get to decide.
When we make that decision for each story element, each selection of raw materials and tools of execution, we are better equipped to optimize the mix. This is how we create something magical … without the slightest bit of magic involved. We don’t settle for good. We assimilate what we’ve learned and what we know to chase down better, in the pursuit of best.
DEFINED: The Big Evolved Idea of your story. The basic “what if?” proposition. The dramatic landscape, the window into plot, the source of conflict, the compelling question, the enticing situation, the promise of the story, the stage upon which the character finds something to do.
GOOD: The reader is inherently drawn to the proposition and is attracted to the answer of the dramatic question posed.
BETTER: The reader can inherently experience the hero’s journey in pursuit of that answer. He can live the hero’s journey vicariously. The story promises an exciting, rewarding ride.
BEST: The reader not only experiences the hero’s journey, but also empathetically feels what’s at stake. He relates to the consequences of the resolution of the story.
EXAMPLE: The Hunger Games. The concept alone is a home run. It compels, it promises a ride, and it asks us to feel for and root for the hero, beginning at the conceptual level. The entire notion of kids killing kids for the entertainment and vengeance of a self-declared superior culture is appalling, and as such, captivating. Novels like Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom rely more on character than concept. Yes, it has one, but it offers nothing particularly compelling at the conceptual level—normal people with normal jobs seeking normal relationships—other than the promise that Franzen can write the heck out of a paragraph. The concept is real life rendered eloquent, with insight.
LESSON: The deeper you are within any given genre, the more critical concept becomes. Concept is the stage upon which character is allowed to unfold. And the story physics of dramatic tension and vicarious ride are the forces that will make it work.
You are searching for a concept that delivers the level of power, via story physics, that will allow your story to succeed. Too many writers settle here, failing to get beyond their own fascination with an idea to assess how the market might be drawn to it. A novel about your cousin picking berries one summer is a tough sell. It’s not inherently compelling. Franzen could perhaps pull it off, but the rest of us are better served by searching for a concept that demands attention.
DEFINED: The protagonist of the story, presented with layers of backstory, inner psychology, outer dimensions, and a journey that will allow him or her to become heroic as he or she evolves over the course of the story to become the primary catalyst of the story’s resolution (which is what heroes do).
GOOD: An interesting protagonist we can root for.
BETTER: A layered protagonist we can relate to as we root for her or him.
BEST: A protagonist who feels what we feel, fears what we fear, and steps into the hero’s role as we would hope we would. In other words, a vicarious juxtaposition between hero and reader on an emotional level. A hero who gets it done.
EXAMPLE: Holden Caufield in The Catcher in the Rye. He’s us, at our most basic level of humanity. And yet, he’s better than us, because he can describe moments and contexts and dynamics in a way that we can’t, but in a way that we immediately relate to.
THE LESSON: The character will work best when we give her or him something interesting to do (dramatic tension and hero empathy) and something to be, rather than simply writing about a character in a static slice-of-life manner.
DEFINED: The relevance and transparency of the human experience through the dynamics of the story, both in terms of character and conflict. What it all means. An issue that informs and becomes catalytic within the story. What the story asks readers to think about, get angry about, question, or feel.
GOOD: A story that shows life as it really is, for better or worse. One that allows us to recognize the dynamics of being alive in whatever time the story takes place within, while illuminating universal truths germane to the time and setting. A story about being poor, for example. We can all relate to that, even if we’re not.
BETTER: A story that shows the virtues of heroism as they play out on a thematically rich and realistic stage. In showing heroism, it also reflects on the darkness which must be conquered or overcome.
BEST: A story that pushes buttons and doesn’t flinch, one that demands the reader see both sides and all the options that attach to the hero’s choices, and teaches us truth and reality in the process. A story from which issues arise that are explored and put to the test through the challenges presented to the characters and the consequences of the decisions and actions.
EXAMPLE: John Irving’s The Cider House Rules, which explores both sides of a polarizing issue through the points of view of the characters on both sides of the question, and on a level that defies politics and religion and doesn’t flinch from consequences. A story that at once forces readers to decide and reflect.
And, of course, there’s Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, which is a clinic on theme. The book sells us nothing but allows the reading experience relative to the characters and their journeys to prompt our own personal response.
DEFINED: The expositional unfolding of the story in a sequence that deepens stakes and presents twists while delivering the reading experience. This paradigm presents target placement (in terms of linear percentage of story) for specific story points, each separating the four parts of story, each of which has its own contextual missions. This mission-driven structural approach differentiates the narrative goals among those four parts of the story, as well as the contextual purpose of the scenes within them.
GOOD: A solid four-part sequential presentation of the story: setup, response (to the First Plot Point), a proactive attack on the problem, and resolution.
BETTER: A sequence that allows the reader to get lost in the story in a vicarious way, which deepens the effectiveness and compelling nature of the four parts that comprise it as well as the nature of the dramatic tension within each.
BEST: A story that surprises, intrigues, captures, and then rewards the reader on both an emotional and intellectual level. The reader simply cannot put it down because the story is unveiled, beat by beat, in a way that entices, teases, and ultimately rewards.
EXAMPLE: Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. Love it or hate it, the story blends all Six Core Competencies into a compelling story that readers—some eighty million of them—literally could not put down. Its structure, which is in complete compliance with the optimal four-part paradigm, is its strength.
The Hunger Games is another clinic in story structure, completely in alignment with the paradigm. It is no coincidence that these novels are two of the most successful franchises in book-selling history precisely because of the way their structures optimize story physics. To be clear, it isn’t just the strength of the concepts that reside at the core of these two books and success stories like them … it’s the pacing and deft touch with which they unfold before the reader’s eyes.
DEFINED: Blocks of narrative exposition that move the story forward in an optimal way, with equal weight given to characterization and dramatic tension. Each scene should have a specific narrative mission, developed in context to its place in the story sequence and the context of the narrative arc.
GOOD: Scenes that are logical in order, that blend into subsequent scenes to create a smooth, sequential story spine.
BETTER: Scenes that play like one-act dramas, each with a setup, confrontation, and resolution, yet yield seamlessly into the next. Scenes that deliver one primary, salient point of plot exposition while contributing to characterization, building layer upon dependent layer of exposition and sequential narrative.
BEST: Scenes that cut quickly to the point (mission) of the scene, that present, frame, and resolve a story beat while setting up a subsequent deepening of stakes, urgency, options, and character arc, including nuances and subtleties such as foreshadowing and subtext. Part One scenes, however, have more latitude for a leisurely setup, particularly in scenes that first introduce main characters and the dramatic premise.
EXAMPLE: Anything by Michael Connelly, Nelson Demille, or Jodi Picoult, or pretty much anything that spends a day on a bestseller list.
DEFINED: The flavor, style, and flow of the writing itself (prose), from the reader’s point of view.
GOOD: Sentences that are clear and direct and that use adjectives and description sparsely yet effectively. Clean writing, void of distractions and overeffort. Prose that is not conscious of itself for the sole purpose of stylistic effect. Words, sentences, and paragraphs that readers don’t really notice, one way or the other, as they get lost in the story. Writing that is professional, yet taken for granted precisely for that reason.
BETTER: Prose that illuminates the subtext of the moment and of the characters involved. First-person prose is often better suited to inner characterization than third person in this regard.
BEST: Prose that goes down easy yet often rewards, with a hint of humor and spice, with nuance and subtlety where required, and with the power of a blunt instrument when called for. Prose with personality that works in a less-is-more sense, without showing too much effort. This can result in a style that, like a singer’s voice, is easily recognized as that of the author, in a defining, branded way, and thus contributes toward the experience of the read.
EXAMPLE: John Updike was the modern master of voice. Read Colin Harrison, too, who sets the bar higher than anyone still breathing. Dennis Lehane, who writes mostly mysteries, has a voice worthy of a grad-school lit class. The list is long and distinguished, yet, unlike guys like Hemingway and Faulkner and Hammett, defies emulation.
Be in command of every moment of your story.
How do you do that? By beginning with the mission and subtext of every scene you write. By knowing what the story needs in any given moment and searching for it, and then optimizing it with the best feasible creative choice you can conjure, after creatively vetting options that arise.
In other words, instead of relying on the rewriting process, on the assumption that you’ll need to pound your story into shape as you write it, you can create your story in context to a fundamental knowledge of the forces that make a scene and ultimately a story work, both in terms of physics and the structural paradigm that optimizes it. This leads to clarity on the difference between good, better, and best, and allows you to land on best more often than not.
When we don’t settle for good or even better—when we shoot for, recognize, and build our stories around creative choices that optimize story physics—we are then using the search process qualitatively, rather than the quantitative approach of simply filling in pages of a raw first draft.
You come to a place in your story where you need to write a scene in which your hero notices the woman that will, later in the story, seduce him and then frame him for murder. That becomes the mission of the scene. And, with a mission in mind, you have infinite choices on how to get there.
GOOD: Our guy arrives at his car in a parking lot, sees the woman, and notices that she’s smiling at him in a way that shows she wants to make a connection. He notices her license plate number and calls in a favor to get her name and address.
BETTER: The smile is laced with promise and mystery, and as he gets in his car he notices she’s left a note on his windshield, which reveals she already knows his name and promises that he’ll hear from her soon.
BEST: She stages an accident in that parking lot, backing into him in a way that seems random but later, upon reflection, was clearly a strategy to stage an introduction, one he won’t soon forget.
Sequential, concept-driven, structure-governed, and organic story building can work without an endgame in mind (you’re still searching for your story), provided you have the time, willpower, and continuing love for the story to see it through. You’ll have to go back to square one and revise it in context to the discovered ending, once it comes to you. However, when a story is composed of optimized elements of story physics from the idea stage and onward through conceptualization, the big picture arc, the creation of a beat sheet, and then a first draft … that process will get you much closer to the highest vision of your story every time.
Every bit as critical as the writing of a draft itself. Because that search is inevitable and inescapable, even if you are only writing a draft to get it done, versus planning an outline beforehand. Both are simply different ways to search for a story.
With story physics as your litmus test, your choices will be better informed and already in context to the whole.