Usually, when you let it slip that you’re a writer, the response is, “Cool … what do you write?” as if you’d just said the most fascinating and unexpected thing possible. Everybody’s a closeted writer, it seems, but hardly anyone admits to it. And when you announce you write “novels” or “screenplays,” one of two things is likely to happen.
Most often you’ll get a polite nod, perhaps a flash of confusion, and then a conflicted expression that says, Okay then, we’re done with that … enough about you.
Once in a rare while you’ll score the dreaded conversational follow-up, which for most of us is worse: “Have you published anything?” Now there’s a dance and a half for you. The answer is no more comfortable if you can say, “Yes,” than it is when you humbly say, “Not yet.” Trust me on this.
It’s possible, though, that you may encounter someone who, out of genuine curiosity, asks you to tell them your story, asks you what it’s about. Good luck with that. You have about a thirty-second window—equivalent to a short elevator pitch, literally—before their eyes glaze over and you find yourself speaking to a blank, albeit polite, stare.
You lost them at, “Well, it’s about …”
And if your answer is, “Well, it’s kind of complicated…” then it’s you who is lost.
If this cocktail or tailgate banter is with an agent or an editor, then buck up, this is your shot. But chances are it’s from a James Patterson fan, or more likely from someone who’s just being polite. Nonetheless, this is your moment in the spotlight, so make it count. In this nonprofessional setting, your answer could be just about anything, focusing on any one of the four elements of the Six Core Competencies (that’s all you’ll have time for … trust me on that, too).
It’s about a guy who … (your hero/protagonist).
It’s about what would happen if … (your concept).
At it’s heart it’s a story about … (insert your passion or agenda here, because that’s your theme).
It’s the story of growing up with an alcoholic mother who ends up in prison … (a brief structural overview, possibly inspired by something that actually happened).
You can make any one of these into a compelling elevator pitch. If your listener is in the business, your best response will contain a strategic blending of all of these … which becomes, in fact, a statement of your story’s premise.
Eventually, by the time you have a draft that is worthy of pitching, you absolutely will need to be able to tell the story (in an elevator or elsewhere) in a condensed version, via a premise.
But what if you haven’t finished it yet? What if you’re pitching your story at a workshop, one with important people in the audience? Which story will you tell? Which core competency (concept, character, theme, and structure) will you open with, and which will you add next?
You need to know what your story is about from all four contexts as early in the development and execution phases as possible. Knowing this, in fact, is the finish line of your search for story, and jacked-up story physics are the jet fuel you use to make sure it all flies.
All of those approaches shown above (for the elevator placeholder answer) are stories. They are microstories, existing within the larger context of your macrostory. They are stories that concurrently unfold in combination with the other elements, with edges and transitions known only to you, the author.
Here’s a scary little truth about pitching your story: You never know which of the elements a reader/listener might react to first, or strongest. Many agents listen for character. Some hope to hear an original concept. Some are watching your eyes, trying to sniff out a whiff of fear. All of them, though, are listening for something commercial, something they can hit out of the ballpark for you.
Okay, let’s be real here … hit out of the ballpark for them.
This has always been true, but what may be new to you is an appreciation for the mind-set of visualizing our stories as a melting pot for several conjoined story lines at once, each of them contributing to the other.
You’ll discover that there are many stories being told, if not at once, then in an interdependent and intertwined way.
A foreground story.
A background story.
A character-driven story.
A plot-driven story, one that depends on dramatic tension.
A subplot story.
A subtextual story.
An arena story.
An emerging story.
A departing story.
A backstory.
A thematic story.
A surprising story.
A touching story.
A gripping story.
A story of empathy.
A story of emotion and meaning.
A story of something that really happened.
An insider’s story.
An ironic story.
A poignant story.
My intention is not that this list be merely viewed as story descriptions or adjectives. What I’m saying here is that these microstories, like different people occupying the same room, all exist and unfold as discreet story lines within the pages of your manuscript.
Need an example? In The Da Vinci Code, the foreground story is Langdon’s journey as an interpreter of symbols and clues in pursuit of a killer. His journey, juxtaposed against his own belief systems, becomes a character-driven story as well.
The background story, which emerges gradually, is the underlying cause of this skulduggery, in the form of an ancient sect of Catholic monks hell-bent on hiding the truth behind their religion.
The subplot story involves the nature of the woman called in to help him, which ultimately links to a subtextual story about what really happened two thousand years ago.
The emerging story is the existence of a centuries-old sect of assassins working at the behest of the Church to hide certain truths which pose a challenge to the belief system the Catholic Church has been protecting and wielding for over two thousand years, and what may or may not be true. Which is part of the subtextual story.
The thematic story is the relevance of this hypothesis to our very real modern lives, which haven’t been privy to the backstory this novel suggests.
The gripping story (dramatic tension) is Langdon’s survival in pursuit of the truth. Will they kill him before he finds that truth? Notice how this differs from the foreground story—the murder mystery—and how it overwhelms that story in the final act.
The story is also gripping in its use of old Leo Da Vinci and his art as a cryptic time capsule of meaning, using the real thing to whet our appetites for more. This is part backstory, part historical story, part speculative story.
A story of emotion and meaning … because chances are this novel (and the movie) pissed you off or shocked you into doubt, or perhaps confirmed your inner cynic. Which is why you talked about it, and why it exploded in popularity.
Brown’s novel was a story of empathy because to some extent you cared about poor Langdon, not only because he was in the crosshairs of an assassin, but because he is metaphorically chasing down the truth of a religion that has perhaps troubled you to some extent. Or not. For some readers, Langdon was simply them.
All this in one little story that sold over eighty million hardcover copies and just as many paperbacks, fueled two movies, and propelled the author’s backlist into immortality.
Do we think Brown pantsed all this stuff? Did he stumble upon it as he wrote a draft? Make it up as he went along? And if he did, do you think he got it all down in just a couple of drafts? That he’s really that good? Nelson Demille blurbed the book with a multimillion dollar endorsement: “This is pure genius.” But was this the genius of Einstein’s variety (ninety-nine percent perspiration, one percent inspiration) or simply the outcome for a writer who combined a killer concept and story landscape with a convoy full of story physics?
Maybe this list of microstories allows you to appreciate the architectural complexity and competency of this novel a little more, and hopefully it gives you the inspiration and confidence to go there yourself.
The truth is more likely this: Dan Brown considered all these stories as parts of a whole, then fleshed them out individually and sequentially. He did some of this legwork beforehand, and other parts emerged through the drafts themselves. Drafting was probably part of the process, but because it didn’t take half a lifetime to create, I can assure you he was writing toward and in context to something (i.e., a vision for the macrostory) in each instance, rather than stumbling upon these story lines through the good grace of luck or a whispering, cloud-dwelling muse.
The answer to that is: Absolutely, we should. If you want to break in, if you want to write a story that leaves a mark, then the answer is a resounding Yes, indeed.
If you intend to make it all up as you go along, you must realize that your process is nothing other than, nothing more than, a search for these microstories. And that only after you’ve discovered them, vetted them, played with them, and tried them out can you hope to optimize a draft that marries them seamlessly.
Have you ever tried to play with an idea—expand it, test its potential, create foreshadowing and then consequences for it—within a current working draft? If so, you know how difficult that can be. That’s why writers who “pants” their stories sometimes require years to finish one. The good news is that you really can evolve an idea in your head, even through conversation and with the use of hierarchical “what if?” sequences and beat sheets, and you can do it to an almost full extent before you write a word.
Notice how each of the various stories in The Da Vinci Code, and in virtually every other sophisticated novel that works, has a beginning, middle, and an ending of its own. Notice how the driving force that moves the characters through the four-part story architecture (setup … response … attack … resolution) is dramatic tension, which can be defined as something that needs to be done or accomplished, with something opposing it, in context to stakes and consequences for either outcome.
In other words … something needs to happen. Dan Brown’s story, from a writer’s point of view, wasn’t about religion, it was about a hero with a problem and a goal, unfolding in context to stakes and the presence of opposition.
That’s what a story is for each of these flavors (microspines) of storytelling.
As authors with professional aspirations, it’s easy to focus on only one or two of these microstories in context to our Big Idea (whichever of the four elements it initially emerges from) and let the others take care of themselves. This trap is all the more deadly, even if these elements do, to some extent, tend to manifest on their own. But as story architects, we benefit from a view of the nuances of all the stories that are unfolding in our novels and screenplays, because only with this proactive knowledge can we manipulate and optimize them.
Some authors might bristle at the notion that they are being asked to manipulate the reader. But isn’t that what’s actually happening in a story that works?
We almost always begin with at least some story notion in our heads.
We then attempt, or should attempt, to evolve that idea into a Big Idea. And then, into a bona fide concept. And from there, we should allow it to grow into a rich and fertile premise. At this point, we face a critical crossroads.
Do you begin writing a draft … or do you continue a predraft search for the rest of the microstories (plural intended) that are required to exist arm in arm, dancing to the same music, within the whole of your narrative?
If the writing of drafts is your chosen path toward the discovery of all of these concurrent stories (and there’s nothing wrong with that; it’s just harder and takes longer, like designing and building a bridge on-site, without an architect’s blueprint), then you need to know that you’ll have to go back and smooth the edges between the microstories. Because it’s virtually impossible to optimize this dance until you know the entire arc of all the stories.
And you thought this was going to be easy.