How to Start a Story You’ll Love to Write

The Week in Creativity: Jan 22, 2023

I wanted to be a screenwriter for a long time. In the late eighties, with no reason to believe I’d succeed, I bought a couple of books on screenwriting and went after it. Within a few months, I’d finished my first script.

It stunk.

But I didn’t know it stunk at the time. I didn’t know anything about screenwriting or the movie business. I thought if I wrote something good enough, I’d be in.

It wasn’t a bad plan…

This was the late ’80s. In fact, my timing was good because starting then and for the next several years, Hollywood was a buying more scripts written on spec, rather than ordering them from pitches. Had I hit upon the right story, and wrote it well enough, it just may have worked.

After five more scripts, hundreds of queries, and no interest, I pivoted to novels.

I just wasn’t the writer I needed to be, yet.

But in 2010, having endured 15 more years of “unsuccessful” writing, I signed on with a coach. It turned out that coach was terrible for me. He was more of a snake oil salesman peddling dreams and access to Hollywood. A year later, I finally snapped out of the spell he’d cast, and found a better coach.

That coach dealt only in tools, techniques, and harsh truth about your abilities. It was humbling, but his lessons changed my writing life. (I also started therapy at that time and that changed the rest of my life.)

What does this have to do with story?

I’ve been pondering the story to write after I complete this novel, and I started a story journal — which is one of the journaling techniques I recommend any writer learn about. I’ve convinced myself that I’m onto a story I want to write, so I began efforts to dig deeper into what I want to write about.

Now I have to take a slight detour to tell you that I use a tool called Obsidian to keep and organize my notes. I have fourteen years worth of notes in that tool, which spans the time I worked with the writing coach who changed my writing life.

One of the features of Obsidian is to display a random note, and I pressed the button yesterday. It showed me the notes from my coach about how to dig deep into a story before writing it as both background for the story and to assure yourself it’s the story you want to tell.

It was a hell of a coincidence to show up — randomly — so soon after deciding to dig deeper into the next story.

How to explore a story idea before writing

My coach recommended three areas to think about:

Concept
Character
Story

Concept exploration

Start with a high-altitude description of your story, and list out some possibilities. You’re not making decisions.

Stay generic, but follow out some of the possibilities to their logical conclusion.

See if it still seems like a fun idea to write.

Character exploration

Think about the main characters in this possible story, and what they may want (as in goals or a quest).

For each main character, describe who they love, where they work, and what’s their family situation.

Most important, what do they fear? What shames them? What motivates them to do things in this story?

Story exploration

Describe some of the scenes that might happen with these characters. If the story is episodic (like a TV show), think up a few episode descriptions (“The one where…”).

What’s interesting about these scenes or episodes? What’s the setting or time frame?

Brainstorm some set pieces or things you’d love to have in your story.

The Story Story

I haven’t done it yet with my new story. I’ve put it on my schedule for next week, as I’m hoping I can wrap up this draft of the novel in the next couple of days.

My growth as a writer has taken me away from the dreams of making a sensational splash in the publishing world or Hollywood (well, it’s taken me mostly away from those dreams). Now, I’m interested in telling a story that matters to me in some way, either because of the characters, or the theme, or I love the story.

You certainly may look at this recommendation for story exploration and think, duh, of course I’ll do that. But I spent over two decades chasing story ideas, sucked into the shiny possibilities of the newness, thinking I really had something.

I might plan the stories, but I didn’t think enough about the characters, themes, and whether I really wanted to spend months on it writing a draft.

What I learned is that a more thoughtful consideration of a story helps me deal with the challenges of writing.

And I hope you’ll consider doing the same the next time you chase a new story idea.

Going Forward

I’m pulling together everything I’ve learned about creativity and storytelling to give it all back to the community.

So If you’re tired of watching others create and you want to finally join in the fun, sign up for my newsletter, Creativity for Fun and Profit and I’ll send you a free course, Awaken Your Creative Abundance.

The Enduring Power of Showing Up to Write

The Week in Creativity: Jan 16, 2023

My father had a penchant for driving cars until they fell apart. I was driving his Plymouth Fury when a tie rod broke and the front wheel collapsed. My brother drove that same Fury to school but couldn’t get it into Drive after school, and had to drive it home in reverse. My other brother was driving my dad’s AMC Ambassador when the wheel fell off on Memphis Avenue.

None of us got hurt, but it really messes with you when things don’t work the way you expect them.

That’s how my creative writing felt last week.

Everybody has a plan…

As part of the run up to this new year, I made all sorts of plans for articles and newsletters. Then last week happened and it felt like the wheels came off, just when I thought I was on my way to someplace else.

A lot of it was my day job which got real busy and I didn’t have a lot of creative energy. On top of that, I had several days of poor sleep which compounds the lack of creative energy.

Finally, my wife left mid-week on a trip. I thought I’d have a bit more quiet time but she left the three dogs behind and running the house — caring for dogs, meals, and everything else — chewed up a little bit more energy.

…until you get punched in the nose

It’s not that I didn’t write, but the writing went in a direction I didn’t expect.

I’m still working on the ending of that novel and I spent a lot more time on that than I expected. It was a vibe thing. When I woke up in the morning, I thought about the novel. When I napped, I thought about the novel.

So when I sat at my desk, I worked on the novel. It was like the newsletters and articles were someone else’s problem, not mine.

Story Ideas

I’m into the nitty gritty of the novel, trying to stick the landing. So the key scenes are really scene sequences that lead to a bigger climax. It’s tempting, when writing a scene, to have one or another character explain what’s at stake fully, to make it easy for the reader to understand the set up so that you can pay it off and move on to the next scene.

Of course, that doesn’t make it easy for the reader; it makes it boring for the reader.

It’s an easy trap of telling instead of showing, especially when showing requires several small scenes to lay out the dynamics and the tensions between the characters, and to do it convincingly so that it seems perfectly natural to the readers that this is what would be happening.

Then, and only then, can you land the pay off with full dramatic impact.

Easier said than done, as they say.

The Story Story

So this story story is four days late by my reckoning. You, my dear reader, probably wouldn’t even notice had I not mentioned, and don’t give a rat’s ass anyway.

The thing about these articles and newsletters is that I have no control over when you read it, if you read it at all. It’s all but guaranteed to be long after I publish it, and there’s no point in mentioning my tardiness.

Except that the antidote for tardiness is persistence. I’m telling you about it because I could have ignored this entire week and started on next week’s story story. But showing up to do the work is what really matters more than my “schedule.”

So I’m proud of myself for sticking to this, writing about my not-so-great week, and trying to share my experience as a writer with you.

My novel is years behind schedule, but I still have high hopes. In fact, I have high hopes for us all.

You just have to find a routine that sort-of works for you and stick with it as best you can.

Going Forward

I’m pulling together everything I’ve learned about creativity and storytelling to give it all back to the community.

The Story Problem Solution — a Technique Anyone Can Learn

The Week in Creativity: Jan 8, 2023

My sleep habits got messed up over the holidays. They’ve never been great but the past ten years I finally realized how critical sleep is for my creativity, health and happiness. Also productivity.

But just being able to have fun and do stuff requires a rested body and mind.

I do computer stuff for a living and used to pull all-nighters just because. Just because I was stupid. I’d be groggy for the entire next day and tried to compensate with extra caffeine.

Honestly, it messed with my brain a little. Maybe a lot.

This past week I had a bout of insomnia, lying awake in bed past three a.m., and only sleeping about four hours. Through the careful use of coffee, I made it through my day job. But around six o’clock in the evening, I needed a nap and crashed pretty hard.

Then I had trouble falling a asleep a second night, and the cycle repeated.

It served as a stark reminder how important it is to sleep if only because I have an interest in writing, drawing, or playing music when my brain is alert. When I’m groggy, I only do the bare minimum to survive.

And sleep is one of the best tools for the thing I love most, telling stories.

Story Ideas

I’ve learned a reliable technique to solve storytelling problems with sleep. After a good night of rest, I wake up with ideas about whatever story I’m working on, along with stories I’m hoping to write. I keep the proverbial notepad on my night table next to the bed so I can jot them down.

I learned it, and so can you.

There are a few books that deal with engaging your subconscious. The best are The MacGuyver Secret and From Where Dreams Are Made.

How to Save Your Novel When the Story is Stuck

The story ideas were strong this past week, even with my poor sleeping results.

The problem was my novel. I was to the point of writing the climax and wasn’t feeling it. (Yes, you read that right: I wasn’t feeling my climax.) I resisted writing because something was wrong with the scene I’d planned.

Finally, I thought about the characters and the situation while out for a walk. I felt better about the story because I liked the character development. They were in a good place. But didn’t have the solution for the plot problem.

In the morning I had the solution the story needed.

I love those moments because the story plays out in my head like a mini-movie. I hardly have to write them down if they’re vivid because they stick with me.

Still, the writing has not flowed like a California atmospheric river, but I’m getting there. Sometimes the writing is work, even when you know the story is right.

The Story Story

I’ve mentioned before how I plan my stories in five acts, thanks to Into the Woods by Yorke.

The specific problem I dealt with was in the climactic finish of act four. Everything had built to this moment but it didn’t ring true. What I planned six months ago no longer made sense.

I could have powered through, finished the first draft, and fixed it later. That’s not a terrible approach. But I wasn’t feeling it.

Then I had that idea in the morning.

The remainder of the story had to change, which required a few more ideas, but it was fun. It meant this first draft would be solid, and my delay might shorten the total time I spend writing.

Going Forward

I’m pulling together everything I’ve learned about creativity and storytelling to give it all back to the community.

The Year in Creativity — 2022

Photographer: Ray Hennessy | Source: Unsplash

Introduction

For the past seven years, I've made plans at the beginning of the year. I make plans for books I want to write and publish, screenplays, or short stories. I also try to blog to boost my "platform." All that's in my plan.

A couple of years ago, I had the bright idea of assessing how that went. This is my end-of-year look back at my creativity efforts for 2022.

Executive Summary (tl;dr)

My hopes for book sales and something like notoriety faded over the course of the year, compounded with disillusionment with my current work-in-progress (a psychological thriller). But interest in cartooning, essays, and a late Moth StorySLAM victory buoyed my spirits.

"Successes"

Fiction

I have two novels I self-pubished at the end of 2021. I spent months fighting for reviews as, as far as I know, reviews are the key to sales for independent authors.

The reviews I've gotten have been good. Sales are still lagging.

I shared the manuscript of my new novel with beta readers and they weren't impressed. So I spent months rethinking the story and spent the end of the year rewriting it. It's been fun.

In the middle of the year, I had an idea for a short story from out of the blue, so I spent two months nailing it. It went long, though, at over 10,000 words. I submitted it to a contest, thinking that was its best hope to find a place in the sun.

Humor and Satire

I placed four satire pieces this year, one that was written two years ago (which is cool):

Open Enrollment for Red-Blooded Americans
Now That We Have a Potion From the Forest Wizards to Dampen the Curse for Spontaneous Human Combustion, it’s Time to Return to the Office
Our Ride or Die Pledge has been Revised. Please Read Carefully.
15 Things to Do With That Economy-Sized Tub of Guacamole From Costco

Nonfiction

I stumbled on a class from Pandemic University called, Developing Your Comedic Voice Through Personal Essay. It seemed like something I didn't realize I needed. I loved it, and took more classes with the instructor, Zahra Noorhbaksh.

Craft and Creativity

Every year, I pursue other creative arts to keep my mind sharp, and read books or take classes on the craft of writing.

Studying cartooning has been fun. I envision something coming of it in the next two years
Matt Bell's "Refuse to be Done" seminar was excellent
The book "Sin and Syntax" is great (and I need to finish it)

Other

I love to tell stories live at Moth StorySLAMs. I've delivered 17 of them at Ann Arbor, and in August I finally won a StorySLAM. It was a hoot and a half. It also makes me eligible for the GrandSLAM in May. I can't wait. Moth events are always a riot.

Summation and Going Forward

That was my year in creativity. My key takeaway is you have to keep slugging away at projects because art will demand the work.

Is that helpful? I'm not sure. Maybe I can ponder that and give you better answer later.

Which reminds me: I'm going to be doing this on a weekly basis, sharing what I've learned, tips and tricks of the creativity life. If you'd like to here more, sign up for my newsletter, Creativity for Fun and Profit and I'll send you a free course, Awaken Your Creative Abundance, for joining.

Thanks for your time!
–mickey