Random Writing Tips vol. 5

81. Easy on the semicolons.

82. The protagonist doesn’t always have to succeed at his/her goal, but they have to genuinely try for the audience to get behind them.

83. Keep your use of the verb "to be" to a minimum.

84. Always pick the most economical/efficient path to telling a story.

85. Write in different mediums. You can learn lots from writing screenplays, short stories, novels, poems, and comic scripts and expand your writer’s toolbox.

86. Cut useless characters or combine them with others. One three dimensional character is worth a thousand flat ones.

87. Avoid beginning and ending sentences with “it”.

88. Find your ending as soon as possible. And write towards the finish line.

89. Don’t be afraid to take risks with your writing. Experiment, experiment, and experiment.

90. Coincidences are only good for getting characters in trouble not out of it.   

91. Try out different voices and writing styles. Keep which fits, throw out the rest.

92. Keep a student’s attitude and outlook. There is always more to learn.

93. Have courage in the face of rejection and focus on improving your craft. Even the most famous and legendary of writers have been rejected at one time or another in their lives.

94. The worst reaction you can get from a reader of your work is no reaction at all.

95. There can be multiple protagonists in a book, but only one main character at any one given moment/scene in the story.

96. Only write in first person if your character’s voice is irresistible and the story would suffer without it.

97. The best main villains are often the anti-thesis of your story’s message and theme, the devil’s advocate to your hero’s ethical/moral compass.

98. When all else fails have the devil walk in through the front door.

99. Nothing happening in the present is ever as exciting as the anticipation of what comes next.

100. Be careful what you wish for. Success can be a double edge sword. Too much success can bring on serious writer’s block and fear of not meeting past achievements. Harper Lee and Margaret Mitchell both struck gold with their debut novels, unfortunately they never wrote another. Money and fame can kill the starving writer’s motivation of putting food on the table. Cheetahs in captivity never run as fast as the wild ones. Why? Because they don’t have to.

Random Writing Tips vol. 4

61. Great writing is remembering the details. What details do you remember about your most vivid memories and dreams and why? Use them in your writing.

62. If it’s a chore writing it then it’ll probably be a chore reading it. Writing is hard work but you should also have fun. Enthusiasm is a must, or writer’s block will set in.

63. Don’t just “write what you know”, write what comes out naturally and fills that blank page, because you’re going to need to fill a lot of them.

64. The only sin in writing is being boring. And the penalty is death by yawning.

65. Structure fuels creativity. Staring at a blank screen does not. Outline, write a spine, use index cards, and take notes. These things are useful tools in the writer’s toolbox.

66. Dialogue is a form of dramatic action that is said for a reason, to obtain an objective of the character.

67. Avoid being “too on the nose” when writing dialogue. Often the most dramatic bits of dialogue are the words not spoken but implied.

68. Cutting creates story. The human brain adds the missing connections between images, whether on screen or in the mind’s eye, and fits them logically into a story sequence.

69. The villain who always loses becomes a joke. Avoid the ultimate goal of taking over the world or destroying it, in each scenario the villain must lose for the story to continue. Break down those goals into stages or create different smaller ones. The tension rises if the audience doesn’t know whether the hero will succeed or not.

70. Great sentences multitask. They move plot, reveal character, set mood and tone, show the writer’s voice, and tell a story all at the same time.

71. The best titles will make the story stand out and entice readers. Bad ones are like inside jokes; you shouldn’t have to read the book first to understand a title. Avoid the cliché so you’re not 1 millionth to last on the Google search.

72. The best writing makes the reader forget they’re reading.

73. Readers usually believe the unbelievable if the characters on the page don’t. Suspension of disbelief fails if no one questions the bizarre and fantastical.

74. Avoid the sudden info dump. Dish out exposition like a formal full course meal, in small need-to-know stages.

75. You can break scenes into five parts: dialogue, description, action, character's thoughts, and exposition. Balance is key, too much of one and not enough of another can spoil the whole pot.

76. Descriptions of the mundane in fantasy worlds can give them a sense of reality.

77. Start your story with the inciting incident, the reason we’re sitting down for this story in the first place. Avoid prologues and first chapters that have little to do with the main characters and story.

78. Secondary actions are not secondary. Subtle gestures and activities reveal character personalities, thoughts, and feelings. Don’t write about talking heads, in other words scenes about people just standing around and talking with nothing but facial descriptions.

79. If the monster is only scary when the audience can’t see it then it was never scary to begin with. Real monsters are terrifying up close with the lights on.

80. Careful with too much or too little back-story. Rule of Thumb: If you need back-story to understand a character enough to write them then your readers need it too. Likewise if it’s not plot relevant cut it.

Random Writing Tips vol. 3

41. Read lots and write lots, every day if possible.

42. Second drafts should be 10% shorter as a general rule. So says the King.

43. Polish, polish, and polish your work.

44. Avoid negative information. Negative information tells us what did not happen, rather than what did happen. It offers the reader no concrete information or images. She didn’t smile. It wasn’t cold outside. He almost cried.

45. Reactive heroes need relentless villains. And at some point in the story the hero must become active in pursuing their destiny/dreams/goals.

46. Avoid weak, silly, and confusing similes and metaphors.

47. Use participial phrases with care so they don’t sound awkward to the reader.

48. Show, don’t tell the reader information whenever possible.

49. Develop and follow your voice, it’s all you’ve got that separates you from the crowd.

50. Telling a great story always trumps simply writing well.

51. When you think you’ve finished, sit down for another draft.

52. Butt in chair, the secret to getting work done.

53. Never try to publish something you wouldn’t read out loud to a group of strangers.

54. If you write for children you should be reading to them on a regular basis. Volunteer to read at the local library or school if you’ve got none of your own. It pays to know your audience.

55. Don’t chase the market. Writing and publishing are slow beasts, moving at a snail's pace. And trends come and go like cheetahs.

56. Be careful when satirizing something or someone you hate. It can come off as childish, mean-spirited, and people usually see through political bias and tune out. Intelligent satire comes from a wide array of emotions, including admiration.

57. The early bird gets the worm. Morning people tend to get more done, this includes writing.

58. Stay healthy, eat right, and exercise daily. Avoid drink and drugs and other known baddies. You need your eyes, hands, heart, and brain to write. Treat them with respect.

59. Don’t buy the Big Break lie. Real achievement/success does not come out of thin air or divine luck but from years of hard work, dedication, passion, persistence, networking, and grit. Getting published is not like winning the lottery.

60. Don’t be a schemer. Dreams require action to make them real. Tiny wood elves will not sneak into your house at night and write your book for you. Only you can do that.

Random Writing Tips vol. 2

21. The key to writing characters of the opposite sex and people of different ethnic groups right is writing more than one of them. Eventually you’ll run out of stereotypes.

22. Nuke the passive voice.

23. Limit the use of words that end with –ly… severely.

24. Know your target audience. Research the sales of your specific genre, you may be surprised who’s buying.

25. Always raise the stakes, never decrease them.

26. Only let your audience know where the story is going if they don’t want to go there. Destiny is always a bitch.

27. Transport the audience to another time and place. That’s what they’re paying you for.

28. Start a scene as far into it as possible and end it the first chance you get.

29. Sequences build pace. Use long scenes, paragraphs, and sentences to slow down pace and short ones to quicken it.

30. Avoid too many eye/seeing words: gazed, peered, looked, scanned, observed etc.

31. Avoid confusion with words and sentences, misspellings, changing of the word’s meaning (death vs. deaf)

32. Avoid description that doesn’t make sense or the reader might take literally: His eyes rolled around the room.

33. Shadows create drama.

34. Easy on the adjectives.

35. Avoid other words for “said”. Great dialogue doesn’t need much help... he scoffed.

36. Easy on the exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!

37. If you didn’t feel emotion writing it, neither will your readers.

38. Writer’s block is a good thing. It means there is something wrong in your story. Find out what and fix it.

39. Write to your strengths and manage your weaknesses. No Olympian is great at all the games. Focus on being the best in a narrow aspect/field in your chosen profession.

40. Be so good they can’t ignore you.  

Random Writing Tips vol. 1

1. Great characters don't have flaws they have personality disorders.

2. Belief creates conflict. Your characters believe something and act according to those beliefs.

3. Be specific. Remove generic words that don’t inject images in the reader’s minds. Use specific exotic nouns to draw the reader into your description.

4. If your characters don’t care then we don’t care about them.

5. No one is truly evil, even the devil thinks he's the good guy from his perspective.

6. Inject the five senses into descriptions to pull the reader into your world. Sight, smell, touch, sound, and taste. 

7. Cut the fat. Remove cluttering words.

8. Read your work out loud. Fix what doesn’t sound right.

9. End sentences on powerful words. Use them to create theme, tone, and mood.

10. Use the end of scenes to create momentum and propel the plot and characters forward. Use dramatic reveals, cliff hangers, and dramatic revelations.

11. A person is what he/she does not what he/she says. Actions make the character not words.

12. Avoid stating emotion. Mad, scared, and happy are telling not showing.

13. If you can't be witty, poetic, funny, or artsy with your sentences then use as few words as possible to get your point across. K.I.S.S. Keep it simple stupid.

14. Readability is the number one priority. Making it good comes later. If great writing is confusing to the reader then it's not great writing.

15. Withholding information is just as important as giving it. Mystery is a good thing.

16. Small details add reality, a sense of place.

17. Characters must change. Those who can't inevitably die before the story is through.

18. Character conflicts must be both internal and external. Your Characters should struggle with themselves, fears and desires, and with other characters.

19. First impressions are everything. Characters introductions should be memorable.

20. Don't sweat the opening. The only job your first sentence has to do, besides tell a story of course, is make the reader read the second. And the only job the second sentence has to do is make the reader read the third. You can see a pattern here. 

The Honorable Obsession… What can Batman teach us about writing great characters?

All characters want something. It’s what drives conflict. Or at least that’s what we’ve been told. A truism spouted over and over again. But still writers often find it difficult to sustain a steady flow of conflict throughout their novels. Why? Because just wanting something isn’t enough, our characters have to need, no deeper than that, they have to obsess.

Enter the iconic character of Batman. Everyone knows his origin story. After watching a faceless mugger gun down his parents in front of him, young Bruce Wayne dedicates his life to avenging their deaths by waging a war on all crime. An unhealthy obsession for sure but also an honorable one we can empathize with, maybe even idolize. Thus the persona of the vigilantly known as Batman is born, Bruce Wayne’s alter ego and superhero identity.

A victim of a senseless crime, Batman has no single person to bare his hate and revenge. The mugger was a nobody, a common criminal, a product of the larger corrupt society. So Batman is forced to focus his yearning for justice on Gotham City itself.

Batman doesn’t simply want to stop crime, he has no choice. The memories of his deceased parents’ haunt him like tormented ghosts. His crusade consumes his every waking thought. But it doesn’t stop there, because in order to honor his parents’ memory Batman cannot kill. If he did cross this line he would be no different than that mugger, someone justifying the taking of life. He is driven by his code and a slave to it. So much so that it becomes a belief. And remember belief is the root of all conflict.

The best villains in Batman’s rouge gallery challenge this belief. Enter the Joker, Batman’s yin to his yang, his polar opposite in every way. The Joker has no rules, no motives, and no moral compass. He is pure chaos incarnate. The Joker’s suffocating nihilism threatens Batman’s code because he exposes it for what it is, an irrational belief. The unstoppable force meets the unmovable object. How easy it would be to just kill the Joker, how many lives would be saved if Batman gave in and broke his code for the greater good? What’s the right thing to do? Is there such a thing as right and wrong, black and white? Or is everything just another shade of gray? You say moral dilemmas I say juicy conflict.

Obsession drives characters to the brick of insanity. Pushes them to their limits and forces them to confront who they are and what they stand for. It makes great characters.  

7 Steps to Creating Likeable Characters

How do you make a character likeable? Easy...

1. Have them do a good deed, a pet the dog moment, during their introduction. It can be as simple as giving up a seat for an old woman on the bus or as heroic as saving a child from a burning building. Good people are good because they DO good things. We like good people. Don't make your character like Tony Stark in Iron Man 2, not once did he do something heroic. Sure he saves people... people he put in danger in the first place by his own selfish actions. Those don't count by the way.

2. Give them a tragic past and/or childhood. Make them a victim of some horrible injustice. Who doesn't root for the orphan wizard with the odds stacked against him? Harry's parents are dead, everyone seems to hate him for no good reason, and there's this evil immortal snake guy after him. Man, someone give this kid a hug.

3. Give them a sense of humor. Who doesn't love wisecracking drunken pirates? Where's all the rum? Oh Tyrion Lannister you will forever rule the seven kingdoms of Westeros and my heart. That and you make a great foil for boring emo John Snow.

4. Give them a code of morals, and show clearly where that line is drawn in the sand. Batman will do anything to save the day, anything but take a life. That's what makes him a hero and keeps him from becoming the villain. Because you either die a hero or live... you know the rest.

5. People care about people who care about other people. Does your character love someone enough to risk their own life/happiness? Will they fight Nazis or interrupt a wedding or hijack a billion dollar giant blue alien avatar body and battle huge airships while riding a dragon all in the name of love?

6. Give them dreams. I wanna be the best, the best there ever was... pokemon yeah! Ash is gonna be the best pokemon trainer in the world, Naruto is gonna be Hokage, and Luffy is gonna be king of the pirates. You can see a trend here in Japan's number one franchises. And that trend is billions of dollars.

7. Make the villain a real A-hole. There's an old saying in professional wrestling: People don't pay to see the hero win they pay to see the villain lose. Its true, the events that make the most money are the ones where the Heel holds the belt in the title match. Your hero can be a real scumbag and do some really shady stuff but as long as he's fighting a child executing Nazi, hell he's a saint in anyone's book.

Pixar's 22 rules of storytelling

Pixar storyboard artist Emma Coats complied this list. 

Who doesn't love Pixar?

#1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.

#2: You gotta keep in mind what's interesting to you as an audience, not what's fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.

#3: Trying for theme is important, but you won't see what the story is actually about til you're at the end of it. Now rewrite.

#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You'll feel like you're losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.

#6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?

#7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.

#8: Finish your story, let go even if it's not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.

#9: When you're stuck, make a list of what WOULDN'T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.

#10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you've got to recognize it before you can use it.

#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you'll never share it with anyone.

#12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.

#13: Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it's poison to the audience.

#14: Why must you tell THIS story? What's the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That's the heart of it.

#15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.

#16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don't succeed? Stack the odds against.

#17: No work is ever wasted. If it's not working, let go and move on - it'll come back around to be useful later.

#18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.

#19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.

#20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d'you rearrange them into what you DO like?

#21: You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can't just write ‘cool'. What would make YOU act that way?

#22: What's the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

The Step/Scene Outline

Every writer wants to be original, creative, and unique. So why follow silly rules and adhere to a ridged structure? Why write an outline? You just want to sit down and write. Won't rules just smother creativity? Well no actually quite the opposite. Structure fuels creativity. You can't play a game without rules and you can't have life without gravity to ground it to the planet.

The structure of a story is in five parts. There are five acts, the exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement. We start by introducing the characters, setting, theme, and the main goal of the hero. Then a problem arises and the hero pursues his goal. And in the conclusion in which the hero either fails or succeeds, and moves on with his changed life. In simple terms we first get the hero up a tree, then we throw rocks at him, and finally we get him down. These acts or parts consist of individual scenes.

What is a scene? A scene is a span of pages in which a piece of dramatic action is played out between characters in a set location. How long should a scene last? For as long as it takes to move the story forward to the next scene. You should treat each scene like a mini movie/ or novel. Each scene should have its own spine. The written scene should include the location and simply what the characters do and say. Unless information is vital to the scene don’t include it. Less is more as the old saying goes. If the story is a war then it could be said that the scene is a battle.

Just because you know the end doesn’t mean you know where you are going. This applies to any writing. Art is a series of decisions; a step outline helps you organize these decisions in order. A step outline is a list of scenes in order, with a simple headline to describe it. Always with an action verb in there somewhere, because scenes are about character actions.

Scene Outline
Scene one: Joe persuades Marl to go with him to the park.
Scene two: Joe convinces Marl to help him out with his problem.
Scene three: Doug pressures Marl to find out what’s bugging her.

Neil Gaiman's 3 Rules For Success

I recently watched a video of Neil Gaiman, famed author of the Sandman series, American Gods, and my personal favorite Coraline, give a speech to some college grads. In which he gave his three rules to success in life, business, and the arts. They are as follows: 

1. Do great work.

2. Deliver your work on time.

3. Be a pleasure to work with.

And the best part is you only have to do two out of the three. People will forgive at least one of those rules if the others are followed. People will forgive OK work if you deliver it on time and are a pleasant person to work with. It's OK to be late if your work is great and people like you. And if you happen to be a scrooge people won't mind if your work is stellar and delivered on time. 

Neil Gaiman is a wise, delightful, and charming man who likes to write about people with buttons for eyes and woman who are made of shooting stars. Read what he writes. Listen to what he has to say. The smile is just a bonus.

A link to the full speech:

http://io9.com/5911699/watch-neil-gaimans-delightful-commencement-speech-about-succeeding-in-the-arts

Dialogue... Your character said what?

Dialogue is essentially dramatic action verbalized through speech or written word that’s about a character pursuing a goal. What is good dialogue in a novel, screenplay, or comic script? Unlike in real life, dialogue in fiction is not common ordinary conversation. People don't just discuss random things in scenes. Scenes are about characters using the art of speech to achieve what they want. Great dialogue in fiction always moves the story, or plot, forward and at the same time reveals something about the character to the audience. 

Another important function of dialogue is to express real human emotions. Every time a character speaks he or she is revealing their opinions and feelings about whatever the conflict is about, revealing their beliefs and personal bias. And ultimately how they believe the world "should" be. Should is a very important word to a character. We all have our "should", our definition of how things in our lives and our tiny universe ought to operate. One need only look to politics to see evidence of this. Belief is conflict. History proves this time and time again.

Dialogue is a form of dramatic action that is said for a reason, to obtain an objective of the character. Characters should not just constantly spout throw away exposition. This is important in film and theater because actors need to have an objective in order to bring out the character that they are playing. How do I say this line? Am I angry or sad? The illustrator needs to draw the character’s body language and through objective can orchestrate the character’s movement accordingly. Would this character stance be open or closed? Should she be forceful in her walk? All questions are answered through objective.

Often the most dramatic bits of dialogue are the words not spoken but implied. Watch/read the movie/play Doubt. Now that is a work of subtly. Never once do the characters outright say the words: child molestation, yet that is what the whole story is about. A nun confronts a priest she suspects of a hideous crime. They avoid being "too on the nose" and dance around the taboo issue, thus heightening the tension. Tension is good. Being blunt relieves tension, which is also good once things reach their boiling point or climax, and you can create an explosion with all that built up pressure. Think about the 'Elephant in the Room' and the right time to mention it, because once you do it'll start stampeding.

There needs to be a sense of mystery in your characters words. People around us are always holding back, out right lying, and omitting the whole truth. Everyone has secrets. We wear different masks in different social situations, hiding our true selves from others. Don't force feed your audience. Most aren't stupid, giving up too much too soon can leave them bored and worst of all annoyed. There is no greater sin in fiction than being boring.

Telling Stories with Symbols vol. 2

Now let's talk about storyboards. “Storyboarding is the process of producing sketches of the shots, or panels, of a script.” (Steven Katz) In film the final result looks similar like rough comic book version of what the movie will look like, usually without the speech bubbles as dialogue is written traditionally below the panel as not to throw off the composition of the shot. This action of storyboarding helps the film maker think about how the final product is going to look on screen, which makes the often difficult task of shooting on set faster. Pictures have a way of communicating better and more clearly than mere words alone, and these pictures will enable the camera crew to position their cameras into the right spot to frame up the shot. The lightning crew will know where to position lights, producers will be able to foresee problems that may come up along the way, and the art department will know which parts of the location are going to be in shot and so on. Even the actors can benefit from seeing a rough visualization of what their acting space will be. Comic artists can also benefit from using a rough storyboard, as the overall placement of each panel on the page and how they are composed greatly effects the over all mood, pacing, and how the reader actually reads each individual comic page. Basically storyboarding is the “working out of narrative and visual problems on paper” (Steven Katz).  

            
“Storyboards convey two kinds of information: a description of the physical environment of the sequence (set design/location) and a description of the spatial quality of a sequence (staging, camera angle, lens and the movement of any elements in the shot).” (Steven Katz) In other words a filmmaker or comic artist must deal with two main things: pictorial design, the film or comic’s environment, and sequential issues, the continuity of each shot, when making the storyboard. Often relationships between shots and panels are an implication or inference. For example, we see a long shot of a man walking to a door and this shot is followed by an extreme close up of a hand turning a door knob. The human brain fills the gap between the shots and connects meaning and narrative to them. The hand must be the hand of the man in the last shot, our brain tells us, and we logically fit them together into the story without any other exterior influence. The magic behind film and comics comes when the human brain adds the missing connection, and thus creates a story.

Ultimately it comes down to what the viewer knows and when, every shot gives the audience new information or does the opposite, withholds it. Take three shots: A woman walking in a park, her looking through the bushes, and a shot of her husband making out with another woman. The sequence we just saw, the audience identifies with the woman because they see information, the husband cheating, when she does. Rearrange the shots in a different way: the shot of the cheating husband first, the woman walking, and her looking through the bushes. Now instead of surprise the audience is given a sense of suspense as we know information before the woman does and anticipate the inevitable outcome of her finding out. Using cut outs of shots, the film maker can create different feelings and moods from a piece just by rearranging any set of sequence of shots.

“The pictorial aspect of a shot or panel is designed to give a sense of place as each shot tells the reader or viewer where the story takes place.” (Alexander Mackenorick) Elements within each shot can trigger feelings, memories, and even all five of the senses from the audience and the storyteller should take care of what he or she puts into the little boxes. Above all else there are no backgrounds in comics and film, only environments that characters and actors interact within.

The true power of story telling with symbols comes when image meets word to form connects neither could realize separately. Once the storyboard and script is complete, the storyteller can begin to piece together the final relationship between the symbols. One of the benefits of using words, spoken language on film, is the ability to compress time and move the story at a faster pace, and free up pictures by pulling the whole weight of the story. We can read or hear a monologue about a man’s past, and can pretty much show any farm from any angle, and the idea becomes the same. At same time picture specific sequences can function without any words at all for as long as necessary, look at silent films for proof. “These wordless panels can provoke a sense of direct experience and immediacy which is sometimes best left alone.” (McCloud Making Comics 134) Words and images can be combined to form new connections in the viewers mind, whether working together to tell the story or completely interdependent of each other leaving the audience to assess the meaning, or simply be used to soften transitions between shots. Often comics use word balloons to give a character a voice and sound effect words to give the world a concrete feeling, but the means is the same: “Capturing and making visible the element of sound” (McCloud Making Comics 142) Film and comics are at their best when words and pictures combine seamlessly to the overall narrative structure, because they are both different sides of the same coin.

Telling Stories with Symbols vol. 1

Since the first time our ancestors learned the art of speech, or complex verbal language, we have told stories. Through these stories, often told around simple campfires among small tribes of people, we have past down our heritage, our culture, our traditions, and our beliefs. Stories in a way have been our marks on this world, our footprints left in the mud, tiny pieces of ourselves that we entrust to the next generation in hopes to gain some sort of sense of immortality. Fast forward 100 thousand years or so, and you’ll see the same thing. Though we’ve now traded the campfires for movie theaters, comic stands, bookstores, and TV sets; but all and all things haven’t changed much, humans still enjoy a good old fashion, well told story. Though the mediums have grown broader and our technology has advanced, the storyteller still wants only two things from their audiences: to understand what they have to tell them and care enough to stick around till the end.

Today storytellers use different tools to capture an audience, but the process still remains the same, the juxtaposition of symbols in such a way as to create a connection in the human brain. But how can we utilize this connection in our minds and the minds of others to tell our stories? How do we combine words and images, symbols, to successfully tell meaningful stories? And finally what is the very structure of a story to begin with? To better answer these questions we must dive into the realm of modern story telling mediums that combine images and words, we must dive into the realm of comics, prose, animation, and film. Over the course of this blog I hope to answer these questions.

So let's start a bit with comics:

Comics are the medium that is most famous for blending the imaginary line of pictures and words. Turn the pages of almost any comic book and you’ll see words working together with pictures to create something neither could alone. They give the world inside the pages life, give a voice to the characters, capture the essence of sound with sound effects, and create a sense of seamlessness. “Comics is a medium of fragments – a piece of text here, a cropped picture there – but when it works, your readers will combine those fragments as they read and experience your story as a continuous whole.” (McCloud, Making Comics 129)

Comics can trace their origins all the way back to the ancient walls of the Egyptians and so can the fist written language. In a way comics, or hieroglyphs, is the first recorded form of storytelling. Yet for centuries images and the written word have remained separate and rarely mixed. Often ignorant scholars write off comics as a lesser art form, and glorify more traditional media like novels. Like most things in life, as Scott McCloud proves in his famous book Understanding Comics, these imaginary lines of separation are nothing more than an illusion. Take the word cat for an example. It is merely three separate symbols, letters as we call them, combining to inform our brain of what sound and animal they represent. Draw a picture of a bunny and you get the same thing, an abstract representation of the creature known as a rabbit. Everything we draw and write is a symbol, language, but it is how we combine them to communicate with the audience or reader is when the real magic begins.

The Spine

The spine is the setup or backbone of the dramatic story, and therefore the most important first step a writer must take before sitting down and typing away their first draft. Without the spine, one risks veering off track and writing themselves into a corner. The essence to successful dramatic writing is making the big structural decisions first and staying with them as you write. Don’t go off on a wild goose chase. Decide what the story is going be about and stay with that. Make the most important decisions first and the small ones later, like a pyramid going from the ground up. Without a strong solid foundation the house will fall. So start off right and avoid the sand.

 
The spine consists of the hook, hero, goal, central question, and central conflict. 

The hook is what gets your audience out of they’re couches and into bookstores and movie theaters to spend money on your product, sometimes it can be a theme or genre that interests the audience or your premise. 

The hero or protagonist is usually the main character and whom the story is centered around. There can be multiple protagonists in a book, but only one main character at any one given moment/scene in the story. (Unless there is none, like in Animal Farm, which is allegory territory) Dividing up ensemble casts and their points of view into individual chapters is a great technique to keep the focus of the story and drive dramatic tension.

The goal is what the hero must attain or overcome in order to achieve the outcome they desire or believe will make them happy. Get the girl, slay the villain, or win the big game and so on.  The hero does not have to succeed in achieving his goal.

The central question is what the audience is asking themselves while reading and ultimately what keeps them on their couches up late at night to find the answer. Will he find the cure in time? Will she defuse the bomb? Will he ever confess his feelings to her? 

The central conflict is usually between the hero and the main villain/antagonist or it can be between two lovers or friends or partners, in any case it’s the main “battle” between the hero and anyone keeping him from his goal. 

Doing a spine helps you find out what your story is about and more importantly what it's not about. Storytelling after all is just a series of decisions on what to include and what to exclude. Can you find each part of the spine in your story? 

Spine

Hook:

Hero:

Goal:

Central Question:

Central Conflict:

Greetings & Mission Statement

The purpose of this blog is to dive deeper into what makes a great story, deeper than most blogs go. Art is a series of decisions and storytelling is no different. I'd like to help you make those decisions. 


I, like many other fans and writers of stories, obsess over improving my craft. Hopefully through this blog I can learn some and teach some. So sit down and sip some herbal tea because I'd love to share my obsessions with you. (And of course shamelessly promote myself along the way :P)