The 7 Points of Write: An Essential Guide to Mastering the Art of Storytelling, Developing Strong Characters, and Setting Memorable Scenes (3 page)

If you can avoid it, try not to fit things you haven’t experienced into a plot. Fit your plot to your experiences. That is one of the secrets to creating a powerful narrative. And that is one way to keep your readers entertained!

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I
REALIZE THAT, DESPITE A WRITER’S LOVE
for the novel form, and writing itself for that matter, moments of inspiration come and go, and authors are sometimes left in a murky creative pool. This
Point
will proffer a few novel means of literary inspiration that I hope will not only aid in offsetting those moments but also allow writers to take home a few creative lessons.

Before you even attempt to write a book, you should have some concept of what kind of story you want to tell, and the best way to capture a future tale is to build on previous ones that have been told in the past. A wise man once said that there is nothing new under the sun. That goes for novels as well. All stories that will be conceived by tomorrow’s writers have already been told at least once. The joy in “retelling” a tale (and that is what all books, movies, TV shows, and plays do nowadays) is telling it in a new way. That is what you have to do. Rather than wracking your brain in an attempt to come up with something completely original (an impossibility, let me tell you now), you should simply chart a creative course to familiar narrative waters. That is what James Cameron did when he retold
Pocahontas
as
Avatar
, essentially setting it in space and tossing in an alien race to shake things up a bit.

Let’s put it this way: all great stories, be they delivered in the form of plays, movies, video games, comic books, television shows, what have you, were inspired by something that came before. Many creators and writers of successfully repackaged stories will tell you, quite frankly, that they drew inspiration for their story from some kind of source material. George Lucas did it with
Star Wars
, as he drew heavily from Joseph Campbell’s book on mythology,
The Hero With a Thousand Faces
, a book that shares essential story elements and overall direction with Lucas’s space saga. Of note, Campbell himself believed that all stories have already been told, and I, as you already know, agree wholeheartedly.

Lucas, as it is widely known, also borrowed from Akira Kurosawa’s
Hidden Fortress
(1958),
Sanjiro
(1962), and
Yojimbo
(1961), infusing many of the beloved characters in
Star Wars
with characteristics from the peasants and samurais that peopled Kurosawa’s films (and samurai swords became lightsabers). The borrowing did not start there, however, for Kurosawa himself drew from American Westerns and detective stories, particularly Dashiell Hammett’s first novel,
Red Harvest
(1928), which was a major inspiration for
Yojimbo
.

I hope you see where I’m going. For many generations, great writers have been building on the work of their predecessors. Note the operative word in the previous sentence,
building
, in the sense that successive generations of great writers often improve on what came before, thus taking the tales of yesterday to a higher level. We see this with the acclaimed succession of the three greatest detective novelists that ever lived (or wrote in this case), namely Hammett, who is credited with inventing the modern crime novel; Chandler, who improved on Hammett’s work by polishing the prose of his books to such a degree that the atmospheric and lyrical language is now arguably regarded as literature; and Ross MacDonald, who achieved the unthinkable by building on the great Raymond Chandler by adding a psychological depth to the detective novel that is perhaps still unmatched today.

Again, since there is no new thing under the sun, no story that will ever be told will be completely and one hundred percent original, no matter what. What is of greatest importance here is this: it is always good to build a story or a series or anything you intend to write on something that preexisted. Not that you’re going to copy what came before, mind you. I am in no way suggesting that you plagiarize the material of others. What I want you to understand is that drawing inspiration from source material makes for easier and smoother storytelling, in that a source acts as a wonderful reference point, which your story can center around. Rather than straining your mind in a feeble attempt to create something that no one else has ever envisioned, you should look to something that already exists. Study that property, and, most importantly, find ways to improve upon it. Inventors do this all the time. Everything we see around us evolved from something that came before it. No inventor invents a thing from thin air without building or improving on something that was conceived prior to their invention. Stories are no different. Even if you think that no one else has thought of your story idea, you can be sure that it exists in one archaic form or another.

This should not dissuade or discourage you in any way. In fact, a writer should take heart and apply what is being said here in their own writing. You see, by drawing on a source and infusing ideas and story elements from that source into your own tale, you will deliver something familiar to your intended readership. In essence, your readers will have something to go on when they read your story. In other words, familiar elements in your tale will allow them to access whatever it is you’re trying to say in a new way. They won’t feel alienated because they can’t identify with some weird, illogical world you’ve created, which has no bearing on anything that has been seen or experienced before. Readers like to identify with the familiar, albeit in new and improved ways. That is why we tend to revisit proven genres over and over again. And if a new subgenre is introduced, it has to be delivered in a way that breeds familiarity. If we’re talking about a tale of space aliens, we still want to see war, redemption, romance, or heroic feats of derring-do—in other words, familiar story elements. Readers need something to anchor their emotions to. They need to pine for two ill-fated lovers to unite in some unforgettable way, despite the odds against them (even if those lovers are CGI aliens or robots or cartoon characters). You see, familiarity is key in all of this, and storytellers of the past have long set the rules; rules that we as readers and moviegoers respect. We need conflict and resolution. We need to see character arcs: antagonists experiencing a change of heart after an amazing series of events alters their course. We need to see people lose heart, and successful people fail; on the other hand, we need to see failures succeed. In other words, we want familiarity; things that we as human beings living in a real world can identify with, even though we’re looking for escapism. And the best way to deliver that familiarity is to take dynamic and essential elements from a preexisting tale (or tales) and repackage them. Simple as that. All of the great writers have done and continue to do this. But you must do so consciously and with expertise, taking care not to plagiarize. The idea is to pay homage to the work of others, or better yet, make allusions to their works.

So if you have a tale in mind that inspires you … if you’ve watched a great film, or you’ve read a sensational novel, draw inspiration from this. We’ve all been touched by offerings from great filmmakers, playwrights, and writers, and they, in turn, have been touched by amazing storytellers that came before them. You as a writer need to take up the torch and build on what they have done. You need to look at their work and say, “Hey, I would love to do that, but in my own way. I could take it in a different direction.” That is how subgenres are created. One writer, inspired by another, decides to take a collection of story elements and put his or her own spin on it, so much so that it forces the creation of a new genre. The detective novel experienced this as it evolved from the Agatha Christie cozies and Victorian world of Sherlock Holmes to Hammett and Chandler’s bleak and more deadly PI worlds, where everyone seemed jaded or cynical. Today, the genre has evolved even further, giving us the police procedural and the medical thriller, among other subgenres.

So you as a writer should feel free to take what has gone before and put a new spin on it. That is how inspiration generally works. The world is your oyster. In short, inspiration is a writer’s fuel, and bookstores, libraries, movie theaters, and television are your filling stations.

TV
OR
N
OT
TV

Granted, while you’re looking at a series of books from accomplished authors, you’ll probably become a little intimidated, seeing these are finished products, with worlds and characters that are fully realized, while yours are still at a nascent stage. You may be thinking of writing a seven-book series and are looking at the works of writers who have done the same. This is probably not a good idea. Why? Because they’ve put in a tremendous amount of work, conducted an enormous amount of research, and spent perhaps many years writing their seven-volume tome. This can prove too daunting for an untested writer who is just sliding his or her toe up to the starting line of a new novel. I propose something else.

While it is a different creative medium altogether, I find that television—good television—can be an effective purveyor of important literary lessons. In fact, I’ll go as far as to say that drawing inspiring from a creative medium
other
than the one you are currently working in is probably best. I know of many writers who read books by authors they hope to somehow emulate, albeit in a small way, only to come away dissatisfied because they couldn’t quite capture the essence of what their admired author seemed to convey so effortlessly. By watching a good television program, however, and gleaning insights into effective and forceful portrayals of human behavior, one can transfer those lessons onto paper without the undo pressure of trying to live up to the lofty standards of a literary predecessor.

This is not meant to contradict my advice to one writer, however, to whom I said: “If you want to write well, read as much as you can. Devour anything and everything that inspires you. Learn from the greats.” By reading a good amount of quality literature—that is, books that are put together well, written well, edited thoroughly, and so on—a writer can learn how language is to flow on paper, where punctuations are supposed to fall; how sentences, dialogue, and narrative on a whole is to be constructed. But when it comes to drawing inspiration, most writers who pick up a good book with this in mind will either become despondent when they realize that they cannot successfully capture the magic of the author they admire, or else they will attempt to copy an admired writer’s style, language, or story, to their detriment. This is why I suggest creative mediums other than your own as the best sources of inspiration.

The reason I suggest television as an alternate medium for inspiration, and not film, is this: the average television show, particularly an hour-long drama, has roughly 22 episodes to a season, which is very similar to the makeup of a novel—each episode acting as a chapter of a book, and the season being the book. It would take roughly 16.5 hours to devour a full season of a dramatic series (sans the commercials)—the rough equivalent of the time it would take a person, reading at a normal pace, to complete a full-length novel. Over the course of that 22-episode season, characters would go through various changes—including ups and downs and the inevitable arcs—and we would see character flaws develop in some and virtues develop in others. I can’t think of a better source of inspiration than the medium of television for someone who is stuck in a creative slump.

As far as choices go, there is something out there for just about everyone. For those who are given to character-driven stories, I’d say, for instance, take a look at
Six Feet Under
. (It’s time to put that Netflix account to good use.) By watching a mere season of this show, one can learn a great deal about character interaction and development and how to create personality nuances that will allow your readers to interpret subtle variations in your characters. And for those who are given to plot-driven stories, I’d say consider ABC’s
Lost
, which not only demonstrates the use of crucial plot devices, timing, and atmosphere but also serves as a good model in the department of character development, given its clever and carefully woven backstories. But feel free to pick and choose what you will, as long as it inspires you and gets your creative juices flowing.

Bear in mind that one would, at the very least, have to rely heavily on intuition for what I’m proposing here, as many of these lessons won’t be apparent to the casual observer. A serious writer, however, will spot them for sure.

I’m not suggesting that you simply pick a show, grab a snack and a drink, kick your feet up, and tune your brain out as you enjoy your favorite hour-long drama. Far be it from me to imply any such thing. What I’m suggesting is that you keenly study the program of your choice and imbibe its many lessons like fine wine. But you have to pick your show of choice wisely, because not all television dramas offer rich characters, story, and plot.