Just What Is Story Craft?

For Story Craft Group and anyone else who would like to read my ramblings on writing.

Okay. Just what is story craft?

Taking the question a part, we see that is actually three questions: what is story, what is craft, and what is story craft. I will deal with each of these as separate items, purely from my perspective… Which may or may not differ from yours. And, that’s okay.

First, to the question of what is story. “Story” as defined by Merriam-Webster gets long winded. Suffice it to say “story” is the telling of events through words. We have all heard or read stories. Some have made sense. Others, not so much. But, it is the function of the story to relate or communicate ideas or events from the perspective of the one telling the story. So, a story is really the re-telling of events through the perspective of the one telling it based on personal experience, second-hand experience (someone told you), related experience (you heard it and now retell it), or creative experience (you had the thought, formed the words, communicated the idea). I will not delve into all of the variants and subtleties of “story.” This is not a class on literary form.

Second, to the question of craft. “Craft” bespeaks something made. Someone took the time, materials, and tools to take a “whatever” from idea to reality. It sounds like work to me. And, to do it well… masterfully, it is work. If it was not, there would have never been the ancient title of master craftsman or maestro or maitre. They would have been, “Oh yeah, he does that.” So, let us recognize there is a difference in craftsmanship. Those who work hardest at their craft become journeymen. Those who go beyond hard work to study and refine their craft become heralded as master craftsmen, experts and workers of excellence in their chosen craft.

Third, what is story craft? Combining my suppositions above to formulate an answer here, story craft is the premeditated effort to manufacture a retelling of an event or events from the perspective of the crafter, the writer or orator. Well, that was rather clinical, wasn’t it? But, it still does not really answer the question.

To fully answer what is story craft is to get long winded. Story craft actually goes against the grain of the fully creative mind. For some, it is a puzzle challenge to take an idea or concept and work it through to something creative and unique while working within the limitations of a specific structure. Chaucer and Shakespeare are ready examples that come to mind. Poe’s the Raven was beautifully written but also extremely structured. And, therein lies the challenge. Take the odd thought or event and convert it into something that will cause others to listen or read. Ideally, they will want to read it again and again.

The fully creative mind that lacks the tools and discipline of crafting rarely, if ever, gets an idea, concept, or thought beyond the “conceptual.” Let me define that. There are many projects that start well. The ideas are there. The concept looks like it could work. The initial execution even looks good. There is genius in the details. Yet, it is left unfinished because the creator of the project said, “I’m done.” It is like an unfinished marble statue. The hand of the master was upon it. The observer can see where the genius wanted to go with the project. Another review shows there were great intentions and even master strokes. Yet, stepping back, there is an unfinished torso protruding from the midst of a marble block of rough hewn stone. The work was left unfinished. The observer was left wanting more but knowing there would not be more.

One of my personal goals is to take the great concept, let it flow a bit, then refine it until it is something that might be published, purchased, or whatever. But, more so than that, that it might be talked about. That it said something to the reader or the hearer and they wanted more of the same. Seeing master sculptors’ works or master painters’ works always leave me wanting to see more of what they can do. It is the same for master story crafters. Tolkien, Asimov, Bester, Twain, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Poe, Frost, Keats, Longfellow, an endless list of masters of their craft will write no more. And we are left wanting. It is the marvelous turns of phrase or witty encounters that makes one stop for the moment and think. Wow. Or, to laugh. Or, to cry. These masters of their craft did not lay hand to pen and pencil to outflow from the ether works of excellence lasting generations. Virgil and Homer, I am quite certain, studied their chosen crafts with an eye toward excellence. The proof is in the required reading of their works by secondary schools and universities, thousands of years later.

So, let us explore the crafting of stories.

Character versus Concept
Concept
Character
Plot
Flow
Language
Rhythm
Spectacle

Character versus Concept:
In story crafting, which comes first? Is it the chicken or the egg? Either way it does not matter. One feeds the other. You cannot have one without the other. The creative mind will take either and let it play. Sometimes it is an idea, a concept that begins to take hold. Other times, it is a character. Someone from history or someone the writer knows or someone they have seen will begin them thinking and a character is born within the confines of their mind.

Whether it is character or concept that starts a creative project is irrelevant. What matters is the starting. Let the creative mind flow with the ideas. Let the character come alive within the mind. Robert E Howard, creator of Conan and Kull – both barbarians, once said the main characters themselves would show up and tell him of the stories he would write. He would have conversations with them. Bradbury had a practice of starting with a word then letting the concepts and characters become born out of that. Others highly defined everything about the characters and concept before even penning the first paragraph. However it works for the individual writer just let this creative flow start.

Concept:

Many times the concept of a story, novella, novel, or poem are just that a concept; a rough idea that needs to be explored. How that is explored varies with individual writers. Tolkien started his exploration of concept while in the trenches of WWI jotting ideas into a notebook. He was in his forties when he seriously began work on writing his stories. Asimov could let the whole thing play in his head and work from there. Shakespeare would write and rewrite until he had his concept identified and worked out.

Concept allows the writer to not just write a story or poem but to express and idea, to tell tales that impact the reader or listener. Concept provides the rules, the strictures for the project, that thing which will hold the story together. Concept is the environment of the story. Without which, the reader or listener is lost. They do not “get” what is being communicated. Free-flow anarchists will not like this. Their work usually goes the way of recycling and their words are lost due to lack of coherency.

Concept creates the framework or guide by which the writer is able to communicate the story; whether a story, novella, novel, or poem. Concept is the thinking through process of writing. Time frame, environment, what is the overall, technology, tension, conflict, emotion, events… these are all determined by concept and determine concept; the fleshing out of the concept. If the story, novella, novel, or poem lacks this element it is only an exercise in frustration. No one will take a writer’s work seriously until the writer takes his/her work seriously.

Character:

Whether the character is a penguin, a pirate, a rock, a tree, a seagull, a space marine, a barbarian, a politician, a whatever… the character must be well defined to the writer. Who are they? What are they? Why are they? What drives them? Why are they doing what they are doing? What do they look like? What do they sound like? How do they react to their environment? What motivates them?

Robert E Howard imagined his characters being so real he had conversations with them. To some, they become like children. To some, they become so real, like family, the writer feels a genuine sense of loss at their death. Lear actually wept when it was decided to kill off Edith Bunker. The character was so real and masterfully played by Stapleton. T-shirts, buttons, and bumper stickers were made in the 1960s that proudly proclaimed that Frodo lives. This quite surprised Tolkien. He did not realize that the characters he created in his mind and in his notes were so masterfully done that others felt so strongly for his characters. The readers loved these characters as much, or more, than the writer.

Creating characters that are so well loved or hated or recognized is the mark of a truly good writer. The characters help define the work. The reader or listener relates to some thing about the character. The character’s experience has meaning to the reader or listener. It would be rather difficult to believe the many readers of Harry Potter could relate to spending their formative years underneath the stairs of his uncle and aunt’s house. Yet, many readers do relate to the difficulty of Harry’s situation and empathize with him. This is when the writer knows he/she has the character right. The audience gets angry when something wrong happens to the character. Or, they laugh out loud at the shear implausibility of Arthur Dent’s adventures with a towel and a guide.

Whatever the concept or scenario the character lives out or through, the character must seem relatable, be real enough to be believed, and must be thought out. Like living persons, the character must share in emotion and sensation. Without which the character becomes flat, one dimensional, not relatable.

Plot

Plot is what the writer wants to have happen. Plot references points along a map whereby one may travel. The same is true in story crafting. The map is the concept. The traveler is the character(s). The plot is the path taken. Many good concepts and characters get lost along the way because of insufficient attention was given to the plot. The writer can still be quite creative along the way. The first person to be surprised at where the story is going should not be the writer.

The plot drives the concept. The plot drives the themes. The plot moves the character from one point in the story to the next to the end. Stories that meander without direction usually get read once. Rarely do they ever get published. And, if they do get sold, most go back to the distributor who gladly gives them back to the publisher for a refund. Which means, if the story does not have a clear plot to the writer, editor, agent, and publisher, it will never make it to mass market. Mass market being those people outside the writer’s circle of friends and acquaintances that actually buy books instead of reading the writer’s rough drafts and telling the writer’s they are great.

Plots need to make sense. Not only to the writer, editor, agent, and publisher, the plot must make sense to the reader. If it does not, the story was time poorly spent. The plot can be full of twists and turns, forwards and backwards, multi-threaded. The plot can be all over the place but must bring all the variants together to create a plausible conclusion.

Flow

Flow is a “big picture” element to story crafting. It is best to go through a concept or story outlining the major events of the story. The quest within outlining is to identify the flow of the story. Does it work? Does it make sense that these events would lead to another? Do these events stand without additional explanation? If additional explanation is needed, where would it fit to balance the story?

The flow of a story is conceptual and therefore difficult to pin down to specific points. In general terms, the flow of a story, poem, whatever must make sense. It is purely objective. Does it make sense to you, the reader? If it does to the writer and no one else, then something is going on inside the writer’s head that he/she is not sharing in the story. Writers should not “suspense” the reader to death. There should be enough storyline going on to assist the reader with the general flow of the story.

Language

Language is more than “spell check” or green-lined grammar reminders in a word processor. Language helps define the concept and the characters. The language used to express emotion to a medieval knight would not be the same language used in a Sam Spade detective story or retelling life on the mean streets of modern urban society. Language colors the era, the genre, the technology (or lack thereof), the level of education (or lack thereof), the geography, the persons within segments of society, et cetera. Language in story crafting is more than proper English grammar in sentence structure and usage. Mark Twain’s books of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were extremely controversial in his day. On one hand, he did not follow normal conventions, and on the other, he used vernaculars to which he was familiar from his days as a river boat pilot.

Tolkien used variances in language to clearly define different cultures within his writings. There are many other examples where the language usage defined the character and the times more than the proper linguistics of English text books. As part of character and concept definition, time must also be given to the language used by the characters within the story.

Now to grammar. If writing in English, it is helpful to use English. Which means, spell check and grammar usage are considerations. There is the tendency for writers (from primary schools to colleges and universities to professionals) to finish the first run of a project and say it is done. All students are dismayed, professionals are shocked, when their work is returned to them with red pen marks, highlighter marks, word processor review notes all over, and commentary that this was not their best work and that they need to review it once again before it is acceptable.

Grammar. It was not just that thing suffered once while attending school, overseen by relentless task masters called English teachers. No, grammar is effectively communicating using a standard form. Without a standard for communicating, the writer’s words would not be understood; therefore, not published, not communicated, not purchased, and not well received. I am not a grammarian, but I do know how to use spell checker and review those mean little green lines that show up in my word processor. If your knowledge of the proper use of the written and spoken language is not strong, I shall make two suggestions: learn it or hire it.

There are many skilled English masters who have taken the time to refine in palatable forms English, the language. There are books galore for the reading that discuss nothing more than the “style” of writing for specific purposes. There are books available that equally discuss grammar function and its proper usage.

Option two: If the writer feels that relearning or learning English is such a great hindrance as to stifle the creative flow, then there is the editor. The editor will, for a fee usually, review the writer’s project and make suggestions for language structure and usage based upon the perceived writing style of the writer. Or, the writer can impose their projects to family and friends with the hope that the projects will be liked and language usage corrected. Not likely.

Option two really is the more difficult of the two options. Why? Option two requires the creative writer to set aside the creative bent long enough to take real, upfront, confrontational criticism. I have yet to meet anyone creative that could stand a critique in good temper. Personally, I have to remind myself that their input on my English is to help me. It is hard to maintain a good demeanor and remain “distant” from my projects. But, I am learning.

Rhythm

Rhythm is similar to flow but different enough to warrant a separate discussion. Rhythm in a story, poem, whatever must have a flow and ebb. Is it all a constant HIGH TENSION, fast paced, whirr of excitement? Is it a plodding discussion of events where nothing is really happening but there are lots of paragraphs or pages of it? Rhythm in a story can be likened to the rhythms of a symphony. The music ebbs and flows, builds to crescendo, decrescendo, crescendo, piano crescendo, and aftermath. It is an exercise in literary roller coasters. If the writer does the project well, the reader is left just as breathless and will wait in line to do it again.

The reader should not sense the rhythm as much as experience it. The best writers will pull their readers into the story until the reader is lost within the story. The reader laments reaching the end, because all of those emotions and imagery are done. Flow and rhythm are similar and different. Flow and rhythm should run hand-in-hand throughout the project. There should be definite peaks and valleys within the story. The writer should work within the frame of the concept and plot to take the reader/listener from one wave to the next. The writer works to draw the reader into the story’s emotion and energy. Psychologically, the reader needs the rest between, the tension and building of conflict, the high energy action or conflict in resolution, and the conflict resolution or slide to a rest or closure of the event. Each project should have its own rhythm.

Spectacle

Spectacle is the show. The Romans defined spectacle in very huge ways. Their stadia called coliseum were for putting on the show in a huge, audience captivating way. In modern times, the “red carpet” prior to the show is part of creating the spectacle. It is the event that captures the attention of the reader. The story, poem, or whatever must create for the reader the “event.”

Spectacle can be viewed as the overall event as well as the build up to the event. Lucas had the concept for Star Wars in the late 1960s. He researched, wrote it, rewrote it, sold the idea, broke it into six movies, and presented the “spectacle” of the story. Wuthering Heights presented its spectacle against the backdrop of it times, among the landed gentry. Whether creative writing using imaginary characters or characters out of history, the scope and spectacle of the story must allow the imagination of the reader to be active.

There have been experiments in minimalist theatre where staging and costume are non-existent and the weight of the production is squarely upon the words. This appeals only to the very eclectic. Most people want the show. They want the costumes, the sets, the actors strutting and fretting upon the stages. They want the spectacle, the pageantry, the event. Writers must look to their projects in a similar light. It is not all about what is happening to the main character. It is assisting the reader to fill in the gaps with the surrounding imagery, sights, sounds, smells, colors, temperatures, events, people, animals, et cetera. How are they dressed? How do they move? Writing is allowing readers to go to the movies in their heads. The writer must first see this and communicate it in such a way the reader can see what the writer sees, somewhat.

Conclusion

Just what is story craft? It is the refining of a concept that will entertain a reader colored by the events and characters of a story as the character moves through the events of the story and moves through the scenery of the story. It is big people moving through bigger events. It is lost or wayward people being pressed upon by events around them. It is the working of words to such extent that readers forget their rooms wherein they are reading and they are transported to a world created by the mind of a writer. It is the use of language and imagery. It is the use of rhythms and flow. It is the use of emotion, tension, conflict, and resolution. It is amazing places, times, and events being played out in words to become theatre of the mind. It is the refining of the rough to accomplish these ends.

Story craft can be viewed as a purely creative form of expression without rules. History has proven otherwise. Story craft is putting forth the hard effort of being creative and pure to the story to create a lasting impression upon the reader/listener. Story craft is learning the trade, the “craft” if you will, of story telling in a compelling and lasting way. The bards of old used rhythm, meter, and rhyme to keep the attentions of their audiences. In oral traditions, the stories of ancestors became mythic and legendary to relive their past in colorful ways among the present. Story craft is not just being creative but being more. Story craft is the working of words to tell tales that capture the minds and hearts of readers/listeners.

Doc.
 

Reviews

[Dave "Doc" Rogers]

Okay, here is another one I had to readd b/c of no review. 'Sokay.
I wrote this as a response to a query in Story Craft Group. I hope you like it.

Cheers!
Doc.