How to think outside your writing toolbox — and four skills you’ll build doing so
Great writing can be learned through breaking across story forms.
To be a Renaissance Writer is to dabble across the various story forms.
It doesn’t mean you have to spread yourself thin.
It doesn’t mean you have to choose one and refuse the other.
It is a matter of experimenting to learn new rules so you can make other ones.
Just imagine the different edges and points around which you can connect these different story forms:
Novel
Screenplay
Stage plays
Narrative poetry
Songs (with narrative)
The long stories of your elderly loved ones
Each of these has qualities that surround specific ideas that tap you into the story’s success. (Take for instance a conversation from David Perell on similar topics — specifically talking about the political side of this.)
Let us start at the beginning, with what may seem like the simplest form of storytelling.
Think about your favorite novel. What was it that drew you to this story? Was it the characters — their mannerisms, dialogue, and relationships? Or perhaps it was a world created that allowed you to escape from reality for just a little while.
Well, it can always be multiple things.
Hopefully, it was all of those things.
So let’s talk about bringing all those things together.
Who has time to dabble in all these different forms? Well, you’ll have time when you become a Renaissance Writer! Join our community!
Together, let’s master the art of storytelling by digging into form.
1. Character
The art of character is of principal importance in any story form. Consider the stage play. When a play is a musical, the character, almost without fail, has an “I want” song. While we can debate whether or not that’s good exposition, we can say that the stage play then certainly demands the writer figure out just what their characters are about.
Let’s look at this link between character and plot in the film “Cinema Paradiso.” This is a beautiful story about an old man who loves movies. A young boy comes to town, sees the magic of cinema, grows up to be a filmmaker, loses his muse, goes back home, finds the entire town has built Cinema Paradiso for him. If you watch the film, it’s clear that the plot is propelled by the character’s wants and needs.
Build great characters by putting together backstories.
By putting the amount of thought and effort into your characters that a novelist would, you can make your characters feel lived in — in the sense that they have a soul that’s been with them for their whole lives and they too are in this constant state of growth — the process we ourselves abide in throughout life.
Perhaps the most insightful art form to dabble in to build character is that of memoir, journal entries, or diaries. Reflect on who you are, and then you can understand your characters. Dig into their faults, their qualms, their strengths, their problems, their ideas, and, yes, their dreams.
Not everyone should be a bright-eyed Pollyanna or a cynical antihero. There are other options.
2. Plot
The second skill is plotting. This doesn’t mean simply writing a story with a beginning, middle, and end. It means giving your story purpose and direction. It means ensuring every scene, every line of dialogue, every step the characters take have a purpose.
It’s ridiculous to try and think about your story being propelled by character or plot. These two necessarily have to go together. The tightness of the screenplay can teach the novelist quite a bit about writing.
And with the tight structure of screenplays teaching us not only about story but also how to write, let’s look at the classic “Hollywood” three-act structure.
Here is a brief breakdown of acts and scenes:
ACT I (a quarter of your total pages)
-Exposition with inciting incident
-Set up/Meet characters
-The Point of No Return
ACT II (half your pages)
- Plot development
-Rising Action
-Climax
ACT III (a quarter of your pages)
-Resolve the story
-Falling Action/Denouement
Now, you don’t have to follow this religiously, but it’s a good guideline to help you make sure your story is moving forward. Essentially, these are the variables within which you insert your own values. This is the equation, and it all adds up to great storytelling. We can of course also dig into the monomyth, and there’s so much to be said about it. There are also several iterations of it
The three-act structure remains the gold standard.
The Freytag pyramid is another option open for consideration.
Also, check out Kenneth Rowe’s structure:
3. Exposition
Like I say, perhaps carrying on in endless asides, monologues, and narration is not the best way to do exposition but the world of playwriting is much deeper than these tired techniques.
These find new life, though, in other forms.
The internal of a character in novels is a fairly strong means of doing this. But the effort of “showing, not telling” reminds important.
By keeping in mind that all storytelling is visual storytelling — at least so far as making sure the stories sparkle and come alive in their imagination — we can think about how we can “see” their thoughts.
A character should not, unless she is a philosopher or monk, “muse upon the deep and profound mysteries that lay within his soul.”
Rather, we should find her thinking in terms native to her background, her natural self. We should see it in the way she walks and moves, we should hear it in her language.
Knowledge of setting and time is also crucial to making sure that exposition is not just presented as fact and left on the page, but rather thoughtfully used when appropriate.
The God’s Eye View of non-linear storytelling has become very significant in this generation of cinema and novel-writing.
This form connects the theme above sequential events. In this way, the world churns around a four-dimensional pattern ass everything comes together and clicks into place.
Who is she? And how can we naturally allow subtext to tell the story?
Screenwriting can teach a “Law of Conservation of Dialogue.”
And very importantly, this lends itself to writing your book cinematically. And that’s important if your high aspirations are to cash in on that Hollywood adaptation money with your next bestseller.
4. Dialogue
Though the lot is the skeleton of screenplay, the dialog is the muscular system. Great screenplays have sharp dialogue.
In novels, we often have long passages of introspection or description. But in screenplays, every line of dialogue must count.
Dialogue is the lifeblood that pours content along.
Not to say that you cannot tell a story without it.
Silent films are powerful means of doing this, despite using dialogue cards often.
If you are writing for an audio or visual medium, consider limiting yourself.
Yes, limit yourself — write an audio drama, and working without visuals will give you an all-new appreciation for them.
Write a silent short film — as it seems many introductory film classes ask of you — and you’ll get a whole new appreciation for dialogue.
In this way, you’ll also grow to use it tactically.
I hope you’ve all enjoyed this. Share your thoughts and I’d be glad to know more about what form you’re digging into write now!
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What have you learned writing in your chosen format? Let me know!