Encouragement Through Rejection

So I'm going to tell you something you DIDN'T know about rejection, which will have you raise your eyebrows and maybe - just maybe - look at yourself and your writing a little differently. 

First, though, let's just set out the practical things you should know about rejection, then I will try to send your eyebrows up... So here we go: Firstly, we have to face it...

1) Rejection is inevitable. It comes with the job. Show me a successful writer who never got rejected, I'll show you a liar. Nobody likes it, but you do need to accept it and learn to live with it. 

2) Rejection is rarely a reflection of your ability. Most of the time, there's a practical, business reason behind rejection. For example, if an publisher/agent can manage 10 writers, once they have ten, they reject everything else until there's some bandwidth. And they have to choose carefully what to do with that limited bandwidth, or they go out of business. Should an agent choose to work on, e.g., David Beckham's new book, or some truly brilliant story by an unknown? Sad but true - the certain money is in the one who isn't even a writer! So you don't even get read; you get rejected. The most common reason for rejection is that the genre of the submission doesn't match the genre of the publisher. Instant rejection. Nothing to do with the merits of your writing. So don't feel hurt personally. It's not usually an ego thing. Learn the lesson (if there is one), turn it around, and send it out again.  

3) Rejection makes acceptance soooo much sweeter when it comes. I have my handful of deals, and when I look at the hangar full of rejection letters it took to get there, it makes me smile. And really proud of myself for hanging in there. Turn it on its head. If someone said to you: 'I'll give you a deal if you accept 100 rejections first.' You'd take that, right? Well, that's kind of how it works. Use every rejection to make yourself more determined than ever. Quality DOES win out. You know if you're good. Keep going. Dig deep. Go again. Bank those rejections, and crank up the sweetness of the deal when it comes... 

4) Rejection is easier to take if you have already moved on. Get immersed in your next story and get excited by that, and any rejection of previous work is much easier to take. Agents and publishers take AGES getting back... so just fire and forget. Don't sit by the letterbox wringing your hands - people who do that are CRUSHED by those inevitable rejections. Don't phone them up and bug them. move on! Get the next one rolling! If you're going to be professional, you will need more stuff, and now is the time to write it whilst you have time! 

Eyebrows UP! 
OK. Here's the surprise one. When I work with writers who are taking years and years to finish a story, it sometimes becomes apparent that it's not their artistic nature or perfectionist tendencies that are the issue... it's the fear of Judgement Day. Before you finish something, it's easy to go to parties and flick your hair and say, 'oh, yes, I'm a writer, don't you know...' and discuss your story and the life of a writer; and people are impressed and life is pleasant. But of course, life only stays impressive and pleasant while the story remains unfinished. The day you say you've finished, it's up for evaluation... and the possibility of various forms of rejection. I'd say it's even harder for an aspiring writer, because the evaluation comes primarily from family and friends... and they need to be ignored, because unless they say something that totally resonates with your own self-criticism, it's not helpful. Writing for a 'public' who don't know you except through your writing, is different. Write for yourself. Be your own critic - it's YOUR story, and it's right when you say it is, not your mum or boyfriend (what do they know?!). Send it to agents and industry people, and accept what they say. You don't need to 'work with' your friends and family at all. 

So is this you? Aspiring writers, particularly those with no deadlines, can take decades and still never finish, because they are so scared it isn't good enough. But you must never forget...

...the most important thing: it's YOUR story. If YOU say it's right, then it's right. Other people will have their views - including agents and publishers and producers - but you can't bend yourself to every opinion that arrives, and you can't force the commercial process. So put on your rhino skin, take the bull by the horns, bite the bullet, grasp the nettle, and adopt the proven, simple and powerful three steps to success John (Only Fools and Horses) Sullivan gave me: 

1) Write the best stuff you can.
2) Send it off.
3) Go to 1. 

If you think about it, it's all you CAN do. And it's all that every successful writer has ever done. So what are you doing reading this?! Get off the internet and get your work out there! 

For more on the publishing process, rejection, story quality and the full conversations with John Sullivan and with publishing head, Stewart Ferris, check out The Story Book, which has full details on How to Do Step 1) !

Character Growth (When You Don't Want Your Characters to Grow)

If you follow my work, you will know that it is an attribute of the very finest stories - the ones that win Oscars, BAFTAs, Booker prizes and the like - that a character changes and learns and grows across the course of a story. (For more detail on this, read my Character Growth Blog .)

However, what if you don't want your characters to grow? What if you need them to stay exactly as they are in order to write a sequel? How can we use the power of character growth, but not actually allow any character growth? 

John Sullivan told me, in discussion about his wonderful series, Only Fools and Horses, that the last thing he needed was character growth, because when writing a series across years and dozens of episodes, character growth can trap the characters against a ceiling. They can only grow so far, then they become fulfilled. They have undergone the change that made them so interesting, and have nowhere else to go. 


That is why a truly great story - great because it does feature character growth - is often followed by a poor sequel. The protagonist has already made his life journey, is fulfilled and has learned his life lessons, so there is no room for further growth in the sequel, so the second story disappoints.

Now, John made a big deal of being 'uneducated' in 'how to write', and had, shall we say, a significant distrust of story theory (which made our conversations somewhat interesting...), but it didn't stop him from being brilliant. He played on character growth with every episode of Only Fools and Horses, without letting his characters actually grow. He played on the pathos of failing to grow by having Del Boy and Rodney offered growth... but fail to improve themselves, and despite their efforts and the golden opportunities offered, they endlessly fell back down life’s ladder. This was brilliant story-telling, because it gave us, in the audience, a chance to see the decisions they should take to advance themselves (so in this sense there was character growth in the story), but their failure to learn and grow was both hilarious and frustrating... and allowed them to slide back down to square one so the beginning of the next episode could always start with a clean slate.

John would also use forms of character growth that didn't fundamentally change the character of the character, if you see what I mean. So, for example, Del Boy having a baby was an emotional plot line that would be considered as a form of character growth, but still meant he could be precisely the same Del Boy at the beginning of the following week without any change to his fundamental character.

I had a similar conversation with Lee Child. For his Jack Reacher novels, the eponymous protagonist had to end up exactly where he started if Lee was to produce another book to the same successful recipe (as he has done every single year for the last 17 years).  Interestingly - given the success of his series - like John Sullivan, Lee often used character growth without allowing Jack Reacher ultimately to grow. Jack Reacher would begin the story as a drifter, wandering into a new town. During the course of a story that has him work for good as a vigilante against the corrupt and the bullies, he would perhaps find a girl, fall in love, become integrated into a community, be a force for good... but by the end, he would walk away from all this good stuff that might fulfil him. He’d tear it all up, spirit himself away in dead of night, and hit the road, to drift on to the next town. It’s just the way he is... but this hugely convenient character flaw that had him dismantle all that lovely character growth also allowed him to return to the same starting point as he drifts into a new town for his next adventure.

The other fine dynamic for using character growth but avoiding protagonist change is to allow a character other than the protagonist to learn a lesson and to grow. Look no further than my old favourite, Back to the Future, in which the protagonist, Marty McFly, doesn't grow at all. The character growth that gives the story all its amazing power comes from Marty's father - George McFly, who learns to be assertive - and changes his life fortunes to the positive as a result. But Marty remains the same. Imagine trying to continue George McFly's adventures into the sequel from that end-point. That would be really, really difficult, because he's ended this adventure having grown and become fulfilled. His story has been told, and there's no more that can be satisfactorily told. His journey to fulfilment is complete. That's why they moved on to the next generation and to a whole new character (Marty's son) to have someone they could advance up life's ladder. 

In all the Jack Reacher novels, Jack stays the same, but the bad guys learn some very serious lessons, and although their progress is generally negative - leading to jail or the grave - this is still a form of character growth - that is why death is such a regular feature of stories even though it is surprisingly rare in our real lives. In most superhero and detective stories it's the bad guys that do the growing - forced down the ladder of life by the lessons they learn. 

How can I use This in my Writing?
So characters do not have to change and grow, but you can still use the power of character growth in four ways without your character growing: 

1) Have a secondary character change and grow (e.g., George McFly). 

2) Have very definite negative character growth in the antagonist (shining a light on positive learning and growth). 

3) Offer your protagonist the opportunity to grow... but then have him turn it down (Jack Reacher), or fail to make the most of the opportunity (Del Boy). 

4) Use forms of character growth, such as marriage or parenthood, that do not implicitly change the character of the character. 

Much, much more on the inordinate power of character growth and learning in The Subtext Book - due out later in 2013. 

The C Word...

The most obvious difference I see between the successful writers I have met and the aspiring writers is confidence. Confident writers are focused and productive. They say, “This is MY story. I’m writing it MY way, and I don’t care what anyone thinks.” They put their blinkers on, they put the hours into what they think is right, and deliver. After that it’s part luck and part commercial savvy that decides whether the final product attracts deals or not, but this is the right approach to any artistic endeavour. So if self-belief and an uncompromising approach to writing is the way to go, what can a writer do to get precious confidence without getting tainted by someone else’s directions?

The wrong thing to do, which I see a lot in the writers I work with, is to go on endless courses or read a pile of books on ‘How to Write’. They inevitably provide you with a set of rules that seem to apply to famous stories.  As soon as you buy into this, your story becomes driven by structure. It becomes a little unnatural and it loses its spark, and you have your creative instinct damaged by someone else’s rules.

That paragraph may seem odd coming from a man who gives courses to aspiring writers, but I am very careful in my approach. The word ‘education’ comes from the Latin ‘to draw out’, and for writers, with precious, highly personal inspiration, the difference between ‘drawing out’ and ‘forcing in’ is a critical distinction. In my experience, what writers really need is not help from the outside to change what is inside. It’s help in making the best possible use of the inspiration that is already there.

The questions writers really want answering are: “How do I make the most of my story ideas? How do I tell my story to its absolute best? How do I guide my ability to tell stories without damaging my natural talent? It takes me months to find out what’s bugging me in my story. How do I understand and solve story problems quickly and effectively? What gives one story power and another one not? What are the story tools that are available to writers that make stories grip and intrigue?”

There is only one person who can tell your story the right way, and that is YOU! Yes, you need knowledge of the craft of story so you are empowered to tell your story your way. Then you will also have the confidence to send it off and, importantly, take rejection knowing that what you’ve done is right irrespective of what the rejection letter says. Many of the writers I meet are hugely restricted by fear of rejection. So much so that they don’t even finish their work. Once it’s finished, it’s judgement day, and that is unbearable, so people keep writing and re-writing for years rather than face the dreaded judgement day. Again, confidence is the issue. If you know you have been true to yourself and true to your story, then you cease to care about external judgement. You listen, of course, in case something constructive resonates with you, but ultimately your own personal judgement is all that matters, so if others choose to reject it for their commercial agenda, so be it. Of course, rejection hurts, but it also goes with the territory, so grasping the rejection nettle and taking the consequences is something you simply have to do. John Sullivan gave me all you need to know about ‘How to be a writer’:

1) Write the best stuff you can.

2) Send it off.

3) Go to 1) 

What happens after that is out of your hands, so just go to 1) ,do 2) and forget it. Over time you will improve, and one day something will click. When it does, the weirdest thing happens: the pile of rejections become a massive badge of honour, and the glow you feel from success becomes magnified ten-fold by every single rejection you collected along the way.

Writers who become clients of mine are always surprised when we start work because I won’t read their story. I’m working to help the writer take responsibility for themselves; to find and shape the inspiration that comes from within. There’s only one right way to write your story, and that’s your way. If you think about it, there simply can’t be any other way to write your story. So forget the gurus and take responsibility. Yes, learn about story so you can squeeze the most from your ideas. Write every day, and say to yourself every day:

“My Story. My Way. And balls to the lot of you.”

Say it now. Say it out loud and mean it. Not only will you laugh at yourself, but take responsibility for your own development and suddenly life as a writer, and your path forwards from today, becomes very clear indeed...

Now. Go To 1).

Hunger Games - Story Analysis

!This Article Contains Spoilers! 

Hunger Games is something of an enigma. As you watch it, you love it, and it kinda keeps you gripped, because the premise is so good, the characters are very strong, and the key question provides excellent tension. But it is low rated by public opinion on IMDB, and leaves you feeling a little unsatisfied by the end, although strangely attracted to it at the same time. Here's why. 

Firstly, let's outline that key question, because that is what gives it its attraction, and is also what lets it down, because they blow the power of that key question halfway through the story. 

In a futuristic vision of North America, The Hunger Games is an annual entertainment put on by the repressive government ('The Capitol'). Each of the twelve districts must donate two people between the age of 12 and 18 to the games. All 24 of these young people - 'tributes', as they are called - are set free in a televised terrain where they must kill or be killed. Only one of the 24 can survive, and return home an honoured hero. The story follows the journey of the two tributes from District 12: Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson). The tension in the story comes from our knowledge that, although their relationship is steadily growing and intensifying as the story progresses, only one of them can survive. As the story goes on, they begin to fall in love. Oh, My God. The key question looms large over us and tightens its grip because we know, at some point one of them... is going to have to kill the other one. Excellent, excellent, gripping, powerful story. 

So why – oh, please why – did the writers have the ‘Capitol’ introduce a new rule halfway through the game by announcing: ‘actually, just this once, we’re going to let two people survive the games, provided they are from the same district.’ What the hell would you do a stupid thing like that for?! The story is now shot to pieces. Oh! Two can survive now! Well, I wonder who on earth THAT could be?! Might it turn out to be - ooh, let me think now - might it be... Katniss and Peeta (the only district partnership we even know the names of anyway!)? Now we know who will survive. The jeopardy is decimated. The tension is gone. The story is over. There is no other subtext to carry the story. Finished. Forget it. Go home.

And it's SO good up until then! It's a crime! What doubles my horror at the way they utterly blew the story power and then, just in time for the very end, they bring it back in again! The Capitol make another announcement: 'Errr. We've changed our minds, and now only one can survive.' 

Yes, it gives the story traction again, because now we feel the tension again - one of them will have to kill the other, but we've had a hour of knowing the outcome, so putting the doubt back in for what turns out to be ONE MINUTE is hardly going to rescue the thing. Clearly, the writers saw that they had to do this to create any kind of cleverness in the ending, so they put it back! Which just makes taking it out in the first place all the more unbelievable!  

What makes it even worse is that the Romeo and Juliet ending we are offered at climax (it's not what happens), whereby Katniss and Peeta commit suicide together - thereby removing the power of the Capitol, making their love sublime for all eternity, making them into martyrs and causing a furious revolution in the districts - would have made this film an all time classic – BUT only if they'd kept that tension gripping us throughout. If the jeopardy had been there the whole way through we would have remained utterly gripped by the knowledge that one of them MUST die, doubly gripped when they fall in love, and totally knocked out when they choose to commit suicide together to confound the Capitol and die in perfect love. 

As it is, that one announcement makes it a weak story and one of the worst errors and biggest missed opportunities I have ever seen. 

Apart from that trashed key question, the other serious issue is that there is no other subtext. All the story participants - the characters, the Capitol, the audience, author, you, me - everyone - know just as much as everyone else. Yes, the Capitol are sneaky and evil - but the moves they make are instantly communicated to all participants. There's no difference in the information held by the different story participants, Katniss and Peeta are trustworthy towards each other, even in the early stages when we know that they fell out in previous years and Katniss has good reason not to trust him now. Even the excellently dubious character who is to coach them - Haymitch (Woody Harrelson) - a previous winner of the games from District 12 - doesn't have an agenda and doesn't do anything dodgy, despite his clear dialogue with the Capitol. It just doesn't go anywhere. Despite the nature of the dog-eat-dog games, everyone knows everything that is going on. The human mind feeds off subtext - it's what we look for in a story, and this is why Hunger Games leaves a nagging hollow feeling you can't quite explain. 

I suspect - and hope - that the problems of this first film will be remedied across the course of the trilogy. The Harry Potter series is a little like this. Most of the individual films are rather difficult to enjoy in isolation (unless you've read the books), but the story power across the seven is perfect. Similarly with Hunger Games, the potential is immense, and terrific foundations are now in place, but this first film, taken on its own, is not as powerful as it could have been with more subtext, and with the tension being allowed to persist throughout through knowing that one of the two lovers must die at the hands of the other. If it had been allowed to persist, the lovers could still have been rescued by the Capitol for the sake of government popularity and the avoidance of revolution as it is now (and to allow for a sequel, of course), but the power of the story could have been maintained throughout and magnified with this one simple story flaw being removed. 

Shame. Still - greatly enjoyable, and I suspect the trilogy will satisfy in story terms by the end. 

The Greeks have a Word for it...

I recently read Aristotle's 'Poetics' - the earliest known work of story theory. It was weird to be spoken to about story theory by a man who died 2,300 years ago, and extraordinary to find him speaking perfect sense in ways that still influence Hollywood today.

Let's see if a modern story can be seen to live up to Aristotle’s key elements, defined literally thousands of years ago. Here they are. An effective story has three essential elements:

• Firstly, we have the Harmartia - a ‘fault’ or ‘flaw’ that disturbs the protagonist’s balance of life.

• Secondly, the Anagnorisis - the ‘realisation’ of what this flaw means to the protagonist and the action that will be required to restore balance.

• Thirdly, the Peripeteia - a reversal of expectation that pays off the story and brings the world back into balance at conclusion - but in a way that is unexpected (in the sense that it didn’t work out the way the protagonist intended and/or the audience thought it would).

So, taking Back to the Future as my example story, do these ancient structural imperatives hold up?

Marty McFly is going about his normal day when he is accidentally sent back in time (Harmartia - a fault which spins his world out of balance).

As he comes to terms with the challenges of getting home, he interferes with his parents' meeting when they were teenagers. Even if he could get home to 1985, he is going to be wiped from existence if his parents don't hook up. He realises (anagnorisis) he must get his parents to fall in love before he leaves, or else he will not exist in the future and will simply disappear.

Marty knows his Mum-to-be likes a strong man. And his Dad-do-be is weak. So Marty plans a big charade with his Dad-to-be to make him look strong in front of his Mum. The peripeteia (reversal) comes when he finally gets his parents together - but not in the way he planned - the charade goes wrong and his father is forced to demonstrate genuine strength. When he finally does get home to 1985 we are surprised to find that his family and quality of life have gone way upmarket compared to the life he left. His impact in 1955 has influenced his father's character and he is therefore born, 17 years later, to a stronger father and a whole different life.

Take a look at your own stories or story events. Do your sequences/chapters/scenes or entire stories live up to Aristotle? I've found that the Peripeteia is particularly significant. I analyse stories that bug me - they have conflict, great characters, key questions - lots of boxes ticked, but something not right... and often the problem is predictability. If a story is great, the chances are it is because it has a wonderful cleverness to it - and that will be the Peripeteia - a beautiful twistiness compared to expectation - shining through. 

I imagine that anyone who has remained influential for 2,300 years probably knew what he was talking about, so I'd pause and think about this one if I were you...!

Kindle and Illustrations...

Here's a heads up for all of you who may have written a highly illustrated book in the past and been frustrated that Kindle is realistically only suitable for text-based books. 

My highly illustrated children's books sell very few in hard copy, and I'm very pleased to see my first one out there as an iBook. It needed adapting for the iPad/tablet/etc, specifically because you can only view one page at a time, so double-page spreads don't work, but but well worth the effort, and hopefully will make some sales! 

There are good instructions on iTunes on how to build the book - fairly easy, I gather, although if you want someone to do it for you, contact me and I'll put you in touch with The Grateful Ted, who did mine for me! Also a great advantage is that the illustrations are multi-lingual, and the little text there is can be translated to Spanish, Japanese, Vulcan - whatever - with relative ease, so suddenly your book can go global with no print costs, no distribution, no storage, no nothing. It's just out there. Forever. Selling...  

So if you made a 'Photographic History of Lingerie Through The Ages' do get in touch - I'll help you with that one... Or an illustrated children's book like mine, now's the time to dig it back out and pimp it up for the iPad! Take a look here:

Oopsie - I Forgot! 

On iBooks/ iTunes Here 

Subtext – The Most Critical Tool in the Story-Teller’s Box

What is subtext? Why is it important? Why is subtext fundamental to a story’s quality.

All writers are told that subtext is the ‘untold’ or ‘underlying’ story, and that stories must be delivered in subtext. Make no mistake - this is true. Without subtext, you literally have no story. However, what the great and the good fail to tell us is how in the world we are supposed to go about telling an ‘untold’ story? How do we bury our story, and still tell it, apparently without mentioning it?

So they give us examples. A character takes a girl by the hands, looks her in the eyes and says, ‘I love you.’ And the audience gasps, because they know that he’s about to leave her for another woman. This is all well and good, but still doesn’t help us understand how to deliver our stories ‘in subtext’.

What we need to know is what writers do to generate subtext.

Creating Subtext

Subtext results from what I call ‘knowledge gaps’. When you craft into your story a difference in the knowledge held by different participants, you introduce a knowledge gap – and simultaneously create intrigue and engagement. This is most easily expressed from the audience or reader perspective:

If the audience knows more or less than any character in the story,

                                  you have story delivery in subtext.

So there are two basic forms of subtext, based on whether the audience knows more or less than a character:

 

Revelation Subtext

Take a mystery story. We follow the detective through all the events, we see all the clues, and we try to predict whodunit. Then the detective arrests the blonde, and we think, ‘Wha-what? The blonde? But she’s innocent! She’s the victim!’ and our minds go racing back through all that has gone before to try and establish what the detective spotted that we didn’t. The audience knows less than the detective, and revelation subtext is built into the story.

          

 Privilege Subtext

As the detective bravely climbs the dark staircase towards the attic, his candle blows out and a chill runs through us all, because we know that there is an axe-wielding maniac waiting for him behind the door at the top. Knowledge gaps whereby the audience knows more than a character generate Privilege Subtext.

Within these two types there are at least ten mechanisms for introducing knowledge gaps. By introducing a mysterious character; by using a subplot to influence another plot; by raising questions in the mind of the audience (particularly ‘I know what the protagonist wants - how is he going to get it?’); by playing on audience pre-conceptions (just because he looks like a policeman doesn’t mean he’s not a criminal...); subterfuge (a character with a secret, an alter-ego, lies and deceit are all wonderful examples of subtext);

Other less common types of subtext exist, using implication and suggestion, metaphor and allegory, and a character’s subconscious aims, but we are best to leave these for another day.

The more the audience has to work to make up the story for themselves in the knowledge gaps, the finer the story is perceived to be, so make it your business to understand subtext. The quantity, depth and persistence of knowledge gaps in your story directly relate to how well your story engages an audience.

This is my specialist area and the subject of my PhD thesis. for full details and in-depth examples, take a look at section 4 of The Story Book.

Cheers!

David



Does Advertising Work?

So listen, people. I didn't just write The Story Book. I originally got published for writing humorous travel books.

To encourage you to take a look, I've asked the publisher to reduce the price of the kindle edition of my first ever published book - for a limited period only - to a derisory 99 of your English pence.

So show me some love, and I'll return the complement with funny, positive, uplifting writing that I personally promise will brighten your winter blues. Don't take my word for it - look at the sample reviews below and then click the button! This offer must end! 

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"One of the funniest books I have ever read." City Talk  "Interesting, raucous and very, very funny. When it came to the end it was like saying goodbye to an old friend." TalkSport "A seriously funny man with a great gift for story-telling." Spirit FM Still not convinced? If you click on the left there are plenty more reviews on Amazon.  Straight five stars across the board on Amazon.com. Here's the latest example: 5 out of 5 Stars. This is a DANGEROUSLY funny book!, October 5, 2012 By Andrew "The Unreconstructed Rebel" (Dover, Germany) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)    Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?) This review is from: Ocean Boulevard - Adventures On The High Seas: An Epic and Exhilarating Journey All the Way... from a Boy to a Man (Baboulene's Travels) (Kindle Edition) This is far and away one of the funniest books I have ever read. The author is a comic genius. I literally fell out of bed laughing. When I rose from the bedroom floor it seemed advisable to take a break from reading in order to recover my composure, and to give my laugh-exhausted innards a chance to resettle. I did a little cooking and then sat down for a small meal. Unfortunately I also opened the story again and was soon in the throes of hilarity once more, to the extent that I inhaled my hamburger. Only the mercy of God allowed me to clear the blockage before I turned blue. I'm telling you, this is a DANGEROUSLY funny book . . .

JAMES BOND SKYFALL - STORY ANALYSIS

Story Analysis of James Bond - Skyfall

It takes a brave man to criticise something as epic as a new Bond movie. So before I do so, let me just say that there is a great deal to enjoy in Skyfall. I’m a fully signed-up Bond fan and greatly enjoyed the visit to the cinema: Fantastic spectacle, amazing locations, top cinematography, awesome set pieces and classic James Bond moments. But I’m looking at the story. Pure and simple. It’s only a component of the overall experience, but it’s a very important component. And as a story consultant it frustrates me enormously to see a film of such immense pedigree, with an investment of a reported $200 million... with such basic story flaws. The simplest of story fixes could have made this a classic – it makes me want to cry - and the fact that the Bond name and franchise is such high quality, it leaves me staggered that the producers didn’t invest a penny of that eye-watering budget in story consultancy. How could they allow the story to be anything less than perfect?

Let’s take the top four foundation stones of a good story: the key question, character growth, subtext and conflict.

SPOILER ALERT! Don’t read on if you don’t want to know what happens!

Key Question

If you have M come out strongly in the story setup and say, ‘Bond! We have to get that list back. It is critical we get the list. It is on that stolen laptop hard drive we just flagged to the audience, and your mission in life is to get the list back. Take all the resources at the British Government’s disposal, and go get the list back, Bond.’

And the audience thinks: ‘Brilliant! We know what the story is all about! We are oriented to the protagonist’s aim. We know what Bond is fighting for and we are going to love seeing how Bond is going to use his brilliance and determination to get the list back.’  And we settle back in our seats feeling that we are in good hands.

This is why we viewers love the first set piece – the motorbike chase in Istanbul. It’s terrific and it’s meaningful, because the guy Bond is chasing is the baddie with the list. Then we like the second set piece as well, because Bond catches up with the baddie (the one with the list) at the top of a skyscraper in Shanghai, and they fight to the death on the edge of a tall building. Brilliant. Bond doesn’t get the list, but he gets a clue as to where it might be from the now-dead baddie, and we’re off to Macau in solid pursuit of the list.

So far, we are around 20 minutes in, and we are all loving it. So why does it go so wrong after this? Well, it’s simple: Bond stops trying to get the list. The list is still out there, but Bond seems to have lost interest. The criminal mastermind, Silva (brilliantly played by Javier Bardem), has begun a Terminator-like dogged pursuit of M, and from this point on, Bond is trying to save M from the relentless Silva. The list never gets mentioned again. Even though it is out there and Silva’s many cronies are no doubt going to continue to release the list on YouTube, thereby endangering the lives of NATO spies the world over. But it’s no longer anything to do with the story protagonists. List? What list? Hard drive? Long forgotten. This is why later set pieces don’t quite grip the same way. The underwater fight-to-the-death, for example, isn’t meaningful or gripping because the guy Bond is fighting underwater doesn’t have anything much to do with the list or any other of the now mildly confused audience expectations.

But all is not lost. We do have a new aim for Bond, and despite the unsettling switch, we try to lock on to the new story question: ‘Can Bond save M from the relentless pursuit of Silva?’ Well, no he can’t. It becomes evident in the final set piece at the Scottish mansion that the ultimate aim for the evil Silva is to kill M and himself at the same time – he wants her to pull the trigger and kill them both with the same bullet in a paroxysm of delight for Silva. Bond kills Silva, but M dies anyway – killed by Silva.

So all in all, from an audience perspective, the main plot line raises 3 key questions:

1. Will Bond get the list back? Answer? No idea. It never gets mentioned again. It could still be out there for all we know.
2. Will Silva kill M, or will Bond save her? Answer? Silva successfully kills M, and Bond fails to save her. 
3. Will Bond defeat Silva? Hmmm. Bond does kill Silva, but we have been told that Silva wanted to die with M, which he did. This is unfortunately now a perfect victory for Silva, who got everything he wanted. 

Indeed, Bond is fundamentally responsible for M's death, because he could have killed Silva earlier on the island. Instead, he brought Silva back to London (there is no explanation why) where Silva is now nice and near to hunt down M.

Now, it’s not a story-crime to have the protagonist lose occasionally, and a bad guy win, but I would certainly have advised the producers against having James Bond - of all people - fail so badly on every count. But it’s not terrible story-telling - it's a choice that can be made. What is a bad story flaw is to raise a key question in the mind of the audience and then not follow through to address that question at resolution. The film drifts from around halfway through. There was no reason for that to happen. Not good.

Character Growth

All of the very finest stories feature at least one character who changes and learns and grows through his experiences in living the story. (Or fails to change and learn and grow, but the lesson is clear to the audience.)

Character growth is an area of difficulty for the writers of James Bond, of course, just as it is for any ongoing series. If Bond climbs life's ladder and evolves in some meaningful way, it means he is in the wrong personal state to begin the next story. This is often the reason why any sequel fails to satisfy – the protagonist has already made his personal journey. He’s become fulfilled and has nowhere else to go in character growth terms in the second adventure. So the writers need to find slightly oblique ways to give the impression of growth. In Back to the Future, for example, the protagonist, Marty, doesn’t change or grow; his father does, and the power of the story resides right there. There are other mechanisms for bringing character growth to a character without spoiling the next episode. I'll blog on that next. In Skyfall, the character growth is from M. She journeys down the ladder of fulfillment from ‘Alive’ to ‘Dead’, without learning or indicating a 'life lesson' that would have saved her (except, perhaps, 'Don't trust James Bond. He'll fail you'). I’ll leave it to you to decide if this was satisfying story for you.

Subtext

Subtext is the very substance of story. Without subtext there is no story, and the more subtext there is, the finer the story is perceived to be. In essence, a story is received in subtext when the writers embed gaps in the knowledge between the different participants in a story; a gap in knowledge between what the audience knows and what a character knows being the most common. To give a classic example from previous James Bond stories, when he begins getting it on with a beautiful girl, and we in the audience know that his weakness for women is placing him in danger because she has something lethal up her frock... and he’s walking into her trap. We know it, but Bond doesn’t. Classic subtext. Or the inverse: Bond attacks and kills a fellow MI6 agent, and we in the audience think: ‘Whoa! What’s wrong with Bond? He’s attacked Snodgrass!’ But the agent turns out to be the enemy. Bond knew something we in the audience didn’t. This revelation is classic subtext. (For more on subtext see my blog post on the topic, here...)

Subtext is a huge subject with endless possibilities, the vast majority of which are soundly avoided in Skyfall. Knowledge gaps can be embedded using action, dialogue, suggestion or implication, subterfuge, questions, metaphor, promise, sub-plot, distraction, misdirection and many other methods. In Skyfall, the only real subtext is through the ‘question’ raised during the setup: ‘Will James get the list back?’ And, as we know, this was not well delivered. In Skyfall, knowledge is, unfortunately, equal for everybody. Every character says what they mean and does what they say and turns out to be exactly who they appear to be. This is classic poor story-telling, known as writing 'on the nose'. There isn’t even subtext through subterfuge! In a James Bond story!

Conflict

Bond is confronted by a series of challenges. Yes, they are entertaining and there’s a good deal of jaw-dropping backgrounds and action, and of course, any battle is a form of conflict; but in Skyfall none of the conflict is ‘meaningful’ conflict. Yes, the bad guys can fight, and yes there’s lots of ‘em, but we already know, deep down, that James is going to win, and we’re never really quite put on the edge of our seats as the next bunch of thugs comes over the hill. Conflict in a story is essential. And this is not conflict. It’s a challenge, and one we know Bond relishes, so where’s the tension? To create meaningful conflict, Bond would have to make a decision under pressure. He must be placed on the horns of a dilemma, between a rock and a hard place, and offered a choice of evils, for example, using a method I call ‘conflict triangulation’. When Luke Skywalker takes on another 100 storm troopers, we don’t fear for his well being. But when he is fighting the leader of the storm troopers, Darth Vader himself, in a final, to-the-death battle, and then finds out that Vader is his father... Oh my Goodness, what a decision to face: Kill the Dark Lord... and therefore murder his dad. Let his dad live... and risk death at the hands of his bitterest enemy. What will happen next?! This is proper, meaningful conflict. In Bond, there is no such conflict. Just one battle after another, with no real story meaning to any of them.

As I said at the beginning, don’t get me wrong – I am a Bond fan. There’s a lot to be had from the wider cinematic experience beyond the story, but I’m afraid it’s a 2/10 for a very poor story and a criminally missed opportunity. When we meet again, Mr Bond, I do hope a tiny proportion of the budget - say, one-tenth of a single explosion – might be invested in a little story consultancy to provide support for the writers who often get so close to the story that they can’t see the wood for the trees. 

 For further information visit www.baboulene.com

Are You Receiving Me...?!

When a writer gets inspired, he takes the world he wishes to communicate and telescopes it down, through the limiting lens of language, into a written form. What we get as readers - perhaps 100 years later, perhaps a world away - is a pile of paper with symbols on it. The reader doesn't get given a world by the author - the author isn't there - the reader gets a lot of words to interpret, and draws the author's world out of himself.

Reception Theory...
...is a branch of literary theory that deals with the critical role played by the reader in the literary process. Without a reader, the pile of paper bequeathed to us by a writer is a dormant, useless object - as lifeless as a stone. It takes a reader with adequate ability to bring meaning to the writers words and generate a version of the writer's world in the form of mental structures in his mind, created exclusively from the reader's own knowledge and experience. A child may know all the words in an adult book, but cannot make sense of it because he doesn't have the necessary life experience and knowledge to create the intended structures in mind. And - get this - because we all have a different profile in terms of life knowledge and human experience, every single reading of a text produces a unique individual production of the writer's world. Every single reading of a text is a unique interpretation. A new version of that story personalised to that reader at that time of reading. Even two readings by the same reader will be different from each other.

A receiver of a narrative is not simply a reader of text but a producer of story.

Wow.

How Can I Use This as a Writer?

Well, if a reader draws on his own life and human experience to produce a version of your story, you, as a writer, must write about the shared human values and experiences that will stimulate and excite the mind of your reader. What kind of writer activity does that to best effect?

To do this, we have to write in two ways: Firstly, Denoted information. We provide solid, factual information that is interpreted the same way by all readers to create a consistent story framework. If I tell you a story about a 'BEAR', you will get an image in your mind. But this is not enough information. She got a Polar bear; he got a fluffy teddy; you got a koala; I meant Angry Grizzly. So the denoted information must be clear and solid in order that the framework of the story is the same for everyone whatever their life experience. If I say I am about to be attacked by an angry Grizzy bear, we're all aligned with the same denoted picture in mind because we all have a common understanding of what an angry Grizzly bear 'means' to a person.

Secondly, Connotated information. This is where we get to the very substance of story. This is the information the reader brings to the party himself that fills in the gaps we deliberately leave in-between the planks of our clear and solid denoted framework. Let me put some more structures in your mind. I tell you I am being attacked by an angry Grizzly bear. I am cornered in a college music room and have only instruments to protect myself. You have a clear (denoted) picture of the situation because you know what an angry Grizzly 'means' and you know what a college music room is like; but now, you do something more. Your human understanding of the position of being cornered by an angry Grizzly has you responding emotionally and appropriately. The human in you wants to survive the bear attack, and your mind instantly searches for answers. There are possibilities that are unstated, and you instantly begin filling in gaps yourself - projecting possibilities, running through a mental list of musical instruments to find which I could possibly use to protect myself from being torn to pieces by a bear. THIS is story - not what I said, but what I didn't say. Not what I gave you, but what you gave to yourself from the threat you perceive that stimulated your human emotional response. If you are being attacked by a bear in a music room, what do you do to protect yourself? You can guess, and you do guess instinctively, but now we are getting somewhere as a writer, because the reader will read on, because he wants to know what happens next, and he instinctively feels a need for more information. This is the need you must work on as a writer. You have (presumably) no experience of bears in music rooms, so the story has stimulated you to new mental structures and new mental stimuli. The human brain likes this.

Mental stimulation through story comes from knowledge gaps. Show someone a gap in knowledge in your (denoted) story framework - work on human emotions to raise questions and create unknowns - and your readers will project knowledge into the gap and test it whether you ask them to or not. Then they read more. They cast around your story, desperate for new and more information to fill knowledge gaps because there is nothing like a gap in knowledge to make a person feel uncomfortable, insecure, intrigued, curious... and utterly engaged in the process of finding out the information that goes into that gap in knowledge and fills in the denoted framework from their own experience. This is story. And your reader needs to know what happens next...

What happened next? Me and the bear are forming a band. He's an amazing lead guitarist. Giraffe on drums. Mole on piano. Three hippos in short skirts on backing vocals. 

Did you get a picture...?! Of course you did. But if I said that in my band there was a dremble-fogger mindi-lobbing furiously on a lingle, it wouldn't mean anything, and you won't get a picture (not the same as anyone else's, anyway!); not because they don't exist - they do - I invented them - but because these things are not part of our shared life experience. I sincerely hope not, anyway. Those dremble-foggers can give you nightmares when they mindi-lob...

How to Write... How NOT to Write...

Many writers fear story theory. "It will damage my natural talent!" they cry. And I understand entirely. As I return to writing fiction again with a decade of story theory in my head, how will my 'formal' knowledge influence how I write now? Am I ruined?

Perhaps more importantly, how do I feel about the things I've said to aspiring writers on this blog and in my paid work as a story consultant now I'm trying to write under the influence of this kind of knowledge myself?

The Big Idea
I think the main thing that hits me is that my knowledge of story theory doesn't impact my early writing process at all. The fundamental fact that kinda undermines all theories is this: do you have a killer idea for a story? If you don't have a great story idea, or characters with compelling conflicts, all the knowledge in the world is absolutely no use to you. I guess this is why so few story analysts are writers of fiction themselves: they don't have any winning story ideas.

Write it... Or Analyse it?
And the first thing you must do when you have a story idea is let it pour out of you. If it feels good, don't stand there thinking about it - get deeply immersed in it! This is the joy of writing - the creativity, the world you build in your mind, the imagination and escapism - it's all brilliant, and I don't think I stress strongly enough in my story seminars or books the importance of just being yourself and getting stuck in. This is your story, you must draw it from your own heart, and the very last thing you should do is let someone else get their hands dirty in amongst your natural ability at this stage.

I feel my analytical work makes it seem like developing a story is a very formal - almost scientific - process, but it really isn't and it really shouldn't be. Just write. Write lots. Get stuck in and follow your heart. It doesn't matter if you throw away 90% of what you write, but write you must if you are going to find out if your stories work or not.

I get lots of inspiration and new ideas from getting into the detail, so I just write - without editing and without polish - in order to get deeper into the characters and possibilities. I accept that I will not keep much of this rough content, but I get a great deal of progress out of it. Then it's back up to the top level analysis view to see how things are shaping up. I think my analysis work might encourage people to spend too much time thinking and not enough time writing. Juuuust get stuck in!

Productivity - the Key Differentiator
Too many writers wait for inspiration. These people rarely become professional. Successful writers work very, very hard to dig for inspiration by forcing themselves to write at the coal-face every day, even on those days when they have no inspiration at all. The successful writers work the hardest, in a very real sense, and I have no doubt that sheer dogged determination to keep delivering a word count and to hit deadlines is a massive differentiator in those writers who can:

a) find inspiration when none is arriving by itself; and
b) be productive enough to produce a book a year and thereby turn professional.

So my advice is this: write from the heart; write lots and let it flow. Then re-write using your head, your story theory knowledge and the dustbin. Be confident in yourself - there is no 'right and wrong' - if you write from the heart you will be fulfilled, irrespective of commercial success. Yes, learn the craft of story in order to help optimise your ideas and speed your process, not to dictate your ideas or BE your process.

So, what am I writing?
Thank you for asking... I'm currently writing my third humorous book. I've never really spoken about my humorous writing on this blog but if you are interested to see if a story theorist can actually write, here is the link to my first book of humorous tales. This book got me my first proper publishing deal. This is a fine book, in my opinion, and judging by the reviews, people do seem to like it. I do hate marketing so make the most of this - I don't plan to do it very often!

OCEAN BOULEVARD (Amazon- UK - Hard copy and Kindle)

OCEAN BOULEVARD (Amazon.com  Kindle store)

"David Baboulene is a seriously funny man with a great gift for storytelling. One of the funniest books I have ever read." City Talk.

I hope you love it! Feel free to let me know what you think!

David

The Writer's First Tripwire...

One of the first traps that a writer often falls into in their early career looks like this.

Most writers get confidence in their early writing from some success with some short pieces. A writer might place an article or two, a short story published - 1500 words that get roundly admired. Then he does it again and feels a terrific - and well justified - sense of achievement as he receives the accolades of people who have genuinely enjoyed his work and he maybe even trousers his first payment for writing. Feels great, right?!

And it is at this point that the writer decides to set about the novel or screenplay he's been brooding over for the last few years. They open a new document, take a deep breath... and begin with their own version of 'Once upon a time...'

And this is the mistake. The trap is sprung. The writer is in trouble, and he doesn't even know it.

Writing 100,000 words or two hours of screenplay is a totally different discipline from writing a short piece. With 1000 words, we can begin at the beginning, write through to the the end, read it through, rewrite it, reorder things, screw it up and start again - whatever. Our writing method is simply to rewrite; read it again; then re-write again until it reads cleanly and no further changes are necessary. This is manageable, because even the most fundamental of changes can be managed and accommodated across the arc of the whole story.

So we set about our first full-length work in exactly the same way. Unfortunately, this rarely - very rarely - leads to success. To get to the end of a 100,000 word first draft, and then read it through and realise there are one or two wonderful changes you'd like to incorporate is a major new piece of work. To successfully manage all the ripple effects of even the smallest of changes is very, very tricky, and to do this two, three, four times is simply not sustainable in one lifetime. The vast majority of stories that are written this way end up dying in a drawer somewhere as the writer loses all sight of what the story was about, loses all vitality and connection with the heartbeat of the story and has no mental energy left to lift themselves for yet another re-write of such an enormous beast.

There is a saying that there are no writers, only re-writers, and there is no doubt that this is true. But there are limits, and a full length work needs to be approached in a different way if it is to have the best chance of getting itself finished. In my experience, the most effective method looks like this:

1. Begin with an idea. Question that idea to develop it. Ask what if? What if? What if...?

2. Focus on the ending. Once you are armed with your ending, you have your story. And from a working point of view, once you have your ending, you know where the goal is, so all the component story events (chapters/sequences/scenes...) can be geared to that ending. 

3. Once the idea has grown into a series of 20 to 30 component events leading to a clear ending, start pitching the story to people. Tell it out loud. It might not be something you want to do, but it is the single most valuable exercise in story development. Tell your story (that is what it is FOR!!) and you will learn SO much about it - the improvements will amaze you.

4. If there are frustrations in your story, think about meaningful conflict, character growth and subtext in every event and across the story as a whole. The source of your frustration will almost certainly be in one of these areas. Learn about these key story elements in order to speed up your writing process.

5. You are now ready to write the first draft. Even this process, because it is slower, will generate new ideas, so be prepared to go back up to the previous level and rework the story at the event level.

If you follow this process - without writing a single word in earnest until you know your entire story from front to back and have broken it down into manageable chunks - subsequent changes to the drafts will be minimal and editorial rather than fundamental, and your chances of becoming the proud creator of a fine, finished product will be greatly enhanced.

This is a brief, blog version of the method. An in-depth analysis of a proven story development method can be found in The Story Book; A develoment method discussed in step-by-step detail, from the seed of the idea to the distributed film, with Bob Gale on how he and Robert Zemekis developed their story: Back to the Future. 

Two Types of Key Question

Leading on from my last post on The Subtext of Character Growth, I would like to refine - and hopefully clarify - the information by using this post to identify two types of key question. I am calling these an 'Event' key question and a 'Character Development' key question. Let's look at two simple children's stories and see what's going on.

Event Key Question
As discussed, the classic story structure we learn in our first year of story theory looks like this: an inciting incident raises a key question in the mind of the audience. The key question is pushed and pulled in the battle between the forces of protagonism and those of antagonism until the climax when we find out the answer to the key question. So, for example, the tortoise challenges the hare to a race (inciting incident). The key question is raised: 'who will win the race?' At climax, we find out the answer to the key question (the tortoise won the race).

This is a key question raised through an event. A 'plot' level key question - and although this is very clear and simple and is a fine mechanism, found in many great stories, it is evident that the very finest and most highly rated stories often do not have a clear and evident Event Key Question. So what do the finest stories have instead?

Character Growth Key Question
In the more highly rated stories, we in the audience are asking ourselves: 'What will happen next?' and we are gripped, but there is no clear and identifiable inciting incident raising a key question that carries us forwards. The Ugly Duckling is an example of such a story. A duck is born. It is different from the other ducklings, and suffers bullying, ridicule and social exclusion. No obvious key question is raised. So why are we intrigued?

Because we are powerfully locked on to the question of fulfilment for our protagonist. We are aware that our protagonist has a yearning - an ambition - with which we empathise. In life, we naturally crave a sense of belonging; we desire successful relationships and we feel secure if we fit in with communities and groups. So we want the duckling to be fulfilled as we desire to be fulfilled ourselves. We recognise the character suffering in these terms, and we are gripped by our own feelings about these issues in our own life, so we want to see what will happen to the protagonist's fortunes. The duck becomes a beautiful swan, achieves a sense of belonging in a group of other glorious swans, and the bad guy animals who ridiculed and excluded the ugly duckling look foolish and rather ugly themselves. The Ugly Duckling becomes fulfilled through an unexpected reversal in fortunes, and we are heartened and satisfied by the story and by the 'life' lessons we have understood. So the key question is there, but it is: "Will the protagonist find fulfilment?"

This is kinda important, because every single story of all time has either an 'event' key question, or a character growth key question, or both. Always and forever. Although a character growth key question tends to characterise the very finest stories, I would suggest that the easiest high power stories to write are probably those that have both. The Hare and The Tortoise is based around a very clear key question (Who will win the race?) but also has a second strand of character growth. We (and The Hare) learn a life lesson along the lines of 'more haste less speed'.

So as a writer, I would suggest that when you find a story idea that has potential, you need to look for how the story idea is going to describe a character arc of growth up the ladder of human values, and how that character arc is going to be achieved in the context of the real world challenges presented by the plot level 'event' that look like they will take the protagonist downwards in life.

Or to give an example from a story that has both, let's look at - guess what - Back to the Future. Marty McFly is sent back to 1955 in a time machine ('plot' event) raising the key question: 'Will he ever get back to 1985?'. Answer at climax - yes, he will); but the real story lives and grips and engages us on the question of George McFly's character growth. When George grows from weak and unassertive to take out Biff with one punch, he grows into a strong and confident man, and it is this life growth that defines the whole story.
 Will George find fulfilment? He certainly does, and there is the Character Development Key Question.