Writing is a beautiful, complex, challenging art.
However, writing commercial fiction that sells starts with a set of steps that are as old as Artistotle (or rather, as old as when Artistotle wrote The Poetics.)
A modern summary is:
- Someone is living their normal life, in which a personal quality makes them unhappy.
- A problem arrives that threatens their normal life.
- They attempt to solve the problem but fail because of the personal quality.
- This makes things worse. They realise that this is because of their personal quality,
- They overcome their defect and, trying again in worse circumstances, overcome the problem.
- Their personal defect resolved, they are now able to live a happy life.
This list is the fundament of a good story. If you have these elements, there’s a decent chance you’ll produce something entertaining. So lets test that theory.
The First Challenge
Your first challenge is to write a 200 word maximum story in which all five of these steps occur, and post it in this thread.
However, you are to write it as ugly as possible. Any beautiful prose, showing instead of telling, deep characterisation, etc., should be by accident if it happens at all.
Treat the list as a series of questions. Pick a problem from out of your head, your life, the newspaper, whatever. Then write it as ugly and as simple as possible.
I’m going to post my example, then a breakdown of what I have done. It will be a piece of writing that breaks any number of rules for beautiful fiction. We can get to those later!
Remember – UGLY! Anybody who writes something good will be frowned at and possible plagiarised 😉 (Just in case anyone is wondering, this is a joke!)
When you’ve written something ugly but functional – ie. it clearly hits the six stages – post it in comments or on the AU Website.
An Ugly Example:
Steve is a star freighter pilot who doesn’t trust autopilots or his co-pilot to land his ship. He has been driving the Charon for twenty years, and he always docks the rickety old bucket of bolts himself on manual.
One day, as they are docking at the space station orbiting Lave, an engine alarm goes off. His young co-pilot Pete looks out the window and see’s the engine is on fire.
They contact the station and are told to dock first so that fire control teams can take over. Steve tells Pete to go back to the engine room to control the fire.
Steve attempts to manually dock, but the unstable ship veers off course and bounces off station shields, damaging the power generator. Pete shouts that he cannot control the engine fire and fix the power generator on his own.
Steve reluctantly flips on the autopilot. Together Pete and Steve activate the fire suppression and stabilise the generator. Steve looks out the window to find the computer has docked them safely.
“You know, maybe you can land us next time,” he says to Pete.
Breakdown of my Ugly Example
First, a person in their normal life with a flaw that makes them unhappy:
Steve flies a freighter but won’t let the computer or his co-pilot fly.
Note that with more words or more skill, it would have been good to show here how this makes him unhappy – Pete complaining that Steve never lets him land would have been perfect. But we’re writing ugly here and this will do.
Second, a problem interrupts:
Being a very simple minded commercial writer, I do love a good explosion.
So the engine explodes, and Steve tries to fix it using his normal approach – manually piloting it into the station.
This approach makes things worse
The ship is unstable and Steve both fails to land and further damages the ship! Pete needs his help of the ship will blow up!
The protagonist learns and changes his approach
Two hundred words doesn’t give you a lot of room for subtlety. Steve overcomes his instincts, switches on the autopilot. and goes back to help Pete.
The new approach solves the problem
Steve and Pete work together to stop the ship from exploding, and the computer lands the ship!
Steve’s new approach allows him to be happy
Realising letting go of the controls won’t result in disaster, he suggests that Pete might fly the ship next time.
What have we learned?
Well, there’s a lot to do to make this a good piece of writing. Fitting it into 200 words required a lot of telling rather than showing. Ideally, you’d build some resentment between Pete and Steve which is resolved when Steve trusts the computer and his co-pilot.
But even here, with quick and ugly writing, following these steps has at least provided the framework of an actual story. I have read and developmental edited hundreds upon hundreds of plays and manuscripts, and you’d be amazed how many didn’t contain a story.
So – lesson one. Story first. We can learn how to make it pretty later.
Feel free to ask questions, but most of all – try it yourself!
