Quantum Storytelling

As I’ve mentioned a few times before, I’ve been going through my work in progress scene by scene. Each index card represents a scene. The challenge here is you’ll run short of scenes pretty quick. And then you start thinking about the scenes you have. Some of them are actually two scenes. There’s a traveling scene where something happens, and then another scene that depicts the arrival, where something happens. It’s easy to think of those two as one scene, because you have a ‘traveling arrival’ — but if the focal point of each is different. If there is a different dramatic build up and conclusion to both of those, then you have two scenes, not one.

So this is what I’ve been dealing with lately. I’m about 20 scenes short of completing my scene arrangement. But when I look at my list of scenes, I’ve pretty much captured everything I wanted. I can’t add a lot more without going into B.S. land. On closer examination, it appears that some of my scenes are actually two scenes. Which explains why my scene count is so low.

If you end up working this way, don’t be surprised if your scene count comes up short. You’ve probably got a few scenes hiding within other ones. Do a second pass evaluation, and any scenes that have a multi-focus should probably be split into two or more scenes. That fixes two problems; One, it keeps scenes focused on one dramatic problem at a time. Two, it broadens your scene count and fills out your story.

Creative consistency is an oxymoron. Creativity, by it’s definition, is not very often consistent. If it were consistent, it wouldn’t be valued so highly. If anyone could be creative, at any time, then what would be the value of creativity? Would it be valued?

Yet anyone who has ever ‘gone pro’ in a creative field has found that creativity becomes a daily demand; It becomes a demand which adheres to a schedule, and worse a schedule usually set by others.

A big part of being a major player in any field is simply showing up where others do not. If you are a sci-fi writer, and you consistently write sci-fi for many years, you increase your ‘rank’ exponentially against all the writers who give up and disappear into the mists of time. Being consistent creates a name for yourself. People will say, “I know that writer. They’ve been around a long time, and written many books.” And so you see, consistency is in itself, a part of the marketing process.

But there is one major caveat. Consistency is not always realistic. Anyone who has ever had a creative slump will arrive at the obvious question; “But I can’t produce my best work all day, every day, can I?”

No, you can’t. It is not realistic to expect your output will be great, every single day, 365 days a year. But here’s the thing…

You can still try.

How do we, as creative people, go about doing this? Using the sister of consistency; Routine.

Let us pretend that we have set aside one month for a little experiment. We avoid any unnecessary routine, and just allow creativity to bubble up whenever it feels like it. We mark on the calendar each of the days where we have a high creative output.

The next month, we set aside thirty minutes… no wait, scratch that. We set aside fifteen minutes every single day to get some creative work done, and then we stick to it. We use an app like Cool Timer and we do nothing but write or work on our stories for fifteen minutes every day.

Between the ‘random creativity’ and the ‘routine creativity’ method, which do you think will yield a higher output?

You’ll have to try it for yourself. I will say in my experiences that even the smallest of routine commitments increases my creative output beyond the frenetic spurts of unplanned creativity.

Routine creativity often snowballs into an avalanche of creativity. Thus the more you shake things up across the mountainside on a regular basis, the more avalanches you will have.

As creatives, don’t we at least owe it to ourselves to try?

I read a negative post on another blog recently, about how writer’s blogs are pointless. How ironic and self-fulfilling is that? I had a rant all typed up in response to it, but then I decided it would only be a further waste of time and energy to follow in the footsteps of that blog, which shall remain unnamed.

Instead I want to talk about a hard lesson I’ve had to learn in my life, one that I find especially pertinent to writing. That important lesson is learning to be constructive, and positive. The craft of writing is built on mental energy. You can’t write when you’re too tired. And writing itself can wear you out and make you tired. So every time you sit down to write, there is a ticking clock. It is not so much a clock that measures time, but one that measures energy. There is no point arguing with somebody who fundamentally disagrees with you. Most likely, you will not change the mind of the other person.

Likewise, if you launch into your blog with primarily negative posts, you’ll not only attact the wrong kind of audience, one which is primarily negative, but you’ll also be wasting a lot more time and energy that could be used to solve problems on your story, or the problems that writers face in general.

In other words, writer blogs and other things that involve writing but are not related to the act of writing a story, are not wastes of time if they are constructive, positive, and help to solve problems. But if they are negative, and their only purpose is to focus on failure and negativity, then they are certainly a waste of time.

Working out problems with crayons in the shower is not a waste of time. Writing this blog is not a waste of time. Anything that helps me push my story forward, solve problems of my own or any other writer’s, is not a waste of time.

Being productive is a not a waste of time. Going around labeling everything wasteful, pointing out how pointless everything is, ranting about the futility of the problems rather than searching for solutions—those things are a waste of time.

Next time you feel yourself frustrated or angry, stop yourself. Take a moment, and just breathe. Ask yourself, “What can I do to solve this problem?”

You’ll go a lot further than if you launched into an anger-induced rant, and perhaps you might even solve your problem.

It pays to be constructive. That’s what a writer does after all. They construct worlds, characters, relationships, and events. You cannot do that if you’re only ever focused on the destructive, or the negative. You could almost say, that by being too negative, you erode your ability as a writer. You destroy your ability to convey meaning and purpose. And that is the central element of all storytelling.

Writers must be constructive, and avoid the destructive or the negative.