Quantum Storytelling

Struggling with my process right now. I’ve just never been happy with it. Sitting down and cranking out a novel doesn’t work. Okay, it works but the end result has been beyond bad. Beyond bad meaning… non-editable. Editing doesn’t save a crappy story. It just makes a crappy story readable. There’s a big difference between writing and storytelling, and my primary concern is storytelling.

My thing is… I’ve tried lots of different things, using Mind Manager, 3×5 index cards to layout scenes, writing treatments, etc. I never reach a point where I feel the story creation process is streamlined. It’s one reason, as I’ve mentioned, I’m interested in studying TV show development. They have to come up with arcs for the characters, and develop stories for individual episodes, and they have to do it all on a schedule.

In other words, they don’t have time to write 3-5, 200+ page drafts like we do. So… how do they get it right? The brute force method of beating your head against the brick wall maybe works if you spend a couple years writing a novel, but it doesn’t work when your script for a TV episode is due in 6 weeks.

I think it’d be fun to go work behind the scenes on a TV show for a month and see how they handle all the story and character development problems. The key is, the team of writers, creators, or whoever — they need a reliable process that delivers results.

So far as I can tell in the writing community for novelists or aspiring screenwriters this doesn’t exist. I’m not talking about formula for any particular kind of story. I’m talking about a reliable process where you can sit down and go through steps A-Z and come out with a solid story at the end of it.

Some of you may think this is crazy because “That’s not how art works!” or “Creativity isn’t predictable.” I agree. But some people come up with consistently good stories and have a reliable system for turning them out, something beyond the usual adage of “Just write!” I don’t need to learn how to write, or how to use three act structure. What I want is the pro fast track for story development, and so far I’m having a difficult time finding that…

Maybe one doesn’t exist and I have to create it. I’m willing to do that if I have to, but I’d rather not reinvent the wheel. Let’s hope the books I ordered on creating stuff for TV will help…