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…

On The Beach by Nevil Schute

After nuclear devastation across the globe, the remaining human survivors have congregated in Australia to spend their last months figuring out what to do before radiation poisoning sets in.

The best parts of the story for me were submarine missions a few of the characters embark upon, exploring radiated coastlines for signs of life and investigating the sources of mysterious radio signals in areas that are unfit for life. These were the only elements to truly capitalize on the strength of the post-apocalyptic setting, as the rest of the story involves the mundane everyday lives of the survivors in Australia.

As a whole I found the story entirely disappointing. The characters behave unrealistically and in ways which do not establish heroic qualities. When confronted with the possibility that everyone will die in a few months, one family sets about planting a garden they could never live to enjoy. Another fixes up cars and races them. The characters suffer from a collective denial of their fate. But instead of exploring their options and fighting for survival, they resign themselves to their fate and continue planting gardens, racing cars, etc.

This lack of action, and initiative, completely destroys the conflict in the story. How can you have conflict if the characters ignore the conflict? And the conflict is, I might add, one of the natural resources of the post-apocalyptic genre; Humans in conflict with their environment.

On The Beach may make a beautiful tragedy, and a work of art in that regard. But as a post-apocalyptic genre story, and a piece of fictive entertainment, it completely fails for having no heroes and no conflict.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

A father and son travel south to avoid cold temperatures brought on by a cataclysm which has destroyed the planet and left humanity on the brink of extinction. They follow a main road south, along the way searching for food and avoiding roving bands of cannibals.

I found it to be a really good story, and played the survival elements very well in ways that On The Beach didn’t. The father and son are at many times on the verge of starving, and their search of abandoned houses or destroyed towns often turns up little, and sometimes exposes them to the danger of cannibals. This is a natural conflict brought on by the post-apocalyptic setting, and Cormac McCarthy uses the setting to full effect.

As far as weaknesses, I would agree with Crawford Killian’s review. It’s a bit odd that there isn’t more social organization, and that the world, as far as the story is concerned, is boiled down to cannibals and lone surviving individuals. You would think that somebody, somewhere, is working together and although this is briefly mentioned a few times in the story, the reader is never given a glimpse of that aspect of McCarthy’s world.

The interaction of father and child is not only an interesting from a character standpoint, but is expertly used by McCarthy as a writer’s trick to consistently explain the state of the world and its inhabitants within the story.

The road itself, in addition to being the title of the story and almost another character in the plot, also serves as excellent symbolism of life journey and the paths we must all choose to face.

The Road is a great story of perseverence, and a prime example of masterful storytelling.

For some reason when you dig into books on writing, all the same ones crop up: Writer’s Journey, STORY, and half a dozen others. Rarely are these books linked or associated with books on TV writing, probably because they deal mostly with screenplays and novels. There is a concrete divide, at least on Amazon.com, between writing for novels/screenplay and writing for TV.

I’ve been noticing some tricks used in shows like Battlestar and Stargate SG-1 that seem to be following some common structures and devices. As a result, I ordered a whole new batch of books on writing, this time dedicated to TV writing. TV writing is an entirely different beast, requiring a much more solid bag of tricks to keep a TV series alive and the viewers interested.

Any of you familiar with this area at all? Assimilated any useful tricks?

Rest assured I will share some of my findings here.

It’s research time again!