The Writing Effect

Instead of getting into another one of my stories this week as January comes to a close, I want to take this time to introduce myself a little more. I know that I’ve said that I love story, but what does it mean to really love the art of story?

Writing is something that has always come more naturally to me than to other people. Maybe it came from the fact that I’ve always eaten up any fiction book I could get my hands on, or maybe it really was something that was natural. Either way, I’ve loved all the writing classes I’ve taken, always fascinated by the different elements of story and how they worked. But even though I was learning about plot structure and symbolism and the power of developed characters, I had yet to see them played out in the stories all around me. That didn’t come until I read my first book on writing.

The day I heard about this book was the day I went to meet a favorite author of mine at a small bookshop not far from me. Ridley Pearson authors the Kingdom Keepers series, a long-time favorite of mine. Even though it was the second time I was attending one of his book signings, I was incredibly nervous. But when I got up to his table, I mustered the courage to tell him that his talks were always a highlight of my year because they encouraged me in my own writings. Contrary to everything I’d feared he would say to that, he lit up with a huge smile spreading across his face, and he started talking to me about his love for young writers. His words were some of the most encouraging I’ve gotten, and soon he was reaching for a post-it, saying there was a book I simply must read if I loved writing. I still have the little yellow sticky note where he scrawled ‘The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler’. I ordered it the very minute I got home, and true to Mr. Pearson’s word, it’s one of the most incredible books I’ve ever read.

If you’ve never read The Writer’s Journey, I highly recommend it, even if you don’t write. It perfectly dissects elements of story structure that can be found in any book or movie you see. Using examples from multiple classics so you’re sure to recognize something, he reveals how vastly different stories use the same puzzle pieces of plot, just rearranged. He makes it his business to arm you with the powerful tools of story that have been around since the Greek myths, and soon you never look at a story the same way. Even the first time you experience a story, you can see the structure the author(s) used, and even better, you start seeing how rearranging these pieces and using different settings and characters makes incredible new content. This book changed the game for me as a writer and truly began my love of story.

I’ve referred back to this book countless times since I first read it. No other book I’ve read has been as helpful as The Writer’s Journey, and it shows in how I craft stories. But I’ve realized that writing isn’t the only way that my love of story can be used in my life. Recently I have been looking into becoming an editor, because it’s really a combination of doing a lot of what I love. I would be analyzing stories, working with writers, and the idea of having a hand in someone’s dreams of being published is endlessly exciting. So, tentatively, I am hoping to take my love of writing to an editing career, and keep my own writing alive on the side.

I hope that you can also find a way for your love of story to thrive in your life. It’s really a magical thing when you can easily see the mediums story writers use to bring their stories to life. It gives you an exciting feeling of being “in the know” about your favorite stories. That’s one of the many things I hope to accomplish with this blog; I want to shed some light on what I see in stories and characters with some research and practice under my belt. Goodness knows what makes a story addict, but there are definitely ways to find and get your fix!

The Idea Phase

This week’s story is unique from the two I’ve talked about previously for one big reason; it’s strictly an idea. I have yet to put any real thought towards developing any aspect of this idea, plot, character, or otherwise. A couple characters have back story, and I have thoughts on a setting or two, but past that, all I have is some thoughts on theme and a general idea. I have enough on it to be able to introduce it to you this week, but I wanted to bring it here to give you a more complete picture on the different phases a story goes through when I work on it. “Don’t Kill the Messenger” was in the completed ‘phase’, and I looked back on it to explore its story mechanics. Felix’s story from last week is in the planning/developing stage, and is very quickly moving into being time for me to work on a first draft. But this story takes the process back another step: the idea phase.

I first got the idea for this story when I was working through an algebra lesson. Don’t ask me how this relates to algebra, because I’m still trying to figure that out myself. But nevertheless, I had a stray thought: what if there was a house where all the wishes on stars were sent to? I had to file it away at that exact moment and focus on my math, but my mind was running wild with the idea already.

So what if there was a house like that? Who would live there, and how would they make these wishes come true? Were there ever any wishes that they couldn’t fulfill? If so, why? My head was buzzing with dozens of questions like these when I sat down to try and sketch out the idea further, and I decided to start with the house itself. Fittingly named Miracle Manor, this house and its magic have only been really explored as much as that initial sketching out session allowed. I wrote down that the constellations themselves came down and built this house as a way of establishing the connection between humanity and the stars, and that has become what I want to be one of the main themes for this story as it’s been rolling around in my head. I think we can easily forget the power that our words have, so the idea of a house where your most secret wishes are collected and theoretically granted has the potential to be a scary thought.

When I think of Miracle Manor, I envision sprawling grounds and a huge old oak structure sitting atop the largest hill on the property. Although it’s only two, maybe three stories, the large clearing the house is situated in gives it a spectacular view of the night sky. On the south end of the property just before the tree line you’ll find a glistening pool of water that’s called the starlight pool. I know I would like that water to have magical properties of some kind, but what exactly they are is still hazy. Inside the actual manor, the first floor holds the rooms you’d find in any house. A pretty foyer with a small, sweeping staircase leading directly to the second floor, a sitting room complete with an antique piano, a kitchen and small dining room, and other assorted staple rooms centered around the massive library. The round library in the middle of the manor stretches up all the way to the roof, covering all the floors and topped off with a blue-tinted skylight. The library holds all sorts of books on the constellations and galaxies and ever manor of stars in the sky. Doors into the library can be found at the end of nearly every hallway on all the levels. On the second floor, along with several bedrooms and a few bathrooms, specialized work and storage rooms can be found. Everything you could possibly need to craft dream catchers and carry out the wishes of the world. If there is a third floor, I imagine its one massive observatory. Charts and scrolls and astronomy instruments cover every inch of the walls and table tops, and the glass ceiling is enchanted so that you can scroll through the night sky as though it were the screen on your iPad.

Even though it’s not very developed, I think I have some good bones for a story for when I am ready to work with it more. I would be very interested in hearing what you think, so feel free to comment or message me in the ‘contact’ section of the site. Later on this week I’ll look at a couple different aspects of this idea, including what I have for characters so far. I’m excited to be closing out my discussions of my stories with this one!

Pirates and Pinnacles

Last week, when looking at a short story, I focused on irony and plot, both when writing the story and when sharing it with you. This week I’m featuring a novel-length work in progress, so it’s a very different animal. I approach prepping for these projects differently, so I want to introduce them differently too. Today I want to look at what I’ve done to develop the theme and setting of the story, and how, to me, the two are intertwined.

What is theme? Miriam-Webster defines theme as “a subject or topic of discourse of of artistic representation” or “a specific and distinctive quality, characteristic, or concern”. When I think of theme in literature, I think it’s a mixture of both these definitions, but moreover, it’s the main point a story strives to get across. The hard part comes when trying to discover the theme of your story. For me, it took sorting through all the jumbled ideas I had about what I wanted this story to be to discover my theme. I had scattered thoughts on the different characters and scenes I’d include, but I only knew one thing for certain: my villain was to be a pirate using children for labor as he searched for a great treasure, and my heroes were a band of children who hated what was going on.

I think the conflict of a story displays the heart of a story. With my main conflict figured out, it was easy to see that my story’s theme is the value we place on the human life. But a theme is not something you can leave alone once you’ve found it; it has to be explored and grown just like a character. So the next thing I set off to do was build the world my story would take place in.

World building is a tall task, especially since the world a story’s set in has a lot of jobs to do. It influences your characters enormously, has the power to shape your plot, and most prominently, sets the scene for everything that’s going to happen. But when I started the process already having my theme by my side, I realized that my theme was also a guideline for what my world needed to look like. After all, having a theme is great, but if the world (and consequently the story) aren’t built in a way that highlights the theme, then what’s the point of having one? Since my theme is the value of human life, I had a few rules laid out: the world needs to be set up to undervalue at least a part of humanity, and there has to be someone exploiting those people. This was easy to decide. If I wanted my idea of the pirates versus a band of children, and I did, then the world I would be writing about would undervalue its children. A world where adults don’t see the point of childhood fun or place little to no value on ‘childish minds’ is not uncommon in literature, but it’s because it’s a fabulous breeding ground for heroes to rise up and fight for the stage of life they’re in, so it’s the one I wanted to use. The fact that I wanted pirates involved also determined the time period for me, as well as the technologies (limited) and the means of travel (mainly ships) and countless other things.

The biggest undefined question I faced, then, was exactly what the pirates were after so desperately that they turned to exploiting the work that children could do. I have a mind for the magical, so the only ideas that excited me were ones that involved a magic artifact or a curse. The answer I found was right back at the world building element. I had to build magic into my world. This task intimidated me even more than the general world building, so I opted to work backwards. Instead of trying to build these huge legends that all the kids grow up hearing, I started with what exactly it was the pirates were looking for. After going through ideas for curses and charms and powerful crystals, I settled on something I like to call a pinnacle. Pinnacles are round disks that can be used to control or manipulate different aspects of the world. One can manipulate the ocean, one can control seasons, one manipulates the wild in your favor, and the other can be used to direct the paths of winds. After brainstorming a little more, I laid out a back story for the magic. In ancient times, wizards inhabited the earth alongside humans, and one day, as a gift to the humans, they gave them these four pinnacles. But soon the greedy and war hungry side of men showed itself, and war broke out over the pinnacles. The wizards were enraged, and shattered the pinnacles and scattered the pieces just before disappearing from the earth altogether. The wizards and the pinnacles alike became legend and were mostly forgotten about. Until a band of pirates got a lead on where the pieces of one might be.

World building is a much longer process than it seems in this post, and to be honest, I only outlined the more exciting parts. Along the way I debated with myself about all kinds of smaller issues, including trying to decide if I’d make my own world geography or set the story in our world, but with a magical spin. I chose the latter, but not before some serious back and forth. It was long and hard, but worth it. Because now, I get to work on something I enjoy even more: my characters! This Wednesday I’ll be introducing the main character, and on Friday I’ll show off some of the others. I love working on this story, so I can’t wait to share more of it with you!