Won’t you please, please learn these rules of storytelling

If you’re trying to write (or revise) a book, a short story, a play, or a commercial advertisement and you do not know the necessary elements of a good story, then you will not succeed.

Write that down. You will not succeed, if you don’t know what makes a story work.

Remember that. You will not succeed unless you learn the rules.

You will bore me. You will not succeed, if I’m disappointed in your story.

I will not finish reading. You will not succeed, if you don’t know the tricks of the storytelling trade.

If there’s even a tiny chance that you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, then please take ten minutes to listen to Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty’s podcast “The Rules of Story” based on Lisa Cron’s book about what our brains crave in a story.

Learn more about this topic:

Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need
by Blake Snyder

Story
by Robert McKee

Wired for Story
by Lisa Cron

Helpful guides to story structure

I’ve been groping around for a few brilliant articles on story structure. Narrative structure is something writers either understand intuitively or find utterly opaque. I’d like to be able to point to some excellent primers when I need to, but they’re not that easy to find online.

If a writer has a blind spot when it comes to structuring a narrative, then recommending the best books on the topic isn’t a good idea. Better to suggest a few simple concepts and hope to inspire further investigation.

Here are a few places to start:

Stuart Dybek’s “Sunday at the Zoo”: A Class in Narrative Structure
by Lee Martin

Why Story Structure Matters, Even If You Don’t Want It To
by Christopher Riley

The Story Spine
by Blake Snyder (author of my favorite book on story structure)

Story Theory
by James Dai

Have you found a clear and concise summary of story structure? Do share.

By the way, Rick Cook offers a tidy explanation of the difference between plot and structure.

If you’re feeling up to the challenge of structuring a plot, Tin House is currently running Plotto: The Master Contest of All Plots. Weekly winners receive a copy of Plotto: The Master Book of All Plots, William Wallace Cook’s guidebook.

Midwest Writers Workshop 2010 is now a memory

For fans of Blake Snyder who happen to read this, I was in Muncie, Indiana, at the Midwest Writers Workshop this past weekend when I was alerted (thank you, Google) to the 45-minute podcast of his 2008 behind-the-scenes interview about screenwriting, which resulted in a Q&A profile for Writer’s Digest Books. The podcast is available as a free download at BlakeSnyder.com. This week is the anniversary of Blake’s death. Everyone who ever met him is feeling sad and missing his encouragement and support. There was a tear in my eye as I listened to the recording in my hotel room.

Knowing I could never live up to Blake’s standards, because he was so good at giving advice and instructing writers gently and with humor, I faced the workshop attendees in Muncie, who had just finished lunch and were in the mood for a nap. The best advice I could give them was to skip my session and go listen to the podcast. In a fine display of Midwestern graciousness, they didn’t.

On the second day of the conference, I had the privilege of being on a panel with agents Amy Boggs, Suzie Townsend, and Uwe Stender. For two hours, we answered questions from audience members, who went away with a better understanding of how agents’ personalities and perspectives influence their choice of clients. Later, the four of us entertained each other with tales of the authors we wish we’d signed.

One evening during the workshop weekend, Debra Marquart performed songs and jazz poetry for a weary but delighted group and turned all of us into fans.

There wasn’t a free moment to sit in on any of the other presenters’ sessions, which I would have enjoyed. Dinty Moore refused to tell me his secret strategy for overcoming writer’s block, but the conference program indicated he told the writers who attended his class, “The key to handling the bad days and bad sentences is to love revision.” All will be revealed when his new book, Crafting the Personal Essay: A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Nonfiction, arrives next month. (I need the chapter on “Pursuing Mental Rabbits.”)

Trouble with story structure?

Save the Cat! is a little book on screenwriting that became popular so quickly, it diverted author Blake Snyder’s career from writing scripts to teaching. People who attended Blake’s workshops, or who simply read his books, were mesmerized by the way he could analyze and explain story structure. The simplicity of his approach and his ability to decode structure were amazing, and I’m not a person who’s easily amazed.

Blake never tried to turn writers or their scripts into formulaic replicas. Still, he was forced many times to repeat his assertion that learning how to use structure, which he referred to as the backbone of a story, wouldn’t prevent writers from being experimental or literary or wildly creative. He taught writers essential elements with a very broad range of applications. Screenwriters and novelists who study his methods come away with at least a few handy strategies. It’s certainly worth knowing which techniques actually work with audiences and readers before deciding not to use them.

Blake was a wonderful guy, widely respected, always candid about his shortcomings, and intensely devoted to what he had finally discovered was his professional calling. At the peak of his second career, he died suddenly at a ridiculously young age, devastating his family, friends, and everyone who had expected him to be around to give great advice for decades to come. His third book, Save the Cat! Strikes Back, was published posthumously last year.

Copies of Blake’s three screenwriting books were (in the interest of full disclosure) given to me by his business associates, because I wrote a piece about him for Writer’s Digest Books. I’m not a creative writer. I studied literature from the reader’s, scholar’s, and critic’s points of view. Blake’s books helped me understand the creative writing process from the film industry’s perspective.

It’s summer, with tons of fun to be had, and it’s easy for writers to get discouraged and rebellious and sick of learning. Writer’s block is an evergreen excuse for giving up and going to the pool to throw in the towel. But if you’re one of those never-say-die types, and you want to turn things around, take a cue from Blake Snyder. He once objected to learning what it took for his screenplays to be commercially viable. In Save the Cat! Strikes Back, he says, “I’d been a bullhead—it’s true! I was much more interested in doing it my way than succeeding.” Changing his mind made all the difference.

If success seems elusive, don’t be reluctant to learn something new. It takes humility to accept that you’re not unique and that other people have something to teach you. As long as you’re learning, you’ve got a chance.

She’s under there

Today, you can find me (virtually) on the other side of the globe, in New South Wales, Australia, where the day is almost over. I’m happy to be the guest blogger on Marsha Durham’s Writing Companion, where I talk more about interviewing Blake Snyder, the author of Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need, which (as it turns out) is only the first of his series of excellent books for scriptwriters.

Marsha Durham is a writing workshop instructor, author, linguist, and bushwalker who lives in the upper Blue Mountains west of Sydney. She’s also in charge of the library at Varuna, the very cool writers’ retreat in Katoomba. As a blogger, Marsha encourages writers around the world with story prompts, technical tips, and practical advice. The Writing Companion is there for you when you need some inspiration.

A little group therapy always helps

Blake Snyder has been a screenwriter for more than 20 years, but when he took a notion to use his experience to help other writers improve and sell their work, he found himself having so much fun that he was propelled in an entirely new direction. The lecturer and author of two screenwriting how-to books, Save the Cat! and Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies, says: “You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to be creative. You can be creative by putting a fresh spin on something you already know. That’s what the job is.”

Snyder’s books have been selling well as the result of viral publicity among scriptwriters and their agents and managers. And it hasn’t escaped novelists’ and speechwriters’ notice that screenwriters are onto something. Writers in diverse media have begun applying Snyder’s style and methods.

As he became acquainted with romance novelists in his workshops, Snyder was impressed by their supportive networking associations and by the sense of camaraderie enjoyed by members of Romance Writers of America. “Their model is one I’d really like to copy,” he said. “They have the right spirit, in my opinion.”

Building community has been professionally rewarding. Each time he holds a workshop, anywhere in the world, Snyder encourages the participants to join or establish a local Cat! group, so they can continue to critique each other’s writing, share industry news and marketing strategies, and avoid the isolation hard-working writers often experience. “Let’s see this for what it is,” insists Snyder, “which is a really fun pursuit.”

Blake Snyder will be the lunch speaker at the BookExpo America/Writer’s Digest Books Writers Conference on May 28, 2008, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. I’ll enjoy the chance to meet him—and you!—there. You’ll be able to read the results of my interview with Snyder at the end of this year, when Writer’s Digest Books releases a new title in the Writer’s Market guidebook series, the 2009 Screenwriter’s and Playwright’s Market edited by Chuck Sambuchino.