The Way I Write

Story ideas tend to come on me all at once, not necessarily fully formed, but at least in their broad strokes. In fact, I tend to have more ideas than I write down, and of those I write down, only a few get a full prose treatment. That doesn't mean that the other ideas are any worse than the ones that I write, only that some strange confluence of the stars arrived so that I actually bothered to write it.

The obvious question is this: why don't I just write them all? The answer lies in the stage in between an idea and a finished draft, when the story idea is changed into a story plan But to get there, I'm going to take a step back and look at an idea that I got yesterday and the development I've done up until now.

1. The Spark
   
   I'm sure there's dozens of words for this part of story generation, but I always think of it as the spark. It's the one question, concept, person, setting, or whatever that starts the process of brainstorming. Think of it as the grain of sand in the pearl--the pearl is built up around it so that the grain of sand disappears. I like to distinguish the spark from the thesis of the story. Sometimes the spark is the thesis; more often it's not. Sometimes, the spark disappears altogether and the story goes into a completely different direction. Either way, the spark is the starting place.
   
   
2. The Thesis
   
   The spark usually launches me down one direction or another, and I start to understand the structure of the story--again, in broad strokes. Is it a love story? Does it have a sad or happy ending? How many characters? What POV do I use? Reliable or unreliable narrator? Not all of these questions get answered at this point, or even asked, but they're there in the back of my mind.
   
   As these elements come together, I start to pick up on what I'm trying to get across with the story. I call this the thesis. A love story might be about acceptance, or it might be about loneliness. A story might be about trust, or fear, or self-realization, or courage, or cruelty, on the permanent or transitory nature of relationships.
   
   I try not to write stories that really whack you in the face with the thesis. I don't like reading stories like that, and I think that for adults, they're an insult to the intelligence of the reader. (For kids too, really.) But here's the thing--the exact same plot might be written in wildly different ways with two different theses behind it. I want to show precisely those scenes that advance the thesis, and to write them in a way that compliments it.
   
   
3. The Threads
   
   When I say "thread," I'm talking about two different things. One is the chain of events that take place in the world of the story, chronologically as the characters themselves experience them. The other is the chain of revelations that are revealed to the reader, chronologically as the story is read.
   
   You might think these are the same thing, but they can be vastly different. Any time there is a flashback, for instance, the reader is experiencing something in a different order than the character does. But you don't need a complicated time structure for the character-thread and the reader-thread to be different. Any time the significance of an event is inherent to a character but not to the reader, or vice versa, the threads are different.
   
   Why do we even want them to be different? We do this because there are certain elements of narrative structure that readers expect from their stories. You remember the whole introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement setup you learned in school, right? That's not a prescriptive requirement in a story--in other words, no one says you have to--but it describes a very definite way that the reader can experience a story in a satisfying way.
   
   Remember, you have to get the ideas of your story across to a reader who may not remember or even pick up on every detail. It's important, then, to make the vital details jump out at the right time in the reading of the story. And that may not be the time when the detail first appears chronologically.
   
   As I'm writing, then, I need to figure out how the characters view their own lives at that moment, and then translate that into a thread that works for the reader.
   
   
4. The Beats
   
   If the thread is a continuous line, then the beats are the points on that line. A story that described every moment of every day would be hideously boring, or would describe someone with an unrealistically interesting life (see television's Jack Bauer on 24 for an example).
   
   A beat is the smallest unit of story, the point at which something is revealed. That revelation could be about character or it could be an event that drives the plot along. Really, when you get down to it, that's what most stories are--how events affect people, and how people affect events.
   
   Typically there is a strong correspondence between beats and scenes. A given scene can have a single beat, or it can have many beats. And since all good scenes should have a climax, we often find the most important beat at the climax of a scene. But not always! In fact, one clever thing to do is to misdirect the reader by putting the beat that's really important to the story earlier in a scene, where the reader will process it without understanding the true importance. That way, when the importance is revealed later on, it won't seem like a deus ex machina.
   
   Can there be a scene without a beat? Well, yeah, but why would you? If a scene doesn't advance the plot or contribute to character, why is it in your story in the first place?
   
   
5. The Outline
   
   There don't have to be Roman numerals for it to be an outline. Let's get that out of the way.
   
   My outlines are usually either a terse listing of beats, broken up by scene, or else a bulleted list. The point of an outline is to put each element of the story structure in the right order and the right place, as a guide to later writing. For example, the following is an outline to a story I'm working on right now.
   
   

   Goes off to college. Gets a girlfriend—the same girl he went to camp with that time. Asks about his sister. He lies to her, and she starts to figure it out. He confesses, but she is repelled by it and runs away. Later on, refuses to talk to him, and when he insists, refuses to admit that anything happened. When he tries to force her, she threatens to report him, so he backs off.

   Here we have both background and story beats. I don't need to show the main character arriving at his first day of college or meeting the girlfriend for the first time. A lot of that I can handle through reflection or exposition. The important conflict here come from certain words, which I've gone back and bolded.
   
   This hasn't been fully developed yet, but I think I would write this as two scenes. In the first scene, the main character and the girlfriend would be in a non-confrontational, comfortable situation that illustrates how things had been going. Then the conversation changes, and suddenly the comfort flees. The main character manages to patch things up, but the reader is aware of the lie, even if the girlfriend isn't. The scene ends with the confrontation delayed, but the comfort and good feelings gone.
   
   In the next scene, we see the main character's inner turmoil, and join him as he makes the decision to confess. Lots of good conflict here in the lead up to the confession, plus the discomfort as he does. We get a strong reaction from the girlfriend with no immediate resolution. The main character is left hanging, and so is the reader.
   
   The last scene of this section would pick up in the middle of a string of unanswered phone calls. The main character is at the breaking point, so he does something exceptional to finally get in contact with the now ex-girlfriend. He succeeds, but nothing goes as he plans. He faces her to confront his confession, but finally understands that there can be no going back to the way things were before. Finally there is resolution, if of a tragic sort.
   
   Each scene offers several story beats, a climax that elevates one of those beats to the foreground, and a hook that leads into the next scene. By the end of this set of scenes, we have learned about our main character, what he's prepared to do and where he's prepared to go. And we now know that in the future, he will be less likely to confess--we expect him to be a less open person.
   
   
6. The Draft
   
   All that's left is to write the story. At this point, I just have to construct the scenes, use brilliant description, realistic dialogue, beautiful metaphor, and sparse but detailed prose. Easy, right? Of course not. That's what multiple drafts are for. But at least I have the feeling that the story that I'm writing and revising is worth the time I'm putting into it, because at this point I should have the confidence that the story makes sense and gets across my thesis.

My original question was this: why don't all my story ideas get turned into stories? That's because the story idea might just be the spark, or perhaps a spark that has burned into a thesis. To do that idea justice, there is a lot of work that needs to be done to make it into a story, and if the thesis doesn't inspire or motivate me, maybe I should invest that energy into something else.