How to make your story unputdownable

They say that love grows in the space between desire and satisfaction. While this may or may not be the case it's certainly true that to create narrative drive requires something very like the adage I quote above. Cultivating desire in the reader to keep on reading despite other demands on their time relies on a pattern of desire-delay-deliver - promise the reader something they want, delay the delivery of it, then deliver it – hopefully in a surprising and revealing way. If you can give your reader desire, anticipation and satisfaction in that order then I'm already buying your book, along with millions of others.

Here are some techniques for achieving just that.

Suspense

Suspense differs slightly from the desire-delay-deliver pattern as the implied event may not itself be desirable (although this doesn't mean the anticipation of it won't be enjoyable – think scary movies). It's usually associated with more negative feelings – anxiety, uncertainty and apprehension - but the pattern to deliver that propulsive effect is the same – an event is implied, the resolution of that event is delayed, then the event is delivered. The key is the anticipation of the event, and it's the delay in resolving it that creates the narrative drive. All of the techniques described below can be used to create it.

Voice

The reader needs to feel confident that you know what you're doing. If they don't think you've got what it takes to tell the story in a compelling and interesting way they're going to put your book down and go watch The Wire instead. So how do you convince them you know what you're doing? Simple - by actually knowing what you're doing.

Having a confident writing voice means being confident in your writing, and being confident in your writing is exactly the same as being confident in anything else – you need experience, skill and knowledge – experience of storytelling, skill in craft and technique, and knowledge of your subject/story. So go get some.

Dramatic Irony

Dramatic irony is when the reader/viewer knows something the characters don't and is a very effective way of creating an anticipated event. If the reader knows that the serial killer is under the heroine's bed then that creates an expected event in the readers mind - the fulfilment of that situation is then desired by the reader and they read on to find out what it is. Although a fulfilment event is implied - and perhaps the reader will invent one of their own – there's no real certainty in how it will be resolved and reading on is the only way to find out.

Foretelling

Foretelling is where you actually tell the reader what's going to happen, either through narration, delivering events in reverse time order, prologue, character premonition or whatever. This is more explicit than dramatic irony, and care must be taken not to sap all anticipation by giving too much away. The key is to make the foretelling a promise of fulfilment, rather than the actual fulfilment itself. She tells you you're not getting your booty on the first date, but you'll get it on the third - you're gonna show, right?

Foreshadowing – a technique worthy of it's own post which I will attend to – is a far more subtle technique than foretelling. It is often used as preparation to make later events more credible but it can also be used to create an anticipatory effect. Watch this space for more discussion.

Crisis

A crisis in the story will imply dramatic events and can also be used to create suspense. I leap from a plane pulling my parachute cord and it fails to open. Dang. Implied event(s). I walk home from the bank with my life savings in a bag when 3 guys step from the shadows wielding knives. Dang. Implied event(s). I get home from work to find the wife in bed with the milkman. Double dang. Implied event(s). You get the picture. Once the event(s) are implied, the next thing is to delay the delivery of them.

Goal

A classic technique for creating narrative propulsion. By creating an empathic character who has a stated goal (which the reader will then desire for the character) – throwing obstacles in the characters way to prevent him getting that goal (delay) – then giving him that goal (fulfilment).

The anticipation of something can be more exquisite than the actual acquisition of it and this is essentially what all compelling narrative boils down to. Desire-delay-deliver. Let's get on with it.

Have I missed something? Would love to hear of any other techniques for creating compelling narrative.

Five brutal truths about feedback on writing

Once upon a time you wrote something you thought was great only to learn it was in fact appalling. With that realisation came the desire to do something about it. But without knowing what’s wrong with something you can’t fix it, so you sought to find out - by joining a writers group, online writers’ community or review site. Then you felt the pain.

But you’re tough, and you’re serious, so you dusted yourself down and applied the changes your critiquers recommended - you rewrote the damned thing from start to finish - and you know what? It was still shit, except this time it wasn’t even your shit.

Here are some things to bear in mind before you swallow that feedback wholesale.

Just because you don’t know what you’re doing doesn’t mean they do

It’s easy to have an opinion. It’s easy to say you don’t like something. It’s easy to think you know what you’re talking about. What’s hard is not just saying that something doesn’t work but understanding and expressing why it doesn’t work. Harder still is fixing it. Hardest of all is coming up with something workable from nothing - remember that before you throttle your beta reader.

And just because someone is a ‘professional’ doesn’t mean they know what they’re talking about either. Think of all the chumps you’ve had to work with in all the jobs you’ve ever had - how many of them were truly awe-inspiringly competent to the point you’d change what you did because they told you to? Close to zero, right? The creative industries are no different.

Haters gonna hate

Here’s a stat for you - 20% of people will dislike your work even if it’s genius.

Ok I made that up but it doesn’t mean it’s not true. You know that lifetime favourite book/film/play you would give your left buttock to have written yourself? At least 20% of the people in the world hate it. You know it. And you didn’t even write it.

A proposed solution is not a problem

People love to (re)write your story for you. Ignore all that advice. You’re the writer of this story. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t an underlying issue that prompted the suggestion - particularly if a number of readers are trying to fix the same area. It’s your job to find out what that underlying issue is - trying to understand exactly what your reader thinks he means can be a lifetime study in futility. Best to nod sweetly and figure it out when you get home.

You really want readers not writers

Writers are lovely people and they are best placed to understand what’s involved in producing a piece of writing - but with connoisseurship comes pet hates, loves and exacting standards. Writers are going to feel passionately about what makes ‘good writing’ because they’re in the business of producing it. They will be particularly concerned with the writerly issues they are currently wrestling with and this may colour their feedback. Remember that the majority of those consuming stories are not remotely concerned with how they are produced. What may push a writers’ group’s buttons maybe irrelevant to your intended readership. Here are three reasons why.

You are your own worst (best) critic

The truth is the only critic you need is yourself. You’re the only one who really knows your story. You’re the only one who can really understand the tools/talents/techniques you have available to express it. You’re the best person to tell that story in the best possible way. Therefore, all you really need to do to be able to fix your atrocious story is to be able to see what’s wrong with it - the rest is up to you.

How to keep having great ideas

You’ve spilled your guts and poured your heart into your latest project and having another idea, let alone a worthy one, seems like an impossibility. The best ideas you’ve had to date, drawing on a lifetime of experience - your blood, sweat and tears poured into the project - how can you ever come up with something like that again?

Because for those of us in the creativity business that’s what we’re supposed to do - keep coming up with good ideas again and again and again. How the hell do we find enough material to stimulate our creativity and hold our interest for the next project? And the one after that? And the one after that?

Easy.

Your material comes from three areas: stuff you know, stuff you’re yet to know, and stuff you make up. And where do we go for that stuff? Right here:

Reading

You already know this but it’s worth repeating - read, read, read - not just on your subject but around it, and far away from it. You don’t think reading that book on quantum mechanics can have any bearing on that noir thriller you want to write? You couldn’t be more wrong - cross-fertilization of ideas is where true originality grows.

Listening

Communication is 80% listening. You’ve got something to say but if they don’t want to hear it, you’re wasting your time. To affect someone you need to know what moves them, what excites them - you need to know their prejudices and fears - you need to know how to get them to listen to you, and you can only do that by listening to them.

Not only that, listening to people is a great source of material, but it’s not just what they’re saying that you need to listen to, it’s what’s going on behind those words, what they’re not saying as much as what they are saying - how the story they’re relating makes them feel, how the event they describe could be interpreted by others who were there - how much of themselves they reveal unknowingly, and how much of themselves only you, the perceptive writer can see.

Experience

You could throw yourself into a wild lifestyle to gather new experiences for material, but the truth is you’ve already lived a fair portion of life already. Every day you recall many events from your past before dismissing them without a second thought for their creative potential. Stop that right now - capture them, reexamine them - something that at first might not seem appropriate for your germinating story idea could be made so by some reworking - could that emotion you recall be applied elsewhere? What if you changed the characters or situation? What if that scene from the playground was actually played out in an adult situation? Could it provide a new applicable dramatic dynamic? No? Then you’re not trying hard enough.

And what about right here, right now? You don’t have to be a secret agent to have a life worth writing about. So the board-meeting may be dull as ditch-water, but maybe the boss is ragging on everyone because his wife’s just found out about his affair with the secretary, maybe all that bravado is because he feels his underlings are better than him - once again, look for sub-text, read between the lines. Chuck Palahniuk got his idea for Fight Club because he attended a meeting at work with a black-eye and no-one mentioned it.

Imagination

This is the bit where you can make up stuff you don’t know - but it’s also stimulated by the other three material sources defined above. You’ll know better than me what stimulates your imagination - but I find it’s the more abstract influences that gets mine going - music, weather, desire and love - to name just a few. This is a subject I’ve already covered, so I won’t bang on about it again here.

Don’t obsess too much about having an ‘original’ idea - there truly aren’t that many of them around - taking an old idea and presenting it through your own view of the world, coupled with a reinterpretation of it’s dramatic significance, the characters involved or the setting, can be all the originality you need. Think of Tarantino or Leone, who at the start of their careers basically re-imagined and re-shot foreign films they loved. No one accuses them of a lack of originality.

Fame at last...

I was planning to write one of my usual fabled posts about the writing life but have been side-swiped to find in my inbox an invitation from a theatre company to submit 10 pages and a treatment for a play for their autumn season on the strength of a piece I previously sent them.

There’s no certainty that they’ll produce anything but I’m in the mix and they must have liked what they’ve seen so far. Naturally I am very excited to be given this opportunity. Just have to write something decent now.

The play will need to be 'inspired by' a vintage photograph which will be assigned to me at a launch event, after which I'll need to submit the first ten pages and the treatment. All submissions will be read by a pool of actors at a public event held over three days - eight scripts will then be selected to be further developed into hour long pieces - five of which will then get a full production, the remaining three a rehearsed reading during the course of the season. The timescales are pretty aggressive so looks like that’s where my focus will be for the immediate future - other projects will just have to take a back seat.

I’ll post about my progress and any lessons learned along the way. In the meantime, if anybody can recommend any great books on playwrighting, or any tips or words of encouragement, I’ll be delighted to hear them.

And if it goes well, I’ll see you all on opening night, and if it doesn’t, I’ll see you all in the bar.