What theatre can teach about storytelling part 2

Imagine sitting alongside a reader as they experience your story, watching their reaction to key events and characters, seeing when they laugh or cry, gasp or tense with excitement. Picture yourself noting when they frown, switching off for passages you spent months crafting, observing the point where they disengage altogether and go and so something else more preferable. Now imagine doing that with a hundred people. Welcome to writing for the theatre.

As David Mamet says – you can never be smarter than the collective intelligence of your audience – so what can we learn from them?

Engage and entertain above all else

Nothing focuses the mind like being face-to-face with the very people you're supposed to be writing for. Typically there's a huge chasm between the writer and the reader – with theatre this isn't the case. Sitting amongst a hundred people who are watching your story really leaves you very little room for lame writerly excuses – you understand the importance of engaging your audience and then entertaining them for the duration of the story. Everything else is a luxury.

The effectiveness of dramatic irony

This is when the audience (or reader) knows something that a character doesn't. The very contrivance of the theatre – that the audience is watching a simulacrum of life that actors are acting out through story – really demonstrates how powerful a device this can be. It can create suspense, anticipation, desire – essentially the want in the reader to see what happens next. That's what we're after right? Let's use it.

The primacy of plot

Aristotle knew his onions. While character is the essence of drama, true character is only revealed through dramatic action; dramatic action requires the character to be put into dramatic situations, and a string of dramatic situations have to be naturally consequential – and thereby a plot.

A story with no characters can be endured – characters without story is just a chat-show.

Those old-stagers weren't kidding

Telling, exposition, and background are boring. Immediate dramatic events happening to engaging characters on stage now is exciting and worth paying money for.

Get over yourself

This is not your platform. Nobody wants to know what you think about the world. Nobody cares about your politics or the issues you think need to be addressed. Perhaps if you write a good story they will – but not yet. Right now all they care about is point 1. Right now all they want is to hear a good story populated by believable and compelling characters. Truth cannot be draped over a story like a blanket but emerges by digging down to find the universal elements of the human condition. Achieve that and you'll say much more than you ever could by just opining.

Where to find drama in your writing

The answer, according to most advice on writing, is to have 'conflict', but conflict is not a particularly helpful word, it's both general and limiting; it's not specific and in fact refers to only one scene-making technique available to writers. Drama – by which I mean compelling story events – can certainly grow out of conflict, but it can also grow out of difference, disparity and contradiction.

The one thing that all of these terms have in common is that they rely on the existence of two states. Conflict is one way to create drama from them, but a character desiring to move from one state to another is also a potentially potent form of drama – from pauper to prince, from slavery to freedom for example. Further drama can also be drawn out by complicating the relationship between the two.

The key is, it's not the states that are interesting but what happens between them. It's the space in between - the gap between the two - where drama will grow.

Here are six relationships that can be used to create drama in your scenes without every one having to be a combat-zone.

Between expectation and reality

Imagine a man making breakfast. He turns the gas-hob on and clicks the ignition button – it doesn't work. We have a gap between his expected response from the world and the actuality - a mini-drama. He goes to turn the hob off but the knob comes off in his hand - another gap between expectation and reality. He goes to the door to open it but its jammed shut – increased drama. He opens the window but the fire-escape has been ripped from the wall.

You get the picture.

Between desire and satisfaction

Any romance writer will tell you that the key to creating compelling narrative is to keep the ideal lovers apart for as long as possible. But it doesn't just have to be love – any delay between desire and fulfilment creates drama. What's particularly useful about this technique is that it also creates narrative propulsion.

Between desire and duty

A further complication of the previous drama – the protagonist wants something so very badly but duty denies it her. Betrothed to one person but you fancy someone else? The law preventing justice? Politely enduring the pointless inanities of a relative while the girl of your dreams slips out of your life?

Jane Austen was so very adept at this. Intensely powerful dramas without a fistfight in sight.

Between the actual and the possible

This vignette covers a whole raft of dramatic possibilities. It is dramatic because it allows for a transition, for a difference to be made, a hero's journey. The shift does not have to be a good one – it can be dark and tragic. Macbeth is driven by what he and his lady believe is possible. It's the difference and their knowledge of it that drives this drama.

There is all sorts of fun to be had here – whole acts can be written about just getting a protagonist to appreciate what is possible before he even goes about trying to make it a reality. To use granddaddy Shakespeare again, the witches serve this purpose in Macbeth.

It's also more interesting when the protagonists, while striving for a particular possibility, end up somewhere else entirely.

Between truth and its impact

The truth is always good, right? The truth will always set you free? Well, maybe - but a whole heap of pain and suffering may have to accrue along the way. Drama always ensues when the truthful choice is loaded with potential collateral. So you see your friend's wife with another man – you going to tell him if you know he's going to leave and the kids don't get to see their daddy so much? You know the janitor at work has a criminal record - you going to tell the boss when you know he has six kids to feed? It's called drama, my friends.

Between character and circumstance

A worthy source of drama used by storytellers as diverse as Stephen King and Anton Chekhov. A character thrown out of their comfort zone and placed in challenging situation can be the basis of an entire novel – a device frequently used by King. Chekhov's technique exploits the same relationship but in a much different way – his characters are stifled and disempowered by their circumstance, and he mines this rich vein of dramatic potential.

So, when faced with a flat scene, don't immediately resort to a man walking in with a gun – consider the two states that are at play and your characters relationship to those states, and the scene will write itself.

And if the scene still stinks, it maybe that you're missing these elements and it's not a scene worth writing anyway.

Three ways readers will judge your work

There's no guarantee that readers will like your work – in fact it's a rule of thumb that 20% of people will hate it even if it's genius. So how can you be certain that those 20% aren't right? How can you have any confidence you're not serving up a load of tripe?

You can't – all you can do is get your ideas and story across and let the readers judge your work for themselves – and here's how they're going to do it.

Is it believable?

So the mild-mannered janitor suddenly kicks some kung-fu ass two thirds of the way through the novel? Give over. Darcy reveals at a tea-party that he can break-dance? Please. A lone cowboy is about to take down a whole town of banditos when the swat team arrives? Right.

Some extreme examples to make the point but it's still a point. Essentially there are three areas where your story will need to be plausible – character ability, character action, and plot. If your character is a hairdresser who can also drive an HGV and is a crack shot with a Lee Enfield you'll need to set that up before you exploit it. It will also need to be convincing how he knows that stuff.

Character action also has to be believable – how many times have you watched or read something and said to yourself 'why the hell doesn't she just call the police/lock the door/cry for help?' Robert McKee points out that a character will always take the path of least resistance to get what they want. Observe that rule and your characters will always behave plausibly and convincingly.

Is it coherent?

'I'm not sure if I liked that or not because I didn't understand a bloody word of it,' is not something you want your reader to be saying after finishing your work. You can't really expect them to have an opinion if you haven't expressed yourself with clarity, if there isn't an end to your beginning, an answer to your question, or a method to your madness.

Coherence relates to structure and plot, the framework of your story, the spine of your narrative. If your scenes progress consequentially i.e. each one is a natural consequence of the preceding events – then there will be coherence.

Coherence also relates to expression and voice – is your story being expressed clearly, your choice of language specific and revealing; does your voice have authority.

I'm using a lot of words where only one is needed – craft. Go get some.

Is it conventional?

Nobody likes to think of themselves as conventional. Nobody likes to think of themselves as conforming; everybody likes to think they come to a movie or book without preconception – but it's all nonsense. People come with a whole heap of baggage to a cultural event. They will have genre expectations even if they don't know it. I see a murder in scene 1 and a detective in scene 2 I'm going to expect that copper to solve that murder. If I see 'Day of the Dead' on Monday, and 'Shaun of the Dead' on Tuesday – I'm going to make comparison. I read Stephen King I expect to be scared, I see an action movie I expect some dudes to get shot.

Convention isn't a bad smell, it's your friend, and the yardstick by which you will be judged. If you don't like it try mastering it so you can transcend it or break it. Either way you can't ignore it.

Seven ways to write more when you're already at maximum

You've restricted your social-life to the point where you'll never get another Christmas card, stripped back the fitness regime so you can no longer see your feet, and cut-out TV so that you don't even know what century we're in. You have two jobs, six kids and eight works-in-progress – and you get a new deadline/manuscript-request/competition/commission that means you've now got to write more and faster. How the hell can you do it when you're already running on empty?

You have to get extreme.

Get Real

So you like to languish with your muse for six months whilst staring at a blank piece of paper, then pants your way through 90000 words of drivel only to have to spend 2 years rewriting it into something decent because it's the only way you can work? Those days are over – you just don't have time for it. You've got to work efficiently, and that means writing as effectively as possible in the shortest amount of time. You want a plot strong enough to hang your story on? Plot it - it takes half-an-hour to come up with a decent plot outline. You want convincing characters? Develop them - it takes about half-an-hour to come up with an interesting character biog. Just imagine how many characters and plots you could generate with an evening's effort. Sure, some of them may be atrocious, but you can weed them out before you even start. Better to have some idea of which direction you're heading before you stride off into the jungle. Leave as little to chance as possible.

Mix It Up

Writing isn't just about writing – it's firstly the expression of your ideas – and ideas can happen at any time. Therefore it's possible to write when you can't actually write, or simply when you need some time away from the keyboard – this will allow you to contribute when you're 'off the ball' and maximise your potential as a writer. Here's a post to help you do just that.

Cross Pollinate

You need a background for a secondary character to add depth and believability? Grab the one you've already developed on that second-rate novel you know is never going to get published – hell, grab the whole character. The same goes for sub-plots, scenes or any story-elements you can re-use from other failed, germinal or unfinished projects – you can change the names, the angles or attitude, and chances are, in the context of the new project, it won't be recognisable as the original idea. Two birds with one stone - and less time.

Negotiate Hard

So you're guilt-tripping when you're writing because you're not spending time with mum/wife/boyfriend/kids, and yet grumpy as hell when you're with mum/wife/boyfriend/kids because you're not writing. Cut a deal – tell the loved ones you're going to see them less due to the extra work-load but make a time commitment to them and spend it willingly and with full engagement. They'll probably appreciate a whole afternoon's worth of quality time more than the daily hour of begrudged distraction they currently get, and you'll probably appreciate it more too after all that extra writing.

Sacrifice Harder

So that one little thing you've allowed yourself to keep on – that regular tv show, the bonsai tree collection, the bridge night – that last time-consuming thing you've held on to to maintain your sense of self? Let it go.

'But I need my bridge night,' says the failing writer, 'it makes me feel alive. Besides, it gives me something to write about.' Right. Sure. So what's your imagination for?

You've got to make a choice – are you a bridge-player or a writer?

Get Less Sleep

Ever wonder why writers look like they're about eighty when they're only twenty-six?

Get Professional

There's nothing like the whiff of success to make all those people who'd rather you mowed the lawn or came to dinner suddenly take your writing seriously. If they think you're actually making money or that someone other than you is reading what you write, then saying 'sorry, I can't come to your dog's dinner because I'm working on my current project,' suddenly has a ring of authority about it. Naturally, if nobody is actually paying or reading you, then that air of professionalism has to come from yourself. Act the part, be the part, so to speak.

Or you could just lie.