All Good Things… Keep It Simple. · 3:08pm Jun 27th, 2020
All Good Things… Keep It Simple.
#Blog #Bloggerstribe #AllGoodThings
26th June 2020
Hello Chaps and Chapettes,
Doing these two back to back because I have a couple of things I wanted to write about in this blog, so rather than stick to my rules I figured it was smarter to get things off of my chest that I will be focusing on when I write a story or anything that includes putting pen to paper really. It’s as simple a rule as this; keep it simple!
I watched a clip of an interview with Micheal Hauge, who is a story consultant, author, and lecturer, and was interested to hear him discuss how many screenplays can fail within the first act or two acts because they do not make the plot easy to follow. If you have something extremely convoluted going on within the first part of a story, show, or production, then the reader or viewer can get lost and alienated extremely quickly.
I have recently found this with “Fallout: Equestria’s Scoundrels - The Last Song” (even the name is overdoing it, right?) which I chose last week to unpublish (but not delete!) while I look at doing surgery on the entire story and make it something much more fun and exciting to read.
The problem with Scoundrels is that there were too many things going on at once, as Hauge points out, “if you have problems in the first to stages, it’s impossible for your [story] to work” (Hauge, 2016). Let me show you why Scoundrels was not only not going to work but also extremely broken;
“You meet a griffon in the Wasteland who is looking for her friend and he turns up with a skull on his head telling them to go into a stable because there might be food and shelter and they get there and and AND AND AND…”
There is a lot going on, BUT no motivation for any character to actually follow. For example, why should any character want to go somewhere on an ‘if’ possibility, IF there’s no drive for them to do so? Even IF I’d suggested it was a mere curiosity, this could have been a stronger driving force that “They just do”. There are greater problems when you get into the heart of the story too because there is so much going on. IF the story was simply this, it would make sense;
“Ponies live in a stable which forces every occupant into a singing contest, and every winner gets to go to a pony version of paradise, however, paradise is not what they assume it to be.”
How long did that take to read? Five seconds at most? Yet you get the premise of the story, right? Let me show you what my previously published version of that would have been...
“A griffon and a bunch of raiders break into a stable and are unable to escape, where the ponies who live there are forced into a singing contest, and every winner gets to go to a pony version of paradise, however, paradise is not what they assume it to be. However the griffon is torn between singing to find out what the paradise is, and the mare she just met and now loves. Also, there are changelings hiding in this stable who once helped ponies but are equally as confused as everyone else...”
Bad. Broken. Not good at all.
Do not get me wrong, it’s good to have subplots during the main plot. We do not simply go to work, come home, eat, drink, and sleep. During our lives, we encounter many “subplots”. Our friend is sick, we worry about them, they get better. We get a cat, they bring home a bird, we try to teach cat this is not the human way of doing cat things. The car breaks down. We call a mechanic. Mechanic takes five years to get to you and when they arrive, they report that the car is a write-off, thus a quest for a new car begins…
But, when these subplots become as big as the main plot, the story gets overwhelming. You’ve probably already felt this in real life. Think about the times when you’ve tried to go to work while dealing with a broken car, while worrying about a sick friend, and being upset about your pet’s behavior. Then work sticks redundancy on you. Then your debts are too damn high. Then, then, then…
And breathe…
A story is a place for you to escape.
If a story makes you feel overwhelmed, then you are not escaping. You are delving into something as great as your problems in real life, thus you will not enjoy it. If you’re writing a said story, you’ll discover that the story isn’t fun to write anymore either. Oh, you enjoyed it at the start, definitely! But as you went on you discover threads that lead to nowhere, matters that don’t matter, and issues that cannot be solved.
What you need to do is simplify.
Hauge uses the plot of “Inception” as an example. It’s a complicated film, he agrees, but in the end, it boils down to this;
“Several men intercept a person’s dreams and delve into the layers of them, interfering with them so that they are able to then adjust the future actions of the dreamer.” Five seconds.
And the subplot is even briefer. “The leading member lost his wife and her memory affects the ability to change these dreams effectively.”
If you cannot shrink your plot to this length, then you’ll have problems.
I’ll sign off with a motto of Hauge that explains how to bring yourself back to basics in a story; “If you’re having story problems, all roads lead to the hero’s outer motivation.” (Hauge, 2016)
Do not get lost in the themes, inner journey, depth or dimension of the character, nor create a premise so thick that there is no way out of it. Instead, focus on the visible goal that the hero wants to cross at the end of this story. Even if you’re writing a blog or a biography, then ensure there is a goal at the end which you want to reach. I think, herein, I have reached that goal.
If you want to watch the full clip, you can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGYHGc0pTeI&t=48s
All good things,
Lots of hugs,
Scara x
