Five Mistakes In Story Structure I See Way Too Often · 2:00am Sep 16th, 2015
As promised, here’s a writing blog post! This one might seems simple, but there’s more than one person with more followers than me who needs a reminder.
In my fanfic career, I have brainstormed and preread for a lot of great writers. Brainstorming especially is a lot of fun for me… usually. I love ideas, but I tend to think in terms of stories-- where is the conflict? where is the climax? how do you show those things? how do they connect in tone and theme?
Like I said, all of that is fun for me. What’s not fun is that a surprising number of people have a very hard time understanding these things. Even people who have already written great stories. And even less fun is that often they can’t even step back and see it, so I end up spending a lot of time trying to get someone with great ideas, who can write the hell out of them, to build a solid story.
A solid story is like a piece of furniture. It does what it’s supposed to do. It’s not a comment on how beautiful or exciting the story is, or how unique it is, or how much time and effort went into the details-- that’s all in the writing. A solid story has a beginning, a middle, and an end that fit together; the characters do things that make sense for them as presented; and it has a plot that gives the reader a reason to read it.
These are the five mistakes I see the most often -- from every level of writer -- in constructing a solid story. There are plenty more mistakes they can make in writing the story; that’s where pacing, prose, character, and theme have to be worked out. But these are problems with the foundation. If these don’t get worked out, they have a mess before they even start.
(As with anything in writing, there are exceptions. Some of those exceptions I’ve included as footnotes to avoid tangents. Another exception that holds for all of this is that it’s geared towards self-contained stories-- short stories, novellas/novelettes, and novels. Episodic stories, serials, minifics, poetry, and other non-standard types of stories can share some of these problems, but their foundations are slightly different so these might not be as important. Experimental stories can try something different with foundations, but remember: experiments sometimes fail.)
Mistake #1: They have an idea, not a story.
An idea, in a story, is something interesting. It can be a setting, a situation, a philosophical theme, a structure, or anything else that catches someone’s attention and makes them want to write about it.
Ideas include stuff like:
Rainbow Dash has a secret video game addiction.
There’s a cave in the Crystal Empire that offers visions of the future.
Luna has the power to grant wishes on falling stars.
Applejack is in love with Twilight and wants to learn about magic to connect with her.
An idea is not a story[1]. Usually, ideas have no conflict, no problem to solve, no momentum. They might suggest those things-- the idea of Rainbow Dash having a secret video game addiction has a lot of directions it could go: How is she hiding it from her friends? Is it affecting her flying practice? Do her friends find out and try to help her get it under control?
Any, or all of those things make a good story. They’re open ended. They present a problem people will want to find out the solution to, or a conflict they’ll want to see resolved. The story shows the resolution of the problem, so if there is no problem or conflict, there is no story.
A good idea is to try to sum up the story as one or more questions that the writer wants people to ask at the beginning of the story, and have answered by the end. If they can’t, they probably don’t really have a story there, they have an idea.
Mistake #2: The story doesn’t start until thousands of words after they started writing.
People should know what the story is about fairly quickly. Bad Horse at one point determined that people usually give a story 500 words to catch their interest before clicking away. Since the story is what you’re hoping will catch their interest, and keep them reading until the end, you ideally want to do something that will get them to ask the question that sums it up within 500 words [2]. Or at the very least by the end of the first chapter, in a longer fic.
A good rule of thumb is that if your story is about a character who has a problem, you want to start the story as close to when that problem disrupts their life as you possibly can. Sometimes you do need some set up, but really think seriously about how much you need. There’s a good chance it’s not as much as you want to write.
Mistake #3: They finished the story before they got started, or they forgot to stop writing when it was done.
There are two sides to this one. In the first instance, the writer gets scared of conflict, or likes their character too much for her to have problems, or whatever conflict they have was something that would be reasonably solved by the characters in half a minute. So they set up a problem, like Rainbow Dash having a video game addiction, then explain right away how it doesn’t get in the way of her flying. And she’s hiding it from her friends, but then her friends find out, and they totally understand and agree it’s a fine hobby.
This can get really annoying in brainstorming, where the point is to find the conflict that will carry the story. If everything is resolved easily as soon as it becomes a problem, the story is going to be boring. But it also results in a lot of incomplete outlines, where the writer gets a few scenes down, then looks at it and wonders “what next?”
A writer needs to pick something that will not be easily resolved. If it would logically be easily resolved, they need to change the situation so that it can’t be easily resolved.
The other side of this one is where the writer has a perfectly fine problem or conflict, and it makes a decent story, but they like their idea so much they want to keep writing after the resolution. At best they’ll start conjuring up extra problems to tack on, even though they have nothing to do with where the story started. At worst they’ll wander aimlessly with no real conflict in sight (a problem that often shows up in shipping fics or fics about OCs.)[3]
In those cases, they should just end the story and start the process over again as a sequel or another episode, giving them a new chance to hook readers and a new resolution to aim for. It leaves the original story feeling solid and fulfilling, it’s less intimidating for new readers, and it offers a fresh shot at the front page/popular stories list/feature box, which can grab some new readers for the original.
Mistake #4: They changed their mind about what story they were writing.
This often happens in fanfic when a writer didn’t outline the whole story, or stumbled on to something interesting as they were writing. Suddenly what was supposed to be a subplot gets all the attention, and the main plot is quickly resolved or shoved aside indefinitely. If they want a solid story, they need to not do that.
They have a few options for what they can do: They can stop the story and rewrite it to focus on their neat new thing. They can focus on the new thing while making sure to keep the original story running on track for the people who were promised that story. Or they can keep the new thing in mind and start planting seeds for a sequel that will focus on the new thing. But no matter how neat the new thing is, they can’t just derail the whole story for it.
Mistake #5: They don’t know how the story ends, and have decided to keep writing until they figure it out.
This is similar to finishing the story and wandering, but in this case they never even finish the story. The writer might have, at some point, thought they knew how it was going to end, but something happened and that no longer seemed like a good idea. Or maybe they write by the seat of their pants and thought they’d figure it out along the way. In either case, there’s a good chance the story is not going to get any better with more writing. The writer needs to find something that makes a suitable ending, or they need to cancel the story and work on a story they know how to write.
So, if you're writing, or brainstorming with a writer, or trying to offer a critique, I suggest keeping these things in mind. A lot of the time people get hung up in the writing or ideas and don't realize the problem is the story itself. And if you're a writer, at least make sure by the time you're done brainstorming you have a central question that will carry the story you want to write. And when you have an outline you're working on, I suggest scanning over it to see if your foundations are solid before you get halfway done the fic and figure out that it's not holding up. There's nothing worse than putting a lot of work into something that's going to fall down in a stiff wind.
[1] An idea is not a story. Okay, sometimes an idea is a story. Some stories are all about exploring an idea, usually either a puzzle or something with philosophical ramifications. This only works if the idea is intriguing enough by itself for people to wonder “yeah, what would happen if Satan tried to tempt the mane six?” or “How did someone manage to steal Celestia’s prize spell book that was protected by powerful magic?”
In these stories, the important part is to hook the reader with the idea up front, and keep your writing to things that cast new light on the idea. When the idea is fully illuminated or explored, it’s time to pack up and head home.
[2] Since the story is what you’re hoping will catch their interest, and keep them reading until the end, you ideally want to do something that will get them to ask the question that sums it up within 500 words. There are some stories that do require a lot of set-up before you get to the real question, but it’s still vital to hook the reader. The best way to do this is to set up a minor problem or question and make that the focus until you get to the one that’s going to pull your story along. The important thing here is to either make it something that can be resolved with the main plot, or make it something that will no longer be a problem once the main plot gets rolling. People shouldn't be left wondering about the original hook after the story has moved on.
[3] At worst they’ll wander aimlessly with no real conflict in sight (a problem that often shows up in shipping fics or fics about OCs.) Okay, I admit that there are many people who like fics that wander aimlessly, especially shippers. But the thing is that it’s also annoying to some people, it’s a bad habit to get into if they plan to write anything other than fanfic, and usually people who did want to wander would be just as happy to do that in the form of a new story.
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I've been thinking a lot about this, lately. It's so easy to recall stories as their idea:
- Children are shipwrecked on an island and revert to a cruel state of nature
- Animals gain self-awareness and take over their farm
- A rich playboy during Prohibition turns out to be a bootlegger desperate to capture a girl's love
Ideas, all of them great. But Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm and The Great Gatsby don't float on their ideas. They might have become famous because of their ideas, but without the fundamental structure of a story, with characters and conflict and tension and change, they would have sunk and been forgotten.
When I'm thinking up new stories nowadays, I imagine a graph. On the X axis is the idea, something unusual about the setting or events that provides an interesting medium for the characters to work against. But the Y axis is the story itself -- how the characters are coping with the world and their various trials and tribulations.
It's more suited for some stories than others -- adventure, world building, etc. The standard slice of life or comedy probably wouldn't benefit as much from being a story heavy on ideas. But you're absolutely correct, that if you're going to write a story that focuses on an idea, you need the rest of the components of a story to help it float.
Has someone actually written this? Because I want to read it.
I get the feeling I'm going to be linking people to this blog fairly often, from now on...
Wow. Most readers are way more generous than me. I'm not sure I give writers more than 25 words to hook me.
Other than that[1], this is an awesome blog post and another testament to what a shame it is that we can't put blogs into libraries.
[1] I wanted to say "Seriously, though," here. But then I realized that I was being completely serious about the 25 word thing.
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Eeyup! "Appletheosis" by DuncanR. It's honestly one of my favorite stories that we've featured in the RCL. Freaking fantastic.
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Twenty-five words?! I can barely get through my weather report opening in twenty-five words! I'll never win your love!
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"Awaken, Scootaloo"
Nicely active and immersive. Sucks you in quickly. Definitely enough to justify continued reading.
"Diary of a Pliant Tyrant"
A bit slow, but this is establishing some nice character voice—and the "very few mistakes" and "delayed genius" lines are definitely building curiosity for me.
"Cheerilee's Thousand"
Some nice character establishment here, and sets up questions in the reader's mind astonishingly quickly. I wanted to toss in a joke about not liking this one to round out the set, but this is probably my favorite, actually. The first two are evocative. This drags me right into the meat of the story, with a couple quick emotional cues to guide my expectations.
Shut up and take me liking your stories.
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I meant to link to that. It is a great story.
3396231 Kind of amazing to hear that, actually. I feel like I'm not so great at beginnings. I guess it's my biases coming to the fore. I'm very character focused, so unless character hits me from the word go, I have to keep reading in order to know if the author did it up correctly. I could definitely get a sense of characterization in that time if they went there, but mood and setting is often the goal of those first few words.
I also once got called out for LUS for that opening in Cheerilee's Thousand. *Rolls eyes*
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That's dumb. (Or, okay, well... it's dumb based on the 25 words I read just now...)
I suppose if I'm gonna go around showing off hooks I like (sorry for sidetracking, bookplayer!) I do want to mention two in particular that I love, though.
First one is from Skywriter's "Infernal Machines"
Second one is from one of my (rather unsuccessful, actually) writeoff entries that I'm blowing into a larger story right now. This is "War"
I agree with this blog so hard.
Incidentally, realizing partway through writing a story that you actually want to write a different story is something that really hurts if you're posting your story as you write it. I got very, very lucky with Mistletrapped, as I realized early enough on that I didn't end up screwing it up.
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So here's a question:
How many of your stories can you remember the first couple sentences (or first sentence) of offhand?
I can only remember a handful of my own without looking.
Note to self: "Devil Went Down to Georgia" style smartass fic.
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Verbatim or general structure? I can't remember any of them verbatim. General structure... Here are my best guesses.
"Amazingly Awesome Adventures..." – Rainbow Dash complains to Tank about how she's finished all the Daring Do novels.
"Bell, Book & Candle" – Bellbray calls out (for Clover?) in a darkened cave.
"Purple Prose..." – Timecode + Twilight enjoys lying in bed.
"A Filly's Guide..." – I think the story proper starts with the first few lines of an article about Twilight wanting to visit Griffonstan? This one's hard, because I was using about four or five different article ledes in the various descriptions and the start of the story. It's actually supposed to start before you open the story, but I needed to allow for readers to start paying attention in lots of different places, so it's hard to remember where the text proper begins.
I'll skip the Pokémon trollfic.
"Transference" – Rarity, in costume, watches Twilight running around the Grand Galloping Gala? This is another one I'm not sure about. There's so much perspective-switching here that it could be a lot of different things.
"Twilight Sparkle Investigates" – An external description of what's seen through a video camera, as Twilight walks on screen with a six-pack of beer.
"Three Nights" – Evocative description of a windy winter night in the woods. (Cadance takes a sentence or two to show up, IIRC.)
"The Curious Incident..." – First person description of the ocular display warning message Derpy is seeing as she tries to buy flowers.
"The Rose" – I think this one starts with a timing line about the first time the rose changed color? Then scene-setting with Ember making soup in the kitchen at his house (and I think a line about the clock).
"Co-Incidence" – You know, I just read this one and I still don't really remember. This is probably my worst story on the site (excepting the Pokémon crossover), and it always bothers me that nobody's downvoted it yet.
BRB, gotta check my accuracy!
ETA: Accuracy not great. I got close enough that I'll say it was a hit on "The Rose" and "Bell, Book & Candle". I got kind of close with "Purple Prose..." and "Three Nights", but my details were weak in both cases. "Amazingly Awesome Adventures..." and "The Curious Incident..." I tagged the second sentences/paragraphs almost spot-on, but missed the first sentences completely. "Filly's Guide..." and "Transference" I'm vaguely on topic, but my details are definitely wrong. And I completely forgot my tiny first-person Luna fic.
3396405 Waitin' on you, Jet. I expect you to deliver on this one :P
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Authors know they have to grab your attention. It can be pretty amazing just grabbing books and reading the first paragraph or so... assuming you have books by the right authors around.
Nine Princes of Amber, Roger Zelazny
Stainless Steel Rat, Harry Harrison
Bloodlist, PN Elrod
The Time of the Dark, Barbara Hambly
--arcum42
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Is that second one "The Stainless Steel Rat"?
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Yep. Would have liked to have added a few more lines further, honestly, but that's often the case with these. The first one is pretty well known, too.
--arcum42
3396464 You hold your breath, ZOMG. You hold your breath and you don't stop holding it!
3396231 I've always liked the first line out of Diamond Tiara Buys a Little Sister (which sets up the story right in the title)
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Went ahead and added book titles and author names...
--arcum42
3396593 Nah, I'll just poke you until you get tired of it and decide either to wring my neck or write the fic~
3396609 Heh. Cute. You think you're more stubborn than I am.
3396614 Nah, I just know you'll wanna strangle me. But you're nowhere near me, so you won't be able to, so I'm free to annoy you at my leisure~
3396305 Gotta give you an upvote for mentioning the opening of contraptionology. The prose on that series was so damn beautiful. Though, I gotta say, I mighta been hooked by that story by description alone, because Applejack defeating the encroaching force of technology with the power of pragmatism was such an amazing idea.
Also, Bookplayer, is footnotes with fancy lead in headers a thing? Cause I desperately want it to be a thing. Foot notes are the worst for me, because I compulsively track just about every single one, even if they're separated from the main text by an entire book. A little header thing is great for this stuff, however you wind up reading it. House of Leaves was such a jerk in that regard, intentionally so. I sometimes wonder if I'm the only person who thinks about this stuff this much. My favorite example of a similar thing is that, after reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the thing I most brought up in reference to it was how much of a revelation dialogue without quotation marks was.
Very nice blog, these things do tend up turning whenever people ask for advice on writing a story.
Augh! I know this far too well, as I've been long stuck with some really, really tempting ideas I don't know how, exactly, to turn into stories.
Wow, this is something I feel will really help me in my trek to start writing. Thanks.
Regarding, in specific;
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In screenwriting, this is known as a High-Concept idea, with big whopping capital letters. Think "The Matrix".
It's a horrifying phrase to get around.
It changes your entire structure and, without it, you're not going to sell a mainstream screenplay.
High Concept detracts attention from your protagonist. Your protagonist is most likely now representing an audience surrogate, so you're a lot more limited in how you approach them. This is why Han Solo is far more interesting than Luke Skywalker, Hermione is more adept than Harry Potter and most sci-fi and fantasy setting protagonists are the uninitiated, who learn the plot and setting with the audience rather than having a place in it.
Jake Sully from Avatar is a fantastic example of this. What can you say of his personality besides "Angry guy in wheelchair?" His brother was a fantastic and decorated scientist who knew of the setting and protocols and everything else, which is exactly why we couldn't use him as a protagonist.
And once that's done, you've lost the character you want to explore. Unless you got a sequel hook, why do you want to stick with this character again? What more appeal could they hol-
What's that? They're making an Avatar sequel?
And it's a trilogy?
God fucking damn it James Cameron. Did you learn nothing from George Lucas?!
I've even had to remove 2 great stories from my favorites so far, when they decided that they didn't want to be "complete" afterall, and started adding more stuff that -- really -- were sequels
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I think that the hook that you mention here, and the hook Bookplayer talks about are not the same one.
The one you talk about is more of a low-level-narrative[1] hook, relating to the writing/wordsmithing skill of the author.(can they write appealing sentences? Do they know what order to best tell the events in?)
Meanwhile, the 500 word hook is more about high-level-narrative, relating to the plot and story structure(What are the actual events we are being lead through? is this story headed in a direction that I want to read more about? Is it even heading in any direction at all?)
There is definitely overlap though, and the 25 word hook should ideally motivate you through to the 500 one.
[1] There's probably an actual phrase for this concept somewhere, but since I can't think of it, I'll just make a reasonable sounding guess :V
I.. well, I don't actually disagree, as you did put in disclaimers about serials etc. But I really think it bears pointing out that this is not some kind of absolute rule. I have read quite many nice fics on this site that don't have any central conflict driving them, and in most cases I don't see how any such conflict would make them any better. And I can think of quite many where the shoehorned central conflict makes them worse. Now granted, most of these are ship fics. If a writer writes a short piece which only purpose is to make the reader feel warm and fuzzy, then it certainly doesn't need a problem or conflict in it.
For me, it also becomes a problem if the resolution of the story is really obvious. (They kiss..) In that case, I usually just read the story if it has interesting characters or worldbuilding. The journey to the obvious resolution doesn't really hold my interest.
Thus, I get annoyed when some author tries something different, and all the "critics" pop out of the woodwork screaming "It doesn't have a central conflict" or "This is not a story!" and then the author tries to shoehorn conflict into the story (and fails), or stops writing. Frankly, I think it's a similar problem that the movie critics have. They are so focused on the mechanics (or lack of), that they miss the forest for the trees. Not every piece of fiction needs to be a literary masterwork, it's completely fine to just write something that readers like to read. Of course, it should be an actual conscious decision, so authors should be aware of it, but getting fixated on always having something driving the story is not necessary, in some cases.
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One thing I'd like to say about this.
No rules are ever absolute.
Among writers and critics, this just goes without saying , and is often left out entirely. Though usually, I would say "make sure you know what you are doing, before deciding to break a rule"
Also, most critics[1], when they say "This story broke rule X and is therefore bad", what they actually mean is "This story would be better if it didn't break rule X", or "This story did not benefit from breaking rule X".
[1] Though there most certainly are exceptions
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And that is the problematic part. That's another way of saying 'It's obvious to me'. What people often miss in cases like this is that it's not obvious to the majority. Especially on a site like this, where almost none of the authors are actual professionals. Obviously I don't have any statistics, but I would bet that most of the authors on this site write because they like it, and do try to improve but don't put significant effort into doing that. Which means that they probably read some articles on how to write, and try to follow any commonly held rules of writing. One of which happens to be what the blog post is about.
And as they are generally inexperienced, they take those rules to be some ironclad commandments. Those rules themselves are not a bad thing, they are a necessary crutch to lean on in the beginning. The problem comes from those people then criticizing other people for not following those rules.
I have quite often seen critique like that. Some author tries something different, and then there are people complaining that "he doesn't follow the rules". Now, if it's a beginner author, the critique is likely valid. Heck, majority of critique like that is almost certainly valid. What bugs me are the instances where a decent author genuinely tries something different, and then you get the naysayers whose complaint boils down to "That's not how it's always been done".
Really, what I object to, is the attitude that a piece of fiction, or the author themselves are "bad", because they don't follow the rules. And attitudes like that are unfortunately common, just go check any literature discussion forum. You may not like the way the author writes, but this, like many other rules of writing is something that's a matter of taste as much as it's an objective measurement of quality and judging someone a bad author for something that's a matter of taste is.. well, bad.
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I would be curious if that 25 words includes the short or long descriptions for stores published on FimFiction, or for the back blurb, or inside jacket blurb, for books (or the description on Amazon).
They're as much a part of the story choosing metric for me as the writing inside, and can convince me to give a story a little time to match the promise in the blurb.
It is now your sacred duty to write a story based on these four ideas. :V
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Okay, first of all you're defending some vague "some stories" and "some authors" here and I can't address that. But I'll try to address a few of your general points.
First and foremost: If critics or other writers or people in the comments are telling the author his story needs a conflict, they are not "missing the forest for the trees." They are saying "I (and possibly other people) did not enjoy this story, and this is a possible reason why."
People almost never finish a story they really liked and say "...but it didn't have a central conflict. Gonna have to doc you points for that." When they point out flaws, it's because they get to have an opinion about what a story should be just like you do.
If they are someone who is well known as a critic or writer, it's probably because other people trust them to know what they're talking about because they tend to agree with them and enjoy the things they recommend or write. If you think your idea of what makes a story good is what people really care about, you can start recommending some stories or leaving comments. If people agree, you will become a successful critic!
Second: I need to run over, real quick, what a solid story does: a good beginning, with an open question, makes most people excited to read the story. A good ending makes people feel fulfilled, like the story didn't waste their time. Characters acting in character and making reasonable decisions lets them focus on the story as something that could actually happen within that setting.
I think that everyone, including you and I, can agree it's a good thing to be excited about reading a fic, to be able to focus on the story as something that could happen in a setting, and to not feel like you wasted your time, right? We might disagree about what stories do that, but those are all good things?
The easiest and most popular way to do that is to have a solid story with a driving conflict.
If someone wants to write a story that's an exception, they need to find a different way to do those things. If people are complaining, the author didn't find a successful way to do those things. For new authors, it might be that they didn't understand why people do those things in that way. In that case they need to work on building a solid story until they understand why people enjoy solid stories.
If it's an experienced author, maybe they were experimenting! That's cool! But the experiment failed if people did not get those things out of the story, and people can and should point that out. And if you did get those things, or something that made up for not having those things, you should point that out. Because...
Third: It all comes down to the reaction the author was hoping for. If the author wanted to impress the critics, and he didn't, he's going to want to fix the problem. If the author just wanted something for people to kill some time with, and wants to ignore the critics, that's cool too. The author decides his goals for the story, other people offer their reactions, and if those matched up the author was successful! Win!
But if people didn't have the reaction he wanted, the problem is not with the readers, it's with the story. No author gets to demand that people have a reaction that he didn't inspire through the story. And no reader, no matter how much they liked the fic or disliked the fic, gets to tell an author whether he succeeded at his personal goals unless his goals were "write a fic that <specific person> liked."
So, if an author feels like he needs to stop or rewrite a story in the face of criticism, it's not the critic's fault, it's that the author is not getting the reaction he wanted. If his fixes feel worse, or the drama feels tacked on, he didn't understand the purpose of a solid story. And if a story is missing some major component, and people liked it anyway, it's because the author found some other way to deliver the things people look for in a story.
But don't blame the critics. Critics are people who like or don't like a story. That's all they are, how much the author cares about any of them is up to him. (I say this as someone who's never been on EqD because I never cared enough to fix a story for them.)
And don't blame the people offering advice like this. This is just the easiest way to make the most possible people like a story, which seems like something most writers would want to know.
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I believe you are commiting a simple fallacy here, in which you completely discredit an argument/critique because of what you consider "poor" reasoning/wording.
If someone gives a story negative critique, it is because they didn't like it (or at least, parts of it/parts about it). No ifs or buts. And as a writer, this is the most important part of a critique.
If you disagree with their opinion, that's totally fine. However, that doesn't make their opinion invalid.
You forgot the best conflict setup when it comes to Dash having a video game addiction: She has to win the upcoming Nintendo Championships in order to raise money for a foal with some sort of pony cancer. Cue the training montages, Rocky, because it's time to git gud at Battletoads or die trying.
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Huh? What? Where have I discounted an argument? My point is that the blog's guidelines are just that, good guidelines, and not following them is not necessarily any big problem, and sometimes may even be a good thing. I will rather read a good author's slice of life, that doesn't have any plot or conflict or anything like that, than poor author's story that dot's all the i's and crosses all the t's of the "Rules of Writing a Good Story".
And I absolutely agree. If you didn't notice, I have just been giving my critique about a certain blog post...
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I think we're having a miscommunication about what "plot or conflict" is. Can you give me an example of a good author's story that doesn't have plot or conflict or anything like that?
(I'm not saying there aren't any, but I don't think they're as common as you're imagining they are.)
3396880 First of all, where are you and Sind getting the idea that I'm against critique? Really, I'm strongly of opinion that there should be more critique, as a lack of critique naturally forms insular hugboxes.
Which is actually the reason I offered critique for your blog post. It's natural for those kind of groups to form, and one place those form is amongst authors and critics. Your experiences and interactions mold your opinions and if everyone says that you need to do things one way, it's going to be hard to point out or even think that it may not be the only way to do things.
Even things as simple as reading a lot of books are going to form blinders just from that experience. You don't need to look no further than, for example, all the dislikes a story where Rainbow Dash loses her flight would get simply because the idea isn't original. Never mind the fact that I don't think I have read a single very good story with that premise yet. (still hoping..)
So everyone will have their own blinders, and actually having a lot of experience doesn't mean they go away, it just means that you develop different ones. That's what I meant with my forest from the trees comment. And that's something everyone should keep in mind, as it's extremely easy to fall into trap of thinking that your opinion is right because you have so much experience.
While your blog post had disclaimers that the advice isn't universal, and while I do agree that it's good or even great advice, I still thought it was too.. dogmatic, in it's message that either you do it like this or you are doing it wrong. And I have certainly run into people who insist that it is a universal truth, and any author that doesn't follow it is automatically a bad author.
So what I'm trying to point out is that the advice on the blog, while good, is certainly not some universal truth, and that yes, there are readers(at least one!) that don't find the lack of driving conflict to be any sin if the story is otherwise good. And why does it bear pointing out? Because what the blog talks about is part of the (almost) dogma of writing, and like all dogma, there are lots of people who are going to follow it without question or real understanding.
This is certainly not the only case of rules like that, there are other rules too, and people who condemn authors for not following them. Now , they certainly have right for their opinions, but it often seems that they start to think that those opinions are the truth because they are part of the "rules".
PS. Really, is this some kind of original opinion? Because I reread my previous posts a couple of times and still don't see how they can be read as a universal condemnation of critique or advice?
Fanfiction is fascinating to discuss like this, because it adheres to slightly different rules than original fiction, in most instances. Namely, and rather obvious, readers will walk into your story about Twilight already caring very deeply for her. This gives you a great advantage as a writer. It's why you can have a successful fanfiction that really isn't a very good story. It's also why, I believe, the feature box can be filled with not-so-high-quality work, because the majority of readers come to satisfy a particular pony craving, and if you give that to them, whether in a good story or not, you'll garner attention.
Of course, the very best ones are both good stories and good fanfictions--these I think are the stories we really remember.
Most stories I tend to find have issues in the conceptual or plotting departments; writers don't fully understand the story they are writing, or understand how to communicate ideas and feelings through plot (under which I personally include characterization and setting). The last elements an author should be grappling with are word choice and sentence structure, simply because you can't really master these for your particular fic if you haven't first mastered its other, more conceptual elements.
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I'm not thinking they are common, they are very rare. What I do think is that they could be more common if not everyone would automatically think that no-one will read them.
And it could very well be that there is some miscommunication, as I think it's pretty much impossible to write anything a bit longer without raising any questions or such in a reader that they will want a resolution for. Never mind that the word 'story' is something that is open to interpretation. For example, are the "mini-fics" from forum prompt games stories? I would say they are more like scenes, but they are still fun to read. Then there are serials and such, that you kinda made an exemption for.
I think this could at least help me illustrate my point.
Reading Rainbow
Now, this one is certainly open to interpretation. It does have a story hook in the beginning, but that's resolved almost instantly. Also, the story-within-the-story certainly has a plot. But the reason I liked it so much is that I liked the interaction between Twilight and Rainbow. And that's the reason I kept reading, not any any need for some resolution. I would have happily kept reading just for that interaction so long as the author would have managed to keep it original. No plot or conflict necessary.
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Maybe there's some misunderstandings going around here. Let's try to clear up our discussion, one subject at the time.
First off, I cannot see how your original comment was a critique of the blog post; You argue that it should be noted that these aren't absolute rules, which is something Bookplayer did note:
Am I missing something in your comment/the blogpost?
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This... strikes me as not a problem.
Can you do good work without following those sorts of rules? Sure! You can write good poetry that doesn't involve rhyme or rhythm, too. But—and this is why "amateur poets" sometimes bug the heck out of me—there are a lot of people who think the "rules" aren't important when you're not using them. And that's where I take... shall we say 'vehement objection' with your stance on these sorts of rules.
Anybody who wants to write an experimental story (and I love experimental stories) should have a firm grasp of rules like the above, and an understanding of why they matter (like 3396880 explained earlier). If you don't understand why they're rules and you just don't follow them, you're likely to get yourself into a whole muddle of words. If you do understand them, then you can play with them. They're natural constraints of the writer's medium, like color and texture are to a painter. You can do cool work by playing with the constraints, but you need to be aware of what they are.
I don't worry about people following rules dogmatically. I don't, because anybody who's regarding them as dogma hasn't reached a point of understanding why they're there. Anybody who's regarding them as dogma doesn't have the experience or understanding necessary to operate without them.
And here's the thing—the accepted writing rules are better rules for following dogmatically than any other rules someone is likely to make up, and if a writer is prone to dogmatic application of rules, then their stories will be better with these rules than with others. That doesn't mean you can't make a better story by not following these rules dogmatically. If anything, it means being a dogmatic rule follower is bad. Dogmatic rule following is not a sign that writing advice is problematic, it's a sign that certain writers are problematic.
Moreover, the fact that you don't value the advice doesn't really mean anything. You're one reader, with one set of preferences—as am I, as is bookplayer, as is any other individual. If you like stories without conflict that focus on characters, great! A really good story will usually deliver on a lot of levels, character included. Some stories focus more in some areas than others, and some genres like Hard Sci-Fi may not be a good fit for you if you like characters. Cool! Variability is neat. But the reason the rules exist is because large groups of people behave in predictable ways, and having a conflict that gets resolved is something that most readers will like. As a writer, you can put yourself in a niche where your readers are less interested in conflict than character or description, as a function of building readership. That's fine too. But, again, the point of the rules is to make writers aware of how writing (and reading) works.
tl;dr Dogmatic rule-following is (1) stupid and (2) completely unrelated to any part of the discussion in this blog. Rules exist because they help writers understand; writers who don't want to understand have a whole different set of problems.
I've got a couple of nit-picks I have to point out. Well, three actually.
First of all, what's this arbitrary bit about a story needing to catch a reader in 500 words? I mean, isn't that a bit harsh? I've read plenty of fics that were less than 3k words. If I were to judge the fic on something as arbitrary as that, then my favorites shelf wouldn't have over 200 fics on it.
Secondly, why is it that everybody and his sister think every fic needs some sort of struggle or conflict as a base for the story? For adventure fics? Sure; that's actually a requirement. Most fluff pieces and the majority of shipping can actually do without it. If this was something that was a requirement, teenage angst novels wouldn't sell.
And finally, third; what's wrong with writing by the seat of your pants? Who says that you HAVE to have an outline detailing every scene you're going to write? Writing organically is actually a style, and actually works for fan fiction as most stories are written chapter by chapter.
Still, this is good advice as a starting point. Just don't take these as hard and fast rules.
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That is based on data that Bad Horse ran, measuring how long the average reader gives a story before they click away.
You might be above average. Bradel reported he gives a story about 25 words, so he is evening you out. Among everyone, it comes to about 500.
Um, you know that teen angst is a conflict, right? So is a typical getting together romance.
Absolutely nothing is wrong with it, I do it half the time myself. But on longer fics, you're more likely to write yourself into a corner or change your mind about something important that would have made the story better. If you had an outline, you might have caught it sooner. An outline is just a tool you can use, or not.
3397663 (Forgot to tag)
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First, if you're willing to read a story that doesn't hook you, that means you're a very generous reader (much more generous than I, and much more generous than most people). It doesn't mean hooking the reader isn't important.
Second, conflict gives you something to look forward to, a reason to keep reading. If you're content to read for no purpose, again, that makes you different from most readers. Stories without conflict are the literary equivalent of soylent.
Third, it's fine to write by the seat of your pants. Lots of people enjoy writing for its own sake. But if you don't put work into writing, you can't come back later and claim to be surprised when your story sucks.
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Yes. This. You can break the rules. You can break all the rules. But once you do, you better be able to find your way back to your story without guidelines.
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Firstly the 500 word thing isn't a rule. It's an observation. Bad Horse did really careful tests with his stories and estimated that once the readers were past the first 500 words they are likely to be yours for the rest of the fic. From this, it clearly follows that most people who abandon your fic do so in the first 500 words, and so it is a good idea to use those 500 words to leave a good impression.
You misunderstand the term 'conflict' I fear. It doesn't mean that people ought to fight. It means that there is a... tension in the story. A conflict between what the characters want and what they have, say. Conflict can even be 100% internal and revolve around, say, a character not being sure what they truly want.
So, you could have a story that's nothing but, say, a Fluttermac fluff piece but it can still have conflict if, say, at the start of the story Big Mac is conflicted about whether Fluttershy loves him or if he's just one more of her strays. And he can have his answer by the end of it. There's your conflict and your arc right there.
Certainly, plenty of really good writers are discovery writers rather an inveterate planners but that just means that instead of outlining the story you write the story so you know how it ends and then you refine it. I'm reasonably sure that this is what Bookplayer meant.