WHAT ARE THE CONTOURS OF YOUR STORY ? ( CONT ’ D )
outlined BUILDING . Use A them BELIEVABLE as outlines .
There is the Journey Story and how old is that baby ? But it serves great purpose . Use it , don ’ t defuse it . Set your character ( s ) on a journey as in King ’ s IT – the journey
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PRESS one “’ CONTROL s childhood ” THEN fears
CLICK “ to BUY face ” TO PURCHASE them down
ANY BOOK
. George Lucas ’ Luke Skywalker is asked to do the same . Sometimes the journey is what happens on a bus ride across a continent , one obstacle after another . There are archetypal story SHAPES that you should use . The Buddy film , the romantic Comedy , the Fish Out of Water films such as … well just fill in the blank .
As a young author , I railed against these shapes like the Wolf at the Door tale , or the Mythology of the Gods with their moralistic endings in the false belief that I could create a unique Good vs . Evil-shaped story , but the Good vs . Evil had then to be utilized , not disparaged . Still I wanted to create unique Shapes of my own . No , there is no new shape to be made , only what you can do within the context of a shape ( or two or three used in same work ). “ Every story under the sun has been done ” really refers to the OUTLINE , the Form , the Shape . The poets and playwrights have their shapes and formats to conform to as well , for instance , the Sonnet or the Haiku . Pretty tight formats , but within them uniqueness happens . Shakespeare creates an entire play in iambic pentameter , damn ! But he did so using Romantic Tragedy perfected by the Greeks .
I had a student once who insisted that a Poem could be anything . I asked for an example , to which he confidently replied with the single word : “ IT . The single word IT can be a poem ; that it requires no ‘ shape ’ or form . The gauntlet tossed at my feet , I had to reply . “ But what use is IT ? What comes of IT ? What is one to do with IT as IT stands alone and without shape or connection to anything that has come before IT ?” In short , I soundly rejected the notion , the student left the class , and I never saw him again , which was sad but his choice , and I suspect he has written a thousand One-Word Poems by now , all Shapeless in Overall Meaning . He proved the extreme example of a person rejecting any orchestration or learning from writers throughout the ages , like a painter who dares ignore the history of painting that has come before him .
There exists the Revenge tale , the murder mystery , the horror story for a reason , as tools to explore the dark side of the human condition just as light romantic comedy and other forms explore the brighter side of humanity . My final advice to young authors is simple : To learn how to plot and do so quickly and proficiently , sit down and write a Mystery , for within the confines of this one shape , you must badger and press yourself to get it done , to develop a storyline and to not stop at a mood , a tone , a character sketch . This shape of all the shapes
WRITERS ’ TRICKS OF THE TRADE
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FALL 2017