I’m spring cleaning at the moment, and have been on an archeological dig through the boxes on the very top of the shelves in my office.
I found a fascinating folder full of short stories and chapters from novels that I wrote during the first ten years I spent as a writer. I had a lucky break first time out the gate – back in 1986 my story “Indian Summer” was somehow shortlisted for a prestigious Sunday Times / Victor Gollancz prize (judged by JG Ballard, Angela Carter and Malcolm Edwards no less) and was eventually published.
After that, convinced this writing lark was going to be easy, I wrote short story after short story, worked late into the night, on trains, at my desk when my boss wasn’t looking – and, amazingly, after ten years, had sold precisely three.
I found another folder absolutely stuffed with rejection slips from the late ’80s and early ’90s.
Looking back it’s easy to see why. Some beautiful, clever prose, quite a few wonderful ideas, subtle character observation, all that good stuff – but no bloody stories!
No narrative structure. No sub plots. No plots often. Conflict that erupted randomly and sputtered out later on. I had clearly no idea about act structure, or arcs, or antagonists, or anything that makes even the worst story readable.
It was interesting reading all these pages of prose – all that prodigious effort going round and round and literally going nowhere. Talk about spinning wheels.
All that only changed when I got work at the BBC in 1995 and finally got the answer to that huge question ‘what is a story?’ that had me completely baffled for ten whole years.
If only I had known then what I know now. Please don’t think you can automatically write great stories without studying the craft and the techniques. You might be lucky and have an instinctive knowledge of how to engage an audience and keep them hooked as long as you want. On the other hand, like me, you might not, and years of your life might go by while you realise this.
Does make me wonder about trying a novel now though.
How To Write A Screenplay
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Go for the novel, Phil! Why not?
Yes, it can really be appalling to read stuff you’ve written years ago – but that was the practice rounds toward perfection. A form of intern training.
Kat
I absolutely agree that the characters must change from what they experience in the story; the character arc. Structuring the script is essential before writing the pages. I work on my outline for a while before I start writing the first draft. Then just let it evolve from there. Still the rewriting improves it tremondously. Always studying the craft and learning with every script project I work on.
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