June 2005
How Good Is The Story?
In fiction, The Story Is King, our readers remind us. If we don't have a good story to tell, reading it is like eating unbaked bread. Sloggy food for the brain.
Most of us have had the experience of reading what looked like a great novel, and stopped before the end because we lost interest in the story.
We're not talking about the kind of "losing interest" because it turned out to be a different genre than we expected. Everyone runs into that situation now and then.
No, what we're talking about is the kind of "losing interest" that comes when the story just doesn't hold up. When we stop caring how it's going to end; when there are no more questions for which we care about the answers.
As readers we feel cheated, not only for the time already invested in getting this far; we also feel let down by the author we trusted to deliver the goods intact. And we're not likely to be on the buyer's list when his-or-her next novel is released.
As writers we understand that pain from both sides.
Sometimes a story can burn into our soul until we're convinced it's the greatest we've ever heard or thought of. This is the one! This one is going to be The Great American Novel!
But then we get half way through the first draft and discover something's missing. We've lost the thread somewhere and our cloth has unraveled to an abrupt and empty fray!
We've lost the story! We've lost our MUSE! Now what are we going to do?
The worst temptation is to believe all the motivational adages, and commence to beat our creative selves to stone trying to force a story where there is none. Write, write, and write some more, they tell us, and never, never, give up. Winners never quit and quitters never win. Remember the little engine that could, and just keep believing you can.
Uh-huh. And ten years later the Great American Novel is still beating YOU up, and it still isn't finished. What's worse, you haven't written anything else, either. (Yes, we speak from experience here.)
At LLP we think that's a horrible waste of time, talent, and energy. The real problem isn't the next sentence or the next paragraph --- it's the STORY.
Chances are, the story you've been writing right up to the breaking point is not exactly the same story you started with. That's not always a bad thing; many successful novelists tell us they don't even know where they're going until they get there because the story writes itself. And that's fine as long as it does keep writing itself.
But we're talking about the story that doesn't keep writing itself. On that day it might feel like the paragraph is wrong, or maybe the whole chapter suddenly feels like it's wrong. And there isn't one among us who hasn't felt that numbing sensation in one project or another.
Do yourself a favor and put that one away for a while. Start something else. Read something else. DO something else.
Get it off your mind for a while so you can come back later with fresh eyes. Then ask youself the important question. HOW GOOD WAS THE STORY?
When you can answer that question for both the reader and yourself, you'll have regenerated the burning desire you need to fix it and finish it.
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