June 2005

How Good Is The Story?

Sometimes a story can burn into your soul until you're convinced it's the greatest you've ever heard or thought of. This is the one! This one has to be written! And then you get half way through the first half, and discover something's missing. What's worse, you're not sure what it is!

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.

Remember that story that was supposed to be the greatest we've ever heard or thought of? The one that you knew just had to be told, and then half way to the middle you realized something was missing?

It feels like unbaked bread.

It looks like loose threads; y our cloth has unraveled to an abrupt and empty fray!

You've lost the story! Your MUSE is swinging from the rafters with no lights in the house. You have to catch it before it falls into the dark emptyness of too many blind paths going nowhere!

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, I speak from experience here.)

I personally 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 works.

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 page 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 stop looking at the page.

Step back about twenty paces. Then ask youself the important question. HOW GOOD WAS THE STORY BEFORE YOU STARTED WRITING?

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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