Stories Move

Many times, I have spoken to writers who say that they have a great idea for a story. They have shown me things or described things that were interesting, but were not actually a story.

Sometimes, I have been shown very interesting character sketches. Sometimes it is a great back-story. Other times it is a situation or setting. But none of these things, alone, create a story.

The difference between a vignette, setting description, or a character sketch and a story is fairly simple. In a story, something changes. The character's understanding of self, the character's location within the setting, the world in which the character exists, the reader's point of view or thoughts… something changes. Something moves.

No Change:

Carol looked into the mirror at her long, dark hair. She had been a blond for years, but after the tragedy, she decided it was time for a change. She picked up the blue bow her grandmother had given her and pulled up her hair, clipping the bow in place just so. She was very particular about her looks, and wanted everything to be in its place. That, too, was something she had adopted after… When Bo had died, a lot of things had changed.

While that might possibly be interesting, nothing changes. Past changes have created the presented version of Carol. But in the paragraph, we only learn how she "is" but nothing really changes.

Change:

Carol looked into the mirror at her long, dark hair, and shook her head. She had changed it to the darkest brown she could find when Bo died. His death had rocked her world, and had turned her into someone she hardly knew, but she had come to think she was no better for it. She had come to think she was worse off—obsessed with nit-picking every detail of her looks to the point that she was miserable.

She looked down at her vanity and then back at her reflection. Shaking her head, she picked up the shears, lifted a section of her hair and cut. Shoulder length will be fine… She made sure that it was a little uneven, just to make a point.

This may be no more interesting than the first example, but in it, we see Carol move. She makes a decision to act on something the reader is told she had been feeling for a while. The reader senses the movement of Carol, and the sum of all the character movements is called the character arc.

An interesting character arc can, sometimes be enough to make a story. Coupled with an interesting plot arc, can make an even better story. But to be sure, without some movement—without something in the work changing, growing, or adjusting—without movement, there is no story.

If a writer is looking to purposefully create a response in the reader, it will be accomplished through the story. As the characters and the world of the characters change, the reader will be prompted to change with them

ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY Discussion About Submitting for Publication

When I spent time around the fantasy and science fiction (F/SF) conventions as a panelist, other writers and I would sometimes, to make a point, say that you can't call yourself a writer until you have at least one rejection letter. That means you must submit your work for publication consideration. You must submit!

The Right Start

Before you can submit your manuscript, you have to have one! And you might as well make things easier on yourself by starting off the right way.

Editors and publishers expect works submitted to be a certain way. The best approach is to start with a standard manuscript format.

Google can provide links to many, many descriptions of what a standard manuscript looks like. You might be surprised. They are very boring and very uncreative. And very STANDARD.

As an editor for a family of small, on-line magazines, we received several submissions daily, each from 2,000 to 15,000 words—most hit around the 5,000 word range. When I saw a manuscript that was not like the rest, my first thought was that the submitter didn't know what they were doing. They hadn't bothered to look at our guidelines (more on that later) and, therefore, I didn't feel very excited to wade through pages and pages of 9 pt Felt Tip font.

If you want your submission to be considered carefully, you need to start off with standard manuscript format. Google it and you will find that, though there might be slight variations, they will all tend toward something like this:

Source: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mslee/format.html (Jan. 31, 2017)

Standard Manuscript Format

Before submitting your stories make sure they are in the standard manuscript format. This is described in many, many "How to Write" books -- and I strongly recommend that you read at least one such book. Pared down to the bare essentials, the rules are as follows....

• Your manuscript should look as though you typed it. Neither handwritten manuscripts nor ones that use a dozen amazingly nifty fonts are likely to be well received. If you are using a word processor try to select a non-proportional font (one where every character has the same width).
• Do not justify the text. By this I mean don't select the option from your word processor that makes every line of text end exactly at the right margin. Remember, you want your manuscript to look as though you typed it, even if you are printing it on the world's most expensive laserwriter.
• Use high quality 8 1/2 x 11 inch white paper.
• Only print on one side of the paper.
• Do not staple the pages together.
• Use wide margins -- at least an inch all around the text.
• Double space the text.
• Show new paragraphs by indenting the first line of the new paragraph by five spaces. Thus: 

• This is the end of one paragraph.
  
       And this is the start of the next paragraph.  Note
  
  that the text is double-spaced, and non-justified. 

• The top of the first page: Put your name, address, and telephone number at the top left of the first page. Put the word count to the nearest 100 words at the top right of the first page. Something like this:

  Jane Smith                                  3200 words
  123 Home Lane
  Writers' Ville PA 15206
  

• The rest of the first page: The story's title and your name should appear a little less than halfway down the first page. Then leave a couple of blank lines, and start the story. The title and your name should be centered:

                     GREAT STORY
  
                         by
  
                     Jane Smith
  

• Put the page number, your surname, and a keyword or two from the title on the top right of every page after the first one. Something like this:

                                  Smith/Great Story/20
  

• To show a scene break, leave a blank line, then have a line with a single asterix centered in the middle, then have another blank line. Thus:

  With a whimper, Bob died.
  
                        *
  
       It was a dark and stormy night, very dark, very
  

• Do not use italics. To show text that should be italicized in the final published version of the story, underline that section of text.
• At the end of your story, leave a couple of blank lines, then write "THE END" or "###" centered on a line.
• And that's all there is to it.

And that's all there is to it. Simple, and ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY!

Once your manuscript is created in standard format, you must then be ready to adapt it as required by whatever place (market) you are trying to submit. You must, must, must, must, must read and follow the guidelines with regard to any changes to standard form.

The magazines published by the company I ran clearly listed a couple of departures from standard form. They were expected because it allowed us to more easily prepare them for publication. We burdened our submitters to do a little work.

Many people freak out about the font. Okay, so do you have a computer? Just type it in whatever font you want. When you are ready to submit, if the market does not specify anything otherwise, do select-all and change the font to Courier 12pt. Done.

The italics rule could cost you some time, but if you are a wiz at Word® or other word processors, you can probably do a global search/replace (I think) to change italic to underline. Better you just underline to start off with.

The take-away from this section is simple: Start with standard format, and if an editor/publisher asks for deviations in their published guidelines, be ready to make the changes. Unless there are clear calls for changes, assume that they want the standard format.

The Right Place

An editor from a major publishing company once, at a convention, said writers should NOT say their work isn't like anything else out there. He said that meant there was no shelf at the bookstore for it.

With the ever-expanding range of electronic markets, there are a lot of shelves out there! The ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY thing is this: make sure you submit your work to the right place!

Back to those guidelines! Almost every publication I have considered as a place I would submit clearly outlined the types of work they wanted to see. If you submit something to the wrong place, you are wasting the editors' time and you might be tying up a manuscript that could be submitted to a proper market for as long as it takes for the editors to reject it.

Make sure you read the submission guidelines completely. Every word. Future articles will discuss some of the things to look for, but if you don't completely read the guidelines, you very well could miss things.

For example, some markets clearly specify word-count expectations. Follow them! Don't submit a 6000 word short story to a market that wants works in the 2500-5000 word range.

Likewise, if they call for mysteries and thrillers, don't submit fantasy. This seems like a very simple concept, but my experience reading submissions suggest that not all writers pay attention to this.

Another thing to look for is who their audience is. If they publish Y/A then make sure your work fits. If their guidelines calls for works to conform to some religious or moral standard, be sure yours fits. The key is to read all of the guidelines and make sure you follow them.

While there are a lot of "shelves out there" in this era, there are also a lot of writers, too. In order to give your work the best chance of being accepted, you need to make sure you understand the expectations of the market to which you are submitting, and make sure your manuscript (properly formatted) fits them.

Planning Desired Reader Response

In the seminal book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey offers the advice to begin with the end in mind. I am inclined to recommend this advice to anyone attempting to create any kind of expressive art. Writers of stories, poems, and songs need to embrace this principle and hold on tight!

Over they years that I have written, I have talked to many, many beginning writers. Far too often, they tell me that they have started lots of "books" but have never finished one. Others would say something like "I had a really good idea and wrote and wrote and then somewhere along the way, it just wasn't going anywhere, so I gave up on it."

For several years, I participated as a panelist at numerous fantasy and science fiction conventions. Usually, I sat on panels designed to encourage writers wanting to improve their art. Over and over, I would face questions that related to how to actually finish a story or book.

Looking at my own writing efforts… Well, I have a folder of drafts that I started, but on which I gave up because they weren't going anywhere.

And that is the point of the article. Begin with an end in mind. Before the first words are typed onto the page… Okay, a little grace—sometimes writers get that sudden inspiration for a hook or a character or opening scene that just must be put done on the page immediately! So, let's say that at the beginning of any writing project, it is utterly important to know where a work is going.

I have found that some people deride the idea of a morale to the story and balk at the idea that a work must have a theme. I would argue that, without something driving the story (or poem or song), it is going to end up vapid and empty. Without a point, it will be… well, pointless.

I have had the chance on a few occasions to be a sounding board for song-writers. I found a way of putting this point across to them by asking this: When your work is complete, how do you want the people who experience your work to respond? How do you want them to change? How will your work make them think differently? Feel differently?

Distilling my ideas on this, I would like to suggest that, in creating expressive art of any kind, the creator—making this specific for fiction and poetry—when writing a story or poem, the writer needs to think about how they want their reader to respond to the work as a whole, and to each part of the work along the way. Clearly understanding the desired reader response will guide the entire writing process.

The desired reader response becomes the end that writers keep in mind throughout the writing process. It can be simple. It can be complex. But the reader response drives what is written, and it appears in different forms.

In an essay, the desired reader response is bundled with the thesis. The essay writer might think along these lines: "I want people who read my essay to change how they think about soil conservation such that they understand the negative impact of stream channelization."

In fiction and poetry, the desired reader response is located in morales and themes. In a poem, the poet might think, "I want the reader to feel the pain and agony of loneliness." In a work of fiction, the writer might wish the reader to see examples of what happens when injustice is unopposed.

However, as much as the previous few paragraphs have cast this idea into the realm of "morale of the story" or theme, desired reader response can be far less lofty. "I want my reader to laugh" could be the end goal—the desired reader response—of a story or poem. The main principle is that a writer knows what he or she wants the words to accomplish.

Once the desired reader response for the whole work is set, it thereafter guides the whole writing process. Nothing in the final work needs to be there unless it contributes to the overarching desired reader response.

Indeed, a work might take on a life of its own, and in the process of being created, add to or modify the desired reader response that the author began with. When this happens—and it does—the author needs to embrace the change, then go back in edits and rewrites to make sure that the final work lines up with the amendments.

Knowing the desired reader response carries through to each part of the work. Verses of a poem need to move the reader through a process until the end goal is reached. Parts of a book, chapters of a part, scenes in a chapter, paragraphs in a scene, and sentences in a paragraph—everything in a story needs to be written to do something, and the sum of all the somethings needs to create the desired reader response.

This level of intentionality seems extreme, but when you look at a work of fiction, there are a lot of things going on. The desired reader response comes from the sum of plot and character development. As the action moves and as the characters interact with each other and the world in which the story takes place, the reader gradually is led to the desired reader response.

Any paragraph in a story might serve a myriad of purposes. A few days ago, I wrote a couple of paragraphs that introduced a scene. Here are the desired reader responses for those paragraphs:

• Remember a romantic conflict between two of the "coming of age" characters in the story.
• Remember that the battle from a few days before had been really hard.
• Remember that the point of view character had a special skill that he was trying to learn to master.
• Become interested in the meeting that the point of view character was called to.
• Share the point of view character's frustration that the meeting was interfering with him working out the romantic conflict.
• Develop an expectation that the meeting was unusual, urgent, and important.

In the two paragraphs, I used five sentences. Overarching the six bullet points above where broader desired reader responses associated with watching the "coming of age" sub-plot unfold and seeing the hard consequences of injustice main-plot explored. Above the plot, the general desired reader response to the story is that they will come to understand that, when facing injustice or tyranny, it is vital to do what is right, not what is easy.

The guiding light for the story is reduced to less than the length of a tweet, but it drives the desired reader response throughout the work. In doing this, the story will either lead readers eventually to see an example of what happens when people do what is right or to see an example of what happens with they don't. Either case is driven by the desired reader response.

Thus, to begin with the end in mind—knowing the desired reader response—guide the entire creative process and allows a writer or poet to justify what they are doing with characters and plot. Rather than letting the words roam around on the page, knowing what the work is trying to accomplish gives direction to them, and ultimately gives them power to change, in some way, those who read them.

Why Another Writing Blog

Does the Internet really need another blog site about writing? If finding a name for this blog is an indication, the answer is clearly "no."

Nevertheless…

Before the Page come to life to fill the need of a high school writing club that I sponsor. Here, I will collect ideas and practices that I have picked up over the years that I have been writing. As members of the club investigate writing, their findings will, likewise, have a home. Where I can enlist others who participate in the sometimes-challenging process of writing to contribute, those thoughts, too, will be shared.

As the life of the writing club goes on, the content here will grow. Within the club, the goal is to help young writers not only learn how to say what they have to say, but also deepen their insight into what it is they wish to say. Thus, the club is designed to hone their skills and techniques while, at the same time, nurture the ideas that drive them to write.

The blog, though, is not exclusively for the club members. The content will be useful to anyone developing their own expressive art.

Everyone is, therefore, invited to join the fun! Before the page receives the first stroke of a pen and long before it appears before the first reader, there are many, many, considerations every writer must address. Dig into Before the Page and see if it offers some thought and guidance along the way.