storytelling

Are you ready to learn what drives STORYTELLING? Not writing, but storytelling?

People say a story is driven by “conflict”. Nah. Conflict is the essential tool for catching and holding readers’ attention but the power source that drives a story is change. And, according to the wonderful editing method known as The Story Grid, storytelling changes are engineered to work in a very specific way.

First of all: every scene you write has to do something they call turn. It has to start out one way, then end in another. If this sounds simple, it is. And yet so many scenes get written which… just do not. Those are the dead ones you feel “aren’t working”. The harsh truth is that, no matter how cool it is, if a scene doesn’t turn you’ve got to cut it and spread whatever information it once contained into other scenes.

Now let’s get more specific. As a writer, you have nearly unlimited latitude as to what the turn is: does the scene’s general mood shift? Does a character, having decided on one course of action, do something else instead? Does a certain object, currently sitting on the upper left shelf, fall to the floor? Do aliens attack? It can be just about anything, but it has to happen on what I personally call a “pivot”. Pivot isn’t a Story Grid term, but the concept is there. It’s an identifiable moment when the change actually happens, and though it doesn’t have to be obvious— in fact it can be very subtle— there has to be one. How come? Because its presence is the proof that a writer made the change happen deliberately, by means of her craft. Scenes with no pivot will feel vague, half-assed. Readers won’t like them and they won’t know why.

Okay, we’re almost done learning the secret of storytelling. Last requirement: the turns must be cumulative and point in one direction: in other words, every scene must change in a way that can’t be undone. If it can be, then the story isn’t compelling. It’s just… a series of events. Big whoop.

But. Get this right and what do you have? You have scene after scene, each one surprising us with a moment that leads irrevocably toward the next, digging us deeper and deeper, until that final and terrible... hah, gotcha. See? Storytelling.