Damn Fine Story: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

by Chuck Wendig

  PLOT EXISTS BECAUSE OF THE CHARACTER’S ACTIONS. To say it again, characters do shit, and they say shit. And the story unfolds from this. They make decisions in the world and the plot—the sequence of events as revealed to the audience—unfolds from those decisions. Too many stories (particularly those of new writers) seem to give the “camera” (i.e., the perspective we take through the story) the agency—in other words, the plot is the point, and the characters are just woven in and out of it. This leaves us with a lot of pomp and circumstance, but little connection to the world—we know stuff is happening, but without seeing character agency in play, we have little reason to care. It’s external, like stapling the skeleton to the outside of a jellied bag of skin and organs and hair and calling it “human.” That’s not a human, that’s an artificial monster who can be given life only through judicious application of lightning. We like to think of a plot as external, but it’s not. Like the skeleton, it is internal—and often invisible. It is controlled by the characters. It does not control them.

  Look at the entire scope of history.

  It’s human. It’s driven by humans. It’s changed by humans. Sure, yes, you have things like volcanoes erupting and floods and other natural apocalypses that force humans to react—but even then, the history is the response. The history is in what the lava or the floodwaters buried and what can yet be revealed. History is a series of human choices and errors.

  Just like your story.

  Give the characters agency. Let them do things and say things. Give them power to shape the narrative. If you’ve ever felt like the characters are somehow “ruining the plot” or not acting in accordance to what you need them to do—that means you’ve been making plot the driver and the characters merely the passengers in the car. Characters are the ones who need to be driving—and, in many cases, it’s a lot of characters all wrestling for the wheel of the car. Characters without agency feel like props. Characters with agency are characters who do the work for you, who create the story and, better yet, are damned interesting to watch.

  STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS

  Beware the phrase ‘strong female character.’

  It’s a great idea, in theory. We should, of course, be striving to make strong female characters, right? Like Trinity in the Matrix! Like Wyldstyle in The LEGO Movie! Like most of the ladies in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. These ladies, boy howdy, they sure do kick some ass. KI-YAA. HI-YAA. Punch! Shoot! Pyoo pyoo! They’re strong because they can punch a dude in the face.

  Right? Wrong. Strength in this regard should refer to the depth and complexity of the character, not to whether or not she can kick a vampire’s head off or fly a starfighter. The problem with a number of the women characters above are that they contain very little agency. Their stories are reflective of the male characters—they die to make the men sad; they swoon to make the men fall in love. They are levers to leverage the dudes into action. But they themselves are not pushing on the plot. They’re fodder. They’re sexy action figures. That’s all.

  Give the female characters—give all the characters—agency in the story. Let them all have problems, solutions, wants, and fears, and let them act on those things as independent architects within the narrative.

  1 The kind like Dungeons & Dragons, in which you create and inhabit a character, describing your character’s actions verbally to the other players present, and they do the same—and from this, a story begins to form.

  2 In real life I don’t like to wear pants because Pants are a Tool of the Oppressor.

  3 See earlier footnote, re: pants.

  4 Frankly, some of the best of us have gone with AND THEN EVERYTHING EXPLODES as the resolution of our plot. Stephen King is one of our greatest storytelling resources, and he ended the novel IT with AND THEN A GIANT SPIDER, I GUESS? Plus there was that thing with the preteen orgy, which is, uhhh. Yeah.

  5 I know, I know, that movie, again? Buckle up, buttercup, we’re going to see a lot more Die Hard in this book before it’s over.

  6 Damn you, Taco Bell!

  7 Mr. Pointy is the name she gives to the wooden stake she uses to slay vamps.

  8 We might think Luke’s problem is “The Empire,” but remember: At the start of A New Hope, he’s literally planning on joining the Imperial Academy!

  9 Remember when a young Anakin Skywalker said that sand “gets everywhere”? I have to assume that even in his metal suit, Darth Vader is walking around with the grit of sand eternally irritating his nethers. Maybe that’s why he’s so mad.

  10 Soylent Green: a 1973 film starring Charlton Heston, written by Stanley Greenberg, directed by Richard Fleischer. In it, the year is 2022, and climate change has ruined the world. Ahem. And in this dystopia, the world is fed rations by the Soylent Corporation, and the newest ration—which they claim is made of plankton—is called Soylent Green. Heston’s detective, Frank Thorn, discovers that it’s not plankton after all, and in the famous line of dialogue: “Soylent Green is people!” Oh, also, Soylent is a new meal replacement drink invented by Rob Rhinehart. And yes, that is a weird and creepy choice for the name of a meal replacement drink.

  11 You think I’m joking, but those of you who have dogs know the room-clearing complication of canine gassiness. Especially if your dog is one of the more snorfly breeds—a flatulent pug is a violation of the Geneva Convention.

  12 If you don’t know the series, a Watcher is the one who helps train and teach the Slayer.

  13 Er, not the angry badger part.

  14 He learns this after making out with her, so, uh, that’s a thing.

  15 I confess, I haven’t thought that one through, but if you want an interesting story-writing exercise, write how a janitor changes the course of human history. Go on, do it, I’ll wait. Are you done yet? GOD, YOU’RE SO SLOW, HURRY UP.

  16 We also learn that Vader may be trying to undermine The Emperor, Sheev Palpatine. Yes, that’s right, the Emperor’s name is Sheev. Which is the Star Wars version of Steve. Steve Palpatine. That wizened old goblin isn’t so scary now.

  17 Say it with me again: “From a certain point of view.”

  18 Consider this your marching orders: If you haven’t watched that show, get on it. Smart storytelling that lets the characters set the plot despite it being about prophecy and magic and a lot of the things storytellers use as plot crutches. Go watch it. Right now. I’ll wait.

  (I won’t really wait, it’s like, 60 episodes.)

  19 grrk! hnnn aaaugh it burns!

  20 Steve

  21 If you have a jockstrap or bra that is alive with that precious spark of life, you should probably bathe more. And/or hire an exorcist. Remember, you need an old priest and a young priest.

  22 Consider the whale from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which appears in mid-air and, before plunging to its death, has enough time to experience a short journey of self-discovery and begin assigning names to things: “What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like … ground! That’s it! That’s a good name—ground! I wonder if it will be friends with me?”

  23 The Toy Story movies are pretty awesome, and they seem light and fluffy, but holy crap, do they get dark sometimes. The ending of Toy Story 3 is one of the most existentially bleak climaxes I have ever seen on film. I still have flashbacks.

  24 Like I said: grim.

  25 That’s a pretty good test, by the way. If your character can be replaced by a houseplant or a sexy lamp without any significant change to the story, you either need to cut the character or give them more to do inside the narrative.

  26 I am not condoning stabbing anyone. But also if you try to steal my sandwich I will legit stab you. Ha ha ha, I’m just kidding. (I’m not kidding.)

  27 Found in the common writing advice chestnut, “kill your darlings,” also known as, “stab those who would steal your delicious sandwiches.”

  28 See, I told you this book had naughty language. If i
t bothers you, for an additional five bucks I will go through your book by hand and change all instances of the word “motherfucker” to “monkeyflinger.”

  29 Pun not originally intended, but it’s too late now, damnit.

  30 This is also one of the tricky bits about prequels: In a prequel, the future is already written, and so the characters in a prequel are slaves to a plot that must find that future. The plot cannot organically grow and change from their actions because the stars are writ, destiny is sealed, the deal is done.

  31 Thank you for the wallet. I burned the pants.

  32 Translation: Characters will do shit and say shit, and when that happens, it matters. It changes the world in ways both small and epic.

  Interlude

  THE THIRD RULE

  The small story always matters more than the big story.

  That’s it. That’s the rule.

  We don’t really care about the big story. We think we do. We think we want the ZOLWANG EMPIRE to fall to the GLORIOUS REPUBLIC OF FRONG, and we want the mighty HEROFACE JOHNSON1 to get ahold of the SACRED SWORD OF DRAGON-MURDERING, and all this sounds fun and fine and important. We think we care about the Empire versus the Rebel Alliance, we think we care about Spider-Man versus the Vulture, we think we care about Buffy versus the Vampires.

  But we don’t. Not really. Not deeply.

  What we care about is the small story embedded in there, the small story that’s the beating heart of a larger one. We care about the characters and their personal drama. We care about their families, their loved ones, their struggles to feel normal, their attempts to do right in the face of wrong. We care about Buffy wanting to fall in love and hang out with her friends and not fail out of school. We care that the villains fighting Spider-Man are often connected to him personally, and that they reflect some aspect of his troubled journey from a geeky high school student to a city-saving mutant. We care about John McClane wanting to get his family back. We care about the friendships that form between Luke, Leia, and Han.

  We care because they care.

  We care because their story is our story. Our story is one of friendships and family, of love lost and jealousy made, of birth and death and everything in-between.

  A big story without a smaller story has all the substance of a laser light show. It’s pretty. It’s dazzling. And it’s very, very empty.2

  Look for the little story.

  Look for the story about people.

  Then you can wrap it in a generous swaddling of space ninjas and swamp monsters and explodey-boom-boom-pyoo-pyoo-zap.

  1 Coming soon, my new novel: HEROFACE JOHNSON AND THE FRONG OF ZOLWANG, BOOK FOUR IN THE DRAGON-MURDERER TRILOGY.

  2 As noted earlier in the book, one could argue that the failure of the Star Wars prequels is due in part because the trilogy takes too long to get to the human aspects—the small story!—and spends way too long dealing with trade disputes and Jedi prophecies and Midichlorian counts. By the time we start to care, it’s already the third movie. Further, it’s arguably why Revenge of the Sith works better despite the narrative problems carried in from the first two—it’s more about fundamental human problems. It cleaves closer to the smaller story of Anakin, Padme, and their other relationships, and it remembers that all the galactic conflict prophecy stuff is really just hullabaloo (i.e., set dressing to contextualize the smaller story).

  Chapter Three

  STRANGE ARRANGEMENTS: OR, HOW YOUR NARRATIVE GARDEN GROWS

  Here’s a story for you.

  Recently, my family and I took a vacation to Maui. I know, I know—we live miserable lives. It was wretched—a veritable purgatory full of vicious warmth and vengeful rainbows. All that sand. All those palm trees.

  Ew. Yuck. Bleh.

  It was basically Hell.

  Regardless of the breadth and depth of our tropical torture, one night we went to Ho‘okipa Beach on the North Shore to check out the honu1 that gather there every afternoon and evening. They come struggling up the beach with all the velocity and eagerness of constipation, gathering amongst the rocks and looking like rocks themselves. And then a person shows up to rope off the TURTLE SLUMBERING AREA to make sure people don’t go galloping up to the turtles for selfies.2

  We went onto the beach, found about 40 turtles chilling out, took some photos, and so forth. Our son, B-Dub, played in the sand with a couple local boys, and we settled in for the sunset.

  Down a bit from where we were, though, stood a dog.

  This dog was a lean, long-snouted dog—a mutt of some kind, black fur, a bit of a hound look. The dog stood right at the edge of the ocean, on the rocks that separated the sand from the sea, staring out.

  Now, Ho‘okipa Beach is known for a lot of things. It’s known for the turtles, yes, but it’s even more famous for the surfers and windsurfers. At any given time, there are a dozen or more out there on the waves.

  The dog stood there, watching the surfers. Diligently. Nose pointed forward. Standing, never sitting. As if holding vigil.

  Sometimes the tide, eager and aggressive, would crash up onto the rocks and pull the dog into the water. The dog, unfazed, would hop right back onto shore, take his place, and resume his watch.

  The sun began to set. Evening bled bright across the horizon.

  One of the first surfers came in from the water. The dog’s tail began wagging with furious canine glee. As the surfer came up onto the beach, the dog ran over, happy, so happy—

  And then he realized that this surfer was not his surfer.

  So again he went back to his rock. Again he endured the waves.

  Another surfer came up and, once more, the dog ran over only to discover that this was not his surfer. As the sky darkened, this cycle repeated again and again. A surfer would land. The dog would go. And, disappointed, the dog would plod sadly back to his tide-splashed perch.

  The sun dipped in glorious fashion behind the West Maui Mountains, setting the sky on fire before bleeding wine across its surface to extinguish the flames. I have photo after photo of the dog standing there, waiting—

  Waiting for what I began to believe was a surfer that would never come. Why, then, was the dog here? Why did the dog think every surfer was his friend, his master, his way home? How long would the dog stay here? Is the dog here every day? A narrative crept in at the margins: The dog came here with his surfer owner one day, and the surfer went out, the dog stood vigil—and the surfer never came home. The surfer drowned. Or ditched the dog. Either way, now the dog was left in his own kind of purgatory, the purgatory of an animal who believes that one day his friend will return.

  I started to look around for someone to ask. A local, maybe. They would know the dog’s true story. Already the sky was a deep purple. Evening was here, and night was soon to come. And the dog remained.

  As I searched for someone, though, two more surfers came in. The last of the batch. Two women came up the beach, surfboards under one arm as they held hands. They stayed out late, the last of the last, coming in under the cover of almost darkness.

  The dog turned his head toward them. His tail stiffened.

  I thought, is this it? Are they his people?

  The dog raced over toward what I feared was another batch of disappointment. He hurried over, and the two women greeted him as many of the surfers had—because who doesn’t like a happy dog running up to them?—and then the dog turned away once more.

  My heart sank.

  The dog ran not to the rocks, however, but up the steps exiting the beach. He waited for the two women on the steps, tail wagging.

  They were, in fact, his people. They got him in a truck. They drove away. Huzzah and hooray.

  The end.

  Cue applause, tears, joy, whatever it is you have in you.

  Now, we’re going to do the horrible thing where we take this story and we slop it up onto the metal slab, and we take our narrative scalpels and we slice it open. We dissect it.

  And, in this case, we’re looking at one parti
cular component:

  The arrangement of the bones.

  When I tell you the story, I know the end of it. I know this dog that has waited and waited and waited will be paid for his vigilance. I know the dog has owners and isn’t just waiting for the ghost of some dead surfer. I know the dog isn’t alone, bereft of friend and master.

  I didn’t know it at the time. But I know it when I tell this story.

  And in telling the story, I don’t give that part away up front. Because to give that part away is to ruin the story. I’m a jerk. I’m trying to upset you. I’m actively aiming to stoke your emotions and take you on at least a smaller version of the emotional journey I went through worrying about this silly beach dog who kept getting pulled into the water, maybe waiting for a master who would never come. It’s like making you watch a horror movie—I know where the scares are, and now I want to see if they scare you the same way they scared me.

  Stories are like that. We take you on a journey, like I said in the last interlude, to make you feel and make you think. Nobody said I’m trying to make you feel good all the time. Nobody said I’m trying to make you think only happy thoughts. Stories drag you through the mud of multiple emotions and through the thorn-tangle of thinky thoughts.

  The way I accomplish that in this story is, in part, through the arrangement. If I tell the story with the happy ending up front, it completely guts the stuffing right out of it. The story becomes spineless and unnecessary. You know the end, and the payoff is ruined.

  The arrangement matters. It matters that I know the ending but tell the story as if I don’t. It’s vital that I play the magic trick as if I don’t know where the rabbit is coming from—storytellers are, after all, practiced liars, and my job is to guide you through the journey, not fast-forward to the end. Part of the journey is about me asking questions and then withholding the answers for as long as you can stand it. It’s like some kind of tantric narrative magic: Withhold the emotional orgasm for as great a time as possible.