by Larry Brooks
Story Fix
Transform Your Novel from Broken to Brilliant
Larry Brooks
WritersDigest.com
Cincinnati, Ohio
STORY FIX. Copyright © 2015 by Larry Brooks. Manufactured in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published by Writer’s Digest Books, an imprint of F+W Media, Inc., 10151 Carver Road, Suite # 200, Blue Ash, OH 45242. (800) 289-0963. First edition.
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Acknowledgments
No author is alone with his work, which is a good thing for writers and readers alike. I’d like to thank Phil Sexton and the team at F+W and Writer’s Digest Books for their steadfast support and consistently stellar design work, with special thanks to Rachel Randall for the incredible value-add imbued by her editing, vision, and advocacy. Thanks to Art Holcomb for modeling what a real pro looks like in this business, and for the inspiration while having my back. And thanks to Joel Canfield for his big brain and willingness to help, to Jim Frey for the best book blurb ever, and to the many Storyfix.com writer-readers who keep me motivated and in the right lane as I balance teaching and coaching work with my own fiction and nonfiction projects.
About the Author
Larry Brooks is the author of three books on writing fiction, including the bestseller Story Engineering: Mastering the Six Core Competencies of Successful Writing and the award-winning Story Physics: Harnessing the Underlying Forces of Storytelling. He is also the USA Today best-selling author of six critically acclaimed thrillers and the creator of the award-winning website Storyfix.com, named six years running by Writer’s Digest magazine in their annual “101 Best Websites for Writers” list. Brooks lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, and travels frequently as a speaker and workshop teacher at conferences and at the behest of writing groups who like their instruction served hot and straight up.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Foreword
Introduction The Power of Instinct
Part One: The Raw Grist of Story Fixing Chapter 1: What You Need to Know About Story Fixing Before You Revise Two Major Reasons Why a Story Doesn’t Work
Story and Execution
Chapter 2: The Story-Fixing Mind-Set The Virtue of Aiming High
The Challenge of Embracing Greatness
Chapter 3: What Went Wrong Acknowledgment Is Always the First Step
Maybe You’re One of the Lucky Ones
Evaluating the Twelve Specific Story Elements and Essences
The Value of Knowing Where You Stand
Part Two: Repair Chapter 4: Strengthen Your Concept What Is Concept?
The Criteria for Concept
What Is Your Concept?
Examples from Stories You Know
Let There Be Superman
What Is Conceptual About Your Story?
Chapter 5: Empower Your Premise The Goal of Premise
The Big Mistakes with Premise
Examples of Premise
Revise Your Premise
The Complication of Premise
A Second Pass at Grading Your Story
The Value of Your Self-Assessment
Chapter 6: The Key to Everything The Search for Story
How to Screw Up Your Premise Within a Draft
Chapter 7: Narrative Bodybuilding Part One It’s All in Your Head
Dramatic Tension
Vicarious Reader Experience
Compelling Characterization
Reader Empathy
Thematic Weight
Chapter 8: Narrative Bodybuilding Part Two Story Architecture
Optimal Pacing
Scene Execution
Writing Voice
Narrative Strategy
An Invitation to Determine What Has Sunk In
Part Three: Resurrection Chapter 9: Welcome to the Suck Nobody Likes to Talk About Revision
Revision Is an Inevitability
Chapter 10: Is Your Story Worth Saving? Rejection ... Let Us Count the Ways
The First Decision Point of Revision
Vetting the Feedback That Brought You Here
The Bearer of Bad News
Returning to Your Dramatic Question
Chapter 11: Spinning Hope from Rejection Welcome to the Bermuda Triangle of Storytelling
Seeking the Sweet Spot
To Revise, or Not to Revise
Chapter 12: Choosing to Succeed The Truth Hurts
What Story Is, and What It Isn’t
When an Author Doesn’t Get It
How to Tank a Job Interview
Part Four: Redemption Chapter 13: The Doctor Will See You Now The Best Learning of All
Chapter 14: Case Study One
Chapter 15: Case Study Two
Chapter 16: Case Study Three Larry’s Cover Memo to the Author
Postscript Note From Larry
Foreword
My mentor Art Arthur, who was a screenwriter for more than forty years, said that an essential principle of good writing was this: Don’t get it right; get it written. If you strive to reach perfection, you’ll never even get to good. So let that first draft be too long, too wordy, too dialogue heavy, and too meandering. Get all your ideas down, and then start the process of editing.
But this raises a new, critical question: Edit it how?
How do you turn that avalanche of words and ideas into a novel or screenplay that is unique, emotionally gripping, and commercially viable? How do you know if it’s even a story worth telling? And what do you do next?
These are the questions Larry Brooks answers—brilliantly—in this book.
But before I talk about how Larry does this, here is something you should understand: Writing a foreword is hard. Not as hard as writing a novel or a screenplay, certainly. But definitely harder than a postcard, a tweet, or a grocery list.
When asked to write a foreword, you feel honored, elated, and mercenary. Someone wants me to contribute to his book! He must really like my work. He must think I have a good reputation, or even a following. And now everyone will see my name—maybe even on the cover. They’ll think I’m some kind of expert, or else why would I have been asked? They’ll Google me and they’ll flock to my website and they’ll buy all my products and they’ll fill all my lectures and they’ll line up for coaching. I’ll be a household name! So immediately you answer, “Yes! I’d love to write the foreword!”
And then a new voice takes over: Wait a minute. Now I have to write something brilliant—or at least clever. That means I’ll actually have to read the book. But what if it isn’t any good? Or worse, what if the book is great? What if it’s better than my own books? Will I modify my praise? Will I steal the best ideas? And if I do, will I get away with it?
“Don’t worry,” I tell myself. “You don’t have to read al
l of Larry’s book, just enough to say something complimentary. The table of contents and a couple of chapters should give you plenty of ideas. You can knock that off in less than a day.”
But here’s where my plan turns to disaster. Because once I begin reading, I can’t stop. Quite simply, this book is brilliant. So now I’m left with only a day or so to create a foreword that will somehow convince every novelist and screenwriter, and everyone who dreams of being one, that they have to read this book—and use it.
And so, faced with such a huge task and such a harsh deadline, I do what any good, professional writer would do: I roll up my sleeves, sit down at my computer, and ask for an extension.
This foreword is my attempt to convey the value, the inspiration, and the fun you will have following Larry on a journey into the heart of great fiction. In simple, powerful language, Larry transforms the process of rewriting from a discouraging, perfunctory exercise into an art form. He shows you, step by step, how to take your story from weak to strong, from good to great, and from one destined for rejection to one that’s likely to get you an agent or a deal.
He does this by providing you with questions that force you to honestly and courageously evaluate your script or manuscript at its foundation. Questions like What is my concept? What is my premise? What is my theme? What is the dramatic tension? Larry presents twelve such story elements and essences and asks you to repeatedly grade your understanding of these ideas and your story’s success in using them effectively.
And then Larry asks you to confront the most important question of all: Is my story worth telling?
This is a question you rarely hear in writing groups or classes, where the guiding belief is usually, “Any story can be saved.” Even consultants like myself have a hard time asking this question of clients, for fear of further discouraging or defeating a writer already beaten down by rejection and self-doubt.
But Larry asks you to face the question head on. He shows you how it can lead to valuable learning, greater skill, and ultimately a better story—one that is far more likely to move your career to the level of success you dream of. Larry strips any sugarcoating and false optimism from what it means to be a professional writer, and he reveals the harsh realities of just how much hard work is demanded of you. But he does this in a way that empowers you as a writer and makes you even more excited about the possibilities of your chosen career.
After laying out the questions that ensure a brutally honest evaluation of your story outline, script, or manuscript, he then presents you with the tools and skills to correct those weaknesses and take your story to a whole new level of emotional and commercial potential.
And finally, Larry lets you view the process in action by providing evaluations to several of his consultation clients’ stories. By having these writers identify the twelve story elements and essences within their own work, and then offering them his responses to their answers, we see first hand how the secrets revealed in Story Fix can lead storytellers to the right path for rewriting their novels and screenplays. Armed with the arsenal of weapons Larry offers in this book, you will not only fix your story, you will transform it.
And in the process, you will also be transformed as a writer.
—Michael Hauge (www.StoryMastery.com), author of Writing Screenplays That Sell and Selling Your Story in 60 Seconds: The Guaranteed Way to Get Your Screenplay or Novel Read
Introduction
“Nobody knows anything.”
—William Goldman, novelist, playwright, and screenwriter
This is a book about the writer within.
That sounds pretentious, I’ll grant you. As if this book aspires to change lives and save souls.
Maybe it does.
Because, as writers, aren’t we always seeking some combination of those two literary ambitions, either for our readers or for ourselves? Even if our most obvious intention is simply to entertain, we want our work to be remembered. When it is rejected, or even when we just know—in our heart or our gut, which in this instance is the same informant—we haven’t nailed the story despite our best efforts, we feel as if our hopes have been dashed on the rocks of cold reality. We are all, at some point in our writing journey, well acquainted with that feeling.
This book is about harnessing that energy and spinning it into gold by seizing the inherent opportunity that awaits us in the revision of our work. When we approach revision with the idea of creating something more enlightened and empowered, rather than just making the writing itself technically better, truly wonderful things can happen.
Conversely, if we don’t learn anything from our failures, or don’t fully understand their nature and how we arrived at them, then we are trapped in a paradox of our own creation. That paradox is a crowded room, full of rejected writers who don’t have a clue about how or why they failed in the first place.
Too often those writers will brush it off as bad timing, bad luck, or a lack of fairness. But almost always, rejection goes deeper than any of these reasons.
While we may not fully control the perception of our work, we are in complete control of how we internalize and apply the available knowledge from which we create it. Successful revision requires ascension of the learning curve relative to craft, finding and applying a higher level of knowledge in combination with any specific story feedback that fuels the climb. Sometimes we must revise without feedback, specific or otherwise, based on generalized responses or, once again, our own sneaking suspicions.
When a story succeeds, it is almost always indebted to some form and interpretation of knowledge—the conscious awareness of the elements that make a story work. When a story doesn’t succeed, it is often because the writer is ignorant of those elements. Or, worse, defiant. This is true even when the writer stumbles onto a lucky streak but actually knows very little.
Which does happen, by the way. One of the reasons learning to write great stories is so challenging is that there are sparkling exceptions to every truism and principle that folks like me throw onto the craft pile. Not everyone who wins the writing lottery—meaning those few-and-far-between, best-selling, newly famous authors—can explain how they got there. Which means we can learn very little from them. Sometimes we guess, sometimes we just follow our gut or our heart, and sometimes that works. That said, writing a great story isn’t a lottery. Much more is involved than a random collision of instinct and blind luck. Thus, strategy and knowledge can and should be a part of what we bring to the writing table.
Write from your heart if you wish. But that will get you nowhere, and slowly, if your heart doesn’t know what it’s doing.
The heart may desire, but the heart also needs to know.
Another reason successful storytelling is so difficult to grasp is that gurus on the subject spin writing craft in so many different ways. The collective conventional wisdom may smack of contradiction, when in fact it merely lacks clarity, or, just as often, simply stops short of considering the context of a bigger picture. For example, intuition—trumpeted by many as the key to the writing kingdom—is always an essential part of the creative process (in both the planning and execution stages of a story), but if you leave it at that, the odds of actually publishing your book successfully go down considerably. The real goal is to cultivate and grow both the breadth and level of your intuition—what I call your story sensibility—to the point where you can truly claim it as the source of your success. Luck will ultimately have very little to do with it.
Once you truly possess a keen sense of story, you’ll notice that it embraces the elements of craft that may have been lost on you earlier. They actually become the stuff of instinct rather than an alternative to the nuts and bolts of craft.
Consider these common guru mantras, all of them real and attached to a familiar name in the story-coaching game: Character is everything. Story trumps structure. Structure rules all. Plot is optional. Plot begets character. Three-act structure. Four-act structure. No-act structure. Core competencies. Realms
of story physics. Snowflakes. Story planning. Story pantsing. Butt-in-chair, just write, go with the flow. You can find workshops of all sizes, shapes, and styles, some even from actual authors of successful novels. That all of these approaches do touch upon truth and wisdom can be confounding.
When someone suggests following your gut by allowing what I call your story sensibility to lead into and through your story arc, that process is either valid for you or it isn’t (which is different, many times, than being right for you, or not). It isn’t a question of right or wrong, because the process is already wrong for some writers who create their stories in a different way. Writing by the seat of your pants is not valid for every writer; it’s only valid advice for those who already have an informed story sensibility working for them. If you don’t, though, and you nonetheless do as these well-intended mentors suggest—just follow your story instinct, allow the story and your characters to lead you—then this becomes the worst writing advice possible.
This dynamic is true in reverse. Story planning is not for everyone, because not everyone is capable of doing it either successfully or pleasurably.
It comes down to this: The exact same criteria, benchmarks, and the measurable and variable story essences that comprise an effective story apply equally to those writers who use story planning and those who don't. Nobody gets a free pass on the criteria for the creation of a good story. The path we choose is always heading toward that goal.
This is actually terrific news. Because it means, no matter what your favorite writing guru advises, that you get to decide which camp you belong to. As a storytelling coach, my files are full of clients who believed their story sensibilities were keen and evolved, and then after years and even decades of getting nowhere, they finally submitted to the guiding light of a given set of storytelling principles, which are nothing more than the proven, vetted instincts of an evolved story sensibility. Suddenly the clouds parted, and they finally got it. Suddenly all of those instincts have a name … and its name is craft.
