A guest post by Larry Brooks of Storyfix.com
When we believe that, at least when it comes to writing, we are wrong.
About both things.
In many other aesthetic pursuits we can indeed reach a level of art without having to fit into anybody’s box. We can skip all that boring discipline stuff and ignore any prevailing commercial tastes and trends and just do our thing.
But where writing is concerned, all that changes. Because in the eternal tug-of-war between art and craft in this avocation, craft is winning.
The acid test on this issue relates to why you write and what you hope to get out of it. If you’re in it for fun, sure, do it your way. But if you want to become a professional author, one whose work attracts a readership and perhaps a publisher with a checkbook, craft simply trumps art all to hell.
Craft depends on discipline. On function as well as form.
And that, by definition, establishes a set of rules that, at first glance, can look a lot like a box. But don’t be fooled.
A guy named T.S. Elliot says it better than I can:
When forced to work within a strict framework, the imagination is taxed to its utmost… and will produce its richest ideas. Given total freedom, the work is likely to sprawl.
And sprawl won’t get you published or read.
Just don’t call it a box.
Here’s the newsflash that rubs some writers the wrong way: there are storytelling principles and expectations in place, at least at a professional, commercial level.
The moment we depart from those standards, if we try to negotiate them or attempt to reinvent them from a context of either ignorance or defiance, our work becomes less than commercial. In doing so we may indeed become artists – very lonely artists – when the higher goal is to become a writer (preferably one with an audience) who has perfected craft to the level of art.
There are consequences to writing without parameters and honoring accepted standards.
When your writing ceases to be commercial you’ve just shot yourself in the foot – at least if your goal is to turn pro – perhaps in the name of art.
The concept of selling out isn’t about writing commercially, it’s about writing at a level that’s beneath you, which is a completely different thing. When you disrespect the principles of craft, you are already in that free-fall.
We all get to choose.
I’m not crazy about rules, either. That’s why I’ve coined another term for the discipline of writing, a way to organize the various aspects of craft into separate yet ultimately dependent categories of essential principles, skills and criteria.
And essential they are.
I like to think of these categories as buckets rather than boxes. I’ve stuffed all the things a writer of stories needs to understand and master – the craft – into one of six different buckets of intellectual and creative awareness, and delved deeply into why they are essential and how they remain connected to each other.
Skipping or mangling these criteria isn’t art, as some might believe. It’s storytelling suicide.
Why we need these buckets.
When you talk about storytelling without differentiating between, say, the essential elements of concept, character and theme… if you view the narrative process as some mysterious and organically intuitive flow defined by obscure, impressive lit class rhetoric more suited to book reviewers than writers of books…
… well, I think I speak for millions when I say there has to be a better, clearer way to wrap your head around the craft of storytelling. One that doesn’t elude you for years and even decades.
I call these buckets of awareness the Six Core Competencies of Successful Storytelling.
And there is only one rule in play.
Actually, an unavoidable and stark truth: you have to be competent to the point of mastery in all six core competencies before you can write a commercially viable and successful story. A weakness in any one of them will kill your chances.
I didn’t make that truth up. Always been there. Even though you’ve never heard it capsulated in this fashion, or this clearly.
The inherent opportunity residing within these buckets.
Books from new writers that actually sell are the ones that offer something special. The trick is to understand what this means, and how to make it happen.
The answer awaits inside the buckets that contain the six core competencies.
When one or two of them, as executed in your work, are astoundingly original, creative and compelling, then you’ve just separated yourself from the crowd. A crowd, by the way, that for the most part is already competent in all six, which makes wrapping your head around these competencies (or, if you prefer, sticking it into each of the six buckets) is just the ante-in to the game.
In writing, the essential elements of a story become the physics of what makes a story work, and when viewed as an entire discipline (which is precisely how they should be viewed), they become the stuff of story engineering that cannot be ignored or, unless you spend decades paying attention, intuitively absorbed.
When one or two are super-charged, the entire story kicks into a higher, better gear.
Introducing The Six Core Competences
Don’t mistake this for over-simplification. Storytelling is still hard, and there is a long and challenging list of attributes, skills, nuances and mechanical gizmos you must understand and put onto the page.
That said, it’s a lot easier to group them into six separate affinities that share common standards, criteria and expectations.
Four of the six core competencies are elements, the essential aesthetic building blocks of your narrative. They are: concept… character… theme… and structure (plot sequence).
You can’t skip one and get away with it. And you can’t knock one or two out of the park until you completely wrap your head around what they each mean.
Separating them is essential, because the criteria for, say, concept and theme are very different. Many a manuscript has tanked because the writer didn’t understand this premise.
The other two core competencies are issues of execution, the application of the four story elements to the blank page. They are: scene execution… and your writing voice.
When you isolate these six essential realms of storytelling, they can be broken down, analyzed, studied and practiced in context to the larger, integrated whole of a story.
Once introduced to the six core competencies – you’ve met them before, just not quite this clearly and stripped of mystery and pretense – your entire writing life will change and expand.
Because suddenly, perhaps for the first time, you will understand how to determine what to write, where to put it, and why it works there.
Which, regardless of how you’ve approached storytelling in the past and intend to get it done in the future, has always been the goal.
Larry Brooks is a bestselling novelist and the creator of Storyfix.com, recently named to the top spot on our recent Top Ten Writing Blogs list. His latest book, “Story Engineering: Mastering the Six Core Competencies of Successful Writing,” has just been published by Writers Digest books, and since its release has been at or near the #1 bestselling spot on Amazon.com’s fiction writing/craft list.
