Hugo Gernsback And The Future That Might Have Been

Hugo Gernsback And The Future That Might Have Been

One of my favorite short stories is The Gernsback Continuum, by William Gibson. It's about a future envisioned in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, a future filled with flying cars and robot maids (think: The Jetsons).

That future never materialized, but it's fun to think, "What if ..." What if you had your very own jet pack and could fly to work? (Just imagine that traffic jam). What if we could have robots clean the house, cook our food and manage our social media?

Hugo Gernsback embodied this future that almost was. He published the first science fiction magazine. In fact ...

[Hugo Gernsback's] contributions to the genre as publisher were so significant that, along with H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, he is sometimes popularly called "The Father of Science Fiction". In his honor, the annual Science Fiction Achievement awards are named the "Hugos". (Hugo Gernsback)

Today I had wanted to publish the third installment of my monomyth series but life intervened. Thankfully, Arthur sent me an Infographic on predictions about the future. Apparently us writerly types have done fairly well when it came to predicting the future! Take a look.

Future Predictions Timeline

Writing And The Monomyth, Part Two

Writing And The Monomyth Continued

Yesterday I began writing about what Joseph Campbell called the monomyth (see Writing And The Monomyth), although I drew more from Christopher Vogler's version of the myth than Campbell's.

Today I want to pick up where I left off and examine the final seven or so steps. (update: I only made it to the midpoint, so I'll attempt to finish off tomorrow.)

6. Tests, Allies and Enemies

The hero has just crossed the threshold from the ordinary world and has landed, probably with a few bumps and bruises, in the special world. In a screenplay this plot point would also mark the beginning of the second act. 

Blake Snyder in Save The Cat! make the point that the Special World should be as different as possible from the Ordinary World (for instance, The Wizard of Oz, Star Wars, Miss Congeniality). If the Ordinary World is the thesis then the Special World is the Antithesis.

Something BIG needs to happen to propel the hero (because I'm talking about the monomyth it feels natural to talk about heroes and villains rather than protagonists and antagonists) from the Ordinary World into the Special World.

The hero must enter the Special World of the adventure willingly, he can't be tricked or abducted, it must be an intentional act.

B Story

Blake Snyder makes the point that this is also the place where we start the "B Story", a subplot that, in some way, is the antithesis, the opposite, of the "A Story", the main plot. In Legally Blond this is where Elle Woods (played by Reese Witherspoon) meets Paulette (played by Jennifer Coolidge) in the beauty shop. Paulette--big and showy--stands in stark contrast to Elle's other, more reserved, friends.

The B Story is often a love story, one that echos the theme.

Fun and Games

As our hero meets some of the people in the special world and gains a few allies, makes a few enemies, we can relax a little. We can have a bit of fun as we get to know our new friends and become adapted to the strange new world

If there is a 'feel good' part of the story, it comes out here.

7. Approach to the Inmost Cave

We have almost reached the middle of the story. The hero must now become serious and prepare for the ordeal ahead of him. If your hero has a love interest there's time for one last love scene before facing the ordeal awaiting him. This is a good way, too, of making the stakes clear.

In preparation for the ordeal, the hero might try to 'think like the antagonist', to get inside his mind.

However your hero does it, he's going to have to prepare for the ordeal. Even if he is blindsided by the danger he needs to make a conscious decision that he will confront the antagonistic force, whatever it is.

At this point perhaps the hero reorganizes his party, perhaps he makes alliances with his enemies. As he gets closer to the ordeal the pressure builds and the mettle of his traveling companions--as well as his own--will be tested.

As the hero approaches the inmost cave he is beset with obstacles. Common obstacles are illusions--perhaps illusions created by threshold guardians--ominous warnings, impossible tests (I always think of the Kobayashi Maru in this context!), and so forth.

8. The Ordeal

We have reached the middle of the story and are in the midst of Act Two. The hero will confront the antagonistic force working against him and either appear to win big or lose big. Neither of these, though, will be a complete victory/defeat.

Michael Hauge calls this "the point of no return". The hero is now completely committed, there is no going back to the Ordinary World except by finishing the journey.

For instance, in The Firm at the midpoint Mitch McDeere is given a choice: go into witness protection and live in fear of being killed by the mob or spend the rest of his life in prison. Whatever happens his life has been irrevocably changed.

What needs to happen at the midpoint:

- A false peek (it all seems to go right for the hero) or a false collapse (everything seems to go wrong).

- The stakes are raised. The midpoint needs to change the whole dynamic of the story. Fun and games are over, now things become much more serious, much more intense.

The midpoint is a place of transformation, of death and resurrection.  Either here at The Midpoint or, later, on The Road Back, there is often a death, either a literal one--for instance, the hero's mentor dies--or a symbolic one. Someone could tell a story about death or, this is Blake Snyder's suggestion, show a dead flower. But there should be a hint of death, a reminder of the price the hero has had to pay for his victory.

#  #  #

Well! It seems, once again, I've underestimated how many words this would take to explain. I'm going to leave off at the midpoint--it seemed appropriate--and I'll pick up this discussion again tomorrow.

Can you think of a movie, a movie you liked, that does not follow the structure of the monomyth?

Other articles you might like:

- How To Communicate Setting: Establishing Shots
- Exposing The Bestseller: Money Can Buy Fame
- How To Edit: Kill Your Darlings

Photo link: "the army" by linh.ngan under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

How To Communicate Setting: Establishing Shots

C.S. Lakin has written another brilliant post, this time about establishing setting, and she starts off by making an excellent point: 

[A] novel is not a visual experience unless you make it one. ... [W]ith novels, you always want to try and show a scene through the POV character's eyes and colored by her emotions, state of mind, way of thinking.

How do you do this? With the equivalent of an establishing shot.

Create An Establishing Shot

This is from Wikipedia:

An establishing shot in filmmaking and television production sets up, or establishes the context for a scene by showing the relationship between its important figures and objects.[1] It is generally a long- or extreme-long shot at the beginning of a scene indicating where, and sometimes when, the remainder of the scene takes place. (Establishing Shot)

C.S. Lakin gives an example from Le Carré's book The Constant Gardener that I include, below, but I'll first give you one from Dean Koontz's What The Night Knows. Yes, I know, that's quite a difference in both authors and genres, but read this paragraph and tell me if you don't think it's a great establishing shot.

Dean Koontz, What The Night Knows

The state hospital stood on a hill, silhouetted against a gray and sodden sky. The September light appeared to strop a razor's edge along each skein of rain.

"... to strop a razor's edge along each skein of rain." I like that, the image of a razor, of a razor in motion, controlled motion, being sharpened, getting ready.  Dean Koontz continues:

A procession of eighty-foot purple beeches separated the inbound and the outbound lanes of the approach road. Their limbs overhung the car and collected the rain to redistribute it in thick drizzles that rapped against the windshield.

The thump of the wipers matched the slow, heavy rhythm of John Calvino's heart. He did not play the radio. The only sounds were the engine, the windshield wipers, the rain, the swish of tires turning on wet pavement, and a memory of the screams of dying women.

I'd say that sets the scene effectively. "Their limbs", "slow, heavy rhythm of John Calvino's heart", "memory of the screams of dying women". Yes, okay, it lacks some of the pure poetry of Le Carré, but, come on, that is Le Carré. He gives writers inferiority complexes.

John Le Carré, The Constant Gardener

Here's the passage C.S. Lakin quoted, and it is truly epic:

The mountain stood black against the darkening sky, and the sky was a mess of racing cloud, perverse island winds and February rain. The snake road was strewn with pebbles and red mud from the sodden hillside. Sometimes it became a tunnel of overhanging pine branches and sometimes it was a precipice with a free fall to the steaming Mediterranean a thousand feet below. He would make a turn and for no reason the sea would rise in a wall in front of him, only to fall back into the abyss as he made another. But no matter how many times he turned, the rain came straight at him, and when it struck the windscreen he felt the jeep wince under him like an old horse no longer fit for heavy pulling.  

Wow. Even just the first sentence makes me want to take a deep breath of the crisp damp air and look for my umbrella.

C.S. Lakin writes:

Look at some of the words he [Le Carré] uses: black, darkening (his quest to find answers is getting that way), perverse (that too), winds, rain, snake, sodden, tunnel, precipice . . . I don’t need to go on—you get the point. The Establishing Shot in this scene was no doubt chosen to work as a metaphor, as the reader has been watching Justin Quayle going through a similar emotional roller coaster, rising and falling into an abyss, turning one way then another, but getting nowhere fast. His task to find answers feels like he’s prodding “an old horse no longer fit for heavy pulling.” And the weight he is carrying is heavy. Powerful, right?

That’s all Le Carré needs to start the scene, and from there we move on to other camera shots revealing important plot points leading to a high moment in his scene. I won’t tell you what that is; you can read it for yourself, and I hope you do. Few writers handle words as masterfully and deliberately as does Le Carré, and he’s a great author to study for cinematic structure.

This week I'm going to do as C.S. Lakin suggests and look at the scenes in my work in progress to see whether I succeed in establishing the scene before I start in with dialogue.

All quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from C.S. Lakin's article Establishing Shots That Reveal Character.

Other articles you might like:

- Writing And The Monomyth
- Steven Pressfield Gives Writers A Pep Talk In A "Get Off Your Duff And Start Writing!" Kind Of Way
- A Pep Talk

Photo credit: "A fish's view of NYC skyscrapers" by kevin dooley under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Writing And The Monomyth

Let's get back to talking about writing, the butt-in-chair stuff.

The Monomyth

Just as all philosophy is a footnote to Plato, all plots are variations of the monomyth. Perhaps, in writing circles, the best known version of the myth is the one popularized by Christopher Vogler in his wonderful book, The Writer's Journey.

I believe that every writer has internalized his or her own particular version of the monomyth. This is the structure that organizes our stories.

Each of our individual monoymths is going to be different because each writer is unique. We each have a different perspective on life and the world and this is going to show itself in our work.

What follows is my version of the monomyth. This version is no better than anyone else's (and hopefully no worse!) and I present it here more as an exercise for myself to make my implicit understanding of story structure explicit. If something I write resonates with you then I invite you to use it and if something doesn't then ignore it, it's not for you.

The Stages of the Monomyth

1. The ordinary world

Here we see the hero (the hero can be a male or female) in the ordinary world. This is the life he is used to. For instance, at the beginning of Star Wars: A New Hope we see Luke working on his Uncle's farm.

SHOW the hero in the ordinary world. Take this as an opportunity to show what the hero is good at. What is he comfortable with? What is he terrible at? What are his hopes and dreams?

2. Call to adventure

A force crashes into the heroes ordinary world. Something happens, something changes. Perhaps a herald/messenger comes with news that the hero's great uncle has passed away and left him a mansion. Perhaps a malfunctioning droid shows him pictures of a pretty girl pleading for help.

3. Refusal of the call

The hero doesn't always refuse the call to adventure, but at the very least he has to consider what answering the call would mean. What would he have to give up? What might he gain?

4. Meeting the mentor

If the hero refuses the call to adventure the mentor can help spell out the stakes for him and motivate him to explore the strange new world that awaaits those few brave enough to attempt the journey. Even if the hero is eager to be off, the mentor can provide him with advice, or perhaps equipment, or--if it's a fantasy--a magical charm or three.

Often the mentor travels with the hero as a helper. Nearly always the mentor dies or leaves the party before the climax of the story, leaving the hero on his own to meet the final test alone.

Think of Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid or Obi Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: A New Hope. The mentor knows more about the special world where the adventure will take place (e.g., the world beyond Luke's home planet of Tatooine; knowledge of The Force).

5. Entering the special world 

Before the hero leaves the ordinary world he often has to pass a test given by a threshold guardian. He doesn't quite pass the test, or he does but he makes the guardian angry, and is tossed into the belly of a whale, or trash compactor, or otherwise left for dead.

In any case, something happens to the hero such that he is swallowed into the unknown and begins--perhaps grudgingly--to adapt to the ways of the special world.

The special world is the land of adventure. There are different rules here, different social norms, different dangers. What the hero was good at he is no longer and what the hero couldn't do before now becomes possible.

After entering the special world the hero goes through a period of adjustment. Think about Luke when he goes into the Mos Eisley Cantina with Obi Wan Kenobi and the wonderful strangeness of the customers, the setting.

Have you ever used the monomyth to help structure your stories? Is there another structure you use? If so, please share!

Update: The discussion of the monomyth is continued here: Writing And The Monomyth, Part 2.

Other articles you might like:

- Steven Pressfield Gives Writers A Pep Talk In A "Get Off Your Duff And Start Writing!" Kind Of Way
- Pixar: 22 Ways To Tell A Great Story
- Podcasting on the iPad

Photo credit: "let's type" by |vvaldzen| under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Steven Pressfield Gives Writers A Pep Talk In A "Get Off Your Duff And Start Writing!" Kind Of Way

It seems this is the time for pep talks. I shared Kid President's yesterday, so I wasn't sure if I should share another right after it, but the truth is I have to, it's just too good.

Besides, it's not like we can have too many pep talks, right?

How The Eagles Learnt To Write A Song

With seven number-one singles, six Grammys five American Music Awards and six number one albums to their name, it's safe to say the Eagles knew how to write a song, but this wasn't always the case. (Eagles (band), Wikipedia)

Steven Pressfield writes:

Glenn Frey was telling the story. He was talking about the early 70s in L.A., before the Eagles were even a band, or maybe just after they had gotten started. He and Don Henley were playing gigs (they had backed up Linda Ronstadt for a while) but they were not writing their own material. They were covering other musicians’ songs. They knew they had to start writing their own—and they wanted to desperately—but they couldn’t figure out how.

.  .  .  .

It turned out that they were living in a little cheap apartment in Echo Park directly above an even littler, cheaper apartment that was being rented by Jackson Browne. Jackson Browne was at the very start of his career too. He was starving just like Glenn and Don.

Glenn Frey, telling the story, says something like this:

“Every morning we’d wake up and we’d hear Jackson’s piano coming through the floor from the apartment below. He would play one verse, then play it again, and again and again. Twenty times in a row, till he had it exactly the way he wanted.

“Then he’d move to the next verse. Again, twenty times. It went on for hours. I don’t know how many days we listened to this same process before it suddenly hit us: This is how you write a song. This is how it’s done.

“That changed everything for us.”

Steven Pressfield writes:

I love that story. I love the demystification of the process. Yeah, the Muse is present. Yes, inspiration is key. But the ethic is workaday. It’s sit down, shut up, do what you have to.

.  .  .  .

I can relate completely to what Glenn Frey said ... I can hear the notes from that piano coming up through the floorboards. “Jeez Louise, what is that guy doing down there? Stop, man! Take a break!”

Then, slowly maybe, or maybe in a flash, the light dawns. “This is how you do it. This is how you write a song.”

All quotations are from Steven Pressfield's article: Jackson Browne’s Piano coming through the Floor.

Here's the link to Steven Pressfield's blog, it's one of my favorites because I love reading an industry professional write about his experiences.

What do you do to get yourself to sit down, unplug from your social networks, hide the TV remote, and write?

Other articles you might like:

- A Pep Talk
- How To Edit: Kill Your Darlings
- Chuck Wendig Says That Editing Is Writing

Photo credit: "The Entrance" by nattu under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

A Pep Talk

Everyone needs a pep talk, even writers.

Whether it's writing a book or sending off a short story for a contest, or writing for a genre you love but have never written for. Don't just think about it, do it! Stretch yourself.

Find a dream worth pursuing and then never, ever, give up.

Here's a pep talk that's gone viral on YouTube. Enjoy!

Thanks to Larry Brooks at StoryFix.com for posting this link.

Other articles you might like:

- How To Edit: Kill Your Darlings
- 6 Ways To Get Rid Of Infodumps At The Beginning Of A Story
- Write A Novel In A Year, Chuck Wendig's Plan: The Big 350

Photo credit: "little dog in tuscany 2" by francesco sgroi under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

How To Edit: Kill Your Darlings

When I started writing this post I fully intended to discuss Chuck Wendig's distinction between writing and storytelling and how to use this distinction to help diagnose problems in your manuscript. But then I fell down the rabbit hole of layer cakes and editordomes.

That's right. Editordomes.

In a soon-to-be-written post I do fully intend to talk about writing versus storytelling--a distinction I've wanted to talk about for some time--but for now I'm going to talk (or, rather, write) about how to identify darlings and then massacre them.

Kill Your Darlings

What is a darling? It's something that exists in your manuscript only because you love it. Or, to put it another way, if something is in your manuscript, your story, only because you love it then it's a darling and needs to go. (1)

Simply put, a darling "doesn't connect. It doesn't bond with the rest of the manuscript." (1)

A true “darling” is a lone wolf, a ronin ninja, a pretty little unibomber, a delicate snowflake. It does nothing for your work. It dances alone with itself in the corner, and you don’t have the heart to tell it that it needs to join the rest of the crowd or drink a capful of drain cleaner. (1)

Okay, that's how a darling functions, or fails to function, in your manuscript, but what is it? Chuck writes: "Darlings can be anything: a turn-of-phrase, a character, a word, a grammatical crutch (1)".

The test: how to determine if something is a darling

Here's the question you should ask yourself: If you cut out this bit of text does the story loose anything? Chuck writes:

Theatrically kill it. ... You’re just… taking it out of the draft for a little while to see how it reads, how it feels, how it lays. Copy the offending section. Paste it into a blank document. Let it sit there on its own ... Come back after fifteen minutes (or, up to a whole day if you’re able). Now, check out the draft once more. Re-read it. Read it aloud. (Always read aloud. I will jackhammer that into your brain as often as I can.) Do you feel that it lays fine the way it is? Or do you say, “Y’know what? This is missing a little something-something. Needs more salt and pepper.”

If it’s okay without it — and I’ll bet 7 times out of 10 it will be — then the darling you’ve sequestered on its own is no longer on vacation, but now trapped in a Murder Room. Close that open window and let it die a swift death.

If you think it needs more spice, more flavor, put it back in. “Kill your darlings” is not meant to be a surly screed against flavor. Flavor is good, as long as flavor accompanies nutritional value. Again, to go back to the empty calories metaphor: darlings are garnish for the sake of garnish, or sweets just because you want sweets. (1)

Weak Words: An Example Of A Darling That Has To Go

In Strangling My Darlings In A Clawfoot Bathtub (Part Two Of Two) Chuck gives examples of darlings. It's well worth the read, but I want to talk about one of his examples here because this is something I still battle with: the use of weak words or as Chuck writes: "mushy, weak, wobbly words".

Maybe, actually, really, almost, sort of, kind of, very, theoretically, mehh, meeeehhhhhh.

You want your writing to sound conversational.

But you don’t want it to sound like uncertain conversation. You don’t want it weak-in-the-knees. (2)

That doesn't mean weak words always make your prose boring, in fact you might think they lend it flair. Chuck concedes this, to a point.

They’re not terrible in total, and some can lend to a stylistic flair, but it’s often too easy to default to that as your excuse. “My writing doesn’t suck. It’s just my style.”

Well, fine. Then your style involves copious amounts of sucking. (2)

How We Can Drown Darlings Without Drama

Be in the right state of mind

You need to let your manuscript go. Yes, you have invested a lot of yourself in its pages, into the story, but now it's time to let it go, to disassociate yourself from it. It is not you. Keep saying that until you believe it.

I love the way Chuck puts this: "You are not the sum of those pages." (1)

How does one distance oneself from ones litterary offspring? Put your manuscript in a drawer, close the drawer and walk away. Chuck advises taking at least a month off, Stephen King recommends six weeks. Don't even open the drawer. Forget about the manuscript. Wipe it from your mind as much as possible. You want to come back to it with new eyes and edit it as though it were someone else's work. That's the kind of objectivity you'll need.

Read Everything Aloud

I don't do this but I know I should ... and now that I've read Chuck's posts I think I will. He writes:

You do that [read aloud], you will hear all the fits and starts, all the awkward language, all the broken pauses, all the disturbed rhythms. Typing is not like speaking — we have the extra step of having our fingers do their little fingery dance. As such, you need to bridge that gap. (3)

Have you ever read your manuscript aloud? Have you ever had your manuscript read to you?

References:

1. Strangling My Darlings In A Clawfoot Bathtub (Part One Of Two)
2. Strangling My Darlings In A Clawfoot Bathtub (Part Two Of Two)
3. Welcome To Editordome

Other articles you might like:

- Chuck Wendig Says That Editing Is Writing
- Looking At Plot: Urban Myths And What They Teach Us
- Monsignor Ronald Knox's 10 Rules Of Detective Fiction

Photo credit: "A petición de Fran." by www dot jordiarmengol dot net (Xip) under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Chuck Wendig Says That Editing Is Writing

My title comes from Chuck Wendig's latest post. He writes:

Let’s get something out of the way:

Editing is writing.

This--his way of drilling down to the core of relevant writing issues--is one reason I've been increasingly eager to read Chuck Wendig's posts.

Believe it or not, there is some disagreement about the point. Some reasonable, smart, experienced, articulate writers would insist that, to the contrary, editing is most emphatically NOT writing.

The Problem With Saying Editing Is Not Writing

For me, here's the problem with denying that editing is writing: I'm a writer, but I spend most of my time editing because I write fast drafts.

Here's how I write a first draft: for two or three (glorious!) weeks I'll say goodbye to the collective illusion we call the real world and climb through a rabbit hole--or slink into a closet, or creep inside (what looks like) a phone booth, or ...--into a world it's up to me to create.

This is the part of writing I can't wait to get to. Writing a fast draft helps me stretch my creative muscles in a way I rarely get to otherwise. Of course, by the end, I can't wait to get to the editing!

The upshot is that I spend the overwhelming majority of my time editing that first draft (and editing, and editing, and ...).

Yes, I insert new scenes here and there, and I cut others, but I think of that as editing not writing. I can't say, "I'll write at least 1,000 words today" because I write as much as I need to and it varies day to day.

But perhaps that's wrong. Perhaps editing is writing and writing is editing.

Chuck Wending writes:

At the end of the day, the actual execution of your editing process is writing. It’s you doing surgery and excising all the unsightly tumors from your work and filling in the gurgling wounds with better material: healthy flesh, new organs ... Sometimes it’s as simple as killing commas and adding periods. Other times it’s as complicated as dynamiting the blubbery beached whale that is your entire third act, picking up all the viscera, and filling in the hole with clean, pristine sand. Sometimes it’s a leeeetle-teeny-toonsy bit of writing. Sometimes it’s a thousand rust-pitted cauldrons of writing.

Writing is editing. Editing is writing.

Writing is rewriting. And rewriting. And rewriting.

I would encourage you to read the rest of Chuck Wendig's article, though I should note it contains mature language.

By the way, all quotations are from Chuck Wendig's post February 26, 2013 post unless otherwise noted.

What do you think? Is editing writing?

Other articles you might like:

- Looking At Plot: Urban Myths And What They Teach Us
- Write A Novel In A Year, Chuck Wendig's Plan: The Big 350
- The Importance Of Finding Your Own Voice

Photo credit: "la nebbia di settembre" by francesco sgroi under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Looking At Plot: Urban Myths And What They Teach Us

A few days ago I wrote about Ronald B Tobias' book 20 Master Plots and How to Build Them. The book is terrific. Tobias writes about something I've been interested in for years: Urban myths.

Urban Mythology

How do urban myths form? They have no author. Or they do, but not just one. They have many authors, many different people who--unconsciously, unintentionally--weave a story which is so catchy, so interesting, it spreads through the population lasting generation after generation. No publicist is needed, no marketing, no sales on Amazon.

How is this done? What makes these stories so interesting, so catchy, that they are told and retold for generations?

That's what I'd like to talk about today.

The Choking Doberman

First, let's look at an example of an urban myth:

A woman returned to her house after a morning of shopping and found her pet Doberman pinscher choking and unable to breathe. She rushed her dog to the vet, where she left it for emergency treatment.

When the woman got home, her phone was ringing. It was the vet. "Get out of your house now!" he shouted.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"Just do it! Go to a neighbor's. I'll be right there."

Frightened by the tone of his voice, the woman did as she was told and went to her neighbor's.

A few minutes later, four police cars screeched to a halt in front of her house. The police ran inside her house with their guns drawn. Horrified, the woman went outside to see what was happening.

The vet arrived and explained. When he looked inside her dog's throat, he found two human fingers!

He figured the dog had surprised a burglar.

Sure enough, the police found a man in a deep state of shock hiding in the closet and clutching a bloody hand. (20 Master Plots and How to Build Them)

What's interesting to me about this story is that it has no author. At least, not as I usually think of it. This story is an urban legend, it's a piece of fiction created by several authors who unintentionally added to it over time.

Why did this story spread? What characteristics does it have that make it engaging? Ronald B. Tobias writes:

The real value of this legend is that it evolved with constant retelling until it became plot perfect, the same process that perfected the fable, the fairy tale, the riddle, the rhyme and the proverb. The story went through thousands of oral rewrites until it could evolve no further.

What characteristics does this story--and, in fact, any urban legend--have that make people want to tell, and retell, it?

On one level the answer is easy: it's entertaining. But what qualities make it entertaining? When we find out we can use those answers to help structure our own fiction.

The Structure Of The Choking Doberman

There are three parts to The Choking Doberman. Above, I've changed the font in the first part to green, the second to red and the third is in black.

First part:
- Hook: the woman's doberman is choking. It raises the question: What is the dog choking on?

Second part:
- Startling complication: the vet calls and tells the woman to get out of her house immediately, but doesn't explain why.

Third part:
- Scary climax: A bleeding intruder is found in the dog-owner's home.

Protagonist: A woman
Antagonist: A burglar

As Tobias writes: "What happens in "The Choking Doberman" is not that different from what happens in the novels of Agatha Christie or P.D. James. It's only a matter of degree."

The Plot Of The Story: Riddle Me This

What is the plot of The Choking Doberman? What is it about?

Yes, it's about a dog, and it's about terror, but those aren't the plot. The plot of the story, it's essential underlying structure, is that of a riddle.

Tobias writes:

The point of a riddle is to solve a puzzle. It comes from the same tradition as Oedipus, who must solve the riddle presented to him by the Sphinx, and the same tradition of Hercules, who had the unenviable task of having to solve twelve tasks, the famous labors, each of which was a riddle to be solved. Fairy tales are chock full of riddles to be solved—children delight in them. So do adults. The riddle is the basis of the mystery, which to this day is arguably the most popular form of literature in the world. Today we think of a riddle as a simple question that has a trick 20 Master Plots (And How to Build Them) answer. "What has . . . and... ?" But a riddle really is any mystifying, misleading or puzzling question that is posed as a problem to be solved or guessed. And that fits "The Choking Doberman."

The story gives the reader two clues, one in the first part, one in the second, and the solution in the third. These clues can be phrased as three questions:

1) The dog is choking on something. WHAT is he choking on?
2) The vet tells the woman to flee her home. WHY did he tell her this?
3) WHO is to blame?

In this case, the WHO (in the third part or 'act') is the answer to both the 'what' and the 'why' questions, and that's just how a riddle works.

Story Without Plot: The King And The Queen

I know I used this example in an earlier article about plot, but I'm using it again because it's just so good! Tobias writes:

Novelist E.M. Forster spent a lot of time thinking about writing. He tried to explain the difference between story and plot in his book Aspects of the Novel. "The king died and the queen died." Two events. A simple narration. This is story.

But if you connect the first movement (the death of the king) with the second movement (the death of the queen) and make one action the result of the other, we would have a plot. "The king died and then the queen died of grief"

Here's the main difference between The Choking Doberman and The King And Queen: The story about the Doberman "arouses and directs our expectations," but "the king died and the queen died" does not.

Why is this?

The Essence Of Plot

"The king died and then the queen died" does not direct our expectations because the events of the story don't have the right kind of causal connection to each other. The death of the king and the death of the queen are disconnected. The problem is that "there are no clues, no connections, no apparent causal relationships" between the two events.

Tobias writes:

Story requires only curiosity to know what will happen next. Plot requires the ability to remember what has already happened, to figure out the relationships between events and people, and to try to project the outcome.

One More Thing: Chekhov's Gun

Just like with Lieutenant Columbo there is always one more thing. Ronald B Tobias goes on to talk about how, in addition to the events of the story being related to each other causally such that one explains or builds on the other, the ending of the story must leave no legitimate room for questioning. He writes:

We prefer order to disorder in fiction. We prefer logic to chaos. Most of all, we prefer unity of purpose, which creates a whole. Wouldn't life be great if it contained nothing extraneous or coincidental, if everything that happened to us related to a main purpose?

This is related to Chekhov's famous gun example:

Chekhov's gun is a metaphor for a dramatic principle concerning simplicity and foreshadowing. It suggests that if one shows a loaded gun on stage in the first act of a play, it should be fired in a later act; otherwise, the gun should not be shown in the first place. The principle was articulated by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov and reported in various forms. (Chekhov's Gun, Wikipedia)

To Sum Up

Here are our three principles of plot:

1. Why, What --> Who

Mystery stories are like riddles, but one thing all stories have in common is that we must attempt to establish cause and effect links between the events of the story, and the ending--while it might contain something surprising--must flow from these naturally. (No one said writing was easy!)

2. The end of the story must leave no legitimate room for questioning.

If we take the principle behind Chekhov's Gun to heart, this will be the case.

3. Unity

You're right, there were only two points, but just as in the story of The Choking Doberman, the who emerged from the why and the what so the third point--that one's story must form a unity--emerges from the first two.

Life often doesn't make sense, life is chaotic, but our stories must present an ordered universe where one thing happens because of another and the end of the story concludes the events in a satisfying (though perhaps tragic) way.

(A caveat: I should note that, here, I'm concerned with genre fiction, sometimes called category fiction. For instance, if--at the end of a romance story--the lovers never make any sort of connection, if their fates are completely disconnected to any of the preceding events, I guarantee you the author is going to have more than a few disgruntled readers. Readers of mainstream fiction may have other expectations.)

I mentioned this, above, but this material has been drawn from Ronald B Tobias' excellent book, 20 Master Plots And How To Build Them.

Do you have a favorite urban myth? If so, please share!

Other articles you might like:

- Monsignor Ronald Knox's 10 Rules Of Detective Fiction
- Joe Konrath Talks About How To Sell Books On Amazon
- Exposing The Bestseller: Money Can Buy Fame

Photo credit: "katie melua:if the lights go out" by visualpanic under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Monsignor Ronald Knox's 10 Rules Of Detective Fiction

I love murder mysteries.

You'd think I'd have written a murder mystery by now given they are half of what I read, but I haven't. I've tried, but my stories are stubborn and insist on being urban fantasy.

Often, perhaps to convince my muse to let me write a mystery story, I've analyzed one of Agatha Christie's who-done-it's in an attempt to expose her magic, her formula, her secret.

So far, bupkis.

Monsignor Ronald Knox's 10 Rules Of Detective Fiction

Perhaps I should try again, but, in lieu of that, here is a list of Monsignor Ronald Knox's (1888 -- 1957) 10 rules of detective fiction:

1) The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow;

2) All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course;

3) Not more than one secret room or passage is allowed;

4) No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end;

5) No [stereotype] ... must figure in the story;

6) No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right;

7) The detective must not himself commit the crime;

8) The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader;

9) The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader;

10) Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them. (How crime fiction has moved on, Rebecca Armstrong, The Independent)

Ronald Knox's list is currently displayed at "the entrance to the Murder in the Library, a compact new exhibition that charts the A-Z of crime fiction at the British Library" (How crime fiction has moved on).

Crime stories have changed over the years. These days, while it's still important the reader be able to solve the underlying puzzle of "who did the crime" we also expect authors to employ psychology in unmasking the culprit. Rebecca Armstrong writes:

The final word goes to Baroness James of Holland Park herself. In her elegant 2009 work Talking about Detective Fiction, she writes that "the solving of the mystery is still at the heart of a detective story," but that, like all forms of entertainment, it has, as it must, evolved. "I see the detective story becoming more firmly rooted in the realities and the uncertainties of the 21st century, while still providing that central certainty that even the most intractable problems will in the end be subject to reason." Fewer secret rooms, then, and a lot more psychology are the hallmarks of the modern whodunit. (How crime fiction has moved on)

Rebecca Armstrong has written an entertaining and instructive article, it's well with a look.

Thanks to The Passive Voice Blog for the link.

Other articles you might like:

- How to record an audiobook at home
- The Importance Of Finding Your Own Voice
- Write A Novel In A Year, Chuck Wendig's Plan: The Big 350

Photo credit: "Touch to believe" by Jsome1 under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.