Your Unique Storyteller’s DNA

Pay attention to how you feel about your story.

As you consider your story ideas and loglines, you may discover something about yourself, about the stories you’re drawn to. Pay attention to those moments when you get excited.

Yes, you could fight through any story idea. You can write anything. That doesn’t mean you should. You have a choice.

Pay attention when it feels good, fun, compelling. Notice when it doesn’t feel like a chore or a drag. Notice, if you can, when it feels like “Oh, boy, this is happening!”

I didn’t realize until I was writing the drafts for my novels Undercover Vulture and Summer Clubbing that I am drawn to a very specific type of story. I don’t mean that I want to watch a certain show or read a certain genre of fiction. I mean that as a writer, I’m drawn like a magnet, like gravity, like identity, to a certain kind of story.

I realized this when I was trying to write a different kind of story, and my brain kept wrenching that storyline into the kind I preferred. I was planning to follow the track of that storyline and go that way, but as I was writing, I rebelled and walked into the woods and followed the trail of this storyline and went this way.

Something in me was fighting to go in a different direction toward a different story.

Fighting this instinct was ruining the story I was trying to write.

It’s like my mom was calling me up for dinner, and I was in the basement setting up my action figures in their hidden bases.

“Dinner!”

“In a minute!”

“Now!”

“Be right there!”

“It’s getting cold!”

“Okay!”

I didn’t want to eat dinner. I didn’t want to do what I was supposed to do, even if it was perfectly okay. There’s nothing wrong with dinner. But I wanted to keep dreaming. I couldn’t pull myself away. I couldn’t help it.

Dinner was the storyline I’d set out to write. It was an intellectual decision. The other storyline was the emotional decision. That storyline was the one my entire being wanted to write.

I like to write stories of the positive transformation of a single, active hero.

I’m not drawn to tragedies. I want my hero to learn and change. I’m not drawn to ensemble casts or multigenerational novels. My hero doesn’t need to be of any particular age, gender, or even species; I’ve written novels about roosters and vultures and aliens. But my hero does need to be self-aware rather than foolish or brutish. I’m drawn to stories about self-aware heroes on missions at the end of which those heroes are better off.

I discovered my inclination while writing two novels that were following the Fool Triumphant story structure (see Save the Cat). In Fool Triumphant, the hero is foolish in a particular way (say, innocent or delusional) and goes after one goal in the Act 2 adventure (often born of love) but also ends up triumphant in a big way by, say, solving the case (Inspector Clouseau), finding their calling (Elle Woods), or saving the world (Wall-e). Fool Triumphant is a kind of hero story but one in which the hero makes foolish choices, is ridiculed by society, and wins anyway, by the strength of their unappreciated virtue.

I tried to write a Fool Triumphant story and discovered I struggle to do so unless I have another character (a buddy, if you will) who is as self-aware as I am. I added a cynical detective to Undercover Vulture, and that solved my struggle. I haven’t really solved my struggle with my horror novel Summer Clubbing. I kept torqueing that novel into an origin story for a dark hero (something I’m clearly more comfortable with), but I started out thinking it was going to be a very dark Fool Triumphant story (Elle Woods with an axe, basically).

So that’s one way to learn what stories you’re drawn to write. You have to write the wrong stories . . . and struggle . . . and feel bad . . . and notice when you’re feeling bad . . . and fail . . . and understand why you failed and be okay with that . . . and change your strategy to fit who you are as a writer . . . and keep going.

And it also helps to read Save the Cat Goes to the Movies (and visit the site (go to Beat Sheets and search by genre)) to learn story-structure genres, which I find very, very, very helpful, waaaaaaaay more helpful than the genres used to market to readers. If there’s another book out there that sets out more story-structure genres like this, let me know in the comments. I’ll buy it instantly!

I also discovered that I feel a spark when I introduce an element of the supernatural into the story. 

I think it’s the boy in me. That element of fantasy or sci-fi lights up my brain. I’m excited to imagine something like that, something dreamt up from what feels like scratch but from what, I know, is the exercise of my sometimes overheated imagination.

That supernatural element is like an enticing hold on a cliff, what climbers must get excited about when they see it. Yes! I want that grip, and I’m going to swing over and get it. It’s a hold, it’s friction, it’s something to reach for and something to climb beyond.

Without that element of the fantastic, I’m just not super excited to write the story. I’m not that interested. My imagination isn’t lit up. The story starts to feel like a chore.

When that happens, oh, man, I back away. This isn’t fun anymore. Something’s wrong.

So I like to write stories of the positive transformation of a single, active, self-aware hero, and I like to introduce an element of the supernatural into the story.

This is why I was drawn to write my recent novels: SmartHome Rebel, about a girl seeking to escape an evil smarthome; Monster Doctor, about a mutant boy in an X-Men type of world; Idol Wish, about a boy who teleports to Hollywood and then into the dark world of a TV show; A Box Came for You, about a young man who confronts a cursed spirit; and Locke Writes a Story to Save His Life, about an eighth-grader who meets an alien.

They all fit this story pattern that’s in me, I guess. The pattern is what holds these seemingly disparate stories together. They all share elements of the kind of story I love to write.

I don’t write full-on fantasy or sci-fi books. I’m not sure why. Maybe I will one day. I’m drawn more to our real human world on Earth, but with a twist of the supernatural, like Jurassic Park, E.T., The Matrix, or Splash!

When I was a boy, I read Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and Ray Bradbury, as well as books about boys and their horses and girls and their horses (there are a lot of these). Then there’s Dr. Dolittle and Alice in Wonderland, Middle Earth and Oz, Mary Poppins and King Arthur, and so on.

I think that’s why I love to read Rabelais, Kafka, Marquez, Calvino, Donald Barthelme, Octavia Butler, Amanda Filipacchi, and George Saunders, authors who add a touch (or more than a touch) of the fantastic. I like graphic novels, and of course, I like animated movies: Ratatouille, Toy Story, Spirited Away, Shrek.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve found, along the way, about the storyteller’s DNA that’s in me. 

I think somehow what we dream drives what we write, and if you acknowledge, sincerely, your own dreams, you will have a much more rewarding time developing your story, writing your story, and sharing it.

Write the story you are in your dreams.

It’s possible you won’t be able to help it!

_____

PHOTO: A few years ago, seniors (at the school where I teach) pulled a senior prank by filling a classroom with balloons. It was pretty great.