A conundrum occurs when a new author is told his/her work is "unoriginal" or the editor has "seen this kind of story too often."
The conundrum lies in the idea that trite stories seldom appear in print, so how does a new author know what's trite if there are no examples available? If, for example, the intrepid author searches and searches for published ghost stories set in haunted old mansions, how is she to judge her own ghost story set in a haunted old mansion as anything but original?
The easy answer is that a few markets offer lists of types of stories they see too often. But those lists are often written in terms of what that market is seeing too much of RIGHT NOW, and are often incomplete. In all fairness, to offer a list of unoriginal story ideas would require reams of paper.
Understand that stories have been around for millennia, and understand also that there are (at least in some estimates) only a handful of types of stories. So how could ANY story possibly be original?
NO story is entirely original. Our human consciousness is vast but limited by our experiences, knowledge, and learning. To create something truly original would mean to reach beyond everything we know. In science fiction, it would mean creating aliens so COMPLETELY alien from humans that they would not only be difficult to describe but impossible for our readers to empathize with.
One of the most original recent works is in Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive series. Much of his world is void of things we find very familiar. Instead of grass, the ground is covered by crustacean-like creatures that withdraw their grass-like fronds into the ground when threatened. Instead of dogs, he gives us axe-hounds with many legs. Instead of oxen, carts are pulled by giant hermit-crab-like chulls. BUT, his grass-like crustaceans are similar to grass. His axe-hounds are similar to dogs (and lobsters). His chulls are similar to hermit crabs.
To Sanderson's great credit, the world is original enough that it takes time for the reader to become immersed in the far-reaching differences between his world and ours. But he still uses the tool of the human collective consciousness to give us enough information that we are able to make imaginative connections between what we know and what he gives us.
Sanderson has set a high bar of originality for others to follow. But do we need to be THAT original to be publishable?
No, we don't.
But how do we know if our story is trite or original? Most markets don't offer feedback. They don't tell us, "Sorry, this story is unoriginal." Often, as new writers, the people we network with are also new writers who don't know much more than us about the difference between trite and original in fiction. We can read stories all day long (because there are thousands of stories--admittedly of varying quality) available for free reading online. But seeing what IS being published doesn't tell us what markets DON'T want to publish. It shows us what's ORIGINAL, but doesn't tell us what's UNORIGINAL.
For the answer, we'll look to master storyteller, Orson Scott Card.
Card teaches the rule of three for crafting original stories.
Here's how it works.
Step ONE:
I sit down to write a new story. I look at my blank page and create for myself the three elements of any story--character, setting, and conflict.
An idea comes to me and I write it down.
This idea is ALWAYS going to be cliche, trite, unoriginal. (Even if it's ENTIRELY original, it can be extraordinarily MORE original if I continue with the process.) This idea comes from my human collective consciousness. It comes directly from the most easily accessible parts of the information storage centers of my brain. It's familiar. It's what I've seen and heard and read and processed most commonly.
We can use that haunted old mansion as an example:
I sit down to write a ghost story. A ghost story is a familiar type of story. My first idea is likely to include some of the following, because they are held within that familiar information center of my brain:
SETTING: Dilapidated mansion on a hill, behind a rusted gate with a padlock hanging from an equally rusty chain.
CHARACTER(S): A bunch of kids (either 11-year-olds on bikes or 16-year-olds in a beater car) come to the old mansion on a dare, because EVERYONE knows the house is haunted, but the kids don't believe it. One will likely try to chicken out but be pressured by the others to go inside anyway.
CHARACTER: The ghost is either a creepy old woman or a child.
CONFLICT: The kids are likely to become trapped in the house or create some kind of mischief in the house for which the house/ghost must punish them. The story resolves when the innocent escape and/or the guilty are punished.
If this story sounds original, it's not. I should NOT write it. I should proceed to...
Step TWO:
I'm going to dig deeper into my brain's information storage centers, accessing the less-familiar details gleaned from my lifetime of experiences.
SETTING: How might that house be different? Maybe it's a typical suburban ranch-style instead of a dilapidated mansion. Maybe it's not even dilapidated but well-cared for. Maybe it's not abandoned but one of your characters lives there.
CHARACTER(S): Maybe it's a realtor showing the house for sale? Maybe it's a couple of crack-heads looking for a place to get high.
CHARACTER: The ghost. Maybe it's a young man who seems to be searching for something or a teenage girl who seems to be angry about something.
CONFLICT: Maybe the ghost needs to warn that realtor of something, but he can't figure out how to make himself heard. The story might be resolved when the realtor finally figures it out, or a second character with special abilities enters the scene and the ghost's message is delivered and responded to.
That's much better, but it's still not enough. I need to proceed to the next step, in which we're accessing the most original, interesting, unique, uncommon, unfamiliar information in our brains AND activating those valuable creative centers as well.
Step THREE:
SETTING: What's the most unusual place I can conceive of in which a ghost story might take place? A tiny village on a South Pacific island? A New York Penthouse? A space station?
CHARACTER(S): A hardened ex-con who becomes an unwitting hero in my ghost story? Maybe a young mother with children dripping from her arms who just CANNOT deal with one more personality demanding her attention. Maybe a Mexican Coyote who's about to get his comeuppance for the truckload of hopeful border-jumpers he left to die in the Sonoran desert.
CHARACTER: The ghost. Maybe a French-Canadian fur trapper who haunts the place where he was killed by a bear, his body torn to pieces by wolves and vultures. Maybe a Mayan warrior who wants the heart that had been torn from his body in a terrifying rite of sacrifice. Maybe a bloodthirsty murderer who, upon his death, finds he will never find peace unless he's somehow able to successfully help exonerate the innocent man who went to prison for his crimes.
CONFLICT: I can now see that as I develop my settings and characters, I vastly expand my potential conflicts. I can see how very many original and interesting storylines I can create, not from thin air, but from the deeper recesses of my consciousness and by activating those creative centers through their exploration.
From this process, I've not only come upon a great story idea, I've come up with a dozen or more! It's mind-expanding AND productive AND gleans original story ideas.
Oh, and one last word, if we want our work to be original and appealing to editors, don't be a response writer. What do I mean by that? Don't be that writer who reads the latest big book, or watches the latest big movie, or sees the latest big news story, and writes a story in response.
Story and book markets saw loads of shiny vampire stories after Twilight, and loads of magic student stories after Harry Potter. As the Avengers films grew in popularity, we saw an uptick in superhero stories. Right now (this was written in April 2020), we're seeing a lot of Covid-19/pandemic stories. The past few years we've seen a lot of Donald Trump stories (either haters or lovers).
Don't be that writer. That story has already been told.
Thursday, April 16, 2020
Monday, January 20, 2020
The Many Faces of White Room Syndrome
White Room Syndrome is a newbie writer mistake that I see in my slush pile more often than I should.
What is it?
Essentially, it's a setting that is so nondescript or so unimportant to the story that it doesn't contribute to the story at all. Your characters might as well be standing in an empty, windowless, furniture-barren, white-painted, doorless room.
Most White Room stories are about people talking or people thinking about things. Very little, if any, action occurs. The prose often shows an imbalance between dialogue and narration, with dialogue holding too prominent a role in the storytelling.
Interestingly, White Room Syndrome can happen in "rooms" that we, as readers, can see quite well. Problems arise, again, when the setting has no central role in the story.
Understand that there are three elements to every story, and each of those elements deserves an important role.
Those three elements are:
1. Character;
2. Setting (remember that setting includes both place and time);
3. Conflict.
A good story balances these three elements in a way that triggers an empathy response in the readers. That empathy response allows the reader to become imaginatively and emotionally immersed in the story. That immersion is the writer's goal, the blue ribbon, the golden ticket. Without it, there is no reader.
How does one make the setting important?
Consider how your characters' surroundings might impact them, how the setting might contribute to the resolution, how the setting might put obstacles in your characters' paths, how your characters interact in meaningful ways with the setting. In a way, the setting should be treated as a character. It might act as an antagonist, like Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. It might act as an element of characterization, allowing us to gain some insight into the people in our stories, in the same way a first-person narrator might tell us what he sees.
Think of that West Texas farm in Second Hand Lions. How did that setting help us accept and understand the characters of the uncles? How did that setting contribute to the boy's character development? How did it support and contribute to the story's resolution?
Think of the video store and the neighborhood in Be Kind, Rewind. Similar questions.
The small town in Stranger Things.
The desert island in Castaway.
The school in Matilda.
The forest in Brothers Grimm.
All these stories have rich, detailed settings that contribute to the story in meaningful ways.
Let's look at some of the common white rooms I see in my slush pile:
1. All-dialogue stories or stories that start with a long sequence of dialogue.
They rarely work and are hard to do well. Dialogue is not a natural way to give narrative description. When you're in conversation with someone, you rarely have the opportunity to talk in any kind of meaningful detail about your surroundings. Setting suffers. It's also difficult to establish setting, character, and conflict quickly, which is an important skill to learn in crafting a story that immerses the reader quickly enough to keep him interested.
2. Bar/Tavern/Pub.
This is one of the most common white rooms I see. In fact, I see so many of them, and so little generally happens in them, that I don't even read them anymore. If your story is set in a bar/tavern/pub, I'll most likely drop it in the reject bin.
Not much happens in bars except for people drinking alcohol and talking--and that's generally what these kinds of stories do. Instead of telling a story, the story is about people telling a story. I'd much rather see the story than see people telling a story that happened somewhere/sometime outside that bar.
3. Hospital beds/rooms.
Lots of people sick or dying. Don't get me wrong. I feel for that. It's never fun to be hospitalized. But it's also pretty boring. Mostly sleeping and waiting and Conflicts and the results of the conflicts in hospital rooms are usually pretty predictable. Any setting description is going to be mundane. The very nature of hospitals prevents us from being able to do or describe things that are out of the ordinary. Any extraordinary things we see inside the hospital usually happened outside the hospital, so why not tell THAT story?
4. Mysterious forests/fog/dark rooms
Many new horror writers believe tension comes from not knowing. The opposite is true. Seeing the meathook on the wall is incredibly more terrifying than sounds in the dark. Sounds in the dark are possibilities. Meathooks on the wall are certainties. Anyplace that removes our ability to sense what's around us, to know what to be afraid of, is, essentially, a white room. Good settings engage the reader rather than mystify the reader.
5. Waking/groggy character.
I see too many stories in which the main character is waking up from a drugged sleep into some kind of uncomfortable situation. Sometimes that setting/situation becomes clear, but usually it doesn't until far too late. And, usually, the setting is just another white room--a kind of hospital room.
6. Vague-writing.
We all know what Vague-booking is. Someone posts "I just hate when this happens," on Facebook. Purposefully vague, fishing for comments.
Something similar happens sometimes with new authors. A vague opening in which some terrible or interesting thing is referred to but never clearly explained--at least not until far too late. Again, it's the idea that being vague or withholding information keeps the reader's interest by stimulating curiosity, fishing for tension. The writer who believes this is wrong. Instead, the reader becomes irritated. Just tell me, already!
This kind of writing almost always neglects setting, and when setting is neglected, a white room is the result.
I like to use my Party Analogy when teaching about story openings. It applies to character, setting, and conflict.
Your story opening is like going to a party with a friend.
Your friend, your host, is the narrator. He's taking you to a party full of people he knows but you don't, to a place he's familiar with but you're not, into a situation that he's aware of but you're not.
As you walk up to the door, he might even apprise you of what's going on inside. Is it a dance? A costume party? Maybe it's a business luncheon and he's going to introduce you to possible employers. In terms of your story, that narrator is going to introduce the conflict of the story almost immediately, maybe even before you meet anyone. This is often accomplished through the book blurb--that thing you read to decide whether you think you'll be interested in a book before you buy. In short story terms, he's going to establish or hint at the main conflict usually in the first paragraph.
Once you reach the actual party, the first thing that's likely to happen is for your host to introduce you to someone. This person is your point of view character, or a character you're going to follow through the story. Throughout the story, your host may introduce you to other partygoers or even pass you on to another partygoer--in writing terms, a point of view change. Again, this is something that happens immediately.
Very soon--maybe even as soon as you walk through the door--you're going to take in your surroundings. Remember, the best parties are always held at interesting venues. A wedding reception at the top of Angel's Landing (Zion National Park) is much more interesting (and tension-inducing, at least for people like me who don't love heights) than a wedding reception in the church gymnasium. What kind of setting is going to enhance your story? What kind of setting is going to say something about your character? What kind of setting might create interest or tension in the opening of your story or scene?
And don't forget to establish that setting ASAP--within the first few sentences, first sentence, if possible.
I know what some of you are thinking. You're thinking, "I bet I could write a great story in one of Suzanne's White Rooms."
Maybe you could. The problem is that it's been done so badly so many times before your brilliant attempt that I'm already seriously prejudiced. I'm not likely to give your story the opportunity to prove itself to me. The moment I see the white room, I'm done, your story is gone.
Don't blame me. You can blame all those who have done white rooms too often and too badly before you.
What is it?
Essentially, it's a setting that is so nondescript or so unimportant to the story that it doesn't contribute to the story at all. Your characters might as well be standing in an empty, windowless, furniture-barren, white-painted, doorless room.
Most White Room stories are about people talking or people thinking about things. Very little, if any, action occurs. The prose often shows an imbalance between dialogue and narration, with dialogue holding too prominent a role in the storytelling.
Interestingly, White Room Syndrome can happen in "rooms" that we, as readers, can see quite well. Problems arise, again, when the setting has no central role in the story.
Understand that there are three elements to every story, and each of those elements deserves an important role.
Those three elements are:
1. Character;
2. Setting (remember that setting includes both place and time);
3. Conflict.
A good story balances these three elements in a way that triggers an empathy response in the readers. That empathy response allows the reader to become imaginatively and emotionally immersed in the story. That immersion is the writer's goal, the blue ribbon, the golden ticket. Without it, there is no reader.
How does one make the setting important?
Consider how your characters' surroundings might impact them, how the setting might contribute to the resolution, how the setting might put obstacles in your characters' paths, how your characters interact in meaningful ways with the setting. In a way, the setting should be treated as a character. It might act as an antagonist, like Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. It might act as an element of characterization, allowing us to gain some insight into the people in our stories, in the same way a first-person narrator might tell us what he sees.
Think of that West Texas farm in Second Hand Lions. How did that setting help us accept and understand the characters of the uncles? How did that setting contribute to the boy's character development? How did it support and contribute to the story's resolution?
Think of the video store and the neighborhood in Be Kind, Rewind. Similar questions.
The small town in Stranger Things.
The desert island in Castaway.
The school in Matilda.
The forest in Brothers Grimm.
All these stories have rich, detailed settings that contribute to the story in meaningful ways.
Let's look at some of the common white rooms I see in my slush pile:
1. All-dialogue stories or stories that start with a long sequence of dialogue.
They rarely work and are hard to do well. Dialogue is not a natural way to give narrative description. When you're in conversation with someone, you rarely have the opportunity to talk in any kind of meaningful detail about your surroundings. Setting suffers. It's also difficult to establish setting, character, and conflict quickly, which is an important skill to learn in crafting a story that immerses the reader quickly enough to keep him interested.
2. Bar/Tavern/Pub.
This is one of the most common white rooms I see. In fact, I see so many of them, and so little generally happens in them, that I don't even read them anymore. If your story is set in a bar/tavern/pub, I'll most likely drop it in the reject bin.
Not much happens in bars except for people drinking alcohol and talking--and that's generally what these kinds of stories do. Instead of telling a story, the story is about people telling a story. I'd much rather see the story than see people telling a story that happened somewhere/sometime outside that bar.
3. Hospital beds/rooms.
Lots of people sick or dying. Don't get me wrong. I feel for that. It's never fun to be hospitalized. But it's also pretty boring. Mostly sleeping and waiting and Conflicts and the results of the conflicts in hospital rooms are usually pretty predictable. Any setting description is going to be mundane. The very nature of hospitals prevents us from being able to do or describe things that are out of the ordinary. Any extraordinary things we see inside the hospital usually happened outside the hospital, so why not tell THAT story?
4. Mysterious forests/fog/dark rooms
Many new horror writers believe tension comes from not knowing. The opposite is true. Seeing the meathook on the wall is incredibly more terrifying than sounds in the dark. Sounds in the dark are possibilities. Meathooks on the wall are certainties. Anyplace that removes our ability to sense what's around us, to know what to be afraid of, is, essentially, a white room. Good settings engage the reader rather than mystify the reader.
5. Waking/groggy character.
I see too many stories in which the main character is waking up from a drugged sleep into some kind of uncomfortable situation. Sometimes that setting/situation becomes clear, but usually it doesn't until far too late. And, usually, the setting is just another white room--a kind of hospital room.
6. Vague-writing.
We all know what Vague-booking is. Someone posts "I just hate when this happens," on Facebook. Purposefully vague, fishing for comments.
Something similar happens sometimes with new authors. A vague opening in which some terrible or interesting thing is referred to but never clearly explained--at least not until far too late. Again, it's the idea that being vague or withholding information keeps the reader's interest by stimulating curiosity, fishing for tension. The writer who believes this is wrong. Instead, the reader becomes irritated. Just tell me, already!
This kind of writing almost always neglects setting, and when setting is neglected, a white room is the result.
I like to use my Party Analogy when teaching about story openings. It applies to character, setting, and conflict.
Your story opening is like going to a party with a friend.
Your friend, your host, is the narrator. He's taking you to a party full of people he knows but you don't, to a place he's familiar with but you're not, into a situation that he's aware of but you're not.
As you walk up to the door, he might even apprise you of what's going on inside. Is it a dance? A costume party? Maybe it's a business luncheon and he's going to introduce you to possible employers. In terms of your story, that narrator is going to introduce the conflict of the story almost immediately, maybe even before you meet anyone. This is often accomplished through the book blurb--that thing you read to decide whether you think you'll be interested in a book before you buy. In short story terms, he's going to establish or hint at the main conflict usually in the first paragraph.
Once you reach the actual party, the first thing that's likely to happen is for your host to introduce you to someone. This person is your point of view character, or a character you're going to follow through the story. Throughout the story, your host may introduce you to other partygoers or even pass you on to another partygoer--in writing terms, a point of view change. Again, this is something that happens immediately.
Very soon--maybe even as soon as you walk through the door--you're going to take in your surroundings. Remember, the best parties are always held at interesting venues. A wedding reception at the top of Angel's Landing (Zion National Park) is much more interesting (and tension-inducing, at least for people like me who don't love heights) than a wedding reception in the church gymnasium. What kind of setting is going to enhance your story? What kind of setting is going to say something about your character? What kind of setting might create interest or tension in the opening of your story or scene?
And don't forget to establish that setting ASAP--within the first few sentences, first sentence, if possible.
I know what some of you are thinking. You're thinking, "I bet I could write a great story in one of Suzanne's White Rooms."
Maybe you could. The problem is that it's been done so badly so many times before your brilliant attempt that I'm already seriously prejudiced. I'm not likely to give your story the opportunity to prove itself to me. The moment I see the white room, I'm done, your story is gone.
Don't blame me. You can blame all those who have done white rooms too often and too badly before you.
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