THE ELEMENTS OF A GOOD STORY

Although there is no central government, no central economy, no central anything in this future world (it is truly a World of Ends), the communities are not isolated — there is state-of-the-art multimedia communication between communities, and plenty of more-with-less technology and innovation as well. No hunting (except for knowledge) and not much gathering. In most of the communities portrayed, one’s teenage years are spent exploring other communities: One month blocks of time living and working with the people in other communities has replaced formal secondary education, and is the future world’s rite of passage — finding your true home. There is a universal language (I won’t say what it is, because its evolution is important to the story — but your first two guesses are probably wrong) as well as unique community languages that have evolved in each community. Because of the affluence of these communities, and because of the re-discovered importance of community, several of the key artifacts of civilization have crumbled and disappeared — most notably the (social and physical) family unit and the concept of private property. The societies are built on collaborative rather than private enterprise, and young people learn to find self-actualization through invention, discovery and cooperation rather than through acquisition and competition. That’s not to say these communities, and their members, are free from conflict. Some, but not all, of the stories in the novel revolve around such conflicts. Some of the stories are adult fables, like many of the stories of Earth’s aboriginal peoples.

So my novel has to work on three different levels, and therein lies the challenge: It is an horrendous balancing act, and I have already thrown out hundreds of pages of writing and at times despaired of ever getting the novel finished. The three levels are:

1. Each chapter occurs in a completely unique and evolving community. Each chapter is, therefore, a short story in its own right. And soeach chapter has to work as a short story, with characters that need to be adequately developed within the chapter, since only the narrator (a traveller and story-teller) appears in every chapter. It has to wrench the reader out of the comfort of the previous chapter and present her with a completely new setting and set of characters, as alien from the last as is humanly possible for someone in our modern homogeneous society to imagine. This is jarring to the reader, and also staggeringly difficult for the writer. A friend told me this requires “not just a great imagination, but great imaginations“. And, as Frederick Barthelme’s Center for Writers explains in The 39 Steps, the first step in good story-writing is:

2. The novel must work as a satisfying mystery (interspersed among the stories are flashbacks to the 21st century that explain how the world got from here to there).  And writing a mystery is another form of the art entirely — it has to move forward at a fast pace, dropping clues, and walk the narrow line between being too obvious and too obscure. Some, but not all, readers need to be able to guess the ending before it occurs. And it needs to have some interesting twists and turns, and to be, well, entertaining to read. And you all know I’m no fun, so this is an especially difficult challenge for me.

3. The novel as a whole must ‘hang together’ and work as a Future State Vision (a model to show people that there is a better way to live). The whole needs therefore to be more than the mere sum of its parts, as a ‘normal’ book of short stories is. When a friend of mine suggested that I was writing a moden-day bible I groaned — but she’s right, most religious texts are, in fact, collections of stories that teach people how to live.

All of this should have been enough to make me give up. This is, surely, setting myself up to fail. But every time I ask myself “If you don’t want to write this novel, what do you want to do?”, and make a list of the alternatives, it makes me realize I am a writer. This is what I do. And so I reopen my laptop and unfold the storyboard and wake up my characters, and plug on.

So now I’ve told you my problems, but I haven’t really answered the question posed by the title of this article: What are the elements of a good story? I’ve already written about the elements of a good speech, how to write clearly, how to write dialogue, the importance of a good editor, how to write a good essay, how to write funny (they say those that can’t do, teach), the need for a big ego and aesthetic enthusiasm and passion, and the need for the writer to pay attention, care, and be honest. But that’s the how. The elements are the what of the story, and I think there are six:

1. Characters who are authentic and sympathetic. What they do and what they say has to be real.
2. A narrative that transports the reader, takes him/her away from where they are and puts them there, in the story.
3. Entertaining events and dialogue. We can be entertained in different ways — amused, shocked, reminded of something in our own lives. But if we’re not entertained, with every page, we’re going to stop turning pages.
4. Surprise. The unpredictable is engaging, funny, terrifying, saddening. It’s the shortest way to our emotions. But it has to be plausible. We’ve outgrown stories about gods and aliens that come out of nowhere and smite everyone. Well, most of us have.
5. Well-crafted imagery. By imagery I mean appeal to all the senses, not just the visual. Good writing lets you see, hear, smell, taste, feel what your narrator and characters do. Supports the transportation (element #2).
6. Style. This is hard to define, but you know it when you see it. It’s a little bit Point of View. Turn of phrase. The ‘voice’ of the narrative and (if there is one) the narrator. It’s humility — you need a big ego to presume to write something others will care to read (and maybe even pay for the privilege), but don’t let that ego show in your style. Writer-reader is a peer-to-peer contract. Writing is a little bit like wooing and a little bit like making love — pouring out your heart, showing you really care, being honest and polite, listening, being patient with the foreplay, a little bit of flattery and seduction, and finally, holding nothing back.

There is one thing that is critical to keep out of a good story as well: Waste. Every word, every phrase, every line of dialogue that isn’t essential to the story detracts from it — Get it out of there.

Time for me to get back to practicing what I preach.