Resources

1. Writing Epical Stories

The knack to writing an epical story is writing it backwards. First, you work out how you are going to misdirect the reader, fundamentally at the final turn, and what the final ‘direction of travel’ will be, what truth it will assert about your character(s). Then, you spend the remaining 99% of your time, trying to make a convincing, absorbing and also far-from-predictable story that will point in the other direction (for the bulk of the story).

Withholding and Misdirecting

The thing which drives a reader to turn the page, to stick with a story, to move not just from paragraph to paragraph, but from sentence to sentence, is a single magnetic force: the readers’ faith in the fact that they are not just having certain information withheld from them, but that the information, when it comes, will provide order, shape and meaning. That the story will be structured meaningfully; that there will be sense to ‘the universe of the story’, even if it's being kept from the reader for now.

The withholding of key information is part of what whets the readers’ appetites and keeps them hungry, but it’s only half of that hunger… the other half is a sense that there is an order at work, behind the withholding of info. This order must itself be a lie; a misdirection. The complete picture being glimpsed at, incompletely, by the reader (who, presumably, is joining the action in medeas res) is a falsehood, a fallacy. It is underpinned by a truth that is its very opposite – namely the final revelation that lands on the story in the last scene. However, as the vast majority of the story is about setting up and pointing in the direction of a ‘false picture’, that false picture actually takes more of the writers’ time and skill (presenting it in glimpses) than the underlying ‘true picture’. In this, the epical story is rather like a magician’s conjuring act. The magician will spend the majority of their time misdirecting the audience – asking members of the audience to check up their sleeves or tap the bottom of their hat, or talking to his beautiful assistant – when, in reality, all of these flourishes are designed to draw the audience’s eye away from where the real sleight of hand is taking place. Writing plot is all about misdirection. How many layers of misdirection you need usually depends on the type of story you’re writing. If it is a literary, psychological or domestic-realist story one misdirection is usually sufficient – classic epiphany stories like Joyce’s ‘Araby’ or Carver’s ‘Cathedral’ spend all their time directing the reader one way (to believe one set of motivations and opinions), only pulling the rug out from under that picture at the last moment, to reveal an altogether different picture. If it’s a thriller story, playing to a thriller audience, then two or three misdirections may be necessary.

Thriller Plots

The revelation, the turning-point where one picture gets replaced with another, has to relate to the fundamental nature of someone the reader has already become familiar with (and thought they knew). The revelation is worthless if it’s about a relatively new character, who only arrives late in the story. In the case of thrillers, it needs to require a major redefinition of a character: a good-guy becomes a bad-guy, or vice versa. Thus, with thrillers plots, where a certain number of characters is usually required (often somewhere between 7 and 11), certain classic devices are often used to wrong-foot the reader from the start. Two common examples of these:

(i) The Unequal Ally

This is often a friend, a lover, a business partner, someone close (and perhaps long-standing) who for some reason is slightly at odds with the protagonist; for example, a long-term begrudging business partner, a less-than-perfect boss, a better-looking lover. This allows the protagonist (and/or the reader) to doubt them early on, and consider them as an agent or assistant to their nemesis. The final revelatory picture will show them to be as much a victim of the nemesis as anyone.

(ii) The Obviously Corrupt Official

This is someone supposedly working for the forces of good (e.g. a police force, or a government official) who shows immediately dubious qualities, aggression, truculence, etc. Suspicions are meant to fall on them immediately. But once again, when the final revelatory picture emerges, they turn out to be one of the few people the protagonist can truly rely on. The real nemesis (or the primary agent of the nemesis) is often one of the very first people the protagonist meets when starting a case; the protagonist’s closest ally and ‘guide’, in fact, in that case.

Literary Plots

A key rule of thumb with literary plots is ‘less is more’. A masterclass of this is Joyce’s opening story in The Dubliners, ‘The Two Sisters’. This is the first task of Exercise 1: read ‘The Two Sisters’. This is a shockingly short story, cruelly short, describing and summing up an entire life, hinting at a downfall that isn’t even fully described, and lifting off abruptly – brutally abruptly – before anything is remotely concluded. We see glimpses of there being a problem with the priest – allusions to it in the comments and unfinished sentences of Old Cotter, but that’s all. This story is also a classic example of the short story’s ‘informational structure’:

Act 1: We stand, with the protagonist, on the brink of an ending (or a change)
Act 2: We see some of the back-story, the reasons why this represents a change or an ending, the context of how the protagonist got to that point. Within this Act we also see the protagonist’s attempts to avoid the change that’s approaching, negate it, and/or we learn of how he’s negated or avoided it in the past.
Act 3: We step off the brink – with the protagonist – into the unknown of that change.

The story explicitly acknowledges this ‘starting at the end’ structure, with its opening sentence: ‘There was no hope this time.’ The unknown, into which the protagonist steps at the very end, is his new, evolving perspective on the priest.

The misdirection in this story is with regard to the fundamental nature of the priest. The narrator wants to put him on a pedestal, as his mentor, and seeks to defend him later. But the revelation is hinted at. The grey face of the now-dead priest that troubles him in a dream wants to confess something. But Joyce turns the idea of the confession on its head, and presents a moment where nothing is confessed, nothing is learned.

Your task: to write a story using any one of these devices. But remember, the ‘false picture’ will require more work than the underlying ‘true’ one.

2. Writing Lyrical Stories

The challenge in writing lyrical stories is finding a central image the symbolism of which is not obvious. Obvious symbols – the kind that readers can decode and understand instantly – don't work. A brick represents a house, a bird represents a thought, a toss of the coin represents fate, etc, etc – these obvious symbols leave the reader with nothing more to do. "I get it," they say, and having nothing more to do become redundant. The text loses them.

Instead, you need to find an image that has a lack of logic to it – one which is the reader struggles to understand the exact relevance of. "I don't get it," they need to be saying. And yet the symbol must also be oddly perfect, despite its lack of logic. Despite its lack of external sense it needs to seem assured of its own role, to sit and wait while the reader struggles to work it out.

Not asking much are we?

One way to unpick this is to ascribe to the mantra: readers are smarter than writers. Our reading intelligence is collective, instinctive, hardwired and ancient. As Robert Mackee puts it in Story, when we all shuffle into a cinema and get ready to watch a film (or for that matter start to read a book) our collective intelligence leaps. Our narrative-brain is genius-like. Everybody gets it.

Always bear this simple fact in mind. The reader is as smart as you (smarter, even), the reader will catch up with you, sniff out what you're doing, get your number. That's why, you have to pull off some of the hardest tricks in literature, you have to follow impulses that even you don't fully understand.

Instead of trying to think 'What might be a good symbol for X?', instead of trying to fox it out like a writer, approach it like a reader. Trawl your own memory or knowledge or reading around a subject... and look out for something in it that you as a reader can't work out or resolve... Look for something that niggles, that stands out, that doesn't fit...

STEP 1

Firstly, think of 10 images – random, odd, unconnected, self-assured, out-of-place, independent. Just strong vivid images on their own.

Allow them to be slightly silly or rubbish in places. Don't try and explain them. Let them find you.

The important thing is that there are a lot of them.

Then, pull back the camera and see if they need any kind of setting (location or time or context). If they insist on any setting, then describe it, fill in the detail. If they insist upon a certain type of character to be looking at them, encountering them in some way, then pull the camera back some more.

Compiling this 'list of annoying, niggling images' may take some time.

Pulling back the camera will also take time.

It must be done this way round.

STEP 2

This has to be done on a completely separate day, in a different mood, using a different part of your brain.

Think of a character who isn't able to express something, or communicate something, for one reason or another.

Make the reason for him/her not being to express it not obvious and not compulsory – another ambiguity or mystery. Don't make it a compelling reason (i.e. a medical inability), make it seemingly voluntary.

Then, as before, pull back the camera.

Make sure you are not thinking about the previous exercise. Then and only then some connection may... if you're exceedingly lucky... suggest itself.

Then combine the two – seamlessly. The person who can't express something + the ultimate 'lyric' symbol that beams out meaning, on behalf of the person who can't express the thing they want to.

Revise and edit down. And see what happens.

Good luck...