September 14, 2024 • 23 mins
How to write realistic, fascinating characters that readers adore...and what it can teach you about BEING a writer...
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(00:01):
Good morning, goodevening, good afternoon.
Julie here from Story a Day and I amhere this week to talk to you about
some other things that I've beendiscovering working through the One
Story September Challenge with thecurrent group of people going through it.
Last week we were talking about howcharacters react to various stimuli and
(00:25):
so I was sharing the the things I'velearned in my study of the psychology
of the human being, the human creature.
And one of the things that'sreally striking is that we are
not as evolved as we think we are.
So if you've been struggling, ifyou're interested in how to write
(00:48):
better characters, I'm going totalk a little bit about that today.
And I'm also going to talk abouthow we can use that knowledge.
to help ourselves to escape fromthe prison of imposter syndrome or
procrastination or lack of motivation orstarting things and not finishing them.
(01:10):
All of these complaints that I hearfrom people every time I put out
a survey that asks you what's, uh,what you're struggling with right
now or any time basically I talk towriters or, uh, be a writer myself.
So First, let's talk aboutcharacters, because it's easier to
talk about other people, especiallynon existent people, than it is to
(01:34):
examine our deep, dark, inner selves.
Here's how humans operate.
When something happens,we react instinctively.
We react chemically, actually.
We react chemically.
Our body floods itself with whateverchemicals in our, our history of human
(01:59):
existence has taught us is important.
This is what we're talking about whenwe say we have the fight or flight
response or how, you know, yourbody thinks it's going to, if you're
stressed, it's like in olden days whenyou used to think you were going to
get eaten by a saber toothed tiger.
Uh, actually humans are a lotolder than saber toothed tigers.
(02:22):
And so you've heard those thingstoo, so many times that they
just kind of wash over you now.
But I want you to think about thefact that we react instinctively.
And our bodies flood us, flood us withthe chemicals that it thinks we're
going to need before any rationalthought has time to form in our brains.
(02:44):
That's how your characters react.
And because we are writing somethingthat is potentially quite intimate
with our characters, we can hop intotheir heads, we can hop into their
bodies at any point, and we should besharing that stuff with the reader.
(03:06):
The reader doesn't really want to knowjust what's happening on the external.
They want to know what'shappening inside the character.
We all consume a lot of televisionand movies, I'm going to assume.
That, in the hands of a really good actorand a really good director, sometimes
you get some of that inner journey.
(03:26):
You see a range of emotionsflicker over the protagonist's face
before they do the right thing.
What's happening, and what's happenedwith that actor and director is probably
lots and lots of conversations aboutexactly how the character wants to react
and what they're doing to suppress thatinitial desire, and whether they're
(03:47):
going to give in to that initial desire.
And the fact is, that's what'shappening in every person all
the time when something happens.
We have this instinctivereaction, and then we have the
conditioned response response.
And the Conditioned Response, the firstresponse that we consciously have,
(04:08):
even subconsciously, is the ConditionedResponse from when you were a kid, and
what the people who raised you, and thepeople around you, who mattered to you,
taught you, was an acceptable solution toa situation, or reaction to a situation.
So, if you grew up ina house that was very
(04:34):
ebullient, whether that's for good orill, if people, if your character comes
from, say, an Italian American family,where everybody argues and shouts and
then it all blows over in a few minutes,as I am led to believe, then that's going
to be how they think it's okay to react.
And that's going to be the firstreaction they reach for beyond
(04:58):
the fight or flight reaction.
Um, the, the urge to punchsomeone is fairly deeply buried.
When somebody crosses you, the urge tolike, if they come at you physically,
the urge to come back at them physicallyis fairly deeply in us instinctually.
(05:20):
Your childhood will have taught youwhether or not it's acceptable to
let that instinct go or whether youneed to, like, sit on your hands.
Beyond that, as you, as your characterlives through life and goes outside
the world of their family, their, theirchildhood environment, they're going
(05:42):
to be in other environments where theywill learn other ways of being, and
they will learn other societal norms.
When you go to school, it's very much notokay to punch someone when you're in the
classroom, even though in certain erasand certain places it might still have
been fine to scrap on the playground.
So you have to learn, as a humanbeing, to suppress instincts in layers.
(06:07):
As you become, say, this characterwho we've talked about comes
from a very voluble, very, veryvolatile family, where it might have
been okay to punch your brother.
And then they go to school and discoverit's okay to punch them, but only on the,
on the playground when nobody's looking,certainly not in front of a teacher,
and certainly not in the classroom.
Then they grow up andthey become a lawyer.
(06:29):
for people who may still do the punching.
But the lawyer themselves has tohave these layers of civility and
refinement, which they, they drapeover everything that they learned.
And so if you're writing this character,they're probably not punching anyone
anymore, except in very extremecircumstances in very dark alleys.
(06:53):
Which means that in a situation ofhigh stress when someone comes at
your lawyer verbally they are going toreact with that primal urge to punch.
The little kid in them isgoing to want to punch.
The kid who went through school andwho's learned to suppress that urge
(07:17):
until nobody's looking might kick in.
And then the kid who went through lawschool and learned to suppress all
of that and come at them verbally isgoing to kick in, maybe, on their best
day, in the best of circumstances.
So that's a lot of emotion.
(07:38):
Those are a lot of stagesthat your character is going
to go through in an instant.
That's how the human mindbrain nervous system works.
If you're not showing us any ofthat, how are we supposed to know
what your character's going through?
If they just quirk an eyebrow or smirk,what does that tell us about what's
(08:04):
actually happening inside your character?
You've got, uh, you've got like afive minute slow mo sequence that you
could be running through You've gotall the off ramps on that journey.
Your character can go all the wayto the right civilised response and
(08:27):
come back with a witty rejoinder.
Or they can take an earlier off rampand they can snarl or they can lash
out or they can, you know, have somephysical reaction that shows them
wanting to go at the other person andrepressing it because, you know, school.
Or you can let them.
Rip and you can let them have theirprimitive reaction not even the one
(08:49):
in the family where somebody wouldhave stepped in and said Okay kids,
let's you know, let's break it up.
Now.
You could let them go even furtherYou have all of those things to
go through emotionally inside yourcharacter Before you even start
thinking about how to show that on theoutside and how far they're gonna go.
So We go from a very primitive responseto a conditioned response that can be
(09:10):
hard to get over to the civilized responsethat we have layered on as adults that
makes the, the, the actions that wethink are civilized and acceptable.
Part of the journey throughout a storyfor your character, part of the internal
journey of any character, is probablygoing to always be a balance between
(09:34):
what society will accept as civilized andwhat your character really wants to do.
It's probably a journey between, journeyabout, or a balancing act about them
overcoming their instincts and decidinghow far to go towards what society
(09:57):
wants and what feels good in the moment.
And then, of course, you get toexplore things like the conditioning
that your character has laid overthemselves, both by their family and
their school and their environment.
All of these things, all of these, these,all of this conditioning that has happened
to them, along with the things that theyhave decided to take on in order to fit
(10:22):
into the world they're in, some of thatstuff may need to be stripped away.
You think about a romantic partnerwho's experiencing coercive control.
They have learned all these layers ofconditioning that have kept them safe and
some of that stuff they shouldn't have.
And they're going to haveto strip that stuff away.
And it's always going to be a fightbetween the instinct, the conditioning,
(10:45):
the intellectual decision aboutwhat's acceptable, and then perhaps
a further intellectual decision.
decision about what's acceptable now,in this moment, for me, unlearning
the stuff that I learned before.
Humans are complicated and ithappens in the fraction of a second.
(11:06):
What can you put into your writing to showus what your character is going through?
Not all the time, just some of the time.
When are the good momentsto show that stuff?
Is your character always going to reactin the civilized, acceptable manner?
Is that always the rightthing for them to do?
How are they going to feel if they letgo and they get a bit more primitive?
(11:31):
How are they going to feel if they staycivilized when they shouldn't have?
Which brings me to you, the writer.
As you go through your writingprocess, you too are human.
(11:55):
You too are dealing withall of these reactions.
to your writing.
It seems ridiculous, but it'snot an intellectual thing.
When you're writing and things gethard, this is what you go through.
You go through an instinctive reaction,you go through your conditioned reaction,
and then maybe, if you're payingattention, you get to the intellectual
(12:18):
reaction where you say, I know thisfeels a little uncomfortable at the
moment, but I'm going to be, I'm goingto be cool about it, and I'm going
to look at my work dispassionately,and I'm going to decide where it's
working and where it's not working.
Now, on the journey from the ugh, this,this feels hard, to no, I'm going to
be dispassionate and, and sensible,and I'm going to work on this like
(12:40):
a scientist and tweak my writing.
On the journey, from one to theother, you're going down a path
that I can't possibly know.
Because I don't know whosevoices are in your head.
I don't know what you wereconditioned to believe was acceptable.
I don't know what you'vebeen through in your life.
But I do know that thatstuff is all in there.
(13:01):
And when people say to me I'm sufferingfrom imposter syndrome, even though
I know they are beautiful writers.
When people tell me they can't finishthings, even though I'm dying to know
what happens at the end of their story.
I know there's something going on in thatmiddle area, in that you were conditioned
to believe certain things area.
Maybe you were conditioned to believethat you shouldn't take this much
(13:22):
time away from your family to write.
Maybe.
Is that acceptable?
Is that appropriate forthis moment in your life?
Is that lesson that you learned whenyou had a tiny baby who really did need
you to be there every second of the dayappropriate now that your children are
adults or now that your parents are goneor now that, uh, you know, there's other
(13:45):
younger people in your community who cando some of the things you used to do?
Does the fact that you're a goodgirl and you never swear mean
(14:08):
that your characters can't curse?
And if it makes you uncomfortable,how are you going to deal with that?
If you were the smart kid at schooland everything came easily to you and
you were able to dodge the classesthat were hard I'm not saying that I
(14:30):
got out of gym by saying I had singinglessons, but I'm not not saying that
If you were able to dodge thedifficult things early in life
Or you just a lot of stuff cameeasily to you when things get hard.
Do you have You the conditioning thatsays hard things are to be avoided.
(14:52):
Or do you have the ability to pushthrough that and get your intellect
involved and say, Yeah, I'm notvery good at this, but that's okay.
I can, it doesn't meanI'm not good at living.
It doesn't mean I'm worthless.
It means I didn't write this correctlyand I don't quite know what's wrong
with it and I might have to ask forhelp and that might be uncomfortable.
(15:15):
We have to work through our instinctivereactions, just like our characters do.
We have to work through ourconditioned responses and ask
whether those are still appropriate.
And then we have to look at ourintellectual rationalising of our actions
and ask if that's actually appropriate.
(15:37):
Is it appropriate to say, ohwell, I'm not very good at writing
novels, therefore I should just not.
Or, is it acceptable to say, Oh well, I'mnot very good at writing novels, I need to
figure out why, and what's tripping me up.
Because this is quite a complex thing, andI bet I'm not not good at writing novels,
(15:58):
I bet I don't have a strong sense ofwhat's actually supposed to be happening.
in the scenes in the middle after theinciting incident and before the climax.
And maybe I need to go and studysome story structure from someone
who really gets this and speaks aboutit in a way that I can relate to.
(16:21):
I know, writing's fun, right?
Writing's a thing you enjoy.
It's supposed to be fun,it's supposed to be easy.
Uh uh.
It's not supposed to be easy.
If it was easy, itwouldn't be interesting.
You may have to.
do some work on, on thebit between your reaction
(16:45):
and the intellectual response you actuallywant and the outcome that matters to you.
And this all happened because Ipromised to share with a bunch of
people what I had learned in mywriting practice and study about the
(17:09):
difference between show and tell.
That writing advice that saysYou should show, not tell.
A.
Not always true.
And B.
Wow, is there a lot to explore in there.
So we've spent this month in the One StoryChallenge, exploring Show, Don't Tell.
And in the meantime,
(17:31):
I got to delve into human psychologyand human physiology in order to
allow all of us to write a book.
Better characters who react morerealistically and who have depth.
Even in short stories you can dothis stuff so easily, not easily,
you can do this stuff so quicklyand with so few words that you can
(17:53):
do this in a short story if youknow what you're trying to achieve.
So I delved into human psychology,physiology, and expectations.
I ended up delving into personaldevelopment, all because I wanted to write
and help some other people write storiesthat were more satisfying to other people.
(18:17):
There's nothing wrong with wantingto please people, especially if
you can use it to keep learning.
This life, I think, is a lifelong learningproject, and writing is demanding.
Because it demands that we lookat what, the human condition.
(18:41):
So simply looking at a techniquelike Show Don't Tell has allowed
me to go so deep this month.
And it's allowed me to develop,not just my craft, but as a writer.
with a writing practice.
It's allowed me to examine why I sometimesresist writing, even though I love it.
(19:07):
It's allowed me to examine whether or notthe polite society rules I was raised with
are serving me, whether I need to be quitethat polite, or whether it would be better
for me as a human being in this one life
(19:31):
to react differently to some things.
It's allowed me to examine whosevoices are in my head and whether
they're worth listening to.
It's allowed me to build confidence.
And I think it's doing the same forthe people in the One Story Challenge.
(19:55):
Never think that yourwriting is a waste of time.
Your writing is a personal developmentproject that trickles out into the world.
That filters out into the worldaround you, to all the people
(20:18):
that you come in contact with.
Working on a skill, or a craftpiece, or a story, or a technique,
is never a waste of time.
It will teach you so much about people,about your writing, and about yourself.
(20:44):
So, I commend you for being awriter, And for doing the hard
work, as well as the easy work.
And if you're not always findingit easy or having it fun,
finding it easy or having it feel likefun, I heard an athlete talking about
(21:07):
this recently and they said that theircoach had told them it's the rule of
thirds, a third of the time it's goingto feel easy and joyous and You're in
the flow and it's going to feel great.
A third of the time, it'sgoing to feel like work.
And a third of the time, no matterwhat you do, it's going to feel
like you're failing because you justcan't get, you can't perform at your
(21:31):
best level, you can't, you can'tgo faster in art, you can't meet
the times that you wanted to meet.
You're just, you justcan't do it on those days.
But as long as that's a third, anda third of the time, you're loving
it, and the middle third is work.
That's about right.
And I found that very encouraging.
(21:54):
Worthwhile things aren't always easy.
We can look at ways of making them moreeasy, we don't need to make them harder.
But there are going to be days where it'sjust not happening, it's just not coming.
But those days are not wasted.
Those days are building strength,building persistence, building grit,
(22:15):
building patience.
And for a writer, they're probablyyou absorbing experiences, noodling
things in the back of your mindwhere you're not thinking about
them, watching the world, watchingpeople, seeing how they really work.
You don't need to be turning out2, 000 words a day to be a writer.
(22:40):
So I encourage you to think aboutdeepening your character's reactions
Letting the reader pause and go throughthat process with them occasionally.
And I also encourage you to pause andexamine your own reactions when you come
up against something that's a little hard.
(23:03):
In part, so you can replicate it on thepage, but in part, so that you can get
to the intellectual analysis part of itand figure out if there's anything you
need to change and What that might be.
And there's no rush, becausethis is a lifetime project.
That's what I have for you this week.
If you'd like to join the One StoryChallenge, you can join it at any time by
(23:27):
coming to StoryADay.org/one-story-signupkeep writing.
Good morning, goodevening, good afternoon.
Julie here from Story a Day and I amhere this week to talk to you about
some other things that I've beendiscovering working through the One
Story September Challenge with thecurrent group of people going through it.
Last week we were talking about howcharacters react to various stimuli and
(00:25):
so I was sharing the the things I'velearned in my study of the psychology
of the human being, the human creature.
And one of the things that'sreally striking is that we are
not as evolved as we think we are.
So if you've been struggling, ifyou're interested in how to write
(00:48):
better characters, I'm going totalk a little bit about that today.
And I'm also going to talk abouthow we can use that knowledge.
to help ourselves to escape fromthe prison of imposter syndrome or
procrastination or lack of motivation orstarting things and not finishing them.
(01:10):
All of these complaints that I hearfrom people every time I put out
a survey that asks you what's, uh,what you're struggling with right
now or any time basically I talk towriters or, uh, be a writer myself.
So First, let's talk aboutcharacters, because it's easier to
talk about other people, especiallynon existent people, than it is to
(01:34):
examine our deep, dark, inner selves.
Here's how humans operate.
When something happens,we react instinctively.
We react chemically, actually.
We react chemically.
Our body floods itself with whateverchemicals in our, our history of human
(01:59):
existence has taught us is important.
This is what we're talking about whenwe say we have the fight or flight
response or how, you know, yourbody thinks it's going to, if you're
stressed, it's like in olden days whenyou used to think you were going to
get eaten by a saber toothed tiger.
Uh, actually humans are a lotolder than saber toothed tigers.
(02:22):
And so you've heard those thingstoo, so many times that they
just kind of wash over you now.
But I want you to think about thefact that we react instinctively.
And our bodies flood us, flood us withthe chemicals that it thinks we're
going to need before any rationalthought has time to form in our brains.
(02:44):
That's how your characters react.
And because we are writing somethingthat is potentially quite intimate
with our characters, we can hop intotheir heads, we can hop into their
bodies at any point, and we should besharing that stuff with the reader.
(03:06):
The reader doesn't really want to knowjust what's happening on the external.
They want to know what'shappening inside the character.
We all consume a lot of televisionand movies, I'm going to assume.
That, in the hands of a really good actorand a really good director, sometimes
you get some of that inner journey.
(03:26):
You see a range of emotionsflicker over the protagonist's face
before they do the right thing.
What's happening, and what's happenedwith that actor and director is probably
lots and lots of conversations aboutexactly how the character wants to react
and what they're doing to suppress thatinitial desire, and whether they're
(03:47):
going to give in to that initial desire.
And the fact is, that's what'shappening in every person all
the time when something happens.
We have this instinctivereaction, and then we have the
conditioned response response.
And the Conditioned Response, the firstresponse that we consciously have,
(04:08):
even subconsciously, is the ConditionedResponse from when you were a kid, and
what the people who raised you, and thepeople around you, who mattered to you,
taught you, was an acceptable solution toa situation, or reaction to a situation.
So, if you grew up ina house that was very
(04:34):
ebullient, whether that's for good orill, if people, if your character comes
from, say, an Italian American family,where everybody argues and shouts and
then it all blows over in a few minutes,as I am led to believe, then that's going
to be how they think it's okay to react.
And that's going to be the firstreaction they reach for beyond
(04:58):
the fight or flight reaction.
Um, the, the urge to punchsomeone is fairly deeply buried.
When somebody crosses you, the urge tolike, if they come at you physically,
the urge to come back at them physicallyis fairly deeply in us instinctually.
(05:20):
Your childhood will have taught youwhether or not it's acceptable to
let that instinct go or whether youneed to, like, sit on your hands.
Beyond that, as you, as your characterlives through life and goes outside
the world of their family, their, theirchildhood environment, they're going
(05:42):
to be in other environments where theywill learn other ways of being, and
they will learn other societal norms.
When you go to school, it's very much notokay to punch someone when you're in the
classroom, even though in certain erasand certain places it might still have
been fine to scrap on the playground.
So you have to learn, as a humanbeing, to suppress instincts in layers.
(06:07):
As you become, say, this characterwho we've talked about comes
from a very voluble, very, veryvolatile family, where it might have
been okay to punch your brother.
And then they go to school and discoverit's okay to punch them, but only on the,
on the playground when nobody's looking,certainly not in front of a teacher,
and certainly not in the classroom.
Then they grow up andthey become a lawyer.
(06:29):
for people who may still do the punching.
But the lawyer themselves has tohave these layers of civility and
refinement, which they, they drapeover everything that they learned.
And so if you're writing this character,they're probably not punching anyone
anymore, except in very extremecircumstances in very dark alleys.
(06:53):
Which means that in a situation ofhigh stress when someone comes at
your lawyer verbally they are going toreact with that primal urge to punch.
The little kid in them isgoing to want to punch.
The kid who went through school andwho's learned to suppress that urge
(07:17):
until nobody's looking might kick in.
And then the kid who went through lawschool and learned to suppress all
of that and come at them verbally isgoing to kick in, maybe, on their best
day, in the best of circumstances.
So that's a lot of emotion.
(07:38):
Those are a lot of stagesthat your character is going
to go through in an instant.
That's how the human mindbrain nervous system works.
If you're not showing us any ofthat, how are we supposed to know
what your character's going through?
If they just quirk an eyebrow or smirk,what does that tell us about what's
(08:04):
actually happening inside your character?
You've got, uh, you've got like afive minute slow mo sequence that you
could be running through You've gotall the off ramps on that journey.
Your character can go all the wayto the right civilised response and
(08:27):
come back with a witty rejoinder.
Or they can take an earlier off rampand they can snarl or they can lash
out or they can, you know, have somephysical reaction that shows them
wanting to go at the other person andrepressing it because, you know, school.
Or you can let them.
Rip and you can let them have theirprimitive reaction not even the one
(08:49):
in the family where somebody wouldhave stepped in and said Okay kids,
let's you know, let's break it up.
Now.
You could let them go even furtherYou have all of those things to
go through emotionally inside yourcharacter Before you even start
thinking about how to show that on theoutside and how far they're gonna go.
So We go from a very primitive responseto a conditioned response that can be
(09:10):
hard to get over to the civilized responsethat we have layered on as adults that
makes the, the, the actions that wethink are civilized and acceptable.
Part of the journey throughout a storyfor your character, part of the internal
journey of any character, is probablygoing to always be a balance between
(09:34):
what society will accept as civilized andwhat your character really wants to do.
It's probably a journey between, journeyabout, or a balancing act about them
overcoming their instincts and decidinghow far to go towards what society
(09:57):
wants and what feels good in the moment.
And then, of course, you get toexplore things like the conditioning
that your character has laid overthemselves, both by their family and
their school and their environment.
All of these things, all of these, these,all of this conditioning that has happened
to them, along with the things that theyhave decided to take on in order to fit
(10:22):
into the world they're in, some of thatstuff may need to be stripped away.
You think about a romantic partnerwho's experiencing coercive control.
They have learned all these layers ofconditioning that have kept them safe and
some of that stuff they shouldn't have.
And they're going to haveto strip that stuff away.
And it's always going to be a fightbetween the instinct, the conditioning,
(10:45):
the intellectual decision aboutwhat's acceptable, and then perhaps
a further intellectual decision.
decision about what's acceptable now,in this moment, for me, unlearning
the stuff that I learned before.
Humans are complicated and ithappens in the fraction of a second.
(11:06):
What can you put into your writing to showus what your character is going through?
Not all the time, just some of the time.
When are the good momentsto show that stuff?
Is your character always going to reactin the civilized, acceptable manner?
Is that always the rightthing for them to do?
How are they going to feel if they letgo and they get a bit more primitive?
(11:31):
How are they going to feel if they staycivilized when they shouldn't have?
Which brings me to you, the writer.
As you go through your writingprocess, you too are human.
(11:55):
You too are dealing withall of these reactions.
to your writing.
It seems ridiculous, but it'snot an intellectual thing.
When you're writing and things gethard, this is what you go through.
You go through an instinctive reaction,you go through your conditioned reaction,
and then maybe, if you're payingattention, you get to the intellectual
(12:18):
reaction where you say, I know thisfeels a little uncomfortable at the
moment, but I'm going to be, I'm goingto be cool about it, and I'm going
to look at my work dispassionately,and I'm going to decide where it's
working and where it's not working.
Now, on the journey from the ugh, this,this feels hard, to no, I'm going to
be dispassionate and, and sensible,and I'm going to work on this like
(12:40):
a scientist and tweak my writing.
On the journey, from one to theother, you're going down a path
that I can't possibly know.
Because I don't know whosevoices are in your head.
I don't know what you wereconditioned to believe was acceptable.
I don't know what you'vebeen through in your life.
But I do know that thatstuff is all in there.
(13:01):
And when people say to me I'm sufferingfrom imposter syndrome, even though
I know they are beautiful writers.
When people tell me they can't finishthings, even though I'm dying to know
what happens at the end of their story.
I know there's something going on in thatmiddle area, in that you were conditioned
to believe certain things area.
Maybe you were conditioned to believethat you shouldn't take this much
(13:22):
time away from your family to write.
Maybe.
Is that acceptable?
Is that appropriate forthis moment in your life?
Is that lesson that you learned whenyou had a tiny baby who really did need
you to be there every second of the dayappropriate now that your children are
adults or now that your parents are goneor now that, uh, you know, there's other
(13:45):
younger people in your community who cando some of the things you used to do?
Does the fact that you're a goodgirl and you never swear mean
(14:08):
that your characters can't curse?
And if it makes you uncomfortable,how are you going to deal with that?
If you were the smart kid at schooland everything came easily to you and
you were able to dodge the classesthat were hard I'm not saying that I
(14:30):
got out of gym by saying I had singinglessons, but I'm not not saying that
If you were able to dodge thedifficult things early in life
Or you just a lot of stuff cameeasily to you when things get hard.
Do you have You the conditioning thatsays hard things are to be avoided.
(14:52):
Or do you have the ability to pushthrough that and get your intellect
involved and say, Yeah, I'm notvery good at this, but that's okay.
I can, it doesn't meanI'm not good at living.
It doesn't mean I'm worthless.
It means I didn't write this correctlyand I don't quite know what's wrong
with it and I might have to ask forhelp and that might be uncomfortable.
(15:15):
We have to work through our instinctivereactions, just like our characters do.
We have to work through ourconditioned responses and ask
whether those are still appropriate.
And then we have to look at ourintellectual rationalising of our actions
and ask if that's actually appropriate.
(15:37):
Is it appropriate to say, ohwell, I'm not very good at writing
novels, therefore I should just not.
Or, is it acceptable to say, Oh well, I'mnot very good at writing novels, I need to
figure out why, and what's tripping me up.
Because this is quite a complex thing, andI bet I'm not not good at writing novels,
(15:58):
I bet I don't have a strong sense ofwhat's actually supposed to be happening.
in the scenes in the middle after theinciting incident and before the climax.
And maybe I need to go and studysome story structure from someone
who really gets this and speaks aboutit in a way that I can relate to.
(16:21):
I know, writing's fun, right?
Writing's a thing you enjoy.
It's supposed to be fun,it's supposed to be easy.
Uh uh.
It's not supposed to be easy.
If it was easy, itwouldn't be interesting.
You may have to.
do some work on, on thebit between your reaction
(16:45):
and the intellectual response you actuallywant and the outcome that matters to you.
And this all happened because Ipromised to share with a bunch of
people what I had learned in mywriting practice and study about the
(17:09):
difference between show and tell.
That writing advice that saysYou should show, not tell.
A.
Not always true.
And B.
Wow, is there a lot to explore in there.
So we've spent this month in the One StoryChallenge, exploring Show, Don't Tell.
And in the meantime,
(17:31):
I got to delve into human psychologyand human physiology in order to
allow all of us to write a book.
Better characters who react morerealistically and who have depth.
Even in short stories you can dothis stuff so easily, not easily,
you can do this stuff so quicklyand with so few words that you can
(17:53):
do this in a short story if youknow what you're trying to achieve.
So I delved into human psychology,physiology, and expectations.
I ended up delving into personaldevelopment, all because I wanted to write
and help some other people write storiesthat were more satisfying to other people.
(18:17):
There's nothing wrong with wantingto please people, especially if
you can use it to keep learning.
This life, I think, is a lifelong learningproject, and writing is demanding.
Because it demands that we lookat what, the human condition.
(18:41):
So simply looking at a techniquelike Show Don't Tell has allowed
me to go so deep this month.
And it's allowed me to develop,not just my craft, but as a writer.
with a writing practice.
It's allowed me to examine why I sometimesresist writing, even though I love it.
(19:07):
It's allowed me to examine whether or notthe polite society rules I was raised with
are serving me, whether I need to be quitethat polite, or whether it would be better
for me as a human being in this one life
(19:31):
to react differently to some things.
It's allowed me to examine whosevoices are in my head and whether
they're worth listening to.
It's allowed me to build confidence.
And I think it's doing the same forthe people in the One Story Challenge.
(19:55):
Never think that yourwriting is a waste of time.
Your writing is a personal developmentproject that trickles out into the world.
That filters out into the worldaround you, to all the people
(20:18):
that you come in contact with.
Working on a skill, or a craftpiece, or a story, or a technique,
is never a waste of time.
It will teach you so much about people,about your writing, and about yourself.
(20:44):
So, I commend you for being awriter, And for doing the hard
work, as well as the easy work.
And if you're not always findingit easy or having it fun,
finding it easy or having it feel likefun, I heard an athlete talking about
(21:07):
this recently and they said that theircoach had told them it's the rule of
thirds, a third of the time it's goingto feel easy and joyous and You're in
the flow and it's going to feel great.
A third of the time, it'sgoing to feel like work.
And a third of the time, no matterwhat you do, it's going to feel
like you're failing because you justcan't get, you can't perform at your
(21:31):
best level, you can't, you can'tgo faster in art, you can't meet
the times that you wanted to meet.
You're just, you justcan't do it on those days.
But as long as that's a third, anda third of the time, you're loving
it, and the middle third is work.
That's about right.
And I found that very encouraging.
(21:54):
Worthwhile things aren't always easy.
We can look at ways of making them moreeasy, we don't need to make them harder.
But there are going to be days where it'sjust not happening, it's just not coming.
But those days are not wasted.
Those days are building strength,building persistence, building grit,
(22:15):
building patience.
And for a writer, they're probablyyou absorbing experiences, noodling
things in the back of your mindwhere you're not thinking about
them, watching the world, watchingpeople, seeing how they really work.
You don't need to be turning out2, 000 words a day to be a writer.
(22:40):
So I encourage you to think aboutdeepening your character's reactions
Letting the reader pause and go throughthat process with them occasionally.
And I also encourage you to pause andexamine your own reactions when you come
up against something that's a little hard.
(23:03):
In part, so you can replicate it on thepage, but in part, so that you can get
to the intellectual analysis part of itand figure out if there's anything you
need to change and What that might be.
And there's no rush, becausethis is a lifetime project.
That's what I have for you this week.
If you'd like to join the One StoryChallenge, you can join it at any time by
(23:27):
coming to StoryADay.org/one-story-signupkeep writing.
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