The SLUSHPILE Blog

Rebecca’s Rules for Writing #2: The Story Always, Always Rules.

You’re sitting around a campfire late in the evening. It is too early to go to bed, but all the day’s work is done. Maybe you’ve been on a fishing trip with your buddies. Maybe you’re on a hunting trip. Maybe you’re a ranch hand on a cattle drive. Maybe you’re a caveman living several thousand years ago. None of it matters. It is simply you, the campfire and several others gathered around it.

There is no t.v. There is no internet. There is nothing but you, the fire, your audience, and the knowledge that you have all night to tell a story, and your audience wants a good one. They want one that they will muse upon as they turn into their bedrolls and stare unblinking up at the starfilled sky, feeling the enormity of creation and the smallness of themselves in the stillness of night. They want one that makes them feel just a little less small.

The fire snaps and everyone looks into the glowing embers as a focal point to the night. You begin to speak, starting your tale, and the flames make pictures as your words resonate softly in the dark.

This is not the time to impress them with your wit. This is not the time to show off your vocabulary. This is not the time to showcase your knowledge of a subject. This is a time when every word is a building block in constructing a scene, a character, a setting, a plot. They are of no use other than how they interact with each other to put up the structure, block by block, frame by frame, and then to furnish it, lavishly or sparsely, down to the final details of molding and curtains and what teacups are used. You are building a world and people to populate it, and they are all there in the dancing flames of the campfire, and you, you as the storyteller, are quite forgotten, other than that soothing voice coming out of the dark that creates the pictures. You, my friend, are as you should be, quite insignificant.

Every word, every sentence, every paragraph, every chapter has only one use: to build the story and move it forward. The story always, ALWAYS rules. There is no room for tangents, political correctness, statements of faith or even whether you prefer the Steelers over the Patriots unless it is a statement by your character and is true to that character’s viewpoint (which may be far different than your own).

You are not making a ‘minnie-me’ for a character. You are creating a being in his or her own right. The setting is not your home, the character’s workplace is not your office. They are far bigger than you will ever be. Give them their own space. They are not there to showcase your talents, you are there to showcase theirs.

Does this make writing suddenly seem hard? It shouldn’t. This philosophy should free you up immensely. Your characters are not reflections of you. Write whatever you want. Make them however you wish them to be. Allow them to become whoever THEY are. They no longer have your limitations, and isn’t that a relief?

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