August 2019
ThoughTree Writing Workshop: Why We Need to Tell Stories!
Literary theorists apply a ‘literary Darwinism’ to explore the reasons why humans are driven to tell each other stories. Think of the famous cave paintings of Lascaux in France, depicting apparent hunting scenes – we can only imagine the animated campfire stories being told alongside them. From Homer’s Odyssey to Harry Potter, certain kinds of narratives have emerged and continue to be popular (The Seven Basic Plots). So, what makes a good story, and why do stories matter?
Our addiction to fiction, say the evolutionary theorists, has helped to develop the way we think. To survive and thrive, we pass on strategies for real life, especially social situations, through stories. Weincreaseempathy.Thereissomeevidenceforthistheoryfrombrain-scanning‐ readingor hearing stories activates parts of the cortex involved in personal and social processing. The more we read fiction, the better we empathise with others.
Stories teach co‐operation, by communicating the ‘right‘ social norms. As heroes grapple with moral decision-making and social dilemmas, so we apply these standards to real-life behaviour. Stories move hearts and minds in the direction intended by the teller. Adversity and temptation is overcome; our sense of altruism and good is reinforced.
In The Literary Animal, the author Ian McEwan compares the behaviour of the Bonobo ape troops with the major themes of nineteenth century novels: the rise and fall of individuals and alliances, plots hatched, courtships played o u t and revenges taken. We share this common ground, McEwan suggests ‐ therefore old stories remain fresh.
So how should we exploit the power of storytelling?
Firstly, remember that no‐one is compelled to read your story (not even your partner!) You must create that desire. When does that happen? In the opening sentence, the first paragraph. First impressions count!
- Hook the reader (a compelling opening, a strong visual snapshot)
- Offer promises to sustain interest ‐ intrigue
- Cultivate a connection between reader and characters
- Above all, a short story must quickly connect with, and generate feelings in the reader. But how?
Some suggestions:
1. Begin as close to the climax aspossible ‐ everything else is a distraction.
2. Take one conflict and aim for an unexpected revelation.
3. Don‘t tell us everything about the character and backstory.
4. What does your main character want? What choices, good or bad, have they already made? What obstacle/ unintended consequences must they face to further challenge their emotional energy?
5. What details can you leave out? (we’ll come back to this)
6. At the climax, what morally significant choice do they make? Should we care? Did we see it coming?
Exercise One.
Here are two opening lines. Chose 1 of them and write a story the suggested guide lines on page 1. You ahve not been in receipt of these instructional tips for very long and so regard this writing as a first drive that you will hone later. The aim at this time is to get you thinking about this mornings subject matter.
Why do we NEED to write stories and how to best set about starting one.
1. I had that dream again
2. I can’t find it
Exercise two
Two people are sitting in a room. It is dark and one of the persons draws back the curtain and ‘sees’ something going on.
The other person is sitting at a table finishing off the remnants of a rice pudding. This person does not see anything of what the other ahas seen outside. We start with TWO POINTS OF VIEW. One sees and the other does not. The opening line to your story is….
“There is something going on out there.” – Get your character at the window to describe to the other what he sees.
These exercises are supposed to be completed in a bout 15 minutes each one. Don’t overthink about what you are going to write about. You have a very sketchy plot that you can do anything that you like with. Try NOT to constrain your self, let your pen flow and race ahead of your mind, don’t be judgemental, just go with the text flow wherever it takes you. My uncle wrote his first novel “revenge can be bitter.” and I could not believe what it was about. Uncle Mick was a musician and an engineer. a book about a chid grooming ring was not what I was expecting at all.
My Exercise ONE (The story that I wrote)
I had that dream again.
For the second time.
I am in an aeroplane and the pressure door slides open, much akin to a London tube train door, with a hiss of compressed air. I am not wearing a seat belt and so I get sucked out of the plane and find myself rapidly falling to terra firma below.
AND, in reality, I actually am falling toward my bedroom floor, which I hit with a resounding thud, I wake up dazed and confused, wonderring what the hell just happened.
The wife is staring at me and laughing her head off. On the first occasion I had not only fell on my bottom but I had head-butted the wall and caught my face on the sharp corner of my bedside cabinet. In the morning,In the mirror, was a guy with an inch wide scrape on the right side of his face and a nasty bump above his left eye.
This second parachute jump (without a rip cord, I might add) I avoided the gashed face and the cherry red stripe on my face, as I had taken to leaving a pillow on the top of the bedside cabinet. Lucky me! I had not head-butted the wall this time either. So pretty much this was a soft landing, with no physical repercussions.
Imagine my surprise when I next spoke to our married, grown up daughter, Michelle and I was telling her about my two night time daring raids over Howden Bedroom Floor. Her face paled as she said to me “AND when did all this happen?”
“Wednesday and again on Friday night. To do it once, one would be a tit, but to fall out of bed twice?”
“I fell out of bed on Wednesday night Dad.”
“What?”
“I fell out of bed Wednesday Night!” And she started to cry.
“Whatever is it?”
“I felt sick and guiddy afterward and threw up a couple of times and Mark took me to A & E.”
“Oh!”
“Kept me in all night, suspected concussion, and on Thursday I had an MRI scan.”
“See if they could find a brain… ” Michelle did not laugh.
“Serious?”
“I hit my head on the wall on the left side, had bounced my brain about pretty bad and ended up with a brain bleed on the right hand side… I had stroke like symtoms and look at my right eye..”
I looked, it was only two thirds open compared with the left eye.”
“Do you remember when I had that episode in France where I woke up, sat bolt upright in bed and screemed? You know that time Mum was so frightened?”
“Yep I remember.”
“You did the same… remember? This is similar ain’t it?”
“Seems that way. Well Mr. Psychic, what is going ot happen next?”
“That’s an extremely good question… Oh Yes, an extremely good question… The second time I fell out of bed on the Friday, no ill effects at all. I felt absolutely fine. Let’s take that as a sign its all good from here on in. How long is your eye going to be like that?”
“They don’t know, feels a lot better to day, you should of seen it whan it first happened! I looked a right state!”
“COSTA Calls. Let’s both have a large, extremely strong, coffee and try to stay awake, we are both safer that way!”
“I am up for that. Hospital appointment Tuesday 0900 hours, can you come?”
“What’s the coffee like?”
We only had twelve minutes to write and so I had done my ususal and written about an actual event and not a fictional one. It all happened like the story said above.
Only;
1. MY hook was the references in my account to war time night raids / parachutes that do not work / tube train doors (fascinating when you are a child as your doors a home do not work like this!)
2. Intrigue – the out come is optomistic but uncertain
3. Connection to the reader – who is not interested at some levell in fortune tellers?
4. I hope there was a big sympathy vote for ME as the laughed at casualty and Michelle as the stroke like victim of only 39
Of the 6 extra tips on page 1.
I ignored one. As the climax is the bit where Michelle tells Dad the same thing happened to her with some dire consequences over half was through this short narative. Two. The conflicts are minimal though the reader may have sympathy with the wife laughing at the battered husband. Three. I certainly did not tell you everything about the French episode and so the reader must guess / predict what the consequences may have been. Four. We are NOT SURE who the main character is. Is it Dad or is it Michelle? Michelle cries – Is there something she is not telling Dad? Five. What will be the consequences of Tuesdays hospital appointment be and why is Michelle keen for her Dad to be there with her? Six. There are no moral significancies here, it’s a Dad and Daughter thing that 50 per-cent of readers will get, and the other half imagine what that is like.
In our follow up discussion where we each read our short story to the other members of this workshop (5) we discovered;
- That the events in any plot illuminate other things going on at the same time. No need to fully describe these. Let the reader use imagination to fill in any blanks themselves. We want the reader to “get the point” but do not make it so obvious all at once other wise you patronise them and they think that your attitude to them is that they are stupid. Drip feed small clues to the reader so that he has to follow a bread crumb trail to wards his conclusion.
- There are no right answers. The reader may miss your point entirely, but see one of his own that you never even put there. Something for nothing. Oh Happy Days!
Exercise Two
He said this quietly almost to himself.
“WellI never.” He thought, as he watched the lawn change colour from green to grey at regular intervals, hold on, after a very short while, the lawn started going from green to grey to sandy colour and back randomly through the colour sequence. “Oh dear, something wrong with my eyes, the lawn is going purple every now and then!” As time went by the lawn and it pulsated rather than flashed through green, grey, sandy aand purple in a sorts of random fashion. Instinctively he looked up at the sky. No Moon. “I am not a lunar-tic,” he thought. Hang on the street light that was aboiut 100 feet down the road was not lit and was at a most peculiar angle. “How strange a leaning lamp post” and he smirked remembering and old ukelele song from his child hood.
“What’s up now Bill?”
“There’s a leaning lamp post.”
“Don’t tell me there’s a bloke playing a bleeding Ukelele!” Bill & Daphne were idintical ages. They did not laugh but glared at each other in a shared indifference with any communication that acidently occurred these days.
“Can you take nothing seriously woman?”
“Not where you’re involved I can’t! No.”
“Well, if you’re not interested then why ask?”
“So, what is so interesting about the lamp-post then?
“Oh not just that , the lawn keeps changing colour as well!”
“Your’re daft you are. Potty just like your father… and your even sillier mother.”
“Well, you can believe me or not as you wish biut I am telling yer.”
“Not interested, so shut the stupid curtain and your trap and keep them that way!”
Just then there was a knock on the door. Daphne jumped up and headed towards the street door like a completely different person on a mission. She opened the door and on the step was a uniformed policeman.
“Sorry to disturb you madam, I am just enquiring as to whether you are both okay, and to ask you to refrain from venturing out for the next couple of hours or so.”
“Whatever is going on?” Said the wife with a sudden spurt of enthusiastic interest.
“A car has smashed into the street light at great speed.”
At this point we were halted from writing. It took a short while for everyone to finish what they were doing and finally our task was diverted in its direction. So far we had been describing what was happening outside in the big wide world out there through the window. What was required now was to tell the story of what was happening IN THE ROOM. And so we resumed from where we had left off.
EXERCISE Two – Part 2
“Oh, anyone hurt?” Daphne continued.
“The road will remain closed whilst we conduct our investigations madam.”
“Oh, and how long will that take?”
“As I hinted earlier it could be as short as two hours madam, of course when there are fatalities involved it can drag on a lot longer.”
“Can I offer you a cup of tea, then you can tell me all about it, we can just leave old grumpy over there staring out of His WIndow.”
“Got to go and see next door madam, and next door to them, we are a bit short of the ground at this time.”
“Oh okay, but if you do get a minute be sure and pop back, Eh.”
Bill did exactly as he had been told to do. He always carried out her highnesses word literally purly because it annoyed her so. If asked to put the kettle on, that wiould be exactly what he would do. Make tea? Naw he had been asked.: and he smiled at the thought of his small revenges.
Daphne went to the window and looked through to teh garden.
“You’re right the lawn is changing colour.”
“Told yer!”
“I know now its due to the red lights on the fire engine, ambers on the ambulances and the blues on the Police cars.”
“Told yer!”
“Actually you didn’t you thought it was Harry Potter with his bleeding wand! They have pulled the lamp post down now.”
“How do you know? It might have just fell down. Or did your new policeman friend tell yer different?”
“Well no. Now don’t be daft. Oh, he has spootted me looking out of the window. I think I will wave at him!”
“DON’T YOU DARE YOU DAFT BAT!”
“YOU DON’T LIKE ME HAVING FRIENDS NOW DO YOU!”
“NO COS THEY FILL YOUR HEAD WITH EVEN DAFTER THINGS THAT THEM WAS IN THERE ALREADY!
“He said more to me in three minutes tha you have said to me all day. I am off out now to help.”
“Didn’t your new boy friend tell us we was to stay indoors cos he has other bodies to investigate!”
“YOU NASTY PIG!”
“NO, HE IS THE PIG!”
“OH SHUT UP AND PUT THE KETTLE ON!”
Seeing a grand opportunity to do her head in. He got up promptly, put the kettle on and then retreated to the safety of the smallest room.
“YOU’LL WANT ME TO MAKE THE BLOODY TEA THEN! She shouted through the toilet door.
“Just as yer like.” He said, combing his hair, smoking a forbiden cigarette. He replaced the Vodka bottle back in the cistern and grinned a very, very, silly grin. “He who laughs last Bill, he laughs the best, so he does!”
From this we learn that the perspective of events are very different;
- In part 1 the text is descriptive of things OUTSIDE of US
- In part 2 the text is descriptive of things INSIDE of US
A very good writing lesson to learn.
