The Deeper the Meaning, the More Lasting the Project

Every story that becomes a classic has at least three universal plot threads:

(1) Character Emotional Development
(2) Dramatic Action
(3) Thematic Significance

Many writers develop one plot line at a time. The plot line you first choose to carry through the entire first draft is usually directly tied to your strength; strength determines preference (Take the Test).

Whether you begin with the Character Emotional Development plot line or the Dramatic Action plot line, most writers put off the Thematic Significance plot line to the end.

By your final draft, you have at least a vague idea of the deeper meaning of your story, what you are trying to say and the ways you have attempted to communicate that meaning through your story to your audience.

Crystallize the meaning you are attempting to convey into two specific universal themes and improve your chances of creating a classic blockbuster project.

Two Kinds of Thematic Significance

When a character is changed at depth over time, a story becomes thematically significant.

1) Character Emotional Development Thematic Significance

In Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Nick serves as the narrator. Of all the characters in the story, Nick is the only one who is changed by the Dramatic Action, thus making Nick also the protagonist. (The definition of a protagonist is the character most changed by the dramatic action in the story. Unlike The Great Gatsby, if other characters are changed by the dramatic action in your story, then the protagonist is determined as a matter of degree and significance of change.

Some might point to Gatsby as the protagonist, alive in the beginning and dead in the end. What counts with thematic significance is not the change from alive to dead, but how the dramatic action creates a long-term emotional change in the protagonist.

Nick sets his own thematic significance in Chapter 3 when he states that he is one of the few honest people he has known. Since he is the narrator, the reader is curious to know if he is reliable, or not. Does Nick have a clear sense of himself from his time in the war as he thinks? Or, does he have more to learn about himself before he can accurately judge himself? In the end, Nick understands he has only begun to live up to his initial assessment of himself as stated in the beginning.

A thematic significance statement for Nick’s character emotional plotline could be:

Only with maturity and assuming personal and moral responsibility are we able to accurately judge ourselves and others.

Hands on
1) Who is the protagonist of your story?
2) Write down a Thematic Significance statement that encompasses the emotional transformation your protagonist undergoes from the beginning and throughout to the end of the story.
3) Infuse your story with the theme through details and comparisons, metaphor and simile.


2) Dramatic Action Thematic Significance

The Great Gatsby, as with all classic stories, deals with universal themes. Along with Nick’s personal thematic significance, there is also an overall meaning or Thematic Significance for the entire story.

A thematic significance statement for The Great Gatsby as a whole could be:

Ambition for money and another man’s wife leads to destruction.

Hands on:
1) Write down a Thematic Significance statement that encompasses the meaning of the overall story. In other words, what do all of the scenes and dramatic action together add up to mean in the end.
2) Infuse your story with this theme through details and comparisons, metaphor and simile.

When a story embodies universal themes for the characters themselves and through all of the elements and details of the story itself, a story becomes lasting.

Refer to Blockbuster Plots Pure & Simple for more tips about each of the three universal plot lines and how to incorporate each one in your writing project and have fun doing it.

Creating a Sacred Writing Space

We as writers spend countless hours in our writing "caves," creating characters and stories we hope will engage and captive our readers. The more enticing our writing environment, the more apt we are to enter and stay awhile. 

Surround yourself with objects that have helped you find your way in life -- books, totems, photos, quotes, special rugs, notepads, pencils and pens. Pay attention to little ritual details. Do you like to light a candle before beginning to write? Brew a cup of tea? Have classical music playing in the background? 

Creating a sacred writing space releases you. And, as Joseph Campbell writes: "...since that space is associated with a certain kind of performance, it evokes that performance again." "To live in sacred space is to live in a symbolic environment where spiritual life is possible, where everything around you speaks of exaltation of the spirit."

As you cross the threshold into your sacred space, cast off all your responsibilities. Banish the internal critic. Seal yourself off from distractions. Allow yourself to sink more deeply into your inner life. Invite in the sense of play and discovery. 

And most of all, have fun!!

Plot Consultations for Writers

I always disguise the identity of the writer when I unwind here and reflect after a plot consultation. I keep my comments general in hopes of showing how universal most of the plots and the plights I encounter.

In my mind, I already see the writer successful and imagine how notes like these would shed a certain sense of historical perspective when the time of success truly arrives.

Today's consultation was all about subplots and themes.

Every element in a memoir, novel, screenplay contributes to the greater thematic significance of a story. 

• Every character functions like a mirror shining back to the protagonist the very elements of themselves they can see in others but not in themselves
• Every subplot does the same thing to the overall plot of the story 
• Every word contributes to the theme and mood and nuance

Nothing is extraneous or there simply because the language is beautiful, the action clever, the character quirky. Every element contributes to the deeper meaning of the piece.

Do you know the thematic significance of your story?

Can you condense the overall meaning of your story into one statement?

This Thematic Significance statement reflects the truth of your story. Not the necessarily a universal truth or truth for all time, but true for your story itself.

A Tough Nut to Crack

The only real antagonist is the protagonist herself.

1) Draw a bubble in the middle of a piece of paper. Write the protagonist's deepest held belief, the one that prevents her from having that which she wants more than anything else in the world. Or do this exercise on yourself to determine what's blocking you -- I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, I don't do enough -- pick one, create one, we've all got them.

2) Spiraling out from the bubble, create other bubbles each with an external antagonist that these deepest held beliefs attract -- accidents, bad men, addictions, drama, dead-end jobs, half-finished projects, arguments = conflict, conflict, conflict -- blockage, blockage, blockage... walls that keep the protagonist from achieving her goal(s).

He was balled up, resistant, bitter, deeply resentful and so tight he could barely speak, ready to take offense, full of self-pity = a mess.

Came around to see how the experience (our plot consultation) could work in his benefit. (He didn't stand a chance -- I know what I'm doing and I've worked with so many just like him...)

I give him huge credit for not falling deeper into victimhood. He arose out of the muck long enough to shine.

We'll see how it goes... Wish us luck...

Don't Relinquish Your Power

My apologies up front. After today's consultation, I'm in the mood to rant.

Hold onto your own personal power no matter the cost.

Don't give your energy over to another and/or to a belief that no longer serves you. Let me repeat that. Do NOT give your energy over to another or to a belief that no longer serves you.

Don't forget, no matter who critiques you, you are the artist. You are the final decision-maker.

Don't give your power over to anyone else.

Listen.

Take notes.

Thank them.

Do for them what you want them to do for you.

Go home and mull over what they have to say.

What resonates with you, follow.

What doesn't feel right, let go of...

You're in this with the divine.

Trust yourself.

Listen to yourself.

Whatever drains your energy run from.

Whatever fills you up move toward...

Have fun...

Plot Therapist

"I believe talking about the story blocks the story."

"So do I," I say, wondering where the writer is going with this.

Later in the plot consultation, she reveals that she had reunited with an old friend who had successful published a book. She read it. Now she's blocked.

"So because you talked to your old friend about your story, you're blocked?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Then why are you talking to me about your story?"

Pause.

"Because you're the block buster..."

Ahhhhhh

Bird's Eye View of Your Story

I'm humbled by how many writers open up to me about that most vulnerable part of them -- their stories. 

Immediately ascertainable is how closely a writer is identified by the story. 

1) This is the story they have told themselves and lived by their entire lives. 

2) This is a fun romp, thrilling mystery, or pure romance.

#1 is generally character-driven. 

#2 is often action-driven.

(To see which way you write, Take the Test).

I get to not only sit in the crow's nest and analyze the plot and structure of the story, from that vantage point I often also see a higher archetypal pattern emerge.

For instance, in a character-driven memoir about strong political and historical and religious themes, the protagonist (the writer) is betrayed as a kid by her father. Later she falls in love with four men. She is betrayed by all four of them.

A bigger picture unfolds... Or, is it only my imagination?

Are there other ways to tell this story? You bet ya. 

How much of that which comes intuitively throughout the plot consultation do I divulge? Like a palm reader, say everything and let the writer decide? 

How much would you want? 

Fascinating journey this is, being a plot consultant to writers. 

Authentic Details

Draft one, writers attempt to create a story with a Beginning, Middle, and End, filled with Dramatic Action that affects the characters in meaningful and coherent ways -- a firm foundation. 

Subsequent drafts, writers create more layers, each of which benefits from the use of authentic details. Authentic details "show" who the characters truly are by the objects they surround themselves with and how their actions support their dialog, and allow the reader to sink into the exotic, unusual story world. 

For example: Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman -- "... In some distant arcade, a clock tower calls out six times and then stops. The young man slumps at his desk. He has come to the office at dawn, after another upheaval. His hair is uncombed and his trousers are too long. In his hand he holds twenty crumpled pages, his new theory of time, which he will mail today to the German journal of physics..."

Authentic details make the story unique, come alive, pulse with meaning.

Research reveals authentic details. How do you find yours?   

Writing for Ourselves. Writing for Others.

Now on her third book, the writer moves away from herself. 

Memoir writers aren't the only ones who write about themselves. Many of us write to work things out in our minds, our hearts, to learn our own individual truths, to make sense of our worlds. 

Memoir writers shape their stories around their own lives and stick to the truth and call their work a memoir. 

Fiction writers take their lives and embellish for meaning or humor or excitement's sake to create a novel or screenplay or short story.

Some of us tire of ourselves and find more compelling fodder. 

Others continue to delve into the well of our lives. 

How many of your stories are about you?

Choosing POV

Today's consultation challenged conventional point of view and arrangement. Most stories revolve around a protagonist who is changed at depth over time by the dramatic action that happens to her. The story is arranged into chapters and told through either:

First person present -- I revel in the balmy ocean breeze 

First person past -- I reveled in the balmy breeze

Third person present -- she revels in the balmy ocean breeze 

Third person past -- she reveled in the balmy ocean breeze

Today's consultation revealed a story more about the transformation of a culture which is changed over time by the dramatic action that happens to the characters who live in the culture than to one particular character.

Some of the most difficult aspects of writing a story, be it a screenplay, novel, or short story, are deciding where the story begins, who's tells the story -- POV, and how best to arrange the overall flow the story.

We seem to gravitate toward a favorite way of telling a story. First person allows the writer and thus, reader closer access to the character. Third person allows the writer and thus, reader less intimate access to the protagonist from her point of view but more access to information beyond the character herself. 

What's your favorite?