{"id":503,"date":"2015-04-17T19:35:51","date_gmt":"2015-04-18T02:35:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/?p=503"},"modified":"2016-06-03T14:14:25","modified_gmt":"2016-06-03T20:44:25","slug":"advice-that-makes-you-go-duh-summing-up-a-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/advice-that-makes-you-go-duh-summing-up-a-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Advice That Makes You Go Duh: Summing Up a Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you can\u2019t sum up your story in one sentence, you don\u2019t have a story so much as a bunch of shit that happened. It could be a long sentence, but you only get so many \u201cands\u201d before people stop listening. If you can\u2019t make someone interested in your idea within that framework, it\u2019s time to take a step back and figure your shit out. It\u2019s a lesson I learn fresh every time I start new story.<\/p>\n

Often people start with a situation, but not knowing their character\u2019s drives, they fail to turn that situation into something that moves the reader to give a damn. I\u2019ve found summing up your story in as few words as possible is a great way to reveal this fundamental flaw.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Take, for example, my second novel. I started work on it recently, but it\u2019s been stewing in my head for two years. I started with the premise: an alien is in jail and humans don\u2019t know what to do with him. There\u2019s enough to that situation to build conflict, but it doesn\u2019t have an arc. Because the character arc was missing, it took a long time to figure out what the hell the story\u2019s about.<\/p>\n

Once I tried summing it up, essentially writing the back-matter for the novel even though it\u2019s not fully written, I figured out what was missing. I started with this:<\/p>\n

Freecloud<\/strong> is *gonzo science fiction about Duran, a humanoid who once held court on a hedonistic space station before he was arrested for piracy. He\u2019s now stuck in solitary \u2013 drugged, deranged, and tormented because human law isn\u2019t otherwise equipped to handle an alien who can walk through walls.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Once I\u2019d finished, the question hit me: why should anyone care? What\u2019s at stake? I had to take some time to think it through, and realized it was this:<\/p>\n

But he has more to fear than jail, because he\u2019s hidden a disturbing secret from his people \u2013 and they could destroy him to get it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There\u2019s the real story. It hints at the questions I hope keep the reader invested:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. What\u2019s the secret and how did it put him in jail?<\/li>\n
  2. What will happen to him if his secret gets out?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    His story is about a common human fear: trading a terrible known for a terrifying unknown. A story has to be about being human to appeal to people \u2013 especially when aliens are involved. It also needs forward momentum, something that drives the character and leads him to make a choice. He has the drive. He wants out of his cell, but it means revealing something about himself that could get him dissected. There\u2019s the choice.<\/p>\n

    But I\u2019m not quite meeting my own challenge there. If I were to sum up Freecloud in one sentence, its Logline might be something like this:<\/p>\n

    Duran is an alien, kept in prison with drugs that drive him mad, and his only hope of rescue comes from his people, a collective entity whose contact could completely destroy his mind.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    It might not have as much pizazz as the more fleshed-out version, but the short version isn\u2019t the novel description \u2013 it\u2019s a mission statement. That sentence is the story\u2019s backbone, and now that it\u2019s in place I have the confidence to pants the hell out of it (Outlines? Pffft!<\/em>).<\/p>\n

    So, I posted the first chapter of Freecloud<\/a> to Google Docs for anyone to peruse since it\u2019s pretty much polished. I also decided to post the prologue to Vava Calypso<\/a>, my first novel, since it\u2019s the only part I don\u2019t intend to rewrite. And now, I\u2019d best be off to write the rest of it.<\/p>\n

    *Gonzo is a significant modifier because Hunter S. Thompson is a significant influence for this work.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    If you can\u2019t sum up your story in one sentence, you don\u2019t have a story so much as a bunch of shit that happened. It could be a long sentence, but you only get so many \u201cands\u201d before people stop listening. If you can\u2019t make someone interested in your idea within that framework, it\u2019s time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[20,37,36,38],"class_list":["post-503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-advice","tag-fiction","tag-things-that-make-you-go-duh","tag-what-im-working-on"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":910,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions\/910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}