- Joined
- May 31, 2013
- Messages
- 26
- Reaction score
- 3
I've tried and failed to write things for years. My scenes are good my dialogue is generally excellent, my characters generally breathe as people.
But people told me for years I was pantser because my stories themselves were unstructured. But the truth is, I'm not a panster, I need to understand how to build a story bit by bit. Point by point, colored by numbers, before I can actually finish something. And the truth is the three-act structure is something I don't really like, because while a classic, it's been done to death, and hacks basically use it, particularly the "Dark Night of the Soul" to unnecessarily kill off characters and create stuffed in the fridge moments which I loathe.
The problem with me is that I believe realism is the point of a story, and if I don't treat the characters as real, I might as well not write because the characters have no power, and are just Marionettes of the narrative, or as Wisecrack put it in the What went wrong? on the Star Wars Prequels, the characters have no agency and are little paper boats pushed along where they need to go. This for me creates huge problems of character and drama bloat that are antithetical to anything resembling a tight story structure. While I find really tight story structures to be shallow, story structure shouldn't be so flabby you bore or overwhelm the reader.
The basic problem is that books may or may not help. Ideally I'd like apprintceship or mentorship because even using fanfic as a crib doesn't work in getting me to actually make a story, and not just a bunch of scenes that happen. But if there's a good book on by the number story strcuture assembly for the aspiring writer, I'd love to give it a shot.
But people told me for years I was pantser because my stories themselves were unstructured. But the truth is, I'm not a panster, I need to understand how to build a story bit by bit. Point by point, colored by numbers, before I can actually finish something. And the truth is the three-act structure is something I don't really like, because while a classic, it's been done to death, and hacks basically use it, particularly the "Dark Night of the Soul" to unnecessarily kill off characters and create stuffed in the fridge moments which I loathe.
The problem with me is that I believe realism is the point of a story, and if I don't treat the characters as real, I might as well not write because the characters have no power, and are just Marionettes of the narrative, or as Wisecrack put it in the What went wrong? on the Star Wars Prequels, the characters have no agency and are little paper boats pushed along where they need to go. This for me creates huge problems of character and drama bloat that are antithetical to anything resembling a tight story structure. While I find really tight story structures to be shallow, story structure shouldn't be so flabby you bore or overwhelm the reader.
The basic problem is that books may or may not help. Ideally I'd like apprintceship or mentorship because even using fanfic as a crib doesn't work in getting me to actually make a story, and not just a bunch of scenes that happen. But if there's a good book on by the number story strcuture assembly for the aspiring writer, I'd love to give it a shot.