I’m truly a believer in lifelong learning, that no matter how much you know, or think you know, you’re learning everyday. With my first novel on its way in a couple months, I am well aware that I have a great deal of learning to do when it comes to writing.

That said, as I’ve gone from the story in my mind, to my first draft, through revisions, and finally to that final draft set to print, I’ve had to learn a few lessons and had to make some shifts in my thinking to get me there. Thoughts that might be useful to writers out there now, with their stories in their minds, with first chapters written or even first drafts, who are struggling with where to go next.

One such lesson, or shift in thought that I had to make, was to let go of the notion that the story in my mind will be the story in a reader’s mind when I am done and the book is out. I’ve come to understand that this will not be the case, and in fact could never be the case.  Was I to describe every detail of setting, every detail of a character’s appearance, every thought each character has, and all the backstory each character carries, I suspect I wouldn’t live long enough to finish even one story. Thus, we as writers streamline the details to what we feel is most important for our readers to experience, and what best serves our plot. Everything else, everything we omit from the vision in our mind, then becomes open to interpretation by the reader. 

The story that reaches the page is only an approximation of the story in an author’s mind, and from those words, a brand new story is created in the mind of each reader. Their story is unique from any other reader’s and twice removed from the original thoughts. Can a story ever truly be told? I would submit that the answer is no. Only an approximation of the story can be told.

Some of this might seem obvious, but acknowledging it becomes particularly important when rewriting and refining your work. After a writer has their first draft, it can seem like cutting a part of yourself, to undergo editing pieces of your story away.  But, in almost all cases, it is necessary to do so in order to make your writing the best it can be – in order to create a work that is dense with captivating content, even when that means cutting vivid details, thoughts, emotions and yes even sometime plot.

The story in your mind will always be far greater than the story that fits into your book. You’ll always have plot that leads up to the beginning of your novel, plot that continues after your novel, backstories for characters that don’t effect this specific plot line enough to warrant inclusion, details of settings that were simply too elaborate to include while maintaining the speed of your plot through your book.

What reaches the page will always be merely an approximation of your story. Accepting this allows you to understand that cutting the book doesn’t change your story; it only changes the approximation of your story that the book holds. Thus, rather than aim to tell your story on the page, you must aim to create the best reader experience of your story that you can. Creating a better reader experience only stands to improve your readership and allow you to continue to tell stories.

Besides that, there’s other good news. For if you could get every detail of the story onto the page, you the writer would then be useless to the story. The story would exist, and you would no longer matter. However, as it is, when you hold so much more story in your mind, you always have more to offer to those who care to dig further.  When fans seek you out to answer questions they have from your book, you have a great deal of additional information to provide - more details, more experiences, more side stories, more background, and maybe even more novels.

 * Note, the examples and descriptions of this essay reflect the creation process for a novel, however many of the same ideas could be applied to a short story, a poem, a song, a painting, or any other narrative from of expression.  Speaking to one scenario only serves to keep the thought concise.

I’m a fan of a good story in whatever medium it appears, book, movie, song, video game, you name it, or in this instance ballet. Popular this time of year, of course is The Nutcracker. I’ve seen a few productions over the years and while I will concede that each performance inherently has its own variances and nuances, in each version I’ve seen, I find the story of The Nutcracker falls a little short.

Lets take a step back and ask the question, what makes a story interesting? To me the simplest answer is conflict. Conflict between characters or between a character and other forces is what almost every story uses to get us listeners, viewers, or observer to invest our time to find out what happens.  What makes a story good? If we observers feel our time was well spent investing in a story, then to us personally, the story is good. Thus, to me, a good story must have compelling conflict with the exploration of the conflict, be it leading to a resolution or not, guiding us through the story’s entirety. 

In general terms, every element of a work should serve the story.  Big budget special effects in movies, soliloquies in plays, songs in musicals, or flashback chapters in a novel, all of these can be exceptional devices so long as they serve the story, if not, they and the story fail. In a ballet, dancing is of course the primary element and dancing is used to tell the story. Therefore, by my standards, all dancing in a ballet should serve the story.

Now returning to The Nutcracker, the ballet has a definite story, the conflict of which lies between the mice, led by the Mouse-King and the soldiers who fight them, led by the Nutcracker.  This conflict might be as good as any for a story, but my issue is that this conflict resolves essentially half way through.

A story can have many conflicts but to me no further conflict arises resulting in the entire second half of the piece being without conflict and virtual without story. The dancing no longer serves the story but instead becomes a simple collage of vignettes, each with no apparent story or conflict of their own, and no matter how well performed, and how ornately decorated, still fall short of continuing to be compelling.

That said, I believe altering the story to maintain conflict, and thereby interest for the entirety could be relatively simple. Just bring back the Mouse-King for one more battle right before the conclusion. Imagine, the story as is, but when the Mouse-King was defeated he instead escapes and threatens to return. Through each vignette of various food or drink themed dances, the threat of the Mouse-King’s return is ever-present…conflict.

After the crowning of Clara (or whatever the girls name is in a particular version) and the Prince (Nutcracker) as rulers of the Land of Sweets, the Mouse-King does returns and threatens everyone. The Nutcracker must once again take up arms and then and only then defeat the Mouse-King for good. With this resolution to the conflict, now only a short amount of story is spent celebrating the defeat and awaking from the dream (if that is the interpretation of your given version.) So again I ask, is it too late to rewrite The Nutcracker?

* It is difficult to account for all interpretation of this piece, across so many years and around the world. Given the multitude of unique versions, it is possible that a similar variation to what I propose has been tried. If so, and if available to watch or at least read a review of, please point me in its direction. I would surely enjoy it.

Much like my culinary appetite, I find my appetite for stories sizable, but more noteworthy, to be heavily influenced by seasonal hallmarks.  Just as the 10^th month of the year brings an insatiable taste for anything with a particular orange gourd as an ingredient, so to does October fortify my craving for creepy, sinister, and macabre tales. Naturally, it culminates on the 31^st, before turning to the heartwarming, playful, and jolly stories that draw my fancy through the remaining holidays of the year.

With Halloween just days away, many dark, enticing tales cross my mind, but one that emerges as not only scary, but interesting to ponder is the film Angel Heart (1987). *  Though I’ve seen it multiple times, and years ago, it still stands as a complex story with themes and details worth revisiting and contemplating from time to time.

It stars a barely recognizable Mickey Rourke, to those familiar with the actor today, alongside Robert De Niro and Lisa Bonet. Rourke portrays Harry Angel. On the surface he’s an easily identifiable, hardboiled private detective – struggling to pay his bills, chasing beautiful women, and bedding a few in order to pursue his latest investigation.  But that’s only where the character begins. The missing person case that falls into Angel’s lap takes him, and us, on a dangerous path of secrets, corruption, and murder. Besides putting Angel’s own life in jeopardy, the story leads to darker territory including voodoo, deathly fortune telling, and devil worship.

This alone is enough to distinguish the story from a Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe case, and to push this film into the October-appropriate realm of Horror, but this is only the surface appeal of the film. Angel Heart goes further, and doubles the detective’s investigation, with all its peril, as also a voyage of self-discovery.  As Harry Angel must go to dark and sinister places, so to must he uncover dark and sinister truths about himself.

This elevates the story from entertaining to contemplative, and is the reason this film can not only give you a welcome Halloween chill, but also leave those of you who love a good story as much as I do, ruminating on its themes and psychological consequences for years to come - revisiting this meaty morsel whenever your appetite for the menacing and direful surfaces.

* Note this film was based on William Hjortsberg’s novel Falling Angel (1978).  My familiarity lies with the film and my discussion is limited to it, though I’m sure the novel shares most of the film’s admirable qualities, as well as possesses many of its own. Perhaps appropriate for a future post...