Story essentials

 This week was the adult week of my local literary festival Portsmouth Bookfest.  As usual, I was running a writing workshop for the festival.   This year I decided to focus on what elements are essential to make a good story.

I got the idea to focus in on these things after reading veteran screenwriter Syd Field's classic books Screenplay and The Screenwriter's Handbook.  His approach to what makes a good story is no-nonsense. It's a different method of working from the way most how-to-write books advise a writer of a novel or short story to construct their narrative.  But I think the advice in his books applies just as much to the written word as the visual medium of film.

His approach to characters is to "create a character" as a conscious process of asking a series of questions about who that person is and where they live, what their background is. "Out of that character will emerge a need, an action, and a story" he says.

Our first story decision is to figure out whose story we're telling.  In his Screenwriters' Workbook, Syd Field has a whole chapter titled "What makes a good character?"  I confess I've never stepped back and analysed the characters I've created in the rationally analytical way he uses.  When I get an idea for a story the character who tells it just appears at the same time.  But I don't need a budget of millions to tell my story, so I can afford to be a little more relaxed on the way I choose my main character.  Having said that, I rarely change my mind about who is the main character of a story once they've appeared.  

Another thing we can take from Syd Field's books is the way he introduces the idea of the story as a "dramatic premise ".  He defines screenplay structure as "a linear progression of related incidents, episodes, and events leading to a dramatic resolution.". That description sums up a written story just as well.  He says that you must know your ending before you start writing.  This can give us a steer towards the character's problem, conflict, or challenge.  Your story should be about dealing with those issues.

The main character dealing with their problem or conflict, or overcoming the challenge you've set them, is the way your story gets from beginning to end.  And it ensures that the character and their needs drives the story along.

You can add clues and richness to the story through the use of setting.  If a scene shows photographs of people, we expect those people to be important to the main character and the story.  You can use the way a person is dressed to show their personality.  And the choice of objects to surround your character with adds to the mood of your story.  Do they live in a minimalist gleaming white penthouse flat?  Or in a tiny two-room house crammed full of cheap pottery?  Those settings would produce two very different characters.

All these things: the right character, the clearly-defined problem, challenge or conflict, and clues from the setting you create, combine to produce a richly-told and satisfying story.