So, for anyone who cares here are one guy's opinions as to what makes a good story:
- First, I can't get into a story that isn't strong technically. To me, this doesn't mean that every word is spelled right or that every comma is well placed. I don't find the occasional spelling and grammatical errors all that distracting provided the meaning is still easily understood. To me, “technically” means saying the most possible with the fewest words possible. I find excessive wordiness a killer to any story. Sentences like "I wanted to just know if she was going to ever touch my cock," has the effect of slowly eroding the attention of the reader when many sentences like this are strung together. I think, "I wondered if she was going to touch my cock," works better. When I write I want the reader to feel like she is sprinting through the piece. If I can take a 6000-word story and reduce it 5500 words without losing any meaning then that has a significant effect on pace. There are some exceptions to this, like with any rule in writing. One good exception I've noticed is if you deliberately want to slow the reader down. If you are about to say something important and you want to cut the breakneck pace of the story as a way to kind of savor the moment. For example, "I'm not sure but I felt this thing that was inside me. It just kind of- I don't know how to describe it. It was there and then it wasn't. I had it and lost it. She looked at me with her eyes and I kind of knew what I wanted to say and tried to put it all together. I opened my mouth to speak some words but she spoke first. She said, "I love you." And then it hit me. That was exactly what I had been trying to say." Another is if the voice of a character or narrator is long-winded. "I tell you, when I used to take LSD there were times when I looked into the sky and saw... Well, I saw a great many things. You wouldn't believe the things I saw. What did I see, you ask? Well, I can't exactly remember. They were great and glorious things. They were unforgettable save the fact I have forgotten most of them. Give me time, they will come to me." These are two exemptions I've used in my own writing. I'm sure there are more. I thought I'd share the exceptions because I think it illustrates how valuable it is to always have a reason to do everything you do.
- I'm sure showing and not telling has been discussed a lot in the past on this site. I won't harp on it too long. I find it distracting more than most readers because I have written so many critiques in my life and when I write a critique I usually point out every instance of telling. If a writer says something like, "Jessica was so mad as she stormed off into the other room," instead of saying, "Jessica stormed off into the other room," I am almost always done reading at that moment. I think anyone who writes with regularity has an understanding of what it means to show and not tell. A lot of times we lack the confidence to trust the point will get across without telling. A writer can ruin a lot of great work by sticking one extra sentence at the end of a paragraph to make sure their point is being made.
- Over using adverbs make your writing impossible to ever be taken seriously. Also, they are lazy. "He slowly raised his head and glared at her incredulously. Shortly the two would be happily traveling in their beautifully furnished camper." Yes, I know that is an almost absurd example. But I used it to try and demonstrate how nothing is lost by removing the adverbs. "He raised his head and glared. The two would soon traveling in their camper." Erotica seems to lend itself to overusing adverbs. Not all adverbs end in "ly." I way overuse the word "just" in my writing. When I edit I ask myself for every "just" I use, do I need it or can it be taken out. In addition, it is best to avoid overusing conjunctive adverbs like: again, anyway, besides, then, therefore, thus, rather, nevertheless and so on... It has the effect of making a writing read like a recipe. Lastly (a conjunctive adverb that ends in "ly") "as" is a little like expensive wine. Drinking a little of it at a time makes you feel great. Too much ruins the whole bottle. "I walked to the store as I listened to music in my earbuds. Sweat dripped down my brow as the sun rose overhead. I felt dizzy as I got more and more dehydrated." Again, this is an extreme example but it's just to illustrate how it feels to see “as” over and over again in one sentence after another. I think it is fair to say it is OK to use adverbs but they are best used sparingly (Ha! Look! An adverb!).
- Sentence structure matters. A series of consecutive sentences that have the same structure has a strange effect on a reader. Our brains are so fickle. If it sees the same thing over and over again it gets bored quickly. So quickly, I think all it takes to lose a reader is a few sentences that look the same. Later I am going to share an example where using the same structure over and over again actually works brilliantly, but as for all things in writing you have to have a higher reason for breaking a rule. And yes, I'd go so far to say avoiding redundant sentence structure is a rule. "He packed his lunch and went to the park. He sat at a picnic table and watched the birds." It doesn't flow as well as, "He packed his lunch and went to the park. Sitting at a picnic table he watched the birds." I think a lot of these issues can be avoided reading writings out loud. You catch so much by hearing how it's read.
- Using the same word over and over again has the same effect as using the same sentence structure. “I went to the car and the it was obvious the car had been broken into. So, I slammed my fists down on the hood of the car and kicked the tire. ‘What kind of asshole would break into my car on my birthday!’”
-Passive voice kills a writing faster than almost anything. Verbs are the lifeblood of any writing. Verbs are the mechanism that moves a writing from beginning to end. So, you want good verbs. You want the best verbs. "was," "is," "has," "have," "could," "would" and all their brothers and sisters are bad verbs. You don't want them. That is why you never want to use, "Sally was cleaning," "John has been driving for the last eight hours." You want to say instead, "Sally cleaned." "John drove for the last eight hours." "Cleaned," and "dove" are the verbs I want to showcase, not "was" and "has been." This is probably one of the hardest most definitive rules when it comes to writing. The only logical exception to this is in dialogue where the character uses the passive voice. Even then, it runs the risk of losing the attention of the reader.
Everything I've talked about so far has dealt with the technical aspects of writing. These are all things I have found to be pretty universal critiques in every writing class I've ever taken. I feel really confident that I've given good advice so far. It is all advice that was given to me many times by many different people. What follows is also advice I've been given, but it deals more philosophically about writing and good story telling.
- I think no matter how long of a piece I'm writing is it is important to have multifaceted/multidimensional characters. A one-dimensional character exists for one purpose. You see this all the time in movies. There is the main character who is complicated and deep. And then the main character has a best friend who only exists as a sounding board for the main character to express herself. You see it in erotica all the time, too. Characters only exist as objects to be fucked or touched. And that is fine if all you're trying to accomplish but it isn't very interesting or compelling. It's like seeing just a picture of a penis or a pussy without any context. It has no meaning and, for me, it makes it impossible to connect with the writing without a deeper understanding to the characters. It doesn't take a lot to add depth. A lot of times you can do it in a few words.
My favorite example of one-dimensional and multidimensional characters is in the movie "Trainwreck." A great multidimensional character is Amy Schumer's sister. In the movie she has a family and a life outside of Amy. Her feelings and pain over their father's death matters to her outside of how it matters to Amy. They have deep conversations between one another that helps to show an amazing bond between sisters at the same time it creates tension in the ways the two characters deal with their grief. I'd argue that this relationship between the two sisters equally contributed to the success of the movie as the humor did. On the other hand, it had one of the all-time great one-dimensional characters with LeBron James playing himself. He only existed as a sounding board for Bill Hader's relationship with Amy. Every scene he was in he asked Hader’s relationship to Amy. The stroke of genius with casting LeBron in this role is that it added a layer of meta multidimensionality to LeBron the person. His singular focus on his friend's relationship made him more than a basketball player. In addition to being the greatest basketball player on the planet he is also a foolish romantic.
- I find over summarizing to be distracting. One of my favorite things to do in college on a Saturday night was go to bookstores and read the first paragraphs of books. I've come to the conclusion there are only really two ways to start a story. Maybe there are more that I personal,y haven’t discovered yet, but there are only two I’m comfortable with. The first way to start a story is right in the middle of the action. "Harry locked his mother in the closet," is the first sentence of "Requiem for a Dream." "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen," is the first sentence of "1984" Both these sentences firmly place the reader right in the thick of things, right in the middle of the action. Choosing this path to start a story is like an aggressive chess opening. It's compelling. It locks the reader in.
The other way I find great books start off is with summary but the summary isn't establishing what came before the moment of the beginning of the story. It is establishing the voice of a character or the narrator. The best example of this, I think, comes from "Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Safran Foer. "My Legal name is Alexander Pervov. But all my friends dub me Alex, because that is a more flaccid-to-utter version of my legal name. Mother dubs me Alexi-stop-spleening-me!, because I am always spleening her. If you want to know why I am always slpeening her, it is because I am always elsewhere with friends, and disseminating so much currency, and performing so many things that can spleen a mother." Here the voice of Alex is summarizing who he is and where he comes from because it becomes vitally important to the story that Alex is not so good with English.
Another example comes from "The Pleasure of My Company," by Steve Martin (yes, that Steve Martin). "This all started because of a clerical error. Without the clerical error, I wouldn't have been thinking this way at all; I wouldn't have had time. I would have been too preoccupied with the new friends I was planning to make at Mensa, the international society of geniuses. I'd taken their IQ test, but my score came back missing a digit. Where was the 1 that should have been in front of the 90?" Here, I think the author is summarizing because it's important to the story to establish this character is a buffoon right away. Both these examples establish a vital voice to the story that persists all the way through. For Foer, Alex's English progressively gets better the more he tells his story. For Martin his character is the joke of the story and establishing that is the most important thing to the opening.
Knowing how a story ends really matters in understanding how a story begins. Summary that doesn't do more than summarize probably should be written as a scene. "Three weeks ago, I was arrested and thrown in jail," is suspenseful and does draw the reader in, but it isn't as strong as, "I can still hear the click of the handcuffs. I can still remember the flashing lights and that asshole, officer Bucky, who carelessly hit my had on the squad car as he threw me in the backseat." I think a lot of times writers summarize because it would be a lot of work to tell the whole story. But there are ways to pepper details in about the past of a character without going into long expansive segments of summary. Summary can be really helpful, though. If you write it all out, it can work great as an outline for the story you were meant to write. It is actually a lot easier to ask the question "How do I turn this into a story," than it is to ask, "How do I create a story."
- The point I am about to make may rub some people the wrong way because romance novel writing often uses what I consider flowery language to express sexual actions, but, by and large, for me, expressing my opinion and not telling anyone how to write, I think excessive flowery writing hurts any piece. I will be the first to admit there are published authors out there who write like this and they make a lot of money. If that is the genre you like by all means write for that genre. I am talking about things like, "He ravaged her over and over in exquisite orgasmal bliss." "Her sex consumed me as I exploded into her welcoming flower." For one thing, writing like that is always telling and not showing. For another thing, it's all be done over and over again. It feels cliché and unoriginal.
Here is a passage from "Less Than Zero," by Bret Easton Ellis. For many people who care about literature and what literature means in the context of literary history this is considered one of the sexiest most meaningful erotic writings of the last fifty years. This book and to a large extent, this passage defined a generation at the time. The interesting thing about it for me is, this writing rejects the idea of over the top romantic writing. It goes in the opposite direction completely. This is the example I mentioned earlier about the redundant sentence structure:
And one of them calls out to me, “Hey, punk faggot,” and the girl and I get into her car and drive off into the hills and we go to her room and I take off my clothes and lie on her bed and she goes into the bathroom and I wait a couple of minutes and then she finally comes out, a towel wrapped around her, and sits on the bed and I put my hands on her shoulders, and she says stop it and, after I let go, she tells me to lean against the headboard and I do and then she takes off the towel and she’s naked and she reaches into the drawer by her bed and brings out a tube of Bain De Soleil and she hands it to me and then she reaches into the drawer and brings out a pair of Wayfarer sunglasses and she tells me to put them on and I do.
And she takes the tube of suntan lotion from me and squeezes some onto her fingers and then touches herself and motions for me to do the same, and I do. After a while I stop and reach over to her and she stops me and says no, and then places my hand back on myself and her hand begins again and after this goes on for a while I tell her that I’m going to come and she tells me to hold on a minute and that she’s almost there and she begins to move her hand faster, spreading her legs wider, leaning back against the pillows, and I take the sunglasses off and she tells me to put them back on and I put them back on and it stings when I come and then I guess she comes too. Bowie’s on the stereo and she gets up, flushed, and turns the stereo off and turns on MTV. I lie there, naked, sunglasses still on, and she hands me a box of Kleenex. I wipe myself off and then look through a Vogue that’s lying by the side of the bed. She puts a robe on and stares at me. I can hear thunder in the distance and it begins to rain harder. She lights a cigarette and I start to dress. And then I call a cab and finally take the Wayfarers off and she tells me to be quiet walking down the stairs so I won’t wake her parents.”
I love this example because it shows how simple erotica can be. I love the tension of wanting to touch and not wanting to be touched, wanting sexual gratification with a minimal amount of intimacy. I am not telling anyone what their style should be. If your natural style is to write that way, do it. Make millions selling romance novels. I happen to believe it is a great and worthy challenge to find a completely original way to describe an orgasm. It isn’t easy. And maybe I’m fooling myself to think it is possible to come up with an original description. But, Bret Easton Ellis did. And he did it with nothing fancy. He did it in a way that spoke to a generation in the 80s that had no interest in books. I wont post it here, but another spectacular example is from the Book/movie “Secretary.” When James Spader, playing the original Mr. Grey, jerks off on Meggie Gyllenhal’s ass. It is raw, blunt, unremarkable in the word choice, but still fucking spectacularly written.
- Make sure your characters have continuity. I was reading a story posted online not that long ago where a female character breaks up with her boyfriend and she is seduced by another female character. It is clear that the author's intention was to have this be a loving and intimate connection between an experienced lesbian and an inexperienced straight girl. What ended up happening is the experienced lesbian came across as predatory and manipulative, taking advantage of a girl in emotional distress. As a result, when the story came to an end, and the two women ended up together, the reader was left feeling icky. Something didn't add up. Why was this girl leaving one asshole for this predatory woman? That could have made for a really interesting story, examining how a woman could be predatory towards another woman, but it wasn't what the author intended. This can be really challenging to spot in our own writing because we are blinded by our own bias. Often times it takes someone else pointing it out to understand. It helps to try and identify it in other people writings. Ask yourself, "Would this minister's daughter who's a virgin really be ready to jump into this gang bang without any convincing?" "Would this guy who just got divorced be ready to fall in love again right away?" If the answer is no, ask yourself how the author could have written it where it would be believable. If the answer is yes, notice how the author did a good job in laying that foundation. Doing that will help catch your own bias in your own writing.
I've already gone on too long. I'll conclude here as I am sure most people aren't going to read a post this long. I'm sorry if some or all of this has all been said before in this forum. I didn't go back and check. I feel like it's helpful for me to put my thoughts together on writing theory. So, thanks for giving me a forum to indulge myself in that way. I always stress this. Every time I give advice about writing I am not being original. I am giving advice I've heard someone else give. I hope it doesn't come across like I am telling anyone how to write. I'm just sharing what I feel like has helped me get marginally better at the craft of writing. This is by no means a comprehensive list of what I think makes a good story. I hope it can be a starting off point for others to share what they think makes a good story. I hope it can be a place where I and others can come to think and talk about writing in a constructive way. Please, feel free to tell me where you disagree with what I've said (not that any of you need permission for that). Share your ideas and theories about writing. I'd love to hear them, think about them, and then reappropriate them as my own.
