/lit/ - Literature★

>>10559 (OP)

so you wanna write the kind of stuff that everyone who's not a complete imbecile just knows how it's gonna play out?

btw, nothing wrong with that, most fiction i consume from a medium or another falls in that category.

the question is, what do you want to achieve with your writing?

>He says every film follows this and gives a few more examples in Terminator, Unforgiven, and Matrix.

Features have a very rigid structure. I suspect Terminator 1 was written starting with the premise, The Matrix begun at the action scenes, and Terminator 2 started with some ideas about both. They empathize different things. In T1, crushing the robot is a solution to its immunity to bullets; in T2, the plot was set up in such a way to get a cool final fight. Because we are here interested in how the whole movies are written, and not only in the structure of their stories, they belong in different groups.

If you learn from those movies, you'll know about action flicks. If you learn to obey the rules from a story similar to yours, that's completely different.

>>10559 (OP)

Ask yourself:

Is this man a wildly successful author? Do circles of literary consumers know who he is, even if they haven't read his work?

Answer is probably "no," and, "not all circles." So by following what this man does, you are not guaranteed hordes of fans and hoards of gold. And even if he was wildly successful you still wouldn't be guaranteed the mentioned hordes and hoards. Market whimsy.

This leads in to my next point: Writing of the non-academic type (you know what i mean) is art. You can be taught sentence structure and grammar. You can study what is awesome and what is awkward for what you wish to write.

But at the end of the day how you write and what you write is defined by your personal artistic choices, feelings, and expressions. It's utterly subjective. You can't rely on rules from other artists to see you through, and adhering to how someone else does something will stifle your own artistic expression. The rules should be considered more as tools.

Now, aside from your blatant shilling for this faggot, you have a decent OP here with a decent problem. Lets ignore the shilling and look at your problem.

>my hero lacks an inciting incident

>treated well by everyone to build to his destiny

>theme isn't actually about killing a dark lord

>protagonist doesn't know his story is about this internal conflict

I'm going to assume from what you've listed here that the story is pretty long, and it focuses more on the hero's journey (or life, like a biography) from being some nobody to becoming the hero.

>no inciting incident

Well ask yourself what kicks off the story. Or, as you seem to be writing a doorstopper, what kicks off both the meta story as well as the nth arc. What do I mean? Consider what pushed the protagonist into the situation in the first place. Why isn't he living a normal life, or what he considers a normal life? If he is living a normal life, what changes that? As for the "nth arc inciting incident," what problem happens this time?

Think of it like a comic book; there's issue 1 where he gets his powers (inciting incident) and becomes important, and then from there he faces Splorgalong the Evil. That arc wraps up by issue 4. And by issue 5 the hero is fighting Ascheros the Mad (arc inciting incident) who stole the city's language or something.

>treated well by everyone

>not actually about killing the dark lord

>actually about internal conflict

>protagonist doesn't know story is about internal conflict

>thinks its about dark lord

What, is the entirety of the supporting cast composed entirely of cardboard cutouts? Fuck you, OP.

The supporting cast are also people. They have lives. They have desires. They probably want to kill the dark lord just as much as the protagonist does.

But this son of a bitch protagonist can't see the bigger picture. It's clearly all about him. They would like to help but some protagonist just had to be a little bitch.

What am I getting at? I'm saying that even if the protagonist doesn't know he has problems, other people will. The protag will need to deal with his problems to stop himself from losing the people he needs to help him take down the dark lord.

Yeah, it's the "power of friendship." It's corny. It's old. And it's classic.

I've actually had Harry Potter ringing in my head the whole time I've been writing this. Go watch the movies from start to finish, that might help you out a little. No guarantees but it's better to enjoy movie night than choking yourself to death on rules that might not apply to your story.

And that's about all I can think of. Good luck.

I've read his book The War of Art. It's something of Marcus Aurelius mixed up with a self help motivational.

I'm currently a fan of Samuel R. Delany's two writing guides: About Writing which covers theory, and Dhalgren which can be read (in part) as application. I think Pressfield's TWoA can be summed up with a little Delany anecdote.

>Be aspiring writer.

>Move in with Delany.

>Observe Delany's extremely dedicated writing work habits for inspiration. What am I doing wrong?

>Epiphany! "This is the kind of effort it takes to be a writer? Holy. Shit. I'm not cut out for this!"

>Move out. Change careers. Never look back.

Conclusion: writing is a full time job, and then some.

I don't think we need begrudge mentioning Pressfield and linking to his blogsite here. He potentially brings two things to the table that might be of use. I would have to study them -- and will do so when I have the time – to see if they are worthwhile. Take following with a grain of salt, I'm guessing at Pressfield's potential. I need to do some homework before I can say for certain.

First, his Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t sounds like every standard writing guide ever. What may be gained is an emphasis on a successful minimalist formulaic approach. This should be valuable to the beginning writer who is also a chan goer. It is just the sort of thing that will get you noticed on fan-fiction sites, and maybe even published on the YA circuit, etc. Appealing to the widest audience possible still ain't easy, even if all you are shooting for is bog standard commercial genera trash. Too many beginners puzzle over how to gain readership. They may acknowledge they suck, yet not understand why they suck.

Delany mentions creative work largely consists of submission to an artistic form. High or low, an artist needs to demonstrate they can handle these forms, prove they have internalized them, before they go crashing about building something different. And you can still be awfully creative without ever leaving that formulaic prison.

Second,

>His breakdown of other peoples' stories is definitely one of those gems.

This may be the most valuable contribution he can give to us. I like quoting Gore Vidal (a fellow screenwriter and historical novelist, no less!) in a similar vein: "The first job of a critic is to describe what he has read. This is a lot more difficult than one might suspect." A no nonsense Pressfield approach to constructive criticism is something most writers around here don't have access to. What readerly feedback we may come by will raise a red flag about your work in some way. What that feedback almost always fails to do is articulate why your writing fails. Seeing a professional concretely demonstrate why should be an eye opener to what real constructive criticism should be.

I have something to say more directly to OPs questions, although I don't have The Answer(s). That's enough for now. More later.

"no aspiring author should content himself with a mere acquisition of technical rules"

-- H.P. Lovecraft

>>10562 (me)

I forgot about the essential point about this kind of books, about writing stories: just because a book doesn't have an overarching story, has one very loosely, or has a terrible one, it doesn't mean it's bad. Invisible Cities, for example, has a story which loosely adheres to the rules. It's a good book because each city is wonderful, not because there is a greater idea from which it was built.

>>10582

That too. No rule can tell you how to come up with a new idea.

I like everything that has been mentioned in this thread, OP.

Subject to further review, Pressfield might deserve mention as a goto for beginners in the board writing guide. That will take some time as the board staff (save for the BV having read TWoA) are unfamiliar with his work.

>Do YOU follow the rules, rigorously, and DO you break your stories' backs to make sure that the rules are followed?

Implicit in the question, and much of Pressfield's apparent advise, is marketing appeal. You must pay attention to that, or be willing to accept the cost in readership and any chance at being traditionally published. I could go on, except I am only rehashing what has already been said while demonstrating my own quirky reading tastes. Of quirky tastes are not a market made.

So, directly in answer, I do not follow the rules rigorously (or consciously) in first draft. I do so, more so, in revision, trying to weed out stupidly weak storytelling.

A little out of context still serves. Since we going all quote happy and stuff.

The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum

You probably should follow some "rules" OP. Following an artistic form is better, as was mentioned earlier in the thread. This is an an act of useful humility for a less experienced writer to practice. It is a lot harder to do with a series, or tome, for your first time around.

Whatever you do, keep writing as best you can, and keep learning.

>>10582

Learn the rules first and learn how to break them after is what I would say -- ultimately molding those to conform with your own rules. I didn't know there were rules in writing (inciting event, midpoint, etc) when I was outlining but at least, what I outlined generally touched those rules; it only made my writing coherent or strong after learning the rules.

>>10559 (OP)

>WHAT'S AN INCITING INCIDENT IN A STORY THAT'S ABOUT NOTHING BUT EVERYTHING?!

I think you're confusing an inciting event with a key event. An inciting event is what sets the story in motion and the key event is the decision of the protagonists to leave behind the normal world.

To give an example, an inciting event in Star Wars V (that was the last movie I've watched recently so it was fresh) is Obi Wan haunting Luke to go to whatever star system Yoda stays. The key event is when he decided to leave the planet or the normal world and meet with this goblin.

Do any of you think it's weird that there are so many books, blogs, threads about making stories better, but little about coming up with more of them?

>>10613

I may be misinterpreting your question. What I'm hearing is "why aren't there more resources for story idea generation?"

The concise answer is: execution trumps brainstorming. A brilliant idea presented by a sincere, experienced, yet mediocre writer will go farther than a fumbling newb, and way beyond an idea generating non-writer.

Scott Adams of Dilbert fame flippantly answered if you've can't come up with any ideas, have someone check if your heart is still beating.

My only advise is that you get out of your comfort zone with more of your reading. This will improve the rarity of your ideas.

>>10613

>Do you think it's weird that so many about making stories better, but little about imagining more of them?

No. On a /lit/ board I would be surprised to read that: we're full of imaginings.

Whether any of them are any good, readable or marketable is a different story -- that's why we keep asking about how to do better.