Last week I started physical therapy on my shoulder. It has been clicking for years and occasionally goes so far out of the socket, I have to knock it back in place like Riggs in Lethal Weapon Two.
When I was younger, my shoulder’s instability let me get into yoga moves my body had no business attempting. Part of me knew it was a bad idea, but I looked so damn cool. Now, the pain makes it difficult to fully enter downward-facing dog.
Taping my shoulder eases the pain, but it doesn’t solve the problem.
My new physical therapist, Nate, told me I’ve been focusing on the wrong thing. Instead of attending to the joint, I need to strengthen the muscles that support it.
It’s an apt metaphor for today’s lesson.
I’m currently reading Lisa Cron’s book Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel. The subtitle of the subtitle is “Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages that Go Nowhere.” At least seven writing instructors have recommended it to me.
The book explores the concepts we need to understand to write stories readers can’t put down.
In chapter one’s section, “Everything We Were Taught About Writing is Wrong” Lisa identifies four writing myths that lead writers astray. To keep the length reasonable, I’m splitting them between two newsletters.
Writing Myth One: We Mistake the Feeling Reading Gives Us for Its Purpose
A great book fills us with a seductive pleasure. That pleasure is the reason many of us decided to write a book. As we’re crafting our stories, many writers believe the pleasure we feel while writing mirrors the pleasure readers will feel when turning the pages of our book, as if pleasure is our story’s primary objective.
That pleasure is hardwired into us, but it shouldn’t be our primary motivation.
The purpose of a story is to educate you through the vehicle of entertainment. A great story hooks you with the mystery of “I wonder what will happen next?” Each time you figure this out, your brains release the feel-good chemical dopamine, which reinforces your desire to read one more page and then another. “When we’re under the spell of a compelling story, we undergo internal changes along with the protagonist, and her insights become part of the way we, too, see the world.”
When done well, the experience is immensely pleasurable, but that only happens if you—the writer—understand how stories work and apply that knowledge to your work-in-progress.
Writing Myth Two: Beautiful Sentences Equal a Brilliant Story
Learn to write well. This is the first lesson storytellers are given. But what does that mean? Early on, most of us focus on writing beautiful, metaphor-laden prose. Lisa says this makes sense. “Beautiful sentences are commonly praised. Comma splices are criticized.”
Here’s the myth: Focusing on the line level results in the false belief that if we learn to craft artful sentences, readers will fall in love with our work. But that’s like taping your shoulder so it looks aligned. A great book employs the building blocks of story so well it wows its audience, even if its sentences are less than stellar.
Lisa uses Fifty Shades of Grey as an example. The addictive power of this story generated so many sales the publisher gave every worker in the US—from top editor to warehouse worker—a five-thousand-dollar holiday bonus. But at the sentence level, the writing was lousy.
According to Lisa, “the author uses the phrase ‘holy crap’ forty times and says, ‘inner goddess’ so many times that if you made this a drinking game, you’d be in rehab before you were halfway through the book.”
So what do you do?
Instead of thinking “I want to write luscious sentences just like that, reframe writing well as I want to write the kind of story that gives sentences like that their power.”
To do this, you must understand what gives a story its power.
That’s the focus of next week’s post.
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