Writing Advice: What Would You Do When Your World Made No Sense?

I sometimes help authors research stuff on Reddit, and recently, someone came to us, wanting details of what goes on inside a slaughterhouse, i.e. where animals are killed and processed for meat. Apparently the MC is both deficient in vision (can't see ****) and mind (delusional) and thinks there are prisoners inside the facility. So at night, the MC, with some homemade weapons, managed to scare away the staff and was about to release all the animals, and he wants to know what's the most efficient way to go about it. 

I told him that what he described is IMPOSSIBLE. There are NO holding pens "inside" the facility. The only time a live animal (single) enters the facility is into the kill box. What one considers to be "holding pens" are moveable swing gate barriers on the OUTSIDE of the facility, and those don't hold any animals overnight. They are built to create a line where animals can be paraded and bid on by buyers as they are unloaded from transports leading up into the kill box. There's nothing to release. 

This gentleman's response? Can be summarized by a quote from ex-Mythbuster Adam Savage: "I reject your reality and substitute my own."

Then I told him about part 2... Any staff who escaped is going to summon law enforcement, and they will summon the county SWAT team, mutual aid from all surrounding counties, plus bigger guns from state police and any Federal teams that may be available nearby. How is your MC going to deal with that? And don't count on the animals stampeding their way out creating a distraction. Modern farm animals are way too domesticated. They will NOT leave and prefer to stay with the herd. If you open the gate, they won't go anywhere until encouraged to do so. 

At this point he's basically ignoring me. Which is fine. The advice is free. If he wants to create whatever fantasy slaughterhouse for his own reality that's his problem. It simply doesn't conform to OUR reality. 

If he had asked something like, "uh, I'm trying to achieve X, how do I go about it? So far my ideas are Y, Z, and W..." I would have told him what can be worked on, and what wouldn't work. However, he's so married to this idea that he'd rather bend reality than accept this idea wouldn't work. 

Chief Takeaway: Don't be so married to your ideas. When they don't work, they don't work. Save it for something else, or rework the idea. 

Writing and Storytelling: Are You a Cook, or a Chef?

Brandon Sanderson, famous novelist, had taught some writing classes at BYU (Brigham Young University) many years ago. In the following video, he challenged his students to be chefs, not cooks. 

The video is an hour long, so I'll try to summarize that challenge for you... 

What is the difference between a cook, and a chef? 

A cook is an individual who follows established recipes to prepare food. 

A chef is an individual trained to understand flavors and cooking techniques, and can create new recipes with available ingredients. 

Let's take the metaphor to writing. 

If you write like a cook, you are following a formula. On page X you must have introduce character A, on page Y you must have plot element B, and so on and so forth. 

If you write like a chef, you understand how plot, drama, tension, theme, storyline (or plot line), story structure, character arc, and more combine and interact to create the final result, and you are ready to create new combinations because you understand the basic techniques and the ingredients (characters, words, description of senses, etc). 

At least that's my interpretation of what he said. 

I'll even throw in my interpretation of "anti-cook" (not in the lecture). 

New writers who don't understand story structure and the rest of basic plotting and writing techniques often have a hard time accepting that they need to learn story structure and the rest, because they think it will turn them "formulaic". 

But as Sanderson pointed out, you are formulaic because you're writing like a cook, not a chef. You need to understand the basic techniques, to know how to apply them in different combinations to create new original results. 

At least a cook will produce something edible, if not original. If you are an anti-cook, you may well produce something completely inedible. Or in writing, something people put down and never pick up again. 

So, go learn the basic techniques, and write like a chef. 

Conflict in Storytelling -- The Three Pillars: Plot, Setting, Character

NOTE: The following is a personal interpretation of a lecture given by Brandon Sanderson, which is available on Youtube. 

A story well told usually has conflict, and conflict involves at least one of the three pillars: plot, setting, and character, often all three. And even within each pillar, there are variations.

Photo by Robert Stemler on Unsplash

However, it basically boils down to: what does the main character want? (and) Why can't s/he have it? 

Plot vs Character -- the plot push the character one way, while character wants to go a different way. The struggle is conflict. 

EX: In Star Wars (Ep 4) Luke wanted to stay and help uncle Owen, but when uncle and aunt are killed by stormtroopers looking for the two droids, Luke was forced to go with Ben Kenobi. 

EX: Bilbo Baggins in the Hobbit. Bilbo wants to stay home, but the plot needs him to go on an adventure...

Setting vs Character -- setting, i.e. societal norms, forces character to behave one way, while character really want to behave a different way. 

Character vs Character -- either protagonist vs antagonist, or main character vs him/herself (or against his/her own limiting beliefs). 

• Protagonist vs antagonist -- Luke vs Vader, of course
• Character vs him/herself
  
  Original Godfather, Michael Corleone tried to distance himself from the criminal activities of his family, at least early on, as he struggles to balance his loyalty to his family vs. his reluctance to join a criminal enterprise.
  
  Lion King, Simba was happy to live in exile, and avoid the trauma and bloodshed. But when Nala stumbled into him and realized he wasn't dead, she told him what had happened since Scars' rule, and now Simba is torn between going back and resume his rightful place as the head of the pride, or stay out there and leave them to their fate while he can live happy and "free". 

Best conflict layers on multiple conflicts, as each of them affects other conflicts as well, and amplify the negative effects and/or raises the stakes. 

While You Were Sleeping, Lucy has a one-way crush on a handsome commuter Peter Callaghan. When Peter was robbed and pushed onto the tracks, Lucy saved him, and ended up in the hospital, where he was comatose, and she was mistaken for Peter's fiancee, and was readily adopted by the big Callaghan family. And it was there, Lucy met Peter's brother, Jack, and they fell for each other. But how can they become a happy couple when the entire family was expecting she and Peter to be together? And what happens when Ashley (Peter's real GF) shows up? 

NOTE: Lucy has a self-limiting belief, a lie, even, that she's in love with Peter, which prevents her from falling for Jack completely, This ties in with the ("it made sense at the time") necessity of maintaining the lie toward the rest of the Callaghans, with a lot of post hoc justification (and rom-com / sit-com excuses, like "mom has a heart condition, don't upset her with more bad news"). That is multiple levels of conflict, internal AND external, as she had to maintain different levels of lie against different people. 

One more level: Lucy had a broken home, and she really wanted to belong to a big family, so when the Callaghans adopted her, she did not want to tell them the truth. 

Even Jack has an internal conflict: he wants to make his own furniture, not to take over the family business, but he can't make himself speak up against the family patriarch. 

Both Lucy and Jack needed to work on getting rid of their own lies to themselves, to achieve HEA (happily ever after).