The Secret to Compelling Stories Revealed
Let's talk about the secret to writing stories that are actually compelling.
I'm going to give you five strategies for writing a book that people aren't going to put down after 30 pages.
When I decided to write a novel in 2011, I'd never written a novel before. I'd honestly never even written a short story. I was a lawyer who had just left law to launch a writing career.
I thought it would take me a year. Instead it took me six: six years to write my first novel!
I kept writing it to please other people. I was trying to fit a mold of what I thought they wanted. Who are they? People in the writing classes I was taking, or the teachers of those writing classes.
At one point I sat down to read this draft that I had written by committee, trying to address the feedback that I was getting in these writing classes and incorporating anything anyone told me to do, and I was bored.
I was bored with my own book.
My stomach sank as I realized this, because I knew that if I was bored, the reader was definitely bored, which meant any literary agent I sent the book to was also going to be bored, and I wasn't going to get a book deal.
What had I done wrong?
Tip #1: Don’t write for other people
The first tip for writing a compelling story and not a boring one is to not write for other people.
Like I mentioned, that's what I had been doing. I had been taking these writing classes where I was getting this feedback from my peers and trying to incorporate anything anyone told me to do.
I was writing my book by committee.
Imagine if you were designing a house. Now pretend for a second that you are an architect. You're designing a house and you design it by committee.
You invite everyone you know to weigh in on what they think the aesthetic of this house should be. And as a result, it ends up with Greek columns and a rustic barn door and some pop art and a red roof.
It's a mess, right?
It has all of these aesthetics because everyone had a different vision and you tried to incorporate all of them into the same house.
That's what it's like when you try to write a book based on feedback from other people.
You are the only one with the vision. You have the interesting ideas inside you and you have to respect those ideas so that they'll come out into your work.
It's very difficult—maybe even impossible—to write a compelling story if you're trying to please other people who are giving you feedback on your draft.
Tip #2: Think about why you have this vision
The second tip for writing a compelling story is to think about why you have this vision.
You have some kind of vision. There's something in you that wants to come out or you wouldn't be writing this book in the first place.
Why are you writing it? What is the big question that you are trying to explore through this story?
We read to understand humanity differently. We read for internal struggle, even in action stories.
Every year, I get at least a handful of emails from people—usually men—who want to tell me about a brilliant plot of their book idea, a plot that will change the world.
They say, "And then this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens." None of these plots has ever once felt that special to me.
It's not because they were bad: it's because plot itself isn't the story. Plot is the means to tell the story.
The story itself takes place in the characters’ souls and their hearts and minds.
To get to that internal story, you have to know what big question they are asking, and plot is just teeing up that big internal question that we're really reading about.
Tip #3: Stuff has to happen
Tip number three is that stuff has to happen. Even though the story is really taking place internally, a novel isn't just someone sitting there having thoughts.
The mantra I tell myself when I'm writing is that something beats nothing. It's very simple, but it works.
When I'm trying to decide what scene to write next and my options for this person who is suffering from a breakup, who is grieving, are that she could go smash his car or cry herself to sleep or just sit there, either of the first two work because they're taking action, but sitting there doesn't work.
Nothing happening doesn't work.
Now if you have a passive character, you may think this character doesn't do active things often. They're a very passive character and that's part of the story. That's fine. But how do they act privately? Do they act self-destructively?
What actions are they taking to express the kind of struggle that they're having internally or the pain they're feeling inside? No one does nothing with their pain, right? It may be secret; it may be private, but we all do something.
Tip #4: Your main character needs a perspective shift
The fourth tip is that your main character needs to shift their perspective because of what has happened.
A story is really a shift in perspective. It can be a big shift or a small shift, but that's ultimately what a story is.
In your story, the shift in perspective that your main character experiences is because of what happens in the plot, what they've gone through.
Tip #5: You must be willing to revise
Tip five is that you must be willing to revise. Now I've never loved the saying that “every first draft is crap.” That never made me want to write a first draft.
Why am I going to waste my time writing something that's terrible?
I like to think that a first draft is just one version of your story. You're writing one version of your story and you're going to have to revise in order to pull out the best version.
Some of that first draft will stay and some of it will go. Revision is a part of every writer's process.
One of my favorite authors is George Saunders, who is also a great writing teacher. George Saunders once said that there were two things that distinguished writers who publish with writers who didn't, and one of them was a willingness to revise.
Revision is a huge part of writing.
Ready to write your book?
I hope you found these strategies for how to write a compelling story helpful.
If these tips were helpful and you're ready to write your book and you want to know more, as a three time published novelist and writing coach, I've put together a free training on how to write your dream book while holding down a full-time job or managing a busy life.
I teach you the exact process I use to write my books, and all you have to do to get this free training is apply, and get accepted, to my 12 month program, The Book Incubator. The application is just two questions. You can do it in under five minutes.
There's no obligation to join the program, but if you're admitted, I'll send you the free training right away. And it's really good, I promise!
You have nothing to lose except maybe years of your life dreaming of writing this book that's burning inside you. So click below to apply and, if you’re accepted, you'll get my free training that you can watch right away. It'll totally be worth your time.
