How to write a story | John Dufresne | TEDxFIU

I Want to talk about how to write a story? And the first command command in the writing fiction is sit your ass in the chair some of us need Velcro Pants Thinking about writing is not writing the story doesn't exist before the act of writing You're in your chair, but your central character will be at the end of [this] rope a desperate man taking desperate measures Only Trouble is interested And everything you don't want to happen to yourself or your family or your friends Should happen to characters you love your hero, but you keep putting obstacles in his way Writing a story is taking the path of most resistance You dip your pen and the ink and you begin at the edge of a cliff you [said] and try to express What's inexpressible and that makes you nervous? You know that every story is a failure But you also know the writer is the one who has not stalked or even fazed by failure And that makes you fearless you begin not knowing where you're going to end up But trusting in your imagination in the writing process to get you there you write about what you don't understand What you don't know is more important than what you know because that's what engages your sense of wonder [you] [sit] and you [insist] on meaning? But not on answers the point is not to answer but to question Not to solve but to seek not to preach but to explore and you also know this that life is stranger than fiction because has to make sense No matter how luminous your prose how? Fascinating your central character if you don't have a plot a narrative shape If your essential character isn't striving to accomplish something meaningful then the reader will put down your story and The plot [-] every story is this You have one central character who wants something? intensely and goes after it despite opposition and as a result of a struggle comes to a win or Lose so you take that definition, [and] you let the plot do your thinking for you It'll lead you quite naturally to Considerations of theme setting point of view and so on so let's say you begin Let's begin with a married couple the belles and with the requisite trouble in mind You open with the death of their child? and you see if the marriage can survive the agonizing Loss the Bells 20 year old daughter [hope] Has died now you don't have to use an allegorical first name, and you may decide that doing so is Heavy-Handed and if you do you'll revise [your] [writing] [a] first draft nothing is carved in stone The bells are home alone after [the] funeral after the burial after the distressing but obligatory reception for Family and Friends Here at the house Alice is sitting on the sofa slumped in the corner teacup in one hand tissues in the other hand Grady sitting in a ladder bat chair elbows on his knees staring at his folded hands Grady believes if he had been listened to hope would still be with them now And he wants alice to admit her role in what happened, and you wonder what did happen? Grady says to Alice When you write a story you have two choices you can show or you can tell you're right seeing or summary Scene is Vivid [an] intimate summary is [distant] and efficient Seeing is where the writer engages the imagination and the emotions of the reader everything important in your story should happen in theme and this looming expression of Grady's Resentment is certainly that so you begin as close to greatest Pronouncement as you can when everything but the action is [over] if this is a story [about] a marriage in trouble You don't need years of prosperity and bliss But before you can write this scene you need to look more closely at the stage that you is sediment At the bereaved bells in their living room Because when people speak they also act And you need to know the potential of the room and every detail in that living room Will tell you about the people who live there? Running a story is archeology not Every detail will make it to the page in Black and white But more importantly every detail Will afford you insight [into] the characters the details that make it will be those that are vivid and [significant] So now you know your characters a little better you feel more confident to go back to the scene Greatest blue tie is stuffed into the breast pocket of his jacket You notice he has a scar [on] his left hand [his] left wrist And you know that every scar tells a story? But will this story be relevant to yours you'll find out He has a Malaga ring a religious charm used for healing purposes and the shape of an eye Pinned to his lapel. He bought it from an old woman outside a church in Shibuya, New Mexico You decide Grady has Glaucoma When he told a woman he wanted a Milagro for his daughter as well the woman said What's wrong with her and he said everything? Now if you hadn't stopped to get look more closely and grady and get to know him better You would not have stumbled on [to] the themes of vision what we see and what we don't [in] Healing and you're already writing about death and about marriage and about grief and about loss, and you haven't even started and what about Grady saying that everything was wrong What did he mean by that? You decide to find out so you write about hope in your notebook? When you learn that hope was a drug addict who? robbed her parents blind and Died alone of an overdose in [a] vacant lot you had dawned in back to the living room Alice's black here is bags streaked with Gray and held off her face with Turquoise barrettes When the sweater slips from her shoulder you notice your left arm is Tattooed with a flaming heart on the coffee table is an emblem of their loss a framed photo [of] Baby hope on a Beach blended Floppy blue hat on our head zinc oxide on her nose When you look past alice, you can see the staircase that leads up to hopes better You know you'll be up there soon to try to uncover what you can of hopes secret life Under the coffee table is a thread of gold you see it the bells Don't it's a necklace and [you] [wonder] what role this piece of jewelry will play in the story? Alice sets your teacup down on a copy of food and wine There's a sleek black cat Sitting resplendently on the Bookcase shelf on The Windowsill is a potted lily Which tells you it's easter you know the irony you realize you could use the seat maybe Season to set the tone for your story and now you've got the themes of renewal and rebirth to consider Grady reminds alice that he was against throwing [hope] out of the house after her last relapse You wanted her to hit bottom he says and she did Alice feels like she's been clubbed in the face What does she say? What does she do? You watch her? Intently, and you wait With a pen in your hand She smashes the teacup the cat blasts off [into] the kitchen She calls grating the monster. She cries until she can't catch her breath you write all that down Great. He knows he should go to her but he's frozen with Anger and overcome with guilt when alice runs to the doorway He follows her and tries to calm her down. She pushes him away runs out to the driveway and screams The neighbors peek out their open windows She runs off Your story's underway But whose story will you tell them Grady's or alice's one Central character remember the decision you make will depend on the themes you want to explore on the Character who is more interesting to you perhaps the one with the most to lose, so let's say you decide It's crazy story, and what he wants us to bring out his home To heal the wounded he's open to repair the damage that Hopes addiction and Death have done to the marriage he wants redemption Now his desire to bring alice home has to be Considerable motivation provokes action you can't write [about] a passive central character so he [loves] her he [can't] live without her he wants her forgiveness for absolution he wants redemption Now you know he has sufficient reason To try to save the marriage and every time he does you'll write a scene in fact you can simply write the obligatory scenes all the way to the end for the a cute moment of the story Who's going to tell the story? [Grady] can talent or a third person narrator can tell it and grant us access to Grady's thoughts and feelings and maybe to Alice All First-person narrators are unreliable they have a stake in the outcome if you want Grady's Reliability to be a part of the meaning of the story [then] [you'll] let him tell it but if you want to focus more clearly on his concerted efforts to save the marriage then you'll let a third person [narrator] tell it so Now you have a central character. You know what he wants and why he wants [it] And now he has to struggle against obstacles you can [write] about a passive central character, so you leap ahead To the evening when grady goes to Ellis sisters condo and asked her to come home She says her home was with hope he said she threw around when she needed us most and the argument escalates Alice is not coming home grady went there to bring her back and drove her further away But he can't stop oh, we have no story Struggle Implies protracted effort and impassioned conflict your next scene Alice agrees to go to lunch with grady They're both back to work He's an [admired] High School guidance counselor He works with troubled kids And he's always secretly believed that parents have allowed Addiction to happen to their children and now you know the source of his [gil] in a sense of failure [at] the restaurant Alice says She's gotten an apartment. She's moving out of his place and into hers Great is incredulous Why did he know anything about this later when she comes by his house to get her clothing and some pieces [of] furniture? Grady is helpful [and] understanding Because he wants to persuade her to stay but she comes with a friend Austin from the radio station Where she works and the move is over in 20 minutes? Waiting ever gets to [randall] [alone] alone without us now the only obstacle so far has been at us and you're wondering if there might be some other impediments and so One Day grady sits at the kitchen Table Poring over the photographs and the family album You and he are trying to discern just what it was that his beautiful daughter Decided enough with ballet and tennis. I'm going to be a [darrel] it Great his heart is broken and his resolve is wearing thin And there you have it Will be given to us to struggle against his own despair He won't give in and he calls alice And he leaves a message on your voicemail asking her to come to marriage counseling and now you know the [next] scene You'll have to run as he leaves the [mesh's] a keep message. He wonders if she's listening You think she is? He wonders if she's alone [you] think she's not the plot thickens At counseling grady says he wants to say But with Dr. Stroud ask alice what she wants she says a divorce [a] new life She tells grady she loves him, but can no longer live with him The ongoing conflict has to be resolved Grady can lose Austin losing with Alice Make a note to get to know Austin better. He's an important character our grady can win [alice] comes home After 23 years of marriage she knows whom that much at least [and] you'll end your story with a see here's one possibility Alice is on the sofa reading a book by lamplight, but she's been on the same page for an hour When grady looks at her. He sees a halo around her head his glaucoma remember He thinks Saint Alice But he notices the book the photo is gone from the book coffee table And he realizes she's holding it behind the book punishing yourself with the image of her loss and in that moment Grady understands the time Will heal some wounds and he will eventually get [over] the loss of balance But in one case time will make no difference, and he will never recover from a shattering loss of his daughter bringing alice home Has shown grading the futility of their decision to live together? Your draft is rough But you'll smooth it out in revision because the truth is stories aren't written They're rewritten you have to have something to rewrite [at] this first draft We've been talking about to expect more from a first draft just to Misunderstand the writing process [if] at first you succeed try try again The plot Led you followed and now [you] have your causal sequence of events And you have your essential beginning middle and end And now you can go back and add the connective tissue of summary Flesh out the scenes You've already written write the scenes that you discovered along the way like the afternoon Outside the church in Chimayo the evening that grady discovered the brook the necklace that you've given his daughter on her 16th birthday and you probably should do something with [that] marvelous tattoo of Alice's, but what? Well, you'll figure it out as you write because your ass still in the chair and just created a brave New world and made up these people who never existed before and you're so excited. You can't get up

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 835,097

Keywords: ted x, English, Drama/Theater, ted, Arts & Crafts, ted talk, tedx talks, tedx talk, TEDxTalks, Art, ted talks, tedx, United States

Id: urJDbQl5W0I

Length: 17min 46sec (1066 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 10 2014