The Controlling Idea Pt. 2

Or: The universality of specific ideas (look at me making up fancy titles)

Here’s something I’ve recently come to understand:
The stories that hit the hardest have a universal theme and yet, at the same time, they are extremely specific — What do I mean by this?

Finding Order in Chaos

Who are you?
There are a thousand answers to this question. From facts, like where we grew up and what we look like, and external traits, like the way we walk or talk or act, to internal ones, our personality and thoughts. Now imagine your protagonist and their thousand answers. There is no way we can fit all of it into one book: and that is not the point.
We are authors, and furthermore, we are designers, and that means we have one job: to bring order to chaos. To find the throughline of our stories.

The Setup

If you are like me and you LOVE the beginning of stories but you are also a crazy perfectionist, you probably have a love-hate relationship with your first few chapters. Starting a new story, the words usually fall onto the page so quickly they are nothing but black streaks of ink. Or pixels. But at the very latest, it is when your draft is finished that you return to these first pages and think to yourself:
what is this abomination?
where is the structure?
where is the agency?
where are the stakes?
why are there twenty scenes that might be, let’s be honest here, hilarious, but just… redundant?

In the following post, I’m going to explain (what I believe) are a setup’s most important elements and show you some of the things I’ve learned while working on my own projects.

Expectations vs. Reality

Expectations vs. Reality is a term I first read about in Robert McKee’s Story. It’s about how every scene should introduce a change in some sort. An expectation the protagonist has meets reality and thus, conflict is created.

But how can we use this knowledge for good? And how can we make use of it both for the external plot and the protagonist’s internal development?

Desire and Misbelief

Reading a new story craft book is a bit like learning a new language; everybody is trying to say the same thing, but some people point at a character’s goal and go, “that’s their want!” while another says, “this is called the desire.”

Hello and welcome to my brain after I’ve read Lisa Cron’s Story Genius and am trying to understand this new language I’ve learned. Specifically: how can I make use of my new knowledge regarding the character’s desire and misbelief and the resulting third rail.

Theme (feat. Finding Nemo)

I’ve already talked about theme once in my post about the Controlling Idea, but now I’d like to expand on the topic a little more. So, what is theme, how do we find it and how can we show it instead of tell it?

The North Star Pt 3 – Act 2 Pt 1 – The Setup

Now the story begins! This part is often called the “Fun and Games”, the reactive phase, the introduction to the adventure world, the “What is going on and what am I supposed to do now?”

In short: the characters have no idea what to do, and to be honest, right now, neither do I.

The Northstar Part 2 – Character and Theme

Welcome to Part 2 of The North Star, my fake wip to demonstrate how to construct a story from scratch! This part is going to focus on character creation and the integration of theme.

The Northstar Part 1 – The Setup

Let’s face it, we’ve all done the research. We’ve read articles and books, watched videos and asked our writer friends, and still we wonder:

How do you construct a story with theme, with a character arc, with development, with all the things we are told to watch out for?

I thought it might be fun to tackle just this problem and work on a story from the ground up. So welcome to part 1 of this series: the first act of the Northstar! Let’s unleash the chaos.

Method Acting

Method acting, isn’t that when actors go out and beyond to become their character to the point where they will send dead pigs to their costars?
Well, yes and no. This might seem a bit extreme to some, but hear me out.