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How Not to Tell a Story
Published: 2013-03-06 04:31:32 +0000 UTC; Views: 124324; Favourites: 952; Downloads: 69
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After being on DeviantArt for a few years now, I've noticed patterns in people's stories. Patterns, that I can't say I've ever seen until I started using the internet. I believe that's because these kind of patterns are thoroughly unprofessional. The pattern in short is this:Character = victim
Plot = bad things happening to said victim
Maybe this sounds harsh. It's not if you understand that is ALL there is to these stories. They take any character, hurl them into a tragedy and that's it.
Let's get this straight: We do not know your character well enough to care about them yet. No matter how bloody and gutty their injuries are, no matter how many of their family members are deceased, no matter what their boyfriend did to them, no matter what kind of disease they have, WE. DO. NOT. CARE!!!!!
These kind of things are sad in themselves, but WHO is this person we're supposed to feel so horrible for? Establish THAT. It should be your absolute FIRST priority: no exceptions.
No more pasting faces onto the same cardboard-cut-out sob story protagonist.
If you want readers to care, you must FIRST GIVE THEM A HUMAN BEING TO CARE FOR.
If you don't, yes of course you are still going to get comments from emotional people who find your story intriguing. That is not the point.
The absolute WORST thing you can do is (I hate saying this), taking comments from people on the internet seriously (about your writing, that is).
People who have no CLUE about literature will post comments on the most unprofessional writings and say things like, "This made me cry. You are like the next J.K Rowling."
DO NOT LISTEN TO THESE PEOPLE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE MADE THINGS LIKE TWILIGHT AND 50 SHADES OF GREY POSSIBLE.
All I'm saying is that if you think things like Twilight are insults to literature, I beg you to take the advice given above. If not, what can I say but: carry on. Let the age of Mary Sue begin.
We need to remember: a rich story is made up of so much more than only one element; it can't rely only on being "dark," or "tragic" or "romantic." These things are for bringing out emotion. It's ESSENTIAL that there is something worth being emotional ABOUT.
That is how you tell a beautiful story.
And even then, if you give us something we truly care about, you'll realize "I can make something even less tragic happen and it will have a much greater effect now."
Sometimes you'll even realize that being subtle is even more disturbing and "dark" than going all out.
I said it before, I'll say it again: drama is the anti-suspense. Drama needs something to feed on or else it is dead.
It's up to you to make casual, every-day scenes interesting too.
Humor is a particularly wonderful tool for making characters appealing. The more appealing the character, the more the audience will care when they suffer.
Think of your favorite cartoon character. Now imagine if they died. Not a funny, cartoon-ish death where we know that they'll be all right again in three seconds.
Pretend they came to a permanent end that was actually portrayed very tragically and non-sarcastically.
Kind of leaves you with a disturbed feeling, doesn't it? If this is the way you want your audience to feel about your characters, then follow this example. It doesn't mean your character has to be as silly as a cartoon character, it just means we should feel like we know them in such a way that we can feel their pain.
In short: don't give us another card-board soap opera. Give us something to love.
No more "I'm going to drench this character in blood and my story will automatically be deep!" If that's as deep as you can get, you must be very shallow indeed.
EDIT: CLARIFICATION
I'm saying that introducing the character should be first *priority,* not necessarily the first thing in the story. The point being, don't write a story that you worry about the character second to the soap opera.
Of course many stories (Harry Potter included) start off with bad things happening. This is because they're crucial to setting up the entire story. The point is not to expect your audience to be scandalized yet.
Also, when you read this guide, assume I'm talking about writing seriously. I'm not picking on those of you writing for practice/fun/etc.
This is a concern because things like this are being published these days. If this isn't your goal, carry on by all means.
I posted this because it's getting to the point where there is no unique style. This is the style that most beginners (and therefore most people) tend to use. I'm not picking on beginners, just pointing out not to settle with the first, most obvious style of writing that no one encourages them to grow beyond.
Are there people who enjoy this kind of writing? Of course. But why is it all we should be content with?
The attitude should be something like this: make the character deep enough for whatever you're writing.
If it's a short deviation, naturally less so than in a novel.
Same if it's not the point of the thing you're writing (say you're just trying to bring out a moral or something).
However, if you expect to write a sob story this is highly important.
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Comments: 424
Thank you for posting this. It is a very useful guide.
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This makes some very valid points that I agree wholeheartedly with.
I love to write and thankyou for putting this up. Hopefully, this'll help with my story writing!
<33
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I agree with everythimg on here. In 6th grade, there was a writing assignment that was due once every quarter. I was as into writing then as I am now, but I remember cringing when they read their stories aloud for the very reasons that you listed above. I'm glad someone finally posted something about one of my worst pet peeves. Thanks!
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You got a DD for this, bro.
This very obviously needs to be read by many, many people.
Thank you. I'm glad someone finally managed to debunk the "mystery" of every Mary Sue ever.
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"THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE MADE THINGS LIKE TWILIGHT AND 50 SHADES OF GREY POSSIBLE."
Love it.
The comment about taking a character, making that a victim and just making bad things happen to them is very true, I don't even know how many stories I've seen written like this...like you said, if we don't know the character we really don't care!
I used to go on a website called Quotev (used to be called quizzaz) And oh. my. god. the poor excuses for literature that made up 90% of that site made Twilight look like freaking Shakespeare. And the amount of people who's stories were nothing but their Mary-Sue bully victim scene-emo character getting depressed and then their best friend/boyfriend/magical vampire demon dog abandoned them or died and then they wallowed in self-pity until they killed themselves seriously nearly made my eyes bleed.
As did the amount of 12-year-olds that thought they could become a famous author when they couldn't spell or use any kind of grammar And Rote Every Wurd Liek Dis.
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Yup, that's exactly the kind of stuff I'm talking about. You just nailed it so well. x'D
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I'm very grateful to have seen this! I noticed something in my writing was very off, but I never really figured out what. I kept putting tragedy in the very beginning, and it made the story lose depth right away because there wasn't nearly enough exposition. It went to the point too quickly. So thanks 
I do disagree with the "Age of Mary Sues" though. They've probably been around a while, but are more apparent in everyday stories now because stories on the Internet are self-published. These writers don't necessarily have anyone acting as an editor. In other words, no one to show them what to cut out, add to, etc; Plus, it was a norm to have a kind of beta-mary sue character in many books and movies some decades ago. So in a way, it's a pretty old device.
Sorry for the mini-rant 
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Now it's probably partly because I'm always taking the opposite side of things, but I can't agree with your argument here. We are not entering an age of the Mary Sue, nor are we entering an age of the tragic hero, and we certainly aren't drenching all characters in blood just to make them deep. Here's what's really happening:
First, it's no wonder you are βonly nowβ seeing this stuff and especially on the Internet. Writers have always told stories that range from good to bad, and for a long time publishers were the only ones who let this stuff be seen and they tried to weed out or at least improve the bad stuff. With the Internet, anyone can put their story out there, even the bad ones. It's good of you to speak up and help others be more critical in their writing, but please don't make it sound like this is only a recent thing.
Second, don't make the assumption that βbad things happening to said victimβ is bad writing. If the hero isn't faced with challenges to overcome, would anyone really care about them? So yeah, stuff will happen to our hero and a lot of it will be bad; what defines a hero is how they act afterward. We want our biggest heroes to have faced equally large challenges, so why is it surprising that many of those heroes would have faced tragedy and been defined by it? Having tragedies define a character is no worse than having triumphs or humor define them, and all it does is help them define themselves in a certain way that has been popular for as long as people have told stories. Having ONLY tragedy define them is certainly unprofessional, but I will refer you to my first point.
Third, how can you say that tragedy is ALL that happens in βtheseβ stories? I don't know what βtheseβ stories are but if I did, maybe I could point out how they are not ALL tragedy. Maybe you just didn't like βtheseβ stories, which is totally your choice to make, and so chose to only remember the parts you thought were bad, which for you were the tragic parts. Obviously you think that humor is a better and βparticularly wonderfulβ brush to paint a story with, so it wouldn't be surprising.
Fourth, and this may be tangential, how can you say drama is the anti-suspense? I'm actually pretty curious about this one and hope you will further explain it to me. There must be a difference in our definitions of drama and suspense because I'm pretty sure they're nearly the same thing. I can see how 100% drama would kill suspense, but so would 100% humor. I'm not worried about the long-term health of Wile E Coyote β falling from high places or starvation for example β because I know he will only ever be βhurtβ to a humorous degree.
In conclusion, tragedy has always been a popular element for writers to use in their stories and is not necessarily a bad way to define a character. If a writer uses tragedy to define a character, they have not already made a mistake. I agree that tragedy can't be the only thing a writer uses but I don't agree that everything out there right now is all tragedy. Also, I am in full agreement that we should never take comments from βpeople on the internetβ at face value, especially the overly positive ones, so good on ya for saying that! Thanks for reading this!
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And thank you for replying to my comment!
Yeah, after a quick re-read of the piece I'm not seeing what I thought I saw on this point. If anything, I was reading too much into those 'ALL' statements you were making, but now I see those were referring only to the bad stuff β¦ which is a bit circular in logic, but whatever.
The way you simplify your argument against bad writing early on to be, βThe pattern in short is this: Character = victim [and] Plot = bad things happening to said victimβ would imply that you believe bad things happening to the characters is bad writing. Personally, I think the point you make later about sob story characters being bad writing is much better, and calling them sob story characters says something very different then calling them victims to whom bad things happen. The difference is in how they react to their misfortune, which is why I mentioned that in one of my points.
You didn't outright say you prefer one to the other, but it seemed pretty obvious. You wrote an entire piece about how badly tragic characters can be written, and then made that point about how humor is, βparticularly wonderfulβ to use; I'm sure you can see how that all seems to a reader.
I think I would define drama and suspense in the same way, so I'm still not sure how you could say that drama is the anti-suspense. To my lights, suspense is a specific moment within drama; in other words, any moment of suspense is also drama, while not every moment of drama is also suspense. Say a character is dying: that would be suspenseful and dramatic. When the character has died, that would be dramatic but we would no longer be in suspense. I agree that first learning to care about the characters will later heighten any tragedy involving them, but I'm not sure what this has to do with the question of whether or not drama is the anti-suspense. You say, βI said it before, I'll say it again: drama is the anti-suspense.β Do you have an earlier piece where you talk more on this?
I'm in complete agreement on the whole Keep It Balanced approach. There's a reason we have a laughing mask and a crying mask as the symbol for the theater. Honestly, I'm kind of against the way DA suggests the work I submit can only be categorized as one or the other.
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I would bet that clarification of definitions would unravel most arguments people get into on the net, that and re-reading later. Good talking with ya!
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I think it gets the point across.
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That's exactly the type I mean, the whiny emo goth kid with a pretty great life in many respects who writes "dark" poetry because it feels important and deep to them. They are using unnecessary drama to escape (hopefully not literally) the good life they have, because the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. They see their happiness as meaningless because it was always there and they didn't have to work for it ... and in some sense they are right.
Sure, but it's not very interesting to point out that all the badly written drama out there is bad. That's what I was saying about circular logic before.
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Whatever you say...
There is a point to it when people don't understand that it's bad.
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Don't believe me? Look at people who win the lottery, how often do they really appreciate that money?
Being able to see when your work is bad is something that comes with experience, right along with learning to write well. One could say the two are related. As long as the writer is open to criticism, things should turn out okay.
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Funnily enough, I remember writing like this vividly a few years ago. I remember myself being quite the melodramatic idiot who thought she could write something at least passably good.
It was either terrible poetry or terrible prose in which basically a person got thrown into the most desolate, horrific, clichΓ©, situations ever. Andβ¦that was about it.
But at least I'm glad I can look back on those works and cringe.
Lots of people say that fanfiction is terrible, and of course there are examples of this - like My Immortal, which will make you want to tear out your hair after reading a few chapters of it. But there are other works that I find beautiful and moving and fantastic that make you care about the character and have you crying and tearing up inside when you read about something terrible happening to them. These also tend to be the works where the small things - just the very small things, mind you, just the small slights or just the small comforts - make me really seem to see what's hidden underneath the surface.
And also, looking back in the kinds of stories that I liked a few years ago, I realize that a great many of them were just what you advise against: sob stories where the character is flung into a horrific situation, like rape, and then the enemy suddenly becomes a best friend and then bam! Romance. And when I reread them, I realized that I didn't like them at all this time around. They seemed shallow.
β¦Honestly, I don't know what this comment is. It's terribly random and I'm quite sure it's deviated from the topic a fair amount. I'm sorry.
But I just wanted to thank you for posting this, because this definitely applied to me when I was younger. But if nothing else, at least I realize that this sort of writing is never really a good thing - and though I won't be writing any novels anytime soon, I'll try and make changes to how I write on smaller scales. Though I generally write (shorter, my first poems were an obscene length) poems and flash fiction pieces, than much that's too substantial.
Thank you for sharing this. I don't consider myself a writer nor a person who delivers good criticism on writing pieces, but I just love reading and I hope that's enough.
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I kinda wish you were my beta reader now <3 I love how wrote this
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I'm a student writer and Γ never really thought about these things before. So thank you. But I agree, it is essential to develop a character people care about or your story is undermined immediately because through the character is how the story is told.
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People tend to blame fanfiction as being the sole cause of bad writing.
While fanfiction is more than often average or bad (a few I've been pleasantly surprised), I've read more stories and watched more movies with blatently bad writing.
As far as Genres are concerned, I find Romance and Westerns to have the lowest quality control, while in movies Action, Drama and Horror (my favourite genre by the way) having truly atrocious storylines or plot devices.
Mary Sues may be the biggest and most obvious target, but it's some of the plotlines and stories that infuriate me.
One of my least liked plot devices is the threat of rape. It is extremely rare for this to be used well, and while the media wants me to be horrified and disgusted, I tend to roll my eyes and say "of course!".
Ever notice most victims of this cheap story writing are women, children, minorities and disabled people?
Long story short: Yes, original media representation isn't great with storytelling either, no wonder aspiring writers often get it wrong.
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ahhhh i have so many real life friends that have characters with huge sob stories ;_;
just the other day, i started a roleplay with a friend and the first thing her character did was get attacked and insulted by some bullies. she wanted my character to save hers but i'm like "WHY SHOULD MY CHARACTER CARE??? he doesn't even know yours????"
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Very good points. Nothing I can really add, but I have to say thank you for uploading this. 
I know I am, even though I don't write all that often.
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All of this is so true. I've been on here for a while too and it's pretty rare to find anything that's even half decent, even for beginners since people can tend to be so lazy and unimaginative with their work. It's nice to be able to read something coming from someone who really knows what he/she's talking about.
I'm no writer myself, but after having read some material off here, several or more books and, of course, seen a number of movies, there's a few things I've noticed that make good stories and others that make them a little dull.
One thing that so many books and movies plots circle around is the protagonist having amnesia and then going on some epic quest to find answers. I'm not saying any work with this is bad, it just starts to get kind of old and unoriginal to use the idea over and over again.
Along with that is the goal of saving the world. Again, not a big downer, but usually the best stories have plots that focus on goals that are of smaller scale.
Something that is good in a story and is very important is describing and explaining the environment around the main character/s and their thoughts and opinions on it too since it helps develop the characters personality and helps the reader envision the scene a whole lot better (which would require a good vocabulary and general knowlegde of things).
Another thing to remember would be creativity with characters and the world they live in. Personalizing your characters with likes and dislikes, notable things about their physical appearance, insecurities, disabilities, ect. Make them more interesting and likeable (or hateable which I know isn't a word 
Depending on the genre and the time and place the plot happens in, you would probably have to have a real creative mind to make up the imaginary world the characters live in.
There's other things that I'd add, but that would take more time than I'd like to waste.
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I agree, thanks for the comment!
Nonsense, of course hateable is a word (well, it should be). XD
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I can see why some may find tragedy as "deep", after all to write tragedy well, it takes a seriously good author in my opinion. I write tragic stuff sometimes, and find it harder to write than amusing light-heartedness. Besides, readers tend to learn more about characters from casual scenes than dramatic ones.
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I agree, it's hard to write tragedy well.
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I blame fanfiction writers (Poor fanfiction seems to be getting a lot of bashing here XD) Since the reader would already have an attachment to the characters in the fanfic, the author knows they can throw down any old misery willy-nilly and get an army of sobbing fangirls/boys lamlamenting about how "wonderful" they are. Then again, it's a sneaky way to be popular on here and FF.net.
That said, I am also a fan of tragic fanfic ><
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This is beautiful and so true!! I hate stories where (unless they are fanfictions where one knows the characters being used... and even then they must be used properly) just sad stuff happens, and you really don't get what's going on.
I mean that's life, bad things happen to everyone. In real life we could give less of a shit... unless they were close family, mentors or friends whom we share deep connections and know their mysteries.
It's easy to pick up a pencil or keyboard and simply scribble a little story of what comes to mind.
But I certainly believe the best writers are those who both experience and deeply observe life whether it be of themselves or their own surroundings, even others. And then the ability to rewrite and recreate similar fantasies and dramas... it's an interesting look at another person's world.
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Because English isn't my mother language, I can't give you a better comment than this: a good writing, everyone who wants to be an author someday (and why not those who write for their own fun too) should read this first.
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To be perfectly honest, I blame fanfiction. Not in the sense that I think fanfiction is bad, how cold I? I write fanfics myself and I read way more than I write, but I still think that the blame lays with fanfiction and people who can't differentiate the genre. The obvious difference in this case being that when you write fanfics, your readers already knows and (hopefully, if they're reading fanfics in the first place) loves the characters. They are already attached.
Of course, really good fanfiction still usually starts with the introductory period..
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I definitely agree. People who start with fanfiction, even if it's just for practice, are cutting out a major part of learning to write: how to invent and introduce their own characters.
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Yeah. I write purely for enjoyment and for, well, fandom reasons
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Don't forget the lines in the author's description, such as "Read it. I suck at summaries."
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True enough, I can agree. The best stories are character driven because we care about those characters.
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The most important piece of advice in this diatribe is to take most comments with a grain of salt. 99% of the people who read your scribblings on deviantart will be high school students who scratch shitty poetry into notebooks rife with My Chemical Romance lyrics and pictures of Invader Zim. If someone is a professional writer or editor, they will not likely give you a shining review without, at the very least, hints of constructive criticism. Happy horseshit like, "OMG this was so good I cried!" does nothing to help you become a better writer.
Most people would end up with much better products by simply reading the things they write out loud in a quiet room. Read it according to the punctuation and exact wording on the paper. If it sounds trite or clunky or like something a middle-schooler would say after watching a Pokemon marathon, perhaps you should consider changing some words or, I dunno, take out your improperly placed commas and learn how to use a semicolon in sentences with more than one distinct clause.
I need to write one of these.
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This is positively fabulous. Can it please be required reading for everyone?
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Lol, thanks.
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This is very true, I am getting tired of popular literature to focus on sob stories and crap. i use sad, terrible plots as a twist. And if something terrible is the base of the story, the main character does not have to carry that pain until the end. but, cookie-cutter happy stories where every freaking moment is happy this and happy that. good stories have humor, anger, seriousness, love, sadness, and happiness.
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I agree. This problem annoys me most when combined with Mary Sue-ness - it's not just that bad things ALWAYS happen to this character, it's also NEVER their fault - other characters treat them badly because they don't realise how perfect they are, or are too inherently evil to care that the protagonist is a saint. It all provokes more annoyance than pathos!
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