[WPOS] Basic Writing Craft
Some excerpts from a chapter, which are excerpts from the works of Walter S. Campbell - Because these are core basics stated clearly...
Basic Writing Craft
( from the works of Walter S. Campbell)
Writing Novels and Appealing Stories – Readers Want People
If you are interested chiefly in character, in people, real or imaginary, you will choose some epic form, or form derived from epic: the novel, biography, memoir, or chronicle – because here character may be displayed to best advantage.
If you are interested chiefly in plot, action, drama, you will prefer a model formed upon the drama: a play, a short story, a dramatic novel, a plot. Because in one of these – action, situation, and the rounded incident show to best advantage.
If you are interested chiefly in expressing emotion, you may well choose lyric poetry in one or more of its various kinds, or romance, because in these emotion finds its most poignant and immediate expression.
You must consider what model is adapted to the public you wish to reach.
Cultivated readers will accept almost any subject, if it be presented in a style and pattern which they recognize as offered by a cultivated mind.
The majority of readers, however, whether because of limited education, narrow environment, or social prejudices, are subject to certain fixed taboos and limitations in their thinking.
In general, it may be said that models already familiar to a given public are more readily accepted than new ones.
You should choose for your own, not merely (as stated above) the best contemporary model of the kind of thing you wish to do, but also strive to determine more closely just what model will suit your public, your subject, your talents, and your skill.
In order to do this you must
(1) consult the models available,
(2) check them by these points.
In doing this, you may make some inquiry from readers, librarians, booksellers, and also, if you can, look into book reviews, statements by authors, critiques, and similar sources of information as to reader opinion. Finally, you must make up your own mind.
It is quite possible that no one book or story will strike you as the perfect model. And in this the modern author is fortunate: he may mix his types as much as he likes so long as he does so intelligently and with reason. The reasons, of course, will be based upon the nature of his subject, his public, his skill, and his talent.
The Age-Old Conflicts That Attract and Drive Readers
The desire for fiction appears to arise out of the peculiar position in which mankind finds itself in this world.
A newborn child is a complete egoist, caring only for its own appetites, comfort and content, and if a baby were able to fend for itself, these selfish impulses would dominate its whole life.
But because of its helplessness the baby is compelled to adapt itself to the demands of those who feed and protect it, and so becomes a member of society.
It is man’s prolonged infancy which makes civilization possible.
In short, whoever has roommate, a friend, a family, a neighbor, must curb his selfish impulses and at least make a pretense of accommodating himself to the desires and demands of others.
This pretense we call civilization. It is an inevitable, indispensable pretense. Hence the old saying that the degree to which a man is civilized can be judged by the degree to which he can endure hypocrisy.
For man is – by nature – a dangerous, combative, selfish creature, with many of the instincts and appetites of the wolf. Yet he is also, by necessity, training and habit, a gregarious creature who lives in flocks and herds, like a sheep.
Hence his strange predicament which one might put this way: man is a wolf, but not a lone wolf; therefore he is compelled to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing!
Yet there is a further difficulty, which even civilization cannot remove. Man finds himself compelled to live, as it were, under two flags. Thus, if he kills his enemy, Nature cries, "Well done! The survival of the fittest!” But Society shouts, "Guilty!’’ and hangs the killer for a murderer.
Again, if a man eats a bad oyster, Society merely remarks, “Poor fellow!" But Nature yells, "Off with his head!" And so man is at the mercy of two masters, whose stern decrees do not always coincide. No man can serve two masters.
Out of this conflict of authority arises the demand for fiction. Mankind longs for a world where the two masters may be reconciled, a world in which a man may obey his natural impulses (and so be “happy" ) and at the same time conform to social standards (and so be “good”). Such an ideal reconciliation rarely occurs in real life, or if it does occur, is never complete or lasting.
But in fiction this can, apparently, happen. That is why people read fiction.
But the mere resolution of this discord is not enough for us Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward. Trouble is the natural habitat of mankind. If we are well, we enjoy a fight, a struggle, in spite of the fact that trouble, in real life, is eventually fatal. Fiction offers a safer outlet for our craving, and since society has tamed us, we find much of our desired trouble in fiction.
So the writer serves the interests of society, since he thus relieves the pressure of his readers’ pent-up emotions, and so makes civilization more endurable for them—and for their neighbors!
Keeping Your Reader Riveted to Your Writing
Every piece of writing (not merely mathematical) produces a series of changes in the emotions of the reader.
It is for these, in fact, that people read.
Without emotion, without those reactions which come to them while reading, most people would go to sleep. And while it may be important in your mechanical pattern to have the right number of words, the right number of scenes, the right situations and subject-matter in your writing – it is far more necessary that you should have the right emotional pattern.
The emotions of man are limited in number, and in addition to having a certain rhythm appropriate to each (which will express each for the writer and suggest each to the reader) there is a certain decency and order in which these emotions are excited and enjoyed in literature.
The emotional pattern, then, is not one which some author arbitrarily creates. It is inherent in human nature, and is found to follow certain paths and obey certain laws in consequence.
The pattern is provided by the reader: the writer merely provides the matter and the variations upon the pattern necessary to bring out the peculiar quality of his subject and his own personal expression.
In your own work you will find that writing to emotional pattern is the path to real excellence. Without that method, writing to the mechanical pattern is mere drudgery, and can only prove disappointing.
But if you study models with an eye to the emotional pattern, you will not only master mechanical practices, because you under stand what they accomplish, but you will share the creative spirit of the masters of literature.
There are here two kinds of emotions to be taken into consideration,
(a) those of the reader, and
(b) those of the persons, if any, in the story or article.
The second exist only as a means to the first. Therefore, your chief concern is with the first. Consider the emotions of the persons in the story, as mere suggestions of the emotions of the reader, your real concern.
A good piece of writing, whether fiction, poetry, or nonfiction, is not unlike a piece of music—each measure, each part performs a function of its own and at the same time forms a part of the composition as a whole.
Try to think of this symphonic structure in your reading and your writing, and you will achieve satisfactory form.
There are both mechanical and emotional patterns in any good writing. Too often, they coincide too much to simply separate.
In a conventional love story, you will find, very often, at the beginning a meeting of the lovers, in which their emotion is friendly and affectionate.
This will be followed by a passage at arms, in which the lovers quarrel.
Finally, the two come together again in firm bonds of affection, and the story ends.
In such a story, the reader will identify herself with the heroine, and the emotional pattern of the heroine’s experience will closely coincide with that of the reader. The reader, like the heroine, will feel attracted to the young man at the start, flattered by his attentions, confident of her own power as a charmer.
A little later all this is thrust back while the reader and heroine struggle with the hero. Finally the quarrel is resolved and the reader, like the heroine, enjoys the luxury, in imagination, of “getting her man” and of feeling sorry for the rival, who, though admirable and attractive, was not the equal of the hero.
The motives of the strife in such a story are the conflict between romantic love and practical sense upon the part of the heroine. For the hero, to be acceptable, must not only be a lover, but a competent husband.
The love story is, in fact, the story of a fight. It is simply a woman’s adventure story.
But it is solved by the happy and surprising fact that the hero, who had seemed to be merely romantic, was also actually able to make his way and protect his sweetheart.
And so, the two demands of the heroine and the reader are met, and wedding-bells are in order.
The mechanical pattern here is simply: Girl Meets Boy; Girl Loses Boy; Girl Gets Boy.
The emotional pattern naturally follows this mechanical pattern, but it is distinct from it. That is to say, though the two patterns coincide, they are not identical. That is the reason why an artist, adept at writing to emotional pattern, may build a masterpiece upon a mechanical formula which has been used by fifth-rate writers before him.
That is how Shakespeare made great comedies and tragedies out of dull and even sordid tales by fifth-rate hacks, yet with hardly any change at all in the mechanical pattern underlying. In short, as Dryden puts it, “‘the story is the least part.” The emotional pattern is the problem of the real artist.
You will find at the bottom of every story a sound mechanical pattern; but the superstructure, the emotional pattern, is what gives the piece its literary value.
What is the Story that Readers Expect – Every Time?
The first requirement of the fiction (as well as good non-fiction) is—a good story.
A good story is one which entertains the reader.
We demand a good story.
The actual world, as we know it, is a fearfully complex thing, extending on all sides far beyond the reach of our feeble senses, a thing which began so long ago that we cannot imagine such a lapse of time, a thing which apparently has no limits in space. We are staggered by its vastness and no less baffled by its intricacy. Our finite minds recoil from such immensity, in which we are utterly lost. All that we experience springs from such complex and remote causes that we cannot estimate them by any stretch of the imagination.
In our vast ignorance, we cannot comprehend it, and so it seems altogether too haphazard, too casual for our comfort. We want something simpler, smaller, neater, something we can grasp; and so we ask the fiction writer to “make up” something for us, something nearer to the heart’s desire, something more interesting, more coherent than the actual life we know.
Out of this conflict of authority arises the demand for fiction.
Mankind longs for a world where the two masters may be reconciled, a world in which a man may obey his natural impulses (and so be “happy" ) and at the same time conform to social standards (and so be “good”). Such an ideal reconciliation rarely occurs in real life, or if it does occur, is never complete or lasting.
But in fiction this can, apparently, happen. That is why people read fiction.
We know, therefore, that our story will have to do with:
(a) trouble or conflict,
(b) natural impulse versus social demands or ideals.
The reader wants these elements, but he wants more than these. He wants fiction—something “made up” to please him; he wants “a good story.”
Fortunately, a good story is a rather definite thing. It's when some narrator has touched up an actual incident to make it more striking, more interesting to his hearers. If that narrator know his business, his version of the incident will be more entertaining
- because it has been simplified to give it point,
- because it is unusual, surprising, in some way, and
- because it all "hangs together.”
From this it follows that the writer of fiction has two principal tasks to perform:
(a) to make up an impossible yarn, a tall tale, something that never happened and never could happen, but something the reader wishes might happen; and
(b) to make that impossible yarn plausible, for the time being, and to the degree demanded by his reader.
What is Good Writing – What is Good Storytelling?
When the "big guys" on social media are talking about “writing”, they aren't talking about books, they are at best talking about getting a short newsletter out. (Something around or less than a thousand words).
By "writing", they mean copywriting. Period.
I've looked these guys up. None have written any books before or since they started their social media journey.
They talk about storytelling, but they never describe as other than your own origin story.
So I had to dig into W. S. Campbell's various works to get writing and storytelling defined:
Every piece of writing (not merely mathematical) produces a series of changes in the emotions of the reader. It is for these, in fact, that people read.
The emotions of man are limited in number, and besides having a certain rhythm appropriate to each (which will express each for the writer and suggest each to the reader) there is a certain decency and order in which these emotions are excited and enjoyed in literature. The emotional pattern is not one which some author arbitrarily creates. It is inherent in human nature, and follows certain paths, and obeys certain laws in consequence.
We know our story will have to do with two elements:
(a) trouble or conflict,
(b) natural impulse versus social demands or ideals.
The writer of fiction has two principal tasks to perform:
(a) to make up an impossible yarn, a tall tale,something that never happened and never could happen, but something the reader wishes might happen; and
(b) to make that impossible yarn plausible, at any rate for the time being, and to the degree demanded by his reader.
Therefore, do your best to please your reader. By pleasing your reader, I do not mean that you should throw overboard your own convictions or falsify your own presentation. I mean, wish earnestly to share with him your own enthusiasm for your subject, wish earnestly to present it in such a way as will make him enjoy it as you do.
In non-fiction, you often deal with facts more than with people. Take particular pains that your enthusiasm for your subject and your friendly feeling toward your reader get into your style. Every sentence is convincing evidence of your attitude. In a word, you must combine fact with powerful emotion. And so it is in fiction, the subject of which is human relations.
Here your task might be easier because there are people in your story and the reader likes to be with people. It is for this reason that non-fiction in our time goes in so heavily for fictional technique. Since, of course, fictional technique simply means they bring in people and their relationships.
There are two dominant sources of interest in literature: the familiar and the strange.
That subject will therefore be the best subject that provides the maximum of both. Since we are human beings ourselves, there will be more of the familiar in human beings than in any other subject.
And any story about people, however you disguise them, can be a good story.