Category Archives: Writing Tips

About the Humanity – Ask Alice Saturday

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Benjamin Braddock in The GraduateQuestion: What is the most important element of good storytelling?

Answer: Mike Nichols was a master storyteller. I saw him in an interview where he was asked this same question and here’s his answer. “All we care about is the humanity.” And that’s a direct quote.

He was saying we must put the core of what makes us all human into the characters in our stories. Their dreams and hopes. Their disappointments and losses. Especially how they FEEL. All portrayed in some well written scenes.

Look at Nichols’ film The Graduate. All of that is there. Benjamin Braddock spends the entire story trying to figure out what his dreams and hopes might be. He stumbles into disappointment – mainly a big one he creates for himself by a huge error in judgment with Mrs. Robinson.

That blunder sets him up for the loss of his life – Elaine Robinson marrying somebody else. It FEELS like the loss of his life and that’s what matters. How it FEELS to the character. He triumphs in the end and we FEEL it with him even though he’s still as confused as ever.

The entire story is Benjamin Braddock. It could have been titled The Adventures of Benjamin Braddock. Each of our stories could be titled The Adventures of ________ (fill in the name of your main character). Or more accurately The Emotional Adventures of ­­­­­­________.

Because what our audience or our readership really cares about is the humanity of our characters. And how that humanity acts itself out – behaves and talks and most of all FEELS – in the story. In other words they care about the character’s Emotional Truth.

Emotional truth is what’s really going on in your story. The real truth of what’s happening to your characters. What your characters allow us to see and hear on their surfaces can conceal what they are truly feeling. Great stories are all about TRUE FEELINGS REVEALED.

This is exactly like real life and real life is the mother lode from which you mine your own emotional truth and refine it into storytelling treasure. The deeply felt emotions that are the beating heart of your story. The deeply felt emotions that make your reader feel deeply too.

I write romantic suspense novels. Scary things happen in my stories. The main character of the story I’m currently writing is assaulted by a brute. That happened to me once. My character and I both survived. Now we both benefit from my emotional truth of that awful experience.

The powerlessness while it was happening. The shock and numbness after it was over. The way others reacted. I didn’t need to take notes. All of that was branded on my humanity in indelible emotional ink. Now it is branded on my character’s humanity.

Unfortunately we’ve all had similar indelible experiences. We’ve been changed by them – traumatized by them – sometimes stopped in our tracks by them. Now we get to convert them into the very raw material of intense and dramatic and powerful storytelling.

You know what these stories are for you. Write them the way your heart FEELS them to be true which may differ from factual truth. Facts are verifiable. Feelings are not. Someone else’s emotional truth may vary from yours. That doesn’t make your truth any less valid.

Emotional Truth is individual. Your characters’ truths are what they honestly FEEL. That honesty gives your story authenticity. That authenticity gives your characters their humanity. It’s what makes your story really matter – to you as you write it and to your readers as they read it.

So dig down and dig deep. You’ll know when you hit the humanity mother lode because it will zing straight to your heart – just before you zing it straight to the page.

Find my books at amazon.com/author/aliceorr.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

Sleeping with Cheerios

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The angels are in the details. And the more specific those details – the sweeter those angels will sing. Nobody knows that better than Stephen King.

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photography-cheerios-cereal-background-image28465937When a refrigerator opens in a Stephen King story we don’t just find ketchup on the shelf. We find Heinz Ketchup on the shelf. Heinz Ketchup is a cultural icon for most of us. We see the dark red through the glass – the white crest shaped label – the metal cap that’s hard to unscrew.

King understands our mental associations with the objects of American life – especially brand name objects. Evoking these iconic associations makes a scene feel more real no matter how outlandish other elements of that scene may be. And we do know Stephen can get outlandish.

Here’s an example from the Stephen King novel Carrie. “The explosion of Toni’s Citgo on upper Summer Street had resulted in a ferocious fire that was not to be controlled until nearly two o’clock in the morning.”

He could have said “the explosion of the gas station.” But “Toni’s Citgo” is much more real. We are right there on upper Summer Street seeing and believing. However incredible the events of Carrie White’s life may be – the specificity of Toni’s Citgo helps us suspend our disbelief.

In another Stephen King example from his novel The Shining Wendy Torrance is terrified of her husband Jack as usual. She “paws through her purse and comes up with an Anacin” after complaining timidly of “a really bad headache.”

“’No Excedrin?’ Jack snaps back. He saw the small recoil in her face and understood.” We understand too and wish we could offer her a Xanax and a ticket out of there.

My personal example resonates more privately. Except maybe if you’ve had a beloved relative in pain and peril and were beside yourself with overwhelming feelings of grief and powerlessness.

This relative was my precious granddaughter and she’d just gone through radical back surgery. I was at her parents’ house exhausted after hours at the hospital. But I couldn’t sleep because I was miserable and afraid. I needed something sweet at a bitter time.

I prowled the kitchen trying not to wake anyone but all I could find was a box of Cheerios. I spirited that box back to my granddaughter’s single bed where I was sleeping – or supposed to be sleeping – while she was hospitalized.

I stuffed dry circles into my mouth as tears wet my cheeks. I woke the next morning with those circles crushed underneath me. I’d been sleeping with Cheerios. If I ever write that full scene – how much less real and resonant will it be if I say I’d been sleeping with cereal?

Find my books at amazon.com/author/aliceorr.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com