Tips for Telling Successful Stories
To those who never give up,
to those who write.
Essentially, we are all capable of telling stories. We humans like to describe reality (to communicate with others, to understand and be understood, to spark discussion), but we like it even more when stories are told to us because through them we learn how to live.
Although everyone is capable of telling stories, not everyone knows how to narrate them, so their ideas, anecdotes, and emotions succumb to a lack of clarity and often get lost in the infinite universe of confusion, self-indulgent writing, vain rhetoric, or deceptive techniques meant to surprise.
This text does not seek to lecture anyone, much less pose as one of those ingenious decalogues that great writers have created as guides for the novice who wishes to write fiction. If anything, it can be read as a list of suggestions that might guide those who wish to practice creative writing to tell a story without becoming frustrated in the process. For, oh, how tyrannical is the craft of the storyteller—demanding so much time and determination—that it is capable of causing frustration and causing people to give up.
My background and experience in the world of creative writing are limited, but not insufficient to present this—methodological?—proposal, which should be viewed as just one more among the vast sea of proposals put forth by writers and various scholars of creative writing.
I would like to recommend here the following readings: *The Screenplay* by Robert McKee; *The Writer’s Journey* by Christopher Vogler; *Then a Ship Appeared* by Guillermo Samperio; *Manual of Creativity* by Mauro Rodríguez; *Dramatic Writing* and *Manual of Theater Theory and Practice* by José Luis Alonso de Santos; *The Art of Fiction* by John Gardner; and *The Joy of Writing* by Natalie Goldberg; all books on which I rely for the development of this proposal and whose in-depth study will strongly equip anyone to tackle the task of telling a story (in the broadest sense of the term, without necessarily adhering to a specific genre, that is, a short story or a novel, in which cases it is worth studying particularities and differences: a matter I will not address here).
I must emphasize the following: mine is a humble proposal with a practical approach that, rather than offering a formula for telling a story (such a thing does not exist, and if it does, I am not yet aware of it), lists a series of general considerations that writers—especially those new to creative narrative writing—should keep in mind before, during, or after crafting a narrative text.
Encouraged by my experience as coordinator of the Seville Creative Writing Workshop, inspired by the invaluable knowledge acquired while studying for the Master’s in Creative Writing at the University of Seville (from which I have recently graduated), and committed to those who, like me, feel passion and joy in telling stories through writing, I dare to believe that to achieve this goal, the following is necessary:
1. To want others to know that story
Otherwise, the author will think only of himself and could easily succumb to the powerful temptation to indulge in self-indulgence.
To consider others is to seek to communicate, to convey ideas, feelings, or emotions. It is like striking up a conversation with friends, not like talking to oneself in the mirror.
2. Summarize the story you want to tell in just a few lines:
Clearly identifying the beginning, development, climax, and conclusion.
The practice of narrative writing requires clarity, a high level of mental acuity. Putting ideas down on paper helps organize one’s thoughts. A mind capable of organizing its thoughts will have the ability to express them clearly.
3. Discipline yourself to keep going, always keep going
Until we feel satisfied with the results achieved through writing, editing, and all the possible rewrites that the creation of the narrative text in question might require—while being kind to ourselves so as not to demand too much of ourselves; this usually happens when we notice a lack of experience or reading, in which case what we must do is practice and read, not get frustrated because we can’t write the way we’d like to.
Natalie Goldberg says we have the right to write crap, especially when we’re just starting out. But as we practice and gain experience, we also take on the responsibility of not falling in love with the crap we write. We need to see our early exercises for what they are: practice, not the best results we can achieve. We can always do better; each practice session will prove it, because with each one we learn and gain new skills.
Once we’ve been able to summarize the story we want to tell, we begin to grasp the true scope of the project ahead. We are, therefore, in a pre-writing stage. It’s not the same to intend something as it is to do it. Having an idea of how long the intended story is allows us to venture a hypothesis about the amount of time and effort such an undertaking will require.
If we consider that estimate and compare it with our usual writing pace or the actual time we regularly devote to writing, we’ll know how much time and effort telling the story we’re working on might require. In this way, the writer will be able to ease their anxieties and stay true to themselves, fighting off the damned frustration that so often leads to giving up.
4. To be subject to history
Writers, often seduced by technique (which is very appealing), forget what they want to tell and focus instead on how they would like to tell it. Neither is more important than the other—or at least it shouldn’t be. A healthy balance between the two could lead us to successfully achieve our goal.
The general recommendation is: don’t think too much about the “how,” especially if you’re just starting to practice narrative writing and haven’t yet mastered the technique. It’s more practical and productive to focus on the story, because the story itself can point out the most appropriate and compelling technical tools with which to construct the narrative.
I do not intend to join the age-old debate about form and content, about the how and the what of an artistic work, but rather to point out that a writer, with little knowledge of narrative technique and little or no practice in constructing stories, will achieve little or nothing if they worry too much about technique, rather than focusing on the story and its stirring passions.
The writing of a narrative text cannot be considered an artistic or literary work simply because it is a narrative text and follows certain technical or genre conventions. It is readers, academia, and publishers who, over time and influenced by established standards, traditions, or creative and commercial trends, classify a narrative text as an artistic or literary work.
But time, the study of technique, and the practice that the writer accumulates are also factors that will allow them to set aside (or not) the story itself, in order to focus on the way it will be told.
5. Make a list of the events that make up the story
The goal is to develop the initial idea by organizing all the events in chronological order.
All stories—absolutely all of them—have a beginning and an end, regardless of the order in which they have been told to us.
Stories are logical systems of causality, where events unfold naturally, one after another, allowing those who know them to understand and interpret them.
Listing the events of a story means mapping out the territory you will navigate, identifying a destination and a port, a beginning and an end. It is synonymous with clarity.
This is a very early stage to be thinking about structure, especially for someone trying to tell a story for the first time. Instead of thinking about an order that we intuitively feel might be appealing, it is better to consider the logic that underpins the linear, chronological narrative. The more understandable and clear a story is in chronological order, the more opportunities the writer will have to create tension, intensity, and suspense for the reader by proposing a different, non-linear narrative organization—and, with it, a striking or original structure.
Those who know and master the fictional universe they have created are capable of reorganizing it as many times as they wish, strategically selecting the information and events that make up the story.
6. Identify the main character and the object of their desire
Every story has a hero, and every hero has desires, goals, or objectives.
We’ll almost certainly prefer to know what has happened to whom, because that way we feel closer to the event, we can identify with the story, and we feel empathy for the main character.
If we clearly identify the protagonist’s object of desire, we’ve already done half the work needed to identify the conflict in our story. And the simpler and more conscious that object of desire is for the protagonist, the simpler and more conscious it will be for us to understand what actions our character must take to try to achieve their desire—that is, to face the adventure.
7. Identify the antagonist(s)—whether characters or forces—who will prevent the protagonist from achieving their goal
If the protagonist of our story can get what he wants without any obstacles standing in his way, then there will be a character, but by no means a story. For there to be a story, there must be obstacles and resistance that stand in the protagonist’s way as he strives to fulfill his desire. These obstacles may be represented by other characters or by various circumstances that act as resistance in the protagonist’s journey toward achieving his goal.
Taking a very simplified view of Shakespeare’s work, in Romeo and Juliet the conflict is: Romeo loves Juliet and cannot have her because their respective families stand in the way. When does the story of Romeo and Juliet end?
At the moment the lovers are symbolically reunited in the parallel realm of the dead and the lovers—that is, the moment Romeo indirectly attains the object of his desire: Juliet. Recall: on the night Romeo is banished, he goes to Juliet and consummates their marriage; he then departs for Mantua, where he will await news from the priest who will marry them so he can be reunited with his beloved.
Meanwhile, Juliet’s father arranges her marriage to a man named Paris, without her consent. So Juliet, to avoid betraying her husband, devises a plan with the priest who is to marry them: she will drink a potion that will put her into a sleep so deep she will appear to be dead, until Romeo can reunite with her.
The priest sends a letter to Romeo to let him know of the ruse, but the letter never reaches its destination. Upon finding Juliet, supposedly dead, the young man buys a poison and drinks it by his beloved’s grave. When Juliet wakes up and sees him there, dead, she cannot bear the pain and kills herself with a dagger, so that she may be reunited with Romeo in the afterlife.
What would have happened if Romeo had been able to reach Juliet before she died, without any obstacles? Perhaps they would have gotten married, and before we knew it, they would have had a cute little apartment, a honeymoon in Hawaii, and many children—and that would have been the end of the story.
8. Identify the ways in which the characters in the story interact with the main character
Characters are not puppets that we can manipulate at will without any regard for their roles. Every character in a story must serve a specific purpose, whether it is to help the protagonist achieve their goal or to prevent them from doing so. If this is not the case, a character’s presence may seem irrelevant and distract the reader from their attempt to understand and make sense of the story.
9. Summarize the conflict presented in the story in just a few lines
According to William Layton’s school of drama, conflict can be identified by answering the question: Who wants what, and how will they try to get it? “Who” refers to the protagonist. “What” refers to the protagonist’s object of desire. “How” refers to the strategies and actions the protagonist will take in order to obtain their object of desire.
In a story, there must be a force that resists the protagonist’s drive. Without that force, the protagonist would very easily get what they want, which would destroy the drama. Conflict is the heart of stories; it is what makes them stories, providing them with action and emotion. Without conflict, there is no story. It’s that simple.
10. Identify the premise of the story
What inspired us to write a story? An apple fell on Newton’s head, and that led him to develop an entire theory of universal gravitation. The premise is the idea, the anecdote, the emotions, or the feelings that lead a person to want to turn that idea into a story. Identifying it helps us understand part of our purpose in wanting to turn that idea into a narrative, because even if we aren’t clear on it yet—and even if we don’t want to—we’ll be trying to say something with our story; that is, we’ll try to communicate an idea that, quite certainly, isn’t the one that inspired us to write. Newton didn’t leave behind the legacy that apples hurt men’s heads when they fall from trees by surprise, did he?
11. Identify the central theme of the story and distinguish it from the premise
According to Robert McKee, the central idea is the ultimate meaning of the story. We want the audience to leave our story convinced that it is a true metaphor for life. And the means by which we will succeed in bringing the audience to our perspective lie in the structure we give to our narrative. Storytelling is the creative demonstration of truth. A story is the living proof of an idea, the conversion of an idea into action. The structure of a story’s events will be the means we use first to express and then to demonstrate our idea… without explanation.
The more capable we are of shaping our work around a clear idea, the more meanings audiences will discover in our story as they take our idea and follow its implications into every aspect of their lives. Conversely, the more ideas we try to pack into a single story, the more they will inflate themselves, until it collapses into a tangled web of tangential notions that say nothing.
The central idea can be expressed in a single sentence that describes how and why life changes from the initial situation to the final one. It consists of two elements: the value and the cause. It identifies the positive or negative connotation of the story’s critical value at the climax of the final act, and identifies the main reason why that value has changed to reach its final state. The sentence composed of these two elements—value and cause—will express the story’s deeper meaning. The controlling idea is the purest form of narrative meaning, the how and why of the change, the vision of life that readers make part of their own lives.
Analyzing the ending we have chosen for our story, we must ask ourselves: as a result of this climactic action, what value—positive or negative—becomes part of my protagonist’s world? Then, stepping back from that climax and digging into the foundations, we will ask ourselves: what is the main reason, the force, or the means by which this value enters their world? The sentence we construct with the answers to these two questions will become our guiding idea.
In other words, the story gives us its own meaning; we do not dictate the meaning to the story. We do not derive the action from the idea, but rather the idea from the action. No matter what our inspiration may be, the story will ultimately fit its controlling idea into the final climax, and when that event reveals its meaning to us, we will experience one of the most intense moments in any author’s life: self-recognition. The narrative climax reflects our inner self, and if our story has emerged from the deepest sources of our ego, we will very often be surprised by what we see reflected in it.
It is called the controlling idea, not because we can control it (in which case it would be called a controlled idea), but because it controls the story.
12. Outline the story using a teaching approach
Still following McKee’s guidance, we must craft scenes that contradict our final statement with as much truth and energy as those that reinforce it. If our story ends with a counter-idea such as “Crime pays because…,” then we must strengthen the parts that lead the audience to believe that justice will prevail. If our story ends with an idea like “Justice triumphs because…,” we must emphasize those scenes that express “Crime pays, and it pays big time.” In other words, we must not present biased arguments.
The danger is this: when our guiding idea becomes the idea we must prove to the world and we design our story as an irrefutable testament to that idea, we embark on didacticism. Didacticism is, as we have already seen, that way of assigning positive or negative values to the narrative events or scenes in our story, which then allows us to strategically choose a new order, a new and exciting structure for telling the story while creating suspense and tension. We abuse didacticism to preach, and thus our stories become theses. The didactic approach is the result of a naive enthusiasm that leads us to believe fiction can be used, like a scalpel, to excise the cancers of society.
However, every story, whether we like it or not, conveys an idea, and it is well worth openly acknowledging which ideas keep our minds preoccupied, for such identification—as pedagogy shows us—will be necessary for narrative design.
The trick lies not in being slaves to our own ideas, but in immersing ourselves in life. But it is not a matter of seeing how far we can defend our controlling idea, but rather whether it will prevail when confronted by the powerful forces we marshal against it.
13. Choose the narrative events that are essential to telling the story and discard those that do not contribute to the tension, intensity, and suspense
If, before we even know what we’re going to tell, we’re already wondering which parts of the story we’ll use and which we won’t, we’ll just be going around in circles. You can’t write clearly if you don’t know, with the same clarity, what you’re going to write. Although there are those who prefer to dive into the blank page without knowing much…
The Mexican writer Juan Rulfo was one of them. He once wrote that knowing three things was enough for him to write a short story: setting, main character, and the main character’s mode of expression. From there, Rulfo would write nonstop for up to sixty pages without a second thought. Finally, as a master of the short story craft, after writing such a large amount of material, he would then set about cutting, cutting, and cutting until he was left with the four or five pages that would make up the finished work.
You can write in any of these ways. Any method is just one among thousands of possibilities. There is a creative process, a way of writing, for every writer, for every creator. And it is very important to identify what our own method is—the one that will lead us to construct stories in a way that is always enjoyable, fun, but above all, successful.
However, I believe that, in order to find our own method, it is necessary—as Rulfo did in his time and as many other creators have done alongside him—to know and master the technique without ever straying from the story.
I might even say that, once the initial phase of learning or training in narrative writing is complete, any method becomes a resource that can be dispensed with, either partially or entirely. That is why, though it may seem ironic, many creative writing teachers, upon finishing their courses, tell their students: “Now forget everything you’ve learned here and follow your own path.”
The ideal, indeed, is to follow one’s own path. But to do so with confidence, fulfillment, self-sufficiency, and success, it is necessary to take one step at a time: to know the technique, practice it, understand it, and grasp its effects within the text, its strengths and weaknesses—without ever neglecting the raw material without which all those tools would be useless: the story.
Having said that, I return to the idea with which I began this point: the selection of essential events. Every story, in order to be created, required a massive accumulation of data—material that will not necessarily prove useful for telling the story in written form, but which has been absolutely necessary for constructing the story, for bringing it out of our heads.
To create the story, it may have been necessary to write a long and, at times, tedious list of narrative events. That list is the result of a logical and organized thought process. The mind requires that logic to function, to express coherent ideas. And in real life, things usually happen at a pace and in a manner quite similar to how we depicted them in that initial list that forms the basis of the newly created story.
But narrative, fiction, is the opposite of real life and shuns tedium: it eliminates all the boring moments to show only—and strategically—the most interesting ones, the ones that lead the protagonist to face a series of actions and emotions.
Fiction is the opposite of real life, yet at the same time it seeks to represent it, even if only in a fantastical and magical realm. But something happens in fiction that doesn’t happen in real life: as readers, we choose to read a particular work of fiction because we’re interested in what it has to say; if that work is clumsy and slow (even if it may be technically superb) and tells us in four pages that a guy is climbing some stairs, and to tell us that it uses heavy-handed and pretentious rhetoric, we will likely lose our attraction or interest in the story and what it has to say: we will close the book.
In real life, if we happen to be following a guy who’s climbing some stairs at a snail’s pace, he’ll just seem like a guy climbing stairs very slowly and we’ll get frustrated, but if we have no choice, we’ll wait until he clears the way so we can continue on our way.
The narrative, then, must eliminate all the boring moments from a story, using a single criterion for deletion: Is this narrative event indispensable for telling the story I want to tell?
Mind you, I’m not saying “tell,” I’m saying “narrate,” which isn’t the same thing. Because to tell the story, it was necessary to include more than one inconsequential narrative event, but that won’t be the case when narrating it.
If we put each of the narrative events that make up the created story to the test and determine their level of significance in the story to be told, we will already be refining a plot, one or more structural proposals, and we will begin to design a clear strategy for telling that story with intensity, suspense, and tension.
14. Propose a structure based on pedagogical principles. Develop the argument
Structure is usually a more or less inevitable consequence of narrative technique—that is, of clearly identifying the positive or negative significance of each of the events we have determined to be essential to telling the story.
For the novice storyteller, the linear order of a story will most likely be the most convenient temporal or causal framework for telling the story, since that is the order in which they created it and they are familiar with that logical and causal system. That’s fine.
Linear structures are the most commonly used, and contrary to popular belief, using them is not unoriginal. Remember that if we are just starting out, we cannot demand too much of ourselves. Telling a story in chronological order will be a great experience and will most certainly help us understand the causal structure of all stories.
Now, if the structure resulting from the didactic application to our story doesn’t quite satisfy us, we can propose one or more different—that is, non-linear—structures to make our narrative a more striking technical exercise (which in no way makes our story any more or less interesting).
To do this, all we need is chance and a pair of scissors. Cutting out each of the essential events that make up the story, shuffling them, and then arranging them in a random order allows us to create striking and original structural proposals.
Any type of structure, whether linear or not, can be called a plot. The plot is a second strategic ordering of the narrative events. The first, let us recall, was the chronological one.
The random organization of the story’s essential narrative events could result in a wide variety of structures, all of them interesting.
What should we do next with these possibilities? We must analyze them. Answer the question: Can I tell my story using this new order?
In my view, the best approach is to choose the structural or plot framework that makes the act of storytelling easiest for us, especially if this is our first attempt. The more difficult we make the task, the longer it will take us to finish it, and the less we will learn from it.
However, it’s worth noting that if we have plenty of patience and are willing to put in the effort, it’s enough to simply choose the structural or plot proposal that most appeals to and excites us. Once we’ve established the order in which the narrative events now unfold—which, obviously, will no longer be chronological—we must consider how to strategically pace the information from our fictional universe to generate suspense, tension, and intensity.
Let me try to explain this better: a chronological order forces us to use a specific logical framework, in which B is the consequence of A, and C is the consequence of A plus B, and so on. The challenge posed by a non-linear structure is that the causality of events is disrupted because their temporal order is altered. Event A in the story, in chronological order, will no longer be A in the non-chronological order but will become, for example, Z. This means that the logic of sequence is disrupted, forcing us to rethink what information and details we will withhold to generate doubt and curiosity in the reader, and what information we will share with them. It is not the same to tell a story that begins with A and ends with Z as it is to tell a story that begins with Z and ends with A. Each of these orders involves the use of its own logical system and follows a different causal system.
15. Develop and get to know the characters
It is very important to have as clear a picture as possible of the characteristics of the main and secondary characters, so it is recommended that you create character profiles before (if possible) or at the same time as you begin writing the text.
A character is constructed based on the details and information provided by the narrator (note: the narrator, not the author). A character is not constructed in isolation but is part of the constellation of the fictional world; that is, a character is defined, above all, by the relationships they have with other characters and their actions, by how their actions affect others, and by how the actions of others affect them. Characters are unique individuals who do specific things in a given space and over a specific period of time.
Character profiles should contain information on the following aspects: name, physical attributes, origin, education and sociocultural background, sexuality, religious and political beliefs, motivations, dreams, hopes, problems, and conflicts. The writer must know more about the characters than they do about themselves. On one occasion, a teacher recommended not starting to write until you know what the characters have “in their pants pockets.”
16. Think about the setting
The setting of a story has four dimensions: time period, duration, location, and level of conflict. Is the story set in the present day? In another historical era? In a hypothetical future? How much of the characters’ lives does the story span? Decades? Years? Months? Days? What is the specific geography of the story? In which city does it take place? On which streets? In which buildings? On the summit of which mountain? On the other side of which desert? On a journey to which planet?
The political, economic, ideological, biological, and psychological forces of society—regardless of whether they are external, as in institutions, or internal, at the level of individuals—shape events just as influentially as the period, duration, or location do. The level of conflict is the position the story occupies within the hierarchy of human struggles.
17. Choose the type of narrator
There are various types of narrators, and the use of each one has a different effect on the reader, drawing them closer to or pushing them further away from the story. The narrator can be a fictional character who never becomes involved in the story they tell, or they can be the protagonist themselves. It is very important to understand the differences and the various technical effects of narrators, so much so that these technical elements have given rise to an entire genre of writing: narrative. But that is a topic that requires its own, in-depth article.
However, I would like to elaborate on an important aspect regarding the appropriate choice of narrator. Often, those seeking to write a story are inspired by or start from a personal or familiar anecdote that leads them to want to disguise themselves by using a specific narrator, in order to mislead the reader and make them believe that the story told has absolutely nothing to do with the author of the story. This happens because the reader often fails to distinguish between the narrator and the author, which are always distinct concepts. One is a fictional entity, and the other is a real, flesh-and-blood person.
The novice writer lives in constant fear of exposing himself to others, of laying bare his own life in the stories he writes, leading him, for example, to use a third-person narrator to recount an anecdote that happened to him.
Readers are generous and forgiving, especially adults, but ultimately they are not fools, and when we treat them like fools, we run the risk of losing them forever. A reader will always be able to recognize when an author uses this technique as a mask.
I do not intend to delve deeper into the subject here.
Suffice it to say that to choose the right narrator for a story, we must consider how we personally engage with the story—not because this means we reveal more or less of ourselves to the reader, but because it allows us to tell the story in the best possible way, imbuing it with authenticity, energy, and emotion.
Storytelling involves self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-esteem, because through our stories—whether we like it or not—we reveal part of our own personality and our own way of understanding and seeing the world. If we don’t have enough self-esteem to defend our ideas, we won’t have enough self-esteem to share them with anyone either, and we’ll easily let criticism get us down or distract ourselves with torturous thoughts about how well others write and how poorly we do.
In short, to tell a story and choose the right narrator for our story, we need to be true to ourselves, respect and understand ourselves, as well as know how each type of narrator works on a technical level.
The bulk of a writer’s work isn’t writing, but thinking and imagining. Anyone who keeps this clear in mind will always be able to finish what they set out to write and do so clearly, without getting tangled up. The rest is just writing.
This was originally published in Spanish at https://israelpintor.com/claves-para-narrar-historias-exitosas/ and translated with DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
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