How to Write a Better Story

This article is an excerpt from Don's latest book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. It's really quite good. Don will be speaking at Catalyst West Coast. You should consider coming to hear his talk. It will probably change your life.

A lot of people think a writer has to live in order to write, has to meet people and have a rich series of experiences or his work will become dull. But that is drivel. It's an excuse a writer uses to take the day off, or the week or the month off for that matter. The thinking is, if we go play Frisbee in the park we're going to have a thousand words busting out of us when we get back to the house. We're going to write all kinds of beautiful prose about playing Frisbee. It's never worked for me. Annie Dillard, who won the Pulitzer while still in her mother's womb, wrote one of her books in a concrete cell. She says most of what a writer needs to really live they can find in a book.

People who live good stories are too busy to write about them. Nobody ever strapped a typewriter to the back of an elephant and wrote a novel while hunting wild game. Nobody except for Hemmingway. But let's not talk about Hemmingway.

I only say this because part of the reason my life had become uninspiring is I'd sat down to earn a living. Literally, I sat in a chair and typed words. And that's fine, because I like the worked, and it pays the rent. But Jordan was right: my life was a blank page, and all I was putting on the page were words. I didn't want to live in words anymore; I wanted to live in sweat and pain. I wanted some make-out sessions and perhaps a little trouble with the law. I wanted to find my dad, if for no other reason than to mark it off my to-do list. It kept bugging me.

But the want was not enough. My desire to live a better story didn't motivate me to do anything. I kept sitting down and writing more and more boring words into my life. And when I wasn't sitting down writing boring words, I was sitting down watching television. Steven King calls the television "the glass teat," and I was suckling on it for all its sugar. I was licking the glass and pawing at it like a kitten.

...

Here's the truth about telling stories with your life. It's going to sound like a great idea, and you are going to get excited about it, and then when it comes time to do the work, you're not going to want to do it. It's like that with writing books, and it's like that with life. People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen. But joy costs pain.

A general rule in creating stories is that characters don't want to change. They must be forced to change. Nobody wakes up and starts chasing a bad guy or dismantling a bomb unless something forces them to do so. The bad guys just robbed your house and are running off with your last roll of toilet paper, or the bomb is strapped to your favorite cat. It's that sort of thing that gets a character moving.

The rule exists in story because it's a true thing about people. Humans are designed to seek comfort and order, and so if they have comfort and order, they tend to plant themselves, even if their comfort isn't all that comfortable. And even if they secretly want for something better.

...

So about a year ago a friend from Alabama e-mailed to say he was flying to Peru to hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. He asked if I wanted to come and invited me to invite any of my friends too. I didn't research the hike or anything, and I was certainly in no shape to climb mountains, I hadn't seen a gym for years. But the next week at the Lucky Lab I wanted to sound impressive, so I said I was thinking of going to Peru to hike the Inca Trail and wondered if anybody else wanted to come. This girl, the one who hadn't given me any signals, said she'd always wanted to do that hike, and a friend of hers said the same thing. And right then and there they said they wanted to come. "It's a date," I said, and got an odd look from across the table.

By the time I got home from the Lab, the girl had e-mailed confirming she was serious. So I e-mailed my friend in Alabama and said there would be three of us from Portland joining him and his friends in Peru. I think I was so excited about the girl that I forgot that I was in no shape to climb mountains. And the next day I looked up the Inca Trail on the internet. The first article I found said the hike was extremely difficult, and a person should be in good physical shape before arriving in Peru. I read a description of the hike, and it turns out the Inca Trail climbs to 14,000 feet, then back down, then back up to 12,000 feet, then all the way back down to the Sacred Valley above which Machu Picchu sits in the clouds. I thought perhaps the warning about physical fitness were exaggerated, so I googled "Inca Trail" and "excruciating" and read about fifty personal accounts of self-inflicted Peruvian torture. I actually read warning from people saying stay away, that even if you are a runner, the trail is extremely difficult. What in the world have I gotten myself into? I wondered. But it was too late. Without knowing it, I'd created an "inciting incident." I'd told my friend I'd go, and I'd invited a girl I wanted to date. I was in a story.

James Scott Bell says an inciting incident is a doorway through which the protagonist cannot return. I didn't know I was doing it at the time, but I had certainly walked through a doorway. I was an overweight, out-of-shape guy who wanted to get into shape and date a specific girl. I'd walked through a doorway that would force me both to get into shape and to interact with her. I suppose I didn't have to get into shape, but if I didn't, the story would be a tragedy. And nobody wants to live a tragedy. I'd found my motivation. I joined a gym the next day.

7 Comments »

1. As a writer myself I can relate to the Inca hike trail (and not only because I have literally gone hinking without being physically fit to do it). I was so excited when I decided to write my first book, and it went ok the first weeks, or months. But it took me three years to actually finish it.
   However I believe that “diligent hands bring wealth” (Proverbs 10:4).
   So we must make ourselves change and move to do something, in my case, I looked for a reason why I wanted to write, and what finishing my book would mean. That motivated me to finish writing the story.

   Comment by Andrea - Feb 08, 2010 @ 11:06 AM

2. Don’s illustration of the Inca hike is an apt description for my journey of writing my first book. Am now just finishing it and looking back at the journey - seven years and almost as many retirements and un-retirements as Brett Farve…finally getting ‘er done. For an energetic starter like me, this has been one of the most difficult things to complete. Reminds me of training for a marathon…the race is won not on race day but during the grueling 18 mile long run when it’s raining sideways, 45 degrees and the legs are feeling like stumps. Fortunately like running, I’ve have been blessed with amazing epiphanies along the way that have kept me going. I echo what Andrea say’s however, the difference ultimately was answering the big why. As to what Victor Frankl said, “those who have a why to live for can endure almost any how…”

   Comment by Rick - Feb 11, 2010 @ 11:22 AM

3. I believe the journey Christ has put me on is a journey of strength in knowing there must be a GOD. It`s a journey that started at age 4 & today age 55.

   At age 4 polio and paralyzed for 4 months, age 6 2 yr brother electrocuted right in front of my eyes, age 16 mother & father went through a bitter divorce and my mother attempted suicide 4 times(not GODS timing), age 17 father commits suicide, age 18 got into drugs, from age 18 to 30 tried to become a professional golfer(not GODS plan), married at age 30 & on our honeymoon wife has mental break down, I DID NOT KNOW CHRIST YET, and after coming to CHRIST because of wifes issues life started changing. From 1995 till today WOW has GOD done so many amazing things in my life.

   So my question is what does someone do with all this and how does one write a book about it. I believe this tough journey has a purpose, but I have tried to get folks to listen. I think sometimes most think it`s not possible endure that much in ones life.

   Scott

   Comment by Scott Baggett - Feb 11, 2010 @ 12:31 PM

4. It’s amazing how the act of actually writing a story correlates so well to the story we live.  I too am in the process of writing my first story.  I hope one day it does well in the public, but really I’m writing it for me. 

   God and I have had many discussions about how I can be a good starter, but how I often lose steam for things I was once so excited about.  When I first started thinking about writing this story I was, of course, excited, and then about a month into it I started worrying that I would do what I often do and quit.  So I asked God to either help that excitement to die down sooner rather than later, or to help me to write it.  Well not a minute later I had a breakthrough idea on where to take the tale, and then more and more ideas have come ever since.  I still have to make myself focus from time to time, but I’m about 7 months into it & have only gained more steam as God reveals the story to me in big ways and small, and disciplines, teaches, and encourages me through it as well.

   This article/excerpt is so motivating not only to keep writing, but to live as I hear what you & others have gone through. 

   PS- I totally hear you on the tv comment!  Hence a decision to give it up for lent this year!

   Comment by Brandy - Feb 11, 2010 @ 01:27 PM

5. Great article. Motivation is key and finding it is tough. Opening the space in which motivation can intoxicate you is even tougher.

   Thanks for the inspiration.

   (BTW, pease tell me that “Hemingway” is spelled correctly in the book….)

   Comment by Helen - Feb 11, 2010 @ 05:07 PM

6. This article hit me in a soft spot! I agree with the authors feelings in that his job was becoming only a means to pay the bills. I often talk about how I want to change my life/career but soon find myself toiling at the same job over and over because it has become comfortable. I firmly believe that we can become imprisoned by our own comfort and the longer we choose to be imprisoned, the harder it is to break-out. Through the bars of our prison, we can see the story that is waiting for us to enter and experience if we can just find our motivation as the author did.

   Comment by John - Feb 11, 2010 @ 10:51 PM

7. I’m teaching a class at church based on this amazing book and we all had to plot the highs and lows of the last ten years, then we plotted them together on a white board and saw how everyone had been at different places through the years, yet God was there through all of it and here we were, today, in one room - all together - and God was here too and had brought all of us to that very day to be with each other for a reason.

   It was pretty cool. 

   It seems that we are meant to write into each others’ stories and be in community. The motivation and accountability work better when we have interactions that require commitment.

   Lovely writing and powerful thoughts.

   Comment by Francine Phillips - Feb 18, 2010 @ 11:41 AM

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