The Biggest Writing Myth Holding You Back
Lesson 2 from: FAST CLASS: Wired for Story: How to Become a Story GeniusLisa Cron
The Biggest Writing Myth Holding You Back
Lesson 2 from: FAST CLASS: Wired for Story: How to Become a Story GeniusLisa Cron
Lessons
Class Introduction
08:21 2The Biggest Writing Myth Holding You Back
06:35 3What is a Story?
13:01 4All Stories Begin in Medias Res
09:54 5The "What If?"
07:02 6The Who
14:19 7The Why
08:50 8The Worldview
10:24Lesson Info
The Biggest Writing Myth Holding You Back
the biggest writing myth that's holding you back, what has been stopping you because when I said a minute ago that writers are the most powerful people on the planet. The reason for that is because story is the most powerful communication tool in the world. We think in story we make sense of the world through narrative. Story is actually hardwired into the architecture of our brain. You have the power to change how your reader sees the world, how they see themselves, what they go out and do in the world simply by giving them a glimpse of life, letting them experience life through your protagonist skin as she navigates that tough story problem that you've set out for her. But as with most things, there's a catch, and the catch is you have to have actually told a story, and that is my topic. Always, it's not writing per se. It is story itself, and you might think, but wait a minute. You just said we were wired for story. You just said it's part of our like standard operating equipment. W...
hy do we have to talk about that? I've known what a story was, since I was three years old. Nobody had to teach me that. I want to learn how to write one. Why do we need to talk about story? And the answer is, as the great Southern writer Flannery O'Connor once quipped during an interview, she said, I find most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one, and I can't tell you how true that is. I have worked with writers and manuscript for as I said, for my career, which spans more decades than I actually want to admit to being alive. And in that time I can't tell you how many Manu scripts I've read, or if you asked me, what's it about? I'd say it's about pages. I have no idea. It's just a bunch of things that happen. And the question is, why? Why does that happen when so many of us, especially now, really, one right? We've all got a story in us. Why do we make that mistake? And the answer is because everything you've been taught about writing is wrong, and I know that that is an incendiary statement. So let's break that down. Let's think about that for a minute, okay? When people talk about writing Well, what is that taken to me? It tends to be taken to mean that you're gonna learn. Teoh, come up with a really interesting premise. You're gonna come up with an interesting character. You're gonna learn how to write a scene. You're gonna learn how to write really scintillating dialogue. You're going to learn to write lovely, luscious pros. You're gonna learn to write really beautiful telling metaphors. Then you're going to Sprinkle in a lot of sensory details because that's what they tell you. Brings a story to life. And once you've mastered all of those separate elements, then you're gonna unleash your creativity. And somehow by magic, if you're the talent, the story is going to appear, and that is not how it works. Story writing and all of that technique is the handmaiden of story, not the other way around. It is the story itself that gives the writing that power. There's only one thing this story needs to dio from the very first sentence, and that is it needs to instil a sense of urgency in your reader that makes them not want to know what happens next but literally biologically have to know what happens next. The reality is that story Trump's beautiful writing every time. In fact, if you had to pick between the two go for story, why do we believe it's a about the beautiful writing? And the answer is, one of the answers, anyway, is because the first job of an effective story is to a nested ties the part of your brain that knows it is a story when you are lost in a story. Think of story as literally the world's first virtual reality. You literally are there when you're lost in a story. The last thing you can dio or want to do, for that matter, is to figure out how the writer has created that sense of reality. In fact, they've done functional M. R. I studies that show when you're lost in the story, the same areas of your brain light up that would light up if you were doing what that main characters during which, which might explain 50 shades of grey. But the point is, you really are there. It literally stories literally put us biologically on a time out. We leave our actual reality. And now we're in the world of the story. And I know that you've probably had that experience. I know I have. You know, it's been a really long day. You have a big day tomorrow, you're exhausted. But you think I'll just read one chapter, everyone chapter, and then I'm gonna go to sleep, and then you read the chapter and it's got that cliffhanger thing they've got at the end of the chapter. You okay with one more page and then you keep reading and then you keep reading. And by that time, the notion the concept of tired has become it's something that you understand the definition, but you can't feel it anymore. And then you think, who parked a Mack truck outside my window? And they've got the bright lights shining and I'm calling 311 and I'm gonna have them towed away. And then you realize it's not a Mack truck at all. It's the sun because you stayed up all night reading because you were so involved in the world of the story. You're gonna be exhausted the next day. It was kind of worth it, wasn't it? That's what stories do so we cannot see how that is done. But the killer thing is in that state. There still are two things that we can see, and the first thing is the writing. We could always see the writing. The other thing that you can see when you're reading is the plot. Because actually site is our most developed sense. I know they say that that sent, you know, smell is the most evocative sense. It'll take you right there. But site is actually our most developed sense, in fact, and you've also probably when you hear about somebody who's lost their sight, another hearing gets more and more and more acute. It's not like without the site that's now done something to their hearing. We always had that power, but we rely on site. So the so the two things we've got our the language and the plot, which we are seeing in our mind's eye, which leaves us with the notion that, okay, if I want to become a successful writer, what I need to do is get really, really good at writing, come up with a rip roaring plot, and now I'll have a story, and again that is not how it works. So how does it work
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Ratings and Reviews
Marianthi Tzanakakis
I was introduced to writing tools and techniques, I didn't know existed. Now I feel I have a much better grasp in what it takes to write a truly great novel.
user-dbf56b
Oh my gosh, i took so, so many notes. Despite it being a quick and dirty version of the class, I figured out where my main character was stuck and now everything makes sooo much more sense. I'm planning on going back and doing the full length course to see what else comes. Lisa is a spectacular tutor. I loved this course!!