Craft Lists are a major device of The Writer’s Interface.
We have to say in looking at writing software and writing craft books, they mostly say too little rather than too much. This means that other people’s craft books emphasize a few key writing craft ideas and thus are over simplified.
This author studied over fifty writing craft books and used over ten writing softwares. They were all in error in acting as if they had the answer to writing a successful novel.
The biggest thing wrong with most marketing copy for craft books and writing software is that they state in a variety of ways that if you get and use their product you will write, not just a good novel, but a best-selling novel.
Now, come on!
A best-selling novel is usually one that is a complex and highly organized affair using hundreds of writing craft tools in a coherent way to provide the reader with a thrilling and informative experience.
If a best selling novel has such complexity, does it not stand to reason that writing software should also be complex and comprehensive?
Don’t be fooled as a writer into thinking that you can get away with doing a few writing craft things well, such as writing dialogue. In truth, many published writers do not do dialog well, so even this is hardly a good example for what is out there.
An analysis of the first chapter presented of novels just published and reviewed in the Sunday New York Times shows that nine out of ten of these should never have been published and will not make significant money for author and publisher.
They just don’t have it in writing and story-telling complexity.
Which is to say that with The Writer’s Interface around fifty craft lists are presented for use, like for types of flashbacks and how they function in story-telling.
METHOD
Our method is that you read a craft list in TWI and then you use the list to make your own list in that subject area that fits your particular story. Then you translate your own craft list into story elements that are in the garb of your own story.
Above The Law. Seagal is to be an action hero. But what kind of action hero?
Make a list of all you know about action heros. If you can’t manage that, make a list of actual action heros from thriller novels and movies.
Looking at some of Steven Seagal’s movies, we see him play any of the following:
- hero avenger avenging the killing of his son
- environmental investigator who not only discovers the bad guys polluting the environment but also eliminates them and their dirty work.
- good guy policeman who must act like a criminal and be in prison to ferret out corrupt officials and save the good gal judge. Sort of a savior archetype who manages to save one of the crooks also.
So far we have in the Seagal roles three types of heros in these examples.
- hero avenger
- hero investigator
- hero savior
From another Seagal movie another Story Key Moment was when he threw the vice President of the United States into the river from a bridge in order to save him.
In terms of craft, know the type of Story Hero you are creating and create also intense Story Key Moments that vividly illustrate the Story Theme.
With Seagal films it is the Story Theme that illustrates a major Life Theme that heroic, brave effort wins out over death, destruction and evil.
We ask, does it?
In story such a theme is illustrated to work every time.
In life maybe such a story theme does not work out that often.
Did you know that half the homicides, half the murders, are not solved? The news media likes to present sensationally the times that a murder is solved. The media reports in great detail the accused in court trial and the eventual conviction, and even execution.
News is drama. The media do not give equal attention to all the unsolved murder cases, do they? What is it?
Here are some statistics taken from Internet sources. The conviction rates are given for the United States and England. What it says is that one out of two murderers get away with murder in these two countries. It says also that only one out of one hundred burglars get caught and convicted.
* 50% for murder in both countries
* 20% for rape in the United States and 10% in England
* 2% for robbery in the United States and less than 1% in England
* 2% for assault in the United States and 1% in England
* 1% for burglary in the United States and less than 1% in England
* 2% for motor vehicle theft in the United States and 1% in England.
What would we say to the effectiveness of a work force in any other area of life?
What if only fifty percent of all surgeries are successful for the patient being operated on?
What if only one teacher in a hundred successfully educates students to new knowledge and skills?
What if only fifty percent of truck drivers drive well enough to keep their trucks on the road at all times?
Would we not see a lot of truck crashes on the side of the road?
WRITING FICTION AS A REMEDY FOR WHAT FAILS YOU IN LIVING LIFE
Our statistics above are to show you that a Great Story is not the same as an intense story acted out in life.
What novel or movie script could be written when the story's murderers get away with murder half the time by story’s end?
Hitler had millions of people killed before he himself was forced to die.
Were those millions of German soldiers that probably averaged more than one kill per soldier prosecuted for murder and executed as a just punishment, an eye for an eye?
No! Only Nazi Germany’s leaders were executed as a symbolic execution accorded all German soldiers who went to other countries and killed their people.
It is of course an alarming disgrace that so many killers were let free with no consequences for their acts. At least the Russians imprisoned German soldiers for years under harsh conditions while the British and Americans let the German soldiers go in a false glorification of the German soldier as a great fighter and not the killer of human beings he was.
But in Great Story Telling we must do better than humans usually do in life. Thus Seagal is usually responsible for many deaths of the bad guys in his movies.
In thriller movies the killers are found and convicted and often killed by the heroic good guys.
For us victimized, ordinary human beings we need our story heroes to compensate for us what is not happening in real life.
Did the Allies continue the Second World War another year in going after every last German soldier or police person who had aided in the killing of six million Jews, and then millions more Russian soldier prisoners?
No, the Allies did not bring justice to those human beings who killed other human beings during the Second World War.
Millions of the Jews killed were old people, women and children. Why did the killers of these people go unpunished? Why did the million German railway workers go unpunished who did the actual transporting of captured Jews to the concentration camps in cattle cars, not giving these Jews toilets, food and water, so that many of them died in anguish in the ten or twelve days of transit.
Thus a professional writer should know the difference between story reality and real life reality and write stories that compensate the real world in the reader’s and viewer’s mind.
While it is not emphasized that Seagal is of Jewish background, he kept his Jewish name, just as another famous movie actor, Jackie Chan, kept his Chinese name.
Psychologically then, Steven Seagal, as an action hero killing bad guys, is the Golem archetype in myth and story telling. The Golem arose in Jewish literature as a super strong dark hero that saves Jews from destruction from anti-Jewish attacks.
Steven Seagal is Golem awakened, the Savior and the Avenger.
Thus we are making ties between the reality of writer and readers and story-reality. This is how complex and real a successful novel or movie is in its craft structure.
A WRITING CRAFT POINT
The statistics for success in publishing novels is something like one out of ten, or three out of ten, novels published makes good money for author and publisher. For the nine out of ten, if the publisher knew that the novel would not be successful they probably would not have published it.
This means that nine out of ten published novel writers are not successful novel writers.
A false mark of success is getting published by a regular publisher.
The mark of publishing success for your novel can only be that your published novel gets lots of readers and you get at least enough real money in royalties to pay you well for the time writing a successful novel, and something in addition for all the time it has taken you to write some novels that never were that good or successful.
Thus we say here over and over, you as a serious writer have to develop serious writing craft knowledge and ability.
The Writer’s Interface gives you some of that knowledge and the ability to plan the writing of your story, but it does not give you all. You must educate yourself as well in writing craft and story-telling craft.
You cannot simply sit down and write.
