Brown Eyes, Black Ink (An Anti-Blog)

How To Tell A Story

How to Tell a Story

Writing is easy. Most people can do it with their eyes closed. We can thank the ubiquity of the qwerty keyboard for that. Writing something worth reading, however, is neither a simple nor common skill. It's closer to walking a tightrope, over a highway, at rush hour.

Shut your eyes if you dare.

As a show of restraint, I'll limit this post to one metaphor, that of the lonely skywalker, and his slow tango high above the asphalt. It shouldn't be hard. I plan to bludgeon it to death.

1. Start with a bang

But that's jumping the gun. We're here to learn about writing, and we've already made mistakes. This is far too late for a proper intro. Let's just throw it out there anyway, empty our pockets, and get it over with.

What makes a good story? Believe it or not, the same things that make it hard to tell. Here are five tips to write your best one yet.

There. Feeling hooked? Didn't think so.

2. Create direction with a central theme

Kindly turn your attention, since I cannot, back to our lonely skywalker. Floating above the morning traffic, his sheer existence makes a mockery of fear, mortal danger, and the employed.

Then again, his commute is shorter than yours.

Amazing how thin that tightrope is. If not for the grooves in his feet, you'd swear he forgot to hang one up. They say gravity doesn't work the same at that height, you know? Some bosh about relativity, tidal forces, and frames of reference.

All I know is a rope ain't as tight in the middle as it is on the ends.

3. Raise the stakes at the midpoint

People are stepping out of their vehicles to watch now. Not much danger in that, though. Once you hit the thickest part of rush hour, the cars start walking to work.

Poor guy is barely halfway across.

Up to this point, no one would have blamed him for quitting. He would have made the front page of the water cooler, and been yesterday's news by tonight. But there's no going home now.

The going is getting tough.

He wobbles more than slightly, then catches himself, but not before someone gasps.

"Shh!" someone yells from two lanes across.

It's that quiet on the highway.

The good news? It only gets easier from here. Surely.

4. Keep building

Isn't it odd how some phrases don't make sense once you say them aloud?

Consider, for example: over the hill.

You've made the grueling ascent, endured the steepest paths, and dragged yourself to the crest over wounded knees. You're near the end. Best of all, it's only downhill from here. Except you aren't.

The top of the mountain is only halfway. And you nearly died getting this far.

If you're about to tell me that was a second metaphor, don't. Over the hill is an idiom. And so are you.

Oh look, our skywalker is almost at the end! Funny... he wasn't shaking when he was almost at the start.

5. Stick the landing

I did tell you I was going to bludgeon him to death, didn't I?

Oh, I suppose it was a while ago, and we were skipping ahead. A little foreshadowing never hurt anyone. But now, in the most literal sense, we are exactly where the rubber meets the road.

Shut your eyes if you dare.

Conclusion: good, wasn't it?

Admittedly, I lied about one thing. Writing is easy, but telling a good story is nothing like walking a tightrope. If it was, no one would ever do it. We would have lost our imagination in the same genetic pool we left our tails in.

What's truly difficult is earning someone's attention again, and again, and again. Page after page. Line to line. Word by word.

But – if by some blue moonlit miracle – they're still here at the end, then you've done something right. As a treat, you may lean in and whisper: Gotcha! Knew what I was doing the whole time.

The only people who could call you a liar didn't make it.