Rapid Story Development #4: Teams and Ensembles—How to Develop Stories with Large Casts: Rapid Story Development, #4

By Jeff Lyons

There are few topics in the field of story development that are less discussed than how to develop stories with large casts. Stories with large casts of characters pose specific challenges to writers and require particular skill sets and tools if they are going to contribute to the telling of a story, rather than detract. Alas, most writers have no clue how even to begin writing multiple-character, stories and so they fall back on the only advice "out there" in the consensus writing community: just do it, just write, the characters will write themselves. Well, characters never write themselves, and the more of them you have, the more complex story development becomes. This fourth e-book in the "Rapid Story Development Series" tackles the problem of multi-character stories, teams, and ensembles and gives you the craft knowledge and tools you need to master developing stories with large casts successfully.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Storygeeks Press
• Release date: Oct 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781732601239

Book preview

Rapid Story Development #4

RAPID STORY DEVELOPMENT #4

TEAMS AND ENSEMBLES—HOW TO DEVELOP STORIES WITH LARGE CASTS

JEFF LYONS

Storygeeks Press

GET THE FIRST IN THE SERIES

RAPID STORY DEVELOPMENT #1: COMMERCIAL PACE IN FICTION AND CREATIVE NONFICTION

AVAILABLE ONLINE AT ALL MAJOR BOOKSELLERS

Rapid Story Development: Teams and Ensembles—How to Develop Stories with Large Casts

Copyright © 2018 by Jeff Lyons

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval without permission in writing from the author.

ISBN: 978-1-7326012-2-2 (e-book)

ISBN: 978-1-7326012-4-6 (Print)

Cover art by Jeff Lyons

Interior design by Jeff Lyons

Web: www.jefflyonsbooks.com

First Edition

Printed in the U.S.A

DEDICATION

This is for loyal readers past, present, and future.

Because without you, what’s the point?

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank the following individuals for their support, help, encouragement, patience, infinite patience, faith, trust, belief, handouts, generosity, and small petty crimes undertaken to promote the success of this book.

Charlene DeLong, Cary Shott, Kimberley Heart, and David Allan—thank you for being trusted beta readers, editors, and telling me the truth.

Gwen Hayes—for her permissions to reprint her romance genre story beats taken from her book, Romancing the Beat: Story Structure in Romance Novels. Contact her and check out her work at: gwenhayes.com/books/nonfiction/

ALSO BY JEFF LYONS

FICTION (Storygeeks Press)

Jack Be Dead: Revelation

13 Minutes

Terminus Station

The Stain (coming)

NONFICTION

Anatomy of a Premise Line: How to Use Story and Premise Development for Writing Success (Focal Press)

Rapid Story Development: How to Use the Enneagram-Story Connection to Become a Master Storyteller (Focal Press)

Rapid Story Development: The Storyteller’s Toolbox Volume One (Storygeeks Press)

Story Development Glossary & User Guide (Storygeeks Press - coming)

RAPID STORY DEVELOPMENT EBOOK SERIES (Storygeeks Press)

#1: Commercial Pace in Fiction and Creative Nonfiction

#2: Bust the Top Ten Creative Writing Myths to Become a Better Writer

#3: Ten Questions Every Writer Needs to Ask Before They Hire a Consultant

#4: Teams and Ensembles: How to Write Stories with Large Casts

#5: The Moral Premise–How to Build a Bulletproof Narrative Engine for Any Story

#6: Seven Steps to Busting Writer’s Block Forever

CONTENTS

Story Function Versus Story Form

The Team Story

The Ensemble Story

Team & Ensemble Stories

How Do You Know When You Have a Team or Ensemble Story?

The Gray Zone

Conclusion

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Appendix 3

Also by Jeff Lyons

About the Author

Get the First in the Series

Author Offer—Anatomy of a Premise Line

STORY FUNCTION VERSUS STORY FORM

Idon’t think there is a single creative person in the world who has not heard the phrase form follows function. It was the famous mentor of the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis H. Sullivan, who first expressed the notion that form follows function, in an artistic context, in his 1896 article The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered:

It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law. ¹

Just as a chair (form) expresses the purpose of sitting (function), just as a house (form) expresses the feeling of home (function), and just as an open space (form) expresses the experience of freedom, so a story (form) expresses the act of storytelling (function). 

Form and function in creative writing are different things, but they are self-supporting, meaning they each make the other more effective. You cannot tell a story without it taking some shape, be that shape a dance, or painting, or mime act, or sculpture, or song, or even the written word. The literary forms that stories take, i.e., the physical expression of storytelling in the world of literature, have a technical name: genre.

Genres are story forms, i.e., agreed upon conventions of artistic composition and stylistic expression. Storytelling is story function, i.e., the natural purpose or final intention of a story. Genre and storytelling exist in a balanced and cooperative state such that storytelling is made more powerful and effective by genre in transferring the experience of being human from person to person. That is the central purpose (function) of storytelling; it is how we teach one another about what it means to be human. Story forms are purely in service to the function of telling a story.

Genre forms can exist on their own, but in the absence of a story to tell genres tend to become empty shells and typically deliver lackluster and dead experiences for readers or viewing audiences. A genre without a story is like romance without love. As a reader or movie lover, you have experienced this. Who hasn’t read that mediocre novel, or watched that dull movie and walked away feeling like the experience was one dimension, dramatically flat, and unoriginal? Okay, maybe there were lots of zombies, and car chases; or aliens, robots, and superheroes, but—been there, done that. Without a story, genre loses its significance. When something loses its significance, it loses its ability to impact or change us. Thus in the right hands, genres can elevate, inspire, augment, deepen, and generally make better any story to which it is in service. In the wrong hands, genre may entertain and distract, but it will never find the higher calling that comes from telling a story. This is not bad or wrong, but it is not storytelling.

SO WHAT? CAN’T I JUST HAVE FUN?

Of course, you can. In fact, I would hope that you have fun with everything you write. But not every author sets out to change the world, sometimes they write just for the fun of it. But herein lies the reason for this discussion. When you write, do you set out with an intention from the start? Other than to finish, what is your plan? Do you have one? Do you have any clue about what it is you are saying? And if you have nothing to say, then what is the objective?

We are taught in the consensus school of creative writing that you should just go for it. Writers write, so you don’t have to have a plan. You don’t have to know what your message is (if you have one). You just have to put your butt in a chair and do it. Good stories write themselves. Good characters write themselves. Don’t think about it; just write.

For 99.9 per cent of writers, this is the worst writing advice they will ever receive. It is the number one creative writing myth that