Happy
Friday to all of you, and welcome to the first of what I hope will be many
guest blogger posts. Over the years I have met a number of talented writers,
and I’m fortunate enough to call them all friends. We writers are a unique
bunch who have chosen this crazy profession because we are passionate about
telling stories and entertaining through our words.
One such writer who is
passionate about storytelling is John C. Bruening, the author of Midnight
Guardian: Hour of Darkness, a New Pulp adventure book set in 1936 in Union City. John's descriptive settings, and on-point dialogue
has set the standard for which all New Pulp stories should be told. I believe
that anyone craving a high-adventure story should treat themselves to Midnight
Guardian: Hour of Darkness, I'm sure you won't be disappointed.
I was thrilled when John agreed to
be my first guest blogger, and I gave him free-range to talk about his writing
procedure and give some insight to his creative process.
So, without further ado, I present John C. Bruening.
One
Man’s Roadmap
By John C. Bruening
First of all, thanks to Chuck Millhouse for inviting me to
step in and contribute to his Stormgate Press blog. If you haven’t read any of
the books in Chuck’s Captain Hawklin series yet, you really should check out at
least one. Go ahead. I’ll wait…
Okay, having done that, you might wonder how Chuck does it
– or how any other writer goes from a blank page to a complete novel. I can’t
speak for Chuck’s process, and to the best of my knowledge, there is no “best
way.” There are as many ways to craft a story as there are writers, and as long
as the job gets done and the end product is engaging and entertaining, who’s to
say what’s right or wrong?
Some writers prefer to start typing with just a fragment of
an idea and see where it takes them. For these folks, building characters – and
building a story around those characters – is a very organic, exploratory
exercise. There’s something to be said for this approach. From beginning to
end, it keeps things fresh and surprising, and the writer is continuously open
to the kind of unexpected twists and turns that can make a story interesting.
I am not that writer.
Don’t get me wrong. As a writer and a reader, I like
well-developed characters in a story with unexpected turns and surprises. But
I’ve never been the kind of guy who’s comfortable just winging it. My great
fear is that I’ll burn up precious time following paths that could potentially
go nowhere. Before I even get started, I need a fairly clear sense of where
it’s all going. I need a map. I need a plan.
For me, that fragment I mentioned a minute ago is the
beginning of a more structured process with a couple middle steps. The fragment
is the seed of an outline – a series of separate and distinct paragraphs, each
one describing dialogue, action, interaction and other plot developments.
Generally speaking, each of these paragraphs becomes the blueprint for each
chapter of the story.
For long-form fiction, I tend to follow the classic
three-act structure. Entire books have been written about this, and there are
plenty of places online where you can find a good explanation of what it is and
how it works. The three-act structure actually goes back thousands of years,
and it has become a widely accepted guide to tell the writer what needs to
happen at certain points along the way to create the tension and resolution
that make a good story.
Again, I’m not suggesting this is the only way to build a
story. There are others. But the three-act structure is an approach that has
worked for some of the greatest storytellers, novelists, playwrights and
screenwriters in history. I’m not about to question their methods or their
success.
So once I have twenty or thirty (or more) paragraphs in an
outline that takes the story from “Once Upon a Time…” to “The End,” I’ll start
expanding on the paragraphs. This is where characters start talking and doing
stuff. This is where decisions and actions and reactions and consequences start
to push the story along to The End. I might take a couple brief detours along
the way – because some of the coolest stuff can happen on the detour – but I
can save a lot of time and avoid frustration if I keep at least one eye on my
destination.
When I get to The End, I have a first draft. It’s usually a
mess, with plot holes and continuity problems and a guy named Bill on page 43
whose name mysteriously changes to Steve on page 127. But it’s a first draft,
and most writers agree that the first draft is the hardest part of the process.
At this writing, I’m finishing the first draft of the
second book in my Midnight Guardian series. It already looks a lot different
from the outline I started with a few months ago. And I can already tell you
that things will change even more by the time the final draft is completed and
the book is published. But that evolution has been manageable because the map I
drew at the start of the journey helped me get where I wanted to go.
This is what works for me – or at least this is what has
worked for me so far. But I’ll make this point one last time because it’s so
important: the process I’ve described above is just one man’s approach. I’m the
last person to suggest a right way or a wrong way. For those writers who prefer
to wing it, more power to you. I admire your courage to take that kind of leap.
At the end of the day, if you have a good story, it doesn’t
matter how you tell it. What matters is that the story gets told.
###
John C. Bruening is a fellow Ohioian and resident of
Cleveland. He has been a professional writer since the 1980's working in
Journalism, editing, publishing, marketing, advertising and corporate
communications.
John's works can be found on his Amazon Author page and through the Flinch Books
Facebook page
