writing 101

the story shape is structured around how they find, retrieve and finally master the quality in their life that has eluded them.

The world or the wood can be as detailed and rich as we like. But the path, which is Cinderella’s own story, goes from here to there, going through this part and that part. Always. And the business of the storyteller, or the novelist, it seems to me, is with the path and not the wood.

There are endless riffs on story shape – sometimes subtle, sometimes brutal explorations and excavations of an original tune. Often you may have to search long and hard to find it, but the tune – even in its absence – will be there. In music, poetry, film – arguably all art – digression merely confirms the archetype’s importance.

Seek out the moments when you felt your heart move.

Let me say it again: Every great story ever told is essentially about a five-second moment of transformation or realization, and the purpose of the story is to bring that moment to the greatest clarity possible.