Finding the Heart of Your Story: Nurturing Your Original Idea

Finding the Heart of Your Story:
Nurturing Your Original Idea
George Galdorisi
Southern California
Writer’s Association
February 17, 2018

We are going to explore the most basic – yet most
important – element of the writing craft, the original
idea that is the essence of your story. We will examine
how generating this original idea works for both fiction
and non-fiction. We will then deep-dive into where
original ideas come from and then progress to how to
shape that kernel of an idea into novel, narrative non-
fiction, or even a screenplay.

A Few Preliminaries….
• Three promises:
– This will be a fast-paced 90 minutes
– We’ll learn something…and we’ll have fun
– You’ll have access to these slides…take notes…or not….
• Three assumptions:
– You all are interested in nurturing your story idea
– You would like to turn your idea into a novel or….
– You didn’t wake up last Tuesday morning with this notion
• And a word about Power Point….

Let’s Talk About Writing….

….and isn’t this
the oldest profession?

“If you decide to become a professional writer, you
must, broadly speaking, decide whether you wish to
write for fame, for pleasure, or for money.”
Ian Fleming
How to Write a Thriller

• Your Original Idea: The Spark That Starts the Process
• Fanning the Flame: From a Spark to a Fire
• Focusing Your Idea: Divergent to Convergent
• Is It Just a Story – Or Something More?
• Turing the Fire Into a Narrative
• Taming the Beast and Writing Your Novel

Your Original Idea:
The Spark That Starts the Process

Your Original Idea:
The Spark That Starts the Process
• The coolest thing about writing!
• Only you are the steward of your original idea
• Can you state your idea in one sentence?
• Ideas can be absolutely anything
• Outward vs. inward focus
• A few examples

“For me, I gotta write, and it’s the adventure of it that’s
hooked me. As the writer, I can do it all. I get to be the
National Security Advisor who recommends the action
to the President who must commit the forces. I’m the
senior officer who sends his men into action and who
feels the pain if they don’t make it back. I’m the enemy
and the defender; logistician and staff planner. But
most of all, I’m a young man again, that fresh
lieutenant who must lead his men into battle.”
Dick Couch
“So you Want to be a Writer”

Only You Are the Steward of Your Original Idea
• It is your idea and your idea alone
• You have to nurture it, don’t share it yet
• It is the foundation of your book
• Above all else, it is the spark of inspiration for you
• Don’t do too much, let it germinate
• Come up with another idea, is the first still the best?

Can You State Your Idea In One Sentence?
• If you can’t do this, start over and find a new one
• This one sentence ignites your creative focus
• It is often the core of the pitch to sell your book
• Remembering just one sentence keeps you focused

Ideas Can Be Absolutely Anything
• A high concept
• A theme
• A plot
• A character
• A “what if”
• A setting or scene

Outward vs. Inward Focus
• A situation idea is outward focused
• Your situation idea focuses on a plot and a problem
• A character idea is inward focused
• Your character idea focuses on character and intent
• The key to success is to have your book do both

Ideas Can Be A High Concept
• In a post-apocalyptic world, what if the top .1% is
delineated by length of life rather than wealth?
• Burners

Ideas Can Be A Theme
• What is more important? Honor or loyalty?
• Duty, Honor, Country

Ideas Can Be A Plot
• On the same day, six different years, the Time Patrol
must keep the shadow from changing our timeline.
• Time Patrol

Ideas Can Be A Character
• A housewife and female assassin must uncover the
truth of the men in their lives in order to uncover
their destiny.
• Bodyguard of Lies

Ideas Can Be A “What If”
• What if people going into the Witness Protection
Program really disappear?
• Cut Out

Ideas Can Be A Setting or Scene
• An international treaty bans weapons in Antarctica:
What if the U.S. put nuclear weapons there and lost
track of them?
• Eternity Base

Let’s look at three more examples

New York Times, Publisher’s
Weekly & USA Today Best-
Seller!
What if a prince in a Middle
Eastern country wanted to get
the United States to attack
another country so his
country could later win a fight
with that country?

Seller!
How does the commanding
officer of a U.S. Navy ship
keep the North Koreans from
capturing her crew after they
run aground on a small island
after losing a gun battle with
North Korean ships?

New this year from
Braveship Books
What if the most senior officers in the
United States military are so
dissatisfied with the President that
they concoct a scheme to have the
President direct a major military
operation, and then have that
operation fail in order to drive the
President out of office?

If you forgot your homework – or
the dog ate it – that’s okay…
….come up with any story idea and
jot it down in two minutes

Fanning the Flame:
From a Spark to a Fire

Fanning the Flame: From a Spark to a Fire
• Is your idea different?
• No? Now what?
• Every idea has been done before
• “It’s been done before” is the first hurdle
• Check out the Internet Movie Database for log lines
• Try Kipling

“Deconstructing” a Movie Log Line
The subject of the sentence will describe (1) an
imperfect but passionate and active protagonist. The
verb will depict (2) the battle. And the direct object will
describe (3) an insurmountable antagonist who tries to
stop the protagonist from reaching (4) a physical goal
on account of (5) the stakes, if the goal is not reached.

“Deconstructing” Your Idea:
Putting It On Trial for It’s Life
• Is there a plot?
• Are there a protagonist and an antagonist?
• Is the verb in your idea an active one?
• Is there an inherent conflict that needs to be solved?

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
Rudyard Kipling
The Elephant’s Child

Fanning the Flame: From a Spark to a Fire
• Since every idea has been done before, now what?
• Your idea turns into a story as you fan the flame
• Fan the flame with Kipling’s help:
– What? Plot
– Who? Characters
– Why? What’s at stake
– Where and When? Setting
– How? Beginning, Middle, and End
• Your idea won’t change
• You are going to do it differently

Focusing Your Idea:
Divergent to Convergent

Focusing Your Idea: Divergent to Convergent
• Spend a lot of time on divergent thinking
– What if….
– A great time to bounce ideas off friends and colleagues
• Save plenty of time for convergent thinking
– These are not your children…you can favor one
– Work what you picked…unless it starts to bore you

Dean Koontz
On Generating New Story Ideas
• Read!
• Write!
• Tickle the imagination and generate story ideas by
playing around with exotic titles
• Type out a bunch of narrative hooks and find one
that is intriguing
• Prime the idea pump by building up a couple of
characters in enormous detail
• Whatever you write, you must begin your novel by
plunging the hero or heroine into terrible trouble

Is It Just a Story –
Or Something More?

Is It Just a Story –
Or Something More?
• The king died and then the queen died.
– A story
• The king died and then the queen died of grief.
– A plot
• The queen died, and no one knew why, until it was
discovered that it was through grief at the death of
the king.
– A mystery

Is It Just a Story – Or Something More?
• What are you selling?
• The “Intent”
– The “why” behind the “what”
– What do you want the reader to feel?
– Is there a beginning, middle and end?
– The payoff to the reader is the resolution
• The “Shiver”
– What excites you about your idea?
– What will excite those you tell it to?
– Is there emotion and passion?
– Can your reader relate to your plot and your characters?

Turing the Fire Into a Narrative

Turing the Fire Into a Narrative
• Before you start slamming together sentences:
– Treatment
– Narrative Outline
• An enormous amount of work – why do it:
– You have to convince yourself it’s a book
– You may have to convince others
– A surefire way to avoid writer’s block
– You’re not chained to it – things happen

Let’s Deconstruct
a Novel Treatment
• Cover
• Organization
• Organizing Impulse and High Concept
• The “Old” OpCenter Dies
• The “New” OpCenter is Born
• New Character Details
– Preamble
– Those who spend a great deal of time
physically at OpCenter
– Those who deal with crises overseas
in each scenario
– Those who deal with crises
domestically in each scenario
• OpCenter Plot and Scenario Plan
– Preamble
– Short Plot Synopsis
• For us, this was 17,000+ words

Let’s Deconstruct
a Narrative Outline
• Cover
• Front matter
• Chapter summaries
– Separate sections
– One or two paragraphs per
section
• Epilogue
• For us, this was 19,000+
words

Now Let’s Get to Work on That
Homework and Create a Log Line!

Pair Off and Put on Your Coaching Hats
1. Read your story idea aloud to your partner
2. Partner, ask questions if what was said isn’t clear
3. Work with the reader to construct a log line
4. Give yourselves only three minutes to do this
5. Switch roles
6. Repeat steps one through four above

Reading Your Log Lines
• Read the log line
• Name your protagonist and antagonist
• Coaches, jump in and sell it to the rest of us:
– Intent
– Sizzle

Taming the Beast and
Writing Your Novel

Let’s talk about three of the most
important ingredients in writing a
successful thriller…

CharacterizationPlotting
Action
You must do
all three well!

“There are only two plots: The hero takes a journey and
a stranger comes to town.”
Timothy Spurgin
“The Art of Reading”
The Great Courses

The Classic Plot
• The writer introduces a hero or heroine who has just been –
or is about to be – plunged into terrible trouble
• The hero or heroine attempts to solve his or her problem but
only slips deeper into trouble
• As they try to climb out of the hole they’re in, complications
arise, each more terrible than the one before, until the
situation could not become more hopeless, then one final
unthinkable complication arises and makes matters worse.
• At last, deeply affected and changed by his awful experiences
and intolerable circumstances, the hero learns something
about himself and the human condition. He then understands
what he must do to get out of the dangerous situation in
which he has wound up. He takes the necessary actions and
either succeeds or fails, succeeding more often than not.

“You can distill anydrama – a Greek tragedy, a
Shakespearian play, a modern novel, a TV drama or
comedy, whatever – into a simple equation: ‘What do
these guys want, why do they want it, and what’s
keeping them from getting it?’”
Bill Bleich
Writing advice

Plots
• Create a compelling plot
• Write a grabber opening
• Write a successful ending
• Create a middle that keeps the reader involved

James Hall – Hit Lit
• Gone with the Wind
• Peyton Place
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• Valley of the Dolls
• The Godfather
• The Exorcist
• Jaws
• The Dead Zone
• The Hunt for Red October
• The Firm
• The Bridges of Madison County
• The Da Vinci Code

Let’s take a deep-dive into one well-known
way to design or deconstruct a plot….

Let’s Deconstruct This Using a
Book We All Are Familiar With
• Pride and Prejudice
• Ulysses
• War and Peace
• Anna Karenina
• Don Quixote
• Little Women
• The Wizard of Oz

The Wizard of Oz
Exposition
The exposition stage of the story sets the scene and introduces
the characters. In The Wizard of Oz, the exposition is everything
that happens from the beginning of the story to the tornado. We
meet all the major characters. Dorothy runs away with Toto and
meets Professor Marvel; and on her way back to the farm,
Dorothy is overtaken by the storm.

The Wizard of Oz
Inciting Incident
Next comes the inciting action, which is the event that
introduces conflict into the story. This is a bit tricky in The Wizard
of Oz, because there are two elements in the story that might be
called the conflict:
• One is the conflict between Dorothy and Miss Gulch, because Miss
Gulch wants Dorothy’s dog put to sleep. This is what causes Dorothy to
run away from home, leading to the blow to the head she receives
during the tornado. In this sense, we might consider Miss Gulch’s
threat the inciting moment.
• But this conflict becomes more complicated when the tornado
transports Dorothy to the Land of Oz. There, Dorothy’s house lands on
the Wicked Witch of the East and kills her, and the Wicked Witch of
the West threatens to kill Dorothy in revenge.

The Wizard of Oz
Rising Action
The rising action is where the plot becomes more complicated
and exciting, building tension. This includes Dorothy’s departure
from Munchkinland, her meetings with the Scarecrow, the Tin
Man and the Cowardly Lion, her arrival in Emerald City; her
audience with the Wizard, and her capture by the witch:
• During this part of the story, small obstacles are thrown in the path of
Dorothy and her companions, and the two conflicts mentioned during
the inciting incident are reemphasized.
• The two conflicts are then explicitly linked when the Wizard tells
Dorothy he’ll help her get back to Kansas if she brings him the witch’s
broom.
• Dorothy and her companions then face their most difficult challenge,
with Dorothy getting carried away by the flying monkeys and her
companions breaking into the witch’s castle to rescue her.

The Wizard of Oz
Climax
The climax is the most dramatic and exciting event in the story.
In The Wizard of Oz, the climax comes when Dorothy and her
friends are trapped in the witch’s castle, and Dorothy kills the
witch by dousing her with a bucket of water. At that moment,
much of the story’s tension is released because at least one of
the conflicts, the one between Dorothy and the witch, is ended,
and the plot begins its descent down the other side of the
pyramid.

The Wizard of Oz
Falling Action
The next element is the falling action, which is made up of
events that result directly from the moment of climax. The
element after that is called the resolution, where the character’s
conflict is resolved:
• After Dorothy has killed the witch, she take the broomstick back to the
Wizard. He solves the problems of Dorothy’s three companions, and
agrees to take Dorothy back to Kansas himself.
• This is the falling action: it shows the results of the death of the witch,
but it doesn’t resolve Dorothy’s second conflict, the fact that she
wants to go home to Kansas.

The Wizard of Oz
Resolution
The resolution comes when the Wizard accidentally takes off in
his balloon without Dorothy, and Dorothy learns from Glinda the
Good Witch that she could have taken herself back to Kansas at
any time just by using the ruby slippers. At this point, Dorothy’s
conflict is finally resolved. The threat from the witch is
liquidated, and she realizes that she always had the power to go
home.

The Wizard of Oz
Dénouement
The denouement is the ending of the story, when order is
restored. At this point, we are often shown the characters one
more time so we can see what happened to them. In The Wizard
of Oz it’s the final scene in Dorothy’s bedroom, where she is
reunited with Aunt Em and Uncle Henry and the now-familiar
farmhands:
• In some stories the denouement simply shows that order has been
restored, and the world is now back to the way it was. But this isn’t
usually the case, and it’s certainly not the case in The Wizard of Oz.
• Dorothy is back home, but everything is not back to the way it was
before she went to Oz. Dorothy’s understanding of herself and her
place in the world have profoundly changed.

Important Qualities for
Heroes, Heroines and Strangers
• Virtue
• Competence
• Courage
• Likeability
• Imperfections
• Change:
– Layers
– Arcs

Character Motivations
• Love
• Curiosity
• Self-preservation
• Greed
• Self-discovery
• Duty
• Revenge

Character Traits
• Physical appearance
• Movement and gestures
• Past life
• Religion
• Sexuality
• Vocation
• Skills and talents
• Fears
• Dreams
• Pleasures
• Plans for the future
• Sense of humor
• Politics
• Voice and speech

Presenting Character Traits Thoughtfully
• How many major and minor characters to have
• All major characters must have a biography
• Develop a “job description” for each character
• You will know what your characters will do
• You are writing a novel – not a movie script
– You have to get your characters from Point A to Point B
– Your characters are not dead when they’re off the page
• What is each character doing?
– On stage
– Off stage

Take a female character who is on her way to her high school
reunion. She’s 50, attractive, divorced, and has had no contact
with her graduating class since she left Iowa for Berkley in
1985. There was a guy she jilted when she went off to
school. Develop her.
• Physical: height, weight, hair color, best feature, worst
feature, etc.
• Occupation: attorney, doctor, college professor, executive,
runs a dot.com startup, etc.
• Personal: strengths, weaknesses, phobias, attitude toward
men, attitude toward all others, etc.
• Family: siblings, relationship with mom/dad, rivalries
• Relationships: good/bad/difficult, marriage(s), children?

Seller!
Let’s color in one character,
Anne Sullivan, Op-Center’s
Deputy Director

“Anne Sullivan was a retired General Services
Administration super grade who had made a career in
Washington. She knew all about the government,
including government contracting, hiring, firing, and
funding, and how to sidestep the issues. These were
things Williams never had to deal with, even during
his multiple tours in Washington.”

“Unlike Williams, Sullivan came from money. Her
father had fashioned a successful and lucrative career
in finance with Bain Capital Ventures. Between that
family money and her GSA retirement, she was
looking forward to a comfortable life. She enjoyed the
D.C. social and cultural scene and traveled often,
primarily to Europe and especially to Ireland. That
plan was interrupted when Williams recruited her—
charmed her, really, she readily admitted—to be his
deputy.”

Seller!
Kate Bigelow, Commanding
Officer, USS Milwaukee
(LCS-5) Freedom-Class Littoral
Combat Ship

“Kate Bigelow was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. She’d
gone to the Academy for two reasons: to play lacrosse and to
sing. Coming out of Montgomery Blair Prep in Silver Spring,
Maryland, her two passions had been playing lacrosse and
singing in her school glee club and church choir. She was an all-
state midfielder and also had a strong voice. Her grades were
good if not outstanding, but the Academy women’s lacrosse
coach saw her play and liked what she saw. Lacrosse was a
rough sport, even the woman’s game, and Kate Bigelow, while
owning a technically sound game, was not above flattening an
opposing player with a legal hit. She started for three years on
the lacrosse team, beating Army two of those three years, and
had sung in the Catholic Choir and the Naval Academy Glee
Club.”

“Kate had graduated in the upper half of the bottom third of
the Class of 2002. She’d never really considered a full career in
the Navy as a seagoing officer, two things intervened that kept
her from leaving the service. She found she liked U.S. Navy
sailors and she had a knack for leading them. Secondly, she
found command intoxicating. There was nothing like it on the
outside, so she stayed in the Navy. She had previously
commanded an MCM ship like Defender that now followed
them out of Sasebo.”

New from
Braveship Books
Lieutenant Laura Peters,
Intelligence Officer, U.S. Southern
Command

For Laura Peters, it was an opportunity for professional growth
that might not come her way again. It was not surprising she
loved what she was doing. The daughter and only child of a
Navy chief petty officer, she had been the apple of her father's
eye. Master Chief Donald Peters had risen through the ranks as
far as he could, but he always wanted to be an officer. That
goal, unfortunately, had eluded him. When it was clear his
marriage would produce no sons, he regaled Laura with the
opportunities that beckoned in the Navy. The master chief
knew enough about how the Navy worked and what it looked
for in its officers—and particularly its need to recruit more
women officers—that he groomed his daughter throughout
high school to make her a shoe-in for winning a Navy ROTC
scholarship.

She had thrived at the University of Virginia, earning top
grades, and lettering in cross-country, squash, and tennis.
Sensing that the Navy was still not enlightened enough to fully
accept women as equal partners commanding ships and
aircraft squadrons, she opted for the intelligence field upon
graduation, correctly surmising that it would provide a more
level professional playing field and afford her the opportunity
to prove herself and advance through the ranks. In her seven
years since graduation she had sought out only the toughest
assignments, usually registering firsts, breaking ground where
female officers had not gone before.

When he finished packing, he walked out onto the
third-floor porch of the barracks brushing the dust from
his hands, a very neat and deceptively slim young man
in the summer khakis that were still early morning
fresh.
James Jones
(From Here to Eternity, opening sentence)

"Jones packs a hell of a lot into that first line. He tells
you it's summer, he tells you it's morning, he tells you
you're on an Army post with a soldier who's obviously
leaving for someplace, and he gives you a thumbnail
description of his hero. That's a good opening line."
Ed McBain in Killer's Payoff

…plot?...characterization?...which is more
important?

Plot or Characterization
• You have to have plot to make the reader turn pages
• People are the story and the whole story
????????????????????????????????????????????????
• Plot has the entertainment value to pull the reader
along
• The characters are the vehicle, the tools through
which you tell your story
• Readers want you to tell them a story
• Dialogue brings your characters to life!

“I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I
try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.”
Tom Clancy

What About Action?
• Action evolves naturally from the plot
• There is no “formula” for having action in your novel
• As Clancy said, don’t overthink the action
• That said, here are some things to consider:
– Different kinds of novels lend themselves to more or less
– Write all the action you can – then consider Goldilocks
– If riveting, hold-your-breath action is anywhere – up front
– Balance scene and summary to bound action scenes

Your Original Idea
• Your Original Idea: The Spark That Starts the Process
• Fanning the Flame: From a Spark to a Fire
• Focusing Your Idea: Divergent to Convergent
• Is It Just a Story – Or Something More?
• Turing the Fire Into a Narrative
• Taming the Beast and Writing Your Novel

Resources
• E.E. Forster Aspects of the Novel
• Francine Prose Reading Like a Writer
• Richard Curtis How To Be Your Own Literary Agent
• James Hall Hit Lit
• Dr. Linda Seger
– The Art of Adaptation
– Advanced Screenwriting
• Robert Masello
– Robert’s Rules of Writing
– Writer Tells All
• The Great Courses, especially, Jane Friedman How to Publish
Your Book

A Word About Surveys:
Comments Typically Come in Three Types
• You rocked my world and my life is now changed forever
for the better – I’m a completely new person
• I’d rather have a root canal than have to sit through this
again – and I think you should pay for it
• I got something (a lot, a little) out of this workshop, but if
the instructor does this again, he should:
– Do more of….
– Do less of….
– Go faster….
– Go slower….
– ????

Slides and Resources Posted:
http://www.georgegaldorisi.com/
For Southern California Writer’s Association Members
Contact me via this website for:
Treatment and Narrative Outline for Out of the Ashes
Treatment and Narrative Outline for Into the Fire
And if you’d like to receive my “Writing Tips” bi-weekly….

But That’s Not All!
(Mainstream and Genre)
• High Concept (Think in movie terms)
– The Coronado Conspiracy
– For Duty and Honor
• Theme
– The Coronado Conspiracy
– For Duty and Honor

Finding the Heart of Your Story: Nurturing Your Original Idea

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