From Vague Idea to Solid Concept
Let J.A.R.V.I.S give you a hand…
I considered going with KITT, Johnny 5, Wall-E, Bender, and Gort (intentionally staying away from the murder-y ones like Hal 9000, MCP, and Skynet) but J.A.R.V.I.S actually demonstrates what AIs like Grok and ChatGPT do: they help us learn stuff faster.
Plus, I figure EVERYONE will get the J.A.R.V.I.S reference. KITT or Master Control Program? Maybe not so much.
What Makes a Solid Concept?
To be able to write a story I need to know:
Who is my protagonist?
What is the audience expecting?
What’s my big Climax?
What’s the “Secret Takeaway”?
I create stories like they’re magic tricks, and these articles are showing you exactly how I craft and perform my particular “magic”.
Early in life I discovered that my favorite stories “tricked” me in the following way: I went to see a movie about, say, a bunch of Sci-Fi stuff blowing up, and I walked away feeling really positive and good about myself, as though I had actually just vanquished and evil galactic empire myself.
Why was this? How did Hollywood perform this trick? How did a fictional person’s fictional accomplishments make ME feel more accomplished?!
After just a couple of years of studying the writing craft it became obvious how this particular trick is done:
The main Story Question gets my butt in the cinema seat
I identify with the protagonist from the get-go
Each time the protagonist tries and fails, I become more invested in his/her success
So the FIRST thing I want to do is have a character that I believe audience will enjoy following.
Right now, I think Abbie Emmons has the most elegant tool to help me create characters that I can feel confident an audience will want to hang with. It’s her “Inner Conflict” tool.
She cover this aspect of character development in MANY of her videos, but here’s one that explains is all well: "What's the difference between the FEAR and MISBELIEF?"
So when I create a protagonist, I know I’m not ready to plot my story until I can assign clear definitions to these following character aspects:
Desire
Fear
Misbelief
Once I’ve got those, I’ve got material to navigate around. As audiences, we’ve kind of been programed to sympathize with the character identified to us to be the protagonist, and we’re subconsciously searching to figure out as quickly as possible what that character wants to accomplish, and what stands in their way. And once the author of the story has clearly set up the goal post, we’re generally invested in watching the game play out.
So the Internal Conflict tool is going to help me answer Question #1: Who is my protagonist?
An exciting, esoteric paranormal audio series
My current project is as much a learning experience for me as anything else. I published the first novella in my Eternity Patrol series in 2019. I’m about halfway through the second novella in the series — and it’s been FIVE frickin’ YEARS!!!
Why am I moving so slowly?
Well, the short answer is that I am like most writers and it’s hard to write when I don’t feel “inspired” to.
But what makes me different than many writers is that I also understand I can hack my own mind and habits, and greater understanding of a process coupled with practice of those skills/skillsets can remove doubt and insecurity and allow me to do a thing faster and more efficiently.
So my current project is creating an audio series, applying the skills and tools I have acquired to date, and observing the process.
And sharing everything I observe with YOU, dear reader.
Part of the answer to Question #2 will be in the TYPE of story I want to tell.
What I mean by this is that people will experience the type of story that interests them. I prefer to explore certain types of stories, therefor I would rather spend my unpaid time writing the type of story I will enjoy exploring.
It won’t be for EVERYONE, and that’s fine. I don’t know if I should admit this publicly, but I have still not seen the Godfather movies. All my filmmaking friends, all my film-enthusiast friends, and even MY MOM tells me I HAVE to watch these movies eventually. (At least the first two.) But my time is valuable to me, and there are so many other things I would rather do with my free time — for now, anyway — than sit through a couple of magnum opuses about the life of a crime family.
Not every genre appeals to every audience member, and that’s fine.
But before I start writing I DO need to be clear about what my story is so that potential audience members can decide whether they want to engage with it.
So, Question #2: What is the audience expecting?
They will be expecting a half-hour audio play about some paranormal topic.
That looks, on paper, like I’m narrowing down my story, but I’m really not. Not yet.
I need to know how my story ends so that I can find the most explosive path to that ending.
To answer Question #2, I need to answer Question #3: What’s my big Climax?
Here’s why:
If I want to write a story in which an archeologist recovers the lost Arc of the Covenant, I know that the majority of my story will be all the reasons that archeologist CAN’T and most likely WON’T recover the Arc!
THAT is what the audience expects.
Yes, we hope for a happy ending. Sure, we can assume we’re probably going to get that happy ending. But what we also hope for is the most AWESOME journey to that happy ending! We want to FEEL like we’ve just ACCOMPLISHED something!
So I can’t figure out the horrors and twists and turns I’m going to throw at my audience until I know what happy ending I’m going to give them.
And J.A.R.V.I.S enters into this…HOW?
I haven’t done any research on this but I’m willing to bet that if you’re reading this you’re already well aware of the power of the AI programs/apps available to the public, so I’m not going to spend a lot of time here explaining it.
If you’re not yet familiar with these tools, I encourage you to make time to play with them for yourself. I’ve played with the following:
I have an X (formerly Twitter) account, so I prefer Grok. ChatGPT’s informational database cuts off in September 2021, whereas the informational database Grok can draw from exists in real-time (as far as I know).
And I believe there are other popular AIs available to the public, so if you don’t already have a favorite, you might want to find one.
But the power of AI, in my opinion, it’s ability to quickly do research, and make intelligent suggestions based on that research.
Clearly define the parameters of the information you’re looking for and ask them in a request form.
Try this prompt, as an exercise, and see what comes up:
“Using Blake Snyder’s beat sheet format, suggest a better sequel to The Matrix (1999).”
I’ll wait…
Shocking, right? I tried the request in both ChatGPT and Grok, and I like BOTH sequels better than The Matrix Reloaded.
And I’m guessing that you also spotted both the strengths and weaknesses of the suggestions…
While you could write an excellent screenplay or novel starting with the outline provided by the AI you chose, there are definitely areas that will require you to do A LOT of creative work of your own to narrow down the vagueness, or to replace the suggestions that don’t feel like YOUR story.
So I needed some suggestions to get me closer to the answer to Questions #3…
Rewatching the Harry Potter movies with my little brother, Brian, he said something that gave me what I believed to be an interesting paranormal story:
My protagonist is afraid of a premonition that involves him or someone important to him. He can't take the action needed to protect himself, or the important someone, because he has always believed that premonitions are things that WILL happen.
But his mentor figure tells him (toward the end of the story, just before the Climax) that premonitions can be warnings of what MIGHT happen if people fail to take action to prevent it.
That got me super excited, so I turned to Grok for help fleshing a propper Climax out.
The Aha Moment -- the understanding that premonitions can be warnings of outcomes to be avoided -- gave a MISBELIEF for my protagonist and a FEAR. That's 2 parts of the 3-part Internal Conflict (Question #1) that will shape my story.
Desire -
Fear - premonition comes true
Misbelief - he is powerless to prevent premonitions
I then explained to Grok that I wanted to create a pilot episode for an esoteric, yet exciting, half-hour paranormal audio series and Grok gave me a workable outline...
“Alex” (Grok always names theoretical protagonists “Alex”) is a paranormal investigator who receives a tip about a fire that's going to happen, and he does everything but try to stop it. At the Aha Moment, he makes the choice to stop it.
This is way oversimplified, but it's a representative summation.
And it didn't excite me.
It took me a couple of days to figure out why. I have a low-paying day job that eats up my time and attention and requires recuperation time. So I don't have the swathes of hours to meditate on my writing that I wasted in my 20s, 30s, and 40s. I usually get brief inspirations when I'm doing something else -- something that, invariably, will require my immediate attention and take a while to finish. So, I rely on quick texts to myself when an insight flashes into my mind. And then I find time later to refer back to that text.
At the moment, I know that the entire story is too passive.
My protagonist spends the whole story being afraid to act or take what any listener already knows is a wrong action.
So when my protagonist finally gets to the Aha Moment, the best I can hope for is that the listener utters a disgusted, "Finally!" and fails to rate or review my little turd of a story.
More likely, though, is that the listener stopped listening WAY before the Aha Moment.
But what's the fix?
I hate to be a tease, but I haven’t found it yet.
YET.
This is a work in progress.
So I’m knocking on wood and crossing my fingers and hoping that I find the solution this coming before next Friday.
If I don’t have the basics for my audio series pilot to share with you by then, I guarantee I’ll have some mistakes and/or missteps that you can learn from!
In the meantime, may you have a GORGEOUS week!!!
And remember that YOU are the writing guru you have been looking for! As my father used to tell me, a wise man doesn’t have all the answers, but a wise man knows how to find them.
You are wise!
