Your Story, and the Truest Way to Tell it

For about six months as a teenager I worked as a journalist. It was rather an unhappy experience. Let me clarify: I hated it. Before I could scrabble together enough courage to quit, the newspaper folded. (Not my fault. Economic problems. You know.) So that was the end of my career as a journalist, and I was grateful.

But I did learn one thing that I’ve never forgotten—the concept of “slant.” The whole thing about journalism is, you’re dealing with facts. And those are the same facts everyone else deals with. The only way to make your story fresh is to come at it from a different angle; perhaps a more original look at the events, a truer approach to the story. It’s your slant.

Now, in fiction, it’s a bit different. Our starting point isn’t a set of facts, but a set of ideas, connected somehow into a premise. No two writers start off with the same premise (and if they do, we say it’s “been done” before.) Rather than add our slant to an event, we invent a new way of exploring some universal theme or drama. We try to reinvent it, if we can.

Every once in a while, someone comes up with something revolutionary. Think Harry Potter, Hunger Games, or yes, Twilight. By now there are dozens of new explorations on those same ideas, but they were very unique when they first came out.

So when it comes to fiction, the idea of “slant” isn’t used to compare us to other writers and stories. Instead, slant is a lot more personal. Slant is how we approach whatever specific story we’re trying to tell.

Some novels seem to know exactly what kind of story they are. Others start out looking like, say, a coming of age story, but then that doesn’t seem to work right; and we wonder if maybe it’s a story about family instead. So we scrap all our previous work and start over, with this new slant. And then we realize, no, it’s not about family so much as personal values. And maybe…how personal values can conflict with societal values. Aha.

The thing is, your original concept—your core idea, your premise, your “facts”—don’t change much in this process. It’s your approach on the idea that changes. Your slant. Your vision, developing.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less travelled by,
and that has made all the difference
-- Robert Frost

Go back to that “aha” moment when you finally discovered the right slant on a story. Why does it feel like all the other directions were “wrong,” and this one is “right”? Why is it that we’re often dissatisfied with a perfectly good plot—a plot that some other author would have loved? How come when friends suggest fixes to our story problems, we get so irritated, and end up saying, “you just don’t get it”?

What is it they aren’t getting?

Fiction is fiction. From start to finish, we’re making it up. But there’s still a sense of truth in it—writing is a way to interpret what’s real, to mirror it and explore it through these made up stories. So we need to represent them accurately. Truthfully. As writers, we struggle to find meaning in life, and we do it by writing stories that play out this bigger meaning.

So sure, it’s fiction—but it’s truth.

Which is why one particular slant can feel wrong. We have a vision for a story, and if our approach at it doesn’t match that vision, we go back and try to start over. We have to tell this story. And we’re trying to find the truest way, the most honest, accurate, and profound way, in which to tell it.

I’ve been doing a lot of agent research lately, and one thing I keep hearing authors say over and over again is, “they got my vision.” The agent got their vision. I’m like, “what vision?” So it got me thinking about the vision I have for my stories and where I’d like them to go. Particularly, it has me thinking about what I’d like to do if I ever wrote a sequel to MIRRORPASS—(or, um, if I got an agent, sold MIRRORPASS, and by some stroke of awesomeness landed a contract for a MIRRORPASS sequel)—because I have a very specific sense of what MP2 would need to do.

See, the ending to MIRRORPASS makes a lot of promises. MP2 would need to explore those promises. And I’ve been thinking about it ever since I finished the first draft if MIRRORPASS. I couldn’t help it—the writer in me wanted to know, what next?

And I realized this. It could very easily be a book about recovery; a book about politics; a book about culture; a book about trauma and fallout. I don’t want it to be any of those things. Those are boring, depressing things. I’d want it to be a fierce, hopeful book—one about homecoming, in all its aching and passion and happiness. I’d want it to be a book that calls to the inner warrior of my characters and challenges them to arise.

That’s my vision.

What's yours?

Think about the novel you’re working on right now. What’s your vision for it? I’d love to hear what WIP’s you guys are focused on right now, so feel free to share as much detail as you’re comfortable with. And what do you think about this "truest way to tell a story" concept?


Truly and always,
-Creative A