On Being a Good Storyteller – Luck and Perseverance? Instinct? Gift? Or Skill?

There’s an old saw that posits, “Stick a million monkeys in front of a million typewriters for a million years and they’ll type every book in the Library of Congress.” Every book, huh? Does that include every single revision of every book? Because I’ve written about a million revisions of each of my own stories. Multiply that by the 130 million books already published and you’ve got 10e6 x 130*10e6 or about 130 trillion possible books and their revisions. (Of course, if you disregard all the ones Sarah Palin hasn't banned - they can't be that good if she thinks they're okay - then the number of good books is probably closer to 100 trillion.)

It’s got me thinking about what it takes to be a good storyteller, if maybe it’s just chance and persistence, that if you work long enough at it, a good story will eventually be produced. Because, yeah, sometimes I do feel like little more than a monkey, picking away for hours at my unworthy manuscripts. Obsessing over one particular word or phrase. Correcting misspellings. Inserting commas and colons and removing misappropriated apostrophes. And that’s not even talking about any major structural edits.

Persistence? Okay, I got that. Patience, too.

Luck... well, if it’s like flipping a coin, then there’s nothing you can do about it anyway.

Okay, but what if you don’t have a million monkeys and a million typewriters and a million years to write a good book. What then? The answer to that question haunts me.

Many others before me have talked about our natural proclivity to tell stories. It’s part of our social DNA and is woven into our evolutionary fabric as human beings. But does that mean anyone can be a good storyteller? And if so, what’s keeping each one of us from doing so? Societal blinders? Self-censorship? The third grade teacher who told you lacked the skills to write a decent obituary? I don’t feel like an instinctive writer. In fact, if I had to pay for every letter I typed and retyped, I’d be in as much debt as Bill Gates is worth.

Maybe it’s a gift. Maybe you either got it or you don’t got it. Honestly, though? I don’t even want to go there. I don’t like thinking that there’s nothing I can do to control whether I can write a good story. Outside of renting a few million monkeys and typewriters, that is. No, I can accept that for some people, writing comes naturally, but I refuse to believe the rest of us are just flapping our gums in the wind.

So that leaves skill as the last resort of the determined storyteller. Well, I can deal with that. Skill is just something you acquire by dedicating yourself to becoming better at something. I once asked an old buddy of mine who had this amazing ability to run a pool table— that’s how he made his living— what it took to be a good pool player, and he told me, “Skill, simple as that.”

“Yeah, but what exactly is this thing, skill?” I asked.

“Dude, skill is nothing more than luck, perseverance and instinct. Oh, and you have to have been born with it.”

Great. Anyone know where I can rack up a million monkeys?


What do you think? What does it take to be a good storyteller?

Little Bunny Foo Foo: An Example of Good Intentions, but Poor Editorial Advice

Most of you are familiar with the children's poem, the one where a mischievous rabbit abuses a tribe of supposedly innocent field mice whilst on his way to whatever unknown and undocumented nefarious woodland activities little bunny foo foos engage in:

Little Bunny Foo Foo
Skipping through the forest
Scooping up the field mice
And bopping them on the head

The story starts off well enough. The main character is introduced early and the conflict is clearly established. The tension begins to build when the antagonist intervenes:

Down came the Good Fairy, and she said:
"Little Bunny Foo Foo I don't want to see you
Scooping up the field mice and bopping
them on the head.
I'll give you three more days, and if you don't
behave, I'll turn you into a Goon."

The tension rises to fever pitch as Little Bunny Foo Foo continues his abusive ways for two more days, apparently entirely undeterred by the fairy's threats (though we can only guess at this, as there's no internal dialogue to help us understand our MC better).

But then, having run out of time, what does our deliciously naughty protagonist do? Defies the Fates, of course, leaving that meddlesome G. Fairy with no choice but to turn our poor defenseless friend into a goon (which, by the way, wiktionary defines as "a thug." I mean, isn't that a bit redundant?). Anyway, the point is, that's how the story ends, all just so we can say (go on, I know you wanna do it):

"Hare today, goon tomorrow."

But, really, is there anyone else who thinks this is just gratuitous word-play at the expense of good story development? Don't you feel cheated? Didn't you want LBFF to just bop that obnoxious fairy do-gooder on the head and shut her up once and for all? And maybe those field mice deserved it. Ever think of that? Hey, maybe they liked it! Maybe they asked the darn bunny to bop them. He was set up! And we'll never know if money exchanged hands because, well, the story ended too soon.


My grandfather, rest his soul, thought it wise to provide his own editorial touch when he recounted the tale to me many years ago. A former boxer-turned-Baptist minister, he was, paradoxically, probably one of the gentlest men I ever met (he preferred to let my grandmother carry out the fire and brimstone activities), but despite his good intentions, his version of the story was even worse than the established one.

First, he had the fairy threatening to turn our MC into a broomstick. Er, say what?

Then, LBFF actually becomes reformed just before the witch's - excuse me, the fairy's - spell can take hold. His story ends with the bunny patting the field mice on the head. Blech. How perfectly bland.

I never knew the real ending until I came across an old dusty record of it when I had my own children to tell it to. Imagine how cheated I felt, all because my beloved g-pa thought I wouldn't be able to handle fluffy Foo Foo getting turned into a "thug."

But perhaps my biggest argument against any of the established and nontraditional versions is that they all lack one thing: Sequel Potential.

Really. I mean, think about it. What if LBFF set a trap for G. Fairy? He captures her and makes her do his bidding, magically bopping all the field mice in the entire world, not just the forest, so he can concentrate on further developing his evil plans to take over the world? Hey, who wouldn't like to see their favorite evil politician bopped on the head by a rabid rabbit?

And think of the possibilities! Book Two has LBFF and G. Fairy teaming up against their will as they struggle not to be bopped by mutant field mice in a televised game for the entertainment of the priviledge few. Call it Mockingmice.

And the third book? I don't know. Maybe something with vampires, perhaps.

The point is, whoever came up with "Hare today, goon tomorrow," wasn't looking at the big picture.

Everything I Know About Writing, I Learned in Kindergarten

Here's a challenge: write a story in 600 words or less, one that'll make me laugh or cry (or, even better, make me do both in quick succession). One with fully developed characters, a mature plot and a complete story arc. And then make it the kind of story I'll want to read six dozen times in as many nights, laughing or crying each and every time.

That's what makes writing a good children's picture book so challenging.

It's also what has helped me become a better novelist. No writer agonizes over every single word - not just the meaning and appropriateness of the word, but the sound of the word as well - as the writer of the successful picture book. No author is so attuned to the melody of a story, the tightness of the plot, the bare essentials-yet-completeness of the characters.

Now, to be honest, I don't give my novels the same level of scrutiny as I do my picture book manuscripts. It would be impossible to finish anything if I did. But the habits I learned in writing picture books have conditioned me to more readily recognize weaknesses in my longer works, to listen to the sounds of the language, to write tightly.

Writing is, to mangle a phrase, ten percent inspiration and ninety percent constipation. We all know how hard it is to produce good writing. For me, developing the skills and habits to write a good picture book has helped (ahem) loosen the process of writing novels.

And if you don't believe me that shorter is harder, then why is it so damn difficult to synopsize your novel in just a few pithy sentences? Well, PBs are pretty much like that.

Starbucks versus Duncan Donuts: Are you a grammatical snob?

I have something to confess: I’ve been a grammatical snob all my life. I liken it to being a coffee snob. What? Not Starbucks? Don’t try to sell me that DD crap.

I know, hard to believe. It’s true. I don’t want to be a snob; I just can’t help it. I’m a hopeless self-critic, an endless reviser. I can’t be satisfied with a piece until every last bit of voice has been extracted out of it, every linguistic twitch beaten into submission. It’s an excruciating process, if only because what you get after all that is something excruciatingly boring to read.

But isn’t the writing supposed to hum soundlessly, invisibly in the background?

I’ve had more than one literati tell me my writing’s as bland as, to paraphrase, decaffeinated Folgiers.

I blame my third grade teacher, Mrs. Hansen, and all the rules she hammered into my head.

I blame Strunk and White.

I blame S. I. Hayakawa.

Most of all, I blame myself for taking these geniuses so… so literally.

The solution? Have you read Arthur Plotnik’s Spunk and Bite? It's a good start.

You can’t imagine the pain I felt the first time I finished a manuscript that actually contained (No!) sentence fragments, (My God!) run-ons, and (Egads!) a slew of other grammatical no-no’s. It was all I could do not to go back and fix things in the dark of the night.

Guess what? It was good!

Okay, maybe not Colombian blend good. Not just yet. But definitely getting there.

It’s hard. If there were a 12-step program for recovering revisionists I’d be stuck somewhere between steps three and four. Yeah, that’s a lot of steps left to go.

Repent. Repent.

Once, on a business trip in Seattle (you see where this is going, right?), my colleague insisted he wouldn’t drink another cup of Starbucks if his life depended on it. (Does everyone take their coffee this seriously?) We ended up driving seventeen blocks before we tracked down a Duncan Donuts that was open. This guy was like the anti-snob of coffee connoisseurs. But, you know what? DD coffee isn’t half bad.

On the writer’s journey, aren’t there more important things to worry about than getting sentence structure and spellings exactly right? Sure, they're important, because you want to know when you're breaking the conventions. So you can break them consistently.

But, dammit, go out on a limb. Forget your past notions. Hey, try the java from Mickey D’s. Or 7-Eleven. Or even (horror of horrors) Der Wienerschnitzel. You never know, hot dog flavored mocha might be the next big craze. At least it’ll taste like something.

Oh, and happy roadtripping.