Is it true that "Any story can be great in the hands of the right storyteller"?
Presumably, like all trite sayings, it's a bit of an exaggeration since a story has to be at least interesting. (I mean, it would take amazing talent to write simply about someone sleeping and make it interesting.)
But my overall interpretation of the statement is that a writer does not have to worry about looking for a "great idea" for a story, but simply focus on taking fairly interesting story ideas and making them as enjoyable to read as possible. Is that correct?
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No, it is very difficult to make any story great. And there is a ton of thought and intention that goes into picking even the right story to tell, from the right vantage point. It is not uncommon for a writer to get to the end of the story and throw out characters, plot points, and settings whole only to reconstruct them from the ground up. And that means that the original story they were writing died to the editor/reviser's red pen.
Good writers know* how to find good stories, and they know how to change what they have until it fits what they are writing. (*) And by know; I mean they or their team sometimes spots problems that points them in another direction.
I think it is less likely that a good author can make any story great than that good author's are just better at sticking to the things that work.
The average number of books it takes to get published (among those who make it) is supposedly 10 [cite anecdotal podcast evidence]). That means they found at least 10 long stories that were no good, revising the last one into something else. And it is not uncommon to work on a project and fail, even after you are published. Failed books go in a spot that gives them their name: the trunk. Trunks are full of stories that good authors couldn't make work. Because ultimately there are foundational elements that allow stories to work their magic and some stories don't do those things, even in the right hands.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37966. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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By and large, yes. thought it does depend on what you mean by story. Every story is unique. It is a particular set of words that tell a particular tale about particular characters, and it is the total immersive experience of the reading that make it great, not some particular twist of plot or eccentricity of character.
At the same time, there are only a few basic story shapes. Man vs man, man vs nature, boy meets girl, Pinocchio, maturation, the quest, crime and punishment, etc. We tell these same basic stories over and over again. People never get tired of them because they are somehow wired into our psyches. These basic stories seem to afirm basic thing we need to believe about the world in order to stay sane and happy.
These basic forms exist in endless variation, but they are easy to perceive in stories the world over. What really differentiates the great versions of these stories from the mediocre, therefore, is not the tale but the telling.
It is not about inventing a brand new story shape, therefore. It is about having a vision of life that can be expressed through a particular telling of one of the classic story shapes, the ones we want to hear over and over again. It is the quality of your vision and your ability to execute on that vision that will determine the success of your story.
But this is not quite to say that the writer does not need to focus on finding a great story idea. All stories adhere to one of the basic types, but to be successful, you have to enflesh one of those basic types with characters and incidents and language that will draw people in and enthrall them. You have to give particular life to the classic story shape and that most certainly requires a set of very specific story ideas that put very specific, consistent, and attractive flesh on the standard story bones.
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a writer does not have to worry about looking for a "great idea" for a story, but simply focus on taking fairly interesting story ideas and making them as enjoyable to read as possible. Is that correct?
That is almost correct; but the question as phrased has hidden caveats.
For one, "a fairly interesting story idea" made "enjoyable to read" is what we call a great story!
Which almost makes this a tautology; e.g. "The way to write a great story is to write a great story." But not quite; the hidden definition saves it. So yes, find a fairly interesting story idea. Make it enjoyable to read. That is one way to create a great story.
As Mark Baker notes, humanity has already derived and distilled the outlines of great stories, basically all patterns of conflict, setbacks or failure, actions taken to overcome failure that succeed.
That is the essence of "story" and how we inherently choose to imagine our lives. Things stand in our way and we overcome them; whether we are saving the world or inventing a new recipe for cookies, saving our child from disease or trying to navigate law school, or wizardry school. Even if we want a house instead of an apartment, and we take steps to make that happen.
Picking one of those GREAT general plot outlines is one way of making something "enjoyable to read". Note these were never dictated, the great outlines became great millennia before the stories that adhered to them were analyzed and categorized. Consider them observed phenomena; they are the greats because they fit the pre-existing human psyche we evolved from our hunter-gatherer days before even farming existed; the stories of heroes told around campfires fifty thousand years ago, the stories themselves evolved by retellings over thousands of years into the essence of what makes a story great.
by describing the plots in greater or lesser detail, you can arrive at more or fewer number of great plots, anywhere from two to 32, perhaps even more with more detail. The number doesn't matter, all of them are reflections of the common human psyche and our need for instruction by example in how to achieve success in life and deal with defeat or failure.
Part of making a story "enjoyable to read" is the author inventing something new for the story, new plot twists, new characters, new kinds of problems to solve. Most (not all) romantic comedies follow a strict formula, but the characters are new, the jokes are new, the settings are sometimes new. The same goes for fantasy, mystery and scifi, or mashups of these.
So your "fairly interesting story idea" will still require a lot of imagination to be "enjoyable to read", it must have enough "new" stuff so that the reader is not bored and certain they know the ending.
Poetic words alone will not carry the story. The reason is simple, in order to be "enjoyable to read", the reader must always be reading to find out what happens next; like in the next ten pages or so.
Part of that is wondering how a conflict will turn out; part is interest in the character(s), the world-building, the little and big problems to be solved. Part of life is learning to navigate new environments or situations, social or physical, and your characters should be dealing with those.
Fortunately, we can take a "fairly interesting story idea" and, through brain-racking work, invent enough "new stuff" to show along the way to make that whole novel/movie compelling and fun. To pack in a variety of problems/challenges/puzzles/battles for the hero that the reader wants to follow them and see how they prevail, or fail and recover.
No matter how well your words land on the page, if the reader gets bored reading, stops wondering what will happen and stops caring whether the characters win or lose, the story will not succeed, even if it was a fairly interesting premise. You must sustain some kind of tension for unanswered questions throughout, including the biggest "finale" unanswered question, for this to be "enjoyable reading".
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There's a nice little story about this...
from http://www.fantasyliterature.com/author-interviews/jim-butcher/
Q: How did you come up with the original idea for CODEX ALERA? We’ve heard rumours that it involved a bet on whether you could combine the Roman empire and Pokémon… is that true?
A: The bet was actually centered around writing craft discussions being held on the then-new Del Rey Online Writers’ Workshop, I believe. The issue at hand was central story concepts. One side of the argument claimed that a good enough central premise would make a great book, even if you were a lousy writer. The other side contended that the central concept was far less important than the execution of the story, and that the most overused central concept in the world could have life breathed into by a skilled writer.
It raged back and forth in an ALL CAPITAL LETTERS FLAMEWAR between a bunch of unpublished writers, and finally some guy dared me to put my money where my mouth was, by letting him give me a cheesy central story concept, which I would then use in an original novel.
Me being an arrogant kid, I wrote him back saying, “Why don’t you give me TWO terrible ideas for a story, and I’ll use them BOTH.”
The core ideas he gave me were Lost Roman Legion and Pokémon… Thus was Alera formed.
p.s. it goes without saying that I think the Alera books are at least good enough for Jim Butcher to have won that dare...
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