- Move the plot along
- Build characterization
- ***Provide insight into the manuscript’s theme.***
Here’s an example from an author with whom most of you are familiar:
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| NORA ROBERTS |
Identifying your Core Story gives you a big advantage when
choosing your career strategies. In best-selling author Jessa
Slade’s guest post last Saturday, she gives advice on career planning and
positioning oneself in the market. Knowing your core story allows you to adapt
story ideas to various subgenres successfully. If you wish, you will be able to
write stories that resonate with your readers in more than one genre. Nora Roberts
writes best sellers in nearly every subgenre of Romance Fiction.
Knowing your Core Story helps you identify ideas and opportunities that are a good fit for you, as well as those that are not. Would you want to partner with another writer whose core story is in direct opposition to yours? “Crime doesn’t pay” versus “Crime is a viable career choice?” “If you’re in love with someone, you won’t ask them to put themselves at risk” versus “If someone really loves you, you can ask them to do anything for you.”
Knowing your Core Story helps you identify ideas and opportunities that are a good fit for you, as well as those that are not. Would you want to partner with another writer whose core story is in direct opposition to yours? “Crime doesn’t pay” versus “Crime is a viable career choice?” “If you’re in love with someone, you won’t ask them to put themselves at risk” versus “If someone really loves you, you can ask them to do anything for you.”
I think not!
How does a writer figure out her core story? It helps to
have written a number of stories so that you can look for the commonalities. I
had written one novel, was halfway through the second and had outlined three
others as well as written a number of short stories before I figured out my
Core Story.
Listing out the external and internal goals, motivations and conflicts of your main characters per Debra Dixon’s iconic work, GMC: Goal, Motivation and Conflict, will give you clues.
Listing out the external and internal goals, motivations and conflicts of your main characters per Debra Dixon’s iconic work, GMC: Goal, Motivation and Conflict, will give you clues.
Ask friends to read your stories and tell you what commonalities they see. Authors often can’t see what is obvious to others in our writing. Try to identify your favorite authors’ Core Stories by analyzing some of their books.
I knew early on that my stories had something to do with personal
identity. My first heroine is a good girl who did one very bad thing and is now
an ex-con living in her small Iowa hometown where someone frames her for murder.
Her hero is a straight-arrow cop who was born into a family of thieves. The sub-plot
hero cross-dresses to hide his identity—you get the idea.
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| COMING SOON! |
In two of my other stories, a hero and a heroine must accept
their physical deformities as realities that do not diminish them as human beings
and may give them an advantage in certain situations. In other stories, enchanted
people transformed into animals must hold onto their humanity.
See the pattern? “You must
decide who you will be.” My characters don't discover who they are (Nora Roberts), they choose who they want to be, as do J.K. Rowling’s in the Harry Potter books: “It is our choices that define us.”
Be patient. This is hard work. Understanding your Core Story takes study, analysis and understanding
of Story with a capital S. I promise you it is time and effort well spent.
Copyright 2015 Sarah Raplee
Copyright 2015 Sarah Raplee
8 comments:
Thanks for an informative post, Sarah. Maybe one of these days I'll figure out my Core Story. I think it is "Love Conquers Fear" or maybe it is "Loving Others Frees". At some point each heroine does make the choice to choose love rather than continue on her life's path without it.
Lots to think about!
I tried to reply from my phone twice, but no luck!
Seems like you're getting close, Judith! Look at the story themes for all your books, and the lessons your protagonists must learn, if you haven't already. You'll get there.
I love looking at core stories. Jayne Anne Krentz introduced us to the concept when she met with a group of us for dinner before a signing in Beaverton a few years ago.
My core story has to do with trust. My characters learn to trust before they are free to love. Either trusting someone else, or trusting themselves.
Cool, Barbara! Thank you for sharing. I can't remember where I first learned about Core stories. It might ver well have been Ms. Krentz or Susan Elizabeth Phillips...or someone else.
Sarah, You always do such a great job at explaining things. And I love your core story. My core story always has to do with justice. Getting justice or showing an injustice.
Thanks, Paty. I agree your core story is something like, "Everyone deserves justice." That's one of the reasons big reasons I, as a reader, am a major fangirl!
Great post, Sarah! I am forwarding it to a private class of 7 women I am teaching to write fictional novellas.
I'm honored, Darlene.
Glad this resonated with YOU!
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