There are a few new shortcuts you can use to write a good story.
John Truby has an app called Blockbuster that helps you lay out a story based on Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey myth structure. There are apps like Plottr and The Novel Factory that do something similar. A lot of the popular word-processing and story-organizing tools like Scrivener also offer ways to plan a story.
And there are, of course, plenty of AI tools that can help you structure a story. ChatGPT and Bard are the most popular.
The sad reality is that none of these are worthwhile shortcuts to writing a good story.
Storytelling is a skill like riding a bike. You can get all the AI and app help you want, but at some point you’re going to have to get on the bike and try to ride it without training wheels.
And are you going to get on and ride it once? No. You’re going to ride it as many times as you need to figure it out.
Are you going to ride it once a year? No. As soon as you fall, you’re going to get right back on and ride it again and again until you master it.
We know this intuitively, but we still don’t do it. The vast majority of us (I put it at 99 percent), try to learn the craft of storytelling by writing only one story (usually a screenplay or novel), and spending a year or more doing it.
The only way anyone ever masters story structure is by writing a lot, and writing fast.
So, are there any shortcuts besides working fast?
There is one. It’s the final ingredient you need to write a good story, and it will save you a lot of time and a lot of work.
Back to the bike-riding analogy. You need someone to run alongside you and push you. At key junctures in your process, you need feedback. The vast majority of amateur storytellers (I put this one at 98 percent) do not get good feedback at the right time. They work in solitude—almost in secret—crafting their story. This almost always results in a story that doesn’t work.
Storytelling is a social undertaking. People have to like your story in order for it to work.
Get feedback at key stages of the process:
Write loglines. Come up with ten or 20 one-sentence story ideas and ask people which one is the winner. The one that gets the most votes is the one you write up.
Write a short treatment based on your logline and read it to people. Ask them what they think of it. Tweak it until a 5-10-minute summation of your story makes people laugh and cry.
Write a shitty rough draft. Ask select readers what they think.
Write a final draft. Ask people what they think.
Repeat.
Get to it!
Good advice. That said, the hero's journey is a very American ideal. And I'm talking novels. European literature is very different, which explains why European film and tv is also very different. I'm not saying this as a criticism of the hero's journey. After all, where would Star Wars be without Joseph Campbell, and vice versa? The hero's journey is only one way of telling a story (and this is probably why I'm not a famous author).
Workshops are a safe space to get feedback too. Truby recommends something similar -- test your short treatment out first with as many folks as practical before commiting to a draft. Snyder too. There's an anecdote he shares in Save The Cat! where he pitches his story to folks waiting in line at the supermarket or cafe.