Storymakers Conference Part II: Dave Wolverton

The highlight for me at the Storymaker's conference was the two-hour workshop I attended with Dave Wolverton/Farland called "Writing for the Masses". I was going to put up a summary of my notes, but someone else beat me to it and did it better than I would have. You can find it here: http://tpmills.wordpress.com/2010/04/30/david-wolvertons-workshop-at-lds-storymaker/

I came out of that workshop thinking, "Crap, now I need to go back and re-write my latest book." I'm going to have to at least go back through it and see if I can improve its "mass appeal". Now, my initial thought was that I really didn't care if I wrote for the masses, I just wanted to tell my stories my way. Wolverton pointed out that that was fine, I just won't sell a lot that way. Things that sell follow the formulas that have been successful. People who strike out on their own paths rarely hit, if ever, the NY Times bestseller list.

It reminds me of the conflict between musicians: the artists versus the pop musicians. Many of us who are jazz saxophonists have a strong dislike for the music of Kenny G. Why? Well, its formulaic, repetitive, and sappy. It also makes lots of money. Those of us working in the trenches, practicing our butts off, can't even get paid for a lot of our gigs, so naturally, there's a little jealousy there. Does that make Kenny G wrong for making money doing what he enjoys? No. But it sure would be nice if more people appreciated some good ol' hard swingin' jazz.

Anyway, that's a decision we need to also face as writers. Do we want to adopt the predictable formulas? Many literary types consider popular styles of writing to be "trash". Do we want to write trash? Wolverton brought this up and said we can write "trash", but let's make it "beautiful trash".

He talked about the "try-fail" pattern that is important for safely increasing the stress the reader feels. I've always felt the try-fail pattern made things too predictable, so I've sought to disguise it. I wonder now if I've disguised it too much.

He didn't explain the try-fail pattern, but in a nutshell, it is where the protagonist makes at least three attempts to solve their problem. Each time, they fail and get thrown into a worse situation. Then, the last time, it looks inevitable that the villain will win and take over the universe, but our hero somehow pulls off the miraculous victory.

Throughout this process, Wolverton pointed out, the reader's stress levels keep increasing. To compensate for this, our body releases endorphins which are related to morphine. The higher the stress for the character, the higher the stress for the reader. Finally, when the hero conquers all, the reader gets this great rush that can drop them below their normal stress levels, thus causing a greater relaxation. It's cheaper than a plane ticket to the Bahamas.

The bottom line, no matter what form of art we pursue, it needs to create an emotional response in the audience. If it doesn't, it will be boring. I remember reading a negative review for the movie Charlie, where the reviewer said the movie "manipulated the audience's emotions". I wanted to say to them, "Excuse me, but all movies seek to do that. The ones that don't are major flops." I've also taught my music students this principle. A musical piece that doesn't grab the listener's attention will quickly put them to sleep.

Reminds me of a joke: What do you get when you play New Age music backwards?

A: New Age music.

Storymakers Conference Part I

Wow, what a weekend. I attended the 2010 LDS Storymakers Conference held at the Provo Marriott on Friday and Saturday and got my brain filled to overflowing. I took 18 pages of notes to try to hold it all in. Of the writing conferences I've been to so far, this one has been by far the best. There were nine class sessions with six classes for each one. I couldn't even begin to make it to all the classes I wanted to attend. I'll start off with some of my initial thoughts and I'll have to release other ideas as they come to me later.

NY Times bestselling author David Wolverton/Farland was the keynote speaker on Friday. He quoted Kevin Anderson, when someone said to him how lucky he was to be so well published, Anderson said, "The harder I work, the luckier I get." Wolverton then added his twist to it, "If you want to be struck by lighting, you have to go out and stand in the way." These statements were made about writing, but they apply to many areas, music included.

Something else that stood out to me was when he talked about the importance of staying healthy. He didn't elaborate, but it struck me because I think that is a big reason why I can write today when I couldn't ten years ago. When I took a class a few years ago from Orson Scott Card, he said the same thing. Jazz musicians Eric Marienthal and Gordon Goodwin mentioned it as well when they came here in February. There's a theme here (note to self: can-o-worms this idea for later blog post).

Something I heard several times was that comedy is one of the hardest things to write. I feel like that is the only thing I can write. It's easy. Of course, people who barely know me can't believe that I have a sense of humor. The young men in our church are all afraid of me and don't want to ask my daughters out because I look so cranky all the time. I can live with that.

One last thing for now, I feel like I have no idea how to really write. I'm a musician, not a writer. I barely know what verbs and nouns are, let alone other parts of speech. I'm sometimes a little embarrassed to say that I'm a published author, since I don't feel like I really know what I'm doing. As I got a chance to meet and talk with other published authors, though, I found a lot of them feel the same. We mainly just want tell stories. I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Next time, I'll try to break down some other things I learned from the various classes I attended.