Making Easy Feel Good

Alright. Here we go again. This guide is a continuation of last week’s guide ‘Making Tough Look Easy’ where I talked about how I wrote my story ‘You Only Die Once’.

This is the final part in this two part-series. Follow the above links to catch up, and let’s get this show on the road.

Element #4: The Sci-fi-seam-less-ness

A good sci-fi story is only as good as the use of the aforementioned sci-fi elements. Don’t create a cool sci-fi element just because it sounds cool. Make it worthwhile, and let the plot and characters deliver the sci-fi to the audience. Good example - Back To The Future, aka my favorite movie-story. Pick any scene from the three movies, and think of the sci-fi element in it. Then try to separate it from the character. I’ll save you the trouble - you won’t be able to. BTTF was written to be a story about a young man learning a life lesson about ego, friendship, and family. Sci-fi just gave the story a fun format.

When you’re experiencing a good story, the content and the form should be one and the same.

Don’t tell the reader what the story is about - don’t write down the world’s logic as a history lesson, or don’t have your characters talk like they’re talking to the audience. Make them talk to each other, only. Show the reader what you want to say, and let the characters do all the talking like a person would. Make it feel natural. Trust your reader to make their own conclusions. Let them do the work of understanding ‘why’ your character does something.

For YODO, I didn’t know the full scope of the sci-fi backdrop until I had finished writing the story. And as I may have mentioned before (somewhere), the actual writing process of this story was done over the course of two nights. So I really, really didn’t have time to over-think how complicated the sci-fi would be. I knew what I wanted to do – put two characters in a world where there is a daily death clock. But choosing the right content for this form is crucial. My story was not just about the sci-fi, it was about what happens to human souls and human relationships when there is a daily death clock. The characters have to be, and remain, front and center of your story.

I’ll give a couple examples. The confession device. I came up with that because I needed Fin to tell Ilaria – and in turn, you, my fabulous reader – that he had done all this stuff prior to the events of this story. In order to accomplish that task of a major story-dump, I had to make up a way for Fin to confess what he did, without jepordizing his mission to keep his sister safe and unaware of her troubled past.

Second example. The Farewell Towns. I knew before I started typing the story that Fin was going to have Ilaria drive him to a remote cabin-like place for this death. I don’t know why I wanted that – I just did. So then I asked myself – why would this make sense? Oh, okay. Maybe he wants to show her something. Is it about their past? No, can’t be about their past because he doesn’t want her to remember her past. Is it about the present? Something he’s been doing that she doesn’t know about? Is it about their future? Well, Fin doesn’t have a future. And he’s no mega-big-shot who can change the game. So okay, maybe he found a well-hidden loophole in the system to help his sister. Yeah, that makes sense. Hence, the Farewell Towns. Because rich people always have it better.

Third example. The whole-f-ing-setup of the story. The reason why I wanted Fin and Ilaria to not have been in touch all this while was so that I could use Ilaria’s lack of information about Fin’s life as a proxy for how the audience – you – feel. You don’t know Fin. And Ilaria felt the same way. She doesn’t really know who her brother is. Which helped me use her as your eyes and ears in this story about Fin’s suspicuous behavior. She reacts how you would react. She feels how you would feel. She is you.

Final example. The mythology of the world. Now this is my favorite part to not write much about. I personally do not like stories where the mythology is explained in the beginning, or via a speaking-to-the-audience monologue. Instead, I like to focus on seeing how a system like this would affect human emotions. It’s like Ilaria said – she didn’t care why she had kids, just that she did. So for me, I didn’t really care about why this world is like this – I just wanted to make one and see what happens. But of course, you can’t play fast and loose with mythology. It has to make sense and sound decently plausible. Which is why I needed Fin to be a guy who worked for some aspect of the system. It helped me in figuring out how he helps his sister, and any information he shares with her would sound legit since it’s coming from a company man.

My proper advice for dealing with sci-fi backdrop in your story is to first figure out if your story could work without any of it, in the current world as it is. And once the answer to that is that, add the sci-fi. And go nuts. Then see how it affects the story. The best stories aren’t about the world, they’re about the people of that world, no matter what world that may be. (case in point: Star Wars).

Element #5: The Ending

I’ve received many, many questions from our community about creating the perfect ending. Let me tell you now, once and for all – there is no perfect ending. Why? Because in order for something to be perfect, it has to mechanical. Because human beings, surely are not perfect. We’re works in progress. So expecting your story to have a perfect ending is like refusing to grow older. You just can’t.

So, is there anything close to perfect, something that just feels…right?

Of course there is. The ending of a story, to me, is as important to the story as any other element I’ve listed here. I refuse to write more than 50% of a story unless I know how it’s going to end. Seriously. I have never ever ever ever written reached half way point in a story without sort-of skipping to the end and writing some part of the ending. Why? Because by mid-way through the writing process, I know how I want it to end.

To tell you the truth, the only reason I get attached to writing a story – because I’ve started many and only finished a few – is to find out why I wanted to write it. And that moment usually comes in around the half-way mark.

In the case of YODO, all I knew pre-writing was that it was an exploration into death. And once I broke that down further, it became an exploration about how to live when you know you could die any day. Which isn’t unlike how we live our life today, given how random death can feel sometimes.

So once I started thinking about how I live, I started to think about ‘why’ I do the things I do. And that is when the world ‘legacy’ popped in to my head. And then I thought about that for a few days. But that didn’t feel enough. I had to dig deeper. Why do we desire a legacy (those of us who have the privilege to have such desires)? That’s when I reached the next level of this feeling. I do not want to be forgotten. Why don’t I want to be forgotten? Because I want my life to have meant something. Because if my life was meaningless as the whole idea of human existence, then what is the whole point of existing?

That is how I knew that ‘deletion’ was going to be an element in this story. I’m sorry I didn’t mention this in element #4, but it seems more apt here. I think about deletion a lot, hoping that we don’t create technology that does that someday. Although ‘blocking’ and ‘ghosting’ come pretty close.

That is when I asked myself – how far would a person have to go to not care about being ‘deleted’, even though he really wants to be remembered. This thought came in right around when I was writing the scene in the car where Fin and Ilaria are talking about family. To me, family is the one ‘place’ where a person is remembered after the die. And Fin, he was willing to be hated, and worse – forgotten, by his only family. This is when I skipped to the end. And wrote the final exchange between Fin and Ilaria –

Fin: Will you tell the girls about me?

Ilaria: Every day, for the rest of my life.

I could sum up my entire story down to those two sentences. I’m not saying this should be a requirement – but if you write something that feels like it contains the entire essense of what you wanted to say… that’s a good feeling. Enjoy that moment, because you’ve just written a pretty cool thing.

Okay, now that we have ‘feels’ out of the way. Let’s talk about what a good ending needs to have in order to have the desired impact. In the case of YODO, I knew that I only had about 15 minutes to create and execute my ending. So I told myself that I have to write these 15 minutes in 20-ish minutes (since my typing is slightly slower than their verbal conversation). Then I tried to put myself in Fin and Ilaria's shoes. That's when I figured out that everything Fin says in these 15 minutes will be something he's thought about a lot over the last 5+ years of his life. And everything Ilaria says will have to be completely based on in-the-moment reactions to what Fin says. She's already spent the last few hours avoiding processing her brother's impending death. And now she has all these secrets being confessed, so all of it has to mess up with her mind. 

So that became my challenge - how do you make someone come to terms with grieving someone while that person is still alive, right in front of them, but you know he'll be gone forever after 15 minutes. 

And that little dialogue exchange above was crucial in helping me figure out how to execute this ending.

All those ideas I wanted to talk about - legacy, being forgotten, being remembered, facing your mortality, losing your family - I knew that if I tried to fit all of those things into dialogues I would end up giving Fin a week-long reservation. And that's not fun to write. Trust me, if you want to kill your characters, don't do it slowly. They'll hate you. 

Endings are very, very important to me. They're pretty much right up there on the list, followed by the story title. And man oh man (or... woman oh woman) I would not have been able to finish this story if I didn't have YODO as the title and that final goodbye. Writing the rest of the story was just a breeze after I had those magical things in place.

Element #6: The Typing

Oh, the times, they are-a typing.

There comes a point where things you love doing, end up becoming things you just end up managing somehow. 

That's how I've felt about my creative expression sometimes. I love telling stories, but sometimes, in the thick of it, it can feel like I'm unable to fully harness my creative force, so I end up relying on the unknown - that part in you that somehow just knows you'll figure it out. And the only reason you know that is because you know you're capable of it because you've done it before.

So, this is why this is the most important and final element for writing a sci-fi story - in this case, but any story really - just keep typing. 

YODO is the result of about 10 hours of typing. It took you, I'm guessing, probably 20 minutes to read it. So to make the final product that lasted 20 minutes, I had to spend 40x of that time constructing it.

Because that is what you need to do in order to make something you love, something you know is tough, look easy, and then feel good.

So here they are again. All the elements I needed to write YODO -

The Purpose,The Plot, The Characters, The Sci-fi-seam-less-ness, The Ending, and The Typing.

Now you know all of my secrets. Do with them whatever you wish to do.

We're going to turn the challenge I made in the last guide into a proper community adventure for The Playground next week. I'll update this guide when we do.

Until then, go start marinating / constructing / typing your own #YODO Universe story. 

The only thing in your way is the 'start writing' button below.