So far I think it’s great. Even though the book’s about screenwriting, it applies marvelously well to fiction of all kinds. One of the sections I found particularly lucid and well-said was a short, three page examination of didacticism and why it ruins stories. Over the years on the AML-list and in other discussions between Mormon artists, I’ve engaged in lots of discussions of didacticism. But I feel like McKee gets to the heart of the matter exceptionally well, so I’ll be quiet now and let him talk. He says:

“A note of caution: In creating the dimensions of your story’s ‘argument,’ take great care to build the power of both sides. Compose the scenes and sequences that contradict your final statement with as much truth and energy as those that reinforce it. . . . If, in a morality tale, you were to write your antagonist as an ignorant fool who more or less destroys himself, are we persuaded that good will prevail? . . . [It is in a] balanced telling [that] your victory of good over evil now rings with validity.”

This is why “affirmation” fiction so often comes off as cheesy or unearned or dissatisfying. When the bad guy is unredeemably bad, he loses power, and then the story loses tension. Of course good will prevail! There’s no other logical option.

And speaking of the AML-list, today on the list Scott Parkin said something really smart (as he often does). He said, “affirmation exists on both poles of the conversation [in Mormon literature]–either affirmation that all is well in Zion, or affirmation that Zion is a pointless fool’s paradise. I find both flavors to be prone to the same limited and limiting presentations. A revolving door story is (quite often) just another polemic, whether it’s revolving in or out.”

Whether it’s revolving in or out! Yes, Scott. Excellent metaphor. McKee agrees with you. He says:

“When your premise is an idea you feel you must prove to the world, and you design your story as an undeniable certification of that idea, you set yourself on the road to didacticism. In your zeal to persuade, you will stifle the voice of the other side. Misusing and abusing art to preach, your [story] will become a thesis [piece], a thinly disguised sermon as you strive in a single stroke to convert the world. Didacticism results from the naive enthusiasm that fiction can be used like a scalpel to cut out the cancers of society.”

I think often, as Mormon writers, we assume the injunction above applies mainly to those who are trying to “convert” a reader to our standard Mormon conversion message: that the Church is true and that you’re happier with it than without it. But it applies just as readily to those Mormons with other theses, those who use “fiction as a scalpel to cut out the cancers of [Mormon] society.” Those writers with a bone to pick can fall victim to didacticism just as easily as those with the goal of proving the truthfulness of the gospel. Both narratives are, in essence, conversion narratives.

So how do we avoid didacticism? Must a writer have no point of view, no convictions? McKee again:

“Make no mistake, no one can achieve excellence as a writer without being something of a philosopher and holding strong convictions. The trick is not to be a slave to your ideas, but to immerse yourself in life. For the proof of your vision is not how well you can assert your Controlling Idea [your thesis, your theme], but its victory over the enormously powerful forces that you array against it. . . .As a story develops, you must willingly entertain opposite, even repugnant ideas. The finest writers have dialectical, flexible minds that easily shift point of view. They see the positive, the negative, and all shades of irony, seeking the truth of these views honestly and convincingly.”

It seems to me that for Mormon fiction to succeed, Mormon writers, both “conservative” and “liberal,” need the ability and willingness to grant their antagonists humanity and power. In one example, the antagonist might be an attractive female non-member tempting a Mormon boy not to go on his mission and, instead, come live with her. In another example, the antagonist might be a rigid and conservative Mormon mother who won’t accept her son’s homosexuality. But in both cases, these characters must be complex, their motivations must be understandable, they can’t be “all bad.” Because if they are, what choice does our protagonist have? If there isn’t something compelling or even good about these characters, what will our hero be giving up if he rejects them? Where is the tension in a story where any logical human being would run away, fast, from a person who’s so obviously bad for him?

One last McKee quote: “A great work is a living metaphor that says, ‘Life is like this.’ The classics, down through the ages, give us not solutions but lucidity, not answers but poetic candor; they make inescapably clear the problems all generations must solve to be human.”

Exactly. And I’m curious: what “classic works” of fiction, Mormon or otherwise, do you think do a good job of saying “Life is like this”? Heck, you can even throw in some movies if you’d like. (I’ve been reading Story, so I have movies on the brain.)

Thanks again, Stephen, for the recommendation.

I believed in the Writer Genius for many years. He was this special, misunderstood person whose waters ran very deep. He was someone who had amazing novels and short stories swimming inside him like fish, just waiting to be caught and hauled up into the light of day. All he had to do was sit at the computer, cast the fishing line into his deepest depths, and type.

Oh, sure. He had to work to get those stories out, but it was his genius that created them. That genius was every bit as much a part of him as the color of his eyes, the shape of his hands, or the sound of his voice. That genius meant that story was something he didn’t have to worry about. All he had to do was find the words to embody that story.

And the really great thing was, in all possibility, I could be that writer genius. How many were the days that I sat down at my computer with an idea that seemed so full of potential? How many were the drafts I pumped out? How many were the critics who said, “Yeah, it’s fine.”

Fine? Obviously you don’t grasp what I’m doing here. Don’t you see the nuances? Can’t you catch the symbolism? Isn’t the story’s soul blindingly apparent?

I spent quite a few years trying to be the Writer Genius. Finally, I had to give up because it was evident to me that I had no natural storytelling talent. I was about as far from being the Writer Genius as it was possible to be. But I’m a stubborn cuss. I wanted to be a writer anyway, so I enrolled in a creative writing M.F.A. program.

I learned something during that time that opened an entirely new world to me, a world that made it possible for me to be a writer. That something is a single principle. And I’m going to give it to you free of charge, just because you’re you.

It is simply this: There is a craft to storytelling, just as there is a craft to engine design, or architecture, or artificial sweetener formulation.

This idea excited me so much that I spent the next five years studying it. The main text I used was Robert McKee’s Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting. It may seem odd to focus on a screenwriting book when one wants to learn story craft, but, as I found out, screenplays are story skeletons. They’re the bones that the cast and crew hang flesh upon. You don’t have to cut through flowery language or extended metaphors or languorous description. You’re just looking at the beams and bones that make sure a building or body can stand. And there are ways to know if they will hold up, or if the art direction, costumes, actors, soundtrack and cinematography are just makeup on a cadaver.

Though I was obsessed with understanding the components that made a good story, it took me a while to learn to apply them. I look back on my M.F.A. thesis and cringe. Why in the world did they let me graduate?

But eventually, my work started to pay off. I could tell because the first time I submitted a screenplay to a film festival, they took my $20 entrance fee and never spoke to me again. The next time around, I revised that screenplay and won third place. The kicker was, I could tell what the problems with my screenplay were, and I could fix them. It was like fixing a toaster.

After that I got published and won writing contests on a regular basis. But it wasn’t because the Writer Genius in me had finally woken up, it was because I knew how stories work, just like an architect knows how buildings work, or an engine designer knows how engines work.

Learning the craft of storytelling has been great for my career. I can actually make a living with words. However, sharing my knowledge has proved to be very difficult.

As I think back on the majority of the fiction I have read, it all has one thing in common. It lacks story. Yes, those pieces of fiction may have lovely language, they may have sympathetic characters, they may have interesting ideas, but they don’t go anywhere.

I’ve written a lot of critiques to fiction writers focusing on their story’s structure, and with almost no exception I receive this response, “What in the world are you talking about? This is how the story GOES!”

That, gentle reader, is the voice of one who is under the thrall of the Writer Genius myth. It’s the voice of someone who believes that storytelling is an innate power they have. Like me many years ago, they don’t realize that there is a craft to storytelling.

As Robert McKee writes, “The novice plunges ahead, counting solely on experience, thinking that that life he’s lived and the films he’s seen give him something to say and the way to say it … What the novice mistakes for craft is simply his unconscious absorption of story elements from every novel, film, or plays he’s ever encountered. As he writes, he matches his work by trial and error against a model built up from accumulated reading and watching. The unschooled writer calls this “instinct,” but it’s merely habit and it’s rigidly limiting. He either imitates his mental prototype or imagines himself in the avant-garde and rebels against it. But the haphazard groping toward or revolt against the sum of unconsciously ingrained repetitions is not, in any sense, technique, and leads to screenplays clogged with clichés of either the commercial or the art house variety” (15-16).

Lack of story craft is the bane of Mormon fiction. In fact, I believe it is the main barrier that keeps Mormon writing from gaining the strength to compete in the national and international markets. Too many potential Mormon writers think that there’s a Writer Genius inside of them just waiting to get out. I figure that a Writer Genius pops up only once for every million people born. Possibly less often. But the Writer Genius myth is so powerful that a great many people who could be good writers, if only they learned the craft, spend their lives waiting for a fish that never bites.