Story writing wisdom from the marketer

Seth Godin aims at the marketer when he writes, but his piece How to tell a Great Story has wisdom for every storyteller. Besides, if you look at it on a basic level, every writer is essentially 'marketing' his or her story to readers.

In his article, Seth says:

A great story is true. Not necessarily because it’s factual, but because it’s consistent and authentic.

Any story does need to ring true and make sense so that it resonates with the reader.

Seth says:

Talented marketers understand that allowing people to draw their own conclusions is far more effective than announcing the punch line.

When writing a story, most of the time you don't need to spell things out like a Hollywood movie. Explain things using metaphors or anecdotes, or use a character's mannerisms or body language to explain their reactions. Try alluding to the ending or finishing your story on a slightly cryptic note. This is also useful for leaving a seed in your reader's mind. This thought seed stays and the reader will continue to come back to the unsolved conundrum.

Seth says:

Great stories are rarely aimed at everyone ... If you need to water down your story to appeal to everyone, it will appeal to no one. The most effective stories match the world view of a tiny audience—and then that tiny audience spreads the story.

This is true. Don't aim mass market with your story. You can't and won't please everyone.Write something original and unique and it will resonate with someone.
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Can Facebook Save the World?

Okay...stop laughing. This is a serious, nay, deadly serious topic! I'm talking WORLD PEACE here. I'm talking PLANETARY SALVATION!

We don't ned to plunge into highbrow rhetoric of world starvation, domination, population explosions, globo-economic 3rd-world fiscal trade deficits, etc., etc., ad infinitum. To pretty much every 'normal' human being, that's all blah-blah stuff for the studious people that didn't sleep through their lectures. That talk is for your Michael Moore's and Alex Jones-types, not for me...not for us. I write crime novels about guys that steal stuff from other guys and the guys that had the stuff stolen from them, well, they get upset and shoot at the guys that stole from them... you get the idea. I'm not a politio-economic wordsmith, so, I'll leave that to the big boys.

But, this is a serious question: Can Facebook (because of it's poplurity, in this text I'm really using Facebook as a metaphor for the internet in general) save the World?

"What's a crime-writer writing about war for, anyways?" Well, according to a recent (albeit, arbitrary) poll I conducted, quite a few writers among us are rebelling against this idea that "writers shall be poor and beg pennies for their existence" and wanting to become writers so they can make money out of doing something they like and can do well. Notwithstanding the fact that a writers got to live, writers should, wholesale, be tackling issues like this. Whatever happened to the days when people wanted to change the world with art, the '60s...you know? I'm not saying let's get all political as was the norm back then, but let's not avoid confronting the fact that there's a lot more necessity for world peace now, than there was in the days of free love and paisley.

The Basics of War:
As far as I can tell, in a war, at the very least you've got to have two sides (or more. Look up 'Poland WWII' Wikipedia and you'll know what I'm talking about). They need to have some basic disagreement with one another. For example: Germany says, "Hey, Poland! We are invading you!" and, say Poland says, "No you're bloody well not!" One thing leads to another and you have a situation where either country has substituted diplomatic exchange for an exchange of weapons. Other countries join in, the conflict expands and the confrontation can become a global one: WWI, WWII, etc.

Generally, however, wars begin much earlier with politicians failing dismally in their art of diplomacy, for example: Germany says, "Hey, Mr. Poland, we're interested in invading your country and using your resources for our own, and then, possibly staging an invasion of all of Western Europe from your land." And Poland saying, "Well, Mr. Germany, thanks for including us in your reasoning. But, on this occasion we shall have to decline" (As far as examples go, this is a little ludicrous, but then so is war). Now, when this cannot be worked out with diplomacy, to cut a long story short, then you can have a war...basically. (Relax you students of international law and politics, it's obviously fragile as far as examples go, but it's not the point of the text so, please read on.)

Yesterday, the good Mr. President George Bush said words to the effect of: "People of Iran, do not be afraid. It is not you we have a problem with, it's your government. We want to get rid of your government for your own good." Mr. President Bush, however, overlooked a very key point: the government of any nation is there because of the people, good bad or indifferent. If the people really didn't like it, they would remove it.

"But," Mr. Bush may argue, "they are 'oppressed'. How can they possibly do that? We can only save them by invading their country, overthrowing their government and taking control of their economy!"

Well, it's easy, they, like, all rise up as one and, like, take over. Proof of this is that no government in the history of the universe has survived by opressing its people. The people always rise up and the governments always come undone. Another idiocy that humanity (and Mr. Bush is included in this sweeping comment) has overlooked is the fact that an oppressive government, forced from office by armed uprising, tends to be replaced by another oppressive regime. You can bust out the history books for proof of that; and there are always exceptions to any rule. The worrysome thing is that, historically speaking, aggressive countries have always failed to create and maintain peace in the countries they invade (witness Poland 1939-'45, China 1933-'45 and to present, Vietnam 1845-'73, all the countries invaded by Napoleon, etc, etc.). Based on this, it's a fine line the Coalition of the Willing is walking in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, this is not new news.



So, going back to it all: for any armed conflict of any size you must at least have two parties throwing bombs, bullets etc. at one another. That's a rough, but fair description of a war. Of course, there are complexities, like (and almost every armed conflit fulfills this criterion) a third side antagonising both warring parties into armed conflict for their own profit. But, these are the basics.

Now, Facebook (or really any internet-based mass-communication system) threatens this in a big way. See, it is 'people', not the government, that actually do the 'fighting and dying' part of any war. Now, the closer those people are in terms of communication, the harder it'll be for the government to incite the violence necessary to facillitate actually killing other human beings, i.e war.

In a war, there's also a very key ingredient that is added to the equation before the violence can begin: difference. I'm not the first to discover this by any stretch of my imagination, but it is a fact. In any war, one warring party must be utterly convinced that the other warring party is very different in everyway to them. Men, being fundamentally a social creature, would find it very dificult to take a knife or gun to another human being if they had not been first indoctrinated into believing (falsely) that their enemy is different, insane, animal-like, has lower morals, etc, when compared to their own ideals.

In the times of great conflicts last century, it was purported that the Germans killed kittens on French doorsteps, that the Japanese were a bloodthirsty race. It came as a shock, then, to Australian soldiers fighting the battles of Kokoda, that they were puzzled to feel empathy, or even sadness when they opened up the wallets of Japanese soldiers they'd killed and saw photos of the dead man's family, wife, kids. They weren't that different after all.

A more modern example is, of course, the treatment of Islam by western media. To quote an old phrase, don't beleive what you see on TV; Muslims love Jesus Christ just as any good Catholic does.

The internet has the potential to prove false the lies purported as being excuses to go to war. War is a massive distraction to the real issues that are affecting our planet, therefore, anything that would disabuse us of the distraction would be a good thing. The fact that Mr. Bush directed his comments at the Iranian government would suggest his advisors and speech writers are becoming savvy to the same fact - the Iranians may also be using the internet, may have American friends, too. You can't go to war with your friend, only your enemy.

But, the internet is a vehicle for anyone and everyone. It is being put to good use by the enemies of peace and the purportors of global violence, too. It a method of spreading, like a weed, falshoods and lies. The belief of one can become the belief of millions in several minutes. So, always take with a grain of salt anything you read on the net.

What About the Writer?
Obiously, this is a forum for writers. So, where does the written linguist fit in to this equation? Well, that's for you to decide. But, I will tell you this, if you're writing with the purpose of buying a house, living the lax life where you can work your own hours, spend time with the kids while earning a passive income from the sales of your books, think again. Sure, you can do this. I'm sure many a writer does, too (or at least dreams of it). But, this is not your purpose. In the words of Arthur O'Shaughnessy, "We are the movers and shakers of the world forever, it seems" and this is the responsibility with which we are charged now and well into the future.

If we're not banging the drum (however annoyingly to the common onlooker), stretching ourselves by means of time and wherewithal, working the fingerprints off our fingers by punching away at a keyboard, then, what are we doing? If we're doing other than this, than pushing the boundary of what is accepted and considered 'normal', than we too have been decieved into thinking that 'things are okay' and that 'we needn't worry because everything will work out just fine'. We don't want to be mild successes in the working worlds, as soon as we chose to be artists, we chose a pretty well trodden road, littered with the bodies of the fallen who trod before us. What an adventure we chose.

I don't want to be the wowser, but unless we are activively doing something about it...it won't be 'fine'. It'll be pretty damn crap, actually.

So, please make use of this thing, the internet and combine it with your skill with the written word. Start a blog and go nuts writing what you think - soon, people will start reading it. Technically, that's publishing, too. Don't hold onto your precious thoughts for, although they may be precious, they are neeed, whatever their gramatic quality.

It's rediculously corny, but, I'll say it: become friends with the world!

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But, Aren't We the Movers and Shakers?

What's happened to us? The writers and artists of the world?

I understand that we don't want to be poor and indigent, but...come on!
What's that...what am I talking about? I'm talking about the changing purpose of writing and art. You hear me bangin' on about it, but it's true.

We've been corrupted! Well, not all of us, but a good number of us. Corrupted by the MTV/Gangsta/International Idol-ness of the modern plasma-net era into believing there are more important things than impinging upon the human conscious with art. Just the other day, I was talking to this guy and he said he really wants to become a writer because it would provide him with a passive income and allow him more 'down time'...you know, 'me time'.

I looked at him and I think my acknowledgement was more of a raised eyebrow than a really understanding gesticulation. But, it was appropriate - I thought what he said was nuts. He wanted to write books to get rich. Stuff the content, he'd write what people most wanted to listen to, even if he thought it was garbage.
If this was an isolated incident, I'd be fine with it. But, I talk to a lot of writers and it's becoming more prevalent. This idea of becoming an artist for the purpose of making money is one that would make the struggling trail-blazers of eras before us turn in their graves (or upon the posts they were burned upon; art used to be dangerous stuff). They didn't do what was 'accepted', they cut and hacked their own dangerous path through the jungle of society and civilisation.

See, we artists now may not think this unprivileged life is not necessary. Life's pretty cruisy in the 21st Century, and besides, we need to buy a house, a car, and purchase an investment property, do some negative gearing and maybe even get another...

Whoa! Man, you wanna do that, you need to get a real job!
(I can hear you all collectively groan...) Now, don't get me wrong - I'm not living in a cardboard box. But, I haven't forgotten the purpose of my craft - that's to make people think, question the 'usual' and 'normal' ways of life and show them another perspective to it. One Arthur O'Shaughnessy said about artists: 'We are the movers and shakers'. We don't walk the straight and narrow; we work long hours, write, paint or make music a helluva a lot while never neglecting our responsibilities of family and work. We move and we shake things - as artists, that's what we do. Work, then, is a necessary part of the writer's life, it's a part of life in general. It would make sense, then, if one is writing about life that they should be living it, too.

So, no, an artist's life will not be a cruisy one. Money will not be your motivation because it is not the return given for our work that we find most valuable. Money keeps a roof over our heads, the lights on and food on our plates; but what we receive in return for our craft it the shock, awe, sighs, relief, grief, cheerfulness etc., that comes when people see, hear or read our work. That is our exchange; that is what we swap for our craft. Not money.

Don't believe the modern 'get rich or die trying' motto; this is a mockery of what we're doing. Don't accept being poor, but don't tailor your work so you can become rich by altering your responsibility as an artist.

That said, I think I should get off my high-horse now that I've ridden it to near death.

Anthony.

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Calculated Perversion of Viewpoint

Art, whether it be in the written, canvas, digital or audio/visual mediums, is a form of expression. When seen by someone, a viewpoint is created in the viewer's mind of what they are looking at. This is a subjective cultivation in response to art, which is objective (music: sound waves, digital: electrons, writing/painting: photon). But, we don't need to translate the laws of physics, however. Art is...well, it's 'art'. But what is happening in the field of art deserves comment - for there are controls and balances being installed into this medium that, given that artists are the movers and shakers of the globe, will reduce the freedoms of expression and corral the purpose of art (one being to change civilisations) for other more devious purposes.

I know, I know...I'm suffering from a severe bout of 'conspiracy theorism'. Perhaps I don't know. Perhaps I'm paranoid. I don't care. But, if you hear me out, you'll see I'm only making comment - my comment - upon the direction of art in our civilisation. Perhaps this comment should be reserved for some heavy, protracted book written by a philosopher or political revolutionary theorist or something-or-other, and not a blog. Being neither of those, I'll just say 'stuff it', this is my blog and I'll write what I goddamn want to.

9/11, as it has become popularly known, was an event that stained my thinking and that of a whole generation. Several generations, in fact. It shook the ground as far away as the streets of Melbourne. If anyone recalls walking deserted city streets the following days after the towers fell, you'll know what I'm talking about.
Since then, nearly seven years have passed, but 9/11ism hasn't been totally warn off. If you remember, almost the entire western world went to war (well, the 'Coalition of the Willing' or COW, anyways) with a idea: "Terrorism". The problem was, Terrorism was nowhere to be found. COW, couldn't find this Terrorism and searched the globe for the country of Terror... couldn't find it and, of course, we all know what happened next (Afghanistan, Iraq, Weapons of Mass Distraction...I mean Destruction, etc). But, I needn't go into it, this isn't, after all, a political article.

The point is, something happened that day. Something changed. If we don't change the course of events soon, in a thousand years our ancestors will look back and remark how September 11, 2001 heralded the beginning of the Modern Dark Age when art became decadent, where spirituality was mocked, where the way we looked at art and what we thought about it was governed by politically correct undertones mores that made us uneasy to 'feel' how we did when we looked at something aesthetic. That made us change our spoken viewpoints of art and made us conform to the accepted opinions of the governed world.

Witness the recent lambasting of Australian photographer, Bill Henson. Even the PM had a swing at him for taking photos of a parentally consenting, yet underaged naked girl. The work was definitely artistic, and no malice was intended, however he was even the subject of a police investigation because of it. Fortunately, a certain sanity finally prevailed and all charges were dropped. However, this was only an opening volley of fire, an early skirmish in the war that has begun on the freedom of uncontrolled expression. But the proverbial 'line in the sand' has been drawn.

You will note that things will become politically incorrect to say or do, we will become more precious about our own safety and what we do and see will be more and more policed as time goes on. The laws passed will be for the few who transgress the good laws of our society but will blanket us all (analogous to this is the fact that it is illegal to carry even a pocket knife after an incident involving samurai swords some years back).

Do you see what is happening? We are having our viewpoints cultivated, slowly, almost below our awareness. Many of us now think things we used to partake in liberally as a severe offence. I will not provide you with a list here, but ask yourselves, what did you do 10 years ago that your would not do now? What would people think of it at the time, what would people think of it now? Some of these things are dangerous and have been duly frowned upon or outlawed, however, many of them are not.

For example, thirty years ago, my mother could take photos of me learning to swim at the local pool without the consent of anyone but herself. Now, however, she would require express written permission from the pool owners before she does so. Recently, I took out my phone camera to take a photo of my daughter and two of her friends from creche, but was stopped before I did so by a carer who imparted to me the fact that I would need the permission of the parents of her two little friends before I did so. You see, this is a law, now - one that is agreed upon thanks to the fear imparted by mass media, a form or art, that one must beware of men taking photos of children. It was made to stop people using the photos for wrongdoing, but the law also applies to me, who would only print the photo for my daughter to display in her room.


I think Bill Henson and other photographers will now think twice before they publish photographs of the naked human form of any age, something that was done by the greats as far back as Ancient Greece and Rome (who's culture and technology was extinguished by the first Dark Age nearly a thousand years ago).

We have had a neat trick played upon us, haven't we? The laws for the few have been cast over us all and, most importantly, with the consent of the people. In a most sneaky way, by the very medium we have used to change the world and the ideologies of the civilisation, we have had art turned against the populace and had the viewpoints of the culture slowly altered. The mainstream media is, of course responsible for this, we say. But, who runs the mainstream media? What about the so-called 'independent' media? If you look, this 'mainstream' sanitised ideology is working its way through here, too.

Before you take aim at me, please have a look for yourself. It's not the laws we need to be afraid of. The laws will only work with widespread agreement of the people (the mistakes of countless despots and dictators have taught the lawmakers that a government can't control a populace by force. Only with the will of the people can a government do that). No, laws need to be agreed to, first, before they can work. And, this is being done via the most cherished medium that has always worked to change civilisations for the better in every Earthly millennia: art.


So, next time you see artists being attacked, think twice before you draw your sword as to whom you will draw it upon.

Anthony Santoro
www.writersworld.com.au

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Everyone's an Artist

Writing is most probably the most common form of expression, next to, of course actual vocal expression. Hence, alternate to vocalizing one's disagreement with a political or social climate, one can always write it down and post it on a blog. The beauty of the internet means that it can be done with relative anonymity while still getting your point across to millions.

Notwithstanding the fact that your blog may be viewed by a total of zero people (unless you're a little savvy with internet marketing), never before has the potentiality existed for one person to reach so many millions of people. Never before could a man in Uganda make known his thoughts so far and wide and garner support for a viewpoint or, even, a fad. Of course, this can be abused, but those abuses (whether in the form of internet garbage, spam or "Nigerian Lotteries") can be easily overlooked when it comes to the point of the good effects that can be created via the internet. But, for argument's sake, let us just hypothesize what would have happened if Jesus or even the early Catholic church had access to such a broad medium as the internet. Needless to say, our world would look very different.

This is not a new hypothetical proposition, however. Countless internet devotees have, no doubt, made such suggestions and the internet has been the forum for many varied conversation topics for years. But harnessing that, and using that energy for good rather than evil, I think is the trick. You only need to type in something derogatory on a search engine to know what I'm talking about (I will not specifically name them here given, how the internet works, it would only garner more support for them). As well as being a gleaming light in our culture, the internet also casts its beams incidentally on some pretty morally base nooks and crannies or our society. But, these debased nooks are merely well planned and executed distractions to the purpose of life and communication. They will always be there, true. But the busy ones among us will ignore them, being more interested in the art and business of living.

I think an artist has a purpose greater than their bank account, although that is no reason they should be poor or struggling. An artist (particularly a writer) can upload, type, show almost anything at all on the internet and it is now time for them to jump on these lines of communication with vigor and tenacity, but wholesale. Communication lines (like the internet, book stores, magazines, etc.), are, after all the conduit by which any artist gets his/her voice heard or pictures seen. The time is nigh, then, to get onto blogs, websites, etc., and type and upload your points of view, your experiences, your prophecies, etc. ad infinitum. Sure, there are people doing it already, but far out of proportion to how many of us there really are.

You will note one important thing in all of this, too: anyone can do it. Which would, as a corollary, mean that anyone has the potential to be an 'artist'. Or, rather, is an artist. See, 'artist' is merely a self-consideration. You either 'think' you are or 'think' you're not. It's not a club, but (to quote an old, overused cliché [sorry]) a 'state of mind'. There is so much that can be done; actually, there is so much that has to be done to really 'change the world' (yes, sorry, again. Quoting another old cliché, I know), because, it really does need changing!

Artists, after all, are the movers and shakers. The dreamers of dreams; dreams that, at some stage, become the future. If you count that we are, all of us, to some degree an artist, that's a hell of a lot of moving and shaking.

If you would like your article circulated, no matter the topic, go to www.writersworld.com.au and contact us to find out how to submit your article to our monthly ezine.

Anthony Santoro

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