Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence (9 page)

Is she right?
Is
land what ties you to your past and makes you who you are? God, let’s hope not. This is why Scarlett emerges both a successful and a tragic figure. And why her blindness to what she truly
wants—caused by her fatal flaw—is understandable, rather than annoying or, worse, hair-pullingly frustrating to the reader. Readers are a surprisingly accepting lot when it comes to willfully blind protagonists, provided they understand the reason for their blindness. This is often exactly what such stories are about: why
would
a person work overtime to stay blind to something that is painfully clear to everyone else? In fact, sometimes the “aha!” moment belongs to the reader rather than the protagonist. It’s the epiphany that comes of realization that not only isn’t the protagonist going to change, but for the first time we grasp the full weight of what the self-imposed blindness is protecting her from.

So, getting back to Scarlett, let’s add a clause to our description:

Focus, anyone? How’s that for a mini-outline! We’ve taken the theme—survival driven by gumption—harnessed it to Scarlett’s issue, and then run them both through the hurdles the plot lays out for her. By synthesizing the theme, Scarlett’s internal issue, and the plot, we’ve boiled a 1,024-page book down to its essence. In one (albeit long) sentence, we’ve provided enough of the big picture to give a clear idea of what the book is about.

While clearly this is a very handy method for defining what, exactly, your story is about once it’s written, it can be even more helpful before you begin writing—or at whatever stage your story is at right now. It’s
never too late or too early, and it always helps. Knowing what the focus of your story is allows you to do for your story what your cognitive unconscious does for you: filter out everything extraneous, everything that doesn’t matter. You can use it to test each proposed twist, turn, and character reaction for story relevance.

This isn’t to say that once you begin writing you might not change your mind about the theme, the story question, or that the story might not unfold in a completely different direction than you anticipated. But—and here’s another reason why figuring these things out first makes all the difference—if it
does
change, you’ll recognize it and be able to adjust the narrative accordingly. How? Because you’ve mapped out where the story was headed, you can now use the same map to rechart your story’s course. Don’t forget: when a story shifts focus halfway through, it not only means it’s now heading in a different direction; it also means that everything leading up to that spot has to shift as well. Otherwise, it’s like boarding a plane bound for New York City that lands in Cincinnati instead. Talk about disorienting (not to mention that you’ve packed all the wrong clothes). The good news is that because you already have a map—something we’ll develop in more depth in
chapter 5
—you know just where those changes need to be.

This will please your readers immensely. Since their implicit belief is that everything in a story is there on a need-to-know basis, the last thing you want is for them to continually trip over all the unnecessary info cluttering up your otherwise splendid story.

MOST OF US WERE BROUGHT UP
to believe that reason and emotion are polar opposites—with reason as the stalwart white hat and emotion as the sulky black hat. And let’s not even discuss which gender was said to wear which hat. Reason, it was thought, sees the world as it is, while that irrational scamp, emotion, tries to undermine it. Uh-huh.

Turns out, as neuroscience writer Jonah Lehrer says, “If it weren’t for our emotions, reason wouldn’t exist at all.”
¹
Take that, Plato! This is illustrated by a sad story that, even sadder, its real-life protagonist doesn’t see as sad at all. Because he can’t—literally. Elliot, a patient of Antonio Damasio, had lost a small section of his prefrontal cortices during surgery for a benign brain tumor. Before his illness, Elliot held a high-level corporate job and had a happy, thriving family. By the time he saw Damasio, Elliot was in the process of losing everything. He still tested in the 97th percentile in IQ, had a high-functioning memory, and had no trouble enumerating each and every possible solution to a problem. Trouble was, he couldn’t make a decision—from what color pen to use to whether it was more important to do the work his boss expected or spend the day alphabetizing all the folders in his office.
²

Why? Because, as Damasio discovered, the damage to his brain left him unable to experience emotion. As a result, he was utterly detached and approached life as if everything in it was neutral. But wait, shouldn’t that be a good thing? Now that emotion couldn’t butt in and cloud Elliot’s judgment, he’d be free to make rational decisions, right? I think you know where this is going. Without emotion, each
option carried the exact same weight—everything really was six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Turns out, as cognitive scientist Steven Pinker notes, “Emotions are mechanisms that set the brain’s highest-level goals.”
³
Along with, apparently, every other goal, down to what to have for breakfast. Without emotions, Elliot had no way to gauge what was important and what wasn’t, what mattered and what didn’t.

It is exactly the same when it comes to story. If the reader can’t
feel
what matters and what doesn’t, then nothing matters, including finishing the story. The question for writers, then, is where do these feelings come from? The answer’s very simple: the protagonist.

In this chapter we’ll explore how to deftly weave in the most important, yet often overlooked, element of story—letting the reader know how your protagonist is reacting internally to everything that happens, as it happens. We’ll decode the secret of conveying thoughts when writing in first or third person; expose the sins of editorializing; take a good look at how body language never lies; and rethink that bossy old saw, “Write what you know.”

When we’re fully engaged in a story, our own boundaries dissolve. We become the protagonist, feeling what she feels, wanting what she wants, fearing what she fears—as we’ll see in the next chapter, we literally mirror her every thought. It’s true of books and it’s true of movies, too. I remember in college walking home after seeing an old Katharine Hepburn movie. It didn’t occur to me how deeply I’d been affected until I caught my own reflection mirrored in a darkened store window. Until that moment, I’d been Katharine Hepburn. Or, more precisely, Linda Seton in
Holiday
. Then all of a sudden I was me again, which definitely meant that Cary Grant was not waiting for me on board a ship about to set sail into a glorious future.

But at least for a few splendid minutes walking down Shattuck Avenue, I saw the world through Linda Seton’s eyes. It was visceral, and it felt like a gift—because my worldview had shifted. Linda was the black sheep of her family, and so was I. She’d fought tradition, regardless of the consequences, and even though she spent years in the proverbial attic, in the end, she triumphed. Maybe I could too. My step was lighter walking home than when I left for the theater.

This is a gift that so many of the manuscripts I’ve since read didn’t quite bestow, because the author had fallen prey to a very common pitfall, one that in essence rendered their protagonist off-limits to the reader. They had mistaken the story for what happens in it. But as we’ve learned, the real story is how what happens affects the protagonist, and what she does as a result.

This means that
everything
in a story gets its emotional weight and meaning based on how it affects the protagonist. If it doesn’t affect her—even if we’re talking birth, death, or the fall of the Roman Empire—it is completely neutral. And guess what? Neutrality bores the reader. If it’s neutral, it’s not only beside the point, it detracts from it.

That’s why in every scene you write, the protagonist must react in a way the reader can see and understand in the moment. This reaction must be specific, personal, and have an effect on whether the protagonist achieves her goal. What it can’t be is dispassionate objective commentary.