Embrace formulas.
(Unsolicited advice for when you're stuck. Part 2.)
First, a recap.
As I mentioned in my last episode, it’s been a struggle over here. I’ve got a day job and a night/weekend hustle, so I’ve had a hell of a time trying to take my Bonesick dream on the real-life journey it rightfully deserves. I want to dump out this spaghetti story that’s bubbling over in my brain pot, but dinner keeps getting postponed.
To take back control, I started to transcribe my analog notebook ramblings into this here digital Substack screen, and what do you know? I DID IT. I came up with the roughest of outlines.
Lesson? As Mr. Pressfield tells us, “Put your ass where your heart wants to be” and something is bound to happen.
So how’d I do it?
When in doubt, lean on your ol’ reliable friend: Structure. You might be thinking: “Structure is so stifling. Talk about predictable. How can you be innovative with a formula?” Well, first, people crave a certain sense of predictability as it establishes trust and reliability. Second, thousands of years of storytelling prove it’s true. Third, there’s still plenty of room for imagination and innovation within structure. Even to this day, we can be shocked by plot twists, all the more satisfying because of structure.
There are boatloads of helpful tools that give anyone a leg up on Story Structure (I’ll reveal my favorite tool a few episodes from now). But since I’m at the very, very, very beginning of this madness, I decided to start very, very, very small. I used an exercise from the book Invisible Ink by Brian McDonald, where you place your spaghetti story through the lens of a Fairy Tale meets Three Act Play: quick, distilled, engaging, complete with a climax and character lessons. Keep it simple, stupid. Something like that.
Here goes.
Bonesick in a nutshell:
Once upon a time, there lived a melancholy skeleton named Toby. He’s a skeleton because a long time ago, he made a choice to go Skin Free. Skin is too telling, too vulnerable. There’s too much surface area upon which others can pin their judgment and blame. And Toby wanted to exist far, far away from those two words.
Every day Toby begrudgingly clocked into his life, went through the motions, checked off the boxes. No big moves or sweeping gestures. For he didn’t want to startle the sleeping giant that snoozed quietly in the recesses of his memory: a mistake, a terrible mistake.
Toby lived out his benign mediocrity until one day, a day just like any other day, he reached into his mailbox. Much to his despair, he pulled out the sleeping giant.
A giant now very much wide awake.
Very much aware of Toby’s existence.
Very much demanding answers for all the time that had passed during that blissfully ignorant nap.
Toby couldn’t bear to face the giant. He doubled down on his original choice. Maybe it wasn’t a mistake at all. What’s done is done. Everyone is better off.
But that giant haunted him nonetheless. And Toby withdrew from all the little things he loved that punctuated his otherwise mundane existence. No more midnight walks through the abandoned part of town with his cat, Cat. No more late night vinyl parties on the floor with his roommate-bestie-blob, Pam. No more tipsy philosophical chats at the gay dance club downstairs with his bartender pal, Sully.
Perhaps — if Toby shut out any feelings of good — the giant would somehow get word of his self-flagellation and go away.
So Toby continued to downgrade his existence to ensure his life was just as fleshless as he was …
Until one day when he heard an insistent rapping at his door.
The wide-awake giant,
in the flesh,
with an ultimatum:
“It’s too late to make amends for your mistake, you’ve made everything worse actually. But you have to acknowledge my existence, or suffer indefinitely.”
The two talked for a long time. More so about the present than the past. The past was all dust and bones anyway.
Face-to-face with his guilt and shame and suffering, Toby finally saw the giant in a new light. A giant is a magnificent, rare, wonder to behold, afterall.
Toby wanted to prove the giant wrong. It’s not too late. There’s still time.
Despite Toby’s desperate pleas, however, the giant insisted, “no, it is too late; time’s up, buddy.” So Toby knew he had a lot of work to do. Maybe forgiveness wasn’t in the cards for Toby, but somewhere, somehow, someone would eventually live happily ever after, come hell or high water.
An End.*
Now, where do we go from here?
*I kept my synopsis vague enough without a proper ending so that it’s relatively spoiler free. Not all the ideas, twists, and turns are revealed to me yet either!
From here, I’m not quite sure what’s next. Just gotta trust the process and start somewhere else if I get lost.
Oh, and put my ass where my heart wants to be.
Next episode? Time to face the music.