Fix Your Story with the Help of Larry Brooks

interview by Aggie Villanueva

Larry Brooks

Aggie surreptitiously emailed Larry Brooks, typing in all caps lest he deduce her fear, and thus uncover that she is undercover. “Hey man, love your work, how about an interview?”

Abruptly, Brooks pointed his mouse at the “delete email” button. Fully intending to press it, something stopped him short. His fingers tingled around the mouse.

Didn’t he need an example for his next class? And if anyone could use his help with writing, it was this poor woman. With ever more purpose, Brooks liquidly slid his mouse to “Reply” and typed s-u-r-e, not really sure what to expect after that, but positive that he could help this poor soul with her writing.

Seriously, no matter how professional the writer, Larry Brooks has much to teach us, and his methods are nothing short of revolutionary if you listen to his thousands of students.

Writing isn’t easy, and not one aspect can be skimped over without that being evident in the book. Because of such beliefs I was often accused of perfectionism. When I discovered Larry Brooks’ blog, Storyfix.com, I rejoiced. I was vindicated. Here was a man who is a true perfectionist.

“Your manuscript…doesn’t need to be perfect; it needs to be better than perfect. It needs to grab an agent or an editor who has seen it all before by the throat and squeeze.”

Brooks is a critically-acclaimed bestselling author of four psychological thrillers, in addition to his work as a freelance writer and writing instructor. Born in 1952, and after a five-year stint as a professional baseball player pitching for the Texas Rangers, it wasn’t until 1983 that he answered an ad for a “script writer” at a company with “eight arteests and a slide projector.”

By 1996 the firm had grown to 120 employees, Brooks was a partner and Executive Creative Director with “a portfolio with more corporate videos, brochures and other useless stuff than Harlequin has romances.”

Fade to October, 2000, when his first novel debuted, Darkness Bound. The novel spent three weeks on the USA Today best-seller list, and three more award-winning novels  followed in four years. We’ve lost count to date, especially with the serializations and screenplays. Just joking; the count is right here.

In late 2002, Brooks’ script for the adaptation of DARKNESS BOUND was named a finalist in the prestigious Don and Gee Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the folks who bring you the Oscars.  For perspective, that’s among the top 10 entrants out of a field of 6,044 scripts.

Brooks began to teach writing in the mid-eighties, and his workshops are just as impressive as his writing resume. He has been named a Mentor by the Oregon Writer’s Colony and he keynotes and teaches regularly at workshops and conferences around the country.

His new book, The Six Core Competencies of Successful Storytelling, will be available late in 2009, and is based on the popular developmental model upon which he bases his workshop and his blog, Storyfix.com.

By now you should have an inkling why I spent just a few minutes browsing Larry’s site before firing off a request to interview him.

AGGIE: Larry, thank you so much for taking the time to share with us. Selfishly, as a reader, I want to hear right away about your upcoming suspense novel, Whisper of the Seventh Thunder. When was it birthed, when will it be available, what’s it about, and how do you rate it alongside all your other prestigious, award-wining novels?

LARRY BROOKS: “Whisper” was born of a single “what if” question, which quickly led (as they tend to do) to others: what if the hidden revelations witnessed by John, as described in Revelations 10:4, who was then instructed sternly to not write them into the book that would become Revelations, were in fact an apocalyptic timetable that, if published, would make the precise moment obvious to a modern reader?

What if someone, a modern reader, could deduce them accurately, and decided to publish them in the form of a novel?  What if certain divine forces tried to intervene to prevent it?  What if darker forces also intervened to make sure the visions were exposed?  What if the poor writer behind that decision was thus caught in a supernatural tug of war over his idea, the bounty being, on the one hand, untold riches and fame and earthly pleasures, and on the other, his very soul?  Which is, of course, a metaphor for a choice we all must face to some degree.

All of that came to me in an instant in 1979.  It took me this long to get it onto paper, in part out of fear of being the living embodiment of my own protagonist, and in part because of not believing I was up to it.

How do I rate it against my other work?  Best thing I’ve ever written, by far.  Ironic, because its initial publication is quite modest in scope, by comparison.  But we shall see.

AGGIE: We know that you do a lot of charity work. I heard about a recent “naked 2010 calendar” fund raiser that you modeled for. What?

Sneak Peek at Colony House 2010 Naked Writers Calendar

LARRY BROOKS: I was asked by The Oregon Writers Colony, for whom I do a lot of training and am an active member, to be among 12 regional published authors participating in a fundraising project to help remodel Colonyhouse, their incredible writing haven at the Oregon coast.  I’m naked behind a desk in the surf, cold enough to feel the effects of still-descending body parts three months later.  All of the shots are in good taste (well, sort of) and lots of fun.

AGGIE: I’m still chuckling over the sneak peek page for that calendar. No wonder the project was a success! Larry, you started teaching writing in the early eighties. What prompted that?

LARRY BROOKS: An invitation.  Anytime one is asked to teach others it’s a life milestone.  Your answer is a choice that ripples throughout your days.  Mine changed everything for me.

Nothing teaches you more than being in the position of a teacher.

AGGIE: How have the years re-formed your teaching practices?

LARRY BROOKS: Its shown me that there is more than one way to achieve a goal, and my way may not always be the chosen path of others.  In the embracing of that, I’ve broadened my options and perspective and benefited from the experience of others, all while seasoning my approach with a softer appreciation of those options.  I’ve even tried a few of them myself.

Teaching forces you to become a student of your chosen field, to keep up.

AGGIE: You tell us it’s hard work, but in simple terms, what is the very first steps we need to take to write a story that doesn’t need “fixing;” in other words, a story that’s “better than perfect?”

LARRY BROOKS: The first step is understanding that effective stories, especially novels, are complex constructions that have both infrastructure and artful nuance.  They look easy when rendered well, but they’re not, they’re very complex entities.  If you don’t understand what that means and what those criteria are, you can’t just sit down and bang out a successful manuscript.  It’s incredibly challenging even when you do understand them.

The first step is awareness of story architecture on multiple levels, the next is reading all you can to recognize and analyze that architecture (or lack thereof) in the work of others, followed by putting what you know into practice in your own work.

Think of a surgeon.  Nobody argues that they should just slice into a patient without first understanding the infrastructure of the human body and the medical principles that will keep them alive under the knife.  It isn’t as simple as cutting someone open, finding the appendix and carving it out before stitching it all up before heading out for your tee time.  To succeed at surgery, you not only need to be aware of the underlying craft of it, you must also witness it at work, and then practice it until you own it.

In both surgery and writing, that cycle of learning and practice never ends, you are always on that path.  Perfection is always a goal, never a destination.  There is always blood.

AGGIE: You explained, “Learning to write a novel or a screenplay by simply starting to write one, without understanding story architecture, is like a pilot trying to learn to fly without ground school, by hopping into the cockpit solo.” In what way are the courses you teach the “ground school” of story-writing?

LARRY BROOKS: Surgery, piloting a plane, athletics… I’ve got a whole bag of metaphors for the writing life.  My ground school is called “The Six Core Competencies of Successful Storytelling,” in which I’ve categorized and clarified all aspects of successful writing (more substance than process, which are different and equally necessary skill sets) into these six buckets.  You really can’t think of something you need to know about storytelling that doesn’t fall into one of them.

I teach them all, and stress the need for mastery of them all.

AGGIE: You’ve stated, “rarely is the (novel writing) process broken down into specific developmental criteria, from concept to character to sequence and theme, with a vision for how all the parts come together to become a whole in excess of their parts.” Every novelist dreams of our whole book becoming in excess of its parts. Out of all your various teachings, which of your courses, or books, will get us there most completely? Why?

101 Slightly Unpredictable Tips for Novelists and Screenwriters

LARRY BROOKS: I really only have one “course,” as introduced in the previous answer.  I break off chunks of it and develop workshops that focus on a sub-set or two, but it’s all part of the same theory.

The part about combining those parts into an effective whole, though, is the tricky part.  Because that’s the “art” of it, and art cannot be taught (only fundamentals and criteria can be taught, and the process of pursuing it coached), and art must be discovered and evolved by the artist herself.

AGGIE: In speaking about you upcoming book, The Six Core Competencies of Successful Storytelling, you talk about getting “your head around story architecture and the underlying criteria of it….” How does this book teach us to do that, where others do not?

LARRY BROOKS: The development of the book is slowing down because of the explosive growth of Storyfix and the recent release of my ebook, “101 Slightly Unpredictable Tips for Novelists and Screenwriters.”  How will it deliver the learning model?

Hopefully with clarity, succinctness and the use of examples.  Story structure in particular is like letting someone in on a secret, and once learned, it immediately and forever changes what you see in the work (novels and movies) of others, very clearly and powerfully.  It’s like suddenly hearing a language being spoken that’s been there all along yet you’ve only felt the results without hearing the words themselves.

It’s like learning to play the piano at a high level.  You enjoyed the music before, but now that you understand the infrastructure of music itself, you hear much more and you immediately understand what the composer and the artist are doing to make it powerful and effective.  You can’t play at their level until you share that understanding.

AGGIE: You claim this book will “quantify, analyze, calculate and blueprint the writing muse, and do it without the slightest compromise to creativity or the childlike delight that comes from making up stories and writing them down.” This is truly amazing.  What caused your teachings to culminate into this blueprint?

LARRY BROOKS: The lack of it elsewhere.  I couldn’t find a source that showed what to write, in what order, how to develop an idea into a story, what specific milestones and criteria were available to get there, and that showed me how this applies to the process of writing itself. It seemed like everyone was talking about characters and sentence construction, when what I needed was someone to tell me how to build a story from the ground up.

I’ve found that other writers, most writers, in fact, share that feeling, that something very basic is missing in the collective wisdom of teaching fiction.

The deeper I went into it, the more valid and effective it all became.

AGGIE: Writing is a business that is “overwhelmingly considered – especially by those big name authors – to be a craft that defies blueprinting.” You say they are all wrong. Can you prove that?

LARRY BROOKS: I’ve backed away from saying that anyone is all wrong, unless they claim that there is nothing to learn about writing a story prior to writing one; that you can learn all you need to know by just doing it.  That’s wrong.  Can I prove it?  Sure.

Find me a successful book that doesn’t demonstrate mastery of all six of the core competencies.  You can’t.  Because when even one of them is weak, the book doesn’t get published.  Period.

Whether the author even understands and categorizes those six core competencies or not isn’t the issue.  Lebron James may not understand the neuro-muscular physics of the slam dunk, he just elevates and jams it home.  But those physics are still there, and the rest of us who hope to dunk need to understand how to put them to work.

The point is that, at the end of the day, and by any other name or categorization, successful writers deliver on those six core competencies.  If they can convey what their collective skill-set and process is differently than how I package it, I won’t say they’re wrong. I’ll say congratulations, the more ways to get these truths out there, the better.

AGGIE: And what about your exciting half price offer on your ebook, 101 Slightly Unpredictable Tips for Novelists and Screenwriters? What kind of information does this book offer?

LARRY BROOKS: It’s actually not a “half price offer” any longer, I’ve cut the price of the book in half, period.  I want more people to take advantage of this information, and price is a factor these days.

This book is preliminary to the Six Core Competencies book, sort of a warm-up.  It’s fun and a bit random, the tips aren’t grouped by affinities or in any sequence, other than saving the Top 11 tips (I couldn’t eliminate one to get down to a Top 10) for the end.  Some are re-spins on existing ideas, others are completely original and enticing.

This book does focus on process as well as substance.  It suggests fun and unlikely ways to inspire creativity and elevate energy, ways to evolve ideas into stories, while also going into detail about the criteria for rendering them effectively.

AGGIE: If you didn’t know now what you didn’t know then, do you think you could have succeeded so greatly in your writing career? Why? And can you capsulate what you know now that you didn’t know then?

LARRY BROOKS: Success is all relative.  While others may view my career as successful — and I’m humbled by that, because I haven’t forgotten what I felt like before I was published — I don’t feel I’ve even begun to tap into my potential and reach a level of success that will enable me to sit back and luxuriate in it all.  Or that I’m even worthy of the term “success” at all.  After all, my publisher ditched me for economic reasons (even they admitted my work was frustratingly under-promoted and under-achieving… my last novel made the Publishers Weekly “Best Overlooked Books of 2004” list.  Is that success?  That question haunts me daily), and I’m still climbing back into the game as an author.  My teaching efforts are part of that journey.

Getting there is completely up to me in terms of effort and strategy, and completely out of my control (or anyone’s) when it comes to timing and the specific path by which it will happen.  There are many, many superior works of genius out there that haven’t landed with a publisher or an audience, for whatever reasons, and the means why which “it” happens remains elusive, fickle and seductively mysterious.

What I didn’t know then, and wish that I did, that I know now?  The simplest and most eternal of truths: that effort equals exposure to the chance of success.  Persistence, discipline and staying positive is everything.  I spent too long between projects, and when I finally published, too long being a promoter instead of a writer between them.  And then, when it all went south, I spent way too long on the pity-pot.  Storyfix has been my resurrection in that regard.

The other thing I wish I’d learned earlier – less is more.  It really is.

AGGIE: What is the absolute wisest thing about writing or writers that was ever said to you?

LARRY BROOKS: When I was starting out I wrote six novels that never came close to landing a contract.  I sent them all to a wise old editor at one of the big New York houses, primarily because he was the only one who took the time to write a personal letter after rejecting the first, the only one who offered encouragement or anything close to wisdom I could use going forward.

Somewhere around the fourth or fifth rejection he told me this: nothing is ever lost in the work of a true writer.  No word ever wasted, no story ever failed, even if no one reads it.

That inspired my writing, and even more, it’s inspired my teaching efforts.  If I can help even one writer understand one thing that changes them going forward, as his widom changed me, then I’ll have had a successful and worthwhile writing journey.

AGGIE: Is there anything that you’d like to say to writers reading this?

LARRY BROOKS: At the end of the day it’s all been about the writing journey.  You only have control over one thing, and that’s your work.  Once submitted it’s out of your hands, you can’t control who reads it, who understands it, who buys it or how the reviews come out.  You will come to understand that your greatest pleasure will be your solitary and intimate relationship with your stories as you create them.  The rest is just a product of effort, luck and the blessings of proximity to opportunity.  Write to connect, not to retreat.

AGGIE: It has been such a great pleasure picking your brain. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us all.

LARRY BROOKS: The pleasure was all mine.  I’m honored by your interest in my work, and grateful for the opportunity to share this with you.

For more information about Larry Brooks:

Larry’s instructional writing blog: Storyfix.com

101 Slightly Unpredictable Tips for Novelists and Screenwriters

Upcoming book, The Six Core Competencies of Successful Storytelling

Follow Larry on Twitter

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