Two Sentence Stories
This is another excellent tip that I am stealing from Jim Butcher. The essential premise, is that every story can be broken down and summarized into two sentence, even the longest, most complicated works. The basic format looks like this, with the words in brackets being replaced by parts of the story.
[When something happens],[the protagonist(s)][pursues the overarching goal of the plot]. But will he/she/they succeed when [the antagonist(s)][pursues a goal contrary to the protagonist’s goal]?
The most notable feature of this structure is that the final sentence is completed with a question mark. Why a question mark? Because it simulates the basic suspense of the timeline and plot which will keep your readers turning the pages until the very end of the story. There should always be doubt that your protagonists will overcome the antagonists in the end. In some stories the protagonists are actually defeated (Alan Moore’s Watchmen is a fine example).
Now, why is this two sentence story helpful? First of all, it forces the writer to break their complex story down into the parts that readers will take with them when the finish the book. Ask any reader to summarize the book they last read, and they will, in general, give you something resembling this two sentence story. A writer can throw all of the style, imagery, and symbolism into a story they want, but chances are half of the people who read your story will miss it, half of those who see it will hate it, and the last twenty five percent might appreciate it, but still want a story first and foremost. If your two sentence story is bland and uninteresting, then your actual story will be bland and uninteresting as well.
In addition, the two sentence story forces writers to make their story concrete. In other words, this is not a good two sentence story: “Following a large change in their lives, Joe and Jane try to put their lives back in order. But will they succeed when Greg and Nancy try to stop them?” What big change? How are they putting their lives back together? How are Greg and Nancy related to Jane and Joe? How are Jane and Joe related to each other? There is no room for mystification in a two sentence story. Either a writer knows what happens in their story, or they don’t. Let’s modify the former example, and make it better: “When a tornado rips apart their dream home, Joe and Jane must try to put their life back together in a small studio apartment. But when their landlords, Nancy and Greg, turn out to be Joe’s ex-girlfriend and Jane’s ex-boyfriend, will all four of them be able to overcome their past conflicts and make peace?” I kind of want to read that story, actually. It also goes to show that the two sentence story can be a good tool for story generation as well.
Exercise #1: Write out the two sentence story for one of you pieces before you revise it. Is it interesting? is it clear? How could it be improved?
Exercise #2: Start with a bland, over generalized two sentence story, and then refine all of the aspects to create a clear, interesting story. If you like it, try writing it.
