How To How To

You’re a writer. You know how it goes. You’ve got irons in the fire, thoughts in the cabesa, concepts swirling around your noodle.

I was trying to come up with some new how-to topics for my how-to site Skippity Whistles because, frankly, I haven’t told anybody how to do anything for quite a while.

That’s mostly because I haven’t done anything for quite a while. I mean, I go to work and do my job, but there are not a lot of how-tos that pop up there. How to draw an interesting clock face in Adobe Illustrator has a kind of limited appeal.

At home I do stuff, but have had to slow down on stuff like mowing the lawn because of a recent surgery. The last couple of weeks have been things like how to sit in an Adirondack chair. How to nod off watching movies on Netflix…

But in thinking about how-to stuff, I hit this topic this morning: how to write a story.

Well, that’s easy, right? You’ve got your protagonist and your situation and what you want to have happen. How hard could that be?

When you tell someone how to draw, say, a monkey, you don’t tell ’em sharpen your pencils and take out your crayons, do you? Step one: Get a piece of paper. That’s kind of a given, dontcha think?

So, how do you say that you have to find your voice, your point of view. Who are you in the story? Who’s going to tell it? Is that too esoteric?

When I’m putting together a long story, like a novel, I always try to remember the structure of a three-act play.

In act one, we meet everybody and learn the setting and about who wants what. It all seems to be going so well,until, right at the end, a big problem arises.

In act two, the problem gets huge, and becomes insurmountable until, right at the end, a solution arises.

In act three, we work through the solution and defeat the problem, and we all go home wiser and much relieved. End of the story, have a nice day.

What do you think? Does that make a decent how-to?

Maybe it’s too stuffy, too high-handed. Well, my child, let me explain…

One of my favorite lines from Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day comes when Owl is trying to help Piglet to be courageous.

“I-I’m afraid I’m just a sm-small animal,”Piglet stammers.

“Then to ease your small mind, I shall tell you a story…”

Maybe How to Write a Story is not a good topic.

I’ll stick to How to Make Scrambled Eggs…

Thanks for the help!