The Write to Happiness

How to Write Stories to Change Your Brain and Your Life

Samantha Shad

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781440346712
• eBook ISBN: 9781642798104
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Creativity

Why not write your way to happiness?

What happens when avid readers and aspiring writers compose stories? Writing stories transforms their brains and their minds. The Write to Happiness is a miraculous tool that can help readers and writers change their lives in the direction they choose. In her strikingly original writing manual, Samantha Shad teaches them not only how to write great stories, but also how writing will change their life for the better. The process of changing the brain and the process of writing a great story are the same in her skilled hands –– and now in yours. The Write to Happiness teaches professional story structure to help them understand and use the power of storytelling. They'll also learn why gossip is central to survival, how forgetting creates meaning, and why accurate memory is a joke.

PART ONE:

HOW TO WRITE TO HAPPINESS

FINDING THE STORY

How do we start down the road of writing to happiness? First, let’s accept that we are writers. We’re not talking about publishing deals and bestseller lists. For us, writers are people who are comfortable putting words down on a page and who are willing to look back at it to make it better if necessary. It requires a bit of thought. It requires something more than typing.

We’ll pretend to find order in the chaotic mess of writing a creative story by picking out the essential elements and building on them in sequence. We start by finding the nub of the story, which is the arena in which the story takes place. We choose a temporary main character and a goal that expresses what we’re thinking about. Then we figure out what stands in the way of our main character achieving the goal. After that, we can define our characters. When we have the nub and the main character, there will be certain challenges that the hero simply must face. We’ll make a list of those challenges, and that will be the outline of the whole story. It looks simple and orderly. It is neither.

THE RULES

These are the rules to writing to happiness:

1. 1.Follow the rules of good storytelling. It took thousands of years to refine what readers and audiences like in stories. Don’t fight it.
2. 2.Stay focused. There are no awards for having the most characters, subplots, and storylines. Aim to go deep, not wide. Keep it simple. Stay focused.
3. 3.Make friends with your sub-conscious mind. If it wants to show you something, take a look. Your best material is floating in there. You’ll know when to tamp it down. It’s pretty safe to let it run around when you’re sitting in your office and the only available weapon is your keyboard.
4. 4.You must finish the story with a real ending. No third-act Hail Marys.
5. 5.Your first draft is a car that can only go forward. No fixing, no editing, no going backward.
6. 6.Typing isn’t writing. Typing is throwing a lot of words on a page. Writing is crafting a story so that a real or imagined reader will be engaged in it. You will have to rewrite. It takes time, but you will get it right.

WHAT IS A STORY?

The basic unit of writing to happiness is the fictional story.

A story is a specific unit. It has a beginning, middle, and end. It has a protagonist and an antagonist. It has a theme, though usually you can wait it out and the theme will sneak up on you. It has obstacles, helpers, and conventions of dialogue.

A universal story is a journey through which a character faces a challenge, overcomes obstacles, and reaches a conclusion. A universal story has a particular shape.

If you have had a specific experience and you’ve written it down from beginning to end, you’ve written something, but it isn’t a story. A story isn’t an accurate representation or catalogue of events. It’s the presentation of a journey by characters through the selection of elements presented to the audience for their enjoyment and edification. In other words, it isn’t necessarily the truth. As David Mamet, the preeminent dramatist of our time, said, “In a drama, as in any other dream, the fact that something is ‘true’ is irrelevant—we care only if that something is germane to the hero-quest . . . as it has been stated to us.”²

A story is the reworking of real or imaginary events for the effect it has on others.

Aiming a story at others is the mechanism that makes us follow the rules for resolving the problem our work presents. The rules make for good drama, but for our purposes, they also force us to explore the issues in front of us and find both our own and the universally applicable answers. We’re all poor, clueless authors. We go on this journey and, unbeknown to us, we discover exactly the solution we needed all along. Voila!

OPENING NOTES

What do we need in order to start writing? We need the nub or arena in which our story takes place. The nub is the irreducible smallest unit of your story. When we writers have the nub, we can build the story idea, which is the skeleton of the story.

We have a story idea when we have a character who has a goal but faces an obstacle. That’s it. This is the place where what the character wants and what stands in her way coexist. After that, we can define our characters. When we have the nub and the characters, there will be certain challenges that the hero just has to, unavoidably, face. We’ll make a list of those, and that will be the outline of the whole story.

There are two known species of writers. Plotters sit down and figure out every twist and turn in a long outline before they write a word of prose. Later, they will struggle to bring vitality and life to the story.

Pantsers are the second species of writers. Pantsers sit down and write by the seat of their pants without an organized plan and stop writing when they get to the end. Later, they will struggle to bring focus to their stories.

We are all both types of writers, at different times. Pantsers are better at finding and following creative ideas. Plotters are good at cleaning up a creative mess and making it comprehensible to the audience. It isn’t a straight line. We alternate without all that much logic. Here, we will try to adhere to a plotter’s approach to how to write to happiness. At times, you will want to veer off because you’ve had a great thought or a transfixing idea. Great! That’s your pantser having a moment. Follow it. But you must come back to your story. Remember Rule #4: You must finish the story with a real ending.

THE NUB

“I want to write a story about ____________.” The blank is the nub of your story. The sentence might be “I want to write a story about . . .” death row, snowboarding, pumpkin festivals, sex in space, Tomorrowland.

The nub of a story is something that is bothering you, the writer. It is the arena in which your actual story will take place. Perhaps it’s something you’ve read online or been dreaming about. Squibs of thoughts and printed articles pinned on your wall are nubs of a story. A lot of writers have a file tucked away of little tidbits that are so unformed that you can’t even call them ideas. Those are nubs. I want to write a story that’s about family dysfunction. In a hospital where everyone gets sick(er). About that guy on death row. Each of those is a nub. It’s not yet a story or an idea or even much of a thought. It’s an area or zone you want to explore.

When you can say “I want to write a story about ____________,” you have your nub of a story.

THE IDEA

Every story starts with an idea. How do you find your idea? When do you know you have it?

This is the formula for an idea: A CHARACTER has a GOAL, but there is an OBSTACLE.

When we can fill in the blanks in this sentence, we have an idea. Can you fill in these blanks?

____________ wants ____________, but ____________.

The usual order for finding your idea is to find the nub of it, put in a placeholder for the hero, determine the goal, and figure out what is standing in the way.

HOW TO FIND YOUR STORY

The most important truth to carry with you as you journey forth to find your next story is this: It doesn’t matter how you find your next story. Writing a story that can change your life means allowing material that is bubbling in your non-conscious mind to come to consciousness in some form that isn’t too frightening. The beauty of this truth is that no matter what you are writing, the material will float into your consciousness and your writing as long as you let it.

Rule #3 is Make friends with your sub-conscious mind. We’ve been trained to control that nasty reservoir of lusts—our-sub-conscious—but it’s also where your best material floats around to marinate. Give your sub-conscious a hug. It’s part of you, and there’s plenty of good stuff down there. Maybe if you give it a little respect, it will send you some great ideas.

In terms of your writing, your non-conscious mind holds voluminous material. When a non-conscious idea bubbles up, through a dream or in meditation or daydreaming, respect it. Understand that you are receiving your best material. Your non-conscious mind is your friend, and it will send you what you need. When your idea veers off in a strange direction, follow it. The key, again, lies in not getting in the way of the idea that is ready to tap you on the shoulder.

So how do you find your next story? There are two ways:

1. 1.Go out and search for it.
2. 2.Sit back and tell it to find you.

Both approaches work. I personally prefer to tell it to find me, because while I’m waiting, I can get a lot of gardening done.

GO OUT AND SEARCH FOR YOUR IDEA

Searching for an idea means researching until something captivates your interest. Swim in the news media. Read websites, blogs, newspapers, news feeds, gossip sites. Read all kinds of stuff, and pay great attention to what nags at you. If it nags for more than 10 minutes, print it and tape it to the wall. It must be physically in front of you, somewhere you might see it when you aren’t looking for it. You can’t get this done by putting it in electronic form. You’re just cleaning off your desk and you keep checking out this one sheet you have about the guy on death row? Great. The fluff piece about a Silicon Valley exec who you just know can’t be as good as his press? Good. Your sub-conscious will turn your attention to a page or two hung on your wall. As always, trust your sub-conscious.

If you have a few nubs, go back to the library and research them for real. Physically going to the library is like setting an intention: It brings focus to your search. It tells the universe that you mean it and that it should show up to help you. Decide you are looking for hard-core information, and try to stick to that purpose. The point of flowing in the river of information is to see what piques your interest. Even though it may look quite goal-oriented, this search will give you a sense of freedom. It is not the search for the perfect hook or pitch or concept. We writers hold on to the fantasy that there is a perfect idea that will be the key to the kingdom, the million-dollar script, the bestseller. But if you want your writing to be a tool for your biggest heart and greatest internal dreams, the great seven-word hook won’t work, ever. As the master himself, Steven King, cautions, “Let’s get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: Two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.”³

Looking for the perfect story idea is like sending out engraved invitations to the judges, editors, superegos, and all the forces of your internal universe that can say “no”—and inviting them to party in your brain. This approach manufactures procrastination and frustration. We are looking for the story that will help you write to happiness, and external success won’t get you there. Neither will stories intended to please others instead of yourself.

SIT BACK AND TELL YOUR IDEA TO COME FIND YOU

My favorite way to find an idea is to do nothing. Stare at the ceiling. Go for a run. Take a long, aimless drive. Walk with music blasting through your head. Keeping your mind relatively...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part One: How to Write to Happiness
• Part Two: Why it Works
• Further Materials for Writers
• References
• Bibliography
• About the Author