Make Something Happen
Mike Ferguson, Fresh Ground Consulting
I’m working on a new short story, my first new story in many years, and I have run into my old nemesis as a fiction writer: narrative pull.
Narrative pull is the thing that causes the reader to keep reading. It’s the desire to know what happens next. Novels and stories that have a strong narrative pull are called “page turners.” In my writing, I am generally good at creating characters, setting, and dialog. But I often have trouble finding the narrative thread that moves the story forward, the actual story itself. The task of keeping the readers engaged then falls to the characters, and even the most complex and well-written character can only bear that burden for so long.
The very talented writer, Ethan Canin, was my first formal writing teacher. He quickly diagnoses my inability and/or unwillingness to develop the story itself, or as he put it, the “clothesline” on which all the other elements of the story hang, elements he said I was talented at creating. As an antidote, he suggested, insisted actually, that I write something that takes place over a span of years (up to that point, all of my stories took place over hours) and, “make something happen.”
So it’s a little ironic that one of things I have helped organizations do over the years is understand and frame their story and ask, What happens next? Sometimes we are working out the story of the organization and how it is being articulated through everything from planning to branding and content; and sometimes we are working out the story of an executive’s changing role within a growing organization. Usually, we are working on both.
The keys to narrative pull in your organization are the same as in writing. If you find yourself saying, “same stuff different day,” then the plot is dragging. Make something happen. Raymond Chandler famously said that when he was writing and the plot started to drag, he had someone walk into the room with a gun. Many times, when speaking to someone who is stuck, either in running their company at a leadership level, or overseeing a project at a manager level, I get them up and out of their chair and walking around.
That is how I became unstuck in creating a plot for the short story I’m working on now. I stopped writing dialog and made something happen.
Another key is getting out of the weeds. Step back from the endless but necessary detail of the day-to-day and revisit the big picture. Your story and the story of your company are epics, not short character studies. Whatever it is you are working on today, the page will turn.