Lewis Wood's New Writers Guide

Thanks so much for subscribing to my newsletter for new writers. Every two weeks I'll be sending out a tip that I've noticed from my script reading experience, alongside with something you can do this week to improve your writing.

This week's tip: where do you start your story?

The Simpsons are the absolute kings of starting a story somewhere that makes it seem natural. To be honest, they’re the masters of all different forms of storytelling and there’s a lot we can learn from the way they tell jokes, craft narratives, and introduce characters. But our key learning for this week is the way that The Simpsons starts off their stories.

Watch any random episode and you’ll notice that we start off with a sub-plot that seems irrelevant to the actual plot of the episode. For example, “The Homer They Fall”, which is about Homer becoming a boxer, begins with a plot where Bart gets a new belt, which gets stolen from him by the school bullies. This leads Homer to confront their fathers, and when he gets beaten up by them, they discover that he can’t be knocked out, which leads to his boxing career.

Bart getting a new belt feels irrelevant to a plot about Homer becoming a professional boxer but what they do here which is fantastic is layer the plot in a way which makes it seem to make sense. They don’t throw you straight into the world, but they draw you in slowly and in a way that makes the plot logical (even if it isn’t).

So what can you learn from this?

It’s crucial to ensure that we start our story in the right place. It feels natural that we start at the beginning of our plot. But sometimes that isn’t where we think it is. The Lord of the Rings starts with a birthday party. Sometimes the Simpsons starts with Bart finding a belt. Find a way to create a richer world and draw your audience in before embarking on the true journey of your piece.

This week's exercise: lost and found

One of the biggest issues to tackle as a writer is coming up with ideas for your stories. A lot of writers will talk about wanting to be inspired with an idea, but sometimes that doesn’t quite hack it when you need to get writing.

In this exercise, we’re going to generate some new ideas for stories.

First, we’re going to write down five things which are important to us. These can be serious or silly - what matters is that they’re important. The reasoning here is that it’s easier to write about something that’s important to you. Not only that, but you’ll do a better job writing about a subject that you’re an expert in. For me, I’m going to go with: cats, children’s books, football, Pokemon, and peach sweets.

Then we’re going to use the idea of something being lost or something being found to generate these into ideas for stories. This is an interesting narrative device which immediately gives us a central conflict. So let’s explore what we could do with the five subjects I’ve written.

• Someone has lost their cat and needs to go on a journey to find it. This turns into an epic adventure.

• A character discovers a book from their childhood that they thought they’d lost, but no one else seems to remember it. They try to find the author to find out more.

• A footballer has lost their boots, and it’s 90 minutes before the cup final. We watch them try to find them in real time in a monologue play.

• A boy finds a Pokemon card that talks to him. Why can’t anyone else hear it?

• A character has lost the peach sweets that they bought for their boyfriend’s birthday. A mystery ensues to discover where they have gone.

Some of these are better than others but you can see how the idea of something being lost or found immediately gives us a conflict to work from. Give it a go for yourself and let me know if you come up with anything interesting.

Want to get in touch about something in the newsletter or interested in having me produce a report on one of your plays? Get in touch here.