Delve, Pivot, Propel: An Interview with Steven James
By David Corbett | December 13, 2024 |
For today’s post I’m once again sharing the spotlight, this time with Steven James, whose writing guides are indispensable. His latest, Delve, Pivot, Propel, which arrived on December 3rd, is a crucial addition to his previous work, and it explores one particular issue I think is often neglected, inadequately addressed, or misunderstood: the pivot, aka the turning point or twist.
Steven is a critically acclaimed author of twenty novels and numerous nonfiction books that have sold more than 1 million copies. His books have won or been shortlisted for dozens of national and international awards. In addition, his stories and articles have appeared in more than eighty different publications, including the New York Times. He is also a popular keynote speaker and professional storyteller with a master’s degree in storytelling.
David: You’re one of the most relentlessly curious students of storytelling I’ve ever met. You’re always thinking about what makes stories great and how writers can accomplish that. Could you briefly outline what prompted you to take this new step in examining how stories work? What did you think was missing from other analyses of story? At one point you write, “[T]heexisting story theories were missing something essential to great stories, a moment in the narrative I’ve come to refer to as the pivot.” Was there anything else you noticed missing from existing analyses of stori
Steven: I’ve heard so many people espouse that stories have,“A beginning, a middle, and an end.” And every time I hear that, I think, “So does a bratwurst. How does the help me write my story?” Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach, but I don’t love it because it gives people the impression that a story is about a list of events—but it’s not. That’s a report. A story is about the collision of desires, not a progression of events.
Similarly, I had been trapped in the box of thinking of stories simply within a temporal framework—first act, second act, third act… inciting incident, rising action, dénouement—that sort of thing. It took me a long time to shift my thinking toward the narrative dynamics of the story and the essential elements to the story rather than continuing to parrot back the temporal aspects of story theory that we have all heard before. After all, you can have a story that works on the level of beginning, middle and end, but be entirely unsatisfying. How could that be? What were we missing? It took me a long time to realize what that was, and how to fix it in our stories.
The other aspects of story that I found were not taught enough were the pursuit and the payoff—that effective stories are not so much journeys as they are pursuits. And, you can have all the plot you want, but if there’s no emotional payoff in the story, you’re not going to impact your readers. So, I really had to step back from the paradigms I’d always heard (and taught) and take some new avenues toward a fresh perspective on story.
Stories always include tension, which is the result of desire meeting up with an obstacle. So, characters face an obstacle and, because of their unmet desire, they make purpose-infused choices that propel the story forward. Without desire and choice—that is, pursuit—you have nothing but a list of occurrences.
Pursuit-based storytellers ask, “What does the character want? What does the character face? What does the character do?” We are less concerned with plot and much more interested in the choices that the character makes in pursuit of their goal.
David: One of the great takeaways from Delve, Pivot, Propel refers back to an earlier work of yours, Story Trumps Structure. In that book, you introduced the “Ceiling Fan Theory:” Stories are not about what happens, they’re about what goes wrong. In Delve, Pivot, Propel, however, you remark that “pinpointing unmet desire is more vital than ‘making things happen’ or even ‘making things go wrong.’ Could you talk a little bit about what you mean by that?
Steven: Ha! Stories are not essentially about conflict, they are about struggles. What’s the difference? Well, in my perspective, conflict is bad stuff that is happening, but struggles include the desire for things to be different. So: Conflict + Desire = Struggle. Without both conflict and desire present, the struggle is lost. So, to accentuate the struggle, add more conflict and deepen the character’s desire for resolution.
David: In addition to desire, you write that “obstacle, intentionality, and stakes are all vital within a story.” What happens if any of those four elements is missing?
Steven: Without desire, you simply have resignation—the character just puts up with the conflict and never does anything to overcome it. That’s not a story. You’re left with just a list of tragedies occurring to someone.
Without obstacles, you have nothing to overcome. They are a vital ingredient in developing tension. Intentionality matters because the character must act, and his unmet desire will provide the reason behind his choices. That intention-infused pursuit will provide direction to the story. Finally, without stakes, nothing matters. The character must care about the outcome or readers won’t either. So, these four dynamics interweave and provide the fuel for the character’s pursuit within the story.
David: At the opening of the book, you boil down the key elements of your new approach in this way: “[D]elve into a character’s pursuit, pivot into unexpected yet inevitable directions, and propel your story forward.” How does this differ from your earlier approach to story?
Steven: I didn’t always teach the pivot as an essential part of the story. I was always more like, “If you can include a pivot or a twist, that would be great.” Now, I really see that a pivot is essential in every scene of your story. Yes. Every scene.
Basically, there are two dynamics that come into play in our stories—what is inevitable and what is unexpected. And they can only interact in four ways:
(1) You can have your scene be entirely inevitable and contain nothing that is unexpected—in which case your story will be predictable and boring.
(2) Or, the movement of your scene simply contains unexpected events that are not at all inevitable—in which case your story would be outlandish and unbelievable.
(3) Or, the scene could be neither unexpected nor inevitable—which is the worst of both worlds. It would (somehow!) be both boring and outlandish, which, to me, is nonsensical.
(4) The only other option is that your scene ends in a way that is both unexpected and inevitable. That’s the pivot. That’s what you will want in every scene in your story to avoid it from being predicable, outlandish, or nonsensical.
So, to me, it’s essential that we start teaching this central aspect to story development and stop focusing on acts and so on. Readers don’t care how many acts your story has, but they do care about it being believable and also surprising.
David: You define the pivot as “a moment we don’t expect, but that the story cannot do without. We don’t see it coming but, upon retrospect, we can’t imagine it not occurring. Yes, the story makes sense before it, but it makes sense in a deeper way after.” You add a little later, “[A]s pivots drive the story forward, they also reveal the true meaning of what has already happened within it.” Could you expound on that a little?
Steven: As I mentioned earlier, pivots are both unexpected and inevitable. In addition, depending on where exactly they appear in the story, they provide escalation and revelation.
This is why dream sequences usually don’t work. For instance, a character is introduced on an airplane. A terrorist leaps up with a bomb, your hero rushes forward to stop him. They fight and suddenly the timer on the bomb starts… It’s ticking down… The hero is diving to stop it when… He wakes up! (And probably sits bolt upright in his bed.)
No reader in the world is thinking, “Man, that’s awesome! It was all just a dream!” No. Instead, we sigh. “Oh. It was all just a dream.” So, the moment might have been unexpected and inevitable, but it did nothing to escalate the story. In fact, it undermined escalation.
Regarding revelation, a pivot provides the insight that leads readers back to previous moments in the story and they realize that the scene means more than they realized at the time. It contained within it a deeper meaning than the one they’d assumed and now, in retrospect, they realize the story could not live without that deeper revelation.
David: Concerning the necessity of creating scenes that are both unexpected and inevitable—you concede this is easier said than done. A great deal of thought needs to go into creating such scenes. That’s why I found one of the most instructive parts of the book the section where you provide 14 examples of how to create a pivot. One of my favorites: Connecting two stories or storylines in an unexpected and yet logical way.” I immediately thought of Robert Stone’s A Flag for Sunrise. Were there any examples that you thought of as you made this point? Are there any of the other examples you consider particularly useful?
Steven: Good question! I would say really any story that has two parallel storylines (perhaps a dual timeline story, or two point of view sections that are alternating back and forth) that merge seamlessly at a time in the story and in a way that is surprising. Readers naturally anticipate that the storylines will thread together, but we want to do that in a way that isn’t entirely predictable. This isn’t necessarily a twist (which is only one type of pivot), but it is a way to provide logical movement of the story as well as a satisfying surprise that provides unity to the narrative.
Have any questions for Steven? Fire away.
How are you using a pivot or twist in your WIP? Are you using a pivot in every scene? How? If not, why not?
David Corbett (he/him) is the author of seven novels: The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Book), Blood of Paradise (nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar, Do They Know I’m Running?, The Mercy of the Night, The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday, and The Truth Against the World. He has also published the story collection Thirteen Confessions and the novella The Devil Prayed and Darkness Fell.
David’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in a broad array of magazines and anthologies, with pieces twice selected for Best American Mystery Stories.
His non-fiction has appeared in numerous venues, including the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Narrative, Zyzzyva, MovieMaker, The Writer, and Writer’s Digest.
He has taught both online and in classroom settings through the UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program, Book Passage, LitReactor, 826 Valencia, The Grotto in San Francisco, and at numerous writing conferences across the US, Canada, and Mexico. In January 2013 Penguin published his textbook on the craft of characterization, The Art of Character (“A writer’s bible that will lead to your character’s soul.” —Elizabeth Brundage), and Writer’s Digest published his follow-up, The Compass of Character, in October 2019.
Thanks for this interview, David! I loved Story Trumps Structure and just now ordered Steven’s new book. Glad to learn of it.
Thanks, Kathryn. I agree–Steven is one of the best students (and teachers) of story out there.
NOTE TO ALL: I have a couple of doctor appointments today and will only be able to check in briefly if at all. Sorry, poor scheduling … sigh.
Happy Holidays, everyone!
Hello David.
Steven James sees the three-act design for novels as being of limited value: “it gives people the impression that a story is about a list of events—but it’s not. That’s a report. A story is about the collision of desires, not a progression of events.”
Okay, I get that, although a collision of desires results from a progression of events that can take many forms. The collision can come “out of the blue” and catch us by surprise, or it can be seen coming by the reader, which can be a different kind of payoff or satisfaction. I have always liked the idea of surprises that on reflection turn out to be inevitable, a kind of oxymoron. This has been a storytelling goal for a very long time.
I’m sure an interview can only touch on some of what’s in a book like Delve, Pivot, Propel, especially when the subtitle promises to reveal 350 secrets that will elevate my storytelling. I think though that it’s always important to underline the significance of voice. I am drawn to writing with a distinct, unignorable voice and tone. However deep the delve, sharp the pivot, or fast the propulsion, if the writer and/or her characters seem lacking in basic self-knowledge, or lack some capacity for irony, I probably won’t be drawn in enough to be moved or fully engaged.
Thanks very much for your post. It looks as though his new book reflects James’s evolution as a theorist of narrative fiction.
Hi, Barry. I agree on the issue of voice, though I’ve recently been reading two novels that garnered a lot of praise and have voice galore and wonderful atmospherics, but as I’ve been turning the pages I’ve often felt like an impatient judge admonishing the prosecutor: “You’ve covered that. Let’s move things along, shall we?” I feel the same sometimes when a writer succeeds in beautifully capturing moments, but gets lost in those details. (If I want moments that stop me cold, I’ll read poetry.)
I’ll be addressing some of my own qualifications to this approach in my next post. In particular, what if the character’s real desire is obscured by denial, self-deceit, repression, etc.? How does the story work then?
Second, I’ve been reading “Transformative Experiences” by the philosopher L.A. Paul, and she argues that we cannot possibly foresee what the result will be before we experience something truly transformative, or make a decision that will change our lives. In such cases we make the decision, or endure the impact of an unexpected or even unwanted experience (e.g., the death of a child) with a tacit understanding we will need to discover who we will become because of what happens. Given the epistemological blindness we have before any such life-changing events, what does it mean to “delve into out desire?” I’m not sure, but I hope to have a better answer by the time of my January post.
“… what if the character’s real desire is obscured by denial, self-deceit, repression, etc.? How does the story work then?” Those are conditions that would definitely “work” to make for a level of complexity in fiction written for adults. I look forward to your future post.
Barry, thanks for your note. I agree that voice is vital—and I’m glad you brought it up. While there are other books out there on the topic of developing voice and I touch on it in this book, I really tried to focus here on how to tell a pursuit-based story rather than a plot-based story. Keep on telling stories with a unique and unforgettable voice.
Thanks, David. In moments of rethinking and changing aspects of my work…Steven’s statements are fascinating and refreshing. Example: We are less concerned with plot and much more interested in the choices that the character makes in pursuit of their goal…a statement to print out and reread when the work isn’t flowing.
If we start with plot (“What should happen?”) then we might include aspects of the story that aren’t honest to that character in that context. If we start with pursuit (“What does his character desire?”) then we will know what should happen. Starting with the result (plot) rather than the impetus to it (desire) can easily cause us to get off track. As Ray Bradbury noted, “Remember: Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations. Plot is observed after the fact rather than before. It cannot precede action. It is the chart that remains when an action is through.” So, in my perspective, starting with plotting out or outlining a novel beforehand is going about the writing process exactly backward.
That’s my perspective, too! I can’t conceive of how a writer can know what the plot is before the characters put their feet in the snow and starting running. (Of course I recognize that everyone’s brain is wired differently. People with “outlining” brains must be able to predict what characters do before they do it.)
The interview was insightful. You are a very quotable person. :) I plan on ordering your book. Maybe both of them.
Hello David & Steven!
How I wished to be sitting with both of you in this conversation! Steven, I recall sitting with you in an Irish pub on Seventh Avenue in NYC where you told me of your insight into the importance of the pivot. (Or was that the “story cube”?) Anyway, I’m thrilled that your idea is now fully developed in your new book.
I will read avidly. Even reading this brief interview has me hopping up and down (mentally) to agree, add to, and elaborate upon what you’re saying. For now, let me simply shout my endorsement of your assertion that a story is not simply a sequence of events (a report). Almost all beginner manuscripts read like the movie in the mind, a flowing visual record of what we would see if we were there and watching. While we may “see” what’s happening using that approach, and that’s important, at the same time we don’t feel involved in a story.
The difference is the most fundamental one for writers to grasp and I love how you’re reframing the whole concept of story, Steven. Great interview. Thanks both.
Thanks! Yes, I remember that pub conversation quite well. I appreciate your note and look forward to next time we can sit and geek out over story.
Very thought-provoking! But I wonder if having a pivot in every scene might not only become predictable (the reader doesn’t know what the pivot will be but they know it’s coming — like jump scares, like someone walking through a haunted house knowing that the angry ghost is going to pop out from behind one of those doors — which one? This develops into a tedious rhythm. Well, it would for me, and I don’t think I’m alone in this. I like pacing that includes milder episodes and character/scene/situation development, and I know there are many other readers out there who feel the same, who savor the quieter, drilling-deeper moments in a story.
This is a point that occurred to me as well … Grumpy? (Say hi to the other six dwarves for me–but don’t tell them you were always my favorite.)
The way I learned scene structure was: Setup => Turning Point => Payoff. The Turning Point wasn’t necessarily a pivot, in the sense it wasn’t necessarily both inevitable and surprising, but it did resolve, change, or in some other way change the power dynamic among the characters established in the Setup. That power dynamic was itself established by the relative desires/goals and obstacles presented by those characters: who wants what, why, what’s in their way, why now? The Turning Point (and there can be several in a single scene) is when one character manages to succeed at least partially in achieving their goal, or failing at it (at least in part). In this way the Turning Point is simply an organic part of the characters’ struggles to achieve what they want.
I hope that’s helpful.
Hello Grumpy. I share your skepticism. Pivots, yes, but in every scene? As you say, that kind of strategy could easily become predictable, to the point of being irritating.
More to the point, if it’s predictable, it stops being surprising.
That’s a good question and one I hear people bring up. Here’s the way I look at it: There are only four possible endings to any scene in regard to logic and surprise. (1) It might be only logical and not surprising—which is boring and too predictable, and something to avoid. (2) It might be only surprising and not logical at all—which is unbelievable and outlandish. (3) It might be neither logical nor surprising—which is the worst of both worlds. Somehow the scene would be both predicable and unbelievable. Not ideal. And finally, the only other option is to have scenes that are both logical and also surprising, scenes that both make sense and allow for the unexpected. That is, they include a pivot. Any type of event that is repetitive (or instance, jump scares) stops being unexpected and surprising. We only have four options for every scene. Which one will we choose? Only one option satisfies readers. That’s the one I aim for (even if I sometimes miss the mark) every time.
Again, everyone has a POINT to MAKE when it comes to the creative process. And good stories, novels, plays? There is so much variation, that we could create careers arguing these points…which of course some do. But from this discussion we once again enjoy the arguments, and note what might apply to our own work. Ah, writers, how do they sleep at night?
Beth–THANK YOU for this: “There is so much variation, that we could create careers arguing these points…which of course some do.”
I truly believe your point is one worth making. Someone as old as I am remembers a time when the way for writers to make their way was to read the writers they admired, and to emulate them in what they themselves wrote. Imagine anyone 50-70 years ago turning to how-to manuals instead of reading and re-reading the writers they most admired. Is there anything wrong in making a career out of devising strategies for achieving success as a fiction writer? I guess you could say it’s just one more instance of the entrepreneurial spirit, and leave it at that. Thanks again.
Thanks, David and Steven, for this intriguing introduction to Steven’s new book. I look forward to reading it to understand these ideas in more depth. I’m especially interested in seeing the 14 examples of how to create a pivot. Coming from the same setup-turning point-payoff background as David, I hope Steven’s fuller explanation in the book can help me see how his idea of a pivot can fit into my understanding of scene structure.
Thanks, also, for the discussion in the comments above!