Last month, I encouraged writers of all ages to ask themselves, “What’s your point?” This question comes from Lisa Cron in STORY GENIUS. Asking yourself this question is a great way to arrive at the takeaway for your story (which others may call the message or moral of a story). You can read more about finding your takeaway here.
This month I want to focus on how different takeaways influence choices we make as writers in terms of structure, voice, point of view (POV), and more. For an example, let’s look a three different bee books.
A Tale of Three Bee Books
In GIVE BEES A CHANCE by Bethany Barton, Barton’s point (or takeaway) is that we should all give bees a chance. Bees are helpful, and mostly not harmful to humans. Because Barton is upending our usual notions of bees as pests, she takes a humorous approach and adopts a humorous voice. Her text is persuasive versus simply informative. The book is set up as a conversation between a child who hates bees and a narrator working to convince the child that bees aren’t all bad. Each spread gives a reason why the child should give bees a chance and value them. By the end, the child is mostly convinced, meaning there’s a bit of a narrative arc, but I wouldn’t classify this as a narrative book per se.
HONEYBEE by Candace Fleming, illustrated by Eric Rohmann makes the point that brief lives can have great value. Fleming focuses on the busy life of one particular bee from birth to death. You could think of this book as a cradle to grave biography of a bee following the narrative structure most biographies adopt. In the beginning, the bee is waiting for the day it can fly, but as the book moves on, the bee realizes the role it has to play in the hive and its life’s work. This powerful message is supported by Fleming’s choice to use a lyrical voice and close third-person POV from the perspective of the bee.
In IF BEES DISAPPEARED, Lily Williams makes the point that small changes (like the disappearance of bees) can have huge and catastrophic consequences in our environment. To support this takeaway, she adopts a cause and effect text structure. She spends a few spreads giving readers a sense of bees and their importance in our world. Then she shows us what would happen if bees disappeared in a smooth cause/effect chain. For example, if bees disappeared, then flowers would disappear, then foods requiring flowers disappear, then animals that eat those foods would disappear. The catastrophic results grow. Williams’s structure is a perfect match for her takeaway.
Stories as unique as fingerprints
The way a writer tells their story is as unique as their fingerprints. Every author comes to their story with their own life experiences and values. That means each author will likely make a different point, even when writing about the same exact topic. In turn, those unique takeaways influence other craft choices like structure, voice, point of view, and so much more. The result? Three books on the same topic can be completely different.
Your turn
Fellow writers, what’s your takeaway? How might it influence your structure, voice, point of view, and other craft elements of your story?