Start Making Your Characters Suffer: Jonathan Franzen's Guide to Great Storytelling
You must make it hard on everyone involved in the story.
'Triangle of Sadness'
As No Film School's resident screenwriter, I have a pretty big soft spot for incredible writer Jonathan Franzen, whose book, The Corrections, should speak to every screenwriter out there.
Franzen is known for his sweeping, character-driven novels that dive deep into the modern American psyche. They're long, dense, and are the perfect novels to curl up with and just dig deep into the worlds.
It's safe to say Franzen likes a complicated world, but if you’re looking for a simple formula for writing a breakout story, his advice is surprisingly direct, ruthless, and rooted in two fundamental principles: distance and fun.
Let's dive in.
The Franzen Method
What I love about videos like this one is that it takes one of the great minds of our times and just lets him offer sage advice with no pretense.
It made me really happy when he emphasized the need for a quiet, orderly life to support violent, original work.
But he had a lot of other advice that I think will help writers in any medium.
1. Find the Comic Problem (The Smaller the Better)
Right at the top of the video, Franzen says he is fundamentally a novelist of character, meaning his primary focus is on the people in his story.
So his first piece of advice is a core dramatic engine for any narrative: identify your protagonist's central issue, but frame it through a lens of comedy.
What about this problem kind of makes you laugh?
Instead of jumping to global catastrophes or sheer violence, look for a sentence that describes a problem that is, on its face, slightly ridiculous or amusing.
He has some tips for doing that:
- Embrace the Trivial: In some ways, the smaller the problem, the funnier it is. If the character's internal suffering is immense, but the external source of that suffering is trivial, you have instant, relatable comedy.
- Create Drama Through Conflict: Once you know what a character wants, introduce an obstacle that gets right in the way.
2. Find Your Distance
Franzen’s most powerful warning is against writers who treat their protagonists—and by extension, themselves—as victims. This approach, which he calls "victimology," poisons the narrative and destroys the necessary bond with the reader.
You need to find distance, tell a story that you can remove yourself from, and show without judgment. If you can't laugh at your main character, you might need to rework the idea.
Franzen says that when the writing isn't working, the two most damaging things an author can say are, "I don't see the humor in it" and "This isn't fun enough."
Your loyalty should be to the reader, not to yourself. It might suck to write, but if the reader loves reading it, then you win.
3. Face Your Shame
For Franzen, the biggest non-technical challenge in writing is personal shame. You have to examine what you are personally going through and share it with an audience.
Again, with some distance, you can look at these things objectively, but you want to be able to feel what your characters feel and understand their points of view, even if they don't reflect who you are in real life.
His basic thesis here is that shame kills good writing. When a story tries to go in a direction that triggers high levels of personal shame in the author, the resulting pages become bad, humorless, and depressing.
There is no technical solution to a shame problem. You must go into the shame and figure out its source. Once you are liberated from personal shame, you can write the story the way it's meant to be.
Summing It All Up
Jonathan Franzen uses this hour to really give us the no BS look at what he thinks it takes to have great writing. It's hard work, and it takes you spending time in your day doing it, but the payoff can be great for your readers.
The goal is simply to make every page a solid piece of craft that keeps the reader turning the page.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
