Writer / Observer / Builder — Presence, clarity, and living without a script
Author: Richard L. Fricks
Writer. Observer. Builder. I write from a life shaped by attention, simplicity, and living without a script—through reflective essays, long-form inquiry, and fiction rooted in ordinary lives. I live in rural Alabama, where writing, walking, and building small, intentional spaces are part of the same practice.
In Sanity Snippet #2, we began our book development journey by considering the importance of a solid idea, what we referred to as the story kernel. This idea/kernel has to be strong enough to carry the weight of the story for three to four hundred pages.
We learned that the kernel contains several key components: protagonist, goal, antagonist, stakes, genre, and hook. We ended Snippet #2 by writing our protagonist’s backstory overview. Today, we’ll continue developing our protagonist’s profile (the complete character profile will consume several Sanity Snippet’s).
First, a note about stories. To me, there are three broad categories of novels: 1) those where the protagonist has some external goal (winning the Super Bowl); 2) those where the protagonist has an internal goal (to forgive the man who accidentally killed his wife); and, 3) those where the protagonist has both an external and an internal goal (winning the Super Bowl and forgiving the man who accidentally killed his wife). The latter makes for a deeper, richer story. Experts refer to the external goal as the protagonist’s want or desire, and his internal goal as his need. Let’s focus on the third story category.
Every hero (our story’s main character, our protagonist) has a backstory that includes something that caused him great pain. Often, this is rooted in a particular event that caused deep psyche pain (example, a thirteen year old losing his only parent). Other times, the event could be a past mistake, something done in a moment of weakness, or be something caused by a general deficiency in our hero’s personality. Whatever the cause, we’ll call this the emotional wound, wound for short. Keep in mind the wound acts as active geyser, spouting multiple personality elements that negatively affect our protagonist including his primary fear, the lie he believes, his flaws, and other negative traits.
Personally, in the story kernel I’m considering, my thirteen year old protagonist, Billy Orr, recently experienced the death of his mother to cancer. This is Billy’s wound. It is his internal problem and will affect his journey to the end of my story.
Consider your protagonist and brainstorm his past and the various negative events he has experienced. Choose the one that caused him the most emotional pain and continues to negatively affect his life. It might be helpful to consider your story’s ending and how you want your protagonist to end up. This will determine whether you are writing a positive or negative character arc (of course, you can choose a flat arc but that dispels the need for the wound). Start writing your thoughts. It’s okay to ramble and to repeatedly ask ‘what if’ questions.
For a thorough explanation of emotional wounds and many examples of each, visit onestopforwriters.com.
The First Plot Point is the protagonist’s point of no return (aka, ‘crossing the threshold’). It is a major event that changes everything, especially for our protagonist. He leaves his ordinary life and steps solidly into the world of the antagonist. Our main character has no choice but to react to what’s just happened.
Often the story’s setting changes during this event. For example, Harry Potter boards a train at Kings Cross station and leaves his ordinary world behind. When he arrives at Hogwarts school, he enters the extraordinary world and his life changes forever.
The First Plot Point belongs at the end of Act I (around the 25% mark). It marks the end of the setup of our story. It serves as a passageway to Act II.
Have you watched the movie Taken? It’s the movie starring Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills, an ex-CIA agent. He is on the phone with his daughter, Kim, when she is kidnapped by Albanian sex traffickers. This is the First Plot Point. This is where everything changes. This is Bryan’s point of no return.
How about Mystic River? Sean, a homicide detective, discovers Jimmy’s daughter, Katie. She’s dead, murdered. Everything changes for all the key characters. Their normal world has ended.
Let’s look at a couple of well-known novels. In Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, Nick’s wife, Amy, has gone missing. Is this serious? Or just her little treasure hunt? The First Plot Point is when the investigators discover Amy’s first clue. They trail along behind Nick.
Everyone has either read or heard of To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. The First Plot Point is when Atticus’ children learn he has agreed to defend Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman, and the entire community is in an uproar.
In developing your First Plot Point it is imperative to create a causal relationship: A causes B, where A is your Inciting Incident and B is your First Plot Point. If you have trouble, consider working backwards. Say you know what event so entangles your Protagonist that he cannot walk away. Something solidly locked him into his point of no return. Then, ask yourself, what caused him to reach this point?
In my current work in progress, Lee’s point of no return is his decision to travel from his home in New Haven, Connecticut to Boaz, Alabama, his childhood stomping ground. The cause of Lee’s decision is his deceased wife’s diaries (and her parents request for Lee’s legal help). The diaries revelation is my Inciting Incident.
If you have a story idea in mind, engage yourself in a brainstorming exercise. First, list a few possibilities for your First Plot Point making sure your Protagonist is leaving his ordinary world and entering the extraordinary. Then, think of two or more Inciting Incidents that could cause each of these First Plot Points.
Your First Plot Point is a lot like your protagonist jumping off a cliff.
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I’ve been giving some thought to my Sanity Snippet project. I’ve gained some clarity and believe an alternative approach will provide more value to my beginning novelist readers.
As earlier described, the goal of Sanity Snippets was to provide encouragement and an opportunity for writing practice. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is that the practice will be more logically fluent and provide a pathway to writing your first novel. Please allow me to illustrate with an analogy.
Think of the game of football. I recall football practices from my high school days. I still cannot believe that was over half-a-century ago. There definitely was a logic to what Coach Hicks had us players do: warmup exercises, breaking into groups by player type to work on skills and techniques (quarterbacks, footwork & throwing, and receivers running routes and catching), dividing into teams and scrimmaging, and finally, running wind-sprints to close out the practice session (fun, fun). These long and grueling hours were not merely for the sake of having something to do. They were for one purpose, that of preparing our minds and bodies to defeat our next opponent. Think of the ‘game’ of novel writing. It too requires many long and grueling hours of practice.
This analogy has altered my plans for Sanity Snippets. I think we must have a focused plan and not write something that may have nothing to do with our first or next novel. We need to better use the time we spend on the writing practice field.
In sum, our daily writing practice will be fruitful if we write a few words or sentences (more is even better). The extra benefit is that our efforts will move us positively toward our long-term goal: our self-published book.
Sound good? Great. Let’s get started.
All novels start with an idea, but not just any idea. It has to be one that will carry the weight of our story for 3 to 400 hundred pages. I can easily testify that not all ideas can perform at that level. I have many a manuscript that met its death somewhere early in Act II.
You may already have an idea. You may have already written a few notes. Maybe they concern an interesting circumstance, a character’s unique personality, a symbol or image, a few lines of explosive dialogue, or a complete scene or two. Many writers refer to these disparate thoughts as story seeds.
It’s critical to evaluate and develop your ideas before wasting countless hours and words just to find yourself lost in a dark cave with no hope of finding your way home. H.R. D’Costa refers to this evaluation and development process as “popping the story kernel.”
In her invaluable writing guide, Sizzling Story Outlines: How to Outline Your Screenplay or Novel, D’Costa teaches that once we isolate our story kernel (the story seed that appears to incorporate all or most of the others; usually involves a situation, a character, or a theme), there are six key components (protagonist, goal, antagonist, stakes, genre, and hook) we must address before we can determine if our story kernel can go the distance.
Now, to today’s Sanity Snippet. Start thinking and writing about your main character. This is your story’s protagonist. Here’s a few questions to answer: 1) male or female?; 2) age?; 3) name?; 4) physical characteristics?; and 5) what’s his or her backstory?
Here’s a backstory overview for my protagonist: Billy has grown up in New York City. He just completed the 8th grade at The Math & Science Exploratory School in Brooklyn. His widowed mother just died of pancreatic cancer.
The above five questions are all important. Don’t just think about your answers, write them down.
Remember, this is going to take a while. We are going to eat this elephant one bite at a time.
The second beat of Act I is the inciting incident. Good storytelling inextricably ties it to the key event.
We are familiar with the word incite and how it is used in a sentence: the murder of twelve-year-old Kenny Barnard by a police officer incited a riot.
Here’s how Merriam Webster defines incite: “to move to action: stir up: spur on: urge on.” Note, these words are verbs.
We can conclude that some action caused an incident or event (I’ll use these interchangeably without referencing the differences). Kenny’s murder caused the riot. The riot is an event. In sum, an inciting incident is an event that triggers the story. All stories have to get started; remember, all stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The trigger is like a stick of dynamite. The event happens. It’s an explosion. Repercussions follow.
K.M. Weiland describes the inciting incident “as being the moment when the story ‘officially’ begins and the character’s life is forever changed.”
Of course, our trigger doesn’t have to be loud. It might not seem all that powerful. It could be as simple as Lee finding his deceased wife’s diary (taken from my current work in progress).
As expected, there is disagreement among writing experts as to various aspects of the inciting incident. What is it? Is it the hook? Is it the first plot Point? Where does it belong? Is it the same thing as the key event? And, on and on. And, yes, I have my own opinions.
I like this oft-cited example taken from crime fiction. A murder takes place. This is the inciting incident, the trigger, the event that gets the story rolling. Later, maybe the next scene, the victim’s sister hires private eye Connor Ford to investigate the crime. The latter is the key event. It’s the glue that connects the protagonist to the inciting incident. Simply put, there is no need for the key event without the inciting incident. The sister doesn’t need Connor Ford if her brother is not killed.
Again, Weiland (citing Syd Field’s Screenplay) provides clarity in defining these terms: “the inciting incident… sets the story in motion… [while] the key incident [is] what the story is about, and draws the main character into the story line.” This ‘drawing’ essentially forbids the protagonist from turning away. He cannot, not, go on this journey (not necessarily a physical journey).
“Robert McKee says humans naturally seek comfort and stability. Without an inciting incident that disrupts their comfort, they won’t enter into a story. They have to get fired from their job or be forced to sign up for a marathon. A ring has to be purchased. A home has to be sold. The character has to jump into the story, into the discomfort and the fear, otherwise the story will never happen.”
Donald Miller
Don’t think the inciting incident is always as tidy as my Connor Ford example. In fact, our trigger might come before our story, before our beginning. For example: what if Kenny’s murder took place fifteen years earlier when his son Kent was just a baby? Now, in our story, Kent has a schoolyard fight with the police officer’s son over the fifteen year old murder. This fight is the glue, the key event, what connects our current story’s protagonist (Kent) to the journey he’ll travel for the next 3-400 pages of our novel.
An inciting incident isn’t always logical, it’s not always predictable. Often, it is just a random or chance event, just a coincidence. No matter how it arises, there is a predictable element (not always, but mostly). The inciting incident creates or reveals a problem for the protagonist that transforms his normal self.
This quote from Masterclass says it well: “Make your inciting action cause a noticeable shift in your character. A compelling inciting action will make your character take actions [he] would not have otherwise. In The Fugitive TV series, Dr. Richard Kimble loses his wife to murder and, worse still is accused of that murder. These traumatic events change Kimble, and they launch him onto a quest so compelling that it sustained four full seasons of television.”
H.R. D’Costa, creator of scribemeetsworld.com, says the inciting incident has four key characteristics: 1) it’s passive; 2) it jolts the hero out of his everyday world; 3) it’s personal; and, 4) it’s causally linked to the first act break. If you want to go much deeper, read her writing guide, Inciting Incident. You can purchase it here in ebook format: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D9UQUXO/
Let’s end with a point of clarification. I’ve revealed this indirectly, but it’s important to see clearly. The inciting incident and the key event have a cause-and-effect relationship. The inciting incident causes the key event. Or, the key event results from the inciting incident. The killing of Kenny Barnard caused the riot.
Initially, I didn’t identify a protagonist, and here I’m referring to the murder taking place inside our current story. I’m sure you can see some possibilities for our protagonist. Maybe it is the police chief. Maybe it is Kevin, Kenny’s twin brother. The point here is the causal relationship.
In fact, this is a critical characteristic for the novel. Our readers look for causation. A causes B. B causes C, and on and on. Of course, our reader may be wrong, but causality is imperative. Few readers will spend time with a story that is simply multiple, “and then this happens.”
Cause and effect, it all starts with our inciting incident and key event.
Next week, we’ll look at the First Plot Point.
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Your protagonist has an external problem. It’s one he’s had for a while, or it’s something that just hit him out of nowhere. I apologize to all females. I use the male gender to avoid the burdensome ‘he’s had/she’s had.’
Give your protagonist a name and describe his problem.
Do not make this difficult. At most, this should take only a few minutes.
Grab your pencil and write. Just a sentence or two will do. Don’t fret about grammar and punctuation.
It could be as simple as: Fourteen-year-old Billy is losing his mother. He doesn’t know his father. Billy dreads moving in with his Aunt Melanie.
Or, here’s another approach: Billy’s problem is his Aunt Melanie.
Your protagonist name can be anything. His problem can be anything. Of course, if you already have a story idea, use it for this practice assignment.
Start keeping a log of how many words you write per day (date/number of words). You can use a small notepad or a note-taking APP on your phone.
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Last week I provided an overview of story structure and the many models available to use in constructing a novel. I listed the components of the Three-Act structure and promised to describe each component in future blog posts.
Act I consumes the first 25% of the novel and reveals our protagonist in his ordinary world doing the things he normally does. These early scenes provide an opportunity to reveal the protagonist’s personality and inner thought life, including his beliefs and needs.
We learn he is to some degree dissatisfied with his life, or something happens to create a problem or some sort of imbalance. Properly constructed and illustrated, this dissatisfaction or issue-spawning event, triggers our readers’ curiosity.
Act I is comprised of three story beats, the Hook, the Inciting Incident, and the First Plot Point. Let’s start at the beginning with the Hook.
It’s highly improbable you’ll catch a fish without a hook. It’s the same with readers. Both species have to be captivated by something alluring, or they will wander off. Or, God forbid, they reach for another book in their TBR (to be read) pile. Yes, fish read books too.
While fish-hooks are made of high carbon or stainless steel, reader-hooks require something much stronger— emotion. Thus, the first thing a novelist has to do is create an emotional response in his reader.
Here’s a visual example I found at Beemgee, my favorite story development tool: “The famous screenwriter William Goldman describes a scene in a detective movie he wrote, in which Paul Newman[] in the first seconds of the film wakes up in his office bleary-eyed, picks a used coffee filter out of the dustbin and pours hot water through it, because he has no fresh coffee.”
The article writer at Beemgee.com gave his analysis: “This simple action tells a lot about the protagonist without any dialog, and makes the audience go ‘oooh yuch’. Emotional response achieved.”
In sum, our hook needs to accomplish three things: 1) it must introduce our protagonist; 2) it must reveal a representative picture of his everyday life; and 3), it must show him dealing with something that troubles him and conflicts with his normal world. All three of these, combined, offer only one conclusion: to some degree, our protagonist is on a trajectory of change, where his life cannot stay as it is. And, as we all know, change doesn’t come without conflict.
Here’s an example I borrowed from blog.reedsy.com: “In The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Katniss is introduced as a responsible, determined teenager who hunts illegally to feed her family, which suffers under the rule of the Capitol.”
Stop a minute and reread this example. Use your imagination to visualize what’s coming, what conflict (s) may arise in this story. First, consider the novel’s title. I suspect hunger is going to be important, as hunting food is one task Katniss, the protagonist, spends her ordinary world-time doing. What else do we learn about Katniss? I suspect she’s not the typical teenager I know (not to knock teenagers). Katniss is “responsible, determined.” What about conflict? She hunts illegally. Talk about actual and potential conflict, and that doesn’t include thoughts about “the Capitol.”
Obviously, this is going to be a dystopian story. The genre I usually ignore, along with sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. But, truth is, Collins’ one-sentence logline, has me hooked. How about you? Confession: I’ve read the book and it’s fabulous. I encourage you to read it.
Here’s another way to look at the Hook. K.M. Weiland, of the website helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com, writes, “stripped down to its lowest common denominator, the hook is nothing more or less than a question.” Actually, what Weiland proposes in order for our hook to grab readers and spark their curiosity is two questions: the first, general, the second, specific. In order, they are: “What’s going to happen?” and, as an example from Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, “What scary reptilian monster killed the worker?”
“The important thing to remember about presenting this opening question is that it cannot be vague. Readers have to understand enough about the situation to mentally form a specific question. What the heck is going on here? does not qualify as a good opening question.”
K. M. Weiland
Here’s my attempt to craft these two questions after considering my current work in progress. I hope my readers ask, “what’s going to happen?” after learning Yale law school professor, Lee Harding, receives an early Saturday morning call from his out-of-town in-laws offering to buy him breakfast, and requesting he help them with a legal problem back home in Alabama (Rachel, their daughter, Lee’s wife, committed suicide a year earlier).
Further, after reading my first chapter, I hope my readers ask, “did Rachel commit suicide because of her high school abortion, or her knowledge concerning the disappearance and presumed death of Lee’s best friend, both secrets she’s harbored for over 50 years?
Author and writing coach H.R. D’Costa (scribemeetsworld.com/)goes deep in Story Outlines with her description and analysis of the hook. “A hook can be a lot of things. It comes in all shapes and sizes, such as: setting, character, origin of material, tone, title, book cover, reputation of the content creator, star power, word of mouth, [and] irony[.]”
Let’s look at character for example. D’Costa contends our protagonist can provide the necessary hook to grab and retain our readers. Of course, she’s not talking about a stick figure or a one-dimensional hero. Rather, our protagonist must be a life-like creation, in many ways like you and me, one with a mix of good and bad personality traits, one who struggles with external and internal issues. In essence, he’s a captivating individual, the type a reader would love to follow around for three or four hundred pages.
I don’t have time or space to explore each of D’Costa’s hook originators. However, if you want to go deeper with the Hook, I encourage you to buy Sizzling Story Outlines, noting particularly the section where D’Costa discusses use of multiple hooks to grab your reader.
I’ll end this post with a challenge. It involves a little reading. You are a reader aren’t you?
“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
Stephen King
Now, to that challenge. I encourage you to pull a novel from your shelf or open one on your Kindle. Start at the first page and read the first chapter. Determine if you are hooked, meaning, “I would like to continue reading to learn what happens next.” If you aren’t hooked, then repeat the process. Keep going until you are solidly hooked on a novel.
Once you are hooked, describe (preferably in writing), in a sentence or two, WHY you are hooked. See if your ‘WHY’ response includes something analogous to Weiland’s specific question she created from Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park: “What scary reptilian monster killed the worker?”
Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoy this ironic hook:
“Do you want to keep your knee, young man?’
‘No’, I said.
‘What?’
‘I want it cut off,’ I said, ‘so I can wear a hook on it.”
Learning the writing craft is super important for everyone, especially the beginning novelist. Learning more about plot, characterization, dialogue, pacing, story structure, point of view, and on and on is an unending quest, a bottomless ocean.
But, there is something that is equally important, maybe more so. That’s practicing the writing craft. Just like a baseball pitcher, a football cornerback, or an orchestra violinist, an aspiring novelist has to practice.
Therefore, I’m introducing Sanity Snippets. I hope it’s an exercise you perform every day. My hope is you will not repeat my mistake: spending years reading about the craft of writing before I started putting pencil to paper (fingers to keyboard).
So, what is Sanity Snippets? In short, if you want to keep your sanity, you need to write something every day, and it doesn’t have to be much. Sanity is intentionally an overstatement but heck, the word works well in this context. For me, my day is not the same, not as good, if I do no writing.
I’m a creature of habit for my daily writing routine. It’s the first thing I do (after grabbing a large cup of coffee). Some days, I write only a paragraph or two. Other days, much more. The surprising thing I’ve learned is how I feel about myself, and my day is equally positive no matter how many words I’ve written. Yes, I know it’s a mind game of sorts. But, it works. A writer has to write. The world is out of balance when I am not writing. I believe it will be the same once you fully commit to this adventure.
However, what I’m suggesting you as a beginning writer do is start small, tiny. I know we’ve been talking about big things, story structure, the hook (my next post, due out before Monday). All I’m asking you to do is write something, even if it’s one sentence.
And, that brings me to snippet. It’s not a tough word. Snippet is simply “a very small piece.” A piece of what? It doesn’t matter. It could be anything, or nothing but a word or two or twelve. It could be, or become, a part of a larger work, say your first novel, but it doesn’t have to. The goal of Sanity Snippets is to get you writing. Here’s a bonus. You don’t have to write every day. Of course I know you don’t have to do anything I suggest. Think about/play like I’m your writing coach. If you played a sport at any level, you know about coaching. Your coach asked you to do certain things.
Can I share a story? When I was in high school, I played football. There were days I hated Coach Dennis Hicks. He worked us hard, no matter the weather, or anything else. What I didn’t realize at the time was he loved us so much he taught us life skills. I still remember two posters he had in the field house. One was “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.” The other was, “if it is to be, it is up to me.” These words have stuck with me for over fifty years. I believe Coach Hicks is why I am such a determined person. I would give anything to spend an afternoon with the greatest mentor I ever had. Unfortunately, he died several years ago.
Most likely you wouldn’t be reading my blog if you weren’t interested in writing. The best advice I will ever give you is to develop the writing habit and to just write. Every day is preferable, but it’s okay to start with two, three, or four days per week. You have the time, so just do it.
I plan on posting a new Sanity Snippet at least once or twice per week. You can respond if you choose or create your own scenario. It will not be complicated. The post might be a writing prompt. It might be a question. It might be a question about a writing prompt. Whatever form it takes, write something. I’ll leave it up to you how you do it—pencil on paper, fingers on keyboard, smoke signals. You get the idea.
One thing I almost forgot. We are fiction writers. So let your imagination run free. Just change the names to protect the innocent, and the guilty.
Let me close with an example.
Sanity Snippet #_. You have lunch with Ted, your boss. He says something you do not agree with but for fear of jeopardizing your position; you give a slight nod and a weak smile.
What are you, not you you, but you as the protagonist (the main character in the story) really thinking?
Tip: Respond any way you want. You don’t have to address the question. You could describe the lunch, the atmosphere, the menu, the decor, what you ate, anything. Or, you could write about the guy sitting two tables over that you know you know. No matter what, you earn an A+ for writing anything. “Ted’s tie was puke green. That killed my appetite.” You just earned an A+. Get it?
Here’s another hypothetical response:
After Ted and I exited the restaurant, his cell rang, and he mouthed to me, “I’ll catch you later.” I walked to my car and sat for what seemed five minutes. How could any human being be in love with spiders, and eat them every morning for breakfast?
Back to me.
That was silly wasn’t it. But, words are free so use them any way you want. Again, the aim is to write. You’ll never become a better writer unless you write, no matter how much writing craft you learn.
Here’s a final tip. You don’t have to limit a particular Sanity Snippet to one session. You might choose to pursue the same Snippet several days in a row. For example, on day two, you might do some spying on old Ted. Capture this: a snippet can create a seed; a seed can sprout into an idea; an idea can become a novel.
In closing (I promise), I want to share a few photos of my new writing room I’ve been working on (currently unnamed). It’s simple, in the barn outback, and has no internet by design, thanks to John Grisham (as in the author of legal thriller fame) on YouTube a few weeks ago. I suspect you will learn that distractions have to be dealt with if you want to produce any writing.
Whether you are a plotter, a pantser, or a plantser, a basic understanding of story structure is important.
Just like you shouldn’t start the construction of a house without a basic understanding of the required components (foundation, sub-floor, walls, electrical and plumbing systems, roof, exterior siding, etc.), you shouldn’t begin the construction of your novel without some base knowledge.
Just as a properly completed house begins with a blueprint, so does your story. Your home’s blueprint is not your home. Neither is your story structure your novel. This assumes you want to do more than simply string together scene after scene separated by two paltry words, “and then.”
So, what is story structure? In short, it is a framework for telling your story. The definition of ‘frame’ I like best for our context is, “a structure supporting or containing something.” Thus, story structure is the structure used to contain your story.
Famed author Jerry Jenkins says, “structure is to a story what the skeleton is to the human body.” Sounds important, right?
Like a human, a story has a framework.
This analogy doesn’t say it is impossible for a human body to exist without a skeleton, but for sure, this human would be unique, to the point one might wonder whether ‘it’ was a human at all. Structure gives story life, without it, we as readers might easily grow disinterested, bored, confused, and, sooner than later, throw the book in the trash.
Before I go any further, I propose a disclaimer. In this blog post you will learn only a tiny fraction about this almost limitless subject. Why? Because there’s no one answer; there’s many well developed structures for you to adopt to ‘contain’ your story. Here’s a few: Dean Koontz’s classic story structure, Freytag’s pyramid, In Medias Res, the hero’s journey, the 7-point story structure, Dan Harmon’s story circle, Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake method, the Fichtean curve, James Scott Bell’s a disturbance and two doorways, and Save the Cat beat sheet. The list, and the names, are mind-boggling.
I’ve intentionally left out the Three Act Structure because it’s the one I use and am more familiar with. Until I was researching for this blog post, I had never heard of several from the above list, including Freytag’s pyramid, and the Fichtean curve.
Allegedly, Aristotle originated the three act structure. In his Poetics, the Greek philosopher Aristotle said, “A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end.” Although here, he was referring to a play, the same principle applies to storytelling no matter the form.
“In the first act you get your hero up a tree. The second act, you throw rocks at him. For the third act you let him down.”
George Abbott, American theater producer and director
Here is a list of the key components for each Act. Note, the percentages. These represent the portion of the story each Act contains.
Act I—The beginning (the setup); 25% The hook; The inciting incident; The key event; The first plot Point.
Act II—The middle (the confrontation); 50% Since this Act contains half of the story, its broken into two parts (three, if you count the Midpoint). Act IIA (reaction)
Midpoint (second plot Point)
Act IIB (action) Third plot Point at end.
Act III—The ending (Resolution); 25% Pre-climax Climax Resolution (also called the Denouement)
“The beginning isn’t simply the first in a series of events, but the originating event of all that follows. The middle isn’t just the next event, but the story’s central struggle. And the ending isn’t just the last event, but the culminating event.”
Steven James, author and writer
You can see, there’s a lot here. In fact, many articles, even entire books, have been written on each of these components. So, there’s too much to cover today. However, I intend to address each of these in future posts.
Before I close, let’s try to apply the three act structure to our own lives. I’ll assume an average life expectancy of 80 years. It seems reasonable to break our lives into the following three stages (Acts?):
I. Youth (age 0 to age 20) II. Adult (age 21 to age 60) III. Senior (age 61 to age 80).
Youth is the setup. We are in our ordinary world before our journey begins. Something happens, let’s say around age 10, that significantly affects our lives. It could be a disease diagnosis (of us or a loved one). It could be the death of a loved one. It could be a disaster: the family farm went bankrupt; a school shooter permanently disables our sister in a school shooting. This is the inciting incident; it causes you or me to become a doctor, a soldier, a politician. This choice is the first plot Point and comes at the end of our youth.
The Adult stage is the longest of the three. It’s our forty years of confrontation. In effect, the first twenty years is a reaction to our choice to become, for example, a doctor. Then comes the Midpoint. We might label it more colloquially, the midlife crisis. For me, it was my ‘need’ to go to law school. This changed the trajectory of my life.
In the second half of the Adult stage, confrontation continues, with new obstacles and antagonists alongside some of the old ones. Then, a moment of victory, before the bottom falls out, mentally or physically. This is the lowest point of your life, when all seems hopeless. One writer calls it “the trough of hell.” I’ll leave this event or experience to your own imagination.
The Adult stage is over. We are now into the last quarter of our lives. You, me, and our fictional protagonist somehow bounces back. At least enough to battle our number one enemy, which can be internal or external. This is the climax and there’s no guarantee we will win. Some will, some won’t. As in fiction, we may or may not have a positive character arc (over the story/throughout life, you, me, and our protagonist are transformed into something better, say, a kinder, more loving person). As in story, sometimes we fail, our enemy defeats us, we become jaded, cynical, mean; thus, our character arc is negative.
Finally, there’s the end, our return to the ordinary world from which we began, although it’s never as we recall. Now, friends and family, those who remain, either love or loath, more or less. With our non-fictional story, like our fictional characters, we have created our own resolution. Our last days are great or greatly grievous.
I will refrain, but we could apply the three act structure more particularly. For example, doesn’t every adventure we’ve taken contain a beginning, a middle, and an end? If the barbecue restaurant adventure (or, the rental property adventure, or the short-sale of Apple stock adventure, or the bi-vocational preaching adventure, or the you-name-it adventure) hasn’t yet ended, will it? And, when? Or, are you only in the Youth stage?
Choosing the right structure to contain our stories is imperative. If we don’t, our stories will suffer. If we don’t, our stories will still ‘live’ in their own container, albeit, unstructured ones.
In my next post, we will look at ‘the hook.’
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At the end of my last post I promised we would explore story structure. I’ve changed my mind. Since we’ve already talked about the ‘why’ of writing a story, I think we should first explore the ‘how’ of writing a story. Here, I’m speaking of your chosen method, although to some writers, method might imply more order than they would admit. Said another way, ask yourself, what type writer do I want to be?
Whether you like it or not, there are only three main categories of writers: plotters, pantsers, and plantsers. But, don’t see these as limiting your choices. There are endless variations of each. The takeaway is there is no right or wrong way to write a novel. What’s important is that you find the method that works for you.
Plotters, pantsers, & plantsers
The plotter. Obviously, this is someone who engages in varying degrees of prewriting. A full-blooded plotter would plan and outline his complete story before he begins to write. He would know his story from beginning to end—every character and every scene—before putting pencil to paper.
The plotter will develop his personal approach to plotting. Many choose index cards, using one per scene. On one side, writing a one sentence description followed by few or many notes. On the other side, listing the characters in this scene. After completing sixty to eighty such cards/scenes, this writer will arrange them any way he wants on the floor, table, or wall, rearranging them as he decides how he wants to tell his story. Many other plotters take a similar approach but digitally. There are several software programs that utilize the index or scene card approach. Two that I’ve reviewed are, Beemgee and Plottr.
Here are the pros and cons of being a plotter. Obviously, it involves a lot of work, maybe months before the first word of the first draft is written. A good thing is this method is singlehandedly the best way to avoid writer’s block: you always know where you’re going. Plus, you mostly avoid getting sidetracked. Chasing rabbits is often a dead end that causes many a pantser to abandon the manuscript. But, a plotter can also create a mess— if he concludes his outline has problems. Redoing an outline in itself is easy. The hard part is redoing the actual manuscript. Normally, a change in one place has a ripple effect, creating work that could have been avoided if the outline had been correct to begin with.
The pantser. This is someone who writes their story by the seat of their pants, trusting their daily imagination to create the needed characters and plots. Thus, he engages in little to no prewriting. In other words, he writes without the aid of an outline or roadmap.
His reason for doing so, most likely, is that he wants to discover his story as he writes (or, like me with God and Girl, he doesn’t have time). This might be grounded in his fear that doing otherwise would squelch his creativity. There are pros and cons to being a pantser. One of the best things is that it avoids months (sometimes years) of pre-planning. And, as stated above, writer’s block can appear any day. Hopefully, you as a new writer will never experience this debilitating, ‘death’ inducing, malady.
The plantser. This is a relatively new term. Plantsers are crossbreeds, those that are both plotters and pantsers, say, half and half, to suggest one of an infinite number of combinations. For example, a plantser might plan three or four key events in his story before he begins to write, leaving much to his imagination along the long and arduous journey to The End.
As to the pros and cons of being a plantser, sometimes you’ll enjoy the best of all worlds. But, everything comes with a cost.
My own evolution
As to my own writing, I’m undergoing a major transformation: away from being a pantser to becoming a plotter. It has been a gradual process but it is picking up steam. As I hinted at in a previous post, with my first novel, God and Girl, my story idea didn’t involve much planning; in fact, the idea came quickly, shortly before I accepted a challenge. What illustrates me as a pantser more than anything is the context and timing. It was November, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) which requires (to be successful) you write a minimum of 50,000 during the thirty day period. In sum, I started my story writing career as a full-blooded pantser.
For me, the main reason I’m transitioning is to avoid (hopefully) black holes, the dark, scary, and inescapable rabbit trail a pantser can pursue that ties his story in knots, those that can only be untied by considerable retreat and rewriting. Don’t question my sincerity here. I have three incomplete manuscripts languishing in a figurative bottom desk drawer to prove my point.
The bottom line
No matter what type writer you want to be, you have to start where you are. The most important thing you can do is to start writing, every day. Learning to write is a journey. The only way you will grow and evolve as a writer, is IF you write. I encourage you to write something today. Don’t have an idea yet? Then do one of the following: 1) just start writing anything; it’s known as freewriting; set your timer for ten minutes or two, and start writing, or 2) consider a writing prompt. Here are two websites for a ton of options: https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/500-writing-prompts-to-help-beat-writers-doubt/, and https://diymfa.com/writer-igniter.
I intend to take up story structure in my next post. I double promise. In the meantime and in anticipation of my next post, I encourage you to daily ponder the following statement I recently found on Beemgee.com’s website: “In storytelling, structure is at least as important as language.” After ten novels, I wholeheartedly agree.
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In this post, I will attempt to define and contextualize the word ‘novel.’
Novel, story, narrative: what’s the difference?
It’s probably unnecessary to consider this question because in contemporary terms, and for most practical purposes, the three are virtually synonymous. But, having a ‘legal mind’ forces me to start at ground zero.
First, I’ll summarize what I’ll be attempting to say throughout this post. A novel is a description of imaginary people and related events arranged in a logical sequence to reveal a particular point of view or set of values.
In other words, a novel is a story. And, you already know a lot about story. It’s simply the telling of an event to a listener and the latter experiences or learns something just because he heard/read the story. A story can be either true or false.
A novel is a particular type of story, one that is ALWAYS fictional (not true in the sense it actually happened). Whereas a story or narrative can be either fiction (false) or non-fiction (true). A novel is always made-up, mostly from the author’s imagination, or an actual event, one either experienced, observed, or learned via reading, hearing, or by some other means.
In my last post, as to what was intended as an actual event, I provided an example of a guy who got snookered by a friend. A novel can be built (via fictionalization) around this, or it can become a memoir (an account of the author’s personal experiences), or an autobiography (a biography of yourself).
Merriam-Webster provides a good definition for the novel: “an invented prose narrative that is usually long and complex and deals especially with human experience through a usually connected sequence of events.” Notice that the word ‘narrative’ is used to define the word ‘novel.’
Before we look at ‘narrative,’ let’s flesh out Webster’s words. Invented obviously means it’s fiction. It’s made-up, created if you will. It’s made-up prose. Prose writing is ordinary writing, as distinguished from verse. Here’s an example of prose writing (the last sentence I wrote yesterday in my current novel-in-progress): “By twilight, with the goats fed and my impatience firing, I packed a bag and headed to Lillian’s vacant oasis.”
When I hear ‘verse,’ I think of poetry. Here’s a stanza of mine from a long ago poem:
“You melted my heart and mended my mind. You gave me love and time, a once in life discovery. A unique couple, moonstruck but fiery.”
Not that good, but you get the idea.
One other thing about Webster’s definition. A novel is ALWAYS long—between 60,000 and 100,000 words. Compare that to a short story (another work of fictional prose) which typically runs between 5,000 to 10,000 words.
“A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.”
Lorrie Moore
A novel is normally “complex and deals especially with human experience ….” This means there is a lot going on: the characters (likely, many), most all with differing wishes, desires, and conflicts. Plus, there are usually one or more subplots that are happening, all necessarily related to the main plot. Of course, not all novels deal with ‘human experience,’ but I’d wager that most do. Likely, because most people read fiction for two primary reasons: to be entertained, and to learn from experience without the experiencing part (I’ll leave you to figure that out).
“A novel must show how the world truly is, how characters genuinely think, how events actually occur. A novel should somehow reveal the true source of our actions.”
Kevin Hood, Becoming Jane
And, yes, I know there’s a lot more in this component of Webster’s definition that needs attention but today, we just don’t have the time.
Now we come to the word narrative. Recall, a novel is a story, a made-up one. Narrative is simply how you tell this made-up story. It is, “a spoken or written account of connected events,” to quote Google. But, narrative is much more.
A quote from Guillaume Wiatr (Principal and Founder of MetaHelm) excellently encapsulates the difference between story and narrative: “People will pay for a story, but people will die for a narrative.” I think what Guillaume means is that a story can grab our attention, entertaining us for the moment, but a narrative (how the story is told) can change us for a lifetime, “[i]t shifts the way we think, for good or for the worst[,]” again quoting Guillaume. He also says this in different words: “Someone died, and that was very wrong[,] starts a narrative that can turn into a revolution.”
Reconsider my summary definition from the beginning of this section: “A novel is a description of imaginary people and related events arranged in a logical sequence to reveal a particular point of view or set of values.” The underlined portion is the heart of narrative. To me, narrative produces theme, it reveals the meaning the writer has explored throughout his entire novel. He’s done this “… [b]y using characters, setting, dialog, plot or a combination of all of these elements[,]” as K.M Weiland says in writing your story’s THEME, a book I highly recommend.
Now that we’ve laid a foundation for understanding the literary form known as the novel, we must look at story structure. Knowing the framework of the ‘building’ you are trying to construct is imperative for writing a novel worth reading. I wish I had learned this much sooner.
We will look at story structure in my next post, but first, you need to understand what you’re getting into (writing a novel) is a challenging but highly rewarding endeavor. With only minor inconveniences as described by one of the greatest writers of all time:
“Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I’m always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it’s very shocking to the system.” ― Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
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Richard L. Fricks 