Jami Gold – The Pencil-Driven Life

June 13, 2023 by Jami Gold

Journalism writing often uses the 5W1H structure. The first few paragraphs of a news article should answer 6 basic questions (which start with 5 Ws and an H): Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How.

While fiction writing doesn’t try to cram the essentials into the beginning paragraphs, those same questions are important for our storytelling. In fact, we can use specific questions from that structure to understand the big picture—or essence—of our story, plot, and theme.

Story vs. Plot

First, though, we need to understand that our story and our plot are not the same. A story is about our characters’ struggle, while a plot is the events that reveal the characters and choices explored in the story.

Let’s illustrate the difference with an example plot idea: An asteroid is coming to smash the Earth to smithereens.

Yikes! Okay, but what about it? Who’s doing the struggling against those consequences?

Without characters, that asteroid’s just going to do its thing, same as it would on an uninhabited planet. Boom, crash, the end. There’s no story there because there’s no story problem there—no characters attempting to overcome the obstacles of the plot.

What’s a Story?

To have a story, we need characters who face a problem. And it’s only when we decide who our characters are or the choices they’ll face that we’ll know what our asteroid story is:

Plucky team of astronauts try to destroy the asteroid before it reaches Earth.
Doomed world leaders debate how to help their citizens react in the last days.
Estranged family members reach out to each other and heal wounds before the end.
And so on…

Each of those character examples defines a story problem—they want to destroy, debate, or heal. In turn, the story problem defines the story, as the characters attempt to solve their problem.

What’s a Plot?

On the other hand, if the asteroid is only big enough to cause a few cloudy days, our characters would have no reason to make big changes or choices. That’s where plot comes in: Plot events are the triggers forcing choices and changes in our characters.

Story Questions vs. Plot Questions

Now back to that 5W1H structure…

Story Questions

As a story is about a struggle or an attempt to solve a story problem, we can begin to define the layers of our story with questions that focus on that struggle or problem:

Who? Who is doing the struggling or attempting to solve the problem? (team of astronauts)
What? What is the struggle or problem? What do our characters want? (destroy the asteroid)

We can further define our story with other questions, especially in certain genres such as historical or science fiction (When? 1892 or the distant future, Where? England or outer space), but the two bullets above are generally the most important.

Plot Questions

As a plot is about the events that force choices and changes, we can begin to define the layers of our plot with questions that focus on those events:

How? How are the characters being pushed into action or choices? How are they trying to reach their goal? (an asteroid is coming to smash the Earth, so they’re trying to blow it up)

Note that it may seem like additional questions would help us further define the plot:

What? What plot events will best reveal our characters? (an accident takes out the mission leader and the protagonist needs to step up)
When? or Where? to describe the circumstances causing the story to take place now (explaining the reasons those estranged family members finally reach out to each other, when they technically could have healed the wounded relationship at any time)

But those are all just other ways of getting at the How, defining the triggers that force the changes and choices in our story.

How Does Our Story’s Theme Fit In?

Theme is usually said to be a story’s “message,” but what does that mean in practice? How can we define what the theme of a particular story might be, especially when…

themes are less concrete or obvious (often found in the subtext or a single sentence)
stories contain multiple themes (formed by story premise, worldview, character arc, plot events, etc.)
stories often include unintended themes (which can undermine our intended themes)

In other words, we might not know what our story’s themes are—or should be. Even if we brainstorm from “theme idea” lists, those nouns or short phrases (war vs. peace, coming of age, love, survival, etc.) aren’t themes until we figure out what we’re trying to say about that topic.

Theme Questions

To figure out what we’re trying to say with our story, we can begin to define the layers of our themes with big-picture questions:

Why? Why does our character participate in the story (in the big picture)? Why are we writing this story? (such as: our protagonist believes the world is worth saving, or we want to inspire others to not give up)

Our Why answers help us narrow down what we’re trying to say with our story, which then helps us define our intended themes. Our protagonist could learn to not take life for granted. Our plot events could present reasons and opportunities for our protagonist to give up, but they believe in the importance of their actions and make choices revealing their persistence. And so on.

From Journalism to Storytelling

Taking a page from journalism writing to identify the most important aspects of our story can help us see the big picture as we plan, draft, or edit our story. Using the 5W1H questions forces us to focus on the essence of our story, especially:

Who are our characters?
What do they want?
How are they going to try to get it?
Why is the story important (to our character(s) and to us)?

Those answers give us direction as we attempt to get our big-picture thoughts onto the page for our readers to enjoy. *smile*

Have you ever struggled to see your story’s big picture or to identify/develop your story’s themes? Does this framework of using specific questions to define our story’s essence make sense to you? Do you have any questions about story vs. plot vs. theme or how to apply these questions?

JAMI GOLD – Resident Writing Coach

Jami Gold, after muttering writing advice in tongues, decided to become a writer and put her talent for making up stuff to good use, such as by winning the 2015 National Readers’ Choice Award in Paranormal Romance for her novel Ironclad Devotion.

To help others reach their creative potential as well, she’s developed a massive collection of resources for writers. Explore her site to find worksheets—including the popular Romance Beat Sheet with 80,000+ downloads—workshops, and over 1000 posts on her blog about the craft, business, and life of writing. Her site has been named one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers by Writer’s Digest.

Here’s the link to this article by Jami Gold.

March 14, 2023

A well-structured story uses events (also called story beats) to move the narrative forward — with compelling issues, rising stakes, and an organic sense of cause and effect — toward a surprising-yet-inevitable resolution. At the same time, our story’s plot events force our characters to react, adapt, make choices, and decide on priorities, often resulting in new goals and revealing a character’s values and beliefs. The biggest events are “turning points,” which send the story in new directions and create the sense of change for a story’s arc.

In other words, story structure affects both plot and character (internal/emotional) arcs. So just as we must adjust the plot aspects of story structure when writing a shorter story, we also need to consider the character arc aspects of story structure with shorter stories. Let’s dig into the ways we might tweak story structure for shorter stories, especially when it comes to character arcs.

Story Structure & Shorter Plots

On a basic level, we can understand story structure as:

story beginnings introduce characters and story problems,
story middles add stakes and depth to both characters and story problems, and
story endings bring issues to a satisfying conclusion.

In addition to those basics, the structure of novel-length stories fleshes out events — with inciting incidents, denouements, subplots, pinch points, or other complications — to increase the stakes, create more obstacles, explore failed attempts to solve the problems, etc. Those techniques are especially common in the middle of the story to prevent a “sagging middle.”

Those fleshing-out events like subplots and pinch points are usually the first plot aspects we trim for shorter length stories. Short stories simply don’t have the word count for subplots or other complications.

Character Arcs: What Are Our Options?

3 Types of Character Arcs

Character arcs in Western storytelling are defined by 3 categories:

Positive Arc: (also called a Growth Arc) The character learns and grows, bettering themselves (such as by understanding how their previous choices were self-sabotaging), as part of their journey to overcome the story obstacles.
Flat Arc: The character learns how to better the world around them (such as by understanding how they can take action) as part of their journey to overcome the story obstacles (think of many single-protagonist series).
Negative Arc: (also called a Failure Arc) The character fails to overcome the story obstacles and reach their desires (such as by becoming disillusioned, corrupted, etc.) and succumbs to their flaw (think of Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader).

Spectrum of Character Arc Depths

Each of those types of arcs can be explored at different depths. For example, in a positive arc, a character can grow and better themselves in a…

simplistic way, such as being willing to trust someone else, or in a
deeper way, examining how that emotional journey happens, such as exploring an emotional wound from their backstory that led to them having fears and false beliefs about the world (“trust just leads to being stabbed in the back”), and the character working to overcome their fears and false beliefs to be willingly vulnerable with their trust of another.

There’s no “best” approach, as different stories might work better with certain types or depths of character arcs, and different genres have different expectations for the emotion level of character arcs. In addition, the length of our story can affect the type and depth of our character’s arc.

Character Arcs, Story Structure, and Story Length

Mapping a Simplistic Character Arc onto Story Structure

Using a positive/growth arc as an example, here’s how a simplistic character arc can be mapped onto—and explored within—a story’s structure:

What does the character long for and desire? (story ending)
What choices are they making that keep them from their dream? (story beginning)
What do they learn? (how they change throughout the middle)
What are they willing to do at the end that they weren’t willing to do before? (story climax)

Adjusting Story Structure for Deeper Arcs

If our story has the word count and setup for a deeper emotional arc for our character, we could flesh that basic story structure out with:

subplots that reinforce their backstory wound or fears from a different angle,
scenes with failed attempts to overcome their fears,
plot events that make them retreat into their fears,
scenes with the character’s growth/epiphanies tying their arc into the story’s theme, etc.

5 Options for Adjusting Story Structure & Character Arcs of Shorter Stories

If our story isn’t novel length, we have several choices for how to adjust our story’s structure for a character arc in a shorter story. For example, we could…

stick with a positive/growth arc but keep it simplistic rather than deep – we need a minimum of 3 spread-out sections (such as scenes, or perhaps just paragraphs in shorter stories) to explore the character’s issue, with at least: one to establish the longing, one to illustrate the struggle, and one to show the change.
show a positive/growth arc with deeper emotions by tying the change very tightly to the main plot, so every plot event allows for exploration of the character’s internal arc.
explore a deeper positive/growth arc—if the story is long enough for a subplot—by making the “subplot” actually the character’s emotional arc (or tie the change very tightly to the subplot, rather than the main plot as above).
use a flat character arc, which is often easier to tie directly to the main plot, as the character learns how to take action and cause the change they want to see in the world throughout the plot.
limit the number or depth of character arcs if we have multiple protagonists (like in a romance) by having only one of the characters complete an arc, or at most using only a flat arc with the second protagonist (such as by having one protagonist “change the world” by convincing the other protagonist in a romance that they’re perfect for each other).

Not every story needs characters to have an internal conflict arc. Not every story needs deep emotional arcs. But if we want character arcs in our story—and our story is less than novel length—we need to be more purposeful and deliberate with how we structure our story to make the most of our character’s arc with the word count we have. *smile*

Have you written shorter stories where you needed to adjust the story’s structure? How did you adjust the structure for the plot (reduced complications or subplots)? How did you adjust the structure for the character arc (changed the type or depth of the arc)? Had you thought about how your story’s length might affect story structure or character arcs before? Do you have any questions about how story length affects story structure or character arcs?