Want to write a killer story? It starts with a solid structure and understanding of the craft. But you also need help along the way—there are plenty of roadblocks a writer hits on the path to completion of a standout story. Let’s remove some of them.
Some time ago, on my group blog Kill Zone, an author commented about a major obstacle he faced:
The big challenge … is not taking forever on the prewriting and outlining. How do you impose deadlines on yourself for outlining and still create a solid, damn good novel outline? My fear of drafting a bad story has to a big extent been replaced with the fear of outlining a bad one ...
I answered him, in part, this way:
You’ve asked a great question. I think it really comes down to fear.
There’s an easier and better way to find story: it’s to play before you write. Play on the monkey bars built of structural signposts. You actually can be more creative this way because you’re not drafting. Thus it’s much faster, too.
Try this: Write a free-form document that asks questions about this tale bubbling in your mind. Use questions like this:
Write for half an hour or more. Then set it aside and come back to it the next day. Add to it, ask more questions. Burn, baby, burn.
Do this for five straight days and you will have a deep soil full of gold nuggets for your plot.
You can also play in the actual writing. But you’ll be playing a game that readers can make sense of.
It’s the best of both worlds. Freedom and focus, and a lot less frustration. The “best of both worlds” combines the playfulness and creativity of the pantser with the beautiful form of the plotter, all with that most important person in mind—the reader!
If you want to sell books and not just feel good about your writing, you need more than pure freedom and more than mere outlining.
You need a guide, a map, a blueprint—one that is flexible and freeing, not cold and ruthless.
Story loves structure, because structure translates story into a form that enables reader connection … and those are the stories that sell.
And don’t confuse structure with outlining, which causes pantsers to break out in the cold sweats. This is a common error. Any writer of any temperament can make the most of structure principles, even if your approach is the seat-of-the-pants variety. To be aware of structure is not the same thing as writing a forty-page, single-spaced outline. Which is a perfectly legit thing to do. Just ask James Patterson. Or many fine writers of the past.
When I talk about structure, I mean the storytelling template that seems to be ingrained in us (as human beings), either through nature or due to the way myths and stories have unfolded over the millennia.
Structure is simply beginning, middle, and end. That’s three acts. The beginning is the first 20 percent of a novel, and the end is the last 25 percent or so. In between is Act II, where the main plot unfolds.
But outlining is not a requirement. Structure is a good thing for any type of writer because of what I call “signpost scenes.” These are key scenes in a well-structured story, scenes you can write toward as you move along. If you know structure, you can anticipate the kind of scene you should write toward. Then you can be free in how you write to get there.
For example, I teach signposts called the Opening Disturbance and the Doorway of No Return Number One. The Opening Disturbance is the very beginning of the novel. The Doorway of No Return Number One is the scene that thrusts the protagonist into the crucible of Act II.
You can write the first scene knowing that the next signpost is the Doorway of No Return. And you have room to improvise how you get there.
In 2015, the longtime literary editor for Playboy, Alice K. Turner, went to her final review at age seventy-five. Her obituary in the New York Times talked about how she championed literary fiction for twenty years, bringing a measure of respectability, ahem, between the folds. And she truly did, publishing some of the best writers of our time and discovering new talent.
I love what she said about her preference for a solid, well-structured plot: “If you’re good enough, like Picasso, you can put noses and breasts wherever you like. But first you have to know where they belong.”
If there is any bit of advice that is ironclad for fiction writers, it is the axiom "Show, don’t tell." Yet confusion about this aspect of the craft is one of the most common failings for beginning writers. If you want your fiction to take off in the reader’s mind, you must grasp the difference between showing and telling.
That distinction is simply this. Showing is like watching a scene in a movie. All you have is what is on the screen before you. What the characters do or say reveals who they are and what they’re feeling.
Telling, on the other hand, merely explains what is going on in the scene, or inside the characters. It's like you are recounting the movie to a friend.
Another term used for telling is narrative summary. It's where you, the narrator/author, just tell us what happened.
Remember the scene in Jurassic Park, where the newcomers catch their first glimpse of a dinosaur? With mouths open and eyes wide, they stand and look at this impossible creature before we, the audience, see it.
All we need to know about their emotions is written on their faces. We are not given a voice in their heads. We know what they are feeling just by watching.
In a story, you would describe it in just that fashion: "Mark's eyes widened and his jaw dropped. He tried to take a breath, but breath did not come. ..." The reader feels the emotions right along with the character.
That is so much better than telling it like this, "Mark was stunned and frightened."
One of the best “show” novels ever written is the classic detective tale The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. Hammett ushered in a whole new writing style, called "hard boiled," with this book. The mark of that style is that everything occurs just as if it were happening before us on a movie screen (which is one reason this book translated so well into a movie).
In one scene, the hero, Sam Spade, has to comfort the widow of his partner, Miles Archer, who was recently shot to death. She comes rushing into his office, and into his arms. Spade is put off by her crying, because he knows it's mostly phony.
Now, Hammett could have written something like, “The woman threw herself, crying, into Spade’s arms. He detested her crying. He detested her. He wanted to get out of there.”
That’s telling. But look at what the masterful Hammett does:
“Did you send for Miles’s brother?” he asked.
“Yes, he came over this morning.” The words were blurred by her sobbing and his coat against her mouth.
He grimaced again and bent his head for a surreptitious look at the watch on his wrist. His left arm was around her, the hand on her left shoulder. His cuff was pulled back far enough to leave the watch uncovered. It showed ten-ten.
See how much more effective this is? We see Spade glancing at his watch, which tells us just how unsympathetic he is to this display of emotion. It reaches us much more powerfully.
Here is an example of lazy telling from a best-selling writer. It comes in the second paragraph of the book:
She cared, she loved, she worked hard at whatever she did, she was there for the people who meant something to her, she was artistic in ways that always amazed her friends, she was unconsciously beautiful, and fun to be with.
There are two major problems with this paragraph.
First, it is pure telling and therefore does not advance the character or story at all. Why not? Because we, as readers, are being asked to take the author's word for it rather than having the author do the harder work of showing us the character in action.
Second, it's an exposition dump. There is no marbling of the essential information (the way you look at a good rib-eye steak and see the fat marbled into the meat!). It's just poured out all at once and therefore has no effect but dullness.
A novel that tried to show every single thing would end up totaling a thousand pages or more, most of it boring. The rule is, the more intense the moment, the more showing you do.
Now let’s talk about exposition, which is explanatory information that a reader needs to know in order to understand the story or character. Mark this down as a guiding principle:
Readers only relate to exposition on a need-to-know basis!
That is, the first thing you want to do is to cut any exposition that is not necessary. By necessary I mean information that deepens the character or explains plot points.
A further tip: Delay as much exposition as you can for the first 10 percent of your novel. If you can create a mystery about it, even better. But understand that the readers will wait a long time before getting answers as long as they are caught up in a solid plot.
When it comes to actual exposition, you may be tempted to put it into narrative form.
Marsha knew Ted had lost his position after a botched surgery. Obviously he wanted to use her to get another one.
You have two better alternatives.
Exposition can easily come through dialogue—so long as it sounds exactly like what two people would say to each other. Not like this.
“I know what you’re up to Ted, my former family doctor.”
“But Marsha, we’ve known each other for ten years, remember? We met just before you got married to Bob, the lawyer you divorced last year.”
Instead, make the dialogue confrontational. Arguments are especially good for this.
“Get out, Ted.”
“Not until you hear me out.”
“I don’t need to hear another word––”
“It wasn’t my fault!”
“A girl died because of your incompetence!”
“I was never found guilty by a board of inquiry.”
“But you can’t practice medicine, can you?”
“I can if I can get some references, if I––”
“Don’t come sniffing around here for that.”
The other way to do it is via internal thoughts. These should be in the voice of the character.
“Get out, Ted.”
“Not until you hear me out.”
I don’t need to hear about your botched surgery. I don’t need to hear about the girl who died.
Nothing slows down a novel quite like large mounds of exposition and backstory. Exposition is material the author puts on the page to explain context. Backstory is story material that happened in the past but for some authorial reason is dropped in the present. When this kind of material appears in the middle of a scene it can slow the pace, sort of like a Mastodon trying to escape a hungry caveman by way of the tar pits.
Now, let me be clear that not all exposition and backstory is bad. In fact, properly handled, it's tremendously helpful for bonding reader with character. But if it's plopped down in large doses, and without a strategy in mind, it becomes a pool of hot goo where the story gets pitifully stuck.
Here is how to handle exposition and backstory, especially at the beginning of the story.
First, ask yourself, is it necessary at all? Quite often the writer has all this story info in his head and thinks the reader has to know most of it to understand what's going on. Not so! Readers get into story by way of characters facing a challenge, conflict, change, or trouble. If you give them that, they will wait a long time before wanting to know the whys and wherefores.
Second, put a lot of this material in dialogue. Dialogue is your best friend. Make sure there is some form of tension or conflict in the dialogue, even if it is simply one character feeling fearful or nervous. Arguments are especially good for exposition and backstory. Recently I watched the Woody Allen film Blue Jasmine and nodded approvingly at an early scene between Augie (Andrew Dice Clay) and his ex-wife, Ginger (Sally Hawkins). They're arguing about Ginger's sister, who calls herself Jasmine. A lot of background is revealed in this exchange:
“What's the rush, Ginger? You got a date?”
“It's none of your business. It happens to be Jeanette, so ...”
“Jeanette?”
“Jasmine.”
“What's she doing in town?”
“She's living with me till she gets back on her feet. She's had a bad time.”
“When she had money, she wanted nothing to do with you. Now that she's broke, she's moving in.”
“She's not just broke. She's screwed up. And it's none of your damn business. She's family.”
“She stole our money.”
“Okay!”
“Understand? We could have been set. That was our whole chance in life.”
“For the last time, Augie, he was the crook, not her, okay? What the hell did she know about finance?”
“Don't stand there and tell me that. She's married to a guy for years, up to his ass in phony real estate and bank fraud. She knew nothing about it? Believe me, she knew, Ginger.”
Third: Act first, explain later. Stamp this axiom on your writer's brain. Or put it on a note and tape it where you can see it. This advice never fails.
Let's have a look at the opening of one of Robert B. Parker's Jesse Stone novels, Stranger in Paradise:
Molly Crane stuck her head in the doorway to Jesse's office.
“Man here to see you,” she said. “Says his name's Wilson Cromartie.”
Jesse looked up. His eyes met Molly's. Neither of them said anything. Then Jesse stood. His gun was in its holster on the file cabinet behind him. He took the gun from the holster and sat back down and put the gun in the top right-hand drawer of his desk and left the drawer open.
“Show him in,” Jesse said.
As we will find out, Jesse Stone knows this Cromartie very well. He's called “Crow,” and he's a Native American hit man. Lots of backstory lies between Jesse and Crow, but Parker doesn't reveal any of yet.
What he does instead is show Jesse getting his gun ready. That's intriguing. He knows something about this man after all, and it requires his gun being ready. Act first, explain later. The scene continues:
Molly went and in a moment returned with the man.
Jesse nodded his head.
“Crow,” he said.
“Jesse Stone,” Crow said.
Jesse pointed to a chair. Crow sat. He looked at the file cabinet.
“Empty holster,” he said.
“Gun's in my desk drawer,” Jesse said.
“And the drawer's open,” Crow said.
“Uh-huh.”
We now know that this Crow is someone who notices things, especially when it comes to guns. What kind of person is that? We don't know and Parker isn't telling us. We only know this guy is probably dangerous. This is not friendly small talk. The air is crackling with potential trouble.
Half a page later, we get this:
“Last time I saw you was in a speedboat dashing off with a lot of money,” Jesse said.
“Long time back,” Crow said. “Longer than the statute of limitations.”
“I'd have to check,” Jesse said.
“I did,” Crow said. “Ten years.”
“Not for murder,” Jesse said.
“You got no evidence I had anything to do with murder.”
Boom. Now we get backstory information, but notice where it is. In dialogue! And that, indeed, is how Parker delivers almost all the essential information in this novel.
Of course, Parker is writing in a particular, stripped-down style. But the principles he uses will serve you as well.
It may be your choice to render some backstory in narrative form. If you do, let me remind you of a rule of thumb (not the same as an unbreakable rule!) that I briefly mentioned earlier, one that I've passed on to many students with good results: In your first ten pages you can have three sentences of backstory, used all at once or spread out. In your second ten pages you can have three paragraphs of backstory, used all at once or spread out. But if you put backstory or exposition into dialogue, then you're free to use your own discretion. Just be sure the dialogue is truly what the characters would say and doesn't come off as a none-too-clever info dump.
Writing teachers place a lot of emphasis on sharp, intriguing openings for good reason. Because that's what editors, agents, and browsing readers look at first. We don't want to leave them in the tar pits—we want them to keep on reading!
These tips will help keep you out of the goo.
I was at a conference once and a new writer came up to me. She said she had a great concept and had used one of my books to outline the plot. She was now 30,000 words into the novel and scared. She said it felt like she was looking out at sea from a tiny raft. There was this long way to go in Act II, but now she wasn’t sure she had enough plot material to make it.
“Ah,” I said like a liposuction surgeon, “the sagging middle. No worries. I’m here to help!”
We sat and talked a bit about signpost scenes, and she understood all that. But it was clear she needed more “story stuff” in her plans.
So I suggested she write the shadow story. This is the part of the novel many writers never think about, yet it’s one of the most powerful plotting techniques there is. It will take you places you’d never find if you only danced around in the light.
Simply put, the shadow story is what is taking place away from the scene you are writing. It’s what the other characters are doing “offscreen.” By giving thought to the shadows, even minimally, you greatly expand your store of plot material.
A few tips for how to do this successfully follow:
The most important shadow is the opposition character. Someone once said a good plot is two dogs and one bone. So while your lead is gnawing the bone in one scene, your antagonist (offscreen) is laying plans to snatch that bone away, or setting in motion a scheme to kill the lead dog, or messing with the dogs who are helping the lead dog.
Or maybe he’s overusing canine metaphors.
Whatever it is, by getting into the head of the opposition character, who is somewhere else, you will come up with all sorts of ideas for plot complications. It’s almost automatic. Fresh scenes, mysteries, obstacles—even new characters—will spring up from your writer’s mind. Your Act II problems will begin to melt away.
You also have a cast of supporting characters—major and minor—all who have lives, plans, and motives of their own. Here you will find the fodder for those plot twists every reader loves. Like when a seeming ally turns out to be a betrayer. Or an enemy becomes a friend. Why would that happen? Let their shadow stories tell you.
You can also delve into the shadows and secrets of your lead. Maybe you’ve done this already by giving your lead a backstory and answering key questions about her life (education, hopes, fears, lost loves, etc.).
But every now and then, in the middle of writing, pause to come up with something going on inside the lead that even she is not aware of. Try what I call “the opposite exercise”: The lead, in a scene, has a specific want or need (if she doesn’t, you need to find one for her fast or cut that scene). Now, pause and ask: What if your lead wanted something the exact opposite of this want or need? What would that be? List some possibilities. Choose one of those. Ask: Why would she want that? How could it mess with her head?
Then look for ways to manifest this inner shadow in some of your scenes.
Or imagine your lead doing something that is the opposite of what the reader or, more important, you would expect in that scene. What sort of shadow (secret) made her do that?
Just by asking these sorts of questions, you deepen your lead and add interesting crosscurrents to the plot.
That’s the power of the shadow story.
There are two excellent ways to keep track of your shadow story material in your work-in-progress.
One of them is called “Scrivener.” I know some people are intimidated by all the bells and whistles this program offers. My advice is to start off by using it for just a couple of simple things (mapping your scenes on the corkboard and keeping track of your cast of characters) and then learn other tools at your own pace, only if you want to. At such a reasonable price, Scrivener is cost-effective for whatever you use it for.
In the Inspector View, there’s a box labeled “Document Notes.” This is place where you can jot down anything relating to the scene on the left. Perfect for shadow story. You can be as brief or as detailed as you like.
The other method is to use the Comments function in Microsoft Word. Just insert a comment, which gives the shadow material.
Remember, all sorts of good stuff happens in the shadows. Go there, snoop around, then come back to the light and finish your novel.
One of my favorite movies of all time is 12 Angry Men, the 1957 film directed by Sidney Lumet and written by Reginald Rose (based on his play). The plot is disarmingly simple: Twelve jurors deliberate in a capital murder case. The entire drama, save for a short prologue, takes place inside the jury room.
At first, the verdict seems like a done deal. All the early chatter is about how guilty the defendant is (he's a slum kid, accused of stabbing his father). One of the jurors (Jack Warden) has tickets to the ballgame and would love to get out early. Others don't see the point in spending a great deal of time actually deliberating.
They take an initial vote. And only one juror, Number 8 (Henry Fonda), votes “not guilty.” Everybody else grumbles.
And for the next hour and a half, we sit in on the deliberations.
The movie violates all the currently fashionable, postmodern, ADHD stylistic conventions. No quick cuts or explosions or overbearing music. It's all talk. It's even in black-and-white, for crying out loud!
Yet, no matter where I happen to come in on the film when it's on television, if I start to watch I have to finish.
Why? Because intercharacter conflict works its magic. What Rose (the writer) did was bring together twelve distinct characters, each with his own background, baggage, and personality, and throw them into what is essentially a great, big argument.
Therein lies the real untapped secret of creating conflict: orchestration. That means you cast your characters so they have the potential of conflict with every other character.
In 12 Angry Men, for example, there's a Madison Avenue ad man (Robert Webber) who spouts bromides and tosses out suggestions, just like he would at a brainstorming meeting at the office. “Let's run it up the flagpole and see if anybody salutes.” He's amiable, easy with a laugh. But he never makes a final decision. He vacillates. Finally another juror (Lee J. Cobb) gets fed up. “The boy in the gray flannel suit here is bouncing back and forth like a Ping-Pong ball!”
There's a mousy bank clerk (John Fiedler) who automatically draws satirical comment from the blustering salesman (Warden). There's a coldly rational stockbroker (E.G. Marshall) who arrogantly dismisses all reasonable doubt, until he’s backed into a corner by Fonda. There's a young man who grew up in the slums (Jack Klugman) who, at one point, turns to E.G. Marshall and asks, “Pardon me, don't you sweat?”
“No, I don't,” Marshall says. There is nothing more to that exchange, but the line is memorable because of Rose's superb orchestration, knowing the personalities and quirks of all his characters.
Then there's the bigot (Ed Begley), who in one unforgettable moment alienates everyone else on the jury.
But it is, finally, the main conflict between Cobb and Fonda that is the focus of the drama. Cobb wants to get this kid executed (for reasons that become heartbreakingly clear at the end). Fonda wants to give the kid his due under the Constitution––the requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
And that's another lesson about conflict: the stakes. They have to be high. In fact, I hold that death must be on the line. Not just physical death, mind you. There is also professional and psychological death. Unless you have one of these overhanging your protagonist, your story is not going to be as gripping as it should be.
In 12 Angry Men, physical death is on the line for the kid, but more important, it's a matter of psychological death for each of the jurors. After all, they might send an innocent man to the chair. In addition, each of them has some inner baggage to deal with, such as the old man (Joseph Sweeney), whose family ignored him, and the newly naturalized citizen trying to make it in America (George Voskovec).
Orchestration for conflict is essential in any genre, including comedy. Especially comedy. Consider the movie City Slickers. You have three friends from the city going on a cattle drive out west. They are very different from each other—one is a joker, one is macho, one is laconic. Then they come in contact with someone who is unlike any of them—Curly, the ramrod. The comedy flows naturally out of the conflict between the different personalities.
So as you're getting ready to write, you would do well to take a grid and create a chart of all of your important characters. Then figure out points of conflict between all the characters.
Trouble is your business, my writer friend. Go make some.
In November, writers all over the world jump into National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. The goal is to write a 50,000-word novel in one month (an average of 1,666.6667 words a day). It's a blast—a communal expression of the love of writing. And it’s a kick in the pants to produce words and not just sit around Starbucks all day talking about writing a novel.
I love the vibe of NaNoWriMo. And over the years I’ve developed some quick exercises to help writers as they clack away at their keyboards—even if they’re not participating in the national exercise.
One of them will prevent you from producing scenes that have no organic connection to the plot, which is the big challenge in this hard-charging contest.
I call this exercise “Because ...”
It has two parts. First, you hone your basic plot into a single sentence. Then, you add a “because” clause which explains what's at stake.
Your plot sentence consists of an adjective, a noun, and a verb clause (the action). Thus:
Every plot can be rendered in this fashion, and it's important that you know this much about yours.
Once you have your plot sentence, add a “because” sentence that explains what the stakes are. Don't worry about the form of the sentence; just pack reasons the lead character in your novel must succeed into the sentences. Turn it into a paragraph if you want to. It's all for you.
Believe me, this little exercise is going to pay big dividends for you. When you write, if you start to feel lost, simply go back to this controlling premise and think up fresh scenes for the lead character. Then determine which of those scenes involve him taking steps to solve the main problem.
Let's say we've started writing Casablanca and we come to the point where Rick sees Ilsa in his café for the first time. What a great scene we've written! They look at each other, and Rick's heart pounds with a mix of love and hate, desire and the pain of betrayal. Now what?
We brainstorm some scenes. What could happen next?
After some reflection, we decide on the last one. This scene gives us an opportunity for Rick to remember what happened in Paris. Then Ilsa comes in. We envision Ilsa falling into Rick's arms ... no, not enough conflict ... how about she tries to explain what happened in Paris and Rick basically calls her a whore ... ooh, that sounds right, because our premise tells us the novel is partly about whether Rick will end up as a wretched human being ...
And so on. In this way you can use this exercise to help build scenes and develop ideas.
So you're writing along in your latest novel or novella, and you come to a screeching (or, at least squealing) halt. Your story has stalled. Your characters are static. You don't know what scene to write next.
You sigh, get up from your keyboard, go to the refrigerator. You take out some of last night's meatloaf or scoop out some ice cream. Maybe you turn on the television and watch a little TCM or some dismal talk show that fills the late morning or early afternoon slot in the vast wasteland of visual media.
Finally, you slink back to your keyboard and ... you still don't know what to write. You start to wonder whether the story itself is flawed. And if this is a novel under contract, and you have already cashed an advance check, and the deadline is, like, soon, you might also feel little trickles of sweat down your neck.
So what do you do? I have a suggestion. I call them the two writing power questions.
I always stress that the stakes of a story must be death. I talked about death earlier in this chapter. Remember, there are three kinds of death: physical, professional, and psychological/spiritual. The core issue in your novel has to be one of these or the book will not be the best it can be.
For example, in a legal thriller—the kind where the story is about a trial––that central case of the story has to be a matter of professional life and death for the lawyer. In The Verdict, Paul Newman is a bottom-feeding lawyer (no, that's not redundant, thank you very much). He has lost all self-respect. He drinks too much. His professional life is just about over.
And then he gets this case. A family comes to him because one of their own has been rendered a vegetable by recklessness at a large hospital. Newman thinks maybe he'll get a quick settlement, take the money and stock up on booze. But he goes to the hospital to see the poor woman. And suddenly he cares again. He realizes he is this family's only hope. Facing huge odds, he takes the case to trial.
If he loses, it'll be death to him as a lawyer.
That's how it has to feel to your lead. In a romance, the death is psychological. It has to be clear to the reader that if the two lovers don't get together, their lives will forever be damaged. They will not be complete.
Much literary, or character-driven, fiction is also of this kind. In Janet Fitch's White Oleander, for example, the issue is whether Astrid, tossed into the foster care system, will come out whole or irretrievably harmed.
So, make this your first power question: Are the stakes death? If not, back up and make it so.
If you're stranded in a book, just ask yourself what is the next bad thing that can happen? What will make the character's situation worse?
In Scott Smith's classic, A Simple Plan, a normal guy falls into a scheme to score some drug money with the prospect/hope that no one will ever find out. What makes the book so compelling is that it's like a slow-motion car wreck. You keep saying to yourself, Don't do that. Please don't do that. And then the character does it and descends further into a pit that will eventually close around him.
Brainstorm for a while. Make a list of the bad things that can happen. Come up with ten. Then ask: What is the absolute worst thing that can happen?
Look at the list and select the best ideas. Then put them in descending order, from bad to worse to worst. That becomes a plan for writing the rest of your book.
Whether you're a pantser or an outliner, these two power questions can blast you through that wall, to the other side where completed novels grow.
Here’s a clip from an e-mail I received some time ago (used with permission):
This is a small point that I’ve wanted to ask a teacher for some time because I’ve noticed this situation in other structure layouts: Why is it that Act II, which constitutes at least half of the entire story (actually 55 percent if Act I is 20 percent and Act II is 25 percent), has relatively fewer structure points? And yet we’re often told that the hardest part of writing a novel or screenplay is Act II. Is it the hardest partly because it’s harder to teach in terms of structure, etc?
That’s an excellent and insightful question. It does seem counterintuitive to suggest that the least number of structural points occur in the longest section of the novel.
But, in point of fact, this is exactly how it must be.
First of all, what is Act II all about? It’s about the lead’s confrontation with death. I’ve discussed several times what death can entail, and it’s the only thing that makes the stakes high enough for the reader to care about what’s going on.
Act I prepares us for this death struggle. To get readers to care about what happens, we have to bond them with a lead character, show something of the ordinary world, have hints of trouble to come ... and then we have to find a way to force the lead through that Doorway of No Return. Why force? Because no one wants to confront death unless they have to (unless their name is Evel Knievel)!
That’s why there are several important structural beats in Act I. We have to have a disturbance to hook the reader. We need a care package to bond the reader with the character. We need a trouble brewing beat to let the reader know there is something at stake. Finally, we need a Doorway of No Return to push the protagonist into the Act II.
Okay, now the lead is in the dark forest. To survive and get back to the castle, she’ll have to defeat the forces arrayed against her. If you want a perfect illustration of this, think of The Hunger Games. Katniss Everdeen is taken from her ordinary world and thrust into a contest to the death, in an arena filled with obstacles and opponents.
Now, keep these two points in mind:
1. There are innumerable actions the Lead can take to gain her objective, to survive, and to ultimately defeat the opponent.
Standing at the edge of that dark forest, the Lead might go left, go right, go straight ahead, follow a sound, run from a sound, climb a tree, make a weapon, start a fire, form an alliance, fight off a monster—whatever it is, you, the author, get to choose.
2. Each subsequent action will, in some way, be a reaction to what’s just happened.
If the lead breaks her leg, she won’t be running in the next scene. If her love interest decides to walk out on her, she won’t be singing a happy tune.
You may also find that a character refuses to do what you want. In one novel I tried to get a wife to go away to her sister’s house, but she wouldn’t do it. I’d planned for her to go, I tried to push her out the door, but no soap. So I had to readjust, and in this case the character was right!
In short, a more “open” Act II enables us to respond to the story as it takes shape.
This is true, by the way, whether you like to outline or whether you prefer to wing it.
Further, you don’t need as many signposts because your scenes should have an organic logic to them. Act II is largely made up of the lead’s battle plans. We know what the objective is: defeat death! In The Hunger Games it’s physical death; in The Catcher in the Rye, it’s psychological death; and in The Verdict, it’s professional death.
So the lead, in Act II, takes an action to gain a foothold in this battle and suffers a setback. Now what?
She forms a new plan, takes a new step, reacting to and learning from the last one.
In this way you have a natural, logical, clear and compelling “plot generator.” You don’t need as many signposts to do that.
If you ever feel “lost” in Act II, just go back and check a few things:
Then brainstorm a few answers to these questions:
Soon enough, you’ll be back on track with plenty of ideas for organic scenes, and rising and falling action, throughout Act II.
Then, at some point, you have to get the lead through another doorway, into Act III, where the final battle takes place. There are more signposts in Act III to guide you through this section. That’s because you can’t dillydally. You’ve got the lead going over a waterfall. You’ve got to get him to safety, fast. The Act III signposts have a shorter space between them, which is exactly what you need.
Make sense?
I think it was Isaac Asimov who said that he knows the beginning and the ending of his novels, but then makes up the in-between details as he goes along.
My uncle Bruce was a bartender for many years in Santa Barbara. Like most of the Bells, who came from (or were chased out of) Ireland in the 1700s, he has the gift of gab. He started doing close-up magic right at the bar. This proved exceedingly popular and before long he started billing himself as “Bruce the Baffling, Magician and Social Chemist.”
When I was in high school, Uncle Bruce gave me a bunch of his tricks, and I started getting into magic myself. It was a pastime that continued through college. I loved the oohs and aahs coming from an audience that was close-up. There's nothing quite like a great card or coin trick, or the cups and balls classic, performed right under the noses of people sitting a few feet away.
I became good enough to perform at the famous Magic Castle in Hollywood: not for the adults at night (you really have to be great for that gig) but for the kids on Sunday afternoon.
The best part about this was that I got to hang out at the Castle and sit around with some of the most famous magicians of the day. It's a crime their names are not as well-known as performers in other wings of entertainment. But for people who know the magic world, names like Charlie Miller and Francis Carlisle are as familiar as John Steinbeck and F. Scott Fitzgerald are to writers.
And if the most famous writer of the mid-twentieth century was Ernest Hemingway, then magic's analogue was a man named Dai Vernon (1894–1992).
Vernon was around eighty when I met him. He was friendly but also uncompromising in his dedication to the art of magic. He could not stand shoddy work. He watched me perform some card tricks once for some guests (informally, sitting around, as most of the magicians do there). When an astonished patron said to me, “How did you do that?” And I said, “Very well.”
That’s a good line most close-up magicians use at one time or another. A short while later I did the same trick from some other people, and once again was asked the question, “How did you do that?” And once again I said, “Very well.”
Dai Vernon snapped at me, “Quit using the same material all the time!” He wanted the magicians to constantly improve and to stay fresh and never get lazy.
I owned all the Dai Vernon magic books and studied them like crazy. In one of the books, he talks about a particular trick that never failed to amaze people, which he called “The Trick That Cannot Be Explained.”
He named it such because the way he performed it would change, based upon the circumstances. It started with Dai writing down the name of a card on a piece of paper, folding it, and placing down on the table. Then he'd give a pack of cards to a spectator to shuffle.
A few moments later, the spectator would select a card. How he would select it would vary, according to Dai's directions. But the card would always match the one Dai had written down.
How could that possibly be, time after time? And how was it that this trick would never be performed exactly the same way twice? Well, Dai did it by utilizing all the skills he had mastered over the years, using them to manipulate the cards and also to adjust to some things the spectator did.
I could tell you what those skills are, but then I'd have to kill you. Magician's code, you see.
But it got me thinking that this is also what a skilled writer does. Using all the techniques he's mastered, he pulls off an effect based on the circumstances in his book, which will never be the same. Each novel presents its own challenges.
Now, there are some folks out there in writing land who purport to teach or inspire writers, who often treat “technique” as a dirty word. It's limiting, don't you see? It blocks your creativity, your inner genius, your wonderful little untamed self that wants to play and be brilliant! So bah on technique.
For some writers (and I proclaim them to be a tiny minority), this might be just fine advice. For the vast majority it's toxic. That is, if they want to get better and maybe start selling their writing.
The plain fact is that writing is a craft as well as an art. Where the “just go play” people get it wrong is in misunderstanding the process.
Yes, there is time for play, for disregarding “rules” or “fundamentals.” It's when you're coming up with ideas, visualizing characters or cool scenes, or even writing your day's pages. This is when you can go wild. (I have found that it helps me to use a pen and paper for this part. I use a spiral notebook, the kind a college student would use, and let my pen play all over the page, making doodles, mind maps, plot ideas, and connections between characters.)
But there comes a time when you have to look at your writing and put the screws to it. And to do that, you have to know how to identify weaknesses and know the way to fix them. Like a plumber, you have to know your tools and where to use them (and believe me, the plumber metaphor is apt, because most first drafts are, well, what they are).
This is where craft study and knowledge come in.
My most valuable writing possession is a big notebook full of my notes on writing. I put it together over the first ten years of my career and have periodically added to it since. It's a compendium of the things I learned, recorded like an excited scientist discovering some new antibody or cure for baldness. Whenever I hit a little drought in the writing week I can always flip through my notes and become reenergized in about five minutes.
Do the same. Study the craft and make notes on what you learn. Create your own writer's notebook. You'll love it as the years roll on and your writing gets stronger and stronger.
And you'll especially love performing tricks that cannot be explained when you revise, because you'll be making magic for your readers.
Study the ways you can address each of these problems. Record the techniques you learn. Add them to your notebook.