Is it okay if I admit that I love today’s post?  Because I do.

Maybe because I’ve been tinkering with it for weeks. 

I write about things that lurk in all corners of the writing room, some hidden and lurking in the darkest corners, others sitting on desk begging for attention. 

Sometimes they’re subtle.  This one is isn’t.

This one is huge. 

It’s straight out of Writing 101, smack from the middle of Square One, and no matter how far down the road we are, a return to this fundamental persective can empower, resurrect or otherwise save a flagging writing dream.

You have to get this stuff down.  

Whether you do it naturally or you have to staple a note to your forehead, if you write stories you must pay attention to what today’s post is sticking squarely in your face.

Let that process begin, or at least reignite, here and now.

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In our last post, I introduced (though I certainly didn’t invent) the notion of boiling your story down to a few simple questions that, in essence, define the very things your readers will want to know.

You have to know them first. 

And then you have to get clever, strategic, even postively Machiavvellian, about teasing them along toward that denouement. 

Readers want to be sucked in, manipulated, double-crossed and then brought back home… they want to take a journey with you… and then they want to be paid off with an ending that delivers the goods.

Even if this sounds obvious at first blush…

… it’s always good to look at things from multiple and even simplified perspectives.  This question-posing technique, in particular, can do everything from conquering writer’s block to putting your story over the top in terms of its dramatic potential effectiveness.

And, just as critically, it might rescue you from a mistake you weren’t even aware you were making.

Here’s they type of questions I’m talking about.

Will your hero reach her or his goal? 

Will he get the girl? 

Will she find love afterall?

Will she survive? 

Will he ever walk again?  See again?  Play the piano again?

Will what needs to happen actually happen in time? 

Will romance ensue?  Or will it flame out? 

Will she get from under her father’s thumb? 

Will he live out from under his family’s name?

Will the antagonist do irreparable harm? 

Will the antagonist be brought to justice?

Will the rules of the game change?   

Will the hero get the job? 

Keep the job? 

Succeed at the job? 

Find a way to work around the boss-from-hell? 

To kill the boss from hell?  Or at least, get her fired?

Will a moral line need to be crossed? 

Will she be forgiven? 

Will others understand? 

Will the cost exceed the benefit? 

Will he get away with it?

Will the inner demon be conquered?

Notice these are, for the most part, yes or no questions.

That’s on purpose. 

Because it forces you to keep your focus on the primary storylines – one, maybe two, with one or maybe two sub-plots– rather than wandering around in a narrative daze, trying to write a story that’s all things to all readers. 

Too many questions can turn your story into something bigger.  Unwieldy big.   Boringly, unfocused big.

You want to write a page turner, not a character-drenched biography full of side-trips and backstory.

Asking the right dramatic question is perhaps the most important part of storytelling.  If you’ve not given it much attention, focusing on details, characterization and the wonder of your linguistic gifts, you may just be missing the point.  Which in this case is synonymous with opportunity.

 Also, notice that these questions aren’t focused on theme. 

They are guiding you toward plot, toward exposition.  The idea isn’t to pose a question such as, “Will love conquer all?” — which is purely thematic — but rather, will the specific characters in your story find love, or not?

Theme is what your readers will take away from the reading experience.  These questions aren’t about that, they’re about what you, the writer, will do within your story to lead them toward that experience.

And now, for my favorite moment in this post:

Notice, too, that the genius of this technique…

… isn’t being able to answer these questions, but rather, to simply ask them.  To propose the right questions and get rid of the wrong ones.  To prioritize.

Read those three sentences (such as they are) again.  They’re huge.

To create a story spine, instead of a slice-of-life with too many problems to solve and cul-de-sacs to navigate.

And because all of the answers are probably yes – and if you’ve noticed that with any degree of impatience, then grab on, because you’re about to get the entire point right here…

… they force you to square off with the next two levels of questions, which are equally powerful and astoundingly brief.

Because for every yes answer you must answer the question of how.

How will you make that “yes” answer happen?  Make it fit?

Make it exciting, dramatic? 

Make it pay off?

How will you get there?  That answer defines whether your story will work, or not.

And if the answer to a dramatic question happens to be no, then the next question, instead of how?, becomes why?

Which in either case leads you to the next most important storytelling question of all.

Because without this one, those first level of dramatic questions won’t matter. 

Your job as a storyteller is to make things interesting.  Make them meaningful.  Deep.  Seductive.  Compelling.  Frightening.  Illuminating.  Interesting.  Gripping.  Memorable.  Relevant.  Challenging.  Engaging. 

Irresistible.

Asking those first-level dramatic questions doesn’t do that, it merely points you toward a means of doing all that.  It gives you clarity, and from that clarity comes the opportunity to really create something fresh and worthwhile.

It forces you to ask… how?

And your answer to that question is the stuff of stellar storytelling.

Because anybody can write a love story, a mystery, a thriller.  Just completing a manuscript and qualifying for membership within a niche isn’t the point.

Making it sizzle… that’s the point. 

Making it stand out.  Making it work in a way that, even if it’s slightly familiar (and aren’t all mysteries and thrillers and romances slightly familiar to some extent, and isn’t that the point?), satisfies and lingers.

You have to have a killer answer ready every time you ask how.

And for that – to answer the most important questions in storytelling – you need the most powerful question in storytelling.

The two most magical words in all of literary creation:

What if… ?

The moment you think of those two words as a tool – as a means of answering the question of how?” – rather than a cliché, your writing will turn a corner.

Because right here is where even the most skeptical of organic writers and painstakingly anal of story planners arrive at an identical point in the creative journey.

You don’t have to settle. 

You can dream as big, as outrageously, or as cleverly subtle, as you choose in selecting and crafting answers to the how? question with a series of genius what if…? propositions.

But only if how have the right high level dramatic question at the story level preceding it.

When you can answer all these questions, at all three levels – the basic dramatic questions that define your story… how you’ll get there… and the best what if? questions you can come up to make that journey compelling – you’ll have everything in your tool chest that you need to write the best story you have in you.

Think of your favorite stories… can you state the dramatic questions that reside at the heart of it?  Let’s hear from you on that. 

So many stories… so many questions.

The Most Important Question(s) in Storytelling and the Ensuing Two Questions That Allow You to Answer is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

If you’ve been challenged by the notion – or if you’re in complete denial – that effective stories can and should be broken down into sequential parts, that each of these parts has a unique contextual mission to fulfill, and that each segment is separated by a critical milestone that must accomplish certain storytelling feats… 

… if this is you, then get ready for some very good news.

Because the storytelling world isn’t really quite as black and white as I’ve made it out to be. 

If you’re a screenwriter, you’re still absolutely stuck with specific targets for the plot points in your stories.  But if you’re a novelist, you will be delighted to hear that what screenwriters must regard as a set of rules really function more like a set of principles where you’re concerned.

These principles are like traffic.  Consistently disregard them and chances are you won’t get a professional chauffer’s license.  But exceeding a few speed limits or cheating a stop sign now and then, that doesn’t mean you’ll end up in jail.  Or dead.  Or become the cause of someone else being dead.

It just means you got away with it.  Which, when it comes to writing fiction, may be perfectly fine.  This doesn’t negate the principle, it just serves your creative needs at the time.

Principles, like a moral code, still require a general sense of discipline and homage.  At least if you want to coexist in the society in which they prosper.

Or with writing, at least if you want to publish your work.

The Case of the Wandering Plot Point

Yesterday I used a five hour airplane ride to read a highly regarded thriller by a writer who lives in a neighboring zip code.  As usual, I found myself deconstructing the story as I went along, making sure the requisite plot points appear within their narrowly-defined range of locale, and that the four sequential parts did their generically-prescribed contextual job.

That’s the downside of studying story structure.  Every novel you read and every movie you see becomes a bit of a clinic.  Last time I just sat back and got lost in a story was when the Swiss Family Robinson was turning a confluence of vines into a foyer.

In my advocacy of story structure I encourage this deconstruction process as a means of understanding what the four parts of a story are intended to do, and how the milestones that separate them are the stuff of dramatic tension, pacing and character arc. 

So there I am, sitting in 24A somewhere between Honolulu and Seattle, waiting for the first plot point to appear where it should.  And waiting.  And waiting.  Past the prescribed 20^th percentile.  Past the 25^th.  Getting nervous as we zip through the 3oth.

The first plot point in this New York Times bestseller finally showed up on page 118 in a 356 page novel.  Do the math, that’s not supposed to happen.

Got me to thinking.  I need to take my musings on story structure a step further.

A plot point may not be what you think it is.

The definition of a first plot point is a change in the story that defines the hero’s quest and need going forward, and does so in the face of an antagonistic force that the reader suddenly understands to an extent that empathy and emotion are evoked, while creating obstacles to the hero’s quest, and thus creating stakes that depend on the hero’s ability to overcome those obstacles.

A mouthful.  Chew it carefully, because it will nourish your story.  Or kill it if you don’t swallow it all.

Because that is always what a first plot point does.

If you look closely, though, the essence of that definition is the grasping of what the plot point means, rather than what it is. 

Read that again.  It’s subtle, and it’s critical.

A husband suddenly dying of an accident may seem like a plot point, if nothing else than by the sheer magnitude of how it changes the widow’s life.  But, if the story is about how she is supposed to deal with the fact that the husband has left all the insurance money to a heretofore unknown mistress, it is the moment when that fact is revealed that becomes the plot point, rather than the death itself.

As you look for plot points in the work of others, don’t be seduced by magnitude.  Look for the narrative moment at which the story clarifies, when the hero’s quest truly begins an informed forward motion. 

When the story switches from set-up mode into reaction mode.

It’s the stakes that the first plot point creates that counts, not the size of the explosion.

A plot point may not appear precisely where it should.

I’ve said (as has Syd Field) that the first plot point should occur at a point between the 20^th and 25^th percentile in the story.

If you’ve perceived that to be a rule, that’s good, because it is the optimal range.  But you, the novelist, have the latitude to cheat that on either side, depending on the nature of the preceding set-up sequence (the very definition of Part 1). 

If you delay the first plot point past the 25^th percentile, then you’ll need several twists and a deepening of the stakes prior to that point.  Without them the set-up will take too long and you’ll lose the reader.

If you’re Big Bang plot point comes much earlier, then make sure you put another twist – one that deepens the stakes of the story – at about the 25^th percentile, making sure that it changes the course of the hero’s quest from what it was.

A plot point may be a sequence of scenes, versus a specific moment.

Sometimes the first plot point isn’t a sudden moment at all.  It can also be the consequence of a sequence of scenes or story points, all condensed around the prescribed vicinity where the plot point should occur.

Sometimes when it’s tough to nail down a plot point in a story we are reading or a movie we are seeing, it’s because several things happen that could be the plot point.  For instance, using the example from above…

The husband is seen cheating.  The husband dies.  The wife is told by the lawyer that the insurance policy doesn’t bear her name.  The mistress shows up at her house demanding the jewelry – including her wedding ring – that the dead husband has just left her in his will.

Obviously, the widow has a new quest and need, and she’s in reaction mode.  A plot point has definitely occurred.

But where?  Which moment defines the point plot? 

A plot point may occur as a sequence of scenes that occur from the 20^th to 28^th percentile of the story.  Each scene changes the nature of the widow’s quest, spinning the story in a new direction, but only after they’re all on the table do we fully understand what it means.

So which scene is the plot point itself?

Answer: it doesn’t matter.  At least not for the reader when the sequence is regarded as a whole.  The writer knows – my money is on the lawyer’s revelation that the mistress is the beneficiary – but post-execution it is the effect of the scenes, rather than the mission, that counts.

Relax.  Tell your story. 

But do so from within the context of understanding how and where story structure comes into play.  This will keep you safe and keep the story moving forward.

Just like a musician can’t go off riffing a solo until they understand the underlying melody.  Just like an athlete can’t successfully freelance a play until they understand where the rest of the team will be on the field. 

Don’t sweat the percentages.  Sweat the stakes, the dramatic tension and reader empathy.  If you’re simply in the neighborhood, story architecture will protect you.

But if you disregard its principles, be aware that this is a tough neighborhood, indeed.  Once lost, you may never be found.

At least, your story won’t be found in a bookstore, that is.

Shades of Gray: A Somewhat Liberating Spin on Story Structure is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

Pop quiz: what’s the most important moment in your story?

When we first meet our dashing hero?  Nope.  

That sky-is-falling plot twist in the middle when all hope is lost?  Nope.

When everything comes together, that visceral oh-my-god resolution just before the credits roll, with tears flowing, hormones raging and adrenalin pumping like beer at a sausage festival?

Nope again.  

The following could change your writing life forever.

The most important moment in your story is when everything changes for the hero.  When what the hero believes is her reality experiences a sudden shift.  Suddenly there’s a new deal on the table that sends your hero down an altered, unexpected path.  And, as part of that new deal, the reader gets a sense of what stands in the hero’s way.

That moment changes your story.  And in doing so, it could be argued that this is when your story really begins.  Everything that happened prior to it was just a set-up.

It’s called the First Plot Point.  And you can’t mess with it.

For many writers this is the single most illuminating piece of writing wisdom they’ll ever hear.  Because you can’t write an effective story until you accept and understand this at the very core of your gonna-be-a-huge-bestselling-superstar self.

In the story of your writing life, your First Plot Point may be right here.   Right now, as you read this.  Because if you haven’t wrapped your head around this principle, chances are you’ll never sell a story.  But when you do, you’ll have immersed yourself into the realm of story architecture, and that may be precisely the thing that gets you published.

A sudden shift.  A new deal on the table.  A new path for you.

And the only thing that stands in your way is your willingness to engage and understand.

Timing isn’t optional.

Here’s shocking news for psychotically organic storytellers: you don’t get to say when that happens.  There’s a narrow little window of expectation as defined by accepted story structure principles – the First Plot Point needs to happen at about the 20^th to 25^th percentile of the story.  Right after you’ve set it all up.

Non-negotiable.

Too early and you’ve shortchanged your opportunity to do that.  The more invested the reader is in the characters, especially the hero, the more the stakes of the story have been made relevant to those characters, then the more emotional vicarious empathy the reader will experience when that MMM (Most Important Moment) arrives. 

That emotional investment is the single, most critical variable that makes your story work.  Or not.

This requires ample set-up time.  In fact, that’s precisely the mission of everything that happens in your story prior to the First Plot Point.  If, in the definition of an effective First Plot Point, we need to shift the hero’s journey going forward, then we need to have introduced and defined – to have set-up – the stakes of that journey beforehand. 

You have about 60 to 80 pages to make that happen.  If something huge takes place earlier – and it certainly can – you’re still obliged to deliver an effective First Plot Point at the proper moment.  Something needs to happen, and in the proper place, that creates a shift that defines a new hero’s quest.

If you raise the curtain on that moment too late, your story suffers serious pacing problems.  It’ll lack a reason to be.  You risk losing your reader, which in the case of an agent or editor means putting the manuscript in the return mail.

Blatancy is optional. 

Usually, in defining the First Plot Point, I cite an example that’s as much in-your-face as it is true-to-life.   But not every story likes it rough.  You don’t have to smack into an iceberg or receive a blackmail threat or get a terminal diagnosis to have an effective First Plot Point.

Sometimes your hero’s world is rocked with a whisper.  A few unexpected words, a meaningful glance, the seemingly random passing of two souls on a street.

Sometimes less is more. 

The moment when everything changes.

Allow me to illustrate with a true story from my youth.  I thought I was in love.  Her name was Tina.  We’d been dating about a month, and things were ramping up on all levels.  I met her friends.  She met mine.  We shared our dreams.  We liked the same things.  Sexual chemistry ensued.

It was the first act of our emerging love affair.  And then everything changed.  Subtly.  Seemingly without significance.  But it completely altered my Tina journey.

We were walking in a park.  Hand in hand, the whole sappy visual.  I made some reference to the future, assumptively so.  I saw her expression shift, her eyes grow distant.

And she said, “If I’m around, that is.”  And she wasn’t kidding.

From that point forward, everything changed.  My quest had a different context, a new goal.  I had an obstacle to overcome, and it was my own inner demons that stood in my way.

Tina was gone a month later.

Life is a story sometimes.  And even then, it has story architecture.

In the current movie 500 Days of Summer – which, by the way, is a sparkling example of storytelling creativity, one that adheres to the contours of story architecture in subtle and illuminating ways – the First Plot Point unfolds in almost exactly the same way, with nearly identical words, at precisely the proper point.  Check it out, you’ll see.

And if you haven’t yet comprehended the nature and effect of a killer first plot point, you will.  Without an iceberg in sight.

As for me, my love story concludes blissfully, though it took years to write that ending. 

Her name is Laura.

We’re working on the sequel as we speak, and it’s a thriller.

CLICK HERE for a feature article about the Storyfixer on a prominent writing site, which also has a review of the new ebook, 101 Slightly Unpredictable Tips for Novelists and Screenwriters.

Story Structure: A Kinder, Gentler First Plot Point is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

Quick note… I have two killer guest posts running today:  At www.bloggingtips.com… and http://the-new-author.blogspot.com.  Hope you’ll check ‘em out!

And now for the continuing run of yesterday’s milestone post:

A bold claim, that.  But I challenge you to read this stuff — which, when printed, really does fit onto one page — and then argue that you’ve seen a more empowering checklist of must-haves gathered in such a condensed space. 

There’s enough stuff here to fill up a bookshelf.  If you don’t know what these questions mean, then by all means go to that bookshelf and settle in.  If you do, then get busy, your bestseller awaits.

This is a listing of everything you need to know about your story before you can successfully finish it, stated in the form of a question.  There was a time when I would say this is everything you should know about your story before you write it, but that only applies to folks who want to write a first draft that’s basically, with a tweak or two, a polish away from being submittable. 

Crazy, I know, but it happens.  I’ve sold three first drafts using this approach.

For drafters — those allergic to story planning and who fight to the death for their defiance of outlining — this becomes a checklist of things you’re looking to discover (answer) in your series of inevitable drafts.  The more answers you can stuff into your next draft, the fewer subsequent draft you’ll need to write.

And if you leave only a few of these untouched  then no draft you write will ever be final.  Only abandoned.

Yeah, it’s that powerful. 

Print this baby  out and keep it in a safe place.  Frame it and put it next to your PC.  Whatever works.  Because when you fully understand what these questions mean to your story, and how to integrate the answers into it, you’re there. 

What is the conceptual hook/appeal of your story?

What is the theme(s) of your story?

How does your story open?  Is there an immediate hook?  And then…

• what is the hero doing in their life before the first plot point?
• what stakes are established prior to the first plot point?
• what is your character’s backstory?
• what inner demons show up here that will come to bear on the hero later in the story?
• what is foreshadowed prior to the first plot point?

What is the first plot point in your story?

• is it located properly within the story sequence?
• how does it change the hero’s agenda going forward?
• what is the nature of the hero’s new need/quest?
• what is at stake relative to meeting that need?
• what opposes the hero in meeting that need?
• what does the antagonistic force have at stake?
• why will the reader empathize with the hero at this point?
• how does the hero respond to the antagonistic force?

What is the mid-point contextual shift/twist in your story?

• how does it part the curtain of superior knowledge…
• … for the hero?…  and/or, for the reader?
• how does this shift the context of the story?
• how does this pump up dramatic tension and pace?

How does your hero begin to successfully attack their need/quest?

• how does the antagonistic force respond to this attack?
• how do the hero’s inner demons come to bear on this attack?

What is the all-is-lost lull just before the second plot point?

What is the second plot point in your story?

• how does this change or affect the hero’s proactive role?

How is your hero the primary catalyst for the successful resolution of the central problem or issue in this story?

• how does it meet the hero’s need and fulfill the quest?
• how does the hero demonstrate the conquering of inner demons?
• how are the stakes of the story paid off?
• what will be the reader’s emotional experience as the story concludes?

The frequent visitor to Storyfix.com will notice that these blocks of questions correspond to the four parts of story structure, as described in our recent 10-part series.

And how, upon closer examination, the list envelopes all of the four elemental components of the Six Core Competencies (concept, theme, character and structure), leaving the other two (scenes and writing voice) to your brilliant execution.

And if you aren’t a frequent visitor here, I submit to you that perhaps you should be.  If you can find one page of information this densely populated with relevant guidelines and empowering milestones, snatch it up.  But I’m betting you can’t, at least elsewhere. 

You’re here.  Welcome to the breakthrough in your writing journey you’ve been looking for.  Welcome to Storyfix.com

The Single Most Powerful Writing Tool You’ll Ever See That Fits On One Page is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

This post is about putting everything we’ve just learned about story structure into perspective.  Because little about fiction is black and white.  And yet, as it is in life, the principles that keep those of us who write it safe and sane are written onto white paper with very black ink.

And oh… get ready for an onslaught of metaphors.

Every once in a while you’ll read about a neophyte swimmer getting into trouble in deep or fast water, and then, when a more experienced swimmer paddles out to help them – one who has themselves almost drowned on more than one occasion, and thus has learned how to remain buoyant – they fight off rescue with all their waning strength. 

The thing about panic is that it can get you killed.

What can kill you even quicker is not even knowing that you need rescuing.

The analogy hits home because every now and then, more often than you’d think, I encounter a writer who just won’t accept the unimpeachable truth and validity of story architecture.  They fight it off as if their writing dream is being mugged.  They reject it as formulaic, they do everything in their power to make it wrong.

Even when you show them that virtually every published novel and produced screenplay is, in fact, a natural product of solid story architecture.

To believe otherwise is like saying the aesthetic beauty of the halls of Versailles has nothing to do with poured concrete foundations and seamless masonry.  Or that, back in the day, there wasn’t an actual blueprint for it all.

These architectural atheists swear that writing a novel or a screenplay is, or should be, a process of random exploration, that their joy resides in following characters down blind alleys and allowing them to set their own pace from there, with no real knowledge of where they’re going.

This is like saying the joy of playing golf is wandering randomly around the course, crisscrossing fairways, club in hand, hitting balls at assorted greens as you please.

I don’t dispute the kick in such an approach.  Hey, random creativity can be fun… so can finger painting.  There’s an inherent kick in a lot of things: drugs, alcohol, sex with ex-spouses, Russian roulette… but that doesn’t make it smart or ultimately productive.

Me thinks these folks are confusing process with product. 

If you’re only in it for the process, hey, knock yourself out.  Just don’t expect to get published.

Writing without bringing a solid grasp of story architecture to the keyboard is like doing surgery without having gone to medical school.  It’s a recipe for frustration and inevitable rejection.  Because the patient’s gonna die.

Just because you’ve watched every episode of Grey’s Anatomy doesn’t mean you’re ready to do an appendectomy.  Just like having read everything Tom Clancy’s ever written doesn’t qualify you to write a publishable techno thriller.

Story architecture is nothing short of the holy grail of fiction writing.  Or if you prefer, the ante-in.  Tom Clancy and every other author in the bookstore understands this.  Even if they write from the center of the seat of their pants. 

How they write isn’t the issue.  What they know about what they write is.

You can write like Shakespeare in love and have the imagination of Tim Burton on crack, but if your stories aren’t built on solid and accepted structure  – which means, you don’t get to invent your own – you’ll be wallpapering your padded cell with rejection slips.

I’m not saying you have to outline your stories.  That’s not what story architecture means.  What I am saying is that you do have to apply the principles of story architecture to the story development process, outline or no outline.  At least, if you want to publish.  That’s just a fact.

That said, allow me to backtrack just a nudge or two. 

If you’re a screenwriter, the confines of the structural box within with you live are as inflexible as a Donald Trump pre-nuptial agreement.  Obey them or die trying to be the next Tarantino, who inexplicably got a free pass on all this stuff.  Screenwriters don’t mind the box into which they are stuffed, they accept it and go creatively hog wild within its comfy black and white confines.

But here’s the good news for novelists: life is easier for you.  All of the structural guidelines and story milestones put forth here in this 10-part series on story structure are offered as principles as opposed to commandments.  When I’ve specified a place to insert a milestone, you get to insert the word roughly into that specification.  When I’ve identified the length of a certain part of a story, you get to chop or add to a reasonable extent.

Stick close to these guidelines and you’ll be treading a proven and safe path. 

Disregard them, and you won’t sell your story.  Period.

Advocating story architecture is like teaching your kids about the world – you tell them to do as you say, not as you do, you tell them about the golden rule and the law of attraction and the mystical consequences of karma, and you do your best to explain that good things happen to good people who live by these creeds.

And when it doesn’t… well, that’s life, and it’s not always fair.  Doesn’t mean it’s not a valid principle.  There are orders of magnitude more examples of dreams gone down in flames from not observing them than there are of success stories arising from exceptions to these guidelines.

Lessons in hand, you watch your children leave the nest to live their lives according to their own whims and appetites.  Sometimes you win, sometimes… not so much.

Where teaching story structure is concerned – sometimes they publish, sometimes they don’t.  You can’t make someone live in a box, even if the sides are somewhat flexible and porous. 

It’s been a pleasure being your lifeguard for this swim in the waters of story architecture.  If you can see the shore, then keep paddling, you’ll get there.  And if you don’t, well, you keep stroking, too.

Because to tread water is to eventually drown.  Moving forward is your only hope of survival.  Unless, of course, you get a kick out of treading water. 

Just don’t kid yourself in the process.  Treading water can feel like swimming, like moving forward, but it’s not.  It’s only wearing you out.  And if you happen to get the aforementioned kick out of it, well, at least you’ll go down happy.

The only life raft coming your way in this sea of choices is one of your own construction.  Or should I say, choosing.

Chances are it has the words USS Story Architecture stenciled on the side.

Story Structure Series: Epilogue… the Fine Print is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

See my guest blog today on Copyblogger.com, the Big Kahuna of all freelance writing sites.   Check it out HERE.

If you’ve just come from there, welcome!  Kick around a while, there’s lots to experience.

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What Kind of Storyteller Are You, Anyhow? is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

Writer’s Block is like rejection — its part of the deal if you write seriously.  It reminds me of the blush of new love — in the beginning there’s excitement, the world is all adrenalin and tongue hockey, you can’t focus or sleep… and then reality slaps you upside the head like a mother-in-law who’s just discovered your porn collection.

Okay, bad analogy.  And no, that’s never happened to me.  But writer’s block has, and I’ve learned a thing or two about it.  The hard way, and it’s cost me more than one story.

What is a good analogy is comparing your writing to love and sex.  Because despite all your blame-diverting rationalizations about being too busy or too tired or too distracted, or despite having none of these excuses but you’re still clueless about why you’d rather have a root canal than sit down to face your manuscript again… the real reason that you have writer’s block is this: your story isn’t working the way it should.

Something is broken.  It isn’t working anymore.  You’ve made a mistake and you don’t know it, or you’re unwilling to fix it if you do.

If this sounds familiar, I’m guessing you’re married.

You’re blocked because your inner editor knows there’s a story problem.  Even if your outer storyteller doesn’t.  Your story won’t have sex with you again until you fix the problem.

Writing is like sex in many ways.  First of all, you get off on it.  There is casual writing, just as there are casual relationships.  One gets you a rejection slip, the other the dinner tab and an STD.  Neither gets you where you want to go: something long-term and meaningful.

As in, a book contract or a screenplay sale.

As it is with love, you have to commit to a new writing project before it has a shot at working, and you have to bring a lot of life experience and the backstory of your scars to the table to prevent resurrecting the failures of your past.  Great storytelling requires great passion, tempered by a respect for what your partner desires and requires along the way.

And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that stories desire and require a lot.  They’re high maintenance, demanding, unyeilding and highly complex.

Just like every woman I’ve ever loved.

And, just the like the woman I love now, my soul mate, the love of my life.  The adjectives still apply. The difference it that I’m a revision of my former self, and because of that the story finally works.

And she’s oh-so-worth the effort.

Staying in this analogous groove, writer’s block is like a serious rift in a relationship.  Or not — it could just be a bad creative decision that is spitting consequences back at you.  Or simply giving you the cold shoulder.

The big mistake is allow writer’s block to fester, to give it the silent treatment in return and then, when you think the heat is off, ease your way back into a daily routine without ever addressing the problem.  No, deeper issues are afoot.  Sometimes it takes a counselor — as in, a critique group, a trusted friend in editorial mode, or a degree of vulnerability and honesty that may have been heretofore missing — to clear the air between you.

You have to let your story win.  It knows what it needs, and it won’t talk to you until it gets it.

Again, welcome to primary relationships.

If you can’t isolate a specific problem and the air between you is still chilly, you could just go back to the beginning and try to remember what made you fall in love with this story in the first place, and then retrace your steps to see where you fell off the path.  Which, if you’re blocked, you did.

Fair warning, though: you may discover that you’re in bed with the wrong story.  It happens.  Writers block can be an indicator that your story just doesn’t feel the love at all.  It’s telling you that you should move on.  Not all problems are solvable, and if you’ve ever lived with someone you don’t like, you know it’s the very definition of hell itself.

Intrinsic to the fix is an awareness of how well you know the path itself.  If you aren’t schooled in the nuances of character development and the intricacies of story architecture — proven standards and criteria for the engineering of a story that works — then you’re tying to erect a massive palace by feel instead of using a solid plan and process, and that’s tough.

There are known principles for making a relationship — and a story — functional.  Most break-ups occur because someone isn’t observing those principles.

The more you know about what your story needs and expects, the sooner you’ll realize what you’ve done wrong.

And that’s the source of your writer’s block.  You don’t know yet.  Or, you don’t own your mistakes.

Your story is giving you the silent treatment.  It’s no longer whispering sweet plot points in your ear.  It’s no longer caressing your vicarious writing jones with surprising gifts and pearls.  Little kisses of affection.  It’s just lying there, letting you do all the work.

The trick is to fall in love again.  And you do it by bringing your story flowers — new ideas, new energy, a change of scenery.  Or, if the problem is more serious — maybe you’ve cheated and strayed into the arms of another story — counseling in the form of outside help.

But make no mistake, your block is not because you’re too tired.  Or that you can’t think of what to write next.

No, it’s because your story is seeing a divorce attorney on the side.

If, after deep soul searching and the best counseling you can find, you decide you are in the right relationship and want to save it, do what you have to do to win back the love of your life.  And that always requires dropping your defenses and getting real, getting vulnerable… and most all, summoning a new willingness to change something.

Doing nothing, waiting for things to warm up on their own, is a recipe for failure.  Fix it.

When you do, many orgasmic nights of literary lovemaking will be yours.

The Ugly Truth About Writer’s Block and the Beautiful Way to Kick It is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

But first…

Do you Blog?

See my guest post today on www.bloggingtips.com

And if you’ve just arrived from there… welcome to Storyfix!

Inherent to the process of writing a story is answering a certain set of critical questions.  Many are intuitive – like, whodunit?… or, will they or won’t they? – but unless you address the less obvious ones directly they can easily be overlooked or underplayed as you grow your story from an initial idea to a fully realized piece of work.

And when that happens, you’ll have to revise your story accordingly.  Or more accurately, extensively.

The best questions become a guide that illuminates story architecture.  For instance, there are certain questions posed at the opening of your story and a different set of questions that apply to each milestone and segment that follows.

And yes, there are specific milestones and segments along the way.  So a great question here is: are you in command of what they are, where they go, and what they need to accomplish within the story?

Lost yet?  That’s good, you’re about to learn something that may – perhaps for the first time – give you some semblance of a roadmap for the telling of a great story.

First, there are the big picture questions.

Why are you even writing this thing?  Is it because you’re searching for a project, in much the same way you show up at the tennis court by yourself looking for a match?  Or are you wrestling with a story that demands to be told and won’t let you alone?  A story that burns and nags and haunts?

There’s a huge difference, and the latter is the stuff of bestsellers.  If such a story isn’t haunting you, perhaps consider waiting until one does.  Or, try working on your story until it takes on that kind of weight in your life.  Because if it doesn’t fully possess you, it doesn’t stand a chance of impacting your readers.

Do you know the basic sequence of how your story will unfold?  No?  Okay, you could just start writing it to find out.  But know that if you do, you’re destined for a series of major rewrites as the elements descend upon you enroute.

Any process – be it extensive pre-draft blueprinting or multi-draft narrative evolution – drives toward the exact same thing: the discovery and sequencing of story elements delivered with characterized nuance and poignant exposition.

You get to say how.  The what has been cast in stone.

Do you have a thematic landscape or message that this story will convey?  No?  That’s okay, one will come to you if the story proves itself worthy of your time.

Do you know how the story ends?  Not much of what you write will be ideally suited to pacing, foreshadowing, character arc and dramatic tension until you do.  (One word for organic drafters: rewrite.)  Once you’ve landed on an ending that works, everything you write needs to be in context to it.

At the end of the day each part of a novel or screenplay – every sentence, every chapter – is connected to every other part.

Have you realized what the stakes are in your story?  For the characters, and for your readers?  Stakes are a make-it or break-it proposition, and the more you know about them – and the sooner you know it – the better your drafts will be.

Once the big picture is in hand, even tougher questions kick in.

Do you know what your key scenes are?  How your story will open?  The first major plot point?  The mid-point context shift?  Several pinch points that smack the reader upside their head with tension and drama?  The final major plot point?

Do you know how to introduce and set up your hero and the impending arrival of an antagonistic force in the first quarter of the story?  Do you know how and when to bring that element in after subtly foreshadowing it beforehand?  After implanting stakes at the root of the character’s motivations that make us feel what she or he feels as they square off with the darkness or the opportunity at hand?

Do you know how that moment (the first plot point) changes your story?  How it alters, launches and defines the hero’s quest and need?  How it irreversibly propels her or him down the story’s arduous path?

Do you know what inner demons the hero must conquer in order to face and eventually conquer the antagonistic force you’ve throw at her or him?  Do you know where that particular personal darkness or handicap came from?  How it manifests and affects others?  How it must change as the story moves forward?

Have you planned for the evolution of your character as she or he moves out of the set-up phase to become a responder to the newly introduced need or goal?  How that response-mode evolves into full-blown attack mode in the middle of your story?  How that proactive and heroic attack must face and conquer even newer and stronger antagonism before it can emerge as victorious?

Are you in command of how your evolved (character arc) hero will become the primary catalyst and architect of the story’s denouement?  This is an essential element to the success of your story.

Do you, at any moment in the story, understand what the reader will be rooting for or against?  What the level of empathy and tension may be, not only for the story at large, but within each individual scene you write?

What is the vicarious experience, the ride, that you are taking the reader on?

Can you sense how your ending will pay all this off, emotionally and intellectually – but most of all emotionally – for the reader?  Will they cry?  Will they cheer?  Will they be angry or happy or confused or bewitched?  Will they be changed?

Will they, at the end of the day, be entertained?

Are you, as the author, prepared to be in full command of why that gamut of emotions will be there for your reader?

One question at a time.

Just as a tennis player arrives courtside with a bag full of skills, and then must assess the opponent and create a game strategy accordingly, the writer begins each story with two hierarchical realms of Q&A already in play.

There is what you know – the basics of story architecture, characterization and thematically-driven writing power…

… and how you apply what you know — the specific creative decisions you must make and infuse into your story, sentence by sentence, scene by scene, in context to the former.

And you thought this might be easy.

But it can still be fun, especially when you get your head around all this stuff.  The better your story works, the more reward it will bring – both in process and with the end-product.

Whether you plan it all out ahead of time or you use multiple drafts to search out these answers, the result will be the same.  Shortcut any of these questions and your story will suffer for it

Nail them, and do it with a high level of art, wit, style, grace and a keen eye for life, and you just might see your name in lights someday.

45 Questions Your Story Will Always Force You to Answer is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

If you’ve just arrived from MenWithPens, welcome.

If not, check out my guest blog on that terrific writing site, run by a guy I really respect.

And now for today’s Story Fix …

No matter how you go about writing your novel or screenplay, there are a lot of things you’ll need to know about your story before you decide it’s ready to submit to an agent, a publisher or a producer.   Five of them are absolutely non-negotiable.

And in my opinion, you should know all about those five moments – scenes, actually – before you start writing.  But hey, that’s just me.

Frankly, my opinion on this tends to piss some writers off.

They are for the most part organic writers who prefer to use the drafting process as a means of discovery, or as an exercise in story development.  Or just as often, who harbor a serious distaste for outlining, claiming it stifles creativity and spontaneity.

Whatever.  If it works it’s from God, and more power to ya.

But this much is true: organic writers, as much as any other type of approach, need to know all about these five scenes before they can finish a final draft that works.  A draft that might actually sell.  On that we can all agree.

The process is entirely your call.  Potato, pototo, whatever.  The end product is the same either way, and the reader will neither notice nor care.

The five scenes are: opening… first plot point… midpoint… second plot point… ending.

If this sounds a bit greek to you, I submit that perhaps you don’t really understand story architecture as well as you should - an affliction as common to outliners as it is to organic writers – and the best tip in the world for you is to stop writing and go back to square one for some serious form of writing bootcamp.

Because that is one of the most common pitfalls of all — beginning a story without a solid grasp of story architecture, and then wondering how and why you’ve just written yourself into a bleak little corner.

There are certainly other scenes you’ll have to discover before you can finish your story successfully.

From 60 to 100 other scenes, in fact, all of them expressed within narrative scenes.  But once you nail these five critical foundation scenes they are more easily developed, either during the drafting phase if that’s your modus operandi, or as you lay out a series of index cards on your kitchen floor in preparation for our outline.

Hey, whatever works.

As for me, the more you know about your story beforehand – specifically your key scenes – the better you’ll write them the first time you try.

These five scenes define your story.

The most important of them are the first and second plot points, because they introduce and launch the conflicting elements that oppose the hero’s primary quest and need within the context of the story, and then trigger the concluding sequence based on everything you know about what’s at stake, both for the hero and the antagonist.

But once you know these five key scenes, the rest tends to fall much more easily into place.

Spaced appropriately across a linear timeline of the story, these five scenes become the pillars upon which you build.  They are the foundations that hold the weight of your structure.  And most importantly, they separate and connect the other scenes that unfold between them – a total of four discrete sections of the story – each of which has a succinct and different context and mission.

It’s not a formula, it’s a roadmap.  Big difference.

Imagine having four shorter segments, each with its own mission, context and criteria, and each developed in context to the ones next to it.

Sort of clarifies the nature of the storytelling journey, doesn’t it.

Welcome to the wonderful and liberating world story architecture, the most powerful thing in the writer’s bag of storytelling tools.  No matter what process you employ.

“101 Tips” Preview: Tip #79 — Five Moments in Your Story You Must Understand Before You Can Write Something Saleable is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

Check out my guest post today on www.WriteToDone.com.

And if you’ve come here from there… welcome!

I think all teachings about writing are good.  Wonderful, in fact.  Taken as a whole, the body of knowledge kicking around out there is astounding, and because there are so many views on so many of the variables that comprise the creative process, in the end the writer gets to decide what works for them and what doesn’t.

Next time you go to a writing workshop, notice how the topics break down into bite-size segments, each of which gets the once-over from someone very worthy of dishing it:  How to add tension.  How to impress an agent.  Writing better titles.  Fun with sentence structure.  Tips for better dialogue. Even how to be more creative.

But rarely is the Big Picture of writing stories addressed, including an exploration of what story even is.  (You’d be shocked and dismayed at how many experienced writers aren’t able to articulate or implement an understanding of “story.”)  Rarely do you see how do you write a novel or a screenplay at those workshops.  It sounds too entry-level, too basic.

They assume everybody with an admission ticket has that one nailed.  And everybody doesn’t. 

Which means — if that’s you — as you listen to How to write a better sex scene, you do so without the valuable context of the Big Picture.  You’ll get something out of it, sure, but too often you’re not sure what to do with it.  If you take that workshop but still don’t know how to write a story, you’ll end up with a broken story with a great sex scene in it.

It’s like trying to build a car from scratch and taking a seminar on how to repair your brakes, when you’re not sure how the brake system interfaces with the brake pedal, or even why the brakes are necessary.  It’s easy with cars, but with storytelling… not so much.

Writing saleable novels and screenplays is like that.  Do you need to master the parts?  Absolutely yes.  Do you need to understand how the parts relate to each other?  Of course you do.  Do you need to wrap your head around how to make the collective gathering of those parts into something beautiful, a whole in excess the sum of the parts?  Well, that’s the idea, isn’t it. 

But that workshop isn’t out there.  Neither is the book.  Not really.  I’ve talked to students that after three decades of reading how-to books and going to workshops, their vision of that “collective whole” is still baffling to them.  I read their manuscripts — and that includes my own — and realize that certain basic engine parts are missing, or they’re in the wrong place for the wrong reasons. 

The overwhelmingly common trait among unpublished manuscripts is that lack of big picture context that disempowers a relationship between the parts.  Bland ideas with great characters.  Great potential characters rendered one dimensionally.  Stories without theme, or too many themes.  Stories told without strutuce and pace.  Out of whack scenes.  Pedestrian writing.  Any one of these can kill your story.

 That’s precisely why all novels and screenplays don’t get sold, despite perhaps being technically sound.  Because it’s art, and art cannot be quantified or templated.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. 

Trust me, Tiger Woods and Roger Federer learned their respective games from the inside out.  Stroke by stroke.  Move by move.  Until one day the parts melded and became technical perfection.  But even then, it took years of honing and growing and further melding before their swings turned them into the Stephen Kings of their sports.

Short metaphoric example: my computer monitor likes to freeze up, go blank, then return as a mash of visual distortion.  Then it flashes a distorted little window telling me, basically, that I’m screwed.  I have to power down and reboot the thing, all right in the middle of writing something that had found its rhythm.  So, once back online, I begin to research the problem.  The “help desks” — perhaps the most ironicaly misnamed entities in all of computerdom — all profess a solution, using jargon like this: driver, register, cache, IP address, server, bios, FTP, SML, RDF, RSS, SGML, SQL and about a thousand other obscure terms.  Do I know what these mean?  Sometimes.   A few of them.  Have I “mastered” any of them?  What does that even mean? 

They assume I have the right contextual understanding to fix my monitor.  But I don’t.  So I just keep rebooting.  And at the end of the day, I’ll have to hire someone to replace the requisite driver necessary to repair the problem… which, I came to realize, is not an issue with the monitor at all, but with the underlying software.  Or, in more writerly terms, with the Big Picture.

That’s what writers face.  Tons of information about the parts.  An assumption that we understand what they all mean and how they all relate to each other.  A lack of Big Picture context.  An uncertainty about how to connect the parts, or even what those parts are and the criteria for them.

The magic pill isn’t out there, folks.  We still have to perfect our swings the best way we can, and then practice them until our dangling participles fall off.

I have something to offer you in this regard.  It’s called The Six Core Competencies of Successful Storytelling.  It’s a story development and process model.  It’s a Big Picture analysis of the parts and how they relate.  It delivers solid criteria for each.  It shows you what to write, how to write it, what will make it work, and why it’ll work.

It can’t give you the artistic sensibility required to sell it.  Or the dumb luck that springs from dauntless perseverance.  But it can give you some tools you’ll find nowhere else, at least that I’ve ever come across, and along with thousands of writing students who say this is what will finally liberate them from the bondage of writing outside of the context of the Big Picture.

All I can deliver here on Storyfix are chunks of that Big Picture, one exciting possiblity at a time.  But soon it’ll all come together, not only as a collective archive that blankets the Big Picture, but as a book.  Until then, keep writing — I shall — and just as important, keep reading about writing.

Hey, if you discover even one tiny criteria you’ve been missing — perhaps the one that will put you into the game – then both of us will have won the day.

Why You Need to Break the Writing Process Down is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com