Not quite a two-parter.

By that I mean, what began as one big honkin’ post quickly evolved into two.  When the intro/set-up — how I came to the stuff I’ll talk about in the forthcoming not-quite-Part 2 — started to outgrow itself, when it became a separate yet valid topic for discussion, I made the executive decision to double up.

It’s what I get for pantsing my posts. 

The good news is, twice the juice for you.  And, I’m already done with the mid-week article.

Love it when a plan comes together.  Even when it’s the result of one falling apart.

###

One of the best ways to skip a rung or two on the storytelling learning curve is to rent DVDs.  Lots of DVDs.

This is just as true – if not more so – if you’re a novelist rather than a screenwriter.  Other than the printed page itself, the core principles of those two avocations are close enough to make them more than literary cousins, more like twins separated at birth.

I’ve already written here about the value of deconstructing stories.  Dissecting the scenes and story-beats and then fitting them back together. 

Sort of a literary C.S.I. thing.  Find out why and how the story worked… or why it croaked.  It works equally well for DVDs and novels, with hardly any difference other than the time required.

But there’s another avenue of writerly growth available on most of those DVDs, and it’s right there on the Main Menu.

Hit the Features or Extras button after you’ve seen the movie. 

Go ahead.  Click it.  What you find there can make you a better writer.

Chances are this is where you’ll find interviews with the actors, the director and producers, and the screenwriter.  Easy to skip this stuff… but don’t.  Hearing what those people have to say can be just as illuminating as watching the story itself.

Because they just might tell you how they did what they did, and why.

You can eat a great gourmet meal anytime, but you can’t cook one up yourself until you hear the chef talk about how it was done. 

I just finished with the DVD of the screen version of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, starring Viggo Mortensen (highly recommended, though dark and very character-driven and thematically-intense, even within an astoundlingly high concept), and the way the cast and crew discuss storytelling is just such a revelation.

I’d also just done this after watching the entire first season of HBO’s Hung, and while markedly different in tone and structure (Hung being a 10-part serial versus a two hour film), I was stricken by the literary similarities.

In particular, I noticed one specific way of thinking about your story before you write it… as you write it… as you rewrite it… and as you pitch it, either to an agent or publisher or producer, to the intended audience.

The way a world class chef thinks about the ingredients before even entering the kitchen.

It’s the thing that keeps the narrative on task, rather than wandering around a character-driven dramatic landscape with a scarcity of tension. 

And it’s as ridiculously simple, even obvious, as it is powerful. 

And yet, I’m willing to bet you’ve never boiled your story down to this level.  I know I hadn’t.

What it boils down to this:

What dramatic questions are you asking in your story?

Boiling your story down to a few simple – key word there: simple – questions allows you to wade through the self-induced quagmire of side-trips, sub-plots, setting-up, paying off, pacing, character arc and resolution…

… all of which are already clarified through a keen grasp of story structure and the six core competencies of successful storytelling that prop it up.

It’s the essence of knowing your story, which is nonnegotiable when it comes down to finally writing it well.

Next up: the not-quite Part 2 of this not-quite two-part post.

Finding Enlightenment Behind The Scenes is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

All this talk about pantsing versus planning…or, in reference to Tim Baker’s recent guest post, the hybrid method now known as plantsing… it’s easy to get confused.

Confused about what the difference is, or what it even means.

Confused about the risks and potential rewards of each.

And confused about what I’m really saying about this polarizing story development preference.

It doesn’t matter.  Either way can work.

I’m done trying to convince die-hard pantsers that their story development method of choice will or won’t work – that’s never been my point. 

Because it certainly can work, but only if the pantser understands story structure to an extent that what pours out of their head aligns with those principles.  Or, that they can get there by evolving their pantsed smorgasbord of a story into a clean, structurally-sound narrative.

Which is, frankly, a rare and difficult thing. 

When Jeffrey Deaver tells you he writes 22 drafts, he’s not advocating pantsing.  He’s admitting that he’s a perfectionist who tries and polishes everything before he’s satisfied.

At the other end of the scale, pantsing is the overwhelming tool of choice for new writers who don’t know a plot point from a ballpoint pen, and think they can bang out a story because they’ve just finished reading one that, because it didn’t seem so darn complicated, makes them believe they can do just as well.

Pantser or planner, though, you don’t get to invent your own theory of dramatic structure.  Any more than an athlete gets to reinvent the rules of their game to suit their mood that day. 

Pansting isn’t the issue.  Understanding the principles of narrative structure is.

Pansters who publish (like Tim Baker) are the ones who get this.  Again, a rare and difficult thing.  Because the more you know about story structure, the less likely you are to pants a story.  (Which is why, I surmise, Baker and writers like him incorporate some level of story planning — the major milestones, especially the ending — into their process.)

The pansters we read about – King, Deaver, and many others – are among those writers who think in terms of story structure from the moment they open their laptop.  And trust me, they’re also thinking about their ending long before they’ll admit to it.

Because you can’t write a draft that works without knowing where it’s headed from page 1.  Anything else — or better put, prior to that moment – is just an exercise in story planning, and if you settle for a draft that doesn’t go back to square one once you do know the ending, the story just isn’t going to work as well as it should.

 Which is one of the reasons Deaver writes those 22 drafts.

You can’t repair a sinking ship once it’s underwater.

Bottom line – everybody, pantser and planner alike, engages in a search for their story, and everybody who finishes a viable story has found a way to land on it.

Pansting your way to that point, draft after draft, is one way to get there.

So is planning it all down to the nth detail before you begin a draft.

Any assertion from one end of this continuum aimed at the other end is as wrong and short-sighted as it is naïve.

The truth is… everybody plans and everybody pants at some point in the development of a story.  Everybody plants.   It’s unavoidable, which means it’s a good thing.

I used to be that polarizing guy. 

Now, I see both points of view.  I’m that story structure guy who doesn’t care how you get there, only that you do.

I happen to feel sorry for one of those points of view – you really can plan your story out without the slightest compromise to creativity or the storytelling journey – but that’s just me.  I respect anyone who can pound together a story that works across all six core competencies, planned or pantsed.

That said, I have a stern warning for pantsers who say the following, which I’ve read over and over again, here and elsewhere:

I like to take little side trips in my story, to get a new idea and see where it leads, to explore new directions and notions.

This is a fact: your final draft, the one that will sell, won’t go there. 

That side trip will end up either re-inventing your story – which is fine, a better idea is a better idea – or it will ruin it.

This conversation divides writers into two camps…

… those who write to publish, and those who write for themselves, who are into the experience of creating a story over and above creating one that others will pay money to read.

A side trip that rewards the writer with an existential experience or orgasmic relief as the primary motivation serves only the latter. 

Because a publishable story – unless the point of the story is, in fact, experiential rather than expositional, which outside of what you read back in Lit 101 is pretty rare – requires pace.  It needs to travel along a narrow path, a defined spine, and anything and everything on those pages needs to serve an expositional mission.

A beckoning side trip is like meeting a seductive stranger in a bar. 

It’s fun.  It’s dangerous.  It’s exciting and potentially meaningful if the person is still next to you — and alive – when you wake up.

If you crave the experience of a one-night stand, know that it can also ruin your health and maybe your life.

If you end up marrying the stranger, then that one-night stand was the beginning of something beautiful.  Even if you broke all the rules when it happened. 

In that case, know this: if you commit to it going forward, there can be no more one night stands for you.

Commitment, in relationships and in storytelling, means no side trips.

And in a good story, the writer always commits. 

To what?  To a direction, a narrative spine… to an outcome.

Readers don’t want or don’t have time for a side trip that doesn’t serve those masters.  Don’t kid yourself, you are alone in your attraction to the side trip that beckons you.

At the end of the storytelling day, the reader of a published novel cannot and should not be able to tell the difference between a writer who planned and a writer who pantsed.

This principle becomes a self-fulfilling truth. 

Because if the pantsing results in an unrequited, expositionally (my word, please don’t look it up) unnecessary side trip, the story won’t see the inside of a bookstore.

Which means, there aren’t really many examples out there that disprove this after all.  Unless the name on the cover is a household word… in which case, they can do anything they want.  Stephen King and Nelson Demille are held to different and frankly lower standards than the rest of us are in this regard.

Side trips, when you do see them, are usually there for a reason.  And it has nothing to do with the writer enjoying the experience of going there.

###

Speaking of a story with no sidetrips: if you’re at all interested in my novel, Whisper of the Seventh Thunder, here’s a 15% discount code to use when ordering on Amazon.com: 6GX63XTL.

Beware the Seductive Side Trip is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

A Storyfix reader recently asked me this intriguing question.  At first I thought, no way.  Then I thought, maybe.  Then I wasn’t so sure.

I’m still not so sure.  But I do know this — you still need “a” first plot point, even if you manage to pull it off.

Below is my response, buffed up for publication here, and augmented with a caveat or two.

Can the first plot point happen without the hero knowing about it?

In my opinion, it can.

Sort of.  Sometimes.

But only if do it right.

And by doing it right, you still need a Part 1 set-up of approximatley 20 to 25 percent of the story, followed by a Part 2 response.

Nothing about the principles of story structure changes.  Ever.  Even in this case.

Response to what?  Answer: the first plot point.  The thing you were setting up back Part 1.

Remember, the question here is whether the hero needs to know about the FPP, or not.  Not whether you can skip the FPP altogether.

You can’t.   You still need an FPP solidly — and functionally — in place.

If your hero isn’t aware of a sudden (though perhaps subtle) shift in the story at the proper First Plot Point milestone, then your reader absolutely needs to be.

Because the criteria for the First Plot Point milestone remains in place. 

Did I say that already?  I think I did.

I’m so glad you didn’t ask if you can skip the FPP altogether.  The answer to that one is… loud.

The story shifts in a new direction at the FPP, even if the hero isn’t aware of it.  Which means it changes.  The thing that changes is the hero’s near-term need, direction, quest, journey, objective… name your favorite term.

The story really begins right there, at the FPP.  Everything before that moment is a set-up for it, everything after a response to it.

Even if the hero is kept in the dark.

There needs to be stakes involved and defined by the FPP milestones.  The hero has something to lose or gain, with consequences attached.  The reader needs to empathize with those stakes and root for the hero.

Even if the hero is in a coma.

We still need to have a newly defined antagonistic force suddenly in play, and in a way that defines a new life-dirction for the hero. 

And, most importantly (okay, just as importantly)… the hero is now in response mode. 

She or he is now, in Part 2, reacting to something that is suddenly pressuring her or him, opposing her or him or otherwise stands in her or his way.

Does the hero need to know about it?  Not necessarily.  It can happen behind the curtain of the hero’s awareness.  But when it does unfold this way, the audience absolutely needs to experience and understand all of the above.

Or it won’t work.

That said, the hero should have a visible shift in their journey at the First Plot Point, as well. 

It’s just that — in context to the aforementioned Big Question — they don’t yet have to be made aware of their ultimate need or quest, nor do they need to have even the remotest clue as to the nature and goal of the force that opposes her. 

Or him.  Or it.  Whatever.

We do… the hero doesn’t.

This is a non-traditional way of unleashing a story, and with unconventional strategies come unique challenges.  It won’t be easy to pull off, to be honest, but if that’s your story… that’s your story.

When this dynamic is in place, you do need to finally let the hero in on the true nature of what their story — their need and quest, as well as that which opposes them, and with a full awareness of the stakes — at some point. 

That point, almost without exception in such a rare dynamic, is the Mid-Point milestone.  It’s made for such a moment, because its mission is to part the curtain for the hero and/or reader and thus create a new context going forward.

Nothing says new context quite like a hero who suddenly wakes up to what’s really going on around them.

Good luck with this… and I don’t mean that sarcastically. 

It’s an example of taking a risk, and with great risk comes great opportunity.  Just don’t make the mistake of creating what is, in effect, a set-up that lasts for 40 to 50 percent of the length of the story, with nothing that smells like a plot point anywhere in view beforehand.

Give us what is, in effect, a false (or at least minor) Plot Point One for the hero, and in the right place, while also delivering a contextually valid Plot Point One for the reader.   They can be different narrative twists, but both need to be in the proper FPP location if they are.

If you can pull that off, you just might have a winner on your hands.

I wish that for you.

Can the First Plot Point Happen Without the Hero Knowing? is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

The Second of Two Posts.  Click Here for Part 1.

The Triggers of Pacing

This is the most obvious part of the pacing conversation, but it gets too easily lost in all this story architecture stuff.

Pacing is all about the reader experience. 

It is the eliciting of desire – desire to know what happens next… desire to know how a specific scene will turn out… desire to know how what happens fits into the big picture… and an involuntary emotional response that springs from empathy and curiosity.

You may not like the word here, but it fits: pacing is an exercise in titillation through narrative manipulation of the reader. 

Feel free to drive them crazy with need and desire… to know.

Part 1 Pacing

How you open your story involves an entirely different frame of reference when it comes to pacing. 

Part 1 has a handful of objectives:

-         hook the reader with an idea or a promise;

-         introduce the hero and her or his world view and current life experience and goals;

-         attach stakes to those goals that the reader will empathize with… foreshadow what’s coming;

-         set-up the mechanics of the approaching First Plot Point, including the use of a killer Inciting Incident that puts the hero’s goal in jeopardy.

Then blend and stir, seasoning to taste.

This is the part of the story when you can luxuriate as you open your scenes, easing us into setting, time and context in a way that makes us feel safe and comfortable. 

All before you pull the rug out at the First Plot Point.

You don’t have that luxury after the First Plot Point kicks the story into a different gear.  You need to get in and get to it.

Keys to Effective Pacing 

After Part 1, what I call the William Goldman Rule kicks in.  So named because that’s where I first heard about it, in his book Adventures in the Screen Trade, which I highly recommend.

Goldman tells writers – and it should be noted here that he was also a successful novelist in addition to winning two Best Screenplay Oscars – to enter your scenes at the last possible moment.

This has huge implications, all of which are liberating and empowering.

First… you can’t pants this.  You can’t even do it until you understand precisely what this scene is all about and what it needs to accomplish with the bigger picture of the story.

Which brings us to the most powerful pacing tip of all.

Especially when it comes to pacing: your scenes (in addition to the architecture of the four parts of your story) need to be mission-driven.

This is the key to effective pacing.  Know what your scene is… why it needs to be there… and what it must do in terms of delivering specific exposition that thrusts the story forward.

All scenes are obliged to deliver characterization, so showing us something about your character is probably not the primary expository mission.  The job of every scene is to take us deeper into the story… and to do with appropriate characterization. 

Not to tread water, not to analyze, not to flashback or wax philosophic.  This means you shouldn’t ever have a scene that exists solely to tell us something about a character, you need to show us something about her or him.

Which means, something needs to happen. 

That’s story exposition.

Once you know what a scene is all about, only then can you write the hell out of it. 

Only then can you make it extraordinarily dramatic (like the Russian roulette scene in The Deer Hunter, or the courthouse scene in A Few Good Men).  Only then can you cut deep into the scene at the sweet spot, rather than ramping up to it unnecessarily and distractingly.

Distractions are pace killers.  Sometimes they are even story killers.

May your pace be swift and your stories irresistible.

And may your pants remain in your closet, instead of in the driver’s seat of your storytelling.

Learn more about how pace relates to structure in Larry’s ebook, Story Structure – Demystified.

Part Two: Slightly Random Thoughts About Story Pacing… From 10,000 Feet is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

Part 1 of 2

There’s already an elephant in this article, let’s go there first.

Why random?  And why from 10,000 feet?

Because pacing is to storytelling what love is to relationships.  I kid you not.  It’s what makes it all work.

Which means it’s bigger than this.

Last weekend I was privileged to present a workshop on pacing at Jessica Morrell’s Summer in Words writing conference.  In preparing, I realized how vast this aspect of storytelling actually is.  It’s better suited to an entire book, rather than the cozy and often claustrophobic confines of a 1500 word post or a two-hour workshop.

Can you fix your marriage in a two-hour workshop at the local Holiday Inn?  Didn’t think so.

That said, the workshop delivered a high level overview of how the art of pacing fits into the overall story development model, which means it’s certainly worth repeating here.  Like many aspects of storytelling – and, since the analogy has been launched, like relationships – it’s easy to take for granted by putting it on auto-pilot.

But don’t be fooled. 

Think of this, then, as an overview of the Table of Contents for the book required to do justice to the topic of story pacing.  Every sub-heading below is an entire chapter – and, another blog post… count on it – in that book.

Awareness is a beautiful and powerful thing.  In marriage and in storytelling.  Both of which, by the way, can break you if you don’t do it right. 

Get ready to feel the love.

The Big Picture of Pacing

You pantsers are gonna hate this.  But the truth is, you can’t pants pace.

But you can plan for it.

The pacing of your story is very much like analyzing the flow of the blueprint for a building that hasn’t been constructed yet.  You look at the relationships between the parts – chapters and scenes for writers, hallways and rooms for architecture – and determine if the sequence and proportions are in balance, if they are optimized for flow and feel, not to mention structural integrity and aesthetic beauty, and you make adjustments accordingly

So whether you plan or pants, pacing is something you address – you build in – at the point at which you are sure your story architecture is solid. 

You can’t pace that which you don’t yet fully understand.

Placement of Pace

Here’s something that’s obvious, but only after you realize it: the nature and implementation of pacing is very different as you progress into a story.

In other words, the pacing in Part 1 is different than the ensuing parts.  The further you go into the story, the more intense and contextual the pace becomes. 

Pacing is most extreme and noticeable as you near the end.

The reason for this has to do with the amount of expository story information on the table, including character development.  The more the reader understands about the nature of the conflict (including the hero’s inner demons) at a given moment in a story… including the manner in which prior exposition has moved the story forward… the more incumbent it is upon the writer to adjust the specific means of delivering pace as you move forward.

A mouthful, that one.  Maybe read it again.  I know I did.

This is what makes the last few scenes something the reader absolutely cannot put down. 

Or not, if you don’t get this.

The Realms of Pacing

As a writer looking to optimize the pace of your story, you are juggling several balls, each of which is airborne in context to the others.

The story itself has pacing demands.  Big picture story architecture stuff.

As we just learned, you need to accelerate the pace and the nature of the exposition as you move forward.  You need to identify and deliver the right scenes, in the right place, to make sure the story is moving not only in the direction you want, but at the pace you want.

Those things – direction and pace – are mutually exclusive.  Your job is to keep them joined at the hip.

Character arc is also subject to pacing. 

The hero (and perhaps others) grow and evolve over the course of the story as they square off with obstacles coming at them, both externally and internally.  How they handle those challenges defines the nature of the way a scene unfolds in terms of pacing. 

Pacing links to tension in a given moment, and the more we feel the tension within a character – which means we need to understand the inner demon that is in play – the more urgent our need to see what happens to her or him.

Scenes themselves – once identified and properly placed – are highly sensitive to and dependent upon pace. 

Effective scenes have a micro-structure that renders them effective when well executed.  We’re all guilty of skimming through the beginning of a chapter just to get to something that happens… this is the author’s fault.  Don’t let that author be you.

If you pace a scene poorly you render it ineffective, even when it’s just what the story needed, when it needed it. 

It’s like putting a relief pitcher into the game with men on base.  Even though the guy is your proven stopper – the right pitcher at the right moment – if he doesn’t deliver, you lose.

Next up (Friday) — the rest of this.

Also… a Newsflash — Amazon.com now has the pre-sale page up for my new book from Writers Digest Books, Story Engineering: Mastering the Six Core Competencies of Successful Writing.  Due out February 2011. 

(Storyfix in an Amazon.com affiliate marketer.)

Slightly Random Thoughts About Story Pacing… From 10,000 Feet is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

Continued from the previous post.

The movie Collateral, starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx, is a perfect example of an early Inciting Incident that could easily make you believe that it’s actually the story’s First Plot Point.

In fact, if it happened in the right place, it could be.  But it doesn’t, it’s too early, at the 15^th percentile.  Which makes it part of the Part 1 (Act 1) set-up. 

It’s an inciting incident, if you define the term literally.  Which you should.  Because it incites everything that follows.

But it doesn’t define the actual intended story (rather, it tees it up for launch), which illustrates what I often cite as the first step, the most important step in writing one: you must know what your story is really about before you can write it well.

One way to help keep this straight is to separate the definition of the term “inciting incident” into two realms.

The first realm, the one we’re used to regarding as synonymous with the First Plot Point, is the literary-tool definition.  When an Inciting Incident occurs at the proper place and with an effective execution of the mission of a First Plot Point, then the two milestones merge.  They are one and the same.

The First Plot Point is the Inciting Incident, and vice versa.  Happens all the time.

But when an inciting incident happens before that point, perhaps as a plot-twisting, game-changing scene somewhere nearer the middle of Part/Act I, then it becomes part of the set-up for the FPP, rather than being the FPP. 

And in that case, you are obliged to deliver a real FPP in the proper, assigned place.

In the case of Collateral, the crashing body represents a bonafide plot twist, and indeed sends the story spinning in a new direction.  Foxx suddenly has a new mission – survival – with new stakes.

But what does it mean at that point?

Answer: we don’t really know.  Or at least, we don’t know enough in context to what the Big Plan of this story really is all about.

Which means, you, the writer, need a Big Plan for your story before you can optimize pacing, dramatic tension and impact.

When the First Plot Point of Collateral finally arrives at the 25^th percentile mark, we now learn what it all means.  The hero’s journey launches – meaningfully – right here.  Much more so, and much more dramatically, than when the body fell on his cab.

At that point we really didn’t know anything about this story, other than obvious.  What the story is really about isn’t obvious.  So the FPP is required to turn that corner, and it only works once the impact of that early Inciting Incident has sunk in, allowing us to feel and empathize with Foxx’s sudden terror.

In retrospect, it’s easy to see how the body was just an element of set-up for the actual First Plot Point. 

Even if it looked, smelled and sounded just like a plot point.

The FPP of Collateral happens two scenes later (after the falling body and its aftermath), in the taxi as Foxx drives, barely holding it together.  There is no action, nothing visual, and yet it trumps the earlier inciting incident – labeled here the dictionary sense, because the body indeed incited the ensuing story – and yet, it’s a classic FPP.

Cruise reveals who he is.  Why he’s here.  What his stakes are.  And what lengths he’ll go to in pursuit of his goals.  He offers Foxx a deal – drive him through the night on his deadly appointed rounds and get paid $700… or die. 

Now the story really begins. 

With stakes, inner demons, an antagonist and a dark agenda, and the nature of the hero’s impending journey… all right there in front of us. 

None of that stuff was present in the story when the earlier inciting incident (the  dropping body that had you fooled into believing was the FPP) happened.  You thought you knew, but you didn’t.

This is a better story now.  Deeper, with more tension, more stakes and a ticking clock.

A Slap Upside the Head

This hit me last week while riveted to a deck chair in Hawaii reading Nelson DeMille’s latest, The Lion (sequel to The Lion’s Game).  The book is 440 pages long, which made me expect the FPP at about the 20^th percentile or around page 88 (once you know this stuff, you can’t help but look for it).  But when I got to page 60 the entire story spun into a new direction, and in a huge way, focusing on the sudden and unexpected appearance of what would become the antagonist.  

Enough so that one could easily think it was the FPP.  It wasn’t.  If by virtue of nothing other than its placement.

It was, however, a moment that incites the rest of the story.  It was, simply from a dictionary perspective, an inciting incident.  Or from a writer/reader perspective, a plot twist.  An injection of threat and fear.  Of potential – but not yet defined – danger to the hero.

But it wasn’t the FPP.  That showed up in a series that takes place after page 80, where the antagonist and the hero’s agendas suddenly, and violently, collide.  Where the hero suddenly has a new journey, a new need and quest, with deeper stakes and an even more meaningful relationship with the bad guy.

And, because we’ve been set-up for it, the reader has significant empathy (emotional involvement) at this point.

When an inciting incident happens early in a story, our world may indeed be rocked.  But chances are we won’t know what it means to the story, especially to the hero.

That’s the job of the First Plot Point. 

Start watching for this in the stories you read.  And then start engineering this evolved sequential technique into your own stories – whether you deliver an early II or you combine it with the FPP – proactively and with confidence.

It’s all about optimizing pacing and dramatic tension.  And, planned or pantsed, that’s never a happy accident on the part of the writer. 

It’s always a function of structure, rendered in context to character.

Redefining the “Inciting Incident” — Part 2 is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

Part one of two.  Maybe three. 

Yeah, it’s that worthwhile if you’re serious about story structure.  A bit complicated, too.  Because it challenges what we thought to be true.

Allow me to contribute to the potential confusion relative to what has been long referred to in the vocabulary of storytelling as the Inciting Incident.

A classic term.  Writing 101.  And just possibly, outdated.

Not confused?  Read on, you might be in a moment.  Because what you think you know about the Inciting Incident may not be completely correct.  Maybe not even complete.

Let me add, too, that I’ve contributed to this confusion.  Both here and in my ebook, Story Structure Demystified, which I’m revising accordingly.

This isn’t something I read about elsewhere.  This is something I’ve discovered.

I realized the conventional definition of an Inciting Incident was perhaps deficient while I was wrapping up the final submission draft of my manuscript for my Writers Digest Book project – Story Engineering: Understanding the Six Core Competencies of Successful Writing, due out February 2011.

Sometimes our work informs us, when all along we thought it was the other way around.

This issue – the purpose, nature and location of an Inciting Incident within a story, and why we will all benefit from a better definition of it – needs closer inspection.  Greater clarity.  An enthusiastic drill down into the nuances.

Great storytelling is nothing if not dependent on nuance.

I’ve also realized that in going there, this might actually stir up more fog than it settles.  So be it.  Nobody said this storytelling stuff was easy. 

Wrap your head around what I’m about to share and you’ll be a significantly better writer.  Promise.

The Present Take on an “Inciting Incident”

So what is an Inciting Incident?  The highest ranking search engine answer was this: It’s when the story gets humped up and leads to the climax.

Swear to God.

Wow.  Color me under whelmed.  That’s like answering the question, “What is puberty?” with: It’s when you grow hair in strange new places and babies happen.

Virtually everywhere in the vast oeuvre of conventional storytelling wisdom the Inciting Incident is considered synonymous with the First Plot Point. 

In fact, while screenwriters toss around both terms, novelists hardly ever use the term First Plot Point at all, which is perhaps why so many of us are confused.

A First Plot Point is the partition/break moment between Part (or Act) One and Part/Act Two in a novel or screenplay.  The place where set-up yields to a game-changing revelation or action.  The place where the hero gets her/his marching orders, where the stakes are plopped right into her/his lap, and where the antagonist surfaces to an extent that we understand what the hero must do and what will oppose them along the way.

The First Plot Point is where the hero’s story – the journey – really begins.  Everything prior to that moment, regardless of how huge it is, is part of the set-up of that moment.

All of that still applies to the First Plot Point.

And it applies to the Inciting Incident, too… unless it doesn’t.

Because – get ready to get dizzy – while the Inciting Incident can indeed be (and often is) the First Plot Point, it doesn’t have to be.  It can actually happen earlier, somewhere in Part/Act One prior to the optimal 20 to 25^th percentile FPP mark.

It can even happen right off the bat.  When it does, that’s called a hook.  Yes, a hook can be an inciting incident, but it’s never a First Plot Point.

When an inciting incident happens early in a story, even mid-way through the set-up, then you still need to deliver a proper First Plot Point in the target zone of your story, right at the end of Part 1.  When this is the case, the FPP is preceded by an inciting incident that is actually part of the set-up for it.

In which case, they are very different milestones, not to be confused

The risk is in allowing your early Inciting Incident to – in your writerly mind – serve as your First Plot Point.  Big mistake.  Maybe a deal killer. 

The good news is you get to keep that early inciting incident scene, and your can make it as big as you want.  The other news (not bad) is that you still need to push your story forward later, at the First Plot Point, and in the proper way, and in context to what you’ve put into play with your early Inciting Incident.

Put another way… an Inciting Incident can be part of the Part 1 set-up itself…or it can be the actual Plot Point One itself.  Either way works.

Which means the terms Inciting Incident and First Plot Point are not really – or at least, not always – synonymous after all. 

They are two powerful storytelling milestones than can be the same thing at the same time… or not.

What’s not flexible is this: when they aren’t the same, the Inciting Incident must precede the First Plot Point.  Never the other way around.  Because, as stated above, when the Inciting Incident comes earlier in the story it becomes part of the set-up (in Part/Act One) for the forthcoming critical, game-changing, story-launching FPP moment.

Where this gets really sticky is when you realize that the definitions of the two milestones, even when they exist in different places (for example, the early II occurs at the 15^th percentile, and the FPP at the 24^th percentile), can seem almost identical – something huge happens… a game-changer is thrown into the mix… the hero’s path is suddenly altered or even blown to smithereens… etc.

All of that can be either an Inciting Incident or a First Plot Point.

Here’s the difference.

So why, if an inciting incident (notice how this is not capitalized in this instance, to help make this point) shows up early, isn’t it simply an early FPP?  Especially when it does most of the assigned work of a FPP?  Who cares if the FPP happens at the 15^th percentile, anyhow?

Well, a prospect agent, editor or reader, for starters.

Because when that moment does happen early, even when it knocks the criteria for an FPP (other than sequential location) out of the ballpark, you still need to deliver a proper FPP at the proper location for purposes of optimal pacing and drama.

It’s like telling your 15-year told to move out of the house.  It’s too early.  Not smart.  Not good parenting.  Wait until the proper time to allow reality to overwhelm them.

When you do follow up an early Inciting Incident with a properly placed FPP, you’ll be building on the earlier II in such a way that the story is imbued with meaningful stakes and the hero’s journey once again takes on new direction and tension, which weren’t there when the earlier II occurred.

That’s why this is so important.

When the FPP is too early, an empathy-grabbing set-up is the sacrifice.  And in fiction, reader empathy is everything.

An example will help illustrate. 

If you’ve been on Storyfix for a while, you may recall me discussing the 2004 movie Collateral, starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx.  Rent the DVD, it’s a structural and character storytelling clinic, especially on this issue.

Foxx is a humble but ambitious taxi driver in Los Angeles.  Our hero, a great guy.   Instant empathy.  Cruise is the bad guy, an assassin arriving in L.A. to whack five different clients. 

After some initial set-up that establishes stakes and reader empathy for our hero, Foxx picks up Cruise as a fare-paying passenger.  Delivers him to an “appointment” and is told to wait in the cab for Cruise to return.

Foxx relaxes, munches a sandwich, goes over his business plan for the taxi company he dreams of starting.   More sandwich.  Family pictures.  Dreams at stake.  Soft background music.  And then…

… a body sails out of a window above and comes crashing down on the roof of the taxi.  Followed moments later by Cruise appearing, pointing a gun at Foxx.

Everything changes.  What Foxx does in these next moments determines whether he lives or dies.

Sounds like a First Plot Point, doesn’t it. 

All of the criteria are in place… except one: placement.

This scene occurs at the 16^th percentile.  Too early for the FPP.  As such, and because there is indeed a proper and legitimate First Plot Point lurking later at the 25^th percentile, which also nails the requisite criteria for an FPP, this cab-crashing body moment becomes part of the set-up for the FPP.

Even though – and here it is – it is actually an inciting incident.  Because it incites the story.

Call it what you will.  Just don’t call it the First Plot Point.  Functionally, the body dropping on the car is an inciting incident, pure and simple.

Next — Part Two of this brain scrambler.

Redefining the “Inciting Incident” is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

I owe you the final installment in our deconstruction of An Education.  And it’s coming – Wednesday, in fact. 

Worth the wait, too, as this story’s Part 4 shows us the difference between the ending in a character-driven story as compared to a thriller or mystery, or even a romance.

But, cool as that is, I just had to interrupt the series to share some thoughts with you.

I started reading a new novel today – I’m in Maui, reading next to a massive pool about 100 yards from the beach, which comprises nature’s optimal reading conditions – and was excited by what I read.

Yes, the book is great, as all of DeMille’s novels are, but what’s more exciting to me is how it illustrates how to open a story.  Which, in turn, led me to hatch a couple of cool ideas relative to process.

The book is The Lion, by Nelson DeMille.

This guy is probably my favorite author.  It’s a political thriller that’s also character-driven, with first person narrative by the hero, John Corey, who is a retired New York City cop now working for the feds tracking terrorists who are living and plotting amongst us. 

Which means, simply by virtue of his mission in life, we already root for this guy, And because he’s got an attitude about the enemy – DeMille is nothing if not a sweetly subtle smart-ass, one that you don’t want to make angry – we’re hooked.

The Lion is the sequel to a novel called The Lion’s Game (2000), a book that greatly influenced my storytelling preferences.  It used a unique approach – at least I’d never seen it done before – that involved using both first person and third person narrative points of view in alternating chapters. 

Which made a whole bunch of high school and junior college creative writing teachers want to picket Borders. 

This approach allowed us the intimacy of sharing the hero’s journey, both experientially and emotionally, while also showing what his adversary (so named in the title) was doing behind the curtain of the hero’s awareness.

I liked this so much that I used a similar first and third person narrative in my fourth published novel (Bait and Switch, 2004), which, while not selling all that well, at least earned a bunch of kudos from Publisher’s Weekly (starred review, Editor’s Selection, Best Books of 2004, and so on).

Guess those teachers didn’t know everything, after all.

But this post isn’t a book review, nor is it about me.  It’s about you.

And while it’s a bit of a book preview, it’s more just one writer sharing some ideas with other writers, all inspired by how DeMille opens his story.

Here’s what we can take away from this novel.

First, the opening chapter thrusts us right into a killer scene.  Not an overview, a review or a foreshadowing state-of-the-world essay, and not exactly a prologue, either.  Because a prologue begins the narrative sequence rather than showing us something that won’t make sense until later, which is the purpose of a prologue.

You’ll recall that every scene needs a mission and a piece of exposition to contribute to the story.  This happens within the first three pages of The Lion – we know why John Corey is there, what his role is in this equation, what the stakes and implication of the scene are, all while introducing the major players and setting the stage for the context of the story that follows.

A tall order, that.  And it’s done in first person, allowing the power of John Corey’s formidable wit and passion for protecting us from bad guys to suck us into the already compelling nature of the scene.

Reading this, contemplating it while slathering on more SPF 30 before turning the page, I realized that we can and should state the mission of a great opening scene as follows: right off the bat the reader is immersed in one or more of the three cornerstones of story – concept, character and theme. 

That becomes the goal of the scene.  Which means, it happens as a result of writer strategy and intention (planning), rather than random fallout.

Stating it as a goal renders the opening pages more powerful than just writing a dramatic scene that may or may not burn one or more of those elements into the reader’s brain. 

The first scene can’t be subtle. 

It needs to kick-start the story by being about what the story as a whole is about.  It is a microcosm of it.  But without telling us too much about it.

And you get to decide what your story is about. 

If you’re not sure yet, then don’t start writing it.  Or at least realize that any draft you do start before you know will have to be rewritten from page one, and thus it becomes an element of that search. 

In other words, a purpose-and-context-ignorant first draft is nothing other than story planning by another name.

Get the reader involved from the very first page.  Make it impossible for them to not keep turning the pages until that opening scene – usually the entire initial chapter– has reached a conclusive turning point, one that thrusts us eagerly into the following scene.

So that’s tip #1 today.  Be purposeful and strategic about your opening scene.

Tip #2 deals with our continuing quest to steepen our learning curve.

Here’s a two-hour exercise that can change your writing career.

Go to a bookstore.  Pick up novels that are by known authors in your chosen genre. 

Read the opening chapter of as many of them as you can.  Just the opening scene.

Notice how and why it works.  Or if it doesn’t work for you – if you aren’t hooked – try to determine why.

Notice how, often as not, the opening chapter kicks right off with the story’s hero involved in a scene-specific little drama… and/or how that scenario introduces the thematic landscape of the story… and/or how the character is so vivid and compelling it almost doesn’t matter what she or he is up to… yet.

You’ll see it.  You’ll feel it.  When you read several in one uninterrupted bookstore visit, and when you compare and contrast them, you’ll notice and absorb the technique in a more enlightening way than when you read the opening of a novel you’re intending to actually finish.

Because in a great book, the opening scene is often trumped by what follows.  Which means you’re likely to not remember and perhaps not even notice how it hooked you.

You need to notice.  You need to see it unfold – strategically, structurally and creatively.

And when you do, you’ll suddenly be aware of your job when you begin your next story.  I know that’s been my experience… especially when Nelson DeMille’s name is on the front cover.

Which is tip #3.

One you can apply on that bookstore research trip.

Study the authors you like, the ones you most seek to be compared to, first and foremost.  There’s a reason behind your preference, and it stems from who you are as a writer as much as who you are as a reader.

Three Tips and a Reasonable Postponement is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

Considering a Prologue or an Epilogue for your novel is like playing with guns. 

You need to point them in the right direction or you can get hurt.

A Prologue is a tricky little piece of business that, definition-wise, resides somewhere between a hook and seductive foreshadowing.

An Epilogue is like a soft kiss goodnight after a great orgasm, tying up loose ends, explaining what just happened and sending the reader away totally satisfied, yet perhaps yearning for more, maybe even with a tiny knot of anxiety remaining.

Sometimes, if read as isolated chapters, you can’t tell the difference. 

What follows here is one or the other.  A Prologue or an Epilogue.  It’s from a recently published novel — mine. 

I won’t tell whether it’s a Prologue or an Epilogue.  The idea is… you tell me.

If it’s the former, I hope it hooks you.  If it’s the latter, I hope it makes you tingle.

Prologue/Epilogue from “Whisper of the Seventh Thunder”

We are watching you.

As it has been since your innocence was eternally withdrawn, we are at your side.

We are not flesh, though when summoned we may assume your transient form, and it is then we are reminded of your blessings, the gifts of sensation and perception.  Our substance transcends thought, though more often than you know your inner voice is the quiet echo of our prayers.  Nor are we simply the stuff of dreams, though in dreams we show you truth in mirrors of what you already know.   

We are essence, born of physics beyond your comprehension, purer and swifter than light in the vacuum of space.

We move among you.  We are the soft edge of shadow at the periphery of sight, though as you turn we are already gone.  On occasion you hear our footfalls, masked within the rattling of your own disbelief.  When you sense in your heart that you are not alone, rest assured you are not.  Know that the occasional random notion or unprompted memory is neither random nor unprompted.  We are the architects of what you assign to coincidence.  You will come to understand there is no such thing. 

We witness the consequence of your desire, and sometimes we must weep.  We know your suffering and exalt your joys as if they are our own, as indeed they are.  We know your destiny but not your fate – one was written in sand at the dawn of time, the other is yours to etch onto the tablet of your own will.  The two embrace, and the dance is life itself. 

We are bit players in the drama of your days.

Know this, and take caution: others dwell in shadow, denied the Light.  They know your yearning, and would use it to mark your soul.  And thus the battle is waged.

You call us angels or ghosts or other names which are neither right nor wrong, yet despite this veiled awareness your scholars write us off as lore or imagination.  But like much of what has been written, they are misled.  We are real, as tangible as the unseen air that sustains you.

We are witness and scribe to all that you do.  We are with you always.

And upon occasion, we are obliged to intervene.

If this did indeed hook you, you can read more about the novel HERE (the “Fact and Fiction” tab is especially interesting)… or you can read reviews and, if you’re still hooked, order it HERE.  With my abundant gratitude.

Coming Monday: we kickoff the deconstruction of ”An Education” (the film).  And, the “winner” of Wednesday’s little workplay contest.

Prologue or Epilogue? You be the judge. is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

You think writing 100,000 words is tough?  That shaping them into a coherent and meaningful story is challenging?

Try writing 1000 words sometime.  Or 5,000.  With the same goal.

Try writing a short story.  

As paradoxical as it may seem, short stories are harder to wrap your head around than a novel.  And harder yet to successfully pull off.

For every famous short story writer out there, there are 100 famous novelists.  That’s no accident.

To help explain this – as much to myself as for those reading this – consider this analogy: we get about two decades to raise our children.  We have that long, give or take, to send them out into the world with a shot at success and happiness.

A lot has to happen.  Sometimes two decades isn’t enough.

Try doing it in six months.  Or even a year.

Writing a short story is like that. 

Everything necessary for a novel to succeed is asked of a short story, as well.

Six things, in fact, or what I call The Six Core Competencies of Successful Storytelling: concept, character, theme, structure, scene execution and writing voice.

Only the short story writer has to approach the task from a different perspective.  While those elements need to be there, they don’t always need to be on the page.

Conflict.  Stakes.  Need.  Journey.  Opposition.  Characterization.  Setting.  Arena.  Sub-text.  Voice.

They all need to be there. 

Even if they’re not.

Sometimes, for a short story to work, they need to implied.

To pull this off, the short story writer needs to be perhaps even better at one specific aspect of the storytelling craft than the novelist.

The short story writer needs to be mission-driven.  The writer’s intentions – which implies a clear understanding of why this story needs to be written – requires a clear, concise objective before it can work.

Not just for the plot, if there is a plot, but for the reading experience. 

Which translates into an even higher priority on theme in short stories than it does in novels.  Novels are long enough entities to allow theme to emerge.

In short stories, theme needs to drive.

The short story writer should know as much as possible about these issues – intentions and execution – ahead of time.  In fact, you need to know these things before you can write a successful draft.

Now – and this returns us to the eternal pantsing vs. planning debate – you certainly can write draft after draft of your story in search for those answers. 

But there is no debating, especially for short stories, that it won’t work until you do.

Once the mission of the story is clear to you, only then can you decide on the optimal structure for it. 

And for that, you can use the four-part structure for novels (set-up, response, attack, resolution, each part separated by specific plot points) to put a fence around your short story intentions.

I get asked this all the time:

Does the four part structure apply to short stories?

Answer: yes.  And no.   Or, sometimes. 

It’s your call.

Yes, you can create a four-part short story that is, in essence, a condensed version of the classic structural paradigm.

Or, you can hone in on any specific moment or segment of the four-part structure – such as, a single plot point element or a single scene from within any of the four contextually-defined parts – and have that become your architecture.

It’s like building a one room addition next to your house.  The end product might be intended to accommodate anything and everything that could go in inside the house, and when it’s done it needs to blend into the aesthetics and structural design of the bigger house.

Even if, in a picture or a drive-by, nobody gets to actually see the larger house.

When you do choose a sub-set of the larger story paradigm, the part you isolate should be written from an unspoken context of the entire architecture.

Which means, your character came from somewhere… something changes… they respond to that change… something else changes… they attack their problem or goal… something else changes yet again… and then things resolve.

Where you jump into that sequence is your choice as a short story writer.   One that the novelist doesn’t have.

A slice of life.  Or the whole pie.

You can, for example, write a short story about a moment that changes a character’s life.  But when you do, you imply – or at least very gently introduce – some essence of a preceding set-up (with stakes) and some notion of what happens afterwards.

You can write a character sketch or vignette of your hero, without ever giving them much to do.  But the context remains in play – who they were… who they are…  what that means in terms of stakes and needs and goals… who they might turn out to be.

It’s your storytelling goal that shapes and defines those structural decisions.  It’s what you want the reader to experience that dictates what goes on the page, and what remains between the lines as an implication. 

Which is why short stories are so damn hard to put into a box. 

Because the box comes in all sizes, shapes and colors, and can be made from virtually anything.

Just remember this: what goes into the box comes from a place outside the box… and will ultimately be withdrawn from the box.

Even if neither realm is part of your story. 

Like life, our stories always reside somewhere along that same continuum of set-up… shift… response… shift… attack… shift… resolution.

As long as your story shows us a slice of that experience, up to and including the whole pie, its fate resides with your ability to make something huge and significant into something short and magnificent.

The Short Story on Structuring Your Short Story is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com