A Process-to-Product Success Story

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This post wasn’t my first impulse where this story is concerned. 

I’d like to share a story with you, submitted to me for evaluation by a Storyfix reader.  A story that is so good, so shockingly professional in execution, that it’s empowering and motivating to behold.

But I can’t.  Not yet.  Here’s why… and here’s the next best thing.

If you’ve been with Storyfix fora while, you know that part of what I do is coach stories using several levels of analysis.  In a world in which the traditional approach calls for submitting and reading an entire manuscript — and costs thousands of dollars — I’ve developed much more accessible strategies that yield 99 percent of the same visibility and resultant analysis and coaching value.

You don’t have to cut open the body to diagnose a problem in need of repair, to stop the bleeding, as it were.  They have MRIs for that… this analysis process does the same for your stories.

In this case, we added a biopsy, which served to solidify the verdict: we have a perfectly healthy winner.

More than healthy, this story is on steroids.

This writer opted for what I call the “First Quartile Analysis,” which includes the Part/Act 1 of a story submitted with a Questionnaire about the rest.  It’s only $450, and yet is every bit as effective as reading and evaluating the entire story… at a fraction of that cost (which begins at $1800).

Everything one needs to do to an effective story shows up in the First Quartile, up through and including the First Plot Point.  If it doesn’t, then the story — and possibly the writer — isn’t ready.

I’ve done nearly 600 story evaluations (in one form or another) in the last 2-plus years, of which several dozen were these First Quartile submissions.  Among those 600, only three were ready for submission to an agent or a publisher (IMO).

Scary stats, that.  But that’s not to say the others were badly broken.  About 20 or so were a tweak or two away, build on solid conceptual ground.

The rest were — well, badly broken is too harsh… let’s just say, they needed significant work.  Those writers heard what they needed to hear, what they paid to hear, and the ball went back into their court.

But this story, submitted by Eagan Daws, was by far the best thing I’ve ever read by an unpublished author.

I wanted to write about the story in this post. 

To break it down for you.  Expose its stellar concept and the powerful premise that springs from it.  Dissect the First Quartile structure, which includes three killer inciting incidents, introduces an intriguing hero with a massive problem on his hands, and sets up the introduction of really intimidating antagonism with massive, unthinkably dark stakes in play.

And, then, a game-changing First Plot Point, which is the most important moment in any story.

All of it written with the touch of an experienced pro, from a concept we’ve never seen before (take note, that’s key).  Ready to publish now.  Every bit as good as what you’ll read from Demille, Childs, Joe Hill, or even his father (who is a guy named Stephen King).

Mark my words, this story will be published.

I often write about the value of seeing work-in-progress as a case study in how weak or missing principles are what is holding it back.  Just as valuable — though orders of magnitude more rare — is seeing those principles totally nailed, with an evolved story sense driving them.

So I pleaded with the author to allow me to shine a light on this story.

He was, as you might imagine, pretty pleased with the feedback.  In fact, he had no idea how good his story was, because he’s been wrestling with it in the planning and drafting stages for some time (a lot of learning from that, as well).

But he wants to wait.  To finish the draft itself.  His call, and I’ll honor it.

Instead, he offered to share his process with you. 

As a case study in keeping the faith, staying true to the principles of craft, and listening with a keen ear when feedback arrives.

So what follows are his words, about that process.  He has agreed to allow me to showcase the story’s bones at a later date, which I’m looking forward to.  But for now, take heart in the success of one writer who gets it, and allowed the craft to fill his creative sails and propel him closer to the goal.

This never was about him endorsing me.  The reverse is more accurate.  But he’s lived the promise of a principle-driven, criteria-dependent process, and there’s immense value in experiencing that from his point of view.

From Eagan Daws, author:

The Larry Brooks approach to story coaching has basically allowed me to get unstuck and proceed with what I intend to be a 100,000-word novel. That’s a big deal and I spent some time  trying to figure out what in particular worked in order to exploit it even more effectively. Here is what I came up with. It probably needs one of those “these views are solely those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect…” kinds of disclaimers.

I first encountered Brooks/Storyfix through Writer’s Digest and that led me to “Story Engineering,” the premise of which, as I read it, is that effective, satisfying stories follow the same, necessary structure, and you can, in fact must, learn to use it to make your story work. Cue the megawatt light bulb. It all made sense to me, the four major parts, the seven milestone moments, Larry’s descriptions of how these worked in the overall narrative.

Back to the keyboard! Hook. First Plot Point. Midpoint, Second Plot Point. Even those pesky Pinch Points. I worked away, but not much was happening. I was struggling as before to write from Point to Point, so to speak.

Damn. Was Brooks another failed writing guru? No. I was a poor student.

As I worked with the model, I began to realize I would have to approach the Brooks structure from another point of entry — the four big boxes, Setup, Response, Attack and Resolution. I started with the Brooksian “What if…” question and began to generate things that might happen, putting them in one of the four boxes while being mindful of Larry’s definitions of the plot points and their functions. The major boxes as defined in the Brooks approach proved specific enough to allow me to sort out the action, but loose enough to let me work through refinements.

The thing for me, then, was sequence — thinking first about what goes on in the story, then about where it goes in the four segments, then understanding and refining the plot points, and then the pinch points.

The engineering idea worked beautifully. It wasn’t even a metaphor. I was building something against a set of loose but vital specifications. Scenes become, if not fully fungible, then certainly movable. I have moved scenes and combinations of scenes between first and second segments, and I suspect the same will be true of the third and fourth segments. Plot points can slide left and right, as well, still following Larry’s guidelines on the appropriate percentile.

Using an effective structure in no way inhibits the writer’s imagination, just as meeting the engineering requirements of building construction doesn’t prevent an architect from designing a great building. Frank Gehry’s buildings are no less artful because he knows how to build them so they don’t fall down.

I should say here that I did not get to this point unassisted. I used Larry’s Conceptual Kick-Start Story Analysis ($95) not once but twice. The combination of structure and analysis from Larry was necessary.

I came to realize I could get my head around a 100,000-word narrative. This was the moment when I first felt confident I would produce an effective story at that length. Was I right about it being a big deal, at least for me?

Eagan Daws