plotting

The Benefits of a Style Sheet

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This post by Jen Matera appeared as a reprint on ePublish A Book on 4/8/14.

Some authors write according to an outline, and others have a less-organized series of events they want to describe. There are authors who write their scenes sequentially, no matter how great or small, and those who write major scenes first and minor scenes last. I’ve even known one writer who wrote all her sex scenes first—she said they were the most fun—and then built the rest of the story around them.

But what most writers have in common is that they keep some kind of notes about their story, characters, plot, timeline, and whatnot. These notes, no matter how informal, are what editors use as a foundation for your story’s style sheet.

So… what’s a style sheet? It’s your editor’s notes about your novel—the place where every character’s name, physical description, relation to other characters is noted. But that’s not all. Not by a long shot. There are basically two types of information kept on a style sheet: content and format. Details that refer to your story line, your characters, your setting, your era, etc., are considered content information. Information regarding spelling, punctuation, and grammar is considered format. But the differentiation doesn’t really matter, as long as most of it is recorded somewhere.

Content:

• Character names—for every character named in the novel. Yes, even Sam the driver who was in one scene. We have no idea if he’ll show up again in book three, so he goes on the list.

• Physical description, including any descriptions—eye color, hair color, general build, and anything that’s noted as standing out. No author wants her lead’s eye color changing mid-story.

 

Click here to read the full post on ePublish a Book.

 

Write Your Thriller In Chapters: 10 Tips For Greater Productivity

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This post by Robert Chazz Chute originally appeared on his Chazz Writes site on 5/4/11.

There’s no one way to write a novel. I do, however, have ten suggestions to make it go easier and faster:

1. Outline. Have some idea where you’re going and what the destination might be. It’ll save you time doubling back from dead ends. Believe me, I’ve written myself into cul-de-sacs and it’s a time suck no one can afford. (No, you’re not married to the outline and you don’t have to go OCD with the Roman numeral outline you learned in grade eight. I’m trying to increase your productivity and enhance your creativity, not shackle it.)

2. If you outline, you don’t have to write your story in sequence. With an outline, you already have the beats, the bases you have to touch as you tell your story. If you’re not feeling very inspired one day, no big deal. Focus on the high points of your outline on the days you don’t start off “in the mood.” Bonus benefit: you’ll get all your sex scenes written first.

3. Write each chapter as if it’s a short story. Your novel has a beginning, middle and end. So should your chapters. I often see substandard chapters which finish without the pulls of intrigue, a cliffhanger or a bang. Some writers reason that if they make the larger story interesting, they can afford to have a chapter or two that isn’t compelling. It does sound reasonable. It’s also wrong. Tension has one direction: up. There are way too many great books to read (and a million other things to do) so, for many readers, you bore them, you lose them. Sure, you’ve made this sale, but they won’t be burnt again.

 

Click here to read the full post on Chazz Writes.

 

How To Tell A Great Story, Visualized

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This post by Kate Torgovnick May originally appeared on the TED blog on 11/8/13.

A good story can make a campfire that much eerier. A good story can flip a conversation at a party from completely awkward to wonderful. A good story can glue your nose to a book. And, on screen, a good story can rivet generation after generation.

So, uh, how do you tell one?

Andrew Stanton, the Pixar writer and director behind both Toy Story and WALL-E, has many ideas, and he shared his expertise in his TED Talk, The clues to a great story. Below, see his golden rules of storytelling visualized by Karin Hueck and Rafael Quick of the Brazilian culture and science magazine Superinteressante. Each month, the magazine’s editors take a TED Talk and give it to their graphic wizards to interpret in any way they see fit. Here, a reimagining of Stanton’s talk on stories. Via the Ugly Duckling. Just click the image to see a larger version.

 

Click here to see the accompanying infographic on the TED blog.

 

10 Keys to Plot Structure by Kay Keppler

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This post by Kay Keppler originally appeared as a guest post on Beth Barany‘s Writer’s Fun Zone blog on 3/20/14.

Note from Beth Barany: Let’s welcome back Kay Keppler for another month with Writer’s Fun Zone! In today’s article, Kay discusses 10 keys to plot structure. Enjoy!

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When writers talk about plot and character, they often reference movies or TV shows. That’s because film provides a visual — an extra dimension that helps viewers understand the story.

Screenwriters have a lot less space than novelists to tell their stories (120 pages!), so they have to get right to it. Michael Hauge is a film doctor who crystalizes plot structure into key 10 elements that will help any writer, screen or otherwise. These are:

 

1. The first and best rule above all rules

What’s happening now must be more interesting than what just happened. The whole point of structure — of your entire story — is to elicit emotion in your reader. If your story is increasingly compelling as you move forward, you succeeded.

 

2. The goal is everything

Your story’s structure depends on its events and turning points, which spring from your hero’s goal — a clear, visible objective that she’s desperate to achieve. Ask yourself, “What does my hero want to achieve by the end of the story? Will readers root for her to reach that finish line?” Then apply scene questions: “What does my hero want in this scene? How do her actions in this scene move her closer to that overall desire?” If your honest answer is “I don’t know” or “They don’t,” then your story, not just your structure, is comatose, if not dead.

 

3. More, bigger, faster, badder

Structure is built on desire, but the emotion you elicit grows out of conflict. The more obstacles your hero must overcome, and the more impossible it seems that he’ll succeed, the more captivated your reader will be. The conflict must build: each successive problem, opponent, hurdle, weakness, fear, and setback must be greater than the one that preceded it.

 

Click here to read the full post on Writer’s Fun Zone.

 

Parsing Is Such Sweet Sorrow

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This article by Emma Pierson originally appeared on Five Thirty Eight on 3/17/14.

More than 400 years after Shakespeare wrote it, we can now say that “Romeo and Juliet” has the wrong name. Perhaps the play should be called “Juliet and Her Nurse,” which isn’t nearly as sexy, or “Romeo and Benvolio,” which has a whole different connotation.

I discovered this by writing a computer program to count how many lines each pair of characters in “Romeo and Juliet” spoke to each other,1 with the expectation that the lovers in the greatest love story of all time would speak more than any other pair. I wanted Romeo and Juliet to end up together — if they couldn’t in the play, at least they could in my analysis — but the math paid no heed to my desires. Juliet speaks more to her nurse than she does to Romeo; Romeo speaks more to Benvolio than he does to Juliet. Romeo gets a larger share of attention from his friends (Benvolio and Mercutio) and even his enemies (Tybalt) than he does from Juliet; Juliet gets a larger share of attention from her nurse and her mother than she does from Romeo. The two appear together in only five scenes out of 25. We all knew that this wasn’t a play predicated on deep interactions between the two protagonists, but still.

 

Click here to read the full article on Five Thirty Eight.

 

How to Know When You are Boring Your Reader to Tears

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This post by Jean Oram originally appeared on her The Helpful Writer site on 3/11/14.

Ever wondered why your books maybe aren’t getting purchased? Finding an agent to rep them? Or just plain and simply catching on?

There are a ton of reasons why books don’t connect. Timing, luck, voice, content, etc. Some of these aren’t controllable. But one thing is.

Boring your reader to tears, death, or worse…having them put your book down in disinterest.

It happens. We can’t connect with every reader. And if we try, well, chances are we’ll end up with a book that connects with even fewer people. (Not everyone liked Harry Potter, believe it or not. They just stay in hiding.) But there ARE things we can do to increase our chances of connecting with our readers and one of the big things is not boring them.

I know, right?

 

How to Know if You are Boring Your Readers and What to Do About It

The easiest way to figure out if you are boring your readers is to see if you are boring yourself.

Seems too basic, doesn’t it?

Right now there could be some of you thinking, “But there isn’t a stitch of boringness in my whole story!” Could be true. Maybe you wrote The Hunger Games. If so, you’re excused. However, the other several billion of us did not. So, dig deep and fall out of love with yourself for a moment (shouldn’t be too hard–we are artists, after all where self-doubt and loathing is as common as cheap bar soap).

Here are a few inklings that things aren’t as tight and as exciting as you might wish them to be in your story and you might be boring your reader.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Helpful Writer.

 

Creating Stunning Character Arcs, Pt. 1: Can You Structure Characters?

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This post by K.M. Weiland originally appeared on her Helping Writers Become Authors site on 2/9/14.

What if there were a sure-fire secret to creating stunning character arcs? Would you be interested in discovering it? If you care about connecting with readers, grabbing hold of their emotions, and creating stories that will resonate with them on a level deeper than mere entertainment, then the answer has to be a resounding yes!

But here’s the thing about character arcs: they’re way too easy to take for granted. On the surface, character arcs seem to boil down to nothing more than a simple three-step process:

1. The protagonist starts one way.

2. The protagonist learns some lessons throughout the story.

3. The protagonist ends in a (probably) better place.

That’s character arc in a nutshell. Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy. What’s to learn?

Turns out: a lot.

 

The Link Between Character Arcs and Story Structure

Too often, character and plot are viewed as separate entities—to the point that we often pit them against each other, trying to determine which is more important. But nothing could be farther from the truth. Plot and character are integral to one other. Remove either one from the equation, or even just try to approach them as if they were independent of one another, and you risk creating a story that may have awesome parts, but which will not be an awesome whole.

 

Click here to read the full post on Helping Writers Become Authors.

Also see this follow-up post: Creating Stunning Character Arcs, Pt. 2: The Lie Your Character Believes

 

Ask Questions to Find Your Story

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This post by C.S. Lakin originally appeared as a guest post on the blog of Elizabeth Spann Craig on 2/17/14.

I ask a lot of questions in my line of work as a professional manuscript critiquer and copyeditor. Sure, I also give a lot of suggestions and fix badly constructed sentences. But it’s the questions that get to the heart of the story. Asking authors questions helps them get thinking about what they’re writing and why.

So much important information seems to be missing in so many novels—especially first novels by aspiring authors. Novel writing is tricky; there are countless essential components that all need to mesh cohesively. To me, the key to reaching that goal is to ask a lot of questions.

 

Questions Create Story

Starting a novel is asking a question. What if . . .? What would someone do if . . .? What if the world was like this and this happened . . .? Then those initial questions lead to more questions, which shape and bring life to characters and story. Questions are the key.

Thousands of hours of critiquing and editing has led me to notice that there are some questions I seem to ask a lot. Which tells me there are some general gaps that many writers have in common in their novel-constructing process. I thought I’d share these questions, because maybe they’ll help you as you work on your novel.

 

Click here to read the full post on Elizabeth Spann Craig’s blog.

 

On Plot

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This post by S. Andrew Swann originally appeared on Genrewonk.

What is a “Story?”
(SF or otherwise.)

A character with a problem.

Every story is about a character trying to deal with some sort of difficulty. Characters who have happy lives, who are content with their lot, and who have achieved their goals are not good fodder for fiction. The people we read about are people in trouble.

The central problem.

Most genre stories can be thought of as revolving around some central problem, or problems. The central problem(s) can be considered to be, in some sense, what the story is “about.” Will the mystery be solved? Will the protagonist survive? Will the rebellion succeed?

Begin with a crisis…

Whatever the length you’re dealing with, short story or novel, you want to begin with a character in crisis. The reader should find characters in difficulty within the first chapter, the first page, and ideally, the first paragraph. Structurally, it may not be possible to have the story’s main problem begin on the first page, but every story should begin with some problem, often with the first line.

…end with a resolution.

If the story is organized around a single central problem, it ends naturally when you’ve resolved that problem. If the story deals with a series or complex of problems, it ends when the last problem is dealt with, or when all the problems identified as most important are solved. A story can persist as long as there are problems to deal with.

 

What makes a Story SF?

 

Click here to view the full post, which includes a thorough analysis of not only plotting but also characterization and pacing, on Genrewonk.

 

Be Afraid

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This post by Andrew E. Kaufman originally appeared on The Crime Fiction Collective blog on 1/22/14.

Being a writer is like climbing the tallest peak in the world. We barely get to enjoy the victory, when someone straps us down, tears our shirts open, and tells the vultures to bring it on. Let’s face it: to be an artist is to be vulnerable. And perhaps a little unstable. We pour our souls onto the pages. We sweat. We cry. We scream a lot. We drink ridiculous quantities of coffee, but never enough to combat our emotional and physical exhaustion.

Not to mention, the brutal criticism, and really, there is no way to combat that. We read it, we cringe, and we may (possibly) throw some things (at least, I hear). After that, we pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off, taking what we can use, and throwing away the rest…that is, between the hysterical sobs, and guttural groans (also, of course, not a first hand experience). Other sides of our artistry are a bit less brutal and far more enjoyable. If we do it right, we get to create worlds and characters from nothing other than our hungry imaginations, then watch them flourish into amazing stories. Also if we do it right, we relish in the knowledge that our readers are enjoying them, and more importantly, feeling them. Of course, getting to that point is easier said than done.

In reaching that goal, my approach can be at times… a bit unconventional. Possibly insane. For me, writing a novel means feeling my way through the darkness and through my pages, essentially with no idea what the outcome will be. I don’t plan before I launch into my work. I write on instinct. As I do this, one persistent and nagging question pokes at me: Will this work?

 

Click here to read the full post on The Crime Fiction Collective blog.