Tag: writing-tips

On Writing: General structure – Progression

On By Jon UreñaIn advice, Arte, EscrituraLeave a comment

You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.

Once you’ve come up with a list of meaningful plot points that should happen in your story, the Acts structure (generally three, but could be strengthened by turning it into five) is a proven method to organize those plot points in a way that makes the story more cohesive, and usually building up in tension.

The following list of questions is meant to ensure that the story progresses appropriately.

  • Lay out all the plot points you have and order them in a way that the obstacles and setbacks escalate in difficulty.
  • Do the anxiety and conflict levels progress in the story? If not, consider that something is wrong it its structure.
  • How do the complications endanger your protagonist’s cause progressively, providing an escalating sense of dramatic tension?
  • If you have determined the act climaxes, how do you make sure each one is stronger than the one before it?
  • Does the story have amazing set pieces? For every event that you consider a set piece in your story, ask the following: Is the scene concept big enough? Are the scene’s stakes high enough? Is the location interesting and unusual? Is there a deadline and/or escalation of conflict?
  • Regarding the impact of the progressing events, think of ways you can show how the plot points hurt the protagonist, and possibly other important main characters.
  • Once the story delves into its traditional second act (second, third, and fourth acts in a five-act structure), consider what happens in it as concrete attacks from one side to defeat the other.
  • How does the second act keep throwing the protagonist into an alien world, at least in a metaphorical sense? Ideally, every event corresponding to the traditional second act should represent the protagonist confronting something alien to his life before the events of this story.

On Writing: General structure – Crises & Disasters & Consequences

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, EscrituraLeave a comment

You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.

Once you’ve come up with a list of meaningful plot points that should happen in your story, the Acts structure (generally three, but could be strengthened by turning it into five) is a proven method to organize those plot points in a way that makes the story more cohesive, and usually building up in tension.

The following list of questions should help you craft compelling and impactful crises and disasters for your story, ensuring that the plot points have consequences.

  • What’s the worst thing that could happen in your story?
  • Is there a point in this story, just prior to the resolution, in which the hero endures some deeply significant test?
  • How does the story bring the protagonist face to face with their darkest fear, or weakest link, and at the crisis point, forces them to confront it?
  • Can you set up the story so that at one point, it leaves the protagonist with no options, no detours, and no help, making them well and truly lost?
  • Do the characters consistently have to choose between goods or between evils instead of choosing between good and evil?
  • Can you apply pressure and time constraints so that the protagonist is forced to make a decision fast?
  • For every significant event in the story, brainstorm a list of consequences.
  • Try to ensure that all major decisions in the story have real consequences. Our heroes make painful choices and must live with the grave consequences of the risks they take.
  • Could you weave into the story an example of what would happen were the protagonist fail to accomplish the overall goal?
  • What are the death elements of the story (in which the protagonist could face an ultimate physical, psychological, social, and/or professional death), and when does the protagonist experience those realizations?

On Writing: General structure – Revision

On By Jon UreñaIn advice, EscrituraLeave a comment

You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.

Once you’ve come up with a list of meaningful plot points that should happen in your story, the Acts structure (generally three, but could be strengthened by turning it into five) is a proven method to organize those plot points in a way that makes the story more cohesive, and usually building up in tension.

Once you’ve settled on an ordered list of scenes, the following questions should allow you to revise it carefully, to ensure that all the scenes have earned their stay.

  • Does the story start at the last possible moment?
  • Imagine your first couple of scenes being the first ten minutes of a movie. Do you think you’d sit there bored and wondering who these people are and when the hell the story is going to kick in? How would those first couple of scenes suck the reader in?
  • Look at the juxtaposition between individual scenes and consider reordering.
  • Can you cut any scene? If you can remove it without risking the collapse of the whole story, throw it out.
  • Does everything in your story’s cause-and-effect trajectory revolve around the protagonist’s quest (the story question)? If not, try to get rid of those scenes.
  • Try to combine scenes so each one is packed, but make sure each scene accomplishes essentially one action.
  • Go through every plot point other than the first, and ensure that each of them escalates from at least one previous plot point.
  • Go through every plot point and ensure that they have real consequences, that they make at least one other scene that follows inevitable.
  • Go through every plot point and ensure that they respect the context of the act they belong to. If the plot point belongs to the traditional second act (second, third, and fourth in a five-act structure), how does the plot point belong to a series of actions in which the character confronts and resists some type of death (physical, psychological, social), against some opposing force?
  • Go through every significant disaster or plot point, and consider how you’ve set things up so that something else could have happened.
  • If three crises hit close together, try to merge them into a single scene of supreme crisis. That would multiply the danger those characters face.
  • Is there at least one “Holy crap!” scene?
  • Put a check by every one of your scenes you consider to be “good.” Don’t lie either. Be honest with yourself. Don’t consider your structure done until at least half of those scenes are top notch.
  • Pinpoint all the moments that challenged your protagonist and caused him to take action.
  • Can every scene challenge the protagonist’s flaw? The action should somehow serve to pose them that fundamental dramatic question, ‘who am I?’ Are they going to be the old, flawed version of themselves, or are they going to become someone new?
  • How does the plot constantly force your increasingly-reluctant protagonist to change?
  • Do your scenes provide enough surprises to keep things unpredictable?
  • How do you make the likelihood of a negative outcome for the story believable?
  • Do the crises build from meaningful but not irreversible to life changing and irreversible?
  • Consider whether the ending is premature. Does the hero have his big insight early, ending his development then, and making everything else anticlimatic?
  • Does the hero achieve his desire too quickly?

On Writing: General structure – Goals & Conflict

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, EscrituraLeave a comment

You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.

Once you’ve come up with a list of meaningful plot points that should happen in your story, the Acts structure (generally three, but could be strengthened by turning it into five) is a proven method to organize those plot points in a way that makes the story more cohesive, and usually building up in tension.

The following questions should allow you to develop the goals in your story, as well as the conflict that will make it harder for the characters to achieve their goals.

  • What is the overall goal by the main character in the story?
  • The goal should be the product of their sacred flaw. What they decide they want has to come from the flawed core of their character.
  • How is the protagonist’s goal a need, an emotional must for the character?
  • What is the concrete goal each important character in your story has, and how do they conflict?
  • Describe when and how your hero becomes obsessed with winning. Put another way, is there a moment when your hero decides to do almost anything to win?
  • Can you start using a “wrong solution” approach? It gives heroes a reason to get moving so that they can learn and grow on the job. While it may seem cooler to have heroes know what to do right away, or at least withhold judgement until they have all the facts, you will often find the audience actually likes them better if you first send them charging off in the wrong direction.
  • Micro-Goal to Macro-Goal. This is a simpler form of false goal. Frodo sets out to merely return the ring to Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings. In Star Wars, Luke goes from wanting to fix his runaway droid to wanting to blow up the Death Star. John McClane in Die Hard spends the first half of the movie just trying to call the cops before he realizes he’ll have to take on a terrorist cell single-handledly. These false goals make character motivations far more believable.
  • What is the plan, the set of guidelines, or strategies, the hero will use to overcome the opponent and reach the goal? How is it specificially focused toward defeating the opponent and reaching the goal?
  • What opposition do you throw at your main character and how do you keep telling them no?
  • How, by competing for the same goal, are the protagonist and antagonist forced to come into direct conflict throughout the story?
  • How does the protagonist face the villain along the way? Specify.
  • Brainstorm all the possible obstacles you could throw in, to make the story as interesting as possible.
  • What is the conflict between each of your main characters?
  • If you have multiple protagonists, can you make them antagonists of each other?
  • How do you place the protagonist’s values in conflict?
  • In what way is your central conflict embodying your theme? How does the conflict force your protagonist to make thematic choices in the novel, with the hardest choice at the climax?
  • How are you pushing your characters to the edge?
  • Has everything that can go wrong indeed gone wrong? Don’t be nice, even a little bit. Throw social conventions out of the window. Does your plot continually force your protagonist to rise to the occasion?
  • Make sure things are constantly going wrong in your story to keep it exciting.
  • How can you complicate things so much that it seemingly becomes impossible for your protagonist to reach his goal?
  • Audiences get bored if the hero doesn’t have to improvise. Try to go through the plot points figuring out plenty of ways it could fail.
  • Can you make it feel like the protagonist is trying to juggle several balls at once and he is just barely keeping them from dropping every time? This is a great time to push the protagonist almost to the point of breaking before bringing them back in for a final and much awaited victory.
  • Your antagonist shouldn’t go with everything going their way either. Let both of them face challenges, twists and turns along the way. The more they are affected by curveballs and unexpected experiences, the more realistic the story will be. Make the protagonist slip up and result in an almost-victory instead of a true victory, and let the antagonist fail at the most inconvenient of times for them. This keeps your readers on their toes and unsure about what is going to happen, when.
  • How does the conflict force the protagonist to take action, whether it’s to rationalize it away or actually change?
  • What is excellent about this challenge? What’s cool, awesome, and exciting about being in this situation? How can your protagonist be creative? How can your protagonist exceed her own expectations, and even your own?
  • Are there catalytic moments of transformation?

On Writing: Plot point generation #5

On By Jon UreñaIn advice, Arte, Escritura1 Comment

You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.

A story is made out of meaningful stuff that happens. Each unit of meaningful stuff that happens is often referred to as a plot point. Here’s how to come up with them, before you consider fitting them into a structure.

  • Brainstorm how you could put any of your characters in ironic situations. What would be ironic for any of your characters to face? For example: a suicidal protagonist needs to talk off a ledge a guy who wants to commit suicide.
  • Think of the major plot points you know about your story, and brainstorm what events could produce them.
  • Think of the escalation of conflict in terms of two oppositions skirmishing before the decisive battle.
  • Brainstorm a “lights out” moment, where the protagonist can’t possibly win in his struggle with death.
  • Brainstorm a list of several possible endings for your story. Even if you don’t actually use any of those plot points as your actual ending, one of them could be your protagonist’s “lights out” beat.
  • Think of the expectations your story and your characters have set up, then brainstorm plot points that would twist those expectations.
  • What are the stereotypical story tropes that spring to mind given your chosen story elements and characters? Can you come up with something different, something opposite?
  • Brainstorm plot points that could only happen given your unique combination of story elements and characters.
  • Brainstorm plot ploints that would act as a bait-and-switch. What plot points would convince the audience they know where the story is going, only for you to pull the rug out from under them?
  • What is the last thing the reader will suspect given your combination of story elements and characters?
  • Brainstorm plot points that turn on its head the audience’s understanding of everything in your story, throwing them out of their comfort zone.
  • Can you come up with a plot point or more in which an important character is being chased? Having your characters on the move with someone constantly on their tail is an exciting situation.
  • Every dramatic scene will likely pose your character the dramatic question: who am I going to be? The drama is a continual test for the protagonist. Are they going to be the old, flawed version of themselves? Or are they going to be someone new?

On Writing: General structure – Characters

On By Jon UreñaIn advice, Arte, EscrituraLeave a comment

You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.

Once you’ve come up with a list of meaningful plot points that should happen in your story, the Acts structure (generally three, but could be strengthened by turning it into five) is a proven method to organize those plot points in a way that makes the story more cohesive, and usually building up in tension.

The following questions should allow you to develop your characters.

  • See which are the major flaws of each major character. How do they explore the unifying theme? If any of them don’t, either change it or try to delete that character.
  • How is the antagonist the person who is most heavily invested in achieving the same external goal?
  • How is something a character believes challenged, so he might change his views, opinions, attitudes, behavior, or core beliefs? Particularly figure out a way for this to happen to the protagonist.
  • Is there an “arc” to each primary character’s story? In other words, do your antagonist, sidekick, and love interest all possess clear goals, and are those desires built up and resolved by the end?
  • Who is on your protagonist’s side? Create a moment in which that care, understanding and support are shown. How close to the opening of your novel can you place this moment?
  • Do any of your characters “peter out” or fade away, never to be heard from again? This is a critical error to flag and fix.
  • How are your protagonist’s flaws a barrier to them achieving their goals? Conversely, make them have to overcome their flaws to achieve certain things.
  • Brainstorm how your characters could surprise you, and therefore surprise the audience too.
  • How does your protagonist summon his inner hero to achieve the goal?
  • How do the events in the plot force the protagonist to make a specific really hard internal change?
  • How does the story’s structure shove the protagonist as far out of his comfort zone as possible, the better for him to ultimately realize that it wasn’t nearly as comfortable, or as safe, as he’d thought?
  • Does your protagonist have a moment of humanity early on?
  • How is your protagonist defined by ongoing actions and attitudes, not by backstory?
  • Is the hero’s primary motivation for tackling this challenge strong, simple, and revealed early on?
  • Detail the ways the opponent attacks the hero. Try to devise a detailed plan for the opponent with as many hidden attacks as possible.
  • How could the antagonist’s flaw contribute to his defeat?
  • How have you made the reader truly believe and feel that your antagonist is a nasty force to be reckoned with?
  • For each interpersonal encounter in the story, how is each major character altered somehow?
  • Have a real feeling for their theory of control. This is their brain’s overarching strategy for getting what they want out of the human world.
  • What do they want most of all in the world? What do they imagine will make them happy forever?

On Writing: General structure – Symbol web

On By Jon UreñaIn advice, Arte, EscrituraLeave a comment

You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.

Once you’ve come up with a list of meaningful plot points that should happen in your story, the Acts structure (generally three, but could be strengthened by turning it into five) is a proven method to organize those plot points in a way that makes the story more cohesive, and usually building up in tension.

The following questions are all about consciously incorporating symbols into your story.

  • Is there a single symbol that expresses the premise, key story twists, central theme, or overall structure of your story?
  • When connecting a symbol to a character, choose a symbol that represents a defining principle of that character or its reverse. By connecting a specific, discrete symbol with an essential quality of the character, the audience gets an immediate understanding of one aspect of the character in a single blow.
  • How do I choose the right symbol to apply to a character? He is defined in relation to other characters. In considering a symbol for one character, consider symbols for many, beginning with the hero and the main opponent. How would they stand in opposition of each other?
  • Can you create a symbol opposition within the character?
  • Come up with a single aspect of the character or a single emotion you want the character to evoke in the audience.
  • Could use a shorthand technique for connecting symbol to character: use certain categories of character, especially gods, animals and machines. Think about how that would give that character a basic trait and level that the audience immediately recognizes.
  • Can you choose a symbol you want the character to become when he undergoes his change? Attach the symbol to the character when you are creating the character’s weaknesses or need. Bring the symbol back at the moment of character change, but with some variation from when you introduce it.
  • How could you encapsulate entire moral arguments in symbol? Come up with an image or object that expresses a series of actions that hurt others in some way. Even more powerful is an image or object that expresses two series of actions (two moral sequences) that are in conflict with each other.
  • Look for a symbol that can encapsulate the main theme of your story. For a symbol to express the theme, it must stand for a series of actions with moral effects. A more advanced thematic symbol is one that stands for two series of moral actions that are in conflict.
  • How could a symbol encapsulate the entire world of the story, or set of forces, in a single, understandable image?
  • Determine what symbols you wish to attach to the various elements of the story world, including the natural settings, man-made spaces, technology and time.
  • See if you could make an action symbolic, making it especially important, and it expresses the theme or character of the story in miniature.
  • When creating a web of symbolic objects, begin by going back to the designing principle of the story, and see how it turns the collection of individual objects into a cluster. See how each object not only refers to another object but also refers to and connects with the other symbolic objects in the story.
  • Think for a moment about your theme, what your story is really about. What images come to mind that might represent your story?
  • When creating an image system, one thing that might help is to envision a movie poster for your story. What key moment in your entire story would be best be shown on your poster? What colors and objects would be shown? What would the characters be wearing, holding, doing? By imagining this movie poster, you might get some ideas for strong symbols.
  • Think about your protagonist. Image one object she owns that is special to her. Maybe it’s a gift someone gave her that has great significance. Maybe it’s a shell she found on the beach on an important day in her life. You can find a place to introduce this motif-object early on in the book, then show it again a few times at important moments in your story, and then bring it into the final scene in some symbolic way.
  • If you can have an object connected to a very important moment in a character’s past (whether something painful or joyful), you can then springboard from there to infuse this object with deep meaning.
  • Write down an emotion or thematic component from your novel, such as grief or forgiveness. Freewrite all the worst images that come to your mind without censoring what you write. Picture in your head your character grieving. Where is she? What does she see? What does she touch or hold? What comforts her–a song, a picture, a place?
  • Think of the main emotion or trait your protagonist experiences (grief, forgiveness, etc.) Can you find a symbol/object for this to use in your novel?
  • Consider the title of your novel. Can you find a way to bring a motif into the title? Tie in with your themes?
  • What objects or images are central and organic to this story?
  • Pick the three most important scenes in your story for your protagonist. Can you insert the same motif into those three scenes somehow?
  • Often a secondary character who serves as an ally to the protagonist will be the one to impart words of wisdom and advice, and this is a good opportunity to come up with a special phrase (and if possible, one associated with some object) that can then be an important motivator for the protagonist.
  • Think about a secondary ally character that can give advice or insight in a way that will introduce or reinforce a motif in your story. Maybe even come up with a clever phrase for that character to use as a word whisker that serves as a motif.
  • How would you refer to and repeat each symbol throughout the story? Start with a feeling and create a symbol that will cause that feeling in the audience. How does that symbol change slightly during repetitions?
  • Describe for each symbol how it helps define the others.

On Writing: Five-act structure – Act 1 – General #2

On By Jon UreñaIn advice, Arte, Escritura1 Comment

You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.

Once you’ve come up with a list of meaningful plot points that should happen in your story, and you have determined the general structure, you could strengthen the scaffolding further by relying on a five-act structure. The original three-act structure suffers from issues regarding the second act, which is the bulk of the story yet it’s treated as if it were the same length as the first and third acts. The five-act structure divides the second act into three, relying on a mid-story turning point as the main mast of the tale.

The following list of notions strives to strengthen the first act of a five-act structure.

  • How do the scenes in the first act chase your protagonist up a tree? How does it push him into a conflict situation?
  • How does the first act set up trouble brewing? Things may settle for a bit after the disturbance, but then a glimpse of greated trouble coming or hovering.
  • How does the first act set up the stakes for the whole story?
  • What scenes of the first act deepen the stakes? How do they deepen the conflict until it explodes so that the story moves into the second act?
  • Is there imminent danger in the first act of the story so as to bond with the lead?
  • How do you make the reader believe the threats to the protagonist in this act are real?
  • How do you make the reader fear for the safety of the characters?
  • How do you make clear what the characters stand to lose in the coming conflict?
  • How is the protagonist’s need to change explored?
  • Somewhere in the first act, can you have the protagonist make an argument against the lesson they learn by the end of the story?
  • What reasons do you give early on to the readers to care about the characters?
  • See how do you illustrate this about the important characters: who are these people? What is the essence of their personalities? What are their core beliefs (even more particularly, what are the beliefs that will be challenged or straightened throughout the book)?
  • What is your hero’s world view, goals, values, problems, etc. prior to the First Plot Point?
  • When the story opens, is the lie/flaw making the protagonist’s life miserable? If so, how?
  • This is the time to lavish some extra attention on the Lie, because within the Lie is always where we discover what is at stake for the protagonist. What horrible things will happen to him and his world if the Lie isn’t overthrown?
  • What is the antagonist doing during this act?
  • Can you place the characters where something bad is happening, or about to happen?
  • Try to focus on only giving the information that is strictly necessary to understand the current situation.
  • Audiences prefer their heroes to get out of trouble in the second act using talents they already displayed in the first act. Even heroes who seem to be starting from scratch are actually adapters. They find ways to use skills from a completely different job to surmount their current problem.

On Writing: Five-act structure – Act 1 – General #1

On By Jon UreñaIn advice, Arte, Escritura1 Comment

You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.

Once you’ve come up with a list of meaningful plot points that should happen in your story, and you have determined the general structure, you could strengthen the scaffolding further by relying on a five-act structure. The original three-act structure suffers from issues regarding the second act, which is the bulk of the story yet it’s treated as if it were the same length as the first and third acts. The five-act structure divides the second act into three, relying on a mid-story turning point as the main mast of the tale.

The following list of notions strives to strengthen the first act of a five-act structure.

  • What is the goal in this act that the main charactes believes that by achieving it he’ll get closer to achieving his external goal?
  • How does the main character’s external goal bend to his internal issue, the thing he struggles with that keeps him from easily achieving said goal without breaking a sweat?
  • For every goal in an act (or scene), see which goals could fail first. That ups the conflict.
  • One way to tell if what the protagonist wants in the beginning is her genuine goal is to ask yourself: will she have to face her biggest fear, and so resolve her inner issue, to achieve said goal?
  • Look at every single character in your story and ask, “What’s their goal at this very moment?” If they don’t have one, give them one.
  • List the actions your hero will take toward his goal.
  • Create a plan that requires the hero to take a number of actions, but also to adjust when the initial plan doesn’t work. How is the plan unique and complex enough that the hero will have to adjust when it fails?
  • As a general rule: whatever the protagonist tries, his first two attempts must be futile.
  • How is this act an unit of action bound by a character’s desire?
  • How does this act fulfill its purpose of preparing the readers for what’s in store?
  • How do you bring with your important characters, as you introduce them, the stakes, what they care about, and the antagonistic forces that threaten what they care about.
  • How do you take the time to introduce the character in his “normal world” before the inciting event comes blasting into view?
  • How does this act represent the phase of the universal story that is Comfort and Separation?
  • In the beginning quarter of the story, get the front story going first by hooking readers and audiences with present moment-to-moment conflict. The protagonist faces an immediate dilemma, experiences a loss, feels fear, and is compelled to take action.
  • The first act sets up the story: the story problem, the story question, and the motivation for the protagonist to take action.
  • Is there a hint of the consequences of failing the act’s goal, a mirror or echo of the kind of death he risks (physical, psychological, social, or a mix)?
  • How does this act mirror and echo act five (the traditional third act)?
  • How do the actions in this act prompt readers to ask “what is the worst consequence of this decision”, and the consequences will be shown in the second half of this story?
  • How do you set up the stakes and the opposition for the desire line?
  • All the scenes in this act should be contributing toward that First Plot Point moment: revealing backstory, giving it stakes, infusing it with tension and fear and anticipation.
  • The mission of these act one scenes is clear: Make us feel like we’re there (vicarious experience), so that we see dynamics that the characters cannot. The characters feel them—and you can certainly make that feeling visceral—but for them it isn’t a story yet, it’s just their lives.
  • The mission of this opening quartile is to invest the reader in the story through empathy for the hero, which depends on the establishment of stakes and a clearly defined dramatic question at the heart of the story.
  • The scenes within each act should align contextually with that mission and thus bear a different context than scenes from the other parts. That’s critical to understand—it’s the difference between a writer who knows what she’s doing and one who is faking it or imitating what she’s read and mislabeling it as knowing how to write.
  • Every single scene before your First Plot Point should contribute to the setup of the dynamic in the second act and forward, either through foreshadowing, hero backstory and present context, the establishment of stakes, or the ramp-up to the First Plot Point story turn.
  • To set up the “Normal World,” not only focus on the existence and archetypical role of the protagonist, but also in the relationships he maintains, and especially in how those relationships are going to be altered or cut off when moving into the second act.
  • Act 1 introduces your hero then throws a problem at him.  That problem will propel him into the heart of your story.
  • Does the hero hesitate to engage with the story problem until the stakes are raised?
  • Make sure the order of the events creates a gauntlet of challenge, baptism by escalating fire.
  • Since story, both internally and externally, revolves around whether the protagonist achieves his goal, each turn of the cause-and-effect wheel, large and small, must bring him closer to the answer. How? By relentlessly winnowing away everything that stands in his way, legitimate reasons and far-fetched rationalizations alike, until the clock runs down to “now or never”.

On Writing: General structure – Development

On By Jon UreñaIn advice, EscrituraLeave a comment

You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.

Once you’ve come up with a list of meaningful plot points that should happen in your story, the Acts structure (generally three, but could be strengthened by turning it into five) is a proven method to organize those plot points in a way that makes the story more cohesive, and usually building up in tension.

The following questions may help in developing the general structure.

  • Brainstorm the specific strategies and actions your hero will take to confront and antagonistic force (villain, threat or obstacle) standing in his way.
  • Write down a summary of what your hero does in pursuit of the goal, the major campaigns and efforts and confrontations he must navigate along the path toward resolving the dramatic question.
  • What is the antagonist’s plan in each act, what maneuvers does he execute to prevent the protagonist from achieving his goal? For each global goal in each act for the protagonist there should be a counterpoint by the antagonist(s).
  • How does the story consist of a great crisis, worked out through a series of minor crises?
  • How does this story involve characters being thrown into a world that represents the opposite of everything they believe and stand for?
  • Sometimes it’s easier to think of the structure in question-and-answer form. Q: What are the worst possible consequences of Macbeth’s decision to kill the King of Scotland? A: The massed ranks of his former allies will march upon him seeking revenge. Good structure will deliver a crisis point that forces the protagonist to choose between their old and new selves.
  • The beginning sets something up. It makes something move. What is a story trying to set up? The end, of course. The key to an effective beginning is that it must contain the seeds of your future climax.
  • How could the story start at the moment the problem becomes acute?
  • How would this story’s inciting incident embody all the characteristics the protagonist lacks?
  • Do away with the overly vague concept of the “inciting incident” and replace it with three specific parts: the long-standing personal problem, the intimidating opportunity, and the unexpected conflict that arises from pursuing that opportunity. Together these form what I call “the challenge”.
  • Rather than start with a happy status quo that gets ruined by an inciting incident, most stories begin the opposite way: The hero starts out with a long-standing social problem, and the inciting incident (even if it’s something horrible) presents itself as an opportunity to solve that problem.
  • Does the hero discover an intimidating opportunity to fix the problem? Simply restoring the status quo is never a strong motivation. In real life, as a general rule, our crises are not just temporary accidents that must be undone but crucial opportunities to fix long-standing problems. To build sympathy, the opportunity should be obviously intimidating. This shouldn’t be a no-brainer decision, but to avoid losing empathy, the full size of the potential conflict should not be immediately apparent.
  • Could you make sure that the inciting incident of the story is personal enough, that it isn’t defined externally? Otherwise the heroes would merely be reacting to outside events instead of choosing to act based on their volatile personal psychology.
  • First Plot Point preliminary: a definitive reaction to the first plot point will shape your character’s arc. You know you’ve found the right First Plot Point when it drags your character out of his former complacency and puts his feet on the path toward destroying his Lie–even though he probably won’t realize that’s what’s happening and, indeed, may be actively fighting that destination. Whether he realizes it or not, he has committed himself to change, even though he may still be trying to change in the wrong way.
  • How will the First Plot Point create a new world in which the character will be “punished” for acting according to his Lie?
  • A big crash usually happens at the midpoint. Not only does this change everything in terms of the external situation, but it slams the hero into a radically new outlook. The first half of a story can often be summarized as “the easy way,” and the second half as “the hard way”.
  • How would the midpoint contain the very essence of the quality the protagonist lacks, the opposite of their initial state, the “truth” of what they’re looking for, the hidden elixir in the enemy’s cave?
  • Could you make it so by halfway through, your heroes are making it up on the fly?
  • What happens (or will happen) in the climax of the novel that will show why your concept and kicker are unique and compelling?
  • Do your story’s beginning and ending contrast each other strongly enough?
  • If your protagonist had to face the events of the Climax in the beginning of the story, would he react to them in the same way he does at the end? If he would, something is seriously wrong with your story.
  • How do you misdirect the lowest points, the cliffhangers, or even the climaxes of each act? How do you make them impossible, or at least set up events in ways that make the reader feel that the story could have gone a different way?
  • Every roadblock, every obstacle, every setback, should escalate in difficulty. Start small and keep building.
  • Write a list of unexpected changes that might occur.