by Dave Haslett
The
ideas4writers
ideas collection
The Elements of Fiction:
Structure
by
Dave Haslett
ideas4writers
www.ideas4writers.co.uk
Copyright © Dave Haslett 2013
Kindle edition published in Great Britain in 2013
by ideas4writers, 2a New Street, Cullompton, Devon, EX15 1HA
www.ideas4writers.co.uk
The right of Dave Haslett to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved
The contents of this work may not be stored, copied, transmitted, sold, or reproduced in any form without the permission of the publisher.
You may use or modify the ideas in this collection in any way that you wish, to aid and inspire your writing. Writing inspired by these ideas may be published, sold or otherwise distributed in any way that you wish. You may not distribute or sell the ideas themselves.
The characters Stan and Martha Bean and their various friends, neighbours and adventures are the intellectual property of Dave Haslett and may not be used in your writing. They appear in this collection for illustrative purposes only.
‘He’ is used throughout the text rather than he/she or they, purely for convenience and grammatical correctness, and by convention. No gender bias or disrespect is intended. Please feel free to replace he with she.
Glossary
Antagonist: villain – the opposing main character
Confidante: trusted friend – someone the hero can bounce ideas around with or reveal secrets to
Love interest: lover – usually of the protagonist
Protagonist: hero/heroine – main character
1. A basic structure.
According to James Friel in The Writer’s Workbook, most stories share the following basic structure: stasis; a trigger that upsets the stasis; a quest to recover it; a surprise development; a critical choice; a climax; a reversal; and a solution. However, if your story has a different structure, that isn’t a problem – as long as you’re happy that the structure you are using works.
2. Avoiding the predictable.
A good story is neither obvious nor predictable, yet the sequence of events must be logical. The action flows from one event to the next with a sense of inevitability, each event affecting the next. Looking back on what happened, your readers must truly believe that it could only have happened that way. Your story therefore needs to be predictable with hindsight, but not on first reading – and that’s tricky to achieve! A good solution is to work backwards rather than forwards when planning your story. You don’t have to plan the entire story that way – some writers find it extremely tiresome. Most of the time you should be able to think of a plausible-but-not-too-obvious way forward and not have to use this reverse planning technique. But you should certainly use it for any parts you’re having trouble with, because it really does work. And definitely use it if anyone has ever accused you of writing stories that are too predictable.
3. Basic novel structure.
Here’s a great way of structuring a novel. Start with twenty chapters – you can adjust this later if it turns out to be too short or too long. Next think of a crisis – the inciting incident that kicks everything off. That’s chapter 1. You then need three dilemmas or turning points where the situation becomes progressively worse. Your hero has to virtually start from scratch each time, but now faces an even bigger problem than when he first started. Put these dilemmas in chapters 5, 10 and 15. The big climax that takes your hero to breaking point goes in chapter 19. The resolution – how everything turns out, unmasking the villain, explaining the puzzles, and so on, goes in chapter 20. That gives you a solid framework with 6 chapters – over a quarter of the novel – already plotted. And you know you have a decent story on your hands.
Now you need to fill in the intermediate chapters. In each of these your hero will attempt to solve the problem, but fail. In these chapters you can also introduce other characters and settings, add minor complications, reveal details about your hero’s background, and so on.
Chapter 1 plunges your hero into the first crisis.
Chapters 2 to 4 make up the beginning, so you can explain how the incident in Chapter 1 began, fill in some background information about your hero, and explain his motivation for solving the problem. You can also introduce some friends to help him, and set him to work sorting out the first crisis. Each chapter should end with a cliff-hanger.
Chapter 5 introduces the first dilemma.
Chapters 6 to 9 continue the attempt to solve the crisis, but now with the added burden of the first dilemma. Again, each of these ends in a cliff-hanger.
Chapter 10 introduces the second dilemma.
Chapters 11 to 14 continue in the same vein as Chapters 6 to 9, but with the greater burden of the second dilemma. However, Chapter 11 is also the turning point in the novel, where your hero becomes more proactive than reactive. From now on, he makes most of the decisions, rather than simply reacting to things that have happened to him. The second half of the story is where he shows what he’s really made of – why he’s such a heroic hero. Put cliff-hangers at the end of each of these chapters.
Chapter 15 introduces the third dilemma.
Chapters 16 to 18 are where the tension really mounts. Your hero now has the central crisis plus three major dilemmas to deal with – and probably several smaller issues too. Perhaps he doubts that the main crisis will ever will be resolved. By this stage the central crisis should have gained such momentum that it can’t be stopped, even if everyone just gives up and goes home. For example, the dam is so badly damaged that it is going to give way; the bomb is going to explode; the fire is out of control.
Chapters 19 and 20 are the climax and resolution, as discussed earlier. So that gives you the complete structure of your novel.
You can try juggling the plot around a little to make the story as good as it can possibly be, but make sure all the major incidents still fall into the 6 key chapters (1, 5, 10, 15, 19, 20). And keep chapter 11 as the turning point. This structure works equally well for children’s novels and adult ones.
4. Beginnings.
The beginning of your story has a dual role. Not only does it have to catch the attention of potential readers, it also has to grab the attention of publishers and editors. Your opening paragraphs aren’t just the beginning of your story, they’re also an advert for it – a marketing tool. Potential readers will normally turn to the blurb on the back cover first of all. If the book passes that test they’ll read the outline/introduction on the inside front cover. And if they’re still interested they’ll read the first few lines of the text. In the case of a publisher or editor, those first few lines will be all they get. You have to grab their attention right there if you want to get published. Starting with a description of the sun rising, however vivid and well written, probably won’t be enough these days. It needs to be more gripping and intriguing.
5. Beginnings – someone else’s goal.
Let’s look at the structure of the first part of a story, where the hero tends to react to events rather than cause them. We might be seeing the story through the hero’s eyes, for example, when the villain bursts in and starts making demands, shooting people and taking hostages. We now know what the villain’s goal is – because he’s just told us – and we might know what’s motivating him too (although he could have lied about that). The villain – who had the upper hand in that scene – has now given our hero a goal of his own: to rescue the hostages. But what is his motivation? We
might not learn that until later; it could be love, friendship, revenge, proof of his bravery, money, or something else.
Let’s go with the money option: one of the hostage’s fathers might offer a substantial reward for her safe return – and the reluctant hero really needs the money. In fact the discussion between the reluctant (but broke) hero and the father would make another excellent scene where the non-viewpoint character (the father) has the main goal and motivation and causes things to happen, while the viewpoint character (the hero) can only react to the situation – he does what the father wants because he knows he has no other choice. But how exactly will the father persuade our hero to rescue his daughter? Could he promise him something other than (or as well as) money? Could he blackmail him, or threaten him? The father could be almost as bad as the villain, which would make things interesting. He’s (probably) a good guy really; he just wants his daughter back – at any price. Think about the beginning of your own story. How can you arrange things so that the main character is not the person with the main goal or motivation?
6. Begin late, end early.
Readers are used to watching TV shows and movies that cut rapidly from scene to scene, and this style is becoming the norm for novels and short stories too. The main technique we can borrow from this is to begin a scene as late as possible and end it as early as possible.
Beginning late means plunging straight into the action, with no lengthy build-up or preamble. Don’t do this with every scene though, otherwise there’s no tension or anticipation. In fact you might want to add a few short additional scenes that you hadn’t originally planned for, just so you can add more tension. When you start to plan a new story, make a list of all the scenes you want to include. For each of them decide how much of their beginning you can leave out.
Ending the scene as soon as the action ends often leaves some questions unanswered. That’s good – as long as you answer them later. Those unanswered questions will keep your readers in suspense, so they’ll have to keep reading. Again, as you consider your list of scenes, decide how much of the end you can cut off and what questions will be left unanswered.
It’s a good idea to divide your list of scenes into a number of columns so you can include this extra information. These columns could include the scene number, a short description, the beginning point, the end point, the unanswered questions it leaves in the reader’s mind, and the numbers of the scenes in which those questions are answered.
[ALTERNATIVE] An alternative to starting a scene as late as possible and ending it as soon as possible is to split one scene into several parts. When one part ends, you can jump to a completely different scene involving different characters in another location. That scene will also be split into multiple parts, so you can keep … jumping back and forth from one scene to the other. Make the jump just as things start to get interesting and you’ll maintain the tension and keep your readers interested. They need to keep reading to find out what happens next.
In longer stories you might have several scenes running at once, not just two. Occasionally you might allow a whole scene to play out in one solid chunk, but there needs to be a very good reason for doing it. Impatient readers might get bored, or skip ahead to find out what happens in one of the other scenes.
Back in the days when readers had longer attention spans, you could allow complete scenes to play out, each with a beginning, middle and end, before moving to the next one in the sequence. Some writers still do it that way. But the modern way – as seen in every soap opera on television – is to split each scene into several parts and flick between them.
Scenes aren’t all the same length of course. That’s a good thing because it adds variety. So you might jump from the first part of a new scene to the middle or end part of a different one. That’s much better than jumping from the beginning of one scene to the beginning of the next, and so on. This is unavoidable at the very beginning of the story, of course, but they should soon get out of sync due to their varying lengths, and that’s when things become interesting. You can help this along by returning to one or two of your scenes more often than others; don’t keep returning to them in the same sequence.
By doing this you can force your story to move along at breakneck speed. Even if nothing much is happening in one or two of your scenes, there might be plenty of action taking place in some of the others. Your readers won’t get bored or skip ahead during the slower parts, because they know that in a page or two you’ll take them back there anyway. In fact they’ll probably welcome the occasional chance to slow down and take a breather.
7. Better than beginning, middle and end.
Rather than thinking in terms of beginning, middle and end for each scene, you may find it easier to construct great stories using this structure: problem – reaction – action – consequences. Your hero encounters a problem and is forced to react to it in some way. The reaction leads to him taking action, and every action has a consequence: success or failure (usually failure). That consequence could be another problem, which he then has to react to, and so the plot marches onwards.
8. Breaking the viewpoint rule.
Normally, changing viewpoint characters in the middle of a scene is strictly taboo. But if you know what you’re doing, and break the rule deliberately rather than by accident, it can be used to spectacular effect. Let’s consider a war story. Your hero has been telling us his story but he’s suddenly injured. We don’t know how badly injured he is, but he’s unable to continue telling the story – at least for the time being. So now, right in the middle of the scene, you need to switch viewpoint characters and have his friend take over the story. If you prefer not to break the rule then you could put your hero’s sudden injury at the very end of a scene, so his friend takes over at the beginning of the next scene or chapter. But it’s worth considering whether this is as effective, and whether it has as much impact, as switching viewpoints in the middle of the scene. It will depend on your story. You need to be aware that you can break this rule (and others) if it makes the story better. But don’t break it more than once per story, unless it’s done for comedic effect.
9. Cause and effect.
Whatever type of writing you’re doing, cause and effect should always be considered. Consider the consequences of a particular action: does it have an immediate impact, and does it have repercussions later in the story?
You can also use cause and effect to generate story ideas. Think about an event (real or fictional) that has happened. What actually caused it, what might have caused it, and what do people think caused it? Are these causes all the same? If not, why not? How could you use that in your story?
When plotting your story, it’s usually easier to work backwards, starting with the final effect and going back through the chain of causes (perhaps inventing them as you go) until you reach the catalyst that started it all off. Then reverse that sequence, so the story begins with the catalyst (which will probably appear to have no connection at all to the final outcome), and the basic structure of your story is automatically created for you.
Remember that each time something happens, some people might misidentify the cause. So you could have several strands to your story where people are trying to identify and solve problems that don’t actually exist, or are much worse than they think they are.
In a mystery story you might have a slightly different structure where you don’t show the catalyst at the beginning, but reveal it at the end. But you can use exactly the same process to design your story.
10. Chain of events.
Begin your story with a fairly straightforward challenge, for which your hero comes up with a simple solution. But that solution should then generate a further and slightly more difficult challenge. What might this new challenge be? See if you can come up with several ideas and then pick the best one. It needs to follow on logically from the first solution, and it needs to take your hero slightly further away from obtaining his ultimate goal (which he won’t achieve
until he solves the final challenge at the end of the story). So your story consists of a series of increasingly difficult challenges and solutions, all of which arise as a natural consequence of the previous challenge and the way your hero tried to solve it.
[EXTENSION] Once you have the final list of challenges and solutions that make up your complete story, you might like to try moving them round a bit so that the scenes are no longer in strict order. A new problem will then seem to arise out of something your hero did several scenes earlier, making the story much more interesting and intriguing and a lot less linear. This will keep your readers hanging on, reading for much longer than they’d perhaps intended, unable to put your book down.
11. Chapters representing equal periods of time.
You might feel tempted to structure your story as a series of equally spaced hours, days, weeks or even years of the main character’s life – where one chapter represents one year, for example. The problem with this approach is that some years (or hours, days, weeks or months) will have a lot of things happening while others will be relatively quiet.
An alternative approach is to try ‘fiddling’ the story so that a roughly equal mix of big things and small things happen in each chapter. That’s not really the best way of doing it though, and you’ll probably find the results unsatisfactory. Your ‘fiddle’ will usually be too obvious.
I think the best approach is to focus on the big things and quickly gloss over the parts where nothing much happens. So I’d considering a slightly different structure, such as one big event per chapter. You can make the dull periods pass by in flash with a simple statement such as ‘The following summer…’ or ‘We all met up again three years later at Stan’s Halloween party.’ You don’t want to give every chapter the same overall feel anyway, because your story will become boring and predictable – unless the writing is extremely well done, as is the case with the TV show ‘24’.
