by Dave Haslett
In this show, each of the 24 episodes represents one hour of the hero’s life as he races to meet a deadline that expires in exactly 24 hours. Each episode contains a roughly equal mix of big things and small things, so it’s well worth further study. But your own story will have to be exceptional if you’re hoping to emulate the show’s success.
12. Chinese Box.
The Chinese Box makes an intriguing (and fairly easy) way of producing “unputdownable” stories. In this structure you end up with a story within a story within a story, nested several layers deep. As the tale progresses, your readers are left increasingly on tenterhooks, awaiting the outcome of not just one story but an ever-growing number of them.
[EXAMPLE] You might begin by telling what seems to be a straightforward story, but break off at an intriguing moment when the hero comes across an old document. The document unfolds another intriguing story, but then breaks off midway when it refers the reader to a separate letter. That letter refers the reader to another document, a will perhaps, and that in turn might refer the reader to a videotape locked in a bank vault. Once the videotape has been viewed, the rest of the will can be revealed – the part that your readers have been waiting for. With the reading of the will concluded, readers at last gets to see what was in the rest of the letter, and finally we are returned to the document that started it all off and we find out how it ends. And with all of that over and done with, the main story resumes where it left off many pages ago, and finally draws to a conclusion.
You can add many more layers than this if you like. The important thing is to keep is intriguing, always breaking off just before the big revelation and making your readers wait, in a delicious agony of suspense.
13. Classic myth structure.
A great book to help you develop characters and plot is The Hero with a thousand faces by Joseph Campbell. This book looks at the classic mythical hero and his adventures, and relates them to modern-day stories, which – surprisingly enough – often follow exactly the same structure.
An example of a classic story is where the hero is summoned to go on an adventure, but is reluctant to do so. He’s urged on by a mother- or father-figure and offered aid, and eventually he agrees. Along the way he has many setbacks, and his skills are well-tested. He might become despondent, but eventually he overcomes the problem with a combination of ingenuity, bravery, trickery and quick thinking. He often has a female to help him. He achieves his aim. He gets his reward. His achievement helps the world and his reputation is enhanced.
That’s a classic myth structure, but did it sound like a modern-day story to you? It should have done! Think of James Bond, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and hundreds more.
Let’s rewrite it as a typical James Bond story: the hero (James Bond) is summoned (usually from his holiday) to go on an adventure (to recover a computer chip for example) but is reluctant to do so. He’s urged on by a mother- or father-figure (Moneypenny and M) and given aid (Q’s gadgets) … it all fits the mythic structure perfectly, and the rest of the story fits too. Could this be the structure of your next story?
14. Cliff hangers.
Imagine your hero hanging over the edge of a cliff, dangling from a damaged rope. As the story progresses the rope frays, one strand at a time, until the big climax when the last strand snaps and he … plummets to the ground? That’s just the structure of the story – one of ever-increasing desperation and urgency – not the story itself. Each strand of the rope might represent a scene in your story. As you plan or write your story, decide how many strands of rope there are, and what will happen to make a strand break at the end of each scene. As the story progresses your hero will find himself in more and more danger. There’s very little rope left now: the situation is becoming increasingly dangerous. How many strands of rope does he need to hold his weight? He doesn’t know … but it looks as if he’ll find out soon enough. The snapping of the final strand won’t necessarily send him to his doom. But it represents the biggest and most decisive action scene of the whole story – it’s do or die. And dying is not an option!
[ALTERNATIVE] Think of a magician or escape artist who seemingly plunges to his death when the rope burns through and he fails to escape in time. The audience gasps – they can’t believe it. But of course he always reappears, safe and well.
15. Concealing the goal.
Here’s an interesting structure that would work well in a short story – especially one with a twist at the end. In a story with a normal structure, the main character starts by announcing his goal or problem (or has it forced upon him), struggles to achieve it, and then either succeeds or fails at the end. But let’s switch that structure around so he doesn’t reveal what his goal or problem is until the end. When the story begins, we find him already deep in conflict with his adversary. As the story progresses we see him fail in his quest. But since we don’t know what his goal or problem is, we don’t really appreciate how badly he’s failed – until the very end of the story when he finally reveals what it was. Suddenly we realise what this failure really means to him and what the consequences are – it’s not just a failure, it’s an absolute disaster. You could also use this structure for a scene in a novel, play or screenplay.
16. Crises.
You could plan your novel by using crises. The number of crises depends on how fast you want your story to move along. Three major crises might move along relatively slowly. Four crises (three major ones plus the climax) would probably be about average. Five would move the story along pretty smartly. Start by thinking about what your crises will be – you might not have any characters, plot or setting at this stage. With the crises established at, say, 50-page intervals, you can build the rest of your story around this structure.
17. Ending chapters.
Most novelists use chapters to help them structure their story. They’ll plan to have, say, 20 chapters, with each one ending at a very dramatic moment that keeps their readers hooked and desperate to read on. The end of a chapter marks the end of a group of related scenes, but it should never be just a convenient stopping point. Your main aim when ending a chapter should be to prevent your readers from being able to put your book down.
Here are a few dramatic moments where you can end a chapter while keeping your readers on the edges of their seats:
At the moment of disaster.*
In the middle of the action.
Before the action begins, but after the hero has announced his decision about what he’s going to do.
At the point where the hero believes all is lost and there’s no way out.
Anywhere else where you think your readers would be unable to put your book down. Always end every chapter (except the last) at the most dramatic moment possible.
* Disaster means something that is disastrous for your main characters, not necessarily a literal disaster such as an earthquake.
18. Failure.
Every chapter in a novel (apart from the last), and most scenes, should end in failure or disaster for the main character. That doesn’t necessarily mean a literal life-or-death disaster; it might be that he didn’t get the promotion he needed to be able to afford the payments on his house, which he’d remortgaged to pay for his son’s operation, which he needed because… The thing about these disasters is that your readers shouldn’t be able to see them coming. Of course they know, in the back of their minds, that whatever your hero is currently involved in will (probably) end in failure.
A simple failure isn’t enough though, because the story would be too predictable. We need the failure to be caused by something unexpected (but plausible and logical), or for some other unexpected thing to happen instead of the much-anticipated failure. Either way, your readers are shocked: they certainly weren’t expecting that!
So, your job, as you plan the end of each chapter, is to find that unexpected something that shocks your readers, yet arises naturally out of the story and seems perfectly obvious on second reading. It’s a difficu
lt trick to pull off, but every decent novel you’ve ever read uses it, so you should be able to do it too. Start practising your lateral thinking – and re-read your favourite novels to see how they did it.
19. Flowcharting.
A good way of sorting out the structure of your story is to use a flowchart. You may have seen these used for diagnosing illnesses, for example: Do you have spots? If yes, are they raised or flat? Do you have a fever? and so on. Eventually, by narrowing down the range of possibilities, a diagnosis is reached and you are told what to do about it. You can use the same technique to plan your whole story, or sections of it. You can also use it to try out various options, such as when the plot could go in one of two directions – or even several directions. Try creating a flowchart and following it along all the possible paths, adding new options and branches as necessary, and see where each one leads. This allows you to build up a story or explore a possible trail very quickly, without having to write anything that might get thrown away later. You only need to write the path that you end up using.
If you don’t fancy drawing flowcharts by hand, there are plenty of flowchart programs available that will do the job for you, and allow you to move things around on screen easily, insert new options, and so on. Use a search engine such as Google and search for: flowchart software.
20. Flowcharting 2.
An easy way to plot the structure of a story is to use a Yes/No flowchart. You’ve probably seen many examples of these. Does the hero love the heroine? If ‘Yes’ go to this box, if ‘No’ go to that box. In each of those two boxes you can make a statement or ask another question. You could spend weeks filling in all those boxes, asking questions and making links. Your flowchart might end up spanning several large sheets of paper. But it’s a worthwhile exercise because you’ll end up with the basic outlines of several different stories. Just pick a starting point (at random if you like) and follow the links. For a different story, pick a different starting point and see where that leads. This method is also a good way of working out the structure of interactive books: if you want the hero to take the forest path turn to page 28, if you want him to take the mountain path turn to page 53, and so on.
21. Follow the line.
If you already have a few ideas for scenes and events that could happen in your story, but you haven’t yet come up with a complete plot, here’s a way of developing it further. Take a large piece of paper and draw boxes on it to represent the ideas you already have. In each box add a few key words to remind you what it’s about. Now cover the rest of the page in other ideas: alternative scenes to those you have already; linking scenes; events that seem to flow logically from the events you’ve already mentioned – add every alternative you can think of; background events from the characters’ pasts; your favourite scenes from other stories (even if you didn’t write them yourself and they’ve already been published); and anything else you can come up with. Dot a few hazards here and there around the page (you could even draw these): perhaps a fire, a locked door, broken stairs, an ambush, a broken down car, a power failure, a few trap, a mugger, a vandal, and so on.
Now find an obvious starting point and an obvious ending point and draw a line that links them, taking in as many of the other scenes and events along the way as you can manage. As you arrive at each box, try to find a scene or event or idea somewhere else on the page that flows logically from it, and extend the line to connect it – even if that means drawing a line across the full width of the page.
If the next logical scene is one that you’ve already used, use it again, but send the story off in a different direction to the way you went last time, so you don’t get stuck in an endless loop. You could even have a few small loops, where the same group of scenes happens over and over until something breaks the cycle and you can move on. Try to insert peaceful scenes and thinking time between the action scenes. And upset things by including an unexpected hazard from time to time.
When you’ve finished, go back to the beginning of your line and follow it through to the end, making a written list of all the scenes, events, ideas and hazards you encounter in the exact order that your line visits them. There’s the outline of your story!
22. Further from the goal.
In a great story, the main character moves further away from his goal with every scene. Let’s take that idea literally. As the story begins we learn that our hero needs to get home urgently. He begins by taking the steps that will get him there – perhaps spending the last of his savings on a train ticket. But in the next scene we might discover that he’s on the wrong train and heading away from home not towards it. (The readers know this, but does the character know? That’s up to you.) As more scenes pass, he struggles to correct his route and find a way of getting home with no money. On a few occasions he might manage to get tantalisingly close to home, but by the next scene it’s all gone horribly wrong again. Road works might divert him, for example, and suddenly he’s hopelessly lost and going in the wrong direction. Perhaps he’s keeping in touch by phone with what’s happening at home – until his battery runs out. Time is running out. Will he make it in time? What will he find when he gets there? Why was he so desperate to get there? He might even end up on the other side of the world – as far from home as it’s possible to be. That’s a very obvious example, but it would still make a good story.
It doesn’t have to be a journey of course. All you have to do is give your main character a goal that he’s desperate to achieve, and then move him further away from achieving it as the story progresses. Examples of suitable goals might include: trying to find someone; trying to attract a lover; trying to have a baby; trying to get a job or promotion; trying to write, publish or sell a book; trying to achieve fame or wealth; trying to save money; trying to carry out a simple repair; and hundreds more. As long as you stick to the basic rule of always moving your character further away from his goal with every step, then a great story is virtually guaranteed.
23. Interruptions.
Interruptions allow you to do some interesting things with the structure of your story. This can work particularly well in a longer story where there are several subplots and several viewpoint characters. Let’s say that one of the subplots involves your hero’s lover who has just been kidnapped. The kidnapper lets her make one phone call, and she chooses to call your hero – naturally.
Meanwhile, back in the main plot, your hero has just discovered a different villain’s secret hideout, plus the evidence he needs to secure a conviction. He’s just about to go in and make the arrest when he gets the phone call from his lover. Your hero’s big arrest scene is interrupted. He’ll have to rescue his lover first and then come back to arrest the villain – although there’s every possibility that the villain will have gone by then. Who kidnapped his lover? Is he in league with the villain? Could he actually be the same person? Could his lover be inside the very building he was just about to raid? If he finds out in time, he could burst in and solve both problems at once. Or he might drive around town in a high-speed wild goose chase that ends up back where he started.
The main idea of this structure is that the main scene is only interrupted by the subplot, not permanently ended by it. So in this example we’ll expect him to come back and try to make the arrest again once his lover has been rescued.
Of course, there are some alternative structures available to us in this example. The kidnap episode might become a long-term story strand that can’t be completed in a single scene. So the big arrest scene will have to be abandoned or set up for another time, or someone else will have to do it. It’s up to you to decide which version would work best in your story.
24. Journey.
A journey makes a good structure for a story. Your beginning and end points are given to you and you can divide the intermediate points into roughly equal sections. You just need to come up with a journey, a reason for making it, and some characters. A straightforward chronological record of the trip isn’t going to be terr
ibly interesting though, so you’ll need some obstacles and problems too.
Let’s say that your hero and a friend are cycling from Land’s End to John O’Groats to raise money for a charity. We have a journey, a reason and the characters. Now we need problems. Since we already know the situation, this is pretty easy: punctures, accidents, hotels and hostels that aren’t expecting them or are closed or don’t any have rooms, double-bookings, haunted hotel rooms, unfriendly locals, over-friendly locals, hangovers, police raids, attacks and muggings, stolen bikes, stolen money, a message from home saying that someone is ill, they might get caught up in a robbery or a police chase, a crook might hijack one of their bikes and use it as a getaway vehicle, and so on. They’ll come close to giving up their journey several times, but somehow find the resolve to carry on. But no doubt their lives will never be quite the same again.
Think about the journeys that interest you, and what could happen along the way. Perhaps you could track down a few people who really have made the journey, and combine some of their most hair-raising experiences into a single story. Perhaps some of those hair-raising experiences actually came from a different journey – but there’s nothing to stop you borrowing them for this one instead!
