Structure Ideas for Fiction Writers
Page 5
You can also plan your story’s structure by doing this in reverse. Decide which dramatic events take place in act three. Then go back to act two and have them starting to develop. Then go back to act one and plant the first seeds – an almost imperceptible sign of the major drama to come.
53. Three-act structure 2.
When editing a story that uses the three-act structure it’s important to retain the logical flow. You might, for example, decide that a character’s sneeze in act one was unimportant, and delete it. But you’ve forgotten that the sneeze was the first link in a chain of events that led to the character dying of pneumonia. So that whole chain now collapses. When the character becomes ill in act two, it’s now completely unexpected. Really good stories don’t work like that; there will always be a warning, or at least a hint, even if the meaning doesn’t become apparent until later. So you need to be very careful what you cut out, always considering the implications that it might have later in the story. Similarly, if you delete something from act three, you’ll need to work backwards and remove all references to it from the earlier acts too, since they no longer have any purpose.
54. Thriller crime.
Think of a crime story. The story generally opens with someone having been murdered. We don’t know that person, but we gradually learn more as the detective runs background checks and follows up leads. But for readers or viewers, there’s no real emotional attachment to the dead person. Typical crime stories focus mostly on the investigator(s).
Now consider a thriller where the murder comes at the very end. In this case the person who is killed might be someone we’ve come to know well. But since that person’s death comes at the very end of the story, there’s no time to investigate it properly or see the villain brought to justice.
One way round this would be to run the two strands of the story simultaneously, switching and weaving between them throughout the story. In one strand (which runs the entire length of the story) the villain pursues and kills his victim, and in the other strand (which also runs the entire length of the story) he is pursued and caught by the detectives and put on trial.
Perhaps an easier way of doing this would be to keep the two structures completely separate: make the first half of the story a thriller, and the second half a crime story. The death can come right in the middle, so we get to know the victim first, and there’s still plenty of time to carry out a thorough investigation and trial afterwards.
55. Unusual structures.
If you’re feeling adventurous, how about playing around with some unusual story structures? For example, you could have something happen at the very beginning of your story that leads to two separate paths and two different endings. In a regular story you’d only follow one of these paths. But if both paths are equally interesting, you could include both of them in your story, perhaps in the form of a parallel plot that alternates between scenes or chapters. Or you could split your story into three paths and switch between them. In a normal story with multiple strands, you’d need to have something that connects the strands, or brings them all together at the end. But how about if you don’t do this? Perhaps the same characters are involved in all the strands – so they could be working on two or more projects at the same time. Or perhaps the characters and activities are different, but they connect with each other in various ways from time to time, possibly without realising it. Perhaps one set of characters are the good guys and the other set are the bad guys. Or perhaps your strands concern the same location at different times. Can you think of any other unusual structures? How would they be better than a more traditional structure?
[EXAMPLE] How about a war that might or might not end with the detonation of an atomic bomb? In one strand of the story the bomb explodes. In the other strand it does not. You could follow both strands, switching between them and showing how each story progresses. Show how different, seemingly minor, decisions end in very different outcomes, as one thing leads to another by logical cause and effect.
56. War.
How about thinking of your story in terms of a war? It might be a personal war between a small number of people, but for those involved the outcome could be just as important as a real, full-scale war. Divorce is a war. Business arguments, corporate disputes and hostile takeovers are wars. Neighbours arguing over the position of a fence or an overhanging tree is a war. So you can plan the structure of your story in the same way as you might plan a war campaign. Diplomacy, peace initiatives, propaganda, sanctions, cutting off supplies or aid, taking sides, enlisting support from allies, planning campaign strategies, appointing leaders and task forces, surveillance and reconnaissance, espionage, battle tactics, increasingly heavy assaults, casualties, retreats and attacks, and (eventually) victory for one side or the other, or a tactical withdrawal or truce of some kind. You’ll be surprised how many stories can use this structure, and how easy and effective it is to make great stories out of it.
[EXTENSION] You could even have a real war taking place in the background at the same time. Then you could relate incidents from that war and show how they compare or contrast with the mini war in your story.
57. Who?
A long fiction project can be structured around the single word ‘who’. Let’s take a crime story as an example, and assume that someone has been killed. Take a large sheet of paper and put the victim’s name in the centre. If you don’t know the victim’s name yet, just put ‘victim’. Who killed the victim? Put the name and role (‘killer’) on the sheet of paper, and draw a line to connect that person to the victim. Who ordered that person to kill the victim? Add that name and role to your sheet of paper, and draw a line to link him to the killer. Keep doing this – always asking ‘who’ – and add all their names and roles until you’ve established a whole network of characters connected to the victim and villain. You can also add friends, lovers, relatives, and other people who might influence any of the characters – even if they won’t feature in the story. All of this should take up half the sheet of paper.
Now do the same thing for the investigation side of the story. Who finds the body? Who investigates the case? Who finds the murder weapon? Who identifies the villain? Who arrests the villain? And so on. Again, set up a network of police, detectives, lawyers, judges, prison officers, and assorted informants, family members, lovers, and so on. The whole sheet of paper should now be fully covered. Perhaps some people feature on both halves of the page: they’re connected to the investigation side but they also have criminal connections, or are associated with this particular crime in some other way. Draw lines to connect them. Some of the characters will also be connected to several of the other characters. The wife of one might be the ex-lover of another, the sister of another, the former childminder of another, and so on. Draw lines to show these connections too.
Your whole story is now laid out in front of you – somewhere. You can see who your characters are, what their roles are, and how they’re connected to the other characters. There’s probably so much information here that you won’t be able to fit it all into one story. You’ll have to decide how much to put in and how much to leave out, and how to make sense of it all. But it’s always better to have too much story than not enough.
58. Your story-writing blueprint.
By combining the ideas in this category with those in our Novel category (or whichever form of long fiction you prefer) you can create your own master blueprint. This will ensure that you always create perfect stories time after time. Go through all the ideas and make a note of those which particularly apply to the sort of writing you do. Use these to create an outline of a typical story and make a chart showing where the dramatic points should occur, when to let your hero have a rest, and so on. Make a check list of all the other things you need to include. You’re creating your own novel-writing (or screenwriting or playwriting) formula, specifically tailored to your own writing. As long as you include enough of the ideas, your blueprint should always be successful, and your s
tories should always be exciting, dramatic, and satisfying.
59. Recommended resources.
Many writers and academics have studied story structure and written excellent books on their findings. It’s worth reading these and choosing the structure that you like best as the basis for all (or most) of your stories. All of the structures in these books have been tried and tested and shown to work. Some structures come into fashion and then go out again. For a while they’re the hottest thing around, but then something new comes along and suddenly that’s the one everyone wants to use. On the other hand, some structures have been around for centuries and are still popular today. The following books are the ones I recommend. If you use any of the structures in these books then you won’t go far wrong:
Screenplay– Syd Field
Story – Robert McKee
The Hero with a Thousand Faces – Joseph Campbell
The Writer’s Journey – Christopher Vogler
The Heroine’s Journey – Maureen Murdock
There’s also plenty of software available to help you with the structure of your story. These include: StoryWeaver, Writer’s Café, and WriteItNow. Also worth a look is Truby’s Blockbuster screenwriting software and Final Draft.
60. Recommended Resources 2.
Jack Bickham’s book Scene and Structure contains hundreds of structure and scene-sequel tricks and techniques. If you’re interested in writing more advanced long fiction (novels, plays or screenplays) and using professional structuring techniques that will lift your story above everyone else’s, then you really need to read this book. For even better value, try More on How to Write a Million, which is three books in one. It contains the full text of Scene and Structure, plus Conflict, Action and Suspense, and Theme and Strategy. Fantastic value – advance your writing to the next level!
Get the complete ideas4writers ideas collection
Available on Kindle from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
The Elements of Fiction
Characters
Description and Setting
Dialogue
Plot
Structure
Theme
General Fiction
Fiction
Novels
Plays
Screenplays
Short Stories
Storylines
Genre Fiction
Comedy
Crime
Fantasy
Historical
Horror
Mystery and Suspense
Romance
Science Fiction
Thrillers
Writing, Editing and Publishing
Editing
Getting Ideas
Getting Published
Overcoming Rejection
Self-Publishing and Book Marketing
Writer’s Block
Writing
Non-Fiction, Poetry and Children
Magazine Articles
Non-Fiction Books
Poetry
Teens/Young Adult
Travel Writing
Writing for Children
Erotica
Also available in PDF
and money-saving omnibus editions
from www.ideas4writers.co.uk