The Fastest Way to Write Your Book

by Dave Haslett

  The three acts in a chapter can be separate scenes. You don’t have to do it that way, but, again, it makes things a lot easier if you do. So within each chapter you would have the beginning scene, the middle scene and the end/climax/resolution scene.

  And, of course, you can use three-act structure within each scene too:

  The beginning of each scene should be around a quarter of the length of the whole scene. It sets up the storyline for the rest of the scene.

  The middle of each scene should be around half the length of the whole scene. It’s where the main action plays out.

  The end of each scene should be around a quarter of the length of the whole scene. It’s the big finish where we find out how the main action was resolved.

  “Resolved” doesn’t mean the problem that played out in the middle of the scene was solved and everything ended well. It means that whatever action your characters took in that scene – or whatever approach they tried using to solve the problem – has ended.

  Things might have gone well for them, but it’s more likely to have ended badly and made things worse. The problem could continue in later scenes and chapters, where they might try other ways of tackling it. They’ll also need to put right all the problems they caused during their earlier failed attempts.

  If your novel has twenty chapters, each with three scenes, you’ll need to come up with sixty scenes in total. But this is highly flexible and depends on the story you’re writing. You might need more scenes or fewer scenes than that.

  Your scenes shouldn’t all be the same length. Readers like variety. Consider putting one or two short, reflective scenes after each of the big action scenes. They’ll give your hero time to get his breath back, reflect on what just happened, and make plans for what to do next. And your readers get a chance to catch their breath too.

  But I like to end some of these reflective scenes early, so the next big action scene kicks off before the hero is ready for it. What happens next might be completely different from what he was expecting.

  Data from your hero’s geological survey might suggest a volcano is about to erupt. He warns everyone he can, and helps to evacuate the area. He rests and reflects on what he’s done and regrets that he couldn’t do more and save everyone. Then the next action scene begins explosively, before he’s fully prepared for it. But the volcano doesn’t erupt; there’s a catastrophic earthquake instead.

  All the warnings he gave in the previous chapter are now invalid, and a different set of people are in mortal danger. He has to throw away his plans and live on his wits until he can gain control of the situation. Of course, the volcano might erupt anyway – but perhaps a little later than he forecast, and probably just when he thought it was safe.

  Or perhaps something else happens. Perhaps the earthquake causes a gas pipeline to explode. Perhaps it’s a secret pipeline that wasn’t supposed to be there …

  Some of the action scenes can be short too. They give your story a sense of pace and excitement, and compel your readers to keep on reading.

  If you’ve come up with ideas for lots of scenes, and you’ve packed them into your outline, you might be worried that your book will be too long. That might not be the case because, as we’ve just seen, some of your scenes can be quite short. And you could end them early and jump straight into the next action scene to make them even shorter.

  Another approach is to combine two or more scenes into one.

  You might have a scene where your main character crashes his car, and another where he meets his future wife in a bar. You could combine these scenes into one by having him crash into her car.

  Ideally, you’ll have sorted this out when you were working on your outline, not during the writing stage.

  On the other hand, if you’re worried that your novel will be too short, you could split one scene into two separate ones. In the example above where the hero of the story meets his future wife when he crashes into her car, you could switch back to the original scenario: he crashes into someone else’s car and has to deal with the repercussions of that, and then he meets his future wife somewhere else, under different – but no less interesting – circumstances.

  Your hero should start to take control of the story from around the middle of the book – or at least he’ll try to. From that point on, he’ll start dictating the action rather than reacting to it. But, of course, things still won’t go his way, otherwise the story would end too soon.

  In fact, things are going to get much worse for him. If he thought he was in trouble already, he hasn’t seen anything yet. He won’t gain full control until the very end of the story. If the story is a series, that might not be for several more books yet.

  The three-act series

  We’ve looked at using three-act structure as the basis of novels, chapters and scenes, but you could go a stage further and use it as the basis for an entire series. A three-novel series (commonly known as a trilogy) could work well:

  Book One is act one. We meet the characters and learn about the set-up to the main story.

  Book Two is act two. The main action takes place and we learn more about the characters, their backgrounds, secrets, hopes, fears, and so on.

  Book Three is act three. We reach the big ending, climax and resolution that the first two books have been leading up to.

  As books one and three each tell about a quarter of the story, you might consider splitting book two into two volumes, otherwise it would need to be twice the size of the others to fit everything in. This would create a four-book series.

  But your series could be much longer than that and still use three-act structure. For example, you could have a twelve-volume series where the first three books are the beginning of the story, the middle six volumes are the second act, and the final three books are the ending. Each book will be a story in itself, but with links back to the earlier books and links to the books that are still to come – with the exception of the first and last books, of course.

  Three-act structure – a more detailed look

  You see three-act structure everywhere, although you might not be aware of it. It’s used in almost every novel you read, nearly every film you watch, and in many television shows. That’s because it works and it has stood the test of time.

  There are lots of other structures and frameworks for novels, films and television shows. But three-act structure is by far the most common, the most easily understood, and the one I use for my own novels.

  We’ll take a brief look at some other structures later in the chapter. If you’d like to learn more about these or other structures, search online for “different novel structures” or “alternatives to three-act structure”. You’ll find plenty of articles and books about them.

  I discuss several alternative structures and frameworks in my book 81 Ideas for Adding Strength and Structure to Your Writing. It also includes plenty of tips and advice on the best ways of using them.

  Let’s take a closer look at three-act structure as it applies to the novel as a whole.

  Act One

  Act one is the beginning of the story, and it sets up the main storyline. You introduce the characters, their relationships and the world they live in. You show your readers what the characters’ lives are like in their normal, everyday world. You then introduce a problem that the main character is forced to confront. For example:

  your hero might overhear a message intended for someone else

  a dead or badly injured person might land at his feet, or the investigative case might land on his desk

  someone or something he cares about might go missing

  he might be summoned back to a job he left years ago

  he might face a problem he’s ill-equipped to deal with, such as being stranded after his plane crashes or his ship is wrecked, with no outside help or means of communication

  Your hero’s attempts to deal with this problem won’t go smoothly. Inevitably, he’ll be led into a second, even more dramatic situati
on that will change his life forever.

  This is the point where the story really begins. It also poses a significant question, right at the end of the first act, that won’t be answered until the climax near the end of the third act.

  Typical questions might include:

  Will he reach the bomb and defuse it in time to save the city?

  Will he work out who the killer is before he kills again?

  Will he find the missing person/microchip/gems/documents?

  Will he ever forgive her and learn to love again?

  The first act ends at this point. If this were a three-act stage play, the curtain would fall here. In a novel with twenty chapters, the first act will take up the first five chapters – or about a quarter of the story.

  Act Two

  Act two is the main part of the story, also known as the middle. In a novel with twenty chapters, it takes up around ten of them – half the length of the entire story.

  Your hero continues his attempts to solve the problem established in act one, but everything he does makes things worse. He realises he’s going to have to learn new skills if he’s going to solve the problem properly. But that means he’ll also have to change himself and perhaps his whole sense of who he is. That might involve finally growing up and acting like an adult, confronting personal issues or challenges he’s denied or avoided all his life, or learning what he’s truly capable of if he puts every ounce of effort into it.

  He might receive some help with this, though he’ll probably refuse it at first before admitting he needs it.

  This part of the story will be an almighty struggle, and he’ll feel like giving up several times. His acute need to solve the final problem – the biggest challenge in the whole story – will drive him on. But he won’t start making real progress until he commits to it one hundred percent. The nature of the final problem is outlined here, and from the middle of the story onwards he’ll start preparing for it, even if he isn’t sure what will happen yet. He won’t actually encounter that problem until act three.

  Act Three

  Act three is where the main story and all of its sub-plots are finally resolved. It includes the climax – the final problem we discussed above – which is the most intense and dramatic part of the story. The question posed at the end of act one is also finally answered.

  In the resolution section, your hero – and perhaps the other main characters too – realise that their lives have changed forever and they have a new or renewed sense of who they are.

  The story might end there, with the main characters hugging each other with relief and making plans to return home. Or it might continue for another chapter – or in an epilogue – where we find out what they do next as they begin the next phase of their lives.

  Act three takes up around a quarter of the story – about the same length as act one.

  An alternative structure: heroic myths

  If you use heroic myth structure as the basis for your novel, you’re guaranteed a story that works. You’ll need a copy of Joseph Campbell’s classic book Hero with a Thousand Faces. It looks at the mythological hero and his adventures, and relates them to modern stories, which, surprisingly enough, often follow exactly the same structure.

  A typical mythic structure concerns the hero who’s summoned to go on an adventure but is reluctant to do so. He’s urged on by a mother or father figure and eventually agrees and is given aid. Along the way he encounters many setbacks and his skills are well tested. He might become despondent, but eventually overcomes the problem with a combination of ingenuity, bravery, trickery and quick thinking. He often has a female companion or adviser to help him. He achieves his aim and gets his reward. His achievement helps the world and enhances his own reputation.

  Did that sound like a modern story to you? It should have done. Think of any of the James Bond films, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and hundreds more.

  Let’s use that outline for a typical James Bond adventure. Our hero (James Bond) is summoned (often from a luxurious holiday) to go on an adventure (perhaps to recover a valuable artefact that’s been stolen) but he’s reluctant to do so. He’s urged on by a mother or father figure (M) and given aid (gadgets) …

  The story has hardly begun, but it’s already clear that it fits the mythic structure perfectly.

  Why not save yourself time and effort and use mythic structure as the basis for your novel? After all, it’s stood the test of time for thousands of years. You’re guaranteed a great story, and as there’s no need to work out your novel’s structure, you’ll save several days’ work.

  An alternative structure: a game of chess

  For a fantastic way of pitting your hero and villain against each other, picture your story’s plot as a game of chess. Every move they make on the board represents a move they make in the story. The two characters will be represented by two highly skilled, closely matched chess players. Your hero can play with the white pieces and the villain can play with the black ones – which keeps things simple. Both are determined to win – and either of them could win.

  They’ll always play the best possible move. Sometimes they’ll go for an easy kill to rattle their opponent. Sometimes they’ll sacrifice a member of their team in the hope of securing a tactical advantage later.

  As the game (and story) progresses, the tension rises as the more important pieces are targeted and lost. For a while, it seems certain that the villain (black) will win. But in the end the hero (white) does, by the narrowest of margins. And it will undoubtedly be because of something he did earlier in the game (or story), rather than a mistake the black player made. Perhaps the white player put a particular piece in a certain position and waited for just the right moment to use it. That early-stage move, which might have seemed inconsequential or even bizarre at the time, was actually a key moment in the story. But your readers may have missed it or forgotten all about it.

  You’ll end up with a fantastic story that practically writes itself.

  If you speak to a chess expert, he should be able to tell you about some famous games that followed this pattern. There are plenty of books and websites that analyse notable games and matches, including play-by-play guides with discussions on the significance of each move. You could use any of those games as the basis for your story. Or you could play chess against someone yourself and record the moves, or watch a chess game between two evenly matched players. It can be great fun to try and make up a story in real time, based on what happens in the game as you watch it.

  You could even take the game of chess literally. It would be a fantastic way of writing a medieval battle story between two kingdoms. Your characters will be the opposing knights, bishops, kings, queens, serfs (pawns), and so on. The board represents the battleground and the setting of your story. The action will move around, sometimes closer to one side and sometimes closer to the other, imposing on each kingdom’s territory and threatening their monarchy.

  As we saw above, your story will practically write itself as you follow the moves of the game.

  If you don’t want to write about a medieval battle, it’s easy to transpose it into a different setting. It could become any kind of story where there are two opposing but closely matched sides, each with multiple participants:

  a modern battle

  a corporate battle about an attempted takeover of a company

  gang warfare in an inner city

  a Mafia story

  a particularly brutal game of football or ice hockey

  and so on

  The loss of chess pieces during the game could represent death or injury, bad business decisions by one side or the other, lost contracts, gambling losses, key employees being poached by a rival company, goals or penalties in a football game, failed romances, or just about anything else you can think of.

  Know your characters

  If you want to write your novel quickly, it’s vital that you know your characters inside and out before you start creatin
g your outline. You need to know exactly how they’ll react in any situation you put them in, and how they’ll interact with each other. If you know what motivates them, you can pit their different motivations against each other to generate conflict, tension and energy.

  Martha has been badly injured. Stan’s motivation is to get her to the hospital as quickly as possible to save her life. But Martha’s motivation is to avoid hospitals at all costs. This is a terrific conflict.

  If Martha hasn’t told Stan why she has a problem with hospitals, she might have to finally tell him. But what if another one of her motivations is that he must never find out? More conflict – and a terrific dilemma too.

  If Martha is too ill to communicate, she might not be able to raise any objections. But that could lead to all sorts of repercussions later when we find out what her objection was. Stan might not be aware of her problem, but Martha must have told someone about it earlier in the story. Your readers need to know that if Stan takes her to the hospital, there will be serious consequences.

  If you aren’t sure whether two conflicting motivations would work in your story, spend one of your mini writing sessions exploring it. Outline a short scene where you put the two characters together and see what happens. If it works, add it to your main outline. If it doesn’t, try it a different way or scrap it.

  Of course, if you know your characters well enough, you won’t need to do this. You’ll instinctively know what will happen and whether the scene would work.

  Many writers struggle to make their characters different from each other. For example, your readers ought to be able to tell which one of them is speaking even if you don’t explicitly say so. Give them different accents, mannerisms, vocal tics, repeated phrases, gestures, posture, body language, and so on. Test each scene on a selection of sample readers: take out the speech tags and ask them if they can identify who’s speaking.