by C. S. Lakin
More Examples of Sectioning
Let’s take a look at another of my novels (I’m using mine because I know how and why I created these section breaks.)
In The Unraveling of Wentwater, after my prologue (which features a minor character in the past experiencing the Inciting Incident—the baby-naming ceremony that goes awry), we have Part One. In this novel, on the section break pages, I put “excerpts” from the scholar Antius’s treatise on The Unraveling of Wentwater. He’s a historian and key character in this novel, and these excerpts reflect on the events taking place in the actual story, kind of as an aside.
So Part One kicks off the novel. Part Two comes at about one-third in, at the point where the antagonist of the story sets off to destroy his brother, who has won the heart of the girl he’s obsessed with. That first section ends with a huge “door of no return” slamming, for Justyn is now motivated by anger and rejection and is about to set disastrous affairs in motion.
Part Two ends with the huge disaster of the spell gone wrong and the world, essentially, vanishing from existence. Only Teralyn, my heroine, remains, trapped in a magical castle. Another big door, literally, just slammed, locking her in and erasing the outer world. This comes roughly at the two-thirds mark in the novel. And then the book ends with an Afterword, which contains the last bits of wisdom from Antius.
Basically, I used a three-act structure, but I didn’t sweat over where exactly these acts fell. I could have added a Part Four section break when Teralyn stitched the world back after seven years and, finally, Wentwater reappeared. But I just kept that whole last section together. In hindsight, I think inserting that Part Four would have made for better structure, giving more impact to the moment when she sees a piece of roofline peeking out of the snowy field. Which shows the flexibility in this method.
Here are the section breaks for The Wolf of Tebron, the first book in my fantasy series. All I have on these section break pages are the section titles:
Part One: The Lunatic Moon (comes after the Prologue that sets up the situation in decades past). This covers the setup and the Inciting Incident, which pushes Joran to seek his missing wife and start his adventure, then ends when he arrives at stop #1—the house of the Moon—and then departs.
Part Two: The Angry Sun (about two-fifths in). Joran then travels east to the ends of the world till he gets to the house of the Sun, continuing his search for his wife and collecting new clues.
Part Three: The Revealing Wind (about one-half into the book). Now Joran travels to the cave of the South Wind, where he learns shocking truths about his family and past and loses all hope (leading to his great despair before the push to the climax).
Part Four: The Unimaginable Sea (about four-fifths in) has Joran rescued from captivity, and he’s now ready to face his greatest test and fears to snatch his wife from the clutches of the Moon. It’s a brief section, which covers the climax and a bit of the resolution.
Part Five: The Shortest Way Home is placed about fifteen pages before the end and is the wrap-up and denouement for the book. It’s the final scene.
Joran had five ultimate destinations in his journey. He had to go to the four ends of the world to find his wife, save her, then return home. It seemed logical to organize this novel into these five acts or five sections. I didn’t ever consider what page each section would start on or how far into the book they’d be positioned. My “acts” were determined not by the need for commercial breaks but based on the best way I could tell this story.
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Your assignment: Can you break up your novel into sections? How many acts do you end up with? Have you tried putting all your scenes on index cards and laying them out to see what acts seem to appear?
Why don’t you give it a try?
If you’ve already written your novel and you’re not sure if you have clear sections or “doors of no return,” maybe play around with this. Lay out your scene cards and see if you can develop those key turning points. While we’ll be going into the turning points in later chapters, exploring this with a finished novel or in the story development stage is tremendously helpful.
Chapter 3: Your Premise and the One-Sentence Story Concept
Before we get into the meat of the first layer of your novel—the ten key scenes—I want to make sure you have a clear understanding of premise and the one-sentence story structure.
We really can’t move forward until you have this nailed, so I’ll do my best to help you get there.
What’s a premise? Simply put, it’s a situation that requires a response. Someone with a reason, drive, need, and/or compulsion is required to deal with that situation.
When you generate an idea for a story, you think of an exciting, tense situation that demands that a key character tackle that situation.
You can fashion a premise by asking “What if?” What if a comet was about to hit Earth, and scientists had to find a way to stop it? That idea makes way for a premise (situation setup), which makes way for you to be able to write a one-sentence story concept.
Nail the Point of Your Story
Why should you take the time to put together a one-sentence story concept? Because by distilling your premise into one sentence, you nail the point or objective of your story.
Your one-sentence concept will make it clear what the key situation is in your novel, who will deal with that situation, what’s at stake, and what or who is opposing your protagonist.
Remember we looked at the problem and the principal action? That’s your one-sentence concept in a nutshell.
How do you go from premise to that important story concept? By adding in those corner pillars of novel construction: the protagonist and his goal and conflict with high stakes.
Many novels I critique each year lack those fundamental story elements. When I ask authors of such a novel to put together a one-sentence story concept, they usually can’t. They’ll often give a vague explanation of their story, such as “John used to be in the Army but doesn’t want to fight anymore, but because of his beliefs, he has to make a hard choice deciding whether to fight evil or spend time dealing with his wife’s terminal illness.”
While that example seems to have a premise at the center of the story—the goal of fighting evil—it’s not nailing the concept. What it hints at is a possibly unfocused premise. And the most important element of a premise is the protagonist’s goal.
You Gotta Have Goal
If you don’t have a protagonist set up to go after some goal for the novel—a goal that veers the protagonist in a new direction by that Inciting Incident—you are going to have a hard time putting a solid novel together.
Yes, that sounds simplistic. It is. But I will stand by my belief that every great novel is about someone with passion going after a goal. And the premise that’s set up (the situation that needs remedying) is all about, yes, that character trying to reach his goal.
There are only five basic story goals for every good story, whether a movie, novel, or play. So at that general place in your story, your hero is now going to try to get something, stop something or someone, escape from somewhere, win something, or deliver something. I bet you can think of famous movie titles that encapsulate the goal. How about Escape from Alcatraz and Finding Nemo? Not hard figuring out what kind of goal those stories involve.
If you can’t tell me which of those five things your character is after in your story, you may need to stop and do some revisiting of your concept.
Seriously, if even half the manuscripts I edited and critiqued had a clear, strong premise featuring a protagonist going passionately after a goal, I would not write so much about this in my blog Live Write Thrive and my writing craft books. In fact, I’d jump up and down and sing silly little songs if even half of those manuscripts had this very basic and necessary foundation.
So, if you don’t have this understanding nailed, spend some time studying up on it until you do. You need to be able to write a one-sentence story concept (yes, on
e sentence) that tells the premise of your novel, featuring that protagonist and his goal and what conflict or primary opposition he’s facing.
Look at this example from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (via Randy Ingermanson): “A boy wizard begins training and must battle for his life with the Dark Lord who murdered his parents.”
Simple and concise. It identifies the protagonist, the premise or situation that must be dealt with, and the opposition in the character’s way to reaching his goal.
Some call this a one-sentence pitch a logline (usually for scripts). Scriptlogist.com makes this suggestion:
Here are three questions to ask yourself as you write your logline:
1. Who is the main character, and what does he or she want?
2. Who (villain) or what is standing in the way of the main character?
3. What makes this story unique?
I like Nathan Bransford’s simplified formula for a one-sentence pitch: “When [opening conflict] happens to [character(s)], they must [overcome conflict] to [complete their quest].”
Really, is this so hard?
What to Do with All Those Scenes
The most challenging aspect of novel writing, to me, is what to do with all those cool scene ideas and developments. When brainstorming my novels, I often have pages of notes and index cards. I have a ton of great scene ideas that have conflict and show progress and hindrance as the hero or heroine of my story strives to reach the goal.
But then comes the part when I have to lay it all out in the best and strongest fashion.
I don’t want to throw all the big rocks, pebbles, sand, and water into the jar in a haphazard manner.
While I now do a lot of this intuitively after having written twenty-plus novels, I still need to break down the action into sections in a manageable way.
And this brings me to the basic framework we’re going to start looking at next—the five key turning points in your novel (based on Michael Hauge’s story structure).
Along with your Inciting Incident (turning point #1), we’ll take a look at the four other key developments in your story, which will help you begin understanding which ten key scenes you need to plan out to begin the framework of your story. Picture those as five big rocks you put into your empty jar.
So, first and foremost: get your premise clear and strong. Practice writing out your one-sentence story concept. If you can’t for the life of you figure out what your protagonist is after or what the central conflict is, you more than likely don’t have a strong concept, or maybe even a premise. And that’s a big problem.
If you’re stuck and need help, hire me. Let’s work on this. You may have a very cool idea, but ideas are lumps of clay. They’re just sitting on the table like blobs of potential until you turn them into powerful concepts.
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Your assignment: Write out your one sentence story concept. Work hard on this. Make sure the sentence showcases your protagonist and her goal, the Inciting Incident, the opposition and stakes, and her motivation. Yes, you can get this all into one sentence. Or come up with a logline using the three questions:
1. Who is the main character, and what does he or she want?
2. Who (villain) or what is standing in the way of the main character?
3. What makes this story unique?
Share your sentence or logline with friends, family, and/or other authors and request some feedback. If they don’t “get” what your story is about or it doesn’t sound all that interesting to them, you may have some work to do on your premise and idea to turn it into a killer concept.
Chapter 4: The First Key Turning Point
So now that you understand what a premise is and what’s included in your one-sentence story concept, we next need to take a look at the five key turning points, which are wonderfully explained by story master Michael Hague.
Before we can craft the first ten scenes, we need to understand what these turning points are and where they “fall” in a novel. Some writing instructors insist on exact placement of those points, but as I’ve said, I believe in flexibility and in letting the needs of the story influence where sections or acts or plot points should go.
Still, by utilizing this structure, however loosely, you can be sure you will have a strong framework for your story, and that’s the objective here.
Don’t Start Your Novel in the Wrong Place
Writers often start their novel in the wrong place. Many first novels I critique don’t have this first turning point at all. Often characters are just going about their ordinary lives without any key event occurring to set up the goal for the novel. Those novels—no surprise—often don’t feature a goal of any kind.
This is often the case with fantasy novels in which a character undergoes a journey, and things happen to him along the way. What readers are getting is essentially a string of random scenes showing the ups and downs of a character’s life. In other words, there is no point to the story.
Readers expect a point. They expect some Inciting Incident, too, to get the story rolling.
These turning points aren’t arbitrary; they’re the key milestones of a strong story.
So take the time to understand each of these turning points, which is necessary in order to create your first layer of ten key scenes.
Point 1: “Opportunity”
Let’s look at the first key turning point: “Opportunity.” Yes, this is the Inciting Incident. Hauge puts it so nicely: “An event occurs that creates desire in the protagonist. Reader gets a glimpse of their longing or need.”
Ah, core need. How often I harp on this. Protagonists (and all main characters) need motivation.
We do things for a reason (however wise or stupid), and your protagonist needs a strong reason to chase after her goal. We bond with characters whose needs are clear. We see what they care about, what they’re passionate about, what they love to do, what they believe in. But underneath all that is the need. A basic, maybe even primal, need.
Every great story has this. Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind needs love. She sure hasn’t a clue what it is or how to get it. But it’s her core need.
Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games needs to protect and care for her family. Her core need means she has to be courageous and self-sacrificing.
Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird needs to champion human rights and cannot allow society to pressure him to compromise his core values.
What’s your protagonist’s need? If he doesn’t have one, you’re in trouble.
That Inciting Incident, which is designed specifically to shift your character in a specific new direction (to ultimately deal with the premised situation), can’t create a “desire” in your protagonist if you haven’t fashioned a character who has a strong core need.
In the book The Martian, the Inciting Incident has already occurred (though in the film, it’s shown in the opening scenes). The protagonist Mark Watney has been stranded on Mars. What “desire” does that event create in Watney? The desire to survive. That first turning point, that incident, now shifts Watney’s former goal (to study Mars and collect samples, then return home with the crew) to a new goal.
Did you catch that? His former goal has now been replaced with a new goal.
While it’s not always best to set up the goal for your protagonist in the opening scene (that’s going to depend on your story), you do want that new direction so that by the 25% mark, the goal is fixed.
The Inciting Incident Launches Your Story
Most writers know they need an Inciting Incident or initial disturbance near the start of the book. Yet, I see way too many novels in which there really isn’t a strong impacting incident. Or it’s in the wrong place.
I recently did a fifty-page critique on a novel (and it wasn’t the author’s first novel either) that had fifty pages of setup. Backstory. Telling all about how the characters met, fell in love, got married, etc.
What was the stated premise? Basically, it told
of a man who has something precious taken from him and must face danger and horror to get that thing back. Huh? What did the first fifty pages have to do with any of that? Nothing.
That Inciting Incident wasn’t there. I imagine it shows up at some point later, but that’s way too late. The Inciting Incident has to come at the start of the story. It launches the story. Catapults it. You don’t want your story sitting in that little catapult bucket for weeks just waiting for someone to hit the lever and send it flying.
A ship’s voyage begins when it’s launched. Not when it’s sitting dry-docked for weeks.
Every great story is about some character in his ordinary world that gets veered off in a new or specific direction due to some incident. Life is moving along, and suddenly an opportunity presents itself, for good or ill—or both.
Whether it’s a parent’s kid getting kidnapped, a violent storm blowing into town, a ship of mutant dinosaurs or zombies that land on shore, or a young woman meeting a hot man, novels need that Inciting Incident to launch the premise.
This really isn’t all that hard, right?
Where Does the First Turning Point Occur?
The Inciting Incident or opportunity needs to come at the beginning of your story—before or at about the ten percent mark. If you have a four-hundred page novel (well, you may not yet know how many pages your book will end up having, at this point), that incident is going to show up around page forty. Or sooner.
You don’t need to take all that much time for setup, even in a fantasy novel. You just need enough to introduce the protagonist and her world, her core need, the stakes and conflict for the story (personal and public), and the other principal players in the story.
