Great novels don’t hook readers by accident. They strategically build up tension and feelings, then release them at just the right moment. This perfect timing isn’t about fancy writing tricks; it’s baked into how the story itself is built.

When a story pulls readers through the pages so smoothly they forget all about the clock, it’s not just clever words doing the work—it’s smart structure doing its job. That irresistible “just one more chapter” feeling happens when the story’s building blocks create a natural flow that keeps readers turning pages without even thinking about it.

Stories built on four-act structure (three-act structure minus the oversized, saggy middle) hit those sweet spots consistently. These natural turning points occur at the quarter mark, halfway point, and three-quarter mark, never allowing any section of the story to drag on too long.

Missing these points by a substantial margin results in a misshapen book with sagging or surging momentum. A lumbering, oversized Act 1 bores readers by taking too long to get moving. A missing midpoint creates that notorious bane of three-act story structure, the “mushy middle.” And a mistimed dark moment, one that hits too soon or straggles in too late, can make even a potentially explosive climax fall flat.

Applying story structure to your novel doesn’t imply blind adherence to some lockstep formula. What it suggests is the wisdom of tapping into a storytelling form readers already get—the same ups and downs that have made stories work since people first shared them around the fire.

That pattern shows up everywhere, from novels to movies to symphonies. “It is interesting to note that within the structure of classical music for several centuries known as sonata form, the first act of three was called Exposition, followed by Development and Recapitulation,” notes screenwriter Scott Myers. It’s no accident these sound familiar—they’re the same building blocks of the four-act structure we recognize in novels.

Act 1: Exposition As the story opens, readers discover the character’s situation and witness their internal disunity.

Act 2: Development The character reacts to the story challenge, which puts pressure on their internal issues, beginning the process of deconstruction.

Act 3: Development When their initial efforts don’t pay off, the character pushes for more proactive progress. They may already be reconstructing their internal balance.

Act 4: Recapitulation External forces (plot) and internal forces (character arc) come together to achieve synthesis, unity, and resolution.

The mix of plot and character through these four phases gives your story its momentum. Early on, readers feel they’re on a journey headed somewhere specific. Each act pulls them closer to what they think is the story’s destination. And those turning points between acts? They’re the rocket fuel that launches readers from one part to the next.

Turning Point 1

Between Act 1 and Act 2, about 25% into the story

Turning Point 1 inextricably tangles the protagonist in the story’s web. It’s that big moment when they have to deal with the main story conflict head on, whether they want to or not, as the story ship irrevocably leaves the dock for a specific destination or goal.

How does Turning Point 1 serve readers?  By now, readers have plowed through a good chunk of your book, about 20 to 25 percent. That’s a real investment of time. If your main character is still just poking around the story’s starting situation at this point, readers might decide there’s no real point to your story—and they’ll bail.

Books that suck readers in often hit that first big turning point earlier than the textbook quarter mark, often around 20% in. This gives readers that crucial “I need to know how this turns out” feeling before they have a chance to get bored.

Turning Point 2

Between Act 2 and Act 3, about 50% into the story

Turning Point 2, the midpoint complication, injects a fundamental plot twist that flips your protagonist’s strategy on its head. Whatever they tried in the first half of the book just isn’t cutting it, or something big has changed or come to light—and now they need a new approach. The early plan (the easy way) isn’t working anymore; now your character has to push beyond what they thought would be necessary or what they believe they can handle (the hard way).

How does Turning Point 2 serve readers? Stories can’t feel like a laundry list of “All the Stuff I Gotta Take Care of Before the Inevitable Climax.” The midpoint keeps your story from bogging down in a monotonous slog toward the same old goal.

Turning Point 3

Between Act 3 and Act 4, about 75% into the story

Turning Point 3 pulls all the conflicts together, creating your protagonist’s absolute low point, their “dark night of the soul.” With hope seemingly extinguished and success looking impossible, this moment sets up everything that follows, making the final resolution meaningful instead of simply predictable.

How does Turning Point 3 serve readers? This rock-bottom moment gives your character somewhere to push off from as they rally for the climax. For readers, it cranks up the suspense. Can your protagonist really pull this off? How? This turning point hits readers with that emotional gut-punch showing exactly what will be lost if your character gives up now. It turns readers from spectators into allies, cheering your protagonist on: Get back in there. Find your guts. Stand up and fight for what matters.

Irresistible Momentum

These turning points aren’t random checkboxes in some rigid formula—they’re powerful currents that pull stories forward. Each one catapults your story into its next phase with fresh energy and urgency. This natural momentum keeps reading turning pages late into the night, whispering “just one more chapter” despite their 6 a.m. alarm.

That’s the power of turning points: They transform your story from words on a page into a voyage readers can’t help but follow all the way to the end.

LISA POISSO - Resident Writing Coach

Lisa Poisso specializes in helping new and emerging fiction writers. A veteran of the disciplined world of classical dance, she brings that same practiced artistry to writing—where structure, form, and technique are springboards that give you freedom of movement on the page. Explore her Writing & Editing Resources for valuable tools to develop your manuscript, and subscribe to the Writes of Fiction newsletter to receive Lisa’s hand-picked writing advice delivered directly to your inbox. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Lisa below.

The post Best Ways to Pace Your Story’s Key Moments appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

What secret is your character keeping? Why are they safeguarding it? What’s at stake if it’s discovered? Does it need to come out at some point, or should it remain hidden?

This is some of the important information you need to know about your character’s secrets—and they will have secrets, because everyone does. They’re thorny little time bombs composed of fear, deceit, stress, and conflict that, when detonated, threaten to destroy everything the character holds dear.

So, of course, you should assemble them. And we can’t wait to help.

This thesaurus provides brainstorming fodder for a host of secrets that could plague your character. Use it to explore possible secrets, their underlying causes, how they might play into the overall story, and how to realistically write a character who is hiding them—all while establishing reader empathy and interest.

Maybe your character is…

Pregnant

ABOUT THIS SECRET: While pregnancy is often cause for celebration, a character who becomes pregnant accidentally or under adverse circumstances—as the result of an affair or a rape, without a partner’s support, or even against her own wishes—might be desperate to keep it a secret. She might struggle with fear or shame, not only about the pregnancy itself but also by what could follow if the news gets out.

SPECIFIC FEARS THAT MAY DRIVE THE NEED FOR SECRECY: Becoming a Parent, Being a Burden to Others, Being Capable of Harm, Being Judged, Being Unable to Achieve a Dream, Change, Humiliation, Losing Autonomy, Losing Financial Security, Losing the Respect of Others, One’s Genetics, Regret, Relational Commitment, Repeating a Cycle of Abuse

HOW THIS SECRET COULD HOLD THE CHARACTER BACK
Having to avoid close friends and family (because they’re the most likely to notice something has changed)
Losing access to the people who would offer advice and support; having to go through the situation alone
Not being able to pursue desired career opportunities
Being consumed by guilt and shame (for being pregnant to begin with, from constantly lying to loved ones, etc.)

BEHAVIORS OR HABITS THAT HELP HIDE THIS SECRET
Wearing baggy clothes
Running the tap in the bathroom to mask signs of morning sickness
Embracing future plans that would be difficult for a pregnant person (scuba diving, extensive travel, etc.)
Not making pregnancy-related plans (buying maternity clothing, taking prenatal vitamins, etc.)

ACTIVITIES OR TENDENCIES THAT MAY RAISE SUSPICIONS
Gaining weight
Giving up smoking or alcohol
A pregnancy test being found in the garbage
The character suddenly wanting a commitment from her partner

SITUATIONS THAT MAKE KEEPING THIS SECRET A CHALLENGE 
Having to change clothes in front of others (in a locker room, hotel room, etc.)
Canceling a big event that will take place after the baby is born (one that will be hard or impossible to attend with a baby)
Developing a pregnancy-related condition that requires bedrest or hospitalization
Sharing the secret with someone who proves to be untrustworthy (the boyfriend, a close friend, a family member, etc.)

Other Secret Thesaurus entries can be found here.

Need More Descriptive Help?

While this thesaurus is still in development, the rest of our descriptive collection (18 unique thesauri and growing) is accessible through the One Stop for Writers THESAURUS database.

If you like, swing by and check out the video walkthrough for this site, then give our Free Trial a spin.

ANGELA ACKERMAN

Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.

The post Character Secret Thesaurus Entry: Being Pregnant appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Actions have consequences—that’s what makes a story tick. A story begins when events around a character push them into action. Those actions create new situations, and those situations push the character into even tougher choices. Watching this chain reaction unfold is what keeps readers glued to the pages.

When we call a story “entertaining,” we’re really talking about something deeper: the chance to step into someone else’s experience. We want to understand their choices and see how their decisions mirror our own journey.

We’re not reading strictly to find out what happens, but neither are we reading only to understand why. Instead, we’re fascinated by the ripple effect of how one dynamic feeds the other.

A satisfying story does two things at once. It sweeps us into an absorbing plot while simultaneously easing us into the vicarious experience of a character’s inner transformation. Plot events shape the character’s options, and their choices then create new situations—a self-perpetuating cycle of action and reaction that creates the story.

Are stories plot-based, or are they character-based? The answer is yes.
Story is the synthesis of both. Plot shapes characters, and characters drive plot. Stories draw their power from the interplay between the two.

Here’s how plot and character organically wind together in classic Western storytelling, act by act.

Act 1: Welcome to the Ordinary World

Key Concepts

Act 1: The first quarter of the story

Plot Keywords: status quo, the normal world, the ordinary world

Character Keywords: disunity, inauthenticity

The story opens on a character living in disunity and inauthenticity, although they don’t realize that yet. Something about their life is lacking, internally or externally or both.

The first act introduces the character, builds the story world and its time, place, and rules, and plants the seeds of change. This sets the chain of action and reaction that drives everything to come, creating the plot that the character will spend the rest of the story pursuing and wrestling with.

Act 1: This act is a story about how inauthenticity and disunity arrive in this character’s life.

Turning Point 1 (end of Act 1): This is how the character resolves to fix the problem created by inauthenticity or disunity.

Act 2: The Easy Way Out

Key Concepts

Act 2: The second quarter of the story from 25% to 50%; in three-act structure, this is the first half of Act 2, the part before the midpoint

Plot Keywords: reactive response, the easy way

Character Keywords: deconstruction

The character steps into this quarter of the story ready to tackle their problem, but they’re going about it all wrong. They’re reacting to their new reality without truly understanding it, chasing solutions that look promising but won’t really work. They’re still operating from old patterns and incomplete understanding.

This initial approach begins to crumble as they discover the problem runs deeper than they thought. Their responses slowly deconstruct their familiar worldview, forcing them to question what they believe about themselves and their situation.

Act 2: This act is a story about how the character reactively responds to the problem.

TP2 (end of Act 2—the midpoint): This is the moment the character realizes their reactive response isn’t working. The problem has grown more complex than they imagined, their old worldviews are deconstructing piece by piece, and they must find a new path forward.

Act 3: The Hard Road

Key Concepts

Act 3: The third quarter of the story from 50% to 75%; in three-act structure, this is the second half of Act 2, the part after the midpoint

Plot Keywords: proactive progress, the hard way

Character Keywords: reconstruction

The character enters this act with a new understanding: It’s time to stop reacting and time to start acting. They begin approaching their problem head-on, using newfound tools or information or wisdom, but success doesn’t come easily. The obstacles they face grow to match their increasing capacity.

As they make proactive progress toward their goal, they gradually reconstruct a new worldview to replace what was torn down. But this reconstruction comes at a cost—each step forward requires more from them than the last.

Act 3: This act is a story about how the character makes proactive progress toward solving their problem.

TP3 (end of Act 3): This is the moment when the character’s proactive approach seems to fail despite everything they’ve learned. Though they’ve been reconstructing a stronger sense of self, they hit what appears to be an insurmountable obstacle or dead end.

Act 4: Bringing It All Together

Key Concepts

Act 4: The final quarter of the story, from 75% to the end

Plot Keywords: final push, climax, resolution

Character Keywords: synthesis, unity, authenticity

This is where all threads converge. The character faces their goal and whatever stands in their way, and now they’re armed with something new: authenticity. The climactic breakthrough isn’t just about solving the external problem—it’s about achieving unity between who they are and who they need to be.

Act 4: This act is a story about how the character achieves synthesis, finding their authentic self and moving forward with a new sense of unity.

Climax: This is the moment when the character’s newfound authenticity or unity enables them to solve their problem in a way that would have been impossible before their transformation.

Finding Your Story’s Flow

Each story finds its own rhythm within the cycle of these four acts. Stray too far from their natural flow, though, and the story loses its power. A weak setup leaves readers adrift; without real struggle, victory rings false.

What matters isn’t following a rigid structure but creating a transformative journey. Readers come to witness your character’s evolution from disunity to unity—this is what lingers in their minds long after the final page.

LISA POISSO - Resident Writing Coach

Lisa Poisso specializes in helping new and emerging fiction writers. A veteran of the disciplined world of classical dance, she brings that same practiced artistry to writing—where structure, form, and technique are springboards that give you freedom of movement on the page. Explore her Writing & Editing Resources for valuable tools to develop your manuscript, and subscribe to the Writes of Fiction newsletter to receive Lisa’s hand-picked writing advice delivered directly to your inbox. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Lisa below.

The post The Ripple Effect: How to Weave Plot with Character appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

What secret is your character keeping? Why are they safeguarding it? What’s at stake if it’s discovered? Does it need to come out at some point, or should it remain hidden?

This is some of the important information you need to know about your character’s secrets—and they will have secrets, because everyone does. They’re thorny little time bombs composed of fear, deceit, stress, and conflict that, when detonated, threaten to destroy everything the character holds dear.

So, of course, you should assemble them. And we can’t wait to help.

This thesaurus provides brainstorming fodder for a host of secrets that could plague your character. Use it to explore possible secrets, their underlying causes, how they might play into the overall story, and how to realistically write a character who is hiding them—all while establishing reader empathy and interest.

Maybe your character is…

Is Safeguarding Someone’s Secret

ABOUT THIS SECRET
Sometimes characters are secret-keeper for others, either because they have been asked to, or the character learned something by accident and has chosen not to share it. They could have many reasons for doing so, including a desire to respect the other person’s privacy, protect them from harm, or not wanting to become personally involved in something that could bring them unwanted scrutiny, risk, or danger.

SPECIFIC FEARS THAT MAY DRIVE THE NEED FOR SECRECY: Abandonment, Being Attacked, Being Capable of Harm, Being Labeled, Being Responsible for Others, Being Taken Advantage of, Being Unsafe, Conflict, Letting Others Down, Losing Autonomy, Losing One’s Social Standing, Putting Oneself out There, Relational Commitment

HOW THIS SECRET COULD HOLD THE CHARACTER BACK
Struggling with having to lie to protect the secret
Having to take risks to help the person avoid exposure
Experiencing anxiety or fear over what to do (if the secret is dangerous or harmful)
The secret shattering a close relationship (over knowing what they did) and mourning that loss

BEHAVIORS OR HABITS THAT HELP HIDE THIS SECRET
Shutting down gossip that involves the person and/or what is being hidden
Watching for threats (nosy people making connections, etc.) that could endanger the secret
Steering the conversation away from anything that might lead to discovery
Using misinformation, false rumors, or lies to keep people from learning the truth

ACTIVITIES OR TENDENCIES THAT MAY RAISE SUSPICIONS
Being caught in a lie
Not attending an event the character was expected to but cannot due to the secret
Emotional volatility around the party at fault (e.g., being unable to rein in anger and judgment around the abusive partner of a friend who is keeping her bruises a secret)

SITUATIONS THAT MAKE KEEPING THIS SECRET A CHALLENGE 
Wanting to offer advice but knowing doing so will alert people involved
Wanting to warn someone when that person is unaware the character knows their secret
If suspicions are raised and the danger increases for the character
When keeping the secret means crossing a moral line

Other Secret Thesaurus entries can be found here.

Need More Descriptive Help?

While this thesaurus is still being developed, the rest of our descriptive collection (18 unique thesauri and growing) is accessible through the One Stop for Writers THESAURUS database.

If you like, swing by and check out the video walkthrough for this site, then give our Free Trial a spin.

ANGELA ACKERMAN

Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.

The post Character Secret Thesaurus Entry: Is Safeguarding Someone’s Secret appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

What secret is your character keeping? Why are they safeguarding it? What’s at stake if it’s discovered? Does it need to come out at some point, or should it remain hidden?

This is some of the important information you need to know about your character’s secrets—and they will have secrets, because everyone does. They’re thorny little time bombs composed of fear, deceit, stress, and conflict that, when detonated, threaten to destroy everything the character holds dear.

So, of course, you should assemble them. And we can’t wait to help.

This thesaurus provides brainstorming fodder for a host of secrets that could plague your character. Use it to explore possible secrets, their underlying causes, how they might play into the overall story, and how to realistically write a character who is hiding them—all while establishing reader empathy and interest.

Maybe your character is…

Hiding a Sexual Relationship

ABOUT THIS SECRET
In general, characters don’t discuss who they’re intimate with, but occasionally it becomes a guarded secret as discovery could mean difficult or painful consequences. An age gap, being from different societal classes, a forbidden pairing due to a feud, danger, or a taboo might all be reasons others would condemn and seek to end this relationship. This entry covers scenarios where the characters involved are happy with these encounters and wish them to continue.

SPECIFIC FEARS THAT MAY DRIVE THE NEED FOR SECRECY: A Secret Being Revealed, Abandonment, Being Attacked, Being Judged, Being Labelled, Being Separated from Loved Ones, Being Unsafe, Humiliation, Letting Others Down, Losing Autonomy, Losing One’s Social Standing, Losing the Respect of Others, Never Finding Happiness, Persecution

HOW THIS SECRET COULD HOLD THE CHARACTER BACK
Creating distance in important relationships to avoid accidental discovery
Carrying the weight of guilt (if the character knows this secret will hurt others)
Being unable to talk about something that brings joy
Stress over telling lies, manufacturing excuses, and courting the danger of discovery

BEHAVIORS OR HABITS THAT HELP HIDE THIS SECRET
Arranging meetups for times when other people are busy or absent
Having an activity near the partner’s location to have a legitimate reason for being there
Cultivating trust with others to allow for freedom of movement
Following a protocol (going out when the family is asleep, avoiding the same hotel, etc.)

ACTIVITIES OR TENDENCIES THAT MAY RAISE SUSPICIONS
An observer overhearing a conversation, especially one that contains suggestive innuendo
Being caught somewhere the character shouldn’t be
Being caught purchasing a gift intended for the partner
Losing track of time often, causing others to notice a pattern of absences

SITUATIONS THAT MAKE KEEPING THIS SECRET A CHALLENGE 
Increased scrutiny of the character
Being caught in a lie
Being discovered half-dressed or in bed together
Parental expectations that it’s time to “settle down with someone”

Other Secret Thesaurus entries can be found here.

Need More Descriptive Help?

While this thesaurus is still being developed, the rest of our descriptive collection (18 unique thesauri and growing) is accessible through the One Stop for Writers THESAURUS database.

If you like, swing by and check out the video walkthrough for this site, then give our Free Trial a spin.

ANGELA ACKERMAN

Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.

The post Character Secret Thesaurus Entry: Hiding a Sexual Relationship appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Writers come in a variety pack of processes. The most common types – regardless of genre – are pantsers, plotters, and plantsers. We know these terms well, right?

• Pantsers sit down at the keyboard and see what falls out of their fingertips for a while to figure out how the story will take shape.
• Plotters lay everything out in advance, so they have a guide for their story.
• Those rebel Plantsters do a little bit of planning – maybe the inciting incident and the turning points, possibly the All Is Lost moment – but not too much before they write away.

And Then There Are Story Quilters Like Me

These storytellers might do one or all of the three methods above, but probably not in the same way. Story Quilters are writers who divide books into individual scenes that they stitch together later into a cohesive story.

If I want this brain of mine to make continual progress, I must take a story down to a bite-sized chunk of writing. I am not alone in this.

Some writers like Diana Gabaldon, Lorna Landvik, and Janet Fitch (and little old me!) don’t see their stories from beginning to end. Instead, we see glimpses and glimmers that we write down until the whole fabric of the story becomes clear. Janet Fitch originally wrote White Oleander as a series of short stories. Lorna Landvik (Angry Housewives Eating BonBons) has been known to string a clothesline down her hallway during the editing phase, with every scene on an index card. She walks the hall, shuffling the cards around, until the story feels right to her.

The idea of doing it this way gives most of my fellow scriveners hives but hear me out. I have good reasons for this.

Sometimes a Book Just Feels Way Too Big

For some writers, the idea of an entire novel can paralyze you and send your muse back under the covers for the day.

Maybe it’s an ADD thing, or our executive function is too unreliable for a project as big as a book. Maybe focus is a monumental achievement some days. Maybe you are sandwiching writing in between all the other things you must do and you only have a tiny slice of time.

All I know is that I tried a gajillion “linear” beginning-to-end ways in my quest to get a book off the ground and finished and none of them worked. I could start a story, but I couldn’t seem to keep my focus and finish the darn thing. I tried many many fancy things: Fast Draft, the W-Plot, the Snowflake Method. They all helped me be a better writer, but none of them got me to “The End.”  

The only thing I’ve found that can get this brain to the end of a story is to embrace my inner scene writer and let her lead the way.

Let’s get this scene-writing ball rolling with some definitions.

What Is a Scene?

I love how Margaret Dilloway describes it in this post:

Each scene is an event that changes the character’s situation in a meaningful way.

• Every scene needs something to happen.
• Each scene produces a change achieved through conflict.
• Each scene shows how the character responds under pressure.

The hard part: If the scene doesn’t meet these criteria, take it out.

Further reading: C.S. Lakin did a post here at WHW with 10+ questions to consider when crafting a scene. Awesome stuff.

How Long Is a Scene?

Scene length varies depending on a lot of factors, including the genre, pacing preferences for the scene, and the author’s personal style. While thrillers and action-adventure stories often have shorter, snappier scenes—say, in the 1,000-word range—the word count typically goes up in literary fiction, historical fiction, and fantasy stories. So let’s take an average and say our scenes will run around 2,000 words long.

Here’s some math on this (knowing the numbers will change for longer scenes):

If each page is 250 words, that maps out to roughly 4-20 pages per scene.

• Doing the math for novel-length fiction, you will end up with 50-60 scenes per novel if you keep your scenes at about 2,000 words.

Keep in mind that just as white space draws the eye down the page, shorter scenes tend to keep your readers turning pages. “Only four or five more pages? I can keep reading…”

We’ve all done that. So if shorter scenes work for your story, they can also have the added benefit of encouraging that page-turning effect for readers.  

What Does It Mean to Be a “Scene Writer?” (Aka Story Quilter)

As I mentioned above, all those cool linear “big picture” methods I mentioned above aren’t small enough for me to stay focused. My busy brain says, “Ooooh…GLITTER!” And I’m off doing something else, instead of writing those 50-ish scenes that make up a novel-length story.

It was Diana Gabaldon who shined light on scene-writing as a possible writing process. I read some articles about Gabaldon and how she wrote the Outlander series.

In her own words:

Anyway, yes; I write just about everything piecemeal, including nonfiction articles, book reviews and essays. It’s effective because it works; I’m never held up stewing about What Comes Next— I don’t care what comes next, I just care about something I can see happening. The order of the happening has a logic to it (often, more than one), and that will become clear to me as I work.

When I read about Gabaldon, a light went on in my head. I finally accepted the truth: I’m a scene writer.

The scenes don’t even have to be in order, they just have to be finite. I need to be able to open a writing program, create a document, and save it in the correct folder. I don’t have to see anything except that scene during the writing session.

How Can YOU Use Scene Writing to Your Advantage?

Scene writing isn’t just a way of life for Story Quilters, it’s a powerful weapon in any writer’s creative arsenal.

One of my writing friends, Laura Drake, is a linear writer who gets stuck in the middle of every book. As a pantser, she comes to that terrible predictable place, that muggy limbo land, where her story is going nowhere and she doesn’t know what to do. She wonders if she should quit writing the story altogether. Every. Single. Book.

When she calls me from Limbo Land, you already know what I tell her to do: write a throwaway scene.

Examples of out-of-order scenes:

• An interview with your main character.
• A character engaging in a hobby you make up on the spot.
• A quick trip through their closet, car trunk, or underwear drawer.
• Figure out their favorite song, and why it’s their favorite.
• Head over to One Stop for Writers and use some of those cool tools. (Character Builder fun, anyone?)

The point of this exercise is to invite your muse to take you to the next place in your story. And even if you don’t use the scene in your book, you can use it as a marketing tool. Readers adore Bonus Scenes.

Final Thought

Everyone must learn their own process and lean into it to bring their stories into being. For some, that learning journey is the hardest part of being a writer.

You might be part of the triple threat writing process variety pack I mentioned at the top of this post, or a quirky Quilter like me, but I hope you experiment until you discover what gets you to “The End.” Your process doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s.

Whether you’re a Pantser, Plotter, Plantser, or Story Quilter, every single one of us has to embrace our stories one scene at a time.

JENNY HANSEN - Resident Writing Coach

Jenny Hansen provides brand storytelling, LinkedIn coaching, and copywriting for financial services firms. By night, she writes humor, memoirs, women’s fiction, and short stories. After 20+ years as a corporate trainer, she loves this sit-down-and-work thing. As a co-founder of Writers In the Storm (WITS), Jenny has supported writers since 2010. WITS, recognized by Writer’s Digest as a top website for writers, offers weekly posts on writing craft and inspiration. Jenny is currently revising a memoir about her cancer journey, with a style described as “get busy laughing, or get busy crying.”

Find her on WITS, Facebook, or Instagram.

The post Writing a Novel, Scene by Scene appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

What secret is your character keeping? Why are they safeguarding it? What’s at stake if it’s discovered? Does it need to come out at some point, or should it remain hidden?

This is some of the important information you need to know about your character’s secrets—and they will have secrets, because everyone does. They’re thorny little time bombs composed of fear, deceit, stress, and conflict that, when detonated, threaten to destroy everything the character holds dear.

So, of course, you should assemble them. And we can’t wait to help.

This thesaurus provides brainstorming fodder for a host of secrets that could plague your character. Use it to explore possible secrets, their underlying causes, how they might play into the overall story, and how to realistically write a character who is hiding them—all while establishing reader empathy and interest.

Maybe your character…

Coveting Someone Else’s Life

ABOUT THIS SECRET: Few things are equal, including advantages, opportunities, burdens or struggles. So, when others have more luck, support, or success, it’s easy to envy them and what they have, even to the point of bitterness. If anyone finds out though, pity follows, so your character will try to keep what they covet a secret.

SPECIFIC FEARS THAT MAY DRIVE THE NEED FOR SECRECY: Becoming What One Hates, Being Judged, Being Pitied, Being Unable to Achieve a Dream, Failure, Having No Purpose, Humiliation, Losing the Respect of Others, Mediocrity, Never Finding Happiness

HOW THIS SECRET COULD HOLD THE CHARACTER BACK
Being unable to appreciate the good in life because they can only see what is lacking
Causing loved ones to feel “not good enough” because the character is never happy
Creating a self-fulfilling prophecy from the belief that their life can never be as good as another’s
Becoming increasingly pessimistic
Not living their own life because they’re obsessed with someone else’s

BEHAVIORS OR HABITS THAT HELP HIDE THIS SECRET
Avoiding the person who has what the character wants
Changing the topic if the conversation begins to highlight the great life someone else has
The character deflecting questions that could reveal insecurities
Working hard to control their emotions when the other person is around

ACTIVITIES OR TENDENCIES THAT MAY RAISE SUSPICIONS
Moodiness (especially when the other person is around or mentioned)
A habit of minimizing the other’s accomplishments by attributing them to luck
Overcompensating; being overly warm or complimentary to hide envy
Trying to force opportunities in hopes of changing their life to be like another’s
Passive-aggressiveness (talking behind the person’s back, sarcasm, back-handed compliments)

SITUATIONS THAT MAKE KEEPING THIS SECRET A CHALLENGE 
Falling in love with that other person’s partner or spouse
Seeing luck favor the other person and the perceived unfairness of it carrying the character to a breaking point
Discovering the person they envy is a fraud or unworthy in some way (disillusionment)
Suffering yet another disappointment that seems unfair or unjust

Other Secret Thesaurus entries can be found here.

Need More Descriptive Help?

While this thesaurus is still being developed, the rest of our descriptive collection (18 unique thesauri and growing) is accessible through the One Stop for Writers THESAURUS database.

If you like, swing by and check out the video walkthrough for this site, then give our Free Trial a spin.

ANGELA ACKERMAN

Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.

The post Character Secret Thesaurus Entry: Coveting Someone Else’s Life appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

What secret is your character keeping? Why are they safeguarding it? What’s at stake if it’s discovered? Does it need to come out at some point, or should it remain hidden?

This is some of the important information you need to know about your character’s secrets—and they will have secrets, because everyone does. They’re thorny little time bombs composed of fear, deceit, stress, and conflict that, when detonated, threaten to destroy everything the character holds dear.

So, of course, you should assemble them. And we can’t wait to help.

This thesaurus provides brainstorming fodder for a host of secrets that could plague your character. Use it to explore possible secrets, their underlying causes, how they might play into the overall story, and how to realistically write a character who is hiding them—all while establishing reader empathy and interest.

Maybe your character…

Monitoring Someone Without Their Knowledge

ABOUT THIS SECRET: While there are legitimate uses of monitoring (say, placing a legal wiretap on a suspect’s phone, collecting intel as a private detective or undercover cop, etc.) privacy laws and heavy regulation usually require it be disclosed or in plain view (but never in a private space such as a bathroom). However, what’s legal and what isn’t doesn’t concern characters on the unsavory end of the spectrum—criminals, Peeping Toms, captors, hackers, stalkers, cyberbullies, blackmailers, or other characters who operate outside the law. This entry focuses on these character types.

SPECIFIC FEARS THAT MAY DRIVE THE NEED FOR SECRECY: A Secret Being Revealed, Being Attacked, Being Unsafe, Discrimination, Government, Persecution

HOW THIS SECRET COULD HOLD THE CHARACTER BACK
Having to keep people at arm’s length so their activities are not discovered
Being torn over monitoring another if feelings become involved
Developing an obsession that takes over their life
Being unable to have genuine relationships (due to a fear of discovery)
Not seeking help for mental and emotional conditions that may be lurking beneath the surface

BEHAVIORS OR HABITS THAT HELP HIDE THIS SECRET
Avoiding friendships and personal connections
Having a secure area to plan and store items needed to monitor (computers, hard drives, etc.)
Taking precautions to stay undetected and not raise suspicions
Being disciplined (resisting temptation to take things too far or get close enough for discovery)
Following certain protocols to stay undetected
Being someone forgettable (being polite but not memorable, seeing boring and harmless)

ACTIVITIES OR TENDENCIES THAT MAY RAISE SUSPICIONS
Being a recluse, causing others around them to wonder what the character is up to
Carelessness (sloppy hacking, obvious daytime survellience, etc.) that is noticed
A cold, detached demeanor (that makes the character memorable to others)
Being discovered in a place they are not supposed to be
Not hiding monitoring equipment well enough, leading to its discovery

SITUATIONS THAT MAKE KEEPING THIS SECRET A CHALLENGE 
Circumstances that suddenly change (like a loss of privacy)
An unforeseen challenge that the character is unprepared for
Needing to take in a roommate to keep up with costs
Having a nosy neighbor or family member
Becoming attached to a target

Other Secret Thesaurus entries can be found here.

Need More Descriptive Help?

While this thesaurus is still being developed, the rest of our descriptive collection (18 unique thesauri and growing) is accessible through the One Stop for Writers THESAURUS database.

If you like, swing by and check out the video walkthrough for this site, then give our Free Trial a spin.

ANGELA ACKERMAN

Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.

The post Character Secret Thesaurus Entry: Monitoring Someone Without Their Knowledge appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

In any discussion of story structure, the three-act model inevitably dominates the conversation. Even as plotting methods such as Save the Cat, the Hero’s Journey, and the Snowflake Method gain popularity, the classic beginning-middle-end form reaching back to the dramatic theories of Aristotle remains the essential core.

But here’s the rub: Three-act structure produces a disproportionately large act in the middle of a novel—the double-stuff cream in the three-act Oreo—leaving writers with a puffy, gooey act notoriously recognized as the most difficult section to write. Act 2 of a three-act story is twice the length of the other acts, forcing writers to combat the infamous “saggy middle” effect using a hodge-podge of plot tangents and pacing tricks.

But it’s not the writing that makes the double-stuffed Act 2 feel like such a slog; it’s the structure itself. The loss of momentum is a symptom of a missing component that flattens plot and character development: the midpoint complication.

The Frog in the Boiling Pot

A well-paced story thrives on rising action, tugging readers into a web of progressively escalating complications. This stream of gains and setbacks turns up the heat on the protagonist, like a frog in the proverbial soon-to-boil pot of hot water.

But when complications occur solely at the scene level, readers may not feel as though their hand has been thrust against the blistering heat of the pot. Their experience is more likely to resemble that of our oblivious friend the frog—they may never notice the relentlessly mounting heat. They may lose interest and hop out of the story pot long before it comes to a boil and the frog finally takes action.

While fans of slow-burn stories do exist, most readers prefer regular injections of momentum. And the exciting change they’re looking for—the stuff that sends plots skittering in new directions and forces protagonists to grapple with impossible choices—is driven not by incremental temperature increases but by large-scale structural movement: story turning points.

What Do Turning Points Do?

Turning points are a structural element of storytelling. A turning point is a pivot point between two acts, forming a joint between one limb of the narrative and the next.

It’s not that a turning point is simply a dramatic, landmark event. That’s missing the point. A turning point fills a specific role in the story: It turns the story in a new direction. It keeps the story living, breathing, evolving … changing.

Turning points work on the basis of stimulus–response. The first element is a stimulus: a significant action, event, or revelation in the plot. The second element is the protagonist’s response to that stimulus. Their reaction determines the tenor and direction of the entire next act.

Recurring, well-paced turning points keep the story from deteriorating into a dull, predictable march toward an inevitable climax.

And this brings us back to the downfall of three-act structure.

The Midpoint Complication

Without a fundamental opportunity for narrative and character change during the second act of a three-act story, readers and writers are likely to flounder. But dividing the second act to create four acts instead of three creates an additional turning point—and another opportunity for the protagonist’s choices to determine the story’s direction.

The midpoint complication, which falls between the two middle acts, offers the perfect story shakeup. It sends the plot in a new direction or complicates the protagonist’s choices with significant new information.

Four-act structure eliminates the long, sagging middle act of three-act structure, prolonging the initial strategy the protagonist chooses at the end of Act 1. The midpoint complication injects new energy into the quest. Readers can visibly see the tides begin to turn. The protagonist’s initial attempts may not be paying off yet, but the hard knocks they’re taking are building determination and resourcefulness.

The midpoint complication serves as a crucial pivot, channeling the story’s energy from reactive response to proactive progress, from the easy way to the hard way, from deconstruction to reconstruction. This form helps writers avoid the common pitfall of the sagging middle act, buoying readers from the first act through the last.

LISA POISSO - Resident Writing Coach

Lisa Poisso specializes in helping new and emerging fiction writers. A veteran of the disciplined world of classical dance, she brings that same practiced artistry to writing—where structure, form, and technique are springboards that give you freedom of movement on the page. Explore her Writing & Editing Resources for valuable tools to develop your manuscript, and subscribe to the Writes of Fiction newsletter to receive Lisa’s hand-picked writing advice delivered directly to your inbox. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Lisa below.

The post The Missing Link in Three-Act Structure appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Structure is critical to every story. And it’s highly likely that if you are reading this article, you are familiar with the most basic shape of story structure. This one:

Rising Action: A character starts with a goal, runs into an antagonist, and struggles through conflict.  

Climax: Eventually that conflict hits a peak, where the protagonist will succeed or fail definitively.

Falling Action: With the conflict resolved, the tension dissipates into falling action, and a new normal is usually established.

This is story’s foundational, basic structure. Nearly every satisfying story follows this structure. But this is still rather simplistic, and you can get more complex and detailed than this.

For one, it’s helpful to know that the climax is also what’s called a “turning point”–it turns the direction of the plot. Notice how the story’s “line” in the diagram quite literally, visually turns, from rising action, to falling action at the climax. The plot was going one direction and then wham–it’s now going a different direction. 

A turning point is also known as a “plot point” or a “plot turn.” So we have three different terms for more or less the same thing. One of the quickest ways to gauge if a turning point has happened, is to ask if the character’s current goal or plan has shifted in some way. If the answer is yes, you likely hit a turning point.

The climax is the biggest, most recognizable turning point in a story, and it most definitely shifts the protagonist’s goal–because he will either definitively achieve (or fail to get) that goal. You can learn more about turning points here.

The climax, however, isn’t the only turning point in a story.

In reality, this basic structural shape works as a fractal or a Russian nesting doll.  There are smaller versions of it that exist within the big one.

Just below the narrative arc as a whole, we have another structural unit: acts.

Most commonly, we see stories with three acts. We may view these as beginning, middle, and end.

Frequently, Act II (the middle) will be split in half, because it’s the longest–often taking up 50% of the story. So we have Act II, Part I, and Act II, Part II.

This means, generally speaking, we can divide most stories into quarters.
Act I (Beginning) takes up ~1 – 25% of the story.
Act II, Part I (Middle) takes up ~ 26 – 50%
Act II, Part II (Middle) takes up ~ 51 – 75%
Act III (End) takes up ~76 – 100%

I’m well aware that some writers dislike percentages, but percentages are the quickest way to explain when something should typically happen in a story, and they are just guidelines. Not all stories break down like this, and there is certainly room for variation.

Still, generally speaking, each of these quarters, follows this same shape–it’s just smaller and less pronounced than that of the whole narrative arc.

Each quarter should have a climb, hit a peak, and then have some falling action (which is usually made up of the character’s reaction to what happened at the peak). That peak is a turning point.

For example, in Act I of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, the rising action is Harry dealing with the Dursleys and then trying to get the mysterious letter. It hits its peak when Hagrid arrives and reveals “Yer a wizard, Harry.” That’s the major turning point the beginning has been building toward. Notice it shifts Harry’s goal: Now he wants to go to Hogwarts to learn magic (which will take us into Act II).

Commonly, act-level turning points are called “plot points,” so you may have heard of them referred to as “Plot Point 1,” “Plot Point 2,” or the “Midpoint.” 

However, in other approaches, they may go by different names. For example, Save the Cat! breaks down like this:

Each one is the major “climactic” plot turn of that quarter.

But this shape goes even smaller.

Inside of acts, we have scenes.

Most scenes should also have the rising action of conflict, the peak of a turning point, and the falling action of the character’s reaction.

Most scenes should also have an antagonist and goal.

The difference is that these things will be even smaller and less pronounced–because they fit inside acts.

For example, in Harry Potter, we have the scene where Harry is trying to find Platform 9 3/4 at King’s Cross–that’s his goal. But he’s met with obstacles: he can’t find the platform, he can’t find anyone to help him, he has to run at a barrier. The turn is Harry successfully getting through that barrier; notice it shifts his goal–because he achieved his scene-level desire. The falling action is him reacting to and taking in the platform.

This basic shape can go even smaller, fitting within passages of scenes, or it can be expanded into something bigger, creating a nice structure for a book series.

This basic shape permeates just about everything. 

SEPTEMBER C FAWKES - Resident Writing Coach

September C. Fawkes is a freelance editor, writing instructor, and award-winning writing tip blogger. She has edited for award-winning and best-selling authors as well as beginning writers. Her blog won the Writer’s Digest 101 Best Websites for Writers Award, Query Letter’s Top Writing Blog Award and has over 500 writing tips. She offers a live online writing course, “The Triarchy Method,” where she personally guides 10 students through developing their best books by focusing on the “bones” of story.

To learn more, visit SeptemberCFawkes.com and grab her AMAZING free guide on Crafting Powerful Protagonists. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with September below.

The post Story Structure as a Fractal appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

If you’ve researched story structure at all, you know there are many models out there, and they’re all slightly different. The most popular forms tend to follow the three-act structure, which resonates with many readers regardless of genre or format.

• Act 1 sets things up for readers by establishing the protagonist, their story goal, the setting, and all the basics.
• Act 2 builds on that information, introducing escalating conflicts (both internal and external) that block the character from their objective.
• Act 3 resolves the story conflict in a showdown that determines whether the protagonist succeeds or fails at achieving their goal.

Within this simple framework, certain events need to happen not only to progress the plot, but also to encourage the character to become more self-aware, make positive internal progress, overcome setbacks, and so on. This journey is essential if your character is to progress realistically from Once upon a time to The End. It’s not an easy path, though, and sometimes characters balk; they’d rather stay where it’s comfortable and safe, thank you very much. The status quo may be stagnant or even unhealthy, but it’s what they know.

But a stalled character means a stalled story—which is death for reader engagement. At times like these, your protagonist needs a nudge (or a full-fledged shove) to reach the next important story event. This is where amplifiers come in.

An emotion amplifier is a specific state or condition that influences what the character feels by disrupting their equilibrium and reducing their ability to think critically.

Distraction, bereavement, illness, and exhaustion are examples of amplifiers that create friction.

To illustrate how amplifiers get characters moving while also supporting story structure, let’s examine a popular (and my favorite) model: Michael Hauge’s Six-Stage Plot Structure, which is beautifully explored in his book Writing Screenplays that Sell. In the right order and at the right places, these points move the character through the story in a logical fashion without sacrificing pace.

Six-Stage Plot Structure Model

Setup: The protagonist is living in their everyday world, but they’re emotionally stuck or dissatisfied in some way.

Opportunity (Turning Point 1): Called the catalyst in other models, this point consists of a challenge, crisis, or opportunity that pushes the protagonist into pursuing a certain story goal. That decision sets them on a journey that sweeps them out of their ordinary world and into a new one.

New Situation: The protagonist is adjusting to their new world, figuring out the rules and their role while dealing with obstacles that crop up. At this point, the character is largely unaware of their own faults and how they contribute to a lack of fulfillment.

Change of Plans (Turning Point 2): Something happens that creates an awakening for the protagonist, clarifying what they need to do to achieve their goal. They begin moving purposefully in that direction.

Progress: Fully conscious of their goal and their new plan, the protagonist takes steps toward success by gaining knowledge, honing skills, or gathering resources and allies. Although they may be growing in self-awareness, they’re not yet able to fully comprehend the depth of internal change that needs to occur.

Point of No Return (Turning Point 3): The protagonist’s situation becomes more difficult than ever as a death or significant loss pushes their goal seemingly out of reach. Forced to face what’s holding them back (their flaws, fears, lies they’ve embraced, and so on), they commit to changing their dysfunctional methods and evolving in the pursuit of their goal.

Complications and Higher Stakes: Though dedicated to personal change and healthier methods, the protagonist is assailed by escalating conflicts and increased stakes that make it more important than ever to reach their objective.

Major Setback (Turning Point 4): The protagonist experiences a devastating setback or failure that makes them doubt everything. Their plan forward will no longer work, and all seems lost. Finally rejecting any beliefs, biases, or doubts that were holding them back, they adapt their plan.

And so on…

Amplifiers in Story Structure

The flow of a story seems logical when seen through the lens of plot structure, but guess who really dictates this little road trip? Your characters—who don’t always cooperate.

Characters tend to resist change, especially the internal kind. An emotion amplifier pushes them from one point to the next with opportunities for decisions that add volatility, increase vulnerability, and make the situation worse. As the story progresses, particularly in the second half, amplifiers can also begin revealing growth as the characters adapt to new challenges and make better choices.

Look at how amplifiers have been used to this effect in some popular movies and books:

Inebriation: In Sweet Home Alabama, Melanie, who has spent years creating a new life for herself in Manhattan, returns to her hometown to get a divorce, which her estranged husband is reluctant to grant. Frustrated by her lack of success, she gets drunk during the Progress stage, turns nasty, and outs her best friend. This leads directly to the Point of No Return, when she awakens in a hungover stupor and realizes that her horrible behavior has caused her husband to finally sign the divorce papers. She should be excited to be able to put her past behind her and fully recreate herself, but she realizes she’s been pursuing the wrong goal all along.

Instability: The Nostromo vessel is floating in outer space, light years away from help, when an alien makes its way onboard (Alien). In the Complications and Higher Stakes phase of this classic movie, as crew members are picked off one by one, the captain is forced to pursue the alien into the air ducts to try to kill it. He fails, leaving protagonist Ripley as the senior officer with an enhanced security level that enables her to discover the Nostromo’s true mission, which has rendered her and her crew expendable (Major Setback).

Hunger: In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, a father and son travel to the coast in a hard, post-apocalyptic world. During the Progress stage of the story, the father’s hunger drives him to enter a building he otherwise would have avoided. What they find there sends them running for their lives, questioning humanity’s right to survive. They stick to the woods, wet, cold, and hungrier than ever. A quote explains the father’s mindset at this point: “He was beginning to think that death was finally upon them.” Their foray into the house of horrors, driven by extreme hunger, has propelled them to their Point of No Return.

In each of these examples, an amplifier is used to drive the character from one turning point to the next, a technique that could work just as effectively for you. Once you’ve created a basic outline for your project, explore amplifiers that could be placed strategically to propel the character into the various stages of their story.

Choosing the Right Amplifier

Your story’s theme can deliver the perfect amplifier for informing a character’s choices and actions. It may be the same one employed repeatedly (as isolation is used in the movie While You Were Sleeping), or a variety of amplifiers that circle the overall message. If you know the theme for your story, consider options that reinforce it while also steering the plot events.

Genre can also provide ideas. A bleak, post-apocalyptic story like The Road is a natural setting for hunger, cold, and exhaustion. Likewise, attraction and arousal are common amplifiers in romance plots and subplots. Thrillers and action stories often include multiple instances of danger, stress, and mortal peril.

Additional Research

Looking for more information on amplifiers? Check out The Emotion Amplifier Thesaurus. With it’s easy-to-use list format and comprehensive how-to front matter, this resource can show you how to use amplifiers to motivate your characters, add meaningful conflict, and further your story.

You can see all the entries in this book here.

BECCA PUGLISI

Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and its sequels. Her books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling.

The post Need to Get a Stubborn Character Moving? Use an Amplifier appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

For strong storytelling, we need to focus on what’s important and relevant to current story events. That means we shouldn’t info-dump a bunch of irrelevant backstory just because it’s interesting or it’s something we enjoyed developing about our character, as we instead need to keep this story moving forward.

Yet two advanced writing techniques may seem to go against this advice by focusing on showing readers events in the past: flashbacks and dual timeline stories. What are these techniques, when might it make sense to use them, and what’s the difference between flashbacks and dual timelines?

Backstory 101: Use When Necessary

While we do need to be careful with backstory (due to potentially causing pacing issues, etc.), in most stories, it’s essential to include at least some pre-story information. Well-crafted backstory gives readers the context of a character’s issues (like a backstory wound) and emotions, informing readers about what makes the character tick. Backstory often creates a character’s pain and motivation—helping readers comprehend the why.

That said, our goal shouldn’t simply be to include backstory whenever we think readers “need” information. Instead, the most important advice for integrating any style of backstory is that the information must be relevant to the current story events and readers’ understanding of the story.

In general, backstory should be shared:

• only when readers need the context for understanding a character’s current choices and emotions (that why information), such as when their actions or behaviors seem out of character or confusing – and –
• only when that technique is the best way to have readers understand why the character is doing what they’re doing.

Advanced Backstory: Flashbacks vs. Dual Timelines

Normal Backstory:

In normal usage, we may allude to backstory in just a phrase or paragraph. Rather than spelling out the details of a character’s history, we may include just a hint, just enough for readers to understand.

For the first time in years, she prioritized her needs over those of her coworker.

That opening 6-word phrase is enough to allude to a past that’s held this character back from standing up for herself. Over the course of the story, readers can get similar hints if necessary to better understand her backstory wound and thus fully understand the story’s stakes and obstacles and her choices and motivations.

Backstory through Flashbacks:

However, sometimes it’s necessary to give readers more information. Maybe during this scene, readers need to know why this is the first time she’s willing to set boundaries. Maybe they need to see for themselves what happened in the past to understand why she was so traumatized and stuck in her mindset—and thus get the importance of this scene.

In that case, rather than contriving a way to share the information within the current story, such as having the character tell someone else about the past event, we may decide to show readers the event itself in a flashback. A flashback gives us a few paragraphs—up to a full scene—to show (rather than tell) a past event.

As her coworker prattled on about yet another emergency that he’d caused—and that required her to give up her weekend off to fix, for the twelfth weekend in a row—she remembered all the hundreds of other times she’d sacrificed for others at her expense. At the front of her mind was the teenage memory of her father demanding that she spend their entire Disney World family vacation watching her infant brother.
Some of the time, sure. All of the time?
At the announcement, she had stared into her parents’ faces, watching for a hint of a wink or smile. They were joking, surely. Her heart dropped as the reality sank into thoughts. No castle, no rides, no fun.
No way.
“But that’s not fair!”…

Dual-Timeline Stories:

Many books consist of multiple stories that interrelate to create one story, such as romance stories that feature both love interests or any story with multiple protagonists. For those, we may alternate scenes or chapters between the characters.

However, what if those stories happen at different times? As an example, what if the story we’ve been using above is a case of generational issues? What if we want to explore not only this woman’s story of learning to set boundaries, but we also want to explore her mother’s history of failing to do the same until she’s inspired by her daughter’s growth?

In that case, a dual-timeline story may make the most sense. With just flashbacks, we’d struggle to create an understanding of not only this woman’s history but also her mother’s story of past situations and choices. Instead, we could create dual stories set at different times so that both timelines are fully shown and not told.

A dual-timeline story gives us any number of scenes necessary to tell a complete story that happened in the past that is somehow relevant to the “present” story. Like any multiple protagonist story, we could alternate chapters or sections, one set in the “present” and one set at the earlier time (but still worded in our usual verb tense).

For our example, we may alternate chapters with the mother and daughter facing similar challenges in asserting themselves. The story set in the past may seemingly end with the mother giving up. Then soon after the daughter finds her backbone in the present, the mother’s story may resume by jumping forward in time to show her inspired to the same, finally leaving her abusive husband.

This time jump at the end is not necessary (or even particularly common) in dual-timeline stories (and in fact, it’s possible to feature the same protagonist in both timelines), but this structure fits with this example. Either way, the dual-timeline story comes together in the end, at least on a thematic level, to illuminate a single story idea.

How Is a Dual-Timeline Story Different from Using Multiple Flashbacks?

Depending on the story we’re trying to tell, the story arc set in the past of a dual-timeline story may also inform the “present” story the same way that any type of backstory provides context to readers. For our example, the alternating chapters could echo each other with similar challenges or show the daughter learning unhelpful coping habits from her mother, explaining more about why she is the way she is.

However, it’s important to understand that a dual-timeline story is not the same as a story with a bunch of flashbacks.

Multiple Flashbacks:

• Only need to be related to current story events
• Can be—but don’t need to be—related to each other
• Are triggered by events in the current story, not the previous flashback
• Don’t need to tell a story in whole
• Aren’t leading up to their own dark moment or climax

In other words, the flashbacks aren’t there to work together to tell a separate story from the present story. Instead, the flashback scenes exist solely to illuminate the current story.

Dual Timelines:

• Each should have their own obstacles and stakes.
• Each should progress as a complete story, with their own independent structure of acts and turning points (dark moment, climax), etc.
• Each scene set in the past should follow the cause-and-effect chain of the previous past scene, not the preceding present-story chain.

In other words, even if we cut out every present-setting scene, the story set in the past should still make sense and be a complete story. The past-timeline story exists for its own reasons, and the dual-timeline structure simply allows the two stories to add meaning to each other.

Need More Understanding or Examples of
Flashbacks vs. Dual-Timelines?
Check out Jami’s companion post!

When Should We Use Each Technique?

If we need readers to know aspects of the past to understand the context of the present, our default should be to use our normal backstory techniques, including hints/phrases, characters sharing stories, etc.

• Use Normal Backstory to share tidbits of necessary context relevant to current story events with readers.

If we want to use our usual showing techniques to share a specific past event with readers, such as to create a deep point of view (POV) experience, we may want to use a flashback.

• Use Flashbacks to show a past defining moment(s), event(s), or scene(s) with the POV character to readers.

If we want to explore a story idea that integrates the experiences of two different timelines to create a single understanding, we may want to use a dual timeline.

• Use Dual Timelines to show two stories set at different times that work together to illuminate each other.

Final Thoughts about Backstory Techniques

With the right writing techniques, we can ensure our backstory elements don’t slow down or interrupt our current story or feel like information dumps to readers. At the same time, appropriate use of backstory techniques can make our story and characters—and our readers’ connection to those—stronger and more compelling. *smile*

Want to learn how the new Fallout TV series juggles both flashbacks and dual timelines? Visit my companion post!

Have you struggled to understand how to weave backstory information into your story? Have you used flashbacks or written a dual-timeline story and have other insights to share? Do you have any questions about these techniques or how to approach backstory, flashbacks, or dual-timeline stories?

JAMI GOLD - Resident Writing Coach

Jami Gold put her talent for making up stuff to good use, such as by winning the 2015 National Readers’ Choice Award in Paranormal Romance for her novel Ironclad Devotion.

To help others reach their creative potential, she’s developed a massive collection of resources for writers. Explore her site to find worksheets—including the popular Romance Beat Sheet with 80,000+ downloads—workshops, and over 1000 posts on her blog about the craft, business, and life of writing. Her site has been named one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers by Writer’s Digest. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Jami below.

The post Flashbacks vs. Dual Timeline: What’s the Difference? appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.