It’s easy to surmise that propelling readers from one scene to the next relies upon a dramatic closing hook, the evocative or provocative impression at the very end of the scene.

Seemed like everyone was finding someone to pair off with. So when was he going to find a girl of his own?

Or—

Edwina looked the poor sod straight in the eye. “She’s not coming back, Edgar. Ever.”

But although hooks may tantalize, another underlying force is what truly launches readers into the next scene. This dynamic arises from the final step of scene structure: a new outcome—change.

Scenes are designed to move the story forward by creating incremental change at the plot or character levels. Effective scene structure intrinsically sets up a domino effect: The unexpected outcome of one scene sparks curiosity about how the character will cope in the next, kindling the impulse to turn the page.

This is how complete, fully formed scenes get readers itching to see how the seeds of change will grow.

Scenes Create Change

Let’s review the structure of the two most common types of scenes in a novel:

Action Scenes                                                      Reaction (“Sequel”) Scenes

Objective                                                                     Emotion

Obstacle                                                                      Deliberation

Outcome                                                                     Decision

Action and reaction scenes share an important factor in common: Their final phases are all about generating change.

In an action scene, change occurs when something (the “obstacle”) interrupts the viewpoint character’s progress toward their scene objective. This creates an unexpected outcome. Something unanticipated has just occurred, and the inevitable consequences loom just ahead.

One minute they were packed shoulder-to-shoulder in the muggy subway car. The next, the squealing of metal against metal sent the world sideways, and she was tumbling wildly into the dark subterranean depths.

In a reaction scene, the final decision phase reveals the viewpoint character’s change of heart or intentions or plans, telling readers to brace for consequences.

Gripping the zip-tie cuffs, Arjan squeezed his eyes shut against the thrumming pain in his skull. He could walk away from this life of deception and violence once and for all. Or he could seek his revenge.

A dramatic closing hook can focus and magnify this effect, using introspection, foreshadowing, or imagery to hint at the broader struggles, unresolved tensions, or profound transitions the scene has provoked. But that’s the thing—the scene itself should provoke those rumblings. When the scene clearly introduces change, even a glimmer of yearning or glint of optimism can ignite the spark that sets the next scenes into motion.

The Springboard Effect

The unanticipated outcome of each scene pushes the characters urgently into the next, riding the domino or baton-passing effect. Scenes shouldn’t be able to be shuffled about willy-nilly; plucking an effectively crafted scene out of the flow would break the chain of action and reaction that makes one scene lead directly into the next.

Readers rightfully expect the change created by one scene to be addressed promptly in the next. This propagates reader investment: hope or worry, anticipation or suspense.

For example, after a scene ending with Max vowing to leave Jonquil and return to his wife, readers will expect his next scene to begin addressing that tangle. He might be temporarily delayed by other concerns—a delicious way to add tension—but he shouldn’t blithely turn away without further thought. Didn’t that decision matter?

The domino effect of one scene tipping into and kicking off the next forges a chain of progressively escalating complications in the story. This chain is what writers are talking about when they refer to the rising action of a plot, the idea that the conflict (what does happen) and tension (what might happen) spiral to a peak at the climax. The first scene of the story sets off an unstoppable chain reaction, leading to a resolution that feels surprising in the way it happens yet inevitable by virtue of cause and effect.

Think of the scenes as opportunities to drop clues into the links of the story. This may seem like an obvious strategy for a mystery story, but you should exploit this effect in every genre. Scatter breadcrumbs or dangle questions at scene endings, then scoop them up promptly in the next scene, weaving the connective threads into a taut, vibrant storytelling tapestry.

Caveat 1: The Roadblock

Occasionally, a scene might run up against a revelation or cascade of consequences that creates a roadblock with no apparent route forward. This sort of scene—full stop, no way forward—is difficult to pull off if you haven’t planned the story before writing it. When the options are so limited that the character can find no way forward, the plot cannot organically advance—the story is muzzled.

Having the character sit around and wait for a deus ex machina (an outside force to swoop in and solve the problem) frustrates readers, who want stories where the characters solve their problems, not the author. Instead, use a reaction scene to break the deadlock, as the character discovers something new within themselves—an inner breakthrough of some kind.

Some scenes do warrant a note of finality, as a story thread winds to completion. But finality and completion signal endings, and if your story isn’t over yet, you’ll want to maintain the plot’s momentum. Most scenes, especially those at the end of chapters, benefit from a dynamic of change to keep readers turning pages.

Caveat 2: Top Spin

Cliffhanger, edge-of-the-seat pacing frequently leverages a screenwriting technique called top spin. In top spin, the scene cuts off at the peak of tension, just as something interrupts the character’s progress toward their immediate agenda. The scene leaps from this interruption or obstacle directly to the next scene, with no opportunity to show reaction or outcome.

Think of the way TV shows cut off at a cliffhanger before a commercial break, then pick up afterwards in the same stream of action. That’s top spin in action. Top spin creates an extremely strong narrative drive.

“Done well, the drama is then built around confrontation/crisis in a sequence that never seems to stop moving,”  writes John Yorke in Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey Into Story. “… Every scene ends on a question—partly ‘Where did that come from?’ but more importantly ‘How are they going to get out of that?’ By cutting away at the crisis point, a writer thus creates a sequence in which question is followed by (delayed) answer, which is followed by a question once again. … The technique of ‘come in late, get out early’ simply accelerates this process, forcing every scene to cut off at the ‘worst point’ of a scene.”

A brilliant resource in suspense stories, copious amounts of top spin are better suited to the screen than the page. Unlike movies or TV, which can only watch a character from the outside, novels draw readers into the character’s thoughts and perspective. A book that consistently chops off character reactions as soon as scene reaches its peak circumvents this quality, and readers may decide that the book reads more like a screenplay than a novel they can sink into.

Harnessing the Force of Change

Continuity between scenes depends on more than tacking on a provocative closing hook. The hand-off effect arises organically from scene structure, which generates a reversal or change for the viewpoint character. The allure of how the character will deal with this complication keeps readers turning pages long into the night.

Read more:

Goal-driven action scene structure, the building block of stories
Strategies for smooth scene openings

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 Secret to Page-Turning Scene Endings appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Let’s face it, some of our characters have to die. Sure, we may have spent hours (days, weeks, decades?) shaping them, planning their backstory, filling their hearts with hopes and dreams. But in the end, it just isn’t their time to shine.

So…

That deer crosses the icy road at the wrong time.

The cable hoisting a plate glass window to the third story breaks.

Or the psycho with the ax chooses your character like he’s Pikachu.

Tragic, right?

But here’s the thing: when it comes to killing, there’s a time and place.

We don’t kill because the scene needs some spice.
We don’t kill because we’ve spotted a plot hole, and killing a character seals it off.
We don’t kill when it’s the easy way out. (Bring on the suffering!)
We don’t randomly kill someone to show readers how bad our baddie is.

And most of all, we don’t kill 1) when the death serves no purpose or 2) if readers aren’t invested in the character. So, make sure the death pushes the story forward in some way and readers have a soft spot for the target (Rue from Hunger Games, for example) before you snuff them out. Emotional currency is king.

I know, I know, you’ve got a sad now, like I smashed your ice cream cone on the ground. So here’s when you can kill:

To Remove Your Character’s Support System

Sometimes our characters must hit rock bottom or lose everything before they can find inner strength. Taking away their safety net can trigger devolution or evolution and support their arc’s trajectory.

To Support the Story’s Theme

Sometimes, there is a cost to holding to a belief or following a certain path, and death may be necessary to fully underscore the weight of the story’s theme. Sometimes, there is no justice. Evil triumphs instead of good. Safety is an illusion. Love means sacrifice, or finding one’s purpose in life may mean surrendering to it. Think about your theme and if this death will support the underlying meaning of the story.

To Show the Cost of Failure

Stakes can be primal, and it needs to be clear to everyone, including readers, when failure means death. If you go this route, invest time into the sacrificial character. Give them goals, needs, and people they would do anything for. Most of all, make readers care about them so their death has an impact.

Because They Had It Coming

Some people deserve to die. They take risks, fail to heed advice, or are just plain toxic and awful. To show the cause and effect of their actions or provide a satisfying death scene for readers, take the character out in a way that makes sense, is ironic, or rings of poetic justice.

See? Lots of good options for killing. Challenge yourself to make it count so it serves the story.

If you’d like to grab this “When to Kill a Character” checklist to save and print, go here.

How do you decide when to kill a character? Who was it, and why did you do it?

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 When to Kill a Character appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

With all the writing advice out there, we know that some “writing rules” we hear are more like guidelines. However, story structure is important not just for our writing but also for our readers—creating their overall sense of our story—so we should consider the risks before ignoring structure-specific guidelines.

In fact, if our story isn’t working well, we might be able to fix the issue by going deeper into the reasons behind those guidelines. Let’s take one example of a relatively minor aspect of story structure (that most advice doesn’t even mention) and look at how it can affect our story—and how our story can “break” if we fail to include the details readers need.

Story Structure at the 25% Mark

Before we start, first know that different story structure systems use different names for each point, but the function they fulfill for our story is the same. In other words, the names don’t matter.

For example, most story structure systems include a plot event (a story “beat”) around the 25% mark (often called the Catalyst, First Plot Point, or the End of the Beginning), and no matter the label used, the function of this beat is to create a “point of no return” forcing the protagonist into the story.

After this plot event, readers should have at least a hint of (and in many cases, a fairly good idea of):

• the story goal(s) and reasons for the goal (stakes)
• the main conflicts/antagonists/obstacles blocking that goal
• some of the internal issues complicating that goal

Those all work together to tell readers who they’re rooting for or against, what they’re rooting for or against, and what our story is about.

If we fail to include a story beat with this function around the 25%-ish mark (usually between 20-30%), our story’s pace will likely feel slow and/or readers might close the book in frustration at not understanding the point of the story. A well-developed 25%-mark beat will establish the story, plot, conflicts, stakes, and character/emotional arcs of the story.

Internal Issues at the 25% Mark

Those of you familiar with story structure probably expected those first 2 bullet points above, but maybe the last point was a surprise. Many story structure systems and beat sheets focus on the external issues of our story—plot, antagonists, villains, obstacles, etc.—and don’t touch on internal issues.

However, if we comprehend the deep, underlying purpose of a story’s structure at this 25% mark, we know that we want to not only show the goal our characters are aiming for, but also to at least hint at what’s preventing them from reaching that goal right now. After all, without something standing between our characters and their goal, readers will think our story would be over before it began. *grin*

For some stories, that “something” will be all about external obstacles and villains, just like the focus of most beat sheets. But for the remainder of stories (especially those with character arcs), readers should have seen hints by the 25% mark that the “something” also includes internal obstacles—such as characters’ false beliefs and backstory wounds—that interfere with the story goal(s) as well.

Going Deeper Helps Our Story (and Readers)

What’s a reader’s experience if they don’t see (at least) hints of the internal obstacles that will be complicating the protagonist’s path toward the goal(s)?

• Readers may think the external conflicts aren’t enough of an obstacle to the goal to create a story and simply close the book.
• Readers may question whether there’s anything other than a need for word count holding the character back from their goal (in a “the character struggles because the plot needs them to” problem) and lose patience with the story and characters.
• Negative character traits without a hint of an internal-arc goal to improve may be assumed to be permanent, which can make readers less likely to root for them.
• Any self-destructive (or obviously wrong) assumptions a character makes without a hint of how it ties into their internal arc (such as through a false belief or backstory wound) may make them less likable or sympathetic and lessen readers’ engagement with our story and characters.

For example, let’s take a character who assumes no one likes them. If readers have seen evidence throughout the first act that the assumption isn’t true, they might have a negative impression of the character for making such a patently false assumption. The assumption could even make readers frustrated, contemptuous, and dull their emotional connection to our character—and story. Not good.

One potential fix? By the 25%-ish mark, give readers hints/glimpses/allusions to a backstory wound causing that assumption.

Even just a few words hinting at something (such as: He’d learned his lesson about trying to make friends years ago.) can make all the difference between a character that readers sympathize with and a character that readers disdain. The hints give a reason for the character’s internal issues that keeps readers in their corner—and rooting for them to improve.

Story Structure Matters

Just as our story can look “broken” if we haven’t provided glimpses of enough conflict (external and/or internal) by the 25%-ish mark, similar problems can occur if we ignore the other major story structure guidelines or fail to go deep enough into the purpose behind each major story structure point. Story structure matters for creating the overall sense of our story—and for convincing readers that their time will be rewarded with a satisfying story.

So if we struggle with a story that seems broken, try going deeper into its structure and make sure to address the underlying purpose of each major beat in our story. We may discover a few easy edits to fix our story. *smile*

Do you have any questions or insights about story structure and how going deeper might help our story?

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 Story Not Behaving? Try Going Deeper into Structure appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Conflict is key to writing great stories. And while writers may categorize conflict differently, I categorize conflict into eight types:

Person vs. Self
Person vs. Person
Person vs. Nature
Person vs. Society
Person vs. God
Person vs. Fate
Person vs. the Supernatural
Person vs. Technology

In today’s modern times, the Person vs. God conflict often gets left off lists or is combined with or even replaced by the Person vs. Fate conflict. But because fate conflicts don’t necessarily have gods, and god conflicts don’t necessarily include fate, I put them in separate categories.

Out of all the conflict types, Person vs. Fate is often the most misunderstood.

Many of us were introduced to the concept of person vs. fate through classic tragedies where the protagonist was foretold a future that led him to a dreadful end (like in Oedipus Rex or Macbeth). This has led some to proclaim that the person vs. fate conflict is unpopular or even outdated, and has also led some writers to shortchange this conflict type (if they even give it much thought). In reality, a fate conflict happens whenever a character is struggling with a destiny–something is predetermined or foreordained, and the character somehow opposes that. What is foretold need not always be tragic or lead to a dreadful end. Arguably, it need not always even be otherworldly.

In fantasy, fate often comes from a prophecy. In Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince, Harry struggles with the prophecy that neither he nor Voldemort can really live while the other survives. In horror, this may be a kind of curse. In Final Destination, the characters are trying to cheat their deaths–they are fated to die. It can even play into the concept of the universe having an order or law that must be upheld or fulfilled. In The Lion King, Simba must embrace his destiny as the one true king to bring order to the Circle of Life. And if we broaden the concept a little more, we can find foretold fates in the normal world; in The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, Hazel is fated to die from terminal cancer. 

Person vs. fate conflicts are very effective because they get the audience to anticipate a future outcome, which is exactly how we hook and reel the audience in. Readers will want to keep reading to see if what is expected to happen actually does happen, and they will want to know how it happens. So the person vs. fate conflict has some innate strengths.

Many fate conflicts are rendered as teasers. Some characters have premonitions in dreams or visions that only reveal a snippet of fate. Prophecies are often worded in ambiguous or metaphorical ways, giving rise to multiple interpretations. Teasers don’t tell readers specifics, but they promise that the specifics will come if the reader keeps reading. So, the reader keeps reading. This also introduces a sense of mystery. Some fate conflicts work as a riddle that the audience gets to participate in, which pulls them even deeper into the narrative.

Usually person vs. fate conflicts explore free will within strict limitations. While some writers choose to ultimately emphasize a lack of free will, others choose to emphasize the power of free will. In Oedipus Rex characters try to change fate and end up bringing it about. In Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince, Harry eventually realizes he has a choice to accept his role or not, and chooses to rise to the occasion. Characters destined to die, may have a moment where they decide how they will face that death.

How the character chooses to deal with the fate is often just as (if not more) interesting than the fate itself. The character may openly fight against fate like Oedipus Rex, or the character may have more of a personal struggle with accepting the fate and its costs, like Simba. The audience may be invited to consider whether it’s worth the cost. In Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus sells his soul to the devil to gain all knowledge. Was gaining all knowledge worth a fate in hell?

We often think of fate conflicts coming from some force beyond the character’s power, but sometimes it’s interesting when the character makes a choice that leads to an inevitable fate, such as Dr. Faustus, or even Jack Sparrow, who makes a deal with Davy Jones in exchange for the Black Pearl in Pirates of the Caribbean.

Fate conflicts traditionally come from the supernatural: prophecies, premonitions, curses, fortunes and predictions, a universal law, magical debts, or the will of otherworldly entities. But the concept can be broadened to include real-world fates: terminal illness, death row and other court sentences, forced marriage, being made a scapegoat, or forced labor. Admittedly, some conflict types can overlap with others, but looking at conflicts from a fate angle may open up your stories to new possibilities.

A few more examples of fate conflicts:

• Curses, like in The Ring, where a video is promised to kill the viewer in seven days.
• Deals, like in Pirates of the Caribbean, where Jack is in debt to Davy Jones and must join The Flying Dutchman or be taken by the Kraken
• Fortunes and predictions, like in The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater, where Blue is told that if she kisses her true love, he will die
• Supernatural entities, like in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, where a ghost tells Scrooge of his coming death

What have you noticed about fate conflicts? Have you ever written, or do you plan to write about a fate conflict? What do you like about them?

Note from Angela:

This seems like an excellent time to mention our thesaurus guides that tackle all forms of conflict, from the central ones that September mentions here, all the way down to scene-level, inner, and micro conflict.

The Conflict Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Obstacles, Adversaries, and Inner Struggles (Volume 1 & 2) will ensure you have plenty of fresh ideas on how to plot, create complications, and cause your characters to struggle. Find out more.

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 Testing Fate: A Closer Look at Person vs. Fate Conflict appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

It was 10pm, and I was trying to sleep when my door flew open and my sister came in, wailing like a wounded puppy. “Why did you kill him?”

I cleared the sleep from my eyes. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Michael! You killed Michael!”

At that, I couldn’t help myself from laughing. Not a nice thing, I know.

Curiously, she went ahead to profess love for the story—particularly the ending that made her cry. Fascinating, right? My story was able to create such a strong emotional reaction because it avoided the safety of a happy ending and the depression of a sad ending. Instead, it opted for the more fulfilling happy-sad resolution. 

Why Happy-Sad Endings?

Before we answer the question of why, let’s explore the story endings that we commonly see. To put it bluntly,

• A sad ending is when the story ends on an overwhelmingly negative emotion 
• A happy ending is when the story ends on an overwhelmingly positive emotion 

In both instances, it’s clear what the final emotional beat of the story is. However, the third type of ending introduces a new kind of experience. 

In a happy-sad ending, the story ends on two opposite emotional beats, making it harder to pick one over the other and leaving the audience in a happy-sad state. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green is a perfect example. I wept like a child and I loved every bit of it. 

One reason these endings work is because they seem closer to real life than happy or sad ones. Life rarely has happily ever afters. There’s always a price to pay, and many times, the sacrifice is unexpected. When a story is able to reflect this familiar experience, it gains an extra philosophical depth. 

Secondly, if one emotion creates a desired effect, two will multiply that effect. Story is about emotional manipulation, and what is a grander act of manipulation than getting the audience to feel more than one emotion?

The Secret to Creating a Happy-Sad Ending

While working on the story that made my sister cry, I knew from the beginning that I wanted the ending to be sad. But that’s not what happened, thanks to the advice I got from a writer friend at work. 

One day at the office, I narrated my story to him. His response? Even a sad ending should give the audience something positive.

It was an epiphany that slapped me into a new story consciousness. I took his advice to heart and reshaped my story. After some tinkering, I stumbled onto a secret for creating this emotionally complex story resolution: For the happy-sad ending to work, the two emotions should be tied to each other in one sequence of cause and effect. In other words, one should not be possible without the other. 

Let’s return to the resolution for the Fault In Our Stars. It’s sad because August dies, but it’s happy because his death helps Hazel appreciate her life more. Because of him—and specifically his death—she’s able to grow.

To state the secret in the clearest terms: Let the sad lead to the happy (or vice versa). There are a few ways to make this happen:

1. The Character Deliberately Sacrifices the Goal So They Can Attain Something More Important

In this ending, the character decides to let go of their goal to gain something better. For this to work, the goal has to be vital to the character. The more we feel it’s important to the character, the sadder we will feel when they let it go for something else. 

We see this in the movie Rainman. Charlie Babbitt spends most of the story holding his estranged brother hostage to protest his lost inheritance. But as Charlie gets to know his brother, he comes to care for Raymond and realizes that he has value. In the end, he gives up his claim to the inheritance in favor of a relationship with his brother.

2. The Character Fails in Achieving Their Goal, But They Do Attain Growth

In this instance, the character doesn’t get the luxury of choosing to let go of his goal; he simply is unable to attain it. Again, for this ending to work, the goal has to be very important, and the lesson learned or character growth has to arc towards the positive. 

A good example is Your Name Engraved Herein on Netflix. Protagonist Jai-Han doesn’t get the relationship he was seeking, but he learns how to deal with not getting what he wants.

3. The Character Is Only Partially Successful

With this ending, the protagonist is successful—kind of. They mostly get what they want, but it’s only a partial victory. So they win, but they also lose.

In A Few Good Men, Daniel Kaffee exonerates his clients of two of the charges against them and keeps them out of jail, but they’re found guilty of Behavior Unbecoming an Officer and are dishonorably discharged. This is a major victory, because Kaffee himself had doubts about his ability to save them from spending the rest of their lives in prison. But as men who value honor and integrity—men who have dedicated their lives to the Marine Corps—being banished from it due to their poor choices is a huge blow. Viewers are left feeling mostly happy but still a bit sad that Kaffee couldn’t deliver the whole package.

(PSST! Head over to One Stop for Writers to see Angela and Becca’s breakdown of the plot line for A Few Good Men.)

4. The Character Gets What They Want But They Lose Something Vital

In this instance, the character gets what he wants but loses something or someone emotionally valuable. If we experience victory and loss at the same time, the ending is made much more compelling. 

We see this in the fifth installment of the Harry Potter series when Harry finally obtains the prophecy he’s been seeking, but in the ensuing battle, he loses Sirius.

5. The Character Sacrifices Himself to Gain Victory for Good 

In this instance, the character sacrifices themselves so that a greater good can win out in the end. An example is Endgame, where Tony Stark sacrifices himself so that the universe can defeat Thanos.

One of the most important parts of your story is the ending. How you handle it will determine how much people love or hate what you’ve written. A happy resolution may work fine, but consider harnessing the power of two opposite emotions with a happy-sad ending. 

What stories or books have you read with this kind of story resolution?

Gilbert Bassey is a writer, filmmaker, and story consultant dedicated to telling great stories and helping other writers do the same. Subscribe to his Storycraft newsletter and get a free copy of the happy-sad ending builder. 

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The post Story Resolutions: Mastering the Happy-Sad Ending appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

When a villain is well written and well rounded, they can tug at our heartstrings just like the protagonists do—which can be cruel, since the villain is usually destined to fail. I say usually because stories can include a change of heart for the enemy.

Is this what you’d like for your bad guy or girl? Let’s take a peek at the villain’s journey and see what the path to redemption might look like.

Understanding Character Arcs: Positive Arcs

First, we need to have a basic understanding of character arc. In essence, this is the transformation a character goes through from the start of the story to the finish.

In the opening pages, the character is lacking something internally. Often, this comes out of a wounding event from the past—a trauma that was so scarring, she was compelled to don emotional shielding to protect herself from the pain of that experience and any possible recurrence.

This emotional shielding comes in the form of bad habits, defense mechanisms, personality flaws, biases, and skewed beliefs that, while intended to protect the character, only create more problems. They’re so destructive that they create a void in the area of her basic human needs.

This void leads her to pursue a story goal (outer motivation) that will fill that need. But her emotional shielding cripples her, keeping her from succeeding and becoming fully realized.

Throughout the course of a positive arc, the character recognizes those internal problems and begins to address and change them. This enables her to grow and deal properly with her past, eventually ensuring that she meets her goal and achieves fulfillment.

Understanding Character Arcs: Negative Arcs

That transformation is the essence of a change arc. It’s the one most protagonists follow. But there’s another, lesser-used arc form that’s common for villains.

In a failed arc, the character is unable to overcome their issues and the demons of the past, failing to make the necessary positive changes that would enable them to achieve satisfaction and fill their inner void. Characters following this arc end the story either back where they started or worse off than they were to begin with.

Very often, this is where you’ll find the villain in your story. She may be aware of the wounding event from her past, but she’s already tried to deal with it and has failed.

Now she’s embracing her dysfunctional behaviors, believing they’ll make her stronger. Or she may never have faced her past and is living in denial, refusing to address it.

Either way, she’s destined to continue living an unfulfilled life that lacks closure—unless she’s given the opportunity to try again, and this time, succeed. Then…redemption.

How Can We Redeem Our Villain?

So as an author interested in redeeming your villain, you first must know her backstory, which will tell you what she’ll have to overcome to succeed.

• What wounding event from the past profoundly impacted her?
• How did her view of herself or the world change because of it?
• What new behaviors, beliefs, habits, and responses developed as a means of protecting herself from a recurrence of that event and the negative emotions associated with it?

There’s a lot of backstory to explore, but questions like these will get you started. The Character Builder at One Stop for Writers is also great for unearthing a villain’s buried trauma, identifying their strengths and weaknesses, figuring out which talents or skills would benefit them, and so forth.

Once you’ve got a clear vision of your villain’s history, you can use one of the following techniques to get her back on the road to healing.

Redemption Path #1:
Elevate the Stakes Associated with Unmet Need

Need is a primary motivator for all people. A void in the human needs department will push the character to take action to alleviate it; this typically means facing past pain and becoming vulnerable again.

But a villain won’t want to go there. Instead, she denies or avoids her past, distracting herself by pursuing other goals and interests.

To turn her around, poke that sore spot; make that unmet need really hard to ignore. Create a situation that makes her painfully aware of her lack and forces her to reconsider her position.

As an example, look at Darth Vader—the ultimate villain redemption story. He’s as dysfunctional as they come, haunted by his past, cut off emotionally from others. Then, he meets his son.

Over the course of several clashes and conversations, something shifts in him, until he eventually chooses his relationship with Luke over everything else.

Figure out which of your villain’s unmet needs (there are probably several) is the most vulnerable, and create a scenario that amplifies it, making it a problem she must address.

Redemption Path #2:
Reveal the Truth about the Story Goal

As we’ve discussed, outer motivations are chosen as a means of filling an unmet need. While most characters aren’t aware of their inner-need void, they subconsciously believe that achieving a certain goal will bring them happiness and completion, so they pursue it.

For instance, someone living without security may decide to get a better job that will enable them to move out of a dangerous neighborhood. A character lacking esteem might seek to prove himself by winning a competition or contest.

But self-awareness isn’t a common trait for villains. They’re incredibly unfulfilled, and they’ll avoid like the plague any emotions or circumstances that mirror their past pain.

So your villain will choose goals that look promising but won’t ultimately satisfy. Avenging herself, amassing vast amounts of wealth and material goods, being feared by others—motivations like these won’t fill the inner void.

If she can be led to a place where she recognizes this unending spiral of pursuing goals, achieving them, and still being unable to escape her pain, she may become motivated to look at other options, including facing the source of her trouble.

This is hard to do, since she’s set in her ways and her actions over time have piled up, making it very difficult for her to examine herself realistically. This process of self-realization can be encouraged with the help of a friend, associate, or even an enemy who is able to hold up a mirror that reveals the villain’s true reflection.

Redemption Path #3:
Show How to Forgive

In the aftermath of a wounding event, it’s normal to examine it and try to figure out what went wrong. Very often in this process, the character will end up blaming someone else (a person, group of people, organization, system, etc.) or finding fault with herself—even if no one is to blame. Unwilling to face the truth, she dedicates herself to punishing those at fault, believing it will ease her pain.

To turn this villain around, you must force her to see that her blame is misplaced and lead her to a place of forgiveness. Create a new scenario where the source of the villain’s blame proves to be upright or somehow bucks her stereotype. Allow a respected person in the villain’s life to forgive in extreme circumstances, undermining her beliefs about what true strength and weakness look like. This could also be achieved if one of the villain’s victims chose to forgive her.

Scenarios like these can shine a new light on her long-held beliefs and ideals about forgiveness, stimulating change.

Redemption Path #4:
Recreate the Wounding Event

If your villain is unwilling to examine the trauma from her past, recreate it so she’s forced to deal with it—but provide a different outcome.

• Maybe, this time, she can see that her blame was misplaced.
• Perhaps the dysfunctional habits she’s embraced (her perceived strengths) fail to protect her, and she realizes that they’ve been holding her back all these years.
• She might look at her own enemy and see similarities to herself, causing her to question everything that has happened since that fateful first meeting.

Final Tip for Redemption: Change Is Hard

Obviously, none of this happens quickly. Change takes time—particularly for someone so ingrained in their habits and false beliefs.

For the conversion to ring true, your villain will need numerous chances to change. Build them into your story while the protagonist is undergoing his own transformation. Give the villain ample opportunities to examine her trajectory and reconsider her path.

These scenarios should trigger deep and unexpected emotions that eventually lead to a change of heart. Redemption for these characters usually requires some form of self-sacrifice as a way of making amends that often (but not always) results in their demise.

How your villain ends their story is up to you, but with these techniques, redemption is always an option.

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 The Author’s Guide to Redeeming Villains appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

In a lecture series on Youtube, #1 New York Times best-selling author Brandon Sanderson talks about the three P’s of plot structure: Promise. Progress. Payoff. 

Promises are particularly important in the beginning of the story, as they draw in the audience. 

Progress keeps the audience invested, particularly through the middle of the story. If there is no sense of progress, then the reader feels as if the plot isn’t going anywhere. 

Payoff is what fulfills the promises of progress. It rewards the audience for sticking around, and if done properly, creates a feeling of satisfaction at the end of the story. 

While all three can be tricky in their own right, many writers struggle to create a proper sense of progress, which can lead to saggy middles. 

Luckily, Dramatica Theory breaks plot down into eight story points that essentially encapsulate progress.

If you apply them to your stories, your writing will always have progression through the middle.

1. Goal – Every story has a goal. It may be a goal of aspiration, such as becoming a top chef. Or it may be a goal of thwarting something, such as stopping a murderer. Whatever the case, a story’s goal is what enables us to measure progress. If there is no goal, then what one does, doesn’t really matter. We have no orientation or purpose, so there is no sense of moving forward or backward. The goal allows progress to happen. 

2. Requirements – In order to achieve the goal, something is required. This can be broken down into two variations. In one, the characters must follow an order of steps, like following a set of directions. In the other, the characters must do or obtain things in any order, like a shopping list. The characters in Jumanji, for example,have the goal to restore the world to normal. The requirement is to win the game. But they must do this in a proper order–they can’t skip turns.

3. Consequences – Consequences are what happen if a goal isn’t achieved or hasn’t yet been achieved. In some stories, the protagonist is trying to prevent the consequences, but in others, the protagonist is trying to stop the consequences that are already happening. Consequences might be thought of as overall stakes. In Ralph Breaks the Internet, if Ralph and Vanellope don’t buy a new steering wheel for Sugar Rush, then its characters will be homeless. 

4. Forewarnings – Forewarnings convey that the consequences are getting closer, becoming worse, or becoming permanent (depending on the story). If a dam is in danger of breaking, then a forwarning may be a crack that shoots out water. In Back to the Future, Marty’s family slowly disappearing from a photograph works as a forewarning. 

5. Dividends – Characters will likely receive small rewards for little successes along the journey to the goal. These are dividends. For example, on her journey to fight in the war in her father’s place, Mulan is rewarded honor and a place in the military when she is able to retrieve an arrow from a wooden post that none of the men could get down.

6. Costs – Just as the journey may include dividends, it also entails costs. These have negative impacts on the protagonist’s well-being. In order to win The Hunger Games, for example, one must be willing to kill others, which also includes psychological trauma. In order for Frodo to get to Mount Doom to destroy the Ring, he must suffer a loss of innocence. This is a cost. 

7. Prerequisites – There are often certain essentials one must have, to pursue the goal at all. These are prerequisites. Prerequisites on their own don’t bring the goal closer. This is why they aren’t requirements. In Interstellar, a spaceship, equipment, and astronauts are needed to travel space to find a new home (goal). But simply having those things doesn’t necessarily mean the characters are closer to discovering a liveable planet. 

8. Preconditions – Preconditions do not directly relate to the goal. They are “non-essential constraints or costs placed on the characters in exchange for the help of someone who controls essential prerequisites.” In Karate Kid, a prerequisite is that the protagonist must receive extra lessons from a master, but the master adds the precondition of doing chores. One does not technically need to do chores to do karate.

Some of these points are more direct–like requirements–while others are more indirect–like preconditions. The direct points will usually be more intense than the indirect. As you apply these elements to your stories, you’ll create a sense of progress–especially through the middle, which will help make any story more satisfying. 

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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.

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As a reader of Angela and Becca’s blog, chances are you’ve seen some of their many posts about the role of conflict in our story. In fact, as a Resident Writing Coach here, I’ve previously talked about how to make our story’s conflict stronger.

The most common advice is to add more conflict to our stories, to add more external or internal obstacles that force our characters to struggle while attempting to make progress on their goals. After all, without conflict, our characters would reach their goals immediately: The characters want X and then they get it. In other words, we’ve learned that conflict is what turns a goal into a story.

But what if that’s not the kind of story we’re trying to tell? What if adding conflict doesn’t feel right for our story? Are we stuck?

Maybe we just need to expand our idea of what constitutes a story…

Different Narrative Story Structures

If we grew up in Western culture, chances are that we learned from our time in elementary school that stories are about solving a story problem. In turn, a story problem implies goals, stakes, and conflict, as the characters try to solve the problem.

However, that dramatic-arc narrative style doesn’t apply to every story, especially those in non-Western cultures. More importantly for today’s topic, stories with different narrative structures often don’t rely on conflict the way we’ve learned. This lack of conflict doesn’t mean they don’t “count” as stories, but it does make them different – and that means we can learn from them.

Narrative Structures with No/Low Conflict

Examples of narrative structures that take a different approach to conflict (often ignoring it completely) include:

• Kishōtenketsu: 4-act story structure found in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese storytelling, from centuries-old stories to modern manga and Nintendo video games
• Robleto: style of traditional Nicaraguan storytelling, which includes a “line of repetition” tying a character’s many journeys within the story together
• Daisy-Chain Plot: story follows single object or idea with no central character
• Fanfiction “Fluff”: zero-conflict/angst stories focusing on character interactions
• Oral Storytelling: often emphases a moral message and not conflict
• Rashomon-Style Plot: repeating events from different perspectives

A Different Way of Defining Stories

If we’re stuck in a Western-culture perspective of storytelling, we might assume no-conflict stories would be boring. Or we might not consider them stories at all. But let’s take a step back to understand what makes a story a story.

As I’ve often talked about on my blog, all types of stories are built on change. Most Western-style storytelling is based on a conflict-style of change, which involves the protagonist overcoming or learning from external or internal conflict (or failing to overcome or learn).

However, that’s not the only kind of change that can apply to storytelling. Many of the examples listed above instead focus on change in the reader rather than in the character.

For example, Rashomon-style stories present the same events as perceived by different characters to the audience, and it might be up to the reader to decide where the truth lies. In fanfic “fluff” stories, readers simply expand their imagination of what beloved characters might say, do, think, behave, or react in different situations.

In kishōtenketsu, the third act typically includes an unexpected “twist” unrelated to the previous acts (often seeming like an outright non sequitur) until all aspects of the story are brought together and reconciled in the fourth act’s ending. In other words, the twist can be more about changing readers’ perspective than the typical “plot twist.” (Check out the first comic at this link for a simplistic example.)

No Conflict? We Still Need a Story

All that said, this knowledge of alternatives to the usual conflict-focused story doesn’t give us an excuse to release boring dreck to readers. We still need to make sure our story is a story, especially as there’s a risk to relying on alternative story structures, as our Western audience is probably expecting a typical narrative. Being too stuck or lazy or whatever to think of how to add conflict is different from purposefully creating a story where conflict is unnecessary and beyond the point.

So if we’re going to claim our story fits one of these other narrative structures, we need to learn the rules and expectations of that structure just as much as we now study conflict, goals, stakes, etc. Claiming our story “fits” an alternative structure doesn’t automatically make it true.

In addition, we need to make sure we know how the idea of change applies to our story. Whether found in the character, the story world, or readers’ perspective or experience, the sense of change creates the sense of a story. No matter the style of change or how much conflict our story does—or doesn’t—have, the change is a type of enlightenment.

Readers want to discover the unknown, from “what happens next?” to “how does this apply to me?” or “how do these story ideas relate to each other?” A reader’s desire to get answers can create another form of tension and conflict, even in non-Western-style stories that are often thought of as conflict-less. And that emotional investment from readers will help ensure our story—no matter the form it takes—is satisfying to readers. *smile*

Do you have any questions or insights about no/low-conflict stories or alternative narrative story structures?

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.

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One of the issues I come across often in my work as a fiction editor is anecdotal writing. I encounter it in scenes, in chapters—and sometimes as the plotline of an entire novel. It’s one of those things where, when you read it, you can tell there’s something wrong, but you can’t put your finger on what it is.

An anecdote is a self-contained story, something you might tell a friend. There is a beginning, a middle, and an end: I went to the grocery store. This man had a meltdown over the price of coffee and started throwing things. I ran out before I got hit.

If you’re writing a non-fiction piece on anger management, the above anecdote, expanded with details, might be a good idea. An anecdote in non-fiction can bring a concept to life by showing its practical application.

If, however, you are writing fiction, anecdotes are a death knell. Basically what you’re doing is giving the reader slices of your character’s life—this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened.

There are two main reasons why this is a bad idea.

Anecdotal Writing Supplies an Early Resolution 

Because an anecdote is self-contained, it has resolution built into it. When you tell your friend that story, you supply an end—and usually things end well. You left the grocery store before anything bad happened to you. Phew!

If you end the chapter by telling us your character made her narrow escape and went home, what have you done? You’ve given the reader a place to put the book down. There’s no lead-in to anything else. You have closed the story door and taken away the crucial impetus that powers a novel forward: the desire a reader must have all the way through to find out what happens next.

There’s a reason we authors are in the business of making bad things happen to our characters. We don’t want things to end well. What we want are problems. Instead of escaping, what if your protagonist was hit with a jar of Nescafé and got a concussion?

That’s better, but making something bad happen isn’t enough. The concussion must lead directly to another problem. For example, if the chapter is all about the trip to the grocery store and the subsequent concussion that happens just before a critical job interview, then you’re ending with tension. There is a slight denouement (the angry man is arrested), but there is no resolution. You leave the story door open. The reader is eager to find out what happens next.

Leaving the story door open means you create forward momentum. Imagine your character mid-step. That is how you want to end a chapter. The reader doesn’t know where her other foot will come down and is compelled to turn the page. 

Every chapter must end with that story door slightly ajar—something left unresolved. A lack of resolution creates both tension and forward momentum. You want your reader to be constantly grasping for resolution, but you don’t want to give it to them until the end.

The moment you supply resolution, you stop the plot from moving forward. There is only one appropriate time to do this: at the end of the book.

Anecdotal Writing Lacks Causal Connection

When you write anecdotally, you’re creating an and then story rather than a because of story. You are giving us slices of life that stand side by side without any connection between them. But a plot requires causal connection. ‘A’ happens. Then, because of ‘A,’ ‘B’ happens. Because of ‘B,’ ‘C’ happens. 

Think of a domino show. In order for it to work, the dominoes have to be close to each other so that each one falls BECAUSE the one before it fell. If you’re writing anecdotally, you are spacing the dominoes too far apart. When one falls, it falls—nothing happens as a result, and that wonderful ripple effect stalls. Again, this is all about forward momentum. A chapter that stands alone contains no propulsion.

Let’s return to the meltdown in the coffee aisle.

In the anecdotal version, ‘A’ happens—the meltdown. The woman escapes the aisle in time and goes home (B). The next chapter begins when she’s at work and something new happens that is totally unconnected to the grocery store event (C). 

In the causally connected version, the meltdown happens (A). Because of it, the woman is hit with a jar of Nescafé (B) and gets a concussion—perhaps without realizing it. Because she is unaware of the concussion, she continues to the important interview for the job she’s wanted from the beginning of the story (C). Because she is concussed, the interview goes poorly (D). Because the interview goes poorly…

Notice the constant escalation? Things keep getting worse for our poor protagonist. But these are not solitary events. Every single plot point in a novel must be causally connected. You want every domino in the pattern to fall.

How to Know if Your Writing Is Anecdotal

• If you can pick up a chapter or scene and move it elsewhere without any consequences to your plotline, that’s a red flag.

• Ask your critique partners or beta readers to note any moment they feel they can set the book down without needing to know what happens next. 

• List your plot points from beginning to end. Can you connect them with causal words such as because, but, or therefore? Or do you find yourself using the dreaded and then?

If Your Story Contains Anecdotal Writing, There Are a Few Ways to Fix It

First, this kind of writing is often a clue that your protagonist is aimless. Ask yourself: does he or she have a goal? Make sure your protagonist wants something from the very beginning of the novel. It should be specific (not, I want respect, but I want that senior executive job) and meaningful (to prove to my sister that I’m reliable, so she can trust me again). Nearly every plot point should involve the protagonist trying (but failing) to get what they want. And the goal should be quantifiable. At the end of the novel, the reader should know if they achieved it or not.

Second, take a closer look at your scene and chapter endings and ask yourself: 

• Is something different at the end? It should be. Does your character finish the scene with a different emotion than when they started? Has something new happened? Has your character learned something? If any of your answers are no, revise with an eye to previous scenes. Think in terms of cause and effect.
• Have you made the situation worse for your character instead of better? While good pacing calls for some breathing room where the protagonist catches a break, anecdotal writing often involves resolving the protagonist’s problems too soon. In your dealing with the latter, consider replacing that resolution with another problem—ideally one your protagonist has created for him or herself.

Anecdotes have their place. They are a perfect accompaniment to a glass of wine. They work well in non-fiction to illustrate a key concept. Just don’t try to build a novel out of them. 

Michelle Barker is the award-winning author of The House of One Thousand Eyes. She is also a senior editor at darlingaxe.com, a novel development and editing service, and a frequent contributor to its blog for writers, The Chopping Blog. Her newest novel, My Long List of Impossible Things, was released this spring with Annick Press. You can find her on Twitter, Facebook, and her website.

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Writing a novel is not just a case of putting pen to paper and letting your imagination run wild—at least not all the time. For most writers, their novels begin with some form of structure. Planning for each twist and turn can be hard at first, especially if you don’t quite know how it all hangs together, but with any of these techniques, you’ll be fully prepared to plot your novel and make the most of your writing time.

Once Upon a Time…

Although the Pixar method is used primarily for screenwriting, their $14 billion profits last year suggest they must be doing something right. Their stories begin with this formula: ‘Once upon a time, there was ___. Every day, ___. Then one day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Finally, ___.’

You can see that it feels almost fairy tale-like, but the enduring popularity of fairy tales implies that this form of storytelling works and is going to be popular with your readers. For example: Once upon a time there was a little girl. Every day she would visit her grandmother with a basket of cookies. One day a wolf spotted the little girl in the forest and wanted to eat her. Because of that, he ate her grandmother and jumped into bed to take her place. Because of that, he managed to attack the little girl until, finally, the huntsman rushed in to save her.

Try filling in the blanks for your story idea. Once you have a rough idea of your outline, expand it and see where it takes you.

Snowflake Method

The snowflake method lets you take the central idea, characters, and setting for your novel and expand them exponentially—like the arms of a snowflake. 

Start by writing a simple sentence to summarise your story idea. For Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, it might be something like this: Ebenezer Scrooge hates everything to do with Christmas—until three spirits show him the error of his ways in the past, present, and future. 

Now do the same for your main character (in this case, Scrooge), and your setting (Victorian London). Once you have a clear overview of these things, write a couple of sentences describing the beginning, middle, and end of your narrative. Then go back and add more detail. Repeat this exercise until you’ve expanded your plan to about two pages. Once you have enough information, you’re ready to begin writing.

Therefore, But

The rule of thumb here is to avoid the temptation to create a story that has moments you can join with ‘and then.’ That formula can result in a linear and potentially dull narrative. Instead, try to use therefore and but. This method, made popular by the creators of South Park, ensures that your story will include cause and effect, along with moments of rising and falling tension. Not only will your narrative become more realistic and believable, but it will become a much more exciting read. For example: Jack’s family is poor; therefore, his mother asks him to sell Daisy the cow, but he sells her for magic means instead of money; therefore, his mother gets angry and throws the beans away, but they grow into a giant beanstalk…

Write a few sentences explaining the plot of your story, but only let yourself use therefore or but to connect your ideas. If you find yourself using then, you may need to rethink your narrative.

Begin at the End

The first sentence can’t be written until the final sentence is written.

~Joyce Carol Oates

In the planning process, writers often focus on their narrative arc. But not everyone works this way. Maybe you don’t know much about your character’s journey, but you do have a clear vision of what will happen at the end of the story. You clearly see the main character and her friend holding a handful of berries that will kill them both while the world watches. Or you see your protagonist blowing up a haunted hotel (and himself, along with it) to save his family. 

If you know what will happen at the end of your story, start there. Then you can work backward, figuring out what’s driving them toward that conclusion and what choices they’ll have to make to get them there.

Sticky Note Planning

You can use this method in conjunction with one of the others, but it’s also a good way to start because a blank sticky note is far easier to fill than an empty page.

Use individual notes to create your timeline of events and then switch it up, removing some scenes, adding others, and rearranging the moments in your narrative until you’re happy with the overall plan. If you prefer a digital tool, you can do the same thing with One Stop for Writer’s Timeline tool. The benefit of planning with sticky notes is the control you have over editing and rearranging your plot. It’s particularly useful for writers who enjoy experimenting with non-chronological narratives.

It’s likely that during the planning process, you will use a combination of strategies. If you plan effectively and in detail, the writing process becomes more manageable, more efficient, and much more enjoyable. So experiment with different ways of planning and structuring your narrative and make sure that you are happy with the result before you begin to write.

But before I sign off, I want to acknowledge the giant, viral elephant in the room. If your life’s been turned upside down by recent events, writing a novel may be harder than ever. So I’ve got a bonus tip to help you manage the little time you have and maximize it for efficiency.

The Pomodoro Method

Most authors enjoy the planning and writing bits of the process. But learning to structure your novel is just one aspect of the writing journey. The challenging part is often just getting started—finding and carving out writing time during your busy schedule. To succeed, it’s essential to learn how to make the most of your writing time.

Kate Harrison’s method is not only pretty exciting, it’s realistic. Her technique involves setting aside manageable 25-minute chunks of time. 

Creative work can be hard to quantify—you might write a scene or section, only to delete it later. But time is a quantifiable thing, so you can measure your progress in… 25-minute chunks. I set myself a certain number to complete every day.

Setting manageable goals means you’re more likely to achieve them and feel motivated to get up and write again the next day. So start with something small—maybe 15-20 minute chunks. You’ll be surprised how much you can get done, and how motivated you’ll be to continue writing past your time limit.

What novel-planning method works for you? Leave a comment and let’s add to this list.

Rachael Cooper is the SEO & Publishing Manager for Jericho Writers, a writers services company based in the UK and US. Rachael has a Masters in eighteenth-century literature, and specialises in female sociability. In her free time, she writes articles on her favourite eighteenth-century authors and, if all else fails, you can generally find her reading and drinking tea!

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As we learn to write, we often hear about the need to create a strong pace in our story. Many seem to think that a strong pace requires a fast pace.

However, that’s not what’s meant by strong. So what is a story’s pace and why is it important?

Pacing is not the same as the speed that a story takes place, whether the plot covers days or years. (That said, a drawn-out time frame for a story can affect a reader’s sense of a story’s pace, especially if it feels like characters are waffling on taking action.)

Instead, the pace of a story is determined by how fast or slow events unfold in the storytelling. Stories are about change, and pacing is a measure of how quickly things seem to change from a reader’s perspective.

A too-slow pace can feel boring—no one wants to read 100 pages of nothing happening, nothing changing. But at the same time, a too-fast pace can feel hectic, be difficult for readers to follow, and prevent readers from connecting to characters or the story. So we need to find the right balance.

What’s the Right Pace for Our Story?

The “right” balance will be different for each story. There’s no formula we can rely on for creating the “perfect” mix for our story’s pace, such as writing 50% action, 40% dialogue, and 10% narrative.

The right pace for our story depends on several factors, including:

• our genre (thriller readers expect a faster pace than women’s fiction readers)
• our story’s voice (some voices are more chatty or terse than others)
• our story’s length (shorter stories often need a faster pace than novels, just to fit in the whole plot)
• our goals for reader connection to characters (more emotional connection requires delving more into a character’s introspection and emotional experience)
• our goals for reader experience (a fast thrill ride or deeper thoughts/emotional responses)

What Creates a Story’s Pace?

When we talk about pacing, we could be referring to several different writing or craft elements that affect pacing, including:

• Story Structure: Beat sheets can reveal whether plot turning points are happening at the right point to satisfy readers.
• Tension: Emotion, contrast, strong goals, conflict, foreshadowing, and even paragraph breaks can all increase tension, which affects pacing.
• Narrative Drive: The sense of forward movement in the story, working toward a satisfying ending.
• Obstacles: A sense of conflict—if meaningful and not random—creates tension, which increases a story’s pace.
• Goals and Stakes: Pacing drags if the stakes aren’t rising throughout the story, and stakes can’t exist without goals at risk.
• Infodumps: Dumping information from backstory, worldbuilding, or descriptions pulls down the pace of a scene.
• Narrative Elements: Too much of anything—action, dialogue, description, introspection, etc.—in a row can hurt pacing, so limit any one element to two or three paragraphs and then add something else to the mix.
• Sentence Structure: Long, complex sentences slow down a paragraph’s pace, and short, choppy sentences speed up a paragraph’s pace. There’s a time and place for both.

How to Create a Strong Pace?

Most pacing advice out there focuses on how to speed up or slow down our story’s pace, such as varying sentence and paragraph length, changing the mix of dialogue/action and descriptive paragraphs, using an appropriate level of detail, etc. All that is good to know, but doesn’t answer the question of how to create a stronger pace.

For a strong pace, ensure every aspect of our story has a purpose. We need to…

• focus on good story structure, so the narrative drive of our story’s beats all lead to a strong climax
• skip pointless scenes that don’t progress the story
• create characters with strong goals, to develop stakes and motivations for their actions
• avoid irrelevant information dumps or backstory
• use the plot to reveal our characters
• create appropriate conflict to drive the plot, establish tension, and push characters to confront their weaknesses
• develop a strong voice to earn reader’s trust that everything has a purpose
• avoid unnecessary repetition or giving redundant information
• use smooth transitions to carry readers along the story’s flow
• add hooks/story questions to maintain tension before switching to lower-stake subplot scenes

And finally, we need to…

• speed up and slow down the pace when appropriate for story events—any speed can become monotonous if it lacks variety

Storytelling is an emotional journey for readers, and good storytellers pay attention to the journey from their readers’ perspective. A strong pace carries readers along on that emotional journey, like an expert tour guide ensuring no one gets lost or bored along the way. *smile*

Do you have any questions or insights about strong pacing or how to find the right balance?

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 Storytelling Decisions: What’s the Right Pace for Your Story? appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Welcome to the final post in this four-part series on ANTS. As I mentioned in my first post, ANTS is a goal-oriented framework for storytelling. It’s what you’re trying to achieve by making great characters, settings, and plots for your stories. In the previous posts in this series, I’ve covered attachment, novelty, and tension. Now it’s time for our final effect: satisfaction.

Satisfaction is tension’s alter ego. Whereas tension is created when you introduce problems that hold readers in suspense, satisfaction is derived from resolving those problems. A well-structured novel will include smaller doses of satisfaction throughout the book, as the protagonist tackles smaller challenges before the climax. Because creating satisfaction often involves reducing tension, the lion’s share of it is reserved for the story’s end.

However, crafting a satisfying conclusion isn’t as simple as giving your story a happy ending. In fact, satisfaction does not require a happily ever after. We’ve all had the experience of reading or watching an ending that brought tears to our eyes but that was still undoubtedly good. Instead, satisfaction relies on following a series of principles that are rarely spelled out to new writers.

An End That Matches the Beginning

The first thing satisfaction requires is an understanding of the sources of tension in the story. After all, satisfaction is created by dispelling that tension. But sometimes writers don’t realize when they’ve introduced a problem or mystery that’s created tension. Other times, they intended to create a problem but weren’t clear enough. If the story’s ending doesn’t bring closure to the specific problems that were introduced, it will be unsatisfying.

Character Agency

Next, the ending of the story – good or bad – must result from the actions of the characters. And generally, the main character must make the biggest difference to the end. It’s deeply unsatisfying if the problem is resolved by pure chance. It’s equally frustrating if a side character swoops in and saves the day instead of the story’s hero. The central protagonist of the story must struggle against problems and then overcome them – or succumb to them – through their own choices.

Karmic Balance

Last, audiences apply value judgments to character actions, and those actions must create an ending that rewards or punishes characters appropriately. A character can earn a positive outcome by showing clever thinking, by sticking to their guns when it’s hard, or by being willing to sacrifice to achieve their goal. Characters that give into temptation or make selfish choices show that they deserve a bad ending. This is why the main characters in tragedies have a tragic flaw. Ultimately, it is acting on that flaw that brings about their downfall.

Generally, creating satisfaction comes down to one critical moment in the conflict: the turning point. You can think of a turning point as the climax of the climax. It’s the moment when the story’s outcome is determined by the protagonist. Let’s have a close look at the turning point in Star Wars: A New Hope.

The big problem of A New Hope is the threat of the Death Star. Using this weaponized space station that can blow up entire planets, the Empire will soon crush the Rebel Alliance. The tension in the story escalates as the Empire locates the Rebel base and sends the Death Star to destroy it.

The movie’s climax appears as the Rebel pilots fly their X-Wings to the Death Star in a last, desperate attempt to destroy it. But to succeed, they have to fire at a very precise weak point on the station, and they are being picked off by enemy fighters. A senior pilot in the Alliance manages to fly down a trench in the station’s hull to get to this weak point, but he fails to hit the target. To give the Rebels one last chance, Luke decides to make his own attempt.

As Luke approaches the weak spot, the turning point comes. He hears the voice of his mentor, Obi-Wan: Use the force! Luke has to decide whether to rely on the targeting technology in his ship or risk everything on a leap of faith. He chooses to trust in the force and in himself, and because of that, he succeeds. The ending to A New Hope is satisfying because the tension surrounding the Death Star was resolved, Luke is the one who resolved it, and he earned his happy ending by making the right choice.

The principles behind ANTS are like any other principle in storytelling: they can be broken in the right circumstances. However, because each ANTS effect is fundamental to reader engagement and enjoyment, storytellers need a very compelling reason to abandon them. So unless the entire purpose of your story is to comment on humanity’s helplessness in the face of cosmic forces, you’re better off sticking with a climax that makes the hero matter.

CHRIS WINKLE

Chris Winkle is the editor-in-chief of Mythcreants, an online magazine dedicated to fantasy and science fiction storytelling. You can read more of her articles on writing or listen to her talk about stories on The Mythcreant Podcast.

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The post Goal-Oriented Storytelling: Satisfaction appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.