It may come as no surprise to some of my readers that I was largely uneducated regarding story structure while writing my first four novels. If I hit on what looks like a preplotted story arc, I attribute it to intuition or gut feeling about how my stories should develop. Now that I have my recent works and also my backlist published, I’m thinking a lot more about how to develop a story—a new story.
I’ve been reading writing blogs long enough to come across a lot of terminology on storytelling. Character archetypes, character arcs, the three act structure, inciting incidents, building tension, climaxes, and the list goes on. Generally, I love reading how-to guides. I am a do-it-yourselfer from way back. But I want to know more than simply the mechanics of something—I crave knowledge of principles, those amazing gems of information that can be applied to so many endeavors.
A while back, I purchased a few books on writing. For a beginner writer, The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman helped me clean up my writing, back when I was primarily interested in snagging an agent. I also enjoyed Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass. But the idea of constructing a story—well, I had stories and they were already pretty well formed, so I put the other books, Save the Cat by Blake Snyder and The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Volger on the shelf. They seemed like heavier reading that I would eventually get around to.
In fact, I have finally gotten around to reading them, but with a very specific purpose—I have a few characters with some interesting history, but I have no story. I mean, I know there’s a story to be told about a young man whose mother is delusional—she believes her son is blind. But how to write it! I may be as delusional as my character to think I can pull this one off, but still ... Hmm … this story could take a while … so, I thought I’d work out my process of discovery here on my blog and make this space earn its keep. Unless of course I get sidetracked with something else … Be warned, I sometimes get big ideas, and they often get messy. Now, if I can just avoid Exploding Head Syndrome!
Hey Bridget. We are reading BETWEEN THE LINES, MASTER THE SUBTLE ELEMENTS OF FICTION WRITING, by Jessica Page Morrell in my Grub Street Class. It is a tremendous help and gives many, many examples. Well worth a read. In fact, I may go chapter by chapter through it again, once I'm in a full on edit of my current story. Hope you are well.
ReplyDeleteLiza
Oh, that sounds like another good book! Right now, reading about writing feels right--I'm in no hurry to rush this story, so researching will be time well spent. Thanks for the referral.
DeleteI hope your own novel writing is progressing. :-)
I've used Save the Cat in the way I write my books now. I've developed a worksheet I use before I begin any novel these days, and it's really helpful! I made it from years of reading stuff like you've been looking at. All of that can be really helpful. I wish you luck with your ideas1
ReplyDeleteI did find Save the Cat really helpful, though I have to say, I'm really enjoying the more in-depth analysis of The Writer's Journey. I've already formulated some worksheet ideas--via Scrivener--to implement some of it. I can hardly believe I have evolved into an outliner! Ha! (I say that with every honest intent of outlining--we'll see what happens when I get down to writing, lol)
DeleteLOL about outlining. Yeah, I've gone the opposite way. I used to outline everything, and now I hardly do anything. I do my worksheet, which is only about 15 sentences of my own story writing when I'm finished. Extremely basic, so I don't really call myself an outliner these days. More like "build a skeleton" and then dive in, I guess!
DeleteI'm just so curious about implementing an outline. I've never really done that before--I've outlined after the fact, just to get an out-of-control ms under control, but to outline before I've even typed my first sentence--I'd like to try that out. Of course, I haven't even typed out the first line of the outline yet--I've only been working on character sketches. It's so tempting to just can the outline, take my characters, stick them in a setting and see what happens!
DeleteYeah, for sure try out the outline!
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