Category Archives: Plot

The Structure of Plot

Story Structure | The Structure of Plot

Most authors think of plot as what their story is about. And beyond that, they recognize key events and turning points in the story that are part of plot as well. That’s a good place to start, because it is how plot appears from the creative perspective as you are developing and writing your story.

But plot is quite a bit more than that. Structurally, a plot needs specific story points such as a goal, requirements that need to be met to achieve that goal, and even the price that will be paid if the goal is not met.

In this installment of our series on story structure, we’re going to reveal the key story points of plot and lay out the structural timeline as well.

By the time we’re done, you’ll have a much more refined understanding of what plot structure is, and how to manipulate it to create just the kind of story you want.

Let’s begin with the four most important plot points: Goal, Requirements, Consequences, and Forewarnings. All four of these work together to define what your story is about, what needs to be done, and what happens if the protagonist fails. Taken all together, these are the control knobs that adjust your plot’s dramatic tension.

Let’s investigate each of these four primary plot points:

Goal is really about as straight-forward as it seems: what the characters of your story are trying to achieve. Now, keep in mind that the protagonist is leader of the effort to achieve the goal. And, as we all know, there’s also going to be an antagonist who is working against the protagonist, either to prevent the goal from being achieved, or to achieve it for himself instead.

Without a goal, there is no clear cut destination your characters are trying to reach. So, you’ll need to describe that goal in no uncertain terms of your story will come off as unfocused and without a defined purpose. To your readers (or audience) it will seem to meander.

What kinds of things can be a goal? Just about anything: To escape from something or someone, to complete a task, to obtain something (could be a treasure, a diploma, or someone’s love), to discover something, to become a better person, to come to terms with the past. Really, almost anything can be a goal. It just needs to be something you don’t currently have, and can’t get just by snapping your fingers – you have to work for it.

Requirements describe the specific steps that must be taken or the necessary conditions that must be met for the goal to be achieved. If any step or condition is not completed, the goal will not be achieved.

Why are requirements important? Without them, your characters (and readers) have no idea what is needed to arrive at the goal. So, everything that happens seems arbitrary. And if they are ultimately successful, it comes off as if the characters just magically achieved the goal – it just happened, not because they worked to make it happen, but just because after running around in all kinds of directions, eventually the goal just plopped down in their lap for no apparent reason.

Like goals, requirements can be all kinds of things: getting the approval of all the members of the board of directors to stop an immoral project, gathering all the ingredients for the secret formula to saving the dying princess, searching the rooms in a haunted house to find an close the portal to hell, meeting the conditions necessary to prove you are worthy of someone’s love.

The key point in regard to requirements is that they be a limited set – a specific number of items or steps, well-delineated right up front, so the reader knows exactly what conditions must be met and can, therefore, track progress toward the goal.

Consequences are the bad things that will happen if the goal is not achieved. Why are consequences necessary? Because they double the motivation to achieve the goal. Without consequences, characters, just like real people, are likely at some point to say, “Hey, that goal would’ve been nice, but geesh, these requirements are just too darn hard. That goal ain’t worth it!”

But, with consequences in place, there is a price to pay if you just give up on the goal. If the goal isn’t achieved, you (and/or those you care about) will suffer. Achieving the goal not only obtains a good thing, but also prevents a bad one. And that is why your characters will push on to the end.

Forewarnings are the indicators that the consequences are gaining on you. They could be cracks in the dam that show it is getting closer to the consequence of it breaking and flooding the town if the goal of diverting the water upstream isn’t achieved or some unknown individual buying up more and more shares of stock until the consequence of him gaining control of the company prevents you from the goal of stopping an evil project.

As with requirements, forewarnings need to be clearly specified, but they don’t have to be a specific number of them. For example, how many cracks does it take before the dam breaks? With forewarnings, additional cracks, small pieces of concrete popping out, shuddering do to increasing instability, all these things can indicate the dam is getting closer to breaking, and collectively they ratchet up the motivation for the characters to push harder and faster because time and/or options are running out.

You can easily see how Goal, Requirements, Consequences, and Forewarnings work together as the master controllers of any plot’s structure.

These are the four power-drivers of the plot. However, there are many other plot points that fine tune how the dramatic tension of the Big Four is channeled through your story. But that is a subject for a future installment in our ongoing series on story structure.

This entire story structure series is referenced from our book on the subject that we published way back in 1991, Dramatica: A New Theory Of Story.  Just click on the link to read it for free in a downloadable PDF.

Also, you may wish to try our Dramatica Story Structure Software with the world’s only patented interactive Story Engine. The Story Engine cross-references your answers to questions about your story to generate a structure that perfectly supports your intent, free of holes or inconsistencies.

Until next time, May the Muse be with you!

Melanie Anne Phillips
Creator, StoryWeaver
Co-creator, Dramatica

Writing Stories with a Collective Goal

Some novice writers become so wrapped up in interesting events and bits of action that they forget to have a central unifying goal that gives purpose to all the other events that take place.  This creates a plot without a core.

But determining your story’s goal can be difficult, especially if your story is character oriented, and not really about a Grand Quest.

For example, in the movie “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” all the characters are struggling with their relationships and not working toward an apparent common purpose.  There is a goal, however, and it is to find happiness in a relationship.

This type of goal is called a “Collective Goal” since it is not about trying to achieve the same thing, but the same KIND of thing.

So don’t try to force some external, singular purpose on your story if it isn’t appropriate.  But do find the common purpose in which all your characters share a critical interest.

Melanie Anne Phillips
Creator, StoryWeaver

Plot Points – Static vs. Sequential

Some time ago I wrote an article explaining how plot wasn’t the order in which events appeared in a story, but the order in which they happened to the characters.  The storytelling order can be all mixed up for effect.  As an example, consider the Quentin Tarantino movie, Pulp Fiction, in which several interconnected story lines are presented quite out of order from how they actually came down.  A large part of the fun for the audience is to try to put the pieces together in the right sequence so they understand the meaning of the story.

Of course, that’s an extreme example.  Much more common is the simple flashback (or flash forward).  But even here, some flashbacks are plot, and others are storytelling.  First, consider a story in which the story opens in a given year and then the next section begins with the introduction, “Three years earlier…”  In this case, the characters aren’t being transported back in time, just the reader or audience.  The author is showing us what happened that led up to where things are “now” in the story.  That is all storytelling, and can be quite effective.

But now consider a flashback in which a character recalls some incident in the past.  The character drifts off into reverie and then we, the readers or audience, watch those events as if they are in the present, observing the memories as the character experiences them.  This is plot, not storytelling, because neither character nor readers are transport back in time.  Rather, we are just observing just what the character is reminiscing about in the here and now.  And so, this trip to the past does affect the character – it changes how they feel and perhaps what they will do next.

This is also true of flash forwards: Do we jump into the future to see where a character will end up, or is the character projecting where they might end up and we are seeing what they are thinking?  The first variation is storytelling, the second is plot.

Of course things can get really out of whack in time-travel stories, especially since you can add both plot flashbacks and storytelling flashbacks also.  The important thing here is to know when you are actually altering your plot or just changing the order in which the readers or audience are shown parts of the plot.  If you are aware, you can play these techniques like a virtuoso, but if you treat them all the same, you’ll just end up with a cacophony.

But, as I said, that was covered in an earlier article I wrote, but I am repeating it here as a necessary foundation to what comes next.  And that is, the difference between Static Plot Points and Sequential Plot Points.  Very important.

To begin, if you strip away all the storytelling aspects of plot and get down to just the structure (the order in which things happen to the characters), you’ll find there are two kinds of plot points:  One, Static Ones, such as the story Goal, that remain the same for the whole course of the story, and Two, Sequential Ones, such as Acts, Sequences, Scenes, and Beats within a scene, in which the story moves from one to the next to the next until the progression of the plot arrives at the climax, resolves and ends.

And that is what this article is about – giving you a glimpse into those two aspects of plot.

First, let’s look at the static plot points.  We’ll cover just four in this article to make the point about static vs. progressive and address others in later articles.  Here’s the four we’ll explore:

Goal, Requirements, Consequences, and Forewarnings.

Here’s a brief description of each:

Goal is what the protagonist is trying to achieve and the antagonist is trying to stop.  Each probably has recruited their own team of helpers enlisted to aid in their two contradictory quest, but it is ultimately the protagonist and antagonist who have to duke it out to determine if the effort to achieve the goal ends in success or failure.

Now we all know that some goals turn out to be not worth achieving and that some goals are born of a misguided understanding, and also that goals can be partially achieved so, for example, the protagonist doesn’t get everything they want but enough to cover what they really need.  No matter how you temper it, the story Goal is the biggest linchpin in your story’s plot.

Requirements are what’s needed to achieve that Goal.  Requirements might be a shopping list of things the characters need to obtain or accomplish in any order (like a scavenger hunt) or Requirements could be a series of steps that need to be checked off in order.

Now you’d think that would make Requirements a sequential plot point, but it doesn’t because the Requirements remain the same for the entire story.  So, just because you have to fulfill requirement 1 and then 2 and then 3, doesn’t make them sequential.  Sequential plot points are like gears that turn to a different setting every act, sequence, or scene.  The focus of each act, for example, is different than the last one, while the Requirements remain the same, even if they have to be accomplished in a certain order.

Yeah, this stuff can get pretty complex.  That’s why you have me, your friendly neighborhood teach of story structure and storytelling to guide you through these tricky little story structure quagmires.

Consequences, are sort of like an Anti-Goal.  Consequences are what will happen if the goal is not accomplished.  It’s kind of like the flip-side of the coin.  One the one side is the positive desired future and on the other side is the negative undesired alternative if that future isn’t achieved.

Consequences are really important because they double the dramatic tension of the story.  The character are just chasing something positive, they are also being chased by something negative.  Will they catch the Goal before the Consequences catch them?  That’s where plot tension comes from.  Right there.

Forewarnings…  Just as Requirements are how you can chart the progress toward the Goal, Forewarnings are how you can chart how close the Consequences are to happening.  Consequences can be cracks in a dam, follow by a small drip, a few little leaks, and so on.  Everyone knows that at some point, the dam is going to bust – unless the characters achieve the Goal first, such as diverting the upstream flow, or opening the jammed overflow gates.

Forewarings can also be emotional too.  A man must make his fortune to satisfy a woman’s father before he can get permission to marry her.  But, there is another suitor.  While he’s off looking for a legendary treasure, the woman has a casual conversation with the rival.  As the man remains away, the woman and the rival share a meal, have a picnic, sit close together on the beach, watching the sunset.  We all know that if the man doesn’t return with the treasure soon, the woman will go with the suitor who is there, rather than the man who isn’t.

So those are four examples of static plot points.  There are many more.  You’d be surprised!  Some of them are extremely handy in making a plot click like clockwork.  Alas, those are beyond the scope of this particular article.  But don’t worry, I’ll be covering those in the not too distant future.  Was that a flash forward?

All right.  Now what about the Sequential Plot Points?  A storya unfolds over time – not just in the telling, but the whole point of a story is to follow a journey and learn if the characters involved make the right decisions or not to get what they are after, both materially and emotionally.  And we, the readers or audience, gain from that experience so we are better prepared if we ever face that kind of human issue in our own lives.

Now of course nobody thinks about that while following a story, but that’s how it works at the structural level.  That’s part of the craft of authorship: to structure a story to affect readers or audience in a certain way intentionally to move them to feel or respond in a desired fashion when all is said and done.

To this end, think of a story as a symphony.  You may know that symphonies are made of of movements – large sections of time in which certain themes are explored.  And then the symphony shifts into another movement in which a different theme is explored.  By the end of the symphony, all the variations of the theme that the composer wanted the audience to experience have been related, leading to a final climax and conclusion.  How very like a story.

In stories, the largest of these movements are the acts.  You can feel them when watching a movie or reading a book.  There comes a point where something major is completed and the characters move on to a different kind of effort or understanding.  Or, some major event occurs that sends everything off in a different direction. You get a sense of completion when you reach an act break, and also the sense that the next stage or phase of the story’s journey is about to begin.

Within acts are smaller movements called Sequences.  Sequences usually follow an arc that spans several scenes.  It may be a character arc or a kind of effort or process that has its own beginning, middle, and end within the story as a whole.  For example, we’ve all heard of the “chase sequence” that often occurs in action movies.  That’s how they come across, basically.

Scenes are smaller units and are more defined.  They are like little dramatic circuits that have a Potential, Resistance, Current, and Outcome (Power).  Each scene is a little machine – a miniature story within an act.  Each scene starts with some dramatic potential, runs into a resistance, presses forward, and ends with a resolution to that original potential.

One of the most elegant things about scenes is that the way a scene ends set up the dramatic potential that will start another scene later.  Elegant, but hard to get your head around.  Again, not to worry, I’ll be covering that aspect of plot in another article soon.

Point being, that each scene is a tooth on the cog of an act.  And together all these act cogs work together as part of the plot machinery of your story.

And finally, just as I covered four of the most basic static plot points, here is the fourth and final sequential plot point I’ll give you for now:  Beats.

Beats are the turning of the gears within each scene.  They are the steps within the scene that introduce the potential, bring into play the resistance, pit those against each other, and spit out the outcome.

What those beats are and how to use them is, again, the subject of another article.  But the point here is that the sequential progression of a plot isn’t just one event after another; it is more like wheels within wheels.

And so, I believe we have accomplish our goal of the moment, which is that you are now probably quite away that the order of events in a finished story is not at all the plot.  The plot is the order in which events happen to the characters.

And plot has two kinds: static, and sequential.  The static point points include such things as Goal, Requirements, Consequences, and Forewarnings, and never change their nature over the course of the story.  The sequential plot points are like gears that move the machinery of the plot forward, act by act, sequence by sequence, scene by scene, and beat by beat.

And that, my fellow writers, is how a story rolls.

For more on how to use these concepts to build your story, try out the StoryWeaver Story Development Software I designed just for that.  And to learn more about how to structure your story, try out the Dramatica Story Structure Software I co-created with my partner.

Until next time, may the Muse be with you!

Melanie Anne Phillips

Plot Order vs. Exposition Order

The order in which events unfold in a story is not necessarily the order in which those events occurred to the characters within the story.

In movies, for example, a story might open with a scene in the present, then put up a title card saying, “3 Days Earlier…” and dissolve back to an earlier time to see how things got to this point.  As another example, in the classic book, The Bridge at San Louis Rey, five travelers arrive at a bridge at the same time, then the book jumps back to see how they all came to be there.

These are simple instances of a very common practice of jumping around in time in the storytelling to create suspense and generate interest and mystery for your readers.  The problem is that mixing up the sequence of events makes it very easy for you, as author, to accidentally leave out essential pieces of the linear logic of the timeline.

When this happens, readers eventually realize that there’s something wrong with the actual order of events, and if it is a serious enough gap it can destroy the readers’ suspension of disbelief and pull them right out of the story emotionally.

You might think, then, it would be a better idea to just write things in their actual order and then mix them up for storytelling later.  But, authors often create best when envisioning their stories in the order they plan on unfolding them.  Exposition is an integral part of the creative process and forcing oneself to write only in sequential order might very well hobble the Muse and result in writers block.

Fortunately, there is a simple technique you can use to avoid temporal mis-steps than can cause your story to stumble, while still supporting the free form creation of stories in exposition order.

First write your story as usual, then jot down all the major events in your story on index cards in the order they are revealed.  Next, rearrange the cards to put the events in character time, rather than exposition time.  Finally, follow the order of events to see if you have left out any crucial steps .

With this clear view of the event-order timeline, you can easily find and plug any holes and correct any pacing issues and then apply those changes to your existing storytelling order so that it all flows perfectly in both the character-sequence and the exposition sequence.

Melanie Anne Phillips

Throughlines and How to Use Them!

Some time ago I write an article that described the difference between the two basic forms of story structure with the following phrase:

You spin a tale, but you weave a story.

The common expression “spinning a yarn” conjures up the image of a craftsperson pulling together a fluffy pile into a single unbroken thread. An appropriate analogy for the process of telling a tale. A tale is a simple, linear progression – a series of events and emotional experiences that leads from point A to point B, makes sense along the way, and leaves no gaps.

A tale is, perhaps, the simplest form of storytelling structure. The keyword here is “structure.” Certainly, if one is not concerned with structure, one can still relate a conglomeration of intermingled scenarios, each with its own meaning and emotional impact. Many power works of this ilk are considered classics, especially as novels or experimental films.

Nonetheless, if one wants to make a point, you need to create a line that leads from one point to another. A tale, then, is a throughline, leading from the point of departure to the destination on a single path.

A story, on the other hand, is a more complex form of structure. Essentially, a number of different throughlines are layered, one upon another, much as a craftsperson might weave a tapestry. Each individual thread is a tale that is spun, making it complete, unbroken, and possessing its own sequence. But collectively, the linear pattern of colors in all the throughlines form a single, overall pattern in the tapestry, much as the scanning lines on a television come together to create the image of a single frame.

In story structure, then, the sequence of events in each individual throughline cannot be random, but must be designed to do double-duty – both making sense as an unbroken progression and also as pieces of a greater purpose.

You won’t find the word, “throughline” in the dictionary. In fact, as I type this in my word processor, it lists the word as misspelled. Chris Huntley and I used the word when we developed the concept as part of our work creating the Dramatica theory (and software). Since then, we have found it quite the useful moniker to describe an essential component of story structure.

Throughlines then, are any elements of a story that have their own beginnings, middles, and ends. For example, every character’s growth has its own throughline. Typically, this is referred to as a character arc, especially when in reference to the main character. But an “arc” has nothing to do with the growth of a character. Rather, each character’s emotional journey is a personal tale that describe his or her feelings at the beginning of the story, at every key juncture, and at the final reckoning.

Some characters may come to change their natures, others may grow in their resolve. But their mood swings, attitudes, and outlook must follow an unbroken path that is consistent with a series of emotions that a real human being might experience. For example, a person will not instantly snap from a deep depression into joyous elation without some intervening impact, be it unexpected news, a personal epiphany, or even the ingestion of great quantities of chocolate. In short, each character throughline must be true to itself, and also must take into consideration the effect of outside influences.

Now that we know what a throughline is, how can we use it? Well, right off the bat, it helps us break even the most complex story structures down into a collection of much simpler elements. Using the throughline concept, we can far more easily create a story structure, and can also ensure that every element is complete and that our story has no gaps or inconsistencies.

Before the throughline concept, writers traditionally would haul out the old index cards (or their equivalent) and try to create a single sequential progression for their stories from Act I, Scene I to the climax and final denouement.

An unfortunate byproduct of this “single throughline” approach is that it tended to make stories far more simplistic than they actually needed to be since the author would think of the sequential structure as being essentially a simple tale, rather than a layered story.

In addition, by separating the throughlines it is far easier to see if there are any gaps in the chain. Using a single thread approach to a story runs the risk of having a powerful event in one throughline carry enough dramatic weight to pull the story along, masking missing pieces in other throughlines that never get filled. This, in fact, is part of what makes some stories seem disconnected from the real world, trite, or melodramatic.

By using throughlines it is far easier to create complex themes and layered messages. Many authors think of stories as having only one theme (if that). A theme is just a comparison between two human qualities to see which is better in the given situations of the story.

For example, a story might wish to deal with greed. But, greed by itself is just a topic. It doesn’t become a theme until you weigh it against its counterpoint, generosity, and then “prove” which is the better quality of spirit to possess by showing how they each fare over the course of the story. One story’s message might be that generosity is better, but another story might wish to put forth that in a particular circumstance, greed is actually better.

By seeing the exploration of greed as one throughline and the exploration of generosity as another, each can be presented in its own progression. In so doing, the author avoids directly comparing one to the other (as this leads to a ham-handed and preachy message), but instead can balance one against the other so that the evidence builds as to which is better, but you still allow the audience to come to its own conclusion, thereby involving them in the message and making it their own. Certainly, a more powerful approach.

Plot, too, is assisted by multiple throughlines. Subplots are often hard to create and hard to follow. By dealing with each independently and side by side, you can easily see how they interrelate and can spot and holes or inconsistencies.

Subplots usually revolve around different characters. By placing a character’s growth throughline alongside his or her subplot throughline, you can make sure their mental state is always reflective of their inner state, and that they are never called upon to act in a way that is inconsistent with their mood or attitude at the time.

There are many other advantages to the use of throughlines as well. So many, that the Dramatica theory (and software) incorporate throughlines into the whole approach. Years later, when I developed StoryWeaver at my own company, throughlines became an integral part of the step-by-step story development approach it offers.

How do you begin to use throughlines for your stories? The first step is to get yourself some index cards, either 3×5 or 5×7. As you develop your story, rather than simply lining them all up in order, you take each sequential element of your story and create its own independent series of cards showing every step along the way.

Identify each separate kind of throughline with a different color. For example, you could make character-related throughlines blue (or use blue ink, or a blue dot) and make plot related throughlines green. This way, when you assemble them all together into your overall story structure, you can tell at a glance which elements are which, and even get a sense of which points in your story are character heavy or plot or theme heavy.

Then, identify each throughline within a group by its own mark, such as the character’s name, or some catch-phrase that describes a particular sub-plot, such as, “Joe’s attempt to fool Sally (or more simply, the “Sally Caper.”). That way, even when you weave them all together into a single storyline, you can easily find and work with the components of any given throughline. Be sure also to number the cards in each throughline in sequence, so if you accidentally mix them up or decide to present them out of order for storytelling purposes, such as in a flashback or flash forward, you will know the order in which they actually need to occur in the “real time” of the story.

Once you get started, its easy to see the value of the throughline approach, and just as easy to come up with all kinds of uses for it.

Melanie Anne Phillips

How to Structure Your Story’s Signposts

First let me define what signposts are in stories and then provide a few hints on how to structure them.

Signposts are the markers that separate one act from another.  Think about any well structured story you’ve read or seen on the screen.  There are always several points at which you feel that you’ve moved from one act to another, such as in the plot when the characters have finished preparing for a journey and actually embark or in the character arc where the main character finally realizes he has been held back by his best friends good intentions and decides to go solo for the first time.

We intuitively know that a major turning point has been reached and that things will no longer go on as they have and that a whole new direction will reveal itself as the story unfolds.

Now all of that is just felt, but it actually comes from something very solid in story structure: the signpost.

Signposts are like road markers that tell you when you need to turn off the highway you are on and take a side road in order to get to where you’re headed.  These signposts are just at the juncture points, yet in between them, you have a lot of ground to cover that is part of your journey.

In a standard three-act structure, there are four signposts.  To see this more clearly, hold up four fingers on one hand as in the illustration below:

If each finger is a signposts, then you can see three journeys between them.

Readers or audiences feel the journeys because that is the flow of the unfolding of a story over time.  But the four fingers define the direction of each of the journeys.  So, the first signpost marks the point of departure of the story.  The last signpost identifies the destination.  the other two signposts in the middle describe the two major turning points in the story when the set up is complete at the end of the first act, and when the climb to the climax begins at the end of the second.

That’s fine conceptually, but how does it play out in actual story development?  As it turns out, all four signposts belong a family which is what gives a story a consistent identity as it plays out.

One such family, as an example, consists of the signposts of Learning, Understanding, Doing, and Obtaining.  So, in such a structure, the story begins with a general sense that Learning is the undercurrent of what everyone is engaged in.  It is the overall background for all that happens.  And while not every event or character conjecture has to pertain directly to Learning, there is that feel that establishes that Learning is what the first act is all about.

In practice, the characters in such a story will begin with Learning this or that (the first signpost) and then the act (the first journey) will follow the characters as they learn more and more until they arrive at an Understanding (the second signpost).  That’s where we feel an act break as the story changes course from exploring learning to exploring understanding.

In the second act (journey), the characters will progressively grow in their understandings until they are finally able to start Doing (the third signpost).  Again, we feel an act break as the internal quest from understanding shifts to the external quest of doing things.

Now the characters do more and bigger things until they are finally able to arrive at their designation, the fourth signpost of Obtaining.  End of narrative.  End of story.

There are a several families of signposts depending on the kind of story you are telling.  And, the signposts don’t always have to be in the same order.  In one story, for example, the characters may obtain something that allows them to do something that causes them to learn which leads to an understanding – a complete different order than our first example.

In real storytelling, this second example might be that some kids steal a car (obtaining) and are then able to do (take a road trip across the country), and en route they encounter many people with issues (learning) and eventually arrive home with an understanding about the importance of respecting the property rights of others.  Lame, to be sure, but fine as an example of how the signpost order is not locked.

Now as I promised at the beginning, I have now defined what a signpost is.  But I still need to explain how to structure them.

To do this, I’m going to share a letter I just wrote to one of my story consulting clients.  (Yes, I make my living as a story consultant.  Click here to learn more…)

This particular client was taking the precise nature of each signposts way too closely to heart.  They were trying to make every single story point in each act tie directly into each signpost, not taking into account that each signpost is just the county you are traveling through and the events in the journey are flavored by that, but not defined by it.

So, here’s the note to my client with some tips for structuring signposts:

Structure should not be applied as rules but as guidelines.  Structure gives you the sense of where the meaning is – where the center of the message is.

So in regard to the four signposts, they are like real signposts: they tell you when you have crossed the border from one kind of conjecture to another.

Stories are all about exploration in order to find the narrative because the narrative will provide the understanding of how all the pieces fit together, and therefore what one needs to do to get things to end up in the best possible arrangement.

If a story travels through learning, understanding, doing, and obtaining in that order, it means the story begins with learning.  That is the first signpost – the point of departure on their journey.  And from there, it starts off on its exploration to learn more and more until it arrives at an understanding (the second signpost).  From that point forward, learning is behind and the characters grow more and more in their understanding of what they already learned until they have understood so much that they are finally able to start Doing something about it – the third signpost.  From there, learning and understanding are pretty much behind them and their focus is to do more and more until they are finally able to Obtain when they reach the fourth and final signpost: their destination.

As you can see, signposts just mark the dividing lines when the story shifts its focus from one kine of endeavor or outlook to another.  You can also think of the four signposts as four rooms in a house.  You begin by exploring the first room in which you learn a lot.  When you have learned all you can, you move on to the next room where you put all that learning together to arrive at an understanding.  When you finally understand all you can, you move on to the next room and begin doing until you have done all you can, and then you move onto the last room to Obtain what you want by taking what you learned, organized into your understanding, turned into the action of doing that results in Obtaining.

Again, in terms of rules vs. guidelines, the signposts give you a general sense of what is going on in each act – what’s the focus or the area of interest.   But, that’s not the only thing going on in each act – just the overall background against which everything happens.

Don’t feel that everything that occurs in an act has to somehow connect to the signpost.  The signpost is just like the broth in a soup into which all the other stuff is cooked.  It gives each act an identifiable flavor but can be filled with all kinds of individual tastes that have nothing to do directly with the flavor of the broth.

Now, looking at your recent work, that is actually WAY too detailed and WAY too focused on each signpost.  It is good to have so many opportunities to relate to the signpost – that shows great consistency in your thinking about that act.  But, you don’t need nearly a tenth of that many references to the signpost as you have there to convey the overall perspective in that act – you only need enough to clearly establish in the mind of your reader the general background of the kind of exploration that is going on in that act – the kind of activity, interest, or concern.

In other words, don’t try to tie everything that happens in your first act into Learning – that would be forcing the structure and taking structure way too literally.  Rather, find as many opportunities as you can in your existing story material for each signpost in each throughline that already is tied into that signpost without forcing it.

W all think in narrative patterns.  Our interests are the topics we explore, but we organize the way we appreciate a topic in narrative, which is nothing more than a framework of meaning that ensures we’ve looked at all the meaningful parts of a topic from all the pertinent points of view.

And so, when we write, as with all authors, we automatically organize our story elements into narrative patterns so they make the most meaningful sense.  But, we do this by intuition so the perspective is often a bit fuzzy and sometime a little off-true.  Structure allows us to focus that already-existing proto-narrative so that each signpost becomes a little more clear as the overall flavor of the background so that all that happens can be seen through that filter before moving on to the next.  Like Red, Blue, Green and Brightness, each signpost provides part of the picture through a different filter until we get the full-color version after the last scene at the end.

My advice:

Don’t put so much effort into each signpost.  Just find the elements of your story that already point at each signpost and then polish them up a bit so they better reflect it.  Let your remaining story elements play against that without trying to force them to direct connect.

Melanie Anne Phillips
Creator StoryWeaver
Co-creator Dramatica

Structuring Your Story’s Limit

In order to create tension in your audience, you will want to establish a limit to the story. This limit will indicate to the audience what will bring the story to a moment of truth, either running out of time or running out of options. If you want tension to increase as your characters run out of time, choose Timelock. If you want tension to increase as your characters run out of options, then choose Optionlock.

THEORY: Every argument must come to an end or no point can be made. The same is true for stories. For an author to explore an issue, a limit to the scope of the argument must be established.

To establish how much ground the argument will cover, authors limit the story by length or by size. Timelocks create an argument in which “anything goes” within the allotted time constraints. Optionlocks create an argument that will extend as long as necessary to provide that every specified issue is addressed.

By selecting the kind of limit at work in your story, you lock down either the duration of the argument (Timelock), or the ground covered (Optionlock).

USAGE: A Story Limit works to bring the story to a climax and a conclusion. This Limit can be accomplished in either of two ways. Either the characters run out of places to look for the solution or they run out of time to work one out. Running out of options is accomplished by an Optionlock; a deadline is accomplished by a Timelock.

Choosing a Timelock or an Optionlock has a tremendous impact on the nature of the tension the audience will feel as the story progresses toward its climax. A Timelock tends to take a single point of view and slowly fragment it until many things are going on at once. An Optionlock tends to take many pieces of the puzzle and bring them all together at the end.

A Timelock raises tension by dividing attention. An Optionlock raises tension by focusing it. A Timelock increases tension by bringing a single thing closer to being an immediate problem. An Optionlock increases tension by building a single thing that becomes a distinct problem.

Both of these means of limiting the story grow stronger as the story progresses. Optionlocks limit pieces with which to solve the problem and can create a feeling of growing claustrophobia. Timelocks limit the interval during which something can happen and can create a feeling of growing acceleration. Both types of Limits bring the story to a climax.

One cannot look just to the climax, however, to determine if a Timelock or Optionlock is working. A better way to determine which is at work is to look at the nature of the obstacles thrown in the path of the Protagonist and/or Main Character. If the obstacles are primarily delays, a Timelock is in effect; if the obstacles are caused by diversions, an Optionlock is in effect. An author may feel more comfortable building tension through delays or building tension through diversion. Choose the kind of limit most meaningful for you and most appropriate to your story.

This tip was excerpted from:

Dramatica Story Structuring Software

What Chases Your Characters?

A goal is what the characters chase, but what chases the characters?  Answer: the Consequences.  Consequences double the dramatic tension in a story by providing a negative result if the goal is not achieved.

Consequences may be emotional or logistic, but the more intense they are, the greater the tension.  Often they provide greater depth if there are emotional consequences when there is an external goal, and external consequences if there is an emotional goal.

Your story might be about avoiding the consequences or it might begin with the consequences already in place, and the goal is intended to end them.

If the consequences are intense enough, they can help provide motivation for characters who have no specific personal goals.

This tip was excerpted from
StoryWeaver Writing Software
Click here for details…

wpc9342079_06

Be Clear About the Requirements for your Story Goal

requirementsThe achievement or failure to achieve the goal is an important but short moment at the end of the story. So how is interest maintained over the course of the story? By the progress of the quest toward the goal. This progress is measured by how many of the requirements have been met and how many remain.

Requirements can be specific, such as needing to obtain five lost rubies that fit in the idol and unlock the door to the treasure. Or, they can be nebulous, such as needing to reach three progressive states of enlightenment before the dimensional portal will open.

The important thing is that the requirements are clear enough to be easily understood and “marked off the list” as the story progresses.

This tip excerpted from
StoryWeaver Writing Software
Click here for details…

wpc9342079_06

Never Be Stuck for a Plot Again!

A writer asked today:

Dear Melanie,

Could you please tell me where can I find some material on western genre plot building.

Let me make it much clearer. I have a character Marshal, A saloon girl, Rancher, Preacher, Blacksmith and bartender along with 4 outlaw gang and 1 leader og the outlaw gang.

What I am trying to find is a story of events that can occur within this small town. Which direction can I take to find some events to get me to page 75.

Darryl

My reply:

Hi, Darryl

Here’s a link to my article, The Creative Two-Step, that uses that example to begin to develop characters in an old Western Town:  http://storymind.com/content/41.htm

This technique can also be used equally well for plot events.

The idea is to switch back and forth between analytical mode and creative mode by asking specific questions about your emerging story, then answering them in as many creative ways as you can. Then, you repeat the process by asking questions about each of the answers and then answering THOSE questions. In short order, you end up with hundreds of plot points.

Example:

Question:

How does the Marshall first find out about the gang’s activities?

Answers:

1. The gang rides into town hootin’ and hollarin’

2. He is told about the situation, right after he accepts the job and pins on the badge.

3. He saw a newspaper account of the town’s gang problem and came there on his own to get the job to clean up the gang.

4. The gang sends a telegram to the marshall’s home to let him know they are in town shaking it down.

Okay, that’s the first step – analytical (the first question), followed by the second creative step (all the potential answers).

Then you repeat, asking as many questions as you can think of about each answer. I’ll just do one as an example.

Answer 3: He saw a newspaper account of the town’s gang problem and came there on his own to get the job to clean up the gang.

Questions:

1. Where was he when he saw the newspaper?

2. Has he done this kind of thing before?

3. Why does he want to interfere?

4. What makes him think he is qualified to do anything about the problem?

5. Does he notify the town’s mayor or governing body before he shows up?

Then, you repeat the second “creative” step and provide answers.

Example:

Question 2. Has he done this kind of thing before?

Answers:

1. Yes, he is independently wealthy and does this all the time as a hobby.

2. Yes, one time. His family was killed when he was a child and in his first adventure, he read a newspaper account of a child who was made an orphan due to a gang’s violence in a town in the East. He brought the gang to justice and found a foster home for the child. It was so fulfilling, his ordinary job has been miserable since, and this new article has made him realize he needs to step forward to give his live meaning.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

Now, through this exercise, what events have we created for our story? Perhaps these:

1. A scene showing the Marshall as a young boy when his family was killed (by who and how and where can all be figured out using the Creative Two-Step).

2. A scene showing the Marshall see the first article and decide to get involved.

3. Several scene, perhaps in a montage or in a scrapbook of how that first adventure went.

4. A scene of him encountering this new newspaper article and how it affects him.

5. A scene of him quitting his job (how much he needs the money, what kind of job, and so on can be created using the two-step)

6. A scene of him arriving at the town.

7. How he gets the job (again, use the two-step to come up with ideas for this)

8. His first encounter with the gang (casual, antagonistic, high or low tension, anybody get hurt?, did the gang know he was the Marshall when they first encounter?)

Okay, again, I could go on and on and so could you. Just use the ol’ two-step method and then stand back, see all the ideas you’ve generated and create a plot sequence from all the notions like I just did above.

The details in each scene can be created using the very same method, once you have the main plot line sequence.

Melanie

Write your novel or screenplay step by step…