Free Tips For Writers - Plot and Structure
From Plot And Structure, by James Scott Bell, 2004Thanks! Give us a review, share, or bookmark on:
This Is Part 1 - Begin Here, Below
(Double-click any word you want defined.)
Free Tips For Writers - Plot and Structure
From Plot And Structure, by James Scott Bell, 2004Thanks! Give us a review, share, or bookmark on:
This Is Part 1 - Begin Here, Below
(Double-click any word you want defined.)
It's one thing to be a poet, or have poetry in your writing, but another to write a novel. Trust me, there are Rules, Plot, Structure, Character Arcs, Plotlines, Acts, and all kinds of fancy stuff. I'll boil it down; that's the advantage of reading it here, I'm condensing and simplifying it for you.
At the outset of your plot and structure effort, you should introduce your Lead (hero, heroine) Character. Introduce their every day Real World and set the tone. Make the Lead fully rounded, compelling, flawed, likeable, relatable to---right off the bat. Get into his/her head and show desires, fears, and admirable or hateful or other compelling traits. You Must Hook the reader into the plot immediately to keep the Reader reading. (Have I done that?)
Show by your structure that the Lead is trying to have a life (or not), trying to get along, just being himself, when some Outside Disturbance occurs, something that changes his life forever. As a result, he must be Desperate to get, find, or do Something that he needs to survive the Disturbance. Pack it with emotion and passion (you can clean it up later.)
Your Lead must have an Objective, a Desire, must Want something that will interest the Reader and move the story plot and structure forward. He must be Desperate to get it. There has to be Tension, Conflict, Doubt, and Suspense over it, to drive the novel forward, or there's just no story worth turning the page for. There has to be a question: Will he get That Thing he desperately needs to survive. Will she make it through?
A driving force in your plot has to be Obstacles to that process, Conflict, Confrontation with Inside (psychological emotional) and Outside Forces (antagonists, rockslides, rain, dragons, etc.)
Imbued in the structure of your plot, there has to be a More Powerful Antagonist who either wants the same That Thing, or wants to prevent the Lead from getting it. The situation has to be Desperate, a battle to the End, and the Lead and the Antagonist have to be cemented to each other forever by something that makes sense, something that neither can avoid, Revenge, Love, Hate, like that there. Otherwise, there's nothing that could reasonably prevent the Lead from just walking away from the Problem.
Make it hard to get That Thing. Throw problems at him, shoot at him, arrest him, pursue him, wreck his life, have the Antagonist be relentless, make his life hard. This is what people want to read about. They want to Relate to him, they want to Be Him (or Her), they want to have Emotion, Passion, Adventure, Feelings, and Succeed in the end.After the Profound Journey you send your Lead Character on, in Three Acts, it should look like she will lose, because the Antagonist is too powerful. It must look like the Lead will not get That Thing. Then, she scores an unexpected clinching Goal Kick out of nowhere, and wins the game.
Then we need an Aftermath. The Lead shows by Actions how the Journey has Changed her, what the sacrifices and tribulations have wrought, the denouement, the End, what the Reader has waited for all this time, the Payoff, the Better Person.
Each sentence must have a hook and a tease. There also has to be a Hook and a Tease in each paragraph, each chapter, and each act. I'll clarify this later. Every sentence you write needs a Beginning, Middle, and an End. The same for each paragraph, chapter, and act.
I'll tell you more about all this, but get this straight first: write these full blast for all you're worth, passion, depth, desperation. Then, you can just come back later and take out the crazy or boring parts, but you Must Hook The Reader immediately. As I said, this happens in Three Acts. I'll talk about that next, what you need to know.
Also I'll tell you about Mythic Plot Structure. You will need to know this from my viewpoint, boiled down. Mythic Structure is something that may cause you to fail completely, unless you know about it in detail. I'll give it to you on the next page.
(See? Above? That's the Read On Prompt. Get it?)
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