For my first post of 2026 I decided to look for KZB posts published sixteen years ago this month. It was hard winnowing it down to three excerpt, but choose I did.
First is a post by Claire-Langley Hawthorne about meeting the challenge of writing a short story by laying out the structure first. Next is an evergreen post by James Scott Bell dealing with the structure of a novel. Last is a touching post by John Ramsey Miller on experiencing death and how that can deeply inform our writing.
I view a short story as having a single transformative story arc – one told in the most concise and most powerful terms possible. All fine and dandy in theory but no sooner do I start than I fall prey to an overabundance of backstory and plot complications – and these little buggers have an annoying habit of multiplying, so by the time I reach around 4,000 words I realize what I really have is, you guessed it, chapter one of a new novel. Characters have already started taking control, offering me a range of complexities that I can’t help but want to explore, the setting demands detailed description which I cannot resist providing and the story arc takes on a much grander scale that will inevitably fail as a short story.
With this particular short story (which I’m hoping will pass muster and be published in the Kill Zone collection you’ll be hearing much more about) this dilemma created both opportunities as well as challenges. I had to rise to the challenge of paring everything down so it would succeed as a short story and I realized I had the seeds for a new series set in Australia which was quite exciting (oddly enough I’ve never written anything actually set in the land I grew up in).
My first step to transforming my piece into a ‘proper’ short story was to think about structure. I focused on the four main elements I thought I needed:
- Establishment of setting
- A trigger for action
- A build up of suspense and conflict
- A critical choice
- Resolution
When I found I basically had all these elements (albeit muddied by too much dialogue, description and backstory!) I knew my main focus had to be on paring everything down to its essential elements. This included character, setting, as well as plot and once I started this process I also found that I could focus on what the story was really all about.
Last Friday I took my short story to my writing group for their critique and they helped me identify areas of improvement and further ‘pruning’ – hopefully I’m now close to the final product and, more importantly, I feel like I’ve grappled with a new challenge that has improved me as a writer.
I can’t say I like the short story as a medium – I am a novelist at heart – but I do appreciate the intensity and power it can bring. I may not have enjoyed the process but as compensation I do have a new (male) protagonist that intrigues me. So who knows, this particular challenge may spur me on to develop a whole new series of books!
Claire-Langley Hawthorne—January 11, 2010
Now, the first doorway is an event that thrusts the Lead into the conflict of Act 2. It is not, and this is crucial, just a decision to go looking around in the “dark world” (to use mythic terms). That’s weak. That’s not being forced.
A good example of a first doorway is when Luke Skywalker’s aunt and uncle are murdered by the forces of the Empire in Star Wars. That compels Luke to leave his home planet and seek to become a Jedi, to fight the evil forces. If the murders didn’t happen, Luke would have stayed on his planet as a farmer. He had to be forced out.
In Gone With the Wind it’s the outbreak of the Civil War. Hard to miss that one. No one can go back again to the way things were. Scarlett O’Hara is going to be forced to deal with life in a way she never wanted or anticipated.
In The Wizard of Oz, it’s the twister (hint: if a movie changed from black and white to color, odds are you’ve passed through the first doorway of no return).
In The Fugitive, the first doorway is the train wreck that enables Richard Kimble to escape, a long sequence that ends at the 30 minute mark (perfect structure) and has U. S. Marshal Sam Gerard declaring, “Your fugitive’s name is Dr. Richard Kimble. Go get him!”
The second doorway, the one that closes Act 2 and leads to Act 3, is a bit more malleable, but just as critical. It is a clue or discovery, or set-back or crisis, one which makes inevitable the final battle of Act 3. It is the doorway that makes an ending possible. Without this, the novel could go on forever (and some seem to for lack of this act break).
In The Fugitive, at the 90 minute mark (the right placement for a film of just over two hours), Kimble breaks into the one-armed man’s house and finds the key evidence linking him with the pharmaceutical company. This clue leads to the inevitable showdown with the “behind the scenes” villain.
In High Noon, the town marshal reaches the major crisis: he finally realizes no one in the town is going to help him fight the bad guys. That forces him into the final battle of Act 3, the showdown with the four killers.
By the way, this structure works for both “plot driven” and “character driven” stories. It’s just that the former is mainly about outside events, and the latter about the inner journey. But that’s beyond the scope of this post.
Now, there is always some well meaning literary genius howling in protest at the idea of structure. Too rigid! I don’t write by formula! I am a rule breaker, a rebel! An artist! Away with your blueprints and let me run free! The 3 act structure is dead!
Let me say, first, I understand this artistic impulse. A good writer is a rebel, someone out to make waves.
But let me also say that the literary waters are littered with the works of those who ignored the basic principles of the suspension bridge. Unreadable novels with pretty words that didn’t sell.
You want to write an experimental novel? Go for it. Just be aware that not a whole lot of people are going to care.
What they care about are characters, dealing with trouble by fighting their way over a bridge—meaning, through a plot that matters and is laid out in the right way.
Structure is “translation software” for your imagination. You’ve got a great story in your head. The characters, the feeling, the tone, the gut appeal, the thing you want to say. But it means squat unless you can share it with other people, namely, readers.
Structure allows you to get your story out with the greatest possible impact.
James Scott Bell—January 16, 2010
Like Gilstrap wrote on his blog, I also think and write about death and destruction and it’s a subject I know better than I’d like. I have seen death and the destruction guns and knives and cars can do to human beings and it made quite an impression on me starting at an early age. We lived across the street from a funeral home when I was ten or so, and that was where my experience began. Our neighborhood kids used to lie on our stomachs and watch Mr. Barry embalm people in the basement. He always had the louvered-glass windows open and he never saw us as his back was usually to us. It was like watching horror movies. We used to run when we heard the ambulances heading for the hospital and we’d stand, an audience of innocents, watching as some unfortunate victim was wheeled in on a gurney. Often the ambulance (again Mr. Barry) would often make a quick stop before putting the vic back into the ambulance (it doubled as the hearse for black funerals at the other Barry home in another part of town) and it had red lights in the grill and a howling siren. The lights were covered with black cloth baggies for funerals. It showed me a side of death I’ve carried with me since.
I have a problem in that I never know what to tell kids about death, how to explain it without instill fear and worry in them. I told Sasha that the old moves aside so the young can have room to grow up, that it was true with every living thing. I told her that dying was just like being born into this world but in another place. I’m not sure about that but I don’t mind lying to children about that.
Before my funeral home days in Starkville, Mississippi, when I was five or six, my eighty-four-year old grandfather died, and I remember how empty I felt and how sad it made me. I took little consolation in people telling me he was in heaven. I only knew he was never coming back and that I’d never sit in his lap and use his pocket knife to carefully cut cubes of tobacco for him to chew. I’d never hear him tell me stories about his life as a cattleman, about gunfights in downtown Hazzlehurst, about driving cattle in storms, of lean times, of being gored by a bull and thrown by horses into bad places. Although I took no consolation in the idea of Papa in heaven, I did in the fact that he died of a stroke while cheering the Friday Night Fights on TV in the nursing home. I am so glad that I knew him for the years I did, and how he called my mama, “baby” and I thought she was truly old.
As I’ve grown older I’ve seen a lot of people I knew and loved die, and it’s never easy. Never. But it has given me feelings to run my fingers over and to put into my words.
John Ramsey Miller—January 30, 2010
***
- How do you meet a writing challenge?
- What helps you with structuring you novels?
- Experiencing death is one of the most emotional aspects of being human. Has it deepened your own writing? If so, how?
Dale, you always find gold when you go mining in the archives. Thanks again!
I admire the logical way Clare handles problems by pinpointing them, then analyzing exactly what needs to change. I can do that when editing other people’s writing but not my own. That’s why I value good outside critique so highly.
Jim’s structure is loose enough that we pantsers can use it w/o feeling constricted by outlines. Thanks, Jim!
What a thoughtful post by John. HIs early experience with the funeral home allowed him to take death more in stride as a normal (and inevitable) part of life. Some people are so terrified of death, their own anxiety becomes a big problem that destroys any quality of life they have left. They never get past Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s stages of denial, anger, bargaining, and depression. In my fiction, I like to explore those reactions in my characters.
You’re so welcome, Debbie. It’s a real pleasure to share this gold.
Clare’s problem-solving was insightful to me as well. Jim’s pylons of act bridges remains my favorite illustration of how to move from one act to another. John’s post really resonated with me as well. I think experiencing death both deepens our writing and also, as you so well noted, helps us be less anxious about facing it ourselves.
As always, thanks so much for commenting, my friend.
My first experience with death was when I came home from 4th grade one day and my mom told me my cousin Laurie, who was my age, had died in a faraway place (her dad was in the army). We’d been writing letters to each other. It was the first time I realized kids could die too, like old people. It instilled a certain fear in me, even though my parents sent us 5 kids to church every Sunday. Then when I was 8 months pregnant with my son, I got the call from my mom that my younger brother, 30, had died in a boating accident witnessed by his wife, his 5-year-old-daughter, and my other brother. Again, a profound understanding that not one day is guaranteed in this life. Being diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer at 57 has reinforced that sense of time as invaluable and beyond fleeting. I want to use every moment I have as well and fully as possible. That includes my writing. All the pain, loss, grief, disbelief, even anger, go into my stories sometimes in ways I don’t even consciously realize. Our experiences shape our writing and make it deeper and wider. Thanks for sharing these excerpts.
Thank you for sharing your own experiences with death, Kelly. I’m very glad you are still with us and hope your cancer is in remission.
“All the pain, loss, grief, disbelief, even anger, go into my stories sometimes in ways I don’t even consciously realize.”
Very well said. Truly some of the most profound experiences are rendered most powerfully in our writing when they naturally flow into our work.
Death, especially early death, or the death of a child, hits a family hard – and never really goes away. It is far less common since vaccines and modern medicine, and we expect our children to live, grow up, and take care of us, so it hits doubly hard.
I needed to process that into something gentler, but still death, in the first Pride’s Children novel – because it is also one of the great touchstones for humanity. If the reader needs to process, literature helps. The reader AND the writer.
We shouldn’t hide it, our experiences, or the feelings it brings – but it is so very hard to face that you will never see that child grow up.
Given that about a third of known pregnancies end in miscarriage, it is also a heavier burden on women, who are supposed to pick themselves up and hope for another time, and take care of the living. Let me tell you: you never forget the babies you didn’t even meet either.