Part 1 of 2 (because this ended being a lengthy analysis; when I post Part 2 on April 4th, I will include a link to this Part 1 post for your catch-up/review).

Writing a novel is complex work. On this point the most successful among us and the most consistently frustrated among us will agree.

No other artful avocation I can think of is complicated by so many processes, theories and debated conventional wisdom as the seemingly simple intention to write a novel.

It’s just a story, how hard can it be? Professionals make it look so easy… isn’t it?

And while it’s true there are many viable ways to go about writing a novel, some more efficient than others that in the end prove to be just as effective, there are also infinite ways to screw it up.

Some of those pitfalls have less to do with how and what you write than with what one believes to be true about writing and the writing conversation in which we are all taking part.

I recently read that about 80 million folks cling to the intention of writing a novel.

Which means, to whatever extent that is even close to being true, there are 80 million prospective authors who intend to turn pro. In a world loaded with ways to occupy our spare hours – golf, bowling, macramé, even reading – nobody seems to be doing this as a hobby.

They intend to get paid. To become famous. To contribute to the collective library of human experience, and thus, live forever.

And yet, very sadly so, a significant percentage of those writers are buying into myths that will hold them back or sabotage their writing dream entirely. Some will fail because they’ve never heard otherwise, they’ve never had their limiting beliefs challenged.

It seems that 80 million of us believe we have the raw chops to write a novel at the highest level of the game, and to command a fee for it. This alone is likely to be a limiting belief. It is a myth in its own right, because it’s just not gonna happen for all 80 million of us.

Not even close.

Not because the truth isn’t available to all.

It actually is available to us all.

But rather, because the truth will be lost on many. Sometimes because of the very writing conversation to which they look for guidance. Contradiction, confusion and outright toxic untruth is out there. Everywhere, in magazines and books and at writing conferences and in keynote addresses, even from the mouths of those who would have you believe they know from whereof they speak.

Confusing the matter is the fact that shreds of truth are marbled within all the noise, just as there are voices of wisdom wandering among the crowd. Like trimming the fat from a delicious rib eye of writing energy – because really, it’s just so fun and energizing to listen to or read about what others more famous than ourselves are saying about writing – we are left to digest as best we can before our arteries clog from the sheer preponderance of partial truths.

We all have access to the truth in all its varied forms, but we are challenged to weed them out from the abundant noise. Not just the truth – because indeed, there are many that apply – but to find our own highest and best truth.

Where process is concerned, what is true for one may not be true for another.  

But where craft is concerned, the truth about what works in a novel, and by omission or weakness what doesn’t, stands unchallenged and largely non-negotiable. If you doubt this, try writing a novel without dramatic tension or stakes, for example. Those are only two of about a dozen incontrovertible essentials.

There are voices calling to you in this regard, and as you read and listen and learn you must seek to separate veracity from hubris, knowledge from ignorance, the overly-simplistic from the perfectly complex.

It is precisely because there are so many pathways to success that you must discount anything that smacks of “this is how I do it” from the mouths of the famous. Because you may not yet know what they know.

Notice how the so-called gurus – Robert McKee, Donald Maass, Randy Ingermanson, James Scott Bell, and others writing here and elsewhere, including myself – rarely if ever say “this is how how I do it, so you should do it this way, too.” Some gurus apply different vocabulary and modeling to their versions of the truth, but when you look closely you’ll see that we’re all basically singing the same tune.

The one you’ll be singing, too, once you get it right.

Rather, we write about what we believe to be true about process without suggesting what your process should be, provided it leads you to certain outcomes, and then, what is unmistakably true about stories that work regardless of that process.

The former is fluid and negotiable.  The latter is as firm and solid as the gravity holding you in your chair.

And thus the beautiful, harrowing, worthwhile dance with our fiction plays on.

If you are reading this and thinking, “well, I hear you, this is hard, but nonetheless I’m going to be one of the few who actually make it,” there is good news and intimidating news.

The good news is that this is precisely the attitude you need, and if you go about it properly – both in terms of process and reaching the qualitative bar required of making it – you must might.

The intimidating news — it’s more good news, actually — is that you might just have to give up, to completely walk away from, some of the things you believe about how it all happens, and what it looks like when it does. Some of which might have been why you came to the writing party in the first place.

A few of these might not ring fully true for you… yet.  But the longer you are at this, the more clarity you’ll find in the following list of myths about writing novels.

Myth #1: “Just write.”

These two words, when strung together in this context, can be among the most misleading and toxic pieces of writing advice you will ever hear. Especially if they aren’t paired with some notion of what and how to just write.

There awaits a place along the writing road where this becomes solid advice. But until you just write in context to a robust awareness of certain principles – requisite storytelling competencies and story forces, all of which will serve you when done well and sink you if omitted or fumbled – you will for the most part be treading water if you simply just write.

For many writers – just for grins, let’s say that this is the case for 79 out of those 80 million aspirants – suggesting that they “just write” is like telling a prospective doctor who has not yet gone to medical school to “just cut.”

The outcome of that can be fatal.

Myth #2: Listen closely and you’ll hear what you need to know.

Maybe. That’s far from a certainty. The better bet is to hear what you suspect may be truth and then seek to prove or disprove it by looking for it within the stories you read.

We have been brought up to listen to those who have gone before us and succeeded mightily. We read about them in magazines, we take notes as they deliver their acquired wisdom in a keynote address. When they tell us that their characters are speaking to them – sometimes as if they want this to be taken literally – we believe.

Because we so want what they are saying to be completely true.

And so often it isn’t.

Here’s the dangerous part, the siren melody of their message: what they say won’t be completely wrong. Because it will be real and right – spot on perfectly accurate – for them. And yet it may actually be the worst thing you can do relative to your own writing process and your understanding of what makes a novel work.

Famous Writer A says she has no clue about her story when she begins, including the ending. She just writes and writes, year after year, draft after draft, until the story coalesces and her characters take on a life of their own. It’s as if she has very little to do with it – which in the moment sounds so humble and heroic – she’s only driving the bus, which is on autopilot to a destination that always surprises her.

Famous Writer B says he won’t start writing a project until the premise haunts his every waking moment, until he knows every last twist and turn, including the ending. Especially the ending. Then he writes a 50-page single-spaced outline and lets it stew for a few weeks while trusted advisers weigh in. Only then will he embark upon an actual first draft, and when he finishes that draft it is pretty close, only a tweak and a polish away from what he submits.

They are both famous bestselling authors. So who is right?

In that moment, the one that scares you the least, and inspires you the most, the one that aligns with what you already think you know and have chosen to believe is true for whatever reasons apply… that’s the writer you believe.

None of those are the best criteria for your choice. Better criteria awaits within the vast oeuvre of craft, solidified by your own reading and witnessing within novels that inspire you. Because reading in context to what you know about craft – using the experience to test and solidify your knowledge – is the most empowering form of learning available.

Learn the craft, witness the craft, practice the craft. That’s the ticket, and it applies to any and all processes, pantser and planner and everyone in between.

Myth #3: There are no rules.

Writers hate rules. Rules are for traffic court and raising children. Rules advocate a crowd mentality, they exist for sheep to keep the sheep alive, while writing is a creative, individual pursuit that seeks to break new ground.

Until, that is, you sign up to sell your fiction as a professional. The moment your raise your hand for that, certain expectations that smell a lot like rules begin to define your path to success. The more you understand the more you’ll realize what you though were rules are actually principles, and they are there to empower you, not hold you back.

There are lines on this playing field, and if you step over them you put your game at risk.

The proposition that “there are no rules” is a misinformed hope, while the fundamental presence of a suite of powerful writing principles is an incontrovertible truth.

Empowerment comes from understanding the difference. And, once you do, to understand that to break form with the principles is advised only for those who know precisely what they are doing.

Versus, say, someone who violates a principle because they don’t recognize or understand it for what it is. Or does so in the name of art, expectations and lines be damned.

Don’t be that writer. It can cost you years of spinning your wheels on the writing road if you are.

Myth #4: Story Trumps Structure

All this means, when taken literally, is that structure is useless without a worthy story to tell. Like using a CAD program to create the blueprint for how to light a candle.  It’s a book title, not a truth or even a principle.

Good stories always have certain things in common. Like a compelling premise. A hero with something to do – the pursuit of a goal, the seeking of a solution to a problem, the avoidance of something that threatens. A plot, in other words. And where this is a plot there is structure. Always. There are stakes involved. Something stands in the way of what the hero wants or needs or seeks, threatening or blocking or otherwise causing trouble.

It isn’t a story until something goes wrong. And it won’t work if the structure is off.

That’s called dramatic tension, stemming from conflict. This is the life-blood of every genre, every time. Structure is like math – it’s not something we make up, it’s something that adds up once we understand the principles involved.

Which leads us to…

Myth #5: It’s all about your characters.

Authors love to talk about their characters. Backstory and inner landscape and how an abusive father messed up their lives. But until the writer tosses in what goes wrong, creating an unfolding path of response by the hero followed by proactive intention, all in the presence of an antagonistic force or villain, motivated by stakes… they aren’t telling you the whole story.

Plot exists to give your characters something to do.

Characters exist to engage with the plot.

It is through their decisions and actions along that path that character is best revealed. saying storytelling is all about the characters is no different than saying it is all about the plot. Rather, the sum of the two exceed the parts standing alone.

*****

Part 2 of this article will post here on April 4th.

by Larry Brooks

When teachers teach, even within the realm of art, the essence of the learning is based on some form of undeniable, unassailable truth. Otherwise, it’s just some guy’s notion of how things are done.

Even finger-painting requires fingers, which are limited in what they can and can’t do. Which creates context for the processes and products of finger-painting.

We teach skydiving and dancing using techniques and proven principles. And even if it’s never mentioned, it is the undeniable and unassailable force of gravity that creates context for the entire proposition.

We teach cooking using techniques and principles and proven recipes. And even if it’s never mentioned, it is an undeniable and unassailable truth – that people don’t like to eat their meat raw unless the words sushi or tartare are within visual range – that creates context for the entire proposition.

I could go on.  If you’ve read my writing books you know I’m fond of analogies (and of going on), often to the extent I receive nasty personal notes from readers who, well, don’t appreciate them, or worse, aren’t capable of understanding what they mean.

Not everyone is cut out for being a writer.

With all the prevailing kumbaya in the online writing and workshop conversations, it is easy to lose sight of this single and simple truth: writing a good novel is hard. Freaking hard. A command of the principles of the craft – including how a good story is structured – is an essential arrow in the writer’s quiver.

Don’t be the writer who squares off with this beast unarmed. Or kids themselves that, within the wide breadth of what the writer gets to make up for themselves, structure is one of those things.

Here’s where things go south in the writing conversation:

When a teacher begins to talk about limits and lanes and proportions and optimal placement of certain essential elements within a story, some writers shut down. This is supposed to be fun, it’s supposed to be art, not architecture and certainly not math.

Others twist what they think they hear into what they fear they are hearing.

And thus the meaning is lost. And with it, the writer’s realistic hope of getting there.

Know this: any conversation about story structure is NOT a conversation about process. 

The presence of, the nature of, and the benefits of story structure are exactly equal and unequivocally unbiased when it comes to any writing process, whether it that of the most passionate free-form organic pantser or the most anal outlining mega-consumer of 3-by-5 cards in the history of office supplies.

The goals of both, and the criteria for the success of both, are without compromise or exception identical.

Here are a few of the outcomes of this disconnect between teachers who talk about story structure and writers who don’t like what they hear:

Writer says: there’s no such thing as story structure, I’ll write my story any damn way I please.  (And when she does, there will eventually be her very own version of story structure in place, thus disproving that initial assertion. Bad story structure is still structure, and it will probably tank your story… so it’s best to understand the difference between good and bad.)

Writer says: I don’t want to create my story within the confines of someone else’s story structure, I want it to flow organically from my head into my fingers and onto my pages.  (And when he does that, it may or may not work. When it does work, it will in no small part be because it landed on the page with some close proximity to the existing and universally-accepted – among professionals – principles of story structure, and if it doesn’t work, feedback will move the story in precisely that direction. Or, in the absence of a revision, it’ll simply fade away, unread.)

Writer says: Sounds like a pile of “rules” to me, and I hate rules. There are no rules in writing.  (Right. No rules. Check. Just like there are no rules in music, athletics, love, relationships, health, medicine, the legal system and generally staying alive. When such a belief system prevails, the writer is saying she depends on her own personal set of story sensibilities (just like those guys in Oregon holed up in a National Wildlife office are relying on their own legal sensibilities to… well, nobody is quite sure, other than they’re woefully out of touch and destined to fail, thus making this a killer analogy for today’s message) to determine what happens and when it happens within her story… and again, if it works, it will be in no small part because the structure resembles principles she did not invent, but rather, she simply aligned with.)

Writer says: There are infinite ways to structure a story. Another writer says: I’ve heard about 3-act models, 4-part models, 6-part paradigms… they all can’t be valid.  (Actually, they can all be right, because you could argue that a novel with 71 chapters has 71 facets of structure to it… which is like a political argument that spins something to serve one’s one beliefs. Doesn’t change the fact that, when the story works, even with 71 chapters, it likely has the functioning acts, which can also be described in 4-parts overlaying those 3-acts, and/or as many other takes on the model as you care to attempt to break down and defend.

None of that matters.

What does matter is the author getting the flow of the story right.

What you call it when it happens doesn’t matter. The bestseller lists are crowded with authors who have never heard of a First Plot Point (yet they execute one elegantly in every novel they write), and believe that the flow of their story is one of their own invention, when in fact, they are simply writing what has proven to work for the collective whole of fiction, thus validating their story sensibility, if not their ability to describe it.

In other words, what a writer says they believe about story structure doesn’t matter relative to the truth about story structure. Because story structure is very much like gravity in this regard… it simply IS.  It exists. It doesn’t care what you call it, or how many ways you slice and dice it… it simply IS.

And it’ll hurt you or kill you if you proceed without an awareness of it.

In today’s commercial, genre-defined fiction market, that universal (yet liberatingly flexible) structure ends up being very much the same in pretty much every novel and movie that works. Because if it doesn’t align, it probably doesn’t work, and thus it won’t find a publisher or readers beyond the family holiday card list.

It is flexible in the same way that an athlete is free to improvise and respond spontaneously, provided they don’t break the rules of their game or step outside of the lines within which they play. When they do that, a penalty ensues.

Of course, writers don’t want to hear this about their game.

And yet, they remain free and without restraint within those same contextual expectations (limits, boundaries, and a proven relationship between decisions and consequences; i.e, a story that violates the tenets of structure simply don’t work as well as those that honor them) for what, win or lose, they are attempting to accomplish.

Already some writers reading this will notice the hair on the back of their neck standing straight, because damn it, there can’t possibly be a single structural paradigm out there telling me how I need to organize my story. And/or, it shouldn’t be this complicated.

It’s an unwinnable argument, either way. Until you have the courage and wherewithal to actually break down a story that works (not yours, but one that is out there) and see the glowing infrastructure of it for yourself. If you are a reader as well as a writer – and you sure as hell better be – and you still deny this after seeing it… I recommend a career in politics instead.

Of course, in doing this you need to know what you’re looking for before you can see it. And there, to quote our friend Bill S., is the rub. To many writer’s don’t.

So let’s simplify that universal structural model…

… the one you’ll find in pretty much every piece of successful fiction, once you do know what you’re looking for. Let’s clear the air and end the debate.

Because there is a kinder, gentler way to introduce, define and embrace the core principles of story structure without resorting to percentages and math and specific target milestones (which remain available for those who want to master this essential storytelling skill), and it defies challenge from any writer high enough up the learning curve to be reading this with the expectation of actually writing publishable, readable fiction.

Consider this: you absolutely cannot argue that every story – that isn’t a short story – does not have a beginning, a middle and an end.

Guess what… that’s 3-act story for you, in a nutshell.  It simply IS.

When you look closer at those three acts, though, you’ll find there are actually four contextual essences (parts) to a story within them (to be more accurate, across them), that flow smoothly over that core 3-act model, thus becoming a more precise and usable 4-part model that is orders of magnitude more useful to writers than its 3-act better known twin brother.

Because it gives you a mission for all the scenes, contextually, within each of those four parts. It’s like having a map, telling you where the land ends and the sea begins, and where the mountains are. Carve your own path through the wilderness as you will, but this information will keep you alive.

So if you are a non-believer where structure is concerned, or a resister, a late adopter or a literary Luddite – or simply someone who hasn’t yet been exposed to these essential truths – let’s look at story structure in a completely new way, with a completely different and non-restrictive or polarizing vocabulary. One as accessible and uncontroversial as the beginning-middle-end model that you are hard pressed to deny.

By the way, beginning-middle-end is way too simplistic to be useful to a professional author. It’s like describing college as freshman, sophomore, junior and senior, when your goal is to get into med school.  You better understand what needs to happen, and when, far beyond that simplistic breakdown.

You need to know what happens, and when.

Think of your novel as a flow.

Now we’re talkin’. Because you know – you don’t resist – that your story is not, it is never, about one moment in time, that is doesn’t take a snapshot of something and describe it to death, that your story needs to move forward (and even backward if you like) in time, it needs to change, to evolve, that new information needs to come in to play, stuff happens, stuff changes… and eventually, things get resolved.

You don’t resist that.

When you realize you don’t resist that, you are also signing up to implementing some form of story structure.

Think of structure as the flow of your story… and understand that the flow of your story follows a natural, organic contextual essence, one that has arisen from any and all other possible flows because this is how human beings experience life (which also has a beginning, middle and end) and stories themselves.

This is how readers engage with our stories. We are writing, first and foremost, for them. If that’s not true for you, you have another issue besides structure that you will eventually need to confront.

Now think of that flow having four definable sub-sequences, each with its own unique narrative purpose. Just like life has infancy, youth, middle age and old age (a list you can expand as you wish, but these four always remain in place)… the context of those experiences is by definition different – everything about them is different – when we live through it.

So it is with your story.

A functioning story has four segments to it that are unique relative to each other, and to how the reader experiences your story. Here they are:

Setup… you need to introduce your hero, present a story world (time, place, culture, natural law), inject stakes and set up the mechanics of an impending launch of – or twist to – your core dramatic arc (the plot), which is what your hero will spend the rest of the story investigating and pursuing and wrestling, all in context to the pursuit of a goal that leads to resolution).

Response… after things have been setup, the story needs to settle into a lane that shows your hero responding to a new path – the core story path, also known as your plot – with stakes in play and some form of obstacle (antagonism) causing the hero to react to something they may not understand (pursue more knowledge) or, if they do, a need to deal with it in a way that keeps their ultimate goal on their horizon.

Attack… because if the hero is too heroic too soon there isn’t much drama for the reader to engage with (there needs to be), so we wait until this quartile to show your hero evolving from a seeker/wanderer/responder to become a more proactive attacker of their problem or goal, both relative to the goal itself and the presence of an equally-evolving obstacle (a villain or a storm or a disease or an approaching deadly meteor, whatever is the source of tension and drama in the story)… moving closer to a showdown and some form of…

Resolution… wherein all the moving parts of your story converge to put your hero face to face with their goal and whatever blocks their path toward getting what they need to get.

This is, by the way, the nature and essence of the most common form of story model, the 3-act structure embraced by screenwriters and a huge percentage of professional novelists… this is the very same flow, because those two middle segments comprise “Act 2” of that model, thus creating a 3-act whole.

The degree to which you depart from this accepted – and expected – story flow is the degree to which you are putting your story at risk. Either by not knowing this, or worse, by defying it.

Because the context of the scenes and chapters with each of these four eras of flow differ, each with its own contextual mission for the scenes and chapters within it, you are then empowered to create a different contextual experience for your hero from part to part.

For example, your hero’s true story-arc-challenge doesn’t fully launch in the first-part (roughly a quartile) setup, and once it does, everything else in the hero’s life is trumped by whatever it is you have placed before your hero as a problem or a need or a goal, with stakes and opposition in play.

There will be those who resist, even to this kinder, gentler flow of a story. There will be those who say, “but wait, my story does kick off on page two, not on page 62,” which is a statement of fact or intention rather than a valid defense. This is why stories get rejected, and why the author may not ever be clear about why it happened.

If that’s you, then I urge to you see a movie tonight, and notice how it flows over these four contextual essences.

Read a bestseller, notice how it sets up the core story before fully launching it, (even when something highly dramatic opens the story, trust me, things will change for the hero, and soon, all within the setup quartile).

Notice how the story shifts (at what is called The First Plot Point) to thrust the hero down a new or altered path, causing her/him to react, to respond, all in the face of stakes (motivation) and the presence an emerging threat (both of which were, in a properly structured story, introduced and/or foreshadowed in the Part 1 setup quartile) of an antagonist (a person or force or situation) that seeks to prevent the hero from reaching their goal (in a romance, for example that would be whatever – person or thing or situation – that keeps the two lovers apart)…

… and then, how the story again shifts in the middle and points your hero toward a more proactive attack on their problem…

… and then, after another twist at roughly the three-quarter mark (new information), where all paths and motives and strategies begin to converge, resulting in a confrontation or a catalytic series of decisions and actions by your hero (who cannot passively sit on the sidelines while someone else steps up to solve the problem), creating some form of resolution.

If you want to see seven or eight parts in that, you can. They may indeed be present, but almost always as subsets and supporting dynamics within these four parts of the flow.

Here’s something that’s true, even if you are the most ardent resister to anything that smacks of story structure: your novel is not a snapshot. Not a dissection of a singular moment in time. A story needs to move forward. Things need to change.

Your hero needs something to do.

Every time.  In every story that works.

If you think of that change over the arc of your story, then you are embracing the context of flow.

Don’t call it structure if that offends or frightens you. But that’s precisely what it is, and that’s all it intends to do: make your story flow.

Call it what you will, but once you get this and begin to either pants or plan your story with this in mind – because it is like gravity itself, if you deny or ignore it, it can kill you – you’ll find the story not only works better, but your experience in creating it will be orders of magnitude more blissful.

Sort of like soaring on the wind.

You always need some form of wings to stay aloft, and alive.

The flow, fueled by your character’s journey, becomes your story’s wings. You are the pilot in command, trained and skilled at what works and what will result in a fiery crash, fully mindful of how far you will fall if you don’t honor the physics of story, forces that will either elevate you or send you spiraling to the ground.

We all get to choose. For professional authors of stories that work – no matter what their writing process – there really is no choice at all.

They go with the flow, every time.

I make a lot of bold declarative statements about writing. In my writing books, on my website, and in front of wide-eyed audiences at workshops and conferences who in some cases are thinking, “who the hell does this guy think he is?”

All of us who write about writing do it to some degree. Sometimes it’s intentionally delivered inside out (because writers don’t like other writers telling them what-is-what, unless they are famous novelists who aren’t in the business of teaching craft, in which case they eat it up), such as saying there are no rules and then proceeding to describe things you can and cannot do (the latter disguised as “should not do, but hey, there are no rules, so ago ahead and shoot yourself in the foot if you want to”), or saying that story isn’t driven by structure and then proceeding to describe the very same structural paradigm the rest of us – those who understand story IS structure – are saying.

No wonder this craft is so hard to learn.

I try to avoid the inside out approach. I prefer to go straight at it, thus causing all manner of outrage and confusion, often by writers who are still laboring under the false creed that you can write fiction any ol’ way you want… because there are no rules.

Yes, you can write “any ol’ way you want.”  Sit naked in a tree and scribble on a used shingle, whatever gets you there. Process isn’t the point, even though an informed process is always better than spit-balling blindly (it is the nature and clarity of “informed” that is what we are seeking here).

What is the point is the form and function of a properly told story… and THAT is something you absolutely can’t render “any ol’ way you want.”  In other words, if you want to sell your story to others, you can’t reinvent the form of the novel in today’s market. And if you’re not completely clear on what that “form” is, then too often your efforts might indeed seem to be an intention to reinvent it entirely.

Reader’s, especially in genre fiction, don’t want a reinvented wheel. Our readers have expectations where form and format is concerned, and inside those lines we have infinite freedom to do our thing.

It is the understanding of those lines where our fortune is made or compromised.

My favorite principle, perhaps the most liberating and useful truism of all relative to story structure, is that of the “most important moment in a story.” That’s my opinion of course, and I hold that opinion because absolutely everything else – concept, premise, dramatic arc, pacing, character arc, conflict and tension, even the ending – depends on getting this one right.

Do I have your attention?  I hope so.  Because this can change your entire writing career, right here.  

Some writers spend decades never quite getting this. And because there are myriad ways to present it, clarity can be elusive. Yet every writer posting here, and every writer who has their name on a successful novel, understands this principle – the principle of the Most Important Moment in a story –  to a practicable degree, even if they call “it” (the Most Important Moment in a story) by another name.

This us as true for organic and vocal pantsers as it is avid story planners and outliners. Because this principle cares absolutely nothing about your process.

All processes, no matter how different, end up seeking the very same outcome relative to all those issues of craft I just listed above. And thus, the Most Important Moment in a story applies to and serves stories born of any and every conceivable writing process out there.

The tee up for this… too long, I’ll grant you. So here it is.

“The Most Important Moment” in a story is known by different names, depending on who is talking about it. That said, it doesn’t change a thing about what is true and liberating about it, or how it is best implemented within a story.

“The Most Important Moment” in a story is the inevitable story twist or turn or milestone (pick your terminology) when everything changes, and does so in a way that launches the core dramatic thread of the story. This usually occurs after a strategic stretch of set-up pages (which, to complicate the issue, may actually include lesser twists that, when viewed in retrospect, are actually contributing more to the setup in which they appear than to the moment – the Most Important Moment – in which the hero’s story journey truly launches) that includes the introduction of the story world and our first glimpses of the hero, as well as the stakes and the contextual presence of impending antagonism.

All of that setup is called, in story structure parlance, Act One… or if you view the entire story arc as a four part proposition (as I do, also quite defensible), Part One (of four). These are exactly the same structural models, by the way, with identical milestones and optimal targets for them.

The Most Important Moment in a story occurs at the transition point between Act 1 and Act 2 (in three-act structure), or between Part 1 and Part 2 (in four-part structure).

Now that we know where it goes, allow me to describe what it is, and what it does.

It is the moment when your hero’s near-term story journey actually begins (launches) in earnest. When the hero’s problem or journey or quest or goal for the story (which often puts the hero’s other plans on hold or in jeopardy) is fully put into play in a way that said hero must do something about it… even if that simply means running for their lives, or just as often seeking information that keeps them safe and/or moves them forward.

The hero responds to the sky falling, for better or worse. Or in most subtle cases, when the first rumble of something isn’t what it seems confronts the hero’s awareness… or if not then, then at least the reader’s suspicions.

This moment – I call it The First Plot Point – is self-defining in terms of where it occurs within the sequence of the story. Not because it is a “rule” or even a principle, per se, but rather, as the collective sum of evolved story sensibility among writers who know how a story best works, as evidenced by the fact that virtually every successful novel and film places this “Most Important” Moment within a very thin window of variance, almost every time.

Because a setup can only last so long.

Or, if you don’t honor the setup completely, you leave the reader without a situation to empathize with or stakes to understand. It takes time to get those reader emotions into play, just as it takes time to foreshadow and install the mechanics of plot into the narrative before hitting the “on” switch.

(As a side note, every movie preview, without exception, shows you the First Plot Point of that story after a quick glance at the setup itself… go online and watch a bunch of them and you’ll notice this clear, now that you know what it is.)

Someone once said – and if you know who, let us know, because I’m not sure who said it first – that “it isn’t a story until something goes wrong.”

Wrapping your head around this is a career-changing truism – because there is so much that it demands of your understanding of your story, both before and after you tell us (within your narrative) what is it that will go wrong, or has gone wrong.  Believing this, and implementing it properly and powerfully, is the key to writing a great thriller, or more broadly, writing a novel at all.

Here’s the math of bestsellers: The degree to which the sum of your hero’s compelling nature (for better or worse) and the fear or anticipation or vicarious titillation that strikes you reader when they learn what might go wrong, is the degree to which your story has the potential to work.

The setup act/part (roughly the first quarter of the story or slightly less) is often character-centric. But when the First Plot Point turn hits the page (when something goes wrong, or shows itself and about to wrong), suddenly the character has something to do. Or, the reader has something to fear for them.  A problem or a need or a quest is thus launched at this point.

In other words, this is where the plot fully kicks in, after all that initial setup characterization (truly the best and often only place you should play with backstory), world building and foreshadowing has made it meaningful, both for your reader and for your hero.

Here’s why the principle of the Most Important Moment in a story works:

Fiction is driven by conflict.

Character is revealed by how your hero responds to and overcomes conflict (rather than, as too many new writers believe, by a backstory or quirks or simply a fully documented inventory of who they are in their life).

Conflict, then, becomes the fuel of the story, the centerpiece of dramatic arc itself.

And conflict, while hinted at or even partially ignited, is usually fully and best inserted into the story at The First Plot Point… which is The Most Important Moment in a story.

Why?  Because if you screw this up – if you delay too long, or rush it, or the worst-case sin of omitting it altogether in favor of further characterization and world building – the story simply won’t work as well as it will when you get this right.

That’s just a fact. Read a novel or watch a movie and see where it happens (see the previous side-not about movie previews).  Of course, you need to have an eye for recognizing this critical moment in a story – not always easy is a story riddled with twists and meaningful shifts – which is where nay-sayers find encouragement and thin basis to trash this principle altogether.

The First Plot Point isn’t a fixed insertion point. It is presented as a target general range of optimal insertion. In the hands of experienced, successful writers it almost always ends up in that range (sometimes after revision moves it there)… because this is how it works best: after a setup that lasts from about 20 to 25 percent of the story’s length.

That’s not formula, that’s story physics. It’s the natural law, the gravity, of genre fiction. Mess with gravity at your peril… because doing so (in storytelling, and in life) can get you injured or killed.

Again, the First Plot Point is where the core dramatic story – the collision of present or impending conflict and your hero’s intentions and needs – comes front and center into the narrative, thrusting your hero down a new and unexpected path than whatever occupies their intentions prior to that moment.

Want an example or two?

In Titanic, it’s when the ship hits an iceberg. Nobody ever misses that, though many don’t understand that they are witnessing the Most Important Moment in the story (duh, we don’t have a story without it, which not ironically is the case in almost every story).  Everything prior to that moment was pure setup for that moment. Everything after that moment occurs in the presence of – in context to – fresh or more fully drawn dramatic tension, creating a path in context to a need or goal that wasn’t present before that moment hit.

In The Help, Skeeter (one of three narrators and two equal protagonists) realizes she needs the assistance of the town’s largely oppressed black maids to write the book she hopes will change her life (that being Skeeter’s stakes; her intentions didn’t begin as the need to right wrongs)… and they refuse her, thus putting her on a new and unexpected path to win their trust. Everything prior to that moment was there to show the reader/viewer the stakes of the story on all fronts while introducing us – while earning our empathy – to the main players and their pre-First Plot Point lives.

In both examples, the First Plot Point changes everything.  In both examples – indeed, in pretty much any successful story you can find these days – the First Plot Point occurs between the 20th and 25th percentile of the story.

It’s not formula (the only people who say this are voice in writing forums who don’t know better; experienced writers know it is anything but formula, it is natural literary law, one of the most important facets of the storytelling craft).

It is story sensibility, based on what history has proved to be the way readers engage with and react to a well-rendered story. The trick then – and this has always been true – to succeeding in the writing journey is to evolve one’s story sense to a point where this awareness, and many others, become second nature, unquestioned regardless of one’s process.

And so, we get to choose.

Now so much how we write our stories as a process, but how we choose to render those stories  once we are done wrestling them to the page.

Because when informed pantsers pants (this being an informal verb in this context), this awareness is what they are pantsing in context to; and when informed planners plan, this is what they plan in context to.  

Uninformed writers in either case are left to rely on their current state of story sensibility, and if that exists without an awareness of this principle, the odds of getting it right are… well, this explains why 990 out of every 1000 novels submitted by “first-time” novelists to traditional publishers are rejected.

Think about what you didn’t know when you started. Chances are this principle was on that list. If that’s you… now you know. Or at least you have a new awareness… you’ll know soon enough.

This is 101 stuff for experienced writers, though the terminology used here may be unfamiliar (hey, in Finland the word for gravity is painovoima, but it’ll still get you killed if you jump of a building not knowing better). But for newer writers, this is a key truth they seek to cull from books and workshops and blogs and coaching and their own reading, because this is absolutely essential to making their writing work.

Or not… they just believe that loud guy in the writing forum who says all you need to know about structure if beginning-middle-and-end. We get to choose.

Once you know what goes wrong in your story, and how this sucks your hero into the narrative in a way that puts her or him on a collision course with consequences (stakes), you will have isolated your core story, also known as the dramatic arc.

And once you know that, your next step is to put it into play within your story: at the First Plot Point, after a solid amount of setup that makes the reader care about the hero for whom this new quest is about to begin.

(If you’re interested in an upcoming workshop that dives deep into this realm of craft, click HERE.)

This just happened.

In the January issue of Writers Digest magazine, the cover article interviews a bestselling author on how she writes her novels.  She’s billed as an “overnight success,” which of course is a deliberate irony, because that really never happens when you throw in the unheralded years before a breakout novel takes wing.

As the visuals illustrate, if not the copy.

There are ten of her previous book covers – from before the overnight success breakout – featured on the first page of the article, spanning ten years.  Thus proving this to be true.

A great talent, no question.  Delightful and humble, too.  If I said she was also quite pretty I’d get hate mail from the misogynist police (I’m not that guy; hey, David Baldacci is pretty cute, too), but I will say this about that: her agent would undoubtedly say she’s the perfect storm from a PR standpoint.

Her first novel was published in 2002, but her “breakout” hit didn’t happen until 2013, which sold five million copies worldwide.   For her, “overnight” took eleven years.

She must have learned a few things along the way.

So we should listen closely to what she has to say about the writing process, right?

Here are a few highlights from just that:

… she is “relearning to write a novel with every story…”

… “I wrote the first three chapters again and again…”

… “frequently I write chapters that I end up having to ditch…”

… “I think it gets harder…” (after you’ve published your first novel)

… “I do outline.  I’m always amazed by these people who say that they just start and see where    the story takes them… I couldn’t do it…”

“… then I had to replot the entire book…”

… “Every time I start a book, I think, I have no idea how I did this the last time.  No idea…”

…  The words “What is this really about?” are taped over the top of her monitor…

… The Interviewer suggest this: “It seems fortunate if a writer can hit on concepts from which to   grow a story rather than a single plot idea, or even a character, because there are so many ways you can approach them.”  (This one gets a massive gold star from me.)

… Her response: “Since I’ve really been thinking it through in that way – and in quite a calculated way – before I start, either my books have really improved or people have just responded better to or people have just responded better to them, I’m not sure.”

“Fortunate.”  Perhaps the understatement of the writing year.

My money is on the improvement option.  Maybe she has learned something along the way.  Maybe she just has trouble summarizing what that might be.

What will writers learn here, and adopt as their own process?

We can be sure that some writers will believe they’ve learned something from this interview.  They may accept and try to emulate this author within their own writing process… because hey, this multi-million-copy bestselling author says so.

In my opinion much of she says is indeed good stuff, worthy of attention (because we can learn from both sides of an equation, especially if we take the time to really dissect it).  And yet some of it is inexplicable, because while this author acknowledges what works for her, she goes on to say she hasn’t really learned much of anything from her writing experience, even when most of it occurs as a published author.

Scary.  Do this for ten years, publish ten novels… and you still aren’t sure how this is done.

Broad statements and truisms about process are everywhere in the writing conversation, many of them fuzzy, just as many contradictory.

Leaving us with only one conclusion (so glad this works for them) and a seductive lie that manifests as self-delusion (oh, THIS is how it’s done, I’ll do it just that way).

Consensus is nowhere on the horizon.  And yet, we are faced with these choices every time we stare down a blank page.

Good thing that horizon is peppered with plenty of bonafide knowledge about craft, specific principles and tools that apply to and stand ready to help any and every writer.

Because it’s about what the story must be, not about how you get there.

You think all the elephant versus donkey noise is loud and obnoxious out there? 

Put your ear to the writing rail, and you’ll hear an equally biased and under-informed blah-blah-blah on the issue of how a novel should be written.

That’s the wrong question, in my opinion.  The better question is this: what are the criteria and benchmarks for a story that works?

There are answers to that, too.

I keep posting about it, it seems (here and on my own website), because just when I think I’ve contributed something to this clarity, I’ll find myself referred to on various corners of social media as “the formula guy” or “the guy who hates pantsers.”

Story structure and formula… NOT the same thing.  I’ve never heard a professional make this claim, though I have heard a lot of under-qualified writers make the converse assertion.

And that’s the problem with the writing conversation out there.  A significant percentage of it – at workshops, in forums, even in keynotes and interviews with bestselling authors – is toxic, because it is misleading for newer authors and stubborn authors who can’t whittle through the proper context.

For example – when Diana Gabaldon tells you she begins her novels without knowing what the ending will be (which she has, many times, in magazine interviews) – sounds great, doesn’t it? Just keep going and the ending will save you – know that the drafts she writes early-on are there to search for and discover that best ending… and then when she finds it, the subsequent draft that works, the one she submits, is written in the full and functional knowledge of what the ending will be.

Because the ending is one of the things that informs and empowers all the narrative that precedes it.

This is true for almost any and all published novels, regardless of the writer’s process.  This isn’t process, this is outcome.

And despite my best efforts across three (and counting) popular writing books, there is always some highly credible bestselling author completely confusing the issue in an interview or behind a microphone.

Not because they are confused – on the issue of what works for them versus what other writers should do – as much as because they aren’t telling you the whole story of how their book came to be.

But rather – and this is worse – because they don’t seem to be confused at all.

It is the pinnacle of hubris to say you don’t really understand how you do what you do, and say it in the wake of some huge success, thus leaving us with only one unspoken conclusion: Gee, this writer must be a natural-born freaking genius!  They just sit down and magic happens, what a gift!

And so the star-struck crowd buys what they are selling.

To be honest, I used to be pretty hard on one end of the process continuum. 

Not on pantsers, per se – though this was the perception – but on a story development preference that urges you to just start with very little, write what you feel and follow your instincts toward a gloriously functional outcome, without knowing or caring how it compares to the accepted standards of craft.  If you are a literary genius, then you can have abundant fun with this… but if you’re not a practicing prodigy or learned master of the form, then there are less-than-mysterious principles and tools that will help you write a book that is – get ready for it – just as good.

Just listen to your characters and don’t worry about structure or arc or anything that smacks of, well, the dreaded “formula.”  Do this long enough and sooner or later you will find your story, and hopefully, it will resemble what the market expects from your chosen genre.

That’s certainly one way to go about it.  And a wildly popular one, at that.  Due in no small part because some really big names say this is what they do.

I’ve never said this doesn’t work, or that it can’t work.

It’s just one end of the process continuum. 

One that pre-destines you to a longer story development process.  If you can’t do any planning of your story ahead of time, which is the antithesis of pantsing, that means one of two things: for whatever reason you actually can’t, in the same way that some people can’t learn by reading, they must learn by doing… or… you aren’t aware of and honoring of the principles by which a story that words is assembled.  The more you know about that, the more likely you will be to engage in some level of story planning.

All perhaps because you heard some author you admire claim to do it this way.

Rest assured, those highly skilled authors who lay claim to being a punster are informed pantsers, and they actually do engage with story planning in their minds, leveraging an advanced sense of story to lead them quickly to what works while avoiding what doesn’t.

Which is impossible if you don’t know these aspects of craft in the first place.

This is irrefutable: when you face the blank page, be it waiting for your narrative or your outline, you are engaged in a search for story.  And your story won’t work, at least as well as it could and should, until you find it.

Not everyone agrees.  And so the debate is launched.  And so some careers advance while others remain fixed and flat.

There came a point in my own journey when I realized that it isn’t a debate at all.

Because neither side is talking about their novels, from a context of how they end up.  No…

They are talking about their process.

It’s a bit like losing weight.  You can diet, or you can sweat off the pounds.  Both approaches have their advocates, their success stories, and an assumption of pain.

Truth is – for the pantser/planner brouhaha and the exercise/diet trade-off – each becomes a sum in excess of the two colliding parts, both of which offer many options and variables, which in itself can complicate the whole proposition.

Both sides depend on the manner in which either approach is undertaken.  And manner is informed by knowledge.

Ultimately, pretty much everybody who ends up succeeding adopts varying degrees of both processes – pantsing, and story planning.

Bottom line: avid and vocal pantsers – like Stephen King – succeed at it precisely because those principles and tools and models… the very thing that lesser pantsers decry as formula or simply don’t know at all… reside in their head.  And they actually use them as intended.

It’s called instinct.  Story sensibility.

It isn’t pantsing or planning that makes or breaks you… it is the level of your story sense.

Let me make this clearer though a hypothetical example. 

Two writers begin with the exact same story concept.  One is clear on the premise, as well (yes Virginia, they are different things), the other not so sure.  The former sketches out the nature of the story’s arc, knowing precisely where and why the story will take a turn.  Because that writer understands this is how and why stories work, and that there are infinite ways to get there… some quicker and more efficient, if not effective, than others.

The other writer, the one who doesn’t know this, just writes. Waits to see what happens, where the characters will send the story  And it turns out, as it often does when an author hasn’t yet nailed down their core story, that their setup takes up the first half of the novel.  The other writer already knows this is too long, but the less informed writer doesn’t… he is making it all up as he goes along.  Yet soon, as soon as someone else reads it, he will be told the story doesn’t work, because it takes too long to get off the ground.

And he will be surprised.  Because that’s what felt right when he did it.

The other, more informed writer… that’s the difference: he would know it wouldn’t work as well that way.  And so he wouldn’t ever write a draft that took that long to achieve dramatic flight.

The “planning” for this story, the process that works best, would manifest as an extension of instinct.  And the lack of that planning, resulting in the mistake, would manifest from either the ignorance of that point of craft, or the rejection of it.

Depends on who you are listening to and believing, right? 

It doesn’t matter which one of these is the pantser and which is the planner.  It doesn’t matter if the more successful author of this story knew it by instinct, of if he learned it from books and workshops and other informed writers… that’s how he will plan it (even if that planning takes place strictly in his head, or with a 40-page outline), and how he would write it.  And it will be closer to working from the very same draft.  Within such a pansting process, the writer knows where and how that story turn must take place.

The other writer either doesn’t know, or doesn’t believe.

And here’s the dirty little secret promised in my title today:

There are just as many successful authors who know their entire story before the write a draft, and then use the draft to polish and optimize that story, as there are those who have no clue where the story is going.  And they are just as talented and artful as their pantser peers.

Process isn’t the point.  Knowing craft is the point.  And when you don’t know or accept craft, then the default process is pantsing, and doing it from an under-informed context.

Once you do know, you can choose your most comfortable and rewarding process and get there nonetheless.

Again, it’s not a debate.  It’s a choice.

Until you can claim a command of all the nuances and elements of story craft (the sum of all those principles and tools and stuff that bumps right up against formula in the name of dramatic arc), then you will benefit from studiest a list of them posted on your wall in great big letters.

Pansting vs. Planning/Outlining: Neither approach can or should claim superiority.

Just like the familiar fortune cookie thing, in which you add the words “in bed” to the end of every fortune (“your dreams will soon come true… in bed” – hilarious, right?)… add the words “for her/him” to anything a writer puts forth as universally true about either pantsing or outlining.

Do that, and what they say, whatever it is, becomes irrefutable truth… for him… or for her.

Stephen King tells you to just sit in a chair and write whatever comes to you… that’s what works for him. Know the whole truth of this, though, before you sign up for this.

Diana Galbaldon tells you that she never knows how her stories will end when she begins… that’s how it works for her.  What you won’t hear?  The draft that works was written with a solid notion of how it ends.

Jeffrey Deaver boasts that he does 22 drafts of every novel… I guess that’s how it works for him.  What may be true, though, is that the last 18 of them were polishes to a solid story arc built upon his knowledge of craft.

Phillip Margolin tells you he writes an idea and then the ending and then a 50 page outline… truly this is how it works for him.  He searches for his story, he finds it, then he develops it with an outline, followed by a polish/revision in his drafts.

James Scott Bell and I present stuff that will lead you to a better story… that’s how it works for everybody.  Process isn’t the issue for either of us, though we both have strong opinions based on what works – wait for it – for us.

When writers (famous or otherwise; beware non-famous ones telling you anything at all is dangerous on both sides of the full or empty needle) tell you that outlining robs the process of spontaneity and limits your options… that’s only true for them.

But maybe not for you.

And if you adopt a story development approach early in your career – perhaps precisely because some big name author you admire said that’s how she/he does things – before you truly know what you’re doing, you may or may not have discovered what is true for you.

Nobody is lying to you.  Nobody is trying to send you down a rabbit hole.  Because truly, when they tell you how they do it, it does work for them.

The trick then, the holy grail of our avocation, is to discover what actually does work for you. 

And that’s much trickier, often a product of trial and error that can take years, than hopping on to someone else’s band wagon.

At some point you’ll find that what does work for you aligns with those very same principles and tools that you perhaps once rejected as formulaic.  Or as antithetical to art.

It’s all just process.

Because however you proceed – pantsed or planned and outlined – your process ends up sharing the exact same purpose with what you may believe is the exact opposite.  Because both approaches, no matter how close to the center of the continuum they are, are a means of doing the very same thing:

The discovery of your full story… leading to the execution of it over the dramatic and character arcs of that story.

How you discover it… whatever works for you.  How it needs to play and what criteria are in place to ensure it works… that’s not something you can make up (pants) at all.

The unspoken fact is, some writers pants their stories – make it all up as they go along – because they can’t do it any other way.  They simply can’t visualize a whole story in their head.  Doesn’t make the stories they end up with any lesser in quality – though that is indeed a possible outcome if they settle for the drafts in which they were still searching for the story – it’s all just a process.

And every writer, famous or not, has one.

*****

If you’d like to go deeper into this discussion, may I recommend my new book, “Story Fix: Transform Your Novel from Broken to Brilliant.”

If you’d like to attend a major workshop that delivers the fundamentals of craft in context to your story, read about that HERE.

… when you throw in the popcorn.

Not all novelists are movie fans, and some don’t recognize or appreciate the parallels between what we do compared to what screenwriters do with the same objective.

Story is story.  As novelists we also provide the lighting, set design, and the musical score… because nothing says background music than the way we open and execute our scenes with the voice of our narrative.

I contend that all serious authors of commercial genre fiction are missing the boat if they don’t consider the majority of mainstream films (with the caveat that there are certainly more than a few that don’t qualify, especially screwball comedies and sequels) as an example of storytelling at its finest.

In fact, if you know what to look for, and if you view and study such movies from a story development and narrative perspective – precisely the same stuff you hope to find at writing workshops – you can get as much value from your two hours in front of a screen as you can from most writing books and conferences.

Of course, that’s not really possible if you don’t know what, specifically, to look for.  When the guy from your car pool hears an Aaron Sorkin monologue he might hear blah blah blah, but you… you hear poetry and the heart of character itself.

Just as a semester as an intern in the O.R. can bring a medical textbook to relevant life for a med student, writing craft books and workshops may be precisely what equips us to gain writerly value from watching a movie from within the context of craft.  What you see can cement your understanding and validate your acceptance of basic principles of craft, perhaps as much or more than reading the scenes in a novel.

Two such richly-crafted films are out now, waiting to show us how it’s done.

Both films are a clinic in the craft of storytelling.  My hope for you this week is… watch and learn.  (Use the links to both films to learn more about the story, it’s journey to the screen, and production notes.)

The first film is The Revenent, which just tonight won Golden Globes for Best Dramatic Film, Best Director (Alejandro G. Inarritu) and Best Actor (Leo DiCaprio).

The story… I’ll leave that to you, to preview as you will.  The point for us, as writers, is to see how the story is handled, in what order, in what context, in terms of narrative and exposition, as well as how things are setup and foreshadowed, and then put into play and later resolved.  These are the same challenges we face every day staring at the blank page… but here they are perfectly demonstrated as working dramatic arcs that will light the observing writer’s creative mind on fire.

The value here for us, as writers, beginning with the dramatic concept itself, is to notice how the Act I/Part 1 setup launches immediately with deep dramatic implications, while firmly grounding the film within a thematic context of racism.

The entire story is set-up in that opening sequence of scenes, defining motivations for the key characters within a context of racial hatred, and then quickly, beginning a descent into the darkness of what quickly surfaces as the primary dramatic arc, with a thematic focus that gives the story its dark emotional resonance.

Notice, too, that this is not an arbitrary dramatic launching point.  This is consistent with movies — a novelist can view each and every scene and ask why, relative to content and placement… and the answer will always be there, easily and clearly defined.  There are no pantsers in the movie business — we novelists own that risky process of story development — everybody involved knows how each scene connects to the next, and how it all plays within the macro context of a clear vision (via the script itself) of where it all is headed.

And then, the story’s three major structural milestones – the First Plot Point, the Midpoint and the Second Plot Point — are unmissable, with perfect placement and dramatic depth that flip the story into a higher gear, not to mention veer it toward a shifted hero’s path… all of it becoming a clinic in these essential elements of story architecture.

The other amazing film, also out now…

… offers a completely different story experience.  Youth stars Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel as seniors vacationing at a swanky Swiss resort.  Caine is a famous but retired orchestra conductor and composer, while Keitel is a fading film director taking his cast and crew on a retreat to nail the ending of the film they are on the cusp of shooting.

Geriatric and emotional hijinks ensue, as pasts and futures collide in unexpected ways.

As a writing workshop for you… this story leans more to a literary sensibility, with elements of mysticism and imagination applied within an episodic narrative sequence (showing you how to pull off such a structure in your story), yet leading toward a powerhouse of emotion in the final act with amazing creative courage and beauty.

While reliable generic structure and character arc offer us models and targets to get us there, thematic power is more elusive as a sum that exceeds the parts themselves, and as such is almost impossible to teach.

Youth shows you how it’s done.

Because while hard to reduce to a roster of narrative principles, it is possible to observe, and to feel.  When it penetrates your own writer’s heart you will find yourself clear on how to summon these essences within your own story, how to move your readers toward Epiphany and revelation.  That’s what this film does so well, and in doing so becomes an opportunity for writers to immerse in this clinic in the power of thematic characterization.

Give these two films a try, then come back here to weigh in. I promise you, the price of the ticket will become an investment with far great value relative to the craft of advancing storytelling in any genre.

They will make you want to write.  Not just the next thing, but something amazing that reaches for a higher bar, and with an expanded tool chest of ways to get there.

What films have you seen that helped inspire you or expand your tool chest as a novelist?

More than any avocation I can think of, writers are likely to view the holidays as a time to get more work done, especially if it means they get some time off from their day job.

In theory… could be.  In reality, there are risks.

This plan can be hazardous to your health and your writing if:

1. You live with a significant-other who ends up doing all the requisite Holiday shopping, wrapping and entertaining work while you lock yourself into your writing closet “making things up,” which is a phrase you’ll likely hear before the season winds down;
2. You use the season as a sort of deadline, as in, “I want to finish my novel before New Years Day because, well, that’s when I said I’d do it,” because rushing to meet a self-imposed deadline is like taking off the parachute before the pilot solves the engine problem;
3. You waste the time completely in the name of getting away from it all for a while.

Many writers have discovered that this last one – getting away from it all for a while – can be some of the most creatively productive hours you will retrospectively realize you’ve spent as a writer.  Here are a few things to consider.

Read a Bestseller

The dirty little secret among working writers is that we don’t read as much as we would like to, or that we should.  Find that book you haven’t gotten to, or have in mind, and lose yourself in it.  Go ahead, tell yourself this is your time… but the truth is you’ll be reading to learn how that writer did what they did.

Which is a good thing.  A great thing.  The more you understand about the craft of fiction, the more you realized you can’t “un-see it” when you read it out there.

Catch Up On Your Craft

It can be hard to dive into writing books and websites while you’re in the middle of a project.  And yet, there is so much to learn, so much valuable and immediately applicable information that may contribute to the very project you are putting on hold until the Super Bowl.

This isn’t a long range strategy, more like a steroid shot at halftime to make you stronger when the clock starts ticking again.

Hey, you’re already here, reading The Kill Zone.  Spend a few hours catching up on the archives.  Read one or more of Jim Bell’s terrific new ebooks on craft.  For that matter, read my new writing book on craft, too, which I promise you will take you to a higher level.

Even seasoned pros, upon going back to training camp, see immediate payoffs in their WIP, because no matter how hard you try, it’s never that far off your radar.

Test Fly Your Premise

Chances are most people in your life know you’re a writer.  That doesn’t mean they’ll ask you about your work at the office or neighborhood party – there’s often about a 30-second window for your answer to “what are you working on here?” before their eyes glaze over –but if the opportunity presents itself, pull out your story pitch and let it fly.  Then ask for feedback, assuring that you are seeking brutal honesty.

The look on their face is, by the way, just as informative as the words they say to you in that moment.  They won’t be brutally honest, by the way, but you’ll see it in their eyes. Confusion never hides.

You may find that the plot twist you had planned in the middle – the one in which your hero is suddenly visited by the ghost of their high school creative writing teacher urging you to go plumbing school – isn’t as clearly logical or clever as you believed it to be.

Read From Page One

If you do have a WIP, stop writing it and begin reading it.  Not necessarily editing it – this goes contrary to the common advice to not edit while you write, which isn’t something I buy into but won’t be the nay-sayer here until I get to write an entire post about it, which is forthcoming in 2016.  Find a way to do this away from a keyboard (like, put it on your e-reader or even go old school and print it out), and read as if you are an agent or an editor or someone browsing through Barnes & Noble.

Do this from a story perspective, rather than that of a line-editor.  The payoff may prove to be significant… because if there’s a reason you story may not work, chances are it’s already on the page.  Use this time to find it.

Journal New Story Ideas

The world is your idea machine, if you look in the right places.  Go to a bookstore and read as many hardcover dust jackets and paperback covers as you can.

Got Netflix?  There’s an entire free channel available that is nothing but movie previews, where you can get Hollywood’s best story pitches in two minute bites.  (Notice that every movie trailer shows you five essential things, see if you can find them in each preview you see: the premise and the concept that fuels it, the first plot point, the first half of the character arc, and some hints of the story points beyond the FPP that turn it all into an immersive experience.)

Have a notepad nearby.  Not only will you want to capture those flashes of inspiration.  Trust me, it won’t be ripping off anything you see; what will happen is your brain will take something you’ve just absorbed and send it hurdling toward another story opportunity that isn’t in front of you at that moment… that happened to me watching the preview of the new Netflix series Jessica Jones (killer, by the way), when out of the blue a new thriller landed on my head with an almost audible thud.

Embrace the Siren Call of Your WIP       

Which, if you’ve done this right, is calling to you from behind the closed door of your writing space.  Imagine yourself as Kirk Douglas, roped to the mast of that ship as the sirens wail Celine Dion ballads from the shore, driving you crazy with desire.

Don’t go to her.  Your heart will go on.  Missing your story is healthy.  Being too close to it… that’s the point here.

Wishing you all a very happy, relaxing and productive holiday season.  The best story of all is the one you are living, and like the stories on your hard drive, you have control over what happens next.  Make it count this year.

Here’s an amazing truth: perhaps the most illuminating, valuable, and directly transferable – to the act of writing itself – thing an author can do in the pursuit of an understanding of how stories are developed and implemented.  Which is… to tear apart – to deconstruct – a novel or film that is judged worthy of study, based either on critical or commercial acclaim.

Today’s deconstructed story is backed by both.

I mention film in the same breath as novels for two reasons: novelists can learn just as much from a good film as they can from a good movie (if you don’t buy that, then chances are you don’t believe in something called story structure, either, so never mind), at least relative to narrative flow and dramatic efficacy, and doing so only takes two hours, versus the 6 to 10 hours it takes (at least for me) to work my way through the latest Grisham.

Of course, just like doing exploratory surgery or trying to find the Titanic (back when that hadn’t been done), it helps when one knows what to look for.

When you do know what to look for, and you use that as context for a deep dive into successful stories, you have the means to send your learning curve vertical in short order.

If the principles of story structure and dramatic/character arcs are calling to you, or refusing to accept your rejection of them, or are already helping you but you’d like more… today’s post (and the links) are for you.

One of the major little-guy-wins-big writing stories of the past few years is The Martian…

… published by Andy Weir in 2009.  There’s a really rewarding writer’s backstory about how he took this from an unambitious series of blog posts to a free self-published Kindle to the best-selling 99-cent Kindle ever, leading (unsolicited) to an agent and a six-figure advance, and then (four days after that news hit) to a movie deal. The fruit of which is still playing at a theater near you.

If you’d like that backstory, click HERE (so I don’t have to repeat it… you’ll be taken to my website for a post that covers that ground). But…

… don’t stay there for long, unless you encounter the forthcoming link, there, before you get to the next sentence, here.  Because the real gold – the deconstruction itself, in exquisite structural and narrative detail – is in another Storyfix post… which you can read HERE.

As a student of the craft of writing fiction, I think you’ll find this a worthwhile exercise.  One that will nourish both your wellspring craft, but your continuing hunger for it.