Writer's Companion

Writer’s Companion

Carlos J Cortés & Renée Miller

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Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Carlos J Cortés & Renée Miller

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1. The Nuts & Bolts

Chapter 2. The Craft of Writing

Chapter 3. The Craft of Rewriting

Chapter 4. The Rules of Writing

Chapter 5. The Presentation

Chapter 6. The Toolbox

Chapter 7. The Oracle

Quoted Works

Bibliography

Notes

List of sections and subsections

About the authors

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DEDICATION

To writers, published and unpublished, born and unborn.

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PREFACE

Prefaces must have a reason. They are not an author’s self-absorbed ramblings about the awesomeness of his or her mad skills. This preface has several reasons that answer time-honored questions. Why this book? Why now? Why these authors?

Let’s get the first question out of the way. Why this book?

Everything has a beginning. Ideas are no exception. The concept for this book began with a wistful breath held in a clenched fist, and that breath set the dice in motion. The idea crystallized during a transatlantic telephone conversation between Renée (the long) and Carlos (the short).

Though spanning two continents - and separated by an ocean - our shared bookshelf of creative writing texts grew and grew to ridiculous extent. Our repository was magnificent, chockablock with scores of books on characterization, POV, pace, dialogue, etc. The problem wasn’t a paucity of information, but too much of it spread over so many volumes that finding anything was a nightmare. Does our dilemma ring a bell?

So in answer to the first question: Writer’s Companion sprang from despair.

After our fortuitous exchange, we made discreet inquiries among our friends at various writer haunts and learned that we weren’t unique in our frustration. Many writers shared a similar complaint: fragmented information forces writers to own tens of books, each touching only a narrow subject or technique. Of course, there’s the Internet and millions of pages dealing with every possible theme, but the problem remains. The information is scattered all over the place, the very nature of which is sometimes contradictory and often structured in ways designed to confuse rather than enlighten. Thus, we set out to compile everything a creative writer needs to write well into a single reference volume.

But these are practical reasons to justify contents. Our primary goal, the ethos of this book, is to help other writers succeed.

Times are a-changing. As the Publishing Industry groans under a mighty shake up, new markets crop up like weeds and the tried and tested policies don’t work anymore. Publishers, who used to dedicate large portions of their budget and time to polish manuscripts, have had to cut expenses to the bone by paring down their once abundant rosters of copy editors. As a result, manuscripts need to be print-ready to have any chance of publication, which in turn demands from the writer considerable technical skills.

In a market awash with millions of poorly written - and horribly edited - manuscripts seeking a place to roost, agents and publishers have closed ranks to a point where a writer must have not only superhuman abilities but also be willing to run a vicious gauntlet to have a reasonable chance of publishing traditionally.

With this book, we seek to give other writers the tools, weapons, and skills to negotiate the Caudine Forks[1] of the Publishing Industry. And survive with a smile at the end.

Why now? Besides the exponential growth of the Internet, globalized commerce, new consumer rights, and trading laws have fueled an unprecedented thirst for professional writing services. Though the volume of printed media remains unchanged, calls for content have soared, and with them, the need for creative writers. In turn, the market demands resources and tools to simplify the writing process while adding value and punch to prose. Writer’s Companion fulfills these needs.

In a competitive society where clear and accurate information can mark the difference between success and failure, creative writers are in ever-increasing demand, and will continue to be in the near future. At least that’s the overwhelming consensus of experts the world over.

At this point, our readers may frown. Hang on a minute... this book is about writing fiction, novels, and stuff. No? Yes. But the underlying concepts of fiction writing are equally applicable to all walks of creative writing. There are mechanical differences between writing news copy, contents for an Internet e-zine, or an article about Blue Tits[2], but the core techniques - the basics - are the same.

Why these authors? Because over the past ten years we’ve done little else except learning the hard way everything contained in this book. We’ve attended courses, endured many rejections, and between us published several novels and short stories, composed hundreds of articles, edited and reviewed thousands of manuscripts, and sold millions of words to paying markets.

Above all, we are mongrel writers, and that alone gives us with the moral right to compile this book. We wanted to put together a book that would be useful to us and our harassed kin: other mongrel writers. In our opinion, a book on writing penned by one of the household names who monopolize the NYT Bestsellers List wouldn’t be of much use to us. These thoroughbreds learned the craft (those who did) a long time ago and are used to being fussed over, groomed, vaccinated, deloused, and taken for walkies by agents, publishers, and editors. We, however, are there, on the street, under railway bridges, in mole-infested and unheated garages, and in vacant lots, burning the midnight oil in the company of other mongrel scribes because writing is our passion. We don’t wear a tag or belong to any posh kennel club, but we have never forgotten our origins, or how to enjoy a good scratch.

Barcelona (Spain) and Tweed (Ontario; Canada) September 2011

Carlos J Cortés & Renée Miller

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Once we had the first draft of the Companion in our hands we realized that, like our works of fiction, this book wasn’t even close to being publishable. We needed other sets of eyes that could rip our baby to pieces. We attempted it ourselves, but no writer can edit his or her own work effectively. Besides, this project had two writers - two passionate writers...

Who would want to pore over countless articles on the craft of writing, grammar, or punctuation? Who would care to spend valuable time offering suggestions, pointing out typos, and arguing over the little details we never thought might be arguable?

We fattened the coffers of Skype owners across the ocean, plotting, scheming, and despairing of ever getting this book polished enough to publish. We discussed who had enough knowledge to decipher our ramblings and who might be willing to try. When we hit the bottle (it was half-hidden in the sand), a most accommodating genie made the customary offer and we grabbed it. Soon, we were surrounded by mongrel writers of such boundless talent and enthusiasm that it was only a matter of time before our work became their work. Without these people, who we’re lucky enough to call friends, the Companion would still be a draft that only the bravest of souls would dare attempt to read.

Michael Keyton, with his acerbic English wit kept our spirits high (distance prevented him from keeping us high on spirits), while Paul Mitton, the Welsh ogre, kept us on our toes endlessly tweaking our wandering prose. Wendy Swore often honored her surname and worked overtime posing endless questions and demanding answers that tested our ingenuity. Down Under, Deb Cawley lost her house in a hurricane, but found a spot among the rubble to continue writing, and reviewing thousands of pages; showing without telling the meaning of courage. Luis Cano ranted, complained, bitched, and designed the cover and much more. Through our trials, we were often scourged by Rita and T. J. Webb who wrote, read, beta-tested, and fought through their alligator-infested backyard to meet our deadlines.

Of course, all self-respecting slaves need a driver, and Donna Johnson loves to wield her whip disguised as a red pen. Our collective backs are raw, but we’re used to pain, else we wouldn’t be writers.

Thank you all, for sharing both your talent and your time to make our shared dream possible.

In addition, our heartfelt thanks to the 1400 members of On Fiction Writing, all of whom provided the inspiration for The Writer’s Companion.

"Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well." - Voltaire

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Chapter 1 THE NUTS & BOLTS

We learn to write at an early age. As a follow-up to expressing ourselves with sounds, we add to our communication capabilities by setting strings of symbols on paper. Then, by the time we reach puberty, most of us can scribble the sensations stored in our minds.

In this sense, to communicate ideas and convey information, every literate person is a writer. Ask a boy to write about his birthday party, and he might come up with:

I had lots of presents a big gun from granpa but mom was angry and my friend has a mouse and we eat ate cake with soda an we went to the cinema and dad got popcorn and candy.

The young man shows promise. We understand that Mom blew a fuse when Grandpa unveiled an AK47 replica, but otherwise the boy had a whale of a time. Likewise, if we were to ask a high school student to comment about inefficient governments, he might write:

In our country, the school system is as deficient as the sanitation, while the army, bureaucracy, police, and intelligence agencies grow out of all proportion.

The sentence is clear, well structured, and concise: without flab. It conveys precise information: Governments don’t provide quality services to their citizens and use the money instead to expand their power.

We would class the student’s sentence as good writing. But good writing is not creative writing.

Among our reader friends, a few have university degrees in language or literature. They write well. Without syntactic or spelling mistakes, they structure correct sentences to convey complex thoughts and concepts. But none of them would ever consider writing a novel or short story. Why? Because being a good writer is a precondition, the starting point to learn creative writing.

Creative writing is damn hard. In the U.S. alone, there are literary agents, editors, and English professors by the thousands. It should be a sobering thought for anybody reading this book to enumerate (with the fingers of one hand) how many have written a passable piece of fiction.

Here in the Companion, Nuts & Bolts chapter contains the basic elements of inner structure and technique to transmute common language into fiction prose. From the structural framework of the most common forms of fiction, we explore the skeleton that sustains and gives form to the different parts of a novel - the first step in our journey to bridge the chasm that separates common writing from fiction writing.

The imaginary high school student, who could have written the sentence we discussed in the opening example used the language to relay information and state ideas. But a creative writer would have added an intangible to paint images and sensations in the reader’s mind. One of the finest craftsmen of the pen ever, expressed the same idea with a magical choice of words:

While the small feeding bottle of our education is nearly dry, and sanitation sucks its own thumbs in despair, the military organization, the magisterial offices, the police, the Criminal Investigation Department, the secret spy system, attain to an abnormal girth in their waists, occupying every inch of our country.[3]

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1.1 FRAMEWORK / ELEMENTS

1.1.1 PROSE

Prose is simply the language we use to communicate in both speech and writing. It has a loose structure and is the usual form we use in fiction, newspapers, magazines, film, television, broadcasting, and most other communications. Prose comes from the Latin word prosa, which means straightforward.

Verse is the only other form of written or spoken language available to humans. Unlike prose, verse has a formal structure, usually of meter and/or rhyme. Elements of prose and verse combine in prose poetry and free verse, where the writer relaxes or omits the metrical structure and versification rules. Hence, poetry is systematic and formulaic, whereas prose mirrors speech.

In writing, we can only express ourselves in prose or poetry, a point exemplified in this conversation between Monsieur Jourdain and an anonymous philosophy master in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme by Moliére:

Monsieur Jourdain: ...I’m in love with a lady of great quality, and I wish that you would help me write something to her in a little note that I will let fall at her feet.

Philosophy Master: Very well.

Monsieur Jourdain: That will be gallant, yes?

Philosophy Master: Without doubt. Is it verse that you wish to write her?

Monsieur Jourdain: No, no. No verse.

Philosophy Master: Do you want only prose?

Monsieur Jourdain: No, I don’t want either prose or verse.

Philosophy Master: It must be one or the other.

Monsieur Jourdain: Why?

Philosophy Master: Because, sir, there is no other way to express oneself than with prose or verse.

Monsieur Jourdain: There is nothing but prose or verse?

Philosophy Master: No, sir, everything that is not prose is verse, and everything that is not verse is prose.

Monsieur Jourdain: And when one speaks, what is that then?

Philosophy Master: Prose.

The levels of prose are difficult to define because their boundaries nebulous. Most of us write informal prose. Literary prose aspires to create art with language, character studies, and representations of reality.

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1.1.2 NARRATIVE

The word narrative derives from the Latin verb narrare, to recount, and comprises the unique set of tools of the storyteller. With these, the writer can organize a story to relate a sequence of fictional or non-fictional events.

The soul of narration is the mode, or the set of communication methods encompassing not only how the story is described or expressed but also the identity of the narrator.

Stories have been with us since the dawn of time, and the storyteller was the first educator and entertainer. Every ancient culture, be it Indian, Chinese, Egyptian, or Greek used storytelling to transmit lessons, legends, exploits, and memories.

Imagine a cave with a large hearth hemmed with stones, a roaring fire, dancing shadows on the walls, a varied group of listeners, and the voice of the storyteller.

When night arrived, Auk curled under an overhang. ‘Mountain gods be merciful and show me a spring, for without water I will surely die.’ Hungry, thirsty, and exhausted, Auk wrapped his bear pelt around him and fell asleep.

After delivering Auk’s lines in a querulous voice, our master storyteller alters his countenance, changes his stance, puffs up his chest, casts a fierce glance at the audience, and bangs his staff on the ground.

‘Who is this?’ Tabor, god of the mountain, flew from the heights and roared at Auk’s sleeping form.

In his narrative performance, our storyteller has used every tool of the trade to convey the plot to his audience: tense, point-of-view, structure, and voice. Our prehistoric storyteller and modern writers have the same narrative tools at their disposal - these and no others.

The narrative tense reveals the sense of time in a story, whether the events happened in the past, belong to the present, or will take place in the future.

The narrative point of view (POV) determines the perspective from which the story is told, perhaps that of an independent narrator, an all-seeing perspective, or a character or characters within the story.

The narrative structure controls the order in which the narrator lays down the events.

The narrative voice shapes how the narrator conveys the story and how the audience receives it.

In fiction writing, narrative is storytelling that communicates to the reader. The narrator can be a character created by the writer for the sole purpose of telling the story. He can be a non-participant, an omniscient voice that relates only to the reader. Most modern fiction, however, relies on the characters to narrate the story, hence the importance of tight viewpoint control.

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1.1.3 MODE

Fiction is prose with distinct forms of expression, each with different purposes and conventions. These forms of expression are called delivery modes.

Experts disagree about the numbers of delivery modes and the role of each, and to date there’s no consensus. Some schools list action, exposition, description, dialogue, summary, and transition; others prefer action, summary, dialogue, feelings/thoughts, and background; others still advocate action, dialogue, thoughts, summary, scene, and description.

We agree with the first list since thoughts are an integral part of dialogue, while we can include background in exposition or description. Thus, we have chosen the delivery modes:

Action

Exposition

Description

Dialogue

Summary

Transition.

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1.1.3.1 ACTION

Action is the description of events as they happen, chronologically, in a linear fashion, or with actions presented through flashbacks or flash forwards in a non-linear form. The action follows the story and one of its roles is to immerse readers in the plot. Some writers rely heavily on action as the main technique to carry a story through (Clive Cussler). Some favor characterization and description (Albert Camus). Still others blend action and description in their work (John Le Carré).

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1.1.3.2 EXPOSITION

A writer uses exposition to convey facts, establish place, add color, and relate past events.

Stories are fragments of reality, limited in time and location, which seldom take place in a vacuum. Often, a writer needs to introduce background information, history, or the character’s routine for the story to make sense.

Naturally, the amount of exposition is relative to genre and place. A writer considering a story set in Antarctica needs to acquaint urban readers with the difficulties of surviving the most inhospitable place on earth. The more unusual the setting (unusual to the target reader) the more exposition the writer needs in order to paint the scenes. Science fiction, fantasy, and works dealing with unusual social conditions, groups, or environments require well-developed exposition.

Since too much exposition at one time slows story pacing, dosing it out and embedding parts of it in with other modes creates one of the most challenging tasks a writer must face. The section Exposition, explores a number of techniques for this judicious dosing.

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1.1.3.3 DESCRIPTION

Description is often confused with exposition. While exposition deals in facts, history, and events, description is the mode for transmitting mental images of the story. It engages the reader’s senses with choice and arrangement of words, bringing scenes to life.

As an example of the difference:

Exposition: Bernini’s Cesar in Drag, a monumental marble statue brought at great expense from Carrara in Tuscany, Italy - a city bathed by the Carrione River, some 62 miles west-northwest of Florence - commanded a central position in the cemetery.

One would expect that Bernini’s authorship of the statue and the excruciating geographical detail surrounding Carrara, would be crucial to the story. Otherwise, readers may be annoyed.

Description: The cemetery looked bleak and dark, as any cemetery should at midnight.

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1.1.3.4 DIALOGUE

To exchange information between characters and to express thoughts, writers use dialogue delivery modes. Dialogue can portray conversation between two or more characters or it can be used to reveal introspection, also referred to as internal dialogue, to give the reader insight into the unexpressed thoughts or feelings of the characters.

Are you willing?

Need you ask?

Able?

You bet...

The fence needs mending.

In most works of fiction, dialogue plays a critical role in plot and characterization. Writers will agree it’s a difficult mode to master. Though we use dialogue everyday in our exchanges, writing it is another matter. What we would actually say or think has little to do with the way our characters should express themselves.

Dialogue, contrary to popular view, is not a recording of actual speech; it is a semblance of speech, an invented language of exchanges that builds in tempo or content toward climaxes.[4]

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Summary

To summarize is to condense the story. This delivery mode skips people, details, places, and events that are irrelevant to the main plot. It condenses timelines, connects diverse parts of the story, and skims over points that, although important to the tale, only need a brief mention.

A writer working on the story of an Irish immigrant, might need to dedicate several chapters to the ocean crossing, and several more on the harrowing passage of third class passengers through Ellis Island, but only if these issues are germane to the story. Otherwise, a paragraph of summary, opening in Cork and closing in New York, would suffice.

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Transition

A story revealed on a chronological continuum would be mind numbing. Imagine writing a story framed within a week and describing every minute of these seven days. No doubt, there would be key events interspersed to shape the plot, but most of the time characters would be waiting, eating, sleeping, taking a shower, or dressing. While these instances may compose the backdrop of plot points, the writer will need to skip over most of them. For this, transitions do the work. These are words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and punctuation that mark changes in time, storyline, location, or POV, to skip over the mundane and get on with the story.

To handle transition, the writer uses section and chapter breaks, dialogue, flashes, summary, and introspection, among other resources. Transition also links, or paves the way, for a new paragraph, new setting, or new chapter so that even great leaps in time or place make sense.

In the excerpt that follows, the writer needed to prepare the set for a transition, a flashback, a technique we’ll review later.

Jolene stood at the sagging screen door. Shaking her head she sighed and turned. She’d spoiled the girl, and now it would be difficult to make her see that sometimes in life you had to take a few lumps. Not everyone had the opportunity to live a life full of fine things. Some would pay more than Rowan had to. Far more. The pain in her chest distracted her for a moment. Taking short breaths until it passed, she lay down on the lumpy couch.

By early afternoon, the heat would make breathing harder and she would need her strength when Rosaline’s man arrived and she had to drag her daughter back. Perhaps she should have arranged for him to take her when Henri finished. No matter. Rowan could only have run to one place, and Jolene was not afraid to go after her, black magic or no.

Closing her eyes, she wandered back in time. Where had she gone wrong? At what point did she lose control?[5]

Transition is an important delivery mode neglected by many writers, until they discover that pace, tension, and story flow, all depend on the use of transitional elements.

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1.2 FRAMEWORK / THE NOVEL

Every novel is a structure with layers, like an onion.

There’s a conceptual plan for the story, with actors peopling a series of events:

The villain captures a damsel. Enters the lovesick hero who kills the villain and elopes with the damsel into the sunset.

We have a protagonist (the damsel or the hero) an antagonist (the villain) a conflict (which is vital!), a climax (or outcome of the conflict), and a resolution.

The second layer is organizational. We need to marshal the events into chunks we’ll call scenes, further arranged into larger bites we’ll call chapters.

The next layer is technical and comprises scores of issues: characterization, setting, plot, pace, POV, atmosphere, etc.

The final layer is the law. There are rules to obey, conventions to follow, usages to hone, and formats to respect.

But we’ve left out the most important layer, the one that supersedes the others in importance. How must a novel work to succeed? What do readers demand from a novel? Notice that genre, plot, contents, and characterization are secondary at this point, for the primary essential is the intangible capacity to satisfy a reader.

Perhaps we can use an example from Carlos’s childhood. He recalls that when he was young tables were different.

How can that be? A table is a table: a round, oval, or square flat board on legs.

Yes, a table is a table, but its use changes with time which, in turn, alters its shape, and even its soul. The writer penning these lines remembers that in his infancy tables were exclusively round.

They had a round top, four legs, and another flat board attached to the legs three or four inches above the floor. This second board had an eighteen-inch round hole in its middle. A thick cloth was draped over the top of the table, and it dangled all the way to the floor. A brazier of burning charcoal fitted in the hole. The family sat around the table and arranged the cloth so the legs would benefit from the brazier’s warmth. Tables needed to be round; else, those sitting at it wouldn’t have equal access to the brazier.

The use of the table was also different. We had no television, central heating, or even much food. We had a radio. So, the family sat at an empty table to keep their legs warm, listen to the radio, and forget their rumbling stomachs.

Fiction writing has shared the changes of that table remembered from childhood. Books are still square, with numbered pages, chapter divisions, and lines of letters printed in them. There the similarities stop. Novel structure and its very soul are not the same. Whether we view the changes as evolution or involution depends on the way we understand the world we live in.

The table changed because its users changed, as a consequence of social pressures. People no longer gather around a table unless it’s laden with food. Although, in many households the table is only used on special occasions, its owners preferring a tray on the couch or standing around the new kitchen’s totem: the fridge.

We’re not suggesting that cinema and TV stole the table’s soul, but it certainly recast the way we read.

A fiction book is a commodity. As such, it’s governed by the same forces that shape other market products: purpose, fashion, and usability.

Our first concern is to determine what the reader expects. We’re not referring to contents - which we’ll discuss later - but usability. Failing to take usability into account results in books nobody wants to read.

But my novel is fantastic; the plot is awesome and the writing... move over Virginia Woolf! a disgruntled writer might cry after the umpteenth rejection. This may be, but perhaps the novel’s framework and conceptual structure doesn’t fulfill the reader’s expectation of what a fiction work should be. Our writer will rave about literary merits and characterization and a devilishly clever storyline while the manuscript gathers dust.

We propose a simple experiment. Imagine a novel about shape-shifters, the Roman Empire, or the antics of a platypus named Daisy. The plot is unimportant but the genre is. Browse through a film library or check what’s available on cable, or rent a film from a supplier. The film must be of the same genre as that of your intended novel.

Settle down before the screen with a handy clock. Check the time and start the film. Don’t bother about color, setting, décor, the heroine’s legs, or the hero’s abs. Concentrate on the moment when the action starts. Analyze the moment conflict sets in, the moment the film hooks you. It may be an explosion, a passionate glance, burned toast, or an alien bursting from an egg and fastening to a spaceman’s helmet. Glance at the clock.

If the film was any good, the minute hand will have moved fewer than ten times. Ten minutes. That’s the time a scriptwriter has to hook his audience.

Next, imagine discovering a film where the conflict doesn’t set in for twenty minutes. Again, settle before the TV but gather a few friends and family. Instead of watching the screen, analyze the body language of those watching. Observe fidgeting, pouting mouths, furrowing foreheads or, (horror of horrors!) drooping eyelids. Glance at the clock.

Restlessness and danger signs of disinterest will have set in around the ten-minute mark.

Films and TV have changed the way we assimilate narrative. In bygone times, before readers watched TV and traveled wide, a writer spent thousands of words outlining setting, background, and atmosphere to immerse the reader in a given world. Now, thirty-seconds of imagery will convey the same effect.

Characterization remains unchanged. The reader needs time to learn what makes someone tick, to understand her goals, her motivations, and the conflicts she’s likely to face because of personality. However, it is unnecessary to provide the painstaking description of unblemished skin or the silk petticoat with tucks at the waist, ruffles, and a dainty appliqué of Rosaline on an organza bustier that a film can accomplish in a single image. Description should reveal character and not exist for its own sake.

We live in a world that expects instant gratification, instant communication, and instant thrills. In a couple of hours, films deliver a barrage of images and sounds painstakingly engineered to keep the viewer’s gaze riveted on the screen. Unfortunately, readers expect to gather a similar experience from a book. The medium is different but the writer must telescope time and configure the prose to sustain the reader’s immersion. In many ways, holding a reader is far harder to accomplish than keeping a movie watcher seated before a screen. A writer must conjure images from words without the benefit of film and projection equipment. Simple words must sustain the same level of interest to compete. Furthermore, the writer knows (or must know) that the reader will stop somewhere, perhaps at the end of a chapter, to go to sleep, do the next chore, or get off the bus for work. He may not return to the novel for a day or a week. When this happens, the writer must hook his reader again.

The first layer of our onion structure addresses the shape of the novel’s cardiogram, its crests, valleys and spikes, its rhythm and beat. We can no longer start with a flat reading, or else the patient may never recover.

In 2005, Noah Lukeman, a literary agent with a towering reputation, wrote The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile. The title says it all: Five pages is all we have to ensnare our reader, though we must confess Mr. Lukeman is an inveterate optimist when it comes to the astringent evaluation process of manuscripts from unknown writers. Often, the first five paragraphs, or sentences, or even clauses, will send a manuscript to the trash can.

Before we begin structuring our new project, before we condense a nebulous concept into the sentence that will start it all, and before creating the characters that will bring our plot to life, we must think of the outer onion layer. We must acknowledge that the reader expects immersion from the moment he opens the book, and structure the manuscript accordingly - from page one.

Novel structure pre-planning

Our first task is to set the tone of the story: solemn or animated, comic or tragic. This must occur in the first paragraph.

The reader wants to know the identity of the narrator. Who is telling the story? Who is talking? In whose head does she find herself? Unless we are writing in cinematic POV, we have the first couple of paragraphs in which to plant the POV and give the reader perspective.

The reader needs a platform: Where are we? What season? Who are these people? We have ten, perhaps twenty lines to establish the background.

Readers (and agents and editors) want to know what’s at stake right away. Opening a novel with exposition is risky. It can be done, as many successful writers can confirm, but they probably knew what they were doing or relied on an adoring fan base to accept it. We must root plot and conflict within the first five pages.

But I need to establish lots of background leading up to the first moments of overt conflict!

Perhaps, but a novel - and to qualify as such - must have a certain length, usually eighty thousand words or more. There’s plenty of space for exposition and detail. We can fill in the background later, perhaps with a flashback in chapter two or, better yet, dosing it out over the following chapters.

Wherever we turn, the bellhops of exception carry on about some writer who does things differently, or they’ll denounce a novel that starts with twenty pages of exposition and sells zillions. There are flukes, and there’s no good reason to imitate them, for the real world is more pragmatic and cruel. The blurb on the jacket promises a payoff, and the reader expects to cash it in from the first page. That’s reality.

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1.3 FRAMEWORK / OTHER FORMATS

Besides the novel, there are many additional fiction narrative formats. The most salient formats include: Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Flash Fiction, and New Sudden Fictions.

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1.3.1 NOVELLA

A novella is prose fiction that is longer than a long story but shorter than a short novel. Its length ranges from 20,000 to 50,000 words. Word count, however, doesn’t define the novella. The essence of the novella is the concentrated unity of purpose and design. Character, incident, theme, and language all focus on a single issue, often of a serious nature or of universal significance.

The events of the novella turn around a single incident, problem, or issue, without subplots or parallel actions. A limited number of principal characters, perhaps only one or two, populate the story, and the events often take place in one location.

Artistically, the novella is often unified by powerful symbols.

Examples of this genre include Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1897), Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice (1912), Herman Melville’s Billy Budd (1856), and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1902).

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1.3.2 NOVELETTE

The novelette, like the true short story, features originality of theme and ingenuity of invention, but it’s not restricted to the short story word count.

It shares the same structural characteristics as the novella - character, incident, theme, plot, and setting. The distinction between a novelette and a novella is word count. A novelette ranges from 7,500 to 20,000 words.

Examples of this genre are: Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Henry James’ Daisy Miller (1878), and Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué’s Undine (1876).

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1.3.3 SHORT STORY

A short story is a work of prose, often in narrative format of limited extension.

Stating what separates a short story from longer fictional formats is problematic. A classic definition of a short story is that one should be able to read it in one sitting, although short story definitions based upon length differ. Since the short story format includes a wide range of genres and styles, the actual length is determined by the individual writer’s preference (or the story’s actual needs in terms of story arc), and the submission guidelines relevant to the target market. In contemporary usage, the term short story most often refers to a work of fiction from 1,000 to 7,500 words long.

Similar to the requirements of longer works, the five key elements that go into every great short story are character, setting, conflict, plot, and theme.

Some of the world’s best examples of the short story are from nineteenth-century American writers: Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, and Stephen Crane. Turn-of-the-century writers O. Henry and Jack London also provided a foundation of superb story writing. Twentieth-century short story writers who have excelled in their craft have learned much from their predecessors.

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1.3.4 FLASH FICTION

Flash fiction is a short work of prose, the accepted word count ranging mostly from 500-1000 words and containing all the classic story elements: protagonist, conflict, obstacles or complications, and resolution. The limited word count often forces some of these elements to remain unwritten, that is, hinted at or implied in the story line.

Very short fiction has been with us since antiquity, as reflected in Aesop and Phaedrus’s fables.

Contemporary writers, such as Chekhov, Lovecraft, and Hemingway have bequeathed us splendid examples of this difficult form.

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1.3.5 NEW SUDDEN FICTIONS

Termed New Sudden Fictions or Very Short Stories, are pieces of prose running from a couple of lines to a couple of pages. At fewer than five-hundred words, these works demand the painstaking attention to detail common in poetry. These narratives are different, not only because of their lack of space to fully develop a plot and characterization, but because they evoke a single idea or moment and have a reversal, often comic, in which the initial circumstances of the plot are transposed at the end.

Other terms, in addition to the older short-short story are flashfic, shortfic, ficlet, microfiction, drabble (exactly 100 words excluding its title), 69er (exactly 69 words excluding the title), or nanofiction (exactly 55 words). To qualify, these must be complete stories, with at least one character and a discernible plot. A six-word short-short allegedly penned by Ernest Hemingway is:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Though some elements are only implied, it has character, setting, conflict, plot, theme, beginning, middle, and end.

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1.4 STRUCTURE

This section discusses the plotting and structural tools to lay the framework of a genre fiction work. The extent to which a writer uses these is a matter of what works for him and the type of story he writes. Some character-driven novels need little or no outlining.

The question of whether to structure or not to structure has promoted rivers of ink and heated exchanges between the writers who structure, those who start with a blank page, and the great majority who do a little of each.

"Know the story - as much of the story as you can possibly know, if not the whole story - before you commit yourself to the first paragraph. Know the story - the whole story, if possible - before you fall in love with your first sentence, not to mention your first chapter."[6]

Most problems in fiction writing stem from lack of structure. Floundering middle sections and dead ends, unworkable or silly or disjointed plots, writer’s block and scores of other problems often are the result of poor planning - or no planning.

No sane scriptwriter would dream of settling down to write before diagramming the script. Novelists, likewise, have plans in some form or other. Written stories serve the same customers as films and TV - viewers and readers expect similar deliveries.

In real life, writers use structure for practical reasons: planning saves time and hundreds of pages of wasted words. A professional writer can’t afford to suffer a block. To spend weeks or months writing without knowing where a story is going or how it will end is too frightening to contemplate. Diagramming key scenes or events of a story is a surefire way to see if the plot works.

Writers unwilling to invest time and effort to prepare a plan complain about the required complexity of a formal structure, when nothing could be further from the truth. A blueprint for a full novel might consist of a few lines scribbled on a scrap of paper, a page of notes, a synopsis, a spreadsheet, or a painstaking chapter and scene outline with character sheets. There are levels of structuring to suit every taste.[7]

Some authors swear by a story structure while others prefer to wing it. This is understandable. The most technically demanding and difficult stages when writing a genre novel involve plotting the storyline and planning.

Writers are often eager to get to the actual writing and balk at doing the hard work first. We believe this is a myopic view.

Building a house is a monumental endeavor, perhaps the largest undertaking and investment of our lives. Men and machines enter the stage to lay down the concrete foundations. Once they finish, they cover up, cart away the excavated soil, disappear, and leave us with the sinking feeling of having paid a pile of cash while the lot looks as empty as before: no house.

Yet, we know that building a house without foundations and good drainage would be lunacy. Why any writer would insist on tackling stories without a foundation is beyond comprehension. And before the enraged voices of the cognoscenti cry from the wilderness, please, do not cite writers who eschew structures and produce technically perfect plots. They cheat. They work out the pattern in their minds and follow it up from there.

We would never suggest the layout must be on paper (though it helps) or a computer (though it’s handy but risky if the data is not backed onto external devices). One can work out a novel outline and commit it to memory, and tweak it while riding a bus or mowing the backyard’s jungle. We advocate a comprehensive structure, but the means of storage is up to the writer.

Some writers don’t like plans; they cringe at the thought of knowing the full story beforehand. We would contend that writers should know the story beforehand. The great gurus of writing counsel to never write a single word without knowing the beginning, the end, and the plot points. Otherwise, what would one write about? Whatever comes to mind?

These writers complain that writing to a pattern is mechanical and hampers creativity. However, this need not be the case. A plot structure can have many levels, from loose to exhaustive, and nothing must be set in stone.

The writer can always alter it by introducing plot points; promoting secondary characters; or adding, removing, or altering scenes at will - and still retain full control of the plot. Even if the writer changes substantial parts of the story, a framework still helps because it’s easier to get a clear picture of an entire novel if backed by good notes.

To write a story within a frame can be as creative as writing without it, but far more productive. For the professional, production is the key to success. Without a clear story line, good writing can often be wasted; sometimes paragraphs, passages, or even entire chapters must be discarded when they don’t further the plot. Thus, we switch the creative plot building to a point before the actual writing. The writer plots the novel from beginning to end and expands each idea, concept, and scene during the writing phase.

By working to a layout, the writer can ensure that each key event or clue leads toward the ending. Without a good idea of where events will happen in the manuscript, the writer runs the risk of hitting dead ends, middle of the story blues, or the dreaded writer’s block. These horrors can make the craft of writing unnecessarily hard.

With careful scaffolding, everything should contribute to the outcome of the novel, ensuring that the writing takes the writer closer to completion, saving steps, hardship, and frustration. Time building the structure is well spent.

But, how long? How complex? How comprehensive should a structure be?

Only the individual writer can answer these questions. There’s no set length or level of complexity. Some writers will need one single page listing the opening, plot points, and ending. Others will want to add subplots and characters. Some will choose a scene structure and others will work from a synopsis.

In every case, a good structure should:

1. Contain a bird’s-eye view of the plot.

2. Break the manuscript down into manageable chunks.

3. Keep track of the story beat.

Besides the unique idiosyncrasies of each writer, the genre also dictates the level of a novel’s layout. Literary work may not require a detailed storyline, but for most commercial fiction, a structure is helpful.

Before committing the first sentence to paper, a writer should have an idea about the beginning, pivotal plot points of the story, and the end. Whether composed in the mind, on a screen, or on reams of paper is a matter of approach and personal preference.

Opening. A king sponsors a ball to find a wife for his son.

Plot point one. Girl’s fairy godmother delivers a beautiful gown and glass slippers.

Midpoint or reversal. Girl and prince dance and fall in love.

Plot point two. The clock strikes twelve, and the girl loses a slipper.

Climax. Prince arrives with slipper. Sisters scorn the girl and try the slipper. Girl tries the slipper. It fits!

Ending. Girl and prince gallop into the sunset.

This is a full six-point structure in seventy-five words, and it provides the framework a writer needs to produce Cinderella.

In the next few pages we will explore in detail the structural tools for novels, though some aspects of these can be applied to plays, film scripts, and other fiction formats.

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1.4.1 THREE-ACT STRUCTURE

Aristotle defined structure and its principles in his Poetics. According to his definition, the classic linear plot has a beginning, middle, and ending. This inner structure is the underlying backbone that keeps the story moving forward. In diagram form, this structure is represented by a pyramid.

The beginning or Act One is critical. It gives readers a first glimpse into the story and often determines whether or not a prospective reader will buy the book. This act should introduce the characters and conflicts while setting the tone and mood for the rest of the story. Setting is important and if the fictional world differs from the real one, it should be detailed here. This should be a short act, limited to one-quarter or less of the novel’s length.

The middle or Act Two usually begins with a complication, a point in the story where things go from bad to worse. Of the three, this act is most often overlooked. Many stories slow down toward the middle, perhaps because the writer didn’t introduce enough complications. Traditionally, during this act, the hero’s first plan will founder. In writing parlance, this is called the story midpoint and should cause a great change in the characters. This is the point where relationships fail, where the hero is captured, or the car runs out of gas. The key is that by the end of the Act Two it should appear impossible for the protagonist to succeed. The climax, or high point of emotional intensity, follows, providing the moment of resolution.

The ending or Act Three is the wrap-up. The adventurer reaches the summit, the warrior fights his final battle, or the lovers find each other.

While the Three-Act Structure is a helpful organizing tool, it is not easy to use, in particular for those writers who don’t know enough of their story before they start. A simple test to see if this is the right structure for a given story is for the writer to determine if he could write the ending first, knowing who the characters have become. From this point, the writer can plot backward to explain how the character got there, or became who he is.

No matter how much a writer may like or identify with the protagonist, the antagonist and the problems move the story forward. This is the key to the Three-Act Structure.

Act One: Create a problem for the main character.

Act Two: Make it worse or seemingly impossible to solve.

Act Three: Allow the character to discover the answer.

Following these three steps and any story becomes interesting.

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1.4.2 SIX-ACT STRUCTURE

The classic linear plot of beginning, middle, and ending, as evolved for novel writing, has six key scenes or points. 1. Opening; 2. Plot point one; 3. Midpoint or reversal; 4. Plot point two; 5. Climax; 6. Ending.

1. Opening. This is the character introduction and the set-up of conflict, setting, and background. Needless to say, it should start with fireworks and not with exposition or ‘Once upon a time....’ In Alien, this is the interval up to the moment where the crablike creature attaches to the astronaut’s helmet.

2. Plot point one. This event concludes the beginning of the story and sets the rest of the plot in motion. Rather than the introduction of conflict, (it should have been introduced in 1) it’s an event which moves the conflict forward. The opening of the story leads up to Plot Point 1, which carries the story into the midpoint or reversal. In Alien, this is the moment where the creature bursts from the wretched technician’s belly.

3. Midpoint or reversal. Understanding the importance of this key element will help writers prevent a boring, foundering story middle - the dreaded middle-of-the-book blues.

The midpoint is the scene or event that transforms the characters or causes a big change. This event should anchor the scenes both leading up to the midpoint and away from it. In a mystery, it could be an overlooked angle. In a thriller, a disaster that may thwart the expected plot continuation. In a romance, the couple may break up. In Alien, this is the scene when they realize the thing will kill them all.

4. Plot point two. Just as plot point one closes the opening, plot point two closes the midpoint and readies the stage for the climax. This is the scene to wind up the action, twisting the strands of the story even further so they can be unwound in the ending. In Alien, this is the scene where Ripley manages to reach the escape pod.

5. Climax. The climax of a story is the high point of emotional intensity. It is the moment of payoff or resolution. In Alien, the climax is the moment the alien is sucked out into space.

6. Ending. The ending is the final scene of the story. At this point, everything has come to a logical conclusion. An ideal ending scene should convey a final image that remains in the reader’s mind after he has closed the book. In Alien this is the instant when Ripley settles down in the hibernation capsule.

This six-point structure is the most useful tool to lay down a plot, but there’s a caveat. As explained in the opening of this chapter, the writer must know the opening, the plot points, and the end before writing a word. These points hold up the structure.

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1.4.3 PROBLEM SOLUTION

Rather than a plotting tool, Problem-Solution is a device to use with any structure.

The natural structure of a problem has two parts:

1. The action that created the problem or inciting action.

2. The action that will resolve the problem or principle action.

The driving force of the inciting action is the threat, be that a terrorist, a frying pan on fire, an alien invasion, or Fido falling down a hole. The incident incites the action. Any of these can be the cause of the problem.

The anti-threat is the driving force of the principle action. The hero faces the threat and solves the problem.

If there’s resistance, either of these actions will require assistance from the components of the classic structures (Three-Act or Monomyth). With enough resistance, there will be complications, a crisis, the need for action to resolve the crisis, and a resolution.

The classic structures are already built around the problem-solving principle action that encounters resistance, namely: conflict, complications, crises or turning points, climax, and resolution. It follows that plot development requires dividing the problem-solving action into scenes, units of action.

This is the natural structure of any problem-solving action - real or fictitious - that encounters resistance.

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1.4.4 ORGANIC STRUCTURE

Although it has developed myriad variations, the organic structure is the oldest among the modern structural tools.

The organic structure became the indispensable working tool of scriptwriters. When producing a spec-script, the writer needed to break the play into scenes and set the scenes on cards to obtain an overview of the full work.

Later, the writer would tackle each scene, in whatever order he liked, or write the story linearly. Though much has changed in the scriptwriting industry, the scene-card core concept remains untouched. Nowadays, many scripts are the work of a team and not an individual writer. This is important in series, soap operas, and follow-ups. Senior writers craft the story arc and secondary writers churn out scenes or episodes while adhering to the outlines. Of course, this requires a detailed scene structure.

The organic structure replicates the human mind in the development of an idea. It starts with a concept, which can be boiled down to a single sentence.

An intelligent amoeba from the ocean’s depths decides to get rid of an annoying species: humanity. Frank Schätzing’s The Swarm.

A tycoon bankrolls the reproduction of dinosaurs from the DNA of amber-encapsulated mosquitoes. Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park.

A man awakens to discover he’s turned into a monstrous insect. Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis.

From the idea, blurb, or concept, the writer composes a synopsis: a few lines or a page. With the synopsis, the writer plots the opening, plot points, midpoint, climax and ending.

From these, already divided into sections, acts, segments, or structural elements, the writer produces scenes. These are the chunks forming the backbone of the story.

Once the scenes are on cards, a spreadsheet or a list, it’s simple to shuffle the scenes around, delete, and add complications, plot points, subplots, or any other device to flesh out the story. Thus, the organic structure can be remodeled at any time and may be viewed as growing a plant from seed.

In the sections dealing with chapter and scene structure, you will find details about classing and rating scenes to ascertain tempo, tension, and story flow.

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1.4.5 THE MONOMYTH

Before you skip these pages, please consider that even before humans invented the alphabet, storytellers built their stories, narrations, and plays around the conceptual steps outlined below.

From books of religious significance like The New Testament or the trials of Buddha and Mohammed to fantasies like Lord of the Ring; science fiction like Star Wars, The Matrix, Ender’s Game, and Avatar; cartoons like The Lion King; and adventures like Indiana Jones, there’s a solid thread that can be traced back to the mythic steps.

Homer, Shakespeare, Chaucer and Milton used these stages - however intuitively - and so have Conrad, King, and Lehane. Superman? Dr. Jekyll? Mary Poppins? Odysseus? Shapeshifters? Ben-Hur? The Sound of Music? The mythic steps are all there.

In The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, Christopher Vogler posits that most stories can be reduced to well-defined narrative structures and character archetypes. Vogler’s work stems from the writings of mythologist Joseph Campbell.

In his search for a unifying theory, Campbell’s seminal work The Hero with a Thousand Faces shone a blinding light on Jung and Freud’s debate over the collective unconscious. He believed the world religions, rituals, deities, heroes, and legends to be masks of the same concept. Most authorities agree.

Regardless of genre or theme, plots can be boiled down to a series of structural phases, necessarily recurring, like a finite series of nails on a board. The writer threads the storyline using the available pegs in no fixed order, and sometimes wrapping the tale several times around a particular nail and skipping others. But a careful study of the base structure, the character’s roles, and the underlying forces that pull a plot in one direction or another, will reveal that the stages are limited. There’s nothing new under the sun. Mythos is our heritage of dreams and the stuff from which we craft fiction.

Scriptwriters have followed these steps or stages for decades, to structure not only mythological or legendary screenplays, but also many other genres. Likewise, writers have used these steps or variations of the same since time immemorial, sometimes unawares. Halfway through creating the Star Wars structure, George Lucas came across Campbell’s work and was dumbfounded to discover he’d followed the mythic structural steps without knowing them.

We are not suggesting writers should approach plots from a mythic-step perspective, but rather that they can use them as guide posts, in particular when drawing a blank (one of those instances when we stare at an empty screen and don’t know what to do next). In studying mythos from a conceptual standpoint, the writer will discover similar patterns in his own work. This will expose where the story wants to go next.

The following authors have each arranged the steps differently, according to their views or interpretation of mythos.

The Campbell & Vogler’s Mythic 12-step lists the stages thus:

1. Ordinary World

2. Call to Adventure

3. Refusal of the Call

4. Meeting with the Mentor

5. Crossing the First Threshold

6. Tests, Allies, Enemies

7. Approach to the Inmost Cave

8. Ordeal

9. Reward

10. The Road Back

11. Resurrection

12. Return with the Elixir

Phil Cousineau, in The Hero’s Journey, lists eight steps:

1. The Call to Adventure

2. The Road of Trials

3. The Vision Quest

4. The Meeting with the Goddess

5. The Boon

6. The Magic Flight

7. The Return Threshold

8. The Master of Two Worlds

David Adams Leeming, in Mythology: The Voyage of the Hero, suggests another eight-step formulation:

1. Miraculous conception and birth

2. Initiation of the hero-child

3. Withdrawal from family or community for meditation and preparation

4. Trial and Quest

5. Death

6. Descent into the underworld

7. Resurrection and rebirth

8. Ascension, apotheosis, and atonement

We find Campbell’s Seventeen Stages of the Monomyth, from his 1949 masterpiece The Hero with a Thousand Faces, to be unsurpassed, and we’ve used his concepts to illustrate this structural tool.

The heroic Monomyth - also known as the Hero’s Journey - describes the common stages of a hero’s trials and adventures found in many stories. The terms and description of each step may sound fantastic or mythological. They are. But these are only labels. Hero is also a label we may attach to men, women, children, animals, or even constructs. Hitler and Bugs Bunny are heroes in this loose definition, even if their humanity is absent.

We’ll call our hero Gladys. She’s twenty-five and a mousy, shy, primary-school teacher, much prettier than she thinks, with a gorgeous mind and lousy luck with men. No pets or live-ins, only a lemon geranium struggling to survive on the window ledge of her tenement flat.

The Monomyth is structured in three acts, books, or