Good news – this isn’t an April Fools day joke, because you’re about sick of them.
What one thing do you need to learn to write a novel – before you write it?
Story structure.
I know, I know, it seems like you should just be able to open Microsoft Word and write “Chapter one”, and after three or four years your novel should be done, right?
Well, there’s two errors in that statement. First, Microsoft Word is absolutely the worst writing environment there is. If you complete a novel in Word, it will take you years, and you’ll be somewhat unsure what’s in your book until you get it back from your printer.
Second, it should only take 90 days to write your first draft, not three years.
I push Scrivener as a writing tool on purpose. I don’t get any financial considerations for doing it. I do it because I believe in the software. That’s the answer to Word. Use Scrivener to write your novel.
Learning Story structure is easy. There’s a number of different ways to track your progress, and I’ll talk about that this week. For now, let’s look at Story Structure.
Structure
There’s three acts in a story –
story goes from normal to oh no
things get worse then impossible
Hang on, getting inevitable, final conflict
Crucial to your story is the inciting incident – the one event that drives the entire novel. If someone is accused of murder, then the murder is the inciting incident. The inciting incident must drive everything after it, or directly cause everything else in the book.
The number one reason most novels are rejected is that the Inciting Incident is too far into the novel, and it seems to drag.
The essential idea is that normal, perfect life must give way to the incident as rapidly as possible. Some novels actually start on the inciting incident – the first Star Wars movie begins with the inciting incident.
Act One
Act one is very much like the beginning of a roller coaster ride – the coaster is moving uphill, and you see the drop coming, and it’s inevitable. Act Two is like the up and down part of the roller coaster ride, and act three is the maddening rush towards the dramatic end of the ride. Act One is approximately 25% of the story.
Your novel needs to build rapidly from the opening to the Inciting Incident, then towards Act Two, then everything must move to act three, which culminates in the climax of the story.
Act One’s main job is… establishing the story. No new major characters may be introduced after Scene One ends. The setting must be established, and quickly into Act One.
Act Two
Act Two is the meat of the story. It is approximately 50% of the story. The best way to think of Act two is Act 2A and Act 2B. Decide on what event will signify the point where the novel begins to pick up speed to the downhill plunge – that’s the midpoint of the novel, and the event that separates Act 2A from Act 2B.
Act 3
The idea is that the antagonist is putting every obstacle in the way of the Protagonist. At the midpoint, the protagonist now has abandoned their role as the “I can’t do this” to “let’s get on with it.” Act three will be the next phase which is, “I must do this”. The climax is the final transformation for your protagonist to the “I have the power to beat you.”
If you’ve incorporated a guardian or keeper of the secret knowledge, Act three is where you have to separate that person from the protagonist. They MUST stand on their own.
The Climax
The reader knows that the protagonist will beat the antagonist. If you did your job right, then this is going to be a thrill ride. Often I turn to movies to explain this part – Barry Gordy’s “The Last Dragon” has a climactic battle between Sho Nuff and Leroy Green. Leroy finds Sho Nuff has the “glow” that shows his mastery of Kung Fu, the very glow that Leroy had been striving in vain for. And as Sho is beating Leroy to death, Leroy realizes at last he had the power all along – he truly is the master. And the ending to the movie literally had audiences standing and cheering – I couldn’t believe how INTO the movie people were!
Because you are Leroy Green. That’s the point. The reader must be drawn into the novel as if it’s a story about them in that situation. Put that climax point at 75% of the way into the final battle – the protagonist suddenly finds he had it all along, and the antagonist finds the tables turned.
Conclusion. Story structure is easy to learn and implement. If you skip this step in your writing process, your first few books may well have unfixable flaws that will lead to their rejection by every publisher and agent. Save yourself a lot of trouble, and spend a little time consciously learning, using and implementing this.
I want you published. I want your novel to succeed. Reject this instruction, neglect these steps and I guarantee you will fail.
We don’t want that. Learn story structure and how to implement this and you WILL succeed.
