One of those "Well Duh!" moments

[dirtsider]

Writing groups are wonderful things because I pretty much stalled on my current WIP. But when I went to one of the writing groups I attend last night, I mentioned that I was having trouble, like I had hit a brick wall. So Craig, the moderator, mentioned trying to do a synopsis of the story and perhaps that will help. I've never done a synopsis before. So we ended up going over the "3 Act" breakdown of story writing at that meeting. (Normally we read and critique each other's stories.)

Well, duh!! I think I knew instinctively the breakdown of the "3 Act". Well, more like Rising Action - Climax - Falling Action. I don't recall ever going over it so well as we did last night. So now I'll go over my story and work it through the "3 Act" outline and see where I need work. I have the feeling that will do wonders. I do feel bad for making the others sit through something that I needed for myself but I like to think that they did get something out of it.

I never really got into outlining my stories in the past because to me, outlining is just something I've done for work. Just a main sentence and some notes for each sentence/scene.

[Jackfishwoman]

That's neat dirtsider. We all learn from each other - I just got some inspiration from you!

[dirtsider]

Well, thank you. I'll have to remember to post the 3 Act breakdown that we went over last night. It was a lot clearer than I remember learning in school. (Now granted that's been a while. lol) And it's a little different from the Rising action-Climax-Falling action. More like "Stimulus-Dark Act-Climax". He breaks each act into 3 separate parts for a total of 9 points.

Craig's cool. This writing group is fairly new, only about 5-6 months at this location. I like it because the people are just starting to come and we're mostly beginning writers. I've been going for about 4 months or so and I've been the "regular" for the past few months. We finally had another person come back for his second month in a row. Yay! I would love to have this group really take off.

I'm also a part of another writing group that gathers on the first Monday of each month. That's a more established group where there are several regular attendees who are already published authors. That group's cool because we get the benefit of that experience. But it's also nice to have a group where people are just beginning too.

[Shadow_Ferret]

Guess I never heard it refered to as "3 Act." Acts always seems like a scripting term for plays.

I guess I simply understood it as 3 parts of a novel. And I'm not sure how you'd intentionally strive for it, it always seemed like something that naturally occurs within the story.

[dirtsider]

Well, the 3 Act outline did start out as something for plays, rather than stories. But it's since been applied to stories and movies, etc. I'm not explaining it as well as Craig did last night. It'll probably be easier to understand once I get a chance to post the whole thing later on tonight.

[Phaeal]

I never really got into outlining my stories in the past because to me, outlining is just something I've done for work. Just a main sentence and some notes for each sentence/scene.

Hate to have to tell you this, but you're already writing outlines. Just because they're idiosyncratic in form doesn't make them any the less outliney, and most likely, the idiosyncrasies make them particularly useful to you.

And, whoa! If you write notes for every sentence, must be a loooooong outline. ;)

[dirtsider]

Snip
And, whoa! If you write notes for every sentence, must be a loooooong outline. ;)

Actually, what I meant was just a sentence for an entire scene (if that) and some notes on the scene. Not notes on each and every sentence I write. This was just an example. And the notes are optional.

I definitely don't do this for my writing. I just write the story. That's where the problem comes in.

[dirtsider]

Ok, here's what I got from last night:

Act I:
1. Stimulus (what stimulates the story)
2. Exposition (aka infodumping)
3. Catalyst (accelarating action)

Act II (The Dark or Villian Act):
1. Crisis (villian ups the ante, tries to undo hero's action)
2. Catharsis (explosion of emotion, villian seems to be winning)
3. Epiphany ("aha" moment - hero's flaw {what s/he doesn't know but needs to know} is revealed and/or resolved)

Act III:
1. Remedy (time to take action)
2. Climax (final showdown)
3. Resolution (balance is restored)