Story Structure: SaveTheCat!, StoryFix and others

Start with the ending and work backwards until you have all the scenes you need to support it. For instance, if the ending involves a father opening up to his son, then obviously you need a scene where the father refuses to open up, a scene where he maybe considers opening up, and a scene where he's about to open up before something interrupts him. That shows his progression. And all those scenes will need their own set of scenes that lead to them. So just keep putting in all the scenes you need until your ending is earned.

This is also the time to come up with "twists" for your scene. Like, say, suppose the father and son are spies. For the scene where the father's trying to open up, maybe they're being ambushed by hitmen and the thing rhat interrupts the father is his son shouting, "Dad, duck!" to save him from gunfire.

Naturally, that scene has its own set of questions: how did the hitmen find them? Well, a mole planted a tracker on them. So now you have a whole su plot about a mole with its own set of scenes you can work on. What happens to the tracker after they defeqt the hitmen? Maybe they use it to trick the bad guy into a final confrontation.

Find the logical flow between scenes, the setup and payoff, and you have your structure.

hiya,

I'm using Snyder's 15 beats on novel 2. Novel 1, I sort of muddle-modeled after stories I enjoy, and these do follow the three act structure.

I've heard of this wall that creeps up for people at 35,000 words. Incidentally, I see this wall in novel II. I think I'll be able to push past it.

My first draft of novel I had a **serious** saggy middle. I bet these things are related--sagging middle and hitting a wall. You might know your protagonist needs to grow, and so you do these various things in act II to drag them through to act III... which then gets pasted on as a sort of 'just finish the damn thing'...

It's daunting. Because then, you (or at least I) end up with a steaming pile of manushipt, and there are days when the last thing you want to do is try to make it better.

Ummm.... but the structural approach is good for the way I write (plotting). When I had a bad draft of novel I, I did the math --found where the story beats were naturally falling, and I cut and added and this and that.

I'm a believer in structure. I use three acts and Snyder's beats fit within that pretty well. There's a book I read but the name escapes me that is not *about* the three act structure, but it does definitely discuss this structure in useful ways.



I am also a believer in subplots.

As a HUGE beginner myself, I read through A LOT of structures before I started. For me, most are incomplete, in as much as seeing the big picture. I found the following 3 resources to be highly invaluable....

1) Story Plotting (for screenplays, but adaptable to books): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U4IgCn78BI

2) Michael Hauge: Search Google for "Key Story Questions & Structure Chart" and maybe type in Hauge too.

3) Story and Subplot Thread Weaving: Dan Wells Story Structure....

Part 1 of 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcmiqQ9NpPE
2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrP9604BEOM
3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNZDL9-dN8k
4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WC_WWErNd8
5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD-T-ku4ynk

https://youtu.be/3pvoLmSdOw0 Four story structures.

Personally I'm a big fan of Robert McKee for the big picture and The Story Grid (for explicating Robert McKee's confusing bits, especially, but they've got a lot of other good things to say.) The Story Grid had a forum of its own and I was active for awhile, but it didn't seem like it was gaining all that much steam, and the links to it now don't work, so I expect it petered out. That's the issue--it can be hard to find enough people who are into your specific structure model.

Actually it might not be a half-bad idea to petition AW for a subforum on writing structure models. Just one to cover them all--you could start a thread on Blake Snyder, I could start a thread on Robert McKee... discussion would be very useful on these things b/c there are often concepts that can be hard to wrap your head around, but practice doing it with other people (and asking if you're applying the concept correctly) can really help.

You might try a search for "plotting" rather than story structure. I'm pretty certain this conversation about structure comes up... regularly.

I like Snyder's structure. I like the four act Orphan/Wanderer/Warrior/Martyr structure. Not particularly fond of The Hero's Journey (because it's more than a little dated). K.M. Weiland has some great graphics on her story structure site on all sorts of things from comparing structures to considering things like sidekicks, subplots, etc.

Personally, I find that structure is most important once I write the first draft and start revising. YMMV.

I've looked for similar discussions here and failed to find them. I get the impression that a lot of novelists either don't care about or don't prioritize formulaic structure (and I mean that in the best way) in their writing process. Personally, I love having guidelines that say "if you do these specific things, it will make your book better." I'm interested by the Save the Cat forum. I will have to look into it. I haven't read the book--just other people's cliff notes of his structure--so I'm not well-versed in the genre variations.

I've used The Hero's journey, McKee, and Snyder templates. I always "riff" on them--never stick 100% to them. I've had everything from 3-page outlines to 20-page outlines and complex spreadsheets. All of that worked. What didn't work for me was no plan at all. At the scene level I like Swain's scene and sequel concepts. Goal, conflict, disaster: once i'd internalized that as the structure of a scene, I was writing page-turner novels.

ETA: I've since read Story Engineering, which is basically screenplay structure for novelists. Also good.

If you can tolerate reading in ALL CAPS, this is actually a very insightful essay: "HULK’S SCREENWRITING 101 EXCERPT: THE MYTH OF 3 ACT STRUCTURE."

There's also Dramatica, which helped me more with character development than structure, but still valuable.

boss281 said:

Problem I'm facing, I have elements of Monster in the House, Superhero, and even WhyDunIt.

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Could you state more clearly what you think the problem is?

Story Engineering was the book that made everything click for me. I write novels but I’m currently reading Writing Screenplays that Sell, this book is also an eye opener for me and gives me ideas on brainstorming

So much great advice on this list! There are lots of different philosophies on how to structure a novel.

I think this is a great starter book on plot: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008CC5L8Y/?tag=absowrit-20

Also, reading this book will give you a lot of depth and perspective on the different kinds of plots: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006RAIXXI/?tag=absowrit-20

Both are great and will get you started.

I'd also highly suggest you build a great spreadsheet to track your scenes. Let me know if you need some help and I will pass along my go-to spreadsheet that I'm using for my 200k word novel.

boss281 said:

Just to be sure I've articulated my request correctly, this question was about APPLYING various story structure to ideas/concepts/premise for a WIP. I understand all the various structures, but this is a request for near real time conversation in a forum environment--my apologies if I didn't ask that correctly in the first post. I've settled on my approaches to structure, just have questions about nuance (see last paragraph in #5 above). There are a lot of Blake Snyder devotees out there, just want to pick their brain on work that is clearly a hybrid between the genre's identified under his model.

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Not sure I fully understand the question - you already made a draft outline but you're worried you may be missing some important beats specific to the genre, is that right? I'm not sure how we can be of help without more information about the story. Can you share a bit more?

No matter what, IMHO everybody's initial draft outline is going to suck pretty bad. This is where you work out all the problems in the story, and some authors will keep going back even after writing various chapters to overhaul the outline again and again until it works. Also, if you like Blake Snyder's approach, you might find helpful Jessica Brody's book about adapting it for novels.

I used to rely on over-plotting in the past because I was afraid of missing something. This approach left me with massive outlines and soulless characters that fit through the plot, or struggled against it.
Now, I realize I am a pantser. I found that at least for me, I've been consuming books and other stories for so long that I've internalized these beats without realizing it (shields face from rocks).

It is a loose internalization, however. I started as close to the beginning as I could and wrote with the end in mind and had fun the whole journey (well, fun may not be the right word--more like engaged). At the next stage, I will go back and double-check my organic story structure against some popular beat sheets.
The PDF cheat sheets for Save the Cat! Writes a Novel (Jessica Brody), The Secrets of Story (Matt Bird) and Romancing the Beat (Gwen Hayes--for romantic subplots) are bookmarked in my browser.

The most important thing for me was to start with interesting characters, follow their lead and find out who they really are by the end of the journey. This also makes re-writing inevitable.

Honestly, I'm expecting a complete mess. But by doing things in this order, I was able to Do the Damn Thing. That first thing always seems to be the most difficult.