I don't understand how to structure a story

Inkfinger: Ah! Vindicated! (thanks, that's what I thought but am still new enough to this to take mis-direction seriously.)

re: starting with dialogue, it's a legitimate thing, but some readers associate it with kids' series, and especially the Stratemeyer formula, whether they were actually Stratemeyer or not.

A few random opening lines from the shelf--

"That Oriental-looking clerk in the perfume shop certainly acted mysterious," Bess Marvin declared, as she and her two friends ended their shopping trip and hurried down the street to the railroad station. (Nancy Drew)

"Mother, come here quick!" (Happy Hollisters)

"I wonder who that man is, Frank," whispered blond Joe Hardy, peering curiously from a second-floor window of their home. "He looks worried." (Hardy Boys)

"Oh dear, Susie's lost her back and can't stand up!" Flossie exclaimed. (Bobbsey Twins)

"I hate rain! It's simply pouring down, and darker than night outside." (Trixie Belden) (not Stratemeyer, and doesn't always open with dialogue.)

But whether people consciously or unconsciously notice the pattern, if anyone's grown up reading those sorts of books-- there's a chance the association is there. That's not to say that you can't overcome it, and that's not to say that it isn't effective, but it's good to be aware of.

The opening to KSRobinson's New York 2140 (an adult climate fiction novel):

“Whoever writes the code creates the value.”
“That isn’t even close to true.”
“Yes it is. Value resides in life, and life is coded, like with DNA.”
“So bacteria have values?”
“Sure. All life wants things and goes after them. Viruses, bacteria, all the way up to us.”

etc.

Chapter A is about 500 words of unattributed dialog. There might be two attribution tags. Very little non-dialog.

Goshawk--plenty of books start with dialog. I've seen it recommended as a way to begin. but it's also true that reading and writing are subjective, and a big name can do things that unpublished writers cannot. Their books will still sell--they have a base familiar with their brand, etc.

If there is an issue with your open, it may or may not be diagnosable by others. I agree with some of the feedback you've gotten, disagree with other feedback, but that's all the subjectivity of it, and have additional thoughts that no one has mentioned (I dislike 'shit' in the first line and I dislike that the viewpoint character is 'telling the listener' that their grin is a foolish one.)

But this is subjective and other people wouldn't be bothered by either of those things, at all. It's subjective. Just write, and read, and critique others, and take notes.

Are you really writing with the sole intention of fixing what you think is wrong with the original of whatever you are writing?

Reading that sort of writing - as a story - doesn't appeal to me at all.

Not sure I follow the meaning of your final sentence.

To me clarity is king, and the key to clarity is simplicity. And the use of 'simplicity' here means being direct and to the point.

But I do wish you good luck with whatever you are writing.

Sansophia said:

I'm hearing what you say. But with that said:

Yeah I get the thing about videogames being the long-form WHEN DONE WELL. But the new owners of Fallout, Bethesda, welll.... they're writing is pretty awful and their world building worse. I love Fallout 3, but mostly for the mods, but the narrative has always left me wanting.

See I don't value originality, cause I don't believe in it. Fix fic is the only reason I'd ever want to write, but if you know Fallout 3, this story I'm presenting is pretty far away from the original narrative, so much so that without specific names it's becoming it's original just from retweaks.

Also I don't understand that attitude about fanfic. Author's intent i not important, nor their vision. What matters is that world and making sure it runs as realistically as the premise allows. An author cannot do what they please, even they are bound by the rules of the world as it would actually have to operate, to default to do so is to crack the facade.

Also, if you want to critque something like poor worldbuilding or flawed characters, I'd think you have to keep the narrative as close as possible so others can do a side by side comparison to see how things can be done better/more consistently/more realistically.

That's one of the frustrating things is I'm sorta bound by the narrative of Fallout 3, because I could make my own story with the story elements, but it wouldn't show how to fix the problems of the original nor why they should be fixed in the first place.

in the end, I don't want to tell a good story in and of itself, I want to get people to think and use this thinking to make better, more nuanced and fair narratives themselves. Because stories are how we understand the world and simplistic narratives make for simplistic people.

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Sansophia said:

The basic story, which I dunno how long on paper was gonna be like this:

1. Kids get exiled from Vault, have to find dad to bring back to Overseer or he'll get impatient and execute their mom instead

Okay, so from this set up, here's what I get:

Main Character: Kid.
Goal: Find Dad so he can help.
Motivation: Or the BigBad will kill mom.

Are you sure that's the goal?


2. The long LONG quest to find dad.
3. Find Dad, use local powers to intimidate Overseer to not have his Vault unsealed without his permission.
The story you set up in step 1 ends here. So, you've got 9 steps, and the kid achieves his goal by step 3.

4. Enclave (bad guys) shows up and brutally genocide the mutants terrorizing the Capital region. Everyone cheers
What does this have to do with your main character?

5. Enclave hires kids to clean up Horrific hotel, girl finds out she's a latent psychic, Enclave tries to use her to mind control entire region, she esapces
Why would your main character be hired by the bad guys? What is the character's goal when they sign up?

6. Goes to Point Lookout (What? Why?) meets very old hero has Lovecraftian religious horror facing down of both evil Old Gods and also the evil psychic who corrupted the hotel and wants to possess her
7. Enclave showing true colors, the brother comes back, finds sister (Why is the brother finding the sister?)
8. Make deal with Techno Knights no one likes (Why is your character making a deal with someone that no one likes?) because they are post-American and don't even have the pretense of wanting to work within democratic institutions
9. Convince the Semi-decent Encalve colonel to defect to local government (Why? What does your character get out of this happening?), screws over Techno Knights because they are Americans (Your character's motivation is because Murica? Really? All of this was for nationalism?), and Americans don't do feudalism. So America Fuck Yeah! Except the Enclave, they're dirtbags.

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Layla said earlier that a story is about a person. People have goals, motivations, obstacles to overcome on their way to the goals. I don't think you lack structure. I think your characters lack motivation.

I'm not seeing a person in this structure.

InkFinger said:

In that case, Goshawk31, whomever told you not to start a story with dialogue is silly. Tell your story your way and go from there.

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I agree with this, tell the story that the way that fits your style. If you don't think the prose is working try a different approach or angle.
I think if you are new to writing novels, following the 3 act structure is really helpful. Even if the pacing is corny or you don't think it's working, that always can come out in edits. Also adding to the conversation about dialogue, A Song of Ice and Fire, George RR Martin, begins with "'We should start back,' Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them. 'The wildlings are dead.'" It's an immediate hook.

Hey man, I totally get what you're coming from. I love fanfics, especially fix-it fics, but you need to understand that what you like to read in a story isn't the same thing as what someone else does. Everyone is different and wants to see different things in fics. The thing about Fallout (and other games like that) is that the story has to be kinda "loose" because you are the player character, you are playing a role, and you kinda make your own story while you do it. You can headcanon whatever it is you want, and that's what the game wants you to do. So writing a be-all-end-all "this is what the story should be" isn't going to go over well, since every other player of the game has had a different experience and different story in their head. It's a game where you can put hundreds of hours into it. However, is your reader going to want to read hundreds of hours of your writing?

I get that your super passionate about this, and that's great! But arguing with us as to why your story needs these things, how does that make your story better? Why do you need to show every thing and force your reader to go through it? You can say "It took him 5 hours to get to his target, and he ran into as many fights as many hours. Ghouls, grifters, desperate folx, they all didn't see him as a person trying to survive like them, he was just a walking sack of bottle caps and bullets." So that tells us the place is dangerous, the type of people he's fought and we don't have to spend so much time reading a blow-by-blow fight scene. Does knowing how exactly your character shoots a guy tell us anything that we need to know and can't find out some other way?

The nice thing about fanfics is you know your audience already knows some stuff. They know what these fights are like, they know that the world is dangerous, they know why people want to attack you. Don't give yourself extra work by telling them things they already know! Tell them what's new. I learned about this technique screenwriters used and it helped me a lot, you should try it, too. Here's an article talking more about it but the gist of it is you take 40 index cards and you write a scene or "beat" or plot point on each card. You can then rearrange them easily as you try to figure out the order things go, or can toss one and make another if you get a better idea. They should be short. What things ACTUALLY matter to the plot? What are the scenes that your reader must read to understand what will happen next? Keep things relevant, or you're going to end up with a wandering mess like Fallout Equestria (620k), or that one Smash fic that's, like, 2 million words. No one is going to read that, be honest with yourself. Nothing feels worse than working hard on a fic and no one reads it. Don't shoot yourself in the foot by making something so daunting that no one is going to give it a chance.

Sansophia said:

In my experience, simplicity is is never EVER good. Because people come in with so many presuppositions, if you do not painstakingly explain things they will not remotely understand what you're talking about, and interpret your words in the worst way possible.

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You are correct, but in my opinion you’ve learned the wrong lesson.

All readers come into your story with their own experiences of life (what you call “presuppositions”), a lens through which they’ll interpret your words. This can’t be prevented or fixed; it’s just how readers are.

Readers are also more skeptical of things they are told than of things they figure out. This also can’t be prevented, and indeed shouldn’t; a degree of skepticism about what you’ve been told is a vital life skill. (*pointedly eyes politicians*)

You have noticed that readers put their own interpretation on what you say, and your conclusion has been that you must tell them more, that you must hem them in, remove any possible room for their own understanding of your world and leave room only for your interpretation. This will not work, first because it is impossible, and second because you are swimming upstream against that natural skepticism. The more you tell them, the more you attempt to force them to accept your interpretation as unalterable fact, the more stubbornly they fight you, until at last they get sick of it and go write their own story — just as you’ve done with the story Fallout told you.

A great deal of the skill of writing involves looking at your story, shearing it down to the things the reader must understand in a way similar to you to make the story satisfying, and then finding ways to “tell” them those things indirectly, so that they will figure them out and trust them in a way they don’t trust things the narrative simply states as fact. To use your example below, if you have a character identified as a Social Darwinist and that means multiple things in your world, you will get much more bang by creating a scene that shows how the character reacts to an event that challenges their belief — and letting readers form the conclusion “oh, they must be this sort of Social Darwinist” — than by the most painstaking and detailed explanation. You’re still in control — you created the events, you created the reaction — but you’ve tricked readers into thinking they figured it all out themselves.

That’s why the “show don’t tell” rule exists, and also the source of the Twain quote “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.”

Thing is, simplicity is the OPPOSITE of clarity. Real ideas and real people are nuanced and complex and because stories are teaching tools even when they aren't meant to be, they subtly warp how the listener perceives the world. mostly leading either to black and white hysteria or nihilistic apathy.

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I invite you to think of the average legal document... say, the EULA for the last piece of software you installed. Everything in it is painstakingly laid out; all nuances and complexity addressed, with no possibility of misinterpretation; every definition provided, every possible confusion ironed out. So it’s the epitome of clarity, right? Everyone who ever reads it understands it perfectly, right?

... you read the EULA, right?

People and their ideas are complicated and nuanced — so much so that we as writers cannot hope to replicate a fraction of that complexity. But we can manipulate people into bringing their own understanding of the world, their own complexity and nuance, into our work, and the best way to do that is to provide an outline, a thumbnail sketch, and let them bring it alive. Fortunately for us poor writers, people are built to look for patterns, to see ourselves and our experiences in everything. It’s why Randall Monroe can draw four lines and a circle and have it be more relatably human than painstakingly modeled video game characters. It’s knowing which lines say human that’s the trick.

Simple writing isn’t the same as easy writing, and complex writing doesn’t bring clarity. Alas.

(Says the person who just wrote a lengthy, complicated post )

Shooting for an exact page count like that is a fool's errand. A page in Microsoft Word isn't the same as a page on a physical book, or the paperback vs the hardcover. eBooks have no page count, since the text automatically arranges itself to fit the size of the screen its own. Formatting can change page count a lot. I'm sure you know the old trick of taking all your periods and changing them to size 14 to make your school essay a little longer. It's better to aim for wordcount, since that gives you an idea of how long a story is (a novel is, generally, 50k or more, and a novella is under that. A short story is several thousand words, how many is usually set by the anthology or magazine or whatever that's going to print it). Wordcount is also what your readers on AO3 or ff.net or whatever will use to judge if they want to invest in reading your story.

And yes, I imagine you can add/subtract cards based on the length of the story. So a novel that is 50-100k at 40 cards could be a 25-50k novella at 20 cards. A short story you could probably do 10. Movies have to stick to structure a lot more strictly than books since they cost so much to make and they've done the math as to what is a "successful" movie, but at the end of the day they are a story with a start, middle, and end and characters who have wants and needs, face challenges and get or learn something at the end. The idea of the exercise is to give you a very "high level" overview of the story and move things around freely while you sort things out. Each thing should be a logical progression to the next thing.

I'll be referring to [this diagram] of the three-act structure, and I'm going to use The Lion King as the example (mostly because mapping it to this was an assignment in my high school's base-level senior English class, which I find very funny).

Act One: Set up. We learn who the characters are, what the world is, and what their internal and external motivations are

Beginning: The whole circle of life song/scene. We see that the animals all serve and adore their king, we learn a prince is born, and that there's themes such as the cycle of nature and the divine right of kings

Inciting incident: Mufasa asks Scar why he didn't attend the ceremony. We learn what Scar wants (to be king) and why (because he feels inferior to his brother) so when Scar does the things he does later, we know why

Second thoughts: Simba, our protagonist, learns about the elephant graveyard. His dad told him one thing (don't go there) but his desire to do what he wants his own way (as were told in I can't wait to be king) makes him choose to ignore his dad's judgement and go. Scar tells him this info to get the chance to kill Simba, because Simba is an obstacle as to what he wants

Climax of act one: Simba and Nala being chased by the hyenas and Mufasa having to save them. It's an action scene, which those little explosions on the chart tend to be, but it tells us how Simba will be brave when needed. Mufasa could have killed the hyenas but let them go, which tells us about how he is a just king.

Act Two: Confrontation. This is when stuff starts to escalate. Characters are going on the course of their adventures/journeys to accomplish the things they want to do (or need to do). They do these things because of events in act 1 and they do things that follow their character

Obstacles/ascending actions: Scar puts his plan together to kill both Mufasa and Simba and become king. His prior plan failed so he has to do something more drastic, because he's not going to stop at the first failure. He lies to the hyenas to get them on his side, because he knows that he's too physically weak to do this on his own. He thinks he's smarter than they are so he has no qualms about using them like this. He also tells them they can kill and eat as much as they want, which is disrespectful to the circle of life. We're told and shown how he is not fit to be a king because of his beliefs

Midpoint: The wildebeast/Mufasa's death scene. There are multiple things that happen immediately leading up to this (Scar lying to Zazu to get Mufasa to come, Scar tricking Simba to get him in the canyon). The midpoint/twist and height of drama is when Scar digs his claws into Mufasa and kills him. Mufasa is a good person and always believed in the good of his brother, so this betrayal hurts, a LOT, and you can see that in his face.

More obstacles: Simba has to run away because he believes people will blame him for Mufasa's death. He almost dies in the desert, and there's lesser obstacles like learning how to be an insectivore and throwing away his old life to live with Timon and Pumbaa. He wants to make his dad proud and be king but he believes he can't do that because of the lies Scar told him. His goal (to be king and do what he wants) is thrown away

Disaster: The Pride Lands fall into ruin. This doesn't happen for no reason, it's because Scar is a bad king. We're told that the hyena overhunt, which is something he told them they could do in Be Prepared. The world is suffering because Simba isn't doing what he needs to do (the whole divine right of kings thing). Nala leaves to get help (which, in hindsight, I'm not sure what she's expecting to find, besides Simba, because she read the script and knows she needs to do this).

Crisis: Simba, well, has a crisis. Nala tells him what he NEEDS to do (be king) and he tells her what he WANTS to do (live in peace and not face his "crimes"). He knows it's what he SHOULD do but he doesn't believe he'll be able. The clash of wants vs needs (internal vs external motivation) gives characters challenges to overcome, and that's more interesting than trading in plot coupons.

Climax of act 2: Mufasa appears in the sky and tells Simba what he needs to do. It's something he NEEDS to hear. He's told he's the rightful king and bring balance to the Force. He makes the decision to confront Scar (and confront his demons) which sets us up for act 3.

Act 3: Resolution. We have exact goals and we know exactly how to accomplish them. Characters are going to do these things because of their character, and there have been clear steps building up to this.

Descending action: This is the "Oh yeah, it's all coming together" meme manifested. Scar is king because of his actions (killing Mufasa/Simba), which he did because of his already established wants/needs (he doesn't want to feel weak/inferior). As the villain, his actions have set up his downfall (the hyenas overhunt, which drives Nala to find Simba, and they do so because he told them they could, because he will lie to gain power and he doesn't care about the circle of life). The hero confronts the villain because of the prior incidents. He doesn't do it because he's good and the villain is evil, he does it because he wants/needs to.

Wrap-up/End: what it says on the tin. Simba doesn't kill Scar, because he, too, is a just king, but Scar is killed by the hyenas because he lied to them. Simba taking the throne causes rain which makes the priedlands green again, which is the whole divine right of kings thing again. The other lions learn the truth about what happened to Mufasa and we all live happily ever after

Things in stories should do multiple things at once. The circle of life opening tells us the themes of the movies, it tells us the setting, it tells us the characters, and all without any dialogue or narrator. We see pretty things, we get a feel for this world and how it works etc. Some of the scenes that were cut out were the morning report song, which is a fun little song and tells us how different animals work with each other, but the important stuff (Mufasa teaching Simba how to pounce) can be accomplished without it. There's also a scene of Scar hitting on Nala, because what's a king without a queen, and what's a king without heirs? With heirs, Scar can rule forever, long after he dies. But we already know he's single-minded in his goal (to be king, at all costs) and that he's willing to do gross/immoral things to do so. That's not in the movie, but it's in the Broadway show because it's longer. There's another version where he does this with Sarabi (Mufasa's mate/Simba's mom) instead, which is also gross/immoral, but it's a little more obvious that he wants to completely replace Mufasa. But again, this is stuff we already know. We don't need a scene of him hitting on his sister-in-law to tell us he's a bad guy, him killing Mufasa and trying twice to kill Simba is enough.

So when you're plotting, ask yourself, WHY is this character doing this? WHAT is their motivation and their thoughts behind it? Ned Stark wasn't killed because the script said he had to be killed to piss off the various Stark children and start a war. He was killed because he believed the Lannisters would "do the right thing" and follow social/political norms. He struggles between his duty to the king and his duty to his family (and the people of the north). That struggle and that misplaced trust caused him to die. But the Lannisters didn't do this because the script told them to be bad. Twyinn sings the Rains of Castamere, which is about one branch of the family brutally murdering the other. Jamie betrayed his king and killed him (this is framed as a "good thing" since the last king was a Bad Guy, but he still broke the rules of society/politics to do this). He also tries to kill Bran in the first episode.

The reason why game of thrones was "good" was because characters did things because it's something they would do in their situation, based on what we know of their morals and character. The later seasons turned bad because characters did things because that thing had to happen for the next thing to take place. The night king had to die so that we could go to king's landing. Dany turned into dragon Hitler because she has to be bad enough for Jon to kill her. She killed those civilians because she needed to become dragon Hitler. And she killed them because her other dragon died, as did her best friend. The dragon died because she "forgot" about the Greyjoy navy. And she forgot because....well d&d needed a reason for it to happen. Compare this to earlier in the series, where she puts the dragons in baby jail because they killed an innocent girl. It hurts her to do this, but she does it because she doesn't want people to be hurt like that. The dragons are her children, but she sees herself as a kind and just ruler, a protector of the weak, so she will do something that hurts her own children in order to protect her people.

I just started coming back to AW a few weeks ago. To celebrate, and before my classes start at college, I decided to work on a book whose plot totally ran away from me many years ago.

Although many people would say, abandon it, the past is the past, I saw some really good writing in it and thought it was worth a shot.

I think that there are far more TYPES of writers than plotters and pantsers. There are probably as many types as there are writers. I am an "Islander." I create related (in the same world-space) scenes, often after long walks or from dreaming/thinking about what the characters do. These separate islands become an archipelago, and all that must be done is to link them.

As the ideas come to me, I generally do some free writing, and then some scene creation. I start to lay them down in a chronological order, as though I had everything written on index cards.

So I might write 50K or more pages before I start to link the scenes together. To do this, I use "plot" building techniques. In some cases, I will have to destroy or trash a wrong turn.

So that is the point I am at now in this novel. I threw away about 10K words and have about 65K in chronological order-- I will edit down, start weeding out things that don't work. So editing is very important.

The next steps are really important. I need to find out where missing links are. How is this character doing this thing here and now?

By the way, there is the "story" and there is "how you tell the story."

A story starts (beginning) has events in order (middle), and comes to a conclusion (end).

How you tell a story can be last event first, first event last
Split by time lines
Split by character (we know that)
Randomly organized



No matter which organization you give your story it needs a beginning, middle and end.

In other words you design it as it is best told in your eye as the author.

There is a study field of story structure called Narratology. A good introductory book is by Mieke Bal. This is original source information and is not how one author writing a how-to book prefers. If you study Narratology you never have to ask this question again.

Sansophia said:

In my experience, simplicity is is never EVER good. Because people come in with so many presuppositions, if you do not painstakingly explain things they will not remotely understand what you're talking about, and interpret your words in the worst way possible. Because words mean multiple things. Social Darwinist means at least five different things, totally different kinds of things (as per Tvtropes page) and if you have a social darwnist character of one type, if you don't make clear what their beliefs are, especially in a pitch for help, it does no good.

Thing is, simplicity is the OPPOSITE of clarity. Real ideas and real people are nuanced and complex and because stories are teaching tools even when they aren't meant to be, they subtly warp how the listener perceives the world. mostly leading either to black and white hysteria or nihilistic apathy.

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The above is your opinion, so in that sense it can’t be “wrong”. But it’s so far from my own aspirations, or I think most writers of fiction, that I can’t let it pass unremarked.

What you describe is appropriate for technical documentation. If I want you to understand how to operate model X equipment safely, then I really need that “painstaking detail”. I must communicate, unambiguously, the knowledge that I (presumed subject-matter expert in the operation of X) have in my head. It would be a failure, perhaps with deadly consequences, if I failed to transfer my expertise in X to my readers.

But how did you come to the conclusion that this should be the goal of all writing? As a reader of novels, I literally don’t care — again, for emphasis: I Do Not Care — what was in the author’s mind when they created what I’m reading. Did they sprinkle their novel with clever allusions to political strife in modern Venezuela that I’m completely unaware of, and so I totally missed the irony of what Bob is saying to Jane? If I enjoyed the novel, I don’t care — and neither should the author care that I was clueless and missed this. Indeed, if the author frequently inserted long digressions into the plot to “educate me”, chances are at least fair I’d stop reading.

My hope as an aspiring author is that my work finds readers who enjoy reading me. If I’ve inserted coy references and allusions into my work and some readers notice and understand and enjoy it, hurray! My work is a splendid and many-layered thing! But if other readers don’t see those things, that’s fine — I want them to enjoy their own path through my work.

OP, if you can stifle your distaste for three-act structure, then I'd recommend Blake Snyder's Save the Cat. It's the closest thing I can think of to a step-by-step approach, which was something you appeared to want when you started this thread. It's a bit restrictive, although I believe there's a certain worth inherent in having enough control to meet a particular story goal by a certain page. It's a "learn the rules before you go and break them" kind of thing.

I found it somewhat restrictive while I was actually drafting, although if you use it enough, I suppose you'd get used to it. I've decided that since I write short stories and novels, not screenplays, I have more wiggle room. Everyone has their own accommodation they have to make with story structure, and you might not know what yours actually will be for several books.

The main thing is to sit down and write the things. Put action to your beliefs and see how that works out. Modify as needed. Keep going. : )

CathleenT said:

OP, if you can stifle your distaste for three-act structure, then I'd recommend Blake Snyder's Save the Cat. It's the closest thing I can think of to a step-by-step approach, which was something you appeared to want when you started this thread. It's a bit restrictive, although I believe there's a certain worth inherent in having enough control to meet a particular story goal by a certain page. It's a "learn the rules before you go and break them" kind of thing.

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This is weird but I only learned about that method a week or so ago when I was searching for alternate ways to encounter plots. It was funny because I had already been doing most of what he suggests. That is to say, using page length to determine where certain events happen in the book. I think it is because that is also how to write academic papers. You don't want to go over your page length, so you divide the pages into the sections you need to fulfill the TOC (in a manner of speaking)-- Title page, Abstract, introduction, main body divided into the main points you are making, usually the presentation of your data follows, and then your discussion, lastly the outro.

Even "pantsers" need to have an internal diagram of when events should occur in the timeline. Too soon, and you run out of things to say, too late and the audience is lost.

When I was taking creative writing in college during my BA. , there was a lot of discussion about the author's need to chose a subject that would sustain the length of the novel. Certain ideas are really played out at short story length and you just start repeating yourself. A major reason people "stuff" is because they have chosen too short a story for the page length they have been given.

Kalyke said:

Even "pantsers" need to have an internal diagram of when events should occur in the timeline. Too soon, and you run out of things to say, too late and the audience is lost.

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Speaking as a pantser, this seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of how pantsing works.

Drafting is how I work out the timeline. I don't know what it is when I start. Revision is where I worry about pacing and placement. There's no opportunity to either run out of things to say or lose the audience; the pantsed version doesn't get handed to the public.

I'm of the opinion that planners and pantsers end up doing more or less the same things, it's just that pantsers do a lot of it while drafting, while planners do a lot of work before writing any words at all. Once the book is finished, a reader shouldn't have any idea which book was planned and which was pantsed.

lizmonster said:

I'm of the opinion that planners and pantsers end up doing more or less the same things, it's just that pantsers do a lot of it while drafting, while planners do a lot of work before writing any words at all. Once the book is finished, a reader shouldn't have any idea which book was planned and which was pantsed.

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Not that it matters, but I am also of that opinion, and I'm going to have it tattooed on my forehead and when people ask Are You A Plotter Or A Pantser, I'll just take off my hat.

mccardey said:

Not that it matters, but I am also of that opinion, and I'm going to have it tattooed on my forehead and when people ask Are You A Plotter Or A Pantser, I'll just take off my hat.

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It matters.

Liz's process is similar to mine but it isn't exactly like mine; you see, there must be as many ways to pants a story as there are to plot. Probably as many ways to pants as there are pantsers, as well. I've posted my process here so many times no one wants to read it again, but there you are. When I sit down to write a story there is no conscious internal scaffolding of any kind. None. The character and I enter the stream of the story and I write with the stream—and when the story bends I'm always surprised at the turn the story has taken but in hindsight, it seems it's the only way it could have gone. But you see, not all pantsers work that way and it would be quite ridiculous of me to state unequivocally that's how pantsing works.

Ari Meermans said:

It matters.

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Whatever works for a writer and a particular story is the way to go!

It can change, not only from writer to writer, but from book to book, or even within a book.

You can start with an absolutely finished detailed outline, when something changes, and you're suddenly pantsing.

That's OK!

Or you can be a pantser for your first six books but then something takes hold of you and you realize you really need to have a more detailed map of where the story and the characters are going . . .

That's OK!

Sansophia said:

Any advice or links on how to make sure there's actually a beginning, middle and end, and not just a bunch of stuff that happens?

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It needs to all link together. I get the impression (I could be wrong, so ignore me if I'm way off base) that you're thinking that there's something much more complicated or elusive to this than there really is.

A common example is:

beginning: a character has a problem
middle: the character does various things to try to solve the problem, they don't all work, other things happen, it gets worse
end: the character fixes the problem

The common thread is the problem. Resolving the problem ends the story.

That's not the only way to do it. Take The Raven by Poe

beginning: character is alone at night during a storm, grieving for his lost Lenore
middle: a raven comes along and he wonders if it's a sign. He asks the raven a bunch of questions, but all the raven says is "nevermore"
end: the character asks the raven if he'll ever be reunited with Lenore. The raven says "nevermore". The character is utterly broken.

Okay so I'm a science grad not an English grad and it's far from a thorough analysis of the poem, but I wanted an example that didn't centre around a character fixing a problem. The common thread is the man's grief for Lenore. It ends with him completely broken.

If the feedback you're getting is that your story's a bunch of stuff happening, my question is whether you have just one story or a whole collection of little stories all stuck together. If it's going along the lines of the characters facing a problem, dealing with it, fixing it, then another problem comes along, they deal with that and fix it, then another problem...etc, then I'd call that a collection of short stories. There is nothing wrong with that, but you might want to structure it as a book of stand-alone short stories that all happen in the same world. I don't know how much you've written of this though. If you've written loads and loads and loads, what you thought was a novel could be a series.

The main thing is that there's a common thread or sequence and the ending is when it's come to some kind of resolution (good or bad). A point where balance is restored, events are wrapped up, either problems are fixed or nothing is ever going to be the same again. It may involve a character growing as a person, or a character becoming very bad (Michael Corleone in The Godfather or Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequel trilogy).

Speaking of Star Wars, IMO the reason why episodes 7, 8 and 9 didn't work as part of the series (even though I enjoyed them very much as films in their own right) is because the story ended with episode 6, Return of the Jedi. All the loose ends were tied up, balance was restored. Everyone was happy. Even Darth Vader redeemed himself. Episodes 7, 8 and 9 were stuff that happened after that and episode 7 had to set up new problems to be resolved by episode 9. Great films, but really not part of the same story.