wetranscripts | Entries tagged with three act format

Writing Excuses 21.18: Deconstructing the Three Act Structure

From https://writingexcuses.com/21-18-deconstructing-the-three-act-structure

Key Points: Three act structure: setup, confrontation, and resolution. Describing normal: establishing the main characters and their relationships and the world they live in. The ordinary world. What's going on, who are the characters, why should I care about them, why am I invested in this story. What is the status quo? By page 5, what story are we reading, what is going on? What is the main action, what are the stakes? Pose a major dramatic question. KPop Demon Hunters. A reason to care. Ground the reader. Set up the overall theme, who we're going to spend time with, where we're going to be, and genre/mood. Stakes.

Act 2: rising action. The protagonist attempt to resolve the problem initiated by the first turning point. Where your try-fail cycles happen. The meat. Act 2 commercial break: dark night of the soul, big crisis, big reveal. The solution that creates the next problem. Purchasing the frame before you know what the painting is. Traversal and transformation.

Act 3: resolution. Climax. Confluence. Punch the reader, then give them a moment to breathe. The scene of aftermath.

[Season 21, Episode 18]

[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

[Season 21, Episode 18]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Deconstructing the Three Act Structure.

[Erin] Tools, not rules.

[Howard] For writers, by writers.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

[Mary Robinette] And I'm very delighted to have a long time friend to the podcast back with us, Margaret Dunlap.

[Margaret] It's delightful to be here. Thank you for having me.

[Mary Robinette] So, one of the reasons we wanted to bring Margaret into these is that, besides writing prose, Margaret is also a screenwriter working in Hollywood. And today we're going to be talking about the three act structure. Which is a classic structure. One of the ways that it was popularized was by a book by Sid Field in 1979 called Screenplay, The Foundations of Screenwriting. So the way he describes it is that the three acts are the setup, the confrontation, and the resolution. Act 1, Act 2, act 3. I would get very salty about the whole idea of a three act structure, because I'm like, three acts, three act breaks, came from theater, and you need them to move scenery around. So, when you said that you have actually read this book...

[Margaret] Oh, I have indeed.

[laughter]

[Margaret] I am aging myself by admitting that, but, yeah. No, when I was first coming up, taking my first screenwriting courses, that was like... That was the Bible of the time.

[Mary Robinette] Can you talk to us a little bit about what you think it... Like... The... Let's... I guess...

[Howard] No, what is the three act structure really, Margaret?

[laughter]

[DongWon] You also said that in a way like you had no opinions about this book whatsoever. So, yeah.

[Margaret] I also want to clarify that, like, it came out in 1979... I was not reading it in 1979.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Margaret] It just took a while for there to be a lot of popular screenwriting books. Like, that market was wide open for a long time.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So as I understand it, the first act is about establishing the main characters and their relationships and the world they live in. Sometimes this is called describing normal. I've seen several failure modes of describing normal in early manuscripts, early career manuscripts. Can we talk about, like, what... Why we want to do that in that first act?

[Margaret] Yeah. Sure. We can do that. I didn't mean to cut you off there. It's a... No, I think, we talk about the failure mode, if it's like the ordinary world, if people are familiar with Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey, which was also very big at the time, of, it's like, oh, it's the hero's journey, and we've had many discussions on this podcast about the hero's journey and the strengths and weaknesses thereof. But there's this idea that you're starting in the ordinary world. Like, to get the audience on board with what's going on, who are the characters, why should I care about them, why am I invested in this story, you have to let them know what the status quo is. And, I think, for writers who are early in their own Journeys, it can feel like, well, nothing's allowed to happen starting out, because I have to set up what's going on and where things are. And it's a... And you do have to set up what's going on and who are these people and what does their day-to-day look like, but at the same time, that doesn't mean that things can't be starting to change or starting to be in flux. Exciting things can still be going on. But I think there's this idea of, like, okay, in a screenplay format at the time, the first 25 to 30 pages were just sort of tooting around to find the plot as it were. And that just... there was also a time when pacing was slower on these things. And now that's... If you are a writer of a spec screenplay, that's not going to fly. Like, you've gotta let your reader know...

[Howard] You need to do something a little more interesting well before the 22 page mark.

[Margaret] But by... Honestly, before page 5, like...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Margaret] You've got to let people know, like, what story are we reading, what is going on. And that's just the way that storytelling, American storytelling specifically, and I think this is also somewhat true on the fiction side as well, has just evolved. There is an expectation of you're going to let me know, like, what is this story going to be about, what is... At least an idea of the main action that might evolve, but, like, what are the stakes. Because that really is what gets your reader invested, of knowing, okay, what am I worried might happen and what do I hope will come to pass instead?

[Mary Robinette] And as I understand it, in the original idea, that this establishing of stakes is basically posing a major dramatic question. Like, is the boy going to get the girl? Are they going to stop the terrorists? And that the answer is going to be either yes or no. When I'm dealing with openings, and as I said, I bounced very hard off of the idea of the three act structure, but I... When we've been doing the deconstruction of it, I'm like, oh, okay, I see the elements that are common in other things. But I do have, like, a thematic problem, even if it's not the big problem, and it usually escalates from there. Like, if it's a story that's going to be about a haunted house, there's a squeak and they can't figure out where the squeak is coming from. And so there's that disruption of normal, but it's not the big one yet.

[Erin] As you were saying that, it made me wonder if this is why so many, and maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like so many rom-coms start at a wedding that is not the protagonist's wedding.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Because it establishes, like, this is the thing. Like, we are all about love. But this person doesn't have it. But, by the end, they will. And like therefore you know, in that first five pages, exactly the realm that you're in, at least.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Exactly. It's like my sister's getting married, and I'm stuck at her wedding without a date. And it's like that sets up that dilemma.

[Howard] And by the same token, when we've started... When we talk about cold opens with action, we have an action scene that resolves in some sort of success, typically, and that describes to us what normal is. This is an action movie that will end with a heroic resolution of the story.

[DongWon] Yeah. I mean, I think sometimes when we talk about establishing the normal, it can sound kind of flat. Right? It can sound kind of like, there's the character going to school and experiencing his normal life or whatever it is. But I think a recent example of an action cold open that establishes the new normal, or the existing normal, in a really effective way is KPop Demon Hunters. Right? We start with this incredible physical fight scene on an airplane that they jump out of, and then they perform their concert and we get all of the stakes that are being set up in terms of establishing the Honmoon, like all the big global stakes, the worldbuilding, but then also the personal stakes over that opening sequence, of what do they stand to lose, what do they stand to gain, which ends in a reveal of the true stakes for the main character of her needing to keep her secret, and then accomplish this stage thing so that she can go back to being normal, or... Also, because we're talking about how pacing and expectations for storytelling have changed, but also, even if you're looking at some sort of classic Hollywood examples, which is the sort of movies that Sid Field was talking about when he did this sort of structural breakdown for screenplays. You look at a movie like Chinatown or Citizen Kane. Like, Chinatown starts with our lead character, he's showing photos of the wife having an affair to his client and his client being like, I'm going to kill her. You're allowed to do that, it's an unspoken thing. And you think you have that kind of money and class, you jerk. Like, no, rich people are allowed to kill their unfaithful wives, you, you are not. And that sort of... It sets up his job, it sets up the theme, we know immediately what he does. And it's not long after that Faye Dunaway shows up. Or that... It's been a while since I saw Chinatown. But, like, since he gets... Gets involved in what's going to be the main case of the film...

[Erin] Your mention of KPop Demon Hunters made me think that, like, musical theater is like this is... Most music, not all, but...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Many, many musicals start with this sort of like here is the world and let me know...

[DongWon] It's a thing we do. Yeah.

[Erin] It's a thing, and it's interesting, because it works on a couple different levels. One is to literally tell you, like, here's the setting, here's the general vibe. But also musically, it gives you a sense of if you're at Les Miserables or if you're at Hamilton, you're going to get very different opening songs.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] If, like, Les Miserables began with a hip hop opening, you would be really confused for the rest of the time [garbled]

[laughter]

[Erin] And people are like, when are they coming back?

[laughter]

[DongWon] [garbled what garbled name is garbled worst nightmare garbled] I feel very torn.

[Margaret] I'm 100% in. When you said that, I immediately thought of Bonjour from Beauty and the Beast...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Margaret] Which is literally let me run down this whole town for you...

[Erin] Can we talk trash about the entire town? That's really pretty...

[DongWon] He has a beef with everybody, that Baker, on sight.

[Margaret] Make a different bread and rolls.

[laughter]

[Erin] My question for this is, like, what is the version of that that we're doing on the page? Like, How do we let people know whether they are in Hamilton or whether they are in Les Mis... What's the kind of story that they're going to be getting?

[Mary Robinette] Like, I talked about this a lot, and from a purely crass commercial, you have to help the editor when you're starting out, that within the first 13 lines, you need to have some reason for us to care. That... Like, my first three sentences, I'm attempting to ground the reader, because sometimes people just don't read past those first three sentences. Sometimes it is setting up the overall theme of the thing, but I want them to know sort of who we're going to spend time with, sort of where we're going to be, and the genre/mood that we're in, which is what we're talking about establishing with these. It's just... I think we're talking about establishing the same things, it's just the metrics that we use for marking how and when we get them in are somewhat different.

[DongWon] It's all about stakes. All of it.

[Mary Robinette] So we're talking about all of these things that were supposed to happen in act 1, and one of the things that is confusing about it, I think, was confusing about it for me, was thinking that act one had to be a third of the book, and that is not the case. So, you can do an act one that is very fast, and then get into the middle of it. And that, I think, is going to take us to our break. And then after the break, we're going to talk about Act 2.

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[Mary Robinette] All right. So we're going to talk about Act 2. As we've mentioned, these things don't have to be proportional.

[laughter]

[Margaret] Act 3 is going to be 1 minute at the end. So brace yourself.

[DongWon] Acts 2 and 3...

[Mary Robinette] So in Act 2, according to this original, Act 2 is the rising action, and typically it's describing... I'm honestly looking at Wikipedia for this. Typically, it's depicting the protagonist's attempt to resolve the problem initiated by the first turning point. The turning point is often like an inciting incident or something that causes or forces the protagonist to get more active. So now they are. Now they're dealing with this, they've got this big problem, we're doing some more character development, and they're attempting to deal with the... Confront the problem. In this confrontation. So what are some of the pieces of this act 2 that we've got to juggle and look at?

[Margaret] Yeah. I think what's interesting about that description of Act 2 as the rising action, which... Looking back with experience, like, oh, yeah, I can see what that's going towards. But it's also in the filled in analysis, Act 2 is about half your screenplay pages. So, at the time, you thought of a screenplay as 120 pages, Now if you're writing a screenplay, 120 pages is probably too long. But you'd have like 30 pages in act one, 60 pages of act 2, and then 30 pages of act 3. And act 3 is clearly where the big exciting climax happens, the quick resolution happens, like, that's all going to be very exciting stuff. And it's like so what the heck do I do with this vast 60 page desert in the middle of my screenplay that is described as rising action. And I think... I was talking to Howard one time when I was visiting you guys and you were talking about who is it described Act 2 is where all the fun exciting things that are going to be in the trailer happen. Because it is the bulk of...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Margaret] The movie or the story or the novel, like, this is actually where the process is the point. It's the...

[Howard] It's where your try-fail cycles typically land.

[Margaret] It's where your try-fail cycles happen. It's... I frequently would break down for my students, talking about Shakespeare on a kind of five act model, and that's... You look at Romeo and Juliet. They meet very early. They get married in Act 2. People forget how quickly that happens in that play. Like, there's that idea of like, oh, it has to be rising up to the big thing. It's like, no, other things can be happening. It's as Howard said, the try-fail cycles...

[DongWon] It's one thing I think about a lot when I'm reading pitches. Right? Because the pitches will often be very good at establishing act one information of who are these characters, what are the stakes, what are the world. And a lot of times, I'll come back with, okay, but what are they doing in this book? Like, what's the actual, like, meat of the book? Like, cool concept, love the concept, love these characters, the vibes through the roof, but what are we actually getting into? And I think being able to give some indication of that and having a sense of that. And sometimes when you hear about what the meat is, you're like, oh, that sounds actually very boring. Never mind.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] Right? And so, I think being aware that the bulk of your book is this act two place, and that needs to be interesting and dynamic and engaging is actually something that's quite difficult to do. This is when we start talking about soggy middles and things like that.

[Howard] The classic, Margaret, correct me if I get the numbers wrong... 47 minute TV episode... Is it 43? I've...

[Margaret] Yeah. 47 [garbled] 47's good enough.

[Howard] But the classic application of 3 act structure there is act one, commercial break, half of Act 2, commercial break, the other half of Act 3, commerc... Or the other half of Act 2, commercial break, and then act 3.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] And it's really useful for me in thinking about three act structure, to deconstruct it in that way and to carve Act 2 into two pieces. Because in a lot of... In a great many TV shows, that act 2 commercial break is your Dark Night of the Soul, it's a big crisis, it's a big reveal, it's a big something, and just being able to put a pin in that and say, hey, about halfway through Act 2, I'm going to start the other half of Act 2, and I'm going to start it with something big.

[Erin] That's what... Thinking about it that way makes me wonder... I think a false solution... When I was thinking about what's happening at like a... I also love this where there's only like four... with commercial breaks in a show. I'm like, oh, that was beautiful. Those days...

[Margaret] Those halcyon days.

[DongWon] Indeed.

[Erin] Now they're like every 3 seconds. Jump scaring me with RSV.

[laughter]

[Erin] But like the... Sorry. You can cut that. But like it's the false solution. Like, I think about, like, Law and Order episodes, for example, where it's like the act one that you're talking about, it's like finding the dead body and they're like, aha! We've caught the person. Like, and then it's like, but for blah blah legal reasons, we can't just throw them in jail. We have to do the other half. And, like, figure out... And do all of our legal shenanigans to get something happened. Or, in Star Trek, when you solve the first thing, but then it breaks something else on the ship.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] When you reverse the polarity and now you're like, oh, no, now negative is positive and positive is negative. How do we deal with that?

[Margaret] Yeah. When I was teaching screenwriting and I would frequently teach the writing the television pilot class, and most prestige TV that stays these days is in a format where you don't necessarily have that network commercial breaks...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Margaret] Where you don't... There were three, there were four, there were five. However many we can put before we get in trouble with the FCC. And I would always say, like, write your pilot with act breaks ...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Margaret] And then pull them out. Because what these breaks do, it's like when you're writing to the break or to the turn at the end of the act, it's that thing that's going to propel us forward into what's happening next.

[Mary Robinette] I sometimes describe this as the solution that creates the next problem.

[DongWon] One thing I wanted to flag as we're getting deep into this conversation is, I think there's a lot of failure states of this three act structure. Right? You can have soggy middles, you can have boring openings, like all these things. But, to return to the KPop Demon Hunters again, that movie is one of the most classic examples of an application of the three act structure. Literally, the first... I think it divides very evenly in terms of the percentages that we're talking about, in terms of 1/4 being act 1, half being act two, 1/4 being act 3. And, part of the reason I think that movie is... Hits so hard, is because of its adherence to really classical storytelling structures. And it does it in a really dynamic, fun, contemporary way. But I think that's a great example of when you can see this working. Right? And when it hits, by God, it hits. You know what I mean? Our brains love that structure. It's very satisfying to have that normal, Rising, conclusion.

[Mary Robinette] I think the failure mode of that is where we don't think about what happens in the middle.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] So I often think about the things on the outside as framing what is happening in the middle. Like, as you say, the bulk of the story happens in the middle, and so the beginning and end set it up. But we spend a lot of time thinking about how is it going to start? What's the big thing that's going to happen at the end, the conclusion? And for me, since like... Switching from my background in theater to my background as an art major, it's like purchasing the frame before you figure out what the painting is.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] So when we're thinking about this midpoint, one of the things that I find very... The midpoint, the... Or the Act 2 is I find it very useful to think about what problem are they trying to solve and how are they trying to solve it? And those give you things that you can escalate, as opposed to how long do I have to wait until I get to my really cool thing, my climax?

[Margaret] Yeah. Something that I've found useful in working through Act 2 was actually something that I came across in a book I read in college about directing for the theater, and one of the things that this author was talking about was, like, you have a play and it's like everything's going great, and it's a tragedy, so it ends on a down note. And it's like you've been working on act one, working on act one, and then you go and you work on the second act and you're working on Act 2, and then you put it together the first time and all of the energy in act 1 is just gone, because all your actors are thinking about the fact that they know how this is going to end. And I think as authors, we can do that as well. It's like whether you're an outliner or you're going back later to sort of shape things, and you got through this more by the seat of your pants, it is that feeling of, like, well, I know where this is going, so I know that all of this is just marking time to get to what's really going on, and you really have to sort of... For me, I have to force myself in terms of, like, I know, but my characters don't.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Margaret] So what are they doing with the best information they have at the time? Because, like, they don't know where they are in the book. We know, the reader knows...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Margaret] But they always have to be going, no, no, this is the bit that's going to work.

[DongWon] Sometimes you can really feel that in terms of, like, the writer knows the inevitable conclusion to all of this, so it becomes a real like yada yada yada to the middle point. Right? Of just like... And I've seen people do this on a micro level, too, where an action scene is happening, and they'll just be like, yeah, yeah, some fight stuff happens, and then here's where we're at too at the end of it. You know what I mean? And it's like, I don't know, that's the end of the bulk of it. You can't ignore Act 2. But, with that, should we start talking about moving on to conclusion?

[Erin] One quick thing first, I just want to say, I was trying to figure out, well, how do you not do that? And I think one way to trick yourself into creating small little, like, act 1, 2, 3's within...

[DongWon] Yes.

[Erin] Your act 2. Like, because in some ways, like, try-fail cycles are like figuring out what it is that it is wrong, trying it, and then failing, and the fail is the fun act 3...

[DongWon] Yep.

[Erin] And then you just build one upon the other. It's sort of like in a relationship, you're like, oh, my relationship is stale, we're going to introduce date night, because we're going to actually, like, create...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] A little mini version of our tomance that's going to happen in the middle of our bigger lives together.

[Mary Robinette] I use that... That idea of the mini things when I'm looking at the big thing in the middle, I will look at barriers or obstacles between the protagonist and the goal. And then each barrier has try-fail cycles that go with it. So the barriers are like a macro version. So, like, in order to get to something, I need to get through this door. But then there's the smaller try-fail cycles that are involved in getting through the door. I try the knob. It's locked. I try the key. It breaks off in the lock. I get a crowbar. I get it open, and now there are bees on the other side of it.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Which is my next barrier.

[DongWon] In a few weeks, we're really going to dig into using microcosms...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] To sort of illustrate all this on a macro scale, and I think it's going to be a really fun conversation.

[Howard] Two words that helped me understand why Act 2 has to be there are traversal and transformation. I have to traverse the terrain, I have to climb the mountain, I have to do whatever. There are obstacles. And I have to transform myself along that journey. Those two things have to happen. If the story doesn't require them, then you go from act 1 to act 3 and you're done. If the story does require them, then allow us to enjoy them. The traversal is interesting, the transformation is passionate. And that's why I love having just those two words on tap for me to remind myself of why Act 2 should be there.

[Mary Robinette] I'm glad you said that, because I think that that is an important thing, that these are ingredients of the three act structure. But not every story is a 3 act structure.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And this is one of the reasons we wanted to do this deconstruction. So, let's move to our last Act, which is act 3. And act three, according to Sid field, is called the resolution. So, the resolution, according to the Wikipedia of the resolution...

[Chuckles]

[Margaret] He really came up with Dynamic names for all...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Margaret] Of these, didn't he?

[DongWon] [garbled]

[Margaret] [garbled] this [garbled] is going to be exciting.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I actually really like it, because they're so much more descriptive than the seven point plot structure, which we're going to get to with Dan later, which is...

[DongWon] Like pinching and other things...

[Mary Robinette] I don't know... I don't want that much pinching.

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] So, in the act 3, the third Act, we've got the resolution of the story and it's subplots, but we also have the climax, which is where things are brought to kind of the most intense point, and we answer our dramatic question, according to Wikipedia, leaving the protagonist and other characters with a new sense of who they really are, and thank you to whoever this anonymous Wikipedia person was. So, these are beats that we see in other things. With act 3, that idea of the climax happening there, that's again a thing I think a lot of people sort of struggle with, and then struggle with what to do after that. Because now everything has been solved. So what are sort of some of the, I guess, the nuances of act 3?

[Margaret] Wow. You're saying that and I'm thinking, oh, I should say something smart, and I'm just going like...

[Mary Robinette] Do you want to take a second?

[Howard] If I may...

[Margaret] Go for it.

[Howard] I don't like the word climax, because it's in so many other domains. I prefer the word confluence. I prefer thinking about all of the things that have been happening arriving at one point so that lots of things are kind of happening at once. That's not a perfect description of it, but in my mind, it helps me sort things out a little better. And helps remind me that I have a lot of threads that have to be tied together.

[Mary Robinette] You remind me of when we had Lou Anders on many seasons ago. You all can... We'll link to it in the show notes. But the Hollywood ending. That at the end, the hero reconciles with the viewpoint character, defeats the villain, and solves the problem. Which is basically what we're talking about happening here at the climax. That the, oh, we feel better about ourselves, or not, depending on the type of...

[Margaret] Depending on how it goes. Yes.

[Mary Robinette] Depending on the type of the show. Bad guy gets just desserts and whatever the problem is, everything's okay now. Or not.

[Margaret] Or not. Yeah. It's... When I was... My first TV show I worked on, the middleman for the time ABC Family, which was a delightful and bonkers experience, but one of the writers in the room introduced a term of art that has always stuck with me, because we'd be breaking the story, working out what's going to happen, what are the scenes, how is it going, and there'd always reach the point where, like, we're getting towards the end or working backwards, and it's like, okay, we know what the big conflict resolution is going to be, it's like we're confronting the boy band which is actually a bunch of intergalactic dictators trying to get back to their home galaxy, we have located the cursed cue ball of the Titanic and we have to prevent this guy from playing it or else all of us will be drowning in the icy waters of the North Atlantic... Actual episodes. And then, Anne Huntsman would always be there, it's like, and then it's the mad dash for the logo.

[laughter]

[I love that]

[Margaret] Referring to logos, the showrunners' sort of vanity card at the end.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Margaret] It's like, we do that and then it's like you've got a little bit of time to, like, if you want to put that nice little button, nice little sort of like... Maybe there's like a B story that you have to resolve, like [Wendy and Lacey] her roommate, has had a conflict and she comes back from saving the world and is like, yeah, here, we're going to have our moment. And then just, boom, you're cutting out.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Margaret] And I think in short fiction, that's really useful...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Margaret] To remember because there is that expectation of, like, we're hitting you, bam, and then there'll be a nice little graphic at the bottom of the paragraph to let you know that it's over.

[Erin] It's funny that you said like hitting you, because I... To continue with a lot of violence that I have in my soul...

[laughter]

[Erin] One of the things that I think is... That I sometimes see in writer's work, is that... It's like you punched someone in the stomach, and then you walked away before you actually got to see the expression on their face.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] So you do want to linger, like, just long enough to kind of get it, because if you punch the reader and then, like, they don't have a chance to actually, like, process it on the page, sometimes they process it at your page...

[gasp]

[Erin] Which you don't want, and then they hate you and your story.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] You want to give them a moment to breathe. Not a long moment.

[Margaret] You want that scene of aftermath.

[Erin] Just a moment.

[DongWon] There's a really great video essay that's about Hong Kong action scenes, on every trim, a painting. Where he talks about how you see the punch [garbled] land three different times. Right? Because you see it, and then you see the thing, and then you see the consequences of the thing, and it's really important to make space for that. Right? And one of the nice things about novel versus screenwriting is you have a little bit more space for that denouement. I mean, we talked about this a bit in the hero's journey episode, but the scouring of the Shire. Right? You have time to go back and sort of see who are these characters now that they've gone through their transformation and to close out that arc. I mean, Lord of the Rings has a thousand character arcs that need to be resolved, which is why the ending of that book takes so long. And in a novel, you don't always want to go that deep with it. But, you have a little bit more space and a little bit less of a sprint to the logo, as you put it, then you might have in other media.

[Mary Robinette] Well, speaking of the sprint for the logo, I believe that it is time for homework. So, for homework, what I want you to do is I want you to take a fairy tale. Just a classic fairy tale. Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks, any of those. And diagram it out as a 3 act structure, just to see what it would do. Do you need to add elements to it in order to make it fit that? So, give that a try on something that's already existing out in the world. And with that, you are out of excuses, now go write.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 19.41: A Close Reading on Structure: An Overview and Why Fifth Season

From https://writingexcuses.com/19-41-a-close-reading-on-structure-an-overview-and-why-fifth-season

Key Points: Structure and The Fifth Season. Spoilers galore! Structurally audacious. Structure. Start with divisions, what are the parts? POVs. Inversion. Parallelism. Sequence or order. Perspective. Tradition and innovation. Structure is usually pacing, order of information, scene and sequel. POV character is the one in the most pain. POV character is the one who can best tell the joke. Second person. Structure as tension, voice, who's narrating. Character as structure. "And you would not exist." Surprising, yet inevitable. Table of contents and chapter titles.

[Season 19, Episode 41]

[Mary Robinette] Hi, friends. I want to tell you about this very cool special edition of one of our close read books for this season. It's the Orbit Gold Edition of The Broken Earth trilogy by N. K. Jemison. This is so beautiful. The set includes, get this, an exclusive box illustrated by Justin Cherry nephelomancer, a signed copy of The Fifth Season, fabric bound hardcover editions of the trilogy, gilded silver edges, color endpaper art, oh, my God. Brand-new foil stamped covers, a ribbon bookmark, and an exclusive bonus scene from The Fifth Season. The bonus scene… I wants it. Just preorder before November nineteenth to get 20 percent off and you can lock in your signed copy, again, I say, your signed copy of The Fifth Season. Visit orbitgoldeditions.com to order.

[Season 19, Episode 41]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] A Close Reading on Structure: An Overview and Why Fifth Season.

[Erin] 15 minutes long, because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

[Mary Robinette] We are going to be reading and talking about The Fifth Season. I need to let you know that we are going to be spoiling this up and down and sideways. You need to have read this book before you go into it, unless you're okay with spoilers, in which case, fair game. Have fun. But this is your warning. All of the spoilers, all of the time, as we go through.

[DongWon] Yeah. Because it's structure, we really can't talk about this book without getting into a lot of the nitty-gritty of how things unfold.

[Howard] To be quite honest, to be quite frank about this, if you haven't read this book, the discussions that we are having about structure are not going to be as meaningful for you, and you are not going to learn the things that we believe you, as a writer, really want to learn.

[Mary Robinette] But, having said that, we also know that sometimes you can't wait to listen to something without having read the book. Hopefully, you'll still be able to get stuff from the larger conversation. But if you have plans on reading the book, just do it before you continue listening.

[DongWon] I will also encourage you to look up content warnings for this book. Because there is some pretty intense and dark stuff in there.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So, why did we pick this book? One of the reasons is that it is structurally audacious. When I finished reading this… I'm friends with the author, N. K. Jemison, and the first time I saw Nora after seeing this, I walked up and I said, "Nora. Just finished Fifth Season. So good. F U."

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] "You have some nerve. Because now the rest of us have to live with this book being out in the world." So we wanted to talk about it, because it is breaking so many of the conventions, and it is structurally so solid, but it's not using an existing recipe.

[DongWon] Exactly. On top of that, it really is one of my favorite fantasies I've read in decades. I think, as an epic fantasy novel, it does such a good job of fulfilling so many things that we look for when we go to epic fantasy, in terms of big worlds, politics, multi perspectives, and exciting magic systems. Right? It's sort of really checks a lot of those boxes, but does something that feels very fresh and innovative with it to me.

[Erin] This is a great book.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] [garbled] [laughter] We were like, let's figure it out. Because I think it's… One of the things that I really love about having conversations on this podcast and teaching in general is that sometimes you do want to figure out why did something work.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] The best way to do that is to dig into it. Because it's easy to put it away and be like, oh, that was so much fun. But, like, having a really good meal that you want to be able to replicate in some way, we want to figure out, what's the salt, fat, acid, heat, of this book.

[DongWon] Yeah. Exactly.

[Mary Robinette] So, along those lines, that's a great segue. I was going to ask you, when you think about structure, what are the things that you think about? Like, what are some of the things that we are going to be thinking about as we're talking about this book?

[Howard] I start with divisions, really. Where are the… What are the three parts? Or what are the five parts? That is… When I'm creating a thing, that's where I begin. Because that informs all of the decisions I make about the things that will be building those parts. This… For me, this book felt like it was built out of points of view. But, structurally, you could argue it's built out of time. Or it is built out of punctuated catastrophes. Or… There's any number of ways to think about carving it up.

[DongWon] Yeah. I… As a reader, and as an editor, I don't actually think about structure that often. It's a little bit of a thing that… I just don't pay that much attention to it. It's not something I'm particularly interested in poking at. Obviously, we do structural edits and move things around, but when I'm doing that, it's more about character arc, it's more about tension, it's more about all the other things we've talked about so far. So, I think Fifth Season really jumps out at me because it is one of the times when I'm actively thinking about structure, because it is not being applied in a passive way. It is being applied as an active engagement with the reader of how structure works in this book. The three different POVs, the reveal around what is going on with those POVs, the inversion from the beginning to the end, all the narrative rhyming and parallelism that happens throughout the book. We're going to dig into all these topics in detail. But, for me, it's hard for me not to think about Fifth Season and think about the structure of the work almost as its own character. Almost as… It is the device through which we are understanding this world in a way that feels so radical compared to what we see in most fiction of A to B to C to D.

[Howard] You might think that you don't think about structure when you read or when you watch or whatever else. But I always come back to that moment when my 10-year-old and I were watching a movie, I think it was ParaNorman. I turned to him and said, "Do you think this plan's going to work?" He looked at me, he rolled his eyes, and looked at me. "Dad, if it works, we don't have a whole movie."

[Laughter]

[Howard] 10 years old.

[DongWon] Yep.

[Howard] Already understood the meta. I think we all have that happening subconsciously.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] For me, and this is not some… This has nothing to do with this book. But to answer your question. I actually think that games and working on games has started to, like, really rewire the way that I think about story and structure as being sort of very divided from each other. Because the way that a lot of games work, you don't have as much control as you do in a book about the way that people take in story information. So you always have to be thinking, like, how do all of these different pieces of information, how do all of these different pieces of narrative, actually create forward motion. Even if people pick them up at different times, and in different ways. It's started to affect the way that I write stories, where I'm like, I want to write stories where you can read things out of order. That is where it does come back to this book, which is, I think a really great way of saying, you can play around with structure.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] You can play around with order, and you can be really upfront with it. I think you said audacious, someone said audacious earlier. I think there's something really great about that. Because it gets you to challenge the way that we have been told that stories have to exist. In a world where… It's not just me, gaming and movies and television impact a lot of the way that we take in narrative. It's nice to see books playing with that as well. Just because it's in print, doesn't mean we can't have fun with the form.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I think one of the things you said about the… Being able to… Writing in things that you were reading out of sequence. That that's one of the things that's interesting about Fifth Season, is that the timeline is not sequential. Structurally, the things that she's using that for… That controlling that order of information, that control of time, to play with things that we'll be talking about later with parallelism and inversion, but even on a very, hello, I'm an early career writer, thinking about the order of information that you portray to the reader, that is one of the basic elements of story structure that she plays with all the way through this.

[DongWon] It's interesting because time is one of the first clues of what's happening in the meta-narrative.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[DongWon] The timeline is one of the first… Howard, you and I were talking about this off mic, but realizing that the world is not ending in these other storylines, that humans still exist in these other storylines, is the thing that starts to clue us into, wait, something else exciting is happening here.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of timelines, I believe that it is time for us to take a small break.

[DongWon] This episode of Writing Excuses is sponsored in part by Acorn. Money can be a difficult topic for writers and creative professionals. It's not like earning a regular paycheck that comes in at reliable intervals. It requires more careful planning to make sure that that advance covers you not just this year, but set you up for the future as well. Learning to invest and be smart with your money takes time and research, and it's easy to put that off in favor of short-term goals. I encourage all the writers I work with to read up on the options out there and do their homework to figure out what makes sense for them. Acorn makes it easy to start automatically saving and investing in your future. You don't need a lot of money or expertise to invest with Acorn. In fact, you can get started with just your spare change. Acorn recommends an expert-built portfolio that fits you and your money goals. Then automatically invests your money for you. Head to acorn.com/wx or download the Acorn app to start saving and investing in your future today. [Lots garbled]

[Dan] This week, our thing of the week is a role-playing game called Rest in Pieces, which is a short game about being roommates with the Grim Reaper. It uses, instead of dice, a Jengo tower which you'll see in other games like Dread, but in this case, half of the blocks are painted black and half of them are painted white. So, as you go through the game, you have to do something, you will pull a block, and if the tower falls, something terrible happens. But in this case, whether you're going to act in a selfish way or a selfish way determines what color block you have to pull. That is a very compelling dynamic that changes the way that you play the game, the decisions that you make. It's a really wonderful idea. The game is a lot of fun, and has a lot of cute art in it as well. Once again, that game is called Rest in Pieces.

[Mary Robinette] So, as we come back into this, one of the other things that I am interested in hearing you all talk about is some of… To foreshadow, some of the things that we'll be talking about later. We're going to be touching on things like… Topics that we'll be hitting are whose perspective is it anyway, parallelism and inversion, and tradition and innovation. So, I just want to give our readers a prologue…

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Of why we think it's important to talk about these things. Because these are not structural elements that most people talk about.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Most of the time, when people talk about structure, they're talking about pacing. They're talking about the order of information that I brought up before. They're talking about scene and sequel. We're not going to be talking about any of that. So why is it important to be thinking about the things that we're going to be talking about with structure? What can… Like, give us a little [garbled taste]

[Howard] You want teasers?

[Mary Robinette] I want teasers.

[DongWon] I think, for me… I mean, this connects to what Erin was saying earlier, and the idea that the structure of this book is audacious. This might just come from my perspective of reading so many books and seeing so many things at various stages of their drafting, but any time… I want people to be more playful with structure. But I would love these people to understand that you can play with time, you can play with perspective, you can play with the sequencing of things to get across your core thematic elements more than you are getting across your plot beats. Right?

[Mary Robinette] Right.

[DongWon] So much of structure as it's currently taught, whether that's like Save the Cat or something like that, is… Or Hero's Journey, is so much about how do you get across clearly the A to B to C to D. To me, that can sometimes feel very flat or not in service of the actual goal of your story. Right? So if you step back a moment and think about what story am I trying to tell here, and what the best way is to tell that, because this is what I'm writing about, this is why this story's important to me. We're going to be talking to N. K. Jemison at the end of this cycle, and one of the things I'm so excited to hear from her is that she write this out of order or did she write this in order and reassemble it into the form that we see now. I suspect she wrote it out of order, but I'm kind of curious at what point in the process it occurred to her to use this structure.

[Erin] Also, for perspective, I think it's a little bit about challenging some of the assumptions of structure. So I think a lot of times, we think of perspective, POV, as like a decision that you make at the beginning, and you go, okay, I'm going to do this POV, and now I'm going to write the story, and, like, it's a thing that, like, it cannot change. But, like, you made the decision. It's like… I'm like I must stay in this perspective because I told myself I have to. Or because that's the way I think books are written, or it's the way that the books that I've read have been. What I like about this is it shows that even the things we think of as assumptions or as early decisions can be tools that we decide to wield intentionally…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] In the story in ways that are not the ways that necessarily the books we're used to have wielded them. Plus, I feel like this it is, to be honest, a story where if you don't speak about perspective on some level…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] You're doing a disservice to, like, one of the major tools that is used within the book.

[Howard] Way back in Writing Excuses Season One, I figured out… And just so we're clear, Writing Excuses Season One is the story of Howard figuring out what it is he's actually doing…

[Snort laughter]

[Howard] Up until that time, I did not know what POV meant. I did not… Yeah, I did not know that I was writing social sat… I did not know anything. I was so much more not that smart than I am now. The point though is that I did know that the story was being told based on a principle that is sometimes articulated as your POV character should be the one who is in the most pain. Mine was the POV character or the camera angle should be who is in the best position to tell a joke about what's going on right now. Okay. That principle right there, that POV principle right there, for me, dictated mountains of structure. Because I had to move things around in order for it to make sense of the camera to be pointed at this person so I can tell… So I can deliver this joke. So when we talk about perspective as a structural tool, it's absolutely a structural tool because if the perspective is important, it is going to be dictating all of the structural elements that go into justifying it.

[Mary Robinette] One of the things that… Beginning our spoilers now. One of the things that happens in this, is that Nora breaks one of the rules, which is that second person is not the done thing. As you get through the story, you realize that it's not actually second person we're getting. That's a very structural decision about when to… Why to use that and when to use it. For me, one of the things that is interesting about it, and why I like using this book to talk about structure, is that the reason to not use second person is that it can be distancing. That is exactly what that character is going through is that distancing. There's also a transformation that happens through the book. So there are all of these different small structural tools that she's kind of taking and blowing up.

[DongWon] Yeah. We could have used this book to teach any of the segments…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] That we've done this year. Right? What I found fascinating is that she somehow turns each of those elements into structure. The structure of the book is where the tension lies, the voice is tied to structure, in the ways that you're talking about, about the switches to second person, who's narrating it. Character is structure, because the parallels of the three versions of the same character across this book. It's just endlessly fascinating to me to see the ways in which structure is such the centerpiece that holds up all the other parts of this book in a way that is more visible and more active than we see in other fiction.

[Mary Robinette] I think that's one of the things that you as a listener can think about with your own book, if you been thinking about, oh, I have to use the Save the Cat structure. Why? That particular one. I often think about story structure as a recipe. That you can have a recipe, and you can make a really good recipe. But if you say, okay, according to this, every recipe needs to have leavening, which is great if you're doing a cake…

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] But not so good for soup. And it's irrelevant for soup. Leavening is completely irrelevant. So what's fun for me with this one is that I feel like I'm watching an improvisational cook go into the kitchen. Or, I feel like I'm watching someone doing molecular gastronomy, where there like, okay, this looks like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but actually…

[DongWon] It is ham and cheese. [Garbled]

[Howard] I… There is a line in… I think it's the prologue, I'm going to go ahead and read this real quick.

"The woman I mentioned, the one whose son is dead. She was not in Yumenes, thankfully, or this would be a very short tale. And you would not exist."

[Howard] That last bit, and you would not exist. Wait. Me, the reader? In my tied into this? Then we get to those chapters where the point of view is second person and you… Oh. Oh, that means… And then the you point of view would not exist, because… I still haven't decoded at this point in my reading, I still have not decoded what this means, but that is not a throwaway line. That is a hook upon which a whole bunch of structure is going to hang, and I love it.

[Mary Robinette] I'm glad you brought that one up, because I… In the reread of this, I hit that line, like, oh!

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] I need to call Nora and yell at her again.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Because she tells you upfront what she's doing.

[DongWon] Yep.

[Mary Robinette] And I'm like, oh…

[Howard] And you would not exist. Really?

[DongWon] That was my reaction. In my head, so many of the reveals come so late, or, like… In my head, like, the second person was used so sparingly, and it's right there, in the prologue.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] It's there from the jump. It is all throughout. And it's almost… The reveal is that she wasn't hiding anything from us.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] It just took us a long time to understand.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] It's the surprising yet inevitable. Where you look at it and say, "Well, obviously it was inevitable, but now I'm angry that you surprised me that way."

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. One of the other things that… Just when we're talking about it, one of the other tools that she uses is actually the titles of the chapters. When you look at the table of contents, the prologue, you are here. Chapter 1, you, at the end. Chapter 2, Damaya, in winters past. It's like, I'm telling you straight up front what's happening. Three, you're on your way. It is fascinating to me that this is also, because of the two interludes, arguably a classic three act structure, but it is profoundly not a three act structure.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Because there are so many moving pieces that are happening simultaneously.

[DongWon] Again, she's using so many classic things like the chapter titles that we don't see anymore. It's a call back, it's a throwback to an older mode of storytelling, and yet it… The end result feels so contemporary and fresh.

[Mary Robinette] So, with that, let's go ahead and give you some homework. I actually want you to look at the table of contents… And for those of you who have read the book, this is specifically for you. Look at the table of contents, and without opening the book again, write down the one important thing you remember from that chapter. Then, through the course of the next several episodes, as we talk through things, refer back to that list and see what you need to add to it that is also important that you missed on the first reading.

[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

[Howard] Have you ever wanted to ask one of the Writing Excuses hosts for very specific, very you-focused help. There's an offering on the Writing Excuses Patreon that will let you do exactly that. The Private Instruction tier includes everything from the lower tiers plus a quarterly, one-on-one Zoom meeting with a host of your choice. You might choose, for example, to work with me on your humorous prose, engage DongWon's expertise on your worldbuilding, or study with Erin to level up your game writing. Visit patreon.com/writingexcuses for more details.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 16.52: Structure is a Promise

From https://writingexcuses.com/2021/12/26/16-52-structure-is-a-promise/

Key points: A structure you pick may set expectations and make promises you didn't expect. Kishotenketsu. Police procedurals. Mysteries have clues! Three act structure, and hero's journey. Be aware of the structure you use, because audience satisfaction may depend on it. Save the Cat! M.I.C.E. Quotient. Use the structure, but paint over the color-by-numbers, too. Younger readers may need to be taught about the structure. Consider using the nesting of M.I.C.E. Quotient because it is satisfying to audiences.

[Transcriptionist note: Again, I may have confused the labeling. Apologies for any mistakes.]

[Season 16, Episode 52]

[Howard] This is Writing Excuses, Structure is a Promise.

[Kaela] 15 minutes long.

[Sandra] Because you're in a hurry.

[Megan] And we're not that smart.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

[Kaela] I'm Kaela.

[Sandra] I'm Sandra.

[Megan] And I'm Meg.

[Howard] I'm here to tell you that whatever structure you picked for the thing you're working on is making a promise that you may not know you've made. For instance, if you're using the hero's journey, you may have promised people that the nice mentor character who is helping your hero is totally going to die. If you haven't decided that they're going to die, your audience may actually be disappointed when your Gandalf or your Yoda survives all the way into Act Three. We're going to talk about how the various structures we use set expectations for audiences and make promises. Often, these are cases of audience bias where we have no control of what people are expecting when they pick up what we've made.

[Kaela] Yeah. I kind of have a fun story about this. When I was younger, I watched Spirited Away for the first time. I'd watched a few Ghibli movies, but I wasn't really much into anime. So I was really unfamiliar with non-Western story structures. So I started watching Spirited Away, and it was this delightful charming thing, but I got about a third of the way into it and I started feeling this underlying anxiety about where is this story going. I don't… Like, we just keep… Like, ah. It actually interfered with my ability to enjoy the movie at all. Because I… My story brain was expecting three act structure with peaks and climaxes and pinch points and all of these things. Instead, Spirited Away is a much more kind of kishotenketsu, which is long slow buildup, world changing event, and then resolution. Because I as an audience member had no idea that that structure even existed, it was so hard for me to engage with the story that was on the screen. Because my brain was like, "What is happening here?" That is, to me, a beautiful example of the way that the structure creates a promise, and because I, as an audience, brought an expectation with me that the story didn't deliver on. I've since watched it multiple times and I love it for exactly what it is now that I know where it's going.

[Megan] Something you find in a lot of especially Hayao Miyazaki's films is that sort of exploration of the world before we get to what you were saying, with the structure wise, because he does not start with a screenplay. Hayao Miyazaki storyboards his whole movie. I'm not going to say like free-form stream of conscious, but he'll just start with the images of a theme, and he'll build just right in a row the whole film before he turns it over to the animators.

[Kaela] Oh, that's a fascinating process.

[Megan] You can buy books of his storyboards. You can see his hand drawings of the entire film. He does it all himself. It's incredible.

[Howard] Well, sadly, we are recording this too close to Christmas for me to say that's what y'all should get me for Christmas…

[Laughter]

[Howard] And have it actually arrive. I think that the story structure underpinning a lot of Hayao Miyazaki is kishotenketsu, which is a four-part structure that we haven't talked about much in Writing Excuses. We talk a little bit about it in Xtreme Dungeon Mastery. But it wasn't until I looked at that story structure that some of the Miyazaki films actually made sense. I was like, "Oh. This is why this happens here instead of happening here." Because my expectations were wrong. But let's talk about some other structures. What are some other structures that make promises and what are those promises?

[Megan] I love hour-long police procedurals. Detective procedurals, murder mysteries. I like, in any language, any like country, I love watching hour-long procedurals. One of the things that that usually promises…

[Howard] By hour-long, you mean like 47 minutes?

[Megan] Yeah. 47 minutes with breaks for commercials. Because those commercials or act breaks are an important part of the structure. That cliffhanger you'll get three act breaks in, where you're like, "Oh. There's another body. What are we going to do now?" [Garbled] there. One of the frustrations I had with watching the BBC Sherlock is that show is all about, of course, what a genius Sherlock is, so it didn't drop the audience clues the way most procedurals would. Sherlock just knows the answer. Or he paid someone offscreen to do the research for him. Instead of somebody dropping a line early on about, "Oh, yeah. Diatomaceous earth. It's used for tropical fish, and is used for this, and it's used for this." And the murder tool has diatomaceous earth on it. Then somebody in Act III casually mentions, "I love my tropical fish," and if you're paying attention, you're like, "That's the murderer."

[Chuckles]

[Megan] Because I'm someone who likes to guess along with it.

[Oh, yeah.]

[Megan] So shows that break that storytelling, or telling a different kind of story, like BBC Sherlock, it's very hard to guess what happens next, because it's not relying on the structure I was expecting going in.

[Kaela] yeah. I would say the BBC Sherlock is not actually a procedural in any way. Which is a surprise for a Sherlock show.

[Yeah]

[Howard] But this actually kind of steps across the line from structure to genre. Because… That's okay. But police procedural is its own kind of genre that comes with an embedded structure. It's weird to me that Sherlock failed to adhere to that, because Sir Arthur Conan Doyle invented…

[Chuckles]

[Howard] The police procedural with the Sherlock Holmes books. We circled back around and BBC said, "Pht! We don't want to do a police procedural, we want to do Sherlock Holmes, who is also Doctor Who and Merlin."

[Yeah. Chuckles.]

[Howard] But that's me [garbled]. Kaela? You had something you wanted to…

[Kaela] Yeah. So I guess the three act structure's probably my bread-and-butter as a writer. Like, that's how I do… And the hero's journey. Those are like two of my favorites. I guess I like that the hero's journey is just something that you do find embedded in all mythology. Mythology is my… That's my house, man. Mythology… I love the way it speaks universally. But also, it gives you a pretty strong structure for character growth and, like, that's the number one thing for me in stories as well as… Character growth in the hero's journey is just so good. That's why I think that when I watch a show that's kind of promising a hero's journey structure and then they don't really grow, I get frustrated. I'm like, "Ah, that was kind of the whole point, is that you change, but you didn't. Now I feel a little bit cheated. Can I have my refund for this Netflix?"

[Laughter]

[Howard] Oh. Oh, goodness. So, book of the week. I'm going to pitch to you Eragon by Christopher Paolini. Because this is a book which unapologetically draws from the three act… Or not the three act, the hero's journey structure as deployed by Tolkien and George Lucas. To the point that a friend of mine was reading, I think, book 2 and his friend was reading book 1. His friend picked up… Looked up from his, and he says, "Hey. Have they met Yoda yet?"

[Chuckles]

[Howard] "What do you mean, have they met Yoda yet?" "Well, because I…" These were guys who were super familiar with the form. I'm not knocking Christopher Paolini. He was incredibly successful by delivering a hero's journey which telegraphed the fact that it was a hero's journey and made it super approachable for audiences. So. Eragon, the book.

[Yeah. Chuckles.]

[Howard] I've been told that the movie is not something we speak of in our house.

[Laughter. What movie?]

[Howard] Eragon, the book, by Christopher Paolini.

[To me]

[Howard] Let's talk about some other structures. Sandra, you had something?

[Sandra] [garbled what I was going to say] is that… Taking this back to the whole idea of what can we as writers do, it's important to be aware that the structure you pick is going to create an expectation for the story you're creating. That means that when you are pulling back and looking at the craft and looking at… You had a head full of ideas and characters and what have you, you need to pay attention to the structure, the framework that you're going to stretch your characters and stories across, because that will determine some of the satisfaction of the reader when they're done reading your story, and that kind of thing.

[Howard] Meg.

[Megan] When I was first reading the Eragon books, they actually ended up not being for me, because I loved the original Star Wars trilogy so much that I felt like the books were too close. So, there's that precarious balance of "Yeah, I wanted something like Star Wars in a fantasy world, but. Not. This. Close." I remember getting really frustrated and not finishing the series, because I'm like, "Well, I know everything that's going to happen anyways, so why should I even…" So that's something about… I'd like to segue a little bit into Save the Cat! That I deal with a lot working in the animation industry. Because you will have people that'll be like, "Okay. Make it Save the Cat, but a little different." Because now everybody knows it, and everybody reads it. I have some development friends who, when they're reading a script go… It'll actually be marked against you if you hit all the Save the Cat beats on exactly the pages that Save the Cat recommends you do it in your screenplay.

[Laughter]

[Megan] [garbled] feeling that, "Oh, this writer is just painting by numbers and they're not telling an emotional authentic story."

[Oh, that's…]

[Howard] When you take a structure… When you use… We've talked about this in our episodes on M.I.C.E. Quotient and hero's journey and Hollywood formula and whatever else. I've used this metaphor before. When you adhere to the formula so closely that every beat is predictable, it's like people can see the lines in the color-by-number. You just filled in the little spaces with color, you didn't actually paint over it and make your own picture. It's the difference between canned beans and fresh beans. It still beans, but if you can taste the can, something's gone wrong.

[Chuckles]

[Sandra] Which is interesting. I mean… This… I think we'll get more into this talking about genre, but there are certain audience segments where… I'm sorry, but they want to taste the can. Like, they showed up for canned beans, and they want to taste the can.

[Chuckles]

[Sandra] That's, again, a thing where you're paying attention to your audience, who are you speaking to, and is this an audience who really wants like to taste the can as they go through their media or are they going to be grouchy because you didn't cook fresh?

[Megan] Knowing your audience I think is definitely an important part of how you handle your structure. Like, who are you speaking to, and things like that. We'll get more into that in the next episode with the genre and media promises, too.

[Well, I mean…]

[Kaela] It can be frustrating…

[Go ahead.]

[Kaela] I was going to say, it can be frustrating as a creator when the person who's in charge of publishing your book or distributing your film project, where you're like, "No, listen. Fresh beans are so good." They're like, "Ah. But the can sell so well."

[Yes]

[Kaela] That sometimes it can be hard to break expectations and conventions and still get a large enough audience that's interested in your niche fresh organic beans.

[Chuckles]

[Then…]

[Howard] This is a case where I err on the side of understand the structure first. Know how the structure works. Apply the structure in your writing or your rewriting. Then, if your alpha readers or your beta readers say, "Your structure didn't make promises and then keep them, it telegraphed your punches and sucked all the energy out of them." Then you know that it's time to go back in and over paint the color-by-numbers so people can't see the grid. Sandra.

[Sandra] Another factor to consider… We have three authors here who write for young audiences. You have to remember that what is old and tired and uber familiar to an older audience is brand-new for someone who's 12. They've never encountered it before. One of the reasons that Eragon succeeded so well is because it hit a generation that hadn't grown up with Star Wars. They may or may not have been exposed to Star Wars. But, like, for example, my kids just all rejected Star Wars, which meant Eragon was amazing and fresh and they'd never encountered this before. So our oldest child latched onto Eragon as this brilliant, brilliant thing because it was the first encountering of that hero's journey and it really spoke to her. So when you are writing for younger children, sometimes you need to teach them what beans are.

[Laughter]

[garbled new product]

[Sandra] You are te… You are… As you're writing for young children, you are teaching them the story structures that they will then have in their head as expectations for the rest of their life, which is amazing and scary as a creator.

[Howard] One of the structures that I want to mention here is the M.I.C.E. Quotient because M.I.C.E. works so well. It's milieu, interrogation, character, and event. This structural formula in which you determine what types of sub stories are being told in your story based on these elements. One of the principles of structuring things by M.I.C.E. is that… It's the FILO principal, first in, last out. If you open with milieu, then your story ends with milieu. Milieu was first in, milieu is last out. It's this whole idea of nested parentheses. If you go milieu, idea, character, then it ends character, idea, milieu. This is something that audiences are not typically conscious of when they're consuming a story that's… Because those things are so blurry by the time you've backed all the way away from it. But if you keep that promise, if you adhere to that structure, it's inherently satisfying and it's subtle. It's something that audiences often don't know has been done to them. That's one of my favorite things. That's, for me, the difference between the fresh beans and the canned beans, is that, hey, I delivered the beans, and I delivered them fresh, and you can't tell that I used the recipe off the back of the can or whatever. The metaphor's falling apart.

[Chuckles]

[garbled second metaphors do that]

[Howard] Metaphors do that. Especially from my lips.

[Howard] Hey, we're 18 minutes in. Kaela, do you have homework for us?

[Kaela] I do. Get your pencils ready everybody. I'll be grading.

[Laughter]

[Kaela] No. So, your homework for today, of course, is to first you want to look up all the things that we talked about today. M.I.C.E., the three acts, Save the Cat, hero's journey, kishotenketsu, all of the good stuff. Then, I want you to take your favorite thing, like, if it's your favorite movie, your favorite novel, your favorite web comic, whatever it is. Sit down with it, have these structures out in some way. You can pick one at a time if you want, and watch it all the way through and reverse engineer what it's doing. So you can see how it is hitting or you can even identify which structure it's using or going off of, at least as a skeleton. Then, for bonus points… You want those bonus points, right? Go ahead and take your least favorite thing. I recommend it be a short thing, just so you don't have to spend too much time with it. Then look at the structure again. Reverse engineer why it's not working. You'll learn a lot by reverse engineering things. I highly recommend that process.

[Howard] Thank you, Kaela. Thank you, Megan and Sandra. We're out of time. This has been Writing Excuses. You are out of excuses. Now go write.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 14.13: Obstacles vs. Complications

From https://writingexcuses.com/2019/03/31/wx-14-13-obstacles-vs-complications/

Key points: obstacles versus complications. People, things, or circumstances that impede the progress of the character or the story. Obstacles can simply be overcome, but complications cause ramifications that make the story take a turn. In terms of MICE threads, obstacles keep you on the same path, but complications take you to another thread. Obstacles are linear, complications change the direction or goals. Obstacles often are within scenes, while complications strengthen act breaks and make the audience come back. A story that is all complications may be too twisty, while a story that is just obstacles may be too linear and frustratingly slow. Try mixing yes-but, no-and with complications and obstacles. A couple of major complications may be plenty.

[Mary Robinette] Season 14, Episode 13.

[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Obstacles vs. Complications.

[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.

[Margaret] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Brandon] I'm Brandon.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Margaret] I'm Margaret.

[Howard] I'm in the way.

[Chuckles, laughter]

[Mary Robinette] All right. So, I wanted to do this because a couple of times on Writing Excuses, you've heard me say, talking about obstacles versus complications and how I learned about it from Margaret Dunlap, and it occurred to me that we actually have Margaret here, so instead of having to listen to my fumbling attempt to distill this theory that she has come up with, we could just have her explain it to you. So, Margaret, tell us, please, about obstacles versus complications.

[Margaret] Okay. So, obstacles versus complications is, I think… I was trying to think back to the origin of this. For me, it goes back to learning how to write to act breaks. Because you… Classically, you write to the act break, you're going to stop, have commercials, and you want something that's going to drive the audience to come back. The problem of writing television today is the television audiences have watched hundreds of hours of television, and they kind of know how television works. So if you put in a classic kind of cliffhanger of like, "Oh, no. Is Mulder going to die?" on the X-Files, well, probably not. Most of your audience is pretty well aware that at the end of act one, it's likely Mulder's probably still going to be with us for the rest of this episode. So, TV writers had to get better at making stories twistier. So, obstacles versus complications, both of these are people, things, or circumstances that are somehow impeding the progress of the character or the story. The difference is, while an obstacle is something that your character can overcome and then keep moving, a complication is something that they have to deal with and then causes ramifications that causes the story to take a turn.

[Mary Robinette] If I can jump in here, one of the… Because we spent a delightful period of time talking about this, and for me, one of… It clarified something that I've talked to my students about, which is when I talk about the MICE quotient and talk about how you can have multiple threads and they can be braided together, I intellectually like… Not intellectually. I had an intuitive sense of what it meant, but I had a difficult time articulating it. So an obstacle keep you on the same path. It's like a straightahead thing. If you're on a milieu line, you stay on a milieu line. Whereas, a complication will kick you off over into a character line.

[Brandon] That is really fascinating.

[Mary Robinette] Isn't it!

[Brandon] Yeah. That's really helpful.

[Howard] Obstacle is the speedbump, complication is the detour sign which you're not actually sure which side road it's pointing to.

[Margaret] Right. Or the detour sign that someone has taken away, or… I have an example of if I am a renowned thief and I am trying to break into Mary's home, the locked door is an obstacle. The fact that Mary is home, and I thought that she wasn't, that is a complication. Potentially. If I knock her out because I am awesome, because I'm an internationally renowned thief, then she is effectively an obstacle. But if she provides information that the thing I have come to steal, I'm not stealing it back, I'm just stealing it, that creates a complication.

[Brandon] Yeah, this is really interesting, because a lot of plot formats, particularly some of the ones rooted in screenwriting, talk about this idea of at some point during the story, you're… The characters are going to realize their goals are larger or different than they wanted them to be. Knowing the difference between obstacle versus that complication that can open their eyes to a greater plot could be really helpful.

[Margaret] Yeah. It's also a way to take a story that has a very linear progression, and think about… Because often we know where we want a story to end. It's like, "All right. Well, the character starts and they had that way." If you think in terms of complications, maybe they start out going in this direction… Yeah, as you can tell from watching me moving my hands on the podcast…

[Chuckles]

[Margaret] They start moving to the right. A series of complications might bend them around 180° and get… Or, more likely, 90°, speaking narratively. We rarely have a character start out seeking the exact opposite of what they wind up getting. But those are the complications that can create those twists that aren't… A shocking twist that you'll never see coming. But just those little shifts in the narrative.

[Howard] There is a classic twist in the… Elementary, CBS's Sherlock Holmes thing, that I've described to my kids as the act two corpse. Which is the point at which we are moving along, and then someone is dead who we are not expecting to be dead. Maybe it's an obstacle, because we can no longer ask that person questions. But we discovered that it's more complex. What's fun is that even though my kids will now watch TV with me and lean forward and say, "Act two corpse? Is it… Yay! Act two corpse!" The episode still works, because we don't know what the complication is going… We don't know what's going to happen. We just know there's been a complication, and we are on board for where our heroes take it.

[Margaret] It's the murder mystery where your prime suspect is the second victim.

[Brandon] I've done that before. It's very handy.

[Margaret] And classic for a reason.

[Brandon] Let's break here for our book of the week.

[Mary Robinette] Great. So our book of the week is Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse. This is a fantastic book. On one level, you can read it as just monster hunters going after monsters. But it's so much more than that. So this is after the world has basically drowned under the big water. It's set on what used to be a Navajo reservation. It has been reborn as Dinetah. All of the gods and heroes of the land are kind of there again. So, like, there's Coyote. It's wonderful. It's relevant to this because it has a great series of obstacles in complications. There are obstacles that are just getting in the way of her tracking down the monster, and then there are complications which are completely affecting the way… A relationship with herself, her relationship with other people. It's wonderful, wonderful storytelling.

[Brandon] So tell us one more time.

[Mary Robinette] It is the Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse.

[Brandon] Excellent.

[Mary Robinette] All right. So. Since we are talking about obstacles in complications, one of the things that I wanted to also talk to our listeners about, we've talked a little bit about how to use them. I also want to talk about the dangers of them. Like the dangers of a story that is only complications.

[Margaret] Only complications. The danger of a story that is just piling complication on top of complication on top of complication is that it can be easy to lose track of the stakes. If we are constantly shifting what's going on, what are we after, how is it happening, it's tough for the audience to… It can be difficult for the audience to remain invested. Because it's who's on first. They're losing track of what is our ultimate goal, what are we actually pushing towards, are we making progress towards it, or do we keep just getting derailed into detours? It is possible to make a story too twisty.

[Mary Robinette] Is it possible to go the other direction, and just have just obstacles?

[Margaret] Yeah. I think the danger of a story that is only obstacles is that, one, it can feel like your character isn't getting anywhere because anytime they're building up a head of steam, they're hitting another wall. The other risk that we sort of talked about earlier is that the story can feel very linear. It's like I am headed to grandma's house. The road goes out. So I've got to get a boat. The boat blows over. It just keeps going. One thing to another thing to another thing, but we never shift years. You can do it. But there is a risk that it just feels like a straight shot down a hallway, and why is it taking you so long to walk?

[Brandon] I've worried about both of those things, with the yes-but, no-and methodology that we've talked about, that Mary introduced me to, which is great. I use it in my class for those discovery writers who don't know how to outline, and don't really want to outline. I say, here's a method. But I worry about if they do this the wrong way, you're going to end up with only complications, because it's so easy to say, yes, they do accomplish this, but weird wacky things happens that sends us off in another direction.

[Mary Robinette] So that brings up the question of progress in pacing. One of the things that I talk about sometimes with the yes-but, no-in is, since in Western storytelling, we have the rule of three. Which is three times are funny, third times a charm, three times are unlucky. We just… We're geared to think in terms of threes. That you can use that in hack with it. If you want something to feel easy, then you have it happen with less than three trial error cycles. If you want it to feel hard, then you do more than three try-fail cycles. So with a yes-but, it's like yes, but complication. Then with no-and, it's like no, and obstacle. To a certain degree. So you can… I feel like you can control pacing to a certain degree that way. How do you con… Do you use these as tools to control pacing?

[Margaret] Um…

[Mary Robinette] I mean, it's hard… It feels like it when you're talking about act breaks.

[Margaret] Yeah. I mean, it is a way to control pacing. I think when writing in television format, it's such a set structure. Even now, as we're seeing more TV being written without commercial breaks. If you're writing for a Netflix or one of the other premium services, you don't necessarily have commercials that are coming in between, but I like to try to write on that 4 to 5 act structure anyway, just because it ensures that things are happening. That you're not getting the episode that feels like, "Okay, this is just an installment, but nothing's really happening. It's a lot of kind of dithering around and nothing is really changing, nothing's really progressing." Having those sorts of stops along the wheel of setting up the problem of the week, making our first attempt at it, a big turn at the midpoint that shifts things around, having to recover and prepare for that, and our final confrontation act five, having that is a kind of baseline structure sets up that… One, the idea that we're accomplishing something in a single episode, even if it's a piece of a much larger story. But also, again with a television audience that watched a lot of television, there are certain rhythms that you get use to. You can shift those rhythms. I watched a lot of Law & Order in high school and college. Then I started watching Homicide: Life on the Streets. I realized that I would start getting really antsy around the half-hour point in Homicide, because subliminally I was waiting for the cops to hand it over to the lawyers to handle the second half of the show.

[Mary Robinette] [Ooooo]

[Margaret] But Homicide is all cops. It took a while to get used to the different pacing and the different rhythm. But having that television falling into those… Saying familiar patterns feels like it's cliché, but just that sort of the storytelling rhythms that at a certain level feel comfortable that you can use or shift up in order to really unsettle your audience.

[Mary Robinette] As you were talking, I realized that when I earlier said yes, but complication, no, and obstacle, that made it sound like those are the pairings that you have to do. Which is not actually true at all. Yes his progress towards the goal, no is progress away from the goal. Then, complications and obstacles are additional tools that you can use in terms of shifting. I find that I am more likely to use obstacles as a… Within a, roughly put, within a scene, and then use the complications kind of as I approach a scene end.

[Margaret] I think, complications, you do have to be judicious with them, at least in terms of major complications. If you look at… If you look at the Leverage pilot, which I'm guessing many listeners and people here on this podcast are familiar with, you get a couple of really big complications in that, but only a couple. We've been hired to steal airplane plans. It turns out those airplane plans, we didn't steal them back from the person who stole them. We just stole them from the people that created them. Then they have obstacles in trying to get revenge from the person who set them up. With… There are some additional complications buried in there, but they aren't all necessarily… A complication doesn't have to be earthshaking. It can be you have to take your little sister with you on this heist job, and how are we going to handle that?

[Howard] The nice thing about the Leverage show format with regard to complications is that when the heist is one in which we are going to be shown, after the fact, that there was a piece they were actually prepared for this. The final complication looks to us like the nail in the coffin that, nope, they're not going to survive this twist. Oh, wait, this is the one they were ready for. That bit of formulaic TV writing… Yes, if formulaic, and yes, if you watch an entire… You binge watch Leverage, you can start to see the seams, but… It's beautiful. I love the way it's done.

[Margaret] I would just like to say, John, Howard said it was formulaic, I didn't.

[Laughter]

[Brandon] All right. Let's… This has been really fascinating. It's really helped kind of frame this in my head. Something that… Like Mary said, I've always kind of known, but never been able to put words to.

[Brandon] You also have a piece of homework for us, right, Margaret?

[Margaret] What I'd like you to try to do is take a story, either something you've written or another story, and either find or insert an obstacle into it. Then, brainstorm what might happen if that obstacle were actually a complication. It's something that forces the narrative to take a turn. See what happens.

[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 12.24: Creating Great Outlines

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2017/06/11/12-24-creating-great-outlines/

Key points: This episode is about outlines to help you write, not sales tools. People like structure, it is comforting. Mix a familiar structure with a bit of strange, and you can relish the oddity. First, the Kevin J. Anderson: pitch, expand to 5 pages, 20 pages, and keep blowing. Thumbnail sketch, synopsis (internal beats), scenes. This approach keeps you focused on what this novel is about. It also gives you room to be creative and get the discovery writing out as you expand. Beware, too much interesting stuff in the outline can make writing the novel boring. Don't try to include everything, just the key details. The Wesley Chu: outline 30%, write a bit, outline more, write more. The structuralist: seven point, three act, Hero's Journey, etc. Create your beats and build the outline. Also good for diagnostics -- what's wrong with this story? The George R. R. Martin: use historical incidents. Often used in science fiction and fantasy, based on a historical record taken fantastical. The Sanderson: build your outline backward. Start with a great ending, then look at what promises lead to that. How do you justify awesome things? Prequels, interstitial tales. The strength of an outline is that restrictions breed creativity. Structural requirements can push you in directions you might not have gone otherwise.

( Details, details, who has the details... )

[Brandon] All right. Well, we are out of time. We are going to go ahead and have Mary give us some homework.
[Mary] Yes. Okay. So we've talked about a bunch of different outline structures. What I want you to do is I want you to take the list of events in whatever it is that you're thinking about writing. I want you to take a list of structures. So, seven point plot structure, The Hero's Journey, all of these different things. Heist! List out the scene types. Then slot the scenes from your event list into the scene type list for each of these different structures. See which of these kind of fits organically with your story, and which one kind of makes you excited, and what opportunities they allow.
[Brandon] Excellent. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

mbarker.livejournal.com

Writing Excuses Season Two Episode Three: Characters with Brandon Mull

http://www.writingexcuses.com/2008/10/27/writing-excuses-season-2-episode-3-characters-with-brandon-mull/

Key points: make your characters feel real by understanding them. What are their personality quirks? What do they want? Quirks that are a little bit extreme help make the illusion real. Ask yourself, "Why can't this character fill this role?" Design imperfect characters who are interesting in that slot in your story. Know the three act format and remember that real heroes always fail twice (at least) before they succeed.
( Much ado )

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mbarker - Writing Excuses 21.18: Deconstructing the Three Act Structure
mbarker - Writing Excuses 19.41: A Close Reading on Structure: An Overview and Why Fifth Season
mbarker - Writing Excuses 16.52: Structure is a Promise
mbarker - Writing Excuses 14.13: Obstacles vs. Complications
mbarker - Writing Excuses 12.24: Creating Great Outlines
mbarker.livejournal.com - Writing Excuses Season Two Episode Three: Characters with Brandon Mull

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Writing Excuses 21.18: Deconstructing the Three Act Structure

Writing Excuses 19.41: A Close Reading on Structure: An Overview and Why Fifth Season

Writing Excuses 16.52: Structure is a Promise

Writing Excuses 14.13: Obstacles vs. Complications

Writing Excuses 12.24: Creating Great Outlines

Writing Excuses Season Two Episode Three: Characters with Brandon Mull

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