You have a lot of ideas but you
don't know how to organize them into a linear narrative--a story. So
you're looking for a way to organize your ideas so that you can
arrange them more easily into a coherent, cohesive narrative. I think
you need to mentally create the following folders for your story
filing cabinet:
CHANGE
This is your beginning. Every story should start with change,
something that happens to knock the protagonist off his current path.
A death in the family, a new job, a new boss, a murder, a kidnapping,
an illness--anything that changes the protagonists future and forces
him to adjust his life to meet its challenges. The ideas that fit in
this folder are some of the most basic--who is my protagonist? What
does he/she want from life? What motivates his/her behavior now? What
will motivate it when something changes? What's going to be standing
in the way? This section of your mental filing cabinet is all about
the who, the what, the why and the why not of the story.
CHOICE
With change comes choice. The choice is your second folder. This is
the part of the story where the protagonist has to decide how to cope
with the change thrust upon him. He may choose to try to delay doing
anything. He may jump right in and make a mistake. Or he may do what
would seem to be the right thing to solve the problem, only to
discover that his choice only leads to new problems. But he has to
choose to do something, even if it's to do nothing. And no matter what
he does, there will be consequences. Consequences challenge the hero
to make more choices, which lead to more consequences.
COMPLICATIONS
Consequences lead to complications. The deeper the character goes, the
more complications arise from his choices and the choices of others in
conflict with him. Here is the place in the book where you start
adding twists. A villain shows an unexpected side. A red herring
emerges to send the hero off into a new direction. Something happens
to give the hero unexpected information that changes what he believed
in the beginning and sends him moving in a new direction.
COMMITMENT
Now that the hero is moving forward at an increasing speed, getting
more and more entangled in the consequences and complications of his
choice, he has to commit himself fully to seeing the problem through
to the end. He's in it until it's solved or he's dead, whichever comes
first. In this part of the book, you examine why he's willing to throw
himself so completely into the struggle. What are the stakes? Why
can't he let go? This is a great place for character revelations and
examination of the internal conflict.
CATASTROPHE
Or, as I like to call it, the "Oh, crap" moment. This is the
moment when everything goes wrong. When your hero meets an obstacle he
can't find a way around. When he reaches the edge of the cliff and
there's nowhere to go but straight down. If you've ever seen the movie
Lethal Weapon, it's the moment in the desert when Murtaugh and his
daughter have been captured, and Riggs is trying to figure out how to
save them--and he hears that gun cocking behind him, looks up and sees
the Big Bad Guy. "Oh, crap." There's a reason this is called
the Black Moment. It's got to be significant. It has to look
insurmountable.
CLIMAX
This is my favorite part of the book. It's the time when your
characters get to show what they're made of. They face the obstacle
with their chins held high, ready to fight to the death (figurative or
literal) to reach their goals. Everything they've learned over the
course of the book--about trust, about courage, about love, about
strength--come into play in this moment. They can face this moment now
because they've changed and grown over the course of the story. If
this moment had happened at the beginning of the book, there's no way
they could have beaten the opponent.
CONCLUSION
This is your wrap up. By the time you reach this point, your
characters will tell you exactly what they want to happen. They'll
have earned their rewards--or their punishments, in the case of the
bad guys--and you'll know how to give them what they deserve.
Copyright © 2010 by Paula
Graves
