So I asked for Feedback in my post So Tell Me This, and I got it.  Only a good friend has guts to say it so straight.  And I have great need of good friends.  Here’s what he had to say:

You want feedback, pal?  Well, brace yourself.  I’m sure you’re looking for more than just “great job dude.” 

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End of the month.  Time to take stock on the experiment.  But I need your involvement to help me make this something you’d like to read consistently and tell your friends about.  Questions abound, but let me give you some stats first. (more…)

Beyond back story revealed in scenes, which are dropped into a story line, there are two types of pre-story content: The Given and The Hidden.

The Given is often used as a way to gloss over really unbelievable content. If you want to write about post apocalyptic times, you don’t have to write the actual Apocalypse. You write about civilization in ruins and give hints as to what caused it. Readers have to go along with the account of the events because they see the results.

Freakangels.com does this nicely.

It doesn’t have to be apocalyptic either. Past events that needed to kick a story off are also presented in the given. Here’s a great one. ”Marley was dead: to begin with.” Dickens goes on to even explain why the Given is so important in story telling. ”This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night…” And he gives us another wonderful example.

The other pre-story information is The Hidden. This happens all the type in Murder mysteries. We come in to the scene of the crime and have to follow the detective on the journey to discover what happened in the Hidden.

This is also a great device for plot twists involving characters who are shape-shifters–characters who change their allegiances during the story. To stay on the Christmas theme, I draw an example from The Ice Harvest. Toward the end of the story Renata, the fem fatale, who has been leading Charlie around, tempting him with the reward of sex, is revealed to have been in cahoots with Vic all along.

Her true intentions have been Hidden. The planning and manipulation that took place before page one or scene one, have been purposely kept from the main character and therefore the audience.

Revealing The Hidden allows the writer to turn on the tension and throw the audience off kilter just when they think they know what’s going to happen.

Here’s how I purpose using the Snowflake and the Journey Circle to write a novel synopsis… for those of you trying to sell a novel. Synopses suck! Big time. It’s damn near impossible to take a 300 page novel and write it in 4 pages. And the last thing you want to do is summarize the book you just spent three years writing.

Start with the pitch line you used in your query. That’s step 1 of the Snowflake.

Then use the journey circle to map the story line of the main character. One character only. Check out the blog posts on the journey circle and the modifications I made to it.

In my view the Circle has 13 spooks. Then use this to write a paragraph telling the major plot points of the story.

Sentence 1
1. Ordinary World
2. The call to action
Sentence 2
3. Refusal of the Call
4. Meeting the Mentor
5. Crossing the first threshold
Sentence 3
6. Tests, Allies, and Enemies
7. Approach to the Innermost Cave
8. The Ordeal
Sentence 4
9. Reward
10. The Road Back
11. The Death Moment
Sentence 5
12. The Resurrection
13. Return with the Elixir

Then expand each sentence into a paragraph. Finally expand the paragraph into a 2 – 4 page document, keeping segments 1 and 5 the shortest.

Hope this helps. Easier said than done, I know… but this is a business after all.

So I realized something at about 1:30 this morning.  The journey circle from page 194 of The Writer’s Journey, is slightly flawed.

Spoke 11. Death and Resurrection.  Should be The Death Moment.  I believe this moment is the dramatis climacticus and is the true close of Act 2 part b.  It is also so important for the writer to have this moment defined because it is a clear indication of what is at stack in the story.  Whatever was at stack is lost in this moment.

Spoke 12. then becomes Resurrection or as I like to call it–The Twitching Pinky.  How many times have we seen dead people come back to life by twitching their fucking pinky?  It’s a cliche?  And so because it has become so cliche it behooves writers to clearly define this moment as well.  And because that pinky starts twitching the audience sighs a relief and we now are clearly in the Renunciation, moving 13. Return with the Elixir next the flip side of spoke 1. Ordinary World, which is exactly where it ought to be.

Like the Call to Action and Refusal of the Call often happen in the same scene, they occupy separate spokes on the circle because it is important to define them.  Sometimes, but not always, they happen in the same scene.  The Death Moment and the Resurrection do usually happen together.

But take the story of Christ for instance.  Death on the Cross.  Pretty Dramatic.  A clearly defined moment in the mythology.  Then they stick him in the grave, he goes into hell for three days to snatch the keys of death, then he twitches his pinky, and Christians everywhere have a neat slogan to put on their bumper stickers.  But you see my point–clearly two separate moments that require defining.

Okay, that’s enough for now.  I’ve also figured out how the 12 spokes on the Journey Circle relate to steps 2 and 4 of the Snowflake.  But that’s another post.

As you may know I’ve been working with a novel structuring tool known as the Snowflake.  It’s a good tool, but not the only tool to use to design story structure.  One of the holes in the Snowflake is that you’re left all alone to build the characters and their story lines without any tools to define the path.

So I keep turning back to my copy of The Writer’s Journey. Page 194 has a cool circle chart on it. To complete steps 3 and 5 of the Snowflake you gotta have this. This helps. This really helps.

The Journey Circle

Fill in the events that make up the points on the chart and you have what you need to build your story on.

Between this and the Snowflake, I’m force to define what my story is for the characters. 

I do one of these per character especially the bad guy.  Remember bad guys are the heros of their own journey.  They don’t think what they’re doing is bad… usually.  Mwa-ha-ha.

Torque was written as a short story first. Without my really knowing what I was doing, I wrote a “treatment.” A complete story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. And that was worthwhile, because I had the opportunity to audition the main characters and the main plot line.

The problem with the short story “Treatment” is that it falls down in the second act where the B plot usually intersects and helps propel the story into the third act. Also, in writing the novel, I added several characters that weren’t auditioned in “treatment.” They ended up being a considerable amount of work.

The early draft of Torque fell apart in B plot with the state trooper. I knew he had to get to the lake house to interact with the other main characters, but I hadn’t thought out how. What I came up with on the fly didn’t work, and I had to throw out the last third of the novel and revise. That was work that could’ve been avoided if I had auditioned it in the treatment or better yet outlined it. (more…)

For those of you looking into the snowflake method after my last post. Shhh, don’t tell, but I’m glossing over a few of the steps. If you don’t know what I’m talking about. Check out my earlier post for the link to Randy Ingermanson’s helpful site for advanced fiction writers. There’s one character I can’t seem to nail down, and I’ll need a lot of research to do it. But she isn’t as important so not too huge a deal. With the two main characters, yeah, I’m really thinking a lot about them. The Afghan mujihadeen fighter is the one I’m spending most of my time on. The American I know, so not such a big deal to write it all down. Some things yes.

I’m kind of adapting the process as I go along. What I’m finding out is don’t wait to step 8 to start the outline. Outline starting at step two. Step 2 has you write out the major plot structure, 3 disasters and a conclusion. So you outline starting with four headings. 1. From beginning to first disaster. 2. first disaster to second disaster. 3. second disaster to third disaster 4. third disaster to end. (more…)