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Underground > Creation >

Structuring Stories

All Acting Regiment

13:18 / 24.03.06

Does anyone have any tips to share on structuring a story? I'm sure all know about the old status quo-->change-->return but different format, but are there any others or any other tricks we use?

03:44 / 25.03.06

The best trick I ever learned was from that dashing wordsmith Bill Shakespeare. Up, up, point of no return, down, down. It's like a cheat code for Sonic the Hedgehog.

Sorry I can't be more helpful, but I usually just "wing it" when it comes to structure. That's why my screenplays are so dreary: they have very little of the Hollywood three-act structure. I could duplicate it decently, but why duplicate?

05:17 / 25.03.06

Generally, here's what I do.

For a comic story (3 or 4 issues)...

I make sure I know where I want it to be on the last page of issue 1, issue 2, issue 3/4.

I figure out who my characters are and what kind of themes I wnat to explore.

I usually have a few snippets of dialogue and some things I wnat to put in.

And then I kind of wing it.

For screenplays, I do the above but with a bit more of a backbone. I figure out my introduction and my ending. Then I try to get from A to b and figure out a few things in the middle.

IF you structure it too little then it meanders and if you structure it too much then all of the fun of the story is gone (and you can really tell as a reader and a writer).

If you're writing a novel tehn you get a heck of a lot more wiggle room with this but you still generally need some idea of where you are going.

05:50 / 25.03.06

I make it up as I go along.

09:19 / 25.03.06

I used to think I could wing it, but its become apparent to me that whilst I can get all creative with the details, I need to have the broadstrokes (and by broadstrokes I mean pretty much the shape of every scene/chapter) in place before I sit down to write. Obviously things change as I go along, but without a road map I get lost far too quickly and end up chucking in the whole enterprise.

So, how do I approach structure? First I write a 2 line synopsis, then a page long synopsis, then I detail the characters' history, then I write synopses of each charcters' arc, then I write a chapter by chapter synopsis, then I actually get started. It normally takes me about a week to get going.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

16:48 / 26.03.06

there's the ninja approach: meticulous planning and organisation, such that when it comes time to writing, it flows without much more effort (provided that the planning stage isn't just procrastination in disguise)

there's the pirate approach: wade into the fray and start hacking. It's messy messy messy, but at least there's visible progress.

we all fall somewhere in betwixt.

tolkien = ninja
burroughs = pirate

I've found that having a solid backstory helps immensely. I've been flushing out the details of a fictional, future version of our world. There's a contstant need to answer the question, "why did xxx do xxx?"

as long as that can be answered consistantly within the world of your fiction, then kudos. (less important whether the reader can answer the question).

or you can stretch your story over a pre-existing structure - use the 10 sephiroth of the kabbalah, or the 7 days of the week, or any system with a progression (not necessarily linear). Extra useful if the underlying structure has parallels within your themes.

story maps are particularly helpful if your timeline is non-linear.

look to the basics: the hero's journey, for example.

best of times and fortune
--not jack

sibyline, beating Qalyn to a Q

00:06 / 28.03.06

hmmm.... i'm copying a handout i once got in class, which is adopted from the janet burroway book, _writing fiction_. a typical story is structured as follows:

* A conflict
* Complications (rising action)
* A crisis action (the climax, the moment everything changes for one or more characters, in which at least one character experiences a Reversal of Fortune, in which something has changed, permanently and irrevocably)
* Falling Action
* Resolution

i actually went through the motions of writing a story based on this structure, and i think it helped clarify things for me, even though it's not a story i would ever think of trying to get published.

oddly, my stories almost always start with a strange detail or an image--the eruption of a volcano, observing a thousand ants slowly moving a piece of fish, an identical twin who is half an inch shorter than his brother--and then i construct a story that ends up with the detail being vital.

there also seems to be a trend recently of writers combining two completely incongruous elements and then mushing them together to form a story.

the possibilities are endless!

02:47 / 28.03.06

For this play that I'm writing, I am going into it ninja style. Everything is going to be planned out. I'm doing a dissertation on David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross and it really opened my eyes to structure and depth. There is a lot - a lot - going on in Mamet's work because he attacks a play like a ninja would, to use the above analogy.

Not only am I mapping out the dramatic arc of the play, but through snippets of significant dialogue (before actually writing the play, I'm just putting down snatches), I am mapping out the characters themselves.

It's quite fun. I've never planned a narrative this well before. The last thing I wrote was planned out pretty far in advance too and I really like it.

02:48 / 28.03.06

I just realized that my post is extremely self-indulgent and self-celebratory and mildly masturbatory. Sorry that I'm not helping this thread whatsoever.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

04:32 / 28.03.06

In a short fiction techniques class I took, the prof had us draw a diagrams of the story structures as we read them. You have to keep track of memory, flashback, the narrative voice, and when the story's present is -- does it dip backwards in time? I wrote a story told from the present-present, but it was about a past event and I made reference to events in between then and now throughout it. A sort of sliding scale with dips into the future.

It actually helps a lot, and I find it encourages you to skip the musical progression/orgasm motif and explore different ways of how time works in the story and how you want to tell it.

04:49 / 28.03.06

an identical twin who is half an inch shorter than his brother

Wow, that it is strange. My twin brother and I must be total freaks what with me being a full inch taller.

sibyline, beating Qalyn to a Q

13:58 / 28.03.06

Wow, that it is strange. My twin brother and I must be total freaks what with me being a full inch taller.

Are you identical? The story has one brother being 5'11.5 and the other brother being 6' tall. The height difference ruins the shorter brother's life. Do people find you more attractive? Are you more secure than your brother. Maybe I should private message you for research purposes.

15:25 / 28.03.06

>off topic<

I'd like to keep this in the public sphere so as to educate the masses, like.

Yes we are identical and no I'm pretty sure our height difference hasn't effected my brother's confidence.

The thing is, whilst I'm sure it's possible for twins to be effected by minor differences, we need to bear in mind that identical twins are never entirely identical and that minor physical (and often major psychological) differences are part of day to day life for those of the split zygote. If a twin is getting worked up by a height difference (height differences are normal) of half an inch it's likely hir agitation is born out of more significant anxieties that have their basis in bigger psychological factors.

Syb, your post met my snark because it got dangerously close to the wow!!!!11!! twins are like totally the same person but in two different bodies - they have teh psychic powers1111! line that gets sooo much fucking play in Western culture.

>/off topic<

21:39 / 28.03.06

the inverted checkmark. works every time.

sibyline, beating Qalyn to a Q

22:12 / 28.03.06

Syb, your post met my snark because it got dangerously close to the wow!!!!11!! twins are like totally the same person but in two different bodies - they have teh psychic powers1111! line that gets sooo much fucking play in Western culture.

um, because i said that an identical twin who's half an inch shorter than his brother is a weird detail? does any mention of identical twins being unusual in some way come dangerously close to this line? i just ask because i'm a pretty staunch non-mystifier, so the meeting of your snark amuses me.

16:18 / 29.03.06

Well, I am famously snarky about all things twinny, so don't take it to heart. It's just that suggesting that a small height difference between twins is a weird detail could point to some rather wrongheaded, if popular, underlying thinking, such as twins are so incredibly alike even small differences are amazingly rare and that they must cause psychological havok when they manifest.