Story Structure
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The Lazy Way to Outline a Story, Part Two
Okay, folks, we’re picking up right where we left off in part one. We’re going to take those plot points that we made in our basic outline and form them into individual scenes. We’ll start at the beginning. Remember that the three-act structure suggests that the intro and inciting incident together should be about 5-15% of your story, and the full beginning should be around 20-25% until you get through the first plot point. You may need to fiddle with this a little, but let’s see what we have to start with. 1) Jessica has just finished working on a client at a luxury salon. She spins the chair, and…
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The Lazy Way to Outline a Story
Hello Writers! I’m going to share with you how I outline a plot. This quick and easy way should satisfy all but the most ardent plotters and the most defiant of pansters. There are, of course, as many ways of outlining a story as there are writers, and if you’re new to either outlining or structure, then I’m sure that you will make this method your own in time. Brainstorm Before You Outline The first thing I do is to brainstorm. I get a nice blank sheet of paper and fill it with my story idea, brief character sketches, germinal scene ideas, setting notes, etc. Anything that I’ve thought of…
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Scenes, Scenes, Wonderful Scenes!
The scene is the building block of fiction. Once upon a time, a novel might contain a lengthy description of a field, several flashbacks, and lots and lots of telling. Those days are gone. We’ve become a cinematic society. Scenes speak to us. Pretty words are all well and good, and I do enjoy them myself, but not when they put the story on hold. Not when they bore me. Scenes move the story forward, keep your reader turning the pages, keep them on the edge of their…well, you get it. As Ansen Dibell puts it in her wonderful craft book, Plot: “Creating scenes means finding ways for your story…
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A Gentle Introduction to Story Structure
Structure is foundational to telling a good story. Although the two elements do go hand in hand, plot is not the same as structure. You can think of it like the layers of a quilt. You’ve got the colorful outside fabrics and the patterns that make people say ‘that’s a beautiful quilt. ’ That would be the plot. Then, you have the fluffy white batting that fills the quilt. This is stuff that nobody sees in the final quilt and that only fellow-quiltmakers probably ever think about, but if you didn’t have that batting, your quilt would not be functional. It would only be two floppy pieces of fabric attached…
