Story Engineering

Character Development, Story Concept, Scene Construction

by Larry Brooks

Completed: February 15, 2021

Writing
278 pages
ISBN: 9781582979984
Goodreads page

★★★★

The six core competencies are:

Concept
Character
Theme
Structure
Scene Execution
Writing Voice

A story, at its most elemental level is:

After a hook and a setup the hero begins a quest, the pursuit of a need or a solution, from which springs a specific goal (survival, revenge, happiness, health, peace, wealth, justice, etc.), and then must square off with and ultimately conquer (or not) obstacles—this being the most critical element of storytelling: conflict. You then toss in a few inner demons as well as some exterior antagonistic forces, giving the hero something to battle and outwit and conquer as he strives to reach his goal.

1 - Concept

A concept is something that asks a question. The answer to the question is your story.

Differences between idea, concept and premise.

A non-story example: An idea is to travel to Florida. A concept is to travel by car and stop at all the national parks along the way. A premise is to take your estranged father with you and mend fences while on the road.

An idea would be to write a story about raising the Titanic from the bottom on the sea. A great idea. A concept would be to suggest that there are secrets still hidden there that certain forces would kill to keep concealed. A premise would be to create an archetypical hero who is hired to do this job and in doing so saves his country from potential attack.

The idea to write a story about ballet dancers is not a concept. It is just an idea. But when you add a forward-thinking realm to that idea, and do it in the form of a question—what if a ballet dancer loses her leg at the knee but perseveres against great prejudice to become a professional dancer?—you have evolved the idea into the realm of conceptualization.

Alice Sebold in The Lovely Bones: Her idea was to tell us a story that shows us what heaven is like. Her concept was to create a narrator for the story who was already in heaven, narrating the tale directly from heaven, and then turning it into a murder mystery…. Sebold’s concept, then, could be expressed as a question that demands an answer: What if a murder victim can’t rest in heaven because her crime remains unsolved, and chooses to get involved to help her loved ones gain closure?

A premise is a concept that has brought character into the mix. As such, it could be said that a premise is, in fact, an expanded concept. “What if the narrator of a story spoke to us from heaven about her own murder?” That’s a concept. “What if a fourteen-year-old girl cannot rest in heaven, and realizes that her family cannot rest on earth, because her murder remains unsolved, so she intervenes to help uncover the truth and bring peace to those who loved her, thus allowing her to move on?” That’s a premise, because of the hero’s quest it defines.

It isn’t enough that your character and your theme be compelling … you need to give your hero a motivated situation and an intriguing goal or problem to conquer.

2 - Character

The seven key areas of character illumination:

Surface affectations and personality — What the world sees and perceives about a character, including quirks, ticks, habits, and visual presentation.
Backstory — All that happened in the character’s life before the story begins that conspires to make him who he is now.
Character arc — How the character learns lessons and grows (changes) over the course of the story, how she evolves and conquers her most confounding issues.
Inner demons and conflicts — The nature of the issues that hold a character back and define his outlook, beliefs, decisions, and actions. Fear of meeting new people, for example, is a demon that definitely compromises one’s life experience.
Worldview — An adopted belief system and moral compass; the manifested outcome of backstory and inner demons.
Goals and motivations — What drives a character’s decisions and actions, and the belief that the benefits of those decisions and actions outweigh any costs or compromises.
Decisions, actions, and behaviors — The ultimate decisions and actions that are the sum of all of the above.

The first dimension of character - surface traits, quirks, and habits.
- This first dimension shows the way a character looks and acts … her hair, her make-up, the kind of car she drives, her wardrobe preferences, where she hangs out, her musical tastes, her taste in food, certain attitudes and prejudices, and so forth. It is largely a combination of two things: how she sees herself, and how she desires to be seen. Sometimes those factors contradict each other, which is, in itself, a product of the second dimension, which we’ll get to in a moment.
The second dimension of character - backstory and inner demons.
The third dimension of character - action, behavior, and worldview.

About peripheral characters: The best use of a peripheral character is to show the reader how a more important character relates to her or perceives her first-dimension efforts to brand herself.

About backstory: The trick is to show just enough backstory that the reader can intuit where the character is coming from, rather than spelling it out. Flashback scenes solely for the purpose of explaining backstory are rarely a good idea. You should be more artful and subtle in delivering backstory as part of the narrative flow.

The two levels of conflict in every great story: Every great story presents two levels of conflict for the reader’s pleasure: one, an external obstacle to the hero’s quest, and two, an internal demon that hinders the character’s ability to make the best possible decisions under pressure. An inner drive, weakness, belief system, or kink that makes him weak, that tempts, diverts, and seduces, that blinds him to the truth, that summons skewed values and warps his ability to see more clearly.

Common inner demons are cowardice, selfishness, addiction, fear, conceit, arrogance, hatred, resentment, bias, lack of confidence, stupidity, genius, heritage, poverty, ignorance, sociopathic insensitivity, naiveté, a spotty moral compass, sexual deviance … in general, any aspect of humanity that isn’t in line with the expectations of others or the accepted ground rules of success within the boundaries of your story and the rules you’ve created for it.

Examples of character arc: the meek become bold, the cowardly become courageous, the quiet become outspoken, the unforgiving decide to forgive, the resentful get over it, the clueless get a clue, the self-deceiving become self-aware, the dishonest come clean with themselves and others, the easily tempted become self-disciplined, the weak become strong, the unbelieving see the light, the oppressed get out from under the power of whatever oppresses them, victims become responsible for themselves, takers become givers, the insensitive develop a sensitivity chip, the naïve become fully aware, the bored become passionate, the cold become warm … the list is the very essence of the human experience.

Character as structure:

In her book The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By, author Carol S. Pearson labels these four stages of character status as orphan, wanderer, warrior, and martyr. While I like all these labels, I don’t think the hero needs to die in the end; he just needs to be willing to.

Stage One Character Context
- In the first part of your story, known as the setup, your hero is not yet fully exposed to the journey that you will unleash upon him. The antagonistic forces aren’t yet fully involved, if at all. We’re meeting your hero in his life before all this happens, seeing what he wants and what he does, and seeing who he is in all three dimensions… However this all shakes out, though, it can be said that here, in the first quarter of your story before the inciting First Plot Point arrives, your character is disconnected from his ultimate goal and destiny in some way. A curve ball, a change of course is right around the corner.
- This is also where you first introduce backstory, which directly links to inner demons and the obvious first-dimension choices that compensate for them.
Stage Two Character Context
- After the First Plot Point arrives to end the opening quartile (or slightly less) of your story, the hero faces a whole new or dramatically evolved set of problems, objectives, obstacles, and needs. A new quest. During this stage he is responding to this new situation, reacting to it, running from it, investigating it, challenging it, disbelieving it … but not really attacking the problem yet, at least in an informed manner.
- It could be said that the hero is exploring his options here, wandering. This is where he makes mistakes that teach him lessons about what he’s facing, what he must achieve, and what blocks his path. This is where his old patterns and inner demons—the starting point of his character arc—kick in to haunt and compromise his efforts.
- A huge mistake by newer writers is to have the hero begin to solve the problem at this point, rather than allow the antagonist to have his way with the hero. But it’s too early. The hero is still plagued and handicapped by his inner demons, in combination with not really understanding what he’s up against in terms of an antagonist force (that he may or may not be aware of at this point). This is where we see the hero flail and fail, and in doing so our empathy and emotions begin to build in his support.
Stage Three Character Context
- After all this wandering around without much of a clue, flailing against a foe that’s bigger and better than him, that confuses and confounds him, it’s time to give our hero some hope. That’s the mission of this third stage: to empower the hero to attack the problem through the application of his learning curve, which requires a new willingness and ability to rise above his inner demons, possibly for the first time in his life.
- In the second quartile of the story, the hero was responding; now here in the third quartile he gets aggressive and proactive. He attacks. It may not work as well as he hopes—in fact, it shouldn’t, not yet—but he’s not going to fail without a fight. The training wheels come off and the hero is doing unabashed battle with his obstacles, both interior and exterior.
Stage Four Character Context
- As the song says, and then a hero comes along. And by hero, we’re not referring so much to the role being played, but the decisions and actions that allow the protagonist, and perhaps others, to become worthy of that title.
- Here in the concluding context of the fourth and final quartile of the book (which is Act Three in a screenplay), the hero is better equipped to square off with the antagonist and its inherent obstacles because he’s learned his lessons well. He’s changed, grown, evolved. He has courage where once he was cowardly. He engages where once he was isolated. He’s conquered inner demons that had tempted and haunted and filled him with doubt and dread, and now he’s prepared to apply that learning toward the implementation of heroic decisions and acts—even to the point of martyrdom—to save the day.

The questions of character

What is your character’s backstory, the experiences that programmed how he thinks and feels and acts today?
What is his inner demon, and how does it influence decisions and actions in the face of the outer demon you are about to throw at him?
What does he resent?
What is his drive to get revenge?
How does he feel about himself, and what is the gap between that assessment and how others feel about him?
What is your character’s worldview?
What is your character’s moral compass?
Is your character a giver or a taker in life?
To what extent does your character adhere to gender roles and stereotypes? And if he doesn’t fit cleanly into one, how is he different?
What lessons has your character not yet learned in life?
What lessons has he experienced but rejected or failed to learn?
Who are his friends? Are they like-for-like, or either above or below him in intelligence?
What is your character’s social I.Q.? Is he awkward? Eager? Easy? Life of the party? Wallflower? Totally faking it?
To what extent is your character either an introvert or an extrovert? How does this manifest in his life?
What is your character’s most secret yearning?
What childhood dream never came true, and why?
What is your character’s religious or spiritual belief system?
What is the worst thing your character has ever done?
Does your character have secrets? Perhaps a secret life?
What does your character’s life partner, closest friends, and employer not know about him?
When, how, and why does he hold back, procrastinate?
What has held him back in life?
How many people would come to his funeral? Why might someone decide not to attend?
What is the most unlikely or the most contradictory aspect of your character?
What are your character’s first-dimension quirks, habits, and choices?
Why are they in evidence, what are they saying or covering for?
What is the backstory that leads to those choices?
What are the psychological scars that affect your character’s life, and how does this link to backstory?
How strong is your character under pressure?
What is your character’s arc in your story? How does he change and grow over the course of the story? How does he apply that learning toward becoming the catalytic force that drives the denouement of the story?

3 - Theme

To put it in its most simple terms, theme is what our story means. How it relates to reality and life in general. What it says about life and the infinite roster of issues, facets, challenges, and experiences it presents. Theme can be a broad topical arena, or it can be a specific stance on anything human beings experience in life.

4 - Story Structure

Each part of this four-part structural model is of roughly the same length, though you can cheat the first and fourth parts to a fewer number of pages, the deficit being made up for in the middle two parts.

Story Milestones

A reasonable length for a story is about sixty scenes (give or take, depending on length), some of which are strung together as sequences. So, the five major milestone scenes in Parts 2 and 3—Plot Point One, Pinch Point One, the Midpoint, Pinch Point Two, and the Second Plot Point—alone are tied into at least half of your entire story. Determine what your milestone scenes are, and you’ve basically structured your entire story.

Here are the story milestones you’ll need to conceive, construct, and execute in your story, no matter how you go about it:

The opening scene or sequence of your story;
A hooking moment in the first twenty pages (ten pages for a screenplay);
A setup inciting incident (optional, as the inciting incident can be the First Plot Point; this is a call the writer needs to make in planning the story);
The First Plot Point, at approximately 20 to 25 percent through the story;
The First Pinch Point (don’t worry, we’ll define that in chapter thirty-six) at about the three-eighths mark, or precisely in the middle of Part 2;
A context-shifting Midpoint, at precisely the middle of the story;
A Second Pinch Point, at about the five-eighths mark, or in the middle of Part 3;
The Second Plot Point, at about 75 percent through the story; The final resolution scene or sequence.

If you allow for three (or more) additional scenes that setup and surround these milestone moments, that’s at least thirty to forty scenes.

Overview of the four contextual parts of your story

Each of the four parts is comprised of about twelve to eighteen scenes, and eat up about 25 percent of the total length of the story.

Part 1: Setup - Scenes that introduce the hero, the context, and the stakes of the story, all before something huge happens (the First Plot Point) that really ignites the hero’s journey, need, and quest, which is what the story is really all about.

Part 2: Response to the hero’s new journey - Whatever his life course and need was before, it’s either put on hold or altered because of a new calling or need, as presented and defined by the First Plot Point.

Part 3: Attack on the problem - Whereas the hero has been reeling and reacting and fleeing and rebounding, at the Midpoint of the story he begins to fight back, to move forward to seek a solution.

Part 4: Resolution - Wherein the hero conquers his inner demons and becomes the catalyst for the resolution of conflict and the meeting of his goal.

Overview of the five milestone story points

the opening hook
the First Plot Point
the Midpoint (context-shifting transition)
the Second Plot Point
tne ending

Part 1 - the Setup

The first 20 to 25 percent of your story—the first of the four boxes—has a singular, critical mission: to set up everything that is to follow.

In a novel of three hundred to four hundred pages, this Part 1 setup should take fifty to one hundred pages or so, or the first twenty-five to thirty pages in a screenplay. The longer it is, the more foreshadowing and dramatic tension (unexplained or unfulfilled conflict, which doesn’t yet benefit from an illuminated purpose via the First Plot Point) is needed.

The mission is not to fully introduce the story’s main antagonistic force, but rather, to foreshadow it. If Part 1 does show antagonistic force at all, it shows only part of it, without explaining what it means. And it’s not to show the reader the big inciting incident in the first few pages—that’s called a hook, which is an important part of the setup.

The mission of Part 1 is to set up the plot by creating stakes, backstory, and character empathy, while perhaps foreshadowing the forthcoming conflict…. Basically, it’s to introduce the hero and show us what he has going on in his life … not for the remainder of the story, but before the arrival of the main antagonistic force (the primary conflict of the story) at the First Plot Point. That arrival often doesn’t even happen in Part 1—when it does you have an early inciting incident, which is fine, but it doesn’t relieve you of the obligation to insert a proper First Plot Point in the proper place—even if strongly foreshadowed or even partially revealed. Part 1 shouldn’t fully explain the conflict in terms of how it affects the protagonist until near the end of the first part.

With this caring aspect fully in place over the course of Part 1, it is at the end of Part 1 that the plot really gets its legs. That’s when the hero receives his marching orders and the antagonistic force fully comes into play. It’s where meaning is bestowed on the hero, the reader, or both. Before the end of Part 1, we aren’t sure what it all means, even if it’s scary or titillating. That moment is called the First Plot Point. It is often confused with what is called the inciting incident, which, as stated a moment ago, may or may not occur at the plot point. Sometimes an inciting incident can be rolled out earlier in Part 1, as part of the setup. When that happens—when something huge and dramatic and game-changing arrives significantly before the end of Part 1—this early “inciting incident” becomes part of the “setup” of the forthcoming plot point.

The purpose of Part 1 is to bring the character to that transition point through a series of scenes. Part 1 ends when the hero is made aware of the arrival of something new in his life, through decision, action, or off-stage news. It launches a new quest, a sudden need, a calling, a journey, which is often something very scary or challenging. It is at this moment that something comes forward to create an obstacle. There is now something the hero needs to accomplish or achieve.

The very end of Part 1—the arrival of the First Plot Point moment—is the first full view of the story’s primary antagonistic force. The bad guy, if you will. Full doesn’t mean that the true nature of the antagonistic force is by any means complete, but rather, it’s the first time the hero (and the reader) actually gets a notion of the nature and extent of the opposing force.

Conflict is the essence of effective fiction. And defining it is the primary mission of the First Plot Point, as set up by Part 1 of the story. The rest of the story, Parts 2 through 4, is about how the hero moves through this new quest, encountering an escalating series of obstacles and experiencing phases of growth and enlightenment along the way.

Five Missions for the Setup of your Story

The First Mission: Setting a Killer Hook

You should deliver a hook somewhere in your first three or four scenes. And when you do, you need to take care that it isn’t an improperly early Plot Point. A hook is just a hook, dramatic as it may be.

The hook isn’t the First Plot Point. Rather, it’s something that grabs the reader very early in the read and makes her want to stick around. It can be an inciting incident if it comes early and doesn’t fulfill the criteria of a First Plot Point. As a general rule, the earlier the hook, the better. What is this wondrous little tease called a hook? Doesn’t matter, as long as it’s visceral, sensual, emotionally resonant, and makes a promise of an intense and rewarding experience ahead. It can relate to the landscape of the story, rather than the story itself. Or not, that’s your call. It’s a simple something that asks a question the reader must now yearn to answer, or it causes an itch that demands to be scratched.

The Second Mission: Introducing Your Hero

Your hero should enter the story early. Long before the arrival of the First Plot Point. Your hero should appear somewhere in the first two scenes. Three at the most. We need to meet and watch the hero in this pre-plot point, pre-story quest stage. We should see and feel what he is doing, what he is pursuing, what his dreams are made of. In other words, we need to have a handle on what is at stake for him once his world shifts at the First Plot Point.

As your story opens the reader needs to drop in on the lives of its cast, especially the hero. See them in lousy jobs and complicated marriages, in failing health and with frustrated plans. See them wistfully dreaming of better days to come. See them giving up. Or maybe starting over.

Most of all, the reader needs to get a sense of what the hero’s inner demons are. His backstory, the worldviews and attitudes and prejudices and fears that define him and hold him back. What are his untapped strengths, his secrets? These are the things the hero must later, when squaring off with the antagonistic force, be forced to acknowledge and overcome in order to step up as the primary catalyst in the story’s conclusion.

The Third Mission: Establishing Stakes

It is critical that somewhere in the first part of the story the reader comes to understand what the hero has at stake. The reader may not understand this at the time, but when the plot turns and trouble arrives she feels the weight of those stakes in the mix.

The Fourth Mission: Foreshadowing Events to Come

Somewhere in Part 1 we must sense impending change. Often that change is a dark turn, but not always. But even if it’s the dawning of a wonderful opportunity, the First Plot Point identifies some opposition to the attainment of a goal that is impacted by the change. And we need to have felt it coming.

In Lone Sherfig’s film An Education, foreshadowing comes in the form of a peripheral character, whose behavior and subtle comments don’t quite fit the crowd and the environment, and which define the potential future of the heroine. The viewer assigns no meaning to this at first—unless he happens to be a writer, that is—but later, when the other shoe falls, this behavior lingers as a memory of the warning it could have been.

The definition of foreshadowing: anything that links to, or reveals a glimpse or hint of a forthcoming story point or issue of characterization, but that is not yet recognized by the reader as a salient story point itself at the moment of its revelation.

If the foreshadowing is supposed to be obvious, make sure you attach emotion to it. Example: A woman walks into the room. Later in the story she’ll seduce our hero, but for now she’s just there. Make her hot. Make the hero notice her, and make the reader notice him doing that.

If the foreshadowing is supposed to be subtle, allow it to pass without much notice.  Let’s say a friend of the hero is seen talking to this woman. Since you don’t want this foreshadowing to be on the nose, she’s not as overtly hot in this case. The hero notices, but only briefly, and only because his friend knows her and he doesn’t. He doesn’t give it that much thought, and neither does the reader. But when she shows up later, both the reader and the hero will remember that she was there, casing him out.

The Fifth Mission: Preparing for Launch

The last Part 1 goal: The pace and focus of the scenes need to unfold in context to, if not directly pointed at, the First Plot Point. A sense of foreboding or shifting winds needs to accelerate to the point at which everything changes—suddenly or subtly. Sometimes there are mechanics that need to be established, since in the real world big changes are usually preceded by little bits of business conspiring toward an unexpected result.

The First Plot Point

The purest definition of the First Plot Point is this: the moment when something enters the story in a manner that affects and alters the hero’s status and plans and beliefs, forcing him to take action in response, and thus defining the contextual nature of the hero’s experience from that point forward, now with tangible stakes and obvious opposition in place.

The definition of the First Plot Point is the moment of change in the story that defines the hero’s quest and need going forward, and does so in the face of an antagonistic force that the reader suddenly understands to an extent that empathy and emotion are evoked, while creating obstacles to the hero’s quest, and thus creating stakes that depend on the hero’s ability to overcome those obstacles.

The reader always meets the protagonist early in Part 1, dropping into his life to see where he is and where he’s going. What his agenda is, his inner demons, his dreams, his worldview. She comes to understand what the hero has at stake in his life. When the First Plot Point arrives, all of this is suddenly up for grabs. If the antagonistic force was already in the story during Part 1, something happens at the First Plot Point that makes it darker, more urgent, or more deadly, and ultimately more meaningful and frightening and consequential, thus forcing the hero to take action. Because something important to the hero is now in jeopardy, and we know what it is.

…the hero, upon reaching the First Plot Point, still has a new quest and need, something the reader can empathize with and root for, and in the face of visible obstacles (antagonistic force or forces) that seek other outcomes.

What is the First Plot Point in your story? Does it meet the criteria? Does it appear in the right place? Does it define and shift the need and quest of the hero from that point forward? Does it create and clarify stakes? Does it imply consequences that will stem from both the hero’s success and failure? Does it create sudden risk and opposition that seemingly weren’t there moments before?

Part 2 - the Response

Part 2 comprises roughly the next one hundred pages of your novel—which means, there’s an entire contextual infrastructure to it….

Part 2 is the hero’s response to the introduction of this new situation, as represented by the conflict itself. It’s too early to have him attack the problem. Part 2 is about a reaction, through action, decision, or indecision, to the antagonistic force, and the launch of a new quest to fulfill a newly defined need.

In Part 2 the hero is running, hiding, analyzing, observing, recalculating, planning, recruiting, or anything else required before moving forward. If you have your hero being too heroic here, being brilliant, already knocking heads with the bad guys (or some other dark force), it’s too early. You’re in violation of structural principles if that’s the case.

The goal could be survival, finding love, getting away from love gone bad, acquiring wealth, healing, attaining justice, stopping or catching the bad guys, preventing disaster, escaping danger, saving someone, saving the entire world, or anything else from the realm of human experience and dreams. But whatever the hero needs, there must be something opposing the hero’s quest to achieve it. No opposition, no story.

What would you do, in real life, if everything changed? If someone was out to get you? If the world were about to crash around you? If your dream shot was suddenly within reach? Would you immediately jump in and try to seize the day? Would you be the hero right off the bat? Would you make the best decision the first time out? Would you try to make it all go away overnight? Probably not. No, first and foremost you’d seek shelter, answers, advice. You’d run. You’d hide. You’d shield yourself and those you love from danger. Seek information. You’d find a safe haven to take stock of what just happened. Explore options. Regroup. That’s what Part 2 of your story is all about.

You have twelve to fifteen scenes or scene-sequences to construct over the course of Part 2. All of them come from within a context of response. If you’re tempted to have the hero start saving the day, back off—it’s too early for that. You can allow him to try, but it can’t work. Not yet. It’s too early.  If he does try, he must learn something from that failure. The antagonist seems to only be growing stronger, getting closer. The hero faces his own shortcomings—his inner demon—during this first failed Part 2 effort to bring about a solution. What he learns from that attempt, about both himself and the antagonistic force, will be applied to his next attempt to fight back in Part 3.

See below for pinchpoints - The First Pinch Point comes squarely in the middle of Part 2. The second squarely in the middle of Part 3. The three-eighths and five-eighths marks of the story, respectively.

Pinch Points

Definition of a pinch point: An example, or a reminder, of the nature and implications of the antagonistic force, that is not filtered by the hero’s experience. The reader sees for herself in a direct form.

The First Pinch Point comes squarely in the middle of Part 2. The second squarely in the middle of Part 3. The three-eighths and five-eighths marks of the story, respectively.

That antagonistic force defines the nature of the hero’s ensuing need, quest or journey. It needs to remain, at least contextually, front and center in the story at all times after Part 1.

But sometimes context isn’t enough. The reader needs to see that ominous force in its purest, most dangerous and intimidating form. Or, if it isn’t dangerous and intimidating, then at least the reader needs to feel it for herself, rather than through the eyes of the hero. The reader needs a reminder of the danger, the stakes and the implication, the unseen monster we know is waiting under the bed.

After the First Plot Point, the obstacle to the hero’s quest is always there. As the hero begins responding to his new quest, the antagonistic force tends to drop into the background. But sooner or later the reader—if not the hero— needs to meet that antagonist again, to look in its eyes and understand what it wants and the power of that desire. That moment is called a pinch point.

The Midpoint

Definition of the Midpoint: new information that enters the story squarely in the middle of it that changes the contextual experience and understanding of either the reader or the hero, or both.

In other words, the curtain parts. The character or the reader suddenly knows that which wasn’t known before. This new knowledge can pertain to previously existing yet hidden information, or completely new information. That’s your call. Either way, the sudden injection of this new awareness changes the context of the story, and thus the reading experience. New weight and dramatic tension has been added.

It’s almost impossible to change context for the hero and not the reader, but changing it for the reader before it changes for the hero is a great way to really crank the tension in your story. Either way, the Midpoint kicks your story into a higher gear.

Part 3 - the Attack

In Part 3, though, the hero begins to try to fix things. That’s the context of this quartile—to become proactive and downright courageous and ingenious in the quest to attain the goal. Which, by the way, continues to evolve, get stronger and more adaptive to the sudden heroics. It is here where the hero begins to attack the obstacles before him. The hero starts to conquer inner demons and begin doing things a little differently than before, or at least come to understand how they have been standing in his own way. That the hero needs to change if he is to succeed. In Part 3 the hero summons courage and applies creative thinking. He leads. He moves forward.

Of course, this can’t happen in a vacuum. Something—new information, new awareness—needs to enter the story to serve as a catalyst for the hero’s evolution from the wanderer/responder in Part 2 toward more proactive, attacking warrior ways. That element takes place at the Midpoint milestone—the wall between Part 2 and Part 3—and the story moves forward and shifts because of it.

While Part 2 was about the hero’s response to the First Plot Point, Part 3 is a full-on proactive attack to solve the problem at hand. It’s a pretty simple mission, really, but one with a few subtleties that empower it. Most notably, the information conveyed at the Midpoint milestone. You may already have shown the hero attempting to do something proactive back in Part 2. In fact, that’s not a bad way to create momentum and tension—taking a swing at whatever is attacking you would be part of a rational response. But none of that worked very well back in Part 2, did it? At least it shouldn’t have. In fact, it mainly showed how committed and powerful and cunning and sinister and complex the antagonistic force in your story really is. The tension goes up because the reader knows the hero is going to have to do better, to summon much more courage and force, to smack down the bad guy who stands in his way.

Back in Part 1 you established some inner dialogue or programming for the hero that holds him back, and we’ve seen that weak link in play as a factor in whatever influenced or foiled the response efforts in Part 2. But a good hero sees and acknowledges his own flaws, and here in Part 3 he begins to adjust and accommodate. He gets over himself in order to do what he must to reach his goal. As in Part 2, these twelve to fifteen Part 3 proactive attack scenes—beginning at the Midpoint and leading into the Second Plot Point, which arrives at about the 75 percent mark—must once again show the reader, front and center, what stands in the hero’s way. And that flash of opposition should be pure and dramatic.  In fact, you need to devote an entire scene to it.

See above for pinchpoints - The First Pinch Point comes squarely in the middle of Part 2. The second squarely in the middle of Part 3. The three-eighths and five-eighths marks of the story, respectively.

And then, the final piece of the puzzle arrives at the end of Part 3—the Second Plot Point (see chapter thirty-seven). And everything changes again. The Part 4 chase is on.

The Second Plot Point

Definition of the Second Plot Point: the final injection of new information into the story, after which no new expository information may enter the story other than the hero’s actions, and which puts a final piece of narrative information in play that gives the hero everything she needs to become the primary catalyst in the story’s conclusion.

The Second Plot Point separates Part 3 from Part 4 at about 75 percent of the way through the story. Which means the hero transitions here from an attacking warrior to a hell-bent, selfless, heroic, and even martyr-like champion of all that is good. Or at least necessary in terms of solving the inherent dramatic problem at hand.

Part 4 - the Resolution

Part 4 is the beginning of the end of the story. You have ten to twelve scenes to wrap it up, using your Second Plot Point as the springboard for those sequences. That moment can be difficult to describe, even generically, because it can be just about anything.

The thing to remember about Part 4 is that no new information can enter the story here, from the Second Plot Point on. Everything the hero needs to know, to work with, or to work alongside (such as another character or resource) needs to have already been put in play.

Here’s a cardinal rule: The hero needs to be the primary catalyst in the resolution of the story. The hero needs to be heroic. There should be no rescuing of the hero, and the hero should never be a bit-player or an observer of the story’s resolution. He is smack in the middle of the resolution, making it happen. Cardinal rules do get broken, but don’t be seduced by exceptions written by Pulitzer Prize winners.

The hero should demonstrate that he has conquered the inner demons that have stood in his way in the past. The emerging victory may have begun in Part 3, but it’s put into use by the hero in Part 4. Usually Part 3 shows the inner demon trying for one last moment of supremacy over the psyche of the hero, but this becomes the point at which the hero understands what must be done differently moving forward, and then demonstrates that this has been learned during the Part 4 denouement.

Overall questions about your story

Set 1

What is the conceptual hook/appeal of your story?
Can it be expressed as a “what if?” question? Can you answer that question?
Does your initial “what if?” question immediately inspire subsequent “what if?” questions that begin to suggest plot points and story segments?

Set 2

What is the theme of your story?
Is your intention to sell a point of view, or merely explore it?
Does you story inspire multiple themes?

Set 3

How does your story open?
Is there an immediate hook?
What is the hero doing in his life before the First Plot Point?
What stakes are established prior to the First Plot Point?
What is your character’s backstory?
What inner demons show up here that will come to bear on the hero later in the story?
What is foreshadowed prior to the First Plot Point?

Set 4

What is the First Plot Point in your story?
Is it located properly within the story sequence?
How does it change the hero’s agenda going forward?
What is the nature of the hero’s new need/quest?
What is at stake relative to meeting that need?
What opposes the hero in meeting that need?
What does the antagonistic force have at stake?
Why will the reader empathize with the hero at this point?
How does the hero respond to the antagonistic force?

Set 5

What is the Midpoint contextual shift/twist in your story?
How does it part the curtain of superior knowledge … for the hero … and for the reader?
How does this shift the context of the story? How does this pump up dramatic tension and pace?
How does your hero begin to successfully pursue or attack his need/quest?
How does the antagonistic force respond to this attack?
How do the hero’s inner demons come to bear on this attack?
What is the all-is-lost lull just prior to the Second Plot Point?

Set 6

What is the Second Plot Point in your story?
How does this event change or affect the hero’s proactive role?
How does your hero become the primary catalyst for the successful resolution of the central problem or issue in this story?
How does that role meet the hero’s need and fulfill the quest?
How does the hero demonstrate the conquering of inner demons?
How are the stakes of the story paid off? Who wins, and what does he win? Who loses, and what does he lose?
What will be the reader’s emotional experience as the story comes to its conclusion?

Six important words about your story

Compelling: Will anyone care about your story? Is there a hook, a draw? Is there inherent emotional and intellectual appeal? What question is your story posing to the reader, and is the answer compelling enough for anyone to care?

Hero: Yeah, you know you need a protagonist, blah blah blah. But is your lead character actually heroic? In what way? Or is the word hero a label rather than an adjective? Does the reader empathize with what he needs to do? What is at stake for him? What does he need to conquer, both internally and externally, to reach his goal? Why does the reader care about that goal? What is heroic about the hero’s ways and the means of getting done what must be done in your story?

Conflict: Nobody wants to read about a walk in the park. Really, they don’t. What opposes your hero’s quest? What does this conflicting force—usually a bad guy, a villain, but not always—want or need? What is at stake for him or it? Most importantly, how does this conflict exert the force of dramatic tension into the story line, into each and every scene in the story?

Context: The most overlooked and taken-for-granted nuance in storytelling. What is the contextual subtext at any given moment in your story? How is the past influencing the moment at hand? How is the inherent conflict of the story exerting context into the moment at hand? What forces influence the characters as they speak, take action, make decisions? What is the thematic context of the overall story, and how does it manifest in the moment at hand? This is truly advanced stuff. Master it and you’ll find yourself on a bookshelf somewhere. Context and dramatic tension—often synonymous, but not always—are what makes your scenes work.

Architecture: That sound you hear is me once again beating this drum. Does your story unfold with a proper setup? With the properly placed and paced revelation of the hero’s new quest and need following that setup? Has the context of the hero’s new journey, in a personal sense, been clearly established? How does it affect what is said and done going forward? Are there shifts and surprises, valleys and peaks, both in terms of narrative exposition and dramatic tension?

Resolution: Does the end of your story deliver an emotional payload to the reader? Does it make sense? Will it linger once the final page has been turned? A killer resolution forgives the sins of softness in the story, but only if the hero is empathetic, the conceptual heart of the story rich and compelling, the thematic gift of the story penetrating, and the technical execution of the story optimized to make your ending the best it can be.

5 - Scene Execution

…for the most part a screenplay or a novel consists of somewhere between forty and seventy scenes, each of them a one-act play with a beginning, a middle, and an ending. An ending that, in the case of a screenplay or a novel (as opposed to a true one-act play), thrusts the reader forward into the subsequent scene with an escalating level of tension, logic, and exposition.

A scene has a beginning, a middle, and an ending, yet you don’t necessarily have to show the reader all of them. Rather, a scene should have an outcome, and that outcome is a carefully conceived and designed evolution of the story moving toward a higher, further goal. And yet, it is capable of delivering its own punch and vicarious ride.

A scene is a unit of dramatic action or exposition (which includes narrative review, overview, or connective tissue) that stands alone in location and time. If you change location or time—such as skipping ahead an hour, or to the next day, or even going backward in time—it’s a new scene. Even if you blend that into what appears to be a seamless narrative.

Because every scene needs to deliver a piece of story information, also known as exposition. A scene that merely describes a place, or even something about a particular character, yet nothing really ever happens in the scene—no decision, no information, no action, no change or forward motion to the story whatsoever—the scene violates one of the most basic and empowering of storytelling principles. Every scene has a mission to accomplish. Or it should have. And that mission—in addition to lovely descriptive language about setting and place—is to move the story forward. Not to take a snapshot of it.

Optimally, each scene should contain only one such piece of exposition. The mission of each scene is to deliver a single, salient, important piece of story to the reader.

We don’t always need to see the car pull up, see the hero ring the doorbell, see his fiancée answer, see them chatting awkwardly over drinks … before he dumps her. All that stuff is obvious and void of drama or interest. Just cut to the couch and let the tears—and possibly the airborne china—commence.

The Cut-and-Thrust Technique

…there is one scene-specific thing you can do that makes it tougher to close the cover and turn off the light. You need to write scenes that propel the reader into the next scene with a sense of urgency and anticipation. Which means you need to end your scenes with a question—figuratively speaking—that demands an answer.

This is called the cut-and-thrust technique (I first heard this from my agent, and to be honest I’m not sure where it originated). It involves the final paragraph in a given scene or chapter, sometimes the final line itself. It is a moment of surprise, where something new is introduced, something unexpected and compelling. That moment may or may not be the conclusion (or resolution) of the scene, but it virtually demands that the reader keep going, if nothing else than to find out what it means and what happens.

Check list for your scenes

What is the mission of your scene?
What is the primary piece of story exposition that the reader will receive in this scene?
Does that piece of expository information move the story forward? How?
Does the new information require any foreshadowing or setup from prior scenes?
What is the precise moment—in action, dialogue, or other narrative context—at which this information will be exposed in the scene?
What is the latest moment you can enter this scene without compromising either the information itself or the potential for a dramatic experience that becomes the vehicle for that delivery?
Is your plan for the scene designed like a short story, with its own tension and stakes and flow?
What is the reader experiencing—feeling, understanding, clarifying, or other emotion—as the scene unfolds?
What is the level of anticipation during the scene, as paid off by the moment when the morsel of story exposition is exposed? Or, if it’s a deliberate surprise, how have you tricked or set up the reader to make that moment as jarring as possible?
How are you demonstrating character in the scene? Is characterization driving exposition (in other words, is the mission of the scene to show the reader something about the character), or is exposition driving character (how the character reacts and handles the news)?
Is the scene efficient? Does it drive gracefully and fluidly toward its payoff moment (the mission)? Or does it mark time needlessly?
Does the mission of the scene stick close to the linear spine of the story line? Or is it a side trip that an editor might ask, “What’s this have to do with this story?” even though you originally believed it to be interesting? (Note: interesting isn’t the point … storytelling momentum and relevance is.)
Does your scene end with a cut and thrust? Does that transition align with the mission and content of the next scene? Is the transition in keeping with how you’ve established earlier transitions?
If you have more than a single scene within a chapter, have you separated them with a skipped line of white space? If not, have you transitioned from one scene to the next in a manner that is clear and smooth?
Does your scene open with something clever, poignant, surprising, or intrinsically interesting? Have you avoided redundant or unnecessary descriptions of setting, place, character appearance, or other issues of ambiance?

6 - Writing Voice

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