Story Structure: The Key to Successful Fiction (Red Sneaker Writers Series #1)

by William Bernhardt

you omit the introduction, the exposition, the excessive description, the musing aftermath—and focus on the c...

complication, the clincher—and t...

Some writing instructors, particularly those teaching screenplays, use the term “beat.” The beat is an element even smaller than the scene, which I guess makes it the subatomic particle of stories. The quarks, if you will. Every scene should have many beats. What are they?

#writing

One of the most difficult lessons for some writers is that dialogue can’t just be two people chatting to no particular purpose (like so much real-life conversation).

.

Readers prefer to be lodged in one character’s head, at least most of the time. You can break away from that viewpoint on occasion,

When forced to work within a strict framework the imagination is taxed to its utmost—and will produce its richest ideas. Given total freedom the work is likely to sprawl. T S Eliot

#writing contests, word limits,

When you actually write the book, you will almost certainly get new and different, usually better, ideas. The further you go in the book, the more you will likely digress from the outline. Does that mean outlining was a waste of time? Definitely not. You might never have gotten to this advanced place in your thinking about the book if you didn’t have the outline to build from.

No matter how many changes you make to it later, you will do better work—and probably work more quickly—if you take the time to outline.

computer programs that will create virtual index cards, even a virtual bulletin board to pin them upon. And I’m sure there are some legitimate reasons for doing so, even if I can’t imagine what they would be when you can get a pack of index cards at Wal-Mart for about seventy-nine cents. But whatever. Index cards

What needs to happen first so that readers can fully appreciate the inciting incident and why it has such a devastating impact on the protagonist? Do you need to establish the character’s normal routine, relationships, or world?

To “set something up” means to give the reader essential foreknowledge. That information may not seem important at the time (and you probably want it that way), but it will be important later. To pay it off means to create a subsequent scene in which that knowledge becomes important.

The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe. Gustave Flaubert

In the twentieth century, we saw much experimentation with traditional forms. But in most cases, for traditional books, and especially for beginning writers, the classic storytelling mode is the best.

Stream of consciousness was interesting, but ultimately resulted in only two novels I would call successful (To the Lighthouse and The Sound and the Fury) and Faulkner himself considered The Sound and the Fury a failure.

And only then, after mastering the traditional forms, did he write Ulysses, which he spent about twenty years messing about with.

Most readers believe—or want to believe—that life teaches lessons, that experiences have a beginning, middle, and definitive end, that conflicts can be resolved, that they are the protagonists of their own lives, that they have free will to make positive decisions, that there is a relationship between cause and effect, and that stuff happens for a reason. And all these beliefs are reinforced every time someone tells a story.

As flight is to birds and swimming is to fish, so story is to humanity.

genre books or literary books (if indeed that distinction has any meaning in the twenty-first century).

The only good reason to write is because you’ve got a story and you want to tell it more than you want anything else in the world. Every time you write, whether you are conscious of it or not, you reveal a little about yourself, how you view the world, and what you think matters. Every time you create a story (even a fantasy) you are basically saying, This is something I believe about this world we live in. And I want to share it with you. There

Here in America, we have little patience for victims, wah-babies, handwringers.

We like people who take charge of their lives. We like a story to end with the lead character in a better place.

You could conceivably end with an open climax. I don’t mean leaving some events unresolved because you’re hoping for a sequel or perceive your book as the first in a nontology. I’m talking about deliberately leaving some questions unanswered or some conflicts unresolved because you

“literary thriller” (a real slap in the face to writers of real thrillers, i.e., thrillers that actually thrill)

in real life mysteries are often not resolved and we never know who did what. These books might as well be shipped out from the printer with LOSER stamped across the cover. They are guaranteed to disappoint. They are not nearly as clever or sophisticated as they think (which do you think is harder—bringing a story to a satisfying conclusion or leaving all the threads dangling?). And worse, they are founded on a mistaken premise—the idea that novels are supposed to be like real life.

Novels are not real life, nor are they supposed to be. Granted, most novels should have verisimilitude, meaning they should seem life-like. If impossible things start happening, and this isn’t a science fiction story, you are likely to lose some readers.

if readers merely sought representations of real life, they would not read novels. They would read newspapers or (God forbid) watch the television news all day long. Readers turn to novels because they are looking for something better than real life, something more satisfying, more ...

good novel should provide the sense of closure that often seems...

a good story should have an ending that delivers a cathartic or vicarious experience of value to the reader. A moment of insight or epiphany. Sympathetic characters or understandable motives. A chance to see the world in a new light or to learn something they did not know before.

Even if you decide to tamper with the elements of traditional storytelling, that does not mean that you should throw structure out the window.

You’re much more likely to get away with the experimentation if you can still maintain the essential elements: the inciting incident, the turning points, the climax,

Start with something that captures the reader’s interest. Doesn’t have to be a shotgun blast. Just seize their attention. Pose unanswered questions. No weather reports. No landscape. No exposition. No backstory. No infodumps.

“Atlas Malone saw the angel again, this time down by the horse chestnut tree.” Jon Cohen, The Man in the Window

Hale, Constance. Sin and Syntax: How to Create Wickedly Effective Prose. New York: Broadway Books, 2001.

Bernhardt founded the Red Sneaker Writing Center in 2005, hosting writing workshops and small-group seminars and becoming one of the most in-demand writing instructors in the nation. His