Structuring your story

We have threads for everything, except, apparently, Structure.

How are people structuring their plots?

I think I've been using the 'snowflake' method without realising.

The way this is illustrated was by 'fractal stars': Take a 6 pointed star - thats the 'top level' - each point on the star is a major plot point.

On each of these points add another 6 pointed star, these points are the things that define the major points

and so on...

If this was drawn you end up with a snowflake. Obviously a book wouldn't, not each of the points needs equal numbers of sub points

So (off the top of my head) Casino Royale is WARNING PLOT FOLLOWING- I am not going to spoiler it out.

Bombers
Le Chiffre
Betrayal

Bombers
-Who
-Target
-Who pays
Le Chiffre
-What does he need
-How can we get to him
Betrayal
-Where is the money
-Why

Bombers
-Who
- - First bomber
-Target
- - Immediate Target
-Who pays
- - Follow the trail
And so on.

I've been trying to get the written equivalent of Pachelbel's Canon in D

If you listen to it the opening 'theme' repeat ?twice? (I know what I like, but musically I'm very poor)// Then these repeat under a new layer, and this combo then repeats for another cycle.// Then a 3rd layer is added, which is an evolution of the first two.// The 4th evolves these, and so on

It sounds to me like each layer is an evolution of the previous, but laid on top of the simpler predecessors.

Fractal - each bit becomes 'twiddly', and the twiddly bits have twiddly bits, and so on. But even at the 3:10mark you can hear the original simple theme in the convolution that it has become.

Does that make sense - That is what I'm trying to achieve: Each part of the story, each revelation is there already, it is just a more described part.

Part of the way I do this is by tying things together with repeating phrases. Everything links forward or backwards. If I go with the happy ending the book will end with a passage that reflects something that happened 110k words before, almost word for word (its actually two earlier bits put together, but those two bits are the same thing from 2 points of view).

This is the wonder of modern word processors - you can insert lines simply: Chekov devices are easily retconned in

As to writing I unwittingly 'snowflaked' - I knew the middle, it was originally going to be a short erotic story but I got interested in 'how they got here, where are they going'. This meant I wrote the start 10k works, and the final chapter. So I had my start, my waypoint and my destination A -> M -> Z

Between A and M is H. Wrote that.

How did they get from A to H, and H to M? Wrote that, (ie that is the 3rd level, the 3rd fractals - E and J)

Each intervening point was more detailed, adding more 'twiddly bits', more motivations.

Back to Canon in D - The bit from M - Z is using bits from the first half, but in detailed: incidents in the first half are called back and parallel, with extra motivation on top.

As I did this I found I had already written, for instance, A->C in the start, but realised it needed a B in there.

As I closed out the story, I realised I needed a reason for 'S' - effectively a third level fractal (If Z is 1st level). A friend gave me a simple 2 line suggestion. That became a whole chapter (?P), PLUS made sense of level 2 point W, which leads to the finale at Z. The wonder of 'electronic ink' meant that I could amend the stuff around to make sure that P fitted, without a time consuming retype.

This retyping is important to me, because I often learn about characters as I write, so even a tightly plotted story would be easily thrown, because once they start speaking in their own voices - I suffer I Just Write the Thing, often 'Because the Characters Say So'

(This sounds stupid to non-writers, but I started a paragraph and the lead character made a revelation I KNEW NOTHING ABOUT. I wrote what he was saying as the rough draft, then went back and tidied it up afterwards. I was able to drop hits into earlier chapters because its a word processor. I also told him never to do that again, but he just shrugged.)

Hope all that made sense.

So- How do structure? Not just do you tightly plot before writing, but how do you hit the major 'set pieces'? Do you know what they are before you start plotting, or is it a matter of Start at the beginning, and go on until you reach the end, when you stop?

edited 9th Mar '13 4:24:07 PM by LastHussar

Writing is like a spontaneous road trip. I know where I'm starting, and I know where I want to end up, but I might get very, very sidetracked between those two points, even though there might be a list of places I want to hit on the way.

Do you forget to turn left at Albuquerque?

^^ I'm much the same way. I know where I roughly begin and I know where I roughly end but I can do*

My "structuring" is often incredibly how shall we say fractured. I'll follow a path to write it but for things in it I'll start building one element then before I know it I'm building elaborate backstories and histories and technologies related to that one element and beyond even that. And I'm (usually) not even mentioning any of that!

It's massively helped my Worldbuilding skill but not my productivity in prose.

For the general plot of my novel ideas, I think of four set-pieces:

• 1st Act Climax: The event that truly gets things rolling for the protagonists, after some set-up. For me, it's usually a confrontation of some sorts.
• Mid-point: Or the Part I climax, where another major event shifts the plot's direction.
• The Darkest Hour: A two-parter. Protagonist suffers huge set-back, has a theoretical death, and wallows around before snapping out of it.
• Climax: Self-explanatory.

I based this loose structure out of common story theory. For example, Oz the Great and Powerful has these set-pieces.

edited 9th Mar '13 7:09:03 PM by chihuahua0

I agree with the "roadtrip" analogy. I structure most of the plot out, but a few things I like to leave to improvisation on purpose, since I sometimes have better ideas as I am writing than what I had originally planned.

Basically, Xanatos Speed Chess in the form of writing.

When I'm developing the story, I outline the characters and the setting first, alongside the kind of story I'm telling. I spend a while thinking each detail of their personality and backstory and what their purpose here is. This has the fortunate side-affect of giving me a rich universe and characters to introduce from square one, but at the same time, it can make me lose focus on what I want to tell [like, say, becoming more interested in my universe's backstory than anything else].

Another drawback is that I essentially can't write short stories. I'll keep expanding the universe and characters in mind endlessly. It never stops.

Anyway, so then I get to the details, the specifics of the story I seek to write.

Add me to the "road trip" school of thought, although lately I've been trying to outline things a little better before I actually start writing. I don't always try to follow the outline strictly, though, at least when I'm in the middle of writing and the scene starts to take on a life of its own. (To use another travel analogy: I try to follow the GPS's instructions, but if I end up going off the route, I'll let it recalculate a new route instead of just turning around. And if I get lost, well, there's probably something interesting out there.^note I'd probably be a horrible navigator on a real road trip.)

The annoying thing is, since I tend to come up with the characters before the general plot, I typically end up thinking up a lot of one-shot scenes that I know probably won't actually fit into the final story, and even when I do start thinking about the specifics of the plot, I don't always think in chronological order — which means I often have to fit together the scenes into an elaborate jigsaw where all the pieces have to be trimmed just a little bit in order to actually go together.

I like the music Idea I was thinking of something just like that the other day.

Anyway with my current plot I have the main story line and other story lines happening parallel and at about the same time period. These parallel plots intersect each other once in a while, and then go back on their separate ways. I have tons of flashbacks that usually reveal a bit about the character. They have a tendency to get brought up when something relevant to their past is about happen and they are asleep/unconscious or whatever. It seems a bit cliche though so I've been working on the flashback placement.

I've tried a lot of methods. Here is my current one.

I come up with an idea and write little drabbles and such, but let it simmer for a long while. Once I have some characters and the plot, I find the theme. Once I have that, I can really start writing.

Once I figure out the theme and key scenes I start writing, keeping a separate notebook with plot details and character bios. I think up scenes throughout the book I want and then write to connect them. It's a loosely planned road trip.

WHO does WHAT, WHY and TO WHAT EFFECT? That's my basic plot structure in a nutshell.

Fiddler uses drugs to upset Dancer, causing Dancer to leave him.

That's one scene, probably the first or second one.

I used to be a seat-of-the-pants writer, but after several botched novels I switched to the snowflake method. I finished step 8 quite recently, and I think I'm going to do the final two steps in parallel.

edited 12th Mar '13 2:28:11 AM by subspace5000

I have no idea what I'm doing at least 100% of the time when writing.