This guest post is by J.E. Fishman.
A
few years ago, on the West Side of Manhattan, a rusting hulk of elevated
railroad tracks metamorphosed into a promenade called High Line Park. Its
transformation soon turned the Meatpacking District, through which it passes,
into one of the hottest neighborhoods in New York.
If
you go visit the park, you’ll see a relatively new hotel called The Standard, a
modernist glass and steel structure that straddles the High Line, supported on
one side by a concrete pillar with the approximate circumference of a
tractor-trailer. That may sound like a big piece of concrete until you consider
that it holds up half a building of 18 stories.
These
days we’re so accustomed to seeing buildings defy gravity that most people
stroll beneath the hotel without giving it a second thought. What if I told
you, however, that the developers of The Standard put a great deal of thought
into the furniture inside but built the superstructure without bothering to
calculate whether that concrete pillar could support the building’s weight? You
wouldn’t believe me, would you? You’d rightly say that the building would’ve
fallen down before the first customer had a chance to approach the front desk.
What
do buildings have to do with books?
We
all know that, thanks to architects, buildings are works of art. Some may
be more artsy than others, but I’d venture to say no architect ever set
out to design a building that doesn’t work. Nor, of course, does any painter or
sculptor or filmmaker or playwright or poet or musical composer or novelist set
out to fail.
Yet
it’s also worth noting that all works of art are also buildings. I mean that
metaphorically, in the sense that they’re all built things. But I also mean it
quite literally, in the sense that every work of art has a structure or
framework.
Developers
can’t construct high-rises without first proving the structure will hold, but
that’s because lives would be at stake. The writing of a novel, by contrast,
remains highly unregulated, despite the risk that untold readers might find
themselves bored to death beneath its rubble.
It
should go without saying that the vast majority of successful stories—especially those in longer form—hang on an invisible framework we often
call “structure.”
Good
editors will talk about structure. Yet, mysteriously, it is rarely discussed in
writing workshops. In fact, I’ve seen the psychological makeup of characters
talked about ad infinitum in writing workshops when, in fact, the story’s deepest
flaw was structural. Without structure, the story teeters, ever in danger of
falling apart.
As
with any element of storytelling, of course, it’s worth issuing the disclaimer
that there are no hard and fast rules. But if you keep in mind these five
elements of story structure, you’re more likely to succeed than you’d be if you
ignored them.
1. Establish normal.
A
story is about something that happens—a course of events. That which happens
is a change from normal, otherwise it wouldn’t be a “happening.” So the
author’s first job is to establish “normal” in the life of your characters.
Keep
in mind we’re not necessarily talking about normalcy as in the average life of
an average human being. More to the point, we’re establishing expectations for
your protagonist. If she’s a corporate lawyer, for example, she expects to go
to the office most days. If he’s a kidnapped child locked in a cellar, he
expects not to be let out.
When
the lawyer is kept from the office, something happens. When the kidnapped
child finds his way out of the basement, something happens.
We
need to establish normal so the reader will know when the character’s life has
departed from equilibrium. Then the action begins.
2. Disrupt it.
That
departure from normal is the disruption. The disruption is the thing that
happens—sometimes called the “precipitating event”—that sets the plot in
motion. By definition it’s a departure from the character’s normal life, even,
as noted above, if the character’s normal is not a normal person’s equilibrium.
The
disruption can occur in the first paragraph or it can come later, but if it
comes too late, the reader will have tuned out or stopped caring. So it’s best
to disrupt things as soon as you’re satisfied that you gave the reader enough
information to understand your protagonist’s normal state.
In
any case, the disruption forces a choice on the protagonist—a choice followed
by other forced choices.
3. Create turning points.
Good
plots get increasingly complicated. Mostly they do so by having something or
someone resist what the character wants—what we often call “dramatic
tension.” But, as a corollary, complications also ensue when we establish an
expectation and then defy it in a way that does not fully resolve the protagonist’s
dilemma.
As
most writers know, we call the big steps “turning points.” They are just that;
they take the action in another direction. They do so when a step toward
resolution solves one problem—but only by creating a more difficult one. Thus,
just when we think the protagonist draws close to satisfying his need, another
obstacle appears and the tension ratchets up.
There
can be any number of small turning points, but in the three-act structure that
prevails today, there generally are three big ones. They come at the end of each
act, and the third one leads to resolution of the protagonist’s dilemma.
4. Strive for character development.
There
are many successful novels in which the protagonist doesn’t
appreciably change. In fact, some people believe the protagonist of a
genre series should never change, but I’m not of that school. In my
opinion, the difference between character development in the protagonist of a
series versus a stand-alone novel is only the pace of change.
Novels
that resonate often feature protagonists who learn something about themselves
in the course of the story. They can learn something big or they can learn
something small (or a series of small things). They can have a dramatic
epiphany, or the insight can hit them subtly.
The
broader point is that readers find it more satisfying when the protagonist
learns something about his or her own character and employs what he has learned
to satisfy the plot dilemma.
But
if he learns these things too soon, the book doesn’t work structurally.
In
The Sun Also Rises, someone asks a character how he went bankrupt, and
he replies, “Slowly, and then all at once.” This is how character development
often happens because it’s how human beings naturally learn who they are, deep
inside. In any case, when it comes at the right pace, the reader leaves
satisfied. When it comes too quickly, the reader feels ripped off.
5. Restore order.
In
those old Laurel and Hardy movies, Oliver Hardy would inevitably say, “Well, here’s
another nice mess you’ve gotten me into.” But in the end, however improbably,
those two miscreants always got out of the mess and lived to see another day.
Having
established normal, disrupted it, and created a fine mess for your characters,
you must let the reader know what the new normal will be. It can be the same as
the old normal—as often happens in a police procedural, for example—or it
can be a changed but stable state. Regardless, it must be communicated, or the
reader will likely close the book dissatisfied.
There
are many other elements to novel writing, of course. Another part of your job,
for example, will be to make the work beautiful. But that requires following the
rules of structure to ensure that the building holds up.
Tell me your opinion: Does your work-in-progress contain all five of these elements of story structure?
