Writing Update
Scenes Re-Arranged: 2
New Scenes Arranged: 12
Total Scenes: 78
Yesterday was a great day for scene arrangement. With the scene I had composed over the weekend, I was able to bang out a ton of scenes that brought a new character into the group. I’m really happy with them and am excited to keep going.
Reading Update
Vengeful: 46%
Nothing to see here, folks.
Personal Update
As I said yesterday, my wife and I just celebrated our one-year wedding anniversary. It wasn’t the most exciting day, but we exchanged gifts and reveled in our love by remembering our wedding day. It was wonderful.
Discussion Topic
Detecting Story Structure
January 2016, I dove into learning story structure hardcore. My book was a mess of 500 pages with an in media res beginning and an abrupt ending. It needed a molecular-level rework and I was clueless how to achieve that. I don’t remember how I found K.M. Weiland’s site or books, but I dove in. I read Outlining Your Novel and just when I got to the part I thought I needed, I found out that the meat of it was in Structuring Your Novel, so I bought and read that. I read the 12 Key Pillars of Story Structure by C.S. Lakin. I took oodles of notes. Then Weiland released Creating Character Arcs and I devoured that.
Then I sat down and started figuring out the major story beats, the turning points that direct the character, the reader, and the novel (what I now call a book’s bones). Then I started shoehorning in every other scene I had. I also reworked Meibor from the ground up. I knew him, but the story I’d written for him, well, it wasn’t his.
Next thing you know, Dr. Strange comes out. By this point, I’ve been writing furiously and reading voraciously. I had consumed Red Queen and A Darker Shade of Magic and two or three of the Air Awakens books as well as others. All of this I did with story structure in mind. So my son and I go see Dr. Strange and it was awesome.
But something strange and interesting happened during that movie. As I was sitting watching, my brain was chewing on what I was seeing and it was doing it faster than the movie could be played before me. Structurally, Dr. Strange follows the beats perfectly. As things were going along, all of a sudden, I realized that we had already crossed the Midpoint and seen the main villain, Kaecilius again. I was watching a scene of intense action, both in the sense of lots of things happening AND lots of things happening BECAUSE Dr. Strange was making them happen. He was gaining control over his powers and the conflict. Things were looking up.
And a voice in my head said, “Something bad is about to happen. Someone is about to die.”
And I was right.
It was like reading the Matrix and finally understanding. After that, I started looking for those moments. I felt like I understood movies, especially, more than I ever had because I was analyzing them as I watched. It’s pretty fun for me.
Have you ever had a moment like that where you knew you knew something in a show or movie before it happened? It happens to my wife ALL THE TIME and sometimes makes me crazy because I don’t see the clues or structure she does. Are you more perceptive than I am? Is this all a refresher course? Let me know in the comments.
May the tide carry you to safer shores.
BSG