On the shape of a tale

The first and most basic thing about crafting a story the majority of us get taught is this.

A story has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

I’ve always found that a remarkably unhelpful lesson in honesty. What other form of art, craft or skill regularly gets described as “It starts somewhere, it ends somewhere, and things happen in the middle,” with that being treated as a profound moment of understanding.

The second thing most aspiring writers learn is that the middle is hard. Many guidelines for script-writing as well as novel structure will recommend that the beginning should take up roughly a quarter of the story, the end should be the last quarter, and the rest - half the story - is the middle.

An incredible amount has been written on the subject of how hard it is not to lose motivation and drift off in the middle, a vast untamed desert of “stuff happens”. The general advise is to know the ending, so you have direction, and then keep finding ways to move the story in that direction while adding obstacles and problems for the heroes to face along the way to slow them down.

This too has always felt… wrong, somehow to me. I’ve written that way, and with Legacy I was able to push through and reach an end point, but it’s also a big part of the reason I’ve never been able to feel entirely satisfied with that story. I feel like a lot of those complications could be cut without really losing anything from the story, other than the heroes reaching their goals too quickly.

As someone with a mind that likes organization and clarity but struggles with vagueness, I always wind up feeling like the missing piece is a better framework than “beginning, middle, end”. Not an exact formula, every story should be unique, but the broad strokes that give each scene purpose. For the beginning and end of the story those are fairly intuitive to most. Introducing characters and establishing the world is clearly important early on. Bringing the characters arcs to a satisfying end point is obvious. The “middle” though, where so many writers struggle, is left amorphous.

And so I have spent a great amount of time contemplating story structure. I’ve studied and attempted structures described by several authors who’s work I admire, I’ve read countless books on the subject, and I’ve come to a rough sense of a five part outline that every other structure seems to fit into from one angle or another.

I don’t claim this to be the One True Way, just my own thoughts, being written out in this form to help steer my mind back toward productive thoughts.

The Five Parts of Story

I’ll go into each section in more depth individually and recommend some key elements for each. For now I’ll keep to a rough overview of each.

Introduction:

The introduction is the “beginning” of the story. The purpose here, from the writers perspective, is to introduce the reader to the story. The who, what, where, when, and why. Who are the characters, where and when does the story take place, what do the characters want, why do they want it. By the end of the introduction the reader should be able to answer all those questions, at least approximately (It might be a mystery why the hero wants their goal, but we know why it’s a mystery and there should be some kind of clue to draw interest).

Exploration:

The next part starts off pretty much as soon as everything from the introduction is answered. As the name implies, the purpose of this section is to explore the implications of the story. If Joe has just gained superpowers, how does that impact his day to day life? If he’s just won the lottery, what does he do with that money? If there is a central mystery, like a crime to solve, how does the investigation play out, what’s the detectives process? If it’s a world with aliens or magic or talking cats, what is the impact of those things on day to day life? The overall plot should still progress, they should find clues for the case or have run in’s with a villain or love interest and so on.

Turning Point:

This is the actual middle of the story. Things change dramatically in some way. Jim Butcher is fond of a “big middle event” in his stories, where generally the hero will charge in to solve the stories core problem but not be ready for it yet, and so fail drastically. I’m a fan of that myself, and it formed the foundation of this part of my own mental outline, but it doesn’t have to be something big and flashy. It just has to change things, in two key ways. First, after the turning point the hero knows what needs to be done (or that it’s the last chance and they have to commit to a single plan). Second, the stakes go way up, either actually increasing or revealing it’s always been higher than the hero realized.

All in:

This section I’m having a little trouble coming up with a name for I’m happy with, but you know it when you see it. It’s the lead up to the final confrontation. The part of the story where separate plot lines start to converge toward the final battle, where the Hero gathers all his resources and commits everything to the final plan. Succeed now or die trying.

One of my favourite examples of this is this scene from Shrek 2. It’s really just the last portion of the “all in” part of the story, right up to the actual final confrontation kicking in at the “Get your hands off my wife” line. But it conveys the essense of this part of the story perfectly - after the turning point the only direction is toward the climax, and this section is that charge.

The secondary purpose of this section is to trim complications. Have allies drop out of the fight because they have to stay back to let the hero proceed, give little moments of closure to character arcs for side characters where possible. As much as can be done without breaking the building momentum, this section should end with nothing left to worry about but the final battle itself.

Showdown:

This then is the actual ending to the story. All the important characters are present. Hero and villain are face to face. There’s nowhere to run. No more allies that could swoop in to turn the tide.

Often by this point the villains plot has already been stopped, and the drive now is either the villains fury at their plan being ruined, or the villain trying to escape and the hero determined to see justice done. Or if the plot is only stopped by the villains defeat, it’ll come down to a single action to keep the conflict focused - “Keep them away from the wand”, “keep them away from the button”, “get past them to stop the machine” etc.

Over the next few weeks I’ll write more in depth on each of these sections and start outlining a project. Seems like a fun way to build momentum into a new novel, and I don’t want this post to drag out into a novel length itself.

Click here for the article on the Introduction phase