Act Structure (FenCon Writer's Workshop Part 4)

New and aspiring authors often say story structure is "confining", or just plain unnecessary. But you rarely hear that sentiment from published, selling authors. [Pete: For more on why you should learn the rules of story structure, check out my post about the Path of Least Resistance]

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The following series comes to us from guest blogger and author Tom Howard.

Learn more about Tom by visiting his Amazon Author Page, and check out Tom's latest story in The Good Fight, an anthology of superhero vs. monster stories.

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FenCon--a long-running science fiction and fantasy convention in Dallas, Texas--hosts an affiliated writers workshop every year, where professional writers share their own experiences with beginning writers in intensive workshops.

My own writing is at a too comfortable plateau, and I attended to learn some new skills to improve my writing. I've enjoyed FenCon writing workshops before and always find something to take away.

I attended the workshop with my friend and frequent collaborator, Belinda Christ. I think she has attended them all. Like me, she's always searching for community and new tools to improve her trade.

This year, 2015, urban fantasy writer, Jaye Wells, did a four-day class for a dozen writers on critiquing each others' work. Ms. Wells used our comments as a springboard to present sessions on structure, conflict, and the other areas writers need to learn their craft.

Part Four – Act Structure

The classic three act formula can become four acts by breaking act two into two parts, and can even become five acts depending on the amount of resolution you include. [Pete: Sound familiar? Read my take on this in my post about Four Act Structure and the Stages of Competence]

Act 1: Depending on genre, set up the problem introduction in Act 1, and make the goal to alleviate that problem.

Act 2: Start to pursue the goal and make plans in this act. End of Act 2 is a huge obstacle that changes the plans and goal.

Act 3: New information and a new plan. Try new things for the new plan. End of Act 3 is big boss encounter, where fight scene happens. Internal and External conflict collide. 

Act 4: Starts out with “What do we do now?” Overcome internal demons to overcome external demons. Goal set up in Act 1 does not have to be the climax. This Act can be duplicated also. Lead to resolution.

Act 5: Resolution. Can be long, or short, or set up the next book.

The plot points at the ends of the acts are usually thought of as external changes, but they can (and should) coincide with internal conflict changes.

The Hero’s Journey is just not plot points, it’s character development. People say genre fiction (science fiction, horror, and fantasy) is plot driven, but really the best genre fiction is character and plot driven.

Subplots start in Act 2. If you're not careful, Act 2 and Act 3 become what's called "the Muddy Middle".

General tips: 

• Don’t give your book away. Start at the top. Respect your work.
• Buy and read GMC – Goal, Modivation, and Conflict. Use it to make your characters three dimensional.

Common Style Problems (FenCon Writer's Workshop Part 3)

Editors and publishers all have their pet peeves, and most of them are founded on reasonable principles. Ultimately, writing style is all about making your story easier to read, and good editors will always try to push you in that direction.

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The following series comes to us from guest blogger and author Tom Howard.

Learn more about Tom by visiting his Amazon Author Page, and check out Tom's latest story in The Good Fight, an anthology of superhero vs. monster stories.

------------------------------------------------------------

FenCon--a long-running science fiction and fantasy convention in Dallas, Texas--hosts an affiliated writers workshop every year, where professional writers share their own experiences with beginning writers in intensive workshops.

My own writing is at a too comfortable plateau, and I attended to learn some new skills to improve my writing. I've enjoyed FenCon writing workshops before and always find something to take away.

I attended the workshop with my friend and frequent collaborator, Belinda Christ. I think she has attended them all. Like me, she's always searching for community and new tools to improve her trade.

This year, 2015, urban fantasy writer, Jaye Wells, did a four-day class for a dozen writers on critiquing each others' work. Ms. Wells used our comments as a springboard to present sessions on structure, conflict, and the other areas writers need to learn their craft.

Part Three - Common Style Problems

The following list of style problems rank among the most aggravating to editors and publishers. Do everything to avoid them.

• Too many that's. The word "that" is almost always clutter. Occasionally, you need it for clarity, but 75% of the time, it can be left out.
• Bad Dialogue Punctuation. Not knowing where to use your commas and periods is a sure path to the slush pile. Pick up a novel and punctuate the dialogue as the author does. [Pete: and check out my post on dialogue mechanics.]
• Missing comma before direct address. "Good morning, O'Dell." not "Good morning O'Dell."
• You don't need the speaking verb (said) if you have an action line surrounding the dialogue. [Pete: for more on this, check out my post about beats]
• Fancy synonyms for "said". Action lines are best, but some old-school editors insist on only using "said". But the worst thing you can do is use a thesaurus to keep from using "said". Obscure synonyms are distracting, and adverbs and adjectives should be avoided in dialogue.
• Too many subordinate clauses and participle phrases. "As" and "ing" phrases are a matter of timing. They show two actions happening simultaneously, and some things you can't do simultaneously.
• Cliche beginnings. Don't start the story with a line of dialogue. Or with a character waking up. Or with the weather.
• Ellipses fever. It's tempting to use ellipses every time you want a drawn out pause, but it also gets annoying to look at, and readers skip over them more often than not. Know how to use them correctly. In dialogue, ellipses indicate trailing off, an em dash (—) indicates interrupting.  One in every paragraph is not acceptable. And don't use ellipses to indicate pauses in middle of dialogue. Break up dialogue with action.
• Tense shifts. Past tense should be past and present should be present for the entire thing. No shifting back and forth.
• Risky grammar. If you're going to use conjunctions at the beginning of sentences, know what rules you're breaking. Every time you do this, you risk looking like you don't know.
• Uncommon punctuation. A semi-colon should be used sparingly or not at all. Colons, too.
• Too much narrative distance. Character's voice should not only be dialogue but also the narrative. Third person point of view should be close and not omniscient. Distancing words like "she saw", "she looked", and "she felt" separate the reader from the character. Watch your narrative distance closely.

Jaye Wells' general suggestions:

• Get a copy of Strunk and White's Elements of Style and look up specific questions. No need to read it from cover to cover.
• Use Grammarly to check your work.
• For the Oxford comma (a, b, and c), use the publishing house's style guide, but use the serial comma for clarity.
• Don't spend a lot of money on marketing (cons, readers) when you should spend it on learning the craft. Use margielawson.com if you want to workshops from Margie Lawson personally.
• RWA (Romance Writers of America) does great Craft and Business workshops that apply to all writers.
• The MFA program at Seton Hill is a crash course on writing that equals ten years worth of experience.
• The Rule of Three: If a writer brings up something three times, it is IMPORTANT and will be part of the plot and climax. Conversely, if you mention something more than once, you'd better involve it in the plot.
• Pope in a Pool: Look for opportunities to break up exposition with active events. The pope could be swimming laps in the background during a long exposition dump.

Top Ten Plotting Pitfalls (FenCon Writer's Workshop Part 2)

Anyone who writes Science Fiction, Horror, or Fantasy knows how easy it is to get tied up in world building. Here are some of the common pitfalls that beleaguer speculative fiction writers and how to avoid them.

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The following series comes to us from guest blogger and author Tom Howard.

Learn more about Tom by visiting his Amazon Author Page, and check out Tom's latest story in The Good Fight, an anthology of superhero vs. monster stories.

------------------------------------------------------------

FenCon--a long-running science fiction and fantasy convention in Dallas, Texas--hosts an affiliated writers’ workshop every year, where professional writers share their own experiences with beginning writers in intensive workshops.

My own writing is at a too comfortable plateau, and I attended to learn some new skills to improve my writing. I’ve enjoyed FenCon writing workshops before and always find something to take away.

I attended the workshop with my friend and frequent collaborator, Belinda Christ. I think she has attended them all. Like me, she’s always searching for community and new tools to improve her trade.

This year, 2015, urban fantasy writer, Jaye Wells, did a four-day class for a dozen writers on critiquing each others’ work. Ms. Wells used our comments as a springboard to present sessions on structure, conflict, and the other areas writers need to learn their craft.

Part Two - Top Ten Plotting Pitfalls

1. Shoe-horning – Don’t do your world building last. The world organically builds your characters, because they come from that world. If ideas start coming to you during the writing process, don't be tempted to just mash them into huge paragraphs of exposition. Take a break from writing the actual story and let the ideas flow out. When they have, you can go back through them and decide which ones you actually need at that point of the story.
2. OCDiety – Don't be so invested in the details that the story doesn’t unfold organically. This is connected to shoe-horning; nobody wants to stop reading about a poisoned character to hear a lesson on the healing flora of your world. It might be good for you to know it, but don't dive so deep you can't get back out. Know just enough about your world to write. 
3. Jargon Fouls – Watch made-up words that aren’t necessary, and don’t be too clever with your naming. Reading words you can't pronounce gets annoying fast. It's good to get specific with language when you're world building--even down to slurs and insults in your native language--but don't go so far that it's irritating to read.
4. Does Not Compute – Watch your character's motivations and the customs of your society. Don't put your characters in a difficult-to-believe situation just because it's convenient for the story. Creating something from nothing has to have some internal logic, no matter how fantastic. 
5. Dangerously Derivative – There's nothing new under the sun, but that doesn't mean you can just copy-paste someone else's world and color over a few spots. Be inspired by your favorite stories, but make sure you're bringing something original to the table.
6. The Rube Goldberg Flaw – Don’t make your world too complicated unless you’re George R.R. Martin. The more complicated the plot, the less world building is necessary and vice versa. If you can get your characters from A to B in three steps, don't put them through ten.
7. Conformity – Just because you've worked hard to create your culture doesn't mean you can't rock the boat a little. Consider the culture's beliefs and conformity and then rebel against them. Always be looking for some new element of the world to help breathe some life into the story. 
8. Procrastination – Don’t world build to avoid writing. It's fun, but sooner or later you have to be finished, or nobody will ever get to visit the world you've created.
9. One-Sidedness – If you've created a broad and vivid world, don't just sow us one person's image of it. Everyone looks at the world in a unique way. Think about how different people see a room differently and apply that to your writing. 
10. Dullness – If you've never done anything interesting, how can you have anything interesting to say? Have real-life adventures to provide realism to your work.

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Tom's report from FenCon continues next week with some Common Style Problems.

World Building (FenCon Writer's Workshop Part 1)

World building is the process of establishing the rules of the universe you create for your story. Every genre uses world building to some extent; from hardcore sword and sorcery novels, to the small town detective novel, to aliens in space. The amount of backstory to include depends on different the story universe is from our known world.

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The following series comes to us from guest blogger and author Tom Howard.

Learn more about Tom by visiting his Amazon Author Page, and check out Tom's latest story in The Good Fight, an anthology of superhero vs. monster stories.

------------------------------------------------------------

FenCon--a long-running science fiction and fantasy convention in Dallas, Texas--hosts an affiliated writers’ workshop every year, where professional writers share their own experiences with beginning writers in intensive workshops.

My own writing is at a too comfortable plateau, and I attended to learn some new skills to improve my writing. I’ve enjoyed FenCon writing workshops before and always find something to take away.

I attended the workshop with my friend and frequent collaborator, Belinda Christ. I think she has attended them all. Like me, she’s always searching for community and new tools to improve her trade.

This year, 2015, urban fantasy writer, Jaye Wells, did a four-day class for a dozen writers on critiquing each others’ work. Ms. Wells used our comments as a springboard to present sessions on structure, conflict, and the other areas writers need to learn their craft.

Part One - World Building

What is world building? Creating a sandbox for your character. Not just the setting, but the cultures, races, history, and everything that influences your character. Characters have to be products of the world; they have to be connected to it. It's not just a set with an actor in front of it; that’s a two dimensional story. Instead, make your world a character. 

World building is not just the map at the front of the book.

Research is key. That will give you ideas for where your characters came from. Build your world by origins. As you’re creating this world, think of how it diverges from the normal world.

World building is the Forest and the Trees; where the forest is macro world building and the trees are micro world building. The more specific you can be, the more grounded the reader feels in that world.

The Five Ps of World Building

1. People
2. Places
3. Problems (from the structure of society)
4. Practices
5. Peculiarities

All are required for the sixth P: Plot. Plot is what happens when People with interesting Practices in a specific Place try to solve their Peculiar Problems. (Like this Quote? Click Here to Tweet it!)

People: Gender? Age? Race? Background? Profession? [Pete: My Character Sheet template might be helpful here]

Place: City/town/village/planet? Geography? [Pete: My General Setting and Specific Setting templates my help with this]

Problem: What’s the problem facing this person or people in this town? Is it a vampire horde? Alien? A murderer? A social issue? [Pete: My Premise Sheet template might be useful here]

Practices: What is the culture of this place or people that might influence the story? What habits or details about the characters influence the story?

Peculiarities: These are the fun details. The twists on things we expect. These details will help your story stand out and give it your unique voice.

As you brainstorm, the most important question to ask yourself is, "Wouldn’t it be weird/cool if…"

Cut out magazine pictures and ask yourself what attracts you about it? Find a music playlist that fits with your world. [Pete: Browse Pinterest for ideas!]

The ultimate goal of world building is for you, the writer, to be fascinated and excited to spend lots of time in this new world. You can create pages of background and not use it. That’s okay because it colors your world and may be important in the next book.

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Tom's report from FenCon continues next week with a list of the Top Ten Plotting Pitfalls!

Beats

In real life, we don't have conspicuous, over-taxed speaker attributions telling us how people are feeling.  As humans, we're hard-wired to read the body language of everyone around us, and we constantly assess their emotions on a subconscious level.  

This is possible in fiction as well.  The strongest place to express character emotion in a scene is dialogue.  The second strongest place to put emotion is in beats--moments of body language surrounding the dialogue.

Bob ran his hand up my thigh.  "You're so fucking hot."

Punctuated and paragraphed properly, beats often eliminate the need for speaker attributions entirely.  That doesn't mean you should use them all the time, because a passage too full of beats takes on a stop-start rhythm that itself becomes conspicuous, and conspicuousness is what we're trying to avoid.

I find that 2-3 beats per 10-15 of dialogue is about all you can get away with, though there are surely exceptions.  In general, I recommend a single speaker attribution or beat at the beginning of a two-speaker conversation, and then let the seesaw rhythm carry for as long as it can--usually no more than 5-6 lines before I feel the need to sprinkle in some setting or internal monologue.

If you've got three or more speakers, you'll need either an attribution or a beat attached to every line, so I tend to shoot for about one part body language to two parts "said", and I try to keep three-plus conversations as short as possible.  They're hard to write, and harder to read.

How you write beats--and how many you use--depends somewhat on your POV.  I tend to favor intimate third person in my work, so often what I do is simply describe a bit of body language...

He leaned forward.  "Keep talking."

He thrust out his chest.  "What are you looking at, bro?"

...and let the reader fill in the emotional blanks just as they do in real life.  This has two benefits; 1) the language is immediate and inconspicuous, and 2) it actually pulls the reader deeper into the story by allowing them to participate in building the story world.

In first person, you have the benefit of full intimacy with a single character, so if your POV character has a conscious thought about the speaker, you can work even more layers into the dialogue:

He thrust out his chest.  "What are you looking at, bro?"What a douchebag! "Nothing, sorry."

This not only tells you more about the speaker, but more about the POV character.  The POV character in the above example clearly has a much different personality than the one in the following example:

He thrust out his chest.  "What are you looking at, bro?"Intriguing, how simian dominance behaviors have yet to be bred out of mankind. "Nothing, sorry."

I find, in an intimate third person POV, you can pretty much write internal monologue just as you would in first person, but it behooves the story to keep them to a minimum.  If we pause for our POV character to appraise every line of dialogue, the story fails to proceed.  Moderation is good in first person too, but you have a little more leeway.

Another issue worth pointing out is that when you rely more on body language than attributions, you allow your dialogue to remain grounded in the scene.  Any body language is great, but if you focus solely on people's facial expressions, posture, etc., you'll quickly find that you have tons of scenes where people are constantly grinning, or frowning, or running their hands through their hair, or leaning forward.  The best thing to do is to craft body language that shows characters interacting with the setting around them.

Say you have a heated argument between two lovers.  You could just write them sitting on the couch, or in the bedroom, and they could bandy wits to your heart's content.  But the scene could be spiced up considerably by having them do something.  Could this argument take place during a couples golf tournament?  How about in the middle of cooking dinner (which would give them plates and sauce pots to throw...)?

Any time you can attach a setting to your body language, you not only wind up with fresher, more original body language, you end up with more realistic settings.  Big, thundering blocks of description can be fun to write, but they're...less fun to read.  They're best kept to your notes.  Readers don't remember that stuff anyway. What readers remember is people doing things.  A character acting on an object makes that object real, and invites the reader to fill in all kinds of details surrounding that object.  It's one of the basic ways to show and not tell.

Between beats and good-old "said", you should have 99% of dialogue situations covered.  Sticking to these inconspicuous devices will help you develop that strong, fluid style that keeps readers locked in your story.