The following is the third in a series of six tutorials designed to help novice writers build a better story.
Once you have your basic storyline down and you have a richer understanding of the people and places in it, it’s time to start focusing on pulling the story into a clearer, more detailed picture as we look at writing an effective Plot. The importance of having a concise and fully realized Plot cannot be overstated; if Theme is the vehicle driving the story and Tableau is the driver, then Plot is the road on which it drives, from Point A to Point Z and all stops in between. If an author doesn’t do a good job of mapping out where the story is going, how long it will take to get there and the markers it must hit on the way, then it becomes a meandering and directionless journey. Your readers don’t have to know where it’s going, in fact it’s better if they don’t. But they have to know that you do or they won’t follow you for long.
In constructing your Plot, there’s a lot to consider…so much that I could probably do another series of tutorials on that alone, but for now I’ll try to cover the major points you’ll need to know and the elements that many fledgling authors neglect. It’s worth saying that there is no such thing as the right way to plot a story, but there are indeed many ways to avoid doing it the wrong way.
Every writer has their own method of plotting, but there are certain elements that are common among most if not all of them. For the purposes of this tutorial, I’ll break it down into two sections. In the first, I’ll address quickly the uniformity of Plot, and in the second I’ll look more in depth at the process I use as a model of how the plotting process can be done.
First, let’s address the basics: Inciting Force, Action, Climax, and Resolution.
Inciting Force
Why is all of this happening? It’s all well and good to want to write a story about a great train-hopping trip across the country, but without an inciting reason for the characters deciding to hit the rails, the story is hollow. A bus driver becomes a doctor…why? Jimmy climbs a mountain…why would he do that? Everything needs a reason, whether it is detailed or not. You should always know why your story is happening. Otherwise no one will believe you and no one will care. Luke Skywalker didn’t just hop the first ship to Dagobah, he had a reason. Your Inciting Force can be commonplace* or surreal, but it should always be important to the characters. Nothing should ever happen just because. Consider as well that there can be many Inciting Forces, but be cautious not to overwhelm the reader with them.
*While Inciting Forces can be commonplace, they should never be mundane.
Action
This is the body of the story, the Point A, Point B, Point C, what happens and in what order. Whatever journey the characters are on as a result of the Inciting force takes place here. Action will be the bulk of your story and is the most variable element of plot. What you do and say here, along with the Climax, will largely define the story you are telling and is what will distinguish your work from every other written piece. I’ll elaborate on this in a moment.
Climax
Often, this is the point in the story where all of the action comes to a head and the Inciting Force is answered, when the mission is accomplished, where goals are met…or not! The mark of good writing is in building suspense so the reader doesn’t always know how the story will end, and a good writer will know when the story demands a happy ending or something else. In addition, your story can have more than one Climax, and can in fact contain many smaller ones along the way. In Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings, we can see one definite Climax when the ring is destroyed, but consider along the way as the balrog is defeated, as Saruman is toppled and when Minas Tirith is saved. These are all small Climaxes to what I call Episodes, which I’ll address further.
Resolution
Also known as Denouement, Resolution is exactly that…the resolution of the story, what happens as a result of Action and Climax. Everything that happens along the course of your story will have consequences, and you must be careful to resolve them, or if not resolved then be mindful of why. Illustrate the world in which your characters will live after their journey is done. If the ending is happy, let’s see the picket fence. If it isn’t, show us how the characters react to their failure. Tie up your loose ends!
Now that you have the basic fundamentals of Plot, what is left is the nuance, the variables. As I’ve said, there are innumerable ways to plot your story, some authors choose to plot meticulously while others plot loosely and allow themselves freedom to construct the details during Composition. For new writers, I always recommend the former, meticulous plotting. This doesn’t restrict you from constructing the details as you write, and in fact every writer should, and it provides a clearer path with which to work. The following is an approximation of the process I use*, Markers, Episodes, Chronology and The Story in Rough.
*This process works for me, but I advise all writers to explore their own .
Markers
Make a list of the major points you want to include in the story, be they specific acts or lines of dialogue you want to use or generic scenes. If you want one character to say “That’s what apples cost these days!” while flinging a hammer at a guy in a monkey suit, jot it down. If you want someone to be wearing a fake moustache but don’t know why, jot it down. From important elements in the storyline to trivial aspects in the background, make a list and keep adding to it. These are your Markers, like an artist will decide their colour pallate before they begin painting, you too will decide what ingredients your story will have. You’re not limited to these, mind you, and you’ll probably scratch more than a few of them off before you’re done, but this list serves as a guideline of where you want to go.
Episodes
After you have your list of Markers, you can begin grouping things that can happen together or consecutively. In this step, you don’t need to pay attention to continuity or what causes what, but focus instead on building the individual Scenes. This is the scene where Jack finds the steel chest in the jungle. This is the scene where the squirrels run through the kitchen. This is the scene where old man Clements throws the hammers. They don’t have to be in order as long as you have a clear picture of what’s happening in each one.
Helpful hint: Write each of your Markers down on its own index card. You can add notes for each at the bottom to help keep track of how you want to use them, or if they are connected to other Markers. You can then organize the index cards into Episodes. You will probably find that you are thinking of more Markers as you organize them, and this way makes it easier to fit them in, and if you need to move Markers from one Episode to another, simply pull out the card. If you have cards left over when your Episodes are constructed, you can reconsider whether those story elements should be included.
Progression and Chronology
Every event in your story should always lead into or be led into by another event, it should have a smooth narrative. Once your Episodes are put together, you need to make sure there is a natural Progression, that the story you are telling builds on itself. This is especially true if the narrative style you choose includes flashbacks or follows more than one main character, or any other kind of split narrative. It’s generally poor form to create a flow of suspense or anticipation and then diverge into a point of low suspense. Of course, this is not always true, and in fact doing this properly can heighten the suspense to great effect. To do it properly, however, you need to pay attention to how it fits in.
As an example, the big car chase is on and the hero is in hot pursuit of the villain over the countryside, knuckles are white and teeth are clenched! Cut to an old farm hand walking his cow to the barn on a lazy, sunny afternoon. He takes off his cap and wipes his forehead with his sleeve as he looks up at the clear blue sky. What’s next? Does the farmer notice the two cars speeding down the road and watch as they pass his farmhouse? Or do the cars smash violently through his field, narrowly missing the farmer and his cow and sending debris and chaos into the scene? Be mindful of how your story flows.
The other side of this coin is the Chronology, or timeline of your story. This is not only a case of knowing what is historically accurate for your story (King Arthur never told his knights to git r dun), but also making sure the events in your story are in in order, and that the timeline within your story is appropriate. Again, this is especially important in stories with split narrative or where time is a variable. If your story is set in 2009 and your character has been a cop for 15 years, make sure you don’t mention him going to see The Matrix in high school. When your band of ragtag WWII soldiers is done fighting the Japanese, they won’t be shipping off to fight the Nazis. If Jimmy loses his pocket knife in the third chapter, he shouldn’t have it again in chapter 12. More than one might ever realize, but these details can be the difference between an enjoyable read and the loss of the reader’s suspension of disbelief.
The Story in Rough
This should be the last step in putting together your plot, assembling everything you’ve done in proper order. Once you’ve turned your Markers into Episodes and you have a good Progression and the Chronology is sound, it’s time to assemble them all together and write out The Story in Rough. Some authors will believe that they can keep the episodes straight in their heads, or even refer to their notes when they progress to Composition, and this may even be true, but I will always always always advise people to make the effort to delineate their full Plot. Whether it be in point form or in longhand prose description, be it handwritten or typed, seeing how your story moves from start to finish will not only affix it in your head, but will also offer insight into how a reader will experience the finished product. I suggest doing it on a computer, as it lets you make changes easily as you need to…which you will. Having your Plot worked out in sequence will also help you focus on the next steps in the process.
Congratulations, you have your Plot! Or, at least, the rough version of it. You will find yourself making adjustments in the next steps as the needs of your process require them, but what you have now is the blueprint. You can refer to this as you begin to compose and see where you’re going, or going wrong.
While forging bravely through the wild and dangerous world of webcomics, one is sometimes called upon to create characters. While this is a daunting - some might say impossible - task, we writers and artists leap into the fray with deranged abandon, laying about us with the twin cudgels of creativity and inspiration until all of our foes lie broken before our majesty. It is a great burden to be asked to create a character, for we must call upon dark and terrible arts to uncover this, the most jealously guarded secret of the webcomic lords.
Creating a character is like creating life. Do not take this task lightly, for when you dream up a new character to put to use in your story, you are a god, creating new life to populate your creation. Just as the Bible says that God created Adam and Eve, you must first craft a Protagonist around whom your world will be constructed. Then, as Lucifer was cast from Heaven, you shall create an Antagonist. Finally, you will create a bunch of other characters that nobody really cares about, much like most of that other stuff in the Bible.
The Protagonist
Every good story has a single, primary protagonist on whom the reader’s attention rests. It’s okay for the story to occasionally center on other characters, but this protagonist in particular is the Main Character, and should therefore be the main focus of the story. Some stories boast multiple Main Characters, attempting to weave different plotlines together into a beautiful tapestry of drama and intrigue. This is a mistake! Any attempt to divide your efforts among multiple, equally-important protagonists will always end in a disastrous failure. Your story will be terrible and everyone will hate you.
The Main Character should be unique and exceptional, because nobody is going to bother with a story in which a fat baker makes bread or an unremarkable Russian noblewoman has an affair or something. He needs a special gimmick that’s never been done before, the better to grab the reader’s attention. Perhaps he is a master of his style of swordsmanship? Can he use mystical arts to perform amazing feats of speed and strength? Is he a plucky underdog who prevails through guts, determination, and fiery courage? The best answer, of course, is, “all of these.” The more special your protagonist is, the more special your story is! Always remember this helpful tip.
Your readers will identify with the protagonist. They will envision themselves in his shoes, doing whatever it is that he does. For this reason, you must ensure that he possesses qualities that some of your readers are likely to have. You could try making him somewhat shy in social situations, or perhaps he loves reading webcomics and dreams of making his own some day. Remember, though: the Main Character must be unique and exceptional! He should serve as a stand-in for the readers, allowing them to experience adventures and excitement in the guise of a devastatingly attractive renegade with a strong sense of justice.
The Antagonist
Once your Protagonist has been created, you need an Antagonist for him to face! You will note that “antagonist” sounds a little like “Anti-Protagonist,” which is fortunate, as that is exactly what an antagonist is. The Antagonist’s purpose is to rival the Protagonist at every turn, providing a “bad guy” for the readers to hate. He should either be driven by a need for revenge over some terrible injustice inflicted upon him, or caught in a moral dilemma which forces him to carry out his evil deeds. This forces the readers to reconsider their shallow ideas of morality, transfiguring them into much more intellectually flexible people through the healing power of webcomics.
The Antagonist can be approached in one of two ways. The easiest and best way is to make him a very simple character, since he exists mainly as an enemy for the Protagonist to defeat. It is okay if many of his decisions go completely unexplained, as he is a Bad Guy and Bad Guys do evil stuff just because they are so very bad (or driven by a lust for revenge, as noted above). The other option is to make him a very deep and complex character. This is a poor idea, as it takes attention away from your Protagonist. Nobody actually likes learning about a villain’s complex and intricate motivations, and whenever someone writes about them it’s just because he is a pretentious jerk.
The Supporting Cast
Now that the Protagonist and Antagonist have been created, you need other, lesser characters to populate the world around them. The main character needs a love interest and a motley gang of misfits to run around with, while the villain needs faceless goons and a traitorous lieutenant.
When designing a supporting character, simply think of what the character “is.” For example, the main character’s love interest is just that: “love interest.” You can think up his or her name later! For now, you know that a love interest should be lovely and interesting, so you decide that the character should be devastatingly attractive and also royalty from an exotic land. Hot damn, you’re halfway done already! See how easy this is? As another example, a villain’s “faceless goon” should be intimidating but featureless. For this reason, you decide that the villain employs a private army of ninjas, because ninjas are scary and wear masks. This method is used by all the pro writers, and the sooner you master it, the sooner you will be on your way to character-building greatness!
Details: Appearance
Once you’ve established the storyline characteristics of each character, it’s time to move on to their appearances. A character’s appearance is hugely important, since the reader will be looking at or imagining the character all the time.
Obviously the protagonist should be attractive, because nobody cares about a fantastically ugly man defeating evil with his inner beauty and finding acceptance. However, there are various other elements of physical appearance to consider, such as hair and eye colour, hair style, the character’s style of dress, his or her height and build.
If your protagonist is female and has an unusually large bosom, you should cleverly avoid making your female readers feel inadequate by occasionally posting links to comics with even bustier protagonists and then going off on rants about how demeaning and childish their creators are. If she is fairly flat, you should go to great lengths to have other characters compliment her on her sexy and petite figure, proving that small girls are beautiful too. Your readers will appreciate this kind of intellectual honesty, and will respect your wisdom in holding up society’s silly foibles to be examined in the noble medium of webcomics.
There is one exception to this advice: it is considered very forward-thinking and high-minded to make the protagonist very busty as a symbol of female empowerment and the liberation of the fairer sex. If you choose to do this, anyone who makes derogatory comments like, “why does every female character in your comic have DD breasts?” or, “that is not how boobs work, have you ever actually seen a woman?” is a sexist bigot.
The Antagonist should be either alluring or intimidating, depending on the qualities you want the Protagonist to show while fighting him. He can either be attractive and dangerous, so that the main character proves his strength of will by overcoming him, or huge and mighty, so that the main character proves how powerful he is by defeating him. Any other kind of appearance is to be avoided like the plague, as it complicates the moment, detracting from the sense of triumph that the reader feels when the Protagonist prevails against the evil Antagonist.
As a note, it is always okay to give a female Antagonist an extremely large bosom, because then she represents the excesses of our image-obsessed culture, and her defeat at the Protagonist’s hands symbolizes the triumph of individuality and inner beauty. If anyone comments negatively on the Antagonist’s bust size, you are within your rights to condescendingly explain that it’s ignorant to criticize something when you just don’t understand the symbolism.
When it comes to the supporting cast, simply use the same method that you used to create them! The words, “traitorous lieutenant” are very nasty-sounding and have a military ring, so make the lieutenant a tall, muscular, heavily-scarred man in a military uniform. If you can’t come up with anything using this method, just assign a single distinguishing characteristic, such as “has an ugly moustache” or “is fat” to each supporting character. It’s not a good idea to spend more than five minutes coming up with a single supporting character’s appearance. You have better things to do with your time!
Details: Personality
A good writer knows that a character’s personality is invisible, and therefore doesn’t need to be described in detail. It’s always best to keep things simple: just write a short list of a character’s most interesting personality traits. The Protagonist should have the most detailed and interesting personality, while the Antagonist’s should be simple and easy to understand. The supporting cast doesn’t really need any kind of personality, because they’re just in the story to give the Protagonist people to interact with and be better than.
To show you that I mean business, here are two example characters:
Sir Magnus Lightbeard (Protagonist) - seems like an outcast but is actually a nice guy when you get to know him - will never hit a woman - has a fierce sense of justice and will never back down in the face of evil - never breaks his word - is a badass Lord Jerkhammer (Antagonist) - executes his minions when they fail him, and also sometimes when they don’t - hits everyone he ever meets, just so they know who’s boss - has a fierce sense of injustice and will never back down from a chance to be a dick to someone - makes lots of promises just so that he can break them later and then laugh - is bad, and an ass
Sir Magnus Lightbeard (Protagonist)
- seems like an outcast but is actually a nice guy when you get to know him - will never hit a woman - has a fierce sense of justice and will never back down in the face of evil - never breaks his word - is a badass
Lord Jerkhammer (Antagonist)
- executes his minions when they fail him, and also sometimes when they don’t - hits everyone he ever meets, just so they know who’s boss - has a fierce sense of injustice and will never back down from a chance to be a dick to someone - makes lots of promises just so that he can break them later and then laugh - is bad, and an ass
As you can see, Sir Magnus Lightbeard and Lord Jerkhammer both have very rich and interesting personalities without being boring, stuffy, overly-philosophical weenies. Writing up a summary like this takes no longer than ten minutes, leaving you free to do important things, like describing the intricate engravings on the Protagonist’s sword in excruciating detail.
In Closing
That’s everything you need to know! You now have the experience required to create truly fascinating heroes and villains. Armed with this knowledge, it is only a matter of time before you take the webcomics community by storm. Your daring protagonists will trounce their way into the hearts of your readers, while your evil antagonists go down in infamy. If you follow the advice provided here, you will have people clamouring for updates year round, desperate to know what happens next in the gripping saga of Jimmy Sprogan, Swordfighting IT Specialist.
Where Monsters Dwell is a really neat show and has some really cool contests going on right now, so go check out their archives, or listen to them live every Wednesday at wheremonstersdwell.ca!
You’ve been working on that story for years–you’ve rewritten it, you’ve taken it to places for critique, you’ve rewritten it again. But something isn’t right. Maybe the people you asked for critique didn’t like it, or maybe you can’t figure out how to fill a particularly large plot-hole. Perhaps you’ve taken a step back and decided that your concept is all wrong or that your characters are unbelievable or unlikeable, or both, again. You feel like you’ve been working on this story forever, and yet you’re no closer to actually making it into a comic than you were on day one. So what can you do? The answer is simple:
Kill your baby. Or at least send it on a nice vacation.
When you work on a comic for a long time, you start to become attached. You love your characters like you’d love your children, and you become very set on the scenes, ideas and conflicts that you first imagined them in during character creation. The following statement may come as a shock, but, some of those initial ideas and scenes and conflicts will be bad. They will not work, no matter how hard you try and rework them, because as someone who is attached to their ‘baby,’ you can’t bear to cut something that you feel is the lifeblood of your character, or, if necessary, the character him/herself. You will almost always never even know it’s necessary, because the more attached you become, the less flaws look like flaws.
Often, when we find ourselves enthralled by a ‘baby’ project, there are plenty of signs that could but fail to alert us, because they don’t seem like signs. Here is a short list of some of the more common signs:
So what can you do? Well, you can change your scenery. Put that project on the back-burner, and work on something else. Change everything–change the genre, change the setting, new characters, new relationships, new everything. And start small–the last thing you want to do is end up enslaved to yet another baby project. Set deadlines for yourself, and get them done. If you can’t meet them, consider enlisting in a particularly motivated and like-minded friend who can keep you in check by working as your partner or editor.
And if you don’t? Welcome to Stagnationville, population: you and your baby.
The following is the second in a series of six tutorials designed to help novice writers build a better story.
Jinkies, Scoob, it’s time for everyone’s favourite part of writing! Today we get to work on Character Profiles, right? Well, yes, but let’s slow down a bit. Character Profiles are indeed an important step in the writing process, but too often new writers underestimate what is involved in doing this properly, and even more tend to overlook that characterization is but one part of building their story’s Tableau. The term may be a little mystifying and it may sound a touch hoity, but it’s appropriate to describe the next area of story development that I want to discuss. A story’s Tableau is, put simply, the elements which provide a story’s scenario…Setting, Characters, Backstory and Climate…not only the people involved in the story or where it takes place, but everything else that makes the story breathe. If we take an in-depth look at the story’s players and examine their surroundings, you can bring your story to life in ways that a compelling story alone cannot do.
Creating a solid Tableau is not always about making your world believable, though. Your characters and settings can be outrageously unrealistic and still be solid and full, as long as they make sense to the story (see Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy). To the other end, your characters and environment don’t always have to be full and rich if it suits your story better that they be simplistic (see Waiting For Godot). The point is to know how the story elements will serve the and propel the overall story. For the purposes of this tutorial, though, we’re going to assume that the story requires a realistic, fully realized Tableau.
Setting
Where does your story take place? It’s a simple question, usually with a simple answer, and it’s fairly self-explanatory, but let’s take a moment to examine the finer points. When thinking of Setting, you will imagine a city or town, possibly even the neighbourhood or even a single building, the more specific the better. If your Setting is fictional, like Middle Earth or Dagobah, then specificity is even more important because you’ll be painting a world people don’t already know. Even if your Setting is well known, such as Manhattan or London, it’s important to take the time to describe it, even loosely. When you look closer at a neighbourhood or a specific street, be sure to know what’s there…a drug store, a park, an antiques store with apartments over top. You don’t need to know every brick, but what kind of neighbourhood it is. Can you get pad thai at 3am? Is there likely to be a mailbox on the corner? If your story requires someone to buy a bag of nails, be sure to know how far they have to go to get it.
Once you get down to individual buildings or rooms, the level of your description should be high. Describe the walls, the floor, what’s on the walls, what furniture is there, what is sitting on the furniture, what colour is the paint, is there a flowery or a musty smell? Is it quiet or can you hear the cars outside? There is no detail too small to know…you may not have to describe it in your story, but knowing it in your head will help you bring it out on the page.
Be mindful of how your Setting adds or detracts from the effectiveness of your story. A whimsical farce may not be appropriate in a concentration camp, and scifi doesn’t always work on a tropical beach. This doesn’t mean you have to tailor your setting to the story, but it should always work for you, not against you. If you think your political drama is best set in a kindergarten, then set it there. If you think your high school drama isn’t going to play well in a pizza joint, find somewhere else. No Setting is off limits as long as it adds to the story.
And there are other less tangible qualities such as weather, seasons or time of day. A rainy autumn night sets a much different scene than a sunny summer afternoon. Don’t, however, make the mistake of thinking that these things define what sort of scenes can take place (people don’t only hear about the death of a loved one in the rain) but know the power that the right kind of conditions can deliver (break-ups are always hardest on a cold winter morning).
Finally, Setting is not only where, but when. Modern day, Middle Ages, 1000 years in the future, whenever your story takes place will have an impact. Don’t be afraid to play around with the time (how many Robin Hood stories have been set in alternate times?), as long as it moves the story forward and isn’t just done for the sake of quirk.
Characters
Many times, a writer will have an idea about his or her characters even before having a clear idea of their premise, and most have a lot of fun designing them. Character Profiles are very popular, especially in amateur comics, and while I have nothing bad to say about this practise, I have to emphasize that a character’s fullness is difficult to express in point form. Height, weight, eye colour, age…these are important things, but they are only peripheral in making a character what they need to be. Characters should be made of more than an at-a-glance checklist of attributes, there is a litany of elements and facets that go into making someone who they are and defining why they do what they do, and while your readers don’t always have to know every detail, the author should.
Backstory
Backstory, the events that not only lead to but also support the beginning of your story, is present in both your Setting and Characters. Perhaps your cop character was once in the military, or maybe the Human Resources Rep was once in the seminary. Has your protagonist killed anyone? Ever been married? Not completed high school? These all add to a richer character. Conversely, was the run-down neighbourhood where your characters live once a more affluent area? Maybe your shoe store was the first to employ African Americans, or is rumoured to be haunted, or won a Best Shoe Store award three years running. Knowing more about the people and places you’re writing about adds depth and makes the reader more interested, or at the very least makes it easier for you to write about it.
In fictional Settings, you will need to know at least the basics about the history of your world. Not everyone has to be as exacting as Tolkein, but what happens in the past affects the present and should be addressed. This becomes less important in real-world Settings, but is still worth considering.
Backstory is very important in creating your Characters as well. When considering who a person is, you have to remember that we are all made up of our past experiences and how we react to them. If you have a very quiet character, it’s important to know why. If your character never shuts up or doesn’t make eye contact or runs everywhere they go, there is a reason for it. This applies also to why your characters will do the things they do in your story, and the choices they make. Even if your characters’ pasts are never revealed in your story, it will help you immeasurably to know at least the surface details of how they grew up and came to be who and where they are and why they do what they do.
Climate
Rather than weather conditions, Climate deals with the atmosphere of your story, the day to day conditions that affect your world and the people who live there beyond the Setting. Is there an oppressive king or a corrupt mayor who allows crime to run rampant? This can create a sense of fear in your world. Is it an idyllic paradise filled with sunshine? Do your characters live under a shroud of paranoia that they will be taken by the government or aliens or monsters in the night? A story of political intrigue will demand a certain type of Climate where a cross-country car chase will demand another. Tension, whimsy, depression, peacefulness, xenophobia…religious indoctrination, social pressures, progressive scientific discovery, widespread disease infection, war…these are what wrap the reader up in your world and they provide the mindset with which your reader will experience the story you want to tell them. Climate is how your story feels, and if you can build it well, your reader will be captured before they have a chance to put the story down.
My final piece of advice on how to develop a proper Tableau is to first gain some insight by doing one for yourself. That’s right, YOU! Get a sheet of paper or open a new document on your word processor and write down a full Tableau on your own Setting, your own Character (yourself), your Backstory and the Climate in which you live. It’s harder to do than you might think, and it will help you more than you could imagine.
