Inspiring Info for the Discouraged Writer

There are a great number of things that can be overwhelming to an aspiring writer. Like, for example, is it better to prefer thus over so when trying to convey formality? Furthermore, writing a a novel that is 100,000+ words can be quite the daunting concept to the new writer who has never had a taste of writing 20,000 words and feeling like you're nowhere. Allow me break it down into more manageable segments for you. Hopefully this will alleviate some of the fear of that massive undertaking

Brandon Sanderson gave a lecture at BYU where he spelled it out clearly in manageable terms. Link to that lecture here.

First, you need to come up with something that is consistent for you. What works for you? In other words, what is your particular flavor of "consistency"? 

Do you only get a 30 minute lunch break each day? Use 15 to eat lunch and the other 15 to write if that works for you. 15 minutes per day of writing x 5 workdays per week is an hour and 15 minutes of writing per week.

For every person, this is different. Writing when you have a family, a full time job, friends–a life in general, can be a sacrifice. Maybe you need to eat a simple PB&J for lunch instead of going out with colleagues because the only free time you have during the day is your lunch break. Maybe the only time you get each day is the wee hours after the kids have gone to bed after you have cleaned up from dinner, got everything ready for the morning, and before you too lay down for bed. 

Maybe your only time available is on a Sunday afternoon for four hours. 

Make sure that if you really want to write, you don't let other distractions get in the way. Use that time. Use it to practice. Use it to work on your story. Any words on the page are words well written because at the very least, you are developing your skillset.

Here are the numbers: The average writer writes between 300 and 700 words per hour when working on new prose. Let's call it 500 words per hour.

Let's call that 500 words your one "brick" Focus on laying four bricks per week. If you can't make four bricks work, make two work.

Four hours per week times 500 words per (2000 words per week) hour with 52 weeks in a year (2000 x 52) comes out to 104,000 words. 

If you can set aside just four hours per week, you can write 100,000 words in a year. That, for many of us is an achievable goal.

Even if you only have two hours per week, 2 years to write 100,000 words is a great goal. Especially for a working parent.

Literary and Mechanical Devices (Writing dialogue, using punctuation like "—", ":", ";", and """"—that's a funny joke—duh!).

These notes aren't yet complete.

That title is meant to be a ridiculous grammatical joke to make english look like a math equation.

Mostly what I'm going to talk about here are Literary and Mechanical devices. These are extremely important writing mechanics which are meant to guide help you to achieve your purpose through your writing. They help your audience to read in a specific direction and to interpret your words the way you want them to.

Grammar Girl has a great podcast where I learn a lot about grammar and punctuation and the proper usage of different parts of speech. Y'all should listen to it (she actually talks in one of the episodes about the etymology of "y'all"). 

I thought it would be nice to add some simple tips here which have really helped me to understand how to write better in a few specific areas.

If you want to get a good idea of what a true master of writing's work looks like, just open up any Stephen King book and look through the pages. He uses more literary and mechanical devices to provide authoritative context than any author I have ever seen. 

Prose Narrative

Prose narrative is essentially the "narrators" part of the story. Everything that the characters aren't saying in dialogue.

Dialogue

Here's an index—of sorts—for the keywords I'll use in these notes:

• Inner Dialogue

• Outer Dialogue

• Tags

• Em-dash

• Prose Narrative

• Ellipses

• Broken Dialogue

• Argumentative Dialogue

• Semicolon

• Colon

• Mechanical Devices

• Literary Devices

• Italics / Italicizing

• Character voice

• Anachronisms

• Historical Accuracy

Now for the meat of the subject: Dialogue, for me, is one of the trickiest parts of writing. Mostly the punctuation for it. To create good dialogue, you need to understand that the rules are a little more complex than typical rules. Take for example the following segment of dialogue:

From Artemis Fowl The Eternity Code by Eoin Colfer, Chapter 2: Lockdown, page 36:

Foaly was already there, his fingers a blur over the Commander's keyboard.

"The signal originated in London somewhere," said the centaur. "We only know that because I happened to be looking at the monitor at the time." He leaned back from the keyboard, shaking his head. "This is incredible It's some kind of hybrid technology. Almost like our ion systems, but not quite, just a hair's breadth away."

"The how is not important now," said Root. "It's the who I'm worried about."

There are a few things to point out with this excerpt: Note the specific section where Commander Root is talking: "[...] now," said Root. "It's the [...]" Without the interjection between the speech, you wouldn't normally capitalize "It's". However, because of the interjection ending in a period, you capitalize "It's" because it comes after the end of a sentence. 

Here are some things to know:

Tags

Tags are words like "he said", "Tyler chided", "she illustrated", "she wondered", "he replied", etc... 

Tags can be a tricky part of speech. If you write your characters voices well, you don't need to use them every time a character talks. If you have successfully structured a character or group of characters are having a conversation, you can skip the tags. Unless it is needed for clarity. Clarity is often useful when it's a group of characters.

It can also be tricky not to get carried away with your tags; oftentimes "said" will do just fine.

If you establish a "character's voice" successfully, you can often skip the tag. This requires the characters voice to be obviously unique to the established character.

Eye dialect (writing how people talk—within reason)

 Eye dialect is the practice of writing out characters’ mispronunciations phonetically. 

"Lis'n hur li'l feller, Wuzzat yer?"

Don't make it too impossible to read or understand, though. The above example is approaching a level that is impossible to understand. You don't want to confuse your readers so much that they put the book down in frustration.

Historical Accuracy / Anachronisms

Society's popular perception of a specific time period can make "perfect" historical accuracy be more tricky than a writer may think when writing a story. This is explored in (I am fairly certain) Writing Excuses Season 7 Episode 53 with some awesome examples. 

Mary gives an example of how, in one specific circumstance, historical-anachronism-accuracy ended up being trickier than she originally thought because there was a sentence she technically "should" have used for perfect historical accuracy, but she purposefully chose not to use the more accurate sentence because, based on our modern perceived understanding of the time period, it sounded more inaccurate than what our modern day vernacular and perception allows people to accept.

Outer Dialogue vs Inner Dialogue

1. When a character starts talking aloud (outer dialogue), it should start on a new line (paragraph) and begin with quotes (").

2. When a new character starts talking, repeat step 1.

   • In the excerpt above, Foaly starts talking first. Note that so long as Foaly is still the one talking, and no one else has interjected, his continued babble is not put on a new line to begin a new paragraph. It all continues in the same paragraph. This even holds true when his speech is broken up by the author ending the quote to put an interjection or descriptive text about what's happening: "He leaned back from the keyboard, shaking his head." doesn't cause the next thing Foaly says to begin a new paragraph.

3. When a character is thinking (inner dialogue) and not talking aloud, you can use italics. Though, some authors choose not to use italics.

4. If a character switches from talking to thinking put the thoughts on a new line (paragraph) and if they switch back to talking again, put that on a new paragraph.

Let's look at some of Stephen King's work From Full Dark, No Stars:

"I can't tell," she said. "I won't tell."

But there were others before you, there could be others after y—

She pushed this thought away. She was too tired to consider what might or might not be her moral responsibility.

This is a great example of a switch between spoken and non-spoken dialogue. When the character switches from spoken (outer) to non-spoken (inner) dialogue, there is a new paragraph. Despite the fact that it's still the same character speaking.

Note that you don't put quotation marks around internal dialogue.

Now let's look at some work from one of my all-time favorite writers: Patrick Rothfuss.

From The Name of the Wind, Chapter One: A Place for Demons, page 3. 

Old Cob was filling his role as storyteller and advice dispensary. The men at the bar skipped their drinks and listened. In the back room a young innkeper stood out of sight behind the door, smiling as he listened to the details of a familiar story.

"When he awoke, Taborlin the Great found himself locked in a high tower. They had taken his sword and stripped him of his tools: key, coin and candle were all gone. But that weren't even the worst of it, you see . . ." Cob paused for effect, ". . . cause the lamps on the wall were burning blue!"

Graham, Jake and Shep nodded to themselves. The three friends had grown up together, listening to Cob's stories and ignoring his advice.

The above example is great for showing how ellipses can be used to establish a pause in a characters dialogue as both a lead-out and a lead-in to their statement.

Argumentative Dialogue: Now let's look at another example from the same book.

From The Name of the Wind, Chapter One: A Place for Demons, pages 5-6, which shows several characters arguing and cutting each other off:

"I'd give a good piece for such a thing these days," Shep said darkly. He had drunk most and talked least over the course of the evening. Everyone knew that something bad had happened out on his farm last Cendling night, but since they were good friends they knew better than to press him for the details. At least not this early in the evening, not as sober as they were.

"Aye, who wouldn't" Old Cob said judiciously, taking a long drink.

" I din't know the Chandrian were demons," the boy said. "I'd heard—"

"They ain't demons," Jake said firmly. "They were the first six people to refuse Tehlu's choice of the path, and he cursed them to wander the corners—"

"Are you telling this story, Jacob Walker?" Cob said sharply, "Cause if you are, I'll just let you get on with it."

The two men glared at each other for a long moment.

Pay attention to how when a character is cut off in the middle of their dialogue, an em dash is used to end the paragraph, rather than ellipses.

Punctuation

The em dash (—)

The em Dash in Dialogue

You can use an em dash to create a sense of broken dialogue, or of a character not "catching" everything another character is saying. This is presented perfectly here:

From Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling (The MinaLima 2020 edition): Chapter One — The Boy Who Lived, Page 5:

"The Potters, that's right, that's what I heard —"

"— yes, their son, Harry —"

In this example, Vernon is overhearing  a group of strangers whispering to each other as he passes by. He's only able to catch some of the words they say as he's busy clutching his large doughnut in a bag and his focus wasn't fully there. As the character's dialogue gets interrupted, the sentence is ended with an em-dash to denote a disruption to the thought or statement.

And, again, on page 7:

"Er — Petunia, dear — you haven't heard from your sister lately, have you?"

The em dash here is meant to represent a sense of hesitation in Vernon's voice. He's trying to navigate these waters with Petunia delicately. The em dash gives a great sense that he is thinking very hard about how he can word his question without—setting her off.

The em Dash in Prose Narrative/Main Story Text

Em-dashes can be used in text to create a break in thought to provide a type of emphasis or to break up a thought or statement. If you open almost any book on your shelf, you will notice more em dashes than you probably thought you would see—though, some authors use them more than others.

From The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, Chapter 2, page 32 (Deluxe Boxed Edition, November 26, 2010):

Finally—over the client's fierce objections—he was forced to refer the material to the police.

And again on page 33:

She did not just seem difficult—in his eyes she was the very quintessence of difficult.

From Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, Chapter 7: Salamander, page 94

Ender noticed that Leopard was losing a lot of men, too—their reckless tactics exposed them too much.

Notice the style choice between J. K. Rowling , Orson Scott Card, and Stieg Larsson. Rowling puts spaces around the dashes, whereas Card and Larsson do not.

The semicolon . . . and a bit on the colon.

Grammar Girl has a great podcast episode on this: Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing, Episode 42. It's where all of these notes come from.

Italics / Italicizing 

Italicizing to denote emphasis

From Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, Chapter 7: Salamander, page 85

Well, why shouldn't he practice with them?

The example I mentioned earlier From Artemis Fowl The Eternity Code by Eoin Colfer, Chapter 2: Lockdown, page 36 is also a perfect dual example:

"The how is not important now," said Root. "It's the who I'm worried about."

Italicizing to denote character thought

From Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King, Page 91:

I thought of Stoppenhauser saying, Do you want to tell me there aren't improvements you could make? A roof to fix? And that Sly look. As if he had known. As if he and Arlette were in on it together.

Don't be getting such things in your head, I told myself. Bad enough that you keep thinking of her, down there. Have the worms gotten her eyes yet, I wonder? Have the bugs eaten away her sharp tongue, or at least blunted it?

Italicizing to denote notes, excerpts, signs, plaques, journal entries, epigraphs, etc...

From Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King, Page 107:

The farmer's old rattletrap Reo was found abandoned near the McCook train depot, with a note on the seat: Here is your car back, we will send the money we stole when we can. We only took from you because we were in a scrape. Very truly yours, "The Sweetheart Bandits." Whose idea was that name? Shanon's, probably; the note was in her handwriting.

Putting a sentence as its own paragraph:

Stephen King does stuff like this. It creates quite the emotional emphasis and attention to the statement.

From Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King, Page 106:

. . .they might have looked in that direction, but I doubt if Henry Slowed; he would not want to stop for the night in an area where they might be recognized.

Their life as fugitives had begun.

Arlette whispered more about that life than I wished to know, and I don't have the heart to put more than the bare details down here.

A List of Mechanical devices

1. Capitalization

2. Headings (font size change and bold text)

   • Utilizing this can help to denote a change of time in the book, or location change:

Two weeks later

or

Cryogenics Institue, London

2. • They can also be used to break up the text to set apart the main body of narration from a very long excript from a journal or note:

Excerpt from Artemis Fowl's diary, disk 2 (encrypted)

Today my father spoke to me. For the first time in over two years...

2. • Note that there are no punctuation marks at the ends of the headings.

3. Underlining

4. Text Justification (aligning text: center, left, right)

   • You can center text to illustrate something a character is reading. Like a letter, note, or sign.  

5. Italics

   • Can be used to imply that the text is being thought and not said aloud by a character.

   • Can be used to create emphasis.

   • Long or short passages of letters, notes, excerpts in the book that a character may be reading should be put in italics

6. Exclamation points

7. Remember: nothing exceeds like excess.

A List of Literary Devices:

1. Epigraph

   • Quote set at the beginning of a literary work or at its divisions to set the tone or suggest a theme.

2. Diction

   • An author's choice of words to convey a tone or effect (could be interpreted as an author's "voice")

   • Each author should find their voice.

3. Allusion

   • A figure of speech which makes brief, even casual reference to a historical or literary figure, event, or object to create a resonance in the reader.

   • This is used to create symbolic meaning.

4. Alliteration

   • The repetition of initial consonant sounds or any vowel sounds within a formal grouping.

5. Allegory - be careful with these. They are handy for world building but can be used poorly.

   • Figure of speech where abstract ideas are described using characters, events, or other elements.

   • This takes place a lot in fantasy when the author is trying to illustrate how a piece of magic works or something. There are two ways to do this: 1) Info dumping (try to avoid this at all costs). 2) creating a dialoge between characters. This can be through an apprentice and master conversation, an argument between two characters about how something works, etc...

6. Colloquialism

   • These are expressions, words, and phrases that are used in informal, everyday speech, including slang.

   • These can be useful to increase the world-building in your book by creating your own. Brandon Sanderson does this a lot ("rust and ruin").

7. Euphemism

   • Euphemisms aren't just about sex:

     1. Tipsy – drunk

     2. Before I go – before I die

     3. Do the dirty – have sex

     4. Rear-end – butt

     5. Thin on top – bald

   • These too can be used to create better world-building in your book. Come up with your own that fit your world!

8. Flashbacks

9. Foreshadowing

10. Imagery

    • Show. Don't tell.

    • This is where you use more sensory language versus blunt, plain words.

11. Juxtaposition

    • Contrasting elements placed next to each other to create emphasis ("It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" -A Tales of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.)

12. Metaphor/simile

13. Personification

14. Anthropomorphism

    • The attribution of human characteristics or behavior to a god, animal, or object. Terry Prachet does this a lot with objects. 

    • (Anthropromorphic personification is making something etherial into something "human". Death — as a humanoid being — is a perfect example of this)

15. Onomatopoeia

    • Words that represent sounds (buzz, splat, squish) They are typically written in italics.

16. Symbolism

17. Tone

Many writers, like me, are overwhelmed by all of the different "musts" that come with writing.

One of the purposes of my writing prompts is for me to focus on practicing each of those things until they are instinctual.  Once you begin to master those little things, you can start to focus more on your stories, and less on the writing. 

It's difficult to set aside your story while you focus on improving your writing, but the payoff is worth it in the end. 

For me, there are two types of "inspiration". Things that give me inspiration which fills my well and makes me want to get up and write. And inspiration that makes me want to sit down and think. One helps me get words on a page, the other helps me to get the gears of my mind churning and coming up with plot points and ideas for my story arch.

Take the first heading in this section for example. Write a story about a working parent who is trying to make ends meet for their family and figures out a way to make it all come together.

Watch the discovery channel. It can give you a tidbit of information that is just the spark you need for a small twist in your story.

Listen to your four year old tell you a story about the ducks at the pond. 

Listen to your dentist talk to you about their biking experience this weekend.

Play games! Board games or video games. Watch movies and TV shows. But know what works for you. Sometimes video games, especially for me, can be more draining than fulfilling, and I may not want to write afterwards. I need somewhat mindless game (like Minecraft by Mojang Studios, 2011) to "fill my well" which I can draw from for writing. However, Minecraft doesn't necessarily give me ideas. Games like The Last of Us by Naughty Dog, 2013 can give me a lot of ideas, but at the same time, drain my desire to write.

Some things that almost always give me the gumption to write are, listening to a podcast on writing, reading a book on writing, or writing on my website. 

Things that almost always give me ideas for plot, story arch, and character development are reading and experiencing other stories through any media format. Whether that be from watching a movie or TV episode, or a few chapters in a new book--You have to be careful with this though. You don't want to be too influenced by other books and accidentally end up making a copy of someone else's work.

Other peoples real experiences could be just the segue you need to make your story feel more real. Written experiences that seem real are what readers are looking for. Use what you hear, see, and experience in what you write.

These are my notes on Writing Excuses Season 7 Episodes 15 and 16 where they put Mary's outline on the "chopping block".

Link to the episode:  https://writingexcuses.com/2012/04/08/writing-excuses-7-15-editing-marys-outline/

Episode 15

Mary breaks down her outlines chapter by chapter. She puts just a short paragraph or two describing the overarching idea of the chapter: "Marie and Kennedy decide to follow the cats because they are curious".

Later on, Brandon calls this moment (when they decide to follow the cats) in the story an "Instigation". It's not the act progression. It's curiosity.

Brandon, when he writes his outlines, he tries to pinpoint a few things: an emotion or feeling he's trying to get out of the chapter and a primary character archetype that he wants to remind himself of in the outline.

Dan reminds himself in some of the outline chapters of important topics from other parts of the book  like "what are the kids leaving behind when they are stuck in this new world of magic? Are they coming from a broken home? A happy home?" He calls this an "establishing shot of their lives".

Brandon mentions the defining "bridge" moment/transition from act I to act II. For this particular outline, it's the moment that the kids make the conscious decision to "go on an adventure". "This is the problem we need to overcome and now we are deciding to set out to overcome it". The difference between instigation and the defining bridge from act I to act II is the children deciding to go out and overcome the problem. Brandon breaks the whole story down into this statement: "They decide to make a plan to rescue the real princess, defeat the bone demon and return the children to their home." This is the plot (this is his simple breakdown of the plot before we have all of the details as Mary hasn't finished reading the outline, but it's close).

In act I. It's appropriate to introduce everything that is going to basically be your plot.

Visual Queues. I'm going to break this out into it's own section as it's a pretty great storytelling tip, but it's about naming characters and making it easier for the reader to know who is talking in the story. You can more easily let your reader know who is talking by saying something like "Son hung upside down from his tail and chatted up at them." when referring to "The Monkey King". This "visual queue" helps the reader easily paint a picture of the character telling them who is talking.

Also make sure each name for different characters are as visually different as possible.

There is one character that Brandon points out who continuously keeps saving the two children. He says that for beginning writers, you need to be wary of this, because if you have on character who is constantly coming in and doing all of the interesting stuff, even though you are giving viewpoints to the other characters, the character who is doing all of the interesting stuff is going to "become the main character".  He calls this "passive observers watching someone doing something awesome". Which is a red flag.

Brandons biggest worry by chapter 7 is that, for him, there is nothing "grounding the two main characters". The only real "character thing that has happened" so far is a fight the characters have about a snake at the beginning of the chapter. Brothers and sisters argue and bicker or have disagreements. The characters so far don't have any driving character motivations, and the fight over the snake isn't big or gripping enough. Essentially, characters need to "ground the reader in reality". That's their job. 

Brandon gives a list here of the important things characters need to do to give them depth (this list is not exhaustive or definitive and this isn't a hard-fast list to stick to. Just a few quick ideas to get started):

• Ground the reader in reality

• Relationship problems they are working on

• A skill that adds something to the story (Lemony Snicket in one sentence sums up his characters skills and they are silly, but they add so much to his stories and he sums them up in one sentence: "One is good at reading, one is good at building, and one is good at biting").

• For this story, maybe one of the characters loves learning about mythology and because of that, he's able to point out parts of scenes which match stories from mythology. This would help readers who don't know those stories become grounded in the character and give insight in an organic way into the mythology Mary is tying into the book.

• It would be cool if, in your story, you can give a character a natural or more organic skill that lends itself to the plot or tone or some aspect of the story to draw your reader in and give your character depth.

• A special flaw, character flaw, or other problem each character is working on (maybe forcibly) overcoming throughout the book.

Mary doesn't bring the parents back up at all. Mary could create more depth to the story by talking about what the parents are going through back home while the children are gone.

When you have a character flaw, it should be brought up early in the book. If a character whose character flaw is being worried about leaving home, that should be brought up in act I when or before they decide to set out on their journey which is the beginning of Act II. One is worried and one is excited. That could be each of their flaws. One is too worried and one is too excited. This could be brought up in the scene when the children are shown the scroll showing their parents. The scene of their parents being so worried can solidify one characters flaw and exacerbate the issue.

Don't put a lot of extra random junk in your outline.

Outline should have:

• Main plot

• Mystery plot

• Sub plot

• Sense of progression

• Conflict (things you're working on)

• Things the characters are working on to overcome conflict.

• Motion. We're going from point to point to point. Stories can have some sort verbal "map" somewhere in the story telling you about what to expect for the motion/travel they are expected to take (not too obvious of a map). Just a character saying "we need to get here. But we can't because we have to do this first", or whatever.

• Important topics to remember from prior chapters or books.

Continued in next section...

Continued...

Link to the episode: https://writingexcuses.com/2012/04/15/writing-excuses-7-16-continuing-with-marys-outline/

Episode 16

in chapters 9 and 10, it's mentioned that the main characters inaction is causing the team to be concerned.

Main character inaction can cause problems.

There is often a problem in writing where your villain becomes more interesting than the main characters. This is because many villains are proactive. They are either coming up with plans to succeed in their endeavors, or already have plans and are acting on them. The heros are often sitting around doing nothing, waiting for the villain to do something.

Make your hero/main characters more active. This will usually make them more interesting.

So when you are thinking about making your outline, think about how to make your main characters more active and interesting.

In Name of the Wind, Rothfuss has a very long period where Kvothe is stuck in the city of Tarbean as a street urchin. Many people find this part of the book interesting. But there are also many who find it boring. I personally say that he gets away with this because during this time, the "villains" to our knowledge aren't making any progress either. In fact, the Chandrian aren't really even brought up until Skarpi's story.

This is to say that there are things you can do, when writing your story, to get that world building and back story developed. While this is happening, if it must happen, put a pause on mentioning the actions of the villains as well. This needs to fit in with your style of storytelling for the book. You can't intentionally mislead your readers, but if your main characters know nothing and have no way of knowing, then the story works.

As a writer, you could play a "dangerous game" by making your hero's flaw BE inaction. But I think you will need a balance somewhere to make it interesting. Maybe the hero has a friend who is tired of their inaction, and they have their own part to play in getting the hero to act. That may make your secondary character more interesting, however. 

You can also make inaction work if, in act III they start to act, and you add enough sense of wonder and enough darkness, or mystery to act II. All the while having a character trying to get them to act until the get dwindled down to their lowest point and have no choice but to stand up and take action.

The team comes up with a simple possible solution for these characters inaction, where Mary could add into part of their character development, going into this new world and learning about it being an expanded real-life metaphor about them learning how to get used to their new life in China. This can add proactive actions by the children simply by having them experience new things and figuring out how to deal with them.

Brandon mentions that you could have the characters start their journey by not wanting, or liking the Chinese food that's given to them. Mary could have the children learn to love their new surroundings through the book, and then extrapolate what they learn in this new world of magic to their new life in China. When they finally get back home they could have an "aha" moment where they realize with their parents that it's all going to be fine.

At this point, Brandon mentions how chapter 10 feels like it's signaling a transition from act II to act III, but it's a little early, and later they decide that this may, instead, be an "act II pinch".

It feels like the bridge to act III to Brandon because this seems like their "low point" and at the start of chapter 11, Marie starts sucking it up, finding help, and moving forward with figuring this out.

Conflicts in a book for adults shouldn't be introduced and resolved so easily. For children's stories, this may be more appropriate.

I'm sure, in high school, you remember learning standard formats or structures of writing a novel. They hammer the concepts into your mind and tell you that you need to follow those structures. They likely, even, required that you write a story following one of those structures exactly. I can't help but disagree with those at least to a point. It's not to say that I don't like those structures; I think that they are great. They help give you an outline to stick to. What I find questionable about this method is the level of emphasis that is place on the structure. What makes or breaks a story isn't structure. It's plot. If your plot points fit into that structure, then that is great! But for me, when I am writing my drafts, I never think of structure when I'm coming up with plot. 

One way I like to think of a  first draft is as a discovery. It's a process of figuring out which ideas fit into your story, which ones don't, and where they fit in. A first draft is an adventure. An odyssey, even. One where you keep finding bits of of a treasure that you have to put together into a functioning gleaming chalice before you reach the end of your adventure only to discover along the way that some of the pieces you picked up don't even fit your chalice, and you have to throw them away. 

Promises, Progress, and Payoff

There are many different plot archetypes. Keep the work "archetypes" in mind because it can be a "cheat code" for coming up with your own writing prompts. If you are trying to come up with something to write about, you can look up a list of plot archetypes. Take a few of them, mesh them together, and try to make something new.

Plot is driven by three main storyline vehicles. Promises, Progress, and Payoff.

What do we mean by "promise"? Stories all make a promise. Likely several.

Being in control of these promises and how they play out shows your level of skill as an author. 

There are many types of promises.

Tone Promise

What is the overall tone of the story going to be. You want to get the tone right straight out of the gate. Don't start chapter one with a heart wrenching scene if you are trying to write a comedy.

One way Brandon proffers as a great opening for a book is what's called the "Cold Open". Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981) begins with a cold open. It starts with an adventure scene that gives you the promise that you will be watching a movie with a lot of adventure.

But it goes beyond just introducing the overall tone of the book. It also gives you an idea about the main character's personality. He's just a normal guy who makes mistakes. This is compounded later when you find out later that he's an archeologist and a professor. 

Character Personality Promise

Each character has specific a personality. Specific things that drive them. They have backgrounds, interconnectedness with other characters, etc... when you introduce a character, you make a promise to the reader of what they are going to act like. You need to make sure that your characters follow their personality type.

Character Arc Promise

Show us a characters desires.

What they are missing in their life that they cannot have (sometimes even the character, doesn't know what they want and you need to make the reader want the character to want something, like with The Hobbit (J. R. R. Tolkein, 1937) and Bilbo not wanting to go on an adventure. The reader wants Bilbo to go on an adventure. Bilbo does not and takes convincing from Gandalf and the Dwarves).

Show us their character flaws. 

What are they working on in their life? 

Who are they hating? 

Who are they loving?

Do characters HAVE to have arcs?

In short, no. Characters do not have to have arcs. There has been a term coined referred to as "iconic characters"

In many of the original James Bond films, James Bond had no character arc. He was just "James Bond". The same person from beginning to end in every film.

Sherlock Holmes has no character arc.

Conan has no character arc.

You may have side characters in your story who don't have any character arc. 

Umbrella Plot

Your visible structural plot (I would say that this is similar to the overall "setting" of the series. Think of a story taking place in a "Wizarding World"). You are making a promise to tell a story about a bunch of wizards. This is the discernible storyline. If it's a book about cowboys and aliens, If you have two characters who live in a town that just isn't big enough for the two of them and one needs to die or leave, but then an alien invasion happens, then the alien invasion may be the umbrella plot. But what is the "goal" for the characters? To get rid of one another. What are the cowboys missing? What do they need to succeed at halting the alien invasion and then, or in the process offing each other? That would be an umbrella plot and a core plot. Take Harry Potter (J. K. Rowling, 1997) for example. The umbrella plot would be that it's a book about a hidden world of wizards. For the core plot, Harry is a "chosen one" who may have defeat the most powerful dark-wizard to ever live. This core plot carries on through each book. In book one, there is an umbrella plot of Harry trying to figure out the mystery behind the Sorcerer's Stone.

Core plots and umbrella plots could be the same thing in different stories, or switched around.

This can be confusing... Example:

The characters are trying to succeed at X. Can they do it? This is your umbrella plot. The umbrella plot will remain the same from book I to book II−The umbrella covering all of the books in your series.

The characters are trying to succeed at X and while they are doing that they Y [fall in love]. Can they do it? This is your core plot. The core plot may change or it may remain the same from book I to book II. It may take your character the full 3 novels of your trilogy to fall in love and it may be all the way at the end at the climax of the umbrella plot. Or they may fall in love at the end of book 2 in your 5 book series.

Core Plot

What your progress and payoff is going to be. If it's a heist; will they get the goods in the end? If it's a romance; will they get together in the end?

"Romance" is your core plot. Remember when I brought up archetypes? This is useful here.

Books may not have an "Umbrella Plot". You may be reading something that is nothing more than a Romance novel. That book would only have a core plot. However, if you are really writing a book about two people who find love... in the midst of the zombie apocalypse, then the zombie apocalypse would be your umbrella plot.

Core Plot in Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977) is getting the plans to someone who can use them. Then there is the twist of destroying The Death Star.

When do you tie up the promise of the plot?

This is the "introduction to the book". 

It could take a few paragraphs in a short story, it can take only a few pages to wrap up, or it could take thirteen chapters at the end of Act I.

Example: It's wrapped up in The Hobbit when Bilbo finally decides to leave his home and go on an adventure and become a new person.

The Strange Attractor

Take a new spin on a familiar idea.

Or two familiar ideas that doesn't feel like it would make sense, but make it intriguing. 

Mistborn (Brandon Sanderson, 2006) is a Heist Movie in a fantasy world mashed up with My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964).

Two plot archetypes that come together to make one story.

Taste

Different people have different tastes. Some people hate romances. They may not like your book just because of that. Don't think that you can make everyone happy.

Progress - THE MOST IMPORTANT PART. It's also the hardest

Progress is... the progression of the promises throughout the story. 

Ask yourself: What question does the reader want answered? Am I making progress on answering that question?

Destroy Empire (umbrella plot) and get plans to the people.

Luke makes steps towards becoming a Jedi (character arc)

Han Solo becomes a little bit less of a jerk (character arc)

Payoff

You are in charge of the story

Remember that you as a writer are in charge of your book. You can make anything happen!

As the author, you may know that, ultimately, your characters may need to be in a specific location for the climax. In order to create tension, you can make your characters, through plot twists, think that they need to be in a completely different place and discover through some crazy reveal that they need to be somewhere else instead.

Don't "waste" your readers time

In some books and movies, the characters may make some sort of progress towards some goal that the writer has made a promise about earlier in the book. But they may introduce a plot twist. The readers/watchers will feel, if you throw all of the characters progress out the window, that their time they have spent reading thus far was completely wasted. 

Instead of throwing our characters progress, and our readers progress out the proverbial window, have the characters apply their progress toward the new goal. It can create wonderful climactic tension making your characters try to apply what they have already worked towards to the new goal.

Plot Twist vs Plot Expansion

Backsliding

Backsliding can be useful for creating tension, but if used inappropriately, it can be dangerous and annoying.

Visual Queues. I'm going to break this out into it's own section as it's a pretty great storytelling tip, but it's about naming characters and making it easier for the reader to know who is talking in the story. You can more easily let your reader know who is talking by saying something like "Son hung upside down from his tail and chatted up at them." when referring to "The Monkey King". This "visual queue" helps the reader easily paint a picture of the character telling them who is talking.

Also make sure each name for your different characters are as visually different as possible.