Three Elements a good story needs

Of all the absolute “rules” for writing, one rule is never mentioned but I have never seen a good story that violates this one. I have seen too many bad books and movies that violate this rule.

There are three things a good story needs, A beginning, a middle, and an end. Every single book or movie I have liked had these things.

What got me thinking about this was I watched Spiderman II the other day. I had seen it before but for the life of me could not remember what happened. After watching it again I still don't. But I did notice the profound lack of a beginning or an end.

I have liked books that switched things up a bit, started at the end and had the beginning in the middle and that sort of thing. But they still had a beginning and an end. When a story doesn't have all three elements it is not a story. It is just looking at a characters daily life, even the most interesting of characters can't stand up to that sort of peeping.

The beginning:

I've talked about this before, this is the event that changes the character's life and gets the ball rolling. Fred going to work at an accounting job is not a beginning unless he finds something strange that changes his life that day.

It is the same with Superheroes or Monsters. Batman patrolling the streets of Gotham City, isn't a story it's part of the neighborhood watch. His running into a new supervillian that makes him have to change tactics is the beginning of a story.

The middle:

Stuff happens to move the main character towards the end. Without an end there is no middle.

The end:

Not every single plot thread needs to closed, and evil doesn't have to be punished but there needs to be an end. Even in the middle of a trilogy there is an end to the storyline started that second chapter. EMPIRE STRIKES BACK is a great example:

Beginning: Our heroes are going their separate ways.

Middle: They learn they need each other. It's a handy lesson for Luke.

End: They vow to reunite.

No matter what genre you write in, except free form poetry, make sure your writing has a beginning, a middle, and an End.

Writing Wednesday: Society Building

AN INVENTION THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

I live in a house that was built in 1920. One of the first things I had to do was build closets, because in 1920 they didn't have closets. Being curious I wondered why.

Before the 20th century people kept their few clothes in armoires, these had shelves and drawers to store the clothes. The clothes were laid flat, so it would be tough to organize more than a few clothes. Then in 1903 the world changed.

Albert J. Parkhouse arrived as usual at his workplace, the Timberlake Wire and Novelty Company in Jackson, Michigan, which specialized in making lampshade frames and other wire items. When he went to hang his hat and coat on the hooks provided for the workers, Parkhouse found all were in use.

Annoyed-and inspired-Parkhouse picked up a piece of wire, bent it into two large oblong hoops opposite each other, and twisted both ends at the center into a hook. Then he hung up his coat and went to work.

That simple invention increased the amount clothes that could be stored. Armoires gave way to Wardrobes that had both drawers and hooks for clothes hangers. Someone took the idea of a clothesline and put it into the wardrobe and shirts and coats could be easily sorted.

With the ability to store more than a few clothes people stopped the practice of wearing the same clothes for a month before washing them. With so much more clothes hand washing became a chore so in 1908 the washing machine was made.

Wardrobes became bigger and more elaborate after WWII architects started building them in to home plans.

This simple act of annoyance changed the world we live in forever.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN

How does all this effect writing?

In SFF it a very important part. As you build your physical world you have to think about how it will effect the people living in that world.

One of the least thought out society reacting to technology is the STAR TREK next generation universe. Two pieces of technology would make that society unrecognizable to us. The Replicator and the Holodeck.

HOW THE REPLICATOR WOULD CHANGE SOCIETY

The Replicator would completely transform society. If you had everything you wanted at your fingertips how would the economy work. There are only two ways it could go:

One way would be a slave economy, where all money flowed to the owners of the energy sources that powered the replicators. The masses would have to provide services to these masters of the world to get a little energy to power their replicators. A very small middle class would make some money by selling designs for products to be replicated, but piracy would create a police state where every time you designed something of your own it would have to be checked against existing designs.

Judges would spend all their time checking how close a knockoff is to the original. For instance what if you took one of Gordon Ramsey's meals and used three quarters of a tablespoon of salt instead of a full tablespoon of salt? Would that be an original creation that you could sell for a tenth of the price?

Trying to use a capitalist model on a world with replicators would be a disaster.

So Gene Roddenberry pictured a world without money. Some have called this Socialism, and it is very close to Marxist Socialism taken one step farther. The consumers literally control the means of production.

With no incentive to work, many simply wouldn't. However, working is something that people do enjoy. Some of the nicest neighborhoods are the ones with a lot of retired people. You see flowerbeds that took a lot of work, carefully crafted landscaping, unique fences. These things don't give the owners much material gain, but they get the satisfaction of a job well done.

So the elite would go into Starfleet and the next tier would go into the Civil Corp of Engineers. There would be a huge art movement. But there would also be the dregs of society, a large percentage of the people would simply give up. People who want to do meaningful work but everything is provided for them and they aren't creative enough to be in the engineering sector of the art sector. Star Trek never shows this class of citizens.

Needless to say I absolutely hated the episodes that took place on Earth, as this problem was never directly addressed.

The societal problems of replicators could be addressed and you could build a nice society taking all that into consideration. The Star Trek technology that the writers thought would be a good idea but never (well, barely) addressed was the Holodeck.

THE HOLODECK WOULD DESTROY SOCIETY!

You have the ability to create a world distinguishable from the real world. Sounds great, but what happens when the real world sucks.

You tried like crazy to get into Starfleet, and failed out. You wonder what would happen if you didn't. Jump in the Holodeck and you're no longer a failure. Time to come out and study, why you don't need the real world.

The object of your affection dumps you, hop in the Holodeck where they love you.

A family member dies, no problem they will live forever in the Holodeck.

The Holodeck does address the problem of what to do with the people who give up on wanting to do meaningful work but it would hit all parts of society.

I haven't met anyone whose life was so wonderful that there was never a time that they wanted to give up. It's the biggest part of being human that during life there will be many times that you're knocked down, it is the struggle to recover that makes you who you are. With the Holodeck it would be too easy just to stop struggling and give up. Soon all of society would retreat into Holodecks and never come out again. It would be the last invention humans ever made.

WHAT TO CONSIDER WHILE BUILDING YOUR SOCIETY

So while you are building your world, try to imagine what anything you add to your world would do to your society. A small thing like the coat hanger can change the world profoundly. A huge fictional invention like the Holodeck might seem like a cool idea, but when you look at how it would impact society it soon becomes a disaster.

Writing Wednesday: World Building

Welcome to my favorite part of writing, World Building.

In Science Fiction and Fantasy the world building is huge part of the novel. In Science Fiction the master of world building, using what we know about the universe, is Arthur C. Clarke. In his book 2010 he took the data from the Voyager mission that showed how Jupiter's moons weren't just lumps of dead rocks but vibrant worlds in their own right to create a fascinating, and possible, place where life exists on Europa and Jupiter's core is a diamond the size of Earth.

In Fantasy world building the master has to be George Lucas. In making STAR WARS he blended the pure Fantasy elements of many species living side by side and the space opera elements of droids and faster than light warships to make a fantastic fantasy place.

There is a lot of talk about how world-building is out in literature. I have four things to say about that:

2010 by Arthur C. Clarke, first novel to receive a million dollar advance.

STAR WARS by George Lucas grossed three quarters of a billion dollars.

The STAR TREK franchise turned Paramount, later Viacom into a media empire.

Lord of the Ring trilogy made over $2.5 billion.

I picked these examples because the world building in these stories overwhelms the other elements and they are hugely popular.

So how do you make a fantastic world to put your story in? Think about the elements of your world and what that does to the bigger picture.

In THE SETTING EARTH I placed the story on Ceres, the dwarf planet in the asteroid belt. I looked up a few facts about the place.

It's gravity is 1/38th that of Earth, so a normal person would weigh between 4 and 5 pounds.

It is roughly 100 degrees warmer than the space around it, where does that heat come from? Very likely as it interacts with other asteroids in the belt its core is twisted and turned making it volcanically active. What does that mean for my settlers on the Dwarf Planet? It means there could be an underground ocean and speculating further that ocean could contain native life.

Once I had that concept I could imagine all the fun that my settlers could do to transform this dwarf world into paradise.

A fun sport on the surface of Ceres would be golf. Under the low gravity even an amateur could hit a 3 to 4 mile line drive.

With the underground ocean they could build giant tubes 60 to 90 kilometers across and they could build a habitat larger than the horizon so you wouldn't be able to tell you weren't in a park on Earth except for the gravity. That difference is where they can have fun.

Weighing only 5 pounds and being in a full atmosphere of pressure, they could strap on a pair of wings and fly where ever they felt like going.

Other fun things about the world I created on Ceres. The day is 8 hours long, so besides a work day being a full day, its spin is faster than Earth. I had my characters rest by a waterfall and the combination of the faster spin and the lower gravity made the coriolis effect noticeable so the waterfall curved 40 feet instead of falling straight down.

Unfortunately I had to ignore a known unknown. It is very likely that Ceres has a few moons. I had my main character star gaze a bit. He didn't notice the moons because I have no way of knowing their size and orbit. The odds of my guessing right are slim to nonexistent so in 2015 when the Dawn spacecraft visits Ceres anything I wrote about Ceres moons would be proven so wrong that it would be a distraction.

What I loved about my building a world out of the little data we have about Ceres is I could let my imagination run free but it was bounded by a few guidelines to make it consistent.

In fantasy the same rules apply but you have to make your own starting points.

In non SFF world building is still important. Even if you base your story on a real place you need to decide what elements of reality you are going to use and what elements need to be replaced with fiction.

One author that is considered great at weaving fictional characters and events into real places and events is James A. Michener. Reading a Michener novel is an undertaking so pick carefully. His novels are finely crafted to have the story weave in and out of the real world. While reading his novels you do get immersed in the worlds he is creating, unfortunately they tend to run over 1,000 pages so even a quick reader like myself needs to be immersed in that world for at least a week. Unlike books from some more superficial writers that run that long, you can't read a few hundred pages put it aside for a week and start reading again.

If you like torturing yourself for your art, reading Michener is good for seeing the technique of combining the real world with a world he created. But I beg of you, if you do study his technique, make your novels shorter.

The final word of advice I have on world building is do the exact opposite of what is being said. In building your world be as imaginative as possible, as long as it stays within the guidelines you first set down. Clarke took everything we knew about Jupiter's system of moons and let his imagination run wild in creating the details.

Lucas took whatever elements he liked from any genre and mashed them together and forever changed SFF. People can argue if this is good or bad but it can't be denied that he changed the genres.

STAR TREK has become a genre of its own.

The problem of world building in novels isn't that people aren't interested in it. The problem is that writers have gotten timid and don't take the world building far enough.

Evolution vs. Creationism

When it comes to making characters writers have two ends of a spectrum, and most fall somewhere in the middle. They can either create their characters first before even starting the novel or they can let the characters evolve as the plot plays out.

CREATIONISM

When making a character you have to have at least a vague idea about them, but some writers go all out on making their characters before they even start writing the first page. I read about one writer who draws a sketch of each character, knows what hospital they were born in, who their friends in kindergarten were, their first job, ect. That is a lot of work that will never make it into the book.

Like most things there are Pros and Cons to knowing that much detail about your character, the good thing is you don't have to break your flow when your writing and research some little detail about your character because you've done that before hand.

The little details about a character come up at the most unusual times, in MIND THIEF I wrote this sentence:

He leaned in close and inhaled the sweet scent of her light perfume.

Then had to hit the brakes, what did her light perfume smell like?

I then had to stop and research perfumes and find out what scents my character would pick out. This is the type of thing that if I had fully researched my character before hand I would know.

The bad side of knowing your character that well is you have even less objectivity when it comes to writing your scenes.

In REPOSSESSING SANITY where I did do a lot work on the main character before hand I had this little scene:

As the rest of the catering staff toiled away in the main kitchen, I made my special meal in the smaller family kitchen.

I had to sneak into the main kitchen to get a box of arugula lettuce, the largest covered serving platter in the mansion and a serving cart. No one paid any attention to me. While the meal cooked I made a lovely Lemon Garlic Vinaigrette, even though the guests probably wouldn't even taste it.

As the guests ate their entrées my heart was nearly bursting through my chest, I couldn't wait to see Gloria's face when I presented my dish to her.

They finally finished and I wheeled my cart in and stopped it right in front of Gloria's seat at the head of the table. I pulled off the cover and kept all emotion off my face as the conversation stopped.

All eyes in the room were glued to Gloria's baby on the silver platter. Lightly roasted on a bed of lettuce with an excellent Lemon Garlic Vinaigrette coating. The baby was Mr. Beals payment for Gloria's position and I'm sure the shock on her face had as much to do with knowing that Mr. Beals would be paying her a visit, as having her six month old baby boy presented to her in this manner.

“I'll inform the chef of your displeasure,” I said in my stuffiest tone and exited the dinning room. By the time the guests had gotten over their shock I was out the side door and in a new Porsche whose keys I had taken from the valet stand earlier.

I knew that my main character, Doug, had worked his way through college as a dishwasher in a four star restaurant and from that experience would know what sauce to coat an infant in. However the reader didn't know that. When one of my beta readers asked, “How come Doug knows so much about cooking?” I thought it was so obvious it was because of his former job. But I hadn't mentioned his job in the story. So something that was natural to me because I knew my character so well wasn't put in the story which could take the reader out of the action.

EVOLUTION

This is how I tend to work with my characters. I approach it like a Human Resources Manager and put out a job opening add:

Now hiring Psychopaths

Must be hard working and have an irresistible desire to kill and mutilate. Heavy manual labor involved.

Once I start writing I can fill in the little quirks of their behavior. Within the first page I hammer out their basic tone on life, that gives me their name. When they need a skill I think up a way that they acquired that. As they react with their environment I pick up little details on what they look like. As the story evolves so do my characters.

The upside to doing that is I don't leave the reader out of any thing that influenced their character as I am finding out about it at the same time.

The downside is I have to go back and rewrite things to match the information. The character I had that changed the most during a novel was Amanda my time traveling babe from AN EXTRA TOPPING OF HORROR.

She started out as Samantha and at some point changed her name. I wasn't aware of that until my 10^th of so rewrite when she called herself that in the last chapter. Oops.

At first she was 5'2” and roughly 90 lbs. As the story progressed she had to do a lot of physical activity and she slowly grew taller until she was just a few inches shorter than Brian the main character.

Her age changed several times, she started out 35, then got younger and younger until at one point she was the youngest person ever nominated for a Noble Prize. She then grew older and older until she was roughly 30 years old.

She even acquired a hook shaped nose.

Another downside of letting your characters evolve through the book is I have never had a first chapter stay the first chapter.

THE GOOD AND THE BAD

If you spend a lot time before writing your book working on your characters you won't hit as many speed bumps in writing your first draft, however you are very locked into their reactions. If you do go into huge detail with them just remember you may have to change them as your book progresses.

If you let your characters evolve, be prepared for a lot of rewriting throughout the novel to have them reflect the changes.

What a Character.

Major disclaimer here, I am primarily a plot driven writer and I had thought characters were my weak spot. Although in the beta readings of my latest book MIND THIEF people are loving the characters and dialog and missing the plot because of it. So take these words with a grain of salt.

You've figured out what POV you should use and where to start now you've got to have the who, your main character. In the pulp sci-fi novels of the 50s I grew up on that wasn't a problem. Characters were one dimensional. They had to be because of the way they were written. The writer banged them out on typewriters and often didn't do rewrites as rewriting anything back then meant if you wanted to change a word or two you would have to retype the entire chapter.

So if a writer described his main character as having shoulders like a linebacker in the first chapter and then the hero had to roll under a closing blast door that was a foot from the ground, the writer would have to go back and retype the entire first chapter.

The same is true for the main character's motivations. The main characters had to be heroic and pure of heart as the more subtle motivations could trigger a rewrite. The best example I can think of bypassing more subtle motivations is MYSTERIOUS ISLAND. The five men lived on an island for years and only thought of making it a better place to live. A writer today could never get away with that as critics would ask, why aren't they breaking down and having prison sex on the beach?

So today a writer needs to give their characters more motivations than just being Dudley Doowright. Unless you've made your character have a reason, like OCD, to have a laser like focus on the final goal, their motivations need to be more than just doing the right thing.

One thing that gives your characters life is the initial decision, the choice they make that sets everything off. The second thing that makes readers identify with a character is giving them a motivation that the reader can relate to. It doesn't have to be something they experienced but that they can empathize with.

My main character, Howie, in MIND THEIF was adopted and his adopted dad disappeared when Howie was 15. As a result he doesn't trust people so he tries to do everything by himself, including having to get a 3.8 GPA to maintain his scholarships and enrolling in a psych study to pay for the rest of the bill.

Now that is something I've never experienced as my tuition, rooms and meals cost $1,600 per semester and my Pell Grants were $2,100. Back then you only paid for college if you had a specialized major, or were from a wealthy family.

But I can empathize with Howie and see why he would choose to enroll in a psych study.

Howie not wanting to rely on anyone isn't an uncommon motivation. People can see why all his decisions can stem from that motivation.

Naturally this applies to all the major characters in your book. With the secondary characters you can have more fun as you don't have to show their motivations up front. When you finally do show their motivations the reader can look back and say, that's why they acted like that.

When thinking about what motivates your characters keep it simple and something people can relate to. That can lead to the reader cheering for them in the final conflict.

A classic example of using a simple motivation to make the viewer cheer for the heroine is ALIENS. Ripley lost her daughter and she runs into Newt who needs protection from the aliens. Ripley's motivation is clear she isn't going to lose another child. It brought the movie up from just a Humans Vs Aliens movie to two mother's battling to save their children from each other.

My entry in a contest

The public slushpile was having a contest to write a flash fiction story entitled "Why does Jimmy hate pizza?" This goes along with the theme of "An Extra Topping of Horror" so I wrote one within the setting of that book.

I thought it was pretty good for having spent about 30 minutes on it.

What do you think?

WHY DOES JIMMY HATE PIZZA?

Oh, where to start!

Two weeks ago I talked about figuring out what POV you should start writing a book in. BTW I forgot one really good example of 1st person POV and that is the “Stainless Steel Rat” series by Harry Harrison.

After figuring out what POV to write your book in, you have to figure out where the story starts. This is one of the hardest decisions in writing and also the most important one if you want to capture the readers attention. Luckily there is only one place to start a story, with several variations.

THE TRIGGERING INCIDENT

People at rest tend to stay at rest until acted on by an outside force. When your main character hits something that changes his life that starts the story. The beginning of the story needs to take place somewhere near this incident. How close depends on the type of story you are telling.

THE CHARACTER INCIDENT

If you want people to relate to your main character the story has to begin shortly before triggering incident and at the decision that main character made that brought him to the incident. In THE PIZZA DIARIES retitled AN EXTRA TOPPING OF HORROR I originally started at the triggering incident where my main character saves the damsel in distress. It seemed logical, but he really didn't have any choices to make unless he was a true bastard. There was a naked woman dazed in the road. Unless he was a total psychopath he had no choice but to help her. As a result for the entire first chapter he was pushed along by the events that happened. That shaped the readers impression of him as someone who just got pushed along through life. So I had to start earlier.

I had to start at the decision that brought him out there in the first place. An order came in from a man that he had a bad history with. He was given the choice of passing it to his co-worker, Kyle, who had plans that would be ruined by taking the order, or taking the delivery. So he had make a decision that showed he was a half way decent person. Not terribly noble, but considerate of his co-workers. It was the type of choice that people are faced with all the time so the reader can relate.

By starting with an ordinary decision the reader can then see how the same decision making process plays out when he is faced with really extraordinary circumstances.

THE ACTION INCIDENT

If your book is focused on the action then the story starts right after the triggering incident in the middle of the action it caused. Then it backs up to the incident, preferably through dialog. This lets the reader know to focus on the action.

THE LONGING

The main motivator in porn and romance, someone has a desire for something they may not even know what it is. The trigger is when they see a chance of having that desire satisfied. If your story is about someone's quest to achieve something then you should show the longing that was inside them before the triggering event.

This example will seem strange but bear with me (or if you are naked, bare with me):

2001: A Space Odyssey. The story starts with the caveman “Moon Watcher”, um, watching the Moon. He longs for humans to be able to great things like find a tree high enough to touch the Moon. He also dreams of a time when humans will be safe from predators and well fed. The triggering incident comes when the Monolith lands and transforms them into a species that has the tool, a brain, to satisfy that longing. 10,000 years later his dream comes true.

THE INCIDENT ITSELF

If you are really good or lucky all those events happen at the same time. The incident forces the main character to make a decision and leap into action that satisfies a longing. Chances are that won't happen. Rather than try and force the incident to fill all these things in the first page (something that is really obvious and usually awful) it is best to find the part about the incident that will shape the impression you want the reader to have.

SOMETHING ELSE

While writing this I have an awful nagging in the back of my mind that I am missing a key part of the triggering incident, but I can't think of what. Somebody enlighten me in the comments so I can do a face palm as soon as I read it.