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hey liz i've been thinking a lot about story structure lately and i wanted your take on how you decide what structure your stories will have? i know there's that "you have to do what your story needs and tells you to do" thing but these bitches dont ever tell me anything they just multiply so. thoughts? - bma
(as an aside, i don't know whether involving medium would change many things but it may be worth considering. mainly i think medium is just a matter of arrangement and that the story would be for most intents and purposes the same no matter how you choose to tell it. i guess you could argue that structure is arrangement in itself and intrinsically tied to medium but i sort of feel like it is secondary arrangement, if at all? like if you consider time as an element to outline -- the time IN the story (how things happen to your characters) is not necessarily the time youāre telling the story IN (how you are telling your reader that things are happening) aka internal chronology doesnt equal your workās pacing? or should it??? does this make sense? i dont think so. i am sorry.) - bma :|
NOOO dont be sorry ur making total sense
i think thereās 3 thots to unpack here (medium, structure, & chronology) & iām gonna start with medium bc itās easier. im also putting it behind a cut bc itās gonna get just stupidly long and rambly. iām sorry in advance if itās not helpful to you, i have a lot to say for someone who has never taken even one single class on writing and as a result doesnāt know jack shit (thereās a tl;dr at the end dont worry)
about MEDIUM:Ā
so like ok iām just some goof-off with a HS degree who writes fanfiction but In My Very Super Qualified Personal Opinion, i donāt think that most of the time medium is intrinsically tied to STRUCTURE of the main storytelling arc...i think the art of storytelling itself is distinct from the medium you choose to tell the story IN. this post puts it better than i ever could but basically for me, i feel like the story itself is sort of the raw, malleable concept, and the medium you choose to tell it in is how you convey the information??
like in a book, you can sayĀ āshe forgot her keysā and in a film you have to show her smacking her forehead, heading back into the house, and swiping her keeps off the counter. you canāt TELL in film, you have to show. similarly i regret every day i cannot perfectly describe a facial expression with words when i see it so clearly in my head. for audio-only podcasts that are dialogue heavy out of necessity you have different limitations than you would for, say, animated music videos with no dialogue at all. games allow for more interactivity and exploration while sacrificing accessibility, tv shows allow for more length while sacrificing, uh, a big hollywood budget...medium affects the kind of story you can reasonably tell which is why some stories are better suited to one medium than another. i think trying things in other mediums is a good way to stretch your storytelling muscles but with enough skill nearly any story could be told in any medium. i think when trying to decide on a medium you just gotta weigh the pros & cons and what you feel comfortable with/what you think would be most effective/what would evoke the strongest reaction
re: structure:
firstlyĀ ādo what the story tells u to doā is a little silly like...the story isnāt sentient. come on. thatās likeĀ āi can only write when the writing gods inspire meā there are no writing gods! inspire yourself! itās all in our weird messed up brains! ok anyway.
this is, again, just how i do things, and i am 700% self-taught so take it with a grain of salt, but when i sit down and start blocking out a story from scratch i donāt...actually consider the big structure at all! sorry if thatās not helpful to you. i like to make a list of everything i want to happen, and then put it together in a few different orders to see what looks best. and when iām finished, whatever i have just like...IS the structure i go with, with perhaps minor tinkering to make it flow more smoothly. (i think this might be in the same spirit as ādo what the story tells youā with less bullshit and more Agency Of The Writer.)
for long and more complex projects, i actually usually have several lists - one list of stuff that is, for example, the Action Plot (the kingdom has been cursed, iām tracking down my serial killer sister to bring her to justice, iām running from djinn who wanna kill my dad, iām trying to bring my dead not-boyfriend back to life). then i have another list for Character A & Character Bās romance or whatever. and maybe a even another one for solo character development (magicphobic prince learns to love magic, former werewolf hunter figures out his family is a cult, half-demon learns to embrace his own nature). and as many lists as we need for however many Main Characters and or Plots/Sideplots
how i order the lists: individually first. donāt mix them together to start with. when deciding the order of an individual list i like to, for example in a romance arc, use escalating intimacy. āA and B have dinner togetherā is naturally gonna go way sooner thanĀ āA and B kissā orĀ āA and B talk about Aās angsty backstoryā because thatās more satisfying. draw it out, good/important stuff last, dangle that carrot so we have a reason to keep reading! for singular character development, itās basically a straightforward point A to point B...if i want my guy to start hating magic with everything he is and end up being very comfortable with it, i have to putĀ āreluctantly uses magic to save his own lifeā WAYYY beforeĀ ācasually using magic to light torches and reheat his cold stew.āĀ
the tricky part for me is when iām done with these lists and then i need to mix them together To Pace My Whole Story. (this is usually why i wind up with a rainbow colored spreadsheet.) i donāt like to put too many things too close together because then the pace feels uneven. even if my Action Plot is only a thinly veiled excuse for romance and character development, i still donāt want to focus on a romance for 30,000 words and then goĀ āand oh yeah in case you forgot Serial Killing Sister is still coming for your asses.ā the more sideplots and major character arcs youāre juggling the harder it is to get an even distribution, which is my main concern always
and like, generally, whatever i have when iām finished...is my structure. (sorry.)Ā
i donāt know much about the classic 3-act or anything like that, but i usually can divide them up into 3-5 big arcs based on story turning points. sometimes i take a scene out of one arc and put it in another because it fits better and i like for my shit to be organized, but usually by the time iām finished with all that, thatās what the final story is mostly gonna look like. (there have been a few exceptions when i realized i needed extra scenes/changes while i was MID-DRAFT and let me tell you that murders me EVERY time. it happened on the merlin fic iām currently posting and that was like my own personal hell.)
this is also where thots about chronology come in:
i think time CAN be an element of this if you WANT it to be, but it doesnāt HAVE to be. if you want it to be, i would consider it just anotherĀ ālistā like character development or the romance arc.Ā
i usually plot without considering Time very much...to me, itās all down to the events you want to show, and however much time it takes is the byproduct. if you want to show something from a characterās chilhood but then tell the bulk of it when theyāre adults, thatās one thing. if you want to show a scene from their childhood, teenhood, young adulthood, etc, thatās a different kind of pacing??Ā i usually do it this way so i can regard time like wordcount: it takes as long as it takes. 3 days or 3 years, a 1.5k drabble or a 100k epic...overall, my LARGEST CONCERN is that even distribution. in the same way that i donāt want one chapter to be 30,000 words when the rest are 10,000 words, i personally am not a fan of huge timeskips offscreen
(because this where i think someoneās own internal chronology DOES matter...this is just a personal preference, as a reader i have a hard time really comprehending, say, a year timeskip or a 10yr timeskip when all i did was turn one page. like, a year is such a long time. i canāt even begin to describe how different i am now to how i was a year ago. itās the same for character development. time IS development and as a writer iām not really comfortable having that take place offscreen - for main characters, at least. itās just too jarring. a little prologue with something happening 10 or 20 years ago is usually fine, but for the most part, iām not a fan. ...i can do one chapter per year a lot easier than i can do two chapters in childhood and the other 8 in adulthood. of course you can play with this a LOT with nonlinear storytelling, which is a whole other very cool thing, and someone skilled in their work can keep me sucked in no matter what, but imo if you donāt want to risk throwing your reader out of your work itās better to keep things steady)
HOWEVER sometimes time IS an element u wanna consider outside of just making sure your shit is evenly distributed...if your heart is moved to tell a story in a specific timeframe, over a year, or from solstice to solstice (this was almost the timeline for my merlin fic and then i changed it), for the first six months of a friendship, or even a huge journey in the span of a single day (toby fox had a lot of success with this one lol).
i think it can help to choose a start and end point for your chronology the same way you do for character development (prince goes from hating magic to being ok with it, story takes place from ages 8 to 25, or from new yearās eve 2038 to 2039, whatever) - that way you can keep your distribution even, if thatās a thing you want to do...even if you have a lot of skips you can still note what happens offscreen to make it work better in your head? like, if you just make it another List, another column on your spreadsheet, when youāre in the early stages of organizing you can be conscious of it and make sure itās playing into the story the way you want it to
anyway these r my thots im SOOOO SORRY this is so long lmao. brain machine broke today which is why i had to ramble more to explain myself. the tl;dr in case ur brain is melting out of ur ears & u didnāt sign up for an essay:
imo medium is totally distinct from storytelling tho ofc some stories are better suited to some mediums
structure? i donāt know her. i plot w/o regard to structure and then if it looks funny i mush it into a more structurally sound shape
my main concern when structuring anything, including time, is an even distribution of Events and a steady rate of escalation
structure to me is just what i have when iām finished plotting. iām sorry one day iām gonna take a writing class
internal chronology matters to me personally because i have a little bit of time blindness but maybe not to everyone, i know many very successful stories where they disregarded that entirely to no ill effect
writerās block isnāt real! everyone just needs more rainbow spreadsheets
thank u for asking I HOPE i didnāt make you regret it too badly lmao and that at least a little of it was helpful!!Ā
#personal#liz loves writing#liz answers asks#brit marling anon#i couldn't figure out how to answer u without walking u thru my entire process#so that's what i did and that's why it's so long. very sorry.#im gonna set this up to reblog itself at the time u sent ur ask so that ur sure to see it!!#edit: there was SUPPOSED to be a cut on this but tumblr put it in the ASK?? i can't seem to fix it. rip
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