the yeah write 2012 summer writer’s series, part 6
Week Six: organizing a compelling post structure
Please welcome back guest editor Saalon Muyo who tweets as @saalon and blogs at Saalon Muyo. If you have any questions or need any clarification on today’s topic or prompts, please feel free to begin a discussion in comments.
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When I plan a story, I start at the end.
I’m not talking about writing. I write straight ahead, from front to back, with few exceptions. I don’t mean the inspiration part, either. That’s its own process; I take whatever seed of an idea I’ve got and journal meanderingly, spiraling around the idea until it turns into something that sounds like a story I want to tell. Or it sucks and I shelve it. Between the inspiration and the writing lies the planning. That’s when I start at the end.
Confused? Don’t be. Think about it like this: It’s impossible, as a reader, to really get the structure of a story until you’ve finished. Story structure reveals itself backward, from the finale back to the opening, as we retrace the steps that led us to the conclusion. Most readers don’t do this consciously, but subconsciously, instinctively. If an ending was happy, readers will relive why it was and how it got there. If it’s sad, they’ll trace that tragedy’s echos back, looking for how it could have been prevented or avoided.
I know I’m finished with the meandering inspirational journaling when I find the end of the tale. I don’t always have a crystal clear image of that ending, but I grab onto the feeling of that ending, the basic shape of where the characters will end and how things will resolve. That’s when I start the real planning.
The ending is my North Star. It’s how I navigate. When I decide what things need to be in the story, or what order they need to occur in, I have that ending as a guide. Does this scene get me closer to that end? Does it help explain or illuminate things that will make that conclusion feel earned or natural? While I don’t explicitly work backwards, the build of plot is most easily traced backward from the conclusion. The motivation for a scene or a plot development should be found in the scenes prior; back and back, to the start.
The more inevitable those steps feel, the tighter the structure of your story will be. Is there merit to a looser structure? Sure, absolutely, but the better you are at fitting those pieces together, the better you’ll be when you want to relax and let a story breathe and flow. The clearer your destination is, the easier time you’ll have knowing if a brief detour is just what’s needed, or if it’s time to keep your foot on the gas pedal.
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This is such great advice. Some days I’ll start writing because a really great opening sentence pops into my head, and then after a little while, I realize that what I’m working on is all over the place. Having an end point in mind really helps me focus and gives me a single hook upon which I can hang all the different pieces of the story.
I seem to find that the most well-paced writing i do is when I’ve got the clear path to the end. I’ve never tried to write fiction (maybe that’s my next challenge?), but the memoir stuff that I write always starts at the end, because that’s the event I’m trying to tell.
Interestingly enough, I’m trained as an actor, so the process of assembling beats is always running in the back of my mind; I find that the process of collecting emotion to frame each beat leads to a build-up pretty naturally.
And I’m also sure that this comment made no sense whatsoever…
Hah! It made perfect sense! (Well, it did to me. I’m crazy, but I’m not *that* crazy, so I think it making sense to me means it makes sense. I hope. Am I making sense?) I love how your acting training has influenced your feel of story structure. I’ve never heard my actor-writer friends articulate it like that, but that makes total sense.
Give fiction a shot! Even if it turns out to be something you love less than nonfiction/memoir writing, I guarantee it’ll help the nonfiction. I’m the exact opposite of you: I’m a big-time fiction guy, but memoir stuff makes me more uncomfortable. Forcing myself to get better at it has made my fiction *much* stronger.
I’m glad that you could understand my comment! Sometimes I feel so tongue-tied (finger-tied?) trying to explain the unexplainable.
And I’ve now added “Try fiction” to my list. I don’t know when or where, but I’m going to give it a shot!
This is exactly what I needed to hear right now. Man, I’ve learned to love these posts. I will miss them.
I have been doing just this. I had an idea for a fiction story/novel, and the clearest thing to me was the climax, how it would all end. I started wrestling with it, because the loose plot I had created around that climax started to seem ill-fitting. Necessary parts to make that structure work, chronologically, just didn’t interest me and seemed not to lead to that emotional punch where I wanted to go.
Weirdly, I think the solution may be to move the entire setting and genre – basically trash everything, even my character, to better fit that emotional punch I’m writing toward.
I thought I was crazy and fickle to be considering this. Thanks for helping me consider this might be the sanest course.
That’s so awesome to hear! That is *absolutely* not an insane course. The most powerful force in a story before you write it is the way you want it to make you (and the readers) *feel*. Fantastic that you still have that in your mind so clearly! Be fearless! And maybe a little insane if you have to be! 😉
I’ve been struggling with this same thing on an idea for (no joke) years. I’ve had three separate versions of the story over the years, and every time it’s wrong, and every time I go and write something else while I try to think of a new approach. I know *exactly* what I want the story to be, but no clue how to tell it. Better to wait than to write something tortured and forced though, right? (he said, hoping he *believes it* this time.)
Love this. I definitely find it easiest, most effective and the most fun to write in the direction of the ending, particularly in nonfiction. Sometimes in fiction you have to let your characters lead you there, but in short pieces of nonfiction, for me at least, it’s more about finding the most pleasing route to the ending I already see. Well said!
I find, with fiction, that the ending is more of an emotional/thematic anchor than it is a solid series of events. It might be that too – sometimes you just *know* where you’re going – but I’ve always had this sense that, for this story to be *this* story, it’ll end up somewhere over here.
Because you’re right: you cannot, cannot force characters into events. You have to let them kick the story as much as they want…and even prove your ending idea wrong! That used to bother me, but now I feel that if the ending guided me to the point where I realized I was headed to the wrong ending, that’s ok. Either I was always headed in the right direction without knowing it, or I’ll be fixing the stuff I already wrote in rewrites…which I was going to do anyway.
Nonfiction is so much easier with this, because you can say: Oh yeah, THIS happened, and THAT is where I’m ending, now lemmie just write to it!