Year: 2024

Okay, I’ve been dancing around this one for a while, but let’s do it.

Let’s talk about structure.

I think the first thing we need to address is that there are many, MANY types of story structure. If you think of a house, we can talk about its internal structure, but that could mean we’re referring to plumbing, heating, electrical, the actual 2×4 framework, the insulation, or even just the way walls and doors are laid out in the floorplan. All of these are the structure of the house, yes. But we understand that swapping out a circuit breaker isn’t going to fix some clogged pipes, and it’s definitely not going to make a shorter path between the bedroom and the living room. Different structures do different things in different ways, and the ways to implement or fix one don’t necessarily work for the others.

When we talk about structure in writing, it’s the same thing. There’s dramatic structure, narrative structure, three act structure, and more. And some of these have multiple names depending on what school of literature your professors were fans of. And like with a house, we need to account for them all, but they’re definitely all their own thing. And like with a house, we can’t apply the fixes for one to another. What works for this probably isn’t going to apply to that.

And this is why I end up having a problem with a lot of guru types announcing you have to this with structure or you never have to bother with that for structure or sometimes just saying… well, nonsense. It’ s really clear a lot of them have no idea what they’re talking about. I saw someone once arguing that three act structure is outdated and there’s no reason you can’t have five or seven or twelve acts. Which sounds really cool and whoo-hoo we’re breaking rules, especially if you’ve got no idea what three act structure is…

Point is, there’s a lot of folks out there talking about structure who have no idea what they’re talking about and you should probably ignore them and what they say.

With that said… let me talk with you about structure.

I’ve mentioned a lot of this stuff here before, and I’ve done this three part lesson or lecture or whatever you’d like to call it before, too (about six years ago). So if you’ve been reading the ranty writing blog for a while, you’ve probably seen some of it or been referred back to it. I figure it’s never a bad thing to revisit stuff, maybe update some examples, explain things in new ways.

Over the next few weeks, the three forms of structure I want to blather on about are linear structure, narrative structure, and dramatic structure. All of these interact and work with each other, and it’s my personal belief that all three of them have to be strong if I want to tell a strong story. If you want a quick, thumbnail explanation of them–

Linear structure is how my characters experience the story.

Narrative structure is how I, the author, decide to tell the story

Dramatic structure is how the reader gets the story

There’s a little more to it that that, but I’ve found this is a good, quick way to think of them.

So this week we’re going to talk about linear structure. Again, simple version, this is how my characters experience the story. Remember how I mentioned different names for things? Well, the Russian literary term for this is fabula. Another term you may have heard for this is continuity. It’s the line of events from past to present. Thursday leads to Friday which leads to Saturday and then Sunday. Breakfast, coffee break, lunch, dinner. Birth, childhood, college years, adulthood, middle age, old age, death.

If you like, remember I’ve mentioned Watsonian and Doylistic a few times? Things happening within the story as opposed to things I’m doing to the story? Linear structure is a Watsonian thing. I’m still choosing the characters and events, sure, but the linear structure happens entirely within the story.

Now, I mentioned all of these forms of structure are really important, and I’m tempted to say linear structure’s the most important (although I don’t want to pick favorites). And there’s a simple reason for this–most of us are experts when it comes to linear structure. Linear order is how we experience things all the time, every day. We’ve been studying this form of structure our entire lives.

This is why it gnaws at us when somebody knows something now, but doesn’t know it later. We pick up on it when ages don’t quite line up. We tend to notice when effect comes before cause, even if it’s subtle. Even if the story gives these elements to us out of order, our minds tend to sort things back into linear order. Because it’s how we’ve been taught to deal with the world. Things that don’t match this universal structure rub us the wrong way, even if we don’t always realize why.

Another way to think of linear structure is a timeline. And it also lets me point out a key aspect of this. If you’ve ever watched a procedural show or a detective show, it’s really common for the characters to take the various clues and incidents and break them down into on a chalkboard or whiteboard. Maybe they stick up some photos, too. And they all go in the order they happened– 4:08, 4:15, 4:16, 4:23, and so on.

Now, that key thing to keep in mind? It doesn’t matter what order the detectives discover the clues in. If we first learned the maid was here at 4:16 and then later on we learn the butler heard the gunshot at 4:08… well, it may sound silly to say but the gunshot still happened first. Learning about them out of order doesn’t change the order the events actually happened in.

So if I’m writing a story—even if I’m telling the story in a non-linear fashion—there still needs to be a linear structure. And the linear structure needs to make sense. Because readers will notice if it doesn’t.

A good way to test the linear structure of my story is to just arrange all the flashbacks, flash-forwards, recollections, frames, and other devices in chronological order. Pull apart my outline or notecards or whatever I’m using and just… put the story beats in order. Simple, right? The story should still make logical sense like this, even if it’s lost some dramatic punch at a few points (more on that later).

If my story elements don’t work like this—if effect comes before cause, if motivations get really weird, if people know things before they learn them—it probably means I’ve messed up my linear structure. I got so focused on doing clever, out-of-order things that nothing works in order. And—not to keep hammering this point—but people will notice this. They have to. It’s how our brains are wired, to put things in linear order.

There was a show I watched a few months ago that had a non-linear gimmick. Lots of flashbacks in every episode. And not all to the same period. Like, if the episode was set on Friday, we might start with flashbacks to Wednesday afternoon, but then move on to Monday morning flashbacks, and then some from Thursday night. And then the next episode is Saturday, but it flashes back to Tuesday and Wednesday morning and maybe also Thursday night, but for a different character.

On one level this was fantastic and I loved it. But as the show went on… it started to gnaw at me. And I found myself analyzing the show more than watching it, trying to figure out how this flashback and that flashback lined up, especially if we were saying the current episode was set Sunday morning. I talked to a couple friends who were watching it and discovered they were all having the same issue. Started good, but as the show went on the structure became more and more problematic.

In the end, the story didn’t make a lot of sense when you put it in order. There were just too many weird issues that didn’t line up. And it messed up a lot of the characters, too. The way they’d act and react, things they say (or not say). It was all being done to preserve big reveals later in the show, rather than being natural dialogue “now.” Once it was all in order, it was obvious the characters didn’t have any reason for the way they were acting or talking.

Y’see, Timmy, no matter what order I decide to tell things in, my characters are experiencing the story in linear order. And their actions and reactions, their dialogue and motives, they all have to reflect that. If halfway through my book Wakko flashes back to what happened a month ago, this isn’t new information for him—it happened a month ago. So everything he does or says before the flashback should be taking that information into account in a natural, believable way.

I know it sounds pretty straightforward and… yeah, it is. Linear structure is going to be the easiest of the three forms I blather about over the next few weeks because it’s the one we all know. Also, it’s just a logical, objective thing. There isn’t a big debate to be had about whether or not Thursday comes before Friday.

And yet, people still mess this up all the time. And mistakes with linear structure are almost always because of narrative structure.

But we’ll talk about that next week.

Until then, go write.

Okay, this one’s going to feel a bit random, but stick with me…

My junior year college roommate was a friggin’ brilliant guy (he teaches biochemistry now). We used to stay up late working out the solutions to scientific problems like “how many hamburgers would it take to reach Pluto?” and other important things we did not get a Nobel prize for. It really was one of those higher-education experiences you only seem to read about– we just liked figuring out the answers to things, and we were in a position where we could spend a random hour (or more) doing it.

And—again—not being rewarded with a Nobel prize for our scientific work.

Anyway, John introduced me to the idea of invisible math. If you and I are on opposite ends of a lawn and I toss a baseball to you, there are so many measurements and calculations that need to be made. Think about it. Distance. Height. Speed. Weight of the ball. Force to put behind the ball. The torque of your arm. Arc. Rate of descent. Air resistance. Wind resistance. And there’s more past that. Every time we throw a baseball, there’s so much invisible math behind it.

But most of the time… we just throw the baseball. Our brains do all that math subconsciously for us. They’re pretty cool, right?

In fact, weirdly enough, if you think too much about any of these things as you’re getting ready to throw, you’ll probably mess it up somehow. Try to concentrate on two or three of those factors and you’ll almost definitely mess up your throw.

Which, of course, brings us to Lindsay Lohan.

If you somehow didn’t know, Lindsay Lohan was a fairly talented Disney kid who eventually moved into “older” roles when she could. But as her roles became more and more serious, her performance became more and more… Well, let’s politely say erratic. Unpredictable.

Now, if you are familiar with Ms. Lohan, I know the easy thing to do is giggle, maybe punch down a bit, and point at all the reports of addiction and abuse that came out as she got older. But please consider this. She was a pretty solid child actor. Seriously. She carried a bunch of movies. But even after she got cleaned up and dealt with some parts of her life, her performances were still kind of all over the place.

Now, I don’t know Lindsay Lohan. I think we were living in LA at the same time, so we’ve probably been within, say, a mile of each other one or thrice. Maybe even a few yards? Point is, I’m kind of guessing here, based on my own experience.

That said, I’d bet real money when she started doing “serious” movies, now that she was a real actor… people started telling her how to act. Maybe she took a class or got a coach. Doing a bit of ye olde method acting, perhaps? Maybe she started putting serious thought into motivations and stage business and presence.

I bet she started thinking about how to throw the baseball.

See where I’m going here?

For most of us, when we first decide we want to tell a story, we just sit down at a computer or pick up a pen and… we start writing. That’s it. We don’t think about grammar or structure or character arcs. We just write about cool stuff we like. Romance. Monsters. Space battles. Wizards. Ninjas. Lizard people! We make characters who are basically us (but cooler! and more popular!) and they go have adventures of one kind or another.

But eventually (hopefully!) someone sits us down and talks to us about grammar. And story structure. And character arcs. Maybe even themes! They tell us how to write. Maybe it’s a schoolteacher. Or a college professor. Maybe it’s a book we willingly picked up, not knowing the awful things it was going to teach us.

And it’s my personal belief that people have one of three reactions at this point.

One group of people essentially say, well, screw this. Turns out writing is way harder than I thought it was. And a lot less fun. And they walk away from this and go become frustrated studio execs or bureaucrats or something.

The second group says wow, I didn’t realize there were so many important rules. I better follow them all! To the letter! At all times! And these people keep writing but it loses a lot of the fun for them and I think.. well, most of them stop being any good. They get so focused on all those rules and guidelines—the stuff we never actually register—that they lose the ability to actually tell a good story. They’re more concerned with making sure the math works out than they are with throwing the baseball.

And the last group?

They’re the ones who take this new knowledge, sift through it, and apply it where they can. They keep writing and try to work with it, rather than wrestling their writing to fit all the rules. They know sometimes all this stuff matters and sometimes… you’ve just gotta write like you’re nine again. Dance like nobody’s watching. Write like nobody’s going to read it. There’s a time and place for all those rules, but its not right now.

Please note I’m not saying ignore the rules. Rules help. They really do. But that’s the key– the rules are there to help me tell my story. They shouldn’t be shaping it. My story doesn’t exist so it can be an example for how all the rules work.

Really it’s a forest-for-the-trees thing. I want to be aware of the rules. I want to know them. I want to understand them. But I don’t want to be focused on them.

My focus should be on my story.

Next time… I think I may babble on about the different ways we can get from A to Z.

Until then, go write.

Oh, hey there. Thanks for opening this email from a relative stranger.

So, let me start right off by saying past-me made some mistakes.

You may remember in the last newsletter I mentioned I was going to try rearranging my weekly schedule to get a little more writing time. Combine the day of errands with my usual day off and then that frees up a whole day.

Alas, it didn’t work out like that. I tried it for three weeks and I just felt… edgy. Frustrated. And during the third week it hit me the problem was I really didn’t have a day off anymore—I had an errands day that I tried to squeeze a little hobby stuff into. But it was easy for that time to get eaten up, and I tended to end the day more annoyed than relaxed.

Like I said, this is on me for two reasons. One, I should know better than to do a radical change in the middle of a project. You don’t want to be in the groove and suddenly have to get used to a new keyboard or new software or a new work schedule. That’s just asking to ruin your flow.

The other thing is,well, I’m a big believer that everyone needs a regular day off. Everybody. I think it’s honestly healthy to stop doing that thing that dominates 70-83% of your life and just do something else for a day. Make your body work differently. make your brain work differently. Never taking a day off is like always skipping leg day. It just makes me unbalanced.

And, yeah, I know I’m speaking from a place of privilege here. I know a lot of folks simply can’t take a day off. It’s the sad truth and believe me I lived like that for many, many years. But I really hope most of you can, and hope if you can that you actually do.

(I originally wrote a lot more here but it kept turning into paragraphs about worker’s rights and pay rates and mental health and health in general and all that’s a lot more than you signed up for. TL;DR – I know I’m lucky to get to take a day off every week and I really think this should be a really basic thing everyone gets to do, not just “lucky” people)

In conclusion, once I hit send on this, I’m going to go throw on a movie, paint some little toy soldiers, perhaps have a relaxing adult beverage. Maybe two. Movies and beverages. Hopefully more than two little toy soldiers.

Anyway…

Let me give you a couple updates on things…

TOS is going well. I’ve got some stuff to transcribe out of legal pads but I think I’m around 85K words right now? Deep in the churn of the second act, story-wise. It’s going to be a big book. I’m actually thinking I could have this done… not by the next newsletter, but almost definitely before the May one.

Also heard back from David, my agent, about GJD and… he likes the new draft a lot. Which is always a relief to hear. He had a few last little notes. Some of them are good things he caught. A couple I’m probably going to push back on a bit and say “nah, don’t worry, this is good.” I should be able to rework those in a day or so and then he shows it to editors who also like it a lot. And then champagne falls from the heavens. Doors open. Velvet ropes part.

Shamefully, I haven’t done a damned thing on that comics pitch, which I really need to work on this week. With all the other stuff this past month, it became the easy thing to push to the side. So let’s hope I didn’t slide it so far I pushed it off the table. So to speak.

Okay, let me fill you in on some other fun stuff from the past month.

Cool Stuff I’ve Been Watching– I watched Monster High:The Movie and got the music for that stuck in my head for two weeks. It was harmless fun and positive without being cloying. I admit I got distracted (in a good way) by character and set designs. The Kid Who Would Be King was something I’d heard a ton of people talk about and ended up liking it a lot. It’s great to have The Bad Batch and Resident Alien back.

Cool Stuff I’ve Been Reading
Read my massive new Rom Omnibus, the first twenty-nine issues of the original Marvel run, plus some tie-in stuff he appeared in they couldn’t reprint until now. It’s fun to revisit, on a couple different levels. Read the third Lockwood & Co. book, The Hollow Boy, because I really enjoyed the short-lived Netflix series and wanted to see where it goes from there. I also just got an early book manuscript from one friend and an early screenplay from an acquaintance. And there are still soooooo many things piling up on the new book table in the library…

Cool New Toys – Not that much this month (*gasp*). The Super 7 Hank Scorpio figure I pre-ordered back in 2022 showed up and, in all fairness, is wonderful. Also a Bossfight cowboy skeleton (the Outlaw). I preordered and Kickstarted a bunch of things that we’ll probably be seeing near the end of the summer/early fall, if not sooner.

If you’re reading this, it probably won’t come as a shock to you, but… people love stories. Literally, since the start of recorded history. They love reading them. Hearing them. Watching them. They love having their emotions played with and their expectations subverted, and they also love comfortable, familiar tales and they can sink abck . They love made up people and places and event that never happened.

Believe it or not, some people also love telling stories. Pulling people and places and moments out of their head and presenting them to an audience. They love the act of stringing these specific words together in this specific order and knowing it’s going to get that response.

Another thing people love is, well, easy solutions. If there’s a way we can get around doing some work, we’ll usually do it. Yeah, this takes sixteen steps, but is there a way I could do it in fifteen? Or maybe eight? Could I skip over the first dozen steps and maybe just do those last four?

But sometimes we just can’t cut corners. For complexity reasons or safety reasons or just because, look, this is how long it takes to do this. As much as we want ease and simplicity, there are some things in life that take time and effort.

So, with that in mind, let’s talk about the Warren Commission.

A week after the assassination of JFK in 1969, newly sworn-in President Johnson ordered Chief Justice Earl Warren to investigate the killings. Warren assembled a group of congressmen and specialists to gather evidence and quash all the conspiracy theories that were already starting to run wild throughout the country.

The Commission’s final report, alas, didn’t really help calm fears there was a big cover-up going on. One of the more controversial declarations it made was that a single shot caused all of the non-fatal wounds to both President Kennedy and Texas Governor Connally, a shot that changed directions multiple times during its flight. Even more amazing, said bullet was miraculously found on the floor in Connally’s emergency room, having supposedly fallen out of his bloody thigh, completely clean and not even deformed…

The popular term we got from this report, which you’ve probably heard before, was the magic bullet. A small, simple thing which defies every bit of common sense to produce borderline-miraculous results. Some might even say… magical results.

Some folks think to be a successful writer, it’s just a matter of finding a magic bullet. I mean, all these folks talk about spending years trying to “hone their craft” but it can’t actually be that difficult, right? Surely there’s a trick that’ll let me skip to the front of the line—an easy way to bypass all those early, boring stages—and get to the point where people are fighting over my manuscript.

So let’s talk about some of the magic bullets folks spend time looking for..

The magic word
Back when I read contest screenplays for food, a common thing to see was scripts entered into a very niche contest with clearly minor additions to make them fit the requirements of said niche contest. I saw countless stage plays that had a few camera directions sprinkled on them. More than a few token minorities and painted-on sexualities. My favorite, however, had to be the sex comedy that showed up in the pile for a faith-based, prayer-centric screenplay contest, where the protagonist desperately prayed to God oh please, please Lord, let me get this woman out of her clothes!

Storytelling doesn’t work this way, either with audiences or publishers. I can’t expect that using this word or that one (or this phrase or that label) is going to be an instant key to success. I definitely shouldn’t expect that it’ll make people overlook certain other glaring issues my work may have.

The magic genre
Pretty sure since the dawn of storytelling there’ve been folks trying to jump on the hot market bandwagon. Thag gets all the applause for his mammoth-hunting story? Well, Bron have mammoth hunting story, too! Two mammoths! With lasers mounted on skulls!

With the desire to make a sale, some folks try to follow the “hot” markets. Right now young adult science fiction is hot? Guess I’ll write YA sci-fi. Historical romance is hot? Did I mention my YA sci-fi is a time travel story with a historical romance element (mammoths in love)? What’s that? Horror adventure is hot? Guess I better dump the YA and start over

The issue here is timing. Even if I lunge at that hot new genre, there’s simply no way to get a manuscript done, polished, and in front of someone before the trend’s passed. Seriously, none. Especially when you consider most publishers are already working a year or so ahead of the current market.

Worth noting there are folks who write very timely books and they write them very fast, but a lot of them almost inherently don’t have much of a shelf life. They sell really well for a brief window and then usually never again. I need to decide if I’m okay with that. Assuming I even have the ability to do it

Don’t try to follow a market trend. Just write the horror/ romance/ faith-based/ mystery/ sci-fi story you want to tell and make sure it’s the absolute best one anyone’s ever read. That’s what’ll catch people’s attention and make hundreds of others rush to hop on my bandwagon.

The magic aesthetic
More than a few folks think the secret to success—real, worthy success—is to create art. Actual literature which will be recognized immediately for its inherent worth and my inherent genius. That deep, overwritten sort of art that makes grad students start to feel warm in the middle of intellectual discussions.

This one’s a double edged sword, because a lot of the folks going for this bullet end up taking it in the chest (I believe the gentleman ordered a metaphor, mixed over ice?). It’s my firm belief that attempts to create art usually lead to forced scenes, painful dialogue, and unbelievable characters. Plus, that same art then becomes a blanket excuse to let the writer brush off any comment or criticism their work may get. After all, only the sophisticated and intelligent people are going to understand art. If they don’t understand, it just proves they’re not intelligent and thus not qualified to judge it, right?

As I’ve said many times before—don’t try to create art. I just want to tell the best story I can the best way I can tell it. Let somebody else worry about if it’s high art or if it’s just some pedestrian, pop-culture crap that’s going to sell a million copies and get a movie deal.

The magic message
Close behind the above bullet is the belief a story needs to have a deep, powerful meaning. Every element should be loaded with subtext. Each page should make the audience rethink their beliefs.

While it’s great to have subtext, a writer shouldn’t be fighting to force it into their story. Likewise, if I’ve come up with a clever metaphor which applies to the catchphrase/ scandal/ fashion of the moment, much like the special genre above, odds are that ship will have sailed loooooong before anyone ever sees my work.

If I feel like my work has to have a greater meaning… maybe I should ask myself a few questions. Do I think it does, or am I trying to live up to someone else’s expectations? Will it still be relevant six months from now, or six years from now? Most importantly, does this greater meaning serve my story? Or is my story bending to this greater meaning?

The magic contact
One of the more common magic bullets you’ll see is networking. My writing’s irrelevant compared to knowing the right people who have the right jobs. For a long time it was (incorrectly) touted as the only way to succeed in Hollywood, and I think that belief spilled into prose writing as well. Some folks spend more time hunting down “contacts” than they do working on their writing.

Alas, active networking is dead. Any seminar, website, or app that promises me tons of networking opportunities will not offer a single useful one. I’m a big believer that the best networking only ever really happens by accident, and trying to do it defeats it immediately.

The people I want to make connections with are… well, the people around me. The folks I’m already talking to and hanging out with because I like them. And they like me because I’m not basing these relationships on a personal agenda, just on a shared interest of movies or toys or gardening or games or just weird shared life experiences. They’re the folks I’m more likely to help later on. And they’re going to be more likely to help me.

The magic software
I’ve talked once or thrice before about becoming too reliant on technology. There’s nothing wrong with using a spell-checker to double-check my work, but I shouldn’t be relying on it to actually know how to spell for me. Or to know which word I meant to use. Or to know what that word means vs what I think it means. Because… well, it can’t do that. Any any of that.

Seriously, how often have you had spellcheck tell you something’s wrong just because the word’s not in its vocabulary banks? Maybe it’s just a word that particular dictionary didn’t adapt yet. Maybe it’s an alternate but still widely -accepted spelling.

And now there’s also grammar checkers and style checkers and you may have even heard there are some fancy futuristic lines of code out there that’ll write the whole story for you. But the sad truth is, none of this stuff actually works. No, it doesn’t. They all understand “writing” in the same basic-competency way a second-grader does. They barely understand the rules, and they definitely don’t understand when and how to break the rules. They don’t understand context or subtext or nuance or, yeah, even basic vocabulary.

So anything these systems do for me, I’m pretty much going to have to double and triple check from every angle (if I actually care about it being good). I’ll need to actually know the spelling and the grammar and the style I’m going for, and I’ll need the patience to do it all line by line, rewriting as I go to make sure there’s consistency.

Which really means… I’m doing all the work anyway. So, y’know, maybe I could just cut out that legally/ ethically/ artistically questionable step and just start learning to do this stuff.

Y’see, Timmy, as I’ve mentioned once or thrice, there’s really no trick to writing (the Y’see Timmy means this is or big overall windup, for those of you who are new here). No secret words or key phrases or handshakes you need to know to get past the doorman. It’s just about being willing to put in the time and effort to become better at something. Some folks are. Some folks aren’t. Guess which ones tend to succeed more? Believe me, I say this standing with thirty years of literary garbage swirling in the wind behind me. The most terrible, derivative fanfic. Some truly God-awful sci-fi and fantasy tinged with high school angst and college melodrama. Heck, look back far enough and you’ll see three completely different versions of that long-lost American classic Lizard Men From the Center of the Earth.

So, there you have it. A handful of things you shouldn’t be spending time looking for. I mean, seriously, who spends their time trying to get hit by bullets?

Next time (assuming you survived all those bullets) I’d like to talk about baseball and Lindsay Lohan.

Unless you’ve got a better idea…?

Until then, go write.