Prescription Nine

A recipe for Effective Storytelling:

Ingredients:

Four parts - four unique contexts and discrete missions for the scenes in them - divided by two major plot points and a midpoint.

Method:

1. Toss in a compelling hero’s need and quest;

2. Add formidable obstacles that block the hero’s path;

3. Add a couple of pinch points;

4. A hero who learns and grows, someone we can empathize with and root for;

5. Scenes that comprise the connective tissue among them all.

6. Execute all of it in context to a fresh and compelling conceptual idea, a clear thematic intention, an interesting worldview, and a clever take on the plot.

Marinate in artful nuance.

Set oven at 180 degrees celsius.

Cook until tender and tasty.

Dish with clean, clear writing.

And for Dessert, dish up a Compelling Ending:

The one rule of Part 4—the resolution of your story—is that no new expositional information may enter the story once it has been triggered. If something appears in the final act, it must have been foreshadowed, referenced or already in play. This includes characters.

GUIDELINE 1: The Hero is a Catalyst.

The hero of the story should emerge and engage as the primary catalyst in Part 4. He needs to step up and take the lead. He can’t merely sit around and observe or just narrate, he can’t settle for a supporting role, and most of all, he can’t be rescued.

GUIDELINE 2: The Hero Grows Internally.

The hero should demonstrate that he has conquered the inner demons that have stood in his way in the past. The emerging victory may have begun in Part 3, but it’s put into use by the hero in Part 4. Usually Part 3 shows the inner demon trying for one last moment of supremacy over the psyche of the hero, but this becomes the point at which the hero understands what must be done differently moving forward, and then demonstrates that this has been learned during the Part 4 dénouement.

The hero applies that inner learning curve, which the reader has witnessed over the course of the story, toward an attack on the exterior conflict that has heretofore blocked the path.

GUIDELINE 3: A New and Better Hero Emerges.

The hero should demonstrate courage, creativity, out-of-the-box thinking, even brilliance in setting the cogs in motion that will resolve the story. This is where the protagonist earns the right to be called a hero.

The more the reader feels the ending through that heroism—which depends on the degree to which you’ve emotionally vested the reader prior to Part 4—the more effective the ending will be. This is the key to a successful story, the pot of gold at the end of your narrative rainbow. If you can make the reader cry, make her cheer and applaud, make her remember, make her feel, you’ve done your job as a storyteller.

If you can cause all of those emotions to surface, you just might have a book contract on your hands.

The fact is, unless you develop your story over the first three quartiles using your story’s key principles, parts and milestones as benchmarks, you’ll be more lost in Part 4 than you may even have realized. Only by having an executed story plan as a baseline for the perhaps somewhat slightly more organic unfolding of Part 4 does this process stand a chance.

That said, it’s better to plan Part 4 ahead of time, too. Plot and strategize all your main story points beforehand—even if you aren’t yet sure of your ending—and in the process of developing the first three parts you’ll find that the final act begins to crystallize as part of the process.

Virtually every published novel and produced screenplay is, in fact, a natural product of solid story architecture - regardless of how it got there. Writing without bringing a solid grasp of story structure to the keyboard is like doing surgery without having gone to medical school. You can write like Shakespeare in love and have the imagination of Tim Burton on crack, but if your stories aren’t built on solid and accepted structure—which means, you don’t get to invent your own structural paradigm—you’ll be wallpapering your padded cell with rejection slips.

Word of the day - FUBSY: short and plump individual.

Character flaw # INTOLERANT: unwilling to tolerate difference of opinion, narrow-minded about cherished opinions.