Story Structure and Construction

[JGittes]

What you're zeroing in on here is the difference between a "plotser" and a "pantser." The former, and I think most writers here in the AH are "plotsers", are those writers who plan out the nuts and bolts of their storiess before writing: outlines, character sheets, timelines, the broad direction of the story. "Pantsers," on the other hand (and I'm one) just start writing without a plan or a plot, and see what happens.

Neither approach is "better" than the other, there's no right or wrong, and if you're extremely one you're definitely not the other (my plotlines can turn on a sentence, and a character arrive just like that). It's useful to know which you are, it stops insanity later.

I agree with your assessment. I am definitely a pantser. I start with a couple of, not even scenes, but a thought of something exciting that I want to explore. I work forwards fleshing it out (I agree completely with Roger Ebert that the muse only visits when you force yourself to write) and backwards trying to create a logical sequence to get where I'm going. The biggest difficulty is inserting a new character, or significantly changing an existing character. There's always a cascade of changes that ripple forward and must be tracked down and fixed. I always fail.

Do you have criteria of when you feel your story is complete?

With this story, the swim meet, I felt the conclusion I wrote finished the arc of the characters at this point. I could have made (and did in different, in-progress versions) slightly different choices that would have extended the conclusion by another week or so, story time, but I would have to come up with more stuff to fill that time and didn't see any point.

I'm 12K words into another story involving most of the same characters, but from an entirely unmentioned character's POV, and set in the weeks immediately after. But that's a whole different thing. I've also fallen in love with a couple of the minor characters and want to write something about them from their POV. So I'll soon have to write up some character lists just to keep track of everything that's happening. That's something I've already had to do for another group of stories that popped up while writing my life drawing model, exhibitionist stuff. It never ends, and I'm closing in on 70. I probably won't make Herman Wouk's 103 years, so I better get to it.

 

[SimonDoom]

I agree with your assessment. I am definitely a pantser. I start with a couple of, not even scenes, but a thought of something exciting that I want to explore. I work forwards fleshing it out (I agree completely with Roger Ebert that the muse only visits when you force yourself to write) and backwards trying to create a logical sequence to get where I'm going. The biggest difficulty is inserting a new character, or significantly changing an existing character. There's always a cascade of changes that ripple forward and must be tracked down and fixed. I always fail.

Do you have criteria of when you feel your story is complete?

.

Following up on EB's point:

I'm what EB would call a "plotster." I've tried writing in the "pantsing" style and it doesn't work for me. I like to plot things. It's the way I'm wired. In almost all my stories I write the last few paragraphs before I write 90% of the story. I like to know where my story is going before the journey is well underway.

The way EB writes is totally different from the way I do but I respect the way he and other pantsters do it and the results they get.

But I'll say this: to pull off the pantsing style, you've got to really work on your characters. Character is the key to doing the pantsing, "write as you go" style. Your characters have to seem real and plausible from the outset. As an author you have to think through what motivates them, what their needs are, what conflicts they confront. I think this is true of all story writing but I think it's especially true of the non-plotting style. So if this is the way you intend to go about structuring (or, I suppose, not structuring) your stories, pay special attention to your characters right from the beginning.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

...My most recent grammatical issue with an author concerns Sally Rooney, a currently up and coming young Irish writer. Based on reviews in the Guardian I bought both her books with high hopes of discovering a new talent. After the first five pages of 'Normal People' I found myself confused beyond reason. It took a few minutes to realize that she doesn't use quotation marks and I had no idea who was saying what to whom. Maybe they just fell off my copies of the books on the bus trip home, but I think not. Clearly, most people don't find this a difficulty, but I just couldn't get beyond it. I spent an hour marking the quotes in pencil and tried again. After 40 pages I gave up, it wasn't worth all that work.

I hope it's not because I just don't like difficult works. I read Proust, in English translation and very slowly. I find the difficulty of keeping such long sentences alive in my mind is part of the joy contained in the payoff. I suspect, though, he correctly and consistently uses past perfect tense, or at least his English translator does.

Ahh, Proust. The tediousness of Milton combined with the excitement of the text on the back of the granola bar I had for breakfast, with a healthy dash of snobbery on top. Having sampled, I don't read Proust. The reason I don't read Proust is that nobody can make me do it and nobody's paid me enough to do it. I'm sure it was wonderful for the time it was written. Everybody says so, especially people who haven't tried to read it.

I would still read Proust before I'd even wade 40 pages into something where I had to guess where the quotation marks should be. I do not demand strict adherence to rules like some here (you know who you are, Simon! ), but for God's sake. Rules just for rules' sake is one thing, but if you ignore the purpose of a rule (assuming it has one), you're destroying readability. I don't think avoiding that sort of mess means you shy away from difficult work. I think it means you're sane.

 

[JGittes]

Following up on EB's point:

I'm what EB would call a "plotster." I've tried writing in the "pantsing" style and it doesn't work for me. I like to plot things. It's the way I'm wired. In almost all my stories I write the last few paragraphs before I write 90% of the story. I like to know where my story is going before the journey is well underway.

The way EB writes is totally different from the way I do but I respect the way he and other pantsters do it and the results they get.

But I'll say this: to pull off the pantsing style, you've got to really work on your characters. Character is the key to doing the pantsing, "write as you go" style. Your characters have to seem real and plausible from the outset. As an author you have to think through what motivates them, what their needs are, what conflicts they confront. I think this is true of all story writing but I think it's especially true of the non-plotting style. So if this is the way you intend to go about structuring (or, I suppose, not structuring) your stories, pay special attention to your characters right from the beginning.

Thanks for your comments. I always appreciate what you have to say, regardless of where you post.

I know that you've collaborated with EB on stories. How do your apparently conflicting approaches to story development work in those cases?

Specifically to your comment directed to me, I completely agree. I have frequently shot off on several thousand word tangents with characters that the next day I very reluctantly discard to the fragments bin. It takes only a minor deflection of character development to end up in an unexpected, and frequently unwanted, place. The hard part then, is to throw it away and keep the character along their proper path.

I realize that sounds rather cringe worthy, but it happens frequently enough for me that I have to be merciless in cutting those tangents. Occasionally it can lead to interesting, and positive areas of exploration, but mostly it's just bullshit. I think we all start out believing everything we write is golden in some sense. It's so difficult to get it down 'on paper' that it must be worth keeping.

Thanks again for your comments, I do appreciate them.

 

[JGittes]

Ahh, Proust. The tediousness of Milton combined with the excitement of the text on the back of the granola bar I had for breakfast, with a healthy dash of snobbery on top. Having sampled, I don't read Proust. The reason I don't read Proust is that nobody can make me do it and nobody's paid me enough to do it. I'm sure it was wonderful for the time it was written. Everybody says so, especially people who haven't tried to read it.

I would still read Proust before I'd even wade 40 pages into something where I had to guess where the quotation marks should be. I do not demand strict adherence to rules like some here (you know who you are, Simon! ), but for God's sake. Rules just for rules' sake is one thing, but if you ignore the purpose of a rule (assuming it has one), you're destroying readability. I don't think avoiding that sort of mess means you shy away from difficult work. I think it means you're sane.

You've made my day. After spending the day hanging off the dangerous edge of my very old house in Sussex, trying to paint a fascia and soffit on which to hang cast iron rain gutters, I read your post and couldn't stop laughing. Fortunately I wasn't reading on my cell phone while painting. It would have been the death of me.

I must admit to not reading much Proust. I've made it through most of Swan's Way, but honestly don't think I'll get through all of the rest of it in my remaining years. I have good intentions, but we all know where that path leads. I'm working on a minimally fictionalized account of my remembrances of my favorite, maiden aunt; more my mother, than my mother. It's partly for me, but mostly for the many members of her descendant family who don't know her as I did. Proust provides a helpful template.

Normal People, not so much.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

You've made my day. After spending the day hanging off the dangerous edge of my very old house in Sussex, trying to paint a fascia and soffit on which to hang cast iron rain gutters, I read your post and couldn't stop laughing. Fortunately I wasn't reading on my cell phone while painting. It would have been the death of me.

I must admit to not reading much Proust. I've made it through most of Swan's Way, but honestly don't think I'll get through all of the rest of it in my remaining years. I have good intentions, but we all know where that path leads. I'm working on a minimally fictionalized account of my remembrances of my favorite, maiden aunt; more my mother, than my mother. It's partly for me, but mostly for the many members of her descendant family who don't know her as I did. Proust provides a helpful template.

Normal People, not so much.

Swann's Way is what I waded into as well. I spit it back out very quickly. I had been looking forward to getting to Sodom and Gomorrah, because it sounded like something I wasn't supposed to read, but I quickly lost my appetite. Besides, my suspicions grew over my foray into Swann's Way that Sodom and Gomorrah was not something I wasn't supposed to read, but to the contrary, was exactly the sort of thing a teacher would assign for reading, followed by an assignment to laud Proust's genius in an essay that nobody, not even the English teacher, wanted to read. My God, that last sentence was almost Proust-worthy. I need an intervention.

You try not to fall off houses and I'll try not to write like Proust.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I know that you've collaborated with EB on stories. How do your apparently conflicting approaches to story development work in those cases?

Just to clarify - Simon's appropriation of Suzie from the Author's Hangout was blatant theft and completely unauthorised, completely unexpected, and I could not stop laughing as I read it. "You little minx," I thought, "siding with your brother against your creator? What next?"

It's a revenge drama, really, a shameless example of what two writers can do with far too much time on their hands and a 750 Word Anthology to fill. Similarly, Simon did not expect to appear with his mom in my little vignette where Suzie meets my Adam character. I think what disappointed Simon was that his role was a walk-on, a bit character. What he wanted, I'm sure, was a full on Force Ten hurricane scene with his mother, but she's a fine woman, looks good in a bikini (and I've got the Polaroids to prove it) and really, for me, it's never been about the numbers .

In all seriousness though, our two stories were each a bit of fun, hatched independently and tossed together quickly like scrambled eggs in a pan, or a quick meal at Maccas.

No, my collabs were with different writers, Jason Clearwater (who used to be a hanger outer in the Hangout but isn't any more) and LoquiSordidaAdMe (who still is). In those cases we each wrote a thousand words, lobbed it over the fence, "Here you go, it's your turn," and we took off from what the other wrote. In both stories, that was it - no pre-conceived story line, no planned outcome, no handover notes.

And circling back on Simon's observation, building up the characters was key. In both stories, using our own pre-established characters made it easier, because we each knew what they'd do, we each had their backstory; so having the characters meet was like a real life encounter in a way, unpredictable, unplanned, just play it out. It worked, both stories were well received by our respective fan bases.

As writers, we just trusted each other to do the right thing by our characters. They were characters in a story, not a story with characters. That's the difference between the two approaches, I think. You have to have both to make a good story work, and you can arrive there in completely different ways.

For those curious, here are the two 750 Word stories:

https://literotica.com/beta/s/i-know-what-you-want-2

https://literotica.com/beta/s/valentines-for-suzie

And the two collaborations (two and a half, actually - JC started another one, which I took over and finished, because he found it too hard to write):

https://literotica.com/beta/s/american-girls-down-under

https://literotica.com/beta/s/the-floating-world-pt-04-1

https://literotica.com/beta/s/english-summer-tales-pt-01

 

[SimonDoom]

I know that you've collaborated with EB on stories. How do your apparently conflicting approaches to story development work in those cases?

.

I had as good a chuckle over this as EB. There was no collaborating. EB came up with the character of Suzie and I used her -- or her name, anyway -- for one of my 750 word stories. I guess EB calls it theft. I call it artistic enhancement. The debate goes on.

 

[NotWise]

My approach falls somewhere between a plotter and a pantser. I often start with a single image or a fragment of a story, often from a dream, and let it brew until I can sketch the five story components around it.

The five components can be stated different ways. One of them is: setting, characters, conflict, plot, and theme (or resolution). I don't plan the story out. I start writing with my end goal in mind and try to keep it from wandering too much. My concept of the characters often determine the details of how the story works out.

My current effort is a good example. I started with the simple idea that brides are sexy. I constructed a setting, plot and resolution, and then populated it with a few characters. There were a few conflicts, but I didn't really understand how the characters would resolve things, so I started writing it. The bride and her maid of honor got a little kinky, the groom and his best man became pigs, and the humiliated wife set out to punish them both.

It's been fun.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Do you have criteria of when you feel your story is complete?

I write open-ended. Most of my stories, and certainly my most recent episodic, character based ones, end in such a way that the particular story is self-contained and logically stops where it does, either with an explicit resolution or a point of "moving on." They're all set up for sequels - and some sit bubbling, waiting to be written - where I could take any of the central characters and branch them out into a story of their own. I tend, though, to keep my central male and write him into a new encounter.

My current work in progress, for example, takes a supporting character from one story cycle and makes him a supporting character in another, with a brand new set of leads. Another story cycle takes a character from an earlier story, re-purposes her as a reader finding herself in a story on Lit, who contacts the "author" - who is the same character only different, from the first story. All very meta and self-referential, very deliberately about "writing" and how it works.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I had as good a chuckle over this as EB. There was no collaborating. EB came up with the character of Suzie and I used her -- or her name, anyway -- for one of my 750 word stories. I guess EB calls it theft. I call it artistic enhancement. The debate goes on.

Suzie pranced into the room, looking adorable. "It's great for me. I've got two authors who are both the best, and they write me doing the best things - I cam, sell tee-shirts, get to wear all sorts of dresses. I get to see Australia and America and, and, and...."

She disappeared in a whirlwind of excitement. EB stirred his coffee, Simon was waiting for his. His mom winked .

 

[lovecraft68]

I knew this would be an issue, but in the end I went with electricblue66's usual advice and write what you want and don't worry about offending a few readers.

No matter what you write you will offend someone. Every category has factions and sub factions etc...but in general the only thing that will get you universally flamed in I/T is non consent, that isn't welcome there by the vast majority of the readership.

Everything else is the personal preference of the reader. I get comments about the 'acting like a whore" I also get all my sons are wimps because in my mind the son is not going to turn into some kind of alpha male who can take charge of his mother, and not just mother, but a woman double his age with ten times the sexual experience

But as for how many people care about it as compared to how many don't?

Let's leave it at I['ve done okay for myself in the category, and all that really takes is sticking to your style and the readers who like it will find you. Keep putting up stories and the more your core readership will grow.

 

[BelleCanzuto]

Sometimes, though, when I'm building a story and get to a point where I have a character needing a logical reason to be able to do something, and the only way I can see to accomplish that is create another character earlier in the story, well, do I go back and do that or will that create too many characters and get in the way of the more basic story I want to tell. That is the thing I'm interested in.

I have frequently shot off on several thousand word tangents with characters that the next day I very reluctantly discard to the fragments bin. It takes only a minor deflection of character development to end up in an unexpected, and frequently unwanted, place. The hard part then, is to throw it away and keep the character along their proper path.

I'm also what EB would call a "pantser". Like Not Wise, my stories are often inspired by random thoughts or images, some thing that just captures my attention. It'll stew around in the back of my bran for a while, and eventually other pieces of synaptic flotsum and jetsum will attach themselves, and I'll have the genesis of a story. I start writing and figure things out as I go.

I do usually have a good sense of who my characters are, at least my main character, by the time I start writing. They have conversations and lives and backstories that often don't make it in to the story that gets published. Sometimes I actually write those backstories out, and then delete them later, but most of the time, that information is just in my head.

When my character is fully formed, sometimes she starts doing something unexpected. In that case, I'll stop writing and think about why she wants to do that thing. What's her motivation? What need is she trying to get met? What is she trying to get away from?

I'd heard writers talking about listening to their characters, and I never understood that until I wrote a few stories. Now, it seems like, at some point, the characters take on a life of their own. So, if they're doing something I didn't anticipate, then I stop to listen to them. I usually don't have to go back and add in a new character, but I may go back and tweak a plot point, or add a detail that makes the new behavior more logical, or at least in keeping with the character as written.

If I'm writing a long story, sometimes one part of the plot will want attention before an earlier part. Then I'll jot some notes in ((Such and such to happen here, they have this conversation, they do this thing)) then go on to the part that's calling to me. Then I'll go back.

Once I have a whole draft written, I put it aside and let it rest for a week or so, then go back and read it through. That's when I'll usually catch any glaring plot wholes or inconsistent actions. Then it's back to listening to the characters and tweaking what needs to be tweaked in order for it to make sense.

My most recent grammatical issue with an author concerns Sally Rooney, a currently up and coming young Irish writer. Based on reviews in the Guardian I bought both her books with high hopes of discovering a new talent. After the first five pages of 'Normal People' I found myself confused beyond reason. It took a few minutes to realize that she doesn't use quotation marks and I had no idea who was saying what to whom. Maybe they just fell off my copies of the books on the bus trip home, but I think not. Clearly, most people don't find this a difficulty, but I just couldn't get beyond it. I spent an hour marking the quotes in pencil and tried again. After 40 pages I gave up, it wasn't worth all that work.

I had this same problem wtih Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall". I'd seen the TV show based on it and the next book in that trilogy (about Thomas Cromwell and Henry 8, etc.) and enjoyed it immensely. So I decided to read the book, and almost stopped. She occasionally used quotation marks, occasionally didn't; sometimes characters' quotes were offset, sometimes they were embedded in a paragraph. Sometimes the writing was the Cromwell character's internal monologue (with no indication thereof) and sometimes it was third person. Occasionally, seemingly at random, it was first person, but not his internal monologue. I finished the book, because by the time I figured out what was going on I was just bound and determined to finish it. Like being at mile 19 of a marathon (not that I've ever done that). Suffice to say, I will not be reading anything else by her, and I frequently wondered what in the hell her editor thought.

And then I thought it must just be some modern style or writing that I don't understand...

 

[gunhilltrain]

If someone has to look it up then they're out of the story. I had to look it up. That put me out of the story and I didn't go back, but that was partly because the OP's discussion points didn't go any farther than that.

Not everybody will be out of the story. I've read books and seen movies in which I didn't get every reference.

Offhand, one that really got me was the scene in Godfather Par III which shows a street festival in Little Italy. A lot of guys were marching along in outfits that looked exactly like Ku Klux Klan robes, hoods and all. That was a real WTF moment for me, because there is nothing in the movie event hinting at what's going on.

I did have to look it up; it's called the Rites of Penance. I'm not even sure if it's really done in New York. If it were done now, it would trigger a lot of people. It is definitely done in Italy.