Quantum Storytelling

While driving I was thinking about what gets me jazzed about story stuff.

What about you? What challenges you and gets you excited about the process of developing and writing stories?

Is it the characters? Seeing a plot come together? Sitting down with a hot cup of coffee on a cold day and putting something in your head onto the page?

What’s that one thing that tweaks you? Where do you get your satisfaction?

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I created an overall story beat sheet, then I did a second version to fix issues of the first. Then I created beat sheets for each act, elaborating a bit more detail for each scene.

Now that I’m somewhere between sequence and scene level, I’m finding that I have to jostle scenes around in order to… well, create order. This is difficult to do on a static sheet of paper, so I’ve broken out the 3×5 index cards again. I’ve tried this in the past, and it’s helped, but let me tell you it works a LOT better if you’ve done a beat sheet or two for your overall story, and then a beat sheet for each act.

Now my only problem is space… I have to lay 3×5 cards out on the floor to see the entire story. I’m thinking of getting one of those giant magnetic whiteboards, so that I can arrange the 3×5s on the whiteboard with magnets and then just slide them around. I could just use Mind Manager or Freemind, but I seem to feel the flow much better using physical cards, and cramming scene descriptions on them.

It’s 3×5 time all over again!

After reverse-plotting the overall story from a bird’s eye view, I’ve begun breaking down the acts. The first act is finished and I’m now making my way through the monster second act. Act two is always tough as it’s usually the longest part of a story. So far I’m loving Jeff Kitchen’s method, which goes something like this:

1. Reverse-plot the overall story.
2. Do a character conflict pass, bringing to surface the character issues that will highlight the conflicts.
3. Reverse-plot acts one, two, and three individually.
4. Do another character conflict pass. Make everything more personal and immediate to your characters using true Dilemma; “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”
5. Reverse-plot sequences and scenes — more fine grain. It’s not enough to know that a scene is “Jane kills Bobby.” How does she kill him? What fuels the action? How does it start? Does it start as an discussion that turns into a shouting match and then a struggle?
6. Take a look at everything you’ve broken down and make sure you’re happy with it. Fix any plot or character conflicts you don’t like.
7. Only when you have the story fully fleshed out, start writing scene by scene.

Although I’m only at the act level and haven’t gotten down to individual scene detail, I feel this multi-stage process of scanning the story and looking for opportunities, breaking things down is one of the most rewarding things I’ve done yet as a writer.

It’s not just plotting your overall story with an outline. The idea is to break down the entire story at both the macro and micro levels, only comitting yourself to the prose writing once the story you have to tell is already on paper. I admit this all seems counterintuitive to “just writing,” but if you’ve shared the same level of frustration in putting a story together, writing and rewriting and never getting where you want to be, this might be for you. Jeff Kitchen himself admits it’s hard to resist the temptation to just sit down and write, but there is definitely a payoff in having some plotting patience. I can vouch for that — although it may be a little easier for me as I naturally inclined to delay the draft until I’ve got the story fully broken down.

I hope to finish up Act II beat sheet over the next few days, and move onto Act III. Afterwards thing will get really exciting, because I get to start examining sequences and scenes in detail! Then it will be time to write.

I am confident this process is leading me (Finally!) to a story I will be satisfied with. Things are about to get interesting…

P.S. Something funny? No more writers block. Working out all these detailed plot points down to the individual scene level has me anxious to reach the point where I can start writing. When the time comes I’ll shoot out of the gate like a horse trying to win a race. How’s that for story development?