Quantum Storytelling

Story –> Acts –> Sequences (A.K.A. Stages) –> Scenes –> Moments, for lack of a better word.

What is a moment? You know the writing is good when the writer doesn’t need a character to say anything, the actor can just do it through a look. You can write a look. And that would be a moment. Something inside of a scene, we’re talking the atomic structure of a scene. A smirk, a glance, a brief gimpse of action or description. A small movement that makes up the larger scene.

When I first begin developing a story, I’m starting at the highest level, the story level. “He goes here and does this, and then this happens.” This is the high level summary. Then I usually frame out the three acts, but I don’t pay particular attention to the 3-act structure because it’s so big and vague that it’s really not important til later on when you’ve got more of your story developed and can see whether the overall thing breathes in larger arcs the way it should.

Sequencing is the most important stage, in terms of story development. This is where the rubber hits the road. You group together your scene ideas in a way that makes chronological sense, and also provides variety in the story so you’re not just following the hero around everywhere (unless it’s meant to be 1st person). You want to show the villain doing something, then the hero, then the hero’s friends or family, etc. The overall flow of the scenes in that group lead to a larger situation within the story.

The scene level is your daily workflow. You can’t really write two scenes simultaneously, though most writers would if they could. So you sit down and say, “I’m going to write Scene 32 where the Arkingbat bites the head off Jimmy, the hero’s best friend.” Now, this is where a lot of us get stuck. Because even if we know what happens in a scene from the story standpoint, we may not know how the scene opens, or closes, or what other functions the scene has to serve in order to fulfill and justify its purpose in the story.

That’s because the real place where actual writing takes place is at the moment-by-moment level. The arkingbat doesn’t just bite Jimmy’s head off, End Scene.

Maybe Jimmy and the Hero are walking along the Mountain of Doom, talking about something poignant like the things they’ll do later in life if they ever get out of this alive. Then suddenly the arkingbat swoops down (we called it an arkingbat for a reason right?) and just at that moment, Jimmy trips and falls down as the hero dives out of the way. It chomps Jimmy’s head off (another, quite important moment), and the hero screams in horror as he rushes forward to grab Jimmy’s lifeless, neck-stump-squirting body. There is another moment where Hero realizes Jimmy’s headless body is hopeless, and drops it in vomiting disgust. The arkingbat, which only eats heads not bodies, flies away as Hero shakes his fist at the sky in furious anger! Then we end scene.

Now aside from the fact this scene was entirely ridiculous, it was constructed out of moments, just as scenes make up the larger sequence, and sequences make up the acts, and acts make up the entire story as a whole.

It’s important to pay attention to which stage of the process you’re in from a creative standpoint. Story development happens from Story thru Sequence. Actual workflow, production of writing, happens from Scene thru Moment.

The cellular structure of a story can be your friend if you know how to use it.

P.S. Watch out for that arkingbat.