Structures of which we are unaware hold us prisoner. Conversely, learning to see the structures within which we operate begins a process of freeing ourselves from previously unseen forces and ultimately mastering the ability to work with them and change them.

-The Fifth Discipline by Peter M. Senge

I found this in an organization/management book, but this universally applies to everything, including storytelling.

One of the biggest roadblocks was that I didn’t just want to write randomly and “follow the muse” so to speak. I didn’t want write stories that only I would enjoy, and others would find difficult to engage or understand.

I’ve always felt that storytelling is a very social form of creativity in that your audience needs to buy into your story in order to accept it, and if they can’t buy into it, then they won’t be buying, period.

A few of the Hollywood storytelling formulas over the last few years have tried to engineer this buy-in of the audience through the use of concepts like mythic structure.

The methods are useful in some areas and less so in others. So I went on a quest, without fully realizing what I was questing for. Eventually, I realized that I was looking for the perfect story structure.

As I tried out various forms of structure and made a few shallow attempts at my own, it became clearer that I wasn’t so much looking for a prescription of how a story should be told every time, but that in fact I was actually looking for the best possible workflow that would allow me to tell my stories without having to think so hard about organization.

I eventually discovered that through my 10-sequence (stages, if you will) structure organized around the commercial-break dramatic payoffs of television — which I feel in their 12 minute build-up can be applied to any form of drama, including film and novels.

I was pulling from Vogler, and Siegel’s 9-Act, and Jeff Kitchen, and probably unknown to me dozens of other storytellers or “story fixers” behind the scenes in Hollywood over the past few decades.

But the point here is not to talk about my structure because that’s over and done with, and I’ve talked about it here so many times before.

The point here is that for me, structure was a roadblock among other roadblocks. It may have been my biggest one. What’s yours? Story isn’t something I feel can just be pooped out via the written word and massaged at some later point through the technical editing of the words and grammar to be made something special which will thrill people, excite them, move them, or yes, perhaps if I could be so idealistically lucky, make them cry.

There’s more to it than that, and to me it’s a little thing that has nothing to do with draft writing. Its name is Story Development, and I felt when I started and still now feel that it is one of the most important aspects of a story’s creation above and beyond the writing itself.

That said, if you can somehow manage to tackle the story development demon, you will find yourself with nothing else left to do except write.

There comes a point where hammering on your characters, plot, and themes reaches a point of diminishing returns, and you really don’t know how the product will come out until you just plunk your butt in the chair and write.

Some would suggest this sooner rather than later. I tend to go against the grain, the self-ascribed contrarian that I am, and lean towards the side of exhausting story development prior to writing. It’s like pre-production for movies and video games. If you want to be happy with your story, you should know what you’re doing before you write it.

But even I must admit there comes a time to Just Write, and it is after you can push the story development no further — at least not alone. And to be able to communicate that story to others, it has to be in a form they can read it. Which means you just have to write it. Blah blah, you can probably see where this is going.

I’m definitely in a deep writing phase right now, which is where I’m guessing I’ll find myself when the last legs of story development have fallen off due to over-use.

The point here is, for one, an explanation of why posts have been less frequent here at Quantum Storytelling. I have more to post about when I’m developing a story, less to post about when there’s nothing left to do but write.

But I also thought I could lend some words of encouragement. On the road to writing, there are many blocks. Some of them are legit, some of them not. If you can tell the difference between the legit and illegit ones, you will have a better idea of what you need to do to get your story in a good enough state to be written. Once you’ve done that, the only thing left to do is write.

Good luck removing your roadblocks, and I’ll see you on the other side.

And if you’re anything like me, you’ll cheat sometimes and skip a few days, or sometimes even a week if you’re busy with real life, work, etc. I have to remind myself sometimes that this is just a hobby. I don’t get to work on this for forty hours a week. If I did, progress would be much quicker.

So how can we keep the story broken down into manageable workflow in the form of scenes while still feeling good about the progress we make?

Ratchet up your daily goals a little. Instead of just doing one scene per day, try to do three. Better yet, focus on an entire sequence. If a particular sequence is six scenes, that may be too much for one day’s work if you already have a full time job like I do. So try to knock out two or three scenes in a single day, if you can. Then knock out another two or three the next day. Over the course of a few days you might complete an entire sequence.

Most stories are somewhere between eight and twelve sequences, or stages. The Writer’s Journey prescribes twelve stages of the Hero’s Journey. I’ve found the Hero’s Journey to be a bit too vague for my tastes. “Meeting with the mentor,” for example. What does that mean? What if I have several meetings with several different characters offering their expertise, and thus temporarily performing the role of mentor? It’s not as tidy a stage/sequence as the paradigm would suggest.

I use ten stages, or sequences — whatever you want to call them. Why ten? Because I’m aiming for twelve minute sequences, similar to the acts in television. Every twelve minutes you get a commercial break in TV. I happen to think twelve minute chunks fit the natural human attention span — at least towards the character’s immediate goals in the story. A story should also have some kind of payoff every twelve minutes so that people don’t get bored.

Then there’s the simple math of it:

12 min x 10 stages = 120 minutes

Now back to the issue at hand; Feeling a sense of progress, feedback, and fulfillment with the work you do each day.

Your workflow should continue to happen scene by scene, but you should have short term goals every week for the completion of a sequence. Instead of working towards completion of 1/60th of your story, why not work towards a better, more satisfying goal of 1/10th of your story? Then you only have ten goals, or deadlines. Each one will feel like a major victory, and you won’t feel like you’re struggling against the weight of something larger than you.

Work at the scene level, but keep your goals oriented towards the sequence level. Your goal should be to complete a sequence while working one scene at a time.

I hope looking at your story in this way will help you feel better about your workload and the progress you can make. I know it did for me!

For example, I have a scene featuring one of my villains who happens to be the chief of a government agency. Since corruption and hypocrisy are themes of my dystopia, I’ve been trying to find the best ways to bring those out through the actions & dialogue of the characters.

In one scene, the villain is assembling his men and about to engage in a raid against people who would be honest law-abiding citizens in a 21st century democracy. In this future society, they are perceived as criminals by the authorities, and through authority’s manipulation of public perception, they have become enemies of the society itself.

One of the keys for this ‘moment-with-the-villain’ scene is to show him debriefing his men, giving them a pep talk before the raid, and finding ways to rationalize what they’re all about to do and explain why these seemingly harmless, freedom-loving people are somehow enemies of the state.

Of course a good place to focus are on statements which are logical but do not represent any kind of sane moral truth, for example, “The law is the law!” That’s not the actual line, but it’s something close to that. Presenting the dogged persistence with rules, but only when they seem to benefit that character, along with several doses of hypocrisy — the villain doesn’t even care about the beliefs he’s presenting to his younger, more impressionable recruits. He also conducts his own life in sheer opposite to the ‘values’ he commands from the mountain top.

Suddenly, what he says and how he says it become very important. Because saying it one way doesn’t do the theme justice, while saying it a better way injects the theme with a little testosterone.

I’ve been obsessed with this lately, as it pertains to theme. Not just with dialogue, but with action too. “Is it more dramatic if he slaps a recruit for insubordination? Or is that too much?” I suppose it’s no different than any other kind of perfectionism. I just need to get the words down and move on. If they’re bad I can fix them later.

Bringing out the theme is one of the more fun, if grueling parts of writing a scene.

“Wait,” You might be saying, “What the hell is he talking about?”

I’m continuing to add and develop some extra scenes just for good measure. When it comes down to the chopping block, some scenes may have to go. All the more reason to create a few extra ones so in your chopping you have more to choose from, right?

I’m beginning to live in a persistent daydream of my story. All the scenes are there, I can run forward and back through them in my head, or in SuperNotecard. Things feel almost right. Almost…

There is a better reason to keep adding scenes, and it has to do with this whole scene wrangling process from start to finish. Each time I add a scene, two, or three I find that it brings greater clarity to the scenes around it, and to the story as a whole. As I add scenes the visual image of my story becomes clearer, and more focused.

And then there’s that word again, nagging at me. “Almost.”

I need to push myself a little bit further. Squeeze just a drop or two more of blood from the stone. I can’t allow myself to think I’m done just yet, because good enough is not good enough. I only needed sixty scenes, but I told myself seventy and I’m currently at sixty four. Just a few more.

Besides, in adding a few more I already accomplished a few really cool things. I came up with a teaser in my third act for a future story. You know, the villain’s hand pops out of the rubble. Okay, not that cheesy but something along those lines. I added a more satisfying resolution for one of the characters, again something that hints at the future. Clearly pushing myself a little further adds a final follow-through that will punch the story up a notch.

The real secret here is that several scenes a day keeps the story doctor away.