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What I do is, um, I look for a sense of progression.
Um, my experience has been, in story telling, that what keeps people moving through a story
is that progressions and what stops people is when they loose the sense of progression.
This is an interesting revelation for me to have because these things are actually fairly arbitrary.
They come into your story telling skills as a writer,
however as a writer you can make– you could write a thousand page book that takes place in one minute.
You could. Or you could write a thousand page book that crosses thirty-thousand years.
You could write a fifteen page story that crosses thirty-thousand years.
So, progression in any of these things is all in your hands as a writer.
Your job is to give the reader the clues that the story is progressing, so they feel like there is motion through the story.
And this is my main goal, is to make sure that there is always a sense of motion,
that things are progressing through that story, that we are building, we are moving toward something.
And in order to do that, I divide my stories in my head, up into different types of plots.
Um, and I then, when I am doing my outlining, I look at these plots
and I decide what is going to make an effective sense of progression for these plots.
Um, as an aside, one thing that gave me an understanding of this was reading, um, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's book Inferno.
Um, Inferno is about a science fiction writer who gets drunk and falls out a window, dies, and wakes up in Dante's Inferno.
In the Hell as described by Dante.
Right? And there is a map in the front of this book,
and I thought, why does the Inferno need a map? That's just like a clichéd–he's a science fiction/fantasy writer, so they put a map in.
And yet, as I read this book, the book was basically a series of vignettes happening in the different places in Dante's Inferno.
It was with the same character, but it almost read like a–it read very episodically.
You get to this new area, you kind of have an adventure there, and then you leave that area and enter the new adventure, new area.
It is very episodic. And yet, I felt a strange cohesion to the whole novel despite that.
And I realized that was because I was feeling like there was a good sense of progression because I could follow along on the map where they were and where they were going.
So, I began to study this and see that the great travelog
there might be two L's in that.
Let's pretend there are. Um, but, uh...
The travelog is a plot type and if you identify that you have a travelog, which is character starts in point A and across the story in going to go to point B.
Um, Lord of the Rings very much has a travelog plot structure to it.
Now, we will get to the fact that most books are going to have multiple plot structures.
But one of the plot structures with Lord of the Rings is a travelog.
David Eddings wrote enormous travelogs. Okay?
The first few books of the Wheel of Time were travelogs.
And what happens in travelog is you do have a lot of episodic adventures.
And it seemed to me that that map was therefore a way to give us a sense of progression while we were having episodic adventures along the way.
And often, it seems to me, that a book with a lot of episodic adventures can feel somewhat boring and yet,
if you feel you have this main goal and you look at that map and can you look at that map and see "Oh, here's the Kingdom of Gromush." Gr-Ahh-Mush, the great.
And, we are staring here and look where we are going! And it's right there, where we have to get to, you know, through the magical earring into the, uh, (laugher) the Pit of Something.
Slime
The Pit of Slime, that's right.
Totally not a Lord of the Rings rip-off.
If you can see this progression, this gets lessened,
the fact that it is episodic
and you can enjoy each episode along the way because they are points along this map getting you were you want to go.
And it, therefore, creates this sense of progression. It is one type of plot archetype.
So, I started to look and try and identify major plot archetypes
and decide what methodology people were using in order to, um, in order to create that sense of progression.
So, you've got––These are just some I've identified, you guys might be able to identify more.
But I tend to look at travelog. I don't really write these because I think they have been used quite a bit in fantasy and epic fantasy,
and so, I stayed away from them intentionally
because I felt they just were used so much.
And also episodic adventures don't interest me as a writer as much as the, um, staying in one place and build to an enormous climax.
Um, which, though, cost me this sense of progression there,
so I have to use other methods to get a sense of progression.
So. Um, mystery plots.
The mysteries seem to be often when I was identifying stories that there would be something that needed to be discovered
and the sense of progression along the way was clues.
Um. Blue's Clues. Um.
That, if you say, you know, Blue's Clues is pretty obvious about it, but if say, "We need to discover this."
And along the way, you then break down in your plot these are what out clues are going to be and you start doling them out through the course of the story,
then suddenly yo have a sense of progression happening for your reader as they feel they are getting closer and closer to discovering this big event.
Um, the Da Vinci Code has one of these and it really annoys me because I think he does a bad job with it.
But he does also do– He uses a lot of dirty tricks that make it very effective despite me not really enjoying it.
Um, so the mystery. Clues along the way.
For this to work, you have to look at it and say, "This is a mystery. I must identify to my reader up front that this is our goal, this is what we are trying to discover."
In screenwriting writing terms, we call that hanging a lantern on it.
That is where you say, "Pay attention to this. It's important."
You will often hang a lantern on something that your reader might think, "Wait a minute, I think that's an error."
If you then have your character say, "Wow, that's weird, that shouldn't be."
Then the reader says, "Ah ha! It's not an error, its a plot point."
Um, that's a very useful tool to know.
But mystery. You have to hang a lantern on the fact that there is a mystery.
Make it a central focus of your plot. Most who-done-it's are this:
someone has been killed, we don't know who the murderer is,
therefore we are going to go through and investigate and slowly find out
and eliminate the possibilities until we end up with the person who actually did it.
Right? And so, sense of progression there.
Um, other ones are the relationship subplots.
This can be romantic or nonromantic, they actually play out very similarly, which–
The relationship is based on two characters becoming friends and/or more than friends depending on the story you are telling.
And in that, again, you have to give a sense of progression.
It doesn't always have to be forward progression. Lets keep that in mind.
Um, but when I am building a story, early on I will say, "Okay, lets say we have a relationship plot here.
What kind of things can I put in the story that would be conducive to giving sense that this is progressing?"
Right?
And I actually build those things in.
Some of these ones have to work a little more organically for the way I do my writing,
so I will come up with these things, but I am not as specific on relationship issues because it is so character intensive
and for me, I have to know the characters before I can figure out have they will react to some of these things.
But it is still very useful to say,"Okay, I am going to, for instance, for a relationship plot to work,
the characters have to be stuck together for one reason or another."
And, so you can build into your plot points where they are stuck together for one reason or another.
And you can show that motion of them getting along better and better or
hating each other more and more until they then kill each other at the end of the story.
Alright? Um. Yeah?
Is the mystery one... I think, I like listened to Writing Excuses once and I am trying to remember, there is one like...
I don't know if that's...
Okay, it's not that. But like, it's like the time one.
Yeah we're getting to the time bomb.
Oh, sorry. I thought it might have been this.
Nope. We're getting to it. Um, Big Problem is another one, where you just introduce your big problem and we need to figure this out.
Most heist plots are actually Big Problem plots if you look at it.
If you go watch, um. If you go watch Inception again, or The Sting, or something like this,
they introduce a big problem, we have to achieve this almost impossible thing and then they show you them breaking it down and working on the pieces.
Breaking it down and working on the pieces gives us this sense of progression.
We––In order to rob this place, we first need to acquire an EMP.
How are we going to get it?
Well, lets go send these guys to pull off that part of the heist and get the EMP and bring it back.
And then we have this one piece of the plot which we have told the viewer (this is Ocean's Eleven, by the way) up front that we are going to need.
And now, they will get a sense we are moving inexorably toward our goal. Okay?
And they get it, but he hurts his hand.
Yes. They get it, but he hurts his hand. You are right!
Nice job.
So, the other thing that I will mention is the Time Bomb,
which is actually, I've come to decide, not a plot archetype,
but is one of the things you can use to inspire a sense of progression on your story if none of these other things are working and if it's appropriate.
This is the, um... Oh, I used it in Elantris, um, not even really knowing what I was doing at that point, but.
You have 100 days to achieve this otherwise this horrible thing is going to happen.
If you having trouble giving a sense of progression to your stories, you can always do this.
Or something like unto this, it doesn't have to be... you know.
But it is a time bomb. Um... You have to, um.
You have to spend all of your money by the end of this certain period and if you do, you'll get even more money and if you don't, you'll be left broke.
That's Brewster's Millions, which is using a time bomb plot with a big problem basically.
But it is really more of just a time bomb because they don't even, you know,
there is no breaking it up, it is just, you know, "We have a million dollars. We have to get rid of it and then you watch the million dollars slowly tick away as they move toward the ending, time wise.
So, I guess it is really a big problem, it is just an easy one.
We have a million dollars. We have to get rid of it. Let's keep count.
Is it a million in Brewster's Millions? It is probably...
Thirty.
Thirty? He has to get rid of thiry and then he wins more. Yes, something like that.
Can't a million dollars buy a house?
They have stipulations.
Yeah, they have stipulations on what you can do with it and stuff.
Like what you can do and how much you can give away.
It's a fun movie. It's Richard Pryor. You guys haven't seem Brewster's Millions?
They're probably too young.
Yeah, this generation. A new class of movies.
But no, um. The time bomb works very well for certain story telling archetypes.
Has anyone 24?
Every episode ended with a ticking clock. Or even every commercial break had a ticking clock.
And in 24 hours you knew something horrible and awful was going to happen.
And you were just trying to keep it from happening. And it works very well.
So, the whole concept with this is this progression. And this is what I look at.
I identify what types of these archetypes. Usually I have some of all of these. Not as many on the travelog.
And there are other ones to identify. You can split Big Problem into subsets.
It's just how you want to look at it. But then I break it down and say, "Lets come up with ten steps."
That's arbitrary, but whatever works for you. "That this can be divided up into.
Lets come up with ten steps that, you know, we can see in this relationship. And I will actually make four of them steps backward
and six of them steps forward.
This sort of thing, so we get the sense that the book is moving along.
When you pick up a thousand page novel, it is really important that you give people a sense that things are moving along.
And it was really hard to do this in Way of Kings because I forced upon myself a lot of big external boundaries and things like that.
But anyway. There's what it is.
If you want to do it easily, just pick one of them. Say, "This is the main plot of my book." Break it down, introduce it in chapter one or two.
Then introduce the pieces that the character is going to work on.
Then slowly achieve them, but add in the "yes, but's" and let things escalate.
Now questions. Yeah.
What is your opinion on the seventh pointer plot that Dan and Rob really like.
Ah, I'm fine with it.
I mean it is another way of describing things.
Um, but I don't use any of these things. I just use this one of mine.
Basically, I like how all of them describe the way things work, but I feel, even though I am an outliner, I feel too locked in by a lot of those types of plots.
Um, plot things like the seven pointer or things like that.
And I feel that I don't necessarily want my plots to fit into these archetypes quite as easily as they sometimes do in other books,
which was mentioned over here, the worry of that happening to you.
You can find your own way of approaching this.
People say that there are only a certain number of plots and I suppose that's true, but part of writing–
Part of what we are doing is trying to explore things in new ways and add something to the dialogue and not just tell the same stories that have happened before.
So I do get a little apprehensive when people follow any one of these things too much,
but at the same time, you know, everyone has their own process
and these things help people write good stories, so therefore, they can't be bad. It's good to use them.
They just don't work for me that well because it makes me feel like I am coming up with things that are a little too generic.
But if I were writing a screen play, I would use the Three Act format straight down the line because Hollywood likes its screenplays very tight and ordinary.
And then you just hope for a good director to add that life into it,
which, you know, some of them can.
Dark Knight does not really follow any of these archetypes really well. It certainly uses some of the principles.
The "yes, but" and no sort of stuff. It uses the...
But at the same time, when you think the story is done, it is not, which is great.
Which is one of the reasons why I like that film so much.