5-Minute MFA: How I Use the Three Act Structure to Plot (Day 14)

On Saturday I talked about using the Three Act Structure to plot your most basic story line of your novel. (See the post for yourself: Plotting and the Three Act Structure)

I mentioned it was just the beginning for me when I start my plotting journey. It's a small, but very powerful tool I like to use.

I thought today I'd show you how I used the tool to start plotting a recently completed middle grade novel I wrote.

Like I said...there aren't an overload of details, but just enough to get me started. I have two more steps after this before I feel comfortable enough to let 'er rip. More tomorrow!

...happy happy happy...

Miss a day? Check out my 31 Day MFA Challenge Master List!

A Week of Prompts: Blogging

Day One: Talk about a time when you should have helped someone… but didn’t.

Day Two: What’s the most dreadful (or wonderful) experience you’ve ever had as a customer?

Day Three: Talk about something you think is terribly unfair — and explain how you would rectify it.

Day Four: What would it take for you to consider yourself a “successful blogger”? Is that something you strive for?

Day Five: Talk about your favorite pair of shoes, and where they've taken you.

Day Six: When was the last time you really stood out in a crowd? Are you comfortable in that position, or do you wish you could fade into the woodwork?

Day Seven: What bores you?

5-Minute MFA: Plotting and the Three Act Structure (Day 12)

Over the next few days, I'm going to dig into just how I plot my novels. There are a few pieces to it, so I thought I'd spare the 50,000 word blog post and break it down into manageable chunks.

Today, I want to talk about the three-act structure.

Whether or not we realize it, we all know the three-act structure. Most movies live or die by the three-act structure and when we write most commercial (and plenty of literary) fiction, the three-act structure is our default story structure.

It has its detractors. Some people swear modern storytelling does not depend on breaks in the action, etc., etc., but I 'm not worried about defending my own plotting methods. I'm simply sharing what works for me. (/end disclaimer!)

It's really just a model that divides the written work in the beginning, middle, and end. Fancier terms would be the set up, the crisis, and the resolution.

Act I

In the first of three acts, we establish the characters and the world they exist in. We learn the rules of their world and toward the end of this first act, something happens. It could be anything. Plague. Zombie apocalypse. The murder of Uncle Owen and Aunt Verue. By the end of the first Act, our hero or heroine has changed and must move on for the story to take shape.

Act II

The second act is called rising action. The speed usually picks up and our protagonist spends the majority of act two trying to resolve whatever problem was dropped on them toward the end of the first act. We learn more about our characters and subplots and the "darkest moment" usually occurs sometime in this second act.

Act III

The third act is our resolution. We resolve the problem (or we fail, or we suffer defeat) but the climax occurs and we wind down our story. Our hero usually returns a changed character.

How do I use this in plotting?

In its most basic sense, I'll sketch out the novel's story line and divide the action into the appropriate act. It helps me develop scenes and important moments and I sketch out the conflict, action, and resolution based on this three act structure.

Sometimes I don't follow the "roller coaster" diagram to the letter, but when it comes to plotting the rise and fall of my story's action, I've found that the three act structure is the first step in my rudimentary story building.

I use the three act structure to build my most basic framework. From there, I add more to my outlines, but it all starts with those three acts for me. See my preliminary use of it here: How I Use the Three Act Structure to Plot.

This week? I'll talk about how I layer on the Hero's Journey onto the three act structure and get more detail out of my novel's outline.

Miss a day? Check out my 31 Day MFA Challenge Master List!

I Vlog, Therefore I am. Then I Give You a Book. For Free. (Day 11)

Hello, friends!

Just a 31 Day Challenge check in here....and a giveaway for an awesome copy of "Still Writing:The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life" by Dani Shapiro.

Good luck!

5-minute MFA: Use Your Notebook Correctly (Day 10)

Ugh. Last week flew by so fast. I have my last 9 days (of the 31 day challenge) written on Word, but I have yet to transfer those bad boys over. Bear with me, writers. They'll get here, I promise!

So let's talk about today's tip: your writer's notebook.

If you're anything like me, chances are you have MILLIONS of pretty, cute, sleek, fancy notebooks floating around your house, littered with thoughts, words, and doodles. It's fun to dream in these books, but are they really working for you as a writer? Are they helping you get to your goals that much faster? My guess is no.

When I was in graduate school, they  never taught me methods for productivity, despite how badly I needed them. In grad school, you simply show up to your workshop each week with whatever story or poem or essay that was due. Nobody cared how you managed it, you just did. That was fine when I was a single 20-something without kids, who could stay up late and pound out a few poems in haste and sleep in the next morning to recover.

But here in the real world, with kids, and jobs, and bills, and laundry, and Sleepy Hollow....how do we get it done?

One of my methods is the writer's notebook. But more powerful than the notebook itself is how you use it.

In years past, I collected notebooks and filled them with a few pages of character sketches and basic plot notes, but that's about it. So I had 47 notebooks with the first ten pages filled in and not much more. These days I keep my character and plot notes on my computer, print a few sheets out to STICK in the notebook for reference and use my notebook SOLELY for production of material.

I took an online workshop a year or so back that focused on productivity and how some authors just seemed to be book machines. How did they do it? What was their secret?

The biggest weapon these writers had, it turns out, were chunks of 15 minutes sprinkled throughout their days that they claimed. And they wrote in these notebooks during these two or three 15 minute blocks and at the end of the day (or the beginning) when they got to sit down for their larger block of writing, they had at least five or six notebook pages of material they could transcribe and from there, the material kept flowing.

It's a pretty simple concept: work on your draft for 15 minutes at a time, a few times a day, in your notebook and suddenly at the end of the week you've amassed up to 20 pages in your non-writing time.

More on how I stack and organize my notes online tomorrow.

Happy writing!

...happy happy happy...



Miss a day? Check out my 31 Day MFA Challenge Master List!

5-minute MFA: Scrivener Review and How-to's (Day 9)

I'm a little tech wary.

It's not that I'm afraid of computers, it's more that I hate the learning curve on each new, greatest "thing." I used Dramatist Pro, Storyweaver, and a number of other writer's software over the years with pretty limited success. I always figured that the time I spent learning how to make the software do what I wanted could be spent writing. All the time I needed to learn how to outline could be used outlining on paper so the time saved could be spent writing.

Logical, right?

Recently, though, a few groups I belong to have started chattering about Scrivener more and more. It's not new, but for some reason it's just making it's rounds  my way.

The trial is free for 30 days. The best part? First, the days don't have to be consecutive. So 30 logged in days. If you write a couple of times a week, your free trial could last a while. Second, it doesn't require your credit card and it won't autobill you if you forget. I love that because I've been bamboozled a time or two by free trials. Nothing like overdrawing because you forgot that you'd signed up with that genealogy site a month ago. (True story.)

I started my Scrivener trial in September and it took me a couple of hours to get comfortable. I was mostly interested in a program where I'd be able to write in a word processor that would be compatible with Word, but that would offer me something more. A little extra writing help.

For me, that extra was the ability to outline your novel, have character descriptions, research, and place names all in the same interface. One click and you're armed with the name of the city your villain was born. Stuck in the plot mud? Click over to your outline notes and reacquaint yourself with what you thought the whole point of the chapter was supposed to be.

To get myself up and running, I copied and pasted the first chapters of a work in progress and went from there, but with the help of a few tutorials and a couple of minutes of tinkering around, you'll be able to start a new project in no time.

I've got about two weeks left of my trial and I'm more than sure I'll plunk down the $40 for the license. Later this week, I'll talk about how I outline my work and how exactly Scrivener fits into that. It's really changed the way I approach new works and I'm excited to learn how I can incorporate Scrivener into other types of writing...essays, short stories and maybe some blog planning?

Sky seems the limit on this one.

Interested? Find Scrivener here.

Want a great group of tutorials to get started? Here's a nice group.

Happy Writing!




Note: I was not compensated or provided software by Scrivener or any other entity. Nope. I simply loved my free trial and will plunk down my own coins to purchase it. Yay!

Miss a day? Check out my 31 Day MFA Challenge Master List!

5-Minute MFA: Explaining the Lingo of Plotter v. Pantser (Day 7)

Plotters and Pantsers are newer terms to me. I honestly made it all the way through graduate school without one professor or peer using the term when talking about how they write.

It wasn't until years later when I was part of a romance writing crit group that someone started throwing those terms around. I wasn't too proud to ask the question and it was quickly explained to me.

Plotters plot their works out before beginning. They feel most comfortable knowing where they're headed and what's up around the bend and blind corners. I imagine plotters to be neat, organized, type A personalities. (I'm sure there are all sorts of plotters out there, honestly!)

Pantsers live by the seat of their "pants" (hence the name) and write a bit more on the fly. Sure, they might jot notes down for future use, but they only need to see a few feet of them at a time on their journey.

In my life, I've always been a pantser. I make lists and shun them. I leave them on counters. In my truck. Or stuck to the bottom of my shoe. I've never had time to be neat or organized.

But then I tried writing a novel. Or two. And failed. And by failed I really mean I got frustrated and gave up because I just didn't have the energy to figure out where this jumbled mess was headed.

I took a few plotting classes over the years and now live very firmly in the land of the plotters. I have to. I'm a quitter if I don't and now and then, I get really attached to my characters (especially now that I've moved to young adult and middle grade fiction...it wasn't so hard for me to cast aside romance heroines...they're too perfect and often got on my nerves) and feel terrible when I dump a project because of plot failure.

Where do you fit in? Pantser? Plotter?

I've included a few links and resources for you and this coming week, I'll talk about different ways of plotting your works.

Articles:
Plotter or Pantser: The Best of Both Worlds
The Pantser, the Plotter, and the In Betweener


Worksheets and planning
Compendium of Plotting Worksheets

Online workshops
Plotting Subplots with June Diehl
Scene By Scene with Sally Parker
Peculiars of Plotting with Monette Michaels

Miss a day? Check out my 31 Day MFA Challenge Master List!

A Week of Prompts: Your World, Your View (Day 6)

We're sticking with blogging for the month of October, mostly because I'm concentrating so much on fiction for the 5-minute MFA challenge. And the truth is, sometimes blogging true stories that are interesting seems like such a dynamic feat to accomplish. Why would anyone on this planet care what my day looked like in pictures?

Well, more than you think. We love our blogging community because it's a glimpse into the day to day of another person. We see ourselves in others and we see people we'd never be, by choice or by circumstance. So this week, let's shine the lense of blogging outward and show a little of our world with others.

Happy Writing!



Day One: I love nothing more than mornings. I always have. They always seem so full of promise and are wide open. What does your morning look like? Is it a rush to the bus stop? A slow amble to the computer to work on your writing? An hour-long bumper car fest in traffic? Paint us a picture using words or photography. Show the world what your mornings mean.

Day Two:  Who do you interact with everyday? Does it change? Does it rarely change? Do you wish for something different? Write about the people in your daily lives.

Day Three:  Meals. (I know, I know, I love food). How do you pick times for your meals? Do you have traditions each day, or only on special occasions? How do you keep your families or yourselves fed on a day to day basis? Do you wish it was different?

Day Four:  What's your routine each day? Do you do the same thing? Are you a free spirit?

Day Five:  Take a photograph of something new today. Was it a new sign in your neighborhood? A picture of a new pair of shoes? It might be difficult, but every day is different in some way. Show us.

Day Six:  What is your neighborhood like? Is it a close community? A rural farm? Tell us about the dynamic between you and the people who live nearby.

Day Seven: What was the most mundane errand you had to run this week? Write about it and why you finally checked it off your list. What was so irritating about it? Is there more to it than what it seems? 

Miss a day? Check out my 31 Day MFA Challenge Master List!

5-Minute MFA, Day 2: Planning Worksheet Freebies

I'm sure somewhere along the way (maybe during my two undergrad creative writing classes, perhaps?), I had a professor talk about initial planning and plotting. But I don't remember that discussion.

In fact, in all the years of taking classes and workshops, everyone has pretty much dealt with the fact that you'd already written the fiction, poetry, or essay. Never once did they talk about their own ways of preparing and plotting what you were about to write.

Doesn't that seem strange?

Thank goodness Writer's Digest comes out with those really expensive "write your book in a month" editions every couple of years because I always find at least one planning worksheet that's worth it's weight (plus some!) in gold.

Today's post is simply a list of links for you to go forth and find your own planning/prepping worksheets and to claim them. Grab them. Make them your own and keep them handy in your writer's notebook as you go forth.

(Don't have a writer's notebook? Don't worry, you will...soon enough.)

One of the biggest keys to victory in writing is a solid game plan, regardless of whether you're a plotter or the seat-of-your-pants author who lives for spontaneity.

Go ahead and be spontaneous with your words...just make sure you've got an idea of where you're headed first!

Story Tracker

Story Idea Map

Scene Card

At A Glance Outline

Character Sketch

Revealing Scenes Index (I love this one because I love to think about my fiction as a collection of scenes...maybe I should have studied to be a screenwriter, hmm?)

Climax

Closing

Reversal Brainstorm

Thanks so much to Writer's Digest for keeping these up. I LOVE them!



This month, I'm writing about writing for 31 Days straight as part of TheNesters.com 31 Days Challenge. See more about it here.

Miss a day? Check out my 31 Day MFA Challenge Master List!

5-Minute MFA: Starting the 31 Day Challenge

I've never done the 31 Days Challenge (over at thenester.com). I've watched quite a few of my blog friends so it, but I have a hard enough time committing to sticking to my weekly meal plan that I can't imagine what it would be like to show up to this blog every day for a month and offer up something useful about any topic of my choosing.

Cray, ya'll. Double cray.

But I just joined up a bunch of dynamite gals who are doing spectacular things with their challenges and it's had me thinking the past week or so about what on earth I might offer. I am not so great at crafting and I'm even worse at tutorials. Tried and failed the food blog because I just don't have the patience to stage and photograph food. I want to EAT the food. I tried a jiu jitsu blog, but then I had to give up jiu jitsu for a while because my babies are just too small to drag from practice to practice. I've considered an art blog, but really, I'm just sort of a hack at art. I love to doodle, but I have nothing to offer anybody else. I write about my family on this blog, but I'd hardly consider myself a "mommy blogger." Truth be told, that moniker drives me banaynays. I love humor, but I don't always have the magic touch.

So what do I have?

Ok, ok. Stop pretending that you didn't see the EXTRA LARGE photo centered at the top of the post. I figured that I had the diploma, the student debt, and the writing chops to maybe help out people who don't have the access, money, or time to invest in an MFA program right now. Why not? Really, all you need to write is to have a seat, grab a pencil and a bit of paper....and write.

Here's a secret you might not know:

There are no secrets in writing.

No, seriously! You don't need a master's degree to be a good writer. You don't have to horde all of your ideas and guard your iPad notes with Fort Knox security levels. You don't need 1,000 books about writing (though I'm guilty of that myself!).

Really, you need to write. And then you need to edit. Then write some more. And edit some more. And then submit. Throw some coffee in there along the way and eventually, you're going to be accepted somewhere (we can't all be J.K. Rowling, though I wish you much luck in getting there!) and your story will be told.

And then you'll do it all over again.

That's really what you learn in an MFA program. That and some other things that really have nothing to do with creating your own story (some could argue that all those Dickens and Milton courses I had to take did me a favor in exposing me to classic lit, but I don't always agree.)

The point behind what I want to do with the next 31 days is provide lightening fast inspiration, tutorials, and concepts (less than 5 minutes!) that will set you on your way to writing with confidence....to help you ditch that nagging feeling that you're not worthy if you're not degreed as a writer.

Hogwash!

So over the next four weeks, in anticipation of Nanowrimo and building towards that, I'm launching the 5-Minute MFA. I'll touch on everything I learned in grad school regarding plotting, voice, editing, workshopping, crafting scenes, character pointers, and much more.

I've even convinced myself to step WAAAAY out of my comfort zone and post a vlog each week. WOWZA!

Hope you enjoy the next 31 days and come up with a meaningful challenge of your own. It'll be fun!