Randall Floyd

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fiction writing

Essential Element #2 – The Rising Action

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In his book “The Story Grid,” Shawn Coyne calls this the progressive complication. I love his words here too because they do an amazing job explaining what the point of these rising action beats is supposed to do.

The whole point of the rising action scenes is to drive your protagonist to a point where he needs to make a choice he can’t get back from. Each complication adds another layer of difficulty for your hero.

Each time something in this portion of your scene occurs, your character gets to the point of no return, where he needs to choose something.

The most important thing about your rising actions is that each beat needs to up the ante for your protagonist. Things need to get more difficult, whether it’s physically, emotionally, mentally, or any other adverb you can think of.

The whole point is to keep your readers engaged.

If your protagonist has a bunch of random things happen that don’t really make his journey in your story more difficult, your story will turn stale and, shocker, it will be boring and flat. To illustrate the proper use of rising action beats, once again I’ll turn to “The Son of Neptune.”

While Percy is running from the gorgons, we find out several more complicating factors.

The first one is that, since he’s been running for so long, he hasn’t had time to eat or sleep. This makes him weak and much more vulnerable. So, even though the gorgons can’t kill him, it looks like at some point soon he’s just going to break down from sheer fatigue.

Then Percy gets a feeling that he is about to find what he’s looking for. Unfortunately, that thing he’s looking for is way under his feet. You see, Percy is at the top of a mountain. So, getting down to the place he needs to get to will be extremely difficult.

The last beat in the rising action is where Percy gets cornered by his attackers. By themselves, these complications are fairly benign. However, when added together, they create quite the quandary for the hero.

As a matter of fact, this last complication puts Percy in a spot where he has to make a choice he can’t return from. When you get your main character to this point, you know you’ve done your job.

Getting your protagonist to this point is the purpose of your rising action. This question that your character is facing is called the crisis, and I’ll be hitting on that one in my next post.

The First Element of Story Telling – the Inciting Incident

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The inciting incident has several names, such as the initial conflict, the exposition, the beginning hook, among other things. What you call it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that your scene, your sequence, your act, and your book have one.

The inciting incident is the thing that gets your chapter going. You can think of it as the problem at the beginning of a scene that gets things going. It can come in many different shapes, sizes, and intensities.

You can even think of the inciting incident as a mini-event.

So, in order to give you an idea of what an inciting incident is, I’m going to break down the first chapter of one of my all-time favorite books.

The book is called “The Son of Neptune,” by Rick Riordan. The book is pure gold, and it’s chalk full of great examples of great writing.

The inciting incident in the first chapter of this book is really easy to identify. In typical Rick Riordan fashion, he throws you right into the action. The scene starts off with the hero trying to escape from two gorgons (Medusa’s sisters), and he can’t kill them. However, you quickly find out that they want to kill him.

It’s a great start, and the details Rick Riordan give you to make this particular chase scene more interesting are great.

The protagonist can’t remember anything about his past except for the name of a girl. He’s trying to find something, but he’s not exactly sure what that thing is. And, apparently, he can’t be killed either.

It’s quite the setup, and all of these things end up with huge payoffs later on in the story.

5 Elements of each Story

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Previously, I’ve written about the three basic building blocks of your story, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction. In addition to the basic three-act structure that every story needs to have, there are 5 other key elements essential to storytelling.

If you don’t have them, even if you’re missing one, your book will not work. Someone is going to read it, and while it will probably be good, something just won’t quite feel right in their gut.

The conversation you might have with this person might go something like this:

You: “Well, what did you think?”

Friend: “It was pretty good.”

An awkward pause ensues. You clear your throat before continuing, trying to figure out why your friend seems to be more interested in the wad of gum on the ground than making eye contact with you.

You: “…and?”

Friend (but now you’re debating this title): “I liked it … but … oh, I don’t know. It was just missing something.”

You, expecting something a little bit more concrete, clear your throat a little louder before speaking: “What was missing?”

Frenemy (no longer loyal enough to be your friend), after another awkward pause: “I can’t put my finger on it, exactly. I just know something didn’t work.”

Then your frenemy screams and runs away because your hard stare burned a hole in her forehead. At that point, you’re left wondering what exactly was missing, or what parts of your story didn’t work.

Since the beginning of time …

What your friend couldn’t articulate, was the fact that your book is missing an essential part of every story.

She just doesn’t know it.

Every person intuitively knows how a story is supposed to work. The human race is defined by the fact that we, as a people, live and die by stories.

Stories shape our decisions, our thoughts, and how we react in a given situation. Not only that, but we tell people stories and listen to stories every single day.

Think about it for a second. How did the first caveman teach his kids about the dangers of the sabretooth tiger? He told them about the time he lost half of his left pinkie when he tried to take food from under the cat’s mouth while it was eating its fresh kill.

We have entire industries built on storytelling. Movies, books, music, theatre.

As mankind has evolved, one way to tell a story developed and remained stalwart. All the great stories have these elements. This story structure is so ingrained in our beings that we don’t even realize that we are evaluating stories based on these elements. It’s why your now frenemy couldn’t place her finger on why your book stunk. She didn’t know, exactly. The story just didn’t feel right.

But don’t worry, all is not lost. I’m going to tell you what those five elements are.

The 5 elements of storytelling are …

Get ready for this:

  1. Inciting Incident
  2. Rising Action
  3. Crisis
  4. Climax
  5. Resolution

That’s it.

There’s nothing else to your story. If you have an inciting incident that pulls your reader in, they’ll want to read more. Then, take them along the story, making things progressively more complicated for the main character. At some point, things are going to get so complicated, the main character is going to come to a crisis point.

The crisis is simply a question that the main character faces. It’s the major turning point of the story when the hero must choose between two courses of action. One course of action will turn your hero away from his goal, and one will carry him towards it. Once the decision is made, the climax follows.

Your climax is the height of action/suspense in your story. The part of your story where, though your character has made the decision to move forward, it appears that he is going to fail because the odds are just too big for him.

After your hero gets through the climax, you need to show your readers the consequences or fallout of the climactic scene. That’s the resolution.

If you can bring all of these things together, your story will work.

So, the next time someone tells you your story just wasn’t quite right, you’ll be able to pinpoint exactly what you need to do to make it better. Or, better yet, you’ll be able to pinpoint it before your friend, who is no longer your frenemy, will have a chance to read it.

Why you shouldn’t write a spineless story

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Or, why every single story or book you write must have a spine.

Steven Pressfield wrote a great article on why everybody needs to figure out their story’s spine.  Go ahead and read it here.  Now that you’ve read it I think you’re ready to read the rest of this post.

Like Pressfield said, your story spine is an essential building block to your story.

If you read my blog post on the basic units of every story you’ll notice that I’d said the same thing, and for good reason.

I just didn’t call it the story spine.

Each story has to have three things: a beginning and middle and end. These three aspects of your story of our literally your story’s backbone.  I’ll come back to this in a minute.

Figure out your story’s spine

Think about your story, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction.  Think about its beginning, its middle, and its end.  Now summarize each section into a single sentence.  I’m not going to let you use more than one sentence per section.  In fact, the shorter the sentence the more effective this will be for you.

So, let me try this again.  Take a look at each one of your sections.  Once you’ve done that, come up with three sentences.  Limit each sentence to seven words and no more.

This might be a little tough. Just humor me on this one.

Steven Pressfield gave a couple of examples, so if you’re looking for a place to start, start with those.  Just for fun here’s a couple more:

Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief

  1. Boy discovers he’s a demigod
  2. Boy tries to stop godly civil war
  3. Boy stops war; clears his name

Finding Nemo

  1. Father loses son
  2. Father tries to find son
  3. Father finds son

The Martian

  1. Man is stuck on Mars
  2. Man/NASA try to get him home
  3. Man comes home

Once you have your three sentences, write them down somewhere.  Better yet, put them at the very top of your manuscript.

Never forget these three sentences.

Why your story spine matters

I told you I was going to get back to this.  Like I said, your story spine is literally your story’s backbone.

You can also think of your story spine as a roadmap.  If you know the three basic parts of your story then you’ll never get lost in your writing. If you’re stuck in the weeds, all you have to do is remember your story spine.

I know it’s helped me in the past.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve been writing I and can’t seem to figure out where the story is going.  Frustrated I would go back to my story spine and remember what I need to be working towards at that point in my story.  Every single time, it helped me get back on the right track.

So, if you’re in the middle of your story, if you’re just starting out, or if you’re finished, make sure that you know what your story’s spine is.

If you have a scene that doesn’t help move your story to where it needs to go, then you know what to do to fix it. All you have to do is change the scene a little bit until it moves back towards your story’s spine.

Better yet, like Steven Pressfield said, with your spine all setup, “[you’re] setting yourself up to succeed and not to fail.”

My cure for writer’s block

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I used to think I suffered from writer’s block. That was before I understood what writer’s block actually was.

Now, I know for sure that I suffer from it. It plagues me at least once a week.

Fortunately, I found the cure for it.

I’m not going to tell you that I go and stand in front of the mirror, look myself in the eyes, and have a conversation with my reflection that sounds something like this:

“You’re amazing … you can do it! I believe in you.”

I tried that, and it didn’t work.

I’m also not going to tell you to write more until something good comes out. While that may eventually work, I think it’s a waste of time, a waste of words, and a waste of motivation to get things done.

What I’ve discovered is a four-step process that works every single time.

But more on that later.

First, just to understand why these four

steps actually work, I think it’s important to actually look at why writer’s block happens in the first place.

WRITER’S BLOCK IS REALLY JUST A SYMPTOM OF SOMETHING BIGGER, SOMETHING MORE NEFARIOUS.

First I’m actually not 100% sure the something bigger is actually the least bit nefarious. It’s just that nefarious is one of my all-time favorite words, and I haven’t been able to put it into a blog article for a while.

Its time had come.

Every single writer, at some point, has experienced writer’s block in some way, shape, or manner. You may have heard from a writer that they don’t believe writer’s block exists. Well, that person is lying … probably.

The fact is, they just call writer’s block something else.

The other fact is that writer’s block ALWAYS comes from one of two things.

The first thing is easy to deal with, so I knock that off my list first: distractions.

Distractions come in lots of ways, and from lots of sources. These distractions by themselves are not bad. But when they all decide, at exactly the same time, that they want to try and get your attention, writing becomes amazingly difficult.

It can get overwhelming … but don’t despair, you can overcome these things. You just need to do two things.

  1. Pick a time where you can write without having to talk to anyone. For me, this means getting up at 5 in the morning.
  2. Pop in your earbuds and turn on some good, old-fashioned music. It can’t be any music – no lyrics, and nothing that makes you sleepy. If you’re curious what I listen to, go here. This is my Spotify playlist – it’s movie and video game soundtracks.

The second reason for writer’s block is much bigger, and it’s usually more difficult to deal with. I call it getting lost.

That’s it. There’s nothing else to it. Writer’s block happens when you lose track of where your story is going.

Perhaps you went down a plot rabbit hole, and now you can’t figure out how to get your story back on track. Maybe you just finished an anecdote, but don’t know how to transition it back to your main point. Maybe you forgot why you put the anecdote in your story in the first place.

I don’t know. There’s any number of reasons you get lost.

Fortunately for you, all you need is a map.

YOU CAN SYSTEMATICALLY REMOVE WRITER’S BLOCK FROM THE EQUATION.

Now we’re back to that four-step process I mentioned at the beginning, but then conveniently pushed off to the end of this post.

Now I must warn you, once you know these steps, you’re never going to have to deal with writer’s block again. Well, that’s not true. But here are the steps anyway.

  1. Take the day off from writing. Don’t think about writing. Spend time with your family, your dog, the sauna … whatever. Just get yourself out of the situation.
  2. The next day, map out your story, fiction or nonfiction. Figure out where you’re going. If you’re writing fiction, figure out the big scenes that excited you in the first place. If you’re writing nonfiction, remember what your big idea was in the first place.
  3. Make your map – plan your destinations. Once you figure out where you’re going, now you can plan out how to get there. Jot down some notes about how your character is going to go from point A to point B.
  4. Start writing. I’d recommend that you write the big scenes first. Then you can write out the less-important scenes you mapped out. Feel free to do it the other way around. It doesn’t matter to me – just start writing again.

IT’S TIME TO PUNCH WRITER’S BLOCK IN THE FACE.

I can’t tell you how long it will take to map things out. I can tell you, however, that once you get it done, your bout with writer’s block will be over … for the time being.

Writer’s block likes to feed on authors who don’t have a direction in their writing. It’s not all that different from those distractions I wrote about a couple of weeks ago.

Fortunately, you can systematically eliminate your writer’s block at any given time if you follow these four steps.

Now go out there and start writing again.

The basic building blocks of any story

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As long as people have been able to communicate with each other they’ve been telling stories. Stories are an integral part of every person’s life. They shape the way humans interact with other humans, that every level of interaction imaginable.

The stories that we’ve been exposed to our whole lives have the power to shape, form, influence, and even dictate the choices that we as humans make. As the foundational element of our lives, stories are literally our today, yesterday, and tomorrow.

As stories developed over time, a pattern emerged. Okay, lots of patterns emerged, but I’m going to focus on one specific pattern. Let’s call it the three-act structure. As dumb as this might sound, all the stories that work, that flow, the draw us in until we finish them, have three-acts.

I’ll label the three acts as the beginning the middle and the end of each story.

The beginning of your story draws the reader, viewer, etc. into your story. The middle of your story makes things progressively more difficult for the protagonist. The end of your story resolves the problem created by the beginning of your story.

It can’t get more simple than this. Fortunately for writers, filmmakers, actors, and anyone else in the business of stories once you can master these three parts of the story you’ll be able to make any kind of story work.

It doesn’t even matter what kind of story you’ve created. The three-act structure works for everything.

So, take a look at the story you’ve written and see if it has these three parts. If you notice that your story hasn’t been working there is a good chance that it’s missing one of these crucial elements. If you have all three of these things, then you’re well underway to crafting a compelling and interesting story.