CONTENTS

Introduction
2

Storycraft
4

Conflict, Logical Response, Point of View

6

Story Skeletons
12

Characters
14

The Great Swampy Midle

18

Scenes
23

'Sequels'
28

Story Climax
33

Putting It All Together

38
Introduction
------------

I suppose the first thing to do is to talk about what these articles are, and aren't, and why
I'm writing them.

What I'm doing here is laying out what I know about writing a genre fiction novel.
Frankly, the principles here could be used to write any decent story, but they are geared
specifically to help train an aspiring writer to produce a solid effort that an editor will
recognize as a solid effort worth the gamble of publishing.

Some of these methods and techniques may seem stiff, wooden, unyielding, boring and
stifling to work with. A lot of people may look at them and reject them with much to say
about "magic formulas" and "studying under a writing mystic" and various similar
comments. I've seen (and written) a whole bunch of them in my time learning to write.
There is always, always, always someone who will complain that some of these
techniques are inflexible and boring and that they are incompatible with creativity.

To that person I say; stop being a petulant baby. Writing a decent story is as much craft as
art, and while some might be born enormously gifted at art, the craft part of the writing
only gets learned one way: practice. Otherwise known as "work." Professional musicians
don't just suddenly pick up an instrument for the first time, walk into a recording studio,
and start to cut a CD. They practice. They start off playing scales and practicing chords,
move up to "House of the Rising Sun" or "The Sloop John B.," and some Christmas
carols, and then, after a lot of effort, they finally get up to speed and start playing music
that people might actually want to pay for.

Aspiring writers, as a whole, tend to want to skip directly from playing scales to the
getting paid part. Most of them (myself included) never considered the fact that it might
take a considerable length of time and an even larger amount of effort to get from A to Z.

These articles are intended to show you the craft techniques that will help you write
reliably interesting, coherent and well-paced stories, and solid characters people want to
read about. Learn to use these techniques, and you'll manage B through Y with the
minimum amount of frustration. That's their first purpose.

The second reason to employ these techniques is that they give you a solid foundation for
writing stories even when you are under hideous time-pressures or feeling utterly
uninspired, artistically speaking. Writing craft is the heart and soul of the mercenary
component of being a genre fiction writer. It gives you what you need to take care of
business.

(I can tell you from first-hand experience that THEY WORK. I cannot begin to imagine
what I would have done under my most recent set of deadlines if I hadn't had the tools I
needed to write a solid story as quickly as possible.)

Keep in mind that learning these techniques only gives you a solid place to begin. Once
you've got them down, you'll begin to understand a lot more about WHY they work. Once
you see that, you'll know when you can alter or disregard them entirely, and still have a
great story. Every rule has its exceptions.
Oh, I should also mention what these articles are NOT. They are NOT my creation. I
learned virtually everything I know about writing craft from Debbie Chester, herself a
best-selling author with better than 40 published novels to her credit. She teaches in the
Professional Writing department at the University of Oklahoma's School of Journalism,
where she learned it from her teacher, Jack Bickham. Bickham has written several well-
regarded books on writing craft, and still publishes the occasional novel himself. These
people know what they are talking about.

I don't know as much as them. But on the other hand, I'm a lot closer to that aspiring
author-me, temporally speaking, than they are, so it might be fair to say that I'm in a better
position to pass this information clearly to the newbie writers. I'll do my best to teach you
what they taught me, only simplified and clarified for the newbie author.

Oh, one other thing these articles are NOT. They are NOT the One True Path to Writing.
They're essentially MY path. They're a pretty darned GOOD path, even if it's a little longer
than I had expected. Maybe you'll hate this path so much that you run off and find a
shortcut that gets you there in a tenth of the time. On the other hand, maybe you'll slip on
a crumbling ledge and be devoured by dyspeptic crocodiles. Who knows?

All I can say for sure is that if you are willing to work for it, THIS path will get you there.

Eventually.

Jim
Story Craft
What Is This Craft You Speak Of?
--------------------------------

To talk about writing a story, first you have to ask, "What IS writing?"

Writing, in its most essential sense, is an artificial means for getting thoughts and
images which reside in YOUR brain over to the guy holding your book in the most
effective and accurate fashion possible, so that the reader will successfully translate
your thoughts into HIS brain. The written word uses symbols to describe sights,
sounds, and situations, in order to let the reader create the story inside his own
imagination as he reads.

Writing is the original virtual reality.

If all goes well, the imaginary world you help the reader create in his head becomes as
believable, exciting, and interesting as the real world.

But that means you need to make everything go well. In order to do THAT, you apply
story craft.

Story? What story?

-------------------

To talk about story craft, first you have to answer the question, "What is a story?"

Simply put, a story is a narrative description of a character (the protagonist/hero)

struggling to attain an important goal. In general, the protagonist is opposed by
another character (the antagonist/villain).

The protagonist sets out to achieve his goal and faces problems and opposition to his
intentions along the way. His risk of loss increases as the narrative proceeds, and casts
an element of doubt over whether or not the protagonist will attain his goal. Then, in a
final confrontation of some sort (the climax), the protagonist either succeeds or fails,
based upon his own choices and actions. We'll talk more about protagonists and
antagonists and climaxes and conflict as we go along.

Story craft, writing technique, story structure. They're all different names that mean the
same thing (at least for the purposes of these articles). They describe the practice of
methodically approaching the writing of any given story with a definite, specific goal,
and a plan for making that narrative engaging and entertaining as possible.

Get to the Story Craft Already!

-------------------------------

Story craft describes the practice of using every possible element at your disposal to
write a good story. It means that you have a plan for the book--you know where you
want it to go, and why. It means that you understand something about how human
psychology ticks, and you use it to your advantage. It means that every piece of the
story has a definite purpose, and that it furthers your story in the most engaging way
possible.

Simply put, story craft is nothing more and nothing less than manipulating the
emotions of your reader.

Sounds cynical and mercenary, don't it?

It isn't. And it is.

Stop and think about it for a minute. You've all read books. You've all paid money for
them in the expectation of being entertained. The books written well enough to make
you burst out laughing, break down in tears, tremble with fear, snarl with anger or
smolder with desire are probably the ones you like the most. They're also the ones you
are happiest to pay for and most enjoy talking about. As a reader, you want to be
entertained.

You WANT the author to manipulate you.

Authors are the other side of the coin. From an artistic perspective, you have an
obligation to manipulate the reader to the best of your ability--that's what makes a
good story. From a mercenary standpoint, successful manipulation is also what gains
the most readers and makes the most money through increased sales.

Long story short: The story craft I'll be describing here is a toolbox. Inside it are time-
proven techniques for exploiting human psychology in your favor. Learn to use the
tools.

Just remember to wear your safety glasses and try not to accidentally chop off any of
your fingers.

Jim
Conflict, Logical Response, Point of View
Conflict, Logical Response and Point of View
--------------------------------------------

This article addresses three basic concepts for a structured approach to writing. While this one
won't be specific enough to actually apply as yet, it's important to understand the basic ideas on
which a structured approach is founded before we go tinkering with nuts and bolts.

Conflict--It's Not the Best Way. It's the Only Way.

----------------------------------------------------

First things first. This is the absolute core truth of telling a story, and is as important to your
writing as the laws of physics are to the real universe:

Stories are about conflict.

One more time, because something this important bears repeating.

STORIES ARE ABOUT CONFLICT!

If I wasn't in ASCII, I'd say it three times, the last time in giant animated 3-d letters that were
on fire. That's just how important it is. Alas, I'll just have to settle for saying it twice.

Conflict is the single most important facet of writing fiction. Conflict should exist in one form
or another in every scene. In a previous article I said that stories are about following a character
in pursuit of a goal, and who is opposed by someone with an opposite or conflicting goal.
That's the overall shape of a story.

But that format of Goal-Conflict is also the basic model for any scene. ALL of your characters
need to have a goal. If they don't have a goal, then what the hell are they doing wandering
aimlessly around on stage? Not only that, but you've also got to have someone who is trying to
ruin your character's day by one means or another. No one wants to read about Odysseus
leaving the sack of Troy, sailing home in moderate weather and settling down to focus on that
urban renewal project he's been putting off.

Conflict exists in infinite forms, and need not (necessarily) involve explosions or blood. A
mobster kicking down the door and spraying bullets is one kind of conflict, sure. But a well-
intentioned relative determined to sway your character from his goal is, too. So is a boss who
refuses to give your character the day off to pick up his sick kid from school.

We'll get into specifics on conflict when we talk scene structure. For now, just remember that
stories are about conflict, and that they best way to create conflict is to give your characters
goals and strong motivation to pursue them.

(Oh, a quick word about crippling information you might need to unlearn. Literature
departments are real big on describing the "forms of conflict." Don't try to deny it. Some of you
know them, and you know it. Man versus man, man versus nature, man versus himself. Let me
give you a piece of advice. The only one of any value to anyone who wants to learn to write
commercial fiction is the first one. Man versus nature stories and man versus himself stories
can work, but the writer has to work a lot harder to make it happen. You're going to be more
than busy enough without making your life more difficult across the board.)

Dammit, Jim, I'm A Writer, Not A Logistician

--------------------------------------------

Another foundation stone of clear writing is a careful observence of logical response.

Remember, one of your goals in telling a story is to make it come alive in your readers' minds.
To do that, it's important that you present things in a clear and understandable fashion. You
have to create clear mental pictures of characters, objects and places for your reader.

(We'll get more into that when we talk about characters, later on.)

While it isn't too terribly hard to create vivid character-images, it is MUCH more difficult to
create those same mental pictures of actions. Nothing takes your reader out of virtual
headspace faster than reading a sentence and description of action, then blinking and thinking,
"What?" Once your reader is stopping to go back and puzzle through confusing language,
you've lost the game.

The best way to keep that flow going is to understand logical-response, or what my teacher
called "Stimulus-Response Transactions." (Which sounds fancy, but they're working in a
university there, and if you don't use lots of sixteen penny words you don't get any R-E-S-P-E-
C-T from the other faculty.)

It breaks down into something really simple, though. Something happens to your character
(stimulus). Your character reacts to it (response). Your character takes an action (stimulus).
Something happens (response).

You don't start mucking around with the order. It's confusing. You don't have the response
occur before the stimulus. For example:

"His fist lashed out at me [stimulus]. My jaw exploded in a flash of pain [response-stimulus],
and it drove me to the ground [response]."

See? There's a logical order to it, stimulus-response, stimulus-response. That's what "stimulus-
response transaction" means. Stimulus comes first, and for every stimulus you have one
response.

If you screw up the order, the same action-description gets a lot harder to understand:

"I was driven to the ground when a flash of pain exploded in my jaw as his fist lashed out at
me."

Strictly speaking there's not any kind of grammar-based felony going on here, but the sentence
is clunky, and the reader has to mentally juggle it to get it all in the right order. It isn't really
DIFFICULT for them to juggle it around, but it does take a little extra effort to sort it into a
logical order.
That effort might seem trivial, but remember that the reader is gonna go through hundreds or
thousands of your sentences in fairly short order. As a result, that kind of minor error could
have two effects. First, it could result in a mental speedbump in your story that jolts the reader
right out of their storyspace. Second, those many trivial shuffles will accumulate. It isn't
something that most readers are going to actually, specifically notice in your work--they're just
going to know that it isn't as much fun to read as they would like it to be

"But but but," someone is surely saying by now, "Spielberg uses just the opposite thing all the
time! He'll go through separate close-ups of eighty six people staring at a dinosaur before the
viewer ever gets to see the dinosaur that stimulated them to stare!

Yes, well, Steve has an advantage. HE ISN'T USING THE WRITTEN WORD. You are. The
reversal of stimulus-response in a movie doesn't confuse anyone because they don't have to
read words and turn it into a movie in their head. The movie is already THERE. Those shots in
Jurassic Park work because they create suspense instead of confusion, precisely BECAUSE the
viewer knows that the response they're seeing must have a stimulus, and they're wondering
what it could be.

Besides. You aren't Spielberg. You're an aspiring writer who wants to learn the craft. So if you
want things to go smoothly for the reader and give you every advantage you can get, observe
stimulus-response transactions religiously.

It All Depends On Your Point of View

------------------------------------

Literally. In a very real sense, the success or failure of your story depends on it. Strong,
entertaining, believable characters are what make or break a story, and a prime component for
creating that kind of character is the effective use of point of view.

What makes it so important, you may ask? (Someone go ahead and ask, or I'm gonna look
pretty silly up here.) Good, I'm glad you asked that. To answer the question, let's go back to our
goal as a storyteller--specifically, to create a story so compelling that it takes on a life of its
own in the reader's mind. We want to create storyspace.

In order for the reader to have that kind of experience, they need a vehicle to do it in--or put
another way, we use point of view as a means of inserting the reader into the story. We write
from the point of view of our characters in order to vicariously plug the reader in to the
emotions, experiences, thoughts and actions of a viewpoint character. Some genres are heavier
into this aspect of telling the story than others, but it is not at all unfair to say that we use point
of view to allow the reader to experience the story through one of our characters' eyes (and
ears, and mind, and possibly several other organs).

Get it now? The reader is going to experience your story world through the thoughts,
perceptions, emotions and actions of your viewpoint character or characters. Do you see how
freaking important it is that you select the best characters to use? The perspective of the
character viewing the story has a profound effect on how it comes across to your readers.

Try to imagine watching Star Trek from the viewpoint of Nurse Chapel. I'm not saying it would
be a lame show, but it sure as hell wouldn't be the Star Trek we know. Chapel was a decent
character, but she wasn't exactly hips-deep in most of the events on the Enterprise. The Lord of
the Rings would be a rather different story told from the viewpoint of Bill Ferny. I don't even
want to consider what Star Wars would look like through the eyes of Jabba the Hut . . . well.
Except maybe for Leia getting fit for that slavegirl outfit . . .

Anyway, the point being that it's absolutely critical that you select the best characters for use as
point-of-view (oh for goodness' sake, I'm going to commit acronym and just call it POV)
characters. And how do you do that, you may ask?

(Quick, someone ask bef--) Yes, I'm glad you asked that.

First, you decide what kind of point of view you want to use.

Once more, you may be burdened with an education in literature that can get in the way of
writing. I'm sure any lit people out there can rattle off half a dozen different kinds of point of
view that can be used in a story. I'll break them down into the most familiar:

*******************************************************

First Person--Written from the interior perspective of one character. "I went to the store and
bought cookies. I ate them." The Dresden Files are first person POV.

Second Person--Written as if being described to the reader as their own actions. "You went to
the store and bought cookies. You ate them."

Third Person--Written from an exterior perspective to one or more characters. "He went to the
store and bought cookies. He choked on them and died."

Omniscient Viewpoint--Told from the perspective of an outside, all-knowing observer. "He

went to the store, never knowing that the cookies were the instrument of the Grim Reaper. If
only he'd purchased milk to go with them, he might have made it. But he didn't, and so sealed
his fate with sweet, corrupt chocolately goodness."

********************************************************

Let me give you some advice my own teacher gave me: write in First Person, or Third Person.
Omniscient viewpoint has been out of style for maybe a century. Second person is best
reserved for Choose Your Own Adventure books. First and Third person are the most common
and easy-to-read viewpoints, and no editor will ever take you seriously if you wade into the
publishing fray trying to sell anything else.

So, next thing's next. How do you decide? First or Third? Let's take a look at their pros and
cons.

**********************************************

First person strengths: An immediate immersion into storyspace through the most personally
identifiable language. In the Dresden Files, the text might read "I went here" or "I did that," in
reference to Harry's activities--but on some level in the reader's head, the reader is experiencing
those things vicariously. The language is subversive, and is possibly better suited to creating
that kind of storyspace than any other viewpoint. Bickham called first-person viewpoint
"perfect viewpoint" for that exact reason. It's also the easiest viewpoint to learn to write in
because, check it out--it's how we experience life.
First Person Weaknesses: The major problems with First Person viewpoint lie in the difficulties
it creates for story structure. Since you are locked into one viewpoint, your story has to happen
around your viewpoint character all the time. You can't show the reader anything that the
viewpoint character doesn't see, and that can become an annoying obstacle, particularly when
various characters with conflicting goals are all pursuing them at once.

The only way around these problems is to be scrupulous about keeping track of what characters
are doing when they're "off stage." But that still leaves you with figuring out ways to convey
the plot-necessary things they do to your reader. Typically, this is where you get villains who
will drone on in an endless summary of what the hero didn't see, or when characters will
otherwise break into a travelogue. It takes planning and creativity to get around the limitations
of first-person viewpoint, but it has the side effect of forcing you to make your character
extremely proactive and nosy, poking into everyone's business--which is probably why the
mystery genre is best known for first-person viewpoint stories.

*************************************************

*************************************************

Third Person Strengths: Third person viewpoint is the compliment to First Person, in terms of
strengths and weaknesses. Third person viewpoint allows you to introduce more than one POV
character, which frees up a whole universe of new options to you as a writer. Since you can hop
around to whatever characters you please, (though usually POV characters are of a fairly
limited number) you can play all kinds of wonderful head games with the reader which result
in the reader knowing things that the characters don't--that's when you get people screaming at
the book, "NO YOU IDIOT DON'T YOU KNOW THAT'S A VAMPIRE?" and similar
sentiments, because the reader's been handed more pieces than any one viewpoint character.

Third Person Weaknesses: Because you have so many more options with third person, you
have at least as many more ways you can screw things up. Most problematic in a third person
viewpoints are problems with displaying enough emotional depth in characters (compared to
first person, anyway), and the risk that a larger cast of characters will grow increasingly more
difficult for the reader to keep track of. (*kaffkaff*JORDAN*kaffkaff*) When you head into a
third person story, you have to be sure to be extra careful about establishing characters and
their goals, in order to help the reader keep the various POVs straight in his head. Often writers
also have trouble keeping the current viewpoint clear to the reader--and some of them even
jump back and forth to various viewpoints within the same scene, chapter, or page, a
guaranteed mental speedbump for the reader as he tries to puzzle out whose head the story is in
right now.

***************************************************

To make matters even more complicated, writing in first or third person also seems to be
heavily influenced by the temprament and skills of the writer in question. Some people couldn't
write third person to save their life. I wrote SEVEN BOOKS in the third person and they were
universally lame. When I finally took Debbie's advice and wrote my first novel in the first
person, I produced Storm Front. I was better suited for first person writing, clearly. Since then,
I've continued to grind my teeth and practice third person, and I think I'm finally getting
somewhere, but it was a struggle for me. Other writers take to writing third person like baby
ducks to water. The freaks.
Okay, broken down to the simplest thoughts I can:

First person offers the novice writer an intuitive advantage in writing a strong, emotional
central character. It creates a few problems for your plot, but nothing that can't be gotten
around. It's best suited to a story focused upon a single central character, and as such is most
often found in mysteries and thrillers, with occasional appearances in fantasy/sf.

Third person is far more flexible and offers you a wider range of options, dramatically
speaking, but it's also considerably more difficult to learn to handle well--but if you learn to do
it, you can really go to town, creatively speaking. Third person is found in every genre, but is
particularly prominant in romance, on account of most of the romances like to present the story
from the perspective of the two principal characters at the very least.

So pick what kind of viewpoint you want to use based on the kind of story you want to tell and
on your own personal gifts and preferences.

Now. All you need to do is pick WHICH characters get to become POV characters. And how
do I do that, you might ask?

For first person it's easy. You pick the guy who keeps telling the reader "I, me, I me." But when
writing third person, the sheer flexibility of the choices available to you can make it tough to
pick who will be the POV character in any given scene.

But there is a simple rule of thumb to help you decide that. Viewpoints belong to the characters
who are the most deeply, emotionally involved in whatever is at stake in the scene. When
you're wondering which character should have the viewpoint in any given scene, all you have
to do is to pick the character who has the most to lose. THAT person is the one who is going to
have the strongest goal, and his pursuit of the goal will be fertile ground for the best conflict.

It is late and I have probably forgot a bit here and there, but if so I'll be back to blow hot air all
over until my ego is sure it has had its say. :) Next article, I'll prattle on about laying out a plot
skeleton before you start pounding on the keys.

Jim
Fundamentals--Story Skeletons
Story Skeletons
---------------

Writing a structurally sound story is simple.

But it isn't easy.

"Huh?" you say. "What do you mean, simple not easy?"

A *lot* of things are really simple. Hauling an engine block out of your car is simple--but it
sure as hell isn't easy. There's a lot of work to be done, and you have to go about it the right
way or the simple task can go all to hell in a hurry. Building a solid story as an aspiring writer
is the same way. What I can hand you here is not going to look very complicated--but for
newbie novelists, it's going to be difficult to handle. At least it was for me.

The story skeleton is a description of the main plot of your book, broken down into its simplest
elements. It's two sentences long. Neither sentence is particularly long. Your plot needs to fit
into that framework, or it's going to be too complicated for the average newbie writer to handle
well.

"Impossible," I said to myself when Debbie told us that in class. "There's no way you can break
down a story as epic as mine into two sentences. You can't possibly do that." As it turned out, I
could. If I hadn't been able to do it, it would have been way too much story for me.

The story skeleton (also called a story question) consists of a simple format:

*WHEN SOMETHING HAPPENS*, *YOUR PROTAGONIST* *PURSUES A GOAL*. But

will he succeed when *ANTAGONIST PROVIDES OPPOSITION*?

For instance, look at Storm Front. (Yes, I'll use my own books as examples, because I'm just
that way. ;) Also, I'm more familiar with them than I am with almost any other writer.) Storm
Front's story question:

****************************
When a series of grisly supernatural murders tears through Chicago, wizard Harry Dresden sets
out to find the killer. But will he succeed when he finds himself pitted against a dark wizard, a
Warden of the White Council, a vicious gang war, and the Chicago Police Department?
****************************

See! It's oh-so-simple! Almost to the point of looking ridiculous--and I have no doubt that
some of the people reading this article will think that it *is* ridiculous. They're wrong. :) This
is a fundamental description of the core conflict in your tale--and stories are all about conflict.

Not only that, but by getting your story broken down into its basic elements, you'll help
yourself focus on the most important portion of the novel and avoid dumping lots of extra
words into it. Always write a story as lean as you possibly can (and still be happy with it).
Every scene and every sequel should be planned to move your story forward--and you should
have the purpose of the scene in mind as you write it.
You want to write your story like a racehorse, not an elephant. It is SO much easier to flesh out
a story that's too lean than it is to trim down a story that's too bulky.

This doesn't mean that you don't plan a book with subplots. Even newbie writers like I was can
usually handle a couple of them, and with enough planning usually more. But the main plot is
the skeleton that everything else builds upon. Before you get rolling on your next novel, make
yourself a little form and fill it out. I know, I know, it seems corny as hell.

But trust me. It will help you in the long run.

Characters
So your story is all about conflict, right? And you can't have conflict without, well, people.
Maybe your people look like sentient renaissance mice, or maybe they look like talking cats,
but there are going to be beings running around your story with a bunch of conflicting desires.
Those are your characters.

Sticking with the purely craft-oriented standpoint, we'll start with a basic question: what makes
a good character?

FIRST AND FOREMOST, FICTION WRITERS, YOUR CHARACTERS MUST BE

INTERESTING.

I mean, come on. Who is going to want to read about boring people? I can do that in the
newspaper, or in any history class. Increasingly, as our society moves into the MTV-
Information-broadband-instant-gratification age, reader tolerance for the dull and the plain is
going to go down.

Bottom line: without interesting characters, your book is already dead. You can write
something that flies in the face of this if you like, and people the story town of Plainsville with
John Smiths, and who knows, maybe you'll create an immortal piece of literary art. But for
poor slobs like me whose sons are suddenly wearing larger shoes than them, and who are
looking with mild panic at the costs of a college degree, there are a couple of basic principles
to think about which could really help you in all kinds of ways.

Which leads us to the next logical question: What is (or what makes) an interesting character?

While no one thing can really stake a sole claim, several things consistently make a team
contribution:

o Exaggeration.
o Exotic position.
o Introduction.
o Verisimilitude.
o Empathy.

We'll look at them one at a time.

1. EXAGGERATION

This can be almost any kind of exaggerated feature, be it physical, mental or emotional.
Virtually every character in popular fiction is an exaggerated figure of one kind or another.
Mister Monk is not merely fussy and unstable, he is fussy and unstable to an insane degree.
Jack O'Neill is not merely wiseass and cavalier, but suicidally so. Sydney Bristow is not merely
a spy, she's a CIA SuperSpyGrrl who can look like anyone and outshoot, outfight and generally
outdo every other spy in the business. Paul Bunyan is not just tall, he's sixty-three axe-handles
high. Pamela Anderson is . . . say no more.
The purposes of exaggerating characters are twofold:

FIRST, it's inherently interesting. Reading a sentence about Joe Average walking down the
street is not nearly as interesting as reading a sentence about Joe Two-Meters walking down the
street and banging his head on swinging shop signs as he goes.

SECOND, it's a device to create an acute mental awareness of your character for the reader.
Remember that the goal of this kind of story-craft is to create that virtual world inside your
reader's head. The reader is glad to help you along with that. I mean, readers will provide a lot
of the background sets and extras and so on if you give them a chance--but one way to make it
easier for them to get into the story is to create a clear impression of a character on them, so
that they always have a clear image in their head of who that character is. Exaggeration helps
with that--it gives the reader something unusual and memorable to associate with any given
character.

(More tips and techniques on how to do even more with this will follow under Verisimilitude.)

2. EXOTIC POSITION

While this is in actuality just another facet of exaggeration, there are enough differences to
make it worth its own heading. Locating your character in an unusual location or situation is
another way to help create immediate interest. A sentence about a thirty-five year old man
sitting in an office is fairly simple and very boring. But it becomes something else entirely
when it's the OVAL office and the youngest president in the history of the nation has just been
advised that a nuclear terrorist is loose in DC. A sentence about a young woman sitting in a
chair is far more blah than a sentence about the first female shuttle commander maneuvering in
her EVA frame in high orbit.

(Naturally there's the inversion of this, too, where you take a very unusual character and put
him in an utterly mundane position, like Mister Incredible working in Insurance Cubicle
Purgatory.)

Whether it is a social, geographic, intellectual or moral position, choosing something unusual

enough to be memorable and interesting will provide you with a significant advantage in
grabbing reader interest.

3. INTRODUCTION

You never get a second chance to make a first impression. When your reader meets any given
character for the first time, it is critical to make sure you get the bare bones of your character
into his head immediately. By establishing your character firmly, you'll make the whole process
of virtual-story-world-creation move more quickly and easily. There are multiple techniques
for planning a strong introduction, but I'm only going to hit on the strongest one:
CHARACTERISTIC ENTRY ACTION.

A solid CHARACTERISTIC ENTRY ACTION consists of introducing your character to the

reader by bringing him into the story in the course of an action which clearly, sharply typifies
who and what he is.

Lethal Weapon 2 starts off in the front seat of a stationwagon during a police chase, with Mel
Gibson howling in excitement and pounding on the ceiling while Danny Glover fumbles for the
siren, tries to talk on the radio, and tries to convince Mel that they don't really need to be doing
this. It strongly establishes both characters as cops. It demonstrates Mel's love of wild action,
Danny's cautious approach to his work, and the relationship dynamic between the two. (I liked
it so much that I borrowed shamelessly from it to start off Grave Peril.)

Every Bond Pic that opens on the "opening mission" template does the same thing: it shows
you Bond being a heroic spy and engaging in lots of danger and action.

Your character is a frustrated high school nerd? Then have him come on stage late for his
school bus, which promptly drives away even though the driver obviously saw him coming.
(IE, Spider-Man.) Your character is a titanic lumberjack? Then start him off towering over the
north woods and felling fifty trees with each swing of his axe.

Make the introduction count. This is something you can't afford to screw up.

4. VERISIMILITUDE

(Which is a university word that means "they act believeably." It's easier for me to type V-
factor.)

V-factor is the second most important element in creating interesting characters. The most
exotic character in the world becomes nothing more than an annoying cartoon figure if he
doesn't behave in a consistant and believeable manner. (*kaffkaff*JAR-JAR*kaffkaff*)

When you are writing your characters, it is absolutely critical that you convey to the reader the
sense that your character is a whole, full person with his own life outside the purview of this
particular story. This is a task that will take a little bit of time, as your reader follows your
character around and sees what is in his world.

The single most important technique for doing that is through showing your character's: 1.
EMOTIONS 2. REACTIONS and 3. DECISIONS. When something happens in your story, a
character with a decent V-factor will react to it. The reader will see his emotional reaction
played out, will gain a sense of the logic of a question or problem, and will recognize that the
character took a believeable, appropriate course of action in response.

The lion's share of this work gets done in the process of writing SEQUELS. (Not like Rocky II.
It's a writing-craft term.)

(SEQUELS are an indispensable portion of your story and will have their own article later.)

But forethought and preparation will play a role in this process, too. Here's another cool craft-
tool for you guys to use: TAGS and TRAITS

TAGS are words you hang upon your character when you describe them. When you're putting
things together, for each character, pick a word or two or three to use in describing them. Then,
every so often, hit on one of those words in reference to them, and avoid using them elsewhere
when possible. By doing this, you'll be creating a psychological link between those words and
that strong entry image of your character.

For example; Thomas Raith's tag words are pale, beautiful, dark hair, grey eyes. I use them
when I introduce him for the first time in each book, and then whenever he shows up on stage
again, I remind the reader of who he is by using one or more of those words.

This is a really subtle psychological device, and it is far more powerful than it first seems. It's
invaluable for both you as the writer, and for the construction of the virtual story for the reader.

TRAITS are like tags, except that instead of picking specific words, you pick a number of
unique things ranging from a trademark prop to a specific mental attitude. Harry's traits include
his black duster, his staff, his blasting rod and his pentacle amulet. These things are decorations
hung onto the character for the reader's benefit, so that it's easy to imagine Harry when the
story pace is really rolling.

Similarly, Bob the Skull's traits are the skull, its eyelights, his intelligence, his role as a lab
assistant, his obsession with sex and his wiseass dialog. It works for the same reason.

Seriously. Before you introduce another character, write some tags and traits down. You'll be
surprised how much easier it makes your job.

4. EMPATHY

If you can manage to create a vivid character in a reader's mind, then establish him as someone
believable, you have a real shot at the Holy Grail of character design. If you do your job, you
will create a sense of empathy in your reader for your characters. This is what makes people
burst out laughing while reading. It's what makes readers cry, or cheer, or run off to take a cold
shower.

Like V-Factor, empathy takes time to build and it relies heavily upon the skilled use of sequels.
But if you can get the reader to this point, as an author, then you WIN. Big time. This is the
ENTIRE GOAL of all this character work, because the reader's emotional involvement is the
single most important factor in how well your story is going to fly.

Or put another way, if you can make people love who you want them to love and hate who you
want them to hate, you're going to have readers coming back to you over and over again.
The Great Swampy Middle
THE GREAT SWAMPY MIDDLE

Every writer runs into this, generally in every single book. The middle. It lurks between the
beginning of your book and the exciting conclusion, and its mission in life is to Atreyu you
right down into the yucky, mucky mire in order to prevent you from ever actually finishing.

The Great Swampy Middle (or GSM) knows no fear, no mercy, no regret. It doesn't come after
you. It darned well knows that you're going to come to it. It knows that you're going to be
charging along, sending up the spinning plates, ripping out the strong character introductions,
planting cool bits into your story for the future, and generally feeling high on life. And just
then, as you get all that fun opening-story stuff done, it pounces. And suddenly, you're staring
at a blank word processor screen trying to figure out how to get your story through the next
paragraph.

And it laughs at you. It laughs and dances on the ashes of your enthusiasm. It knows full well
that you are going to be its bitch from now until you somehow finish the book or else give up
in despair and slit your wrists with the edge of one of those index cards you're using to try to
figure out the rest of the plot. It rejoices and dances around a primal bonfire, howling its glee at
the uncaring stars.

The smug bastard.

Okay. Maybe I'm anthropomorphosizing it a little. But not by much.

The middle of books is HARD, especially for beginning writers. Why? Because the middle of a
book gives you the most flexibility in terms of telling your story. The beginnings and ends of
stories share many similar demands, craftwise, but the MIDDLE is where your personal style
has room to play. IE, there are a berjillion-and-one different things you can do in the middle of
a story, and since you're a beginning writer, about a berjillion of them are probably the wrong
things to do.

It's like a swamp. There are apparent paths all around you--but sometimes the ground that looks
solid actually sucks you under and paralyzes you and strangles you. Sometimes the water that
looks deep and unpleasant is actually shallow and safe. Sometimes apparent paths aren't paths
at all--they just wander all over and wind up at a dead end. Sometimes the safe-looking waters
are teeming with alligators and poisonous snakes just below the surface.

Man. The middle of a book is /dangerous/.

It's when an author starts getting lost that the book's middle becomes the Great Swampy
Middle. Once you've taken a wrong turn in the GSM, you've got to be smart about which way
you move, because if you just keep wandering around, you (and by "you" I mean "your story")
is just going to keep bumbling around in circles and never get out of the GSM.

Those of you who have written this much of a book already know exactly what I'm talking
about. You hit that point where you're not sure what to do next--when small details and points
of logic start tripping you up. Where your story begins to veer off from your outline, and feel
fairly confident that it's never, EVER going to veer back. You aren't sure where things went
wrong, exactly. Characters and situations start popping out of your fingers as if of their own
volition. They're often fun, even intriguing, but they're really a form of denial, you poor
deluded, benighted sap. You're lost. You just don't want to admit it to anyone, least of all
yourself.

News flash: the reader is going to get that, and it's going to kill their fun. Readers are not
stupid. They have a surprising amount of insight, even if they don't always consciously work
out why something seems to be wrong with the story. Many readers, God bless every one of
them, will plow ahead through the swamp, trusting you to get your act together eventually.

But most won't have that kind of patience. You'll lose them.

(That's bad.)

But I say unto you, fear not. For though the GSM be all around you, there are ways to escape
its fearsome grasp. I'll share my own favorite methods with you, and go over several other
techniques and tips, and finish off with the WMD (Weapon of Middle Destruction) which can
snickersnack that GSM monster back into the slivy toves with 100 percent reliability.

Here we go:

The problem with GSMs is that most writers don't have a very good idea of exactly where they
want to go. I mean sure, they want to get "to the other side of the swamp," but that's sort of like
saying "I want to get to the other side of the continent." It's a good plan, as stated, but it lacks
clarity, specificity, definition. Instead of saying "the other side of the continent" it might be
more helpful to say something like "I'm taking I-70 out through the midwest to Denver, then
hopping on Highway Suchandsuch southwest through the Rockies before taking Route
Whatever across California to the Pacific."

Same thing applies in the story. If you have a good idea of your next landmark, waypoint,
stepping stone, what have you, it's a lot easier not to fall off the path and get sucked down into
the mud. SO. One way to help yourself do that is to create something to help you keep on
track--a structure specifically designed to keep the pace of your book strong throughout the
middle. My favorite such construct is called THE BIG MIDDLE.

THE BIG MIDDLE:

Here's the nutshell concept: Plan a great big freaking event for the end of the middle. You want
it to be a big dramatic confrontation of whatever kind is appropriate to your genre. The fallout
from your big bad Big Middle event should be what boots the book down the homestretch to
reach the story's climax. Really lay out the fireworks. Hit the reader with everything you can.
PLAN THE BIG MIDDLE EVENT. Then, as you work through the middle, WORK TO
BUILD UP TO IT. Drop in the little hints, establish the proper props and motivations and such.
Make sure that everything you do in the middle of the book is helping you build up to the BIG
MIDDLE.

(I've used the Big Middle concept in EVERY book I've ever published. It works. It ain't broke.
It ain't the only way to do the middle, either, but it's one way.)

Example: The Dresden Files, Dead Beat. The Big Middle event in this book is the zombie
attack on Harry's apartment. Corpsetaker and Grevane show up in the same place, at the same
time, and kick off a full blown Necrobattle. There are zombies and ghosts, tons of magic,
Harry's wards frying everything in sight, Butters gets captured, Harry and Thomas have to save
him, plenty of special effects and a narrow escape.

(That's the drama part.)

In the course of the Big Middle, Harry gets information he needs to continue his pursuit, the
bad guys blow out the city's power, Butters picks up a new mantra about courage, and we segue
into the next day, with Halloween and the Darkhallow charging down from the horizon.

(that's the set things in motion part)

Big Middle is a good counter to the GSM. It helps you stay focused and gets you through the
chapters more smoothly.

MINI ARC:

Some authors get through the GSM by creating a whole little storyline of its own and plopping
it down smack in the middle. Normally, it's intertwined with the main story in some fashion,
but the focus of the characters shifts onto a new track, one that is wholly contained in the
middle. It is, essentially, a smaller story, which interfaces with the overall story well enough to
expose cool character stuff that is relevant to the main plot, that kind of thing.

Example: The Two Towers. For the non-Frodo non-Sam characters, the main goal (destroy the
Ring and defeat Sauron) changes (to catch the orcs and rescue Merry and Pippin, save Rohan
from getting suckerpunched into the great beyond). They haven't given up on the Ring or
whacking Sauron--but they've been diverted into a smaller story which still carries emotional
weight. They'll get back to antiMordor insurgency soon, you know. But for the time being,
we're learning more about their characters, establishing some of the best character interaction
in the whole of the story.

NEW SUBPLOT:

A watered down version of Mini-Arc, a new subplot is just that--a subplot that suddenly
develops and has to be dealt with, without actually becoming a big overwhelming part of the
story on its own. The new subplot begins and ends in the middle, and generally introduces you
to some cool characters or threats native to that subplot.

Example: Trash Compactors and Tractor Beams. Luke's main goal (save the princess and defeat
the Empire!) gets altered (don't get squashed flat! Escape! Come in, Threepio, where could he
be!?). It doesn't change the overall goal--but it DOES take the story into a new direction, and
you get the cool periscope-tentacle monster, a new setting, and a really suspenseful impending
doom scene. Kenobi gets an even tamer version of the same thing, because his presence would
make rescuing the princess way too easy. He gets sent off on the tractor beam sabotage
mission. Again, a small subplot bound to the main goal, but NOT the main goal, and it creates
tension by separating him from the others, letting him smell Darth's BO coming steadily closer,
and showing us cool Jedi tricks that only seem to work on Stormtroopers.

NEW CHARACTER:

A new character tromps out onto the stage in a more flamboyent or memorable fashion than
most supporting characters would do. They aren't on stage long, but they serve an important
role in forwarding the story, and they entertain the hell out of the audience while they do it.

Example: The Incredibles, Edna Mode. Edna shows up to make Bob a new suit, make the
whole family new suits, and to tip Helen off to the fact that Mister Incredible is off on Fantasy
Island with Storm's bolemia-stricken baby sister. Edna is a freaking riot, but her total time on
stage is a bare fraction of the main cast, and she's there to keep the plot moving quickly.

There. THAT hatful of techniques should be able to help anybody sinking into the quicksand.
Be aware that using this stuff is simple--but not EASY. It takes practice. Play with it and see
what works best for you, but PRACTICE.

Which leads me up nicely to segue into the ultimate Vorpal Sword for slaying the GSM:

Keep writing.

Here, let me repeat that.

KEEP WRITING.

One more time, only louder.

KEEEEEEEEEEEP!

WRRRRRIIIIIIIITTTTTIIIIIIIIINNNNNGGGGGG!

The ultimate way to get out of the GSM is to keep on plowing ahead. Sooner or later, you're
bound to pop out the other side or else stumble onto a discernable path.

Note, I say that this is the ultimate way. It isn't the fast way. It isn't the smart way. But, by God,
if you sit down, grit your teeth and WRITE WRITE WRITE, ONWARD ONWARD
ONWARD, you're bound to get out eventually. You'll do ten times the work and probably need
to cut and slash your story with a whale flenser before you move on to the next draft, but it
WILL get you unstuck and out, sooner or later.

Okay, I think I'm about metaphored out. So, one more, and then I'll shut up.

Finding your way through the middle of your novel is like finding any other path. You're best
off if you NEVER GET OFF IT. Solid outlines are the best way to stay on it, but they aren't an
easy way, either. That's just as well. Devloping some skills you'll need to find your way when
accidents happen and you get off track is important and useful.

These techniques above are tools, stuff you can use to help stay focused on the proper path (IE,
your PLOT) so that you don't veer off on accident, slow the pace of your story and kill the
interest of your audience. If you get off track, employing one of the tools (or about a million
others I've forgotten about, never heard of, or can't quite remember just now) can help you get
your story back on track, charging for that big finish. They're best used in the planning stages
of a book, as preventatives, but you can use them after the fact with just as much success.

The Great Swampy Middle doesn't love you. It wants you to never write a book, ever. The
GSM wants you to give up and go home.
So take my advice and take a few tools with you--mine or someone else's, you won't hurt my
feelings. If the GSM so much as looks at you crosseyed, go upside its head with them.

That'll learn the smug bastard.

Jim
SCENES
SCENES
----------

Scenes are important. Scenes are where all the plot in your book happens. Any time your
character is actively pursuing his goal (as opposed to a character who is pausing to reflect or
react emotionally to the events of the story) he is engaged in a SCENE.

The basic structure of a scene is simple. Your POINT OF VIEW character sets out in pursuit of
a SPECIFIC GOAL. Someone else (usually, but not always, the antagonist) actively,
knowingly tries to stop him. There is a CONFLICT. The reader is left to wonder whether or not
the POV character will succeed (which can also be thought of as the SCENE QUESTION).
The result of the conflict is *always* a SETBACK of one kind or another (also thought of as
the SCENE ANSWER)--at least, until you get to the end of the book.

Let me break that into a simple format. This is the one I use every time I write a scene. I fill it
out, like a freaking class worksheet (which at one time it was):

POINT OF VIEW CHARACTER:

GOAL:
CONFLICT (SCENE QUESTION):
SETBACK (SCENE ANSWER):

We'll look at each of them, one at a time.

POINT OF VIEW CHARACTER

------------------------------------
Sometimes, this is easy--for instance, when you're writing a first-person viewpoint novel, like
the Dresden Files. The point of view character is always the same person.

Other times, though, you've got more lattitude (IE, a better chance to screw up). You've got
multiple point of view characters in your book, and often more than one of them is
participating in the scene. (Romance writers, especially, run into this issue a lot.) If you pick
the wrong viewpoint character, you'll cheat yourself out of making your scene as interesting
and appealing as it could be. Picking the optimal viewpoint character is VITAL.

Fortunately, there's a simple rule of thumb for people getting started. ALWAYS pick the person
with the MOST AT STAKE, emotionally, in the scene. If you do that, you help build in
additional tension, you get to show more emotion (aka, create greater empathy in the reader),
and you help ensure that the conflict is real, that it matters.

You can break this rule--just like you can break all of these rules--once you know what you're
doing. But until you are CERTAIN that you understand why this works, how it works, and
what you can accomplish by NOT following the rule . . . don't. Please, until you've worked
enough to get it yourself, just take my word for it that this rule of thumb is frickin' critical, and
you will do well by yourself to stick with it.

GOAL
-------
Once you've got your point of view character, the next thing you need is a GOAL for them to
pursue. This needs to be an ACTIVE, SPECIFIC goal, not just something vague. Instead of
your character setting out to "do something to save the day" he needs to have a goal more like,
"go pound Joe Blow for information that might let me save the day." Instead of "make the girl
like me" his goal needs to be something more like "take the girl out for a wonderful night on
the town with lots of attention to detail and customized surprises for her."

(That's the great part about writing action scenes. You get really clear, simple goals like "Get
out of the room alive.")

Your goal doesn't always have to be life-shatteringly important. It can be as simple as "I want
breakfast." The most important thing about it is that it must be clear, apparently attainable,
specific, and important to your viewpoint character.

CONFLICT
-------------

Ah, conflict. The heart of every story. If you screw up absolutely everything else about a scene
but GET THE CONFLICT RIGHT, you're gonna be way closer to getting published than most
people ever manage.

Conflict is what happens when someone, for some reason, up and decides that your character
needs to fail in his goal, or else is pursuing a goal which, if met, will prevent your viewpoint
character from reaching his goal.

CONFLICT IS ALL ABOUT CHARACTERS. IT HAPPENS BETWEEN CHARACTERS.

Conflict is NOT "there's a forest fire!" or "it's really cold outside!" Those things can be used as
dramatic elements, don't get me wrong--but they aren't CONFLICT. They are referred to as
"adversity" and they are inherently second-class citizens when it comes to establishing
interesting scenes.

(Most often, they serve best as a supporting role. It's one thing to be in a knife fight with your
most hated enemy. It's quite another to be in a knife fight with your most hated enemy in the
middle of a forest fire.)

CONFLICT, ideally, is two characters going head-to-head (on whatever level is appropriate--
social knife-fighting can make reading every bit as interesting as literal knife-fighting), while
both of them try to achieve conflicting goals.

All this really means is that you need an antagonist with the same specific, attainable goal, the
same kinds of emotional stakes, as your protagonist. Once you've got the right kind of set up,
the scene almost writes itself.

(Notice that I say "antagonist" and not "villain." It doesn't have to be a villain. It can be a
concerned friend, trying to talk your character out of doing something. It can be a misguided
heroic-type, who just happens to be acting against your protagonist, like Murphy was in the
first couple of Dresden books. It can be an admirable and even likeable foe, like Marshal Sam
Gerard in The Fugitive. The choices are vast. The important thing, though, is that he's working
against your viewpoint character.)
And, done right, the conflict poses an implied SCENE QUESTION. Will your character
succeed? Or even better, WHICH character is going to succeed?

SETBACK
------------

The SETBACK is the result of the CONFLICT. Your character set out to accomplish a certain
goal--AND HE DOESN'T GET IT.

Eh, you say? What what?

He doesn't get it. Come on, if it was that simple--Goal, attained! Goal, attained!--it really
wouldn't be a terribly interesting story. Think . . . oh, the early Superman cartoons. A dozen
problems would start happening--bad guys, natural disasters, what have you. Then Supes
would show up and, one by one, smash/burn/freeze/throw/beat up the problems, mostly with
very little apparent effort.

THAT GETS BORING FAST.

(In fact, I often don't even like to use the word "setback" to describe the results of the scene. I
like referring to it as the DISASTER. But I'm melodramatic, that way.)

In any case, the character doesn't attain his full goal, his total completion, until the END OF
THE STORY. If he gets it early on, hey, why keep reading? The best stories keep the reader on
edge (IE, not entirely satisfied) until the story's climax, at which point all questions are
resolved, all goals met, and we can all go have a cigarette or something.

There are a number of ways you can end a scene--or phrased another way, there are a number
of ANSWERS to the SCENE QUESTION. Let's go over them, beginning with the least
desirable, from the standpoint of a writer trying to keep a reader glued to the story:

ANSWER 1: YES. Already told you, this one is a no-no. It's the simplest, leaves you with the
least drama and the fewest options. It's predictable, almost inherently comes with less conflict,
and gives you the worst odds of keeping a reader's attention.

("Trapped in the pit of starving, diseased wolverines, our hero struggles to get free! He leaps to
safety unscathed, and continues his journey!" See what I mean? Bor-ing.)

ANSWER 2: YES . . . BUT. This one is a lot better. In this scenario, your hero accomplishes
his scene goal all right--but there's a complication of some kind, and one that might have
consequences down the line. Generally, the more dire and/or disastrous the potential
consequence, the better.

("Trapped in the pit of starving, diseased wolverines, our hero struggles to get free! He leaps up
to climb to safety, the wolverines raging and foaming beneath him--but just as he reaches the
edge of the pit, and freedom, he is savagely bitten on the leg! He is free! But it is only a matter
of time before Mad Wolverine Syndrome reduces him to a snarling, foaming monster!" See
there? Way more interesting than getting away without a mark to show for it.)

ANSWER 3: NO! Another solid scene resolution, from the writing standpoint. The hero sets
out to attain his goal, but is flatly denied. Maybe he gets shut down by the antagonist. Maybe
he makes a mistake and blows it completely. Either way, he gives it his best shot and is slapped
down. Now he'll have to back off, re-evaluate the situation, and try something else. Use this
scene answer with some caution, because it can have the effect of bringing your story to a halt.
Too many of them can become frustrating for the reader, and can make your character look
foolish and/or impotent, thus reducing reader empathy and the tension of your overall story.

("Trapped in the pit of starving, diseased wolverines, our hero struggles to get free! He leaps up
to climb to safety, but the crumbling edge of the pit gives way, dropping him back down among
the foaming monsters! He reaches for his communicator and shouts, "Red! I may have a
problem here!" See? This can be a good way of getting other characters involved, dropping in
some more character interaction, what have you--but you're still stuck in the pit of wolverines.
Unless you are writing "Wolverine Pits of Madison County" or something, you don't want to
stay stuck in the wolverine pit forever, so use your NO answers carefully.)

ANSWER 4: NO! AND FURTHERMORE! My personal favorite scene answer. Not only does
your hero NOT attain his goal, but he manages to make matters even WORSE along the way.
It's best if the worsening of the situation is your protagonist's fault, because that's just FUN, but
it doesn't necessarily have to be.

THIS answer is really the one that gives you the most interesting scenes, provides the meat for
the most interesting and endearing sequels, and is generally the Big Gun you pull out when
your plot is slowing down. Warning: it does force you, as the writer, to get a little creative,
because it multiplies the problems your hero has to solve. But hey. If you weren't at least a little
creative, you wouldn't be here.

("Trapped in the pit of starving, diseased wolverines, our hero struggles to get free! He leaps up
to climb to safety, seizing onto the trailing end of a vine! But the vine gives way, sending our
hero sprawling back down among the slavering beasts! He stares at them in horror, and only
THEN realizes that the "vine" he seized was no such thing! He is now holding the tail of a
thirty-foot long Peruvian Acid Cobra--and the incredibly deadly serpent is NOT happy to have
been suddenly seized in the middle of its siesta. It opens its deadly jaws and lunges for our
hero's throat!" Mmmmm. Now that's good fallout.)

Granted, these examples are pulp fictiony, but they're meant to serve as broad illustrations. In
one way or another, every scene in every story where a character is pursuing a goal will fall
into one of those four outcomes.

And you've done it! You've written a good scene!

Simple, right? It is. But it isn't EASY. Try it out, and PRACTICE it. Shockingly, you get better
with practice. These days, I don't even really consciously think in terms of
goal/conflict/setback. Those things are a part of my thinking process, and they've become
transparent to me, now. I just think about the scene, forming it with a solid skeleton from the
get-go, and it allows me to focus more active effort on other aspects of the writing--pace,
character, mood, setting, description. Occasionally, I'll even have time to spare for making the
language pretty. But if I didn't have that solid skeleton there, that other stuff wouldn't much
matter. You've GOT to have the craft elements solid before you can start adding in artistry.

To recap:

POINT OF VIEW
GOAL
CONFLICT
SETBACK

And that's all there is to writing a really good scene.

Of course, books aren't 100 percent full of scenes. Characters have to stop to bind up their
diseased wounds, be diagnosed with Mad Wolverine Syndrome, to worry about their
impending doom and steal kisses from sympathetic nurse-heroines. Where's the conflict in
that? How does that fit into your scene paradigm, Jim?

It doesn't, of course.

That's a sequel. We'll talk about those next.

SEQUELS
SEQUELS

And no, we're not talking about book 2. We're talking about the original meaning of the word
sequel--the part that comes after, the next in the sequence. In the scenes of a book, you're
getting all your plot-pursuing and action-taking and choice-making done.

Now you get to the hard part.

Getting your reader to give a flying frack about it.

To do that, you've got to win them over to your character's point of view. You've got to
establish some kind of basic emotional connection, an empathy for your character. It needn't be
deep seated agreement with everything the character says and does--but they DO need to be
able to UNDERSTAND what your character is thinking and feeling, and to understand WHY
they are doing whatever (probably outrageous) thing you've got them doing.

That gets done in sequels.

Pay attention. This is another one of those simple, difficult things.

Sequels are what happens as an aftermath to a scene. They do several specific things:

1) Allow a character to react emotionally to a scene's outcome.

2) Allow a character to review facts and work through the logical options of his situation.
3) They allow a character to ponder probable outcomes to various choices.
4) They allow a character to make a CHOICE--IE, to set themselves a new GOAL for the next
SCENE.

Do you see how neat that is? Do you see how simply that works out?

1) Scene--Denied!
2) Sequel--Damn it! Think about it! That's so crazy it just might work!--New Goal!
3) Next Scene!

Repeat until end of book.

See what I mean? Simple. And you can write a book EXACTLY that way. Scene-sequel-scene-
sequel-scene-sequel all the way to your story climax. In fact, if you are a newbie, I
RECOMMEND you write your book that way. You can always chop and cut the extra scenes
(or sequels) out later, and you will have a solid bedrock structure for getting your book done.
We'll talk a little about balancing them in a minute.

First, let's outline exactly what happens in a sequel--and WHY the basic outline I'm gonna
show you works.

Here's the basic structure to a sequel. It's another little worksheet you can fill out when you're
thinking about it ahead of time:
1) EMOTIONAL REACTION:
2) REVIEW, LOGIC, & REASON:
3) ANTICIPATION:
4) CHOICE:

And it MUST happen in THAT ORDER. Why you ask me? Because we're all human beings,
and THAT is the order in which we respond, psychologically, to events that happen around us.
Especially to big nasty events that bring out a lot of emotion.

Most of you have probably been in a car accident of some kind, and that's the model I'm gonna
use. Even if it was only a little accident and no one got hurt, everybody reacts in pretty much
the same way. Imagine it with me, if you will. You're driving and all of a sudden,
SQUEEEEEERRRCRUUUNCH! Car accident. What happens next?

You react emotionally, on instinct. Maybe you sit there stunned and startled for a second.
Maybe you feel a moment of horror (if it was your fault), or else seething outrage (if it wasn't).
Maybe you yell and curse, or throw up on yourself, or break out into hysterical laughter. There
are a whole lot of viable human emotional responses to that kind of stimulus--but the first ones
on the scene are ALWAYS the most basic, instinctive, emotional reactions.

Next, your brain kicks in. (This takes a variable amount of time, depending on the person.)
Your brain tells you things and you pay attention to it. Maybe it says "this accident was your
fault, and if they catch you, you'll go to jail. Run!" Maybe it says, "Check to see if anyone is
hurt! Call the police! Exchange insurance information!" Maybe it says, "Call so-and-so to
help," or "Oh my God, I'm bleeding," or "Please God let me have my proof of insurance in the
glove compartment." You think about things like how the accident happened, and what you
could have done to avoid it, what's necessary to accomplish immediately--and then you get to
think
about where you're suddenly not going to be.

(During your review, logic, and reasoning process, it is very human to realize or rediscover
facts that bring on an echo of your emotional response, or which otherwise inspire an entirely
new line of emotional response. If you realize that the guy who just slammed into your car ran
a stop sign to do it, for example, it might inspire a radically different set of emotions than a
moment before, when you thought neither one of you had a clear right of way.)

You can get as upset as you want, for as long as you want, but sooner or later you're going to
have gone over all the facts of what happened a minute ago, and you'll start thinking about
what happens NEXT. You anticipate the immediate future, based upon what you know and
what your current options are. Maybe you've got a buddy who can pick you up and get you to
work, and you'll only be a few minutes late. Or maybe you don't, and you've just lost your job.
Maybe
you're going to have to find a phone to call an ambulance because someone is hurt. There are a
lot of things that could be pretty obviously a part of your immediate future, based on your
current circumstances.

And once those things have rolled through your mind, you've got to decide what you're doing
next. Maybe you're just trading insurance information and getting back on the road. Maybe
you're hiding the body. The point is, you've got a choice to make, and that choice is going to
determine your next action.

Voila.
You've just had a sequel, a broad, archetypical human reaction to a sudden situation that goes
radically out of your control.

YOUR CHARACTERS DO THE SAME THING.

At the conclusion of a scene, they've just had something go out of THEIR control. You know
how I know this? Because you didn't answer YES to your scene question. Something went
wrong, because you are a smart writer, and that's how you did the scene. Now your characters
go through the same set of reactions:

1) An immediate emotional response.

2) A review of what happened, applying logic and reason to the events and why they turned out
that way, and of what options are open to them.
3) Anticipation of what might follow the pursuit of those options. (Highly important, this one.
Never underestimate the effects of anticipation on a reader.)
4) Your character makes up his mind and decides what to do next. IE, he makes a CHOICE.

Now, it's possible to SKIP some of these steps, or to abbreviate some of them so severely that
you all but skip them. But you CAN'T CHANGE THE ORDER.

Emotion, Reason, Anticipation, Choice. That reaction is typical to people, regardless of their
sex, age, or background. It's psychologically hardwired into us--so take advantage of it. By
having your character react in this very typically human way, you establish an immediate sense
of empathy with the reader. If you do it right, you get the reader nodding along with that
character going "Damn right, that's what I'd do." Or better yet, you get them opening their
mouth in horror as they read, seeing the character's thought process, hating every step of where
it's going while it remains undeniably understandable and genuine to the way people behave.

Sequels, frankly, are what really make or break books. How you choose to show your reader
your character's reactions determines everything about the reader's response to the events of the
story.

Worse, sequels are very fluid, very flexible things to apply. You can do all kinds of tricks with
them. Some sequels are all internal monologue. Some are conversations carried out with a
character's best friend (or his all-in-black-id). Sometimes a sequel LOOKS like a scene, in the
trappings anyway, but what's actually important is the character's internal reaction.

(Search your feelings, Luke. You know it to be true. *I* am your father. *NOOOOOO*. Yeah,
that lightsabre fight looks like a scene, but at that point it isn't. It's a sequel.)

This is where, frankly, I think writers have the greatest fluidity, the most chance to apply their
creative talents--which means, of course, we also have the best chance of screwing things up
here. You can approach sequels from an almost unlimited number of directions. There are no
limits to how you can lay out a sequel, except for your own imagination. Just remember:

1) EMOTION
2) REASON
3) ANTICIPATION
4) CHOICE

Get those in there, in the right order, and you'll be fine.

Let's talk, for a moment, about how you want to weight the various parts of the sequel, based
upon your genre, what you want to accomplish, etc. The sequel is where you can put a spin on
almost any story to make it more suited to a given genre. Each of the genres has its own bias
towards a given part of a sequel.

Romance, for example, is VERY heavy on Emotion and only slightly less on Anticipation.
Mystery and SF lean very heavily on the Reason portion of the sequel. Action novels go light
on everything but Choice, and give you just enough sequel to get you through to the next
scene. Horror loves to linger on Anticipation. Think about it for a while,and you'll start to see
what I mean.

So, if you're writing a romance, you'll want to place extra emphasis on your character's
Emotional reaction and on his Anticipation of what could come next.

Mystery writers had better be able to produce clear lines of logic in the Reasoning portion of
their character's reaction. If you need the reader to be cozy with a character, put extra emphasis
on that character's sequels. If it isn't necessary for another character, go light on the sequels, or
skip them entirely.

If that wasn't enough, Sequel-to-Scene ratio is the single largest factor for controlling pace.
Sequels have a unanimous tendancy to slow the pace of your story, while scenes have the
opposite effect. If you've ever read a book and felt like it blurred by too fast and never seemed
to touch on anything long enough, go back and look at it. You WILL find that the book's scenes
took up a great deal more space than its sequels. If you've read a book that you thought was too
slow, too cerebral, or that wandered back and forth while droning on and on, go back and look
at it. You WILL find that sequels took up a hell of a lot more page space than scenes.

It's a balancing act, and how you stack up scene-to-sequel is going to depend on several factors,
including your genre and your audience. Romance, for example, is really nothing BUT sequels
with occasional scenes to make them stick together. Romance wallows in sequels, because
that's what it's ABOUT--emotions, feelings.

If you write an action book, those emotional passages--not so much. You'll want to spend more
time and effort on the scenes, and make sure that the sequels don't start to outweigh them. If
you're writing for a more cerebral, mature audience, they have a much higher desire/tolerance
for sequels than if you write for, for example, young adults. The older audience might well be
more interested in the thought and emotion behind the plot, while the younger audience might
want you to stop moaning and dithering and get straight to the point. You control that pace by
balancing sequels with scenes.

Sequels also determine what I've always called the "warmth" of your novel. When people talk
about a "warm viewpoint" what they really mean is that you're throwing in a lot of emotional
reaction. Oftentimes, warm viewpoint novels (like the Dresden Files) toss in micro-sequels as a
part of scenes. Any time you see Harry talking to someone, wanting to tear his hair out, forcing
himself to control his temper and get back to the task at hand, you've just ridden through a
micro-sequel with him.

"Cool" viewpoint novels, like the more classic hardboiled PI novel, downplay their
protagonist's Emotional reactions--often skipping them entirely during a scene, and showing
them only indirectly during sequels. They tend to emphasize the Reason side of things.
My God, there are so many things you can do with this stuff. Brainy, intelligent characters go
heavy on reason--and then you cheat by going light on Anticipation, and keeping his Choice
half-veiled from the reader, so that when he actually acts in the next scene he looks a lot
smarter and more resourceful than he might have if you went step by step through the whole
thing. ("Of course! He animated the T-Rex! Brilliant!") Characters who are balancing their
loyalties up to some critical moment can get the whole sequel laid out, extra heavy on
Anticipation, and then you deny the reader any info on the Choice until they're actually in
action.

Get it? SEQUELS ARE WHERE YOU APPLY THE COLOR TO YOUR STORY. It's the best
point at which to manipulate your readers' emotions. I've been working within this craft
structure for ten years, and I feel like I'm only barely beginning to get a handle on it. Seriously.
You've got to give this some thought.

Knowledge of how sequels effect your book's impact on the reader is damned handy in
rewrites, too. If a character is coming off too flighty, all you have to do is add in a bit more
Reason to their sequels. Character too dry and boring? Add in more Emotion to /his/ sequels.
Someone comments that your character's motivations aren't clear? Go give their sequels a tune-
up, and make sure his Emotion-Reason-Anticipation-Choice is in the correct order and
consistant.

When you do it right, the reader knows exactly what is going through your character's head,
and why. The /reader/ starts being the one anticipating along with your character, and when that
happens, you pwn them. It creates forward momentum for the next scene, and it helps the
reader /want/ to read it.

This basic structure for sequels is pretty much the ENTIRE secret of my success. I do it like
this in every freaking book I write. I know it works because check it out. People like my books.
They like them for some of the special effects, sure, and for some of the story ideas
sometimes--but mostly it's because they find themselves caring about what happens to the
characters, and that happens in sequels.

People don't love Harry for kicking down the monster's front door. They love him because he's
terrified out of his mind, he knows he's putting himself in danger by doing it, he's probably
letting himself in for a world of hurt even if he is successful, but he chooses to do it anyway.

Emotion. Reason. Anticipation. Choice.

Special effects and swashbuckling are just the light show.

The heart of your character--and your reader--is in the sequel.

Story Climax
Climaxes
********

Caveat, on this article as on all the others: This is not the whole sum of wisdom on writing
craft, forever and ever amen. This is intended to be a place for aspiring writers to /start/, a little
bit of foundation with which you can begin to develop your own style. If you work with this
stuff here, it can be an immense aid to you in developing your skills to a professional level. I
know it's true because this is exactly the stuff that I learned, and it worked out all right for me.
It's a pretty good beginning.

Right then!

I've talked a little about beginnings and middles. What's left? Oh, right, right. Here we go.

CLIMAXES!

Stories are like sex: the buildup and the ride can be fantastic, but if there isn't a climax before
the end, you might come away from the experience feeling a little frustrated.

So, let's talk about a story climax. What is a climax? Why is is important? How do you build a
good one? And will the reader still respect you in the morning?

WHAT IS A CLIMAX?
*****************

A story climax is, in structure terms the ANSWER to the STORY QUESTION that we talked
about earlier.

There, see how tidy that is? Simple! Again, not EASY, but simple!

For example, the overall Story Question of Lord of the Rings:

*************
When Frodo Baggins inherits the Ring of Power from his Uncle Bilbo, HE SETS OUT TO
DESTROY IT before its evil can wreak havoc upon Middle Earth. BUT WILL HE SUCCEED
when the Dark Lord Sauron and every scary evil thing on the planet set forth to take the ring
and use it to turn the entire world into the bad parts of New Jersey?
*************

And the story climax of the Lord of the Rings:

******
Yep.
******

See? ANYBODY could have written Lord of the Rings!

Well. Okay. Maybe it's not THAT easy. But it is SIMPLE to write a good story climax when
you bear in mind that ultimately, the story climax is, on its most basic level, the answer to a
question. Will the Rebels overthrow the Empire? Will the hero win the heart of the girl he
loves? THAT is where you begin. It is therefore kind of important that, before you begin
writing said story climax, that you know the answer to that question.

WHY IS A STORY CLIMAX IMPORTANT?

********************************

Catharsis.

As I understand it, catharsis is some sort of toxin which humanity has never been able to
remove from paperback book ink. It builds up in human fingers as they keep flipping pages,
and if they get all the way to the end of the story and DON'T get a sufficiently satisfying
climax, the catharsis toxins can drive them into a psychotic state, and bad things happen. The
surgeon general has stated that catharsis is--

Oh. Oh, hang on. I just Googled it.

Huh.

Apparently, catharsis is actually only a regional threat. I guess it's only in the ink in Greece and
around the Aegean... oh. Oh. It isn't a toxin and . . . I thought my wife was being /serious/ about
that. I mean, she never smiled or /anything/.

Gosh, is my face red.

(Thank you folks, I'll be here all week.)

Remember earlier, how we talked about ways to hook your readers and get them emotionally
involved in the story? Well, if we've done that right, then when you reach story's end, they are
INVESTED in its outcome. They want to SEE what happens, preferably as vividly as they
possibly can. By the time you've reached the end of a story, a good writer has got their readers
on the edge of their seats, at 3:30 in the morning, and the pages are tearing every time they turn
because the reader is so excited.

You've made an implicit promise by getting your reader so bound up in the story. You've /got/
to deliver on it, or that reader is going to freaking /hate/ you for doing that to them. They are
gonna go away from that ride all hot and bothered and frustrated as hell. That's what catharsis
is: the release of all that tension and sympathetic emotion that the reader has built up because
of the writer's skill at weaving the story. Done right, your readers will cheer and cry and laugh
out loud and dance around their living room.

EVERYTHING YOU DID IN YOUR BOOK LEADS UP TO THIS. Deliver on the climax or
die as a working writer. Simple as that.

HOW DO YOU BUILD A CLIMAX?

**************************

The same way you do everything else. You start at its beginning. A climax officially begins
where the Great Swampy Middle ends. To use an overly-simple metaphor, the Beginning of
your story dumps the dominoes of your story out of your box onto the table. The Great
Swampy Middle sets all the dominoes up into a neat pattern.

And the climax knocks them down.

Guess which is the most fun. :) For the writer, as well as for the reader. There's nothing quite as
nice as flicking over that first metaphorical domino after several months worth of setting them
up, let me tell you. :)

The Great Swampy Middle ends at the first of the story events that starts the dominos to
toppling. In Dead Beat, for example, when Harry and Butters find the little keychain drive
inside Bony Tony with the GPS coordinates in it, it sets off a chain of reactions that lead
Dresden forward to the final confrontation. That little drive is the last domino to get set up and
the first one to topple, and start the cascade.

The actual climax itself, the absolutely peak of it, though, is what I generally refer to as the
Showdown or the Throwdown or the Beatdown, depending on my mood and testosterone
levels at the moment. The most dramatic point is the actual confrontation between your
protagonist and antagonist, where they are directly contending with one another, and where
both of them know that the story question is about to be answered.

For THAT confrontation, there several structural components that you can use to organize it
that will be really helpful, much like the components used in a Sequel, like we talked about
before:

ISOLATION
CONFRONTATION
DARK MOMENT
CHOICE
DRAMATIC REVERSAL
RESOLUTION

ISOLATION: At the end of the day, your protagonist stands alone. That's why that character is
the protagonist. Oh sure, there can be other people around, but the one who really COUNTS is
your protagonist. The more alone he is, the higher the tension levels are going to be, and the
more satisfying the climax is going to be for the reader. Ellen Ripley lands on LV-426 with a
whole squad of marines and various others. After the first confrontation with the Aliens, only
eight others are left. During the second confrontation, THOSE companions are whittled away,
one by one, until Ripley is left to enter the lair of the alien queen--a nuclear reactor about to
blow up, no less--ENTIRELY alone. Now THAT is tension and isolation.

CONFRONTATION: Your lone protagonist, determined to follow things through to the end,
confronts the antagonist. Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to
die.

DARK MOMENT: The confrontation Does Not Go Well. The odds are stacked against your
protagonist, or the situation swings out of his control, or he just plain gets outclassed.
Everything looks like it is in genuine jeopardy of going to hell. It looks certain that the answer
to the story question is going to be one that the reader is NOT going to like. In the recent
Narnia movie, that moment was at the death of Aslan. The Great Lion is gone, the White Witch
has made fashion accessories out of his mane, the bad,guys have them outnumbered and
outgunned, and there's just no way to win the fight that's coming the next day--but the folk of
Narnia need Peter to lead them. Which brings us directly to:

CHOICE: It always comes back to choice. The climax of the story is the acid test, the crucible,
where the rubber meets the road and where the schisse hits the fan. Your protagonist has to
CHOOSE whether or not to stay true to his purpose or to let himself be swayed by fear, by
temptation, by weariness, or by anything else. In that Dark Moment, he has to make the call
that ultimately reveals who your protagonist really is, deep down. And the choice has GOT to
be
a BAD one. If it's an easy choice, there isn't any drama to it--no tension, no release for the
reader.

"Use the Force, Luke," urges ghost-Kenobi's voice. "Let go, Luke!" Luke visibly makes a
choice, turning off his targeting computer, putting his faith in the Force to make the shot that
the whole galaxy is literally riding on, the way a Jedi should. He's alone, with the baddest guy
in the movie hot on his tail, and even his friends are telling him he's nuts. "His computer's off.
Luke, you've switched off your targeting computer! What's wrong?" "Nothing!"
says Luke. "I'm all right!" Not ONLY is he about to get blown out of the air by Vader, but he
might miss the shot, too. Luke is about to do something INSANE. He's about to sacrifice his
life to take a literal shot in the dark.

Which segues right into...

DRAMATIC REVERSAL: The intrinsic nature of the story or of the protagonist's character
influences or causes the events of the confrontation to be changed in an unexpected way,
causing an outcome that is in harmony with the principles of poetic justice. Luke is an
idealistic young kid, brave to a fault, dedicated to a fault, and because of that he has made a
choice that is Going To Ruin Everything. But that very idealism and courage have also touched
the heart of a jaded smuggler, who, instead of running to protect his own life, has returned to
throw in his lot with the rebels, and who has entered the battle at the absolutely critical moment
of truth.

(A quick word on Choice and Reversal. Not all heroes MAKE the self-sacrificial choice.
Sometimes, the hero falters and makes the awful choice, to save his own skin or indulge his
own darker nature. In that situation, the reversal is still there doing exactly the same thing--
only this time, the justice that gets handed out is BAD for the protagonist. There's a name for
that kind of story: tragedy. See King Lear. See also Hamlet, Othello, etc, etc, etc.

This outline works for both tragic and happy/heroic endings. Those aren't the only ways to end
stories, by any means. But they are popular ways to end stories, and they are fairly simple ways
to end stories, and this article is aimed at beginners and aspiring writers. Trust me on this one.
If you're new, just go for a happy ending or a tragic ending. Work on bittersweet open-ended
thought provoking montage endings after you've practiced on some of the simpler ones.

And, to be frank, if you're wanting to write professionally, work your happy ending skills. Real
life is full of the other kind. There probably are some, but I can't think of many full-time
tragedy writers.)

Finally, we get to...

RESOLUTION: Time to hand out the medals, kiss the girl, go to the wedding, put the star on
the Christmas tree, raise the curtain on the rock concert, attend the funeral, or otherwise
demonstrate that with the conclusion of the story, some kind of balance has been restored. The
catharsis is complete, the tension eased, and the reader can catch their breath now.

My advice to you on resolutions: Keep it short. Once you've gotten through the Showdown,
write as sparingly as possible to get to the end, and don't draw anything out any more than you
absolutely must. You've already kept your poor reader up until 3:30, your heartless bastard. Let
them get some sleep before they have to rush off to their shift in two hours!

Then you get to type the most satisfying words in any book you'll ever write:

THE

END

And there you have it! Story climaxes!

Was it good for you? :)

Putting It All Together
How to Get Your Story Started
or
Organizing This Frickin' Mess

by Jim Butcher
**************************

So you've got a great idea for a story. You've got some good characters, some
good plot, maybe a great scene or two in mind. You're ready to plunge in!

If only you could figure out WHERE to plunge in.

Be wise and listen to me, young padawan writer: get a few things organized
first. It'll save you enormous headaches in the long run. I'm going to share
what I do before I start a novel with you guys. Hopefully, that'll give you
one idea of how to lay your groundwork.

This isn't the only way to do it, God knows. This isn't meant to be a "Thou
Shalt Do This" kind of article. But this is how *I* do it, and it seems to
work out most of the time.

****************

Page One--The Basics

STORY QUESTION
The first thing you need is your STORY QUESTION. See the article earlier in
this journal. Get your story question and write it down.

PROTAGONIST
I haven't done a full article on them yet, but I *have* done an article on
characters. Write down your protagonist, his tags and traits, and how you
intend to introduce him.

ANTAGONIST
Ditto, but for the main opposition. He's a character too, so all the same
rules apply.

Page Two--Story Arc(h) or PLOT

I'm never sure how to spell that.

Get a BIG piece of paper. Draw a big curving arch on it. At the LEFT side of
the arch, write a brief phrase about the opening scene. At the RIGHT side,
write a brief phrase describing the climax of the book. That's your pot of
gold at the end of the rainbow.
At the TOP of the arch, write down your BIG MIDDLE, or whatever event it is
that starts the dominoes to falling.

Then make a bunch of tick marks along the way and fill in any scenes that you
have in mind that you know you want to do. Once you've done that, add in some
more tick marks in between, and add in phrases describing scenes that lead
your character from one established tick mark to the next, in a logical
fashion.

Pages Three to Whatever--SUBPLOTS

Do Story Arches for all of your subplots. Make sure you know where they
begin, end, and what event causes them to be resolved.

MORE PAGES--CHARACTER PROFILES

You need to profile EVERY significant character on his own sheet, just like
you did your Protagonist and Antagonist. I like to go through creating
character profiles as I create the story arches, creating each one as needed
for the story, or attaching established characters to the main arch or to
subplots.

*******************

OUTLINE SCENES AND SEQUELS

RIGHT THEN. Now you've got a good skeleton. In fact, you've already created
a number of Scenes and Sequels without even knowing it.

Each of your tick marks and phrases should describe either a story event (a
SCENE) or a logical point that leads you to the next story event (a SEQUEL).
Starting from the beginning, outline your first SCENE on its own page, as
described in the article on SCENES. Then outline the SEQUEL that follows.

(A lot of writers put these on index cards and lay them out in a line in order
to work out which events go where. That works, but it takes up a LOT of floor
space, and if you have dogs or children, they tend to break your plot.)

Repeat until CLIMAX.

********************

CLIMAX

Sketch out the CLIMAX, as described in the article on CLIMAXES.

********************

Voila.
You now have a packet of pages that gives you a solid foundation to begin
from, as well as handy reference material to check when you forget what color
your character's eyes are in chapter 20. You've created signposts to help
guide you along the way, to boot.

Yeah, it really is that simple. But it damned sure ain't easy. Still, you've
got a good point to begin, and a path laid out for you to guide the way.

As you continue writing books, the process is going to change to suit you--that's what it's
supposed to do. You'll eventually come to understand your strengths and weaknesses, and how
to plan ahead for problems you've run into before. But for now, that's not a bad way to get
going.

So write already. :)