The IDEA Method

This signature DIY MFA technique is based on the premise that creativity is not some mystical process. It’s not about magic bullet ideas that you simply pull out of a hat. Rather, creativity is like a muscle that you must exercise and strengthen through repeated practice.

The IDEA Method also posits that idea generation is only a tiny part of the creative process. It’s not enough to have a great idea, you have to know how to put it into action. Idea generation is fruitless without implementation.

There are four stages in the IDEA Method: Inspiration, Development, Evaluation, and Action. As you can see, these four stages spell out the word I-D-E-A. (You know we love our acronyms at DIY MFA!)

Inspiration

This stage is what most people imagine when they think of the creative process. This is the stage where you come up with fresh new ideas. The other stages are where you build out those ideas and put them into action, but the inspiration stage is where idea generation happens.

The key to inspiration, in my opinion, is play. Have you ever watched and paid attention to kids playing? They don’t ever run out of ideas. It’s like an endless font of creativity and they are constantly coming up with new possibilities. They start with those magical words “let’s pretend” and suddenly they’re reenacting all sorts of adventures and playing endless games. The key for us as adults to tap into an never-ending source of ideas is to approach creativity through play. One of my favorite ways to get inspired through play is with the Oracle. I wrote a whole article about this creativity tool here.

Development

This stage is where the rubber meets the road. If inspiration is that initial jolt of creativity, development is where we dig deep and bring that concept to life. There are three components of this stage: imitation, improvisation, and incubation (or what I call the 3i’s of idea development).

Imitation is perhaps the most overlooked part of the development stage, but often the most valuable. This is the reality that we learn and create best when we acknowledge that our ideas exist in context rather than in a vacuum. Most of what we create is going to be a partial imitation of some other work that has come before. In fact, some of the most prominent artists and creatives use imitation heavily in their work.

Consider the impressionist Edgar Degas. Best known for his drawings, paintings, and statues of ballerines, what you might not know is that he was also in the habit of copying his own drawings over and over with slight variations. I discovered this when I went to a special exhibit of his work at the National Gallery in London, where I saw rows and rows of his ballerina sketches, virtually identical to each other, almost as if he had traced and retraced his own work.

Similarly, Vincent Van Gogh painted “First Steps, After Millet” imitating the pastel drawing by Jean-François Millet almost identically, only in a different medium (oil-on-canvas) and with his signature bright colors and swirling brush strokes. Artists of all types are constantly borrowing from each other and writing is no different. Imitation can happen both with an artist imitating someone else’s work or their own.

The key with imitation is that sooner or later, the artist moves from copying other work to improvising and making it their own. And if we’ve tried imitation and improvisation and we’re still struggling for ideas, the best thing is to pause and do something else. This is where incubation comes into play.

Evaluation

Once an idea is sufficiently developed, it’s good to take a step back and evaluate it objectively. This is not about letting the inner critic derail your process. Instead, the point is to take your writing project to a point where you have a critical mass, enough of it that you can determine whether it’s working. Bring your inner critic into the process too soon and you will derail your creativity, but you also don’t want to get so far along with your project that then if you realize it’s not working, you have to go back to the drawing board.

For every writer, the evaluation process will be a little bit different. Some writers have critique partners who provide this type of feedback throughout the writing process. Other writers might get a third or half of the way through their project, then pause and give it an objective look. The goal here is for us to avoid investing hundreds of hours in a project before we realize we’ve written ourselves into a corner.

Action

Finally, after we’ve figured out if the project is working, we simply need a plan for putting those words on the page and getting to “The End.” Here is where I like to do a little writing math and reverse-engineer from the end goal to where I am now.

Suppose you’re writing a novel and you’ve written about 20,000 words already. For a typical novel, the typical word count for most genres and categories is 80,000. This means you have 60,000 words to go before the end. Suppose you want to finish this book in 4 months, that means you need to produce 15,000 per month which amounts to about 3,750 words per week. If you write five days per week, you just have to produce 750 words per writing session to reach your goal.

For some writers, 750 words per session might be easy, but for others it might be a stretch. If you’re in the latter camp, you might need to work your way up to that 750-word pace. This is where I recommend the ten percent rule. Choose a word count number that’s super-easy, so easy you could probably knock out that word count in your sleep. Suppose that easy number is 500 words. Take that number and add ten percent (so 550 words).

That extra ten percent might not seem like much, but it’s enough to make you sit up a little straighter and lean into your work a little bit more. It’s not so high as to set you up for failure, but just enough challenge to keep you engaged. Eventually that baseline-plus-ten-percent number will become easy. At that point, you simply add another ten percent (now 605 words). Keep adding ten percent as each new baseline feels easy until you reach the goal of 750-words per session.

The point of this exercise is to avoid setting pie-in-the-sky goals to motivate ourselves to work harder. The truth is, though, when we set those high goals, we’re just setting ourselves up for possible failure. By working our way up from an easy baseline to a more reasonable goal, we set ourselves up for success.

Conclusion

The creative process is so much more than just that initial bolt of inspiration. There are three other stages that are equally—if not more—important. There is so much more to the IDEA method than the concepts shared here today. If you’re interested in learning more, check out our on-demand webinar Don’t Wait for the Muse which is part of the HUB lessons archive. You can learn more about the HUB here.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: The IDEA Method: What to Do When You’re Out of Ideas appeared first on DIY MFA.

It has been a while since I’ve done a three-act analysis, so I thought one of my favorite Poe stories would be a perfect subject. Today we’ll do a three-act analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Cask of Amontillado”

Spoiler Alert! If you have not read “The Cask of Amontillado,” it’s in the public domain so you can find plenty of copies online. In fact, you can download this copy from the DIY MFA site. I highly recommend reading the story (it’s only four pages!) before diving into this analysis.

Let’s get started with our analysis of “The Cask of Amontillado.”

ACT 1: In this story, act 1 is fairly short: only a few paragraphs. The first two paragraphs consist of Montresor justifying his need for revenge on Fortunato. The third paragraph gives us some background on the victim himself. Apparently Fortunato thinks himself a connoisseur of wines, so Montresor decides to use that against him.

While this  brief opening focuses mostly on Montresor’s justifications and Fortunato’s background, the five promises still come through loud and clear.

Character: Montresor is our protagonist. He wants to get revenge on Fortunato because the latter has wronged him. 

Voice: We are in a first person point of view with Montresor as both the protagonist and the narrator. The story is told entirely in Montresor’s voice. At one point, he breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the reader: “You, who so well know the nature of my soul.” It is almost as though he wants to convince us that his decision to murder Fortunato is justified.

Montresor is a somewhat unreliable narrator—though you could argue that any first-person narrator could be unreliable. He is not quite as unreliable as the narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” but we know from the outset that we cannot trust everything he says. 

World: We are in an Italian city during the carnival season. (We find this out in the fourth paragraph, just at the end of Act 1 when we meet Fortunato for the first time.) Acts 2 and 3 of the story take place in the catacombs of the Montresor family.

Problem: Montresor has an annoying friend (Fortunato) and has endured a “thousand injuries” from him.

Event:  Eventually one of these injuries crosses the line and Montresor vows revenge. But, he doesn’t just want to punish Fortunato, he wants to “punish with impunity.”

PIVOT POINT 1:  This pivot point is as long or longer than all of act 1. It begins with the external event where Montresor meets Fortunato (drunk) during the carnival time. He tells Fortunato that he has acquired a bottle of Amontillado but he is not sure of its authenticity. Immediately this piques Fortunato’s interest, especially when Montresor says he plans to ask Luchesi about the Amontillado. It becomes clear that Luchesi is a rival wine connoisseur of Fortunato, so when Montresor mentions him, right away Fortunato insists on seeing the bottle of Amontillado himself.

We have quite a bit of dialogue between Montresor and Fortunato. Montresor insists that the vaults are too damp and that he does not want to impose on Fortunato. He keeps mentioning Luchesi to provoke Fortunato, making him almost desperate to be the one to identify the Amontillado. The passage ends with a choice where Montresor takes Fortunato’s arm and—almost as though he is reluctant—takes his friend back to his home and wine vaults.

ACT 2:  This act begins with a bit of world-building. Montresor tells us that he left his home, giving his servants strict instructions to stay put in his absence, knowing full well that they will do the exact opposite and that his house will be empty when he arrives with Fortunato. This is important because it allows Montresor to commit his crime with no witnesses.

This tiny detail about the servants gives us a sense for Montresor’s world. It is clear that the servants do not respect him and yet he is able to use that lack of respect to manipulate them and have his house empty as he desires.

The rest of the story takes place in the catacombs where Montresor has his wine vaults.

SUPPORTING CAST:  There is only one true supporting character in this story and it is Fortunato. His name means “fortunate one,” which is ironic because as we find out at the end of the story, he is far from lucky.

We also have another character mentioned throughout the story—Luchesi—but he never appears on the page. Montresor brings him up multiple times as a way to manipulate Fortunato and make him all the more eager to be the one who successfully identifies the Amontillado. Luchesi’s sole purpose is as a mechanism to provoke Fortunato.

WORST: In this story, Montresor’s motivations are straightforward and we can map them easily onto the WORST acronym.

Want: Montresor wants to get revenge on Fortunato by killing him.

Obstacle: He needs to plan this murder carefully so that he may “punish with impunity.” He does not want to get caught.

Risk: There is a big risk that he might get caught, so he needs to be strategic about where he commits the murder and how he lures Fortunato to his death.

Stakes: If he doesn’t get revenge, he will be forced to endure a thousand or more future injuries from Fortunato. This prospect is likely unbearable, prompting him to come up with a permanent method of revenge: death.

Transformation: Montresor has a slight change of heart at the end, but it is not sufficient to prevent him from going through with the murder. Just before he forces the last stone into the wall, he says “My heart grew sick—on account of the dampness of the catacombs.” Clearly, he is having some second thoughts about his actions and is trying to convince himself that this feeling is a result of the dampness, not of the murder.

RULE OF THREE:  The rule of three appears twice throughout the story. The first is regarding Luchesi and the second is with respect to the nitre which contaminates the vaults.

Luchesi: There are three sections where Luchesi is mentioned. The first section is during the first pivot point, when Montresor tells Fortunato that he is planning to go to Luchesi to have him assess the authenticity of his Amontillado. During that passage, Montresor mentions Luchesi multiple times and it is clear that he is trying to provoke Fortunato into wanting to see the Amontillado for himself.

The second instance is early in act 2, when Fortunato has a coughing fit in the catacombs. Montresor pretends that he is concerned for Fortunato’s health and says they should leave the vaults. He ends by saying “Besides, there is Luchesi—” and immediately Fortunato insists that he is fine and that he “shall not die of a cough.”

The third mention of Luchesi is when they have reached their destination, the place in the catacombs where Montresor plans to murder Fortunato. It is a small, dark crypt and it is difficult for them to see anything in it, even with their torches. Montresor says “Proceed… herein is the Amontillado. As for Luchesi—” Fortunato cuts him off by calling Luchesi an ignoramus and steps into the crypt, at which point Montresor chains him to the wall.

The first two mentions of Luchesi are clearly taunts from Montresor. He is using Luchesi to manipulate Fortunato into coming with him to the catacombs. The third reference to Luchesi is more of a passing mention than the previous two instances, but it is that final straw that makes Fortunato step into the crypt, thus leading to his ultimate demise.

Nitre: There are three sections referencing nitre while they are in the catacombs. Note that there is a fourth passing mention of nitre before we get to act 2, when Montresor is insisting that Fortunato should not come with him. This mention is not as significant as the others, so for the purposes of this rule of three, I only consider the mentions of nitre that occur while they are in the catacombs.

The first reference to nitre is shortly after they have entered the catacombs. Fortunato notices the nitre in the vaults and asks Montresor about it, then immediately proceeds to have a coughing fit. Ironically, he only starts coughing after Montresor asks him how long he has had that cough.

The second mention of nitre occurs just after the midpoint. Montresor points out that the nitre is increasing and “hangs like moss upon the vaults.” He uses this moment to provoke Fortunato further, saying they should turn back because of his cough. Fortunato refuses and instead takes a drink of Medoc, getting further intoxicated.

The final instance of nitre is just after the second pivot point, once Montresor has chained Fortunato into the crypt. He says: “Pass your hand… over the wall; you cannot help feeling the nitre. Indeed it is VERY damp. Once more let me IMPLORE you to return. No? Then I must positively leave you. But I must first render you all the little attentions in my power.” At this point, Montresor is no longer trying to pretend. It is clear what he plans to do, and he is saying all this as a way to torture Fortunato.

MIDPOINT: The midpoint is the moment when Fortunato asks Montresor about his family’s coat of arms. Montresor replies: “A huge human foot d’or, in a field of azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel.” It is clear that Montresor sees himself as the serpent and Fortunato as the huge foot. The foot might crush the serpent but not before the serpent gets its revenge.

Fortunato then asks about the motto and Montresor tells him: “Nemo me impune lacessit” which means “No one provokes me with impunity.” The irony, of course, is that Montresor spends the entire story provoking Fortunato and his goal is to punish Fortunato with impunity. He is doing exactly what his motto threatens against. Note that we do not have a true moment of self-reflection at this point, but the midpoint instead serves as a foreshadowing of what Montresor is going to do.

PIVOT POINT 2: The second pivot point occurs when they reach the small crypt where the Amontillado supposedly is stored. Montresor taunts Fortunato by mentioning Luchesi and Fortunato steps into the crypt. Montresor immediately comes up behind him and chains him to the wall. The event at this pivot point is Fortunatio stepping into the crypt, while Montresor’s chaining him is the choice.

ACT 3: Most of act 3 is Montresor laying the bricks and closing off the crypt where Fortunato is chained. We get a detailed description of him laying each of the layers of the bricks, building up the tension. We can anticipate what’s coming and we know it isn’t good. 

CLIMAX: At the climax, Montresor has only a few more bricks to lay down and Fortunato starts laughing. He thinks the whole thing is a joke and that any moment now, Montresor will free him. He jokes that they will laugh about this at the palazzo over a glass of wine and Montresor replies with: “The Amontillado!”

Then he realizes that Montresor is not kidding and he begins to panic. Eventually he says: “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MONTRESOR!” and Montresor replies: “Yes… for the love of God!” After a few moments without a reply from Fortunato, Montresor calls his name multiple times and receives no answer.

There is a brief moment when Montresor hears a jingling of bells from Fortunato’s jester’s cap and his “heart grew sick” but immediately he shrugs it off as a result of the damp catacombs and pushes the last stone into position.

Ending Type: While this is a terrifying ending, according to our four-ending classification this would be a happy ending. After all, Montresor wants to get revenge on Fortunato, and he does so successfully.

DENOUEMENT: The denouement in this story is quite short: “Against the new masonry I reerected the old rampart of bones. For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them.” This suggests that Montresor was, in fact, successful in punishing Fortunato with impunity because for half a century his crime has not been discovered. The story ends with a three-word paragraph: “In pace requiescat!” or “rest in peace.”

CONCLUSION: “The Cask of Amontillado” is a relatively simple story. Two friends meet on a street. They go into the catacombs to find a rare wine. One of the friends murders the other by burying him alive. Still, despite the simplicity of the plot and the constrained story world (we are in the catacombs most of the time) the story hits all the major plot points of the three-act structure.

The only place where “The Cask of Amontillado” deviates slightly from the three-act structure is at the midpoint. The event at the midpoint is neither a temporary triumph nor a false failure, and we do not have a true moment of self reflection on the part of the protagonist either. Instead, the midpoint acts as a moment of foreshadowing.

In fact, we have multiple moments of foreshadowing throughout the story. Early in act 2 when Montresor shows concern for Fortunato’s cough and Fortunato replies: “It will not kill me. I shall not die of a cough.” This, of course, is true. In the end, his cough is not the thing that kills him.

A little later, when Montresor produces a bottle of wine, they both give a toast. Fortunato drinks “To the buried that repose around us,” which is ironic because a short while thereafter, Fortunato becomes one of those buried in the catacombs. Montresor then replies “And to your long life.” This is, of course, further irony because Montresor knows exactly what he has in store and if he succeeds, Fortunato’s life will be far from long.

The midpoint with the coat of arms and motto is even more ironic foreshadowing. At that moment, Montresor is almost coming right out and telling Fortunato what he is going to do. Yet through it all, Fortunato is either too drunk or too oblivious to realize the hint.

The final hint comes a little later, when Fortunato asks Montresor if he is part of the masons and Montresor holds up a trowel, implying a play on the word “mason.” Throughout the story, Montresor hints at what he is going to do, yet Fortunato never figures it out until it is too late. It is only when we reach the climax, we the readers (along with Fortunato) realize the extent of Montresor’s thirst for revenge and just how twisted his motivations are.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Three-Act Analysis of The Cask of Amontillado appeared first on DIY MFA.

At the same time, I think putting our fingers in our ears and saying “La-la-la-la-la I’m not listening” with respect to AI is about as practical as being anti-internet in the 1990s. Unless you plan to live in a cabin in the woods next to Walden Pond and isolate yourself from all society, you have to accept living in a world where generative AI is part of our reality.

How do we use AI ethically?

I’m neither a lawyer nor a philosopher, so I’m not about to try parsing out the ethical nuances of AI use. Instead, I’ll point you to a source I trust—The Author’s Guild. This organization has been instrumental in helping writers navigate the process of getting fair compensation for their unlicensed work being used to train LLMs. It has an excellent online guide on the ethical use of AI.

After reading this guide, I feel cautiously optimistic that big corporations may eventually do the right thing and start licensing the work they use to train their models. And if they don’t, at the very least, artists and organizations like the Author’s Guild will take to the courts and maybe force these companies to do it.

Speaking of cases, many people have asked me how I feel about the Anthropic settlement, especially since my book is one of the thousands listed in that database. My response is always the same: It’s not great, but it’s better than nothing. I think authors and artists should be compensated far more than what the settlement has determined. (Let’s be real, $1.5 billion divided among however many thousands of books is not going to yield very much for each writer, nor do I think it’s punitive enough to prevent this kind of nonsense from happening again.)

Still that settlement sets a legal precedent, which is important because it makes it less of an uphill climb for other, similar cases to be decided in the artists’ favor. In my opinion, the legal precedent is in many ways more important than the pecuniary outcome.

I’m also gravely concerned about what AI is doing to people’s brains and to education as a whole. As the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, I’m a firm believer in self-motivation, especially when it comes to learning. But AI is now baked into so many online tools (including search engines) that it’s virtually impossible to do even the most basic research or creative work without coming across some AI generated result.

I suppose this would be tolerable if AI’s accuracy were not so hit or miss, but the way things are right now, it’s garbage in, garbage out. There’s no quality assurance department—aside from our own brains—to help us determine the accuracy of something generated by AI. This means if we’re not careful, we could be using AI generated content and inaccurate information without even realizing it.

What can we do about this?

First and foremost, get informed. AI isn’t going anywhere. Unless we want to live in the dark ages while everyone else is zipping into the future, we need to understand what AI is about and be aware of any controversy that surrounds it. Arm yourself with the right resources. I already mentioned the Author’s Guild, but I also highly recommend Jane Friedman’s paid newsletter The Bottom Line, where she reports on all things publishing-related, including generative AI (when relevant). This is one of those go-to publishing resources I recommend to any author who’s serious about getting published and understanding this industry.

Second, be cautious about what material you feed into AI tools. Make sure you understand all the terms of service. Read the fine print. I know we’ve been conditioned to click “accept all terms” when signing up for a new app or piece of technology. Do not do this with AI. Make sure you understand exactly how that AI tool uses and stores your data. I especially caution you against entering your entire manuscript into an AI chatbot or software. Unless you are absolutely certain that you retain all ownership and that it will not be used to train the model, do not feed it into the AI.

You also need to be aware of who owns the output. It does you no good to input your manuscript into an AI tool if you don’t own whatever material it spits out. Do your due diligence. If you choose to use AI, make sure you understand exactly what happens to both the input and the output.

Third, recognize that AI is deeply flawed and often inaccurate. If you’re going to use it, take the resulting output with a grain of salt and always supplement it with your own research and brainpower. Do not take AI at its word. Make sure to verify all results.

AI’s Impact on Education

Where things have gotten fascinating for me is the impact AI has had on education. My kids are in 6th and 8th grades, and it’s interesting to see how their schools handle the use of technology and are responding to generative AI.

My daughter (the 6th-grader) goes to a school where they’ve gone back to paper-and-pencil exams (remember the good ol’ days of blue books?) because they don’t want the students using AI during tests. My understanding is that they are opting for forms of evaluation where the students do most of the work in class, like presentations and in-class projects. This is all in an effort to prevent the use of AI in cheating.

My son (the 8th-grader) goes to a school that has taken things even a step further. In addition to monitoring the students’ use of technology, they have baked AI awareness into their curriculum. They have an entire subject called Media Literacy, where they focus on identifying generative AI outputs and also learn how to navigate the landscape of social media and the internet responsibly.

If generative AI challenges us to pause and take a step back to more basic forms of learning and testing, that might not be such a bad thing. In fact, I’m not opposed to teachers and administrators limiting the use of screens in the classroom. It’s hard enough to limit screen time at home when all the homework requires logging into a school portal. If more of those screen-related boundaries can be set in the classroom, so much the better. If avoiding AI forces classrooms to go “back to the basics” and my kids end up writing more with pencil in hand, I am all for it.

To AI or Not to AI… Where Do You Stand?

Now I’m curious. Where do you stand on generative AI? Are you opposed to its use for writing but feel it’s okay for things like checking errors? Do you find it useful for brainstorming or marketing purposes? Are you completely against it in all forms (aside from maybe spellcheck)?

I’d like to get a bit of a poll going and if we get some interesting results, I may share it in a subsequent newsletter. (Don’t worry, we’ll only share the aggregate, not individual, results.) Click the link below that best represents your take on AI.

I’m an AI user.

I use AI regularly in many contexts. It saves me tons of time doing tasks I dislike, which allows more time for writing.

I’m AI-cautious.

It may turn out to be useful, but before I can make up my mind about AI, I need more information. I want to wait and see how things develop.

I’m AI-avoidant.

I dislike what AI is doing to our world and our culture. I refuse to use it in any form. If it’s anything more than spellcheck, I avoid it.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: How Do You Feel About AI? appeared first on DIY MFA.

Spoiler Alert! As with all three-act analyses, it’s impossible to talk about a book’s structure without giving spoilers. This book in particular has something of a twist at the end, so if you don’t want this analysis to spoil it for you, grab a copy and read the book first. It’s super-short and has lots of illustrations, so it’s a very quick read.

Without further ado, let’s dive into our analysis of The Little Prince.

ACT 1: The book opens with an anecdote where the narrator tells how, as a child, he drew a picture of a boa constrictor eating an elephant. When he showed it to adults, they all seemed to think it was a picture of a hat and they could not see the terrifying truth that it was really an elephant inside a snake. This anecdote is meant to show us the contrast between how adults and children see the world.

Many years later, the narrator’s plane crashes in the desert and he is completely alone, until a little boy—the little prince—appears as if out of nowhere. The boy asks him to draw him a sheep but no matter what the narrator draws, nothing seems to satisfy the boy. Eventually the narrator draws a picture of a box with holes in it and tells the boy that the sheep is inside. The holes are so the sheep can breathe. This is the first moment when the narrator begins to think like a child, rather than an adult.

For the rest of Act 1, the little prince tells the narrator his story. He is from a tiny planet where he lives alone, tending to the plants and trying to prevent baobabs from taking root. (This is why he needs a sheep, so it can eat the weeds and dangerous plants.) As the days pass, the little prince tells the narrator more and more about his planet.

Character: The little prince is the protagonist of this story. He begins seeming very childlike but by the end he shows wisdom beyond his years.

Voice: This book is told through the point of view of a nameless first person narrator. Like the book’s author, the narrator is a pilot, and at the beginning of the story he has a very grown-up mindset. As the story progresses, however, the narrator begins to identify with the little prince and think the way a child would think.

As with The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Little Prince is written in the first person peripheral point of view. This means that the character narrating the story is not the protagonist but a supporting character.

Note also that the voice and tone of the story shifts. At first, we are very much in the voice of the narrator relaying to us what the little prince has told him. As the story develops, however, and we get more entrenched in the story of the little prince’s adventure, the narrator begins to disappear from the picture and we slide into what almost feels like a third person limited point of view. Toward the end of the story, the narrator resumes his more prominent role and we are back in the first person peripheral point of view.

Periodically, the narrator’s voice shifts into the second person, as though he is speaking directly to the little prince (though it is clear that we are in the narrator’s thoughts). While the second person can be hard to sustain for a longer book, these short bursts of this unconventional point of view work well sprinkled throughout the story. In these moments of second person narration, we feel as though we are right there, inside the narrator’s head.

World: There are two primary worlds in this story: the harsh desert where the narrator meets the little prince, and the fanciful world of the asteroids and planets that the little prince visits along his travels. Each planet he comes to has its own quirky inhabitant and these people are meant to represent different facets of society.

Problem: The little prince lives alone and he worries about dangerous plants (like baobabs) taking root and overwhelming his whole planet.

Event: The story begins off with the narrator’s plane crashing in the desert, which is where he meets the little prince.

PIVOT POINT 1:  The little prince tells the narrator of the arrival of his flower, whose seed blew to his planet “from no one knew where.” He immediately falls in love with the flower and does everything he can to take good care of her. Yet, she is vain and selfish, and she torments the little prince with her constant requirements. Eventually, he decides to leave his planet.

The morning of his departure, he puts everything in order on his small planet. He cleans out the volcanoes and says goodbye to his flower. She apologizes for her past behavior, but he leaves nonetheless. The external event at this pivot point is first meeting the flower. The internal choice is the little prince’s decision to leave his planet.

ACT 2:  The second act has two distinct parts to it, split almost directly down the middle. The first part comprises all the planets the little prince visits before he gets to the Earth, and the second part takes place after he has reached our planet. 

SUPPORTING CAST:  As he stops at different planets, the little prince meets different men who represent various facets of society. When he meets these characters, the little prince wonders at their odd behaviors and remarks that adults “are certainly very, very odd.” These characters include:

The King: This king sits alone on a tiny planet, barely big enough to hold his throne and extensive robes. He instantly assumes the little prince is a subject because to him “all men are subjects.” He also commands the little prince to do things that he would have done anyway, simply as a way to flaunt his power. For example, when the little prince decides to leave, the king tries to prevent him, but eventually lets him go, calling him an “ambassador.”

The Conceited Man: Just as the king views everyone as a subject, the conceited man thinks of everyone as an admirer. Both the conceited man and the king are alone on their planets, which is ironic because the conceited man has no one there to admire him and the king has no one to rule over. Yet, they both believe they are the best or highest rank on their respective planets.

The Drinker: The next planet houses a man who sits alone, drinking. According to him, he drinks in order to forget that he is ashamed of drinking. As it turns out, drinking to forget is a vicious cycle.

The Businessman: This man sits alone with his ledgers and counts the millions of “little glittering objects” in the sky (i.e., the stars). The businessman insists that he owns everything that he counts and makes a distinction between kings and businessmen—kings do not own, they reign over, whereas businessmen own the things they count. The little prince tells the man that he owns his flower and his volcanoes, and that in owning them he is also of use to them, but the businessman is not of use to the stars he supposedly owns.

The Lamplighter: On this planet stands a man, alone with a single streetlamp that he must light and extinguish over and over again. He does this because it’s what he has been ordered to do. While at first the little prince admires the lamplighter’s industrious calling, thinking it a useful and beautiful profession, he soon begins to realize the futility of the man’s role. He is simply doing as he is told. “Orders are orders,” after all.

The Geographer: This man sits alone on a planet, writing in voluminous books. While the man claims to be a geographer, he does not know where anything is on his planet because he is not himself an explorer. In other words, his job is to catalogue the information related by the explorers, but he does not acquire any of that knowledge for himself.

MIDPOINT: If we look at the exact halfway point in the story, that brings us to the lamplighter planet. This chapter has a somewhat of different quality to it than the other planetary visits. Even the little prince himself says of the lamplighter: ”he is the only one of them all who does not seem to me ridiculous. Perhaps that is because he is thinking  of something else besides himself.” He goes so far as to say that the lamplighter is the only man with whom he could have been friends.

This scene with the lamplighter has a different quality to it than scenes on the other planets and we do get some sense of self-reflection in that the little prince is considering the lamplighter’s beautiful occupation. That said, this scene does not really operate as a Temporary Triumph (or a False Failure). Yes, it seems as though the lamplighter is the only person among the planetary visits with whom the little prince can be friends, but the little prince is unable to stay on his planet because it is too small.

A bit later in the story (about 60% of the way through the book), we find a more significant Temporary Triumph when the little prince arrives on earth.

The Earth is not just an ordinary planet!  One can count, there, 111 kings… 7,000  geographers, 900,000 businessmen, 7,500,000  tipplers, 311,000,000 conceited men—that is to  say, about 2,000,000,000 grown-ups.

To give you an idea of the size of the Earth, I  will tell you that before the invention of electricity  it was necessary to maintain, over the whole of  the six continents, a veritable army of 462,511  lamplighters for the street lamps.

At first, it seems like the little prince has found what he has been looking for, but then he realizes that there are no people anywhere on the planet. His Temporary Triumph quickly dissolves into failure when he realizes that he has reached this significant planet and is still all alone.

ACT 2 (Cont’d): While the little prince meets various people on his planetary visits, when he comes to Earth, his interactions are at first with other creatures of the flora and fauna varieties.

First he meets a snake who tells him he is in a desert, which is why there are no people to be found. This interaction with the snake foreshadows the ending because while the little prince says the snake is “no thicker than a finger” the snake counters that he is “more powerful than the finger of a king.” The snake says it will send anything it touches back to earth, and that if the little prince should feel homesick for his own planet, the snake can help him.

Later, the little prince crosses the desert and meets a solitary flower with only three petals. The flower tells him there are no people because men have no roots and “the wind blows them away.” Eventually, the little prince comes across a garden filled with roses that look just like his flower back on his planet. He is distraught because he had thought his flower was unique and now he has found several just like it. He is overcome with grief and he cries.

PIVOT POINT 2: The second pivot point occurs when the little prince meets the fox. The little prince is very unhappy because he has just left the garden with all the roses and he asks the fox to play with him. The fox says it cannot play with him because it is not tamed. It asks the little prince to tame it and the little prince does.

When the little prince is ready to leave, the fox is very sad and the little prince realizes that in taming something you can both do it good as well as harm. The fox tells the little prince: “Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world.” When the little prince goes to look at the roses, he realizes that his own rose is, in fact, unique. The little prince tells the roses of the fox: “I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world” and he realizes that the same is true of his rose. His flower is unique because she is his.

The event at this second pivot point is the little prince taming the fox. The choice that he makes stems from realizing that his rose is, in fact, unique and that he is now responsible for those he has tamed—the fox and his rose.

ACT 3: In Act 3, the little prince meets a few other adults: the railroad switchman, the merchant, and eventually our narrator. Like the men the little prince meets on his planetary visits, the railroad switchman and the merchant each seem to have a futile existence.

The railroad switchman simply sends people on their way, going left and right. All the travelers are never satisfied with where they are and they also don’t seem to pursue anything. Instead, they seem to move simply for the sake of moving. Only the children seem to be interested in the journey itself, pressing their faces against the train windows.

The merchant sells pills that quench thirst, and claims the pills will save people fifty-three minutes every week. The little prince says to himself “if I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water.” In other words, the pills the merchant sells don’t seem to have any significant impact or importance.

The third person the little prince meets is the pilot-narrator.

CRISIS: The little prince has told the narrator his story. The narrator has run out of water and goes looking for a well. They find the well and together they both collect some water. The little prince tells the narrator that he needs a muzzle for his sheep because he is responsible for his flower and does not want the sheep to eat the rose. The narrator realizes that the little prince has plans he is not telling him about. 

CLIMAX: The little prince tells the narrator that he is going back home, but that it is too far. He says he has the sheep (in the box) and the sheep’s muzzle. The narrator realizes that the little prince is becoming afraid and the little prince says that he is.

The narrator says he wants to hear the little prince laugh again and the little prince says:

All men have the stars… but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they were wealth. But all these stars are silent. You—you  alone—will have the stars as no one else has them… In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of  them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky  at night… You—only you—will have stars that can laugh!

The narrator does not want to leave the little prince alone. The little prince says that it is too far to get home and he cannot carry his body with him. They sit out under the stars and when the little prince stands up, there is a flash of yellow near his angle and he falls to the ground. 

Ending Type: This is a Tragic Ending because the little prince starts out wanting to take care of his flower, but after he travels, his planet becomes too far away. Instead, he gets bitten by the snake and it is the only way for him to get back to his rose and his planet.

DENOUEMENT: Six years pass and the narrator still mourns the loss of the little prince. He imagines him back on his home planet, sheltering the flower under a glass globe and tending to his sheep. He worries whether the sheep will have eaten the flower. The narrator says: “no grown-up will ever understand that this is a matter of so much importance!” 

CONCLUSION: Before we wrap up this three-act analysis, it’s important to note one thing about the little prince: he never answers any questions himself, but when he has a question he refuses to let go of it. In fact, we have a Rule of 3 where three times, the narrator says of the little prince that he “never in his life had let go of a question once he had asked it.”

The first time the narrator says this is when he is speaking with the little prince about the subject of thorns. The little prince wonders whether the flower’s thorns will be sufficient to protect it from the sheep and prevent the sheep from eating the flower.

The second time this phrase comes up is when the little prince is meeting the businessman and he wants to know what the businessman is counting. While the businessman is focused on owning everything he counts, the little prince later learns that what really matters is forging a connection with something (like his flower) and feeling a sense of responsibility for it.

The third time we hear that statement about how the little prince never lets go of a question, he is speaking to the geographer about the ephemeral nature of his flower. All three instances relate to his flower in some way—truthfully, everything in the story comes back to the flower, because she is the driving force behind the little prince’s motivations.

If we look at the order of the above instances as they appear in the book, it may seem as though the cadence is inverted. But if we consider the events chronologically, the first instance is actually the last one to happen (even though it appears first in the book). That instance is different from the other two because the little prince is actively trying to do something to protect his flower.

In this scene, the narrator responds to the little prince’s question with the first thing that pops into his head and says the thorns will not protect the flower at all. When the little prince pushes back, the narrator says he is busy with “matters of consequence.” The little prince replies:

If someone loves a flower, of which just  one single blossom grows in all the millions and  millions of stars, it is enough to make him happy  just to look at the stars. He can say to himself,  ‘Somewhere, my flower is there.. .’ But if the  sheep eats the flower, in one moment all his stars will be darkened… And you think that is not  important!

This is the moment when we realize just how important the flower is to the little prince. We also understand why the little prince never lets go of a question: because the matters he is asking about are truly of grave importance, even if they may not seem so to a grown-up. In this way, this inverted Rule of 3 underscores not just what the little prince is asking, but why his questions are significant.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Three-Act Analysis of The Little Prince appeared first on DIY MFA.

The truth about time management is that it’s not actually about time; it’s about other skills like choosing priorities and setting goals. The majority of time management boils down to assessing which tasks need to happen when, and how those tasks fit into a broader project. Time management is also about understanding which blocks of time are most efficient for you, so you can use your time effectively. Time on the clock is only a tiny slice of time management as a whole. Ultimately, time management has little to do with time itself and more to do with making effective choices and being strategic with how you allocate your tasks.

For the next few weeks, I want to delve into different facets of time management. In particular, I see time management having four different areas:

• Choosing priorities (so you know what to tackle first)
• Setting goals (so you can see how small tasks fit the big picture)
• Assessing time quality (so you allocate your time effectively)
• Using the clock (so you can be more efficient with your time)

Today, I wanted to focus on the first topic—choosing priorities. I believe this is the most important element of time management, because it’s all about knowing which tasks to tackle and when to do them. If you get good at choosing priorities, your ability to manage your time will increase exponentially.

But, how do you choose those priorities in the first place? How do you know what tasks to tackle first, and which ones can wait until later? This decision comes down to a couple of different factors.

Task Urgency

Which task has the earliest deadline? What step needs to happen first, so other steps can come later? Which part of a project needs to be done right now? These are all questions relating to the urgency of a given task, and often this is our greatest motivator.

Most of us are driven by urgency. It’s hard to ignore a task when you have a big, glaring deadline hanging over your head. Yet, while urgency is an important factor to consider, we sometimes let it overshadow other factors, like a task’s importance or ease. In other words, we may sometimes get caught up working on unimportant tasks, simply because they are urgent and calling our attention.

Task Importance

Instead of focusing purely on task urgency, we must also consider task importance. This means looking not just at a task’s looming deadline, but also considering why the task matters. In particular, it’s important to think about how a given task contributes to your greater goals. For writers, for example, we might get caught up worrying about immediate deadlines (“Oh no! That newsletter has to go out tomorrow”) instead of giving priority to more important tasks (“I should spend some time writing my manuscript.”) This is where the Eisenhower Decision Matrix can come in handy.

Eisenhower Matrix

Developed by Dwight D. Eisenhower, this two-by-two matrix considers both task urgency and task importance together. To understand where a task falls on the matrix, all you need to do is ask two yes/no questions: (1) Is the task urgent? and (2) Is the task important? (See the diagram below.) You can use this matrix to figure out what course of action to take with a given task.

Depending on where the task lands on the matrix, you will handle it in a different way. If the task is urgent and important, you need to do it right away. If the task is important but not urgent, you need to decide on a time when you will work on it. Important-but-not-urgent tasks are most often the things that will move you closer to your long-term goals, but they are also the easiest tasks to fall by the wayside. If a task is urgent but not important, you should look for a way to delegate that task if at all possible. This will preserve your precious time for the things that really matter. Finally, if a task is neither important nor urgent, you can simply delete it from your to-do list and ignore it altogether.

There are two additional categories that I add to this model but do not appear on the matrix itself. You see, sometimes there’s just no way to delegate or delete a given task. You simply have to do it. In that case, see if you can delay or divide the task so you can buy yourself some extra time. For example, suppose you want to sit down and write but you also have to clean the house. You could hire a housekeeper to do the cleaning (delegate) or simply let the house get overrun with mess (delete), but for many, neither of those options is feasible or optimal. Instead, you could try to delay the cleaning for a few days, or divide the task so you do laundry on one day, clean the windows on another, and so forth.

If I were to recommend the one area of the matrix where you want to spend the most time, it would be the important-but-not-urgent or “decide” box, because those are the tasks that make the most long-term impact, but they are also the ones that are easiest to put off. Because they are not urgent, it’s easy for these tasks to fall to the bottom of the to-do list.

The area on the matrix where most people spend their time is the important-and-urgent or “do” box. This is because these tasks are important (so they can’t be easily delegated) but they are also urgent, so they require immediate attention. I call the “do” box the “swatting flies” box because when we spend too much time there, it often feels like we’re knocking out tasks as though we’re swatting flies. The problem with swatting flies, though, is that the minute we get rid of one, another one shows up.That’s why so many people who spend a lot of time in the “do” box tend to end up burnt out.

Task Ease

A third consideration which does not appear on the Eisenhower matrix is task ease. Sometimes the difficulty of a given task will affect the order in which we tackle it. For example, some people might prefer to knock out all the easy tasks first, to give themselves that fist-pump feeling of accomplishment and to help them build momentum. On the other hand, some folks might prefer to tackle a difficult task first, to get it out of the way and while their mind is still fresh. Regardless of which approach you take, it’s important at least to consider task ease when setting priorities.

This consideration is easily ignored, because it’s not as objective task urgency or importance. Yet I would argue that task ease might just be the most significant of all three components because it considers how you best handle your priorities. You see, priorities are highly personal and what might be nonnegotiable for one person might be less significant to someone else. This is why, when we choose our priorities, we have to allow for a little subjectivity and individuality. Task ease allows for some of that flexibility, as does task preference.

Task Preference

Let’s face it, some tasks are fun and don’t even feel like a burden. Other tasks are about as pleasant as getting a cavity filled. Just like task ease, task preference will vary wildly from one person to the next. Unlike task ease, however, I do think there is an optimal way to handle task preference.

While with task ease there are arguments for either doing easy or difficult tasks first, with task preference, I think the most effective way to do it is to tackle the most unpleasant task first. It’s easy to procrastinate on things we don’t like to do, but if we don’t get those unpleasant tasks done, they’ll just hang over our heads like a sword of Damocles. Instead, what I recommend is to knock out those unpleasant tasks and then reward yourself with the more pleasant ones.

What does this have to do with writing?

As writers, we often have to juggle competing tasks, both in the writing itself, and in the areas of our life that compete with writing. For many of us, life is continually at odds with our creative work and it’s filled with pragmatic responsibilities like going to a day job, cooking meals, cleaning the house, and taking care of kids or aging relatives. With all these things on our plates, we can’t magically make time appear out of nothing, but we can manage our priorities and find ways to put our writing higher up on that to-do list.

Ultimately, time management is not about creating more time—because that’s impossible. Rather, it’s about being more effective in how we use the time we have. This starts with choosing priorities and deciding which tasks you will do when.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: The Truth About Time Management appeared first on DIY MFA.

For today’s analysis, we’ll be looking specifically at episode 20 from season 1, titled “Murder Takes the Bus.”  In this episode, Jessica and her friend Sheriff Amos Tupper are on a bus to Portland, Maine when they get stranded at a diner because of a storm.

One thing I love about this episode is that it’s a closed circle mystery, where the characters are all stuck together in one place and the murderer is among them. Closed circle mysteries take place in locations where the suspects have no way to leave, like a country house in a snowstorm or a desert island. The key characteristic of a closed circle mystery is that there is a limited number of suspects, they are all stuck together, and they all have plausible motives for murder.

Another thing I love about “Murder Takes the Bus” is that it’s a nod to one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes: “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?” The premise is the same: a bunch of people stranded together in a diner during a storm. The only difference is that the Twilight Zone version involves Martians.

Not familiar with the DIY MFA approach to story structure? No problem. Check out this article for a detailed rundown of the framework.

Spoiler Alert!  As with any cozy mystery, we all know that the sleuth is going to solve the case in the end. The key, of course, is figuring out who the murderer is. If you haven’t seen this particular episode and you don’t want the ending spoiled, look for it on a streaming service. (I recently caught it on Prime.) Otherwise, be forewarned, there will be spoilers in this essay.

Okay, let’s dive into our analysis of Murder, She Wrote — Season 1, Episode 20: “Murder Takes the Bus.”

ACT 1: Jessica Fletcher and her friend Sheriff Amos Tupper are going to Portland, Maine for a banquet. Amos is anxious to get to the banquet early because there’s a raffle and the grand prize is a big-screen TV. Before they can leave Cabot Cove, the car breaks down and they are forced to take the bus. They board the bus and we meet some of the supporting characters including fellow passengers and the bus driver.

As they drive, Jessica notices a car following them. The bus stops in front of a state penitentiary and a man gets on. When he boards the bus, he seems to recognize one of the passengers, but it’s unclear who.

The bus gets stopped by an emergency worker who says the power lines are down and there’s flooding up ahead. Nevertheless, the bus continues on. The car that was following the bus passes them, then breaks down and the driver also boards. As he is putting his bag on the overhead rack, Jessica notices he has a gun under his jacket.

In Act One of any story, we always have to fulfill five promises: the character, the voice, the world, the problem, and the event that kicks off the story. Here’s a breakdown of the five promises as they apply to this episode.

Character:  The main character in our story is Jessica Fletcher, a retired school teacher who is now a mystery author. She often stumbles across real life murders and uses her mystery-writing skills to solve them.

Voice:  As with movies, this show does not have a voice per se but a mood. The opening credits help to set that mood by showing a montage of scenes from different episodes of the show interspersed with clips of Jessica at her typewriter. The music is light and upbeat, starting with a tinkling piano and followed by a full orchestra, including bouncy tubas. This music and mood are perfectly fitting for a cosy mystery.

Note that once Jessica and Amos are on the bus and the storm begins, the music changes dramatically from the upbeat piano and tubas in the opening credits to strident strings, reminiscent of the music in the movie Psycho. This is typical of Murder, She Wrote, where the opening credits set the tone for the show as a whole, but each individual episode has a unique score that captures the mood and personality of that particular story.

World: The world of “Murder Takes the Bus” is fairly limited. We have two primary locations: the bus itself, and the diner where the passengers are stranded. 

Problem: The problem at the start of this episode is that the sheriff’s car has broken down and the only way Jessica and Amos can get to Portland is by bus.

Event: The bus has engine trouble and they are forced to stop at the diner.

PIVOT POINT 1: The bus driver needs to stop to check the engine. He pulls over at the Kozy Korner Kitchen and the passengers go inside to stretch their legs. Jessica forgets her book and goes back to the bus to get it. There she finds a passenger dead with a screwdriver plunged into his neck.

As I’ve mentioned in past analyses, the pivot points have two components: an external event and an internal choice. In this case, the external event is Jessica finding Stoner dead and her internal choice is to tell Amos, who is a sheriff after all (even though this is not his jurisdiction). Jessica thinks it’s obvious that one of the people on the bus must be the murderer and tells Amos as much.

ACT 2: This is the part of the mystery where we compile the clues and try to put the puzzle pieces together. We learn the identity of the victim (Gilbert Stoner) and that he had just been released from prison. Jessica says she remembers Stoner’s name from her research. He was part of a bank robbery where at least one of the three robbers was apprehended and an innocent bystander was killed.

SUPPORTING CAST:  At this point, we also meet our cast of supporting characters. Each of the characters introduces themselves and says where they were at the time of the murder.

Kent and Miriam Radford: Kent is a math professor who is fascinated by statistics. Miriam is a librarian. Kent claims to have been playing an arcade game when the murder happened and Miriam was in the diner the whole time.

Cyrus Sleffingwel: He is an older gentleman and a retired postal worker. Like Miriam, he has been in the main dining room of the diner the whole time.

Steve and Jane Pascal: Steve is a computer programmer traveling with his wife, Jane, who is expecting. He says he was outside on the payphone at the time of the crime, but Jessica says she saw him through the window, having an argument with Stoner on the bus.

Joe Downing: He says he is captain of a fishing boat and claims to have been at the bar having a drink during the murder.

Carey Drayson: This is the man who boarded the bus from the broken down car. He says he is a jewelry salesman and he carries a gun for protection because he has valuable jewels in his sample case.

Ben Gibbons: He is the bus driver and he says he was fixing the engine. He adds that he left his toolbox on the bus so anyone could have taken a screwdriver and used it to kill Stoner.

After the introductions, Jessica pulls out a photo that she found with the dead man and says Steve Pascal bears a striking resemblance to one of the men in the picture. Steve refuses to reply but Jane looks at the photo and says that one of the men in it is Steve’s father who died during the heist (along with the innocent bystander). Stoner was caught and the other robber got away. Police never recovered the money.

After this discovery, Jessica begins to explore the diner and figures out that several doors lead outside so anyone could have slipped out and committed the murder. She and Amos go back to the bus where Amos notices a light blinking on the dashboard. That light is for a damper switch. While Amos goes to the back of the bus to check the switch, Jessica looks around the diner to investigate the doors and finds Stoner’s open suitcase out in the rain.

MIDPOINT: Back inside the diner, Steve shares a newspaper clipping giving information about Stoner’s release. That clipping also reveals that the innocent bystander who was killed was named Julie Gibbons.

Amos makes a citizen’s arrest, saying that the driver threw the damper switch on purpose to stop the bus. It turns out that the driver is Julie Gibbons’ father. He confesses to stabbing Stoner with the screwdriver, but Jessica steps up and says that he is not the murderer. She gives proof that Stoner was already dead when Gibbons stabbed him and that he died of strangulation, not stabbing.

This midpoint is a temporary triumph because at first it appears like the murderer has been found, but soon thereafter we realize that there’s more to the case than we first expected.

ACT 2 (CONT’D): The phone lines are down but Ralph, the diner owner, says there is a CB radio in the back room. Carey goes to try to call for help, but he leaves his jewelry sample case behind. Jessica confronts him, asking why he would leave such a valuable case unattended. He reveals that he’s not a jewelry salesman, but that he works for the insurance company and his job is to recover the money that was stolen in the heist.

Jessica wonders why, if they found Stoner’s suitcase, they didn’t find his overcoat or the book he was carrying. She and Amos go back to the bus to look and find both items a few rows behind Stoner’s body. They go back into the diner.

PIVOT POINT 2: The power goes out. There’s a gunshot. When the lights come back on, Jessica rushes to the back room. Carey has been shot but is only slightly wounded. The CB radio, however, has been completely destroyed. Captain Downing helps to tie a bandage around Carey’s wounded arm.

Jessica conjectures that someone among the passengers wants to find something that Stoner had. She believes someone on the bus is the third man from the robbery. Somehow in those few minutes of darkness, Stoner’s book has disappeared.

The external event for this pivot point is the power going out and the possible killer taking Carey’s gun. The internal choice is that Jessica does not give up and continues trying to find the murderer, despite the heightened danger.

ACT 3: Amos starts to search everyone for the book and they eventually find it in Miriam’s knitting bag. Jessica examines the book and finds a key hidden in the binding. She turns and accuses Captain Downing, saying he’s not a real sailor because he used a granny knot to tie Carey’s bandage instead of a square knot.

CRISIS: Downing pulls the gun, but just as he is threatening everyone, the door blows open in the wind. Amos, Steve, and some of the others overpower Downing and take the gun. Downing admits that he had been looking for the key but insists that he did not kill Stoner.

CLIMAX: Jessica says she believes Downing. Amos was right all along when he first made a citizen’s arrest. Ben Gibbons was the killer from the very beginning. He strangled Stoner first, then stabbed him with the screwdriver later to hide his crime. Gibbons says that he didn’t mean to kill Stoner but got caught up in a rage when he confronted Stoner about his daughter’s death. He thought that by confessing to the screwdriver murder, he would draw suspicion away from himself when the coroner determined that it was death by strangulation. He reasoned that if he confessed to the stabbing, he would no longer be a suspect for the real murder.

Ending Type: This is a happy ending because Jessica wants to solve the crime, and she does indeed solve it.

DENOUEMENT: The storm clears and it’s the next morning. The police take Gibbons away and the passengers board the bus to continue on toward Portland. Jessica and Amos are getting ready to head back to Cabot Cove when Amos gets an update about the banquet. He says it was surely a shame that they missed that drawing. Jessica tries to console him but then he reveals that she’s the one who won the TV, not him.

This is a classic Murder, She Wrote ending, where we get a happy scene after the discovery of the killer, often ending with Jessica laughing at some sort of a joke.

ABOUT COZY MYSTERIES: These are among my favorite things to read. What fascinates me about this genre is that while they have to adhere to strict “rules” they are in no way formulaic. I’m always amazed at how authors manage to create variation and keep readers guessing, while still sticking to the format. Cozy mystery “rules” include:

No Death On the Page: While you can have other crimes in cozy mysteries (like robbery, blackmail, kidnapping, or fraud), murder is the most common. That said, we never see the actual murder on the page. The body is discovered after the fact and we never see any violence. (In addition to no violence, cozies also generally don’t have swearing or sex.) In the case of this episode, Jessica finds Stoner already stabbed. We don’t see the actual killing on screen.

Amateur Sleuth: The person doing the investigating is often not law enforcement, but an amateur sleuth. This person usually has some sort of special skill that makes them ideally suited to solving crimes. In the case of Murder, She Wrote, Jessica is a mystery writer so she knows how criminals think (because she has to write them).

Quirky Supporting Characters: While the amateur sleuth is usually a unique and interesting character, the supporting cast is no less fascinating. Often the supporting cast includes quirky personalities, particularly those of recurring characters (like the bumbling Amos Tupper, the witty Dr. Seth Hazlitt, and Jessica’s dopey nephew, Grady Fletcher).

Quaint Setting: Cozy mysteries typically take place in small towns or other quaint settings. You’re not going to find a cozy mystery set in a gritty city, though sometimes the sleuth might travel to other places and solve a crime on their trip.

Keep in mind, one of the challenges of cozy mysteries is what folks have lovingly come to call “Cabot Cove Syndrome.” This is the problem that when you have a small town and a lot of murders, you may eventually run out of possible murder victims (and suspects). Murder, She Wrote sidesteps this problem by alternating Cabot Cove episodes with ones where Jessica travels somewhere else for writing-related events or to visit friends and family. Yes, an inordinate number of murders still take place in that idyllic town, but they are interspersed with episodes that take place in a variety of other settings like a fancy vineyard, a luxurious cruise, or an archeological dig.

The key to cozy mysteries is that readers want some predictability while still being in suspense as to whodunnit. Readers love the quirky characters and the quaint setting, and they love following along with the sleuth, putting the pieces of the puzzle together. At the same time, they want variety. This is why cozy mysteries will play with different themes and sometimes branch out into new settings. “The same, but different” is the key to keeping cozy mysteries interesting.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Three-Act Analysis of Murder, She Wrote appeared first on DIY MFA.

Today I thought I’d share a few questions you can ask yourself in order to select the best POV for your story. This way, when you’re faced with choosing a point of view for your work, you can weigh the pros and cons and land on the best option. Here are five things to consider when selecting POV.

(1) Whose thoughts do you need to be able to access?

Ultimately, all POV considerations boil down to one thing: information access. Depending on which type of narration you choose, you will have access to different types of information.

For example, if you’re using a single first person POV, you will have access to all of the narrating character’s thoughts and emotions. Anything that goes through that character’s head is fair game and you can use all of it. The downside is that you won’t be able to do this with anybody else’s thoughts and feelings and your character will have to make inferences based on other characters’ body language, dialogue, and demeanor to deduce what they might be thinking or feeling.

The easy way around this limitation is to use a multiple first person POV, where you alternate between the first person perspectives of a handful of key characters. The advantage of this choice is that you have access to more than one person’s thoughts and emotions. The downside is that it can sprawl a little out of control and it can be hard for the reader to get a good sense of whose story this is.

The same considerations also come into play with the third person POV. On one hand, you  have a single limited third person, where the narration follows one character closely and gives you access only to that one character’s mind. You can also use the multiple third person, where the POV consists of a limited third person approach but alternates between different focal characters. We see the multiple third person a lot in epic stories with broad, sweeping worlds, where the reader needs to be able to follow what’s going on with different characters in different locations.

Both the first person and limited third person POVs have similar limitations in that you can only access one character’s thoughts and feelings at a time. The multiple POV options allow the author to be in multiple different characters’ heads, but it can present challenges. For example, the shifts from one character’s POV to another might be jarring if not executed well. Plus, you can’t “head hop” from one character’s mind to another in the same scene.

The place where multiple POV gets interesting is when we see the same scene from more than one character’s perspective. The TV show The Affair explored this contrast by showing the same segment in time from two different characters’ points of view. In one key scene, we see  the events unfold from the female lead’s perspective. She’s catering a party where the male lead is a guest. She is wearing a simple dress shirt and slacks and keeping a professional distance from her counterpart. When we’re in the male lead’s perspective, on the other hand, the female lead is wearing a short, slinky black dress and is acting very flirtatious. By showing the same scene from the different points of view, we get a sense for each character’s state of mind when they first meet.

(2) How sympathetic (or unsympathetic) is the main character?

Another consideration, when it comes to POV, is how sympathetic (or unsympathetic) the main character of the story might be. Often, when the protagonist is unsympathetic or hard to relate to, it helps to use another character as a go-between via the peripheral first person POV. We see this especially when the main character is larger-than-life, making it hard for the reader to relate to that character.

In DIY MFA terms, there are two types of main characters (not counting antiheroes, who are a special category all their own). These main characters can either be relatable (i.e. a regular person caught in extraordinary circumstances) or aspirational (i.e. a larger-than-life heroic character). Think of “relatable” and “aspirational” as opposite ends of the same spectrum and the author’s goal is to try and nudge that main character a little bit toward the opposite end of that spectrum. In other words, if a character is relatable, we need to show their heroic side, whereas if a character is aspirational, we need to show their softer side. This does not mean making your character go “out of character” but rather is about showing their potential for growth.

What does this have to do with POV? Sometimes when characters are so much larger-than-life, it’s hard for readers to connect to them. This is where the peripheral POV can be useful. For the peripheral first person POV, we have the story narrated through the first person perspective of a supporting character (not the main character). This supporting character is often more relatable than the protagonist, giving the reader a way in to connect with that main character. Examples of peripheral first person POV are The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Sherlock Holmes series by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

(3) Does the reader need to follow multiple story threads at once?

This is perhaps the most important consideration when thinking about a single versus multiple point of view. If you have a broad, sweeping world with lots of different things happening at the same time in different places, then the only way to capture all of those scenes is to use a multiple POV. A great example of this is the Prydain Chronicles (The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, etc.). The first four books of this series are in a limited (single) third person POV following the character of Taran. Then the author flips the script.

In the final book, The High King, we see the epic battles across the kingdom from various different characters’ perspectives. I remember when I first read it and I came to a passage told through the POV of a raven flying in the sky, high above a battlefield. At first, I thought the author had made a mistake. But as I read the rest of the story, I realized that the author could not have done it any other way. There are different battles scattered throughout the kingdom, with scenes following each of the characters in each battle. If we had stayed only in Taran’s POV, we would have missed out on a huge part of the story.

For this reason, it’s important to consider the pragmatics of the POV you choose. Do you need to be in different places at the same time? If so, a multiple POV might be your best bet. Also, do you need to access more than one character’s thoughts and emotions? Again, you might want to go with a multiple POV option. The two key things to consider with a multiple POV are: (1) connection to the protagonist, and (2) transitions between different POVs.

In terms of connection to the protagonist, remember that when you have multiple perspectives, it becomes trickier for the reader to identify one character as the protagonist. Sometimes, the author does this on purpose because they want the reader to “latch on” to the character of their choosing. Other times, the author has multiple perspectives, but one character still rises to the top as the protagonist. Just be aware that when you play with multiple POVs, the reader may not know exactly who they should root for. That can be a good thing if you’re going for ambiguity, but it can also create confusion for the reader.

When it comes to transitions between different POVs, it’s important that the reader knows exactly which character they’re following and when. Some authors solve this problem by putting the POV character’s name in the chapter heading. Other authors don’t use headers in this way and instead, simply make it clear from the text which character’s POV we’re in. Whatever option you choose, it’s important to include a section break or chapter break when the POV changes so the reader is prepared for the shift. It doesn’t have to whap the reader over the head, but it should be clear who the POV character is. Some authors might even get extra creative by using different icons at the start of a chapter to symbolize each POV character. Or they might add additional information in the chapter heading, like date and time or location coordinates. This way, what can feel a little heavy-handed in using chapter headings to signify POV shifts, can actually become an opportunity for extra creativity.

(4) How realistic do you want the story to feel?

Realism is relative and different POVs capture realism in different ways. I once sat in on a lecture by David Morrell (the author of First Blood, featuring the character Rambo) where he talked about how point of view and realism are intertwined. He gave a historical overview of different point of view options, explaining when and why they came into play. As it turns out, depending on the type of POV option you choose, you can create a sense of realism in different ways.

The earliest novels are written in traditional (single) first person, which gives the story a feeling of being “straight from the horse’s mouth,” like we are hearing an unvarnished account from someone who experienced the events of the story first hand. The first person also lends that feeling of it being confessional, like you’re being told about the events directly from the person who was there. Of course, the limitations of the traditional first person are what we have already discussed—that it does not allow for access into anyone else’s mind or perspective. It also means that in order for the reader to experience a given scene, the first person narrator must be in that scene.

A variation on the traditional first person is the epistolary form, which makes it feel like the reader is spying on someone’s private correspondence. It has a voyeuristic quality to it, making it feel like we’re reading actual letters. Another, similar form is the use of diary entries to tell the story. Diary form has the same voyeuristic essence to it, but instead of the correspondence being between two people, it is more of a one-sided conversation with only one person’s perspective appearing in the diary. The primary limitation of this form is that certain things (like dialogue) don’t make sense in a letter or a diary entry. It can also be tempting to fall into the “tell, don’t show” trap, because both letters and diary entries lend themselves to exposition more than scene.

While authors began experimenting with traditional first person and epistolary form, not long thereafter they also began using the omniscient third person. This is the “eye in the sky” narrator who knows all and sees all. It gives the story a sense of objectivity because it feels like it’s just the facts. We see a lot of nineteenth century authors—like Charles Dickens and Jane Austen—using the omniscient third person POV. The key to making the omniscient POV work is to have a firm grasp on who the protagonist is. Yes, you can hop from one character’s head to another in the same scene, but make sure the reader doesn’t lose sight of the main character.

(5) How reliable do you want your narrator to seem?

Finally, we get to the question of reliability (or unreliability, as the case may be). I once heard an author say that all first person narrators were by definition unreliable. This is because the character acts as a lens and we see the whole story through that narrator’s perspective. If the narrator is opinionated, or overly naïve, or insane, those factors will influence how the character perceives the events of the story.

A great example of an unreliable narrator is The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe. This short story uses what we call a “deep first person” POV because we are so deeply inside that character’s mind that we are immersed in his interpretation of events. His attitude toward the old man and his “vulture eye,” his insistence that he is not mad and is being perfectly reasonable, we take all of these things for granted because we are so fully absorbed by his perspective. Of course, we know that the protagonist is not sane and that his opinions and actions are far from reasonable, but we can’t help but get swept away by the events of the story because of this deep first person point of view.

Conclusion

There you have it, five questions to ask about point of view to help you pick the right choice for your story. Of course, if you choose one option and it doesn’t seem to be working, you can always experiment with something different. Make sure if you switch POV you don’t just go in and do something like swap out the “I” pronoun for he/she/they. That’s the paint-by-numbers approach to point of view and it will squash your voice and make your writing feel stilted. Instead, choose a scene to try in a different POV, read it through, then rewrite the whole thing from memory. Trust that your brain will hang onto the good stuff and that whatever doesn’t make it into the rewritten version was not all that important anyway. I call this process rebooting a scene and the reason it works is because it allows you to capture that energy and drive you get from writing something fresh, but do it with the direction of knowing where the scene needs to go. When editing for voice and point of view, the reboot approach is hands-down your best bet.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Which Point of View Should You Choose? appeared first on DIY MFA.

Two things: voice and craft.

Voice is a writer’s literary DNA. It’s what makes a book by Jane Austen feel like it was written by Austen and not by some other writer of the time. The author’s voice is much more than just their style or flair, it’s in the very essence of their writing, from the words they choose (or don’t choose) to the way they craft their characters and put together their plots. Voice is the differentiator that makes writing truly human and unless AI grows a soul, it will never be able to fully imitate a writer’s voice.

Craft is the great equalizer. While not all writers are born with equal amounts of talent, everyone who applies themselves can learn the craft. I’ve seen so-called “talented” writers flop because they didn’t invest in their craft, and I’ve seen middle-of-the-road writers come out as shining stars because they did double-down on craft. Understanding the mechanics of writing and storytelling is the thing that allows us human writers to stand apart from AI-generated material.

AI: The Proverbial Elephant in the Room

This essay is not intended to start an argument on the merits of AI (or lack thereof). I have purposefully stayed quiet on this subject because I think enough people are railing about AI or singing its praises, and adding my voice to the cacophony won’t make much of a difference. Plus, I don’t consider myself enough of an expert to contribute meaningfully to the conversation.

I do think that AI is here whether we like it or not. We can stick our fingers in our ears and go “la-la-la-la-la,” but that won’t make AI go away. The folks I follow online, who take a measured stance on AI, have taken the time to understand it and get a sense for what it can (and can’t) do. Even if you think AI is the most terrible thing on the planet, it behooves you to understand it. After all, the wisest warrior is one who knows their enemy.

What we have to realize when it comes to AI is that time is not going to stand still. Some folks are certain that the AI bubble is about to burst while others are convinced that we’re two steps away from Skynet and a Terminator revolution. Still others think that AI is the greatest thing ever and use it for all sorts of tasks, from writing book jacket blurbs to marketing copy or even crafting their author newsletters and creating images for their book covers. (For the record, this newsletter is 100% handcrafted by yours truly.)

I consider myself “AI-cautious.” I recognize that there’s no turning back the clock on this technology and as writers we have to learn to co-exist with it somehow. Even if we choose not to use it ourselves, we have to adapt to a world where other people around us are using it. But that doesn’t mean there’s no room in this brave new world for handcrafted, artful writing.

Little Man (now age 13), who is a wiz at coding, is also a true optimist when it comes to AI. He could easily have given up on his craft and looked toward other, more “marketable” skill-sets. Yet, he insists on learning how to code and writing all his code from the ground up. Why? Because according to him, AI can’t replace artistic jobs. (And I think he’s right!) It can replace some of the more mechanical (AKA boring) tasks about those jobs, but when it comes to true artistry, AI just can’t cut it. I think the same is true in writing.

This is why, when writers start to panic about AI taking their jobs, I remind them of those two magical components that AI can’t touch: voice and craft.

Hone Your Voice

I’ve spoken about voice at length in the past, and one of the things I repeat again and again is this idea that voice isn’t something you find, it’s something you have, you just need to unearth it. A lot of writing teachers talk about helping students “find their voice,” as though it’s loose change stuck between couch cushions. Whether you realize it or not, you already have a voice, you just have to figure out what it is and cultivate it into what you want it to become.

So, how do you do that? How do you shape your voice into something that you want? To become a voice virtuoso, you have to do three things: (1) Understand the capabilities of your voice, (2) Fine-tune your technique, and (3) Expand your range.

Understand the Capabilities of Your Voice

I want you to try a writing exercise. Choose a nursery rhyme (like “Humpty Dumpty” or “The Itsy Bitsy Spider”) and rewrite it in the voice of some author you admire. In other words, the nursery rhyme provides the basics—characters and plot—so you don’t have to think about those things and can focus solely on the voice. Do this exercise several times over the course of a week, each time in the voice and style of a different author. You will learn volumes about your own voice in the process.

What this exercise does is it allows you to understand the mechanics of how another author’s voice operates. Do they use short, clipped sentences? Or are their phrases long, luxurious, and lyrical? Do they focus mainly on action or do they take time to describe the setting or the characters? And what exactly is it that makes an author’s voice uniquely theirs? When you imitate another writer’s voice, you get an inside look at how their voice works. Once you can do that with someone else’s voice, you can start to do the same with your own.

Fine-Tune Your Technique

At DIY MFA we tend to focus on “big craft” topics like character development, plot and story structure, world-building, etc. Yet, a lot of voice work happens as “small craft” at the sentence level. There’s a lot of nuance in how sentences are put together and what words an author chooses in order to communicate a specific idea. Even the way a sentence is structured can do a lot to convey the intricacies of voice.

One of my favorite resources for “small craft,” sentence-level work is the book Spellbinding Sentences by my friend and colleague Barbara Baig. She is a true artist when it comes to sentence-level craft and this book shows you how to write sentences that really sparkle. Like me, Barbara is a firm believer in practice, so her book is sprinkled throughout with exercises and opportunities for you to put your newfound knowledge into action. If you want to understand your voice on a nuts-and-bolts level, I highly recommend getting this book and working through it step-by-step.

If you decide to buy Spellbinding Sentences, we hope you’ll do so by supporting your local bookstore. If you choose to use Amazon, please consider using our Amazon Affiliate link, where DIY MFA will get a commission at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Expand Your Range

I’m a firm believer that your voice is already in you, and all you have to do is cultivate it and shape it as you would like it to be. While you can modulate your voice to some degree, you can’t change it completely.

As I’ve said before, voice is a writer’s literary DNA, and like DNA, it can’t be modified without changing the essence of who that person is. That said, the same DNA can manifest in different forms or different types of cells throughout a person’s body. So, while that DNA—that core essence—is still the same, we can find that same genetic code in a bone cell, a blood cell, or a brain cell.

When you expand your range, you’re expanding how your voice manifests itself in the world, but you’re not changing the essence of that voice. Think of a singer who—with careful practice and training—works to expand their range. They might do exercises to try to coax some higher pitches out of their voice or to access the deeper tones. Still, that singer’s voice is inherently the singer’s and no one else’s. It’s not as if some other singer has stepped in to sing those higher or lower notes. It’s that same singer accessing a broader range of notes through practice.

The way to expand your range is by doing the exercises mentioned above (both the nursery rhyme prompt and the practice sections of Spellbinding Sentences). Be gentle as you work to expand your range. Small, incremental steps can yield huge progress over time. As with singing, the fastest way to break your voice is to force it. So take your time and cultivate your voice slowly and with care.

As I’ve often said in the past, your voice is your own. And while you might not be able to grow roses from sunflower seeds, with enough water, sunshine, and care, you can grow the best sunflowers anyone has ever seen.

Conquer the Craft

As I’ve said above, craft is the great equalizer. It levels the playing field between writers with great talent and those who are only so-so (but are determined enough to learn the craft). AI can do a lot of things, but as of right now, it’s not smart enough to learn and apply the craft. Yes, it can search HUGE databases and produce answers to questions, but it can’t put craft techniques into practice.

You can ask an AI to spit out an essay in the style of some famous author, and the AI might even produce a somewhat similar imitation, but it can’t replicate the essence that is that author’s voice, and it can’t creatively produce new stories that haven’t been written yet. That’s where craft comes in. With craft, you can produce good, new material. AI can’t do that.

Everything AI produces is, at its core, derivative. It searches an enormous database of information and produces an answer based on the material it has analyzed. But AI can’t come up with truly original material, because if it’s that original, it’s not in the database. Ultimately, AI is information-driven, not skill-driven.

But craft is a skill.

When we practice our craft, we deepen our understanding of various techniques. We learn how to make characters feel real to the readers. We learn how to immerse our readers in a story world. And we learn how to put a compelling story together that hooks our readers from page one. This is not just information that can be searched in a database. These are skills that must be honed through practice.

This is why craft is the great differentiator when it comes to AI. At some point, even if people are using AI for various writerly tasks, there has to be someone well-versed in the craft who can take that material output and actually turn it into something.

Full disclosure, before writing this newsletter, I decided to experiment and ask an AI a few questions about voice and craft. (I even asked the AI how it might make itself obsolete. That was amusing to say the least.) The answers I got to my queries completely lacked focus and direction. There was so much extraneous information that there was no way to turn it into anything actually usable. Had I relied on AI to write this newsletter, it would have been a long laundry list of disjointed information… most of it not very good or original.

Still, the process of experimenting with AI gave me a sense of what it could (and couldn’t) do, and after seeing the results, I am all the more convinced that writers are not in trouble. At least not with the technology as it is today. AI is not going to kill publishing, though in the future, it will likely change a lot about how we do our work.

The World Is Not About to End Because of AI

I’ll readily admit, I don’t love AI. I don’t like what it’s doing for our environment, and I don’t like that in many cases it uses copyrighted material without permission. (I take the latter personally because the DIY MFA book was one of the ones pirated and potentially used to train Meta’s AI.)

Unfortunately, when it comes to using pirated material to train Large Language Models (LLMs), it’s looking more and more like the courts are ruling in AI’s favor. One ruling in San Francisco said that using copyrighted works to train an AI constitutes “fair use,” which opens the door for other cases to make a similar argument. Still, there are many cases pending, so this is not the end of the story. In fact, more recently, Anthropic (the company behind the Claude chatbot) and class-action attorneys announced a $1.5 billion settlement meant to resolve claims that authors’ works had been pirated. Even with this announcement, though, this settlement has not yet been definitively set and there are still a lot of questions in the air. Plus, there is legislation in the works surrounding both user privacy and copyright infringement with AI, legislation that could favor the creators. This is all to say that the verdict is still out, and it’s too soon to tell how the copyright issues with AI will evolve.

I think of AI as being a lot like the printing press, disrupting our industry at a fundamental level. We could try to fight the change, but at the end of the day, it would be like competing against writers who print their material while we’re still copying each manuscript by hand. At some point we have to think about how we’re going to adapt. This is not to say that the market for handcrafted work will cease to exist overnight. It just means if we want to do handcrafted work, we have to understand what we’re competing with.

For up-to-date reporting on AI (and many other topics in the industry), I follow Jane Friedman’s newsletter The Bottom Line. Her reporting is top-notch and she takes a measured approach with AI that I find refreshing. This is a paid newsletter, but worth every penny.

I can’t tell you how to handle AI because it’s a personal choice. Some writers hate it, some love it. I myself am cautious but curious and I want to be as informed about it as possible. Here’s how I’m trying to coexist with AI:

(1) Understanding Its Use of Copyrighted Material

I do not like how AI uses copyrighted material. In fact, when I explore AI tools, the first thing I ask is: how does this model get trained? Does it use material without permission? And how does the AI use the material that is put into it? Does it use that content to further train its model? These are all questions that I want clear answers to when considering an AI tool.

(2) Being Careful with My Own Material

Before I experiment with any AI, I read the terms of service (TOS) very carefully. I look for indications of how it uses my personal data and whether it trains the model on any material I might input. I also want to understand the ownership of the output. If I input something into an AI tool and it spits out some sort of output based on my material, who owns it? Yes, it’s a pain to read all that fine print—and let’s face it, most of us skip it and accept the terms of service without batting an eyelash. But it’s important that we understand how the AI tool will use our material and our personal data.

Also, when an AI tool does not provide the above information, that tells me to run (not walk) in the opposite direction. If the terms of service and privacy statement are hidden or not readily available, it feels like the AI has something to hide. If an AI service can’t be transparent with how they handle my material and my personal data, I’m not going to use it.

(3) Fact-Checking the Output

Let’s face it, a lot of the time, AI just gets it wrong. Sometimes really wrong. This is why it’s on us to make sure we fact-check the content it generates to make sure the information we’re getting is accurate. This is yet another reason why I’m convinced that writers will not be totally out of a job because of AI. A lot of what these LLMs produce is garbage-in-garbage-out, which means that artistic pursuits focused on quality over quantity will stand apart from all the stuff that comes from AI searches.

These are just three things I keep in mind as I try to wrap my head around AI and figure out how (or if) I plan to use it in earnest. You’ll have to come up with some guiding principles of your own and determine whether you want to use AI as a tool for certain tasks, or whether you’ll avoid it altogether. Some writers will remain staunchly opposed to AI and will refuse to use it on principle—a noble sentiment, to be sure. Other writers will accept AI and will look for new ways to use it in their author careers.

I myself am in a middle camp—”AI cautious,” as I said before. I recognize that AI is here and that like it or not, it’s not going anywhere. I also don’t want to be like a lone medieval monk, copying manuscripts by hand when everyone else is using the printing press. And I think the only way to approach a new technology is to try to understand it. After all, how can we work with (or resist) something we know nothing about?

As for AI stealing writers’ jobs, I’m highly skeptical. These big tech companies might steal our published works to train their AIs and they might even try to output something that looks like our original writing, but given where AI is right now, I don’t see it as much of a threat. Until they can build a LLM with a soul, they won’t be able to capture the nuance of our craft or the essence of our voice. AI can never be human—only a poor imitation thereof. Plus, it gets a lot of things wrong. This means if we double down on voice, craft, and quality, we can still stand out.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Two Things AI Can’t Take Away from You appeared first on DIY MFA.

Not familiar with the three-act structure? No problem. Check out this article for a detailed discussion on this topic.

Spoiler Alert! Okay, if you haven’t read Romeo and Juliet, or seen the play, or seen a movie based on the play, then be forewarned. This discussion will, of course, contain spoilers because it’s impossible to discuss a story’s structure without mentioning the ending. At the same time, given that this play is several hundred years old (and it’s been made into over thirty films!) I have a hunch you’re already familiar with at least the gist of it.

Okay, let’s dive into our analysis of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

ACT 1: We are introduced to the feud between the Montagues and Capulets. There is a street fight that the Prince breaks up, and he threatens them not to fight again, on penalty of death. The Capulets give a masked ball, and some of the Montagues decide to attend in disguise.

Character(s): We have dual protagonists in this story, and we meet them both in the first act. Romeo is pining for love of Rosaline, who is not interested in him. Juliet’s parents want her to marry Paris (the Prince’s relative) but she does not want to marry anyone at all.

Note that because we have dual protagonists, many of the key “landmark” scenes will have both a Romeo component and a Juliet component.

Voice: Shakespeare writes in a combination of iambic pentameter and prose. The prose passages, however, are not frequent and tend to happen when there’s more back-and-forth between characters in dialogue. Interestingly, the iambic pentameter passages do not always rhyme.

It is only in certain specific—and important—moments where the lines rhyme in quatrains or couplets. For example, Mercutio’s famous Queen Mab speech does not rhyme, while the passage where Romeo and Juliet meet does rhyme.

World: We are in the Italian city of Verona. In this story’s world, there are two feuding families: the Montagues and the Capulets. Romeo is a Montague and Juliet is a Capulet, making them star-crossed lovers.

Problem: The initial problems are twofold: Romeo is in love with someone who doesn’t love him back, and Juliet’s parents want her to marry someone, but she does not want to marry anyone at all. So essentially, they both are unhappy in love. The story becomes all the more complicated when they fall in love with each other and realize that their families are enemies.

Event: The event that kicks off the story is the masked ball given by the Capulets.

PIVOT POINT 1:  Romeo and Juliet meet at the masked ball and instantly fall in love. That is the external event that marks this pivot point. Soon thereafter, they each separately ask someone who the other one is, and they discover that they have fallen in love with their enemy. The internal choice is that they both decide to pursue the romance anyway, despite knowing that their families will not approve.

Note that the passage where they meet and fall in love is written in quatrains where the lines have an ABAB rhyme scheme. The passage begins with each of them taking one full quatrain, then their lines begin to intertwine, still keeping the rhyme. The passage ends with each of them taking half a line, as though they are finishing each other’s sentence.

This use of rhyme scheme and the way that the lines weave together is meant to show the progress of their falling in love. They start the scene as two separate entities, each taking a quatrain to express their thoughts. Then quickly come together, their lines alternating, until finally Juliet finishes the rhyme of Romeo’s line.

ACT 2:  This is where we have the courtship—albeit a lightning-fast one—as well as more feuding between the two families. During this section of the story, Romeo and Juliet each rely on an ally. Romeo has the Friar, who provides a friendly ear and also helps facilitate the marriage between the two young lovers. Juliet also has her nurse, who helps send messages back and forth between them so they are able to be together. After Mercutio and Tybalt’s death, Romeo is banished to Mantua, where he awaits news of whether he can return to Verona or whether Juliet will be able to come to him.

SUPPORTING CAST:  There are several important supporting characters who come into play in the story. These include Mercutio, Tybalt, Benvolio, and Paris. Notice that names are extremely important in Shakespeare’s plays, and many of these characters have names that symbolize their personalities.

Mercutio: His name comes from Mercury, known for speed as the messenger of the Roman gods. This name is fitting of Mercutio, who is quick-witted and very funny. In fact, most of the humor in the play comes from him, and when he dies, the story instantly shifts from comedic to tragic. As one of Romeo’s best friends, he keeps Romeo from taking things too seriously.

Tybalt: His name means “bold people” and comes from the Germanic name Theobald. Tybalt is Juliet’s hot-headed cousin who fights Mercutio in a duel and ends up killing him. He’s fiercely loyal to the Capulets and sees violence as a way to uphold his family honor. He is aggressive and quick to start fights. After Tybalt kills Mercutio, Romeo fights him and wins.

Benvolio: His name comes from the Latin “ben” (good) and “volere” (will), meaning good-natured or well-wisher. Benvolio is a peacemaker who resists fighting and does his best to deescalate conflicts. He doesn’t just try to stop fights before they start, but he also plays a role in explaining what happened after the fact. He serves as a voice of reason throughout the story.

Paris: He is a relative of the Prince and is betrothed to Juliet. This betrothal is part of what precipitates Juliet’s plot to fake her own death. Unlike Romeo, who is respectful of Juliet during their courtship, Paris is possessive and takes liberties with her. For example, he kisses her when she does not want to be kissed (after she is secretly married to Romeo). In the crypt in Act 3, Romeo fights Paris and wins.

W.O.R.S.T.: Throughout Act 2 we also see the W.O.R.S.T. acronym in play.

Want: Romeo and Juliet want to be together.

Obstacle: The obstacle is that their families hate each other.

Risk: Romeo risks death multiple times to sneak into the Capulet orchard to see Juliet. She also risks getting into severe trouble by being with Romeo. The two take the ultimate risk when they decide to get married in secret.

Stakes: What’s at stake if they can’t be together? They’ll be miserable forever. Plus, once they get married, they are now bound to each other. This means if they can’t be together, they will either be forced to be alone and never have love in their life, or they might be forced into a life of sin, if their families make them marry someone else (as is the case with Juliet and Paris).

Transformation: Neither Romeo nor Juliet seem to change much throughout the story. The change that really happens is the transformation in the Montague-Capulet feud. At the beginning of the play, these two families hate each other and are dueling in the streets. By the end of the story, they come together at the tomb, and it appears (from the Prince’s speech) that the two families have learned their lesson, albeit too late.

MIDPOINT: The temporary triumph of the story occurs when Romeo and Juliet get married in secret (Act II, Scene VI). This is a temporary triumph because it seems—for a split second—that maybe they’ll be able to be together. Unfortunately, right after the marriage scene (the marriage itself happening off stage), we have the fight scene between Mercutio, Tybalt, and Romeo, which results in the deaths of Mercutio and Tybalt, as well as Romeo’s banishment.

Mercutio’s death is a pivotal moment of the story because it shifts the story from feeling like a comedy to being a full-on tragedy. To the very end, Mercutio is cracking jokes and making puns. For example, just before he gets carried off stage wounded, he says: “Ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man” (a pun on the word “grave”). This shows his character, always quick-witted and making quips, even at the moment of death. After he dies, the tone of the play quickly shifts.

The moment of self-reflection happens after Mercutio’s death, when Romeo says that his love of Juliet has made him soft. After all, by being married to Juliet, Tybalt is now his cousin, and it was in the moment when Romeo tried to stop the fight between Mercutio and Tybalt that the latter kills his friend. This self-reflection prompts Romeo to fight Tybalt and kill him. The Prince then banishes Romeo from Verona. 

PIVOT POINT 2: After Tybalt’s death, Lady Capulet decides that they should expedite Juliet and Paris’ marriage. Juliet panics because she’s already married to Romeo and begs the Friar to help her. The Friar concocts a plan wherein Juliet will fake her death. She will drink an elixir that will make her sleep as though she has died. Her family will lay her to rest in the family tomb. In the meantime, the Friar will send notice to Romeo to come to her. She’ll then awake after a few days and find Romeo with her and the two can go off together.

At this pivot point, the event is Juliet getting betrothed to Paris and Lady Capulet wanting to have the wedding in short order. The choice is Juliet deciding to fake her own death.

Notice how the Midpoint involves mainly Romeo, while here, Pivot Point 2 focuses mostly on Juliet.

It is not uncommon for dual-protagonist stories to have some landmark scenes that apply to both of them, and then some that relate to only one character. In Romeo and Juliet, most of the important landmarks involve both characters, but there are a few landmarks (like the fight component of the Midpoint or Juliet’s plan at Pivot Point 2) that center on only one of the two protagonists.

ACT 3: Juliet’s fake death goes as planned. She drinks the elixir that the Friar gave her, and it makes her sleep as if dead for several days. Her family, as Friar predicted, bury her in her family tomb. In the meantime, Romeo hears of Juliet’s death and is so distraught, he decides to buy poison so he can kill himself at her tomb.

CRISIS: Paris comes to the tomb first, before Romeo gets there. Romeo then arrives with his servant Balthasar. Paris and Romeo duel and Romeo wins, killing Paris. Romeo lays Paris in the tomb, then says his final soliloquy and pulls out the poison.

CLIMAX: Both Romeo and Juliet die. Romeo’s last words are: “Thus with a kiss I die.” Then Juliet awakes, finds Romeo dead and kisses him. Then she says her final words: “​​Yea, noise? Then I’ll be brief. O happy dagger! [Snatching Romeo’s dagger.] This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die.” 

Ending Type: This is a tragic ending because Romeo and Juliet still want to be together all the way to the end, but they do not get what they want. Instead, they both die.

DENOUEMENT: The Montagues, Capulets, and Prince all arrive at the tomb. The Friar, who has been at the tomb and has seen everything, tells the Prince the whole story. He explains that Romeo and Juliet were in love and were married in secret. He explained the plan he hatched with Juliet to fake her death. Balthazar also adds some details to the story, saying he brought word to Romeo of Juliet’s death. The Montagues and Capulets realize their folly and make peace with each other.

CONCLUSION: In conclusion, I also wanted to share with you a theory I have about this play. This theory boils down to the question: is it a comedy or a tragedy? You see, up until the moment of Mercutio’s death, the play reads a lot like a comedy. We have Romeo in love with one person, then falling in love with another (Midsummer Night’s Dream, anyone?) We have mistaken identities at the masked ball (not unlike Twelfth Night and other such comedies). And we have the quick witticisms of Mercutio tying it all together. But the story ends as a clear tragedy with the protagonists (along with several supporting characters) dead.

According to the Royal Shakespeare Company, Romeo and Juliet was likely composed in the earlier half of Shakespeare’s career, not like some of his more mature tragedies (Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, or King Lear) which were composed later in his life. In fact, along with Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet may likely be one of the very earliest tragedies Shakespeare ever composed. While it’s impossible to pinpoint an exact chronology of when Shakespeare wrote each of his plays, it is clear that many of his earliest plays tended to be histories or comedies.

This is why I think it’s interesting that Romeo and Juliet reads like a comedy-turned-tragedy. In fact, I can pinpoint the exact moment in the play where the tone goes from comedic to tragic: Mercutio’s death. Up until the moment of his death, Mercutio is cracking jokes, and it feels like we are in a comedy. It is only after he dies that the story takes a tragic turn. It’s almost as if Shakespeare said: “Whoops! I just killed off my best character. Welp, might as well kill off everybody else and call it a tragedy.”

Of course, we do have the chorus passage at the opening of the play that foreshadows what’s coming down the line, but that stanza could have easily been added after-the-fact. There’s no evidence that shows Shakespeare clearly intended Romeo and Juliet to be a tragedy from the outset. It could easily have been something he decided to do on the fly because the story took an unexpected turn.

I share this theory with you because as writers, we’ve all had experiences where a character’s arc takes a left turn and throws our story upside down. We’ve all had situations where we discovered things about our characters and had to make changes on the fly. I like to think that Shakespeare had a similar experience with Romeo and Juliet and that the story did take him a little bit by surprise.

This comedy-to-tragedy blip doesn’t make the play any less popular, by the way—in fact, aside from Midsummer Night’s Dream, it’s probably one of Shakespeare’s most performed plays. This theory makes me feel a little better as a writer, because it makes me think I’m in good company. If Shakespeare had a story go sideways on him and he didn’t let that stop him, then maybe all is not lost for regular writers like me.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Three-Act Analysis of Romeo and Juliet appeared first on DIY MFA.

I love this quote because I think it captures the nature of subplots to a T. The main plot is like a noun or verb in a sentence, it’s the part that conveys meaning and tells us what’s really going on. The subplot, on the other hand, really is like an adjective or maybe an adverb. It may add interest, but the main story can still exist without it.

Lately, I’ve had subplots on the brain, and today I wanted to talk about why subplots matter in the first place. If subplots are “sub” to the main plot, why do we even need them? If they don’t contribute to the main story, what’s the point? Why do subplots matter? Here are five good reasons.

1) A subplot makes the story more interesting.

Theoretically, we could go through life using mostly only nouns and verbs. I’m imagining a story set in a dystopian society where adjectives and adverbs are outlawed. People could still communicate and get their ideas across, but it would be boring. Adjectives and adverbs are what give sentences their flavor and make the language more interesting.

The same thing is true when it comes to plots and subplots. The main plot might drive the story forward, but the subplots add interest and give that main plot flavor. Without the subplot, the main plot might get boring.

For example, take the Wicked Witch of the West subplot in the film The Wizard of Oz. The main plot in that movie is Dorothy trying to get back to Kansas, but the Wicked Witch’s quest for the ruby slippers adds complications and makes the story more interesting. If it weren’t for the Wicked Witch, Dorothy could just meander through Oz at her leisure, and that would be boring. It’s the Witch who creates urgency and makes Dorothy want to get home right away. The Witch also complicates Dorothy’s journey, creating obstacles that she and her friends must overcome.

2) A subplot helps you get through the “muddle in the middle.”

Maybe you can relate to this experience. You start writing a story, and at first everything is zipping right along. You like the characters, the plot is interesting, you come up with a great series of events to kick off the story. But then, somewhere about fifty pages in… you stall out.

Welcome to the “muddle in the middle.”

The second act in any story is going to be a long slog. This is because this act is at least twice as long as acts one and three, sometimes even longer. The best way to get through that long stretch of the sagging middle is to add wrinkles in the form of subplots.

Keep in mind, shorter form work (like short stories, novelettes, or novellas) may forego subplots because they don’t have the space to include them. In short pieces, the main plot is sufficient to carry the story forward, and that’s good because the story’s meant to be short. We don’t want it to sprawl ad infinitum.

In novels, on the other hand, we need subplots to keep the story’s momentum moving forward. These subplots give the story variation, letting us focus on other threads aside from the main plot. This is especially important in the second act of the story, where momentum tends to flag and the plot tends to sag.

3) A subplot can help show a different side of the main character.

We all want characters who are three-dimensional and don’t feel flat. Yet sometimes it can be hard to do that without making your character do something that’s “out of character.” This is where subplots can help. They give you opportunities to show different sides of your main character, so we can see they’re not just hitting the same note over and over.

For example, in The Hunger Games, the subplot of Peeta being in love with Katniss gives opportunities for Katniss to show her softer side. When she hides out in the cave with him and feeds him the broth, we see Katniss playing “nurse,” which is definitely not something we would expect from her. Similarly, the Rue friendship subplot in The Hunger Games gives Katniss the opportunity to play the “protective big sister” role, and we see just how devastated she becomes when Rue dies and Katniss is unable to save her. Both of these subplots give us a chance to see a side to Katniss that she would not ordinarily show, especially not when she’s in survival mode.

4) A subplot can add complications to the main story.

Sometimes, a subplot can be used to raise the stakes of the main story. For example, in The Hunger Games, the Peeta subplot raises the stakes for the whole story. It is a foregone conclusion that in order for Katniss to win the games, everyone else must die. So, when Peeta declares his love for her, that’s a BIG problem and it makes her furious. After all, if she’s to win, at some point in the games, she’ll have to kill Peeta. And it’s that much harder for her to kill him if she knows he’s in love with her.

The Peeta love story adds additional complications to the main plot as the story evolves. For instance, at the start of act three, the Gamemakers announce that there has been a change of rules and now two tributes may be crowned victors, provided they’re from the same district. With this plot twist in play, Katniss can now allow herself to develop feelings for Peeta because she won’t have to kill him. If it were not for that change in the rules, Katniss would never have gone looking for Peeta and subsequently would not have nursed him back to health or kissed him in the cave.

Then, of course, when the Gamemakers change the rules yet again and reveal that only one tribute can win, at that point Katniss has had enough. Her frustration with the Gamemakers, coupled with a hint of feelings for Peeta, prompt her to pull out the berries and give them to Peeta. The two—seemingly out of their undying love for each other—pretend they’re about to eat the berries until the Gamemakers stop them and crown them both victors.

5) If a story is moving too fast, a subplot can help it slow down.

We see this in action movies all the time. The hero is out shooting up bad guys, but eventually, there comes a quiet moment where the hero and the love interest get together. That snippet of a love story slows the pace a little bit and gives the audience a chance to catch their breath.

For example, consider Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark. For most of the film, Marion’s character is almost like a partner in crime with Indy, going with him to Cairo and trying to find the Lost Ark. They get trapped together in the Well of Souls, but eventually escape and manage to get the Ark and get it onto a steamer to transport it back to London. It seems like they have escaped the bad guys, and they have a romantic moment. This scene serves to slow the plot and give the audience a moment to relax after all the action-packed tension.

Up until this point in the story, we have had very little actual romance between Marion and Indy. We know they have a romantic history because it’s alluded to in earlier scenes, and we know there’s romantic tension between them as well. But we don’t really get a romantic moment between these two characters until well into act three. This makes sense because the filmmakers would not want to slow the plot down too much too early in the story. At this late point in the plot, the film has earned a respite and the romantic subplot can come to the forefront for one quick scene.

As you can see, a subplot is an important part of the storytelling process. We use a subplot in any number of ways: to add interest to the main plot, to raise the stakes, or to show a different side of the main character. While you don’t want your subplot to overshadow your main plot, it can be a useful technique to help keep that story momentum going.

Now it’s your turn…

Consider your work-in-progress and ask yourself a few things about subplots. Grab a journal or a notebook and pen and noodle on the following questions.

• Do you have a subplot in your current project?
• If so, why is it necessary to your story?
• Does it fulfill any of the above reasons?
• Or does it serve an additional purpose not listed here?
• If the latter, what purpose does it serve?

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Why Your Book Needs a Subplot appeared first on DIY MFA.