The Oracle

In my writing space, I have a box I lovingly call “The Oracle.” This is because it’s not unlike those oracles of old, where people would travel for miles to visit and get inspiration directly from the gods. My oracle is not nearly so grand—just a box with a latch, filled with random stuff—but it helps me come up with stories or develop ideas that are just a glimmer in my mind.

In the past, I’ve used a lot of the knick-knacks from my oracle as writing exercises for classes I’ve taught. Below is a picture of my oracle, and as you can see, it’s filled with random stuff. Let me give you a rundown of the creative tools I like to keep handy.

Dice

Dice are among the most useful tools to help you get ideas for stories and other projects. I use them in many different ways. I might assign a number to the words Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How, then roll a die, and depending on the number that comes up, I use that word to guide some freewriting I might do about a project. For example, if I roll a “Where” I might freewrite about the world of a current project and think about different aspects of the world-building. Or if I roll a “When” I might freewrite about different time-related aspects of my story. For example, I might play with the idea of doing multiple different timelines, or something like that.

Another way to use dice is to assign a different story alternative to each number. I brainstorm these ideas quickly, without thinking too hard about each individual one.

1 = the character goes camping
2 = the character travels abroad and writes a letter home
3 = the character gets called in for jury duty
Etc.

Then I roll the die and whatever number it lands on, that’s the thing I have to write. Then all I have to do is sit down and write a scene based on that situation.

The reason dice help me get inspired is because the outcome is totally random. I have no control over what the outcome might be and whatever number comes up, I have to roll with it and make it work. Any game of chance can work in this way, including flipping a coin. (Heads my character escapes through the secret door, tails they escape by climbing out the window.) 

Randomness is precisely why games of chance are so useful for the creative process. They force us to make do with what we have in front of us, and we have to figure out a way to make it work. Sometimes having too many options available can be stifling to our creativity. It’s as though, with so many choices, we get stuck and end up choosing nothing. When we limit our choices, we actually make ourselves get more creative because we have to figure out how to make the available options work for us. So, when in doubt, keep some dice handy and use them to spark new, creative ideas.

Paint Chips

Often, when I start working on a new project, I go to a paint store and collect paint chips corresponding to the different characters in that story. I don’t have a super-scientific method for assigning colors to characters. Generally, I just go with whatever vibe I get from that character and what color seems to fit the best. Sometimes I’ll use color symbolism to assign colors to characters. For example, blue is symbolic of peace, so it might be a good fit for a character with a relaxed, calm personality. But most of the time, I just go with my gut and choose colors that “feel right” for the different characters in my story.

Why do I do this? I assign colors to characters because it allows me to get a sense for that character just by looking at that color. Rather than writing up long, elaborate character dossiers, simply assigning a color can often sum up a character’s personality so I get the gist at a glance. I find this to be a lot more efficient than spending hours upon hours writing up character descriptions and figuring out what my character’s favorite food is or who their third-grade teacher was, or what have you.

The other thing I find interesting is that oftentimes (usually without me even planning it) the relationship between the colors of certain characters can be emblematic of the relationships between those actual characters. For example, a lot of times I find that characters who are at odds with each other tend to have colors on opposite sides of the color wheel. These are colors that have a strong contrast with each other (though they can potentially look very good together). On the other hand, I sometimes find that characters who get along easily usually have colors that are close together or adjacent on the color wheel. These are usually tones from the same “color family” and they tend to look very harmonious together.

In other words, by assigning colors to different characters, I am able to get a sense for those characters’ personalities at a glance, and I can also get a feel for the relationships between those characters. Usually, characters with colors close together on the color wheel tend to get along, while characters who are on opposite sides of the color wheel tend to be at odds with each other.

So, next time you’re starting a new project, hop on over to the paint store and grab some color chips. You may be surprised at what you learn about your characters that way.

Word Box

You can see in the picture a small red box with little slips of paper inside. Each of those slips of paper contain a single word. I call this my word box.

I assembled this word box over the course of several months, just dropping in a couple of words each day as I felt inspired. Whenever I came across an interesting or unique word, I would write it on a slip of paper and put it in the box. After a few months, the box was filled and I was ready to start using it.

Here’s how the word box works: You choose 5-7 words at random and write a scene where you use all of those words. There is no other requirement about the scene in question, just that you use up all 5-7 words. This scene can become a part of your current project or it can be a standalone story or just a random practice exercise. The goal, though, is to use all of the words you’ve picked from the box.

This word box works similarly to the dice in that it limits your options and forces you to narrow your focus. Just as with dice, you have to work with whatever number you roll, here you have to be ready to make do with whatever random words you pull from the box.

The other thing that this technique does is that it forces you to stretch your creativity when you make connections between the words. For example, let’s suppose you pull the words “pirate” and “pumpkin.” These aren’t words that go together naturally, so you’ll have to get creative in how you make them work in the same scene. These types of random word associations force you to get creative and come up with unique solutions to make the combinations work.

Image File

Perhaps my favorite item in my oracle is the image file. This is a collection of photographs, postcards, and other images that I use to spark a story. Everywhere I go, I look for interesting things that make me think, “Wow, I bet there’s a story behind that.” I collect those images and put them together in a tin box. Some of the images I find are postcards of paintings or sculptures from museums. In fact, every time I go to a museum, I make sure to stop by the gift shop and look for some postcards to add to my image file.

I use the image file by pulling out a random picture and letting it spark a story idea. Sometimes that idea will directly relate to a project I’m working on. Sometimes it will lead me down a completely different path. The point is that the image is random and I can use it as a way not just to get inspiration but also to set limits on my creativity. By forcing myself to use an image to spark a story, I have to get creative about how I will draw a narrative from that picture. The picture sets constraints—not unlike the dice or word box—and I have to work within those constraints in order to make the story work.

Just like the word box, it can take a little bit of time to build up a juicy image file. To get started, choose a container where you will store the images. (I use an old tin candy box with a hinged lid.) Then start looking around for images. Some of these images might be snapshots you take with your phone while you’re out and about. Some of them might be postcards you pick up at museums or galleries. Some might even be pictures you clip out of magazines. See if you can collect at least one image per day for an entire month, and by the end of that time you’ll have amassed a big enough collection that you can start to use it.

Conclusion

These are just a couple of tools and techniques that I keep handy in my oracle. You may choose to add other things to your writer’s toolkit, and that’s fine too. The goal is that you have at least three or four different tools handy that spark your creativity and help you generate story ideas. And remember, it can take time to assemble all these tools, so be patient and put in the time and effort. It will be well worth your while.

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 Oracle – Where I Go to Get Ideas appeared first on DIY MFA.

I’ve been working with writers for well over a decade and over that time I’ve seen again and again just how crucial the main character can be to make—or break—a story. After all, readers won’t remember every last detail of a story’s plot, but they’ll remember the characters and they’ll remember how those characters made them feel.

This is why I wanted to take some time today to talk about your main character (i.e. your protagonist) and why they are so important to your writing. In this email, I’ll dive into different facets of character development, so by the end of it, you will know how to craft a unique and engaging main character for your story.

Why Your Main Character Matters

Not everyone recognizes the importance of the main character. Some believe the thing that really matters is the plot and how gripping and interesting the story events are. But the truth is, events are only interesting insofar as they happen to a person.

If we don’t have a character then the story is nothing more than “this happened, then this happened, and then this happened….” Well, that’s not a story—it’s a newsreel. And while newsreels can certainly be interesting, those events take on much deeper meaning when we see how they impact a specific person.

The protagonist of a story provides a lens through which we readers experience that narrative, Without that lens the story falls out of focus. The main character makes the story feel personal, and that, in turn, makes us more invested in it.

Plot and Character Operate in Tandem

Some writing teachers focus on plot more so than character, while other story experts say the opposite and put all their eggs in the character basket. In fact, some people even go so far as to break it down by genre, saying that literary fiction is more character-driven and genre fiction (like thrillers, mysteries, or romance novels) tend to be more plot-driven. Truthfully, I think good storytelling requires both elements.

If you have a character, but nothing interesting happens to them, then there’s little opportunity for conflict and tension. Without conflict or tension the story will be boring. Characters need opportunities to misbehave and create trouble.

On the other hand, if all you have are events buffeting the characters to and fro, then these characters have no agency. Story events need to stem from character choices, not just random things that happen outside of their control. It is far more interesting to see a character make a choice that turns out badly than to have a random event happen for no reason whatsoever.

A good story is not just character or plot in isolation, but the two elements intertwined and working together to create an engaging narrative.

Understanding Character Archetypes

When you understand the type of character that you’re writing, you can craft your narrative around that character, creating story events that will cause conflict or force them into uncomfortable situations. Remember, we can’t just be nice to our characters. We have to cause trouble for them and create bad situations that make them act out. “No one wants to read about happy people in happy-land,” as my friend and colleague James Scott Bell has been known to say. People want to read about characters who are dealing with problems or facing trouble. Conflict is what makes the story world go round.

This is where it can be extremely valuable to understand the type of character you are writing. You see, not all characters are created the same. There are distinct types of characters and each type has particular qualities that will make them behave in specific ways. There are essentially two types of protagonists. Let’s take a closer look at each one.

Relatable Characters

The first type of protagonist is the relatable character. This is a regular person caught in extraordinary circumstances, where they need to rise to the occasion and do something amazing. Examples of this type of character are: Bilbo Baggins from The Hobbit, Luke Skywalker at the beginning of the original Star Wars saga, Anne Elliot from Jane Austen’s Persuasion, and Katniss Everdeen at the start of the Hunger Games trilogy.

Readers love these relatable characters because they can identify with them. Readers see a part of themselves in these characters, making them want to root for them. The goal with a relatable protagonist is to show their potential for greatness. When a relatable character does something extraordinary, the reader thinks: “Wow, if they can do that, maybe I can do something special, too.”

Aspirational Characters

The second type of protagonist is the aspirational character, and this character is almost the polar opposite of their relatable counterparts. Instead of being a regular person caught in extraordinary circumstances, the aspirational character is larger-than-life, almost like a superhero of sorts. With this character, it’s not about making them rise to the occasion and do something great (because they’re already great), but to show their humanity, some hint of vulnerability that makes this superhero-esque character seem more relatable, more human. Examples of this type of character are: Superman, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, Jay Gatsby from The Great Gatsby, and Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice.

Readers love aspirational characters because they show what’s possible. These larger-than-life characters may not reflect readers as they are right now, but they reflect what readers would like to become. The goal with these aspirational characters is to show their potential to be vulnerable, making them seem more human and relatable.

The Opposite Is Possible Theory

I have a theory that in order to show the potential for change and growth in a character, you have to show that it’s possible for the character to be the opposite of what they are. No, this does not mean you’re making your character behave out of character, but it does mean that you give a sense that the opposite is possible. With a relatable character it’s all about showing that hint of greatness while with the aspirational character needs to show some vulnerability or humanity.

If you think about it, relatable and aspirational characters are essentially two ends of the same spectrum. If a relatable character becomes extraordinary enough, they can eventually become aspirational, while the converse is true with an aspirational character.

This Opposite Is Possible Theory works in large part because the potential for change is baked right into the character. And we’ve all heard the writing class cliché that characters should change over the course of the story. This Opposite Is Possible Theory means that the change is woven right into the fabric of the story from the very start.

Think about the character you are writing and try to identify whether they are relatable or aspirational. Your character may not fit neatly into one box versus the other—remember this is a spectrum—but see if you can determine which category best fits.

Some folks object to categorizing characters in this way. “My character is a unique individual,” they say. “I can’t fit them neatly into a box.” Keep in mind, this is not an exact science and a character might be relatable in some respects but aspirational in others. The thing is, if we can fit our character into one of these two broad categories, then it makes it all the more straightforward to figure out how that character should change.

Of course, it’s a little reductive to pile characters into one of two categories, but when we know whether our character is relatable or aspirational, we know what direction their change needs to take. A relatable character will have to rise up and do something extraordinary, while an aspirational character needs to show their humanity. Having an overall sense of which type of character you have will give you an idea for how to craft that character’s emotional journey.

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: Craft a Compelling Main Character appeared first on DIY MFA.

Mapping Out the Calendar

Before I set goals, I do a calendar exercise where I put a copy of the upcoming year’s calendar all on one page. Each row represents a month, and the numbers in that row are the individual days. Using a marker or highlighter (or a more high-tech option, an Apple pencil and app called Paper), I block off windows of time that I need for various projects. I also color-code things so that each type of DIY MFA project (workshops, courses, HUB) gets a different color. This way I can see at a glance where my calendar is already full and where I have space to play.

I used to do this exercise on paper with different colored markers, but nowadays I use the more high-tech option, which makes it easy for me to edit things as plans ebb and flow throughout the year. My team and I call this the “kooky calendar” and it’s not set in stone, it gives us an overall roadmap for the year ahead so we have a general sense of what’s happening and when.

Climbing the Mountain

I like to think of writing books as being like climbing a mountain. Now, truth be told, I’ve never scaled a major mountain myself (the most I’ve done is hike up to the top of a small hill near campus when I was in college). Still, I think the analogy holds true. When you think about a big project—like climbing a mountain—there are a couple of different considerations.

Choose the Right Mountain

Your mountain is your “big vision” and the first thing you have to do is make sure you’re climbing the right mountain. After all, it does you no good to scale Everest if what you really wanted to do was reach the top of Kilimanjaro. The same thing is true with a big project. You have to make sure you’re tackling the right project, and for the right reasons. Writing a book is a big project, one that should not be taken on out of obligation or guilt. If you want to write a book, you need to want to write that book.

You also want to make sure you’re writing the right kind of book for you. Sure, it’s important to consider the market and what may or may not sell, but if you write a book solely based on market trends, you are fighting a losing battle. First off, things that are trending now won’t be trending two or three years from now (when your book finally hits the shelves). Plus, you have to live with your book for a long time, reading and rereading it throughout the drafting and revision process. If you don’t love the project, it’s going to be painful.

Plant the Flag

When people climb mountains and they get to the top, what do they do? They plant a flag to signal that they were there, that they reached the peak. Planting a flag is a symbol that you’ve conquered one mountain and are ready to pursue the next goal.

Writing a book is very similar. It’s important to have a symbol, something that signals that you’ve reached your goal and are ready to move onto the next thing. This plant-the-flag moment is going to be different for every writer. For one it might be holding a printed copy of the book in their hand. For another, it might be doing their first author signing. For still another it might be getting an award.

Regardless of what that plant-the-flag moment is, it should be a tangible, concrete event. Something that you can point to and say, “Yes! I did that.”

Determine the Milestones

The milestones are the big phases of your larger project, kind of like the places you set up camp when you scale a big mountain. You don’t try to climb the whole thing bottom to top, you just focus on getting to the next place where you’ll set up camp for the night. In terms of goal setting, basically you take your larger project and break it down into three-to-five overarching steps. For example, if your goal is to write and traditionally publish a novel, your milestones might be:

1. Finish a rough draft.
2. Do revisions.
3. Query agents.
4. Go through the publisher’s editorial process.
5. Launch the book.

These are not small action steps, but larger sub-projects leading to your big vision of writing and publishing your book. It’s important to break the big vision into smaller milestones because it makes the overall project feel more manageable. After all, “write and publish a book” can feel overwhelming to many writers, but finishing a draft—though still a big task—can feel a little less daunting.

Still, it’s important to recognize that these milestones are not small steps that can get done in a day. Rather, they are sub-projects that might take weeks or months to complete. This is why we must break our milestones down into action steps.

Break Things into Action Steps

Here is where the rubber meets the road. The key to completing your milestones (and thereby also reaching your big vision) is to break those milestones down into manageable action steps. These should be bite-sized steps that you can start and finish in one sitting. The idea is for you to feel that sense of accomplishment when you complete an action step. This is why action steps should be small, concrete, and easy to complete.

For example, let’s suppose your milestone is “finish a rough draft.” Unless you’re incredibly prolific (or are willing to sacrifice your sleep and sanity), you won’t be able to finish a draft in a day. But what you can do is break that draft down into manageable chunks.

Let’s suppose you can easily write 1,000 words per weekday. That means that in one week you’ll have 5,000 words. If a typical novel is 80,000 words, then it’s just simple math: 80,000 divided by 5,000 is 16. This means it will take you 16 weeks of writing (or a little under four months) to complete your draft. Then, all you have to do is stick to the program and knock out those 1,000 daily words.

Or as another example, let’s imagine you’re gearing up for your book launch and you want to weave podcast appearances into your launch strategy. First you may want to do some research on how to give good podcast interviews. (Here’s a post that walks you through the before, during, and after.) Next, you need to make a list of potential podcasts you’ll want to pitch. Making the list might be quick, but researching the various shows may take more time, so you may want to break that task into small batches of 2-3 podcasts.

After that, you need to start pitching. One action step might be to write a pitch letter template. (While you’ll want to personalize each pitch, it can help to have a template to work from.) Then you’ll need to start sending out pitches, one at a time.

When it comes to tracking complex action steps, I’m a big fan of using project management software. Currently, my team uses a program called Asana. It’s a great piece of software and has a lot of bells and whistles, but for many writers it’s likely much more than you need. Other software I’ve used in the past is Trello and ToDoist (both of which offer free plans). For many, even just a simple spreadsheet tracking daily word count can be sufficient. The point is, that it’s incredibly easy to lose track of how much progress you’ve made if you don’t keep a written record. So, find a way to record your progress and keep track of how far you’ve come.

Here’s a diagram showing the big vision broken down into milestones and then further separated into action steps:

What If You Hate to Set Goals?

Many writers—particularly “pantsers” who write by the seat of their pants—tend to resist goal setting. They want to throw themselves into their projects and write with abandon, not worrying about where that project might lead.

This is all well and good, and some creative exploration is important, particularly at the early stages of a career. But at some point, you’ll need to have a plan if you want to make good progress. It’s important to plan and set goals, especially if you’re juggling more than one big project at the same time.

At DIY MFA, we often have multiple projects in the hopper simultaneously. We might be gearing up to launch a workshop and have a course on the back-burner, ready to be launched soon thereafter. Plus, I often have multiple writers I’m working with one-on-one, and we have regular “maintenance work” we need to keep up with, like producing these Writer Fuel newsletters and the subsequent posts on our website.

Without setting goals, it’s hard to tell what’s important and will make the most impact, versus what’s just urgent and needs to get done right away. There’s a concept in time management called the Eisenhower Matrix, which looks at projects in terms of their importance and urgency.

Things that are neither important nor urgent can be removed from your task list altogether. Similarly, things that are urgent but not necessarily important can get delegated. The problem is, we often conflate urgency with importance and we’ll get tied up doing unimportant-but-urgent tasks when we should be focusing on the tasks that really matter.

This is where things get tricky. The temptation is to swat flies and focus all our energy on the urgent tasks that need to be done right now. But what about those important long-term tasks? They may not be urgent right this second, but they are often the things that move us closer to our goals.

Writing a book is an important-but-not-urgent task. Unless you’re under contract and on a deadline, you probably don’t have anyone waiting with bated breath for you to finish your manuscript. The task may not have an immediate deadline and it’s up to you to keep moving the ball down the field. With important-but-not-urgent tasks, the key is to schedule the time. You have to make sure you carve out room in your schedule and break that big project into small, manageable tasks so you can. Get. It. Done.

This is why goal setting matters. Without goals, we don’t know what tasks are important and what tasks are just urgent. Goal setting allows us to see the difference.

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: Set Goals the DIY MFA Way appeared first on DIY MFA.

Spoiler Alert! Okay, I always have to do one of these spoiler alert warnings, because the last thing I want is to ruin a book or movie for someone else. So consider this your spoiler warning. If you haven’t watched Die Hard (for shame!) go stream it now.

Okay, let’s dive into our analysis. But first, here’s a quick diagram showing the key components of the three-act structure. For an in-depth look at the three-act structure and how it works, check out this article on our website.

ACT 1: On Christmas Eve, NYPD officer John McClane arrives in LA to see his estranged wife, Holly. They’re still married, but his wife has moved to the West Coast for a fancy job and has taken the kids with her. McClane gets picked up in a limo by a driver called Argyle who takes him to Nakatomi Plaza. When they get to Nakatomi Plaza, Argyle offers to stay and wait for McClane, in case the reunion with his wife doesn’t go well and he needs a ride elsewhere. Let’s run through the five promises.

CHARACTER: John McClane is your typical tough guy action hero character. He’s a great cop and the kind of person you want to have on your side in a crisis, but when it comes to matters of the heart, he’s a bit clueless.

VOICE: Since it’s a film, we don’t really have a voice per se, but we do have a mood. It starts out very Christmas-y with holiday music, decorations, and people having fun at the Christmas party… but we get the uneasy feeling that something evil is brewing. Even the music in some spots turns a bit dark. We also see snippets of the bad guys starting to put their plan into action.

WORLD: With the exception of a couple of short scenes, the bulk of the movie takes place in Nakatomi Plaza, a large, fancy office building in Century City. At the start of the movie, the employees of the Nakatomi Corporation are having their Christmas party.

PROBLEM: McClane’s wife has moved across the country, but he’s a New York cop through and through. How can they possibly make this relationship work? When McClane arrives at Nakatomi Plaza, he discovers his wife has been using her maiden name (Holly Gennaro), further cementing that their relationship is on the rocks.

EVENT: Upon arriving at Nakatomi Plaza, McClane goes up to his wife’s office. He meets his wife and one of her coworkers, Harry Ellis, who brags about the Rolex Holly got from the company as a holiday present. McClane washes up, takes off his shoes and squishes the carpet beneath his feet, making “fists with [his] toes.” (This is something a fellow passenger on his plane recommended to feel better after a long flight.)

PIVOT POINT 1:  Thieves—who behave like terrorists—enter the building and take all the Nakatomi employees hostage, including McClane’s wife. McClane is still in the bathroom and when he hears the commotion, he manages to stay hidden and escape to another floor. At first he’s unsure of what to do—after all, he’s a lone, unarmed cop while the bad guys all have machine guns pointed at the hostages—but then he has an idea. If he pulls the fire alarm, he’ll also summon the cavalry because the fire department will have to respond. He pulls the alarm, thereby alerting the bad guys to his presence.

ACT 2:  The bad guys manage to convince the emergency responders that there is nothing wrong and they turn back. Now criminal mastermind Hans Gruber and his goons know that someone is there in the building with them and the cat-and-mouse game begins. Throughout Act 2 McClane manages to hold his own against the bad guys. He sneaks into various places, trying to collect as much intel as he can about them.

One of the things that keeps the story moving throughout Act 2 is the supporting cast, which becomes increasingly more important as the story evolves. Let’s take a closer look at the supporting characters who come into play in Act 2.

HANS GRUBER & HIS CREW:  The most significant supporting character in the story is our villain, Hans Gruber. We don’t know much about Hans except that he’s a criminal mastermind and his focus is 100% on getting the job done. He doesn’t have any grand political purpose—all he wants is to steal the bearer bonds that are in the vault at Nakatomi Plaza, and he will do whatever it takes to make that happen.

Throughout Act 2, he continually sends one or more of his goons after McClane, but McClane thwarts them and starts to pick them off one by one. In addition to decimating the ranks of the bad guys, he also managed to take a radio (so he can now communicate with the outside world) as well as a machine gun and other supplies.

At one point (late in Act 2), Hans separates from his men and goes to the roof to check on some explosives. While he’s there, he comes across McClane and pretends he’s a hostage who also managed to escape. He and McClane talk for a bit and McClane gives him a gun, at which point he turns on McClane and tries to shoot him. But McClane has tricked him and the gun isn’t loaded. Hans manages to escape when his men arrive and go after McClane. They shoot through glass partitions leaving shattered fragments everywhere, forcing McClane to walk over them in his bare feet to get away.

HOLLY GENNARO: While she is captured by Hans Gruber and his men, Holly Gennaro (McClane’s wife) is not particularly active, but she does take on an important role. After Hans kills the office head, Mr. Takagi, she becomes a leader of sorts among the hostages, negotiating with Hans for certain necessities. She also keeps her identity as John McClane’s wife a secret because if Hans is aware of their relationship, he could use her to get to McClane.

AL POWELL: Perhaps the most important new character in Act 2 is Al, a sergeant who gets called in to Nakatomi Plaza to check things out. At first, when he gets there it seems like everything is fine, but then McClane gets his attention by dropping the corpse of a bad guy onto his car. McClane and Al form an alliance as they talk over the radio. Al becomes a liaison between McClane and the outside world. We later learn that Al refuses to pull his gun on anyone because he once shot someone by mistake. 

ARGYLE: We don’t see much of Argyle throughout the beginning of Act 2, but periodically we get snippets of him in his limo, listening to music and talking to his girlfriend on the phone. At first, he is completely oblivious to what is happening in the building above the garage. It is only when he sees a news report about Nakatomi Plaza on the limo TV that he realizes what is going on. Unfortunately, he can’t get out of the garage because all the gates are closed, so he quietly waits in the limo.

MIDPOINT: The police finally realize there’s something serious going on. The deputy chief arrives with the SWAT team and they prepare to attack the building. Both Al and McClane know that an attack would be a disaster because the criminals are too well-armed. The deputy chief refuses to listen and the SWAT team attacks anyway. They get completely destroyed by the criminals and in the middle of the fight, McClane asks Hans to let the SWAT team pull back but Hans orders his men to fire again.

McClane is furious. He takes some explosives he got off one of the criminals and builds a makeshift bomb, throwing it down an elevator shaft. It creates a massive explosion and kills two of the criminals. For a moment it seems like McClane has had a small victory, but when he calls on the radio, the Deputy Chief gets angry at him.

This midpoint is an example of a temporary triumph. The character has a moment of victory where it seems like they’ve gotten what they want, but that triumph is short-lived. In this case, because it’s an action movie, we don’t have much of a moment of self-reflection. The emphasis is on the temporary triumph and we get right back to the action afterwards. 

PIVOT POINT 2: This plot point occurs over the course of a series of tightly woven scenes. McClane is wounded and his feet are bleeding from the broken glass. He and Al talk over the radio and Al confesses to him why he had a desk job. This sequence of scenes is a moment of vulnerability for both Al and McClane. At this point, McClane is at his lowest and it looks like the thieves have won. In his darkest moment, McClane asks Al to give his wife a message:

“She was the best thing that ever happened to a bum like me.  She’s heard me say I love you a thousand times, but she never got to hear this…Honey…I’m sorry.”

This is just about as classic a Dark Night of the Soul monologue if there ever was one. After giving Al this message, in true action hero fashion, McClane rallies his strength and continues to go after Hans and his crew.

Interestingly enough, McClane and Al have opposite trajectories for their stories and they are almost mirror images of each other as characters. Al is a super-supportive husband, stopping at the convenience store on his way home to pick up snacks for his pregnant wife. At the same time, because of his accident on the job, he’s afraid to draw his gun on anyone and needs to regain his confidence as a cop. McClane, on the other hand, has the cop thing down and is taking on a building full of criminals all by himself. His problem is that he needs to be more supportive of his wife. It’s no surprise that both Al and McClane verbalize their weaknesses during this sequence of scenes at the second pivot point, or Dark Night of the Soul.

ACT 3: As the crisis for Act 3 builds, we get more and more quick cuts from one scene to another. This gives us the sense that multiple things are happening at the same time. Here’s a summary:

A few of Hans’ men take the hostages up to the roof but the roof has been rigged with explosives. McClane, thinking his wife is among the hostages, heads to the roof as well. Meanwhile, Hans now has Holly and he takes her away from the roof to the (now open) vault. At the same time, a couple of Hans’ goons have been loading the bearer bonds from the vault into a truck. 

Karl, whose brother was killed earlier in the film (and now has a particular vendetta against McClane), goes after him in the stairwell to the roof and tries to kill him. He and McClane fight and it seems like Karl is dead. McClane goes to the roof in search of his wife.

McClane gets the hostages off the roof, but he’s cornered by an FBI helicopter and he knows the roof is about to blow. Just in the nick of time, he jumps off the roof tied to a fire hose and manages to break in through one of the windows on a floor below.

Just before the climax, one of the criminals takes a truck (now loaded with bearer bonds from the vault) and gets ready to get away. Argyle, who has been hanging out in the garage all this time, crashes the limo into the truck and foils the escape.

CLIMAX: McClane comes after Hans to get his wife. He surrenders and it looks like everything is over when he pulls a concealed gun he has duct taped to his back and shoots Hans. The wounded Hans falls out a window, hanging onto Holly’s watch. He pulls a gun, trying to take Holly and McClane down with him, but McClane unlatches the watch clasp just in time and Hans falls to his death.

ENDING TYPE: This is a happy ending because McClane gets what he wants (to stop the thieves and save the hostages) and he still wants that at the end of the film.

DENOUEMENT: As McClane and his wife walk out of Nakatomi Plaza, Karl (who didn’t die previously) ambushes them and tries to kill them. Al shoots Karl and saves McClane and Holly, thus tying up the loose end of his story. Then Argyle comes tearing out of the garage and takes McClane and Holly off in the limo.

RULE OF 3: There is a Rule of 3 that spans the entire movie, starting at the beginning of Act 2 and going through to the very end. There are three instances where an individual hostage is in peril and McClane wants (or tries) to save them. The first is Mr. Takagi, who gets taken by Hans right at the start of Act 2 so that the criminals can get the code to the vault. When he doesn’t reveal the code, Hans kills him. At that point in the story, McClane has not yet pulled the fire alarm and revealed his presence to Hans and his crew. He’s furious at himself for not trying to stop Takagi’s murder but he also knows there’s nothing he could have done.

The second instance is with Harry Ellis, one of Holly’s co-workers, who tries to negotiate with Hans by saying he and McClane are old friends. In the process, Ellis gives up information to the criminals about McClane, including his name and the fact that he’s a police officer. Knowing that this is not going to end well for Ellis, McClane insists he doesn’t know him but Hans doesn’t believe it. Ellis tries to smooth-talk his way through the situation and ends up getting killed.

The third and final instance is when Holly gets taken by Hans at the end of the film. At that point, Hans has put together that Holly is McClane’s wife and he kidnaps her as added insurance so he and his crew can get away. Unlike the two previous instances where McClane was unable to save the hostage, in this case, he successfully saves his wife.

CONCLUSION: It’s indisputable that Die Hard is one of the tightest, most perfectly plotted films out there. The three acts are well-paced and the two pivot points include both external events and internal choices from the protagonist. The only thing it might be missing is that moment of introspection at the midpoint, which plays out purely as a Temporary Triumph without much self-reflection. That said, because this is a high-action film it makes sense that McClane does not have time to pause and reflect because he has to go after the bad guys and save his wife.

This film also adheres closely to Chekov’s gun, a principle in which every element must be significant to the story. Notice that not a single detail gets introduced that doesn’t have payoff later in the film. For example, the Rolex watch that we see mentioned briefly at the beginning becomes a key detail in the climax of the film. Also, Argyle, who all but disappears for most of the film, only to reappear at a key moment when one of the bad guys is about to get away and he thwarts the escape. Finally, when McClane makes “fists with [his] toes,” it means he’s barefoot when the criminals attack. This means he spends most of the film running around barefoot and later when they shoot the glass, it injures his feet. As you can see, not a single detail is added to the film that does not have follow-through later.

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 Die Hard appeared first on DIY MFA.

This past summer, I rediscovered Myst as a smartphone app (called RealMyst) and I’ve been thoroughly sucked in all over again. While the crisp graphics and immersive sounds are great for setting the tone of the game, the thing that has really captured my attention this time around is the storytelling and world-building.

If you’ve ever wondered what makes a story world come to life, it’s a number of different things. The primary element, though, is that sense of the world being three-dimensional and truly immersive. The minute a reader (or gamer) becomes aware that they’re in a story world, it loses its magic and the spell is broken.

What can we learn about storytelling and immersive world-building from Myst? Here are three things. Note: If you’ve never played the game and you think you might want to in the future, be forewarned—there are spoilers ahead.

1) There has to be something at stake.

The game starts with us materializing on an island with a series of buildings on it. The buildings range in architecture from a classical style with imposing stone columns to more scrappy and makeshift structures like the wooden cabin at the far end of the island. As we meander around getting the lay of the land, we suddenly discover a note left on a patch of grass, giving us the first set of instructions. This note tells us to go to a specific place on the island and explains how we can decode a secret hidden message left there for us by one of the characters in the game.

When we decode this message, immediately we discover that there is something deeply wrong on this island. The creator of the island world, Atrus, has been trapped and he suspects his sons are the culprits. Now it’s up to us to assemble all the clues and free him. But there’s a catch. In the library, we find two books—one red, one blue—and when we open them, we see garbled video messages from what appear to be Atrus’ sons. Our mission in the game is to figure out how to free Atrus without accidentally freeing one or both of his malevolent sons.

In this way, Myst puts the stakes right up front in the story. We know that freeing Atrus is the goal, but we also know that bad things can happen if we inadvertently free his sons instead. And if we don’t figure out all the clues, Atrus will be trapped where he is forever.

Examine your own writing: Are the stakes clear? Are they buried in the narrative, or are they right up front in the story?

2) A story world is not static.

The way Myst is designed, you can travel to and explore the different Ages in any order. And yet, there is also a logical progression to the game. This progression gives the game a sense of story—an arc—and if you unlock a particular achievement too early (like accidentally finding the white book page before you’ve visited all the Ages) the game will not make sense. There is an internal logic to how the story is put together and most players will go through the steps in a particular order.

First and foremost, players tend to focus their attention on the main Myst Island. They find the hidden message right at the start of the game (establishing the stakes) and then they explore the island and figure out how to find the Linking Books that connect to the various Ages.

Most players will solve the puzzles leading to a specific Linking Book and then they will go to that Age and explore it. Once in that Age, they will solve multiple puzzles there before coming back to Myst Island. Once the player has explored all four Ages (Mechanical, Selenitic, Stoneship, and Channelwood), they will have enough information so that they can solve the final puzzle and release Atrus from where he is trapped.

While the graphics and sounds of Myst make the various worlds (or Ages) come to life, what makes them interesting is that there is activity. There’s something to do. The world of the game is not static. The player can make choices and change things as they solve the various puzzles. They have agency, just as the character in a story must also have agency.

Speaking of characters, while we don’t interact with many characters throughout the game and most of the adventures are solitary, we do feel the characters’ presence in the world. When we visit the various Ages, they feel lived-in, as though the characters might walk in at any moment. This lived-in quality makes the world feel dynamic and interesting because it puts characters at the center, rather than emphasizing the setting for the sake of itself.

Look closely at your story: Is there a clear arc or path through the story? Are the characters at the center of the world? If so, do they have agency, or are they just buffeted to and fro by story events?

3) The world must be a multisensory experience.

Perhaps Myst’s greatest claim to fame when it was first released was the quality of the graphics. I remember playing a demo version of the game in a computer store and when I got to that place where you click the painting in the library and it swirls around and makes a bwowooo sound, my fifteen-year-old mind was blown. Clearly the graphics are an important part of making this world feel real, but the sounds are even more important.

The place where you might notice it most is in the Channelwood Age. When you’re at ground level, the background sounds are of swampy things like frogs and flowing water. Then, when you go up into the trees and you’re walking along the canopy, you can hear birds chirping and wind blowing as well as the creaking wood of the bridges between the tree houses.

Sounds play an especially important role in the Selenitic Age, where you need to use different sounds in order to solve the puzzles. To get into the Selenitic Age, you need to decode a puzzle using the keys of an organ inside the spaceship. Then in the Selenitic Age, you have to use a combination of different sounds in the right order to open up the doorway leading to the spaceship back. Finally, once inside the return spaceship, you have to use sounds to navigate your way through a maze, eventually leading you to the Linking Book that brings you back to Myst Island.

In some areas of Myst there are only background sounds (as in the Channelwood and Selenitic Ages), but in other areas, there is also the use of a soundtrack to set the scene. For example, some of the buildings on Myst Island have music that plays when we go inside. There is an oboe theme when you go into the observatory and there’s a pulsing, almost metallic song when you climb into the tower. These snippets of soundtrack all add to the immersive experience of the game.

The key to this game’s success is that it really makes you feel like you are in that world, and a large part of that is that it doesn’t just rely on fancy graphics—it also uses sounds.

Consider your story’s world: Do you create a multi-sensory experience for your reader? Where can you tap into the five senses to add more dimension to the world? 

At the end of the day, world-building is not just about creating a nice setting for your story. The world needs to feel almost like a character in its own right. A story’s world is like a living, breathing organism that can change as the characters interact with it. This is not unlike the way the Ages of Myst change as the player discovers clues and unlocks various puzzles.

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: World-Building Lessons from the Video Game Myst appeared first on DIY MFA.

Fantasy

This genre relies heavily on creating a detailed world with intricate magical systems. World-building for this genre includes broad topics like the actual geography of the world as well as the structures and systems at play within it. This means considering the topography of your story world space. Are there lakes and rivers or mountains? Is there a desert? What does the terrain look like?

Any fantasy world that involves magic also needs to consider how that magic works. Does it involve wands or incantations, or is the magic something that people can wield simply by thinking about it? Also, who gets to have magic and why? Is magic associated with status in any way?

You also need to consider any magical creatures who might inhabit the world. What kinds of creatures are they? Are you basing them off of existing mythologies, or are you inventing creatures all your own? Also, are there ordinary creatures with extraordinary abilities, like the talking animals in the Narnia series?

Science Fiction

Whenever there is science and technology involved in a story, we have to consider where that tech came from and who gets access to it. Is technology something that is readily available to most everyone (as in the Star Trek universe) or is it something that only the people in power can have at their fingertips? You also need to consider whether technology is self-aware or not. Is it merely a tool used by humans and other individuals, or is it more “alive” like the Matrix in the Matrix trilogy or Skynet in the Terminator films?

When you consider world-building in sci-fi, you may also want to think about social structures like class or other societal groups. Are some people the “haves” and others the “have nots”? You also need to consider whether there are certain components of the world that relate to societal groups, for example districts in The Hunger Games trilogy that represent different social classes.

Finally, you also need to consider currency and the use of money. In a future world, has money become obsolete? If not, you need to think about what people use as a form of currency. Is it coins and paper money that we are used to, or is it something different?

Historical Fiction

This genre also tends to lean heavily on world-building, only now we are not imagining a fantasy or futuristic world, but crafting a story within a historical time period. Depending on the time period and the nature of your story, the scope of that world can vary wildly. If you are in a time period (say, the Middle Ages) where characters aren’t aware of several continents, the world-building will be more local, focusing on their immediate surroundings. If, on the other hand, you are writing about a big, sweeping war, the scope of the story will likely be far more global.

As with fantasy and sci-fi, historical fiction also must concern itself with certain mechanics of the world. Here are some questions to consider:

• What technology is available (or unavailable) in this particular time period?
• How do people communicate with each other over long distances, if at all?
• What does currency look like in this time period and how important is money to the way people navigate that world?
• What about class and societal groups—how do they impact the structures of the world?
• Who has the power in this time period and how does that power impact how the world operates?

Mystery

Depending on the type of mystery you are writing, there will be different types of world-building involved. If you’re writing a cozy mystery, then the world-building will concern itself primarily with the small town environment where your story takes place. This means most of the focus will be on your sleuth’s immediate surroundings. That said, many cozy mysteries often have themes to them: a hobby or activity that anchors the series. For instance, maybe the sleuth works at a yarn shop or has an interest in pottery making. These elements can become avenues for the writer to build out the story’s world and make it more intriguing to the reader.

If you’re writing a police procedural, then the world-building is completely different. In this case, the focus of the story is the investigation and the world-building is all about the world of law enforcement. In this case the world-building not only centers around the physical spaces of the story (precinct, crime lab, courtroom, etc.) but also the process of solving the case. The way the investigators pursue the criminal is all part of the world-building.

Thriller

In order to differentiate from other similar stories, a lot of thrillers tend to focus around a particular subject or location. For example, legal thrillers are set in the world of courtrooms and juries, giving us a window into that environment. Medical thrillers are set in hospitals or doctors’ offices and give us a behind-the-scenes look into that profession. Some thrillers emphasize a location, like a national park or particular city. And some thrillers take place in the world of international espionage.

Some thrillers or horror stories emphasize a specific locale, like a haunted house or a spooky cemetery. In these cases, the world-building is all about elevating the mood and making the reader feel that slow creep of fear as the events of the story unfold in that scary location.

Commercial or Literary Fiction

It might seem strange to think about world-building in our contemporary world, but it is still important. Think, for example, about the fashion world we see in The Devil Wears Prada, or the high-class stay-at-home-mom social circle we see in Happy and You Know It. If your story focuses around a particular job or industry, you need to develop that world the way you would world-build for any other genre.

This is because readers read not just as an escape, but as a way of satisfying their curiosity. They want to know what it’s like to work in a high-end restaurant kitchen or live in an exotic city. They’re also curious about seemingly mundane things. To a person who has never ridden a subway, that world of underground tunnels can be as exotic as a faraway locale.

With contemporary fiction, you don’t need to worry too much about certain types of world-building. We know how money works in the present day, and we know what cars, cell phones, and computers are. The one thing to be careful about is when it comes to technology, if it’s not central to your story, you may want to use a light touch. This is because technology will date your book. No one listens to CDs anymore or watches VHS tapes. If we read a book from the 80s today, details like this would make the book feel dated. So, be careful about going too heavy on the technology, or in a few years your story might seem out of date.

Romance

Just because it’s not obviously heavy on world-building doesn’t mean that romance is off the hook. Even if the romance occurs in a completely contemporary setting, there is still plenty of room to craft that story’s world. As with some thrillers and cozy mysteries, romance often has some element that holds the series together. Maybe it’s a particular sport that one of the characters play, or maybe it’s a specific location like a resort. Regardless, there’s often something that anchors the series and makes it feel unique. Whatever that theme may be, there is plenty of opportunity for world-building around it.

When it comes to world-building, romance tends to operate like commercial or literary fiction. People might read romance because they’re looking for that Happily Ever After, but they may also be curious about the world where the story takes place. This is why it’s important not to neglect world-building, even when that world may seem obvious or mundane.

World-building is an essential part of storytelling. In fact, I believe in a three-pronged system, where character, plot, and world are all essential components of a story. In order for something to be truly a story, it must have all three elements present, and if one of them is missing, the story falls apart.

Consider, for example, Dante’s Paradiso. Up until that point in the Divine Comedy, we have had concrete settings like the nine circles of the Inferno and the spiraling mountain of Purgatorio. When we finally get to Paradiso, the world becomes suddenly amorphous. It’s hard even to picture what that world looks like. It’s as though the characters are just suspended in mid-air. We have no sense of place, no grounding structure that allows us to imagine what this space looks like. This is why, in my opinion, Paradiso is the least effective installment of the Divine Comedy.

World-building is crucial if you want your story to come to life. Without it, the story will feel ungrounded and the narrative will fall flat. Whether your story’s world is elaborate and detailed or it is more subtle and subdued, it is still an essential part of your story and deserves to be crafted with care.

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: World-Building and Genres appeared first on DIY MFA.

Spoiler Alert! Obviously, we can’t talk about the structure of a book without mentioning the ending and giving away spoilers. Given how long this book has been around, I think the statute of limitations on spoilers has long since passed. So, if you haven’t read this book and you want to do so without spoilers, stop reading now. Go read the book first, then come back to this newsletter for this deep dive into its story structure.

Okay, let’s dive into our analysis of Pride and Prejudice.

ACT 1: At the beginning of the book, we see what normal life is like for the Bennet family. We see them interacting with each other, going to events, meeting friends, etc. The five promises are very clear (though because the chapters are short, they tend to span more than just the first chapter).

CHARACTER: Elizabeth Bennet is our protagonist, though she does not appear until Chapter 2. (She is mentioned in Chapter 1 in a conversation between her parents, but does not actually appear as a participant in the scene until the following chapter.) This might be a similar situation to our The Wainscott Weasel example from my last newsletter, where the character is more reserved so it makes sense for the author to hold back and introduce them a little later into the story. That said, because the chapters are so short, it doesn’t feel like we have to wait very long to meet Elizabeth. In the same vein, Mr. Darcy—the other member of the central couple—does not appear until Chapter 3.

VOICE: The voice of the narrator is very clear and opinionated. Just look at the opening line: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” Right away we see the irony in that statement. It’s not the single man who is in want of a wife, but the other way around: a wannabe wife is in want of a single man with a good fortune.

WORLD: This story takes place in the English countryside of the early 1800s. While the first two chapters are mostly conversation between the characters, presumably taking place in a parlor of sorts, by the time we reach Chapter 3 we are out in the world at an assembly where the characters are interacting with each other and their friends. The story takes place in various different settings, from the great outdoors to the simple parlor of the Bennet estate, Longbourn. It also includes visits to lavish estates like Rosings Park (home of the antagonist, Lady Catherine) and Pemberley (Mr. Darcy’s home).

PROBLEM: There is a serious problem that overshadows the entire story and this is that the Bennet estate is entailed away from the female line and the women of the family are not permitted to inherit the land. Because Mr. Bennet has five daughters and no sons, the estate will go to his closest male relative: Mr. Collins. If Mr. Bennet were to die, his wife and daughters would be out of house and home… unless one of the daughters were to marry well. This is why Mrs. Bennet is so desperate to make sure at least one of her daughters marries a man of means. Keep in mind: while this problem may not be the central conflict of the book (MDQ:, Will Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy get together?) it does relate to that conflict and raises the stakes of the story.

EVENT: The event that kicks off the story is that a young, rich, and single man (Mr. Bingley) has moved into Netherfield, the estate next door. This event relates directly to the problem mentioned above. Mrs. Bennet is desperate to marry off at least one of her daughters and conveniently a young man of means has just come to the neighborhood.

PIVOT POINT 1: Elizabeth first meets Mr. Darcy at an assembly in Chapter 3, where he snubs her, saying: “She is tolerable: but not handsome enough to tempt me.” This is the external event that kicks off the first pivot point of the novel. The internal choice, however, does not come until Chapter 7, when her sister Jane falls ill while visiting the Bingleys. Immediately, Elizabeth pulls up her skirts and goes on foot to tend to her sister, “crossing field after field at a quick pace, jumping over stiles and springing over puddles…” Up until now she has been forced into Mr. Darcy’s presence simply because they are at the same social gatherings. This is the moment when, for the sake of her sister, she chooses to put herself in his presence even though she dislikes him.

ACT 2: This act can be summed up by two rules of three: “Boys, Boys, Boys” and “Road Trip!” Let’s examine how each rule of three works.

BOYS, BOYS, BOYS: There are three key suitors who pursue Elizabeth throughout the story. The first is Mr. Collins, her distant cousin who is set to inherit her father’s land. He tries to court her and when that fails, he turns around and marries her best friend, Charlotte Lucas. (So classy!)

The second suitor doesn’t really go anywhere, and this is Mr. Wickham. He starts out as a visitor in the nearby town of Meryton, then joins the militia. While he is staying in Meryton, he and Elizabeth cross paths multiple times and he confides in her, telling her the sad story of how Mr. Darcy wronged him. While Elizabeth is certainly attracted to him, this flirtation doesn’t go anywhere and eventually the militia leaves to go to Brighton, Mr. Wickham going with them.

The third suitor is Mr. Darcy himself. While Elizabeth is not interested in him in the slightest, he begins to develop feelings for her. At the center of the book he proposes (the worst proposal of all time) and she turns him down. He sends her a letter explaining himself and she begins to think maybe she misjudged him. They cross paths again later and his personality is much softer so Elizabeth starts to develop feelings for him. Eventually, they fall in love and get married.

As with any Rule of 3, the first two elements are similar—in this case they are relationships that don’t work out. The third element is different. The relationship takes a different trajectory, starting with animosity and ending with the two characters falling in love.

ROAD TRIP! There are also (sort of) three road trips that anchor Act 2 in Pride and Prejudice. The first is a trip that her sister Jane takes to London in the hopes of running into Mr. Bingley. The trip ends in failure, with Mr. Bingley’s sister snubbing Jane, leaving her demoralized and convinced that Mr. Bingley does not love her.

The second trip is one that Elizabeth takes to visit her friend Charlotte Lucas (now married to Mr. Collins). While there, she has the opportunity to visit Rosings Park, home of the pompous and imposing Lady Catherine and her sniveling daughter. Mr. Darcy also arrives at Rosings and it is on this trip that he makes the failed proposal.

The third trip is the one that Elizabeth takes to the Lakes with her aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. There they take a tour of Pemberley, Mr. Darcy’s home, thinking that he is away in London, only to have him arrive and surprise them. It is on this trip that Elizabeth’s opinions of Mr. Darcy begin to change.

Note: simultaneous with Elizabeth’s trip to the Lakes is her sister Lydia’s trip to Brighton at the invitation of Colonel Foster’s wife. While on this trip, she runs away with Mr. Wickam, thus cutting Elizabeth’s trip to the Lakes short. So, while there are actually four separate trips that take place in Act 2, they happen in three separate chunks of time, the third being different because that is where most of the drama happens.

MIDPOINT: A series of scenes make up the midpoint, starting with Mr. Darcy’s failed proposal, followed by his letter explaining himself, and culminating in that moment where Elizabeth says her famous line: “Till this moment, I never knew myself.” That line is in itself the embodiment of the classic midpoint. The main character looks inward and realizes they don’t like what they see and makes a choice as to how to move forward. That is precisely what happens when Elizabeth reads Mr. Darcy’s letter.

It is important also to note that this midpoint is what I like to call a False Failure. Most midpoints are a moment where it appears that the character is getting what they want, only to realize that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. The latter type of midpoint is called a Temporary Triumph. A more rare alternative is the False Failure, where it seems like things have failed for the protagonist (in this case, her choice to reject the proposal and her realization that she has misjudged Mr. Darcy) and yet that supposed “failure” actually opens the door for the story to move in a more positive direction.

If Mr. Darcy hadn’t given the world’s worst possible proposal, they might not have argued and he never would have written his letter explaining his side of the situation. Without the letter, Elizabeth would never have had that moment of self-reflection and she would not have begun to have a change of heart toward Mr. Darcy. By that same token, if Elizabeth had not told Mr. Darcy off during the proposal, he likely would not have realized how big a jerk he was and he may not have mended his ways. For these reasons, the failed proposal was a necessary step in order for the relationship between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth to move forward.

PIVOT POINT 2: Elizabeth receives a letter (external event) from her sister Jane telling her that Lydia (their youngest sister) has eloped with Mr. Wickham. Worse yet, it appears Mr. Wickham has no intention of marrying Lydia, bringing tremendous shame to the family. Mr. Darcy walks in on her moment of shock, just after she has read the letter, and she confides in him (internal choice) and tells him the whole story. He then leaves abruptly and she thinks that he is rejecting her, wanting to have nothing to do with her now that her family is in disgrace. As we later find out, he’s actually leaving in order to try to help.

ACT 3: Elizabeth and her aunt and uncle return to Longbourn and the uncle continues on to London to help with the search for Lydia. It takes a while before they hear anything, but eventually, they learn that her uncle has discovered Lydia and Mr. Wickham, and that they will marry in London. Of course, the truth is that the uncle must have had to bribe Mr. Wickham with a sizable sum of money in order to convince him to marry Lydia.

Once the marriage has taken place, Lydia and Mr. Wickham stop at Longbourn for a visit on their way to Newcastle (where he will now be stationed). During that visit, Lydia lets slip that Mr. Darcy was present at her wedding. Elizabeth questions her aunt about it and discovers that Mr. Darcy was the one who set the whole marriage up and dealt with all the money. A few days after the situation with Lydia is resolved, Mr. Bingley proposes to Jane and it now looks like things are going in a good direction for the Bennet family.

CLIMAX: Yet there is still unfinished business. Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth still have not gotten together, and one major obstacle stands in their way: Lady Catherine. As Mr. Darcy’s aunt, Lady Catherine objects to the possible match and she comes to Longbourn to convey her displeasure. Of course, at this point Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy are not engaged, and Elizabeth isn’t even sure if Mr. Darcy likes her, given how he behaved back when she first told him about the letter. Still, Lady Catherine’s accusations get under her skin and Elizabeth stands up for herself, refusing to back down and comply with Lady Catherine’s demand that should Mr. Darcy propose she would not accept. Instead she says her other famous line: “I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.” This moment is the climax and it is important because it is the moment when Elizabeth stands up for her own happiness.

DENOUEMENT: Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth go for a walk and find themselves separated from the rest of the group. They speak at length about their previous misunderstandings and (it is presumed) Mr. Darcy proposes. It is important to note that the proposal itself does not appear on the page, nor do effusive declarations of emotion. Instead, the proposal is understood based on what we see in the chapter that immediately follows, where Elizabeth confesses to Jane that she is engaged to Mr. Darcy. After that we also see a scene where Mr. Bennet questions Elizabeth on her choice. It is interesting that while Elizabeth does declare her feelings for Mr. Darcy in that scene, we see it only in exposition. We never see it in actual dialogue.

“Elizabeth, still more affected, was earnest and solemn in her reply; and, at length, by repeated assurances that Mr. Darcy was really the object of her choice, by explaining the gradual change which her estimation of him had undergone, relating her absolute certainty that his affection was not the work of a day, but had stood the test of many months’ suspense, and enumerating with energy all his good qualities, she did conquer her father’s incredulity, and reconcile him to the match.”

It’s significant that when the professions of love go wrong between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy—as in the failed proposal—we see the play-by-play through dialogue. Now in the denouement when they finally get together, all of the lovey-dovey moments happen either off the page or in exposition.

This makes sense because the story isn’t really about whether Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy get together. Yes, it seems to be so on the surface, but if we dig below the surface, we discover that the story is really about Elizabeth’s pursuit of happiness. She starts out thinking that her happiness will come from being single and eventually discovers that her happiness will truly come from being married to Mr. Darcy. The author drives that point home when Elizabeth writes to her aunt and tells her: “I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh.” This shows us just how profound Elizabeth’s newfound happiness is.

ENDING TYPE: As I mentioned in my last newsletter, there are four possible endings in a story and they depend on the answers to two questions: Does the character get what they want? And do they still want it?

If we look at Pride and Prejudice on the surface level, it appears we have a Change of Heart Ending because Elizabeth starts out wanting nothing more than to stay single. She dislikes Mr. Darcy and rejects his proposal. Then, as the story evolves, she has a change of heart and ends up falling in love with him.

Yet, if we look at the story from the perspective of happiness, it turns out this is a Happy Ending (i.e. where the character gets what they want and they still want it). At the start of the book, Elizabeth believes staying single will bring her happiness, but by the end she realizes that this happiness will come from marrying Mr. Darcy. Considering how that the climax centers around Elizabeth’s pursuit of happiness, it makes sense to look at the story through that lens.

CONCLUSION: There you have it: a detailed analysis of Pride and Prejudice based on the three-act structure, and you can see how perfectly plotted this book is. There is one more detail I wanted to call your attention to: throughout the story, Elizabeth receives three proposals of marriage. The first is the horrible proposal from Mr. Collins, the second is Mr. Darcy’s failed proposal, and the third is the final, successful proposal where she gets her “happily ever after.” These proposals also form a Rule of Three where we have two proposals that are similar, both because they fail and because they happen on the page. The third proposal is successful but we don’t even see it on the page. We see the aftermath of the proposal when Elizabeth tells Jane and later speaks with her father, but the proposal itself is completely off-page. This means that there are actually three Rules of Three in the book.

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 Pride and Prejudice appeared first on DIY MFA.

To understand the three-act structure, we need first to consider its origin. Aristotle wrote about this framework in his Poetics, using it to explain specifically how Greek tragedy was put together. Over the years, many other writers and thinkers (particularly in Western culture) have expanded on this structure, applying it more broadly to all types of storytelling.

At the same time, it’s important to acknowledge that there are many cultures where the three-act structure is not the predominant form, so we need to recognize that while this framework applies to a lot of fiction, it is far from globally universal. That said, this structure is compatible with a broad range of stories across many different genres, so it is useful to understand how it works.

In fact, I’m thinking of doing a series of newsletters where I analyze different films or books according to this structure, showing just how broadly it applies. I thought for today, it would make sense to start with a discussion of what the three-act structure actually is. Then we can come back and apply it to different works in later installments.

The Three-Act Structure

When I think of the three-act structure, I use a simple formula: 3 + 2 = 1. There are three acts, plus two pivot points (where one act transitions to the next), and together these components equal one classic story structure. Most stories have three additional components: the midpoint at the center of Act 2, the climax in Act 3, and the denouement at the very end of the story. Let’s walk through these components step by step.

We begin the story in Act 1. This section needs to accomplish a couple of things. First, it must establish the status quo, where we learn what “normal” looks like in the character’s world. Think of this as being like the “before” picture in an infomercial. Without it, the “after” picture has no context and we have no basis of comparison. The same thing is true with storytelling. If we don’t establish the status quo, we have no sense for the transformation that comes later in the narrative.

Act 1 is also where you make five promises to your reader. These are: (1) a character to root for, (2) the voice of the narrative, (3) the world where the story takes place, (4) a problem, usually hinting at the central conflict, and (5) an event that prompts the story to start at that specific place and time. Most stories establish these promises within the first chapter, but there are some cases where an author might delay one or more of them to create a specific effect.

For example, in the book The Wainscott Weasel by Tor Seidler, the main character doesn’t appear until chapter 2. In fact, during the whole first chapter, the reader comes to believe that a different character might be the protagonist. It’s not until we’re deep into chapter 2 that we realize who the main character really is.

I had the pleasure of having this author as my professor in the MFA program, so when I read this book, I asked him: “What was that about? Why did you delay the appearance of that main character?” He explained that the protagonist for the story was extremely shy, and it would not have been true to his personality to put him front and center in chapter 1. Instead, it made more sense to hold him back and wait to introduce him when the story was more underway. This is an example of a story that artfully breaks one of the five promises.

When we get to the end of Act 1, we reach the first pivot point in the narrative. This is a point where an external event occurs to shake things up for the main character, and then that character must make an important internal choice. Usually, that external event is easier to spot, but the internal choice is much more important. Think of it this way: a story is not a series of things that happen to your character. It’s a series of decisions your character makes in response to these external events. If the character is just buffeted to and fro, it does not make for a compelling story. Instead, the character should have agency and should drive the story forward. In the case of this plot point, it should operate as a “point of no return,” where—once the character makes their choice—there is no way back to the way things were.

After the first pivot point, we are now firmly planted in Act 2. This is often the longest of three acts and the hardest to get through, which is why many writers call it “the muddle in the middle.” One way to help keep Act 2 moving forward is to bring new supporting characters into play or build up subplots. Think of Act 2 in the film The Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy has landed in Oz and is exploring this magical new world. Here she meets her three new travel companions: the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion. She also has several run-ins with her new nemesis, the Wicked Witch of the West. Had the film been nothing but Dorothy and Toto exploring Oz by themselves, it would have been horribly boring. Adding these supporting characters keeps Act 2 moving forward and gives the story momentum.

Another way to make progress through Act 2 is to use the Rule of Three. This technique groups similar elements together in threes. The number three is important because it is the smallest number where you can create a pattern and then break it. You can use the Rule of Three in any number of ways, for example: three supporting characters, three obstacles the protagonist faces, three different locations in the story’s world, or three significant items they discover on their journey.

The Rule of Three usually has two different flavors to it, and I call these the (1) Three Little Pigs and (2) Goldilocks. In the Three Little Pigs version, you have two similar things followed by a third that breaks the pattern. The first two pigs build their houses out of flimsy materials (straw and sticks) and the wolf easily blows them to the ground. The third house, however, is made of bricks, so it withstands the wolf’s huffing and puffing. In the Goldilocks version, you have two elements that are polar opposites of each other and a third one that is “just right.” The first two elements are similar to each other in that they are extremes, while the third element is the happy medium. When you find that Act 2 is beginning to stall, ask yourself: is there a way to use the Rule of Three to keep the momentum going?

Another important component of Act 2 is the midpoint. Often called the “mirror moment,” the midpoint is a moment of self-reflection where the protagonist looks inward and decides whether they like who they’ve become (and if not, what they’re going to do about it). The midpoint is different from the pivot points that occur where one act transitions to the next. It does not emphasize the character’s choice, but their inward state. If the character does make a choice at this juncture, it’s usually one that has to do with how they see themselves and who they want to be going forward. If the protagonist does not like who they have become, they can choose to make a change and the second half of the story becomes like a reversal—a mirror image—of the first. Not all stories have this mirror image structure, but many do have this moment of self-reflection at the midpoint.

At the end of Act 2, we come to another pivot point. Here the character comes to their lowest point, the moment where it seems like all is lost and nothing can possibly make things right. This is again a moment of choice for the protagonist, though in this case it is more subtle. The character must choose whether to continue on their current path, give up, or go in a new direction. Readers know the character is not going to give up. (It would be the world’s worst ending if they did!) Still, giving up must feel like a reasonable choice that the character could make. Just like with the first pivot point, there is usually an external event that drives this moment in the story followed by the character’s internal choice. Something must happen to make it feel like all is lost for the protagonist and then they must choose to keep going despite how bad things seem. The moment where they make that choice is often called the “dark night of the soul.”

Once we pass this second pivot point, we are solidly in Act 3 of the story. Here is where the tension rises until the story’s central conflict comes to a head at last. This moment is the climax and it is a scene (or sequence of scenes) where the major dramatic question of the story finally gets answered one way or another. The major dramatic question (or MDQ) is the question that drives the story. For example, the MDQ for Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games would be “Will Katniss survive the games?” and the MDQ for The Wizard of Oz film would be “Will Dorothy get back to Kansas?” Usually the MDQ is closely tied to the main character’s primary desire, the thing they most want in the story. Katniss wants to survive the Games and Dorothy wants to go back home, so it makes sense that the MDQs would focus on whether or not they achieve those things.

There are four possible ways in which a story can resolve at the climax, and these depend on the answers to two questions: (1) does the character get what they want? and (2) do they still want that thing? The diagram below shows the four possible endings based on the answers to these questions.

A happy ending occurs when the character gets what they want and they still want that thing (as in The Hunger Games or The Wizard of Oz). A tragic ending is when the character doesn’t get what they want, but they still want that thing (like in any Shakespearean tragedy). Where things get interesting is when the character doesn’t still want the thing they first pursued. If the character doesn’t get what they want but they don’t want it anymore, we have a “change of heart” ending (for example, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen). If the character does get what they want, but they don’t want it anymore, it’s called a “be careful what you wish for…” ending, (example: Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton). Note that this last type of ending is relatively rare in novels. Often when a character gets what they want, it happens at the midpoint of the story (often called a Temporary Triumph), and then the character has that moment of introspection and realizes maybe what they wanted wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. We’re more likely to see this scenario as an ending in short stories and novellas than in novels.

Regardless of the type of ending, the climax is the moment where the central conflict of the story resolves, and after that happens, all we have left is the denouement. I’ve written about the denouement before. It’s that “sigh of relief” after the climax, that extra scene or two that wraps things up and gives the story a sense of closure. If the story were to end right at the point of the climax, it would be extremely unsatisfying for the reader. If the job of the climax is to answer the MDQ, then the job of the denouement is to answer the question: “So what?” At this juncture in the story, the reader wants to know what the point of this whole journey was. That’s the purpose of the denouement.

I once heard a writer explain that the best story endings are both surprising and inevitable. The reader shouldn’t be able to see the ending coming from a mile away, but when it gets there, it should feel like the story couldn’t have ended any other way. Sometimes the denouement also opens the door to more possibilities for where the story could go. This is especially true with books in a series, where one book’s ending might drop hints as to where the next book might go. Still, even in a series, the story needs to have a sense of closure, with each installment feeling like it has a true ending and not leaving the reader at a cliffhanger.

There you have it: an overview of the three-act structure. If you’re someone who loves plotting your story from beginning to end, this 3 + 2 = 1 formula can give you a basic framework, but you can fill in additional details to create your own unique story. If you’re a pantser, on the other hand (i.e. someone who writes by the seat of their pants), the 3 + 2 = 1 formula gives you a general direction without boxing you into a specific plot. You may not even use this structure while you’re drafting your book, and may only apply the concepts later in the revision stages. Regardless of your approach, I hope this format gives you some insights into story structure and that it helps you craft a compelling narrative.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Writer Fuel: The Three-Act Structure appeared first on DIY MFA.

Have you gotten the DIY MFA Starter Kit yet? This is a two week email series full of worksheets to help you DIY your MFA, so you can get the “knowledge without the college.” You’ll learn more about how to write with focus, read with purpose, and build your community. You’ll also receive Writer Fuel, our newsletter full of words of wisdom and resources to help you keep the momentum going in your writing. And you’ll be the first to hear about other fun goodies we only share via email. Best of all, it’s free to join! You can sign up with your email at diymfa.com/join.

In this episode I discuss:

• Why it’s so important for writers to talk about and track money.
• The two “magic numbers” of publishing, what they are and why they matter.
• Five essential questions to think strategically about IP. 
• The trifecta of success, and how to consider ROI (return on investment).

Link to Episode 483

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to Apple or Spotify and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 483: Lesson 8 – Track the Money appeared first on DIY MFA.

Getting the Idea

It all started at graduation. I had completed my traditional MFA and was sitting in an uncomfortable wooden pew in a West Village church waiting to get my diploma. After two years of workshopping and dedicating myself to the craft, I expected that the skies would part, light would stream in through the stained glass, angel choirs would sing down from the heavens and a voice would whisper from on high: “You are now a writer.”

You see, I thought that in order to be a writer, I needed someone else to give me permission. What I didn’t realize until much later was that I had already given myself permission, and that was far more important than what anyone else said.

As I sat in that creaky wooden pew, my mind ran over all the things I had learned and accomplished in those two years of graduate school. I was so happy and grateful to have had the opportunity, but then my thoughts turned to my writing friends outside the MFA, talented writers who didn’t have the chance to go back to school. A wave of sadness flooded over me and I thought to myself: maybe I could share some of what I learned in the MFA program with them.

As I thought about this, I began to realize that a lot of the things I learned in the MFA program are things I could have learned on my own. For example, the program provided me with a workshop, but I already had a wonderful critique group full of talented writers who gave me valuable feedback. In the MFA program, I also took literature courses where I studied books in my chosen area of writing, but I was already doing that on my own by building a personalized reading list of books relating to my work-in-progress. The MFA also required that we attend readings and lectures by visiting authors, but I regularly went to readings at bookstores and attended conferences as well. In other words, all the things that the MFA provided I had already been doing in some capacity on my own.

That’s when a wild idea hit me: What if there was a do-it-yourself version of an MFA?

That night, I did what any self-respecting writer would do when they got a wacky idea: I went home and blogged about it. Now at the time, I had a teeny-tiny blog with 12 followers (one of whom was my mother), and I wrote up a post essentially asking: If there was a DIY version of an MFA in writing, would you do it? Given the microscopic size of my audience, I expected that blog post to fizzle out in the ether.

But that’s not what happened.

The next morning, I awoke to dozens of emails in my inbox and a bunch of comments on that blog post, all saying “YES! I’d totally do it!” So, that’s when I realized I’d hit a nerve. I’d landed on an idea that resonated with people.

Finding the Market

As writers, we often have lots of different ideas, some of them awesome and some of them not-so-great. One of the best ways to build our creative muscle is not to get too precious with one idea and instead focus on generating lots of them. Think of ideas like subways in NYC, there’s always another one coming. With DIY MFA, I knew from the get-go that there was interest in my idea, but that wasn’t true for many of the other ideas I’d had before.

What I didn’t share as part of this story were all the failed business ideas I had leading up to DIY MFA. There were many of them. For instance, did you know that at one point I had a jewelry-making business? I was fairly successful with it and even had some pieces on consignment in a Madison Avenue boutique. The trouble was, I liked using high quality materials, which were expensive, and it meant that to make any real profit, the markup had to be pretty high. Given the high-end nature of the product, it was difficult to find the right customers. I ended up pivoting my jewelry making to more of a hobby and using my skills to create gifts for friends and family instead of trying to sell my work.

There was also a time when I had a knitting blog, thinking maybe I could be the next Stephanie Pearl-Mcphee. The problem was, I couldn’t knit fast enough to post with any real frequency and a blog without regular content just flounders. Then there was that phase in the early 2000s when I thought I might want to pursue graphic design as a freelance business. I got a gig doing pro bono work for a nonprofit, which helped me build up my portfolio, but I had no idea how to grow the business past that point. Fun fact: those graphic design skills have come in handy at DIY MFA because I do a lot of the graphics for the site.

The truth is, I had tons of creative business ideas, many of which I tested and then decided not to pursue. It was only when I came up with DIY MFA that I realized I had hit on something that people wanted.

As writers, we have to remember that publishing is a business, and that in order for a book to be successful, there have to be readers interested in it. This means that you have to have a clear idea in your mind of who your readers will be. Perhaps the biggest mistake I originally made when I tried out all those other business ideas is that I focused on creating what I wanted and I didn’t stop to think whether other people would want it, too. So, think about your readers, even as you’re working on that very first draft.

Keep in mind, though, you don’t want to chase the market. Don’t write about vampires just because that’s what’s hot at the moment. Remember that it takes 2-3 years for a book to get to market (unless you indie pub) so what’s hot right now may not even be a thing when your book comes out. That said, if you love vampires and that’s your jam, write the story that’s in your heart. After all, you’re going to have to read and revise your story dozens of times before you publish, so you might as well write something you love.

Testing the Concept

After getting all those positive and encouraging messages about DIY MFA, I realized I needed to test the concept. Specifically, I wanted to test two things:

1. Did I have enough to say on the subject?
2. Did I really have an audience?

After thinking about it, I realized that the best way to test these two things was to pose a blogging challenge. Back in 2010, it was the heyday of blogging and there were all sorts of blogging challenges on the internet. I figured I would do a blogging challenge… on myself. The idea was simple, I would blog about DIY MFA every single day for an entire month. I figured by the end of the month, I’d have a pretty clear answer to each of the two questions above. Either I would have run out of things to say, or I’d still be brimming with ideas. And either I’d have gained a bigger audience, or my existing followers—all twelve of them—would have abandoned me.

I decided to run this DIY MFA challenge in the month of September because it was back-to-school time and that somehow felt fitting. Also, it gave me the whole summer (between graduation, when I first had the idea to September 1) to collect my thoughts and map out my posts. This way I could hit the ground running as soon as September rolled around.

Here’s what happened: I got to the end of September and I still had ideas for DIY MFA. In fact, 14 years later, I’m still coming up with new courses and workshops so clearly I have a lot to say on the subject. Not only that, my small group of twelve followers grew to four hundred, just in that one month. Now, that might not seem like a lot in today’s influencer-driven world, but at the time, gaining four hundred blog followers was a big deal, and it showed me there was an audience for my concept.

We writers often don’t test our concepts nearly enough. We often commit to a long project like a novel and we don’t take time to test and see if the concept lands with our audience, or if we have the stamina to see it through. Sure, many of us want nothing more than to hide away in our writing space and focus all our energy on creating The Big Project. But that does us no good if the project doesn’t have legs. This is why it’s so important to test our concepts.

One way to do this is to focus on writing short form work for a while and trying to get that work published. We have several members of our word nerd community who have chosen to focus on short form work and have had excellent success publishing their stories, essays, or poetry. The great thing about short form work is that you can start and finish a project in a much shorter span of time, and you can get feedback on it by submitting it for publication and seeing if it resonates.

For folks who are working on long form work like novels or memoirs, another way to test the concept is to take some aspect of your project and see if you can adapt it to a shorter piece. For example, if you’re writing a novel, what if you wrote a short story about one of the supporting characters? Or if you’re writing a memoir, how about taking an anecdote that doesn’t fit the memoir’s theme and making it into an essay? The idea is to try to test the market for your concept before you’ve committed a ton of time to writing that longer piece.

If your writing stamina is the thing in question, the best way to test it is with a challenge. Every November writers around the world dive headfirst into a new novel project and write with abandon until they hit 50K words. But you don’t have to wait until November to pose a similar challenge for yourself. Give yourself a word count goal and a window of time to see if you can stick to it. Maybe your goal is writing 2,000 words per day, 5 days per week for two weeks straight. Or maybe it’s writing 500 words every single day for a month, rain or shine. Come up with your own version of the challenge and use it to help you see if you have the stamina to get through a long project.

Developing the Structure

Structure is a huge factor, both in terms of developing a business idea and in writing a book. As I’ve shared on previous occasions, DIY MFA comprises three pillars: Write with Focus, Read with Purpose, and Build Your Community. But it wasn’t always this streamlined. In fact, that first month when I did the blogging series, I had something like ten different subcategories of DIY MFA. These categories were: productivity, motivation, creativity, craft, workshops, reading, literary analysis, conferences, platform, and publishing. When I did that first blogging series, I posted about all these different topics, assigning different themes to different days of the week, even doubling up some of the topics to make them fit the weekly schedule.

It was a mess.

And it took me a little while to put that mess in order. It was in 2012, when I decided to rebuild the website and have it professionally designed, that my web developer said we only had room across the header for three topics. Somehow I had to take those ten things and cram them down into three. Plus, I had to make them sound catchy so they’d look good on the website.

What I realized was that those ten topics could be grouped together into larger buckets of writing, reading, and community. Once I made that discovery, the solution was simple. Our header would be Write with Focus, Read with Purpose, Build Your Community, and those would be the three pillars of DIY MFA. Once I had those pillars figured out, the rest of the DIY MFA structure quickly fell into place.

Whether you’re a plotter or a pantser (someone who writes by the seat of their pants), sooner or later you have to think about structure. For plotters, structure comes into play early in the process, before they even start writing. For pantsers, on the other hand, structure often happens as part of the revision process. Personally, I recommend a “plantser” approach, where you write by the seat of your pants for a while (maybe 10K-20K words), and then you pause and take stock of what you have. Extract an outline by mapping out what you’ve already written, then figure out how to fill in the gaps. Then, when you get back to writing, you’ll have a direction for where you want your story to go.

So, there you have it: the background of how DIY MFA came to be, along with some insights you can apply to your own creative life. Remember, ideas by themselves are not all that useful. Instead, you have to test the ideas and see if there’s an audience for them. Once you’ve tested a concept, you also have to give it structure, so that it can take shape and become something great.

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 DIY MFA Got Started appeared first on DIY MFA.