We Need to Have A Talk About Writing...

I recently re-read Jim Butcher's old livejournal blog about writing. He has some stuff that likely came straight from his writing class (the class in college he took), but it seemed pretty organized.

I liked the idea of the Story Question, which in many ways sets up the blurb for what the story is about on the back of the book or the front of a posted story on this site.

The most useful mechanic was showing how he uses Scenes and Sequels.

The handy part about the Scene framework he gives is that you setup the confrontation and then the hero makes his big action, and as a writer, you have to supply the outcome, which in Butcher's eyes should tend to be a failure or complication. Basically make things worse, harder, etc for your hero.

I think that's important, as the novel I'm working on setup as short stories, I tended to have the hero be successful at each step of his quest. I had other complications for an interesting story, but at the heart of being a hero, my guy would drive to Scene A, do something, and it would work, then drive to Scene B, do something and it would work. This bugged me when I wrote it, and the Scene/Sequel thing kind of clued me in on the methodology leading to why it nibbled at my brain.

For a short story, the chain of successes might actually be fine. I spot checked against some Walt Longmire short stories, and yeah, Walt has a smooth, but interesting ride most of the time.

But for a novel, or bigger, more complex story, trouble needs to get heaped on, success shouldn't be guaranteed in every scene. Wripples and side effects should come up to make the hero's original problem bigger, before it starts getting smaller.

The Sequel concept is equally important. It's basically the hero's reaction to the scene. So in the Scene, the Hero grapples with the enemy, tears off his mask as he slips away, to learn it's his long lost evil twin doppelganger on his mother's side. The Sequel is the hero sitting on the curb, holding that mask, reflecting on how things ended badly between them 5 years ago and mulling over if he can really kill his brother, and then making a decision on what to do next.

Well, maybe not all Sequels are like that, but the idea is to show the reaction to the scene and do some thinking, etc on the hero's part and show how he'll get to the next Scene.

As I do outlines for my stories usually, it's a useful way of framing my outline, in that every other bullet should be a scene, followed by a sequel.

Personally, I like the idea, but I am reluctant to re-outline my novel idea in scene/sequels and rework the whole darn thing. Partly because it's a lot of work, it would change some parts of the story that I've got pretty well connected up and possibly shift things off the track I had planned. It's one thing to understand a story may drift from your original vision, it's another to know that every story can easily be changed to be drastically different, simply by changing what happens next at each Scene.

Anyway, hunt down Scenes and Sequels if you haven't heard of the concept.