SKILLS IN FICTIONAL CONTENT GENERATION
When I did my ikigai, I found that my area of interest and the eternal appeal to readers are cross-pollinated. A fictional niche became an option for me; I wrote twelve fiction books (in four series), a fictional autobiography, five memoirs on popular sports personalities (in two series), and two fiction books in the past three and a half years to pursue my interests. The same was self-published on Amazon platforms. The Author page link is below.
Amazon author page:
To understand the art of fiction writing, one should understand the following as provided by the best-selling Author ROB BIGNELL;
Devise Your Story Plot
- by ROB BIGNELL
Revise Your Story’s Plot
A guidebook in the Storytelling 101 quick read series:
CONTENTS
What is a story? An Autopsy of a Tale Conflict: THE HEART OF A STORY
PARTS OF A PLOT:
Inciting Incident
Create a Great Narrative Hook
Introduce Crisis Affecting Main Character
Start Your Story in the Middle
Rising Action
Utilize Both Internal and External Conflicts
How to Build a Scene for Your Story
Climax
Your Protagonist Must Solve the Story’s Problem
Falling Action and Denouement
Don’t End the Novel with a Cliffhanger
Use Subplot to Give Story More Depth
Don’t Overwhelm Reader with Too Many Subplots
Common Plot Pitfalls to Avoid
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ABOUT FICTION WRITING SKILLS
INTRODUCTION:
When writers come up with a great story idea but don’t know how to develop it, the problem is usually plotting.
Understanding story structure — i.e. Plot — would be extremely helpful in developing their story. For example, they might realize that the kernel of an idea is a great concept for a scene but not for an entire story. Knowing how that scene might fit into a full story would allow them to start writing.
Many fiction writers eschew the idea of following any general structure, believing that the story should go organically, that following some kind of blueprint would result in tales that are all the same, like so many ticky-tacky houses in a cheap suburban development. But understanding the story structure isn’t about following a blueprint. Instead, it’s like knowing the basic rules of structural engineering in construction. If you don’t understand tensile reinforcement, loading conditions, and distribution reinforcement, you're building probably will be substandard and collapse. Likewise, if you don’t understand the plot’s relationship to the other elements of a story, the parts of a plot, and the conflict’s role in storytelling, your story probably will be substandard and quickly fall apart. And just as those engineering rules can lead to an infinite variety of structures, from pole sheds to 2-bedroom homes to airport terminals and skyscrapers, so the general rules of plotting can lead to an infinite variety of stories, from epic poetry and novels to short stories and screenplays.
Many writers instinctively understand story structure, as they’ve read thousands of books; they’ve also been exposed to the basics of storytelling during their schooling. Still, they at times find themselves unable to diagnose the problem with a story, because just like a novice writer who can’t get started, they’re not thinking systematically about the tale.
Plotting your story is all about understanding the basic rules for constructing your story. In the page ahead, we’ll examine the plot’s rule in storytelling, the importance of conflict in plotting, and the five traditional elements of a plot, at least in Western storytelling, we’ll also look at some common plot pitfalls. The structural guidelines here work for any genre, whether you’re writing a serious literary piece or penning in any escapist genre from romance or science fiction to mystery or fantasy. By the end of this volume, with a little imagination tossed in, you should be able to construct an impressive plot.
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WHAT IS A STORY? AN AUTOPSY OF A TALE:
Often when asked to write a book report, elementary and middle school kids will recount what occurred in the story. They’ll mention the main character only by explaining what happened to him or how he reacted. Essentially, they recount the story’s plot.
But the story is more than just the plot or what happened to a character. That’s one small part of the story. To best understand the plot, recognizing how it fits into the machinery that is a story is helpful.
For convenience of analysis and discussion, stories often are broken into parts.
These parts typically are referred to as the five elements of fiction.
- Plot — How the problem in the story is overcome, typically thought of as physical action.
- Setting — Where and when this action occurs.
- Character — Whoever tries to solve the story’s problem as well as those who create the problem and those who appear incidentally.
- Point of view — Perspective from which the story is narrated.
- Theme — Purpose for which a story is told.
It’s easy to think of the five elements of fiction as a matter of 5 W’s and 1 H, or what, where, when, who, why, and how. The plot is what happens in the story. The setting is where and when the story happens. Character is who the story happens to be. The point of view is how the story happens to be told. The theme is why the story happened to be told or its message.
Each of these elements appears naturally in the story, whether you consciously intend them or not. For example, the plot of a story may be about a lone Roman legion that must stop the barbarian invasion. The setting is the northwestern corner of what is known as Germany in the land once ruled by Cauci. The characters are the Roman Legion commander, his lifelong best friend who is a tribune, and the barbarian leader with his second-in-command. The point of view largely is from an outside perspective, as if we were seeing all that occurs in both camps from a bird’s eye view. The theme might be the folly of war.
Virtually all the problems with poorly written stories are that they in some way muddle one or more of these elements. In addition, you may perfectly nail each of these five elements but still tell the story poorly because it lacks flair; such problems are a matter of style, which is a part of understanding the craft of writing though not an element of fiction itself.
Each of these different parts is interconnected and entwined. Like the various systems in a body — respiratory, digestive, endocrine, circulatory — you can’t truly have a story unless all are in play. Still, just as an anatomist or physiologist can look at each system in isolation, we can look at each part of a story on its own. Next, we’ll focus on the first part of those parts — the plot.
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CONFLICT: THE HEART OF A STORY:
When telling a story, you’ve got to have conflict in it. If there’s no conflict, you have a wooden story that starts nowhere, leads nowhere, and ends nowhere. As E. M. Forster noted, “’ The king died, then the queen died’ is a plot. ‘The king died, then the queen died of grief’ is a story.”
Forster’s quotation is apt because a good plot is about at least one character under adversity. Conflict typically arises from the characters’ feelings, needs, and wants. As each character has an urgent personal agenda, your plot is a synthesis of its individual characters’ efforts to achieve their agenda.
Let’s look back at the story of the lone Roman legion stopping a barbarian invasion that was used as an example in the last section. The agenda of our hero, the Roman commander Gauis Camillus, is to persuade the Cauci tribe to join his legion so that they may hold out against the invading barbarians. The agenda of our villain, barbarian King Hagena is to conquer the former land of Cauci so that they have space to live as they face pressure from the expanding Vandi to the east. The Cauci’s Council of Elders’ goal is to stay neutral.
As these conflicting agendas intersect, each character faces adversity. For Gauis, the Cauci aren’t receptive to his idea, then finds his legion surrounded by Hagena’s advancing army. For Hagena, Gauis’ legion refuses to yield and at night raids his army’s supply lines. The Cauci council refuses to join the Romans even when Hagena begins to burn their villages. For the Cauci, they first feel the pressure of Gauis and Hagena and then watch both sides become increasingly violent toward one another on their home turf.
Types of Conflict
There are five primary types of conflicts that your characters can face:
· Man vs. nature — When the forces of nature, such as storms, deserts, and volcanoes, hinder a character from achieving his aim. A thunderstorm that leads to river flooding, for example. This might delay Hagena’s army as they are forced to find another route to meet the Romans in battle.
· Man vs. man — When two individuals struggle against one another to achieve their goals, such as Gauis and Hagena.
· Man vs. society — When a character or small group challenges the mores and values of their culture or its political institutions. Perhaps one of the Cauci objects to the Council of Elders’ decision and advocates joining the Romans.
· Man vs. God(s) — When an individual or a small group fights God or gods. Possibly one of Hagena’s officers begins to question if his people’s god favors them as they face setback after setback against the legion.
· Man vs. himself — When a character has an internal struggle because of conflicting desires, wants, and needs. Maybe one of the tribunes disagrees with Gaucis and finds himself struggling between loyalty to his commander and his inner belief that his men will needlessly perish if a different course of action were taken.
When developing conflict in your story, follow these guidelines:
· Maximize conflict by pitting two forces against one another — This can involve opposites facing off (as with Gaucis and Hagena) or involve an internal conflict.
· Every scene should present the main character with a problem — If this doesn’t happen, there possibly isn’t much point to the scene.
· Conflict should allow the character an opportunity to change the course of events — Adversity alone is rarely enough to carry a story, though it may help create reader sympathy for your character.
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PARTS OF A PLOT:
In every story, something happens. These events form the structure of your tale. Plot, then, is the drama and action through which characters come to life.
Consider the following plot for a fantasy story. Young Cris Lucent finds his dreams and hopes of leaving a small backwater farm quashed by his stepfather. While looking for two new cows that broke out of their corral, Lucent meets the mysterious Xanorim, who helps him find the cattle; one of them has a message in its cowbell for Xanorim, pleading for him to help the resistance against the oppressive Supremacy. When Lucent returns home, he finds the farm ablaze and his stepfather and mother dead. He decides to join Xanorim’s mission to help the resistance. The pair charter a wagon with a troll smuggler, JinJin. At their destination, they meet Supremacy’s new fortress, where all-powerful magic is being conjured from the recently discovered artifact. Sneaking into the fortress, they rescue Lady Hali, who sent the earlier-mentioned message to Xanorim. Returning Hali to the resistance base, they plan an attack to destroy the fortress. In the end, Lucent is the one who fires the shot that destroys the artifact leading to the fortress’s destruction.
Much more happens in the story than in those few events. But it is that storyline on which the rest of the story hangs.
A story at its basic is plot. It’s why when students write book reviews, they almost invariably talk about what occurs in the story, void of any reference to other elements of fiction except maybe a stray line about who the main characters were and where the story was set.
There are many metaphors about what a plot is, most of which are equally apt. Some writers and academicians say it’s a structure that leads us somewhere, others a tread that pulls readers through a story. Using music as a metaphor, some refer to the plot as a “narrative melody.”
The plot is far more than a series of events, however. Events occur in a story because of cause and effect. Lucent goes with Xanorim because once his mother is dead, nothing stays for him in the backwater valley where he doesn’t want to be. Because of this cause-and-effect rule, most stories are told in chronological order. The above doesn’t start with Lucent rescuing Lady Hali then jumps to the events that led him to the fortress. In good stories, these events also should involve conflict. Lucent doesn’t just walk into the fortress and take Hali. Instead, first, the Supremacy’s legionnaires chase him, and he finds himself trapped in a dungeon with imprisoned spider folk.
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