You have no idea what the basics of writing a story are, or maybe you want a refresher.
Either case, as you’ll study every word of this article, you’ll be amazed at what you’ll learn.
Answer these questions inside your head:
- What does a story mean to you?
- What’s a story, actually?
You don’t realize it yet, but in the next few minutes, you’ll get your answer.
The cursor mocks you
So, you’ve got your writing software ready and you want to write your story. But the cursor mocks you.
Blink.
You had a great idea and you already started about a dozen times in your head.
Yet you choke in front of your keyboard.
Blink.
Here’s something that maybe you don’t know:
There’s nothing new under the sun, writing-wise, just ask Stephen King. Or JK Rowling.
Now, if you tried to get a hold of these outstanding authors and got a busy tone or crickets in your inbox, there’s an easier way to do this.
The Fantastic Five™
Maybe you’ve googled or went to a few writing workshops and you’ve heard this:
Character = story
Plot = story
Tension = story
Theme = story
Conflict = story
The trick here is that while these are all correct parts of the answer, it’s not the full answer.
The full answer is this:
If you want to write unforgettable and great stories, you need to know the Fantastic Five™.
The laundry list of story ingredients is complex, but it all comes down to these five checkpoints:
The Fantastic Five checkpoints.
Like the Fantastic Four and The Jackson Five.
Original. I know. I came up with it myself.
But let’s call them like that, The Fantastic Five, because it’ll be easier for you to remember them and once you’ll learn about what each of them does, the fog of grief will lift and you’ll see the sun shining once again in your writing life.
So, let’s talk about this Fantastic Five shenanigan and how we’ll use these checkpoints to teach you how a story works.
Some of your successful author friends or idols write in different styles.
- Maybe they sit out and churn out page after page, draft after draft (also known as the panster or Stephen King)
- Or maybe they outline and plot (also known as the plotter or JK Rowling)
But just suppose there’s a roadmap à la Google, where you have all the pins and the traffic is updated in realtime.
Well, Fantastic Five does just that and it eliminates the endless number of drafts you might bang out in frustration, as you discover your story.
What is this is all about?
1. Theme
What do you want to talk about? This is about things happening in day-to-day life. Here’s an example about what Marvel’s theme is all about.
2. Concept
Your “what if” question that builds the bridge from your idea to your final story. Here’s an example about how Stephen King’s The Long Walk concept turned out to be a killer idea.
3. Character
- What’s your hero like?
- Is your hero more of a Daenerys Targaryen or more of a Jon Snow?
- Do you have an antihero for us?
This character development thing, along story structure, is one of the most simple but hard things to wrap your head around.
You need to have a hero that
- faces an obstacle that the antagonist puts in front of them
- fails, at first, given that they have inner demons they have to conquer
- struggles in his quest
- eventually surpasses their obstacles, after they;ve been shaped by the famous hero journey
- tackles the antagonist on their own in the final battle, with no outside help
- finishes the story or the main conflict without a deus ex machina, god from the machine.
Deus ex machina in a story means that the main danger of the story, the danger that your hero is working so hard to prevent from happening, is suddenly stopped by an unexpected thing or action, that has nothing to do with the hero.
Think what it would have meant for Harry Potter to stand idle, while Voldemort was defeated by a secret spell Dumbledore created before he died.
Or, think about how Luke Skywalker would’ve seen the Death Star explode on its own.
Deus ex machina is a cheap trick and only works if your writing is a comedy or a satire. Otherwise, it’s anticlimactic as hell.
Whatever you decide, make us root for your hero. I wrote about a vulnerable Spiderman that I found myself rooting for, and I think that Spiderman Homecoming is the best Marvel Movie to date.
4. Structure
I know you’re thinking about the same old boring “beginning, middle and the end” stuff. But there’s more to that.
You need to learn:
- what a hook is: the first thing someone reads from your page that makes them want to know more and want to know the story
If you already know the Harry Potter hook, here’s a quick example:
It was hell's season, and the air smelled of burning children.
Gone South, by Robert McCammon
- the plot points
- Call to adventure: the inciting incident you provide; comes after the hook and before the Beginning of transformation
example: Harry Potter gets his letter of admission from Hogwarts
- Beginning of transformation: the point of no return for your hero (25% milestone)
example: Harry Potter gets on the Hogwarts express, leaving his old life behind
- Revelation: the midpoint of your book; this is where your hero starts to do things; they're no longer passive and timid; your hero starts to see the way, yet not too clearly (50% milestone)
example: Harry Potter correctly deduces that whatever's been stolen from the Gringotts Vaults, is in possession of Hogwarts, guarded by the monstrous three-headed Fluffy, but doesn't yet know what it is and why it's there, in the school.
- Resurrection: the moment everything's on the line and your hero becomes unstoppable (75% milestone)
example: Harry Potter wrongly assumes that Snape is the bad guy, but decides to go after the bad guy anyway. As well as Hermione and Ron, whom they both share their skills in this dangerous quest of stopping the villain.
In addition to story structure, you need to know:
- how to use foreshadowing and set up expectations
- how to build your scenes, so that we root for your hero from the very first few pages (this is a combination of character and structure, provided you’ve got a great hook
- how to alter your pacing, so as not to tire or bore your readers
- how to keep the mystery going by baiting and rewarding your readers
All of these and much more have a place in the story structure part.
5. Voice
The smoky and velvety writing voice that delivers the story to the reader.
Your voice.
You can be clean like Rowling or you can be cool like Stephen King. Either way, your voice must deliver the story, not stand in its way.
Your writing voice will also communicate about how literate you are and how well you can invoke feelings and memories at the snap of the fingers. The best writers carry that ability and they perfect it with every book they write and publish.
Remember, to have a strong writing voice, you need to read from multiple genres. Not just fantasy or science fiction.
Ok, these checkpoints help. Now what?
You need to get your favorite story, be it Harry Potter, The Hunger Games or The Shining and dissect it like a professional, based on those five checkpoints you just read about.
Just picture yourself as the editor and analyze the story like one.
Just picture yourself using these five checkpoints. And a few weeks from now, you’ll develop a skill that will stay with you for as long as you’ll want to write.
This is no mere storyboard planning, or plotting, or whatever you want to call it.
I’m talking about charging through your story with the knowledge that these are the five things you need to cover, if you want to have a good story on your hands.
If you’re thinking about the various combinations of story structure with the other elements of theme, concept, character and voice, we’ve got all of this covered and more in the Fiction Coach Masterclass.
Or if you want something to whet your appetite, check out the Fantastic Five free email course.
Just think about this: you’ll never suffer from writer’s block again, once you’ll define, learn and apply
to your stories.
Obviously, there are a bunch of celebrity authors that have this covered.
Ask yourself this:
How did authors like Neil Gaiman, JK Rowling, Stephen King and so many others manage to become so popular and successful at their craft?
You can clearly see that there’s a pattern: they all know how to write great stories.
They’ve all reached a point where they don’t concern themselves with petty things like structure and rhythm, but they went for the next big thing: molding ideas into nuanced and educational stories.
After so many years as masters, they’ve done it over and over again, that the lines between these so-called Fantastic Five checkpoints began to blur and coalesce, resulting into hit after hit.
This is what Fiction Coach is all about: making case studies from all the hit stories, may they be book studies, movies, series or games and analyzing them against these five key story ingredients:
- theme
- concept
- character
- structure
- voice
All published stories have strengths and weaknesses, but they’ve all met the minimum requirements for these five checkpoints.
Sum of the parts
A great story is like a professional athlete. You’ll find that this comparison isn’t out of the ordinary.
Apparently an athlete can’t function just with their heart or just with their lungs or just with their feet. They need the whole of the body to be in peak condition, come competition day.
So just as professional athletes grind hours upon hours on their craft, to get even the smallest detail perfected, their breath, their rhythm, their heart rate, everything, you’ll need to add hours to your study.
And learn the Fantastic Five :)
And then apply what you learn to your project.
It may be anything, from writing a short story, to writing a novella or even that novel you’ve been dreaming about since you were a kid.
The demands are high. But now you have someone to coach you.
Talk soon.
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