Congratulations!

You’ve made it this far—you’ve created a rough draft! You’ve written 200-331 pages—maybe more—and it’s time for a break. And an intense intuitive scholarly peek at what you’re done. Where you are with your story. What you need to do now. So you can keep going. Let’s start with an inventory:

How many characters did you create?

Who’s got the plot?

Who’s locked down a subplot?

How many settings keep leaping back onto your page?

How many objects of desire?

How many intruder-scenes?

How many crimes?

How many dinner parties?

How many killings?

How many births?

How many funerals?

Writers and their narration. We love our own narration. We use our narration to judge the narration of other writers: My narration is better than the narration of Friend A. My narration is different from the tasteless verbiage of Friend B. Friend C’s narration? Well, pardon me, but it sucks. Narration works like a cloak. A glistening coverlet. Narration allows a writer to write sentences of any length. It’s glorious when it works—a veritable bench-mark of your personal style. Alas. Narration is not the tool that helps you write a novel.

As you launch your re-write, start creating scenes. When you create a scene, the work pulls you out of narration (and its tendency to proliferate) into structure and story and scene. A scene is a single action or series of connected actions taking place in a single setting in a finite period of time. Scenes are the containers for drama. Drama is what makes entertainment. People pay money for stories because they want to be entertained. While narration dumps control into the language, scene-building returns control to the writer-builder. Scenes did good work for writers like Sophocles and Shakespeare and Arthur Miller. The dramatic scene is the structural building block for movies. Movies are very big. Like opera and novels in the 19th century, the feature film is the Power Art of our time. When you rewrite, use scenes to make an action sequence where Characters A and B clash or flirt or chat or bicker or fight. Or practice kissing. Or drive like hell or lift off in a propulsion vehicle headed for Alpha Centauri or cook breakfast wearing ballet slippers and baby diapers. A scene has boundaries. A scene starts and then it ends. Narration has no boundaries. On good days, writing narration delivers a glorious feel. On bad days, narration sucks. A scene discloses characters with agendas and back stories: How did character A land on Page One? How did character B land on Page twenty-two? How early is your First Encounter scene?

First Encounter is the meeting of Characters A and B. Could be lovers. Could be enemies. A scene contains action and dialogue and objects that tell a piece of your story. Tip: If you’re writing a two character scene and you want some drama, then you bring on a Third Character. That third character is the Intruder. When the Intruder enters your scene, you have drama. And maybe conflict. Name your scenes. First Encounter is big—the first meeting of Characters A and B. Farewell scenes can be sad. Fight scenes come from old sepia John Wayne films. Snow White Asleep means your heroine needs help waking up. Use a scene to launch an action: Sir Parsifal charges into Chapel Perilous, spurs scratching the chessboard floor. The waters of Astarte’s Pool open, taking the initiative deeper. An unnamed scene puts the writer under pressure. A scene with a name focuses our attention.

The First Encounter scene

(Character A meets Character B)

is big medicine. The First Encounter scene is big time important. Tristan and Isolde had to meet before they could elope. Rome and Juliet had to meet before they could launch a feud. A story from real life: Decades ago, in Guanajuato, Mexico, in a stucco house on a sandy hill, across a twisted dusty street, a young British writer asked me to read her book. It was a love story. Clean and pretty and sweet. The lovers had their First Encounter deep in the book—after Plot Point II, in the twisted remains of Act Three—too late for the Love Story to gather speed, to go deep, to have much impact. When I pointed this out, the writer was horrified. I didn’t blame her. It was a structural problem and she hated me for pointing it out. And she hadn’t done a solid rough draft. And she had written her book with carefully crafted narration. I can still see her face. She was young, pale, nervous, edgy—the house guest of a neighbor—a writer who supported his family by cranking out X-Rated porn. This guy—full-time writer—delivered a book a week. Not my idea of fun. And this guy’s First Encounter scenes took place early in the book.

In these early stages of novel-writing, you speed up and then you slow down. You’re over-alert to feeling and atmosphere and nuance and depth—trying to build characters your readers will like, maybe even identify with, maybe even love. (Like our girl Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird—everyone loves Scout). In this early writing, you’re laying pipe, planting seeds, working out motives and action and structure—and questions arise—does this scene go in Act One or Act Three? And when you stall out, remember the sad British writer in Mexico who waited until Act Three for inserting the First Encounter. When you have 70-100 pages, pull together a list of scenes. Here’s a sample from my work in progress:

pg	APRIL 28 2024	Subj-Object	Notes. Insights. To-dos.
1	Regius POV	White tuxedo	Willem primes Arturu for action
13	Xelda party	Party dress?	Attempted rape—
17	Xelda POV	Bedroom action	Eyes, feathers, the murder of Hercule, black ops—very long scene for the opening
29	L’Opital	Death of Hercule	New time switches for Xelda/Q-Droids/Clotho in white, uses Bone fone to call Xelda’s Mama– Intro/DOD
38	Astarte—Pool, Goddess, Yolo	Dreams the Pool	Crimson Lights 669/First Sex rejection/Parsifal and the candle-stick/witnesses Real Sex—why not? voyeurism
46	Parsifal	Sex-Hungry Boastful Comic Quester	Page 47—back in the LIMO—Time-crunch talk— Extraction talk—Yolo the kid from the pool 49—Clotho explains TIC—but no black smoke—cover-up for petroleum industry—work stoppages—prayer rugs—IS CLOTHO TALKING TOO MUCH?
49	Missed G-Market	Xelda’s intro to TCI	Need to Rework in Xelda’s back story.

	Black Ops	Extraction Talk Xelda and Clotho	UBU Legend Of—Black Ops famous female writers They quiz Xelda about Swannie—HUGS for Xelda
54	Black Ops	Blueprints	UBU the Camera film—entrails of Vatican Ost
55	Xelda		Now she’s remembering the wheelchair visit
56	Title Stuff—reminder Roman Numerals +	7/VII	Ritual immersion – pool of Astarte—but no text Also plans and blueprints for extraction
58	Bath prep	wheelchair	Dunked in the pool of Astarte—wheelchair as witness

63	Wheelchair prep	Page 65	WHEELCHAIR ACTION—white doorway etc.
67	GETHSEMANE	MARQUETTE	Fuzzy black cloud, penitents on their knees, the scent of Transformation.
68	Author note on Yolo—black suit and dark matter
69	Xelda and Clotho	First Sex–Triptych	OBJECT—Split into Three???—NEW Self Rejection of First Sex

71	First Sex Dialogue	DYCW
73	Gray Hijab and	Names for Droids	I was never a baby—education on Q-Droids
	NOTES to SELF	No First ENC,	Plotting Note: First Encounter is the Extraction of Yolo the Altar Boy from the Prefectory—a torture chamber in the bowels of Vatican Ost.

Stop for a Breather: Congratulations.

Constructing a solid rough draft proves you have energy and stamina.
Your scene lists prove you have characters and objects.
You have a choice: to keep going with the rough draft.
Or: to take a break and focus on structure.

Structure in western literature comes from Aristotle—a wise old Greek—who figured out how stage drama worked:

Equilibrium-Disruption-Equilibrium-

(or balance-imbalance-balance)

In our time, Aristotle’s dramatic dance of Equilibrium-Disruption-and back to Equilibrium is the action and conflict across Acts One and Two—with resolution in Act Three—dragged out of Ancient Greece by stage-plays and novels and moving pictures, where the writers get a grip on the structure by using Plot Points—a screenwriters tool that you can use in your rewrite—here’s the formula:

Inciting Event to Plot Point One.

Plot Point One to Mid-Point.

Mid-Point to Plot Point Two.

Plot Point Two to Climax.

Translation: The Inciting Event (accident, surprise attack, assault from inside, catching someone in a lie, losing a ball game, going to jail, crashing a birthday party) launches your story—and offers a complex situation that reaches a mini-climax at Plot Point One, which marks the end of Act One. Complications arising from Act One get worse in Act Two—and deeper at Mid-Point, the middle of Act Two. As the second half of Act Two speeds toward Plot Point Two, your characters get tired. They feel wacko hopeless. With no light at the end of the tunnel, your characters stumble into Act Three—where they claw their way to the Climax. (For movie people—directors, actors, producers, lowly screen-writers—Plot Points keep them in touch with Aristotle.)

While you’re re-writing Act One, you’d be smart to think ahead—because you need to know your climax.
You’ve got to know what happens in Act Three—the action that leads up to the climax.
You’ve got to know what happens in Act Two—actions that lead to Act Three.
It’s time to pry yourself loose from the rough draft—all that weighty prose narration that’s hiding the story. It’s time to view your tale like a screen-writer—a story-teller who turns lovely narrative prose into scenes—a savvy writer who uses Plot Points to get a handle on structure and story.
While toiling away at your rewrite, you’d be smart to pretend you’re writing a movie—scenes, action, dialogue, objects, temperature, early decision on the Resource Base—the object of desire your characters are willing to kill for.

Characters from your past pop onto the page.

They come from old manuscripts—eager for work.

They worry about being forgotten.

They whisper to the writer:

hey, dude—I’m dying up here.

Need a place to hang.

So slip me into your story—

Okay?

This little story-teller’s website that floats in mystical Cyber Space is not just for writers In Our Time with manuscripts that need a boost. This budding website will also assist me by clearing for a rewrite of a novel that is seven+++ years in the making. A novel that arose from writing practice around the tables at Louisa’s Bakery and Café in Seattle, where Jack and Janet and Priscilla and Geri and Zack and Frank and Johnny and Max and other dedicated writers gathered on Tuesdays and Fridays at 2:15 to write under the clock for 45 minutes—keeping the hand moving without knowing where their writing would take them in the next 45 minutes— First we wrote. And then we read around the table. And that’s where the voice of Yolo bleeped into being—writing practice at Louisa’s—Yolo the Altar Boy bleating like a small furry animal with a mythical musical sense—trying to dodge the pain that came from the nasty Monsignor of Vatican Ost while a chorus of plaintive Altar Boys sang out for help, breathing life into Xelda and UBU the flying camera and Mother Clotho and Chaz and the WDF—and bringing onstage two nasty villains: the chubby Monsignor, Fabbio Gorgonzola, the naughty chief prelate of Vatican Ost, who craves power—and the cruel but handsome Dr. Wyrd, who is eager to seize the throne of Arp.

So while you’re rewriting your stuff, turning narration into scenes, I’m right next door, in the adjoining booth, rewriting a novel spread across seven versions, the word count well over 200K, caged inside a bulging over-loaded character roster, crammed into passages that sing and other passages that hang there in space laughing at the author. A word of thanks about Writing Practice. It was a glorious gift from Writer Natalie Goldberg, whose world-class writing workshops (head-quartered in Taos, New Mexico, in a room with 50 other writers in the Mabel Dodge Luhan House, writing away and then reading aloud)—helped me locate the narrow turnstile gate that leads to the un-conscious, that hidden other self—all those memories swooping in, bidding goodbye to writer’s block, writing longhand, writing under the clock, characters stepping onstage from the deep beyond, the happy writer shopping for the perfect notebook, diving deep into memory and feeling the pulse of creativity, writing in a room with 50 other writers writing, and Natalie’s voice acting as the starter gun: Write about your summer vacation for ten minutes, GO! And then, breathless and quivering, standing up to read aloud—hey guys, this is me, these are my words.

When characters pop onto your stage—protagonist, antagonist, helper one, antag two—corral them into a Character Grid—adding role and object and core story. Now you’re not alone.

Here’s one grid for my Yolo tale.

Name	Role	Core Story	Object	Entry
Xelda	Protag	Coming of Age	Blade	Act 1
Yolo	Protag2	Scapegoat	COG	Act 1
Dr. Wyrd	Antag1	King Replacement	White Tux	Act 1
Clotho	Helper	King Replacement	Mace	Act 1
Chaz	Helper	Grail Quest	Sword	Act 2
Hercule	Ghost	Revenge Quest	Blade	Act 1
Monsignor	Antag2	Rags to Riches	Spade	Act 2
Mama	Clinger	Rags to Riches	Shoes	Act 2
Q-Droids	Helpers	Grail Quest	Clothes	Act 1

Core story guides action. Not writing alone jump-starts your re-write—Time and Place. Protagonist and antagonist. Core story guides each character to action. Remember to shift from narration to creating scenes.

So welcome to this writers’ website. Please help yourself to the exercises. Launch yourself into your novel rewrite. Summary of steps:

Step One—switch your writing from narration to creating scenes. If you have clawed your way through a First Draft, then you are not the same writer who started narrating your heart out 100+ pages ago. You know more. But there is more to learn for a successful rewrite.
Step Two—Your perspective on the tale has shifted. You are not just starting out. You need to get your characters under control. Corral the main characters into a Character Grid.
Step Three—Pretend you are a screenwriter—and focus on measuring the structure of your tale with Plot Points—something you can do online. Just type “plot points” into your search engine—then wait for the insight to take hold. See you next time.

4 Comments

Linda Lockwood on May 28, 2024 at 1:23 pm

Hello, novelist Bob!
Thanks for the wonderful memories of our writing times at Louisa’s and all your teaching tips. Now that my memoir is slated for publication on Sept. 10, I’m busy with promotion activities, but then will turn to writing my next book, a novel. I’ll save this newsletter and follow you for more tips, and then write my novel along with you, once again. Linda

Loading...

wayne hughes on June 13, 2024 at 6:33 am

thanks for this Bob. Going though a rewrite now.

w. hughes

Loading...

Meredith B Mills on June 13, 2024 at 11:08 am

Wow ~ this is a beautifully organized and detailed curriculum on story writing. Thanks you!

Loading...

Mary Allen Doud on June 13, 2024 at 12:02 pm

Dr. Ray,
I am using this avenue to write to you, hoping it’s a viable option. I am gathered in Arlington VA with eight other female graduates of Beloit College class of 1969.
Among our reminiscences are the benefits we gained from your challenging teaching strategies. You broadened our perspectives, encouraged divergent thinking, and provoked creativity.
We moved on from Beloit, through various graduate programs to meaningful careers. We include renowned artists, an executive strategist, a university professor and Dean, a library administrator, an urban planner, a special needs educator, and a graphic facilitator. Our experiences at Beloit College, including our interactions with you and your colleagues, launched us on a journey of lifelong learning.
You might remember my father, Hugh Allen, who was an administrator at Beloit College during your tenure.
With fond memories,
Mary Allen Doud and the rest of
“The Beloit Nine from ‘69.”

Loading...