Where Exactly Does the End Begin in a Novel, Memoir, Screenplay?

Question:
I've read Blockbuster Plots about five times and seen all your wonderful Youtube vids (thanks!). But it seems like the line initiating the third acts changes a lot. On Pinterest, you have it coming just after the low point after the crisis. Others with examples on the same page put it before. And in your book, it comes even later, right before the climax.

Can you clarify about the right time for a third act to appear? Thanks!

Answer: 
Every Plot Planner you refer to shows the End beginning in different places because different artists created the different Plot Planners for me. In my webinars, the line initiating the End is different than all the others.

Another reason why the line is different on all the Plot Planners is because the End is determined by the story itself.

In high action stories and lots of screenplays, the distance between the crisis and the climax in scene and page count is much shorter than say literary fiction and some genres.

Thresholds Hold Tension
By slowing the action and drama after the crisis, when the energy rises to announce the final quarter, the story moves quickly and with maximum impact to the end.

The protagonist estimates what is necessary for ultimate success in achieving her goal. She gathers the attributes, things, and people to take forward with her on the final journey to the end. She leaves behind everything that does not serve the highest good.

The final quarter of the story shows the protagonist taking action without hesitation. The character may have thought about the actions she intends to take to accomplish her goal and even voiced them, but until she acts her words are meaningless.

The moment she moves toward her long-term goal, the final one-quarter of the story begins. The dramatic action is designed to get the protagonist to the right place at the right time to seize back her personal power from the antagonist that best represents the thematic significance of the entire story.

In The Lace Reader, Calvin represents all that the protagonist has lost. To break free of the hell in which her fear has held her for fifteen years, she must face him, face her greatest fear.
**Excerpt from The Plot Whisperer: Secrets of Story Structure Any Writer Can Master named BEST BOOKS FOR WRITERS by Poets and Writers

If you'd like more, join me at an upcoming online video-chat plot workshop , a writers conference, picture book workshop , middle grade and young adult intensive , and writer's plot and scene retreat and read my plot books.

Flashback versus Memory

A problem I often find in the plot consultations I provide to writers is the misuse of flashbacks.

During a plot consultation, a writer outlines her historical novel to me. Before long, the story takes a u-turn into flashback. My immediate reaction is to refocus myself. I quickly scan the Plot Planner I am creating for her for what I know of the story so far ~ the time frame, the place, and the characters ~ in order to keep in perspective the time and place change.

If you've read Blockbuster Plots Pure & Simple, you know I am not a fan of flashback. Mostly, I dislike the whiplash effect, but also because I have seen too many writers, especially writers just starting out, overuse and abuse flashback. It is more difficult and takes more thought and creativity to integrate the pertinent backstory seamlessly into the front-story than it is to create a flashback. Flashback is a depiction of a past, literal experience. Full integration of back-story into front-story involves more nuance and skill.

Three plot tips when it comes to flashbacks:

1) If you feel you just have to have a flashback, wait to use it in the Middle of the story. By then, the reader has had time to ground themselves in the front-story and is better able to transition back and forth in time

2) A flashback is portrayed moment-by-moment in scene. Consider instead using a memory (summary)

3) If flashbacks are integral to the overall plot and structure, do like Audrey Niffenegger in The Time Traveler's Wife, make the story line non-linear and create the very structure of your story based on time jumps.

Subject: Help!!

I have purchased and read your book "Blockbuster plots pure and simple" and I still don't understand. I'm starting with a basic logline for a plot and don't know how you come up with scenes if you don't even know what the story is about. It would seem to me that in order to create scenes or follow the plot planner portion of the book you need to know more about how the story is going to unfold than you know when you just get the idea. It feels like there is a step missing between the initial idea and being able to come up with scenes.

What am I missing?? Please help!
Thanks,
Muriel


Dear Muriel,
Often, with a firm understanding of the Universal Story form and the natural trajectory of a story, writers can better come up with scenes needed to create a story.

If character most intriques you, start with the character emotional development profile (info can be found in BBP, on the website, and in entries below).

If dramatic action ideas bubble forth, start with the action.

Study the three biggest scenes in a story: The End of the Beginning, The Crisis, and the Climax (in the second half of BBP -- Plot Planner portion of the book -- also, the blog has info on these three critical scenes below).

See if you can visualize any of those scenes in your story.

How do you get your character from the beginning to the End of the Beginning?
What events are you interested in exploring, writing?
Do you plan to use any true historical events?
How can those events work into creating one of the three major plot lines (examples are in the book and below)

or....

Start with whatever you've got. Write that in scene. Then ask yourself: because that happens, what happens next.... Write that scene. Then ask yourself again -- if that happens, what happens next?

Hope this helps.

I'll put the word out for other writers to give their ideas as well.

Great good luck.

Sincerely,
Martha

Consider the Reader

We as writers may start out writing just for ourselves, but even for those who are the most resistant to admit it, we each long for a readership to enjoy our projects.

Once a writer embraces that truth, our relationship to our writing changes.

One way to consider your readers or audience is to get closer to yourself. What kinds of writing do you like? How does your favorite author begin their stories? In scene or in summary? How do your scenes compare to theirs in terms of complexity, interest, excitement, character development, and truth?

What constitutes the Beginning, the Middle and the End of their projects? Can you detect what launches the character(s) into the heart of the story world towards the end of the Beginning? Does the Crisis reveal anything about the character to the his or herself or does the highest point in the story so far function only on the Dramatic Action level alone? How does the Climax show the character doing something they could not have done at the beginning of the story? Is there Thematic Significance to their writing? Is there to yours?

One of the greatest personal benefits of writing is the opportunity to dig deep for our own individual truth. The first draft for many writers skims the surface as we look for meaning and conflict shown in scene and how the characters will show their transformatio over time. Often, what we write in these first drafts is what we've heard before or learned from our family and friends, in school, and through our own reading and the news.

But once we read what we have written, we immediately sense when something does not ring true. There is no better way to learn what is true for us and what is not, than to read our words ourselves first.

As I stated in my plot book for writers, Blockbuster Plots Pure & Simple, my hope for you and for me is that our search for the truth through our writing remains active and honored. We dig for the truth not only for ourselves, but for our future audience as well.

We each share the need to be heard.

We each have something vital to offer.

Yet Another Case of Waxing on For Too Long in the Beginning

The Universal Story Form is made up of three parts: the Beginning, the Middle, the End.

Simple, right? Right.

The Beginning makes up of 1/4 of the entire page, scene, or word count.
The Middle makes up 1/2 of the page count.
The End makes up 1/4 of the page count

Simple, right? Well, it should be, but sometimes it's not, and for a very simple reason.

Often writers go on for too long in the Introductory mode at the Beginning. This is normal. Writers warm up at the Beginning. They get to know their characters. They usually write in summary, giving all sorts of what they believe are important details about the characters and the story up front.

What's wrong with that, you ask? Absolutely nothing, in the first draft, that is. After the first draft, this rambling on and on poses a significant problem.

By going on for too long in the Beginning, the writer alienates the reader or movie-goer. Your audience to become impatient to get to the "good part" -- the Middle. They grow tired of the introductions and want to get to the heart of the story world itself -- the Middle. They want something big to happen, be swept off their feet, so to speak.

*Tip:
Write to the End without going back to the Beginning. Once you have the first, ugly, messy, not worthy, vomit, and all the other ways people describe their first drafts, divide the entire page count by four. If you find the Beginning drifts way beyond the 1/4 mark, consider cutting all the writing you did to get warmed up. Generally this adds up to be the first 50 - 100 pages. Now you see why I want you to write all the way to the end without going back? If you had done what too many writers do and get stuck in the syndrome of hitting the middle of the Middle and then going back to the Beginning, your Beginning will be all polished and nice, and much, much more difficult and painful to cut than if you have only written it once.

(For tips on how to push yourself beyond the middle of the Middle without going back and starting again, please visit the tips page on http://www.blockbusterplots.com)

Ticking Clock

The last few consultations have brought writers with well thought out scenes that draw the reader into the Beginning 1/4 of the project. Each one was able to develop the character emotional development through dramatic action in the Middle 1/2. In other words, for these three writers, three quarters of their projects work, at least on a structural plot level.

However, these same three projects had little or no real Climax to top off the entire work. In each case, the protagonist is reawakened by the Crisis. They are shown struggling to take full ownership of their newly discovered consciousness. This is all good. What starts as a twinge, in the quick build-up to the Climax, the protagonist more and more recognizes quite painfully each time her actions and speech do not align with her new understanding of herself and the world around her.

But in none of the cases was the character shown having fully healed this schism in the Climax.

The Beginning sets up the scene of highest intensity in the story so far ~ the end of the Beginning. This scene shows the shift or reversal outside the character that sends her into the heart of the story world.

The middle sets up the scene of the highest intensity in the story so far ~ the Crisis. This scene shows the character’s consciousness of the shift or reversal inside her.

The End sets up the crowning glory of the entire story ~ the Climax. This scene shows the character fully united with her new self-knowledge, new understanding of the world, new sense of responsibility through her actions and her words.

In one case, the writer mentioned that she felt the Grandmother in the story would die. The answer presented itself. In the Grandmother dying, the Climax takes on a deeper relevance as the protagonist of this young adult novel is given the opportunity to assist her grandmother's spiritual departure. That the grandmother was sick and death looming, the conflict, tension and suspense shoot higher. The clock keeps ticking. The sense of everything coalescing in the final minutes builds to a fevered pitch.

The Climax is the crowning glory of the entire book. Once you write that most important scene all else will fall into place.

T.S. Eliot said, “The end is in the beginning.” The Beginning of any comprehensive and well-crafted story tells as much about where we are going as to where we will be at the end. This means that until you write the Climax you will not truly know the Beginning. Keep writing all the way through to the Climax.

Cause and Effect/Beginnings

The first quarter of any writing project introduces the story's major characters, their goals, the setting, time period, themes, and issues. In the quest of accomplishing this task, many writers forget the importance of Cause and Effect. When scenes come at a reader one after another with nothing linking them together, the piece feels episodic and thus, off-putting to the reader.

Consider instead finding ways to link the scenes by Cause and Effect. Ask yourself: Because this just happened in this scene what happens next? The operative word here is: because. Because of this, then that. Not, this happens and this happens and this happpens next. But rather, because this happens, then this happens next, and because of that, this happens next. Cause and Effect is a seamless way to draw the reader deeper into the story.

Also, keep in mind the needs of the Beginning. This is not the place where you necessarily deepen the character or the plot; it is the place of introduction.

To read more on Cause and Effect and the specific parameters for each part of a novel, screenplay or memoir, visit, www.blockbusterplots.com and click on Plot Tips.