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Novel Writing for Beginners: The 5-Step Process to Get Your Story Started
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May 13, 2025
Kristina Stanley, founder of Fictionary and bestselling author, hosts a workshop for The Unsealed community. She teaches the community the secret weapon of successful authors: the 5-scene structure. If you would like to purchase Fictionary's software, you can do so here: https://fictionary.co/?via=theunsealed Don't forget to use the Black Friday coupon: BLACKFRIDAY2024
View Video Transcript
0:00
tonight we have a really special guest tonight I'm actually not doing the workshop it's Christina Stanley and
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Christina is a published author bestselling published author she's also has a degree in computer mathematics
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which I think is really cool and she started a company called fictionary doco
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to help writers like all of us to organize our stories which I find so interesting because I feel like as a
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young writer that was my biggest struggle how do I stick to the things that actually make sense and not go all
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over the place but I will let you take over and I will try to manage this Crazy Little Thing Called technology and okay
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I'm going to just uh I'm going to put the chat up so I have this I have it over here so I can see it in case
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there's people who are chatting and want to ask questions I got hosts and panelists up
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okay I'm just going to let her rip then we're one minute after we're recording for anyone who's not here already to
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share my screen okay so we are here to talk about novel writing for beginners so it's
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really um if you've always wanted to write a we a webinar a novel or you're
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thinking about writing a novel you've started writing a novel you have a draft novel ready I'm going to show you the
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five scenes that have to be in every novel and why they have to be there and where they go in the story so we're just
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going to rip through this I've got a lot to cover I hope it's super helpful for
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everybody I'm just going to tell you very quickly who I am so my name my name is Christina Stanley as Lauren already
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said I'm CEO and co-founder of fictionary and I started this company because as an author I really struggled
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with structural editing and I was using a massive spreadsheet and as Lauren mentioned I I
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I I have a computer mathematics degree so I had kind of both sides of the artistic thing and the technical thing
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and so I created fictionary to help with structural editing and so it's not copy
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editing it's not proof reading is what is the struct of a story so I'm a best-selling author of
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this series WR novels that sell which are all about structure so secrets to editing success secrets to writing a
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series secrets to outlining a novel and it's all about the structure and um awardwinning fiction
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author um I'm a structural editor I haven't done an editor in about a year just because I've been too busy but in
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my heart I really love love love editing it is my passion and I I write more
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about editing than I actually write fiction and more because I just love the Mind candy puzzle that comes along with
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with editing I'm also a volunteer guide dog puppy razor so there's always puppies in
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my house that's my fun thing that I do on the side uh besides fictionary so that I actually do something besides
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fictionary so it makes me focus on something else and I mean who doesn't like a puppy my team this is who
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fictionary is so um I co-founded with my husband Matthew and our main our main
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team is donon who's our manager of development so he wrote the very first line of code of fictionary years ago e
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who's our product manager Lisa who's our CMO for marketing and Millie who's our
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content manager and so we're a small team we all love story and we all love story structure so we teach story
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structure that's our that's our main function and our goal is to help writers in an affordable way to get access to to
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professional editors to get access to tools that they can use to structually edit a story or write a
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story from a really strong foundation so of course we have software to do that
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and we have a community with liveg guided editing courses um this is the the URL for it's fictionary doc circle.
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so it's a free community we focus on kindness kindness is our thing we want a
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safe place for people to learn to practice writing to work together to share in the
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community um so that's who we are so this is where I'm coming from and this is why I'm here talking to you about
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story structure all right so the first thing you need to do if we're talking about
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writing a story is you need to know what your story is about and for that you
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need a skeleton blurb and all a skeleton blurb is one sentence and it tells you
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who the protagonist of your story is what their goal is for the story and
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what the story Stakes are so what happens if they fail at their at their
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story goal so as we go through this we're going to look at two famous commercially successful novels one is
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the fourth wi and the other is the Duke and I so the first book in the Bridgeton Series so we've got a fantasy and a
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romance and I thought in an hour I was going to throw in a mystery and then I thought we'll never get through it so I just picked two and and stuck to that
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and they're famous so I'm hoping everybody knows a little bit about it I do want to say ahead of time spoiler alerts I'm going to tell you the ending
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so when we get to the climax part of this look away or don't listen or I
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don't know but I'm going to tell you the endings of these books if you haven't haven't read them so if we go I'm just
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going to show you very quickly a little piece in the fictionary software and this is the story editing journey and so
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here when we're writing a story we look at the story blurb first and all that is
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is a promise to read to the reader of what to expect from the story and for you as the writer it's to
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keep you focused and so we look at a skeleton blurb and so if we just look at
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the Duke and I and you'll see these are my notes for all of the books as I as I was analyzing the series but for the
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Duke and I if I just open this up the protagonist is Daphne Bridgeton this is her love story um the story goal is to
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show Simon who's the love interest that he's worthy of a full family life now Simon doesn't believe he's he should
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ever have children cuz he's not worthy and he has sworn never to get married and never to have children so he's a sad
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lonely man and Daphne of course at this time in history she wants to get married
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and have children so she needs to prove to him that he's worthy or she's not going to find true love with him so
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that's a very typical romance um story in fictionary if you're
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writing um right from scratch you don't have anything yet you can use one of our
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outlines and so I'll just pick the romance one because dukkan I's Romance and we put all the scenes in there for
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you of all the scenes you need in a story and the scenes we're going to talk about today are the big five scenes the
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inciting incident plot point one the middle plot Point plot Point 2 and the
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climax and that's going to give you an overall starting point and whether you like to uh outline or not outline if you
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can do your skeleton blurb first so you know what your story is and even if you don't know who your protagonist is maybe
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you just know it's a 17-year-old boy for example or maybe you know it's a an
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alien or it's a dog it doesn't actually matter but you know who the story is about and what do they want in this
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story and then if they don't get it what bad thing happens and that's your starting point and as you go through
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this you're going to find that you can fill this in better and better and better and so to get through and and and
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start writing your book the idea is don't get stuck on any of these steps just do do what you can I mean maybe you
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only know it's a murder mystery okay so the goal would be solve murder that's it that's that's fine to get started you
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know that's the story you're writing oh sorry I'm on the wrong screen
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here let me click here okay so let's get some definitions out of the way um
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definitions are useful you may have a different one other people out there may use different definitions um so I like
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to put out the ones I'm using and so you know where I'm coming from and so every novel is made up of scenes and if you
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can make a scene strong and another scene strong and another scene strong and they all flow together you're going
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to have a strong story and all a scene is is a section in your novel where characters do something or they speak so
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it's action or dialogue or both that makes up a scene if a character is not
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doing anything and they're not talking nothing's happening so there's no scene yet that might be just description of
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something and so when we look at a we're looking for characters who are doing something we're looking for the plot
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which is what they're doing and we're looking for settings which is where they're doing it and so every scene is
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going to have characters plot and setting and that's all a scene is it's as simple as
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that all right the next important thing to know is so you have a bunch of scenes
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in your novel and let's say in a typical murder mystery you're going to have 60 scenes every one of those scenes is
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going to be told by a character and that's the point of view character and so that means the character is in this
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the character in the scene who is striving for the scene goal so the character is going to want something in that scene and they're going to do
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something to get it that's the point of view character it may or may not be the protagonist of the whole story it could
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be um if we look at Game of Thrones and it's written from many points of view or
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if we look at Fourth wi one point of view except for the two scenes at the end so there's lots of choices on point
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of view and every book is going to be different and the the most important thing to know about point of view is
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that character is telling the story meaning the only things that can happen in that story are what that character
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can see smell hear taste touch if they can't see it it can't be or any one of
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the senses it can't be in the scene and that's your point of view character the protagonist and I'm I'm
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breaking these out because often they're confused the protagonist is the main character in the story and so they're
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they're the ones when we look at the skeleton blur the protagonist must do something and they have the most to win
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or lose it may or may not be a point of view character in a scene but um they
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are the character that the reader is going to think okay this is their story so in fourth wi is violet V violet yeah
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Violet singale who's also nicknamed violence um it's her story
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and so when we're looking at uh a promise to the reader the reader is interested in who's his protagonist and
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what do they want and you as a writer need to control every scene and who's
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telling the scenes within this and so the story goal belongs to this character
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and the story Stakes are what's going to hurt them most if they don't achieve their
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goal okay so choosing the story goal so this is the second part of the blurb um
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and all this is is what does the protagonist want by the end of the novel and we're going to go through fourth wi
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uh and the Duke and I to show how to do this and then what are the key scenes in
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each of those novels and the biggest tip about um every scene in your story either it gets
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the protagonist closer to or farther away from the story goal whether they're
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in the scene or not and if it doesn't it might not along in the scene so when
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you're writing you want to think about the scene you're writing and how is it helping or hindering the protagonist in
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their main story goal and we do this for two main reasons
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one is to know uh when does the story end so in in fourth wi Violet's goal is
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to stay alive because she's gone into the riter's dragon quadrant it's part of the war school and she she thinks she's
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going to die every day her story goal is just to stay alive and so at the end of
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the story she's either alive or she isn't and I'm going to tell you later
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but it's whether um and until she achieves that goal the story is not over
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so you must so for example in a murder mystery if the detective doesn't solve
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who the murderer is the story is not over so the detective wants to solve the
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murderer or the criminal goes free or the criminal kills somebody else or or
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or there's all kinds of of bad things that could happen depending on the story the story is not over until that crime
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is solved and you also needed to know if every scene belongs in the story and
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this is where we get to is the scene helping or hindering the protagonist and so when you know who your protagonist is
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you can then decide okay this is my story goal and then you can decide well what's the
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ending of your story and is it's it's the first piece of your story you can decide and if you can do that of just
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whether they're going to achieve the goal or not you don't need to decide how they do it or why they do it so we'll go
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back to the murder mystery all you need to know for the ending is that the detective whether it's an amateur SLO a
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professional detective doesn't matter they're going to solve that that that mystery the the murder at the end of the
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novel and so now you know what the story goal is you know the ending of it and so
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everything else you do becomes easier when you're writing your story and you're not just kind of writing all over the place wondering what's going to
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happen then you choose the Stak so this is the third part of the skeleton blurb
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so we've got the protagonist must do something is part one sorry the protagonist is part one must do
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something is part two and the third part is what happens if they don't and if there's no no consequences if they don't
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achieve the story goal if it doesn't matter the story has no tension and nobody's going to read it the readers
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like to worry they want a guess they want it to be sus suspenseful they don't want to know the ending so there has to
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be something bad that's going to happen to this character if they don't achieve their story goal and we do this just to
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create tension throughout the entire story sometimes the reader going to think oh they can do it and sometimes
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they're going to think no they can't and you're going to go up and down in your story but it's a way to make the
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reader worry and so this is just the bad thing that will happen in a fantasy it's often the world is going to end because
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the evil whatever is taking over the whole world you know if we look at the Hunger Games by the end of the series if
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Katniss doesn't destroy the capital all everybody she knows is going to cease to exist or live a life of misery and
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that's the series so she's got to lead that Revolution or everybody she knows
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loves cares about in her town or District dies or is
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miserable okay so that's the skeleton blur so before you start writing this is
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the big thing try and do the protagonist must do something otherwise something bad will happen and that's it now you
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now you have a framework for writing and whatever else you do you can stick it on
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a sticky you can you can what if it's visible to you you know what your story is and while you're writing your writing
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will be faster because you know where you're going okay so I'm just going to repeat
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again spoiler alerts I'm going to give you the endings for these books because it's hard to understand a story if you
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don't need the ending and so fourth ring is Fantasy by Rebecca yaros Duke and I
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by Daphne um by Daphne it's not by Daphne it's by Julia Quinn and um it's a
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historical romance and so what I'm going to go through today works for all genres it works for
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narrative non-fiction if you're writing a memoir and you want to do a memoir in a story fashion so not a biography where
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it's it's chronological but if you're telling a story in Memoir form these story arc scenes all work for
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that so in fourth ring here is the skeleton blur so Violet must use her
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intelligence to survive the writer's quad otherwise she will die so what's
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happened to poor Violet is she was a scribe working in a library and her lovely mother gave her six months
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warning that she's now going to go and ride dragons and fight in a war and and and she's little and she doesn't have
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much strength and so everything is against her and so this is her goal if she doesn't achieve it well she's dead
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so it's not very good for her the Duke and I D must show Simon he's worthy of a
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a full family life otherwise she won't find true love with him and here oops sorry here um Simon really just doesn't
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want to get married he thinks he's he's not worth it he doesn't um deserve to
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have this family he'll he'll be a bad father a bad husband all of these things and so he's just written it off and so
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this is her goal and the reason we know so fourth wi
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it's very clear that Violet's the protagonist and she's she's the point of
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view character the entire way through except for the scenes at the end where she's unconscious and then it flips to
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Zaden for the Duke and I there's more than one point of view so if we go I'm just going to show you in fictionary if
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we go into the Duke and I so I'm just going to open this and what I've done is I've put in all the point of view
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characters in this book and so in this book we've got if I just scroll across
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the bottom here we've got 49 scenes 50 5% of these scenes are written
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from Daphne's point of view 37 are from Simons who's the love interest 6% are
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from a narrator which is at the beginning of a few scenes 2% which is only one scene is written from her
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brother's point of view so the author throws this in near the end because the brother is the protagonist in the next
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Bridgeton series book and so she's introducing his point of view here to carry to the next series if this was a
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standalone book wouldn't really need to do that probably be because it's a romance you would stick with just these
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two characters and a narrator but because Daphne has the bulk
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of this story it's her story and Simon is a secondary love interest if they had
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equal scenes like um The Wedding Date by um
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uh I just forgot her name that's terrible I've read this book so many times it's it's got two people with the
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same number of scenes and so they come in together with the same protagonist ghery is her last name Jasmine ghery
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there we go that's how long that took me to bring it out okay so that gives us we've done our
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story promise we know what the story is about and then we have um five scenes
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that actually make a story and when you're writing your story if you can come up with what's the main event in
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each of these scenes you have a full Foundation to go from you don't need to outline the whole story you don't need
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to outline the scenes you're just looking for ideas and these scenes and I'll go through each of these in detail
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so I'll just give you the high level here but these scenes are the inciting incident and that's just the shakeup in
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the Ordinary World so something's happened to the protagonist that changes their world then we have plot point one
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and this is where the protagonist accepts the story goal so if you know
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that your protagonist must do something that's the story goal in plot point1 the
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protagonist accepts they're going to do that something um and so I'll go through
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these for both books you can see more clearly what they are the middle plot point is just where the the protagonist
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goes from reactive they're still active all the way through the book but from plot point one to the Middle Point
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something's happening and they're reacting and doing something and something's happening and they're
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reacting when they get past this point then they're driving it instead of
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reacting to something they are making decisions they're going forward and they're driving the story in the wrong
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directions because it's going to get bad and it's going to get bad at plot point two and plot point two you might have
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heard of like the Dark Night of the Soul um and it's basically the worst
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point in the protagonist's story to this point and plot point two actually does two things compared to the other and one
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is it's the protagonist at the worst of the worst and the reader thinks they're never going to make it this is terrible
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everything's awful and they also learn the final piece of information they need
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to get to the climax and this is important and I'll get to that in a second of of why that's important at
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this this place in the story and then they get to the climax where they just answer the story goal or address the
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story goal do they or don't they achieve the story goal so inciting incident plot
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point one middle plot Point plot point two climax scene and all story structures have these five scenes in
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them there's um you know save the cat um the auth the writer's Journey the hero's
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journey they have many other scenes but the thing they have in common all of them these five scenes are in every
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single story and when you start to look at commercially successful stories you'll see them
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there okay so we'll talk about the inciting incident so this is just the
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shakeup so the inciting incident something happens that disrupts the protagonist Ordinary World so why do we
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have this if there's no change in the Ordinary World there's no story so
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without an inciting inant there's no story so you'll notice sometimes if you're reading a book or maybe you're watching something a movie or or a
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series on TV or whatever and and you're thinking like what is this about nothing's happening it's because it's
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showing the Ordinary World for too long and people's ordinary worlds are boring
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nobody wants to read about that they want to see see the protagonist in trouble what's going to happen in this story so this is the moment where
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something happens to the protagonist whether they wanted or to or not and now
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the world is different so if we look at Fourth wi um
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fourth wi happens actually before the story starts so before chapter oh it's a
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prologue I think in that book but before the beginning of the story Violet's mother orders her to the writer's
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quadrant and this is her shakeup so her Ordinary World is she been a scribe working in a library that's what she's
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training for her whole life and then 6 months before she's go she's to go to
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scribe College her mother who is the general of the whole thing says nope you're going to be a dragon rider off
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you go so she has six months to train so this is the shakeup in her Ordinary
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World The Duke and I um this is where so in a romance you you you might have
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heard of this as uh the meat cute and this is where the two love interests meet and they meet at a
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ball if they don't meet there's no romance there's no story so the inciting
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incident has to happen in a murder mystery if there's no murder there's no
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story and in fourth wi if Violet's mother doesn't order her to go to the riter's quadrant there's no story she's
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just describing the library and that's it that's the story and okay then we're done in two pages and that's all there
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is so here you're really just looking for something that's going to happen to
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them then we get to plot point one and this is where the protagonist accepts
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the story goal that's in the skeleton blurb if they don't accept the story
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goal there's no story so they have to actually now their life
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is changed now they've accepted the story goal and they have to do something if they ignore it so we'll go to our
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murder mystery and the detective goes no yep there was murder well there's no story they have to accept the story goal
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to find the murderer so if we look at Fourth wi um and just a reminder so she's got
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to use her intelligence to survive that's her goal what she does in plot
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point one is she beats an opponent on the mat and so they have these battles inside this school and they can
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kill each other so it's really dangerous and she's she's a little person and so
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she's got no power to fight these really big people that are there and people who've trained their entire lives to
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fight and so she uses her intelligence and her knowledge that she gained a a
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scribe she goes out hunting and she gets her uh herbs that she needs to create poison that will weaken but not kill
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them so she's accepted the story goal that she's going to try and survive up till this point she's every day she's
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like I'm gonna die I'm gonna die I'm gonna die I'm gonna die and here she figures out I'm going to try not to so I might die
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but I'm going to try not to in the Duke and I Simon offers da
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Daphne a fake dating relationship so they can avoid other suitors so he's a a
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Duke and all the women want him she's decided she doesn't want anything to do with this marriage thing at this point
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and so they get into this fake dating and so this is where um even though
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they're fake dating there is an attra action and it's their first meet cute
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where they decide they're they're going to be together but they're both like not really as a couple but really as a
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couple okay then we get to the middle plot point and this one is often hard for writers because what do you do with
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it you're in the great big 50% middle of your story so what it is um is the
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protagonist changes from reactive to proactive and they do it because if they
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don't go from reactive to proactive they can't get to the story climax which means the story never ends so there is
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no story without this if they're just reacting they're all over the place they're not going in any direction it's
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oh something happened I do something something happened I do something if they um decide where they're going they
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can drive toward the story goal and that's what gets them there and it's
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also you know the reader starts to cheer for them they're going to make a lot of mistakes people die along the way bad
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things will happen but they're at least driving the story in one of the Tom Cruz
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movies I just watch watched the other day one of his Jack Reacher ones he says to the other woman right in the middle
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of the story now we're going to get proactive and go for this he literally says it and I said to my husband stop
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right there how how many minutes are we into this and right at the midpoint he's telling the audience I'm getting
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proactive now okay so it's kind of funny it's my favorite movie moment all right so we'll go to Fourth
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Wing so here um Violet poisons Jack during a match and wins the match so
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they're they're back on the mat and this time um so Jack's been trying to kill
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her he's a bad character in this story and and he he wants her dead so she's
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found out that he's deathly allergic to oranges and so she um brings an Orange
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in her pocket to this match and as he's literally killing her she shoves it in his mouth and so he's about to die
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however this is a false victory for her because she um lets him live she tells
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somebody what the poison is for him and so they can take care of him and he doesn't die and she should have left him
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die because he continues to try to kill her but it changes the direction now she's feeling pretty confident she's
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feeling strong and she's now going to drive this story in the Duke and I Daphne saves
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Simon from a duel and here to do that they have to get married so they don't
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they're still in their fake dating thingy but they actually get married right after this because they now
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um because of the whole setting Simon can't not marry her and so
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the first kiss is right before this and then the duel changes the story Direction and now Daphne goes hard at
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trying to figure out how to get him to marry her and so that's their middle all right then we have plot point
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two so this is the protagonist at the lowest point in the story um and they
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receive the final piece of information they need to achieve the story goal and
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here we want them at their lowest point because we want the reader to think they can't achieve the story goal they're not
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going to survive this they won't find the murderer they won't they won't get their happily
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ever after and we want um that tension there so that's the lowest point and at
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somewhere in the story they have to receive the final clue of how they're going to achieve the climax so in the
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murder mystery there's a big clue and it could be right before right after the scene but it's generally in this
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area of how like what do they have and they might not know it they might not know at that point and the reader might
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not know but this is where it comes if they're still finding clue clue clue
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clue after this if that's too close to the climax and those Clues start to
30:08
start to look coincidental and the reader doesn't believe them that it's now oh I'm going to look there's this
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pen that wasn't here before and now I know who the murderer is so it can't happen that late because the reader
30:19
won't believe it so without the final information can't receive the goal okay so then we
30:25
get to Fourth Wing So Violet uses the golden her little Golden Dragon andara she uses the power to stop time and save
30:33
another character Liam um and she kills another person for the first time so two
30:39
things happen in this scene Violet the whole way through has been trying to survive this and not kill anyone she
30:45
doesn't want to kill somebody and so she does she she kills
30:50
Jack and she she is distraught because of it this is not who she wants to be
30:56
she's fundamentally Shak of who she is as a person and she finds out that her
31:02
signant is lightning and so this is just the power that can come through the dragon of the magic she can do and so
31:09
she can wield lightning however she can't control it so she like blows up a mountain and stuff and it's it it's it's
31:16
not great so um she's made her two things of unhappy that she killed
31:22
somebody but she figures out what her signant is and she's been trying this since the middle plot point to figure
31:28
out what is her power and without her power she can't succeed in the Duke and I Daphne's
31:36
abandoned by Simon uh because he can't commit to a relationship and so here she's she's
31:44
left alone um she's pregnant it's a piece of information she
31:50
finds out so she's distraught because he's left her and now she's pregnant and so that's the piece of information she
31:56
needs to actually get to the client clax to have their happily ever after okay so this is where I'm going to
32:04
tell you the ending it's coming soon on the next chart for both these books so here in the climax the
32:11
protagonist either achieves their story goal or they don't it's one or the other
32:17
except of course there's always an exception if you're writing a series they might just partially achieve their
32:23
story goal so that there's more in the next series so there's a bit of there's
32:28
a little bit of leeway there why because you want to ensure the reader is satisfied they need to know
32:35
this happened and and as an editor I've often seen first books where the climax scene is something fantastic but it
32:43
doesn't answer the story goal so it's it it's it's not the climax scene it's just
32:48
a really great scene and so then what the writer has to do is go and bring that scene down a bit and find the
32:53
climax and bring that scene up so it's a bigger scene than when that's not the climax Max okay so if we look at Fourth
33:00
Wing here's the ending Violet and the whole team they win the battle and violet lives and she because this is a
33:08
series she learns some things in this battle about the enemy and who they are
33:14
um but basically she has achieved her goal of surviving the riter quadron simple as that story's technically over
33:21
and then there's a bit of resolution leading into either the end of the book or to the next book in the series
33:28
and in the Duke and I they have their happily ever after so they're already married
33:34
um and but they actually Proclaim they love each other so it's gone from from
33:39
this fake dating Trope and romance to now they actually love each other okay so that is the five
33:47
scenes so now I'm going to show you what these look like so this is like a
33:53
perfect story arc where the inciting incident is anywhere from before this story starts to up to 15% so when you're
34:01
writing yours you want to think about where you want to place it plot point one is somewhere between 20 and 30% and
34:07
these are are loose ranges and so if you're out like outside
34:13
these ranges you just want to make sure there's enough tension in your story so it's not dragging and you you start
34:18
looking for do I have too much description do I have too much backstory why isn't there but you don't want to try and get it like it has to be exactly
34:25
25% that's not the goal here it's a range middle somewhere in the middle
34:30
plot Point 2 somewhere 70 80% climax 85 to 95 however in some of the romances is
34:37
right at the end at 99 so there's flexibility some genres are a little bit different than others Romance Writers
34:43
are tend to be well it's done so I don't want to read anymore the the story is over where fantasy wants a little bit
34:51
more or in a murder mystery you want to look at um how how does finding who the
34:57
killer was impact everybody around and closure for all of those people are typically what
35:03
happens so if we look at I'm just going to go to my bookshelf in fictionary and in fictionary we've got example
35:08
manuscripts and this is a manuscript that was written for um to have
35:14
structural errors in it and I just want to show you the story arc so when you
35:20
write your manuscript in fictionary once you have a story the story arc draws for you if you import a story it'll draw for
35:27
you so fictionary analyzes it and pulls out your story arc and what you're looking for in this structure so you
35:34
know how I was saying there's ranges well if we look at this is plot point one for this story and you can see here
35:40
this line is really dragging and that means the story is dragging because too
35:45
much time has gone from the inciting incident where the protagonist world was shaken up to when they accept the story
35:52
goal and the reader is thinking get on with it we know this is happening like just get to this and accept Theory story
35:57
goal so this needs to be farther back here and the other thing that happens
36:03
with plot point one too close to the Middle Point this is where the story lacks depth there's just not enough in
36:09
here and this is when you're reading a story where it's got good points but you start to skim and just look for like the
36:15
beginning and the end of the chapter because there's not enough in there to keep you word for word captured but
36:20
maybe enough that like I just kind of want to find out what happens so you skim through it and so when you're
36:25
writing your goal is something close to um you know if we look here this is
36:31
scene 21 so we can let's say we edited this this will redraw and we'll put this
36:38
back to like scene 25 we'll pretend we actually edited this novel and made it better and then you
36:44
can see this redraws for you and now the story arc is looking more reasonable but it doesn't have to be perfect really key
36:52
point there okay so let's look at the fourth wing
36:58
the inciting incident before the sto story starts so well before 15% great
37:04
Violet's mother orders the Riders uh her to go to the Riders quadrant then at 21% in approximately
37:12
Violet beats the first opponent so this is where she went and collected poison and and took people out that way without
37:19
killing them right at 50% is when she poisons Jack but lets him live at 70%
37:26
she kills Jack she uses her her lightning to do that and at 90% she wins the battle and the battle is several
37:32
scenes um so it's it doesn't actually have to be just one scene it goes it's a big battle in fantasy typically that can
37:39
happen where it's it's a few scenes together and so this is how fourth wi
37:45
plays out that it's just bang on and when you look at um any genre with
37:51
really commercially successful fiction this is how the story arc looks now this is just a fake drawing it would wiggle
37:58
around a little bit The Duke and I 11% in Simon and
38:03
Daphne Meed a ball so here's a thing about romance this inciting incident has
38:09
to happen in the book after 0% it must be there in a romance people want to see
38:15
the couple meet it has to be there where all other genres so if you think of a
38:21
cozy mystery the murder could have happened before the story starts that's fine that's the inciting incident but
38:26
it's it's done on on the side um 24% so really close to 25 Simon offers Daphne
38:32
the fake dating at 50 we have the Duel at 75 Simon leaves her and at 93 they
38:40
have their happily ever after and so these are the core five things that you
38:45
need to H to actually have a story if any one of these is missing either there
38:52
is no story or the story is not over yet and so when you're writing if you can have these in your mind you know what
38:58
you're structuring for okay now I'll just quickly go over because I know we're already at 22 um
39:05
when you're looking at your scenes there's three areas to look at like we talked about at the beginning the
39:10
character the plot and the setting so similar to your whole story
39:15
where you have the protagonist must do something otherwise something bad happens in a scene the point of view
39:22
character must do something that's their goal otherwise something bad happens so
39:28
you can take this structure from the whole big novel and when you're writing your scenes you think about well who
39:35
scene is this so maybe it's the detective and she's at the crime scene
39:41
and so her goal is um to find Clues and if she fails she's not going
39:47
to find the murderer and so there's consequences there or maybe she gets fired maybe her boss said well you got
39:53
to do this or or else or you know lots of there could be lots of different types of consequences on the plot side you're
40:00
looking for why is this scene in my novel and when you're writing your story
40:06
is really fun and sometimes you write scenes that are really great but they don't actually belong in the story they
40:12
might belong in a different story but you wrote a great scene so you look at what's its purpose and it's very clear
40:18
the story Arch scenes what their purpose are but um at the beginning saying
40:23
opening image you're establishing the Ordinary World that's its purpose and so all scenes have a reason for being in a
40:30
story and then at the beginning of the scene you want a hook and all an entry
40:35
Hook is is you want the reader to ask a question so um if if we look at I'll
40:43
just go back to the murder mystery because it's easy let's say we're an amateur sleuth and the woman opens the
40:49
door and there's a dead body well the first question who's the body there's a question there's a hook off you go the
40:55
exit Hook is the thing at the end of the scene that makes the reader want to keep going and if you do an entry hook and an
41:01
exit hook at every scene the reader just wants to keep turning pages and they won't go to bed and then the setting is just where
41:10
and when the the the story takes place so if you're writing chronological you
41:16
know it could be day one day two day three day four if you're writing a a time travel it could be you know
41:22
2024 um 1950 whatever it doesn't matter it's just your keeping track of you know
41:28
where it where the scene is and you choose specifically so you choose scenes that make it either easy or difficult
41:35
for the protagonist to achieve their their goal time you're just making sure
41:40
it makes sense often books that go out of time are written chronologically first and then they're mixed up and you
41:47
and and scenes are moved around and then objects are really important in all
41:52
books because they bring such meaning to the story and so in your setting things you want to look for objects and so
41:59
there's many things in setting but I'm just trying to bring it down to three things for for each of these
42:05
areas um so big thing is do you have a story and to know if you have a story
42:11
you need to know what your main event is in uh the inciting incident plot point
42:17
one middle plot Point plot point two and a climax and if you know just very
42:23
simply you can even just structure it you you know you're right a murder mystery in citing incident um there's a
42:30
dead body in plot point one the detective gets a sign to the case in the
42:36
middle plot Point makes a bad decision and goes in the wrong direction in plot point two he's got a bad clue maybe
42:43
there's another dead body maybe he caused somebody to die um find something he doesn't know what it is yet and then
42:48
the climax solves the murder if you just know that very simple about a story whatever your genre then you just go
42:55
away and you can write it and you just fill in all this scenes and boom you have a story cuz you know it's so easy writing a
43:01
novel um so I'll just quickly summarize with top three are my books that are out already um bottom three are coming this
43:08
year secrets to writing a fantasy secrets to writing and editing a mystery and secrets to writing and editing a romance so and I co-author all of these
43:15
with other lovely fictionary certified story coach instructors and then fictionary we have
43:21
a a sale and I think Lauren you have a link um for everybody so if you're interested our Community is free I'll
43:29
just pop oop no that's not it this is our community fictionary doc Circle
43:34
uhso and it's it's free we have lots of free events we have a space where you
43:40
can ask an editor anything we have trained editors that answer questions for you so you're getting story coach
43:47
editors who answer whatever you you want um and then we have all the get get connected places where you find all your
43:53
friends and your co-writers and and things but our main in this community is kindness and we monitor it for that um
44:02
and then our software um which I think Lauren just put the link up we're doing a 40% off sale and we haven't actually
44:08
announced our Black Friday sale but because Lauren invited me here today we thought well we you're the first people to actually see that we have a Black
44:14
Friday sale on so thank you Lauren for that
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