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Not sure you even need the first part. A character has a problem and tries to solve it, until he either succeeds or definitely fails. Lots of stories start with a conflict at the very first line, without any kind of setup (especially thrillers).
(1) stuff happens
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There's a traditional variant of this schema: A poor man uses all his money to buy a horse. "You must be happy", his neighbor says. "I don't know", answers the man. The next day, the horse escapes. "Your hard-earned money, and your horse, both gone. You must be sad", his neighbor says. "I don't know", answers the man. A few days later, the horse comes back, with a female horse. "Now you have two horses, and very soon…
This is a parable, not a novel. It's hard to imagine expanding this narrative to anything novel-length and also readable, so it's unrelated to TFA. Of course, GP post is similarly OT.
But the original article is not especially about novels, it's about stories in general. Cinderella is mentioned in the article, as a story archetype, and although longer, it is not a novel either (and would be pretty boring as a full-length novel).
So, sure, it's not a novel, but is it a story? My point is, it's very debatable. Most people, me included, would say "I heard a story yesterday, about a poor man who bought a horse, and..." But it does not fit the usual, ultra-simplified structure of a story (a conflict, and then a resolution of the conflict).
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There's a traditional variant of this schema: A poor man uses all his money to buy a horse. "You must be happy", his neighbor says. "I don't know", answers the man. The next day, the horse escapes. "Your hard-earned money, and your horse, both gone. You must be sad", his neighbor says. "I don't know", answers the man. A few days later, the horse comes back, with a female horse. "Now you have two horses, and very soon…
> it cannot fit any of these story patterns. Of cause it can, just because you have a character proclaim he doesn’t know doesn’t suddenly make it so. The curve goes down when his son breaks his leg and it goes up when he doesn’t have to join the army. There is no requirement to integrate all future development into the current state of the curve.
Infant's shoes for sale. Never worn.
Apparently Ray Bradbury, when asked what science fiction is, supposed to have written:
Last man in the world heard a knock on his door.
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There's a traditional variant of this schema: A poor man uses all his money to buy a horse. "You must be happy", his neighbor says. "I don't know", answers the man. The next day, the horse escapes. "Your hard-earned money, and your horse, both gone. You must be sad", his neighbor says. "I don't know", answers the man. A few days later, the horse comes back, with a female horse. "Now you have two horses, and very soon…
That sounds a lot like some kind of episodic serial.
This is addictive like crazy because we have several stories told at once, each with their own succession of rises and falls at different paces.
This abuses the word "plot". These aren't plots, they're highest-level structures . They're also merely all six alternations of up/down across two and three combinations. "From bad to good fortune" or "From good to bad to good" isn't a plot. "A young man leaves his town in search of adventure, his talent is quickly recognized by the military and he leads a platoon in battle which wins the war and he finds the meaning…
/ \ /\ \/ /\/ \/\[1] http://rolltop-indigo.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-big-list-of-r...
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Can you give reference(s) for that beginner’s mistake? I’ve never heard it before and it’s definitely something I do. Would love to learn more about this!
I can't think of a specific ref off the top of my head but there are great books out there. Also, I used dialog as an example but what makes a story addictive is the act of filling in the blanks. You can do that with emotional transitions or imagery and that's what I meant by "do that throughout your book and few people will complain about a lack of plot" Plots are a great tool in that they have that part built in. I…
* Secrets of Story by Matt Bird
* Anatomy of Story by John Truby
* Breakout Novelist by Donald Maass
* Self Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King
Enjoy!
In the early-90's I saw Vonnegut give a presentation in which he talked about his story graph idea. However, the video linked to in the article appears to end before the most interesting part. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-84vuR1f90 Hamlet. It's never clear whether what's happening belongs more toward the good or bad side of the vertical axis. The curve you get is a flat horizontal line. That's art. Never clearly…
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I have heard that this advice is given for news, and I think that this is unfortunate. "Show, don't tell" is not necessarily appropriate in news. News and writing for entertainment serve such radically different goals that it's worth carefully considering to what extent the same methods and models fit both. When someone reads creative writing, they derive enjoyment from the mental reconstruction of the scene, the cha…
I don't know - Show politician X is a liar instead of tell that politician X is a liar might be good advice.
For less obvious lies, it would be helpful to lead with the truth (see the primacy effect on memory). After stating the truth, then you can say "but politican X said Y".