The Wandering Hero: No Goal, No Plot, No Chance
by John Robert Marlow

Imagine, if you will, a lead character who wanders aimlessly through 120 (or 300) pages, with no particular destination in sight. As an editor, I don’t have to imagine it; I see it again and again—and yet again. The aspiring author sits down to write, and does—with no purpose in mind save following the exploits of their lead character. Trouble is, not every lead is worth following.

And therein lies the problem.

PSSST, HEY BUDDY…

Let’s say someone comes up to you in a bookstore, or outside a theater—perhaps even someone you find quite charming. And they say, “Hey dude, come with me, let’s hang out.” The first things you’ll want to know, of course, are where he wants to go and what he wants to do. So you ask. “I dunno,” he answers. Would you be inclined to go with him?

Or let’s say he comes back with this: “I thought maybe we could wander around aimlessly for the next seven hours and, who knows, maybe have some fun?” Chances are, you’d turn him down flat. First off, you don’t know this guy (as an agent, editor or producer doesn’t know you)—and for all you know, his idea of fun is jumping off the Empire State Building without a parachute (just as an agent, editor or producer has no idea what kind of story you consider worth telling). At least he’s not asking you to pay him for the pleasure of his company.

Without a solid concept consisting of a Who (your lead character or hero), a Goal (something he or she sets out to accomplish), and an Obstacle (which must be overcome in order to reach the Goal)—you’re going to look (to that same agent, editor, or producer) an awful lot like the guy you just met. With one difference: you’re planning to charge for the experience.

THE CRUCIAL QUESTION

To be worth following, a lead character must lead. Not blindly, but with purpose.

Think back over your favorite books and movies. Now ask yourself the same question about each: what is the hero trying to accomplish—his goal, desire, or mission? Is it to get the girl, rob a bank, escape the bad guy—what? Another way to phrase the same question: does the hero succeed or fail at the end? Because once you know what he’s succeeded or failed at, you’ll know his goal.

Without even knowing what your favorite books or movies are, I can state with absolute certainty that—if those stories were commercially successful—then 999 times out of a thousand, you’ll be able to answer that question. Why? Because as a general rule, stories with aimless heroes do not get bought, published, or made into movies.

In those few cases where this does actually happen, those books and movies are almost invariably—by money-making standards—miserable failures. And while an established author or filmmaker’s career might survive such a debacle, the beginning creator’s career may not.

If your lead character is to be worth following, he must be moving toward something. That something is the goal. Without this, plot cannot exist. No plot means no story, means no audience. End of story (if there was one). With no goal, there can be no consistent obstacle for the hero to confront and overcome. (Think back to the obstacles in those same favorite stories.) No obstacle means no conflict—which again means no story.

And so, instead of guiding your would-be audience through a real story, you (and they) wind up stranded in…

MEANDERVILLE

What you get instead is a meandering collection of random events connected by nothing more than the lead character’s presence at the time they take place. And while you may believe that the force of your hero’s magnetic personality is strong enough to overcome this—it’s not. In fact, chances are the hero is no hero, but is instead as deficient as the nonexistent plot itself.

The reason is simple: people who wander aimlessly through life with no overall purpose, no particular goal, no burning desire they feel compelled to fulfill—are, quite simply, boring. It makes no difference whether they’re trust-fund brats or street people; dull is dull. Even if they’re fascinating in the short run—funny, charming, whatever—in the long run they will inevitably come off as shallow and (because of that) ultimately uninteresting. At best, they’re fun in small doses. Books and screenplays are not small doses.

In the case of a fictional character (or even a real person in a true-life story) with no goal, there’s nothing for the reader or audience to get behind, nothing to root for, no ultimate satisfaction in seeing something achieved—because there is nothing to be achieved. It’s like being lost in the desert without compass, map—or desire to get out. You just keep plodding along until you drop. No one’s going to buy that. And if you publish it yourself, no one’s going to read it. Better you find out now than later. Because of the thousands of stories I’ve encountered, I’ve seen no exception to this rule.

Now, your hero can–to a certain extent–be aimless and carefree at the very beginning of the story. (Even in such cases, there’s often a glimpse of some redeeming quality early on.) But the hero then finds his goal and struggles to attain it, embarking on this journey at the turn of the first act. And he’d better be a damned interesting fellow regardless, all through that act.

THE PITCH FROM HELL

How do you pitch something like that? Probably with something like this: “Well, it’s about this guy, and he…” And already you’ve lost them. For good examples of pitches from hell, think back to Miles explaining his unpublished novel to Maya in the Sideways movie, or (more recently) Eddie explaining the plot of his unpublished manuscript to the guys sitting at the bar in the Limitless movie. Miles gets lost, and Eddie seems to bore even himself.

Do not pitch a work that has no plot; it has no chance of success, and it might even get the door slammed in your face when you try to come back with something better. Don’t do it.

REPLOTTING THE PLOTLESS

Your best bet, if you already have (or think you may have) a work like this, is to step back and reassess. Take a look at the Story Development for Writers series on this blog. Once you’ve finished the series, reevaluate your story to see how it measures up.

If it doesn’t, decide whether you feel the story is important enough to rework. If not, move on and do better next time. If you do decide to rework it, follow the recommended steps in laying the groundwork for the revision or rewrite. You can tackle that alone, or seek professional help. The next time around, you won’t have to rework things in this way, or to this extent—because you’ll lay the foundation before you start writing.

The first story—like the first million—is always the hardest.

Author John Robert Marlow is available for professional editing, development, and consultation. If you’d like help taking your work to the next level, contact John here.

JRM

copyright © by John Robert Marlow
all rights reserved

The Digital Outline: Creating a Beatline for Your Story
(Story Development For Writers, Part 6)
by John Robert Marlow

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN (OR WOMAN) BEHIND THE CURTAIN

You’ve no doubt heard that art is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration. Actually, it’s not that simple. If coming up with the concept is inspiration, and the actual writing is perspiration—that still leaves everything we’re doing now: logline, structure, pitch sheet and (finally) beatline. This is the man-behind-the-curtain-work that makes the final product—the art—seem effortless. To the audience, that is; the artist knows better.

HAMMERING OUT THE DETAILS

Now that we have the logline, structure, and pitch sheet in place, it’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty details of just how, exactly, we get our characters from first page, through all seven story points, past the obstacle (which is usually, but not always, overcome) to the goal—and beyond.

This is the land of story development proper, an area many writers—and most beginners—ignore at their peril. Which sounds dramatic, but it’s true. Every good story is a new destination, never visited before. And unless you have a fondness for blundering through the forest in random directions (a fondness which your readers will not share), you’re going to need a map.

The structure set forth in SDFW Part 4 described the landmarks; now it’s time to zoom in and look at the actual path we—and our characters—must travel between them.

WHAT IS THE BEATLINE?

Unfortunately, no one can be told what The Beatline is. You have to see it for yourself.

Oh wait, that’s not entirely true. It’s best to do both. So let’s start with the telling. A beatline is…

A bullet-point version of your story, detailing (in story order) every significant physical and emotional event that takes place during the course of the story.

Most bullet points should be one to three lines long. Some may include more than one event, if those events are very closely related. No significant event is overlooked. Ideally, a complete stranger should be able to pick up your beatline and follow the story from beginning to end, without needing to read the story itself.

Sounds easy, right? It’s not—but it beats the heck out of any “conventional” outline you’ll ever see. Bad news and good news here. If you blow (or skip) the beatline (or more conventional outline), you’ll more than likely blow the story as well. Maybe partially, maybe completely; you won’t know until you’ve finished writing or—worse—when agents, publishers, or production companies start turning it down. That’s when the endless rewrites begin.

On the other hand, if you truly ace the beatline, your story and characters should be in excellent shape—before the writing begins. Then it’s a matter of making sure your writing does justice to the tale being told. If story revisions are needed, they’ll probably be minor.

GETTING STARTED

This is where the specifics of your particular story come into play and, thus, where an article like this offers the least assistance. That’s because we’re no longer dealing with universals like story structure and pitching, which apply to everyone; it’s now down to you and the unique tale you have to tell.

When working with clients, I know the tale, and a great deal of my development work involves helping clients beatline their concepts (for expansion) or existing stories (for revision or adaptation). Because I don’t know your story, I’ll return to the previous installment’s example and beatline the first part of a story most readers already know.

BEATLINING THE MATRIX

This is what a beatline looks like…

• Traced phone call: Trinity tells Cypher that Morpheus believes Neo is The One; Cypher expresses doubt, says “We’re gonna kill him” (Neo)
• Four cops move down dark tattered hall with guns and flashlights, kick in door of Room 303; Trinity sits inside bare room, working laptop; she raises her hands
• Agents pull up outside, speak with Lt., who was told to wait for them; Agent Smith tells Lt. the four men he sent are already dead
• Cops move to cuff Trinity; she kills them all with freakish, inhuman abilities
• The Agents enter the building with more cops
• Trinity speaks to Morpheus on cell phone; earlier call traced, hardline cut, Agents coming; he tells her where to find another phone
• Trinity steps into hall as elevator opens, takes off; Agents and cops pursue, large Agent in the lead
• Trinity hits fire escape; Agent Smith on ground outside so she goes up
• Trinity hits the roof; Agent follows; she jumps to next roof, he follows; cops lagging, barely make jump
• Agent fires, misses; Trinity makes impossible jump over street to next building; Agent follows, cops stop
• Trinity bolts across roof, leaps off edge, crashes through small window in next building
• She tumbles down staircase, lands on back with two guns aimed at window; no one follows, she rises
• Trinity runs outside, spots phone booth; garbage truck skids into turn, stops with headlights on phone booth; phone rings
• Garbage truck burns rubber for phone booth; Trinity sprints toward booth
  She steps inside, picks up phone, turns to face oncoming truck
• Truck smashes phone boooth through wall, backs up
• Agent Smith steps from truck, other Agents walk up; there is no body in the phone booth; “She got out;” Smith says their informant is real, and the name of their next target is Neo; a search is already running
• Neo sleeps in front of his computer; news headline about Morpheus eluding police on the monitor
• The newscroll disappears; words appear as Neo wakes: “Wake up Neo… The Matrix has you… Follow the white rabbit;” He tries to shut down but can’t; next message is “Knock knock, Neo”
• Someone knocks on the door; the monitor goes black
• Neo answers, small group in hall; he sells illegal disk to lead dude in hall; dude invites Neo to party; Neo passes, then spots white rabbit tattoo on gal’s shoulder, agrees to go

That’s a beatline. Every significant event is there. (In this case, they’re all physical.) The final level of microdetail—Trinity leaving a footprint in the concrete when she lands on the third rooftop, for instance, or spinning as she sails toward the window of the fourth building—isn’t needed until the actual writing begins. Though you can of course make notes as cool little microdetails come to mind.

As you can see, once you have the beatline in place, it’s hard to write too far astray. On average, I find a tightly written beatline comes out somewhere between 20 and 40 pages long. Novel beatlines run longer than script beatlines.

NONFICTION BEATLINES

There’s no reason you can’t use this same process to beatline a work of nonfiction, substituting topics covered and examples for physical and emotional events. Conventional outlines are klutzy and often hard to rearrange; the beatline is more streamlined, and a cinch to alter.

BEATLINE NEW AND EXISTING STORIES

Simply put, it’s faster and more economical to work in beatline form. While it’s easy to see the advantages of this process for new works, let’s take a look at beatlining existing material.

Many writers know something. What they know they can’t explain, but they feel it. They’ve felt it for some time: There’s something wrong with their manuscript or screenplay. They don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in their mind—driving them mad. Or causing rejections. It is this feeling that brings many clients to me.

In short, they need need to revise their stories—and the beatline works here, for the same reason it works with something new. In this case, you can either plow through 120 or 300 pages (or more), over and over again, changing this and fixing that, and rereading yet again to see if you missed something.

Or you can clunk through a complicated formal outline of some type—in which case, go with God.

Or you can, instead, work with a 20-40 page beatline, where each bullet point becomes, in effect, digital or (if you prefer analog) modular. You can add, delete, move, or alter any beat without worrying about futzing up some multiply-indented, numbered-and-lettered-and-subnumbered monstrosity of an outline.

You can see immediately how your changes affect neighboring scenes. In a matter of minutes, you can see how it affects the story as a whole.

Using a beatline also allows you to keep the whole story in your head while you tinker, because it doesn’t take 2 or 3 or 6 hours to read it through (which also means you’re more likely to read it through in one sitting). In the time it would take to read your manuscript or screenplay, you can rip through the beatline 5, 10, 20 times or more.

You’ll actually get to know your story’s pitchable points better (and faster) this way than you will by reading the actual story. Ghosts, orphans and other oversights will “pop out” at you in a way that just doesn’t happen while slogging through the entire work, in part because you seldom read the entire thing in one sitting.

To break things up a bit and provide points of reference—so you can see, at a glance, where you are in the story—list the seven major story points (see SDFW Part 4) in their proper place in the beatline, like so:

• Neo gets FedEx delivery at work, finds phone inside

INCITING INCIDENT

• Phone rings in his hand; it’s Morpheus, who says he’s been looking for Neo and wants to show him something, Neo may not be ready but they’ve run out of time because “they’re coming for you and I don’t know what they’re going to do;” tells him to look
• Neo looks over cubicle wall, sees Agents (including Smith); Morpheus guides him (as if he can see everything) to outer office and painter’s scaffold, says only ways out of building are walking skyscraper ledge to scaffold and taking that to roof, and leaving in Agents’ custody; Morpheus leaves choice to Neo and hangs up
• Neo goes onto ledge, damn near falls, drops phone, goes back
• Neo escorted from building by Agents, placed in car outside; Trinity watchersd from motorcycle, takes off when Agent Smith turns her way

You might even make the story points a different color.

Once the beatline is complete (or revised), you’ll know exactly where you’re going before your fingers ever touch the keyboard—avoiding the otherwise inevitable blind alleys and endless rewrites that could cost you weeks, months, even years.

Another thing the beatline will do for you is this: help kill your darlings—those choice bits you’ve labored over and become invested in and just can’t seem to part with, even though they don’t quite belong in the story.

Novelist and Oscar-winning screenwriter William Goldman goes so far as to say that this is in large part what distinguishes the professional from the amateur writer: the ability to kill one’s darlings. When those darlings exist as mere bullet-points in a beatline, it’s easier to show them the door.

The beatline is also appropriate for adaptations—where perfectly good stories must nevertheless undergo additions, deletions, and alterations to meed the demands of the new medium.

STRIKING COLORS

A few useful tips I use with clients…

Once you have a complete draft of your beatline, save two versions: an original and a numbered working draft: Brilliant Work beatline (original) and Brilliant Work beatline (working 01). Park the original and use the working draft.

When making changes to the working draft, use strikout for deletions and a new color for all other changes. If you move something, strike it out in the old spot and color it in the new. Choose an easy-on-the-eyes color for this, or you’ll go blind. (You can also track changes in Word, but I find this to be more trouble than it’s worth, through multiple versions and with two people working the beatline.)

Before “permanently” deleting strikeouts, save a new working version (“Brilliant Work (beatline working 02)”). If you change your mind on anything later, you can revert to (or pull beats from) earlier versions.

Note that after a while, it gets really annoying to read through, or even look at, a document with large blocks of strikeout text—so at some point, you’re going to want to dump those blocks and continue with a “fresh” document.

When you reach the end, and have gone through everything and made all of the changes you think best, save another draft as-is, then black all text (changing colored text to black), save as “Brilliant Work v2 (beatline working 0-whatever).”

Now repeat—because there will be things you missed, new “aha moments” as you go through the revised beatline, and new changes to be made. If you need help, or want to brainstorm, find a good editor or story development guy (Hello), and have at it.

Repeat again, as needed—until the story seems flawless.

Then go write it.

Alter your beatline to reflect the new full draft. Check it over for mistakes and possible improvements. Do a final pass on the work itself and—

Viola!

You’re done.

NEXT UP:

Starting this month, the Self Editing Blog will be expanding its coverage with guest posts from agents and others, interviews with authors and screenwriters—and more. Stay tuned…

The articles in this series are:

Story Development for Writers, Part 1: The Basics

Building the Perfect Logline for Your Book, Screenplay, or Other Story (SDFW Part 2)

Logline Workshop: Jurassic Park (SDFW Part 3)

Story Structure: Laying Down the Bones (SDFW Part 4)

The One-Minute Story: Crafting a Pitch Sheet for Your Book, Screenplay, or Other Tale (SDFW Part 5)

The Digital Outline: Creating a Beatline for Your Story (SDFW Part 6)

Author John Robert Marlow is available for professional editing, development, and consultation services (including logline, structure, and story development options). If you’d like help taking your work to the next level, contact John here.

JRM

copyright © by John Robert Marlow
all rights reserved

The One-Minute Story: Crafting a Pitch Sheet for Your Book, Screenplay, or Other Tale
(Story Development For Writers, Part 5)
by John Robert Marlow

PITCHING AS COURTSHIP

We already know (from Part 2 of this series) that most commercial concepts can be conveyed in 10 seconds or less, via something called a logline. Now we’re going to look at expanding that micropitch into something positively extravagant: a one-minute pitch. (Okay, sometimes it’s a minute and a half.)

Think of it like courtship: you start small to test the waters, tossing out your best line to see what happens. If the response isn’t favorable—that is, what happens is nothing—you move on. That’s the logline stage.

If the other party shows interest, you take the next step—ask them out to lunch, maybe, where you reveal a bit more about yourself. That’s the pitch sheet. If all goes well, you’re on for dinner, where you lay the whole script on the table. If that goes well, you dance around for a while and—hopefully—close the deal. By selling the book, script, or whatever it is you have to offer.

Sometimes the stars align and you’ll go straight from opening line to dinner. But you can’t count on that, so you have to plan on lunch—which is what we’re doing here. Lunch also makes for good practice, so we don’t want to skip it and go hungry.

A good pitch sheet is the written equivalent of a movie trailer. It doesn’t show you everything, nor is it meant to; it is not a synopsis. Instead, it shows you just enough to make you want more. Agent Andrea Brown’s description of a query comes to mind: “It should be like a skirt. Long enough to cover everything, but short enough to be exciting.”

LOGLINE RELOADED

The pitch sheet starts with a logline, which you should have by now. (If not, revisit SDFW Part 2 and SDFW Part 3, in that order.) The idea here is to quickly hook those new to your concept, and refresh the memories of those who’ve already seen or heard the logline—hitting them again with the thing that got them excited in the first place.

With that accomplished, it’s time to start…

UPPING THE ANTE

If you’re wondering how to get started, don’t; you’ve already laid the groundwork by coming up with a logline (SDFW Part 2 and SDFW Part 3) and figuring out your major story points (SDFW Part 4). All of that comes into play here, which is why we did things in this order.

The logline takes 10 seconds of someone’s time. If they decide that’s time well spent, you’ve bought yourself another minute. Your job now is to expand the logline and fill that minute in a way that causes the reader to bump you up from casual-glance status to someone they’re willing to spend a few hours with.

Which is, of course, precisely the working dynamic of a movie trailer. And you already know how that goes. There are three possible outcomes: you’re left with a burning desire to see the film; you’re sort of iffy about it; or it’s really not your thing.

Professionals in the book and film industries don’t have time for iffy; there’s too much new stuff coming in the door. So with very rare exceptions, it’s an immediate “worth a look” or “not interested.”

Here’s how to get yourself in the first category.

BREAKING THINGS DOWN

Title, genre, your name up top. Followed by the logline. So far, so good.

Now, keeping your three basic story elements—WHO, GOAL, OBSTACLE—firmly in mind, take a look at your tale’s basic structure. This, as you may recall from the previous installment, consists of seven things: inciting incident, first act turn, midpoint, low point, second act turn, climax, and denouement or wrap-up.

Let’s start winnowing that down. Obviously, we’re going to need to include the inciting incident and the first act turn, and in the process of doing that, we will inevitably cover the WHO and the GOAL. How hard was that?

We may (and may not) keep the midpoint; it’s more likely to make the cut if it’s a no-turning-back point rather than an unsuspected-element-in-play reveal (see SDFW Part 4). We might also keep or partially reveal the low point, and maybe (but not always) the second act turn.

The climax will certainly be implied (and so reveal the OBSTACLE against which (or whom) our hero struggles), but since giving away the outcome wrecks any possibility of suspense, we won’t be including the climax proper in the pitch. Likewise, we can leave out the wrap-up, which would serve only to give away the outcome of the climax.

So already we’re down from seven to four, maybe five structural elements, along with our trusty WHO-GOAL-OBSTACLE mantra. Now that we’ve broken everything down and stripped away the things we don’t (for the moment) need, it’s time to get busy…

BUILDING THINGS UP

For our working example, let’s use a story everyone is—or should be—familiar with: The Matrix. Our starting point is the logline. When I think about this story, here’s what I come up with:

A young hacker discovers the world we know is a dream, created by intelligent machines to enslave humanity. Now he must lead a rebellion to free Mankind—while pursued by virtual assassins no man has ever defeated.

Because this concept is a bit more complex than usual, I’ve chosen to employ a setup line with the WHO, followed by the GOAL and the OBSTACLE. Those are the basics. Delving more deeply into this particular concept is going to result in something far too complicated to get across in a logline.

Now let’s get into story structure. As pointed out in SDFW Part 4, classically structured stories have seven major structural elements. Let’s take a quick look at these before we start building our pitch:

INCITING INCIDENT: Morpheus calls Neo at work

FIRST ACT TURN: Neo takes the red pill

MIDPOINT: Cypher revealed as traitor

LOW POINT: Tank, Neo and Trinity about to pull the plug on Morpheus

SECOND ACT TURN: Neo and Trinity set out to rescue Morpheus

CLIMAX: Neo confronts Agent Smith in hall outside Room 303

DENOUEMENT: Phone booth talk / system failure / Neo takes flight

Time to rock and roll. First thing we do is set up our main character, the WHO:

Thomas Anderson spends his days as a cog in the corporate machine. By night, he hacks the web as “Neo,” searching for answers to questions he doesn’t know.

Right away he’s relatable, to both the cubicle worker and the rebel—and to those who are a bit of both. That’s a massive audience. Of course, we still need a fabulous story…

Next up, the INCITING INCIDENT:

Contacted by the most wanted man on earth, Neo escapes government surveillance for a meeting.

That’s heavy. Lots of danger, along with the revelation that Neo has been under surveillance. We’re oozing tension already. We’ve also brought up two intriguing questions: who is the most dangerous man on earth, and why would he contact Neo?

Time to touch on that FIRST ACT TURN:

“Morpheus” tells Neo he’s a slave in a prison he cannot see, and offers a choice: return to his soul-crushing corporate life, or take a pill that will reveal this prison-called the Matrix.

The world we know is a computer-generated dreamland, wired into our brains to control our minds and bodies. This is the Matrix.

Because the concept is so extraordinary, this part of the pitch focuses on the reveal, setting up the world of the story and generating further empathy for Neo—whose whole world vanishes before his eyes. Any reader worth his or her salt is firmly hooked at this point. Unless we screw up big-time with what follows, we’ve got ‘em. We can now move on to suggest the GOAL:

Believing that Neo is the long-prophesied savior who will turn the Matrix against itself, Morpheus and his small band of rebels train Neo to enter the Matrix with them, evade its defenders, and attack the machines.

Here we raise the stakes, and explain who the most dangerous man in the world is (Morpheus, whose goal is to take out the entire machine civilization) and why he would take the time to contact a cubicle worker/hacker (he believes that Neo can help him achieve his own goal).

We also throw down another question: Is Neo, in fact, The One? Providing the answer would wreck the suspense—so we’ll leave the reader hanging on this One.

Clearly the GOAL is, in part, to attack the machines. In this case, we’ll save the rest of it for later.

The MIDPOINT isn’t needed here and, if included, would require us to introduce Cypher and explain his betrayal. TMI: too much information, when we need to keep this flowing smoothly. The no-turning-back point was Neo taking the pill.

We’ll use the LOW point to set up the final act:

When Morpheus is captured,

That’s bad. It’s like seeing Obi Wan Kenobi cut down—the fall of the hero’s mentor. Which, of course, places the burden of success squarely on our hero’s shoulders, giving us in one fell swoop the SECOND ACT TURN, the immediate OBSTACLE (the large-scale obstacle is the Matrix itself), and the suggested CLIMAX:

Neo must lead a rescue assault—against virtual assassins no man has ever defeated.

Clearly, the climax will involve a final battle between Neo and the Agents. (The Agents are here called virtual assassins in order to intrigue without getting bogged down in lengthy explanations; likewise, saying that Neo and Trinity are the assault team’s only members would force us to explain who Trinity is and what happened to everyone else. Again, TMI at this stage.)

This leads quite naturally to the fully-stated CLIMAX / GOAL, and the (large-scale and personal) consequence of failure:

Neo must fulfill the prophecy and free Mankind—or die.

We will not use the WRAP-UP, as that would give away the outcome of the climax.

Now let’s put it all together in…

THE ONE-MINUTE-PITCH

Thomas Anderson spends his days as a cog in the corporate machine. By night, he hacks the web as “Neo,” searching for answers to questions he doesn’t know.

Neo will fulfill the prophecy and free Mankind—or die.

That’s 35 seconds to read on screen or page, and 1 minute, 6 seconds to read aloud. Add the title, genre, author, and logline up top, and you’ve got…

THE FINISHED PITCH SHEET:

THE MATRIX
(action / sci-fi / tech thriller)

by Larry and Andy Wachowski

A young hacker discovers the world we know is a dream, created by intelligent machines to enslave humanity. Now he must lead a rebellion to free Mankind—while pursued by virtual assassins no man has ever defeated.
_

Thomas Anderson spends his days as a cog in the corporate machine. By night, he hacks the web as “Neo,” searching for answers to questions he doesn’t know.

Contacted by the most wanted man on earth, Neo escapes government surveillance for a meeting.
“Morpheus” tells Neo he’s a slave in a prison he cannot see, and offers a choice: return to his soul-crushing corporate life, or take a pill that will reveal this prison—called the Matrix.

Neo takes the pill and learns the truth: the real world is a wasteland, shattered by a war between Man and Machine. Humanity has been enslaved by a victorious race of intelligent machines.

The world we know is a computer-generated dreamland, wired into our brains to control our minds and bodies. This is the Matrix.

Believing that Neo is the long-prophesied savior who will turn the Matrix against itself, Morpheus and his small band of rebels train Neo to enter the Matrix with them, evade its defenders, and attack the machines.

When Morpheus is captured, Neo must lead a rescue assault—against virtual assassins no man has ever defeated.

Neo will fulfill the prophecy and free Mankind—or die.

[Contact info at bottom]

That’s 44 seconds to read; 1 minute, 20 seconds to speak. If I were pitching The Matrix today, this would be my pitch sheet.

THINGS NOT TO DO

Go over one page.

Also—unless you’re attending a pitch fest (where such things have come to be expected)—do not, under any circumstances whatsoever, plaster your pitch sheet with graphics. This includes your idea of what the book cover or movie poster should look like, photos of yourself or anything else, nonstandard (and often hard to read) fonts, and so on.

You’re here to sell the steak, not the sizzle. The more you dilute your steak pitch, the more likely you are to be viewed as unprofessional, or as desperately trying to bling-up a product with no substance.

Exceptions: You’re pitching something where the graphics are an integral part of the work (illustrated children’s book, graphic novel, etc.); you’re pitching an adaptation of an existing work (in which case you might—and might not—want to include, say, an image of the existing work’s cover or case); you’re playing off your own brand logo (which is already widely known); you’ve been asked to do this by the same person you’re sending it to.

Even here, though, words—not images—take precedence. Put bluntly: you’re a writer; act like one.

MAPPING YOUR COURSE

The pitch sheet is a vital tool not only for selling—but for keeping you on track as you put your story together. Think of it as a map to a place you’ve never gone before. You can step outside and wander in the general direction of your destination, hoping to get lucky—or consult a map and know exactly where you’re going before you set out.

Using a map doesn’t mean you can’t make adjustments along the way; if a flash flood has washed away the bridge, you find a way around. A map helps you do that—and ensures that you’ll find your way back to the route you wanted to take.

Once you’ve reached your destination, you can review the map—the pitch sheet—and update it to reflect your final route.

[For those seeking professional help with logline, structure, or story development, see the author's contact link below.]

UP NEXT:

SDFW Part 6: Filling in the details with a beatline…

The articles in this series are:

Story Development for Writers, Part 1: The Basics

Building the Perfect Logline for Your Book, Screenplay, or Other Story (SDFW Part 2)

Logline Workshop: Jurassic Park (SDFW Part 3)

Story Structure: Laying Down the Bones (SDFW Part 4)

The One-Minute Story: Crafting a Pitch Sheet for Your Book, Screenplay, or Other Tale (SDFW Part 5)

The Digital Outline: Creating a Beatline for Your Story (SDFW Part 6)

Author John Robert Marlow is available for professional editing, development, and consultation services (including logline, structure, and story development options). If you’d like help taking your work to the next level, contact John here.

JRM

copyright © by John Robert Marlow
all rights reserved

Story Structure: Laying Down the Bones
(Story Development For Writers, Part 4)
by John Robert Marlow

SEVEN ELEMENTS OF STRUCTURE

Classically-structured (three-act) stories have seven basic structural elements: inciting incident, first act turn, midpoint, low point, second act turn, climax, and denouement or wrap-up. Though you’ll occasionally hear about “mythically structured” tales (like Star Wars) having more than three acts, all of those acts fall within three major acts, so the structure laid out below still holds true.

It’s not as complicated as it sounds. Really. And the structure is exactly the same for books, movies, and other story venues—because story is story, regardless of medium. I use movies as examples because they have a broader audience, and readers are more likely to have seen a given movie than to have read a given book. One note of warning: a great many “spoilers” follow.

INCITING INCIDENT

The inciting incident is the event that kicks off your story. That doesn’t mean your hero rolling out of bed in the morning qualifies, just because it’s the first scene; that’s part of your protagonist’s (the WHO’s) ordinary life. The inciting incident is the thing that throws a wrench into your character’s ordinary life—after which, things are never quite the same. Generally speaking, this happens roughly 10% of the way into the story.

The inciting incident can be as seemingly innocuous as a chance meeting of two strangers (Dan and Alex in Fatal Attraction, Connie and Paul in Unfaithful, Rose and Jack in Titanic, Jake and Neytiri in Avatar), or as obvious as a letter (Sleepless in Seattle, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone), a new job (Midnight Run, Jurassic Park), or having a friend or loved one kidnapped (Taken, Die Hard) or murdered (Beverly Hills Cop, Ghost, Batman Begins).

While the placement of the inciting incident can occasionally be altered (Iron Man, The Fugitive), this is a rare move most often attempted by seasoned pros—and not recommended for those still looking to break in.

FIRST ACT TURN

This is where the first act ends and the second begins—the point at which your hero (WHO) knows what he must do (the GOAL), and sets out to do it. Knowing alone is not enough, and making a decision (which is passive) doesn’t cut it. There must be action taken toward the achievement of the Goal: a decision coupled with action. The first act turn marks the beginning of the hero’s journey, and typically takes place about 25% of the way into the story.

The “journey,” in this sense, isn’t necessarily physical, but refers to the overall path embarked upon by your main character. This is always emotional, and also includes physical (and sometimes spiritual) elements as well.

Examples include John Anderton going on the run to prove his innocence in Minority Report; Richard Kimball going on the run to find his wife’s killer (and so prove his innocence) in The Fugitive; Neo taking the red pill in The Matrix; Somerset taking one last case and training Mills in Se7en; Steven blackmailing/paying David to kill his (Steven’s) wife in A Perfect Murder (proving that the protagonist isn’t always the good guy, though this is a risky move); the guys in Hangover setting out to learn what happened last night/find their missing friend Doug; Harry Potter leaving the Dursleys to begin his new life (in the first book/movie).

The first act turn needn’t be a single event; multiple, very closely-spaced events sometimes combine to create the act turn, as in Rocky—where he accepts Apollo Creed’s offer (which happens offscreen), takes Mick as his coach, and begins training for the fight. In such cases, the turn takes place over a short span of pages.

MIDPOINT

The midpoint can be one (or both) of two things: the point of no return (beyond which your hero cannot turn back, cannot undo his actions), or the point at which an unsuspected element is revealed to be at work within the story. This happens at the halfway or 50% mark, or thereabouts; hence the term midpoint.

In The Matrix, for example, the first act turn (taking the red pill) is also a point of no return, so the midpoint takes the form or an unsuspected element revealed; this is where we (but not the protagonist) learn that Cypher is working for the other side. In Harry Potter, the midpoint is where Harry (and we) discover that the mysterious package from Gringott’s is now at Hogwarts.

LOW POINT

This is the all-hope-is-lost point, where the main character is as far as it seems possible to be from achieving his Goal. Put another way: if your main character were going to commit suicide, this would be the place. The low point almost always occurs in the second half of the second act, between 50% and 75% of the way in.

This is where almost everyone is dead, and Tank is about to pull the plug on the captured Morpheus (The Matrix); where Rocky realizes he cannot defeat Apollo; where Alan refuses Madison’s touch in the water tank, after they’re captured by the government (Splash); where Mr. Incredible’s family is held captive and they’re all about to die because of his actions (The Incredibles); where Wesley dies and Buttercup gets married (The Princess Bride); where Harry Potter and friends rush to tell Dumbledore that Hagrid has accidentally given away the secret and the stone is in danger, only to find that Dumbledore himself has been lured away—leaving the stone vulnerable to Snape.

It’s also where Doug learns that Fergie will not let him walk away from the trade, and that the FBI has turned Claire against him (The Town); where Tony Stark gets his plug pulled by Obadiah Stane, then collapses just short of reaching his backup power source (Iron Man); where Jake’s previous actions catch up to him, Neytiri turns against him, Hometree is destroyed and Jake is tied up and left to die in the aftermath—and, to top it off, Mo’at seems about to run him through with a blade (Avatar).

SECOND ACT TURN

This is the point where, after what seems a massive, even hopeless defeat (leading to the Low Point), the protagonist comes back with a new plan—taking new action to achieve his goal. This usually happens about 75% of the way into the story.

This is where Harry Potter and friends come up with their own plan to save the stone and set it into motion; and where Jake sets his new plan (the counterattack) into motion by jumping Toruk (Avatar). It’s also where Neo decides to go back for Morpheus, and he and Trinity jack in and enter the building where Morpheus is being held (The Matrix); and where Alan takes action to help Madison escape (Splash). As with the first act turn, the second turn is a decision coupled with action, which can take the form of a single event, or a very brief sequence of events).

CLIMAX

The point of maximum conflict between hero (WHO) and OBSTACLE (usually but not always an antagonist or villain), toward which the whole story has been building. For the hero, this is the make-or-break point, because the outcome of the climax determines whether he will succeed or fail in his efforts to achieve the goal. The climax takes place in the last 25% of the story, most often in (or concluding in) the last 10% or even 5%.

This is the final round (and the decision) in Rocky’s fight with Apollo; Harry Potter’s confrontation with Voldemort; Neo’s final confrontation with Agent Smith in the hall outside room 303 (Matrix); Steven and Emily’s final confrontation in A Perfect Murder; Dan and Beth fighting Alex in the bathroom (Fatal Attraction); Sam’s battle with Carl in the abandoned attic (Ghost); Richard Kimball defeating Nichols and saving Gerard, who now knows he’s innocent (The Fugitive).

It is Anderton confronting Lamar (Minority Report); Harry Tasker’s battle with Aziz to save his daughter (True Lies); Sam and Annie meeting atop the Empire State Building (Sleepless in Seattle); Alan jumping off the dock to go with Madison (Splash); Jake and Neytiri’s fight with Colonel Quartich and Jake’s rebirth as one of The People (because this—and not the fight alone—is the culmination of Jake’s emotional, spiritual, and physical journey in Avatar).

DENOUEMENT

The denouement is the wrap-up, showing (sometimes merely indicating) where things go from here. Because the climax is the high point, the denouement is typically kept short—say, the last 1% to 3% of the story. Enough detail to let people know how things are going to turn out, but not so much that it detracts from the climax-induced high. In faery tales and comedies, this sometimes comes down to a single line: And they lived happily ever after.

NONCLASSICAL STRUCTURE

Nonclassically structured stories can lack any or all of he above elements, including the denouement—and often end ambiguously, refusing to tie things up with a clearly-defined resolution.

TRUE STORIES

Real life, of course, does not adhere to classical story structure. Then again, real life abounds with boring minutiae and meaningless detours that are of little interest to anyone, including the people living through it. In short: few people will pay to read or watch that. Another important difference between reality and storydom: fiction has to make sense.

Which is why it’s crucial, when adapting real stories for the screen, to adapt them in such a way that the finished product adheres to the classical structure expected—indeed demanded—by Hollywood filmmakers. If you’ve ever wondered why such adaptations are promoted with phrases like “based on a true story” or “inspired by true events” rather than “a true story” or “everything happened exactly like this”—ponder no longer. (Fargo, of course, did claim to be a true story—but they were fibbing, so that doesn’t count.)

Even when writing a true story in book form, it seldom hurts to relate the details in classically structured format—assuming this can be done without fundamentally altering the truth of the narrative.

CONCLUSION

Look again at your favorite stories, and you’ll find these seven elements forming the skeleton upon which those stories are built. This is no coincidence—and if you want your stories to appeal to a large audience, this is the way to go. And while there are exceptions to everything, but as Damon Runyon once wrote:

The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong—but that’s the way to bet.

[For those seeking professional help with logline, structure, or story development, see the author's contact link below.]

UP NEXT:

SDFW Part 5: The Pitch Sheet. Look for it Thanksgiving week.

The articles in this series are:

Story Development for Writers, Part 1: The Basics

Building the Perfect Logline for Your Book, Screenplay, or Other Story (SDFW Part 2)

Logline Workshop: Jurassic Park (SDFW Part 3)

Story Structure: Laying Down the Bones (SDFW Part 4)

The One-Minute Story: Crafting a Pitch Sheet for Your Book, Screenplay, or Other Tale (SDFW Part 5)

The Digital Outline: Creating a Beatline for Your Story (SDFW Part 6)

Author John Robert Marlow is available for professional editing, development, and consultation services (including logline, structure, and story development options). If you’d like help taking your work to the next level, contact John here.

JRM

copyright © by John Robert Marlow
all rights reserved

Coming to a Bad End: Rabbit-Hats, Cliffbangers, and Other Cheats
by John Robert Marlow

Few things in life are worse than a bad story. One of them is a good story with a bad ending. At least with the bad story, it’s pretty clear what you’re dealing with, often in the first few chapters. So you really can’t blame the writer when, despite numerous warning signs, you slog all the way to page 347 before throwing in the towel. In a sense, you knew what you were getting into.

Not so with a good story. There you are, swept along by the narrative, engrossed in fabulous dialogue from characters so real it seems they’ll step off the page—when something goes so terribly wrong that every fiber of your being shrieks: That’s not the way it’s supposed to be!

Somehow, the author veered off course and, in the end, you’re left feeling disappointed, cheated, even angry. A number of authorial missteps can lead to this dark place, but the major boo-boos fall into several broad categories…

RABBIT-HATS

A rabbit-hat ending is one where some wildly unlikely occurrence happens at just the right time, and in just the right place, to turn a dire (or hopeless) situation into a happy ending. The bankrupt protagonist is about to hang himself—when he suddenly inherits a fortune, or wins the lottery. The hit man has Our Hero in his sights—but slips on a banana peel, and falls in front of a speeding train. And so on.

Such events are about as likely as—but less believable than—magically pulling a white rabbit out of your hat. It destroys all credibility, is often unintentionally comedic, and always makes the author seem too lazy or unimaginative to construct a plot that stands on its own merits—instead of resorting to slight-of-hand and parlor tricks. Aristotle complained about this sort of thing two thousand years ago, but many new writers have yet to see the memo.

Despite all of that, you can sometimes get away with this sort of thing when writing comedy—because in this situation, you want the reader to laugh at the sheer improbability of it all. (For a full treatment of coincidence, see What a Coincidence! The Use and (Mostly) Misuse of Coincidence).)

BAD DREAMS & NUTJOBS

We’ve all seen these. Engrossed in a book or movie, we’re hanging off the edge of our seat. Wondering, perhaps, how Our Hero can possibly extricate himself from the most impossible situation of all when, suddenly, the protagonist wakes up—and we learn it was all “just a dream.”

Most of us react with something approaching disgust. Oddly enough, the better the story has been (until now), the stronger this feeling is. Why? Because everything we just experienced, the whole roaring roller coaster of human emotions…never happened. It was all for nothing. Useless. Pointless. Unfulfilling—for us and for the character.

It should come as no surprise, then, that our own readers and viewers will react in precisely the same way. Assuming we make it past the agents and editors, that is. And yet, beginning writers continue to make this same mistake.

A similar dynamic is at work when, instead of finding it was all a dream—we find instead that the main character is batso. Again, the whole thing didn’t really happen, except in the deranged mind of our protagonist.

Exceptions do exist: either of these scenarios can be successfully pulled off. The problem is that every new writer thinks his story is the exception—and almost every new writer is wrong. Most seasoned pros who think this are also wrong; that’s how we know what it feels like to encounter one of these tales.

One writer who wasn’t wrong authored the screenplay for Identity—a low-budget but brilliant example of the batso protagonist.

Still, any time you’re considering either of these moves, reconsider ten times over—because your story is unlikely to be that rare exception.

LINE-CROSSING

Once in a while, an author will get so wrapped up in his own fictional world that he will unknowingly drive the story over the double yellow line, so to speak. The result is a head-on smashup with reader expectations. The most frequent examples involve children and pets.

The Fly (1986) and The Fly II provide an illustrative example. In the first film, Seth Brundle unintentionally transforms himself into a sort of monster. In the sequel, something similar happens to a dog—and this time, the action is intentional. The first film works. But it’s hard to say how well the second works, because that scene is so disturbing that it’s hard to think of anything else—and, in fact, hard to watch the movie at all. That one scene is so far over the line that it destroys the effect of the film as a whole.

A big part of the reason the first film works and the second doesn’t is this: what happens to Seth in The Fly is—however unintentionally—his own fault. He meddled with things he shouldn’t have, and he made a mistake. In the second film, the poor doggie is an innocent victim of a malevolent scientist. A great many audience members (and readers) cannot bear to see bad things happen to children or to animals—even when adults are considered fair game.

That’s one of the few taboos we have left, and you ignore it—and other line-crossing maneuvers—at your peril. Stray too far over the line and, as far as your readers are concerned—the story ends right there.

There really are no exceptions to this, outside of twisted tales aimed at small markets.

NONENDINGS

Stories are about things that happen to people. So when nothing really happens at the end—things just sort of peter out, or keep going the same way they’ve been going all along, with characters who are unchanged by the journey they’ve taken—readers feel cheated. “What’s the point?” they ask.

Conflict requires resolution. Two dogs, one bone. That’s story. One dog gets the bone, one doesn’t. That’s resolution. Sure, there are open-ended stories, and some of them work, and some of those that work succeed commercially. But something of great importance is resolved, and we very seldom end where we began.

There are stories that break this rule. Most of them you’ll never see, because the manuscripts and screenplays are sitting on someone’s closet shelf or hard drive. A Simple Plan (novel and film) might seem to be a rule-breaker but, really, it’s not; great changes have taken place, and both the main character and his wife have been profoundly changed.

Memento, on the other hand, is a rule-breaker—but the particulars of this example (scenes presented in reverse order; lead character with no short-term memory; circular plot) are so unique to this particular story that it’s hard to see them applying to anything else.

Very few commercially successful stories lack definitive resolutions. And so—absent some astonishingly good reason to break with tradition—you should strive to provide one.

FAILURE

For the most part, heroes are heroes because—eventually—they succeed. Or, as Eddie Dodd says in True Believer: “Don’t give me that liberal yuppie bull**** about a good fight… A good fight is one you win!”

Not every protagonist wins, of course, but the overwhelming majority of commercially successful protagonists do triumph in the end. Even in those instances where they fail to achieve what they set out to do, they very often wind up with something of greater value.

Wall Street is one example of this: when Bud realizes that his blind ambition is about to wreck thousands of lives—including his father’s—he abandons his quest for material wealth, turns on his erstwhile mentor, and averts catastrophe. He loses what wealth he’s gained, loses his girlfriend, even loses his freedom (at least temporarily)—but he gains the self-respect that comes with being an honest man. It sounds corny but, when done well (as it is here)—it works.

CLIFFBANGERS

We’re all familiar with the “cliffhanger,” where a scene ends on a major revelation, or with an important character’s fate left dangling. This technique originated with early silent film serials—where the hero would literally be left hanging from the edge of a cliff at the end. To find out what happened to him, moviegoers would have to return the next week. Modern tv series frequently employ this same technique just before commercial breaks and episode endings—albeit in a somewhat less literal sense.

The cliffbanger, on the other hand, is what you get when the hero falls to his death, banging into the ground at the bottom. (Ouch.) From a reader / audience perspective, this is even worse than the dream / nutjob ending: here, the character they’ve most strongly identified with…dies (or does something heinous—as in The Mist, where a man shoots his whole family to save them from a monster that never comes). What kind of ending is that?

One that angers your audience, that’s what kind. Here again, the trials and tribulations along the way become pointless—and the more readers like the character, the more they’ll dislike you for doing this. So don’t.

Which isn’t to say that protagonists can never die: 300, American Beauty, Gladiator, and many other stories prove that. But note that with 300, we know going in that everyone dies; with American Beauty, we know in the first two minutes that Lester is going to die; with both American Beauty and Gladiator, we are at least somewhat comforted by the assurance that the character lives on—somewhere else—after death.

A dead protagonist must make sense, must (in retrospect) seem inevitable, and should serve a purpose. (The 300, for example, changed the course of civilization.) Still, this is dangerous terrain, and alternative routes should be strongly considered.

PERSONALITY TRANSPLANTS

This is the kind of story where approaching doom is certain, but the day is saved when—for no apparent reason—one of the characters suddenly undergoes a radical personality shift, doing something (or failing to do something) that is completely inconsistent with his or her previous actions.

The Bad Guy who’s been trying to kill the Good Guy for the last hundred pages sprouts a conscience. The meticulous planner overlooks the obvious, with drastic consequences. The abusive husband turns gentle. The evil corporate CEO donates his fortune to charity and takes up residence in a monastery. And so on. Point being, there’s no previous setup, and the out-of-character action (whatever it is) proves crucial to the plot’s outcome.

Such devices are just that: devices—artificial, out of place, and unbelievable. Ultimately, they do as much damage as the situations they’re intended to resolve.

There are no exceptions. When turnarounds work, it’s because they’ve been set up earlier. Darth Vader’s turn in Jedi—perhaps the single biggest character turn in cinematic history—works beautifully, because it’s been set up for three movies. We don’t see it coming—but when it arrives, we understand, and everything clicks into place. It makes sense; it feels right.

In Back to the Future, George McFly—who’s submitted to Biff’s abuse and humiliation for years—suddenly lashes out, with life-changing consequences. But again, we understand: he’s loosing a rage that’s been building for years. Like Darth, he was finally confronted with the one situation capable of effecting massive change. Because we know the character, we get it.

Bladerunner’s Roy Batty is another story. In the version of the film without voice-over narration, his final scene with Deckard is so massively inconsistent with his previous actions as to be totally incomprehensible. In the cut with the voice-over, it works.

CONCLUSION

The Princess Bride is not devoured by Rodents of Unusual Size. Rocky is not killed in the ring. Sam and Annie do not miss each other at the top of the Empire State Building on Valentine’s Day. And, like these tales—your story does not disappoint.

Or your sales figures will.

Author John Robert Marlow is available for professional editing, development, and consultation. If you’d like help taking your work to the next level, contact John here.

JRM

copyright © by John Robert Marlow
all rights reserved

What a Coincidence! The Use and (Mostly) Misuse of Coincidence
by John Robert Marlow

COINCIDENCE

Few things are more deadly in the hands of the inexperienced. Not coincidentally, few things can destroy believability and author credibility with greater efficiency. With astonishingly few exceptions—most of which relate to works of comedy—the use of coincidence to move the plot forward marks the writer as a hack in the eyes of agents, publishers, and readers.

COINCIDENCE AS ARTIFICE

The impression conveyed is this: the writer is incapable of formulating a sensible plot, and must therefore rely upon coincidence to force events into compliance with his or her notion of what should be happening in the story. Using coincidence also deprives the reader of the chance to think ahead and try to guess what’s going to happen next: because what happens next makes no sense (being coincidence), it cannot be reasoned out, or even guessed. Nor, for the same reason, can it be satisfying. It’s a roll of the dice—and readers can get that a lot cheaper (and faster) elsewhere.

Generally speaking, and in the vast majority of cases, you can’t use coincidence to get a character out of a jam. Readers want to see your main character get himself out of trouble through his own resourcefulness; that’s the journey they signed up for when they started reading. They did not sign up to see this guy luck out through coincidence.

Sure, Douglas Adams gets away with it in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series—but he is writing comedy and he does, after all, have the Infinite Improbability Drive to make things, well, at least a little less (or more) improbable than they might otherwise be.

Coincidence can be used to get your character into a pickle. Here we’re talking about something that makes life harder for the protagonist—so coincidence is working against the character, rather than for him. Mistaken identity is a classic device in this category. (In both El Mariachi and Red Rock West, for instance, the main character is mistaken for a professional hit man.) You cannot, however, have a series of such coincidences—even if they’re all bad news for the character—because this stretches credibility to the breaking point.

ART IMITATES LIFE?

Let’s say you have a plot involving the abduction of the Queen of England from Buckingham Palace. Which would most likely mean a thriller. You might start with a criminal mastermind, who then hires a crack team of specialists—driver, sentries, an electronic security specialist, a hacker, an assault/grab team, an inside man if possible, and perhaps a negotiator to quibble over the ransom. Your team would have to get the building plans, modification/renovation plans, security system details, patrol schedules, and so on. Next would come The Plan, followed by its harrowing execution—with, perhaps, a few casualties along the way.

You would not, on the other hand, think up a plot involving someone who walks up to the palace, scales the wall without difficulty, shimmies up a drainpipe and blunders into the Queen’s bedchambers while the guard who’s supposed to be stationed there is—by sheer happenstance—off walking the Queen’s dogs at that precise moment. This actually happened (the intruder’s name was Michael Fagan, the year 1982)—but if you put it in a novel, you’d be laughed off the shelves.

Truth really is stranger than fiction. Unlike truth, however, fiction has to make sense. So unless you’re doing something based on a true story, art should not (in cases like this, anyway) imitate life.

DEUS EX MACHINA

This particular type of coincidence has a literary history that stretches back to the Greeks—and a history of ridicule that began with Aristotle. Deus ex machina is Latin for “god from a machine.” Greek tragedies were rife with these, the works of Euripides being perhaps the most prominent offenders.

Basically, the playwright would write his hero or heroine (or both) into such a fine pickle that it seemed impossible for the character to get out of it. Which indeed it was. Then, when all seemed darkest and inevitable doom was fast approaching—lo and behold, a crane (the machine) would be used to lower another character (a god) into the scene. Using his (or her) divine powers, the god would intercede and rescue the hero/heroine from certain death or worse.

In some cases, the god would show up after the character had actually died. No problem—godly powers would be used to restore the dead to life. The term deus ex machina has since broadened to include any device which suddenly and improbably pops up to conveniently resolve plot issues at the last minute.

I come across this kind of ending every now and again. One example that comes to mind involved a story set in late August/early September, 2001. Terrorists appeared early on, but then vanished from the storyline. They were mentioned again a few hundred pages in, only to vanish once more. It was hinted that they were planning the WTC bombing on 9/11.

At the end of the tale (which had very little to do with terrorists; the villains here being a preacher and a deformed dwarf), the hero buys a plane ticket and hands it to the bad guy. The idea being that the Bad Guy—who also receives the priceless artifact he’s killed several people to get—will step on the plane and so give the Good Guy several hours to make his escape before Bad Guy and his secret-society minions can try to kill him in order to keep their secret safe.

By sheer coincidence, the plane Bad Guy steps onto just happens to be one of the only two airliners in the history of the world to be deliberately flown into a skyscraper. Poof! Bad Guy is vaporized by coincidence, and our hero is off the hook. The entire manuscript was set in the past—and the terrorists take up the first several chapters—simply to set up this deus ex machina ending.

Aristotle argued in his Poetics that deus ex machina is a cheat that gets the author out of thinking up a plausible solution. The plot’s eventual resolution, he felt, should arise naturally from elements already present in the story. This makes the author’s job harder, but the audience experience better.

Two thousand years later, this remains sage advice. Coincidence is almost always bad (whether bad form or bad for the characters), and is at its worst when used to resolve difficult issues at the end of your tale.

Reps and publishers view this as lazy writing, and that counts heavily against you. In the unlikely event that such an ending should somehow make it into print, readers are bound to be left disappointed, even angry. (“I spent my money and time on this?”) And disgruntled readers are unlikely to read your next work, or recommend you to others.

EXCEPTIONS

There are exceptions: Comedy, for instance, where you’re deliberately trying to make the tale or its ending ridiculous and unbelievable. Even here, consider other options carefully before going with a god from the machine. Another exception might be a work intended to depict life itself as random; such plots are generally the province of underfunded independent films made by people with no expectation of commercial success (which often explains their lack of funding).

I wracked my brain to come up with a good, non-comedic story that breaks this rule. Of the thousands of books, movies, and manuscripts I’ve encountered, only one came to mind: The Cooler. When I thought about it a little longer, though, I realized that this film is not an exception after all, because the resolution—which at first appears to be blind chance—really isn’t, owing to the unique nature of the lead character’s abilities, which form the basis of the whole story. So, in the strictest of all senses, even this apparent exception follows Aristotle’s rule.

CONCLUSION

As a general rule and excepting some comedies, you can use coincidence once—and then only to get your character into a jam, not out of one.

Author John Robert Marlow is available for professional editing, development, and consultation. If you’d like help taking your work to the next level, contact John here.

JRM

copyright © by John Robert Marlow
all rights reserved