Hey writing frens - I have a question and I need some advice. I've outlined a new short story, and I sort of like it ...but I think it's missing something Act 1 introduced the characters and presents a mystery. Act 2 is a procedural: they solve the mystery & enter inner sanctum
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2/ and ... wow, OK, here we are. Our two protagonists solved the mystery and now we're up to the same place that we were at the end of Firefly Season Two. The little procedural investigative part was fun ... but there was no enemy they were struggling against. Man vs nature?
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3/ where "nature" = "ignorance of what's going on" and that's fine ... but, again, the resolution is not super exciting if you've already read FS2. so I'm trying to figure out the problem in structural terms. One stab at it is "this is a 4 act structure, I've got 1 and 2A >>
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4/ ...but not 2B or 3". We've got the Hero with a Thousand Faces "gathering of the team".
@LibertyFarmNH put her finger on it "it sounds like that one terrible Robin Hood movie where the movie wraps with the title card 'and now the adventure begins'"2 replies 0 retweets 3 likesShow this thread -
6/ i.e. "so why not tell me the story, and cut all this intro crap?" I see three possible solutions: 1) keep act 1 and act 2A, and now define act 2B - a new conflict - of about the same size as act 2A 2) realize that this ENTIRE thing is just act 1, and write a big story >>
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7/ 3) decide that this is what Elmore Leonard would call "the parts that people skip over", and thus cut it all I don't like #3, because I find the mystery and the procedural fun. I dislike 2, because it implies writing a LARGE story and I want to keep this small and light.
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8/ ...so I'm leaning towards option 1: write an act 2B - a kind of separate adventure. ...but I'm not 100% sure that that's right. Thoughts
@JASutherlandBks@AetherCzar@robkroese@NerdKing52@BrianNiemeier@MorgonAuthor ? (please feel free to tag in others I missed)6 replies 0 retweets 2 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @MorlockP @LibertyFarmNH and
My style doesn't lend itself to commenting on story structure. I start writing and the story's finished when I'm done. However, I will comment, because I'm unable to do otherwise. If, after where you are with it, it's "big" "large" story, does the rest of the story lend 1/
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Replying to @JASutherlandBks @MorlockP and
2/ itself to a serial style, where the first installment, with an inner sanctum reveal, is a bit of a cliffhanger/setup of the next, and would that carry through several small works that would satisfy your small, light desire. You said you wanted to do several small things
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Yes, this is exactly what I initially pictured! ...and now doubting myself.
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