In my last post, I discussed the 7-Point Plot Structure and how I use it to create the barest of outlines for my stories. It’s pretty simple to use, but it does leave a whole lot to be desired in the way I use it. I might only have a dozen sentences in my outline between all 7 points. Not a lot of flesh there. 

But that’s when we can really start using it to develop more than the basics.

7-Point Character Arcs
Probably one of my favorite supporting uses for the plot structure is in character arcs. I use this as a way to give my characters agency, keep track of their individual desires and actions, and to help flesh out my overall outline. I find it particularly useful when I have multiple prominent characters, but especially for the protagonist and antagonist. 

I don’t necessarily keep a Hook in place for all my characters, but I often have one, just as a sort of anchoring point for bringing them into the action. While I don’t actually have a set of character plot-outlines handy as examples, the idea is very simple. Each character has their initial outset and goal for whatever portion of the story they’re in. In simple ways, I try to create each character’s arc the way I do the main plot: Plot Turns 1 and 2 are inverses or foils for each other, as are Pinches 1 and 2. So a character might start out hating the protagonist when PT1 has them butt heads in a competition. But by PT2, the protagonist has done SOMETHING to turn the character’s opinion around, and now in PT2, they in turn do something to SAVE the protagonist. An about face, but one that will make sense as a foil for who they were at the beginning of the story.

What’s really great about doing this, is creating personal arc outlines for characters gives you as the author more information to place in your greater outline. With multiple character arcs going on across the length of the story, you can map out when in the outline these moments happen, where they overlap, and where they’ll be most effective in the story. This in turn is a great way to make conflicts more dramatic, if you have two characters’ Pinch 1 moments happening in the same chapter, scene, or general timing in your plot. 

Say we have Timmy and Nadine, a pair of school students. Nadine is our protagonist, with the plot revolving around her becoming star of the swim team.

Timmy, Nadine’s friend, has his own character arc involving family life and bullies.

Nadine’s Pinch 1 moment, where the stakes are raised, is all about her swimming rival appearing, a new student with eyes on the championship.

Sure, that’s bad, but we can make it worse by adding Timmy’s PT1 moment into the scene: Timmy reveals to Nadine that his parents are getting divorced, and he might have to move.
Now Nadine’s story is complicated by her friend’s plot point. 

What’s great is, these arcs don’t need to move at the same pace. Some character arcs might be shorter, with the whole 7-point structure playing out in microcosm within one of the main plot’s points. Timmy’s story might come to a crux and resolution before Nadine even gets to the midpoint of her story, or maybe Timmy’s story comes to a head with severe bullying during Nadine’s Plot Turn 2, and Timmy’s resolution (let’s say he kicks his bully’s ass) inspiring Nadine to take real action against her rival.

If you’re one of those people who likes complex storylines with lots of characters, this can be an invaluable practice. Giving basic outlines to all your main characters, then breaking them into their individual pieces and organizing them into timing can almost make a whole story for you. Figuring out when and where to put important plot points for a whole cast gives you lots to work with, and then you can even start merging plot points together to raise the stakes. Two characters’ Pinch 2 moments happen at the same time? Make it so their goals are counter to one another, and however the event plays out, one succeeds and one fails. That gives them the drive to compete with one another.

7-Point Series Outlines
In the same way you can shrink plot structures to suit character arcs, you can also blow them up to cover the main points of a whole series (or trilogy, or whatever). It was exactly this reason that The Deadly Studies was originally planned to be a 7-novella series. Necessity ended up making it a 10-novella series, as plot points did keep growing, but that happens. Initially, I had the overarcing plot of the whole series split into a basic 7-point structure. Each plot point was intended to be one novella. I don’t have the original outline I had, but it went something similar to this:

H - Luc loses his family, victim to an assassin plot
PT1 - Luc gets adopted by the Assassin’s Guild and trains, making friends
P1 - Luc and his friends grow apart for personal reasons. Their goals take them in contrasting directions. Luc has to leave Europe for the United States
MP - Luc makes a frenemy in Tom Statford, protagonist of the main series - this is where he is set up as the character he becomes in the main series
P2 - Unable to defend himself against the wrath of literal deities, Luc makes friends again, with Tom, despite hating him.
PT2 - Luc discovers the assassin who killed his family was his sister - She’s alive and an assassin too! But for his mortal enemies.
R - Luc ends his sister and takes his place against the Templars (this was always intended to be open ended, as it ties into its parent series, The Statford Chronicles by John G. Walker)

So even in the macro-plot of the series, I had points that mirrored one another. In PT1, Luc gained a new family. In PT2, his real family was taken away from him a second time, as he discovered his sister was not only alive, but was the one who assassinated the rest of their family.

Incomplete Outlines
Thing is, you don’t HAVE to hit every point on an outline. If you’re doing character arcs, you can interrupt an outline with a character dying. Any remaining points might get handed down to another character as part of dealing with the grief or aftermath of their death. Or it just leaves emptiness, a sense of incomplete possibility. 

As long as you’re flexible and using these points as tools, you can do a lot just staying within this structure. Is it perfect and infallible? Hell no. It’s a start, a tool to use. But I’ve found some good ways to use them.

Time for another post on writing processes, and this is going to be going into my personal outlining process. Your mileage may vary; you might be better served as a pantser. You might be even more of a planner than I am. This is just one man’s method. It’s always being refined and adjusted for each project, but it at least serves as a starting point for me.

Personally, I’ve discovered that I save myself a lot of stress and failed projects if I put more effort into my outline than if I just write as I go. Pantsing, as it’s called, leads me to frustrating places I don’t necessarily want to go, and I have a hard time backtracking when it gets to that point. As a result, my outlines come in two stages. I’ll call these stages the Short Outline and Draft Point-Five.
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For blog purposes, I’ll be breaking this into three posts. So here’s Part 1!

The Short Outline
This is the stage all my projects start in. My general structure (as of right now) tends to be the 7-Point Structure. That is:

The Hook: a compelling introduction to the story’s intriguing world and/or characters.
Plot Turn 1: an inciting incident that brings the protagonist into an adventure.
Pinch 1: the stakes are raised with the introduction of the antagonist or the major conflict or challenge
Midpoint: a turning point in the story where the protagonist goes from reaction to action.
Pinch 2: the major conflict takes a turn for the worse, and all appears lost for the protagonist.
Plot Turn 2: the protagonist discovers something that helps them resolve the major conflict or defeat the antagonist.
Resolution: the major conflict is resolved, and the antagonist is defeated.

Needless to say, the way these develop for me is usually with the Hook, or the initial plot idea I had. What makes the story start in the first place. The situation. I might already have the first Plot Turn (PT1) in my head, as well. Generally, I’ll have the most basic version of the conflict in mind. That’s at least the basic starting point of most of my stories. For illustrative purposes, we’re going to be looking at my short outline for the first book of The Deadly Studies series of novellas, Assassin’s Victim.

For this, I started with an initial idea for a first line, and a snippet of what the character was at the beginning. I also had a specific date in mind, as this was a time-sensitive plot point. 

H- [8/1/92] was the day I stopped believing in God, but I don't remember exactly why. Young lacrosse player.

Wasn’t much, but it was the hook. I also had PT1 all set, and it looked like this:


PT1- Luc is approached with a proposition- thinks its regarding his father's business, but it's actually regarding him. Templar attempt at shady recruiting. He offers to fund Luc's way onto a youth traveling lacrosse team?

It sets up the initial conflict: a stranger disturbs the normal routine with a proposition. There’s a lot to it, but it involves the eventual antagonists of the series as well as the smaller conflict of this first book itself. From there, I usually use a sort of mirroring/antithesis approach. I like using logic to make PT2, the turning point for victory, be a symbolic inverse of PT1, where the world gets upended. So rather than try to fill the next structure point, I go to PT2 and figure out how the main conflict will turn around for our protagonist. In this case:

PT2- If I become it, I can fight it. Accepts proposition/mentorship with Auguste Fosse.

So while PT1 here has Luc given a proposition (which I know he will reject), PT2 has him realizing that the greatest advantage he can get is to seize his opportunity to train and become a weapon. Only he wants to be a weapon AGAINST what he was approached by before. 
From here, it’s mostly filling in the blanks. I’ve gotten the two basic turning points of the plot. I approach the Pinches (P1 and P2) the same way, with trying to make them inverse or opposite style situations. P1, for me, often becomes the sort of last straw in taking action. The protagonist has no choice now but to go on their new path. In the case of Assassin’s Victim, P1 had to be Luc losing everything, and it had to be to the very monsters he rejected. A direct reaction to his refusal of the proposition in PT1. So…

P1- Assassination- family dies

And then to counterbalance that, in P2, he needs to regain a family. The same people who killed his family want to finish the job. But he’s not alone.

P2- Templars come searching for him. Wanting to recruit him to their cause, openly this time. When he refuses, thinking them to be the ones who murdered his family, they attempt to take his life. He's saved by a shadowy figure- Auguste Fosse.

It’s there that he gains a new father figure and the new direction to resolve the conflict altogether. In this case, becoming an assassin like he was victim of.

The last pieces of the puzzle are the final Resolution and the MidPoint (MP). MP is easy, as it’s a literal turning point. What causes the protagonist to turn from reactive to proactive. It could be an external force, but in this case, I chose to have it be a conscious decision.

MP- Ends his grief, begins his search/vendetta.

Luc resolves to change things. It’s as simple as that. And finally, the resolution. A lot of that was covered in PT1, but the final should, once again, somewhat mirror the inciting incident, resolving the conflict itself.

Simply put, R- Luc is going to become an assassin. 

So as a whole, here’s how my Short Outline for Assassin’s Victim looks:

H- [8/1/92] was the day I stopped believing in God, but I don't remember exactly why. Young lacrosse player.
PT1- Luc is approached with a proposition- thinks its regarding his father's business, but it's actually regarding him. Templar attempt at shady recruiting. He offers to fund Luc's way onto a youth traveling lacrosse team?
P1- Assassination- family dies
MP- Ends his grief, begins his search/vendetta.
P2- Templars come searching for him. Wanting to recruit him to their cause, openly this time. When he refuses, thinking them to be the ones who murdered his family, they attempt to take his life. He's saved by a shadowy figure- Auguste Fosse.
PT2- If I become it, I can fight it. Accepts proposition/mentorship with Auguste Fosse. 
R- Luc is going to become an assassin.

So… what?
Well, that’s it. That’s the basics. It’s a basic roadmap of the story, waiting to be filled with more detail. You can just go straight to writing from this. Personally, I don’t. I move on to my second part of outlining, which I call Draft Point Five, but I’ll go into that in another post in this series.
I also use the 7-point plot structure to expand outlines for larger projects, which will be in the next post of this series. 

This is very much a topic I have a lot of words about, but the thing is, and I will say this in all caps:

THERE ARE NO RULES OF WRITING

Okay, that’s being facetious, but the thing is, writing is an art form, same as other art forms like physical art, digital art, dance, music, all that. I mean, the whole point of art is that it is interpreted in the eyes and heart of each individual. Everyone ingests all arts differently, so there is truly a whole lot of fuzziness in creating art.
That said, there is one big difference between writing (and other spoken media like theatre) that is a limitation, and obviously it’s what I’ve already hinted at: language itself. Naturally, being able to express a thought and have it be understood in language is a great gatekeeper for writing itself. Rather than have this post be a treatise on language (I realized I’m going totally technical-autistic and really getting into the bare bones foundation of language, which is where I don’t want to be), let’s just acknowledge that basic fact and step into actual “writing rules” as they’re called.

Okay, so the “rules of writing fiction” are not a thing like the Ten Commandments or the Terms of Service for your travel blender. There are no prescribed rules, so it’s not easy to find a list. For ease of reference, I’m going to call in some of Stephen King’s Top 20 Rules for Writers. I’m really going to go into just a couple that I have something to really say about.

King: Don’t use passive voice. “Timid writers like passive verbs for the same reason that timid lovers like passive partners. The passive voice is safe. The timid fellow writes “The meeting will be held at seven o’clock” because that somehow says to him, ‘Put it this way and people will believe you really know. ‘Purge this quisling thought! Don’t be a muggle! Throw back your shoulders, stick out your chin, and put that meeting in charge! Write ‘The meeting’s at seven.’ There, by God! Don’t you feel better?”

My take: Okay, the passive voice in general isn’t great, and King makes a good case with his phrasing, but I think it’s seriously oversimplified. There is nothing wrong with the passive voice when used well. Of course, using it well usually involves using it sparingly. But there’s a reason it exists. It can help weaken something further when you already want it to be weakened. Like everything else, it’s another tool, and it’s there to be taken advantage of. But it’s more like a cherry pitter than a cutting board. Some tools you are going to use in every meal (or writing session. I’m making an analogy here.) Some tools you only use in one specific case (like pitting cherries) until you realize it can be used in this one other, somewhat unexpected place (like pitting olives.) When you really need it, you’ll be glad you have it. But most of the time, it’s just an option you can ignore.

King: “The adverb is not your friend. Consider the sentence “He closed the door firmly.” It’s by no means a terrible sentence, but ask yourself if ‘firmly’ really has to be there. What about context? What about all the enlightening (not to say emotionally moving) prose which came before ‘He closed the door firmly’? Shouldn’t this tell us how he closed the door? And if the foregoing prose does tell us, then isn’t ‘firmly’ an extra word? Isn’t it redundant?”

My take: Oh, fuck right off with this nonsense. Adverbs are highly useful, and they are friends. To keep up with the cooking analogy, adverbs are going to be more like cumin or cinnamon. Used right, they absolutely make a dish. Used wrong, it’s pretty obvious. They’re a seasoning, a decoration, not the main part of the meal. But to avoid them is like cutting off a couple fingers. Can you get on without them? Sure, easily. If you have them, though, you prose can be more colorful and powerful without using extra words when one can suffice. They can serve to underline speech or make an action explode. It’s only when they’re shoddily or excessively used that it becomes a problem.

King: Avoid adverbs, especially after “he said” and “she said.” “While to write adverbs is human, to write ‘he said’ or ‘she said’ is divine.”
John Scalzi: Not directly quoted, and he has since updated his stance on it, but he said something along the lines of “You don’t need any dialog tag stronger than ‘said’ unless it’s maybe ‘asked.’”

My take: This is one that I will harp on forever. I bring Scalzi’s name into it because he’s the one I first heard this idea from, and it was he who totally debunked it for me with one particular book. I’ll get to that in a minute.
So, Scalzi’s updated thoughts on it are thus:

In print, having “he said” and “she said” at the end of dialogue makes good sense — it helps direct traffic and pacing. They can get repetitive, but most readers eventually gloss over them — they know they’re there but their brain starts processing them more like punctuation than words. They see them, but they don’t sound them out in their heads.
But in audio, every “he said” and “she said” is spoken out loud by the narrator. I was never more aware of how much I used dialogue tags than I was while listening to one of my audiobooks.

It was through listening to Scalzi’s book Redshirts in audio form that I noticed what he’s mentioned. The audio version is read by Wil Wheaton, and it’s painful how much the word “said” appears in that book. Like Scalzi mentioned, if I’d been reading the book in written form, I would be ignoring most of the “saids.” But Wheaton says every one in the audio form, and it’s horrible listening to these conversations with multiple people, where after every line, Wheaton also has to say “Dahl said,” “Duvall said,” or “Jekins said.” There are a lot of scenes featuring three or more speakers, so there has to be ways to delineate who is saying what, but in this case, “said” isn’t it. Not as a blanket tool.

This rule, as it was interpreted before, is a staple case of (keeping with my cooking analogy) overusing a seasoning in your meal. You’ve oversalted seriously by only using “said.” The meal is edible, but it is not a pleasant experience for anyone. Listening to Redshirts becomes an exercise in not getting annoyed at every instance of the word “said.” If I’m correct, I recall counting only 3 instances of a dialog tag other than “said,” with two of them being “asked.” Whatever the actual count is, it’s awful. Those few non-saids become a breath of fresh air, but it was a problem of the author’s own making in the first place.

In short, use dialog tags. They don’t have to be the adverb-followed ones. Language has a ton of words to choose from. Boomed, belted, shouted, roared, whispered, breathed… they’re all valid and use up a single word, same as said does.

Are they the best choices, just straight substitution? No. But there are a lot of better options than just only using “said.”

King: But don’t obsess over perfect grammar. “Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes. The object of fiction isn’t grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story… to make him/her forget, whenever possible, that he/she is reading a story at all.”

My take: I totally agree with this one! Perfect grammar is great as a foundation for language, but people don’t talk this way. Not even self-proclaimed Grammar Nazis speak perfectly 100% of the time. Your characters shouldn’t either, whether in dialog or in description or narration. Perfect grammar gets uncomfortable pretty quickly, like a harness or handcuffs. Don’t start sentences with conjunctions? Yeah, I’ve done that a few times just in this blog post. Don’t end sentences with prepositions? That’s not even an actual grammatical rule in English; it’s just a personal preference (sorry, Mrs. Matlock, but it’s true. Seriously, my late high school Latin teacher was a stickler for this one, and I always disagreed. Miss you, Mrs. Matlock).

Bend the grammar rules all you want, but there’s the line between reader and writer that is always there. As a reader, if I can’t understand your writing, I’m not going to read it. As a writer, I try to make my words accessible, but damn do my thoughts interrupt each other a lot. So there’s a ton of grace to be given and taken on both sides to make a story understandable. It’s finding the balance and walking the line that is most important.
Which is pretty much the whole point I’m making in this post.

I think I’ll leave it here. I’ve only addressed a few writing rules, but I wanted to go into the more technical ones than the subjective ones like “Eliminate Distractions” and “Read Read Read.” 
I guess in conclusion, there are skills to writing to hone, and there are “rules” to writing that every writer needs to prioritize or discard on their own. Even poor techniques can have their place, when used correctly. That’s all practice and learning.
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Just write. Fail, revise, and write again. Succeed, figure out why, and imitate your own successes. That’s my rule of writing, I guess. Do it, and then do it again.

 I'm honestly very pleased that I've been maintaining weekly posts here on the website blog and an additional one each week on Patreon, since I started back in February. It's actually become something I look forward to on Mondays. I've been working on trying to get things prepped ahead of time. You know, actually thinking ahead, and that's going to become even more important in the coming months, as I might have a new job on the horizon that will eat up a lot of hours. Might mean Fridays or Sundays become my "get this set up and scheduled" date with Monday being the release date for posts. The last thing I want to do is to lose this momentum. I've been enjoying getting this done.

That said, planning blog posts ahead of time is not always easy. I don't always have something to write about, and while I do have some future posts in the works, I don't have a lot of them to fall back on if I'm having a dry spell.

So I'm getting help! I found this "A Year's Worth of Blog Post Ideas for Writers" post (you know, pretty much exactly what I was looking for) that is going to give me plenty of things to go on about for a while. I can pick at these ahead of time and have them ready in a pinch. Be prepared to see some of these coming in the future. Will they be in the offered order? I doubt it. Will it be one of these every week? Of course not. I have my monthly updates that I like to and will continue to post.

But these are going to be some direction, which I am grateful for. See you guys next week!