Write Then & There: A Writing Course

Week Three: Three Story Prongs

Week two done, and now we slide into the third! We applaud everyone who managed to complete the task component and/or get something written within the week. To those of you who are still struggling, again, if you need reminders, word wars, or even to just have an extra push, seek out writing partners, seek out someone to help encourage you to start. If you've got someone at your side, you're more likely to make the progress you set out to make when you joined.

*Two checks indicate that an individual was able to catch up on a previous week while also completing the current week. 

Levi Hughes | Task: | Writing:

Seth Waylin | Task: ✓ | Writing: ✓

Andi Hara | Task: ✓ | Writing: ✓

Garrett Vallejo | Task: ✓ | Writing:

Rhinen Ryan | Task: ✓ | Writing: ✓

K. T. Andershaw | Task: ✓ | Writing:

Joseph Vaccaro | Task: ✓✓ | Writing: ✓

Emma Della | Task: ✓ | Writing: ✓

Magma Kepner | Task: | Writing:

Richard Byrd | Task: ✓ | Writing: ✓

Karla Villarreal | Task: ✓ | Writing: ✓

So far, you've got your characters all lined up, you know your world more in depth - now, we want you to think more about your plot. Don't panic when we say that: all we're going to ask of you this week in terms of plot are three brief, but incredibly important, points to have in mind while you're writing.

1. The Inciting Incident - aka, the moment your character is thrust into the actual story/outside of their version of "normal." You want to start your story as close to the inciting incident as possible.

2. The Midpoint - quite literally the point that lands halfway through your story. As one article neatly put it (which will be linked in the comments if you want to read it, I strongly suggest you do if you struggle with this), "It's what caps the reactions in the first half of the book and sets up the chain of actions that will lead the characters to the climax" (Weiland). Or, as Seth tends to put it: Reactive to Proactive. Defensive to Offensive. It's a turning point.

3. The Ending - which, for our purposes, will refer to the resolution, or how your character accepts their "new normal." Ideally, this new normal will be informed by the decisions your character(s) make throughout the story, and by how they grow or regress.

(Obviously, if you're writing short stories, you'll have these in each story, unless you're going for a structure that's more linked in which case it's possible for these to still carry over across the entire anthology.)

Now, there are clearly other plot points you could consider, but to keep some of you who struggle with plot thinking about where you're going to take your story without putting a lot of pressure on you to know how everything is supposed to go, we only want you to focus on these three things. Try to write at least one sentence per point.

As an example, Seth will use his three points for "Nature Boy." For the zero of you reading it (thank God), this will contain spoilers.

1. The "Nature Boy" is hit with Viola's car and discovered.

2. Viola visits and leaves the woods as usual; however, this time, the "Nature Boy" follows her home unknowingly.

3. Viola gets rid of the "Nature Boy," clears her name, and gets away from her abusive home life.

For the sake of simplicity, I did not include how every single subplot ties into each of these points, and you don't have to either - we'll talk about subplots at a much later time. Hopefully this is a decent illustration of what we want from you this week.

DEADLINE

Sunday, July 5th, at 12 PM PST/3 PM EST.

Line Prompt: "I am under no obligation to make sense to you." *cough* the plot @ us *cough*

Picture Prompt:

Song Prompt: Instrumental time! Here's the "It Follows" theme.