Building a story out in the open (comments very much welcome)

[LittleFenny]

NaNoWriMo has rolled around for this year so in the habit of writers across time I am reacting to the thought of sitting down and actually writing by finding other things to do, including completely different writing projects. I looked around the critiques and discussion forum here and there are a lot of good threads. But I haven't seen much on plotting or structure, something I've been reading about after realizing I've been stuck. So (instead of writing and editing more Finding New Things) I'm making this thread where I plan to take one of my ideas for a story and give all this plotting stuff a try and do so in public.

 

Plotting and Pantsing

You can't read a book, website, or watch a youtube video on plotting without Plotters versus Pantsers being brought up. Since it's apparently the law and I don't want to have to stand in the corner after a spanking by the Writing Police I'll put a few sentences here. Plotters are kind of like the really prepared Bigs you'll see in stories here. They've made a plan. They don't just get up in the morning and start playing with their Little, they know that first they'll be changing that Little's overnight diaper, then breakfast at 8:00am. Cartoons for the Little after that while the Big gathers supplies. A trip to the park at 9:30am. Lunch is a bottle of juice and a cut up peanut butter sandwich at 11:00am. A trip to the zoo at 1:00pm to see the new baby gazelle that was on the news a few days before. Home at 3:00pm when Big and Little will both take a nap. Etc. Etc. Etc. Meanwhile we have our Pantser. A big kid who gets up in the morning, gets into a dry pair of training pants, grabs a couple of strawberry PopTarts and is out the door to see what fun they can find. Will they be playing with Johnny in the park? Joining Becky on the swings? Looking for frogs by the stream with Stevie? Depends on who they run into first. They're just heading out to play and have fun and that's all the plan they've got.

Finding New Things, which I last posted an update to five years ago, has been entirely pantsed. The start of it come to me in a dream or maybe just daydreaming while half awake in bed and then I thought about it for a few weeks and then with a general idea of how it would start and how it would end I sat down and started writing. When this works it can be great. When it doesn't work, well my last post to Finding New Things was November of 2017. Which is part of why I got interested in reading and learning more about this plotting stuff.

My opinion? Plotter versus Pantser is just two ends of a spectrum. Very few people seem to sit down and start writing with absolutely no plan. Pantsers usually still seem to have some plan even if it's just, "Wouldn't a Diaper Dimension Story about an Amazon kid trying to find some way to be mistaken for a Little be fun?" Just the same I've heard of very few people who do the stereotype extreme plotter thing where they fill multiple binders with notes and research and write a two hundred page super detailed outline before they even start writing a single line of the actual story. I will not be doing that super outline in this thread.

 

The Story Idea

If I am going to do some planning then I need something to plan. I'd go with that idea up above, but it's living next door to an idea I've already been looking at and I don't want to get them confused in my head. So I'll go to one of the old ABDL story tropes, the kid who ends up getting babied by a sitter. The fun thing with tropes is they give a piece of a pattern but they still let you scribble all over them with your crayons to make them your own. I've seen a few variations of this one: the older sister who tricked her younger brother into diapers to keep him too embarrassed to get in the way of her fun while their parents were on vacation; the younger brother who changed the note left by the parents for a sitter so that she'd think the brother a year or two older was a bed wetter with a habit of lying to sitters about it; even one where the sitter wasn't actually hired by the parents but showed up and told the kid, "Your parents changed their minds and decided you weren't quite old enough to stay on your own for as long as they'll be gone. But don't think of me as a babysitter, think of me as a friend who is staying over." Who then proceeded to gaslight the kid back into diapers and being treated like a little kid. Let's give this one a science fiction twist, who here has seen Reva The Scarf's Rejuvacations? It's some furry comics with the idea of a company that offers vacation packages where you are temporarily rejuvenated to a younger age to enjoy childhood experiences like attending a summer camp or class trips to aquariums and museums. Let's have a high school kid, a sophomore or junior (grades 9 & 10 or the US twelve grade year primary education system, somewhere around 14-15 depending on when their birthday is and the local system's rules). For whatever reason the parents are going on a trip that the protagonist won't be going along on but they aren't ready to leave him alone for as long as the trip will be. Given choices ranging from staying with relatives to a few 'babysitter' services the protagonist sees one that has as a pitch, "Enjoy being a kid again!" and is curious. Curiosity soon giving way to determination that this is the choice they want.

 

I'll finish up this first post with a summary of the story idea so far, what we know about any characters, questions to ponder for both and a teeny bit about story structure.

 

Story Idea: A high school kid's parents decide they aren't ready to leave them alone for the week or so they will be out of town. When given a choice of options they are quickly enticed by a flyer for a child minding service that promises to allow them to, "Enjoy being a kid again." For reasons yet to be decided this service that includes a temporary rejuvenation was available to the family at a quite reasonable rate. Maybe a perk of an employer discount program, maybe they have discounts for good grades at school, or it was just a discount voucher sent out as part of an advertising program. How much control is there over what age you're rejuvenated to? Will our protagonist remember they still sometimes wet the bed at age X? Just which rejuvenation package is selected? How young are they getting rejuvenated to and for how long? How does the rejuvenation end: suddenly or over time? Might they get stuck with this partially overlapping summer school classes or something else where they will be around others they know?

Protagonist: Probably a boy? They've been feeling stressed out by school and the pressure to get good grades and prepare for college. Maybe they've been feeling jealous of a younger sibling or cousin and thinking they don't know how good they have it at their age. Do they have any existing regressive/little tendencies?

Parents: Mr. and Mrs. Barely Appearing In This Story, or at least I suspect so. Around for the setup and at the resolution. We'll need at least names and a general idea of their personalities.

Any siblings: Perhaps the protagonist is the youngest and the others are now all either in college or working outside the area. If so staying with one who has a room was probably one of the options presented, but not so obvious and easy an option that the parents sent the protagonist there instead of the rejuvenation service. If there are younger siblings where are they?

The world: Clearly not the present day of our world, but near future? A similar science-fantasy or everyday mad-science world? Not a dystopia. Repeat, not a dystopia.

 

Story Structure

You probably already know the basic first level detail of story structure from school: A story has a beginning, middle, and end. Also known as Act I, Act II, and Act III. The good news is that absolutely everyone agrees on all the additional details (this is what's known as a fib, and might get me a visit by the Story Police). In truth if you look around some people break stories into four acts (by splitting Act II in half), five acts, and I've even run across people saying seven acts. I'll keep it simple and old school and go with three. The three acts are each roughly 25%, 50%, and 25% of the story. Act II being a double length act that usually has some sort of major turning point in the middle is how you get the four act structure by calling them IIA and IIB.

Act I is the beginning and generally has an introduction to the protagonist's everyday pre-story world, an inciting incident, and the First Plot Point. The inciting incident is something that changes in the protagonists world, in our story this is almost certainly the parents announcing their trip. The First Plot Point is when the protagonist makes a choice that pushes them into Act II, which here would be when they actually go to the rejuvenation service. Even that morning they probably could have said, "I changed my mind, this sounds too scary, I'll stay with your coworker Mrs X!" and while his parents would likely have grumbled at needing to try and get a refund they might well still have called up Mrs X. But now he's walked through the doors and is about to get zapped or given a shot or however the process works.

Act II is divided into two parts. In the first half the character is still getting used to things. Our protagonist has shrunk down to a preschooler or maybe a first grader, suddenly remembered they still wet the bed at this age, and isn't sure what's going on. Around the middle there is what James Scott Bell calls the Mirror Moment where the protagonist has a realization or two and makes some decisions (Bell says he named it that because he noticed a number of movies where this in part happens while the protagonist is looking at themselves in a mirror). Often the first half and second half of Act II are mirror like in that if IIA is generally upbeat IIB will be downbeat or if the protagonist was struggling in IIA they start having victories in IIB. Some people also invoke a Rule Of Threes and suggest there should be three challenges over the course of Act II (Perhaps why the guy who wrote Save The Cat calls part of Act II "Fun and Games"). This all leads to the Second Plot Point, where the protagonist once again makes a choice that pushes them into the next act (one example I ran across is that in Star Wars the First Plot Point is when Luke returns to the farm to find his Aunt and Uncle dead and decides he will follow Obi Wan to rescue the princess and the Second Plot Point is when after the princess has been rescued and Han says he was just in it for the money and once he has his reward he's leaving, Luke decides to volunteer as an X-Wing pilot for the attack on the Death Star).

Act III has the climax, resolution, and denouement. Minds out of the gutter, there's no sex in this story. The climax isn't that sort, but simply the protagonist facing whatever the rest of the story has been leading up to. In Star Wars it's the actual attack on the Death Star, in BabySophia's In-Between I'd say it's when Cameron is able to serve as part of the plaintiff's counsel in the case brought against SafeFoods and Aubry Harris. The resolution is quite simply the resolution of the climax. The destruction of the Death Star in Star Wars and the end of the trial in In-Between. The denouement is pretty much what you might call an epilogue. It's a taste of the post-story life of the protagonist. The medal ceremony at the end of Star Wars or at the end of In-Between when we get to see that Cameron goes on to have a successful career as a lawyer and then judge, as well as the events of his personal life.

Just as everyone (doesn't) agree that there are three acts, everyone (doesn't) agree that: into, inciting incident, first plot point, fun & games, mid-point, second plot-point, climax, resolution, and denouement are the major sign posts. Some list fewer and some list several more (Save The Cat has fifteen, Campbell has seventeen in the Hero's Journey).

Bonus: The guy behind Community and Rick & Morty, Dan Harmon, has a related thing called The Story Circle which instead of dividing the action into acts with sign posts along the way has a list of eight steps a character goes through arranged in a circle. Summarized a bit too these steps are: You, need, go, search, find, take, return, changed. You introduces the character, who has a need, causing them to go forth, searching to a solution, which the find, and take while paying a price, returning home, only they've changed. Although in episodic TV that change is likely to either be fleeting or or truly minor as having the characters change complicates writing episodic TV (how many times now have the characters in The Simpsons or other long running shows learned the same lessons over and over again?). At least one person I read suggested using both three-act and the story circle together with the three act structure covering more of the events that happen and the story circle covering how the character is changing from beginning to end.

A last bit: I recall some years ago complaining to someone that while I could come up with ideas, and endings to go with the ideas, that it was filling in the middle that was the daunting part. "Okay, so we have a pair of star crossed lovers from feuding families, who stop fighting after their strife tragically causes the death of the lovers... Um. Okay, a beginning and an end. How the heck do we get from the beginning to the end?" These sign posts help a little by giving you more than, "1. Steal Underpants, 2. ???, 3. Money!" to work with. But is, "1. Steal Underpants, 2. 'Coincidentally' have a supply of adult diapers that are the only underthings left in the state, 3. Which wonderfully have to be bought again and again, 4. Money!" better? Well, yes, but there are still some big gaps in there. Someone who is more of a Pantser may well prefer that and not care if they have three failed attempts each to get from step one to two, two to three, and three to four before they get to a complete story. But others may get dismayed deleting so many failed attempts. This is where scene lists and beat sheets can come in. But given that I am now at one and a half days word count were this writing for a nanowrimo story, I'll stop for now.

 

Anyway, I hope this wasn't too dense a wall of text for people. As I said up at the top I welcome any comments people may have. Whether it is discussion of plotting versus pantsing, structure, or thoughts on the story idea. Just keep in mind the forum rules: constructive criticism is good. Likes and subscribes feed the ego, or at least that's what the youtubers say. ?

[LittleFenny]

So, having some free time and not feeling sleepy yet despite the late hour, I'm returning to add to this thread. In the previous post I looked at some basics of plot structure. But a story is more than just a series of actions. Those actions need to make sense for the character. In my long delayed Finding New Things even if I was pantsing it the two viewpoint characters still have reasons for the decisions they make. But here we are looking at a different story. Let's look again at what we know so far about our protagonist:

• They're a kid in the first or second year of high school.
• The idea of a summer camp where you're age regressed is attractive to them as an escape from stress.
• This stress is from the pressure they feel to achieve the best grades they can.
• They are also, despite still being early in high school, feeling pressure to prepare for college.
• They have possibly felt jealous of a younger relative that they felt was having a much more carefree life.

There are a number of methods for building on your first impressions of a character. Character sheets where you put everything from their full name, birthplace, birth order, favorite color, favorite book, worst argument they had with their first grade best friend, and enough other things to fill both sides of several sheets of paper. You can ask who you would have play the character if a movie was made of the story and put a few pictures of that actor in your notes. There is a whole thing of zodiac signs and different personality systems and archetype lists. I'm not going to bother with any of those in this post. Instead I'm going to say we should reach inside and let our inner toddler out for a bit and ask, "Why?" You know the trope. The little kid who keeps asking, "why?" over and over again.

 

"Why can't we go swimming?"

"Because the pool is iced over."

"Why?"

"Because it's been snowing all week."

"Why?"

"Because it's winter."

"Why?"

"Because the Earth is... Because... Let's make hot chocolate and have some cookies."

 

For this we'll ask a question about the character, answer it, and then respond to that answer with a why: Why is our protagonist so stressed out about grades and college? Because their parents and older brother and sister are all really successful and they feel average. Why do they feel average? Dad is a respected engineer, mom is a doctor and medical researcher, sister isn't working on a PhD. but only because she's working on her third master's degree, and brother who is only three years older than the protagonist has finished a masters and is working on a doctorate. Wow, okay, but why does he feel average, is he getting bad grades, held back a year? No, he gets As and Bs and is taking advantage of a program where some of his classes are simultaneously high school classes and classes with the local state university. Okay, but that doesn't sound average, why does he feel less than the rest of his family? He feels that his siblings already knew what they wanted to be by his age and he doesn't, he's getting college English and Mathematics credits already and he's picked electives he thinks are ones a smart person would take but he's picking at random among the ones he thinks smart people would take. Why does he think he ought to be sure of what he will do with his life already? Sure his brother and sister are impressive but did they really have it all figured out at his age? Sister announced when she was ten that she wanted to be an astronaut, at eleven she changed that to rocket scientist-astronaut. What she's studied for her degrees? Mechanical engineering, biophysics, and fluid dynamics. His brother? He's turned down job offers from pretty much every major company that designs cpus and when he tried describing his dissertation it sounded like magic and all the protagonist really caught was that it was that it involved trying things with cpu designs that had never been done before or maybe never successfully done before.

Oh. I that is impressive, I can see why following in those footsteps would be intimidating. Why hasn't his family done anything to help him feel better? They have tried, but when his brother told him he still had time to decide what he wanted to do he felt like he was being talked down to. Especially because his brother told him that after realizing our protagonist hadn't understood a word he'd said in the last five minutes. His sister has tried too. The last time she was home she spent some time getting him to open up about his current interests, but he doesn't see how dance video games which he tried to pass off at first as just exercise, all the design stuff of being part of the school year book, or any of the stuff from shop class which he really, really, super wanted to take a second time if that wouldn't surely be such a waste of his time... He doesn't see how any of those could lead to anything worthy of comparison to what the rest of the family has done.

That's some nasty self inflicted feelings of inferiority. But I have to ask why he would see the age regression summer camp and actually pick that if he feels he needs to achieve at all costs. He first planned to just take some of his required classes in summer school to free up time for the combined high school and college classes. All those summer camps offered was frivolous play. Fine, some of them allowed you to study things, but most of those were things that could be fun like modern dance or even learning more about computers but they were either frivolous or things here he would never catch up to his brother or sister. But this one grabbed him with two things. The flier mentioned that they could include adaptive educational classes that let you move forward at the pace of your learning. Which was how he also allowed himself to give into some of the jealousy he felt for his eight year old cousin whose family lives only a few blocks away. Even he can't insist an eight year old should have a life planned out yet and his cousin is doing all sorts of fun things both in school and after school activities and no one is pressuring them to work so hard. Never mind that his family hasn't been telling him he needs to work harder, he feels it's just understood no matter what they say.

 

I think those two paragraphs give us more than answering eye color, hair color, and favorite item of clothing. You can use the endless why for world building too. I actually first ran across that use as a kid. I got a copy of the complete Logan's Run trilogy in one volume and took it along when we went on our summer camping trip. In the forward it told of how the idea for the book and setting was developed as an exercise at a convention panel. The future coauthors of the book asked those attending the panel to call out one sentence ideas. Being the 1960s someone called out, "Don't trust anyone over twenty-one!" Which they picked, but said wasn't quite enough so they changed it if I'm remembering correctly to, "Don't let anyone live past twenty-one!" and wrote that on a chalk board. Then they asked everyone, "Why isn't anyone in the story allowed to live past twenty-one?" Picking an answer they liked they wrote that underneath, and once again asked, "Why?" Doing so until they had twenty things written on the board. And they pointed out that the twenty things combined drew a picture of a world that you wouldn't get from just, "No one lives past twenty-one," alone. So if something in your story has you stumped you might want to ask why, and then ask why again.

 

One of the less common ideas I have also run across, at least less common for people writing prose, is to give a character a verb to describe them. This is apparently something that comes up in theater and acting classes as a way to help get into character. On one web page an example is given that Snape's verb in the Potter stories could be to vex. Sure he is broody, but that doesn't really describe his actions towards the characters. But whenever the characters are in the same room with him? He vexes them. The first class? Asks Harry advanced potions questions that you wouldn't expect a first year to know on the first day. When Hermione knows the answers? Docks her house points for showing off. Even when he's helpful he does so in an annoying way that causes distress. He vexes. If you were needing to play the role being able to just remind yourself, "My character vexes others," would help you figure out how to deliver your lines and act on stage.

So what is our protagonist's verb? To prepare? Maybe. A preparing instinct could be going haywire because he doesn't know what to prepare for. And later when he comes to some self realization he could act on that verb in a non self-destructive way. To challenge? Perhaps the problem is he's challenging himself to answer questions he's not yet prepared to answer? To idolize? He certainly seems to have put his family up on pedestals. But could we use it as the story progresses? To worry? He does seem to worry. Or maybe to yearn? I'm not picking one now, but I'll be thinking about it.

 

For all I'm down on the idea of filling out a five page questionnaire about everything from a characters name to shoe size, it's a good idea to have notes as you come up with details. There are programs specifically for writers that let you plot, take notes, and write all in the same place. I don't know that I'd pay for Scrivener just to write stories that will get posted for free. Sixty dollars isn't exorbitant but it's still a tank and a half of gas or two packs of Little Paws. There's a few web based ones, but writing something like these stories on one of those feels risky. But whether you use Office, LibreOffice, or your operating system's default built in text editor you can either use its built in note or comment feature or keep a second text file where you jot down, "Decided older Sister's name is Seras after watching too much anime again." Or an eye color or home address or anything else where it might be embarrassing to give two different details in different parts of the story. If all else fails Control-F is your friend when you write and post on computers.

 

Do you have ways you like to find out about your characters? Do you like those five page character questionnaires? What the heck should the age regression summer camp be named? Just how young is our protagonist regressed to?

Next post is probably asking about the world and figuring out the most basic sign posts of the plot, the beginning and ending.

[Personalias]

Are you looking for questions?  Or feedback? Or just using this as a way to illustrate and analyze your thought process?  I don't want to interfere. I just don't know if this is a dialogue on your process or a monologue.  Both are valid.  

[LittleFenny]

2 minutes ago, Personalias said:

Are you looking for questions?  Or feedback? Or just using this as a way to illustrate and analyze your thought process?  I don't want to interfere. I just don't know if this is a dialogue on your process or a monologue.  Both are valid.  

Wow, I turned on my laptop right as you posted this. I'm giving my thought process as I give some of the plotting and structuring things I've been reading about a try. So, illustrating but with an open mind towards any questions or feedback on both the process and results. I'm not going to insist I have all the answers, I've just been reading up and watching quite a few videos over the last few years and now I'm trying to put what I've been studying into action. Partly I'm posting this because I haven't seen threads on structure and plotting and also to put some pressure on myself by starting it publicly.

Oh! I don't think I've mentioned it before but your user icon is awesome.