Story Building Mastery 5 – Character Development
Character Development RETURN TO MENU ARTICLE Entire libraries could be filled with the books and articles written by much better writers than I on how to develop characters in your book. And no doubt as I go through this some equivocation will occur with the terms I’m using. Some experts may think I’m misdiscribing one thing, or that one is not relevant. I do not claim to be presenting the definitive work on the subject, so cut me a break. I’m also not going to tell you how to decide what types of personalities to give to your characters. Only you know your stories, and hopefully you have an idea of what types of personalities you envision experiencing your story. What I am going to give you is a general overview of the four major types of characters: Flat, Round, Static, and Dynamic.
Story Building Mastery 4 – Story Genotype
Story Genotype RETURN TO MENU ARTICLE This way of classifying a story is perhaps one of the most important yet overlooked items. It’s easily confused with genre…probably because there are a few common genres which actually double as a genotype. Yet there is a distinct difference. Genre is best understood as the designation of the story’s setting, style, and audience. Essentially, it is how the story relates to the reader. (See the previous article in the series on Genre.) So root that firmly in your brain as we go forward. Genotype is how the story relates to the characters in the book. The characters aren’t experiencing a genre of setting, style, and audience. They are experiencing life…their lives. Genotype helps us to understand what aspect of life that they are experiencing. This has a TREMENDOUS effect on how plot and characters are developed, because plot and character development are directly related to the experiences of the characters. Let’s look at a few examples.
Story Building Mastery 3 – Story Genre
Story Genre RETURN TO MENU ARTICLE So you think you know what Story Genre is, huh? It can be best understood as a story’s designation of setting, style, and audience. Other definitions include form, content, and technique. What needs to be keyed in on here is that Story Genre moves the READER through the story, or the author’s means of connecting the reader to the story. Don’t confuse this with Story Genotype, which I’ll talk about next time, which moves the MAIN CHARACTERS through the story, or is the author’s way of connecting the main characters to the story. What do I mean? In genre, setting and style are most important. The characters are unaffected by this, it is the reader that bears the impact. For instance, consider setting. A Western is characterized by a “cowboy” type setting, usually mid to late 1800’s. The characters are unaffected because it’s simply a reflection of their normal world. This setting designation is used to connect the reader to that world.
Story Building Mastery 2 – Five Act Structure
Five Act Structure RETURN TO MENU ARTICLE We’ll soon be getting into some familiar territory. If you’ve had any creative writing study at all in high school, then you’ve at least heard about the Five Act Structure. Those of you who are more experienced with writing will have a fairly decent grasp of how the Five Act Structure works. The Five Act Structure is a way to describe the basic development of any story. In Level 1 we talked about the focus or main core with which the story will be developed. Here we’ll look at how the story is broken down into definable sections. There’s nothing mystical about this, but every story pretty much follows the Five Act Structure. Because it’s fundamentally the way story telling has developed through all the centuries that story telling has existed. Let’s look at each Act and I’ll describe what they’re getting at.
Story Building Mastery 1 – The Tri-Core Substructure
THE TRI-CORE SUBSTRUCTURE RETURN TO MENU ARTICLE This week I want to talk about the foundational layer of story building, the Tri-Core Substructure. Shiny, huh? I made that term up myself because neither my publisher nor I could think of a proper pre-existing term. What is the Tri-Core Substructure? It is the very basic most primitive form of a story: Character, Experience, Reaction. Or in other words, he came, he saw, he did. Each of these three primitive parts of a story can be reduced to the three core parts of which we will be talking about. Character (personal development), Meaning (experiential objective), Plot (action/reaction).