How To Plot Your Novel | Part 3: Act One

hey guys welcome back to heart breathing's today we continue our plotting series and we dive into the elements of Act one if you are new to this channel we are currently going through an eight part series on how to plot your novel we started out with just an overview of story structure and everything we'd be talking about and then my last video was how to write great characters and we went through some of the elements of writing a great character and some of the things I have found helpful to figure out before I start writing so where we're going to go today is diving straight into the elements of act 1 now act 1 is where you can find basically the main set up of the story we're introduced to most of the main players now there might be some characters that don't appear until later in the story but we're introduced at least to the heroine or hero of the story sometimes we meet the antagonist or we at least get a hint that there is an antagonist out there there's some kind of conflict going on we need to find out for sure what are the stakes here what is at risk if the story question isn't answered which means that we also figure out what the story question is and I'm going to take you through all of these things as we get into actual examples of plotting but just as an overview you're introduced to the characters you are given some sort of hook or some sort of reason why you want to read this story what's going to make it interesting is there a mystery is this a quirky heroine is there a love triangle what is it that's gonna hook readers in and make them want to keep reading we're given some kind of idea already remember we talked about in the last video how to write great characters is that every character tends to have some kind of wound or some sort of ghost in their past something that happened that now affects them so we're going to enact one get a really strong hint of what that wound is you may not as a writer completely spell out the wound but we're going to see the effects of that wound so even if you don't say this character had a fire when she was little and her stepfather died you may not totally spell that out but you can show that this character has bad or traumatic memories of something that happened from when she was young and you can sort of introduce it as a mystery what happened to her that made her feel this way so you don't necessarily have to give the entire wound but in Act one we absolutely need to see the effects of the wound and how our character is sort of armoring themselves against the world to try to protect herself or himself and we need to see basically what that character's life is like before the story goes it doesn't mean you need to see them wake up and get breakfast and go throughout their daily routine but we need some hint as to where are they now so the reader gets anchored into the story of like who is this character and what kind of life have they lived up to this point because throughout the story we know that everything is basically going to change so it gives that sort of before picture it's going back to what we learned about your character in the previous video or the previous steps you're going to learn a little bit about your characters outer goal or desire and a hint of what their inner desire is through finding out what that wound is or what they really truly need you're also going to get some kind of inciting incident or sometimes it's called the call to adventure where your heroine is or hero is enticed like hey come into this story and they may refuse that call you might find a statement of the theme or at least an idea of what the theme of the story is if there's a love interest you're definitely going to meet them in act one or at least by the end of Act one we definitely want to see what your characters greatest hopes are and get a sense for what their greatest fears are so these are all things that you want to introduce as you go through act 1 basically we're setting up the story we're introducing the characters and we're introducing what's going on in the internal world of your hero or heroine and we're setting up what are the stakes of the story and what's the major conflict and then by the end of act 1 we're going to have some kind of bang some kind of incident or event that is going to pull your hero into a new way of being a new world a new story so to speak so let's go through each of these elements and I'll walk you through an example of one of my books as well okay so in my write great characters video I was taking you through my book beautiful demons but as I started getting into Act one what I realized was a mistake is that when I was writing beautiful demons back in 2010 I actually didn't have a lot of these plotting tools I was a new writer I had only written a couple of books before hand and I was still getting my feet wet and learning about plotting so I had not found a lot of these tools that I'm gonna introduce to you now so I did not plot as cohesively as I do now so it didn't make for a great example so what I've done instead is I'm backtracking and instead of doing beautiful demons I'm gonna do a more recent book of mine called deep dark secrets so again spoiler alerts galore if you have not read this book and you want to read it you can pause this and read away and come back to the video later but otherwise you're gonna get some spoilers and that'll just be fine but what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take you back through that character sheet very quickly and I'm going to introduce this character to you her name is Mariah Freeman so instead of Harper from beautiful demons we're gonna meet Mariah who is my new heroine for the new book so I'm just gonna briefly take you back through those things so you can get familiar with her character and how I filled out her character sheet and then we'll start going into the elements of Act one for deep dark secrets as well as for your own plotting okay so as you can see I've already filled this out my character's name is Mariah Freeman she is 17 years old she has brown eyes and dark brown or black hair and she's five foot six her other appearance notes I have is she has long hair tan skin and she's half Native American half Japanese and she has dark clothes that she wears after the accident what does her deepest desire is to find out the truth or at least to know that she isn't crazy she truly needs to believe in herself and embrace her true powers and what happened in her past is that her best friend drove them over a bridge and they were both accused of using drugs and her friend died and now mariah has been in rehab for a year and what she believes to be true about herself now because of that is that she's broken she's a liar that she's crazy and completely untrustworthy then she's most afraid of because of that wind her biggest fear so that she's afraid she can't even trust herself or her own memory she portrays herself to others as I'm fine she lies to them and tells them what they want to hear to make them things she's okay for her true self deep down is that she is very powerful with extraordinary strength and light so just an overview of her now going on to the goal motivation of conflict we have again outer and inner conflict and I have two goals here so I've set set up all of this stuff for two things at the beginning her goal is to leave her past behind so she can regain some freedom and Trust from others but her memories won't leave her alone she's having too many flashbacks too many things bringing her back to the past later her goal switches to finding out the truth about what happened that night because her own life could be in danger too and her conflict is that she can't remember and the darkness is now coming after her internally her goal is to believe in herself and embrace her true light because without a clear true idea of who she is she will definitely be lost to the darkness but the conflict is she doesn't remember everything that happened so she still doesn't trust herself the character arc the beginning of the story she believes she's broken a terrible person she just wants to forget and by the middle she's thinking okay I'm gonna face the truth head-on because I can't move on until I know the truth which is a change or Die moment which I'll go over later and she also is thinking I have to by the end I have to embrace my light and my own power and she begins to show her real strength okay guys thanks for letting me go back through that new character to kind of give you an idea and hopefully that gives you just another example of how to fill out those sheets and I know I went through that really quickly so feel free to watch that again several times but now let's get into Act one so if you have your sheets printed out then you can follow along with me sorry that's kind of washed out in the light but if you have your sheets you can go through this with me now and then I'm going to I'm just going to briefly walk you through these elements and explain them in detail then I'm going to give you an example and show you how I would fill it out for my book deep dark secrets as an example if you do not yet have your free plotting workbook you can go to my blog at heart breathing's calm slash plot your novel and if you sign up for my newsletter list you can get a free copy of this entire plotting workbook that I am filling out the link will be for you there for you down below so feel free to go grab that if you are already on my newsletter list look back through your emails or shoot me an e-mail at sarah s arra at heart breathing's calm and I will send it over to you but I have sent this to you in an email directly so check your emails to make sure that you have it the first element that I fill out when I'm looking at act 1 and I'm going to be kind of referring to this as we go is the opening scene or hook so this is just this is not like the biggest event this is not like the big battle or anything like this this is just where do we see your character in the opening scene how are we going to meet your character for the very first time what I always try to think of is what is going to be an opening scene that is going to absolutely hook the reader make them care about my character right from the start make them get some sense of what this story is going to be like is it a mystery is it a comedy is it a romance give that really good picture of what your character is like right now I always try to think about this in terms of what is going to make the reader immediately at the end of that first chapter even the first page think okay I've got to read this book doesn't mean it needs to be some huge explosion it can just be like a hint of a mystery what is that first image like if this was a movie opening up what do you want them to see at the very beginning and why is it important spend some time really thinking about why this is the beginning of your book and why it sets up the story so well if you can give a hint of what trouble or what challenge is going to face this character throughout the book that's how you're gonna hook them so the next thing that I like to fill out is the setting of the story so I was just talking about the tone matching the genre so now we're going to think about the setting of the story where is it set and what is place look like what's the feel you're going for is it a small town is it an you know an urban setting are we in a big city where there's a lot of high-rise are we in a dystopian future what is the story world then I like to fill out who are the allies of this story who is on your heroines team so James Scott Belle likes to call this the care package sometimes so like who cares about your character and who does your character care about now what I like to do is I like to put all of the characters allies right here in this act one section even if I don't meet them until later and if I have a character that I'm like oh okay well Marion is gonna be an ally to her but she won't meet Mary Ann until act 2 then I'll just make a little note of that but I like to go ahead and have a list here of all the main characters that are going to be my heroine or here as allies throughout the story next is the dramatic question you should be able to answer the dramatic question with a simple yes or no so it should be something like will Harper survive will Harper get sent to juvenile detention yes or no will Mariah be able to find out what really happened that night yes or no there's usually some kind of dramatic question that you will ask here in the first act and the point of the whole story will be to answer that question with a yes or no answer the way I like to think about the dramatic question is it is the entire central conflict of your story and it usually has to do with the stakes and what your character is up against so then you've got the argument against transformation and this is another terminology from james-scott Belle's book superstructure so I highly recommend you get it and read it because it is for me it was life-changing in terms of plotting when we talk about the argument of transfer against transformation basically your character at the beginning is going to be asked to change in some way and we need to see like where that character is at the beginning of the story and then once you know remember how in the character arc thing I say here's the beginning here's where they are in the middle and then here's where they are at the end so once you know where your character is going to transform into by the end of the story you can sort of set that up here in act 1 this can be a very powerful thing when it comes to stating sort of the theme of the book and how your character is going to transform by the end just if you think okay this is this person is going to transform into someone who loves and accepts themselves by the end then an Act one we need to have them argue against why they're never going to change because James Scott Bell really introduces the argument against transformation well and what he actually says is this is kind of your character telling you why they shouldn't be the hero of this story and I loved it when he said that because it's like your character is saying well I don't deserve to be this person I'm never going to be a hero or a heroine and I'm just going to forget what happened to me and I'm going to move on thank you very much but the truth is they are going to get pulled into the story whether they like it or not sometimes people call this the refusal of the call so you your heroine or hero might get a call to an adventure in the first act like they might be there might be enticed to join the story in some bigger way so for example I've heard this said so many times like Star Wars Luke Skywalker gets this call to adventure like help me obi-wan Kenobi and you know Princess Leia has this chance to go save her and he's like I'm not doing that so he refuses the call at first and then later he gets pulled into the story because his family is killed and he now he's he's in it for the long haul so refusal of the call can also happen at the same time as the argument against transformation okay then what we've have in my story sheet is we're going to meet the antagonist or get introduced to the mystery in some way so in some stories you actually know who the antagonist is you know who the bad guy is so to speak who is causing the conflict for your hero or heroine and sometimes you don't actually know who it is or what it is that is the antagonist but you do know that there's some kind of mystery going on here so that is what happens in deep dark secrets as I'll show you in a little bit but you do want to go ahead and introduce the mystery of the story or the tagging is one thing to keep in mind if you're writing a romance is that sometimes the antagonist of the story is your hero or your heroine the antagonist your hero's antagonist might be the heroine because they don't want to fall in love and so that heroine is what's threatening their way of life and that's the way romances often are is the antagonist is actually the hero or heroine of the story then this next part is crucial you need to be introducing the stakes of the story what happens if Harper fails what happens if the evil wins at the end of this what happens if we never find out the truth of what happened to Mariah what happens if the heroine can't come through with this loan does she lose the farm whatever it is what are the stakes what is at stake sometimes it can be something very small or something very local like it can be literally losing your family farm which is not small to that person but it doesn't really affect the world at large but it affects this person's world and sometimes it can be much more global so it's like you know you'll see this in some of the bigger like action-adventure movies or even in big epic fantasy movies like Lord of the Rings what happens if Frodo does not get the ring to the mountain or whatever I don't know what it's called but what happens if Frodo fails if they fail to get destroy the ring the world ends and evil takes over forever you know it can be something small like losing the family farm or if she doesn't understand who she truly is and fall in love then she'll never find happiness so it can be like sort of like a death of your happiness or it can be the death of the world and something much bigger but you need to decide for yourself what are the stakes of this story what's at stake for your heroine what's at stake for the larger community around them and then finally what we have at the very end of act 1 for the act 1 climax is we have the first doorway of no return the first doorway of no return is basically also called sometimes the first plot point this is the first big event where your character gets locked into the action of the story what is it that happens that makes your character go on the journey they are going to go on throughout this adventure what you can also think is what is the confrontation or afflict that is going to carry us through act 2 and to the rest of this book is it a mystery was there a murder and now your heroine is being accused of it for Harry Potter for example the end of act 1 is that all these envelopes finally start coming and he has no choice now I mean he's going to Hogwarts whether the Dursleys liked it or not that's an event that locks him into the story that first doorway is something where your character is going to make a decision or something that will happen to them that now locks them into your story's action this is also sort of a passage like life will never be the same again so what happens to your character what decision do they make or what event do they go through that changes their life forever a decision to go to a school for wizards or witches is definitely a life changing the decision to explore murder mystery is definitely a life changing decision if you really think about it this is your character saying okay I'm going to face this conflict I'm going to actively become a participant in this story because of something that's happened and pulled me in and now I am locked into this stakes right the stakes of the story and if I fail there's death of some kind now the death could be like I said figurative like if I lose my family's farm I will be ashamed of myself forever and I will never be able to find happiness again or it could be literal like if I go in search of Princess Leia and I fail at this you know I could literally die so one way or another your character is now locked into these stakes and they're facing some kind of death in one way or another in KM Wyland's book structuring your novel she has a really really great explanation of what she calls the inciting event versus the key event now I am NOT going to be able to describe this as well as she does but I hope that you will read that because it's really really great explanation but basically the inciting incident or the sighting event is something that happens earlier before the climax of act one that introduces the new story world or the mystery to your character but the key event is the thing that locks them into the story for good so I will explain how this makes sense to me when it comes to one of my own stories but she has some great explanations of it one of the great ways that I love that she explains this is she says like the inciting event is what gets the story moving so if you're thinking about dominoes it's that first domino that tips over then what she says as the key event is the event like the insight if the inciting event is the beginning of the story it tips over that first domino and kind of is the first effect you know that has on your character then the key event is the thing that solidifies your character being locked into this story forever so she doesn't give this example but since I was talking about Star Wars you know the inciting event I could be wrong about this but what I would say is the inciting event for Luke Skywalker is destroyed that he gets this message from Princess Leia that's an inciting event no he says okay I don't want anything to do with it but he's already connected to this because he was because of the day he was born so all those things kind of happen earlier but the key event for him is when his family is murdered and he has no choice now but to leave and follow this adventure then he's locked into the story hopefully that makes some sense and I'll explain it a little bit more as we dive into the actual plotting of my story there are more things that happen and there's so much more that I could go into that's why I highly encourage you read you to read these books that I've kind of talked about because they go so much more in detail than what I can do in a single video but hopefully this gives you a good overview and now I'll take you through how I would use this in my own plotting and give you kind of an example but basically you want to set up the story and you want to set up the stakes of the story and then you want to have those major events that key event is one of the biggest things because it's what locks your character into the story and then the doorway of no turn is what decision your character makes so for Luke Skywalker for example the key event is his family is murdered his doorway happens at the same scene basically when he says okay I'm in I'm going on this adventure and I'm with you no longer gonna refuse this call I'm in it so the event happens to him and in the doorway he makes the decision to go through that doorway and I've heard it explained many many times that really the best doorways and the best way to do a doorway of no return are into the new world has to be an action that your character decides to take so they're a willing participant in this and I'll show you how that applies in my own story as well alright so let's move on to my example of deep dark secrets I am so excited to introduce you guys to deep dark secrets which is book 1 of my spirit walkers trilogy I'm going to take you through how I would have filled this out for that book for example so the opening scene is a very short prologue that sets up the main inciting event of this story right from the beginning which is that there was an accident where my heroine Mariah's best friend Haley was driving and she was acting very strange and all of a sudden she starts going very fast and Mariah sees these black tears running down her friend's face which introduces and sets up this paranormal or supernatural genre and introduces that this is a mystery because we don't know why this girl would do such a thing because this is her best friend acting completely out of character then after that very short prologue we moved to one year later in the present where my main character is checking out of rehab and the hook here is you know is this character crazy or not because her memories are very unreliable and no one believes her so we're setting that up right from the beginning and also setting up a situation where the reader can feel sympathy toward my main character because you know not only has her best friend died under mysterious circumstances but now everyone thinks that Mariah doing drugs with her friend and they blame her kind of for the accident so it sets up that sympathy as well as the hook now moving on to the setting so I would potentially go into more detail in the setting that I do in this example but I did just write out the places that we get familiar with in this book so you've got the Longview Rehabilitation Center which is the mental institution she's in the very beginning then we have the small town of Twin Rivers where Mariah lives it's the fictional town in the mountains of North Carolina there are lots of hiking trails woods mountains waterfalls rivers that kind of thing so setting up that type of town then I also set some of the story at Twin Rivers high school I could also have added that some of it happens at her house and I could have gone into a description of what Mariah's house looks like what the high school looks like you can just choose how much of the setting you want to get detailed on in this plotting sheet and you could add just another set of notes if you want to get more detailed Mariah's allies in the story at the beginning are dr. Milner which is her psychologist at Longview rehabilitation center and also we are introduced to her sister Kimmy I put a little smiley face there because she's one of my favorite characters in this story she is petite but has similar looks Mariah and she's a little bit younger than Mariah then we have Jordin gray cloud who is a Native American he is good looking he is new to town and tall mysterious has dark hair skin and he is you know really this is not only an ally but the love interest of the story and I should have actually added in here that her friend her only friend that has still remained her friend throughout this whole time is a girl named Nicole and I should have added this here in a lies but I forgot to add it in so she would go into the allies section as well the dramatic question like I said this is the story question is will Mariah find out the truth of what and that night or I could also word it as was Haley murdered so we need to know by the end of this story what truly happened or at least will Mariah ever find out the truth of what happened you could also say the dramatic question is are Mariah's memories reliable so you could come up with any way to address the central conflict but it's all based around that same conflict of what actually happened to that night and will Mariah ever find out then we move on to the argument against transformation so for Mariah since we filled out that inner goal motivation and conflict and that sort of thing with her earlier you know that her argument against transformation is I'm fine I just want to leave it all behind me now it's time for me to move on and focus on the future that's what she keeps saying to people and even to her parents and to her therapist that she's like you know I am ready to leave this rehabilitation center I'm ready to leave this path behind me but this is really just armor because she's actually not truly ready she really does deep down want to know what happened but she's afraid so that's why she makes this argument against transformation and then we have the meet the antagonist or introducing of the mystery now in this story we do not know who the antagonist is until the very end because it is a mystery so we don't find out the true antagonist until the end of the story but I do introduce a lot of mysterious elements so right away the mystery is introduced with what really happened that night why did Haley have these black tears running down her face and why would Haley purposely drive them off the bridge there also becomes an introduction of through dream sequences of a stranger in the river a new strange guy that she remembers as well as a medallion that he gave her that night and everyone says that this guy did not exist but now someone who has just enrolled at her high school looks so much like the guy she remembers so that introduces another hook of a mystery it's like all ties in to her dreams here and what really happened that night so it's like who here's a clue that maybe she is remembering it correctly but if she is then who is this the serious guy and is Jordan Gregg out loud the guy that was there that night what did he have to do with the whole thing then I introduce or set up the stakes of the story so I would say in the deep dark secrets the stakes of the stories if she doesn't figure out the truth she'll never trust herself again she will be broken for ever she already feels that she's broken in the eyes of her parents but she doesn't even trust herself so if she doesn't go through this path or go down this path and figure out what really happened that night she can't ever trust herself again which will be a type of death because she will never truly love herself or believe in herself also there are now strange symbols and nightmares that point to you know possible antagonists besides just an accident and she has to start wondering is she next is this going to affect her in some way so start to introduce more of darker stakes for herself then we move into the first doorway of no return so before we can address that we need to look at the inciting event so for this particular story the inciting event is the accident that happened one year ago that is the first domino that tipped over was this crazy accident that nobody understands the key event however that locks Mariah into the story is that at the end of Act one she finds a note in her locker from her dead friend Haley this note basically says if anything happens to me it wasn't an accident and for Mariah this thing where she's been trying to deny her memories and go with the flow and believe that what everyone else said is true and you know fit in she just can't do that anymore now she has proof that this was not an accident and so her reaction to that is the first doorway which is where Mariah decides to find out the truth and she begins her own journey to investigate what really happened to that night her commitment to investigate is the doorway so hopefully that makes sense that the inciting event the first domino that tipped over was the actual accident the beginning of the mystery the key event for Mariah is when she finds that note in her locker she can no longer refuse the call to adventure she says okay this was not an accident so her reaction to it is the first doorway of no return which is her decision to find out what really happened so here we have a filled out story grid for act 1 now what I'll do briefly is later on in your plotting notebook you have this little grid here so this is just four sections and what I like to do is I will label the first one as act 1 and I will start filling it out with some of the scenes that I now know need to happen based on how I just filled this out so for example I know that the very beginning or opening scene is going to be the accident and then I know that the scene after that is going to be Mariah checking out of rehab so I could go ahead and write those scenes down now if I wanted to if you don't want to use this story grid you could also pull out index cards and write each one of these scenes on index cards so even though you filled out this original thing like everything that's happening in act 1 you may not have all of the scenes filled out yet but don't worry because we are going to address that as well when we get to the bringing it all together video that will come at the end after we've gone through all the acts and I'm going to show you how I figure out what the actual scenes are but what I like to do is go ahead and start filling in some of the scenes that I know once I've gotten the act 1 structure down and that gives me sort of a starting point when I start to fill out the action scenes so hopefully that is a good example for you if you have any questions make sure to pop them down below and I will answer them as soon as I can alright guys you made it through to the end of Act one I sincerely hope that this has given you some ideas many of these ideas might not even be new to you but I know that for me it helps to see how other people apply them to your stories which is why I've taken the time to go through one of my own just to give you an example of how I would fill it out for myself and maybe that'll trigger some ideas for you as well so in our next video we're going to move on to Act two part one and I separate act two into Part one and Part two because it is really the longest part of your story so we're just going to tackle Act two part one in my next video and that will be coming out a week from today so I hope that you are subscribed to my channel make sure that you hit that notification bell so that you get notified as soon as a new video goes up from me and again if you have not yet downloaded your free plotting workbook head over to heart breathing's calm slash plot your novel and download that today I will also pop that link for you down in the description box below and that is it for today guys thank you so much for sticking through this I know this is gonna be a long video thirty minutes plus but hopefully I have been a pretty thorough here and giving you some good ideas on how to plot your own novel on how to get started that's it for today and I will see you in my next video bye [Music]

Channel: Heart Breathings

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Keywords: act structure, how to outline, how to write, 3 act structure, creative writing, writing a novel, how to outline a novel, story structure, how to write a book, outlining a novel, how to plot, how to write a novel, writing tips for writers, how to write a novel series, how to write a novel outline, how to plot a novel, plot structure, writing tips, how to outline a book, sarra cannon, writing advice from writers, writing advice from authors

Id: 0Rbo5aXqFAk

Length: 34min 55sec (2095 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 09 2018