I'm not a writer but something that surprises me is how often a popular story, doesn't interest me at all. Lord of the Rings I found dull as dishwater. When it was turned into a film, I just couldn't get through it without falling asleep. The reason? Right at the beginning it was clear that the only thing that matters is that the ring is returned to the mountain. Yeah there were loads of battles along the way but I didn't have any interest in the characters involved in those battles. Even when the Hobbits are trying to persuade the trees to help in a battle I couldn't help thinking "sod the trees, just get to the mountain, you've got a ring to return" I'm a great fan of Harry Potter but even JK made this mistake on the rules of Quidich. What does it matter if people are scoring points along the way if the result is determined by a seeker catching the snitch? Fortunately the game of Quidich is a miniscule part of the storyline so it was still a great story. Maybe it's just me but perhaps there's a point to be learned here.
Counterpoint to Beating the Antagonist early: You could set it up so that the Antagonist is incredibly sore and bitter over their defeat, and this motivates them to go on their own villainous underdog journey and become a legit threat when they encounter the protagonist again. Case in point: The Spot from Across the Spiderverse
I actually have a story where the protagonist repeatedly defeats an antagonist in often humiliating ways, so the antagonist keeps running off to get even more dark magic power and generally making things worse. This works because a) there are other serious threat antagonists who don't lose as easily or often and b) this dynamic is actually a moral failing on the part of the protagonist. If she was less cruel in her repeated victories, the antagonist wouldn't keep doing worse things to try and get back at her and making problems for everyone. I think this dynamic works best if the protagonist is physically victorious but still "fails" in some other sense, so they still need to learn and grow.
Or just setting things up to have them be a threat in a different way. For example, starting with something like a fencing match where the main character wins, well, the villain has a grudge and, well, outside of school, your antagonist might have a lot of other power and be a petty asshole for it. Hell, that's the entire setup for the rivalry between Victor Von Doom and Reed Richards...Richards proved to be better at something and Doom fucked up, and Doom is petty as fuck.
@@AzraelThanatosYes, I love that kind of story. Another example could be Harry Potter and Voldemort. Harry defeated him while he was still a baby. Of course Voldemort would want revenge years later 😂 The main difference, though, is that in both cases (HP and FF) these early victories of the good guy are presented as flashbacks in relation to the main story. We learn about them pretty early, but we still don't see them happening during the main course of the story, so it still has a kind of mystery around it. Did it really go down that way? Maybe the rumors about that story are false and the protagonist didn't really win? Or of they did, was it a fair victory? So many questions that can be explored later on as you learn more about that event
Ok then, addendum to the point: don't give the antagonist a more interesting story than the protagonist. If the villain is having cool adventures and learning new skills offscreen then the reader might want to see that story instead of the one you're presenting.
Keanu Reeves made a tech noir movie called Johhny Mnemonic. Remember it? Probably not. He also another tech noir movie you probably have heard of, The Matrix. I read an opinion piece that suggested one reason why The Matrix was so much better is because the protagonist went through a metamorphosis. He started as an everyman.
It's funny how Across the spiderverse subverts the first mistake (beating your antagonist too early). Miles easily beats Spot pretty early on and dismisses him as a threat only for him to become one of the main antagonists
There are actually a lot of great antagonists who are beaten by the protagonist early and come back in some way. I'm not sure I agree with his first point, I just think it is easy to pull off badly. Even without "upgrades", there are lots of ways an antagonist can drive a plot without being a physical/magical match for the hero. There is a reason that despite all the supers Superman has beaten down, Lex Luthor has remained probably his most iconic villain.
you could also turn the story into a deconstruction of the heroes story by having the hero struggle to find a new goal in a fantasy world where "the chosen one" has served his purpose and isn't needed anymore, maybe even not valued anymore tbf there is almost nothing in writing that is a hard rule, all those outlines are just traps you can fall into, if you have the darksouls mindset you can always try and pull it off
Part of it depends on the framing; Spot was overtly being played as a joke character at the outset, so the initial vibe was “okay, whacky opener villain dealt with, let’s get into the main plot”. I think it’s more a matter of not overtly saying “yeah, the protagonist can totally resolve the main conflict” right at the start.
@@willieoelkers5568 I think you nailed it. Spiderverse gets around this problem by NOT portraying the Spot as the main antagonist early on, but as a quick, light-hearted one-off villain; a warm-up boss, at most. When he comes back as the main antagonist, it's a shocking twist, which means no one's going through all the stuff in-between going, "Why do I care? I already know the protagonist can win this fight," which was the whole issue with having your protagonist beat the main antagonist too early, that it's hard to build tension throughout the story towards a fight you've already seen the protagonist win.
00:28 🛡️ Be cautious about introducing and defeating the antagonist too early; it can diminish suspense and character growth. 02:17 📋 Vary scene formats to keep reader engagement and maintain conflict progression. 04:06 🏃♂️ Ensure your protagonist makes active choices; passive protagonists can stall the plot's momentum. 05:30 🗝️ Establish a clear through line, defining the core conflict to avoid meandering and purposeless subplots. 08:18 🐌 Avoid a "soggy middle" by maintaining progression and purpose; consider a seven-point plot structure for better guidance. 14:08 ⚔️ Challenge characters with adversity to reveal their true depth and create reader connection. 15:06 🔄 Align the promise, progress, and payoff to maintain a natural flow in your narrative. 16:01 🪢 Condense the resolution of plot threads to create a more impactful and dynamic climax. 17:39 🎲 Avoid relying on luck to save the protagonist; instead, use it to create challenges and obstacles for them.
@@dameanvil no point. I was gathering information so that I could 1) understand if the built in time stamps existed when the video was first posted, and 2) understand if you had another motivation for putting in the effort outlining the video with time stamps. It's a helpful and kind thing to do and I even done it myself a few times, but only in videos without the feature, so I wanted to gain insight into a new perspective. Or let you know about the feature in case you hadn't noticed it to save you some effort if you didn't have another reason for doing it.
I was going into this thinking he was going to say "Dragons should not be put in a story, they take away tension/stakes etc.". Meanwhile I was sitting here with an unfinished (of course) story about wealth hoarding dragons, sweating bullets, waiting for that point to come up. I was pleasantly surprised.
I was thinking about a specific scene in Fate of the Fallen by Kel Kade... The perspective cuts back to the main character when he's attacked out of no where by a dragon. He almost dies in the attack, which only lasts like a page. It was very jarring on my first read, I thought I was missing some pages. Turns out the gods were meddling (in both the world and the story), and sent the dragon to "challenge" the protagonist, because beating a powerful beast makes you more powerful. They just totally underestimated how powerful the dragon was compared to the protagonist.
I would think dragons would raise the tension and the stakes, after all, if you have a party of characters traveling through a dungeon or some caverns, and then they hear loud breathing, and then notice that they are walking right through a dragon's den and it's sleeping, and the slightest noise might wake it up, the tension just went up a lot, and the stakes just went up to include their very lives, remember, just cause a dragon is in your story, it's not always gonna be on the side of your protagonists.
The good news is that the stakes (to make the metaphor literal) depend less of their "height" and more on their placement to each other. Think in terms of tent stakes: tension between stakes is good, but too little tension makes the tent fall over while too much tension will "snap" the reader into incredulity. You can absolutely start with dragons, so long as the next step is beholders and Vecna, and not, I don't know, natives from a fishing village. The reason most sci-fi narratives begin to "fail" after introducing the multiverse is because... what else is further than every possible iteration of everything? Now **that** is a stake I would hesitate to plop down without also sticking down some very serious "consequence stakes" near that concept. 😁
Like many other aesthetic tropes of fantasy, dragons are fine, and can even be great! They only become writing problems when they're just thrown in with barely any thought "because it's a fantasy story."
Ive seen a lot of kods shows do this, where someone seems like the big bad until near the end of the first major arc, and then theyre taken down and the REAL big bad gets closer to the foreground
@@QuikVidGuyThat works. But you have to be careful of falling into "oh, there's another greater bad" again and again. I've seen that happen in some JRPGs and it just feels like "oh, ok so I gotta fight you now. Next!" And I'm not as interested in the antagonists anymore. Ex: FF 9. Love the game and story, but by the end I'm losing interest in who the big bad is.
@@QuikVidGuy Tbh, I feel like this only works if the other character has been introduced before. Else it just feels like "Well you defeated that guy, now defeat this faceless even stronger dude"
ON "beating an enemy too early," bingo! In pro-wrestling, promotions used to be structured to introduce both heroes and villains going through a number of jobbers, guys who lose every week on TV. This establishes the character and abilities of both opponents. Then there are the set-up feuds, where they each face a much bigger threat, and we see how they deal with that. And then finally they face each other.
Everytime I feel like I'm writing my book wrong, one of your videos pop up and reminds me to just keep doing what I'm doing. Thanks for all the advice you provide on this channel, they're a tremendous help!
Mistake 1 reminds me of why I was unimpressed when Moff Gideon came back in The Mandalorian season 3. Moff Gideon got spanked in season 1 and in season 2, so obviously he would lose again in season 3 no matter how many upgrades they give him.
It’s because they kept making Gideon put them in scenarios where escape was impossible so they had to defeat him or die. I love mandalorian but this was definitely a weak point. There are many ways to have the main characters not die but also not win in a major conflict like they always wanted to have at the end of the season, but they never found a good way to do that.
I would have been fine with the idea of Moff Gideon being spanked by Luke Skywalker before season 3, but not by Mando. That way Mando's victory in s3 feels more satisfying - because of course Luke would kick his ass.
Your first is really good I'm surprised you didn't mention The Force Awakens with how Rey beat Kylo Ren in their first meeting weakening him as a villain
The proper way to have addressed Kylo getting beaten in Force Awakens would have been to have Snoke do a long volley of very harsh training on Kylo in the next movie. Almost like a training montage from a Kickboxer movie, then have Kylo go back and crush her at the end of the movie. Give Kylo the training and get better to defeat your opponent since they had no idea what to do with Jake Skywalker and Rey Palpatine.
@@barnabusdoyle4930Kylo taking the L to Rey makes sense if the watcher understands SW lore or is vaguely familiar with it. Kylo being conflicted from killing Han = Kylo’s connection to the Force is very weak = he is very weak. The issue is that most people don’t understand that at all or how emotions affect your strength in the Force. It’s why TLJ had to have Snoke literally explain why he lost to Rey at the start of the movie because everyone was getting pissy about it. What is actually a problem was his “fight” with Luke. Obviously they couldn’t make Luke look bad when the scene is supposed to be about him becoming the same war hero we grew up with once more but at the same time, there isn’t a single explanation or reason to excuse Kylo getting utterly embarrassed. Sure, everyone including Kylo thinks this could be legit cuz they have Luke on a pedestal but it only serves to hurt Kylo’s image nigh irreparably in the viewer’s eye.
@@Zong_Cheng The whole new trilogy is just bad. Instead of building up on things, there was conflict between the director's visions. Personally, I think JJ Abrams just sucks as a director, and I'm not going to say Rian Johnson is great either.
If I had to summarize act 2, I would say: Make the third act as great as possible (raise the stakes). When writing Act 2, you can significantly heighten the emotions and tension for Act 3. I think the reason why there are so few detailes about the middle part in this storystructure, is because it really depends on all the other stuff in your novel. Act 2 is very subjective which is probably why beginners really tend to struggle with this. But I have heard many writers say that as they started to dive really deep into act 2, the middle actually became their most favorite part of the process. Great Video!
I feel like the second act is my favorite for this exact reason! The tension ratchets way up, and you get to work in clever little things that have major payofs in the third act.
The most low-resolution cave-man version of story-telling these days is a pro-wrestling match. The classic match had four segments: the Set-up (establishing characters, their relationship to each other, the rules, the audience, etc, the wrestlers are testing each other); the Shine (the good guy ascendant, with whatever virtues he has; bad guy can't win); the Heat (begins with the bad guy doing something nefarious, then he starts making the hero suffer); the Finish (the good guy makes a comeback, leading to desperation on the parts of both wrestlers).
17:16 an author who does the "tie together plot treads" very well is Charles Dickens. He makes you wait for it, but his last chapter or two is always worth it.
In terms of story structure, I like to use an arc structure. Basically, several interwoven subplots each contributing to the themes and larger story, but each had its own unique side characters and arcs and such. I find it keeps constant engagement
Aye, I do this as well and combine it into a 5 act story structure. Each act having it's own arc that further explores the larger themes of a story is not only more engaging in my opinion, but easier to write as well
@9:30 Suzanne Collins had a different solution to the soggy middle in The Hunger Games. Beyond the fact there are 3 books, each book roughly subdivides into 3 sections of 9 chapters each. But those sections in turn split roughly into 3 short stories, causing a pattern of each chapter being an act.
1:45 I’ve heard a story once about a very powerful antagonist called Sauron who suffered a huge defeat. He came back weaker but the author chose to make the protagonist unable to beat him. The main plot line in Tolkien’s universe is literally the idea that for defeating the antagonist, free people need to become less powerful. It started with Valar’s war against Melkor and ended with 3 weak hobbits sneaking into the enemy stronghold. And all the story power of the Lord of the Rings, the book version I mean, comes from the idea that, to really defeat him, confrontation with the many times beaten antagonist need to be avoided. The usual structure in fantasy stories is a protagonist slowly becoming stronger in order to finally defeat the antagonist. And yet, the greatest fantasy universe is built about the idea that all the most powerful beings (valar, high elves, edain…) renounce to use their power to let the weakest ones do the job…
Yeah but to be fair, this writing tip was mostly about having your protagonist beat the antagonist too early. Like Lord of the Rings would have been a whole lot less interesting if it had been Frodo who cut Saurons finger off and then when the Nazgul come to hunt the Hobbits, they just swiftly defeat the Nazgul without a sweat.
That's an alternate win condition. An alternative is the protagonist wins early, but uses forbidden powers to do so, and that threatens the release of a bigger threat AND allows the original villain/threat to rebuild instead of being wiped out. Or the hero becomes the new threat.
Stranger Things 4 is an example of #1. The monsters being created by the first psychic child is an interesting twist, but Eleven beat him when she was like 7! It makes it hard to believe she's ever in danger.
I was personally disappointed that the monster in the ther world was another psychic human. I thought it would've been more interesting for it just to have been an eldritch monster.
Your 7-point structure just gave me the biggest breakthrough, thank you! I've been struggling with not feeling like the three-act structure was working for my novel.
I really enjoyed it too! I think I'm going to adapt it for the purposes of my story, where I have 2 protagonists that spend the first half of the book split up before teaming up to solve the big mystery.
Or. Dont even be hampered by the 3 arc plot. It's an efficient tool but tricking yourself into becoming rigid and thinking it *must* be followed can also be a mistake. Think about the story you want to tell. The beats and themes you want to hit, and put events between the two that tie them together. Also consider the characters involved and how they would react in certain scenarios. This is an easy way to get good character exploration, tension, character development, payoffs. If you want the series to be more ongoing introducing later plot essential characters either shortly after the inciting incident or before the climax is an efficient way to do so.
Rey and Kylo from Star Wars is a perfect example of having your antagonist get stomped at every fight. There was no tension there when they would meet again at the end. When your villian is a joke, you lost the narrative.
He was a bad guy, a protagonist. He's not THEE bad guy. Even the first movie that people generally speak highly of, Kylo wasn't even introduced as the big bad, not at any point in the trilogy. You, like many others, are too focused on the wrong things to make them enjoyable. Particularly when it comes to Star Wars.
Summary for "my people": 1) Start with your protagonist about to get executed, then have your antagonist land on a nearby tower and destroy the city as Protag escapes through Helgen Keep. 2) A scene format is like a quest. You wouldn't write a dozen quests that are all "kill 5 of these things" or "bring me 5 doodads," would you? 3) Protag needs to tell the world it can wait while he or she does a side quest. 4) If you want the bulk of your story to be about reclaiming and rebuilding the wasteland, maybe don't start with a plot that requires Protag to immediately rush to find his or her son, only to ignore that in the first chapter, and for the next four chapters. 5) No water levels. 6) If you want a danger to seem actually dangerous, you're going to have to require corpse runs. 7) Don't overhype and overpromise. If Protag cannot be a space trucker flying between galaxies, don't set that up before you get into the story. 8) If Protag leaves the story to go to Africa, that's your climactic ending. Don't try to replace him with Randy just to milk the story until it's hated. 9) Minor supporting characters should not have the power to know where Protag is when facing certain doom, have the power to heal Protag, and just happen to know how to get and deliver the two artifacts that allow Protag to kill the Basilisk.
Or; Don't have your antagonist through most of the game be a "muh-ha-ha" bad guy trying to kill you for power. Only to try to reveal he needed that power to prepare for an even worse villian, just to have _that_ villain be a total pushover that gets defeated in a single fight. *cough* Fable 3 *cough*
@@annatardlordofderps9181 Do you think I should have done something like a *cough* **reference** *cough* throughout my post? I thought about it. I also thought maybe tying my numbered items back to a timestamp so Reader could see how they relate might have been a good idea.
I've been months trying to find that one sentence that resume my story. And you make me say it confidently for the first time, even before that advice of think about the end (in that moment i just was happy because the sentence coincided with that final)
Another great video! A problem that I've been encountering a lot lately is dealing with that jump at act 2 and 3 between the protagonist's lowest moment and the climax. I've seen lots of very different methods on this, from do it as quick as possible to give it plenty of time to let your protagonist really take in the impact of the lowest moment. Of course, there's no right or wrong way, but there seems to be a lot of inconsistency, even in successful stories. I've yet to find anyone that has put into words how to make that jump successfully, or, at least, what the common working elements are. Most tend to talk about the lowest moment and climax in isolation, but not what comes between!
I think that depends on too many factors to really be easily said. It depends on how impactful you want this situation to be to the reader too, but also on how organic that would come of. For example: Obviously how much time the character gets to handle this should be somewhat realistic. If he sees his friends killed in the middle of a battle, he can't really spend too much time on it, since he's in the middle of a battle. If he arrives after the battle happened it can be much more impactful. But it also depends on how impactful you want it to be to the reader, as opposed to the character. For example if the lowest point is that because of a mistake your character made his family died, but each of the family members had like, two lines of dialogue in the whole book, you should probably not linger too long because the reader probably isn't invested enough in the family of the main character to really care about THEM, they will care about what it does to your character, but if the subject of the matter isn't interesting enough, it's probably not worth spending too much time on. If on the other hand this lowest point directly affects someone the readers are very connected to, for example because it caused something to happen to a major character, then there is a lot more room to explore what that means for each of them. Basically: you should look at the situation not from the perspective of your characters but of your audience. If there is no real reason for them to care, then don't spend too much time on it.
Interesting about the 7-point plot structure, because my first thought was: Make Act2 it's own three part structure. I think borrowing from movie trilogies, that are good at least, works. Take Empire Strikes Back. It's a brilliantly told movie, that's also the second act of the complete story. the 7-points does this in much the same way I guess.
The point about respective scenes was awesome - I’m currently evaluating a manuscript using the Story Grid method, and I’ve added a column ‘type of scene’ to make sure I don’t have too many similar ones side by side. Thanks!!
You hit the nail on the head with the issues with the 3 Act Structure. This is why I use a synthesis of the 4 Act Structure and the 7 Point structure that you mention. Act II is often the protag learning/showing off/gaining confidence and Act III becomes the antagonists showing off and destroying the protag's confidence. Too many authors get lost in the 3 Act structure. I especially see people struggle with that story square outline format that has 9 chapters for each act, because Act II ends up being too short, and Act I ends up being way too long. Thank you for bringing this issue up!
One of the flaws with the "3 act structure" isn't the structure itself, but the way people oversimplify the concept into a story containing ONLY those 3 acts, with the thresholds between each act being clearly identifiable at a glance.
Started my story with my protagonist unaliving himself then going back to show why he felt the need to do it and showing the antagonist that was the main reason for all the events that unfolded
I was always a self-taught writer when it came to fantasy, and I didn't have many of these problems, though it was really interesting to see how you point these out. Whenever I had these problems with writing when I was little and getting into writing for fun, I found myself falling into these problems and just scrapping the whole idea before going onto something fresh. I have to say, now that I've nailed all these aspects, I find myself clueless as to what my climax should be. I pride myself on character development, world development, scene-writing, making even the exposition exciting and interesting, but once I reach that climax, I don't know how it should end for the characters. I struggle between gritty, harsh reality and catharsis, and I'm pretty sure it's because of the reflection of my own world and life. Everything I build up to is a very bleak and dismal ending for these characters, and a hopeful change almost seems out of place. I feel awful if I do achieve that bad ending, and I know that's how my readers will feel, and I personally hate nihilistic worlds and stories like that (my writing tends to be just the worst luck in a world that's not hopeless, not set in a hopeless world). But on the other hand I have no context or experience on what a unique, good ending would look like. For instance, I never kill off a character that doesn't hold emotional value, but I also don't kill off too much of them, but how does the world continue on without those characters in it?
My favorite endings are bittersweet ones. I love when everything goes wrong and close emotional things fall apart and the protagonist loses a lot, but keeps going. It's learning how to live with loss and regret and heartbreak that I find the most satisfying. Something about light seeming brighter when surrounded by darkness. All this to say, the natural conclusion of your stories might be tragedy. But if it feels too tragic, spend time on the bits of hope and continuance. Focus on how the world goes on without those killed-off characters, because it does go on whether your protagonist wants it or not. So how do they cope? Do they find companionship in their other friends? Do they build a new life - imperfect, painful, and scarred as it is? The ending may not be pleasant, but it's worth living. There are people who'll read an everything-falls-apart story. And if you don't want to write that, there's people who will read a slightly-lighter-but-still-disaster story. I'm one of those. You have an audience. You'll find them. :) Also let me know if you ever finish a story, I want to read it.
@@yellowcremling Awe! Thank you for this insight, it does really help a lot with figuring out what needs to happen. I think I tend to focus on one character and they often face the story solo, so maybe if I add in more characters it won't feel so out of place when the main character still seeks out a good, fulfilling life even after a bunch of tragedy. Of course it won't be sunshine and rainbows, but it will give incentive for the protagonist to keep going. Honestly, I love fiction and fantasy because it's an escape from a cruel world, so I don't like when things are entirely hopeless. Thanks again! 😊
Beating the Antagonist early is only a problem when the Antagonist themselves is the source of the threat. I know of a lot of great stories where the Antagonist isn't really personally intimidating or powerful but they work as a master mind commanding great forces and acting as a nebulous threat. This often works great for the story because not only can you have the protagonist's defeat of them be the inciting incident for the story, the thing that pushes the villain into targeting them and even into becoming a villain, but you also get a smart and petty antagonist that will often target the protagonist indirectly through weak points like friends, family, public reputation, and even the law.
Another interesting way is that the protagonist beating the antagonist can be a good setup, if your story is mainly about that being shaken up. For example: A superhero story where you show the superhero defeat the supervillain in the beginning of chapter 1. BUT THEN! The hero loses his powers. When that is the main plot of your story, the hero trying to reclaim his powers, then having the villain be defeated in chapter 1 can set the stakes. Because now the reader knows what the villain is capable of, and they know that the hero WITH his powers can save the day. But they also know that if the villain returns while the hero is still powerless, that's pretty much game over. So now the clash in the beginning actually serves to make the villain MORE intimidating because now, insteadof the story being about an escalation of power, it instead turns into a ticking clock situation.
or give the villain agency. they were beaten this time rather easily but, you've motivated them and given them info on your abilities. meanwhile to your protag the might seem like an afterthought setting up a nasty surprise. maybe the loss was entirely intentional to gauge strength or progress for some other plot. perhaps the villains goal requires the hero to reach their full potential. there are many ways to use an early defeat. you just have to follow through properly.
It is NOT acceptable for the antagonist to be saved by luck either. First off, it devalues the actions of both protagonist and antagonist so far to have the outcome be decided by luck. It also discredits your future narrative if the protagonist's hard work can be negated through contrived coincidence at any time. But worst of all, it messes with what you call the 3P. Promise, progress... no payoff, because the author wants to recycle the villain and was too unimaginative to make them reach round 2 through competence? That's a lazy writing in support of lazy writing, at the cost of reader satisfaction. No thanks.
But I feel as if I must because I am a natural storyteller. The kind of books I write are, I will say, a bit outside the box, which, I think, may be what the creative world needs. I don't mean to sound grandiose.
Show your work to your friends and family first Show it to your writing instructors too Just to see what they think and have it be like a test screening but with a book
Really well made point at 16:45, I've always thought this is the best resolution of a story be it a film, novel, game or any other story based work. I think a good analogy is to see the story you want to tell as a painting, if you've had even a basic exposure to the art of painters, photographers and other canvas creating artists, you may know that they can have clever twists within the work such as playing with perspective, different stories within the picture painted such as characters interacting with other characters or elements of the picture and what this tells us, who is looking where and why, who is playing what roles.... .... .... so as you scan the painting you might see these in isolation and get that sense of what they show in isolation, then you start to see their different meanings within the whole painting/photograph, so a story from the teller's crafting it perspective is very much like having that whole canvas in front of them, even if they are still evolving it as they work on it, working on each little area of detail (thus story within the story) bit by bit but with that final reveal of the whole work once the viewer/reader has pieced all those elements together, done really well they've almost seen the whole work before the cloth is taken off. But that's where the method you suggest and how I see this in the picture context is so strong and effective, to the audience it is as if a cloth is being taken off the work to reveal it for the first time but in the case of a story the storyteller has planned it so the reveal branches and weaves out from that first corner, hooking them more and more to see how it will all connect in the end, eventually the viewer/reader sees the whole work, first with the 'finishing the jigsaw puzzle' experience of figuring out how the parts fit into the whole, but then, if you've got it right, the magic of how well they work as a whole which can be so so satisfying so the better you can craft that gradual piecing together of those visual elements the better so that (in the most enjoyable works from my experience as audience) there can be that real wow moment- the elements were interesting enough on their own and drew your interest in, but wow when you see how they all fit together within the story of the whole image (so think painting/novel/play/film/photograph and of course the classic comparison a tapestry- a concluding merging of several threads into a cohesive whole that makes sense) there's something powerful to it, which can vary for different types of story, anything from the heartbreaking tragedy of how something happened and led to some tragic outcome to the heartwarming joyful catharsis of something awful being resolved in some positive way or whatever else or combination of things make your overall 'story image'. Image, Middle English from Old French and Latin imago and connected to (to) imitate. Imitate, copy (which can include a person's personality traits) or simulate, emulate as a model, take as a pattern, and why does all art that really resounds with us work so well? Because it helps us understand something of the complexity of our 'selves' and everything around us. So weaving all these threads into one final hit is the breathtaking bit of the art, you've let them savor the painting by looking up close at its detail, now they're seeing the whole canvas. You've told each story within the story but now they are seeing how those stories are all really part of one bigger story. All those travelers on their own voyages and probably with their own destinations have ended up in this one place because their mind map and choices of turning (free or forced upon them by circumstance) have taken them here, even if 'here' wasn't the original plan. Mess it up and some of them will have hit dead ends lost on the way, which unless this works as part of that overall story will leave the audience a bit disappointed you didn't take them along the way with you. (Links to being careful who/what you kill off when and why if anybody/anything has to not make it to the end!) So thanks for sharing similar views and this really good tip. On which note if you've not done so already could you do something on how to make 'big' stories work (the problem of oh so many multi sequel films etc that end up not working quite so well as a whole) as I'm currently working on a big project for a game (homebrew stuff nothing serious I'd hope to become famous off!) but there's that concern of how do I manage the scope of something that needs to cover five ages with a lot of stuff going together as it's either going to go really well with the final 'threads coming together' being amazing or just be a confused messy mix of tastes of 'too many ingredients thrown in the soup cauldron', so wondering if you have any tips for making those big multi part sagas work (I guess mostly in terms of making them work as a whole as individually it is just the same as for a story, it gets trickier for the overall body of work hence the 'hated sequels' problem that can hit films, which applies to any big connected body of work. So tips for how to make something work that has a big canvas by its nature? If it helps as a starting point for any tips the big overall thread is about the consequences of individuals turning against each other (sometimes through circumstance such as the base need to just survive, othertimes through manipulation and power struggles/similar corruption), especially with a focus on the tragedy of this where the big canvas picture has that choice and consequence aspect. Naturally of course this getting resolved. So I know this aspect of how the threads weave together and resolve, it's just ways to do it so it's not messy due to the scale and scope. It should be doable as a lot of it is that there's a bit of a domino effect going on where social structures fracture because one thing leads to the next and things gradually escalate and snowball so the threads do naturally intertwine and I can see how they resolve (no spoilers :) ) but it's a challenging bit of weaving as five ages is a lot of characters and events (I'm ambitiously trying to weave a big game world together into one story like a saga of old across its five main ages) so a lot of need to avoid frayed bits that become weak or things unraveling.
My biggest struggles are the passive protagonist and the throughlines. I have already recognized many of the weak spots and pitfalls of my first draft for my second manuscript attempt. The only beautiful thing here is is that this story is still very young and therefore flexible enough to make stronger. Thank you for your help.
yeah its surprisingly easy to get into the world, setting, details and overall idea of how the plot will be but forget to give proper, believable motivations to the characters. i find my biggest problem being that i find myself trying to justify my characters doing the plot instead of suiting the plot to the characters
The final duel with the main villain is obviously the climax of the story, true. But you shouldn't do the opposite mistake, making the villain too strong, i know, it creates pathos, but it also forces you into a "Super Saiyan" situation, wher you hve to give a sudden and unexpected boost of power to the MC in order to make it win.
Or, you can make your villain that powerful but he willingly doesn't use that level of power by establishing that he set rules in place that applied to everyone, even himself. He is scrupulously fair, in the sense that they have a chance, it is up to them to take it and make the best of it.
I can't tell you how many times I have gotten frustrated watching a tv show where the bad guy is set up with a realistic level of strength and is _very_ deadly, and yet the untrained and unprepared protagonists are somehow able to survive or even win. Like... is your protagonist _really_ going to be able to escape from the ninjas? Really? Without help or some kind of Deus ex machina? You expect me to think this high schooler can fight his/her way out?
One mistake I sometimes do is that I mention a random detail in an off-hand way like I'm foreshadowing something important but then it never comes up again.
1:19 Beating the antagonist early could definitely be a bigger problem, but simply introducing them isn't a problem I think. Introduce them, but there is information and resources that the MCs don't have and must get before they are able to defeat them. It makes the goal they initially begin to aim towards clear, even if it shifts, and it's probably not such a bad thing anyway.
In a very early story, I had a chapter called “A Meeting of Thrones” where you meet all the potential antagonists and evils that could be encountered. I loved the chapter, but never could write beyond that.
Interesting video, as always. The second point is something I'm really paying close attention to because it's extremely easy to fall into that trap. Your brain, in fact, is naturally leading you toward the easy solution, which, if you're not careful, can easily make your story redundant or even awkward. The throughline thing is something I've never thought about before, but I definitely should. Thanks for pointing it out. So far, I'm at the start of my book, but I'll make sure I stay on the rails as I progress. The passive protagonist is usually not an issue for me, but one of my pov characters is very reserved and shy, which I found extremely challenging when it comes to making active. The problem when you're shy is that you're afraid to impose yourself and make decisions, which is precisely what a good story requires from you. So far, I think I'm doing "okay" with him, but it requires ten times more thinking to make his story engaging than the others, I feel. I also put a lot of work into the characters accompanying him to palliate this issue, but I can't abuse this, either. This is HIS story, not theirs.
Counterpoint to point one The lion king. Is stated very early on that scar gets his ass beat in a fight every time. But he still kills mufasa and takes over the kingdom.
Jed! I have to thank you so much for your channel, but especially for this video! I had entirely no idea that the "seven point story structure" exists! I've only ever known about the three act structure and you are absolutely correct! The "soggy middle" as you called it, is and has been my greatest challenge. I am the type of writer that knows the beginning (and usually a good 2/3rds into it) of my story as well as exactly how I want it all to end and come together, but the connective tissue, finding that flow for how it gets to the end in the 3rd act, that has been such a struggle. I'm so grateful that you mentioned this other structure option and I'm really excited to explore it more!
Peter Jackson made me actually love writing my middle part the most - he said that the "middle" of a trilogy or whatever is the most fun because that's where you shake it up and change things.
A story that actually did a great example of beating the antagonist early is across the spider verse. It achieves this by have dual antagonist working on different axis of the plot. Its definitely a more sophisticated story telling technique, but could work well when executed correctly.
If an antagonist is equal early on when both are week it's not unrealistic to have them be stronger later. If the MC is a warrior versing a mage for example it makes sense that when both are weak the MC would win, or the antagonist can simply have more resources because of their family. The antagonist can also be drunk at the time, or the MC could have won based on a sneak attack or due to the antagonists arrogance. There's lots of reasonable ways to have an easily beaten antagonist pose more of a threat later. I personally like writing MC's that are strong early on due to their advantage but weak later on as their advantage gets outclassed. I like writing about how their early advantage gave them a headstart and having them have to learn to lower their head later on until they eventually gain an advantage again. For example, if you're writing a beast tamer evolution novel, the MC can have an advantage due to his first contracted beast being a mutant, but later on it's more realistic for the MC to be going against beasts that outclass his from families that are far above his. Though I'm more of a long story enjoyer with thousands of chapters, not a few hundred. I'm not really a fan of cheats in novels either. I prefer writing MC's that have luck but don't have godly luck. For example, just because they get lucky and have a mutant beast doesn't mean they'll ever get another. Just because the MC got lucky and found a strong technique doesn't mean he'll be able to cultivate it to it's peak either, it's quite common for MC's to always have perfect affinity to obtained techniques, but I don't think that's realistic. My favorite novels have ordinary MC's with average or slightly above average talent that only moves up with time and strategy. Of course, lucky encounters are inevitable, but it's normal for someone to get lucky and doesn't have to be at every turn. I love clan building novels that go into depth of generations of wealth accumulating and the clan rising slowly.
I’m a reader and I now respect you guys soooo much! It’s amazing to know there’s a technology to your craft... who knew? Keep creating! I love all of you!!! ❤
Author & teacher James Scott Bell has an excellent writing craft book: “Write Your Novel From The Middle,” which helps address the problem of the sagging middle.
These are good points, and some of this is unique relative to other writing advice on TH-cam (Brandon Sanderson, Hello Future Me, Ellen Brock, Savage Books, Studio Binder, The Take, etc). I particularly like the idea of evaluating one's scene types via an outline. I'm going to use that. That said, it's frustrating how much ego is baked into this video. (1) Jed says things like, "You are making these mistakes," rather than, "Here are some pitfalls and solutions I've seen." (2) He titles this video "Mistakes Every New Fantasy Writer Makes," rather "Mistakes Many New Fantasy Writers Make." (3) He talks about what his students will learn from him via his curriculum in his program rather than welcoming workshop participants to learn from each other as well as him. This makes me wonder if he sees his audience as uniformly ignorant. What's more realistic is that the people watching this video have a wide range of experiences and expertise. Ultimately, his condescension may blind him to the great things he could learned from his audience. This reminds me of something Brandon Sanderson said in his sci-fi writing lectures (which are all on TH-cam). He wants to teach his students who to be chef writers than cook writers. A cook has to follow a recipe, but a chef has such a profound understanding of what makes good food that they can create their own recipes. Likewise, a "cook" writer would likely follow Jed's advice verbatim. But a "chef" writer would understand how Jed's advice can strengthen some stories, but may not apply to others. Looking at the comments, I see a lot of folks taking that chef approach already, finding counter examples of great stories that don't follow Jed's advice. Having watched some dozen writing advice BookTubers, I've developed a sense of weariness for those who give writing advice without a sense of humility. Generally, the more successful and author, the more humbly they present their advice. Brandson Sanderson, for example, often says he can teach you, but encourages you to learn from many, many others. Jed, on the other hand, seems to present his workshop as the only help you'll need. I think this lack of humility may lower the quality and applicability of his content.
I am a long time Sanderson fan. I learned of you because of him. I am so thankful. Your mind is incredible. I need you to never stop creating and teaching Jed. One day (when I finish school), I'm going to pay for your services. I can't wait to see your critiques on one of my manuscripts.
Thanks for the kind words! I very much feel like I'm at the start of my journey (both when it comes to writing + TH-cam), so hopefully the mind just keeps improving from here :)
I have a villain who's whole thing is that they pretend to be a weak middle man in their own empire when in reality they are very strong. The villain basically tricks the main character into over looking him by letting the Main character beat him. Would this count under your "beating the antagonist too early."
No, that's a bait and switch done in-universe, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It is however very difficult to pull off. But I'm confident you know what you're doing.
In general, you should only follow rules if you don't know what to do and don't have reason to break them. If you just google basic story structure and how to improve your writing, I think you should just follow it. But if you come up wth an idea that intentionally breaks that rule, it is sort of the same as if you actually acknowledged the rule and gave it its own twist. So its not like you made the mistake, rather you made your own rules. So I guess go for it, it definetely sounds interesting.
You realy need to make the transition to the villain actually beeing extremly dangerous believable. If he suddenly Plays everyone without foreshadowing and a believable, well planned plot twist, it will feel cheap
No because the whole point in the video is that if the protagonist beats the antagonist that means the protagonist is more powerful, and so when they fight again in the climax there's less tension. If it's revealed that the antagonist intentionally let the protagonist win the first time, then it doesn't apply
Sauron came back into power three times. They always thought they defeated him, but he was the deceiver, and Tolkien never wavered on that part of his character, so it works for the plot. Especially with the subsequent age of the rings. He was like a spiritual pest.😂
I'm currently writing my first draft of my first book, and I planned the books middle out from the beginning. However, I am not sure 100% on the ending, but I have a vague idea which I feel is a good thing. So far I don't have any of these issues you mentioned, which I contribute to reading/listening to many fantasy novels. Also, my book is the product of many years of crafting a world idea for something else, and then the universe just so happened to nudge me into writing a story for that other thing.
Good stuff! People should keep in mind that these arent hard rules. With enough skill and the right audience, these can be all broken. But i think the main goal is to give advice on what usually trips up new writers. So good to keep that in mind.
I've noticed a lot of videos about issues with worldbuilding and that everyone makes a wall of text at the beginning of the book. What if you have the opposite problem? What if you fail to add any basic details about the background and get right into action. Could you make a video of how to maybe fix this issue? Also great video, keep up the good work!
What you do is you break up your exposition into smaller pieces and scatter them throughout the story, especially in chapter 2. There is a difference between exposition (world building) and wall of text (bad paragraph breaking) and you are talking about exposition. You don't want to have exposition at the very beginning but soon after the beginning, it's good to give a little exposition. Then give more exposition in chapter 2. Then some exposition in chapter 3. Etceteras. Watch Attack on Titan for a good example. It is very action packed most of the time but there are little snippets of world building here and there.
I enjoy walls of text personally. Rarely do I see people complaining about info dumps if it's actually relevant. Usually people complain if they have to pay for something that is almost all info (if you charge chapter by chapter).
@@theunintelligentlydesigned4931 I concur with this commenter, though my example would actually be Roadside Picnic - a sci-fi novel about humanity dealing with the fallout of weirdo aliens visiting Earth, and leaving a bunch of strange artifacts behind. The story drops you into its world without explaining anything. There is exposition as the story goes on, in snippets here and there. But if you pay attention, you can also gradually piece together what's going on, who the characters are, and the significance of what they're doing from context. It's a fascinating approach to exposition. And it feels utterly confident in itself, that its audience will be intrigued enough to stick with it, despite their initial confusion about what's happening.
The classic trick is to have a character tie the wall of text into an emotion so it flows as a rant. You can't do that all the time, but if you have only one place to put the wall of text, that helps. My other thing is I'll try to map out exactly how little I have to explain and then see if any of those factoids could be tied together, and only put them in the same scene if they are. (For instance, when I describe Evangelion to someone, I only include the information relevant to make every joke in the "Evangelion 4kids intro" make sense. ("THIS is the story of a boy named Shinji, living in the flooded streets of New Orleans...") It immediately tells you what's important. You can do the same thing with your story climax.) And then you have things like Richard Roberts' Wild Children, where word of god is "no one actually knows how the big magic plot device works, they just have to deal with its very unpredictable consequences." That's valid too!
I think it would be good to remember “show, don’t tell” when thinking about exposition. A description of a field they are crossing would bring the reader more into the scene than saying a war was fought there, and they can mention something like one or two key characters that died there or the valiant sacrifice of the defenders.
Thanks a lot for this video Jed! Very helpful! Really clear points and i'm happy that I have come across this now instead of when I would already be finished with my novel. Thanks!
Luck being used against your protagonist is far harder to overdo, but it absolutely can make your story feel stale or boring. I've seen this happen in a few TV dramas where they milk the concept of Murphy's Law into oblivion, and it can actually get very old when overused, and it looks like this: Step 1: Problem arises that needs to be solved in a certain timeframe. Step 2: characters come up with a fix to the problem. Step 3: something unlucky happens to negate their fix, forcing them to come up with something new. Step 4: Repeat steps 2 and 3 as many times as possible before the timeframe from step 1 runs out. Step 5: repeat step 2 one last time, but don't include step 3. Characters solve the problem with seconds/inches to spare. When 5 episodes of a show in a row followed this format to the letter, I started to realize that luck getting characters INTO problems isn't the only way for plot convenience to diminish the stakes of a story. Knowing the story has to go on for a certain amount of time but seeing the characters juuuuuust barely scrape by problem after problem turns all of those 'unlucky' moments into a bunch of white noise because you're really waiting for the last few seconds to see if they have any actual consequences this time.
yeah thats when bad luck starts becoming predictable, and then it really does not feel like luck, and so you end up thinking "the first solution has never worked, just reveal the twist and get on that already". so it really feels like luck when its actually unpredictable, and that opens so many more opportunities too, for example, differing just how bad the unlucky event is and how stressful it is. an early minor fail gets you into the beat and shows off what the characters can do, while a severe worst case scenario way further down the line is not only more worse by contrast, but also feels like a proper climax, and so it actually feels like the characters are being pushed to their limits. you could also forego the unlucky mishap entirely and simply make the issue really difficult, but the eventual solution works exactly as planned and the characters feel relieved and maybe even competent
As mentioned, it can be done well even for the protagonist, but it shouldn't be overused. If the protagonist is always scraping by due to luck, then that is plot armor, they can't fail even if they try and that gets old fast. On the other hand, if the antagonist only remains a threat because of lucky breaks, then that gets old just as fast. Like anything, moderation and knowing when and when not to use something is key. One way I liked using luck is in the way it can screw with both sides due to it being a third party doing something. It turned out to be a lucky break in the end for our protagonists due to it allowing them to properly identify, though not expose, the main antagonist early, and sped up the conclusion of it all because it forced the antagonist's hand, but they also ended up seeing some of the consequences of that third party actor's actions. And the third party actor's actions had consequences towards himself due to his acting in a way that could have potentially endangered everyone.
I'd interject that this solid advice is important in every genre. I'd also say this information is very consistent with what I learned about story mechanics in film school.
I'm not a writer so this idea could be absolutely terrible. But an idea that I thought of is if you're dead set on having the protagonist win the first battle, maybe set up that the protagonist wins using a method that can't be replicated. So if they're in a fantasy setting they used a magic that can only be used once because at that current time the protagonist was weaker, and make it clear that it's something that can't be done again. So if/when they have to fight again they Protagonist will have to win themselves
That's kind of what happened in Harry Potter, with him being saved by his mother's love as a helpless baby. Then Voldemort slowly becoming a threat again, giving Harry and the reader time to realise how dangerous he could be and to train enough to make a defeat feasible. I'd say your idea is market approved :)
@@emdove Harry didn't actually need to train to beat Voldemort. It was entirely luck and coincidence. He got the drop on Draco, resulting in the elder wand recognizing him as its master, which means that Voldemort couldn't use it to kill him. If literally any other wand had been used, Harry would have lost.
I feel as though point 8 does a disservice to emotionally-pulling plots (emphasis on plot that is specifically emotionally directed, and not an additional emotional pull, like most writers use to spice up their main casts journey). Sometimes you would want to continue to specify what comes after said climax if you have a story that is inherently tied to the character's personal life, or the life around them, and not just the directive actions of the story. Fantasy can include plenty of romantic or psychological plot points once you establish character's personal stakes, and maybe a change of belief systems. ex- if you're writing a Fantasy novel with a side of romance, a good novel will deal with the romantic aspects in and out of the main plot- OR if it's mainly a Romance in a fantasy setting, then the personal, emotional stakes is what drives the narrative and the fantasy subtext is written around said fantasy world, so you would intertwine the worldbuilding in and out of plot. This example is also useful in a psychological drama in a fantasy setting, or a fantasy "slice of life". Fantasy books don't have to give up other types of subjects to cater to the hero's journey only. I know this video seems to be catered towards classical Action Fantasy, but I found this when trying to find inspiration for my Psychological Fantasy Novel.
If your issue is the middle but you have an idea for a beginning and end, did you really have a story idea? Or did you just have an idea for a story concept? Feel like sometimes people get too attached to an ending idea and stop writing when their story goes different places instead of sewing where their new ideas take them.
I agree that overly passive characters are boring but it is possible to have an overly active character too. One of the reasons I like Katniss from the Hunger Games is because she is forced into such a passive role. She wants to be more active but circumstances keep forcing her to play pretend. She isn't ALWAYS fighting. Now she isn't completely passive either. It was her volunteering for the hunger games that set the whole story in motion and she certainly wasn't passive when she shot an arrow into an apple in the middle of a feast of the elites. But she can't just express her true hatred against those elites. She has to stay calm and collected at all times. I don't think the through line has to be summarized in a single sentence. I do agree that you need only one primary through line and that through line should be summarized but maybe the through line can be two sentences: one describing who the main character is and one describing what the character is up against. My solution to the soggy middle: instead of making the structure more complicated, I make the structure less complicated. It's just an upside checkmark. The beginning of the story is when the main character starts the main plot. Everything grows from there until the climax and then everything resolves. As long as your middle is building toward the climax, it doesn't have to be 50% of the story. Stop trying to apply a measuring tape to your story to make sure you have a long enough middle. Just write your story.
There's a difference between Katniss, who is deliberately making decisions on how to act in situations where there aren't good choices, and what he's talking about, which is a character who things just happen to. Like the main character in The Final Girl Support Group does jack all for 90% of the book. Things are constantly happening around her, but she's just running away from place to place and not actually doing anything about the events in the book until the very end. She could be completely cut from the book and it wouldn't change the story. Katniss could not be removed from The Hunger Games.
Wow. You make writing fantasy seem boring and sterile where you just follow a format like a dressmaker. But writing isn’t like that… when you do it correctly.
I don't think Smaug was meant to be the main antagonist. He needed to be defeated for the main conflict of the story to be explored, which was greed I do have problems with the hobbit movies, but mainly with just the love triangle and how the master of laketown was portrayed (and WHY did Alfred Lickspittle happen)
It should have been a half hour to 45 minutes, considering how it was bickering over the treasure, the battle of five armies, and then the epilogue. They added a LOT of BS to The Hobbit movies.
I'm going to try and put twists on these "writing mistakes" that might make them work to challenge myself 1. The protagonist ends up being the twist villain and the antagonist is the real hero 2. A story where the character is going through a groundhog day like scenario 3. The passive protagonist could be unwilling to act whether through depression or something else, or maybe something is holding them back so they can't even if they wanted to. This setup can go in a wide variety of directions. Too many to say in a comment 4. Maybe the book could be about a shattered reality and a wide variety of alternate universes, and the adventure is so diverse it can't be summarized in one sentence 5. 6. This can work in a fantasy setting with low stakes and no villain. They still need to go through challenges, but they can be low stakes and thus low consequences 7. 8. If the plot threads being resolved all caused mystery and/or suspense, this could work. But it needs to be set up really well to work. Your basically slowly trickling them answers that they want, and that can keep them engaged 9. Well, i got most of them
I thank you for keeping this brief, and free!! I'm playing around with writing anything longer than poems and short stories now, and your advice on throughlines, hit home. I also really need to work on .. having an antagonist :)
I just finished my first novel as a NaNoWriMo project (50,050 words! Yay!) Starting the outline with a log line really helped. I may not know where the story is going, but at least I know what its about. Naturally it evolved over the writing and I have to go back and add to the early chapters to set up later developments, but at least I knew what the goal was all the way through.
This is quite honestly very good advice. While I rarely follow rules such as these, mainly focussing on making the story make sense and being something I would read, I addmit these are very good notes. One pushback though, passivity of your protagonist can be the point, so while it certainly requires skill and I personally do not like that style myself. I would be bit more causcious about saying to not make your protagonist passive.
The plot outlining may be a tool I may have to start using - considering the very first novel I'm currently working on has 4 main characters with one main antagonist that somehow integrated himself to be in all four of their lives indirectly. Great video!
I don't think you intended it this way, but I couldn't help but notice how most you said applies to the Star Wars sequels. 1. Beating the antagonist too early: Kylo shouldn't have been beaten in TFA 2. repetitive scene formats: TFA is basically ANH reshot beat for beat 4. no consistent throughline: there clearly wasn't one in the trilogy with JJ and RJ working against each other. I can't think of a more pointless and meandering subplot than the jaunt on the casino planet. Every scene involving Finn could have been cut and the main plot would not have been affected at all. 5. Soggy Middle: i.e. the Last Jedi in which we start with a small band of rebels trying to escape from a planet and it ends with an admittedly smaller band of rebels escaping from a planet 6. Weak consequences: Chewie's fakeout death, C3POs 'sacrifice' which gets reversed by a memory backup, need I say any more 7. Misaligned three Ps: there was a lot of promise, hardly any progress and no one was satisfied with the payoff that was ROS. Seriously bringing back the emperor? Even Reylo fans, those poor fools, were cheated by that "kiss of gratitude" 9. Lucky breaks: how about crashing into a quick sand trap that leads you to an underground cave system of some critter where you find the macguffin you happen to need for the plot to progress Perhaps you should offer Hollywood your help XD
I feel like depending on what type of story is being told, some of these tips can be very helpful to some authors and *extremely* detrimental to others. Many people have already covered why mistake 1 doesn't always apply, so instead I'll focus on mistakes 4 and 8. For mistake 4, the weak throughline issue, you frame it in such a way that the primary plot is the only thing that readers will or SHOULD be interested in, and maybe for plot-driven stories that's true to an extent (though there are more than enough stories out there where the "side" plots are just as interesting as the main one, if not more so), but for stories that are more focused on the characters themselves and their personal relationships and issues, the main plot becomes a vehicle to guide the characters between those supposedly pointless subplots (which are not pointless because the focus is more on the characters and their growth, rather than whatever specific villain or incident lead to that growth) as opposed to it needing to be the other way around where the characters are just a vehicle to explore the main plot. In the end, there's still a big bad for the team to take down and a world to save, but for this type of story the real investment lies in seeing the characters gradually transform into better versions of themselves who are capable of accomplishing what they never could have in the beginning. As an extreme example, imagine a story that's episodic in nature, villain-of-the-week and all, but while the status quo of the world at large is always returned to normal by the end, the status quo for the main characters permanently changes every single time, constantly developing with new perspectives and abilities that will carry on to future episodes. That's basically the exact opposite of what you suggested, but still sounds like an interesting story, it's just that it's a story about the characters themselves rather than a story that the characters are merely a part of. Anyways, all I'm trying to say here is that depending on the story, focusing on the "main plot" above all else isn't always what's best. As for mistake 8, the peter-out ending, I wanted to point out that cramming several plot resolutions into a single moment can be a VERY bad idea sometimes, because readers are just as likely to hate an ending for feeling rushed as they are to hate it for feeling slow, so compressing everything is not just some objectively "better" approach that you claimed it to be. Yes, some stories might slow to a crawl near the end like you said, and sometimes they can indeed benefit from cutting the fat, but other times they might NEED that extra space in order to make sure each resolution is actually satisfying. Conversely, some stories might *already* be too dense, in which case they may need to stretch the narrative a bit in order to flesh things out properly. In short, instead of simply dismissing the issue as "dense good, spread out bad" it should be handled on a case by case basis, so that every story can find the pace that best suits it. While I didn't agree with everything, most of what you said in this video was still solid advice. I shared my criticisms in hopes that they provide additional perspective, so don't let them dissuade you from doing the good work that you're doing. My own story is roughly 30 chapters long, and although it follows a 3-act structure, it forgoes the traditional ratio of 1:2:1 in favor of a 3:4:3 split, in order to cut down on that pesky middle section while still keeping it as the biggest chunk. This results in 9 chapters mainly focused on building up the characters and world until the end of chapter 9 twist reveals the main plot going forward, then 12 chapters of going around getting stronger and gaining allies while trying to find a solution to the big picture, and finally 9 chapters of them putting everything and everyone they've got into taking care of all the remaining threats, including the main one. That said, not every character has their arcs resolved in a uniform pace with each other. One character might have their big backstory motivation resolved before the end of act 1, only for brand new ones to take its place after something happens in act 2, while another character might have amnesia for the first two acts, only for an act 3 revelation to conflict with the new life they've formed with the rest of the group. The biggest difficulty lies in making sure every character gets enough time to shine, while ALSO making sure that the characters who aren't shining at any given moment are at least still relevant, but that's the price I pay for trying to have 6 equally important protagonists and 6 more slightly less important deuteragonists. For context, it's a DnD campaign-esque type of story, so there's a focus on making sure that each member's overall importance and relevance is as balanced as possible, even if some of them end up having their biggest moments earlier than others. On the bright side, since the party is so large and varied, no matter what situation they find themselves in, at least one of them will always have some kind of significant reason for the team to get involved and help resolve things, and at least one (usually more) of them will experience growth in some shape or form, ranging from personal/emotional growth after learning a hard lesson to a literal power-up they pried out of the enemies cold dead hands because they thought it would synergize with their skillset. It's a challenging task to undertake, but it's such a blast to flesh out my characters and expand upon my world that I don't mind if the process takes a while.
*Soggy middle* The advice definitely helps. I've been writing a different varieties of stories for over 10 years and I always stop due to this issue. I've whittled down most of my stories into a long running series. Each story is separated by several if not hundreds of years and the beginnings and most of the endings are at a point where I feel they could be just the way I need them. In fact when I started writing I actually remember clearly starting everything with the ending of the 2nd Story. It's what's in between that is always my biggest issue while always feeling as though something is missing. With you mentioned about the 3 acts and now 7 may just be what I need to step up the pace on my writing again. I'd love to finally sort my mad scientist level of notes and ideas on desk lol 😂
Thank you for your insight! I have just launched my first fantasy novel - It took a LONG time to get here, I don't think many quite understand how long it takes to write a full complete story.... My research was about 4 months, writing the first draft was 19 months {About 400k words} - polish / editing / proof-reading took 3 years!
For the first mistake, I like how Harry Potter deals with it. Sure, Harry beat the antagonist so easily he was just a baby by then. But we're not sure how he did it and how he can do it again. By the time we learn how he did, the antagonist is back and had neutralized the way he had been beaten. So, now it's even more hopeless
The story structure is interesting because 3 act structure is used a lot but other story structures exist particularly divergent ones that counter soggy middle in manga because they use a specific structure. So people really should look into different story cultures that can be present even specific cultures sticking to certain story structure
I find that often (but certainly not always) it's those meanderings that I actually like about a story. Depends on how well they're written, obviously, and it's usually a bad idea to apply this recursively, but those meanderings make the world feel more real, more complete. I'm not really a fan of characters going through hell. I can too easily imagine myself in such a situation. That's ... not good.
![[#2024MAMA] BIGBANG (빅뱅) - 뱅뱅뱅 (BANG BANG BANG) + FANTASTIC BABY | Mnet 241123 방송](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EQsYfiPR9uM/mqdefault.jpg)
Apply for the next cohort of my Fantasy Outlining Bootcamp: jedherne.com/outline
I'm not a writer but something that surprises me is how often a popular story, doesn't interest me at all. Lord of the Rings I found dull as dishwater. When it was turned into a film, I just couldn't get through it without falling asleep. The reason? Right at the beginning it was clear that the only thing that matters is that the ring is returned to the mountain. Yeah there were loads of battles along the way but I didn't have any interest in the characters involved in those battles. Even when the Hobbits are trying to persuade the trees to help in a battle I couldn't help thinking "sod the trees, just get to the mountain, you've got a ring to return"
I'm a great fan of Harry Potter but even JK made this mistake on the rules of Quidich. What does it matter if people are scoring points along the way if the result is determined by a seeker catching the snitch? Fortunately the game of Quidich is a miniscule part of the storyline so it was still a great story. Maybe it's just me but perhaps there's a point to be learned here.
Counterpoint to Beating the Antagonist early: You could set it up so that the Antagonist is incredibly sore and bitter over their defeat, and this motivates them to go on their own villainous underdog journey and become a legit threat when they encounter the protagonist again. Case in point: The Spot from Across the Spiderverse
I actually have a story where the protagonist repeatedly defeats an antagonist in often humiliating ways, so the antagonist keeps running off to get even more dark magic power and generally making things worse. This works because a) there are other serious threat antagonists who don't lose as easily or often and b) this dynamic is actually a moral failing on the part of the protagonist. If she was less cruel in her repeated victories, the antagonist wouldn't keep doing worse things to try and get back at her and making problems for everyone.
I think this dynamic works best if the protagonist is physically victorious but still "fails" in some other sense, so they still need to learn and grow.
@@michaelramon2411 hahaha that's so interesting!
Or just setting things up to have them be a threat in a different way.
For example, starting with something like a fencing match where the main character wins, well, the villain has a grudge and, well, outside of school, your antagonist might have a lot of other power and be a petty asshole for it.
Hell, that's the entire setup for the rivalry between Victor Von Doom and Reed Richards...Richards proved to be better at something and Doom fucked up, and Doom is petty as fuck.
@@AzraelThanatosYes, I love that kind of story. Another example could be Harry Potter and Voldemort. Harry defeated him while he was still a baby. Of course Voldemort would want revenge years later 😂 The main difference, though, is that in both cases (HP and FF) these early victories of the good guy are presented as flashbacks in relation to the main story. We learn about them pretty early, but we still don't see them happening during the main course of the story, so it still has a kind of mystery around it. Did it really go down that way? Maybe the rumors about that story are false and the protagonist didn't really win? Or of they did, was it a fair victory? So many questions that can be explored later on as you learn more about that event
Ok then, addendum to the point: don't give the antagonist a more interesting story than the protagonist.
If the villain is having cool adventures and learning new skills offscreen then the reader might want to see that story instead of the one you're presenting.
There’s a lot of times I don’t feel motivated to write, then I watch one of your videos and I immediately want to write again. Thank you
That's awesome. Get after it!
Only slow down once burnout approaches
Same lol
Same! I get so many ideas suddenly. lol
What a nice thing to say! Must feel genuinely incredible to know you can be someone's inspiration like that!
Good reference on active vs. passive protagonists. Bilbo Baggins started very passive and grew out of it.
You can make the argument Gandalf is the protagonist at first and then Bilbo takes over.
@@schwarzerritter5724 Perhaps co-protagonists along with the dwarves?
@@rcschmidt668 Maybe Torin, but the other dwars don't have a personality outside of their funny names.
Keanu Reeves made a tech noir movie called Johhny Mnemonic. Remember it? Probably not.
He also another tech noir movie you probably have heard of, The Matrix.
I read an opinion piece that suggested one reason why The Matrix was so much better is because the protagonist went through a metamorphosis. He started as an everyman.
You can have more than one protagonists
It's funny how Across the spiderverse subverts the first mistake (beating your antagonist too early). Miles easily beats Spot pretty early on and dismisses him as a threat only for him to become one of the main antagonists
There are actually a lot of great antagonists who are beaten by the protagonist early and come back in some way. I'm not sure I agree with his first point, I just think it is easy to pull off badly.
Even without "upgrades", there are lots of ways an antagonist can drive a plot without being a physical/magical match for the hero. There is a reason that despite all the supers Superman has beaten down, Lex Luthor has remained probably his most iconic villain.
you could also turn the story into a deconstruction of the heroes story by having the hero struggle to find a new goal in a fantasy world where "the chosen one" has served his purpose and isn't needed anymore, maybe even not valued anymore
tbf there is almost nothing in writing that is a hard rule, all those outlines are just traps you can fall into, if you have the darksouls mindset you can always try and pull it off
Part of it depends on the framing; Spot was overtly being played as a joke character at the outset, so the initial vibe was “okay, whacky opener villain dealt with, let’s get into the main plot”. I think it’s more a matter of not overtly saying “yeah, the protagonist can totally resolve the main conflict” right at the start.
@@willieoelkers5568 I think you nailed it. Spiderverse gets around this problem by NOT portraying the Spot as the main antagonist early on, but as a quick, light-hearted one-off villain; a warm-up boss, at most. When he comes back as the main antagonist, it's a shocking twist, which means no one's going through all the stuff in-between going, "Why do I care? I already know the protagonist can win this fight," which was the whole issue with having your protagonist beat the main antagonist too early, that it's hard to build tension throughout the story towards a fight you've already seen the protagonist win.
They subvert the idea which is nice because you and the hero dismiss them as a threat.
00:28 🛡️ Be cautious about introducing and defeating the antagonist too early; it can diminish suspense and character growth.
02:17 📋 Vary scene formats to keep reader engagement and maintain conflict progression.
04:06 🏃♂️ Ensure your protagonist makes active choices; passive protagonists can stall the plot's momentum.
05:30 🗝️ Establish a clear through line, defining the core conflict to avoid meandering and purposeless subplots.
08:18 🐌 Avoid a "soggy middle" by maintaining progression and purpose; consider a seven-point plot structure for better guidance.
14:08 ⚔️ Challenge characters with adversity to reveal their true depth and create reader connection.
15:06 🔄 Align the promise, progress, and payoff to maintain a natural flow in your narrative.
16:01 🪢 Condense the resolution of plot threads to create a more impactful and dynamic climax.
17:39 🎲 Avoid relying on luck to save the protagonist; instead, use it to create challenges and obstacles for them.
Were these not built into the progression bar when you watched it? It shows you where you can click to get to a specific segment
@@xitaris5981 Fascinating. What is your point?
@@dameanvil no point. I was gathering information so that I could
1) understand if the built in time stamps existed when the video was first posted, and
2) understand if you had another motivation for putting in the effort outlining the video with time stamps.
It's a helpful and kind thing to do and I even done it myself a few times, but only in videos without the feature, so I wanted to gain insight into a new perspective. Or let you know about the feature in case you hadn't noticed it to save you some effort if you didn't have another reason for doing it.
@@xitaris5981 yea. some people don't want or simply can't follow a video. and they can use the text anchors.
Thank you! My focus was way too scattered to watch the video rn but I was really curious about the concise points lol
I was going into this thinking he was going to say "Dragons should not be put in a story, they take away tension/stakes etc.". Meanwhile I was sitting here with an unfinished (of course) story about wealth hoarding dragons, sweating bullets, waiting for that point to come up. I was pleasantly surprised.
I was thinking about a specific scene in Fate of the Fallen by Kel Kade... The perspective cuts back to the main character when he's attacked out of no where by a dragon. He almost dies in the attack, which only lasts like a page. It was very jarring on my first read, I thought I was missing some pages.
Turns out the gods were meddling (in both the world and the story), and sent the dragon to "challenge" the protagonist, because beating a powerful beast makes you more powerful. They just totally underestimated how powerful the dragon was compared to the protagonist.
I've got dragons in my next novel (Kingdom of Dragons), so I've certainly got nothing against them myself!
I would think dragons would raise the tension and the stakes, after all, if you have a party of characters traveling through a dungeon or some caverns, and then they hear loud breathing, and then notice that they are walking right through a dragon's den and it's sleeping, and the slightest noise might wake it up, the tension just went up a lot, and the stakes just went up to include their very lives, remember, just cause a dragon is in your story, it's not always gonna be on the side of your protagonists.
The good news is that the stakes (to make the metaphor literal) depend less of their "height" and more on their placement to each other. Think in terms of tent stakes: tension between stakes is good, but too little tension makes the tent fall over while too much tension will "snap" the reader into incredulity.
You can absolutely start with dragons, so long as the next step is beholders and Vecna, and not, I don't know, natives from a fishing village. The reason most sci-fi narratives begin to "fail" after introducing the multiverse is because... what else is further than every possible iteration of everything? Now **that** is a stake I would hesitate to plop down without also sticking down some very serious "consequence stakes" near that concept. 😁
Like many other aesthetic tropes of fantasy, dragons are fine, and can even be great! They only become writing problems when they're just thrown in with barely any thought "because it's a fantasy story."
Hey, I made almost all of these mistakes in my first drafts! Pretty shocking that fixing them made my story way better.
An alternative for beating the antagonist early, it could be beating the 5th in the chain of command, and then being crushed by the 3rd later.
Ive seen a lot of kods shows do this, where someone seems like the big bad until near the end of the first major arc, and then theyre taken down and the REAL big bad gets closer to the foreground
@@QuikVidGuyThat works. But you have to be careful of falling into "oh, there's another greater bad" again and again. I've seen that happen in some JRPGs and it just feels like "oh, ok so I gotta fight you now. Next!" And I'm not as interested in the antagonists anymore.
Ex: FF 9. Love the game and story, but by the end I'm losing interest in who the big bad is.
Another good thing is to have the antagonist lose on purpose to achieve some kind of goal, or to get near something they are after.
@@onidaaitsubasa4177 Oh, interesting. Have any examples of that?
@@QuikVidGuy Tbh, I feel like this only works if the other character has been introduced before. Else it just feels like "Well you defeated that guy, now defeat this faceless even stronger dude"
ON "beating an enemy too early," bingo! In pro-wrestling, promotions used to be structured to introduce both heroes and villains going through a number of jobbers, guys who lose every week on TV. This establishes the character and abilities of both opponents. Then there are the set-up feuds, where they each face a much bigger threat, and we see how they deal with that. And then finally they face each other.
Face and Heels
tournament brackets are usually structured so that the strongest competitors wont face off until the final
I guess you have not read the first ten pages of the critically acclaimed “Chip Driver Mystery”.
@@jsinope2786is that the book from the Good Place? It sounds familiar…
@@joethesmith2175 oh wait. It was called “Six Feet Under Par”. I guess the book wasn’t as memorable. 😂
Everytime I feel like I'm writing my book wrong, one of your videos pop up and reminds me to just keep doing what I'm doing. Thanks for all the advice you provide on this channel, they're a tremendous help!
Same apperntly im not as crap as i thought i was
Hell yeah!
Mistake 1 reminds me of why I was unimpressed when Moff Gideon came back in The Mandalorian season 3.
Moff Gideon got spanked in season 1 and in season 2, so obviously he would lose again in season 3 no matter how many upgrades they give him.
Mandalorian season 3 also was, for some reason, categorically against letting the main characters face any consequences for their actions
It's a real shame too because Moff Gideon could have been a really good villain.
Disney writers cant create compelling villains, so they bring back old ones and neuter them.
It’s because they kept making Gideon put them in scenarios where escape was impossible so they had to defeat him or die. I love mandalorian but this was definitely a weak point. There are many ways to have the main characters not die but also not win in a major conflict like they always wanted to have at the end of the season, but they never found a good way to do that.
I would have been fine with the idea of Moff Gideon being spanked by Luke Skywalker before season 3, but not by Mando. That way Mando's victory in s3 feels more satisfying - because of course Luke would kick his ass.
Your first is really good I'm surprised you didn't mention The Force Awakens with how Rey beat Kylo Ren in their first meeting weakening him as a villain
Kylo is such a joke just like the movie.
The proper way to have addressed Kylo getting beaten in Force Awakens would have been to have Snoke do a long volley of very harsh training on Kylo in the next movie. Almost like a training montage from a Kickboxer movie, then have Kylo go back and crush her at the end of the movie. Give Kylo the training and get better to defeat your opponent since they had no idea what to do with Jake Skywalker and Rey Palpatine.
@@barnabusdoyle4930 he should have never been defeated. It makes less than zero sense.
@@barnabusdoyle4930Kylo taking the L to Rey makes sense if the watcher understands SW lore or is vaguely familiar with it. Kylo being conflicted from killing Han = Kylo’s connection to the Force is very weak = he is very weak. The issue is that most people don’t understand that at all or how emotions affect your strength in the Force. It’s why TLJ had to have Snoke literally explain why he lost to Rey at the start of the movie because everyone was getting pissy about it.
What is actually a problem was his “fight” with Luke. Obviously they couldn’t make Luke look bad when the scene is supposed to be about him becoming the same war hero we grew up with once more but at the same time, there isn’t a single explanation or reason to excuse Kylo getting utterly embarrassed. Sure, everyone including Kylo thinks this could be legit cuz they have Luke on a pedestal but it only serves to hurt Kylo’s image nigh irreparably in the viewer’s eye.
@@Zong_Cheng The whole new trilogy is just bad.
Instead of building up on things, there was conflict between the director's visions.
Personally, I think JJ Abrams just sucks as a director, and I'm not going to say Rian Johnson is great either.
If I had to summarize act 2, I would say:
Make the third act as great as possible (raise the stakes). When writing Act 2, you can significantly heighten the emotions and tension for Act 3. I think the reason why there are so few detailes about the middle part in this storystructure, is because it really depends on all the other stuff in your novel.
Act 2 is very subjective which is probably why beginners really tend to struggle with this. But I have heard many writers say that as they started to dive really deep into act 2, the middle actually became their most favorite part of the process.
Great Video!
absolutely agree
I feel like the second act is my favorite for this exact reason! The tension ratchets way up, and you get to work in clever little things that have major payofs in the third act.
exactly! Making all those setups and watching them revolve in act 3 is one of my favourite things in all of writing@@marsultor762
The most low-resolution cave-man version of story-telling these days is a pro-wrestling match. The classic match had four segments: the Set-up (establishing characters, their relationship to each other, the rules, the audience, etc, the wrestlers are testing each other); the Shine (the good guy ascendant, with whatever virtues he has; bad guy can't win); the Heat (begins with the bad guy doing something nefarious, then he starts making the hero suffer); the Finish (the good guy makes a comeback, leading to desperation on the parts of both wrestlers).
Honestly, I just think the 3 act structure isn't very good.
17:16 an author who does the "tie together plot treads" very well is Charles Dickens. He makes you wait for it, but his last chapter or two is always worth it.
I concur, Oliver Twist feels so frustrating to read in the middle, but so satisfying in the end
In terms of story structure, I like to use an arc structure. Basically, several interwoven subplots each contributing to the themes and larger story, but each had its own unique side characters and arcs and such. I find it keeps constant engagement
I like to do this too
I love this type of story
Aye, I do this as well and combine it into a 5 act story structure. Each act having it's own arc that further explores the larger themes of a story is not only more engaging in my opinion, but easier to write as well
Yah when there just one plot it gets tiring and boring.
Love this type
So the soggy middle of this video is literally an ad for your services?
Fitting!
Teach by example and all that.
Antagonist goes down in chapter 1. The real antagonist was the crushing loneliness of a life without purpose.
Writing my high fantasy novel right now, and I am learning a lot from your videos!!
@9:30 Suzanne Collins had a different solution to the soggy middle in The Hunger Games. Beyond the fact there are 3 books, each book roughly subdivides into 3 sections of 9 chapters each. But those sections in turn split roughly into 3 short stories, causing a pattern of each chapter being an act.
It feels like you are reading 3 books in one, exactly!
1:45 I’ve heard a story once about a very powerful antagonist called Sauron who suffered a huge defeat.
He came back weaker but the author chose to make the protagonist unable to beat him.
The main plot line in Tolkien’s universe is literally the idea that for defeating the antagonist, free people need to become less powerful. It started with Valar’s war against Melkor and ended with 3 weak hobbits sneaking into the enemy stronghold.
And all the story power of the Lord of the Rings, the book version I mean, comes from the idea that, to really defeat him, confrontation with the many times beaten antagonist need to be avoided.
The usual structure in fantasy stories is a protagonist slowly becoming stronger in order to finally defeat the antagonist.
And yet, the greatest fantasy universe is built about the idea that all the most powerful beings (valar, high elves, edain…) renounce to use their power to let the weakest ones do the job…
Yeah but to be fair, this writing tip was mostly about having your protagonist beat the antagonist too early. Like Lord of the Rings would have been a whole lot less interesting if it had been Frodo who cut Saurons finger off and then when the Nazgul come to hunt the Hobbits, they just swiftly defeat the Nazgul without a sweat.
That's an alternate win condition.
An alternative is the protagonist wins early, but uses forbidden powers to do so, and that threatens the release of a bigger threat AND allows the original villain/threat to rebuild instead of being wiped out. Or the hero becomes the new threat.
Stranger Things 4 is an example of #1. The monsters being created by the first psychic child is an interesting twist, but Eleven beat him when she was like 7! It makes it hard to believe she's ever in danger.
I was personally disappointed that the monster in the ther world was another psychic human. I thought it would've been more interesting for it just to have been an eldritch monster.
@@TheVeyZagreed. If i remember correctly, they even make it seem like the eldritch monster is subservient to him too which is sooooooooo lameeeeeee
@@TheVeyZ That got retconned in a theatrics play, the eldritch monster/the mind flayer is the one pulling the strings.
Your 7-point structure just gave me the biggest breakthrough, thank you! I've been struggling with not feeling like the three-act structure was working for my novel.
Awesome!
I really enjoyed it too! I think I'm going to adapt it for the purposes of my story, where I have 2 protagonists that spend the first half of the book split up before teaming up to solve the big mystery.
Or. Dont even be hampered by the 3 arc plot. It's an efficient tool but tricking yourself into becoming rigid and thinking it *must* be followed can also be a mistake.
Think about the story you want to tell. The beats and themes you want to hit, and put events between the two that tie them together. Also consider the characters involved and how they would react in certain scenarios. This is an easy way to get good character exploration, tension, character development, payoffs.
If you want the series to be more ongoing introducing later plot essential characters either shortly after the inciting incident or before the climax is an efficient way to do so.
It’s really funny how many big budget Hollywood movies make all of these mistakes constantly
Hollywood movies have been about checking boxes in terms of genre
People should write what they like and not listen to people like this.
Annepirate2427 What do you mean? I agree that people should write what they want, but this is a professional writer and this is good advice.
Rey and Kylo from Star Wars is a perfect example of having your antagonist get stomped at every fight. There was no tension there when they would meet again at the end. When your villian is a joke, you lost the narrative.
.....
*[Trap goes off.]*
"AAAAH! PERRY THE PLATYPUS."
He was a bad guy, a protagonist. He's not THEE bad guy. Even the first movie that people generally speak highly of, Kylo wasn't even introduced as the big bad, not at any point in the trilogy. You, like many others, are too focused on the wrong things to make them enjoyable. Particularly when it comes to Star Wars.
Summary for "my people":
1) Start with your protagonist about to get executed, then have your antagonist land on a nearby tower and destroy the city as Protag escapes through Helgen Keep.
2) A scene format is like a quest. You wouldn't write a dozen quests that are all "kill 5 of these things" or "bring me 5 doodads," would you?
3) Protag needs to tell the world it can wait while he or she does a side quest.
4) If you want the bulk of your story to be about reclaiming and rebuilding the wasteland, maybe don't start with a plot that requires Protag to immediately rush to find his or her son, only to ignore that in the first chapter, and for the next four chapters.
5) No water levels.
6) If you want a danger to seem actually dangerous, you're going to have to require corpse runs.
7) Don't overhype and overpromise. If Protag cannot be a space trucker flying between galaxies, don't set that up before you get into the story.
8) If Protag leaves the story to go to Africa, that's your climactic ending. Don't try to replace him with Randy just to milk the story until it's hated.
9) Minor supporting characters should not have the power to know where Protag is when facing certain doom, have the power to heal Protag, and just happen to know how to get and deliver the two artifacts that allow Protag to kill the Basilisk.
My dude... are you ok?
@@fredericororiz6500 C'mere, bro. Get in close, this is between me and you. *This was just a little writing exercise I gave myself.*
Or;
Don't have your antagonist through most of the game be a "muh-ha-ha" bad guy trying to kill you for power. Only to try to reveal he needed that power to prepare for an even worse villian, just to have _that_ villain be a total pushover that gets defeated in a single fight.
*cough* Fable 3 *cough*
@@annatardlordofderps9181 Do you think I should have done something like a *cough* **reference** *cough* throughout my post? I thought about it. I also thought maybe tying my numbered items back to a timestamp so Reader could see how they relate might have been a good idea.
Hi. Yes. This is brilliant. Thank you. Bye.
#8 is the way to write the Sanderson avalanche. Would love a whole video dedicated to that. And great video, thank you!
I've been months trying to find that one sentence that resume my story. And you make me say it confidently for the first time, even before that advice of think about the end (in that moment i just was happy because the sentence coincided with that final)
Another great video!
A problem that I've been encountering a lot lately is dealing with that jump at act 2 and 3 between the protagonist's lowest moment and the climax. I've seen lots of very different methods on this, from do it as quick as possible to give it plenty of time to let your protagonist really take in the impact of the lowest moment. Of course, there's no right or wrong way, but there seems to be a lot of inconsistency, even in successful stories. I've yet to find anyone that has put into words how to make that jump successfully, or, at least, what the common working elements are. Most tend to talk about the lowest moment and climax in isolation, but not what comes between!
I think that depends on too many factors to really be easily said. It depends on how impactful you want this situation to be to the reader too, but also on how organic that would come of.
For example: Obviously how much time the character gets to handle this should be somewhat realistic. If he sees his friends killed in the middle of a battle, he can't really spend too much time on it, since he's in the middle of a battle. If he arrives after the battle happened it can be much more impactful.
But it also depends on how impactful you want it to be to the reader, as opposed to the character. For example if the lowest point is that because of a mistake your character made his family died, but each of the family members had like, two lines of dialogue in the whole book, you should probably not linger too long because the reader probably isn't invested enough in the family of the main character to really care about THEM, they will care about what it does to your character, but if the subject of the matter isn't interesting enough, it's probably not worth spending too much time on.
If on the other hand this lowest point directly affects someone the readers are very connected to, for example because it caused something to happen to a major character, then there is a lot more room to explore what that means for each of them.
Basically: you should look at the situation not from the perspective of your characters but of your audience. If there is no real reason for them to care, then don't spend too much time on it.
Interesting about the 7-point plot structure, because my first thought was: Make Act2 it's own three part structure. I think borrowing from movie trilogies, that are good at least, works. Take Empire Strikes Back. It's a brilliantly told movie, that's also the second act of the complete story.
the 7-points does this in much the same way I guess.
The point about respective scenes was awesome - I’m currently evaluating a manuscript using the Story Grid method, and I’ve added a column ‘type of scene’ to make sure I don’t have too many similar ones side by side. Thanks!!
You hit the nail on the head with the issues with the 3 Act Structure. This is why I use a synthesis of the 4 Act Structure and the 7 Point structure that you mention. Act II is often the protag learning/showing off/gaining confidence and Act III becomes the antagonists showing off and destroying the protag's confidence. Too many authors get lost in the 3 Act structure. I especially see people struggle with that story square outline format that has 9 chapters for each act, because Act II ends up being too short, and Act I ends up being way too long. Thank you for bringing this issue up!
One of the flaws with the "3 act structure" isn't the structure itself, but the way people oversimplify the concept into a story containing ONLY those 3 acts, with the thresholds between each act being clearly identifiable at a glance.
Thanks man. I love writing my own story's and these changes have both improved my writing and my inspiration for new plots and adventures.
Started my story with my protagonist unaliving himself then going back to show why he felt the need to do it and showing the antagonist that was the main reason for all the events that unfolded
I was always a self-taught writer when it came to fantasy, and I didn't have many of these problems, though it was really interesting to see how you point these out. Whenever I had these problems with writing when I was little and getting into writing for fun, I found myself falling into these problems and just scrapping the whole idea before going onto something fresh. I have to say, now that I've nailed all these aspects, I find myself clueless as to what my climax should be. I pride myself on character development, world development, scene-writing, making even the exposition exciting and interesting, but once I reach that climax, I don't know how it should end for the characters. I struggle between gritty, harsh reality and catharsis, and I'm pretty sure it's because of the reflection of my own world and life. Everything I build up to is a very bleak and dismal ending for these characters, and a hopeful change almost seems out of place. I feel awful if I do achieve that bad ending, and I know that's how my readers will feel, and I personally hate nihilistic worlds and stories like that (my writing tends to be just the worst luck in a world that's not hopeless, not set in a hopeless world). But on the other hand I have no context or experience on what a unique, good ending would look like. For instance, I never kill off a character that doesn't hold emotional value, but I also don't kill off too much of them, but how does the world continue on without those characters in it?
My favorite endings are bittersweet ones. I love when everything goes wrong and close emotional things fall apart and the protagonist loses a lot, but keeps going. It's learning how to live with loss and regret and heartbreak that I find the most satisfying. Something about light seeming brighter when surrounded by darkness.
All this to say, the natural conclusion of your stories might be tragedy. But if it feels too tragic, spend time on the bits of hope and continuance. Focus on how the world goes on without those killed-off characters, because it does go on whether your protagonist wants it or not. So how do they cope? Do they find companionship in their other friends? Do they build a new life - imperfect, painful, and scarred as it is? The ending may not be pleasant, but it's worth living.
There are people who'll read an everything-falls-apart story. And if you don't want to write that, there's people who will read a slightly-lighter-but-still-disaster story. I'm one of those. You have an audience. You'll find them. :)
Also let me know if you ever finish a story, I want to read it.
@@yellowcremling Awe! Thank you for this insight, it does really help a lot with figuring out what needs to happen. I think I tend to focus on one character and they often face the story solo, so maybe if I add in more characters it won't feel so out of place when the main character still seeks out a good, fulfilling life even after a bunch of tragedy. Of course it won't be sunshine and rainbows, but it will give incentive for the protagonist to keep going. Honestly, I love fiction and fantasy because it's an escape from a cruel world, so I don't like when things are entirely hopeless. Thanks again! 😊
Beating the Antagonist early is only a problem when the Antagonist themselves is the source of the threat. I know of a lot of great stories where the Antagonist isn't really personally intimidating or powerful but they work as a master mind commanding great forces and acting as a nebulous threat. This often works great for the story because not only can you have the protagonist's defeat of them be the inciting incident for the story, the thing that pushes the villain into targeting them and even into becoming a villain, but you also get a smart and petty antagonist that will often target the protagonist indirectly through weak points like friends, family, public reputation, and even the law.
Another interesting way is that the protagonist beating the antagonist can be a good setup, if your story is mainly about that being shaken up. For example: A superhero story where you show the superhero defeat the supervillain in the beginning of chapter 1. BUT THEN! The hero loses his powers. When that is the main plot of your story, the hero trying to reclaim his powers, then having the villain be defeated in chapter 1 can set the stakes. Because now the reader knows what the villain is capable of, and they know that the hero WITH his powers can save the day. But they also know that if the villain returns while the hero is still powerless, that's pretty much game over.
So now the clash in the beginning actually serves to make the villain MORE intimidating because now, insteadof the story being about an escalation of power, it instead turns into a ticking clock situation.
or give the villain agency. they were beaten this time rather easily but, you've motivated them and given them info on your abilities. meanwhile to your protag the might seem like an afterthought setting up a nasty surprise.
maybe the loss was entirely intentional to gauge strength or progress for some other plot. perhaps the villains goal requires the hero to reach their full potential.
there are many ways to use an early defeat. you just have to follow through properly.
My next fantasy novel, Kingdom of Dragons, is out now!
Check it out here: bit.ly/kingdom-of-dragons
It is NOT acceptable for the antagonist to be saved by luck either.
First off, it devalues the actions of both protagonist and antagonist so far to have the outcome be decided by luck. It also discredits your future narrative if the protagonist's hard work can be negated through contrived coincidence at any time.
But worst of all, it messes with what you call the 3P. Promise, progress... no payoff, because the author wants to recycle the villain and was too unimaginative to make them reach round 2 through competence? That's a lazy writing in support of lazy writing, at the cost of reader satisfaction. No thanks.
You leave me alone about my potholes. I'll fix them............maybe.
Love your vids
I'm a writer, and I am extremely scared of showing my work.
Same here. I don't know if I will ever publish it or release my book.
Make up a good Author name, and then blame Them for all the mistakes.
But I feel as if I must because I am a natural storyteller. The kind of books I write are, I will say, a bit outside the box, which, I think, may be what the creative world needs. I don't mean to sound grandiose.
@@joshuacunningham8558 just do it. You have nothing to lose. Good luck
Show your work to your friends and family first
Show it to your writing instructors too
Just to see what they think and have it be like a test screening but with a book
I love that you also give suggestions on how to overcome the "Do not's" of writing, it's very helpful for aspiring authors like me
Really well made point at 16:45, I've always thought this is the best resolution of a story be it a film, novel, game or any other story based work. I think a good analogy is to see the story you want to tell as a painting, if you've had even a basic exposure to the art of painters, photographers and other canvas creating artists, you may know that they can have clever twists within the work such as playing with perspective, different stories within the picture painted such as characters interacting with other characters or elements of the picture and what this tells us, who is looking where and why, who is playing what roles.... .... .... so as you scan the painting you might see these in isolation and get that sense of what they show in isolation, then you start to see their different meanings within the whole painting/photograph, so a story from the teller's crafting it perspective is very much like having that whole canvas in front of them, even if they are still evolving it as they work on it, working on each little area of detail (thus story within the story) bit by bit but with that final reveal of the whole work once the viewer/reader has pieced all those elements together, done really well they've almost seen the whole work before the cloth is taken off.
But that's where the method you suggest and how I see this in the picture context is so strong and effective, to the audience it is as if a cloth is being taken off the work to reveal it for the first time but in the case of a story the storyteller has planned it so the reveal branches and weaves out from that first corner, hooking them more and more to see how it will all connect in the end, eventually the viewer/reader sees the whole work, first with the 'finishing the jigsaw puzzle' experience of figuring out how the parts fit into the whole, but then, if you've got it right, the magic of how well they work as a whole which can be so so satisfying so the better you can craft that gradual piecing together of those visual elements the better so that (in the most enjoyable works from my experience as audience) there can be that real wow moment- the elements were interesting enough on their own and drew your interest in, but wow when you see how they all fit together within the story of the whole image (so think painting/novel/play/film/photograph and of course the classic comparison a tapestry- a concluding merging of several threads into a cohesive whole that makes sense) there's something powerful to it, which can vary for different types of story, anything from the heartbreaking tragedy of how something happened and led to some tragic outcome to the heartwarming joyful catharsis of something awful being resolved in some positive way or whatever else or combination of things make your overall 'story image'.
Image, Middle English from Old French and Latin imago and connected to (to) imitate. Imitate, copy (which can include a person's personality traits) or simulate, emulate as a model, take as a pattern, and why does all art that really resounds with us work so well? Because it helps us understand something of the complexity of our 'selves' and everything around us.
So weaving all these threads into one final hit is the breathtaking bit of the art, you've let them savor the painting by looking up close at its detail, now they're seeing the whole canvas. You've told each story within the story but now they are seeing how those stories are all really part of one bigger story. All those travelers on their own voyages and probably with their own destinations have ended up in this one place because their mind map and choices of turning (free or forced upon them by circumstance) have taken them here, even if 'here' wasn't the original plan. Mess it up and some of them will have hit dead ends lost on the way, which unless this works as part of that overall story will leave the audience a bit disappointed you didn't take them along the way with you. (Links to being careful who/what you kill off when and why if anybody/anything has to not make it to the end!)
So thanks for sharing similar views and this really good tip.
On which note if you've not done so already could you do something on how to make 'big' stories work (the problem of oh so many multi sequel films etc that end up not working quite so well as a whole) as I'm currently working on a big project for a game (homebrew stuff nothing serious I'd hope to become famous off!) but there's that concern of how do I manage the scope of something that needs to cover five ages with a lot of stuff going together as it's either going to go really well with the final 'threads coming together' being amazing or just be a confused messy mix of tastes of 'too many ingredients thrown in the soup cauldron', so wondering if you have any tips for making those big multi part sagas work (I guess mostly in terms of making them work as a whole as individually it is just the same as for a story, it gets trickier for the overall body of work hence the 'hated sequels' problem that can hit films, which applies to any big connected body of work. So tips for how to make something work that has a big canvas by its nature? If it helps as a starting point for any tips the big overall thread is about the consequences of individuals turning against each other (sometimes through circumstance such as the base need to just survive, othertimes through manipulation and power struggles/similar corruption), especially with a focus on the tragedy of this where the big canvas picture has that choice and consequence aspect. Naturally of course this getting resolved. So I know this aspect of how the threads weave together and resolve, it's just ways to do it so it's not messy due to the scale and scope. It should be doable as a lot of it is that there's a bit of a domino effect going on where social structures fracture because one thing leads to the next and things gradually escalate and snowball so the threads do naturally intertwine and I can see how they resolve (no spoilers :) ) but it's a challenging bit of weaving as five ages is a lot of characters and events (I'm ambitiously trying to weave a big game world together into one story like a saga of old across its five main ages) so a lot of need to avoid frayed bits that become weak or things unraveling.
My biggest struggles are the passive protagonist and the throughlines. I have already recognized many of the weak spots and pitfalls of my first draft for my second manuscript attempt. The only beautiful thing here is is that this story is still very young and therefore flexible enough to make stronger. Thank you for your help.
yeah its surprisingly easy to get into the world, setting, details and overall idea of how the plot will be but forget to give proper, believable motivations to the characters. i find my biggest problem being that i find myself trying to justify my characters doing the plot instead of suiting the plot to the characters
Never thought of seeing it that way. Good thing to keep in mind. Thanks!@@kirtil5177
The final duel with the main villain is obviously the climax of the story, true. But you shouldn't do the opposite mistake, making the villain too strong, i know, it creates pathos, but it also forces you into a "Super Saiyan" situation, wher you hve to give a sudden and unexpected boost of power to the MC in order to make it win.
Or, you can make your villain that powerful but he willingly doesn't use that level of power by establishing that he set rules in place that applied to everyone, even himself. He is scrupulously fair, in the sense that they have a chance, it is up to them to take it and make the best of it.
I can't tell you how many times I have gotten frustrated watching a tv show where the bad guy is set up with a realistic level of strength and is _very_ deadly, and yet the untrained and unprepared protagonists are somehow able to survive or even win. Like... is your protagonist _really_ going to be able to escape from the ninjas? Really? Without help or some kind of Deus ex machina? You expect me to think this high schooler can fight his/her way out?
One mistake I sometimes do is that I mention a random detail in an off-hand way like I'm foreshadowing something important but then it never comes up again.
1:19 Beating the antagonist early could definitely be a bigger problem, but simply introducing them isn't a problem I think. Introduce them, but there is information and resources that the MCs don't have and must get before they are able to defeat them. It makes the goal they initially begin to aim towards clear, even if it shifts, and it's probably not such a bad thing anyway.
In a very early story, I had a chapter called “A Meeting of Thrones” where you meet all the potential antagonists and evils that could be encountered. I loved the chapter, but never could write beyond that.
Interesting video, as always.
The second point is something I'm really paying close attention to because it's extremely easy to fall into that trap. Your brain, in fact, is naturally leading you toward the easy solution, which, if you're not careful, can easily make your story redundant or even awkward.
The throughline thing is something I've never thought about before, but I definitely should. Thanks for pointing it out. So far, I'm at the start of my book, but I'll make sure I stay on the rails as I progress.
The passive protagonist is usually not an issue for me, but one of my pov characters is very reserved and shy, which I found extremely challenging when it comes to making active. The problem when you're shy is that you're afraid to impose yourself and make decisions, which is precisely what a good story requires from you. So far, I think I'm doing "okay" with him, but it requires ten times more thinking to make his story engaging than the others, I feel. I also put a lot of work into the characters accompanying him to palliate this issue, but I can't abuse this, either. This is HIS story, not theirs.
Counterpoint to point one
The lion king. Is stated very early on that scar gets his ass beat in a fight every time. But he still kills mufasa and takes over the kingdom.
Jed! I have to thank you so much for your channel, but especially for this video! I had entirely no idea that the "seven point story structure" exists! I've only ever known about the three act structure and you are absolutely correct! The "soggy middle" as you called it, is and has been my greatest challenge. I am the type of writer that knows the beginning (and usually a good 2/3rds into it) of my story as well as exactly how I want it all to end and come together, but the connective tissue, finding that flow for how it gets to the end in the 3rd act, that has been such a struggle. I'm so grateful that you mentioned this other structure option and I'm really excited to explore it more!
Glad it was useful!
Peter Jackson made me actually love writing my middle part the most - he said that the "middle" of a trilogy or whatever is the most fun because that's where you shake it up and change things.
The waiting for the story to start feeling is how I felt watching the first Dune movie without realizing it was only covering Act 1 😂
A story that actually did a great example of beating the antagonist early is across the spider verse. It achieves this by have dual antagonist working on different axis of the plot. Its definitely a more sophisticated story telling technique, but could work well when executed correctly.
Great advice for any author, liked and subscribed
If an antagonist is equal early on when both are week it's not unrealistic to have them be stronger later. If the MC is a warrior versing a mage for example it makes sense that when both are weak the MC would win, or the antagonist can simply have more resources because of their family.
The antagonist can also be drunk at the time, or the MC could have won based on a sneak attack or due to the antagonists arrogance. There's lots of reasonable ways to have an easily beaten antagonist pose more of a threat later.
I personally like writing MC's that are strong early on due to their advantage but weak later on as their advantage gets outclassed. I like writing about how their early advantage gave them a headstart and having them have to learn to lower their head later on until they eventually gain an advantage again.
For example, if you're writing a beast tamer evolution novel, the MC can have an advantage due to his first contracted beast being a mutant, but later on it's more realistic for the MC to be going against beasts that outclass his from families that are far above his. Though I'm more of a long story enjoyer with thousands of chapters, not a few hundred.
I'm not really a fan of cheats in novels either. I prefer writing MC's that have luck but don't have godly luck. For example, just because they get lucky and have a mutant beast doesn't mean they'll ever get another. Just because the MC got lucky and found a strong technique doesn't mean he'll be able to cultivate it to it's peak either, it's quite common for MC's to always have perfect affinity to obtained techniques, but I don't think that's realistic.
My favorite novels have ordinary MC's with average or slightly above average talent that only moves up with time and strategy. Of course, lucky encounters are inevitable, but it's normal for someone to get lucky and doesn't have to be at every turn. I love clan building novels that go into depth of generations of wealth accumulating and the clan rising slowly.
I will keep those in mind as I'm writing my first book.
I’m a reader and I now respect you guys soooo much! It’s amazing to know there’s a technology to your craft... who knew? Keep creating! I love all of you!!! ❤
This felt like so much good advice for free. Thank you sir you're a gentleman and a scholar
What a delightful challenge to break all your rules and still pull off a great story.
I love having it take as long as possible for the protagonist to beat the antagonist. I hate protagonists beating villains early.
Author & teacher James Scott Bell has an excellent writing craft book: “Write Your Novel From The Middle,” which helps address the problem of the sagging middle.
These are good points, and some of this is unique relative to other writing advice on TH-cam (Brandon Sanderson, Hello Future Me, Ellen Brock, Savage Books, Studio Binder, The Take, etc). I particularly like the idea of evaluating one's scene types via an outline. I'm going to use that.
That said, it's frustrating how much ego is baked into this video.
(1) Jed says things like, "You are making these mistakes," rather than, "Here are some pitfalls and solutions I've seen."
(2) He titles this video "Mistakes Every New Fantasy Writer Makes," rather "Mistakes Many New Fantasy Writers Make."
(3) He talks about what his students will learn from him via his curriculum in his program rather than welcoming workshop participants to learn from each other as well as him.
This makes me wonder if he sees his audience as uniformly ignorant. What's more realistic is that the people watching this video have a wide range of experiences and expertise. Ultimately, his condescension may blind him to the great things he could learned from his audience.
This reminds me of something Brandon Sanderson said in his sci-fi writing lectures (which are all on TH-cam). He wants to teach his students who to be chef writers than cook writers. A cook has to follow a recipe, but a chef has such a profound understanding of what makes good food that they can create their own recipes. Likewise, a "cook" writer would likely follow Jed's advice verbatim. But a "chef" writer would understand how Jed's advice can strengthen some stories, but may not apply to others. Looking at the comments, I see a lot of folks taking that chef approach already, finding counter examples of great stories that don't follow Jed's advice.
Having watched some dozen writing advice BookTubers, I've developed a sense of weariness for those who give writing advice without a sense of humility. Generally, the more successful and author, the more humbly they present their advice. Brandson Sanderson, for example, often says he can teach you, but encourages you to learn from many, many others. Jed, on the other hand, seems to present his workshop as the only help you'll need. I think this lack of humility may lower the quality and applicability of his content.
4:11 that sounds like a personal attack
I am a long time Sanderson fan. I learned of you because of him.
I am so thankful.
Your mind is incredible. I need you to never stop creating and teaching Jed.
One day (when I finish school), I'm going to pay for your services. I can't wait to see your critiques on one of my manuscripts.
Thanks for the kind words! I very much feel like I'm at the start of my journey (both when it comes to writing + TH-cam), so hopefully the mind just keeps improving from here :)
I have a villain who's whole thing is that they pretend to be a weak middle man in their own empire when in reality they are very strong. The villain basically tricks the main character into over looking him by letting the Main character beat him. Would this count under your "beating the antagonist too early."
I'd say that is a subversion of it. And like all tropes, be aware of it's pros and cons before you subvert it.
No, that's a bait and switch done in-universe, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It is however very difficult to pull off. But I'm confident you know what you're doing.
In general, you should only follow rules if you don't know what to do and don't have reason to break them. If you just google basic story structure and how to improve your writing, I think you should just follow it. But if you come up wth an idea that intentionally breaks that rule, it is sort of the same as if you actually acknowledged the rule and gave it its own twist. So its not like you made the mistake, rather you made your own rules. So I guess go for it, it definetely sounds interesting.
You realy need to make the transition to the villain actually beeing extremly dangerous believable. If he suddenly Plays everyone without foreshadowing and a believable, well planned plot twist, it will feel cheap
No because the whole point in the video is that if the protagonist beats the antagonist that means the protagonist is more powerful, and so when they fight again in the climax there's less tension. If it's revealed that the antagonist intentionally let the protagonist win the first time, then it doesn't apply
You have no idea how helpful the 7 point plot structure is. Thank you. 😊
I disagree with number one. The antagonist can always come back as a bigger threat later like Spot in the most recent Spiderverse movie
Or they can become pathetic like Kylo Ren.
There are exceptions to every rule. This video just highlights guidelines that are generally true or at least helpful.
Sauron came back into power three times. They always thought they defeated him, but he was the deceiver, and Tolkien never wavered on that part of his character, so it works for the plot. Especially with the subsequent age of the rings. He was like a spiritual pest.😂
This seriously broke me out of a writing funk! I've been stuck with an opening element for so long now but now I know what to do, Thank you so much!
I'm currently writing my first draft of my first book, and I planned the books middle out from the beginning. However, I am not sure 100% on the ending, but I have a vague idea which I feel is a good thing. So far I don't have any of these issues you mentioned, which I contribute to reading/listening to many fantasy novels. Also, my book is the product of many years of crafting a world idea for something else, and then the universe just so happened to nudge me into writing a story for that other thing.
Good stuff! People should keep in mind that these arent hard rules. With enough skill and the right audience, these can be all broken. But i think the main goal is to give advice on what usually trips up new writers. So good to keep that in mind.
I've noticed a lot of videos about issues with worldbuilding and that everyone makes a wall of text at the beginning of the book. What if you have the opposite problem? What if you fail to add any basic details about the background and get right into action. Could you make a video of how to maybe fix this issue?
Also great video, keep up the good work!
What you do is you break up your exposition into smaller pieces and scatter them throughout the story, especially in chapter 2. There is a difference between exposition (world building) and wall of text (bad paragraph breaking) and you are talking about exposition. You don't want to have exposition at the very beginning but soon after the beginning, it's good to give a little exposition. Then give more exposition in chapter 2. Then some exposition in chapter 3. Etceteras.
Watch Attack on Titan for a good example. It is very action packed most of the time but there are little snippets of world building here and there.
I enjoy walls of text personally. Rarely do I see people complaining about info dumps if it's actually relevant. Usually people complain if they have to pay for something that is almost all info (if you charge chapter by chapter).
@@theunintelligentlydesigned4931 I concur with this commenter, though my example would actually be Roadside Picnic - a sci-fi novel about humanity dealing with the fallout of weirdo aliens visiting Earth, and leaving a bunch of strange artifacts behind.
The story drops you into its world without explaining anything. There is exposition as the story goes on, in snippets here and there. But if you pay attention, you can also gradually piece together what's going on, who the characters are, and the significance of what they're doing from context. It's a fascinating approach to exposition. And it feels utterly confident in itself, that its audience will be intrigued enough to stick with it, despite their initial confusion about what's happening.
The classic trick is to have a character tie the wall of text into an emotion so it flows as a rant. You can't do that all the time, but if you have only one place to put the wall of text, that helps.
My other thing is I'll try to map out exactly how little I have to explain and then see if any of those factoids could be tied together, and only put them in the same scene if they are. (For instance, when I describe Evangelion to someone, I only include the information relevant to make every joke in the "Evangelion 4kids intro" make sense. ("THIS is the story of a boy named Shinji, living in the flooded streets of New Orleans...") It immediately tells you what's important. You can do the same thing with your story climax.)
And then you have things like Richard Roberts' Wild Children, where word of god is "no one actually knows how the big magic plot device works, they just have to deal with its very unpredictable consequences." That's valid too!
I think it would be good to remember “show, don’t tell” when thinking about exposition. A description of a field they are crossing would bring the reader more into the scene than saying a war was fought there, and they can mention something like one or two key characters that died there or the valiant sacrifice of the defenders.
Thanks a lot for this video Jed! Very helpful! Really clear points and i'm happy that I have come across this now instead of when I would already be finished with my novel. Thanks!
Luck being used against your protagonist is far harder to overdo, but it absolutely can make your story feel stale or boring. I've seen this happen in a few TV dramas where they milk the concept of Murphy's Law into oblivion, and it can actually get very old when overused, and it looks like this:
Step 1: Problem arises that needs to be solved in a certain timeframe.
Step 2: characters come up with a fix to the problem.
Step 3: something unlucky happens to negate their fix, forcing them to come up with something new.
Step 4: Repeat steps 2 and 3 as many times as possible before the timeframe from step 1 runs out.
Step 5: repeat step 2 one last time, but don't include step 3. Characters solve the problem with seconds/inches to spare.
When 5 episodes of a show in a row followed this format to the letter, I started to realize that luck getting characters INTO problems isn't the only way for plot convenience to diminish the stakes of a story. Knowing the story has to go on for a certain amount of time but seeing the characters juuuuuust barely scrape by problem after problem turns all of those 'unlucky' moments into a bunch of white noise because you're really waiting for the last few seconds to see if they have any actual consequences this time.
yeah thats when bad luck starts becoming predictable, and then it really does not feel like luck, and so you end up thinking "the first solution has never worked, just reveal the twist and get on that already".
so it really feels like luck when its actually unpredictable, and that opens so many more opportunities too, for example, differing just how bad the unlucky event is and how stressful it is. an early minor fail gets you into the beat and shows off what the characters can do, while a severe worst case scenario way further down the line is not only more worse by contrast, but also feels like a proper climax, and so it actually feels like the characters are being pushed to their limits.
you could also forego the unlucky mishap entirely and simply make the issue really difficult, but the eventual solution works exactly as planned and the characters feel relieved and maybe even competent
As mentioned, it can be done well even for the protagonist, but it shouldn't be overused. If the protagonist is always scraping by due to luck, then that is plot armor, they can't fail even if they try and that gets old fast. On the other hand, if the antagonist only remains a threat because of lucky breaks, then that gets old just as fast. Like anything, moderation and knowing when and when not to use something is key.
One way I liked using luck is in the way it can screw with both sides due to it being a third party doing something. It turned out to be a lucky break in the end for our protagonists due to it allowing them to properly identify, though not expose, the main antagonist early, and sped up the conclusion of it all because it forced the antagonist's hand, but they also ended up seeing some of the consequences of that third party actor's actions.
And the third party actor's actions had consequences towards himself due to his acting in a way that could have potentially endangered everyone.
This was very useful for me as a first time writer. Thanks.
The fact Hollywood writers fall now in all of this is concerning
I'd interject that this solid advice is important in every genre. I'd also say this information is very consistent with what I learned about story mechanics in film school.
I'm not a writer so this idea could be absolutely terrible. But an idea that I thought of is if you're dead set on having the protagonist win the first battle, maybe set up that the protagonist wins using a method that can't be replicated. So if they're in a fantasy setting they used a magic that can only be used once because at that current time the protagonist was weaker, and make it clear that it's something that can't be done again. So if/when they have to fight again they Protagonist will have to win themselves
That's kind of what happened in Harry Potter, with him being saved by his mother's love as a helpless baby. Then Voldemort slowly becoming a threat again, giving Harry and the reader time to realise how dangerous he could be and to train enough to make a defeat feasible. I'd say your idea is market approved :)
@@emdove Harry didn't actually need to train to beat Voldemort. It was entirely luck and coincidence. He got the drop on Draco, resulting in the elder wand recognizing him as its master, which means that Voldemort couldn't use it to kill him. If literally any other wand had been used, Harry would have lost.
I feel as though point 8 does a disservice to emotionally-pulling plots (emphasis on plot that is specifically emotionally directed, and not an additional emotional pull, like most writers use to spice up their main casts journey). Sometimes you would want to continue to specify what comes after said climax if you have a story that is inherently tied to the character's personal life, or the life around them, and not just the directive actions of the story. Fantasy can include plenty of romantic or psychological plot points once you establish character's personal stakes, and maybe a change of belief systems. ex- if you're writing a Fantasy novel with a side of romance, a good novel will deal with the romantic aspects in and out of the main plot- OR if it's mainly a Romance in a fantasy setting, then the personal, emotional stakes is what drives the narrative and the fantasy subtext is written around said fantasy world, so you would intertwine the worldbuilding in and out of plot. This example is also useful in a psychological drama in a fantasy setting, or a fantasy "slice of life". Fantasy books don't have to give up other types of subjects to cater to the hero's journey only. I know this video seems to be catered towards classical Action Fantasy, but I found this when trying to find inspiration for my Psychological Fantasy Novel.
If your issue is the middle but you have an idea for a beginning and end, did you really have a story idea? Or did you just have an idea for a story concept? Feel like sometimes people get too attached to an ending idea and stop writing when their story goes different places instead of sewing where their new ideas take them.
I think I mainly watching these videos as a reminder for how I'm gonna make my manga, but its still helpful.
This is great advice. Weak throughline, weak middle, etc. these all sound very common in stories I've seen too.
I agree that overly passive characters are boring but it is possible to have an overly active character too. One of the reasons I like Katniss from the Hunger Games is because she is forced into such a passive role. She wants to be more active but circumstances keep forcing her to play pretend. She isn't ALWAYS fighting. Now she isn't completely passive either. It was her volunteering for the hunger games that set the whole story in motion and she certainly wasn't passive when she shot an arrow into an apple in the middle of a feast of the elites. But she can't just express her true hatred against those elites. She has to stay calm and collected at all times.
I don't think the through line has to be summarized in a single sentence. I do agree that you need only one primary through line and that through line should be summarized but maybe the through line can be two sentences: one describing who the main character is and one describing what the character is up against.
My solution to the soggy middle: instead of making the structure more complicated, I make the structure less complicated. It's just an upside checkmark. The beginning of the story is when the main character starts the main plot. Everything grows from there until the climax and then everything resolves. As long as your middle is building toward the climax, it doesn't have to be 50% of the story. Stop trying to apply a measuring tape to your story to make sure you have a long enough middle. Just write your story.
There's a difference between Katniss, who is deliberately making decisions on how to act in situations where there aren't good choices, and what he's talking about, which is a character who things just happen to. Like the main character in The Final Girl Support Group does jack all for 90% of the book. Things are constantly happening around her, but she's just running away from place to place and not actually doing anything about the events in the book until the very end. She could be completely cut from the book and it wouldn't change the story. Katniss could not be removed from The Hunger Games.
@@Laf631 Well I'm not disagreeing with the video. I'm just pointing out that the opposite extreme is also a problem.
I use a 3 act story structure that is divided into 8 points.
First one is why hazbin hotel feels so rushed
Wow. You make writing fantasy seem boring and sterile where you just follow a format like a dressmaker. But writing isn’t like that… when you do it correctly.
I know a few seamstresses that would balk at the suggestion that they're work is boring and rote.
Also, there's a massive difference between creating your own outline and following someone else's outline.
Your videos have been extremely helpful in helping me dust off old skills and learn new ones to apply to my writing. Thank you for making these! 🤘🏻🦄
You're welcome!
I hate how they decided to have 2 more hours of movie after Smaug's death.. they should have changed the plot and have him survived the black arrow
I don't think Smaug was meant to be the main antagonist. He needed to be defeated for the main conflict of the story to be explored, which was greed
I do have problems with the hobbit movies, but mainly with just the love triangle and how the master of laketown was portrayed (and WHY did Alfred Lickspittle happen)
It should have been a half hour to 45 minutes, considering how it was bickering over the treasure, the battle of five armies, and then the epilogue.
They added a LOT of BS to The Hobbit movies.
@@SaraL22 ow wow greed! awesome! what a great character! what a charismatic antagonist!
I'm going to try and put twists on these "writing mistakes" that might make them work to challenge myself
1. The protagonist ends up being the twist villain and the antagonist is the real hero
2. A story where the character is going through a groundhog day like scenario
3. The passive protagonist could be unwilling to act whether through depression or something else, or maybe something is holding them back so they can't even if they wanted to. This setup can go in a wide variety of directions. Too many to say in a comment
4. Maybe the book could be about a shattered reality and a wide variety of alternate universes, and the adventure is so diverse it can't be summarized in one sentence
5.
6. This can work in a fantasy setting with low stakes and no villain. They still need to go through challenges, but they can be low stakes and thus low consequences
7.
8. If the plot threads being resolved all caused mystery and/or suspense, this could work. But it needs to be set up really well to work. Your basically slowly trickling them answers that they want, and that can keep them engaged
9.
Well, i got most of them
I thank you for keeping this brief, and free!!
I'm playing around with writing anything longer than poems and short stories now, and your advice on throughlines, hit home.
I also really need to work on .. having an antagonist :)
I just finished my first novel as a NaNoWriMo project (50,050 words! Yay!) Starting the outline with a log line really helped. I may not know where the story is going, but at least I know what its about.
Naturally it evolved over the writing and I have to go back and add to the early chapters to set up later developments, but at least I knew what the goal was all the way through.
This is quite honestly very good advice. While I rarely follow rules such as these, mainly focussing on making the story make sense and being something I would read, I addmit these are very good notes.
One pushback though, passivity of your protagonist can be the point, so while it certainly requires skill and I personally do not like that style myself. I would be bit more causcious about saying to not make your protagonist passive.
The plot outlining may be a tool I may have to start using - considering the very first novel I'm currently working on has 4 main characters with one main antagonist that somehow integrated himself to be in all four of their lives indirectly. Great video!
I don't think you intended it this way, but I couldn't help but notice how most you said applies to the Star Wars sequels.
1. Beating the antagonist too early: Kylo shouldn't have been beaten in TFA
2. repetitive scene formats: TFA is basically ANH reshot beat for beat
4. no consistent throughline: there clearly wasn't one in the trilogy with JJ and RJ working against each other. I can't think of a more pointless and meandering subplot than the jaunt on the casino planet. Every scene involving Finn could have been cut and the main plot would not have been affected at all.
5. Soggy Middle: i.e. the Last Jedi in which we start with a small band of rebels trying to escape from a planet and it ends with an admittedly smaller band of rebels escaping from a planet
6. Weak consequences: Chewie's fakeout death, C3POs 'sacrifice' which gets reversed by a memory backup, need I say any more
7. Misaligned three Ps: there was a lot of promise, hardly any progress and no one was satisfied with the payoff that was ROS. Seriously bringing back the emperor? Even Reylo fans, those poor fools, were cheated by that "kiss of gratitude"
9. Lucky breaks: how about crashing into a quick sand trap that leads you to an underground cave system of some critter where you find the macguffin you happen to need for the plot to progress
Perhaps you should offer Hollywood your help XD
I feel like depending on what type of story is being told, some of these tips can be very helpful to some authors and *extremely* detrimental to others. Many people have already covered why mistake 1 doesn't always apply, so instead I'll focus on mistakes 4 and 8.
For mistake 4, the weak throughline issue, you frame it in such a way that the primary plot is the only thing that readers will or SHOULD be interested in, and maybe for plot-driven stories that's true to an extent (though there are more than enough stories out there where the "side" plots are just as interesting as the main one, if not more so), but for stories that are more focused on the characters themselves and their personal relationships and issues, the main plot becomes a vehicle to guide the characters between those supposedly pointless subplots (which are not pointless because the focus is more on the characters and their growth, rather than whatever specific villain or incident lead to that growth) as opposed to it needing to be the other way around where the characters are just a vehicle to explore the main plot. In the end, there's still a big bad for the team to take down and a world to save, but for this type of story the real investment lies in seeing the characters gradually transform into better versions of themselves who are capable of accomplishing what they never could have in the beginning. As an extreme example, imagine a story that's episodic in nature, villain-of-the-week and all, but while the status quo of the world at large is always returned to normal by the end, the status quo for the main characters permanently changes every single time, constantly developing with new perspectives and abilities that will carry on to future episodes. That's basically the exact opposite of what you suggested, but still sounds like an interesting story, it's just that it's a story about the characters themselves rather than a story that the characters are merely a part of. Anyways, all I'm trying to say here is that depending on the story, focusing on the "main plot" above all else isn't always what's best.
As for mistake 8, the peter-out ending, I wanted to point out that cramming several plot resolutions into a single moment can be a VERY bad idea sometimes, because readers are just as likely to hate an ending for feeling rushed as they are to hate it for feeling slow, so compressing everything is not just some objectively "better" approach that you claimed it to be. Yes, some stories might slow to a crawl near the end like you said, and sometimes they can indeed benefit from cutting the fat, but other times they might NEED that extra space in order to make sure each resolution is actually satisfying. Conversely, some stories might *already* be too dense, in which case they may need to stretch the narrative a bit in order to flesh things out properly. In short, instead of simply dismissing the issue as "dense good, spread out bad" it should be handled on a case by case basis, so that every story can find the pace that best suits it.
While I didn't agree with everything, most of what you said in this video was still solid advice. I shared my criticisms in hopes that they provide additional perspective, so don't let them dissuade you from doing the good work that you're doing.
My own story is roughly 30 chapters long, and although it follows a 3-act structure, it forgoes the traditional ratio of 1:2:1 in favor of a 3:4:3 split, in order to cut down on that pesky middle section while still keeping it as the biggest chunk. This results in 9 chapters mainly focused on building up the characters and world until the end of chapter 9 twist reveals the main plot going forward, then 12 chapters of going around getting stronger and gaining allies while trying to find a solution to the big picture, and finally 9 chapters of them putting everything and everyone they've got into taking care of all the remaining threats, including the main one. That said, not every character has their arcs resolved in a uniform pace with each other. One character might have their big backstory motivation resolved before the end of act 1, only for brand new ones to take its place after something happens in act 2, while another character might have amnesia for the first two acts, only for an act 3 revelation to conflict with the new life they've formed with the rest of the group. The biggest difficulty lies in making sure every character gets enough time to shine, while ALSO making sure that the characters who aren't shining at any given moment are at least still relevant, but that's the price I pay for trying to have 6 equally important protagonists and 6 more slightly less important deuteragonists.
For context, it's a DnD campaign-esque type of story, so there's a focus on making sure that each member's overall importance and relevance is as balanced as possible, even if some of them end up having their biggest moments earlier than others. On the bright side, since the party is so large and varied, no matter what situation they find themselves in, at least one of them will always have some kind of significant reason for the team to get involved and help resolve things, and at least one (usually more) of them will experience growth in some shape or form, ranging from personal/emotional growth after learning a hard lesson to a literal power-up they pried out of the enemies cold dead hands because they thought it would synergize with their skillset. It's a challenging task to undertake, but it's such a blast to flesh out my characters and expand upon my world that I don't mind if the process takes a while.
Nothing turns me off from a mainstream fantasy than a passive protagonist. Great list, thank you!
*Soggy middle* The advice definitely helps. I've been writing a different varieties of stories for over 10 years and I always stop due to this issue. I've whittled down most of my stories into a long running series. Each story is separated by several if not hundreds of years and the beginnings and most of the endings are at a point where I feel they could be just the way I need them. In fact when I started writing I actually remember clearly starting everything with the ending of the 2nd Story. It's what's in between that is always my biggest issue while always feeling as though something is missing. With you mentioned about the 3 acts and now 7 may just be what I need to step up the pace on my writing again. I'd love to finally sort my mad scientist level of notes and ideas on desk lol 😂
Thank you for your insight! I have just launched my first fantasy novel - It took a LONG time to get here, I don't think many quite understand how long it takes to write a full complete story.... My research was about 4 months, writing the first draft was 19 months {About 400k words} - polish / editing / proof-reading took 3 years!
Hey Jed! What an awesome video! I'll definitely be using this in my story. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
Your tip #1 applies to Disney Star Wars so very much!
I'm writing my first fantasy epic. I'm glad I didn't encounter many of these errors!
For the first mistake, I like how Harry Potter deals with it. Sure, Harry beat the antagonist so easily he was just a baby by then. But we're not sure how he did it and how he can do it again. By the time we learn how he did, the antagonist is back and had neutralized the way he had been beaten. So, now it's even more hopeless
The story structure is interesting because 3 act structure is used a lot but other story structures exist particularly divergent ones that counter soggy middle in manga because they use a specific structure. So people really should look into different story cultures that can be present even specific cultures sticking to certain story structure
I find that often (but certainly not always) it's those meanderings that I actually like about a story. Depends on how well they're written, obviously, and it's usually a bad idea to apply this recursively, but those meanderings make the world feel more real, more complete.
I'm not really a fan of characters going through hell. I can too easily imagine myself in such a situation. That's ... not good.