Writer's Blog ...and so it continues.

It was back in March that I last discussed Writing a Novel by Nigel Watts. I was looking at Chapter 3 which details the concepts of the eight point story arc. You can click here for the earlier post.

I won't go into the details here but if you want to know about this type of an arc then Daily Writing Tips describes it well.

For this post I want to discuss the rest of Chapter 3. Watts goes on to discuss arcs of a novel in general. The arc is the change the character undergoes across the story. Sadly character change and growth can something be rare in fiction. This is especially true it television which often makes use of the reset button. I particularly rememberer Earth: Final Conflict being bad for this. A new technology would be introduced at the beginning of an episode and, for various reasons, be unusable by the end. Admittedly I didn't see it all the way through and I believe it is said to have later improved. Anyway I'm getting off topic...

To show the merits of the eight point story arc the example of Jack and the Beanstalk is used. It is highlighted that Jack and the Beanstalk is not the tightest of stories. Naturally it was written for children so the plot, were it written for adults, would no doubt be tightened.

Watts tells us: "The protagonist should pass greater and greater points of no return, facing greater dangers and having greater pressure put on his resources." (p36) This is important to ensure that the story continues. Also I feel that the protagonist has to believe that these challenges are achievable - or at the very least the cost of failure is so high that there is little other choice. Finally Watts breaks down the plot of this fairy tale into its minor, major and grand plot points. The main thing to take away from this is that the difficulties are what makes a story. Jack steals gold from the giant, this version uses an ogre, if it had been a gift their would be no story.

Well I've just done a preview of this post and its quite long. So I'll finish with a quote that Watts uses to illustrate this point. I will certainly be making another post on Tuesday and may post one before then.

Nothing progresses in a story, except through conflict.

Robert McKee