Forum: Author Hangout

Story Structure question

ArthurSB73 🚫

Hi there. New-ish author. I have a page full of story concept ideas, and I am developing one idea into a book of approximately 3 dozen chapters. It's basically the bachelor meets seeking sister wife. A poly-style narrative.

I have one- to two-line descriptions of most chapters and have developed longer summaries for the first half of the story.

2 questions.

With the nature of the show, adding intimate relations won't likely happen until later in the plot, so a slow burn, which I am ok with.

Question 1. Is a slow burn a barricade to readership?

I'm crafting the central characters and building the plot, and I like how the story is developing. However, I've posted the summary and several early chapter descriptions into Copilot (yes, I know) for suggestions based on the TV series. Now, I have suggested production notes, camera angles, confessional dialogue, and Host narration.

Question 2 - Should I write this as straight narration, a screen play-ish, or something of a hybrid(which I have to decide how much of either shows up)

I have cross-posted this in the story idea forum

Replies: TheDarkKnight Crumbly Writer REP ArthurSB73

TheDarkKnight 🚫

@ArthurSB73

Question 1. Is a slow burn a barricade to readership?

A "slow burn" is nothing but another name for plot development, which, based on the story you are describing, is necessary. Some readers might bail because they're just looking for a quick thrill. Don't worry about them.

As to Question 2, your approach is entirely up to you. It's your story, tell it like YOU want to. It might even take a couple of drafts with different approaches to find the one that works, but again - it's up to you.

Good luck!

Replies: TheDarkKnight

TheDarkKnight 🚫

@TheDarkKnight

One last thought. If you are new-ish, you might want to start with a shorter, simpler story.

Crumbly Writer 🚫

@ArthurSB73

SOL is a story site (i.e. words only), so if you're thinking in terms of a video or game, you're probably barking up the wrong tree here. However, if can attach video, sound or images to the story. Though when you do, it may not be compatible with each individual reader's system's capabilities (i.e. it's largely a crapshoot whether readers can access them or not). So it's probably adding the appropriate websites, mainly so it won't interfere with the text-based story.

But given the story nature of SOL, treating it as a screenplay will likely cost you readers you can't afford to lose and a first-time author. And again, starting small and allowing yourself to experiment is probably your best bet—just to determine which approaches work best to help guild you as you gain more experience.

But 'slow-burn' merely means the entire story is more plot-centric rather than an immediate porn jaunt, so the readers who'll most appreciate that won't appreciate a screenplay approach. So, as they say, pick a lane and stick to it.

REP 🚫
Updated:

@ArthurSB73

Should I write this as straight narration

When I first started writing, I wrote the draft of my first story as narration-only.

For me, at that time, narration was more comfortable than dialog. My first editor clued me in that a narration-only story was boring to read. I had major problems with writing dialog. Basically, I had to learn how to become multiple characters and apply their personalities to their dialog. To do that, I had to learn how to develop a character with a personality that was different from the MCs.

Unfortunately, that editor attempted to take control of my story by telling me to turn it into a sexual romp that I was not comfortable writing. For what it is worth, I am still not comfortable writing stories where the MC uses the women in his life for his personal pleasure with no personal bond with the woman and the story focuses on the woman's physical attributes.

Don't let people like me tell you what should go into your story. Just take our experience and if you feel it has merit, merge the lessons we learned into your writing style and practices.

Saying that you need to develop the skill of writing character-driven dialog and doing it are two very different things. I don't recall how long it took to convert that first story's descriptions of what a character said into dialog in the character's words. My first cut at a character's dialog was essentially the same character's verbiage. In revising each character's dialog, I started to understand how to make each character become an individual. I still have to work of creating distinctly different characters.

I agree with TheDarkKnight's advice of starting with a shorter story and work up to the longer stories. As a new author, you have a lot to learn. Trying to learn character and plot development are time consuming activities. As you integrate techniques that you learn, you will have to go back and revise your earlier chapters. Revising a 20-30+ chapter story, multiple times, is a daunting task. Make life easier on yourself by starting with shorter stories, 4-5 chapters.

My first story was posted more than 11 years ago, and I am still working on developing that skill.

Replies: Crumbly Writer fohjoffs

Crumbly Writer 🚫
Updated:

@REP

Heck, to this day, I still write with essentially one character voice, as I feel it's how intelligent, educated people normally speak, so I mainly focus on the exceptions, who wouldn't ordinarily speak like that.

Plus being able to capture a more generic 'common folk' and 'military/police' parlance helps fill in those blanks as well, which only provides the few 'odd-voices' (typically specific regional accents and grammatical structure) a more powerful presence and overall impact on the story.

And yes, I start out as a novelist, never once writing a short story. I've written a few LONG novelettes, yet I consider them 'close enough' I don't fill the need to reclassify of fill the with irrelevant crap just to meet a technical definition of 'novel length', so I mostly just let them stand as is.

As always, stories should be exactly as long as they need to be, not any shorter nor any longer. However if often takes a LONG time to get them to that length, which usually involves adding enough so after some heavy revising and repeated editing, it'll have a comfortable margin to trim off the fat.

fohjoffs 🚫

@REP

>Unfortunately, that editor attempted to take control of my story

Not uncommon. Some editors do not edit, they attempt to co-write. I have found that few editors are competent. Be careful in your selection of editor if you choose to use one.

Best of luck.

Replies: Crumbly Writer

Crumbly Writer 🚫

@fohjoffs

Which again, is the reason why I prefer using several editors, as mostly each has their own specialty, while few actually have an overall view of everything needed to successfully edit. So with multiples, you can vet each one against the others, learning what their strengths but more importantly, just how ignorant they are about other necessary details.

Of course, that works better with volunteer editors, more interested in helping improve a work they're already familiar with. But with professionals, each type of editor has very specific skills, and even then, they may also lack the same expertise in specific areas. So in the end, very often it's a crap shoot, which is why vetting is so damn necessary!

I've had issues with professional editors, even after thoroughly vetting them. After everyone, has off days and you can never know when they're suffering from specific issues unless you know them (i.e. are friends).

ArthurSB73 🚫

@ArthurSB73

Thank you all for your feedback, I recognize you all as I have been reading on SOL for more than a decade.

I call myself new-ish because I have drafted several short stories for myself, done a few papers, and write for public speaking 2-3 times a year. This is just the first time tackling a story this involved, but as many authors have said, I needed to get it out and onto paper.

I have developed the narrative, first by one one-sentence description per chapter, then a 2-3 paragraph summary, and I am fully a third into the longer narrative. The production notes/shooting script was something I started in parallel as TheDarkKnight suggested.
As the story and characters are developing, I am definitely going back to review how the earlier story is built and updating as needed. But one thing I learned from several authors on this site, I am maintaining a character background bible for consistency of development.

I think I will continue developing both approaches and see how the parallel path informs the overall story. Then I will find a way to integrate both into a more complete blend of storytelling.

Thank you all.

Replies: Vincent Berg

Vincent Berg 🚫

@ArthurSB73

As always, the best of luck with it, and if you ever have any specific questions, feel free to ask any or all of us. That's how most of us learned, so it's our 'passing the torch' onto a younger generation for everyone's benefit.

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Story Structure question

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