The Only Plot Structure You Will Ever Need
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- Опубліковано 5 тра 2024
- Unlock the secrets of bestselling authors and elevate your fiction writing with the power of the 40-chapter plot module. In this masterclass, I'll demystify the essential components of plot structure, giving you the tools to write a page-turner that readers won't be able to put down. Whether you're a seasoned writer or just starting out, this guide will help you streamline your process, avoid writer's block, and create a story you're proud of.
Timestamp:
00:30 - Introduction
00:33 - What Structure Is?
02:32 - 40 Chapter Plot Module?
03:24 - Acts Breakdown - Making up the 25% story
04:53 - Act 1 Breakdown
08:10 - Act 2A Breakdown
10:52 - ACT 2B Breakdown
12:47 - ACT 3 Breakdown
16:25 - Antagonist V/S Protagonist
17:04 - Conclusion
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#WritingTips #PlotStructure #Storytelling
Love, love, love your videos. You always sound like you really care and you are so excited to share your discoveries with everyone.
I really like your new video format. Your voice is now synced up with the video. And great advice, as always! Love your channel!
This is the power of systematization. I recently read about how a hairdresser boiled all the possible hair styles down to 17 haircut patterns. Once learned the newly trained hairdresser could use combinations of these patterns which would cover every possible haircut a client could ask for. I'd like to see how your structure is applied with an example of a book you've written. I've never written a fiction book before and would like to know how. I've written a factual book, where I told the story.
Thank you! Keep sharing your wisdom!
You have no idea how much you've helped me (and I'm sure many others). Thank you so very much. xoxo
I loved this!! Very informative for someone like me who just starting!
Hola monsieur, having recently finished the first draft of my first novel, I am thankful to have come across your plot module. And for the idea to think of my self as a publisher. I am running with these … thanks
Thankyou
Plotstruction.
Oh my goodness. The pun
Anyway, it's Save the Cat with some extra steps, mainly borrowed from the 27 Chapter outline.
Useful for action-oriented stories, but if you're writing romance, you want
Romancing the Beat by Gywn Hayes
and for mystery you want
How to Write a Damn Good Mystery by James N. Frey.
I'm not trying to knock the work that went into putting this together. It obviously took some time and thought, But it's really misleading to tell people that you're giving them a general template that can be adapted to every genre what you're actually giving them as a template for the genre you write.
Mystery and Romance have different focal points.
Specific elements of the conflict need to be set up and executed in ways that aren't addressed here, and a lot of mysteries don't contain an "all is lost" because the point of the mystery is not to engage with the protagonist's deep internal struggle.
Mysteries have flawed protagonists, certainly, but there are a lot of really effective mysteries That use a flat arc system Where are the big story change is in the supporting cast rather than in the protagonist.
I literally read a mystery every week for two years, and I've written several romance novels.
I agree. I love the '24 chapter' outline by Derek Murphy but it didn't work for my romance novel. I tried Save the Cat, Hero's Journey, and 3 other templates. I finally used a combination of '24 chapter' and Romancing the Beat. I kept on trying to map the story to outlines that were meant for other genres and got stuck when the plot points didn't sync up. Wasted a lot of time trying to make it work with other outlines.
@@janasher4940 I spent a few years trying to figure out how to map my stories to different outline templates. I wouldn't call it wasted time, but it was definitely way less efficient than it could be.
My stories are...weird. They're usually a combination of fairytale, scifi, and romance with elements of cozy mystery.
They don't map well to anything, so I ended up making my own.
I think tools like this are useful for people writing more straightforward stuff, but you *cannot* map EVERY story to any one specific tool and it bugs me when people with platforms geared at new or inexperienced writers insist that you can.
@@InThisStyleGMinor I don't know who you think you're talking to, but I'm a disabled writer who uses AI as an accessibility tool, and Jason has talked at length about his use of AI to help with burnout and mental health struggles. Both of us have read and studied extensively in our craft and been writing for decades before AI became available.
Great Video! Thanks 🙂☀️
I love that you're spelling the chapters out for new writers. I think this is good as long as they realize that this model uses specific tropes, and there are many tropes to choose from. One criticism I might give is chapter 13. Spelling out the characters internal conflict to the character is not usually a good idea. Their internal conflict is what causes them to make fear based decisions throughout the novel, and they don't usually resolve it until the end. It's only when they see the truth that they are able to overcome their internal conflict and accomplish the goal. In general, you want the main characters internal conflict to closely relate to the storyline for this reason, and because it makes for a more satisfying story in general.
Science to Art. As a new writer, I need to learn principles. Thanks so much for your help for us beginners!
Interesting I like how you break it down. Yet you got me thinking in the last part.
If the antagonist can be societal norms, basically a abstract notion or peer group pressure. Why could not a protagonist be the group dynamics of a team of characters?
This would allow for the flaws and internal struggles of characters in the group to be the protagonist inner struggles, could even lend to the team character's mentoring each other, while adhereing to a single protagonist yet with multiple view points.
The module or node like structure really helps present your idea, and how easy it is modify to fit a genere or style, loose but with a strong foundation to build on.
I think it's important to note that any one of these chapters aren't hard-and-fast. To me, the examples you give are simply a common/typical story structure. One might want to change things around to make something more interesting and avoiding being too formulaic.
It's a good way to look at a story from a high-level though. Also it's nice to see a bunch of chapters categorized as topics which lets people to pick from and mix-and-match. It lets the author focus on what they want their big idea to look like across the story.
I particularly like books that are written in a way that force me to not really think much in terms of plot points, or they're at least more obscured. Although, I find that endings to stories often fail in obscuring their last intentions (not a completely bad thing).
I agree. But so many newer authors have no idea where to even start. This is a way to learn the “rules” which they can then break after they’ve mastered the basics.
how do you enter plot structure into novelcraft?
Okay, I subscribed to the newsletter to get the free stuff. I'm on a page pestering me to complete my profile, with links to "Join a Group" or "Take Course", only to follow them to show no groups and no courses available. I can't seem to get off this page to anything more meaningful.
Oh, and no free stuff. No module, no nothing.
I received two emails after signing up for the newsletter. One was a welcome note and the other contained my login credentials. As soon as I logged in, the free stuff was right there.
@@easternpa2 How wonderful for you. I only got one email, with the subject line "You're In! Here's Your Course and Prompt Library". The Story Hack Foundations link goes to a page labeled "Story Hack Sign-in" and now when I click it, it's just a blank site.
Reach out to jason@storyhacker.ai
@@TheNerdyNovelist I did. Linsey reached out to me.
hey idk if you already got it but if not, I was having the same problem and found a welcoming email with my login info in the "promotions" part of gmail
I've been working on something similar for the last six months. I think i will steal this from you and rework what I have into it. This is a good story base but if you are going to have multiple POV you really need an arc for each character. Mine integrates the five man band trope as well as the mentor and friend trope.
I am interested in the additional chapters layering modules for multiple POVs!
Love the idea, but I can't ever find these things on the site LOL Paid member and looked around but can't find this.
Turned the jump zoom images off. EVERY SENTENCE - ANOTHER JUMP ZOOM! WTF ARE YOU DOING? Imagine reading a book where EVERY sentence was in a different font in a different size.
How do you turn that off? This editing is making me feel nauseous.
I use a similar structure, only it has 36 chapters, 9 in each quarter. I break each quarter into a beginning, middle, and end with each of those three sections having a beginning, middle, and end. Its worked well for me thus far.
SO, a 4 act version of the 3acts-9blocks-27chapters structure. I extended it to having 3 scenes per chapter and three beats per scene. A bit overkill, but I strongly suffer Empty Page Disorder
I would love to see a version for 30 chapters.
Have you considered training a GPT to this model?
Um... I can't find anything related to what you're talking about in your provided link. Where is the forty chapter structure download page?
Me either I thought it was just me. Thanks for pointing that out.
Maybe when you set up for the newsletter it’s automatic I’m not sure though.
Um... It's in the description.
Yes, the description has a link to it but when you click the link at least for me, I can find nothing about it. Maybe it’s me, but I see other people having the same issue.
There's a newsletter sign up, but I've tried signing up multiple times from different accounts and haven't gotten any emails
Jason have you had a deep dive into Dibbly Create yet? Respect you as the #1 youtuber for AI fiction writing, so would love to hear your review on it?
Not sure why people can't find the template. I signed up for the newsletter and got my welcome email and login credentials right away. I logged in and found the template as expected. You also leaked it in one of your videos about writing a book using only prompts. You scrolled through the entire document, so I retyped it (but never shared it) from screenshots.
After watching a few dozen of your videos, I finally signed up for the Novelcrafter trial and I've been using your 24-chapter outline to outline a few different novel ideas. Thanks for everything you do for the community!
i signed up a couple hours ago and like others I haven't received any email yet.
Same here. I’ve actually signed up a couple of times before and I don’t ever see anything back checked the spam folder still nothing
@@robleach460 Not sure what's up. I use DDG email to mask my email. Both emails showed up almost immediately.
Sorry I don’t even know what DDG email is
@@robleach460 Duck Duck Go, the Internet privacy group, offers a free email scrubbing service. You can give a different email address to each entity that wants one and DDG will scrub all trackers out of it before forwarding it to you. I don't know why so many people are not receiving their welcome emails and credentials. Mine went through DDG and arrived almost immediately.
Thanks for the outline! How would you adapt this structure to a multi-protagonist story with chapters jumping from character to character (or even to the antagonist's point of view)?
Just write a list of scenes for each character arc and fold them in. I’m working on some examples for my book on this subject.
What program/platform do you use to make your videos?
how might this story structure be adapted for a videogame narrative?
I couldn't find the document for the 40 Chapter Plot Module
I have a question if I may about AI writing. I've noticed that while AI can write scenes pretty well based on descriptions, it is very bad at writing character progression/chemistry, subplots (romance, sidequests etc.) or the "grand scheme" in which little nuggets come together to form the "oh wow it actually makes sense now" moment. It also struggles massively with clinging too closely to your initial provided ideas instead of naturally progressing them. (For example I wrote that a villain laughs before engaging in combat, and he kept laughing throughout the entire battle). Is there any good way to intertwine these into a natural world in which everyone is a fully fledged person with their own things to do and agendas, instead of just rushing the main plot based on provided chapter outlines and story beats?
Yeah, AI is bad with pacing, with subplots. It struggles to flesh out an outline if I give the first half and ask it to brainstorm for me the second part. It just diverges a lot.
You just have to keep prompting it till you get what you want or edit the output to fit what you want. Then you could ask it to phrase it differently if you aren't that good at putting words together
@@__Mac_ I just realised I have brainstormed the rest of the outline on my own faster than struggling with Ai.
I mean, The Jason’s method might be good if you move from a premise to a synopsis to an outline but if you have a draft or an unfinished outline and want AI to act as a developmental editor, suggesting better plot twists, better scenes instead of your initial vision, it is almost useless. Maybe it is not as sophisticated as necessary for it.
Or, perhaps if I gave it a whole first draft of the first half of the story and ask to brainstorm the second half, it could work. But I doubt it.
Does "whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer" belong in Act 2B or not 2B?
Thanks for this info. Tried to get the 40 chapter outline, but did not receive any email.
Reach out to jason@storyhacker.ai
Jason , HELP! I love your videos. I’ve tried several times to sign up for your newsletter. I can never remember seeing anything, and I really would like to particularly see your new plat structure guide, but I never seem to get your stuff. Please help. tried junk file nothing there.
Reach out to jason@storyhacker.ai
@@TheNerdyNovelist sir I have signed up for your newsletter more than once I just never seem to get anything back. Check the spam file. It’s not there. A quick read shows at least a couple other people had the same issue. Please help.
I have subscribed like 10 times. I have no idea where this chapter list is. Has anyone figured out how to get to it?
You log in at portal.storyhacker.ai if that doesn’t work email us.
@@TheNerdyNovelist Thanks for responding. I went to that URL but didn't work so well. There was no contact information there either, so I tried Facebook.
I love when people don't lie on their titles and when they give theory ADDİNG examples. Some of us need examples to learn better. Like and subscribe without doubt
I’ll be doing a deeper dive with examples later.
What about novellas?
I have the same problem as a few of the others on here in the fact that I subscribed to the newsletter and I cannot seem to see it anywhere :(
Well, at least I know it’s not just me.
Reach out to jason@storyhacker.ai
Is this outline for all genres?
Yes.
Probably a really dumb question so please forgive me.
How would you adapt the forty chapters for multiple characters and how many chapters would you use.
Sorry still new to this 😂😊
First off, if you’re just starting out I wouldn’t do a book with multiple POV characters. But to do so you’d need to make a list of scenes for the development of each character then fold those in.
@@TheNerdyNovelist ah okay, thank you!
Can I repost your content on my website? I will include the original link.
As a postmodernist I fundamentally disagree with your attitude toward rules and "good" art, however that's not to say rules can't be extremely helpful! as a beginner writer this video was super informative for me
Why would a postmodernist disagree if all opinions are equally valid? Or are they all equally invalid? Perhaps the only culture that a postmodernist thinks is valid is postmodernism or is that also invalid if you think about it? Perhaps all validity and invalidity are invalid, but would that make any sense?
@@oldsoul3539 ok 🙂
😂😂😂
Would this work for a short story?
No. It’s too big of a format. Short stories are on my list to tackle.
@@TheNerdyNovelist Thanks. I suspected that was the case. Looking forward to your advice re short stories.
I like this video, but it would be useful if you, well, used some of the most popular pieces of media as an example
That’ll be coming in my deeper dive to come. And in the book I’m writing on the subject.
Hey man are there any uncensored AI writers out there? I want to write extreme horror and every one i've tried holds back or is vague especially if it's something sexual or really nasty and violent. Cheers!
Try mistral large
@@RiccardoHoe Cheers man!
That seems to be pretty much the Hollywood story pattern, which might be great for screenplays. But I think it is not that good for novels. Maybe at best if one wants to write very formulaic genre fiction, then it could work, but even then I think this might teach new authors some bad habits.
i guess ihave to type it myself then
👍✌️💯🔥
I wish people would stop trying to write something that sells. Write what you want to write. If it sells great. If it doesn't so what. You've still written something you wanted to write.
In the real world, people have bills to pay. Not everyone writes as a hobby. If you do, good for you.
@shebreathesingold8043 if you're not writing what you want to write, you might as well be working at a job that allows you to do that.
Why would one thing exclude the other?
@@michaelrasmussen6318 Maybe it doesn't but I think it does. It has to do with integrity.
@@pdworld3421 they dont care they only want to feed a idea into an ai system and have it spit out a novel they dont care whats inside the novel they do care about the cover because thats a selling point but other then that they just want to produce 20 novels a day automatically and hope for the best on kdp. its a get rich quick scheme and some people are just ignorant (they dont know any better).
im with ya i just write books for my kid when she asks for a new story which unfortantly is alot. i only recently started putting stuff on kdp but i could care less if it sold thats what my day job is for.
I will definitely be buying the book. In the meantime, maybe somebody could send me the structure and I’ll give you my email address.
Yeah, that clicker is super annoying. You're not training a dog.
Also the slides should be stationary, not floating around the screen in a nauseating way.
Major distraction from the content of the video, which otherwise seems good.
I'm honestly sick of reading the same story with different characters. It's so predictable. How does one get around that?
Structure is not the same as a formula. Even the most original books and films (take Barbie for example) all follow a similar structure. At least they do if they are critically acclaimed or box office super hits.
@@TheNerdyNovelist I find all the popular movies repetitious and boring
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Dear Sir, if you could would you share your approach for writing good lyrics for a song.
Thanks for support. Best Regards
Did you deliberately put a typo in your thumbnail to get more interaction?
1500 words a chapter? are your videos all based on like ai generation?
my chapters are like 5k or more each i could imagine a chapter ever 4 pages or 1500 words.
honestly can i not just write the novel in 3 chapters of 15k or 20k words each? or just not have chapters at all i would much rather write a 80k word chapter-less novel then trying to find start and stop points for each chapter.
That’s just a sample for this particular model. It can be more or less. I generally recommend shorter because readers are more likely to feel like they’re making progress. It’s recommended by many authors like James Patterson, but is not required. Some genres like epic fantasy expect more.
Should've gone with the bare minimum structure first.
Inciting incident
Turning points
Crisis
Climax
Resolution
Those are all included here.
Jason, can I ask why you have added that horrible 'muzak' to your videos? It really detracts from the excellent words and visuals. So annoying.
bro fix your email stuff
Your Outline is clearly designed for action, epic-fantasy, and sci-fi genre stories.
It's really not a generic 'plot structure' outline framework. Saying it doesn't make it so, Jason.
Frankly, it's unwieldy and requires more work than necessary to adapt for literary fiction, romance, and mystery genre stories. There are known, proven to work plot frameworks models that are superior to your personal beast of an outline.
"Modules' for outlining other genres will muddy and agitate the how-to-plot a story waters for newbie authors struggling to not drown.
Try as you do to appeal to all storytellers most of your writing / storytelling vlogs are skewed to fantasy fiction which turn me off.
I'd welcome more detailed, how-to use NovelCrafter videos and fewer fantasy sci-fi focused videos wherein you read aloud the AI generated text. That's BORING and really not educational except for you (thinking out loud).
The three-act structure Jason covers here has been detailed many times by others. The Star Wars/sci-fi/action application works well as an example here because those popular genres are well known throughout our culture. But if you read Alexandra Sokoloff and many others who cover the same space, you'll see that this structure is broadly applicable across nearly all genres.
Stop with the words blasting across as you're talking, very annoying. I love how you think all stories should follow a cookie-cutter "plot module," lol
I figure the longer you write the more you will pants 👖 parts of your process till you may not even need an outline.
But I hate how pantsers make plotters feel like their method is inferior to pantsing, when it would make more sense to have a structure guide you along the parts you are not so strong in.
Pantsers usually suffer from writers block the most, not having a clue where to go next. When plotters usually have the steps laid out for them already.