Tag: 3actstructure

How to Write a Trilogy

Quan

Trilogies are a holy grail in storytelling. They make any story larger and grander, and can create a real connection over time between the reader and the central characers. I’m in the process of writing my own trilogy, so I thought I’d do some digging into what makes trilogies work. I found a bunch of great advice on a bunch of other blogs, so I thought I’d share my findings with you, along with some of my own observations from writing my own trilogy.

  1. The first part of the story must be able to stand on its own merits. The Master & Commander series of books are quite popular, but when adapted for screen, never made it past the first movie (despite the movie being pretty damned good and making a lot of money). The lesson is that you cannot assume that your storyarc will make it to book two. Make sure your first story is strong and well-told and can work as a standalone story.
  2. Part two takes everything that worked about part one and ramps everything up, the stakes are higher, the character swings are bolder, and the consequences more severe. And part three is the closure where story arcs conclude and loose ends are tied up.
  3. Throughout the stories, there have to be details, thematic or otherwise, that tie the three stories together. Ideally, your reader should be able to sit and go through all three stories in one sitting and feel that they have read one complete narrative.
  4. To piggyback off of point one: each part of the trilogy has to work as a self-contained story within itself while at the same time advancing the overall narrative. You never know which story will be somebody’s jumping-on point, so you want to make sure they get a complete story in that one instance, whether they are reading part one or part three. At the same time, the most successful trilogies have a narrative thread that develops over the course of the series. It could be a plot arc or a character development arc, or even a setting/environmental arc. I’m a huge James Bond fan, and I love each of its 25+ movies, but the stories pitting him against Spectre and Ernst Starvo Blofeld resonate the most with me because the rivalry between the two is built and developed over the course of multiple stories (i.e. Dr, No through Diamonds are Forever was an excellent build, as was Casino Royale through Spectre). Likewise, the original Foundation Trilogy chronicled the fall of the Galactic Empire and the rise of the Foundation over the course of many generations.

For me, a good trilogy is a prime example of the 3 act rule that I spoke of in earlier posts, just in a bigger package and working at a Meta level. To review, Magic: The Gathering Head of R&D Mark Rosewater (who also wrote episodes of Roseanne) described the process in three steps: 1) get your protagonist stuck up a tree. 2) throw rocks at them. 3) get your character down from the tree. This works withn the confines of a regular story, but it also works within a trilogy. The first story gets your character stuck up the tree. Even within your protagonist’s resolution of the story’s central plot, there are seeds planted which show that the greater problem has not been solved yet. Think Star Wars: yes, the Death Star was destroyed, but the Empire still rules the galaxy, and the big bad (Darth Vader) was still out there to create havoc in a future movie. The second story raises the stakes and truly puts the heroes in jeopardy of not completing their overall goal; like in Empire Strikes Back, where Luke and Company were dealt devastating blows by Vader, Palpatine and the Empire and the only central plot of the story was whether our heroes could survive it all and make it to the end of the movie. And the third story ties everything together and resolves everything, like in Return of the Jedi where Luke finally redeems his father and destroys the leader of the Empire…along with another Death Star.

There are a lot of things to keep in mind if you are planning a trilogy, but then there are added challenges if a story you originally hadn’t intended on expanding organically develops into something that needs more installments. Maybe your standalone story is so successful that your fans of your publisher demand a follow-up or two. Or maybe you have so much going on in your sequel that you can’t contain it all in one book. In those instances, the best thing to do is to do a deep dive into the world you created in book one. Pick out as many aspects of the settings, plots, subplots and characters that could be explored, and find an overall theme you can build an overarching narrative from that can carry multiple books.

So if you are hankering for a good narrative challenge, try taking one of your stories and expanding it into a 3-part saga. You might discover some new things about your world that will only serve to enhance your original idea.

How Storytelling Applies to Other Types of Writing

Quan

If you have been reading my blog regularly, you know that my main focus has been on improving as a storyteller. But also if you’ve read my author interviews, you would see that many of the authors I have interviewed wrote nonfiction books. There is much more to writing than just writing fiction. There are nonfiction writers, marketing writers, journalists, technical writers, essayists, and a plethora of other forms of writing that people engage in.

But I maintain that storytelling can be, and often is, a crucial aspect in all forms of writing, above and beyond just fiction.

Storytelling makes any writing more engaging

Anyone that has read a textbook for class or research knows that a lot of writing can be dry and uninteresting. It is a reason why a lot of people dread reading. A good story takes the reader on a journey where they follow how everything progresses over time. The way you write your piece can take your readers on that journey. The reader in now invested in the narrative you are presenting, and wondering how, or even if, the subject you are presenting can solve the problem you have created. Now your reader wants to know more about the subject you are writing about. They want to know the details because each detail you present could be part of the solution to the problem, or even present more problems that need to be resolved. It’s human nature: if you witness something begin that catches your attention, you will naturally want to see it through to its completion. You can use that to your advantage.

Benefits of adding a storytelling element to your writing

Making your writing piece into a story helps make your point more digestible. Your writing is no longer just a stream of facts statistics and ideas. There is a definitive, driving point to what you have written, and all of your supporting information now has a clear direction it is pointing in. If you are marketing, or writing to sell something, telling a story help the reader envision themselves in the situation where your product or service would be beneficial. That way they can better visualize the benefit your service or product will bring to them.

Creating a narrative.

The classic 3-act structure can be used in any setting. Simply, put, act one presents a problem, act two is the process of trying to solve the problem, and act there is the resolution of the problem. So now the question becomes how to compile your writings to fit this structure. Here is a simple, three-step way to do hat.

1. Find The Problem

Whatever you are writing about, whether it be advice you are giving, a product or service you are trying to promote, a theory you are trying to explain, or an explanation of how something works, it is in response to something that created a need for what you are writing about. Start by pinpointing where exactly that need was generated. This is the beginning of your story.

2. Find The Solution

Whatever conclusion you were going o write about, whether it actually solves your problem or not, is your solution in this context. It is the end of your story and the resolution for what you are setting up.

3. Find The Process

Now you have to figure out how to get from the genesis of your problem to its resolution. This is where all of your data, or historical references, or your selling points come into play. You actually have some creative liberty here with how you present the details, you can show how each of your points responds to different aspects of the problem. You could show how your solution initially responds to the problem, how the problem reacts (or present counter-arguments to your solutions), and how the solution responds to those responses, or a number of other ways of presenting the information. The most important thing is to show a progression where the problem you have pinpointed is resolved over time. This is the journey that you are taking you reader on.

If you can mold your non-creative writing project into a story narrative, you will make your writing more engaging and appealing to the reader, and they will be much more comfortable with reading what you wrote completely from beginning to end. Give it a try and see what you come up with.