When lecturing on plot, New York Times best-selling author Brandon Sanderson often breaks structure down into three parts: promise, progress, and payoff. These fit beginning, middle, and end, respectively.
While I find this approach too simplistic for what I need to write a great story (hey, I'm not Brandon Sanderson!), it is an excellent foundation to build on. Without these things in place, your story will always be lacking. Without these things in place, you'll run into problems that will lead to bored (or even annoyed) readers.
Lately, I've been thinking about how these principles not only apply to the story as a whole, but how they are useful for smaller structural units as well--acts and scenes.
As always, I'm not going to say using them is vital to every scene or every act of every story.
But I will say, they can be super helpful if this approach resonates with you, your story, your act, or your scene.
Before I explain all that, though, let me give a brief overview of Sanderson's perspective . . . (though I admit to sprinkling in some of my own thoughts along the way).
Promise, Progress, Payoff
Essentially all stories are made up of beginnings, middles, and ends. And as mentioned, Brandon Sanderson assigns these three different purposes (broadly speaking of course). The beginning makes promises to the audience. The middle shows progress toward those promises. And the end illustrates the payoff of the promises and progress.
Beginning--Promise
When the reader opens up the book, they want to know what sort of story this is going to be (and if they want to stick around for it). As a writer, it's your job to make promises that convey that.
Sanderson talks about several promises you need to make:
- Genre (The opening of the book should make it clear the story is science fiction, historical, romance, crime, or whatever it is. However, Sanderson does acknowledge the cover, title, and back cover will likely illustrate this as well.)
- Tone (the feel--will this be comedic? Dark? Whimsical? Cheerful? etc.)
- Plot (Will this be a mystery? Travelogue? A heist? A rivalry? etc.)
- Character (Who is the protagonist and what is he like?)
- There should also be a promise of change or conflict--it's a promise that something will be in motion.
I admit that Sanderson uses the term "promises" a little differently than I have on here in the past, but I think it's fair to call these promises (and Sanderson also admits to wanting the alliteration of three P's: promise, progress, payoff).
I want to mention, too, that you are essentially setting up the story here. You are conveying to the audience where and when the story takes place, who it's about, what's going to happen, and why it matters (the "why" would be the stakes). When you look at Sanderson's list of promises, you see they basically cover all that as well. (But I'm pointing it out for something I will bring up later.)
Middle--Progress
When the reader gets into the middle of the story, you need to keep them reading by showing progress on what you promised. If this story is a mystery, you need to show the characters finding clues. If the story is about traveling to a destination, you need to show the characters traveling. If this story is about a competitive rivalry, you need to show each character striving to outdo the other.
After introducing the protagonist in the beginning, you need to show how she is progressing toward her wants, as well as how that character is progressing through her character arc.
You may also want to show "progression" related to genre. If you introduced a magic system in the beginning, you may want to dig deeper into it in the middle. (And you don't want to introduce magic in the beginning, and then have no magic in the middle (usually).)
End--Payoff
This one is pretty straightforward. As the reader gets to the end, you are going to pay off everything you promised and progressed. The mystery gets solved. The destination gets reached. The rivalry ends with one or the other as the victor.
The character achieves her objective and/or completes her arc.
And you'll probably have the biggest, best illustrations of your genre at the end.
This is all simplistically speaking though. Of course not every story ends with the character reaching her destination or achieving her objective. There are absolutely ways to turn the ending with a surprise, or twist or subvert an expectation, but that's beyond the scope of today's article.
Basically, the ending is about doing a good, satisfying job of completing what you started.
As Brandon Sanderson says, ideally you want to give the audience the expected thing (what you first promised), but in a way that is better (read: bigger, more surprising, more powerful) than expected.
Application to Acts
Recently I've been thinking about how these same basic principles can be used to create satisfying acts.
If you've been following me for a long time, you may know that I see basic story structure as fractal.
This basic shape has smaller versions of it that live inside it, like a Russian nesting doll.
Not only does the story as a whole take this shape.
But so does each act.
And most scenes.
It's just that, the smaller the structural unit, the less impactful and important the pieces are.
I think I also feel that way with the concepts of promise, progress, and payoff. Yes, they're very important to the story as a whole, but to a smaller degree, for many stories, they are also important to acts.
If it suits your story, you can likewise view acts as following these principles of promise, progress, and payoff--they just show up a little watered down.
I'm not necessarily saying you have to promise genre, tone, and everything else, all over again.
But what I mean is, it's this idea that there is a sense of setup and promise for the act.
Then a sense of progress.
Then a sense of payoff.
If we look at the first act of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (which I've been using as an act example lately), you'll see how this works.
The story opens with the Dursleys and then Harry being left on the doorstep before we move forward in time to when he is ten--this has both promises for the story as a whole, and also for the act.
In the middle of Act I, strange things start happening. Harry can make odd things happen, and odd things seem to be happening around him, while the Dursleys continue to hate anything out of the ordinary (including Harry).
We hit Act I's peak turn, which is when Hagrid reveals Harry is a wizard, and he's been accepted into Hogwarts.
Promise. Progress. Payoff.
Start Act II (Part I).
As Hagrid takes Harry to Diagon Alley, we get promises of what Harry's new life will be like as he gets a wand, and we also see Hagrid take a mysterious package from Gringotts.
Harry starts his new life and begins learning magic. On the train ride to Hogwarts, Ron mentions someone tried to rob Gringotts, and later Harry learns from the paper, that that was the same day he went there with Hagrid.
Harry goes to meet Malfoy for a midnight duel, and then finds the trapdoor with Fluffy. Harry realizes that whatever Hagrid took from Gringotts is now below the trapdoor, being protected. Soon after, someone tries to steal the item (which results in a troll getting loose). The thief is at Hogwarts.
Promise. Progress. Payoff.
No, it's not as big or as obvious as the story as a whole, but I certainly think it can be useful at times to look at acts in this way.
Application to Scenes
Likewise, it may also be helpful to consider these principles in relation to scenes.
When you open the scene, and set it up, you make promises about what's going to happen in the scene.
Then you show the character taking action toward an objective (progress).
Then you hit the scene's peak, where it often becomes clear if the character did or didn't get their scene-level objective (simplistically speaking). Promise, progress, payoff.
So as a quick example, Harry plays his first quidditch match. . . .
The start of the scene sets up the time and place and characters involved, and makes the promise that yes, this scene is going to be about a quidditch match. We know Harry's objective is to catch the snitch. We know the stakes.
As the game starts, we get a sense of progress as the characters play, and Harry searches for the snitch. (And there are some other surprises along the way, too.)
The game ends with Harry successfully catching (in his mouth) the snitch.
Promise. Progress. Payoff.
--They can be useful for any structural unit. 😊
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Recently I attended FanX as a panelist, and it turned out great! Later this month I will be teaching a class on balancing dialogue, description, action, and interiority in scenes, at LDSPMA in Orem, Utah. I'll also have a vendor table while there. (So if it seems like I've been slightly MIA lately, just know I've been busy with these things ☺️)
