Goals: the REAL Framework of Plot

Often in the writing community, people define plot by conflict. "Story = conflict"--or so they say. In reality, goals, not conflict, are the true foundation and framework of plot. It's by changing and evolving the protagonist's goal that you truly progress the plot, not by how much or how little conflict you have.

This isn't to say conflict isn't important; it most certainly is. I still consider it a critical element (most of the time). But more important than that, is actually the goal, which is where true plot starts, anyway.

You can't have conflict, until you have an antagonistic force. The antagonistic force is a form of opposition--it's something in the way of the protagonist's pathway. In other words, it's something in the way of the goal. So, you can't have a real antagonist, until the protagonist has a goal.

Okay, already some of you who are new around here, are chomping at the bit to tell me I'm wrong. You want to tell me you can think of great stories where the protagonist wasn't pursuing a goal. She was just enjoying her life, until something interesting happened.

And that's one of the problems with talking about goals in the writing community: most of us have a narrow idea of what a goal is. Too many of us envision big or aspirational goals, but that's actually only one type of goal.

At the most basic level, there are, in fact, three types of goals: to obtain something, to avoid (or stop) something, or to maintain something.

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The Importance of Conveying Character Plans

Character plans may sound like kind of a boring topic to cover; they aren't as exciting as character goals, antagonists, conflicts, or stakes, but they are often still critical to communicate to your audience. In fact, conveying a character's plans will reinforce many of those exciting plot elements and help them show up in more impactful ways.

I consider the primary plot elements to be goals, antagonists, conflicts, and consequences.

And I consider the secondary plot elements to be progress, setbacks, costs, and turning points.

And the tertiary plot elements are plans, gaps, and crises.

Plans reinforce goals and help create a sense of progress.

If a character wants to achieve a goal, but has no plan, then the goal feels more like a wish. It's what the character wishes would happen, but the character isn't trying to make it happen herself. She isn't making plans for how to make it happen.

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Mastering Midpoints (The Saviors of Saggy Story Middles)

I've been pulling my hair out lately trying to fix the middle part of one of my novels, and one of the main problems with it, relates to the midpoint. You see, I plotted and largely wrote this manuscript years ago, before I had an in-depth understanding of story structure--like a lot of us have probably done. Heck, a lot of us don't even like thinking about story structure because it feels too restrictive and formulaic, and that's fine. But whether you plot your stories' structures by the books or just do what you want as you go, understanding story structure can be hecka important. And even if you hate it, at least knowing how it functions can be super useful, especially if you are trying to troubleshoot what is wrong with a manuscript, like I was weeks (months?) ago.

Once I realized that my problem related to the midpoint, I was able to begin brainstorming (and praying) how I might fix it. And a lot of times, the midpoint is key in doctoring a problematic middle. I kind of like to think of it as the savior.

The midpoint typically happens in the middle of the plot (no surprise there). It is the moment when new, significant information--or at least a shift in context--enters and turns the story in a different direction.

(Wow, is that definition vague enough?)

Now, the direction of the story can change completely, like a 180, or it may be very slight and subtle, more like 10 degrees, but it changes in a significant way.

Most often, in a typical story structure, the change is this:

The protagonist moves from being primarily responsive to being more (pro)active, in regards to the main plot.

So, it's usually like:

Character responding to problems --> Midpoint (new information or context) --> Character being proactive toward main problems.

The "new information" is just something that allows the character (or audience) to have a greater understanding of what's going on, so that they can now be more active in attacking the problem.

There are literally so many ways this can play out, which is why the midpoint can seem difficult to grasp, so I'm going to grab some popular examples:

In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the midpoint happens when Harry overhears the professors in the Three Broomsticks and learns Sirius Black is the reason his parents are dead.

Why? Because prior to this, he is responding or reacting to the fact Sirius is after him. But after this, he wants to seek revenge on Sirius, in other words, mentally, he becomes active in "attack mode."

In Legally Blonde, the midpoint happens when Elle realizes that she will never be good enough for Warner.

Why? Because prior to this, she is just responding to Warner's breakup. But after this she is actively trying to succeed at Harvard, with an intensity she hasn't had prior--she buys all new materials, studies hard, answers questions in classes.

In Interstellar, the midpoint happens when Cooper, Murph, and by extension, the audience, realize that there is no real "Plan A"--everyone on Earth is going to die.

Why? Because prior to this, Cooper is responding to the destiny of humankind, but after this, he goes into an active "attack mode" by planning to do whatever it takes to return to Murph and Earth right away.

In Ralph Breaks the Internet, the midpoint is when Ralph realizes he can get the money they need from making viral videos.

Why? Because prior to this, he is unsuccessfully responding to the broken steering situation and the internet itself, and after this, he hatches a solid plan to get the cash, with a better understanding of how the internet works.

But a midpoint can be rather loose, which is why it's hard to define and wrap our minds around. For example, I may use terms like "respond" and "reaction" paired with "attack" and "pro-action," but you could argue from another perspective, some protagonists are doing all of them all the time. For example, from the inciting incident, Ralph is trying to actively solve a problem, and same goes for Cooper. But here's the thing. At the midpoint, new information or a new understanding allows them to "attack," better or more accurately, the focal conflict.

Think of it as a moment that jump-starts the protagonist into a different direction.

In some cases, this may be a rather unexpected direction. 

In Lion King, Simba spends the first part of the story reacting to the fact he will someday be king, but then the midpoint hits--Mufasa dies and Scar tells Simba no one will ever love or forgive him--Simba goes into an "attack" mode of sorts, except his is that rather than just responding to being king someday, he proactively chooses to never be king, and takes action by running away and starting a new life. It relates to the main conflict of the story, but his "attack mode" is to actively, intentionally, run away. After all, he thinks he is the problem, so in a sense, he is "attacking" himself.

The content of a midpoint can be very flexible, as you can see from these examples. If you want to get a better discerning eye for what a midpoint is and how many different forms it can take, start pausing movies smack dab in the middle--there should be something around there that enters the story and pushes it in a new direction. You can also try opening books to the middle and searching around there. Harry discovering Sirius is responsible for his parents' deaths is near the middle. In Stranger Things season one, Will's body is found smack dab in the middle, which is new information that changes context, and therefore the direction of the story. And after that point, the characters have to all decide how to act next.

So now that we have some idea of what a midpoint is (significant information that changes the direction of the story, usually by changing the protagonist), let's talk about how it actually works.

Step One: New Significant Information Enters . . .

In order for a story or protagonist to start going a new direction, there has to be something that causes that. Information. Or an event that is new information.

Or at least a shift in our understanding of the information we already have (context shift), which in a sense, is its own kind of "new" information.

But let's not confuse ourselves quite yet.

In order for the information to significantly change the direction of the story, the information itself needs to be significant.

Remember how I broke down what constitutes "significant" a few weeks ago?

Something is significant when it either:

1) Has important personal consequences, or
2) Has far-reaching, broad consequences

So, new information enters the story that has personal or far-reaching consequences. This means that the midpoint itself is either going to "broaden" or "deepen" the story, or do both. And it's going to do this in a powerful way.

Elle realizing that she will never be good enough for Warner has deep (a.k.a. personal) consequences. Harry realizing that Sirius is responsible for his parents' death has deep consequences.

Cooper learning everyone on Earth is going to die has broad consequences--all of humankind.

Simba believing he killed his father has both personal and broad consequences, as it affects himself and his whole kingdom.

Sometimes the new information is big and mind-blowing, maybe even a juicy twist, like in Incredibles 2 when Elastigirl realizes that Evelyn is the real Screenslaver, and she's in deep trouble. Or it can be subtle, like a character making an important connection between information he already had.

Like I touched on earlier. The new information can come as:

Information

- Ralph learning he can make money by making viral videos is straight up information.

- Harry learning Sirius is responsible for his parents' deaths is straight up information.

An Event

- Scar killing Mufasa and telling Simba it's his fault is an event. Mufasa being dead and Simba believing he is responsible is the "new information" (along with the fact Scar actually killed Mufasa).

- In Stranger Things season one, Will's body being recovered is an event that brings in new information. The characters either have to accept he's actually dead or prove to others he is not.

Or a Context Shift

- Dr. Brand reciting a poem he's recited through the whole movie isn't really anything new. But him reciting it on his death bed in that tone shifts the context and gives it a whole new meaning, which leads to characters' new realizations.


Whatever the case, something significant arrives in the middle that changes how the story has been going. And this something needs to have greater potential consequences than probably anything that has happened since the inciting incident.

Step Two: . . . Which Leads to a New Direction or Understanding

Now that new, significant information has entered the story, it means the protagonist or the audience (or both) will change their approach to the problems, because their understanding has changed.

In some stories, the change may be aggressive. For example, in Incredibles 2, I would consider the results of the midpoint to be more aggressive and drastic. Elasticgirl falls under Evelyn's control, and later, so do other superheroes. The midpoint means that this problem is going to be much more difficult to solve than we first thought. (Note though, how all the of protagonists (the family) change more drastically after that moment.)

In other stories, the change may be softer. Sure, Harry now wants revenge on Sirius, but content-speaking, this doesn't drastically change what happens in the plot, until the climax, when he meets Sirius. The midpoint is still critical, for Harry, and for our understanding of the story, but Harry's "attack" mode is not super aggressive. The midpoint largely changes the story's context. We all now see everything with Sirius in a different light, and we also now have more things to worry about.

In either method, the midpoint kicks up the tension, like a catalyst.

Variations

Like everything in writing, you can break rules and play with variations. Once you understand what a basic midpoint is, you can mess around with it, to an extent.

Often a midpoint is, well, a point, a moment, an instant, or a single scene. But sometimes, like plot points, it might be more of a sequences of scenes. It might be a sequence of information. For example, in Into the Spider-verse, the midpoint is when the heroes successfully get the computer from Alchemax and realize where they can get another goober. Prior to this, Miles and Peter are largely responding and reacting to their situations. During the course of the Alchemax scene, they learn to work together, and Miles learns to use his abilities. They also learn some new information about Kingpin, Doc Oc, and the collider. But in the next scene, it's Gwen who says she knows how to fix their problems. There isn't really a strong, critical, earth-moving moment, but rather a sequence of new things that bring them into "attack mode."

At some midpoints, the protagonist doesn't learn new information, but only the audience does. The protagonist can still get more desperate in solving the problems, but it's the audience alone that has the greater context. Because it still changes the direction--our understanding--of the story, has significant consequences, and kicks up tension, it can still work as a midpoint, if an unusual one.

On the flip side, it may be that the midpoint brings in information that is new to the protagonist, but that the audience already knew or surmised earlier, but the fact the protagonist now knows changes the direction and meaning of the story in significant ways, jump-starting the next part of the plot.

Some stories may place the midpoint a little earlier or a little later than the middle, and if that doesn't mess up the pacing or make the stakes drag, why not?

Some stories may even have multiple midpoints. In Story Engineering by Larry Brooks, he talks about this in regards to The Da Vinci Code. One moment is when Langdon and Sophie decide to meet Professor Teabing, who is "The Teacher," and another moment is when they learn what the Holy Grail actually is. Each moment changes the direction and meaning of the story.

In particular, you may have multiple midpoints when you have multiple plot lines. For example, in Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry learning that information about Sirius is a midpoint, but a lot of the other plot lines hit a midpoint near there as well. Harry hasn't been able to get to Hogsmeade, but in that same chapter, Fred and George give him the Marauader's Map--new information that drastically changes his ability to travel. There is also a plot line about winning the Quidditch cup, and near the middle, Harry's broom gets busted and someone sends him a Fireblot, drastically changing things.

For the werewolf/Lupin plot line, near the middle, Snape substitutes D.A.D.A. and teaches about werewolves, particularly how to recognize one. With the Hagrid and Buckbeak plot line, in the middle, the trio learns that Buckbeak has to go to trial, and they promise to help with it. With the Dementor plot line, around the middle, Harry falls off his broom and then Lupin offers to teach Harry the Patronus charm.

In short, every plot line hits something new and significant that changes the direction of it. It is almost always something greater than anything that has happened since that plot line's inciting incident.

If you find your story middle isn't coming together, check the midpoint(s). Think of the midpoint as the nail you hang your story's whole middle on. It transitions from the first half of the middle to the second half of the middle. It's the story's middle middle. 


Related Posts:
Story Structure Explained: Pinch Points, Midpoints, Plot Points, and Middles
How to Write Stakes in Storytelling
What to Outline When Starting a Story

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Breaking Writing Rules Right: "Only One Impossibility"

You may have heard of the "one impossibility rule," the idea that the audience's suspension of disbelief can only handle one impossible thing. In this article, I'm going to talk about what the rule is, why it's a rule, and when and how to break it.

What's the Rule?

When we write, we invite the audience into our fictive universe. In order to take part, the audience must have what's called a "willing suspension of disbelief," meaning that they are willing to enjoy the story even though it's not real.

For example, maybe your story has fairies in it. But fairies aren't real. However, the audience is willing to accept that for the story.

The Rule:

In a story, only one impossibility can exist.

Why It's a Rule

Most audiences can only take in so much impossibility before their suspension of disbelief is no longer . . . suspended.

They might accept with the premise of the story that there are fairies. But if your story has not only fairies but also aliens invading the planet, there is going to be a problem.

That's two different impossibilities.

And they don't go together.

Take that a step further and add the fact that in your fictive universe, dogs have overcome humans in the species hierarchy, so they are the ones running society--and now we have three impossibilities.

It's too much. Every time you add an impossibility, you narrow your audience. With these three, I've really narrowed audience. 

My examples are a bit exaggerated, but these are the sorts of things that the one impossibility rule is referring to.

However, it can sometimes be used in other situations.

One thing the audience has very little tolerance for is when human behavior doesn't make sense. Maybe your protagonist's mom dies, and he doesn't even grieve. That seems impossible. And the more you stack on unlikely human behavior, the more the audience's suspension of disbelief wanes.

For more on problems with unbelievability, see "Inconceivable! Dealing with Problems of Unbelievability."

How to Break It

By now you may have thought of one or more stories that clearly have more than "one impossibility." In a high fantasy, you may have fairies and dragons and dwarves and elves and centaurs . . . the list goes on.

Or maybe you thought of a rarer rule break, like a story that deals with both an alien invasion and restoring faith in God. Putting a belief of God in can be considered a big no-no in the industry when writing science fiction. From one perspective, you are dealing with two impossibilities. (I'm not saying I feel this way, I'm just talking about the industry.)

Or maybe you thought of something stranger still, a story where part of your soul lives outside your body in the form of an animal, where one of the intelligent species are (randomly) bears, where there is a clan witches, and some of the main characters are quite literally at war with God.

Clearly this rule can and has been broken. So let's talk about how to do that.

1. Use an Umbrella

The reason high fantasy gets away with so many impossibilities is because everything actually fits under one big impossibility: an imaginary world.

Sure, in our reality dragons and elves and dwarves don't exist.

But in a completely fictional world, like Middle-earth, all of them do, and more.

Tolkien, like basically all high fantasy writers, gets away with so much impossibility by lumping them together under one big one. Other examples include Alice in Wonderland, The Chronicles of Narnia, and even Star Wars (in a galaxy far, far away).

Even though Harry Potter includes the real world, it does this same thing--everything impossible comes from a magic society within our world, that's the umbrella.

The umbrella does not even necessarily need to be a world or society. Those are just the obvious examples. It could be an origin, history, or something else. The idea is that the one impossibility encompasses and explains all others.

2. Make Connections

Similarly, the audience is more likely to take in more than one impossibility if they connect in some way. Maybe you are reading a novel that has vampires in the real world. Then the second book in the series deals with werewolves. What?

But it's okay, because Stephenie Meyer made them connect by explaining that werewolves exist because of the vampires--they are the natural predators of vampires (yes, I just used Twilight as an example) (yes, I know other stories put vampires and werewolves together as enemies).

When you use this method, you usually want to build off what the audience already knows. They already know about the vampires, great. So when you explain the werewolves, make sure to relate it to the vampires. This will make it easier for the audience to swallow.

Of course, there are some stories that don't do that. Usually in those cases, the writer may introduce them as two separate things and explain the connection later. If you chose to do this, you should know that it's more difficult to pull off, and it will likely narrow your audience, because people might be rolling their eyes and stop reading before they get to the connection. However it has and can be done.

In rare occasions, the connections may not be concretely obvious, but instead thematic. What do invading aliens have to do with regaining faith in God? Well, nothing, directly. Except that it works together thematically in a beautiful way in Signs. Keep in mind, though, that this is one of the reasons some people hate that movie. So for some people, it did not work--in other words, it narrowed the audience. That's fine, if you are willing to pay that cost and take that risk.

3. Shift Context

Sometimes you can get away with multiple impossibilities if you don't present them as all impossibilities to begin with. In Interstellar, we are dealing with some pretty heavy science fiction, but then on the other hand, one of the main characters believes there is a ghost in her room.

I would hazard a guess though, that most of the audience didn't believe there was a real ghost in the room. Instead we can accept that the character believes that. As we get more information and the context shifts, we realize the "ghost" really was a person.

Though worth noting is that it is still ultimately explained by science, so the movie also connects it the other impossibilities.

But my point is, you may be able to do something similar. Maybe we think the second impossibility is something other than it actually is, and it's truly explained later.

4. Foreshadow

 Sometimes you can get away with more than one impossibility if you foreshadow it right.

I know a writer who saw Arrival and loved it up until the ending, where the entire story was "ruined" because it "broke the one impossibility rule."

I'm going to have to agree to disagree with that. All of the impossibilities, especially the last, were foreshadowed from the beginning, so when I encountered them, as an audience member, I was prepared.

Also notice how that movie also incorporates context shifts and connections.

The story essential has three impossibilities in it, but in my opinion, they pulled them off stunningly.

However, it didn't work for that one writer, so, like I said above, you are always taking that risk.

But then there are people like me and my family, who loved the story even more and were brought to tears because of how it incorporated three impossibilities.

Basically if you are breaking the one impossibility rule, you are probably polarizing your audience, which is sometimes a good thing, if you want word-of-mouth advertising.

5. Utilize Tone

Tone can go a long way in letting you get away with the impossible. This is especially the case with what are called "unreality" stories.

Unreality stories take place in what's recognized as the real world . . . but it isn't. It's an unreality. It's best explained through examples. Here are some unreality stories:

A Series of Unfortunate Events
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Matilda
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Edward Scissorhands 
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Like I talked about in the last section, you may realize that unreality stories can be very polarizing: You either love it, or you hate it.

Notice how all of the examples I gave have more than one impossibility (sometimes completely unconnected), but for audiences okay with the unreality genre, that's not a problem. (Which reminds me, it's also worth noting genre does play a role in what you can get away with).

If you establish the right tone, you can get away with almost anything.

6. Acknowledge the Impossibility

In some cases, you can get away with multiple impossibilities if you validate to the audience how impossible, unlikely, or strange it is, on the page. Since I have two posts that go into this, I'm not going to reiterate everything, but you can read more here and here.

7. Keep the Reader Hooked and Invested

Sometimes you can get away with more than one impossibility if the reader is already deeply invested in the story. They may be so hooked, so pulled in, that adding a second impossibility isn't going to ruin it--as long as you don't do anything too crazy.

Ask yourself (and maybe your beta-readers), is adding this one impossibility really going to stop the reader from reading and enjoying the story? It might give them pause, but you might be able to get away with it. After all, it is a story.

8.  Start with the Most Familiar Impossibility

Everyone knows what a dragon is, even if they aren't real. So it's easier for the audience to accept that.

In Spider-verse we are dealing with two impossibilities that don't . . . really even connect . . . or fit under an umbrella. 1 - that radioactive spiders can bite people and turn them superhuman. 2 - that there are parallel realities. Those are both impossibilities, and they don't actually go together.

But the audience is willing to accept it, because they are so familiar with Spider-man and superhero movies. Adding parallel universes to it isn't a big deal. (Not to mention that parallel universes have been long established as part of the comic book world.)

The more familiar something is, the easier it is for the audience to accept and digest it.

Kitchen Sink Stories

There is a term in the industry called "kitchen sink." It's the basic idea that a writer has a lot of ideas, but they are throwing them all into one story. It's like a kitchen sink. It has a bit of this and a bit of that. A scrap of old pizza, an onion peel, a soggy fry. Sometimes when writers are trying to include a lot of impossibilities, it turns into a kitchen sink story. In some cases, you may definitely need to divvy out ideas into different stories. But in other cases, it's amazing which seemingly unrelated ideas you can make work, especially using these methods I outlined.

It's hard for me to tell everyone that their "kitchen sink story" isn't going to work. Because it might.

I feel like the best example of this is His Dark Materials. It has everything, and the kitchen sink. But in England, it became a hugely successful series. Yet so many of the concepts don't seem to belong in one story.

- Parts of people's souls live outside their bodies in animal forms.
- There is an intelligent species of bears (bears?? Why? That's so random!)
- Oh yeah, and there are also witches. (oookay . . .)
- And angels
- By the way, there is also a religion reminiscent of Christianity, but it's antagonistic
- Also, God is in it
- And there is this device that allows the user to know all truth
- It takes place in England . . . but it's sort of . . . somewhat . . . steam-punky
- Oh yeah, also, not only is this fantasy, but it's also science fiction. We will definitely be talking about dark matter and running experiments with computers
- Also, surprise, I know you didn't know this from the first book, but our world, the real world, is actually part of this same universe
- Aaaand there are spectors
- We'll also be following people into the afterlife. . . .

Okay, seriously, that whole series is a kitchen sink story!

. . . which is also why it was so revolutionary. It was unprecedented.

So . . . while it's very difficult to pull off . . . it's not impossible.

You might be thinking, "but everything fits under the umbrella of a parallel world." Dude, it doesn't. We don't even know parallel worlds exist until the second book.

It's a kitchen sink.

You Can Break the One Impossibility Rule . . . with These Risks and Consequences

Depending on what impossibilities you decide to use and how you implement them, you run these risks:

- Ruining the suspension of disbelief 

Your audience may still not be able to accept your impossibilities. In truth, some readers are unwilling to even accept one. So they may stop reading.

- Narrowing your audience

This may lead to a narrower audience. Maybe most people don't like M. Night Shyamalan's movies (he breaks a lot of writing and film rules). That's okay. Enough people like him, and he obviously isn't trying to appeal to the masses.

- Polarizing your audience

Some people will absolutely hate stories that use multiple impossibilities. But other people love them. Polarizing your audience isn't actually necessarily a bad or good thing in and of itself--it depends on your goals.


These are risks and consequences, but they do not necessarily influence success. Some people cannot read any fantasy, yet it's one of the most popular genres. Not everyone likes Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but it's now a children's classic. Even a kitchen sink story has been highly successful.

Can you break the one impossibility rule? Yes! But like breaking any rule, it can be tricky.

Next week I'll be talking about critique letters and editorial letters, and how I write one. See you then!

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"Everything has already been done before" -- Has it really?

You've probably heard the idea voiced in the writing world at some point that "Everything has already been done before." Is that true? Has everything really already been done before?

I'd argue no.

And I might even be a little passionate about arguing it.

Now, before I get further, I think it's important to acknowledge that there is a difference between saying "Everything has already been done before" and saying  "It's okay to do this again." Sometimes when I hear people say "Well, everything's already been done before," they're using it in a way to grant permission to do something again. But there is nothing wrong with doing something again, as long as you make it your own, bring something fresh to the table, and don't plagiarize (or base everything off the same source). Using the excuse that "Everything's already been done" though, causes a couple of problems.

For one, it's saying that in order for your work to have value, it must do something no one has even seen before. And that's just not true. Having something new in your story that people haven't seen before can definitely make your work stand out, but it is not the sum attribute of what makes a good story. Besides, you can have something fresh, new, and original that actually hurts your story or makes it worse . . . because it's not an appealing idea, it doesn't fit the story or genre, or it's too strange and bizarre for the intended audience.

The second problem is that when you use that logic, you limit yourself. When you say and believe "Everything's already been done before," you give yourself a ceiling, a limitation. If you don't believe there can be any new ideas in the world, then you can't really come up with new ideas, can you? And if you do, it will be by accident (which is very unlikely).

This reminds me of a conversation I had several years ago with someone. We'd gotten on the topic of spirituality or the spiritual realm and if it could ever be scientifically discovered. The person I talked to said, "But how can it be discovered if it can't be measured?" I replied, "How was anything ever discovered?" To which he replied, "You have a point."

Obviously my response was an exaggeration, but the point is, there have been things discovered in science that we previously thought could never be discovered. I mean, we can freaking tell the elements in star by looking at its light spectrum. We've discovered things that no human eye can see. We've "discovered" dark matter, which is still literally undetectable to us (we only see its effect on things). My point of this conversation is that, whether or not you believe a spiritual world or afterlife exists, when we accept the idea that if it did, it can never be discovered, we vastly limit our abilities of possibly discovering or measuring it.

But if you look at history, time and time again, new things were discovered--even crazy things that vastly changed human perspective, that led to persecution, to religions renouncing sciences, to powerful opinions and thinking, to shaming and banning--and we gained access to new sciences. Whenever we believe humankind has already discovered everything there is to discover, we largely curb our learning abilities.

Remember that once most of the human population believed the Earth was the center of the universe--and if anyone could say they could actually measure where and how it fit into the universe, they would have been laughed to scorn, and worse.

Imagine people back then saying, "Everything has already been discovered," or "Every school of science has already been invented," or "Everything that can be measured has already been measured."

When we learn of these things and attitudes in history, we laugh. But honestly, today, people are no different.

But my point is, if we choose to believe that everything we could write has already been written before, we vastly limit our abilities.

And it's not true.

Look at time machine stories.

How many time machine stories do you think exist? Probably tens of thousands. Maybe hundreds of thousands.

But someone came up with the first one (The Clock that Went Backward by Edward Page Mitchell). Eventually someone came up with one that was so mind-blowing, it infiltrated far corners of the world. Now everyone knows what a time machine is, even if they don't exist.

If everything has already been done before, then how were genres like cyber punk and space opera started? And how are we able to trace back to their beginnings?

Sometimes such groundbreaking work does not happen on a huge scale. As a lot of you probably know, I'm a big fan of Christopher Nolan's movie Interstellar. When making the movie, they worked closely with physicist Kip Thorne, who gave them the most up-to-date information on black holes. No one had created a true black hole in television before. Not even Kip Thorne had seen a rendition of a true one, and he's spent his life in astrophysics. Interstellar was the first movie to accurately depict what a black hole would actually look like. Even Kip Thorne was stunned to see it.

It had never been done before.

Years ago I started reading Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. I didn't have to get far into it to see why it was so popular and such a phenomenon. And while I've seen a few concepts that may overlap with it (and as I've mentioned before, some weirdly overlap with my own (and here I thought I'd been so clever)), it was vastly its own story--largely original. I'd never read anything like it before. And I've never read anything like it since. And it just wasn't in a few aspects here and there, it was all over. And it was clever. Philip Pullman created something that hadn't been done before.

There are many other examples I could go on about. Of course, there is Harry Potter and there is Lord of the Rings and there is Star Wars and there are many more.

Guys. Everything has NOT already been done before!

Some stories have completely new concepts--and yes, those are very rare--while other stories do something that's never been done, like Interstellar. Still, there are other stories that take something already done, and carry it out in a way that's never been done.

You can crisscross concepts in ways that haven't been done. You can play with tropes and outcomes to make something no one has seen before. You can push the limits and twist ideas into something that has never graced the bookshelves.

When Indiana Jones was still in its very early stages, during a brainstorming session, the filmmakers were talking about a chase scene. Chase scenes have been done a million times. But during the brainstorming, they come up with the idea of using a camel in the chase scene. They'd never seen a chase scene done with a camel. Horses, cars, and on foot--yes. But a camel? Never.

They took a common scene and tried to think of a way to put their stamp on it, to make it different. (Unfortunately I don't think that particular chase scene ended up in the film, but you get my point.)

You are different than other people in the world. You have different experiences, and a different perspective.

You can do something that has never been done before.

Is it difficult? Yes, it can be very difficult. But honestly, it can also be a skill developed like any other. You can work on it the same way you work on learning punctuation, style, plotting, or character. The problem is, we never teach how to do it, or try to do it, because,

"Everything has already been done before."

The. Ceiling.

The ceiling we've placed on others. The ceiling we place on ourselves.

Doomed to be borrowers and copycats.

Now, as I said at the beginning, stories don't have to be "new" to be good. And not everyone wants to write something completely revolutionary. That's 100% acceptable. Say, "It's okay to do this again." Don't say, "Well, everything has already been done before."

Whichever writer you want to be, though, I do recommend leaving something of yourself in every scene. We don't want to be complete copycats and plagiarizers. I also don't recommend repeatedly borrowing from the same sources--unless you are a writing hobbyist or fanfiction writer who is doing that intentionally for the sake of doing it (i.e. "What would it be like if my character went to Hogwarts when Harry did?")

But please, be good to yourself. And remember what I've said in posts past: People who teach that something can't be done, don't know how to do it.

Don't put ceilings on yourself. It's perhaps one of the most successful ways to sabotage yourself and keep yourself from reaching your potential.

If you truly want to learn how to create something that hasn't been done, you can. Learn to develop an eye for when others do it in books or movies . . . and when they don't. Go over to tvtropes.org and study hundreds of story tropes--you usually need to know what's out there and how it works in order to make new combinations, alternatives, and concepts.

Here are some of my past posts that overlap and relate and may help too (particularly the first one):

Flipping Story Stuff
Writing Micro-concepts
Ramping up Try/Fail Cycles
Honestly, a lot of my Interstellar posts may help
Why Rowling Rocked the Briefcase Mix-up and How You can Rock Your Own Tired Tropes
Tips on Creating Your Own Fantastic Beasts
Leaving Your Stamp on a Scene
Starting a Scene: Two Important Questions
Playing with Foils
The Real Key to Brainstorming: Restrictions

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Kicking "Great" Dialogue up to "Killer" Dialogue (with Interstellar)

I'll start off by being honest. This post can't decide if it wants to be an Interstellar post about dialogue, or a dialogue post with Interstellar as examples. In a lot of ways, there's not much difference. But basically, I'm going to talk about strategies you can use to help kick your dialogue up.

Similar to my What I Learned about Writing Action Scenes post and my 15+ Tactics for Writing Humor post, I've been . . . unsatisfied with the information available on writing killer dialogue. I read a couple of books on it and writing tips, but you know, I'm obsessive, and I wanted more.

Most of the dialogue tips I've read have been either on the grammatical basics of how to write dialogue, or really about how not to write dialogue. They might go through how to punctuate dialogue, and then talk about what not to do. They talk about bad dialogue.

Yeah, well, what about beyond all that stuff?

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Interstellar: Ramping up Try/Fail Cycles

In writing, a try/fail cycle is the main character's attempt to resolve the story's problem. There are at least three try/fail cycles in every well-written story (of this structure). Often the main character will fail the first two cycles, but not always. In Interstellar, the first try/fail is the first planet they visit, the second try/fail is the second planet they visit, and the third try/fail is the black hole.

A good writer wants each try/fail cycle to be bigger or better than the previous one. That's one key to writing a successful story. Escalate. Escalate. Escalate. The writer has got to keep increasing the tension, the stakes, and the costs.

Like I said last time, Interstellar has huge stakes and costs, and the Nolans ramp them up to the max-- all at the first planet they visit, the first try/fail cycle! Most writers wouldn't be able to do that. Do you know why?

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Interstellar: Skyscraping Costs

I've been talking about the writing techniques the Nolans used to really ramp up the Interstellar story and in particular, the audience's emotional journey with it. Today's post is all about taking the story's stakes and costs to the max. I mean, totally skyscraping them.

If you're not a writer, you might not know what I mean by "stakes" and "costs."

The stakes are what are "at stake" or "at risk" in the story, what your character has to lose. In The Hunger Games, Katniss's life is what is at stake, and the emotional (and physical) health of her sister. If Katniss doesn't win The Hunger Games, she'll die and Prim will be devastated. In some stories, a relationship is what is at stake. A lot of 90's movies are about the relationship between a father and son being at stake, because the father works too much. In other stories, it can be a job.

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Interstellar: Keeping Conflicts Unresolved

Today's post is short, but the writing technique is still strong and effective. I've been talking about what Interstellar did to have a powerful emotional impact. One way was to keep a crucial conflict unresolved until the very very end of the story.

When Cooper has to leave his family, and Murph refuses to say goodbye, it creates strong tension in the audience. See, if Murph and Cooper would have made-up before he left, that tension would have been released, but instead, the writers amplified it by leaving it not only unresolved, but by taking advantage of the parent-child relationship that was going on, and the unknown future of Cooper. All these things worked together to take the emotion to a new height.

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Interstellar: Gaining Incredible Emotional Power by Crossing Opposites

When I pressed "play" on Interstellar, I had no idea that I was about to have one of the most powerful emotional experiences of my movie-watching life. Sure, subconsciously I took into consideration that I would cry at the end of the movie. Maybe. I was not prepared to legitimately cry near the starting, in the middle, at the climax (multiple places), and at the resolution (in two places). On top of that, I was not expecting to experience emotion that was that raw. I don't know if I've ever experienced emotion that raw from a movie.

I was not alone.

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Interstellar: Flipping Story Stuff

If you follow my Facebook, Tumblr, or G+, you may have encountered my ramblings about the movie Interstellar. And let's be honest. That movie is storytelling at its finest. It works so perfectly, in so many aspects, that of course I'm going to pull it apart and talk about the thing on my blog. Don't pretend to be surprised.

I realize I'm months late jumping on the Interstellar bandwagon, but I made it. And whether you saw the movie the first day it hit the big screen or you see the film this month, it's still a killer story. The movie had a huge impact on me. And frankly, I don't think I've watched a movie that made me that emotional since Les Miserables, and I'm not sure if even then. If you read my rants on social media, some of this particular post will be a repeat, but not all of it. I promise. And there will be more posts after this one.

I've talked several times on my blog about flipping story-parts on their heads for an interesting effect. The example I usually refer to is Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn, which takes the classic hero-journey fantasy story and flips it. One way he does this is by starting the tale after the prophesied "hero" has attempted to kill the god-like antagonist--and died. That's like Harry finally reaching the climax of his battle with Voldemort, dying, and then J.K. Rowling starting the story there.

The point of flipping and twisting familiar concepts is that it creates a sense of originality, breathes fresh life into old ideas, and surprises viewers. Whenever you need to get your story to feel more original, whenever you need to brainstorm new ideas, you can look at flipping, twisting, and morphing a common concept. You can look at flipping, twisting, and morphing what is already at work in your story.

Interstellar did just that in several ways.

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