With comedy, what is funny to one person may not be funny to the next. Here, research your audience. Make a point, but keep it light and easy. Social satire delivered in a heavy handed way will come off as preachy. Accidents and pratfall’s can be funny, but get old quick. Parodies not only need to know the subject matter they are making fun of, and also require the audience to have seen it before, otherwise they will not get the joke.
For any drama premise where one of the main characters die or strife or suffering happens, keep in mind that the world is a pretty dark place to begin with. We do not live in a perfect, happy word, and most people just want to read or see stories that entertain them, make them smile, or simply forget about “the real world” for awhile. What this means is the most successful stories from a critical and financial standpoint are going to be “feel good” type comedies or action adventures that transport an audience to another place, and hopefully, someplace original.
This is an important concept to understand. It is true, that heroes do not always survive or save the day. That is definitely a realistic concept, but even if the characters do not survive, some sort of positive concept like hope, or change could. Since we live in a world slanted with a billions of unhappy people, positive stories are going to do well. Down the road, if the Earth ever enters a period of utopia, peace, sunshine, rainbows and Unicorns, then you might see tragedy stories come back as popular. Until then, though, make sure you have a good reason for telling a tragic premise. Just keep in mind the road to success will be slightly tougher for a tragedy.
For a premise that is science fiction oriented, the key is also in the details. If a science fiction movie fails it is because it took itself too seriously and added death, or drama where it did not need to be, and did not add enough details to explain the mysteries. In most cases these stories fail because they end up asking more questions then they answer.
Once you have your well thought out premise, the next key is to avoid “Writer’s Block.” The case for creating story grids is a good one because they can effectively erase any writer’s block because you know where the story will go. Some may be able to start with a blank page and create a story from beginning to end with no outside help; I am not one of those people. I need some sort of outline for the story, the world, my locations, and my characters. The more information you have on these, the better, and story grids keep track of this.
A story grid creates this needed structure and outlines thoughts in a linear way. Granted stories do not have to be told in a linear fashion, but ultimately all stories are linear. You might have flashbacks that explain parts of a character’s back story or intentionally show parts of your story out of order, but there will be a linear story there if the pieces are rearranged back to chronological order. If you tell the story in pieces, your audience can piece together what happens, arranging the scattered pieces back into the linear arc that they need to get the full story. Even alternate universe stories are just story arcs running in parallel.
Story grids have been around for years. J. K. Rowling, author of the successful Harry Poter series, is said to have used story grids when writing her books. She used them to understand where the characters were in their story arcs from book to book, and as a quick reference for how their character traits flowed. Story grids break up the monumental task of story writing into smaller pieces that are easier to work with.
The term “grid” implies that the information is setup in a rigid, conformed way. Certainly the information will be easier to manage if it is represented in spreadsheets of some kind, be it a grid you make on paper, or a grid in a spreadsheet program on a computer. How you choose to record the information in your various grids is up to you. The idea is you are creating a database of information to pull from for your story so you can easily fill it in with information, and never run into writer’s block because you will know what to write.
The Story Outline Grid
The Five Act Structure lends itself well to a story grid. Before jumping right into a story there should be an outline to follow. For the grids, you can sketch out these grids by hand or use computer software to create them. This saves a lot of time, and is easily changeable. The grids are built to ask many questions that you fill in, then use as a resource to populate your story.
The first step of a stories creation is determining what the overall size is going to be. Since the grid is going to be an outline and not a rule, you can always change the number of pages later. There is no rule that states how long a book should be, nor will I be telling you what has to happen on each page. Typically, 300-700 pages is a reasonable size for a novel, but all that will changed depending on fonts used, pictures if added, or the physical book dimensions upon publication.
The idea is just to think about an overall size so you can construct your outline. Without knowing how long a book is going to be it could take years to complete and keep going and going, throwing characters into tangents. The story can become overwhelmingly big and focus can be lost.
The idea for your story will be deciding how many pages your story will be, then divide that by five acts. At 300 estimated pages, divided by five acts, would give us 60 pages per act. We take 60 pages per act and break that up into six chapters per act. Next, we need to think about chapter length. Five to fifteen pages per chapter is a good average to shoot for. Ten pages is a good average chapter length so ten pages times six chapters give us our 60 pages per act.
Now right off you might be saying, what if I end up having eleven pages instead of ten, or eight pages instead of ten. Or what if later I find I need more than six chapters to fill out and make a point for my first act? Then that is ok. Keep the chapter lengths consistent and up the size of the book if you need to.
With that in mind, already things are becoming a little easier. Instead of worrying how to write 300 pages from beginning to end and being overwhelmed, all we have to worry about is easily digestible writing portions.
You might even be wondering why I do not base a story’s length on the number of words written? That is certainly an option but not as an exact science. It is much easier to worry about act and chapter lengths then worrying about how many words make up different sections. One rule of thumb is there are 200 words per page, but even that is pretty arbitrary. Fiction novels can range anywhere from 50,000 words to 200,000 depending on the story.
If we start drawing lines in the sand and say there are 200 words per page, then a 300 page story would be about 60,000 words. I would rather break everything up into smaller sections and tell you to focus on the quality of your acts in 60 page chunks then tell you you have to have your first point of no return moment for your core group before you reach 12,000 words. It would not be exact. As long as you can stick to the grid I believe it is easier.
It is important to not get hung up on the numbers inside these particular grids. As you write and fill out your story you will find that the acts and chapter lengths vary; that is absolutely fine and expected. The idea is you create a mold for your story to grow then break that mold with your own originality.
As you continue to write, your chapters may change around and the length of those chapters will be varied. When the finished book is finally published, the number of overall pages will vary depending on font and your final physical book size. Story grids are simply meant to provide structure as an outline to be filled in.
Once an estimated story length is established, we need to outline chapter names and main ideas. Some authors simply list their chapters in order by number with no chapter titles as they write. If you end up having hundreds of chapters, I can understand that, but if you are writing a novel I feel this can be a missed opportunity.
Some use chapter (or episode) titles to clarify main ideas. Using chapter titles help the reader navigate the story better and