Look at Austen. In her novels, you get a dance, followed by an encounter, followed by a letter, then a period of solitude. No flashbacks and no backstory. Let's have no more back story!
You can read a dozen different textbooks or how-to manuals that will tell you the basic rules of what makes a story - a beginning, a middle, and an end.
The thing should have plot and character, beginning, middle and end. Arouse pity and then have a catharsis. Those were the best principles I was ever taught.
If you're gonna start a story, you start from the beginning, right?
In plotting a book, my goal is to raise the stakes for the characters and, in so doing, keep the reader mesmerized.
You have an hour and a half or two hours - maybe two and a half hours - in a movie, and it has to be a self-contained three-act structure. It's like a rock and roll song. Certain things have to happen for it to be a toe-tapper and get people excited, leaving the theater.
I better make the plot good. I wanted to make it grip people on the first page and have a big turning point in the middle, as there is, and construct the whole thing like a roller coaster ride.
Oddly, the meanings of books are defined for me much more by their beginnings and middles than they are by their endings.
In order to have a plot, you have to have a conflict, something bad has to happen.
I write largely plot-driven stories.
Even if your novel occurs in an unfamiliar setting in which all the customs and surroundings will seem strange to your reader, it's still better to start with action. The reason for this is simple. If the reader wanted an explanation of milieu, he would read nonfiction. He doesn't want information. He wants a story.
The point about a great story is that it's got a beginning, a middle and end.
When I began writing novels, I read Aristotle to learn how to perfect structure, Pearl Cleage to sustain tension, and Nora Roberts for characterization.
Traditional fiction has a little bit of spatial exploration but is basically a question of time - the question is, what happens next?
Beginnings and endings are not interesting; audiences want the high point, which means you've got to get to it and get to it now - get the gun out fast, the clothes off quick.
You can't write just anything. Your story needs structure.
Where are the beginnings, the endings, and most important, the middles?
That is what I define as a novel: something that has a beginning, a middle and an end, with characters and a plot that sustain interest from the first sentence to the last. But that is not what I do at all.
When I'm writing a story, I try to reduce it to the barest possible components and go from there.
I love the idea of stories being about great beginnings and terrible endings.
Certainly, 3rd acts of any movie are hard. It's always hard to have something that will give you the promises from the beginning of the movie. That's true for all movies.
The conventional Aristotelian plot proceeds by means of a protagonist, an antagonist, and a series of events comprising a rising action, climax and denouement.
Early on, a story's meaning and rationale seem pretty obvious, but then, as I write it, I realize that I know the meaning/rationale too well, which means that the reader will also know it - and so things have to be ramped up.
Even the most complicated stories start with a very simple premise.
I started as a playwright. Any sort of scriptwriting you do helps you hone your story. You have the same demands of creating a plot, developing relatable characters and keeping your audience invested in your story. My books are basically structured like three-act plays.
