Tag Archives: structure

11.18.25
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Wrap-up

Being the seventh part of a seven-part series based on Your New Favorite Writer’s recent WWA workshop “A Bulletproof Beginning: Five Ways to Anchor Your Story in Urgency from Word One.”

I can’t tell you how to write a great beginning. But here are FIVE BIG IDEAS—three Dos and two Donts—that ought to help quite a bit:

1. Engage the reader immediately.

2. Do not drown the reader in information. 

3. Introduce important characters and plots early. 

4. Do not let INFORMATION bog down the profluence of the narrative. 

5. Shape early action toward later plot points.

In recent weeks, we’ve looked closer at each of these five big ideas. I hope you’ve discovered ways to write livelier, more compelling beginnings for your novels, short stories, or screenplays.

But can we say anything, in general, that summarizes these five big ideas in a way that’s true to the reality of writing fiction or, for that matter, narrative nonfiction?

Structure is King

As you may have surmised already, Your New Favorite Writer believes we all need a working knowledge of the universal story template that seems built into the human psyche. The five big ideas all rely, ultimately, on knowing what can happen within the space of a manuscript or screenplay that logically exploits our craving for dramatic and narrative order. So the concepts of beginning-middle-end or Act I-Act II-Act III and the major plot points are essential equipment in the writer’s toolbox.

Not Each But All

It’s also important to note that the five big ideas—or any other valid ideas you may be offered for making your work sing—do not operate one by one. You need to make them all work with each other. You must not only introduce important characters early, you must avoid awkward information dumps while doing so. Furthermore, they must be introduced in ways that presage plot developments to come along later in the story. It all has to work together.

This is really hard to do. That is why we big-league writers are so highly paid. 

Let the Protagonist Protag

One thing I have probably under-emphasized in this series of posts is the central importance of the protagonist. In the last analysis, the story is always about the protagonist. The more active the protagonist, the more story there is to tell. And the rule is, the protagonist must protag. (That’s what we in linguistics call a back-formation, kids.) 

To protag is to act. To protag is to be unpredictable. To protag is to have big things at stake. To protag is to take hold of the story, turn it upside down, and shake it till all the loose change falls out of its pockets.

You can be cute. You can tell the story from the viewpoint of a secondary character, but it will be the secondary character talking about the protagonist, like Watson and Sherlock. Unless you have a very good reason for doing so, why bother?

You can tell the story from the viewpoint of the antagonist. But still, it will be the chief opponent talking about, or more likely scheming about how to counter, the actions of the protagonist. Of course, the antagonist, if worthy, may be very active as well. But here’s a thought: The moment you catch your antagonist protagging, you really ought to ask yourself if you have a protagonist disguised as an antagonist. In that case, may the good Lord help you, because I can’t. You’re going to have to turn everything around. But you may have to do that. Remember, a bad guy can be the protagonist. Anyone who has ever read the works of Patricia Highsmith can attest to that.

At some point, preferably early in the process, you’re going to want to ask yourself, “Whose story is it?” And if you can bring yourself to answer honestly, you have identified your protagonist. Make sure he, she, or it protags. 

It’s best if the protagonist is active, or at least mentioned, early in the narrative. Remember, this little series is all about beginnings. 

So What?

When you understand basic structural concepts, when you realize all your tools must work together, and when you come to grips with the vital activity of your main character, you have an opportunity to build the beginning of the story toward what will happen before the end. You will be more likely to include only those actions, events, and speeches that make the story flow with a decent profluence from beginning to end.

If, Dear Reader, you will trouble yourself to re-read the preceding paragraph, you will find it is a nice, pretty, nearly irrefutable, paragraph. I’m very proud of it. 

But if you are an experienced writer, you already know that no matter how well you master structure and all the other elements that must work together, your story may astound you with all the twists and turns it takes before you type “The End.” 

Try not to be disappointed if you have to go back, once you thought you were finished, and write a new beginning to match the middle and end that actually showed up for work.

But having at least thought about the general principles discussed here, you may recognize the contours of your work for what they are. And this should make it easier to rewrite the beginning.

Next week: Something completely different.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer

10.07.25
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A Bulletproof Beginning

Last Friday, I had the good fortune to present a workshop titled “A Bulletproof Beginning: Five Ways to Anchor Your Story in Urgency from Word One” at the annual Wisconsin Writers Association Conference, held in Stevens Point. 

I say “good fortune” for several reasons:

  • I got paid.
  • I heard the sound of my own voice—sweet music to my ears, indeed.
  • Most of all, I was with 175 friends of the Writing Persuasion—folks who have an itch they can scratch only by setting pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard. These friends understand one another’s need. About sixty of the 175 attended my breakout session.
Some of my good friends relaxing just before my workshop last Friday.

A lot of people have told me they got something good out of it. 

So, why keep it to myself? For readers who did not have the opportunity to attend, I will try to encapsulate a 50-minute talk in the next seven weekly blog posts.  

Here goes:

A Bulletproof Beginning

What’s the big deal about a beginning? Why the fuss?

Aristotle, right, argues with Plato (strongly resembling Leonardo da Vinci) in this detail from “The School of Athens” by Renaissance painter Raphael (1483-1520). Public Domain.

Dear Reader, a philosopher named Aristotle said, about 2,400 years ago, that every story has a beginning . . . a middle . . . and an end. That may seem obvious, but apparently nobody before Aristotle thought to write it down. 

And nobody since Aristotle has gone much beyond that simple observation in explaining story structure. If you want to hassle me about Joseph Campbell’s/ Christopher Vogler’s Twelve Stages of the Hero’s Journey, or about Blake Snyder’s Fifteen-Beat “Save the Cat” structure—sure, let’s have that argument someday. But in the meantime, consider:

Of the three parts of a story, the beginning is most important. Why?

Because if your beginning is no good, no reader will experience the joys of the middle and end. They won’t stick around.

More so, if the reader is an agent, editor, or publisher considering your story for publication or film production. Typically, such mandarins want the first ten pages included with a cold query. But that does not mean they will read ten pages. 

No. They will read maybe one page. Or maybe just the first paragraph. And if that doesn’t knock their socks off, they’re done. They have a lot of scripts to read. You must earn your way to the second and subsequent pages. 

Most of all, the beginning is important because it establishes the conditions under which the rest of the story plays out. The break into Act II, the many twists and turns thereafter, the great change of color and tenor at mid-point, the swiftening action as you move into Act III, the exciting climax and final denouement—all are present in embryo in the beginning of the story. If they’re not, it won’t work.

Studio publicity photo of Billy Wilder and Gloria Swanson on the set of Sunset Boulevard, ca. 1950. Public Domain.

Billy Wilder—the great German-American film genius responsible for Ninotchka, Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity, Some Like it Hot, and many other classic movies, said, “If you have a problem in the third act, your real problem is in the first act.” If you go back and fix the first act, the third act will work better.

By the way, Gentle Reader, did you ever notice how many lectures, workshops, or articles about story construction for prose fiction rely heavily on movies for their examples? Here’s the reason: Owing to the format and function of film scripts, the screenwriter has nowhere to hide from the need for STRUCTURE.

A seasoned scripter can sit in a darkened movie house, discern the arrival of the Great Change at Midpoint, look at his watch, see that 58 minutes have elapsed, and predict—with dead accuracy—that the film’s total run time will be 116 minutes. It’s really that cut and dried. It’s all about structure. 

The beginning is the first great pillar of structure in any story, filmic or otherwise. That’s why it’s important. 

As I told my friendly audience last Friday, I cannot tell you how to write a good beginning. It’s your story, you figure it out. 

But here are FIVE BIG IDEAS—three Dos and two Donts—that ought to help quite a bit:

  1. Engage the reader immediately. 
  2. Do not drown the reader in information. 
  3. Introduce important characters and plots early. 
  4. Do not let INFORMATION bog down the profluence of the narrative. 
  5. Shape early action toward later plot points.

Now, Dear Reader, go ponder these things in your heart. Come back at this time next week, and we will consider Point 1: How to engage the reader immediately.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer

02.18.25
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Huzzah!

I may have mentioned before now, Dear Reader, that the writer’s life is a lonely one.

Oh, sure, we are celebrated among our friends . . . if we have friends who are kind enough to celebrate us.

Gerrit Dou, Scholar Sharpening a Quill Pen. Public Domain.

We also confer among ourselves at writers’ conferences. We sit at the feet of masters and learn, if we can, a kind of self-mastery. We even may tip a tumbler or two, on such occasions. 

We have the usual allotment of spouses and children and dogs. 

So writers, as a group, are not existentially lonely. Most of us are not, at any rate.

But when it comes to writing—when we need to plot and craft and draft and re-plot and re-craft and re-draft a novel or any large work of fiction—that we do all by ourselves, in mental if not physical isolation. We may share a work in progress with colleagues: give glimpses, get feedback, gain perspective. But the actual doing of the thing is a solo gig. It’s just you and your keyboard in a room somewhere.

Thus, any victory merits a celebration. 

So it is with pride and joy I announce: Your New Favorite Writer has reached Mid-point on his current WIP (work in progress). Sorry to burden you with technical jargon, but nonetheless—HUZZAH! Please feel free to huzzah along with me.

What’s the Big Deal?

Thanks, I thought you’d never ask.

Aristotle. Public Domain.

Mid-point in a work of fiction is not merely halfway. It does not mean fifty percent of the work has been done. Perhaps the second half of the book will be much easier to write, or much harder, than the first half. 

Syd Field. Photo by thedemonhog, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Rather, the Mid-point, which always falls very near halfway through the pages, is where Something Momentous Happens. There is a major plot turn, visible or invisible, that makes the whole thing deeper and more important. The story shifts, the way a batch of fudge changes color in the pan just before it sets up into a new, delicious thing. 

This is not my imagination, Gentle Reader. You could look it up. Any number of gurus have told us about it, from Aristotle onwards. Pick up a copy of Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, by Syd Field (1935-2013). Mr. Field was one of the first to put the how-to of screenwriting into a book, so that anybody could do it. 

Charles Dickens. Public Domain.

Well, not just anybody. You have to also be a certifiable lunatic.

Actor-director Roberto Benigni, creator of Life Is Beautiful. Photo by Harald Krichel, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

But I digress. The point is, there is a fundamental dramatic structure that almost all good stories have. A beginning, a middle, and an end. Sometimes we call them Acts I, II, and III. There are vivid plot points that kick off the action (Inciting Incident), shift it into gear (Break into Act II), change the whole picture (Mid-point), set up the final confrontation (Break into Act III), and resolve the story (Climax). There are numerous lesser turns as well.

The all-important Mid-point signals a shift in tone, emphasis, and import of the story. That shift can be quite stark, as in the Italian film Life is Beautiful (1997), or more subtle, as in Charles Dickens’s novella A Christmas Carol (1843). But it has to be there, or the story resembles an uncooked fish, several days old.

Therefore I celebrate the conquest of the Mid-point.

So What?

Your New Favorite Writer has written two novels that are currently in print, The Price of Passage and Izzy Strikes Gold! Both were very hard to write. I have been at work for some time on my third—a twentieth century historical novel that goes by the working title Brother’s Blood. It’s about two brothers who find themselves at odds but have no opportunity to fully reconcile before the Second World War sends them off in different directions. 

This one is hard to write, too. But writing the first two, as well as several unproduced screenplays, taught me a few things. Especially how important the first act is. Famed writer-director Billy Wilder said, “If you have a problem in the third act, your problem is in the first act.” What he meant is that you need to set the stage fully and exquisitely in the first one-quarter of the work (Act I), so that all kinds of situations and relationships established at the start can then pay off in satisfying ways as the rest of the story (Acts II and III) unfolds. 

Writers often talk about a character coming to life and taking the story off in an unexpected direction. It is delightful when this happens. But in a way, it’s even more satisfying when the underlying logic of the story—the line of development that flows from all the details you have packed into Act I—forces an unavoidable realignment of meaning at the Mid-point, and the rest of the story snowballs to an irresistible end from that point. 

I’ve been laboring mightily over Act I: Writing, re-writing, changing, re-adjusting to get a number of rather ordinary yet secretly powerful ingredients into the story. And I’ve launched into the wilds of Act II, grinding away at just marshaling the facts of the characters’ lives, when ALL OF A SUDDEN, SHAZAM! A major plot event, one which I did not see coming, elbows its way into the story. Right at the halfway point. It’s an event I’m not at all happy with—and you Dear Reader, may not like it either—but it shoves the invisible river of narrative into a swifter and deeper channel. There is no help for it. We must go there. 

I can’t wait to write the rest of the book.

Note: It would be very helpful at this point, no doubt, to give you a more specific idea of what happens in the book. I can’t do that. Major SPOILERS would be involved. All I can say is: look for it in a year or two, possibly by a different title, wherever fine books are sold. 

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer

02.01.22
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Six Simple Steps to Literary Lionhood: #9

Do you recall, Dear Reader, when I said that to be a Literary Lion you must write?  Or words to that effect? Yes, that’s right: Step Two in my Six Simple Steps to Literary Lionhood.

Lion. Photo by Kevin Pluck, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

I may have neglected to mention that, even when you go on to other steps, such as getting feedback, hobnobbing with other literary lions, and submitting your work for publication, you still must continue to write.

Case in point: Your New Favorite Writer.

State of Play

At present, I am juggling multiple balls. Besides posting this blog, I have a finished historical novel manuscript, The Maelstrom, being considered by more than one traditional publisher. I am polishing another historical novel—a coming-of-age story about a young boy, Izzy Mahler, in the 1950s—and will soon begin seeking a publisher for it. I am always, of course, on the lookout for likely places to submit some of my completed short stories and poems.

But while all this is going on, I must keep writing.

Which brings us to the current project.

Memoir

Lincoln Steffens. Photo by George G. Rockwood. Public Domain.

I am writing a memoir—have written only a few thousand words of first draft so far, and I don’t know where it’s going. This in itself is odd—because you would think I’d know the story. Writing a memoir is like writing a novel, except that you generally have some idea how the novel ends. In the case of a memoir, you know the whole story in great detail but can’t figure out what parts make it a story, and what parts make it an insufferable catalog.

How does memoir differ from autobiography? They could be the same—but not always.

I like to think of an autobiography as a document written by a person of note. (That would exclude Your New Favorite Author.) Benjamin Franklin wrote an autobiography. Lincoln Steffens wrote an autobiography, but it’s arguably more a memoir. Harry Golden wrote many memoirs or autobiographical pieces, but they might better be considered miscellaneous collections of reminiscences. That doesn’t mean they’re not worth reading, but they are a different genre. 

The Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant is a great autobiography as well as a great memoir.

Confused yet? If you’re not, you just haven’t been paying attention.

Consider: “What makes Larry F. Sommers worthy of an autobiography?” Absolutely nothing—in the sense that I’m neither Hillary Clinton nor Jon Bon Jovi. 

On the other hand, if you’re talking memoir, well—I’ve lived a long time, learned a lot of things, and have something to say. Memoir-writing guru Marion Roach Smith says memoir is about what you know after what you’ve been through. 

I’m only now beginning to understand it’s not as simple that. Maybe I’ll sign up for her course.

Structure

The structure of a memoir is crucial. I’ve got a slam-bang, surefire opening chapter—a riveting account of a reconnaissance flight from my time as a member of the U.S. Air Force. But what comes after that? How do I integrate the opening chapter with all the other things I want to include?

RC-135M reconnaissance aircraft, 1969. Public domain.

“All the other things I want to include” is a big fat hint. The trouble is, I want to leave in way too much.

In seventy-six years, one may accumulate a lot of experiences and quite a bit of wisdom. But good writing, a book you would want to read, depends on selectivity.

Every bit of my life seems tremendously significant. To tell it all would take millions of words. Even if I live another thirty years, there may not be time enough to write it all down. And then—who would read it? 

Martion Roach Smith also says that all non-fiction, memoir included, is an argument. To wield the razor effectively on one’s own narrative, one starts by knowing what the argument is. Then you only leave in that which supports it.

So here’s where it gets tricky: I don’t know what I’m trying to say, and I won’t know until I write it down. My writing is not the triumphant display of certainties already discovered but a stumbling exploration of what the past may mean. 

So in tackling a memoir, I’m being forced to change from an outliner to a pantser. I’ve got to just write, until I get a glimmer of the path forward. 

The only comfort is, you can tell is when it’s not working. You can feel when your prose is floundering. Then you need to back up and do something different.

I call this “living the dream.”

Thanks for listening, Gentle Reader.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers, Your New Favorite Writer

Author of Price of Passage—A Tale of Immigration and Liberation.

Price of Passage

Norwegian Farmers and Fugitive Slaves in Pre-Civil War Illinois

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(History is not what you thought!)