All right, guys, let's do class. Yay!

Oh,
boy, class!

The way I'm going to format the class year

is, we will do our second week on plot this

week, and then next week I'm going to dedicate

to going through your questions that you've

written on your little slips about plot or

whatever it is. I'll do last week's and this

week's. If there are things that I don't answer

about plot, or things that are confusing or

whatnot, or you want me to dig in deeper to,

put them on your sheets, and those will come

to me next week and we'll do a Q&A episode.

The week after that, I believe, Isaac can

confirm, will be the week that Mary Robinette

will be here.

Isaac: The week of the 18th.

The week of the 18th? Whatever the week of

the 18th is, the week that Mary Robinette

will be here, and she is going to talk to

you about short stories, I think is what we

decided, something she's much better at than

I am.
Let's talk more about plot. Last week we dug

into this kind of my philosophy about promises,

progress, and payoffs. It was kind of high-level

conceptual stuff. Today I want to dig into

a little bit more of the nitty gritty. How

do you actually construct a plot? What are

the pieces that go together to make a plot

work? How do you make an outline?

Now, the caveat to this is, not everybody

uses an outline. An outline is not necessary

to write a story, even a very complex one.

Generally, as we talked about the first week,

people do kind of fall in this spectrum between

how much upfront work they want to do, and

how much back end work they want to do. That's

really the discussion you're having when you're

deciding if you're more of a discovery writer
or more of an outline writer, how much up-front
work, how much back-end work. Both have to

do some up-front work, and both have to do

some back-end work. A discovery writer is

generally offloading a lot of stuff that the

outline writer does to the end, to do more

revisions, to try and fix things that are

broken, whereas the outline writer tends to

front load it and get a cleaner first draft.

If you are a discovery writer by nature and

you think, why are we-- can I go to sleep

for this entire thing? Well, I was a student,

so yes, if you need to go to sleep, go ahead.

These are comfy chairs, much more comfy than

most classrooms.
But most of the time, most of the discovery

writers I know, they like knowing this stuff,

because this is the sort of thing you do in

drafting, is you look for what is the structure

of my plot? What are my promises? What are

my payoffs? How am I making this work? In

fact, a lot of my friends who are discovery

writers, it's like their first draft is kind

of like a really good outline. Their second

draft, then, becomes the equivalent of the

outline writer's first draft. In fact, I have

a good friend who writes every book twice

from scratch. Writes the book all the way

through, puts it aside. Now that's her outline,

and she starts on page one and writes every

word again, using that as an outline. I think

that would be miserable. That's why it's good

that there are different writers and there

is no one way to do this. Because for me,

doing up front work and creating an outline

helps me a great deal.

Why do I like this? Well, I've talked to you

guys a little bit about how, as a writer,

as you progress as a writer, you learn to

do some things by instinct, and you then can

focus on other things in your actual writing,

hour by hour, day by day, and get better at

those things. An outline works a little bit

like that for me, in that I can offload some

of the work that I would have to be doing

while I'm sitting and writing to a planning

session before I start the book. Which means

that when I sit down to write the chapter,

there are fewer things I have to keep in my

brain, because the chapter outline has provided

some of the high-level stuff that I need to

accomplish, and I can just focus on making

this chapter exciting, making it interesting,

making sure it's active rather than passive,

making sure that instead of info dumps we're

focusing on what the characters motivations

are and how I see the world. I

do this. We're going to talk about my method

of outlining right now first. This is just

one that works very well for me.

When I was in high school or junior high or

whatever, they talked about outlines. They

talked about an outline having a number 1,

and then an A, and then i, and then ii, and

that was what your outline looked like.

When I got into writing, I assumed that's

what an outline was. An outline is not necessarily

that. In fact, if an editor asks you to send

them an outline for your story, that is just

shorthand for about a three-page document

telling them your story. It does not indicate,

they do not want heading 1, subheading B.

If they say, "Send me three sample chapters

and an outline," it can be longer than three

pages. Three to five pages is what I would

recommend, nothing longer than 10. Ten is

getting into, like, if you are writing an

epic fantasy, and you are working with the
editor, and they've already bought the book
and they want the outline, then they can get

longer. But they upfront are just asking,

what they want is a summary. Outline means

summary to editors.
Now, for me, that's not what my outline looks

like either. It is not a summary. In writing

my books, and if we get on the ball, we will

post for you guys one of my outlines, because

I can give you the one for Steelheart or for

Skyward. Because those ones are a little bit

easier to understand than Stormlight outlines.

This is in part because so many things in

the Stormlight outline are actually referencing

to my Wiki, my internal Wiki, which is all

my world building, and things like that. Most

of my outlines will look like this. They will

start with a heading for character. Then they

will have a heading for setting. And then

they will have a heading for plot. These will

each be, I will use Microsoft Word's document

map, and I'll make these top level of an outline.

In this case it is building an outline. So

I can easily get through the document and

click to things that I want.

Then underneath character there will be the

names of each of the characters. So, you know,

Kaladin, Shalon, Dalinar, Szeth, for the main

characters. Let me erase underneath and just

kind of go a little bit more. I will give

each main character their own heading, and

then I will have a separate heading for side

characters underneath it, and then there'll

be some bullet points under there that are

a different outline level. The character one

is, I start out saying what is the character's

arc? Under each of these characters, like

if you went to the Kaladin one-- By the way,

I'm explaining it to look way prettier than

it actually does in the original Way of Kings
outline. In Skyward it looks like you might
be able to understand, so I'll try to get

you that one or Steelheart. But it'll say,

under this I'll have a paragraph that explains

who they are. Then I'll have another one that's

just kind of like, this is intro, and this

is arc. That'll be like arc 1, arc 2, and

things like that. This will be for every character.

It'll be like, this is where they're starting,

this is where they're going. I'll get into

how I build those arcs in a minute. All right?

I'm just giving you what it looks like.

The side characters might only have one little

paragraph about each of them. Under setting

I will have large headings that will talk

about things like the magic or the tech, the

world building, like the physical setting,

and the cultural setting. Don't stress too

much about this, because we will have two

entire weeks talking about setting, and we'll

have two entire weeks talking about character.

I'm just giving you the format of what this

looks like for me. Under there, that's going

to read more like an encyclopedia entry. This

is me defining terms for each of these. There'll

be subheadings if it's getting very long.

I usually do split between physical setting

and cultural setting, and we'll do a day on

each of those during world building. We'll

talk about the differences and why I group

them that way. But ignoring all of that for

now, let's look at plot, because today is

our plot day.

When I am building my plot in an outline for

a book, I am looking for a couple of things.

One of the main things I'm looking for are

my promises, my progress, and my payoff. The

most important thing, generally, for me to

determine is the progress part. Because once

I understand the progress part in my outline,

I can figure out the correct promises and

how to make good on that. When I'm doing that,

I'm usually looking for some sort of plot

archetype that I can use. By my definitions

today, a plot archetype is different from

a plot structure. Plot structure, which we'll

talk about a little bit later is something

like three act format or the Hero’s Journey.

A plot archetype is a style of plot, what

we're trying to achieve.

To explain this, I'll talk about, I'll use

Mistborn. When I was building Mistborn, there

were a couple of things that made me excited

to write the book. The first was that it was

going to be a heist. This was one of my primary

plot archetypes. A heist is a type of story.

It is a story that you can go find other heist-type

stories and learn what they did. You can research

them, you can figure them out, and you can

start using them. I also knew, in my outlining,

that there was going to be a master-apprentice

plot, that there was going to be the story

about Vin learning to because a Mistborn.

This is the My Fair Lady side of it. Vin trains

under Kelsior to learn to move among the nobility

and also to learn how to use allomancy.

Then I also knew there was going to be what

I'll call an information plot. This is a plot,

it's a mystery. There are certain things we

don't know about the Lord Ruler that are going

to be teased as clues. I look at these three

things and I say, how do I build a story around

these ideas. Oh, there's also one more. There

is the relationship. There's a relationship,

a Vin and Elend romance subplot. I think I

got all the main ones, looking at that.

Someone asked, when I was scanning the questions,

which we'll start digging into next week,
they said, "Do you use only one sort of progress
and one sort of payoff for a book, or do you

use more?" Which is an excellent question.

There's your answer. Mistborn has four major

ones that I was juggling. This is appropriate

for an epic fantasy novel.

The thing is, one does kind of have to be

more important than the others, and as I worked

on this book, I really kind of moved the heist

kind of almost being secondary, and it was

the master-apprentice plot that became the

actual main, like if you're reading the book,

most of the sense of progress you're getting

is Vin becoming Mistborn, and that is the

core. Most of the time you're spending with

her is her going to the balls, fighting the

people, learning the magics, all of these

things. So it's actually really a master-apprentice

story that has a B plot or a sub mode that

is a heist, that also has these kind of minor

other secondary plots.

Now, building one of these, I'm going to focus

a little bit on the heist, because I want

to talk to you about what I did to build the

heist, even though I just told you it became

the secondary plot. What I find very useful

is to see what other people have done. You

can create something whole cloth. Well, some

people will say you can't. But you don't have

to use one of these plot structures or even

these plot archetypes. But man, it can be

handy to look and see what other people have

done, to try and become a chef in the way

that I told you in the first week. Instead

of just following a recipe, I want you to

start looking at recipes and things people

have created and try to pull out what works.

What I did is I went to a bunch of my favorite

heist stories. I'm going to use films as examples

because they are a little easier to break
down the structure, because they tend to be
more focused than a novel does by the nature

of their medium. I'm going to use, I watched

a bunch of heists, I read a bunch of heists,

I mentioned a bunch of those in a previous

week, and I settled on there being two main

archetypes for a heist. I realized there was

what I'm going to call the Oceans 11, and

what I'm going to call The Italian Job. Both

of these have had very prominent remakes around

the time when I was working on these books.

What happened with these, I looked at them

and I'm like, what makes them interesting?

Why do they work? Well, the Oceans 11 type

plot goes like this. You gather a team. You

usually have one newbie to explain things

to. So you gather a team, you grab your newbie.

You then have an explain the problem. In Oceans

11, the remake, they have this thing where,

it's Brad Pitt that's there, they're saying,

"We have to do this," and he's like, "Which

we can't ever do." It might be George Clooney

saying it. But it's basically they present

the problem with the cool cinematic methodology

to them. It's like here is the casino we're

going to rob. They have this thing that we'll

have to beat, which we can't beat because

it's impossible. And they have this thing

we have to beat, which we can't beat because

it's impossible. And we have this thing. And

they lay out basically here's the big problem

of what we're going to do. Then they start

talking about breaking it to little pieces.

And you follow the newbie, usually, along

going to get all the little parts that are

going to come together for your big solution.

But one of the key attributes of this heist

was, at the end there's a piece missing that

the newbie often is like, "But what about

this?" And they're like, "Oh, we'll figure

that out. You don't have to worry about that."

There's a big piece missing. You get to follow

along in these little pieces as you see how

they're going to solve each of the problems

that they had in the explain the problem plot.

But you've still got this lingering what's

going to happen with the piece that's missing?

Everything's going to go wrong. It creates

this sense of doom and dread and inevitability.

Until you get to the end and the twist is

they all knew how they were going to solve

that problem anyway. They just didn't tell

the newbie so they could surprise us. At the

ending you think everything went wrong, but

then they take off their masks, and lo and

behold they were the S.W.A.T. team all along,

or something like that, and boom, we actually

all went according to plan. You just didn't

know it.
This is different from The Italian Job plot,

which has kind of some similar attributes,

the gather a team, explain problem. But this

style of heist did something really interesting

that I found. They introduced problem A, problem

B, problems A, B, C, and D. They said, "We

are going to solve them with solutions 1,

2, 3, and 4. You follow the plot kind of the

same way. Except at the end, they get to the

ending and they find out that instead of problems

A, B, C, and D, they have problems E, F, G,

and H. You've probably seen heists like this.

They do all the planning. They do all their

preparation. They're ready to go, and then

they move the target. It goes to another country,

or something like that. Suddenly all this

preparation is out the window.

We talked about this a little bit last week

in the pull the rug out from underneath--
No, it wasn't to you guys. It was to someone
else. Never mind. I told someone, they asked

me what do I do if I want to pull the rug

out from underneath people. This is a great

way to do that, because the way that they

solve this, do you guys know? Have you guys

seen this movie? What do they do? They don't.

Exactly. They take solution one and they say,

"Wow. If we jury-rig this thing, we can solve

problem F with that. And number 4, the person

that we've recruited specifically to crack

the safe can actually break into this car

that we can use. And suddenly we'll use 2

for E and 3 for H." What happens is you get

a jumbling up of all the preparations solving

the problems in different and unexpected ways.

Why this works so well is, oftentimes if you

want to have a cool twist in your story and

you pull the rug out from underneath people,

it's a little bit like I said last week, promising

someone a car and giving them something else

completely different that they're not expecting.

In addition, in your storytelling, your reader

will invest time in the middle, in your progress.

They'll spend most of the time in the book

focusing on the things the characters are

doing to progress the story. So if you built

a heist where you made 1, 2, 3, and 4 completely

irrelevant now, that is 80% of the reader's

experience in the story getting thrown out

the window, and they will feel annoyed at

you. They will be frustrated because you promised

them something. You were also probably promising

them a twist if you're doing a heist, because

heists architect kind of about twists. But

you have also upended them.

How do you solve this? You make sure that

the time they spent on 1, 2, 3, and 4 is still

very relevant by applying it on the fly to

solve new problems, which suddenly becomes
very satisfying because you both get a twist,
plus you feel like your expertise, the amount

of time you as a reader spent experiencing

the story, came together at the ending. Breaking

this down, let me ask you guys. Thinking about

as a chef, why is a heist satisfying? Why

do people want to watch a heist? Why do they

enjoy a heist? It doesn't have to even do

with the things I mentioned up here, because

there are pieces I haven't even mentioned

that are relevant. What to you? What makes

it work?

Yeah?
Student: The thrill of getting away with it.

The thrill of getting away with it. Exactly.

For a lot of great heists, even a heist where

the good guys, the heroes are actually on

the side of law, there's a sense of, we actually

got away with it. We robbed Hitler, or something

like that. Yeah, there's definitely a sense

of that.
Yeah?

Student: Hypercompetent characters.

Hypercompetent characters. We will speak in

the character week about how competence is

something really attractive to readers.

Student: The puzzle of figuring out how to

do it.

Yeah, the puzzle. Both of these leave you

with a puzzle. One of them leaves you with

the "we have to improvise," which tends to

work better if you have a lot of viewpoint

characters in charge, because you don't have

to hide things from them. You can cheat and

hide things from people. Because I used more

of an Oceans 11 style for Mistborn, if you

were following these things. I put a little

bit of an Italian Job twist at the end, but

mostly it was Kelsior is hiding things from

everybody, and he's a viewpoint character.

You have to cheat a little bit to do that.

Go head.

Student: The feeling of rebellion. They're

a little bit rebellious or sneaky. They're

sticking it to the man.

Exactly. You're getting away with something.

You're doing something cool that's outside

the rules. Even, again, if the protagonists

are heroes, it's like the Mission Impossible

team. No one else could do this because these

people can break the rules and go outside

what everyone else expects and pull off something

incredible.
Student: We also love to see people succeed

at something impossible.
We do. We really do. This is why there's that

scene with George Clooney and Brad Pitt being

like, "We have to do this, which is impossible,

and this, which we'll never be able to do,"

because it sets this expectation, this promise

to you. And that is, this is going to be cool

to see them pull this off, because it's going

to be hard but they're going to do it. That

scene is a promise. It's a really cool promise.

Yeah?
Student: Because stealing something from the

dragon, I guess, is ontologically very, or

at least we get the same feelings from that

as we-- our lives are part heist movies. Our

lives are like, everything, this whole plot

line is about how we have to confront problems

in the real world with the tools that we have

available. We don't know how we're going to

make it out and we're going to the unknown.

It's just something that's very meaningful

and important because it's real.

Right. So my recommendation to you is, when

you're doing this, when you're breaking down
a plot, one of the things I would recommend
you do is ask yourself these questions. Why

do people love this? Why do I love this? Why

do I really like taking one of these plots

and watching them or playing with them? What

are the elements I have to make sure I don't

get rid of? Hyper competence. You could make

a heist without hyper competence. It would

be a different type of story. But if what

you love about them is that hyper competence,

lean into that and make sure you're making

use of that in order to tell your story.

One of the cool things about starting to look

at plots like this is also you can strip a

plot down to its archetype, and you can apply

the genre trappings to it. It's really interesting.

I've done all this, and then I had a chance

to talk with Joe Russo, who is one of the

filmmakers, one of the directors who made

Infinity War. I asked him, I said, "Joe, how

did you build the plot of Infinity War?"

He said, "Oh, it's really cool. Not a lot

of people understand what it is, but we just

took a heist." For them it was a bash and

grab, which is actually a third archetype

I didn't even put up on here. "And we said,

we're going to do a superhero movie that's

a heist, and we're going to plot it like this

and apply it to superhero sci-fi. And people

will love it because they love a heist, but

they also won't look at it and see a heist

because they'll see a superhero story."

I'm like, "That's really interesting. Tell

me more about how you did that because it

looked really like what I'd like to do." And

indeed it is, I don't think, that uncommon

for storytellers to say let's take what works

really well in this genre and let's apply

other trappings to it so that I have a familiar

framework.
I've talked a lot about the underdog sports
story as an archetype. Because the underdog

sports story is a fun one to point out that

Hoosiers, Ender's Game, and The Way of Kings

all use the underdog sports story plot archetype

as a major section of their story. But these

are three really different stories, aren't

they? Remember the Titans versus Ender's Game,

you'd be like, oh, completely different genres

but they have the same plot archetype, which

is the underdog sports story. Being able to

look at these and strip them down also helps

you understand your progress.

This is where you can go wrong sometimes.

If you're writing a fantasy novel, and you're

like, well, fantasy novels are travelogues.

Let's say you've only read some quest fantasies

that you really like. You're like, it has

to be a travelogue. So I'm going to make my

sense of progress going from city to city

to city. But really what you want to tell

is a romance between two characters, and that's

the bulk of the time you're going to spend

on your pages focusing on this relationship,

and the relationship is not making any progress,

it doesn't matter where you're going. The

reader's going to feel bored. They're going

to feel like nothing's happening, because

the bulk of what you're giving them is a relationship

plot without progress.

What you want to be able to identify is what

are your steps. Now, a heist is kind of interesting

in this way, because your steps are generally,

you have the explain the problem, it actually

gives the reader an outline. Like, here is

the outline of what our story is going to

be. We have these 12 problems and we're going

to attack them one at a time. Then your sense

of progress is as you go to piece by piece

by piece and see them accomplishing or failing

and having to go do something new because

one of their pieces didn't work. It has a

pretty easy, straightforward structure of,

if you're checking things off that list and

coming closer and closer to be able to pull

off the heist, the reader's anticipation for

that heist will grow. They will know something's

got to go wrong, because it always does. You'll

probably put seeds in by saying, "Well, there's

this one thing we haven't figured out yet,"

or by saying, "Everything's great. We're ready

to go tomorrow. Oh, no, they moved the target."

You will be able to build this tension through

progress, progress, progress, progress.

Once you identify that, it makes your promise

scene much easier to write. Your promise scene

in a heist is this one right here. You do

not have to do it exactly as they did it.

In fact, I recommend that you don't. But you'll

see how that promise works really well, and

then your payoff at the end is them pulling

off the heist despite the problems that came

along the way. Very simple, very straightforward.

It is harder to do than say.

Let's look at some other styles of plots and

some of the progress we can have in those,

and how those payoffs can match their promises

in the beginning. Let's start with a mystery.

We've got a classic detective mystery, who-done-it

murder mystery. Why do we enjoy murder mysteries?

Anyone who does? Go ahead.

Student: They're clever.

They're clever. Okay. There's an implicit

promise that the detective is going to be

smarter than the villain. That's what we're

looking at.

Yeah?
Student: The puzzle aspect again. We want
to figure out what happened.
We want to know what happened. We want to

know how they did it. Unless the reversal

is they show you how they did it, and then

you're going to see-- like was that Columbo,

where they reversed, they inverted the trope?

Yeah.
Student: Sometimes it's a puzzle for you,

the challenge of, can I figure this out before

Sherlock Holmes does?

Yep. That, I think, is a major draw of mysteries.

Can I figure it out? Let me highlight that

one for a minute, because mysteries, if you

cheat, and the reader couldn't have figured

it out, a lot of times it will feel very unsatisfying

for this reason. People are not understanding,

writers are not understanding that part of

the promise of a mystery is you will be able

to figure this out. If you are laying the

clues, it's not going to be so out there.

If you've read or watched a mystery that was

really unsatisfying to you at the ending,

it might have been because they promised,

ooo, with these clues of information you could

solve this crime, and then there was no way

for you to come anywhere close. You feel cheated

at the end.
Student: I like the possibility of having

very witty characters with really great dialogue

to bounce off each other as the investigator

tries to decipher [___].

Right. That tends to be a hallmark of the

detective-driven murder mystery, is you're

going to like the detective. It might be because

they're witty. It might just be because they're

folksy, and they're more Agatha Christy. You're

just going to enjoy-- Not Agatha Christy,

Angela Lansbury. They're going to be Angela

Lansbury. You're just going to enjoy watching

her solve a mystery because she's just so
likeable that there's going to be a connection
to the detective. In Agatha Christy, it often

was about how clever the detective was.

Go ahead. Yeah.

Student: I think one of the things I like

about mysteries is the misdirection. You can

still figure it out.

Right.

You don't go from point A all the way to,

okay, okay, I think this is where it's going.

Instead it'll be like, I didn't see that,

but now I can see where that's coming from.

Right. A mystery implies that there is going

to be some difficulty to this, and there are

going to be new revelations. I identify a

mystery as an information plot. A mystery

is, characters don't have all the information,

and the progress is watching the characters

get that information as you try to put together

what that information means. Spoiler, in Mistborn

it is the true history of the Lord Ruler.

I won't say what it is. But the true history

of the Lord Ruler, the book lies to you at

the beginning, and then indicates that the

story is a lie that you've been told, gives

you clues along the way, and then the mystery

comes together at the end of understanding

it.

Now, what is really fun to do is, in Mistborn

the missing piece is not something Kelsior

knows 100%. It is the information plot. If

we can put together the information plot,

we can solve the missing piece of the heist

that Kelsior is confident he can do but doesn't

quite have all the pieces yet. I was able

to slot that information plot into this big

problem in the plan as presented.

But relationships, why do we like--? By the

way, usually a buddy cop movie and a Jane

Austen novel follow about the same plot archetype.

Just with some different trappings and subplots.

A lot of classic romances and classic buddy

cop movies are just relationship plots. Whether

it's a bromance or a romance, it tends to

follow the same plot beat. What's exciting

for us about a romance? Why are we reading

a romance? Why do writers put them in almost

every story?

Student: It gives poor guys like me hope.

Wish fulfillment. Yes. Wish fulfillment. Do

not discount the power of wish fulfillment,

in all kinds of plots. What else?

Student: It's very humanly relatable. We can't

relate to superheroes to the degree that we

can relate to someone who's in love.

Right. Absolutely. I think you nailed it.

It is one of these plots that you can put

into the most fantastical and strange of stories

to give it a really powerful human element.

Student: I think it shares something with

mysteries in that you know the mystery is

going to be solved. You know the two people

are going to get together, because you figure

it out before it happens.

Right. They are generally going to get together,

but how? The how is really exciting and interesting

to us. We have two romance writers right over

here. Do you guys have anything to add?

Student: I was going to say for old people

it's nice to remember how it used to feel.

Nice to remember how it used to feel. That

is also pretty awesome. We're going to have

these two ladies talk to us one of the weeks

about indie publishing, because both of them

have indie published a number of books. So

look forward to that on how we're going to

do that.
I don't want to spend a ton of time on this.
Sometimes we get up on the board and we start
breaking these all down and we spend a long

time on it. I think I did it in a previous

lecture series, so you can watch that on YouTube.

But I think you guys get the idea. Identifying

the why, why we like this, and then figuring

out how you can quantify that, how you can

break it down into small steps, is how you

build a lot of outlines. Not the only way,

but how it works really well.

This is where we get to how does Brandon make

an outline. My outline looks like this. It

starts with, at the top, what I want to have

happen. Relationship. Character A and B are

a couple at the end. I will define what that

is based on the story. That might just be

they have gotten over their issues of hating

each other and are now willing to work together.

Whatever it is, I've identified what I want

to happen.

I outline backward. I start with my goal.

Because once I've identified what makes something

satisfying, I come up with-- what progress

makes it satisfying? I'm like what is the

best ending for this story with that plot

archetype? What is going to work? What is

going to be exciting? Then I'm going to add

underneath this bullet points of all the steps

that will take them from the beginning of

that to the end. Generally, there'll be a

paragraph at the top with the relationship.

It's like, here's what I want to achieve.

These two characters start here. They get

here. Here are all the things I need to include

to make sure that happens. It would generally

be, depending on the plot that I'm doing,

like bullet point 1 would be "Scene showing

how character 1 is really competent in one

area and is living the life, but has a need,

has something that they are missing." Then
character 2, we'll show how they are capable
in their life in some areas, but they are

missing something different. The astute reader

will notice, hey, what this person is good

at is where this person's hole is, and where

this person's hole is, this person has some

strength. Then you will want to introduce

why they don't just immediately propose to

one another the first time they meet. What

is going to be the conflict that is pulling

them apart? Well, one's a Montague and one's

a--

Class: Capulet.
Yeah, that. What is going to be pulling them

apart? Then I'm going to create-- I'm not

going to actually create the scene. I'm going

to say, "Scene where they are working together."

Dave, when he taught this class, talked about

relationship plots as braiding roses. Because

everybody has thorns. At the start of the

story your thorns just smash into each other.

Your relationship plot could go with, the

first time they meet it's a disaster for this

reason. Second time they meet, it's a disaster

for this reason. But then you have a scene

where you realize that what character A does

character B needs, and another scene where

character B realizes, "Wow. What character

A is doing here is something that I admire."

You slowly, as Dave put it, you braid those

roses, so that by the end of the story instead

of the thorns pointing at each other, they

are pointing outward toward anyone who could

come in and try to destroy the relationship,

which is a really great metaphor, which is

why it stuck with me for 20 years. Braid those

roses.
You would come up with all of these things,

and they are just bullet points. They are

not scenes yet. They are, character A sees

character B with his little sister and realizes

that there's a deep caring for other people

that he doesn't often express because of whatever.

You're like, wow, that's an admirable attribute

about him. I am interested. I don't know what

that interaction with the sister is going

to be. I just know the sister is relevant.

I have all of these bullet points. Then I

jump over to the next one.

It's like, now we're going to do our my--

I'm going to say, all right, underneath here--

I guess I didn't circle it before. I put,

like, underneath here I'm like discover X,

and explain why discovering X is going to

be awesome. I want that end scene to be really,

really cool. When Raoden puts together why

the magic is broken, X happens, which is a

very dramatic and powerful scene, because

Raoden's plot is half mystery in Elantris,

and that's kind of the plot structure I was

using. Though I didn't know how to do all

of this back then. I just kind of went with

my gut. Discover X, and this is the scene

that's going to happen. This is how I do it.

And then, how do I earn that scene. Well,

here, instead of all the other things, these

are going to be clues that are going to be

discovered, that are going to interlock with

the other clues, or sometimes be red herrings

that you later on discover weren't doing what

you thought they would do. This is how I develop

my sense of progress, bullet point to bullet

point to bullet point, slow and steady quantified.

I'll do this for every plot cycle in the book,

and generally for every kind of character

arc, once I've determined the character arcs,

what they're going to be.

My outline is generally, at this point, not
in order. It is an order by section. Then,
as I start writing, I start grabbing bullet

points from different headings and saying,

chapter 1 is going to be this bullet point

and this bullet point. Chapter 2 is from a

different plot archetype bullet point and

this one. And I start organizing those bullet

points. This is where, when we give you the

Skyward outline, you'll be like, you'll go

to the end and you'll probably see that a

lot of these bullet points have been moved

into order, into a whole sequence of arcs

and plots. That I am doing while I'm writing.

I am changing this. I've got the bullet points

all done. I usually start writing, and then

I'm building a full outline of the bullet

points in order chronologically, not just

by plot archetype, but together, and I'm building

scenes out of them as I imagine where they're

going to be.

But at the beginning of the day when I sit

down to write, oftentimes it's like, you need

to write a scene that achieves A, B, and C,

which is way easier for me than trying to

keep a whole plot in my head and try to write

so that that plot works. Instead I can be

like, oh, today I just have to do this. Today

I have to write a Navani scene where she does

X, Y, and then encounters Z. I can do that.

Now let's focus on making that scene active,

interesting, it's taking place in an interesting

setting, having some good, dynamic conflict

to the scene. I can use those bullet points

to launch me into a great chapter. This works

for me because, again, it lets me offload

a bunch of stuff to the beginning.

Any questions about that? Go ahead.

Student: Do you necessarily have to have multiple

plot archetypes so they're intertwining with

one another? Or is that mostly just for epic
fantasy [___]?
Excellent question. Do you have to have multiple

plot archetypes that you're intertwining together,

or is that just something for epic fantasy?

The answer is, the shorter the piece you're

writing, the fewer of these you're usually

going to have, and the longer the piece you're

writing, the more of them you're going to

have. It is not a 1:1 correlation. There are

some very long stories that are plotted more

as a series of explosions that the character

is dealing with, and the book ends just when

there's not another explosion. Nothing goes

wrong this time. It feels more discovery written

that way. It works really well. We'll talk

about it under discovery plotting.

But most of the time, for a novel, you're

generally going to want at least one plot

archetype, at least one character arc, and

at least one sort of subplot archetype, either

a relationship or a master-apprentice or something

like that. I would say that's what you're

looking at most of the time. For Skyward,

which is much less complex, for Skyward I

was using the boy-finds-a-dragon-egg plot

archetype. I don't know if you could find

that one in books on plots, but it's one I

noticed. I read a lot of great books. I'm

like, I'm going to use a boy and his dragon

egg, except it's going to be a girl finds

a spaceship. The archetype is kid finds some

cool thing, keeps it secret, works on it.

That was the main plot that I was doing.

But I had a secondary relationship plot going

on, and I had a tertiary. I had a character

arc for her. If you haven't read the book,

Spensa's got this kind of, these ideals of

what a hero should be, and then actually goes

to war and has to deal with her idealized

picture of heroism not meshing very well with

how it is to actually be fighting, and that's

her character arc. Those are the three ones.

There's a couple minor things, but I would

say that's the three. There is a relationship

with the ship she finds, but that's kind of

built into the kid and the dragon egg story.

You can see that one is simpler than Way of

Kings, which has a ton of these things. Like,

the Way of Kings plots don't fit in a file

because I have all this world building and

things. They are crazy. One thing I do like

to do with Way of Kings, though, is make sure

that every book has one very relatable plot

archetype, because the other plots are generally

not following one. This is why Kaladin having

the underdog sports story is so important

to the Way of Kings, because it could feel

like a jumble of a whole bunch of things going

on. Because Dalinar's plot is not as simple

and as clear-cut an archetypal plot. Shalon's

is a little bit more. But there's so much

going on that if you don't have that one sturdy

central plot to hold on to, then it makes

the book feel-- it would make it feel just

crazy. That's where Way of Kings, the first

version I wrote in 2002, went wrong, is it

didn't have this. It had one section of a

bunch of different plots, but it didn't finish

any of them.
Anyway, there was a question back here. Yeah,

go ahead.
Student: Yeah, so quick question. How do you

keep this fresh? Especially like, I know that

good writing will make anything interesting.

Right.
Student: But maybe when you're pitching it

to someone?
How do you make this fresh, adding the caveat
that you know that good writing will make
anything interesting, but how to you keep

it fresh when you're pitching it? This is

where the strange attractor I talked about

comes in really handy. When you can pitch--

when you can say, "It's the story of a boy

and his dragon, except it's a girl and a spaceship."

Suddenly it adds-- you're telling people what

the new fresh take on it is.

That's actually a very small part of what

makes Skyward work. What makes Skyward work,

I hope, is a really great execution of this

plot, with a character arc that feels really

personal and poignant. That's what's going

to make any book work. But what hooks people

is saying, "Oh yeah, the hero who was prophesied

to save the world failed, and now a bunch

of people are going to rob it." They're like,

"Ooo, tell me more!" This is where pitching

becomes an art of its own. Because really,

the pitch is a way to get people to read the

book and see that it works and is good, but

it has to, you usually want to pitch with

one idea. We'll talk more about pitching as

the semester progresses. But, yeah. Focus

on one really distinctive thing in your pitching,

and that's like simply doing another heist

but adding on an interesting magic you've

come up with and a character who's interesting,

generally going to be great.

I often say, plot and character, it's a little

harder to be really different. Because-- actually,

it's really easy to be really different. It's

just unsatisfying. There's a reason that certain

plots are done. There's a reason that certain

characters are done. That is, you can look

at the modernist literary movement and antiheroes,

like in the classical sense, like Madame Bovary,

and things like this, and trying to write

these antiheroes that are just miserable to
read about. But there's a reason why popular
fiction in particular tends to go back to

the same sorts of stories, because they work

real well. It's the distinctive flair you

put on it that's going to make it work.

Setting is where you can go just crazy, as

long as your character is relatable, and it

doesn't matter. You see that in modern animation.

Like, if you think about it, trying to tell

stories about, what is that famous Pixar thing?

They're like, we're going to start and writer

going to make it like bugs have feelings.

And then we're going to make toys have feelings.

And now feelings have feelings. Right? But

because you can make relatable characters,

you can have a story take place inside a tween

girl's mind, with personifications of her

emotional states, and have it work. Because

setting is way easier to go crazy on than

plot and character.

Oh, wait, there was a-- Yeah, go ahead.

Student: You talk about mixing archetypes

in one story, having more than one. But what

if you have the same one, but duplicate it?

Can you do the same plot duplicated in the

same story? Yes, you can. I would have them

play out in slightly different ways. Like,

you can have two relationships and have the

way that one is going sour as a contrast to

the way that one is going well. Pride and

Prejudice, folks. And do the reversal, where

you think the one that is going well turns

very terribly, and they think the one that's

going poorly turns out really well. That is

the reversal that makes Pride and Prejudice

so cool. It's the same two plots, just an

A plot and a B plot.

Student: I guess I ask in terms of, like,

you say that in conflict you've got to have

length, you need to have more of these plot

lines, and so you could have more of the same

ones.

You could have more of the same ones to make

a story longer. If you want to make a story

longer, more steps is also a way. If you wanted

to make a heist longer, what you'd do is you'd

be like, writer going to have to break this

up into three mini heists, which is very common

for these, and this whole section is on stealing

this one thing that will let us later on steal

this other thing. And you do three mini heists,

followed by a big heist at the end, using

the pieces that you've stolen. You just make

sure each of those mini heists has a different

flare, a different feeling. This is kind of,

you see this a big like in Inception, which

is doing mini heists leading to a big heist

at the end that goes crazy.

Other questions? Yes.

Student: You talk about balancing these three

or four or more different things. If you're

trying to balance different things, how do

you keep them going so that one doesn't just

drop out for the whole novel?

All right. If you're doing a whole bunch of

different things, how do you make sure one

doesn't just drop out and vanish, and when

you come back to it they're no longer interested

in it or have forgotten about it. This gets

more and more difficult the longer your story

is, and the more of these you're juggling.

You're going to have to come to your own decisions

on what you want to do here.

There is the, what I'll fondly call the Robert

Jordan. The Robert Jordan method is to basically

break your plot into sections, and then you

will get, you'll be like, all right, there's

kind of a mini climax here. We're going to
do these parts of the relationship, and then
writer going to skip a book, and then you'll

come back to it. I'm going to try to get you

to a part where this is satisfying enough

for now. Or, if it's a big cliffhanger, you

only have to remember one thing, because we're

going to jump a big time gap before we get

back to it. This is where epic fantasy often

has to go.
But there is also the method of do them one

at a time. Be like, all right, opening part

of this big, long book, we are going to focus

on the relationship. But then the characters

are going to be split apart and pining for

each other for the next part where they are

split apart, because they've only just had

their relationship start to work, and now

they get ripped apart. Then that, you only

have to keep in your mind one thing. If you

are-- most of the time I have found that you

can interweave these and not have to do this

too much.

A lot of what I do in the Stormlight is kind

of a hybrid of these two. Way of Kings is

a good example. I take Shalon's plot to a

stopping point, and then I skip a part and

we do Dalinar's plot for a while, and then

I skip back. I try to make sure you're getting

conclusions to both of them in the same book,

and that Kaladin in that first book acts as

a through line. I make sure they're, Dalinar

and Shalon's plots are short enough that you

can do them in half of a book instead of a

whole book. And then I try to weave them together

like that. It is a real difficulty. It takes

practice. This is why doing a little work

ahead of time and realizing, oh, man, I'm

going to have this huge gap where the characters

aren't together. Maybe I should have the big

moment in their relationship happen up here
where they break up, because they're going
to be apart from one another, rather than

having it be in the middle of their story.

All right. We'll do one last one and then

we'll move on. Yeah?

Student: What does your plot brainstorming

session look like? Do you just look for things

you like and write them all down?

The question is, what does my plot brainstorming

look like? Do I just look for a lot of things

and then write them all down? Kind of. Like,

a lot of times these are simmering for a long

time. I'm going to the gym, I'm working out,

and I'm imagining what that last scene is.

Like, the last scenes of a given plot are

what is going through my head many times before

I can sit down to make this thing. But, when

I'm making this thing, I am generally just

saying, all right, here is the plot archetype

that I'm using. Here are important elements

to it. Which of those do I want to use? That's

an important thing that'll segue us into the

next thing I want to talk about is some of

these plot structures.

Now, I'm only going to pick a couple of them

and talk about how you would apply them. Because

there are a ton of these helps out there,

and they all can be really helpful, or they

can just be useless to you. It depends on

if they work for you. But you can buy books.

You can buy Save the Cat, which is a screenwriting

book that's talking a lot about establishing

reading interest and how to plot a story.

You can read many different books. There's

a nine-point story structure. There's a seven-point

story structure. Dan really likes one of those

two. I can't remember which one it is. But

he's got a great YouTube video on it. Is it

seven? It's seven, isn't it? Yeah, he has

a great YouTube video on seven-point story

structure. Dan Wells, writer. Everybody uses

different things.

There are a couple of classics, and one of

them is, in science fiction and fantasy, the

Hero’s Journey. We'll go through it very

shortly. You guys probably all know this.

If you don't, a brief history of it is that

a guy named James Campbell was a researcher,

an ethnographer, and a folklorist, and was

researching different stories that different

people told themselves. He wasn't the first

to come up with this, but he kind of popularized

the idea that a lot of different cultures

across cultural barriers, language barriers,

whatever, were telling the same sorts of stories.

He called this the monomyth, the story that--

He said, he's like all stories align to this.

No they don't. But a lot of stories do, because

it's got a very vague structure that has a

lot of cool elements to it. The monomyth is

you have a character at home who doesn't want

to go on an adventure. They get called on

an adventure. They refuse the call. And then

they are Forced to go out and cross the threshold

into the world. All right? What's that?

Student: To the unknown.

To the unknown. Yeah, to the unknown. Out

to the unknown to the character. The classic

example of this is Star Wars, because Luke

is really like the monomyth. He likes it a

little too much sometimes. But he really likes,

he has actually some really good, there were

PBS specials about the monomyth that I think

George Lucas himself did. But, yes. Luke is

at home. You see the call. He looks up in

the sky. But then when the call-- you see

he wants to go. But then when the call actually

comes and everyone says, "You must learn the
ways of the Jedi," what does he do? He's like,
"No, I've got to go back home and deal with

power converters and stuff." No, I can't,

I can't, I can't. Then he goes home and what

happens? There is no home anymore. Only Storm

Troopers are so precise, or whatever. So he's

forced to go out into the unknown world. Then

they have the trials. This is the road of

tribulation, or whatever it's called. Basically,

problems are popping up, and the character

is learning to overcome them.

Usually there's a mentor. And then there's

not a mentor. Whoop, whoop. No-o-o-o! Usually

you get some buddies who will suspiciously

not be around anymore by the time you get

to the bottom of this, which is the descent

in the underworld, which is where the character

either metaphorically or literally dies and

is sent to the underworld. Metaphorically,

they're at their lowest point. Everything's

going terribly. But then they come out of

it. They have the-- what's it called? There's

the moment of apotheosis and redemption. They

call it something else. Campbell calls it

something else. What's that? There's rebirth,

definitely. Atonement, that's what it is.

Basically, the character's going to change

in some way, make some decision, learn some

new skill, make atonement. They're going to

get rewarded with the elixir. Then they're

going to go home with it and take the elixir

back. There's generally an apotheosis here,

where it's like a meeting with divinity or

with one's father figure, and kind of accepting

and dealing with that, taking the elixir,

and heading home changed, bringing the elixir

back to the people at home, but having been

changed so much that the hero is no longer

the person who can stay home. Often there's

an epilogue where they just wander off. Fallout,
right? Was that Fallout One? That was Fallout
One, wasn't it?

Is this useful? Yes, it is. It's really useful

for envisioning a character arc in an interesting

way. It's really handy. I would recommend

reading about the Hero’s Journey. Where

can it go wrong? Well, there are a lot of

things in the Hero’s Journey that don't

match every story. For instance, Campbell

identified that the hero in the ancient myths

was almost always the result of a divine birth

or a virgin birth. In the old Greek myths,

Zeus was doing something, there was a really

pretty swan or whatever, and there is often

this child of divinity or child that was born

out of mysterious circumstances. So what did

he add into episode one? Where did Darth Vader

come from? He was a virgin birth, born of

the Force. Every single person in that movie

theater when I was there was like, "What?

Like this is cool, but what?" If I'm going

to criticize one of the greatest and most

successful storymakers of all time in George

Lucas, which he really is, that is what I

consider one of the dangers of being too slavish

to a formula or a plot structure. This is

where it gets different from an archetype.

The plot archetypes are like, I want to achieve

this emotion in my readers, and here are some

steps to get that emotion. Structure is, all

right, here's how I actually structure my

story. And if these are too rigid, you will

end up putting things into your story that

just don't feel like they fit. They generally

will not ruin your story. But once in a while,

people can be too slavish, I feel, to following

one of these plot structures.

How would you use the Hero’s Journey? Well,

looking at this and asking yourself as a chef,

why do we enjoy this story? Well, there can

be lots of answers, and we're down to 10 minutes,

so I'm not going to go to questions on this

one. But we can talk about the idea that all

human beings kind of have to go through this.

It's the story of being a teenager in a lot

of ways, and arriving at adulthood, hopefully

about the literal death and rebirth. But it

is this thing where we are going to go through

all of our lives, and we have to—

I have a 12-year-old. I'm like, "You're going

to go to college, not too much further by

adult times, six years or so."

He's like, "I can't do that. I cannot move

out."

I'm like, "You don't have to. You're 12. 12-year-olds

don't move out.”

But to him, this is the most terrifying thing

that he ever learned, is that he is going

to be someday expected to leave the house

and live on his own. That is really scary

to a lot of people. We go through this.

Why else is it cool? Well, it's really satisfying.

Like this moment. It's full of satisfying

moments, right? This moment is satisfying

because you can usually see the hero wants

to go on the adventure, and then they're Forced

to. That moment is kind of cool. The moment

where they go into the underworld, where they're

at their darkest point, and they pull out

of it anyway, is really satisfying. The apotheosis

and atonement, where kind of coming to face

one's destiny, one's parental figures, to

make amends for the things that they've done,

and then return home a better person, having

brought something that helps everyone else,

whether it's having destroyed a Death Star

or not, coming home victorious is really satisfying.

This explains a lot of really satisfying small
steps you can take, and that makes progress
really exciting. When the small steps of progress,

on their own, give people cold chills, then

you're doing the right thing. Then your book

is coming together. The Hero's Journey is

just all about those moments, those triumphant

moments, or those moments that are really

relatable, and it's why it makes such a good

plot structure.
Another one that you guys may have run across

is Three Act format, which is kind of just

a remix on the same ideas as most plot archetypes

are. Three Act format imagines a story as

three acts with two major division points,

the first one being generally where the character

becomes proactive. Now, you can find a lot

on Three Act format. I'll just say, if I'm

not writing the one you know, it's okay. There

are lots of different ways. But one is the

change from inactive to proactive. This is

the moment where you go from Act I to Act

II, where the character says, "I will go do

this." And everybody argues on where the different

act breaks are, which is how you can tell

this is a little more squishy than people

pretend.

Everyone, again, usually uses Star Wars as

a perfect example of this, but they will disagree

on whether Act I ends when Luke decides to

go with Obi Wan because he has no other choice,

or when they get off of Tatooine, or when

they get on the Death Star and decide to go

save the princess. All are legitimate arguments

for the end of Act I.

You usually have a transition between Act

II and Act III where you're at the low point,

where all the things you have tried thus far

have just dug you deeper. And the way you

do the middle is you have, generally there's

a mid-point twist, where the stakes change
in some dramatic way, usually an expansion
of the stakes, or the villain's achieved something.

Generally through here you have this rising

action where you increase stakes, increase

tension, and the character tries things, and

oftentimes fails spectacularly.

This is what we try a try-fail cycle, is how

Dave liked to put it. The character has come

up with a solution to their problem. They

try it, they fail, and it gets worse. They

try it again, they fail, and it gets worse.

They try it again, they fail, and it gets

worse. And now we're at our low point because

we've tried everything. Oh, no, what are we

going to do? Frodo has decided to keep the

ring. Spoilers, right? Yeah. Seventy years

old, is it now? Some spoilers. Sixty years

old? But, yeah. We are at a moment of utter

crisis, and then the ending happens, and very

soon after, woo, end, and then denouement.

This can be really handy, again, to structure

your story if you know you need to have a

moment where your character takes initiative.

You need to have something right about the

middle point of your story where the stakes

change in a dramatic and different way, and

that needs to lead into a low point where

everything has been tried, but there is still

one chance. If Luke trusts in the Force he

can fire the torpedoes, even though the last

ones missed, because he has the Force.

You can bring in, when it works really well,

your overlapping different plots. For instance,

Star Wars has Han's mini plot of an arc of

will Han be a good guy or not? Is he going

to learn to want something more than money?

Lo and behold, what happens is you overlap

the lowest moment, Luke finally deciding to

finally trust the Force, Obi Wan speaking,

and Han returning all at once, and it becomes

this really beautiful moment where all your

different plots intersect. That's what I really

love, is when you can take multiple plots

like a character arc, where the character

makes that last big decision or understands

at last the thing that they have been missing

about their life, overlapping with a big surprise,

overlapping with the climax of the story,

that's where a story can really get me, if

they can do that.

So, Brandon, what about discovery plotting.

I don't have a ton to say on this, because

I don't do it. I would recommend going to

other people who do discovery write, reading

what Stephen King talks about with discovery

writing, reading what George R. R. Martin

says about gardening.

I will tell you one thing you can try, and

we'll end here. Mary Robinette, which if she

goes to a Q&A here you can ask her about it,

taught me a discovery writing method that

works pretty well, and it is called "yes,

but/no, and." Yes, but/no, and focuses on

taking a character, throwing them into some

sort of terrible situation at the very start,

and then just asking yourself, all right,

what's the most intelligent or reasonable

thing they could do right now to get out of

this problem? Have them do that, and then

ask yourself, does it work? If you say yes,

you add a but, something else has gone wrong.

Or you say no, and you escalate that problem

to a bigger problem.
What this does is it creates this sort of

sense of motion where something is always

going wrong for the character, which can be

really handy to keep your stakes up in a discovery

written story. Afterward, after you've written
the book, you can go back and say, okay, can
I move all of these things into being pieces

of a larger plot? Can I somehow tweak this

so this one is foreshadowing for this one?

But as you're writing, you can just remember,

everything needs to be getting worse a lot

of the time. And yes, but/no, and is a method

of doing that. You can find a lot of them

online. I would recommend listening to what

other writers say. You've heard a lot today

about my method. Go research other methods.

Try out a lot of different things. See what

works for you. I'll do Q&A next weeks on anything

about plotting you guys want to know. And

that's it.