Lies They Tell Writers, Part 47: Your story needs an arc.

I read and hear a lot about “story arc” these days.

I confess I don’t really know what it means. As near as I can tell, it is more or less the same kind of thing as the “dramatic structure.” It could be the “three-act structure” or maybe the “five-act structure.” Or even the “hero’s journey” structure I used to hear a lot about, but not so much anymore.

It all comes down to (as near as I can tell) what happens to your character(s) between the beginning and end of your book. How they change, and what changes them, or something like that.

Why this sort of thing needs a name, I don’t know. But “arc” does not seem to me a very good name. I see an arc as a curved line connecting two points. But stories seldom follow a curved line. They go up and down, down and up, sometimes sideways, and sometimes they go backward as you move along from page to page. Now, some may say this is all part of the “arc.” But, if your line isn’t a curved line connecting two points, is it still an arc?

Maybe it is. I don’t know. All I know is that your characters should (and will) decide how the story goes. And if you let them, they’ll blaze a much better trail than a carefully plotted “arc.”

Lies They Tell Writers, Part 36: Plan Your Plot, Organize Your Outline.

Many fiction writers plan out a story in great detail before writing the first word. And many writing instructors teach the hows and whys of plotting and outlining. They swear by the process, claiming it provides discipline and keeps you on track. If you plot and outline well enough, you’re less likely to wander off on tangents or let the story ramble down paths not of your choosing.

But it’s not the only way to write. And, for some, not the best way to write. While every story starts somewhere, and the writer likely has some idea about where it’s going, many writers know little else about it. They like to let the story find itself, rely on the characters to drive the action, and allow causes to create their own effects and conflicts to reach their own resolution.

That’s the way I like to write. In fact, as I write this I am about 50,000 words into a novel, and while the story and characters have decided what happens next (as they have, for the most part, all along the way), what follows after that is pretty hazy, and where it will end is unknown—at least to me.

There’s a quotation by Ray Bradbury that sums up this approach to writing a book: “Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down.”

E.L. Doctorow said something similar: “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

I trust that, at some point, the fog will clear and book I am working on will eventually reach its destination.

P.S. It did.