Structure and the hero

 This week I've been reading Syd Field's classic books Screenplay and The Screenwriter's Workbook.  It's interesting that I should have come across these two books now. I've known about them for years, but had never been motivated to read them before.  They were for screenwriters, and I'm a fiction writer.

Of course, once I started delving into them I found lots of things which were just as applicable to fiction writing.  Take his tips on creation of character, for example.  In Screenplay he advocates separating the components of your main character's life into two basic categories: interior and exterior.  

"The interior life of your character takes place from birth until the moment your film starts", he says.  Fiction writers will easily recognise that as character backstory.  "The exterior life of your character takes place from the moment your film begins to the conclusion of the story.". For fiction writers, this is the part of the character's life we put on the page, it's the events of our story.  

Another useful insight is "Writing is the ability to ask yourself questions and get the answers." I'd agree.  Creating a story is a whole series of decisions on questions and answers.

"The ending is the first thing you must know before you start writing" he says.  I don't think I could write a story without knowing how it ends before I start.  As Syd Field points out, the story is about movement from start to end, and you can't know you're moving in the right direction unless you know the end first.  

I happened to read these books right at the time when I began planning a new novella.  I'm a fan of The Writer's Journey, Christopher Vogler's structure based on The Hero's Journey, and I've used that for years when structuring my stories.  Several times I've reached my Supreme Ordeal far too early, and have had to go back and re-position whole chunks of chapters.

The Screenwriter's Workbook uses three act structure, but in a simpler way than I've seen before.  It's s pared-down version, without all the restrictions of some of the other systems I've seen.

Act one is the setup, with a plot point at its end which totally changes the story around.  Act two is confrontation, which maps onto the Tests stage in The Hero's Journey.  Plot point 2 occurs at its end, and again totally turns the story around.  Act three, resolution, which I think maps onto the Supreme Ordeal and the Return Home.

I'd written my novella outline with a pared-down version of The Hero's Journey, and I checked it against Syd Field's three act structure.  I found that my outline mapped perfectly onto it.  I could easily identity the two plot points, and they do indeed both totally turn the story around.

I was happy with my outline before I read Syd Field's books, but now having analysed my outline against his structure, I'm even more confident that my story structure will work.