Story arcs are the series of little beginnings, middles and ends that, put together, will build your story. Now that’s straight forward enough, and people get taught that in school, but the part that’s important for writing your novel (or even your short story) is how you build and control the development of a series of strands of information.
For example - the main story might be how the character, we will call him Dave, forms a band and finds fame. I know – great story, it practically writes itself...
Anyway, that’s the main story arc. It requires, for the success at the end to be fulfilling, that it seems unlikely at the very beginning and that challenges are met along the way. So this really dictates how you open the story or write the first chapter - you need to establish the contrast with how you want to end the story.
I’m going to stop right here and offer up a link that might be helpful (http://www.writersstore.com/narrative-structure-and-infinite-creative-possibilities/ ). Well explained and some top tips – certainly worth a look!
Getting back to our story of Dave the Musician, because he is clearly a man defined by his role, another story arc within that might be dealing with a difficult relationship with his father (we'll call him Ed the Father). So Dave the Musician is on his way to fame, but along the way he needs to resolve his relationship with his father, Ed the Father. Clichéd, I know, but just to illustrate a point.
Even that doesn’t really feel enough; your readers are greedy (if they’re anything like me) and they want more to work with. Each story arc offers another puzzle and another opportunity for the reader to feel that they own the story for themselves. Done subtly it engages because they’re always working and joining the dots to understand the characters. Not only that, thinking along these lines help you to work out the character’s motivation and you start to understand them on a deeper level.
For example, returning to Dave the Musician here and his Father (Ed the Father), that flippant comment I made about him being defined by his role has suddenly got me thinking… OK, his self-worth is entirely dictated by his status. He is a man who doesn’t operate on a level of individuality – instead, needing to be understood and perceived a certain way. So does that mean that he accumulated possessions, experiences and friends that will reflect on him in a certain way? He is the sum of the parts of his life… so a series of sub-arcs (or sub-plots if you prefer using actual, real phrases) would help to slowly build these elements of his life and allow them to contribute to your story… Suddenly you find your way to an interesting aspect of the character and you can launch off from that (it’s a good way of forcing writing when you have writer’s block, I must admit).
Really, this needs us to look at character mapping, and I'll do that in a different post. However, when you do have your character traits all set, all mapped out, then you can pace and control how you introduce these ideas. For example, Dave the Musician is selfish in his relationship with Sue the Girlfriend (no doubt because he chose her on the basis of what she says about him) - but how do we show that? How do we pace this revelation?
A good exercise is to list what Dave the Musician could do that was so selfish (Cheat, never clean the house, never ask about work, take her to a certain restaurant becuase he like the food (when she didn't), make excuses and disappear when her family come around...) Anyway, when that'd done I would work the list into an order from subtle selfishness to really obviously a so-in-so. This can give us an order of approaching it in the story. Leap in with the obvious stuff too early and the rest of it becomes redundant ("Yeah, I get it: he's not nice. Get on with it!"), slowly build and the reader starts to suspect there might be something wrong before it's signposted and then feels pleased with themselves when they find out the truth. It also means that the earlier events have reinforced the believability of his later actions.
I hope you don’t misunderstand me; I am not saying that every novel should be densely plotted, but they should be densely layered with information. Even if it’s controlling a slow release of information about a character’s perspective, even if it’s controlling tone, then it all needs to feel purposeful for the reader to trust you and continue reading.
I think there's a danger in wallowing too much in one aspect of a character. It doesn't help you to convey their depth and it leaves the reader tuning out or, worse still, putting down the book. It's like someone taking 45mins to tell you that their boss is awful with one anecdote that made the point in the first minute, or someone taking 700 words to talk about managing sub-plots... uh...oh dear. This is kind of awkward.
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