Story Mechanics 101

Published in

thebardiccircle

11 min readSep 17, 2020

Introduction

Story mechanics are the theoretical side of writing; it’s the study of how humans tell each other stories. I’ve gotten fierce pushback trying to explain it, so I’d like to clear up some FAQs before we get started. While you can use them to outline (I certainly do), the practicality of story mechanics really shines in the rewriting. I won’t tell you how to describe a tree better, the learning there is done with reading and (of course) writing, but when it comes to pacing, creating effective characters and upgrading Something about the story feels off to This is what’s not working and why, I’ve got you covered. Don’t worry, I’m not preaching formulaic writing, take this article as more of a basic diagnostic manual when you get to editing. For anyone wanting to dig deeper, I’ll leave a list of further reading at the bottom of the article. So, let’s take a journey and look at the nuts and bolts of storytelling!

Plot Structure

I need to stress the importance of good structure. Imagine your story is a race car: conflict is the engine, your protagonist is the driver, and the plot structure is the chassis holding it all together. So what is plot structure? When you say that a story’s pacing is fast or slow, you’re noticing that the plot structure is wonky. Stories may develop organically, but there seems to be a general (and when I say general, I mean I’m taking the overlapping points from dozens of models of plot structure) consensus on the main beats a story needs to hit. To take this out of the abstract, we’ll make up a character to follow along with us. Fair warning: as pacing is relative, I will be using percentages.

Act One (The First 25%)

When we talk three act structure, we’re basically just giving formal names to the beginning, middle and end. Act one is the beginning, of course, but more importantly it serves to set up the journey we’ll be going on.

Let’s see it in action:

Samantha worked at an office during the day, but what really brought her joy was the model train set she kept in the extra room.

This first section is all about setting up the regular world and takes up 10–15% of the narrative. Our goal here is to give the reader an idea of what the character’s life is like. The character is usually in a place of comfort, especially in anthology narratives like sitcoms, but the general idea here is A Day in the Life.

One day Samantha saw a flier, advertising a model train contest. With a gleam in her eye, she could see herself accepting the gold medal. She shook off the notion and continued her trudge to work.

Here, 10–15% of the way in, we have the inciting incident or call to adventure. Something happens to the protagonist to make them question the status quo. Change is on the horizon, but typically our hero will be reluctant to abandon their regular way of life.

Looking over her mounds of paperwork, Samantha spied her model train, the chrome paint gleaming from the light poking into the room from the kitchen. She shuffled around the bills on her desk and, with a cough, returned to work.

This is the refusal of the call, lasting until the end of the act. The inciting incident has shook up their worldview, but the character is not totally on board yet. It might be a direct refusal of the call to adventure, vainly attempting to remain in their normal life; an indirect refusal of the call, trying to prepare their world for the adventure; or just time spent figuring out what they’re meant to do next.

Threshold into Act Two (~25%)

The thresholds are the gateways into (and out of) the actual journey. This is where the character leaves the conscious, the known, the normal world, and enters into the unconscious, the unknown, the special world.

With a busted car turning a twenty minute commute into a three hour one, Samantha was badly in need of cash. Then it hit her: the model train contest had a prize of exactly how much money she needed! Literally down to the penny exact.

The first threshold is the change of plans. The half measures taken in the refusal of the call have broken down, the character is forced to take charge and go on that journey.

Act Two: Part One (25% to 50%)

*Insert montage of Samantha working on her train while balancing a job*

Blake Snyder refers to this section as “Fun and Games”. Here you deliver on the premise, use your favourite set pieces and make the section that’d be featured in the trailer. This is also a great place to start a subplot, romantic or otherwise, as the main story has been established but there’s still plenty of story left to go. Here your hero meets obstacles they can overcome, not really needing to change. They may not have a strategy, but by god they’re trying something.

The Midpoint (50%)

Smiling, Samantha accepted the trophy and, more importantly, cash.

Like it sounds, the midpoint is in the middle of the story. This is where the function can change based on the character arc, so let’s assume the story in question has a positive arc. This is the eye of the hurricane, either a patch of calm where the problem seems solved or a false victory. Dan Harmon’s advice is if you want to add a twist, twist here and twist hard.

Act Two: Part Two (50% to 75%)

With layoffs and pay cuts abound, Samantha had to work much harder at work. With the lost income, she won’t make rent if she can’t find another job. The local model train school is looking for teachers, but it takes a lot to get the spot so she’ll have to study hard.

Michael Hague refers to this part as “High Stakes and Complications”. The character is encountering obstacles they struggle to overcome and, while beginning to change, try and logic their way out of change. They think they know what they’re doing but are having trouble actually doing it.

Threshold into Act Three (75%)

Your character is returning to the normal world with the knowledge they’ve gained, but to cross this threshold they’ll have to pay a heavy price…

Samantha had her interview right after work, but was told she needed to stay late. Infuriated, she quit. After barely making it to the interview on time, she was so rattled she bombed and was left completely jobless. What was she thinking? What was she doing? Model trains? She felt like a fool grasping at a fool’s dream.

Here we get the major setback. Your character has to make a sacrifice to return to normality and it hurts. It seems like all is lost and they experience a dark night of the soul, reflecting on themselves and their choices.

Act Three (75% to End)

And we’ve reached the end of our journey. Our job now is to tidy up after the party, conclude the adventure, tie up any loose ends.

After explaining the situation and getting a second interview, Samantha spent the days leading up to it practicing her heart out. On the day of, all her prep work left her mind at the first question. Why do you want the job? She began talking, rambling almost, about her dad’s model trains and the joy of continuing his work. She held her breath as her three judges talked amongst each other

The final push, seen above, takes place from 75% to 90–99%. After recovering from the major setback, the hero buckles down to complete the fight. They use everything they’ve learned on their journey to face the final conflict.

The three women nodded and shook her hand, she had the job.

The climax is the last big moment of the story and comes 90–99% of the way in. This is the conclusion of the hero’s journey, where they apply the truth they’ve learned. K.M. Weiland’s advice is to have your character complete their arc by doing something they wouldn’t have in the first act.

The students filed out of the classroom, a murmur about that day’s lecture rising out of them. One student, however, lingered toward the back. She approached Samantha and thanked her for enriching her life.

The denouement is the last little bit of the story after the climax. This is where you can tie up loose ends the easiest and show what the character’s new life is like after the adventure.

Character Elements

Like plot structure, characters form organically yet have some key components that keep things running smoothly. Taking a look at the elements of your characters will help give them a direction and get along with the plot nicely. Remember: good characters can carry a bad plot, but the best plot in the world can’t make bad characters work.

Character Arcs

Character arcs are how you tie your character’s growth to the plot so the two can work together as a team. The main arcs are positive, where the character starts out believing a lie and learns to accept the truth; negative, where the character stops believing the truth and starts to believe the lie (barring disillusionment arcs, like The Great Gatsby); and flat arcs, these would be impact characters, where the protagonist already believes the the truth and instead of changing themselves, changes the people around them. For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume we’re talking about a positive arc.

The Truth and The Lie

The truth and lie are how we think of theme regarding characters. Your story poses a moral question, and a character’s truth is their moral argument. The lie is the false belief that is bringing pain and upset into their life. Samantha, from the story above, believes that stability is only possible through compromise. Her truth is that stability is never guaranteed so a fulfilling life is the best thing to strive for.

The Ghost

The lie doesn’t come from nowhere, there’s a moment in the character’s past that has lead them to this false belief. Samantha’s father was into model trains and the major setback implies he’s dead, so the best ghost would be that her dad’s affinity for model trains lead to the instability that lead to his death or his absence from her life. The midpoint is a great place to reveal the ghost, as you preserve the mystery for the first half of the narrative and can work with that information in the audience’s mind in the latter half. If we were rewriting Samantha’s story, we could reveal the ghost at the midpoint to show the past she’s working against and write the speech in the final push to focus on her dad’s idealism.

The Needs

Believing the lie is having a negative impact on our character in two ways, morally and psychologically. In overcoming the lie they have a psychological need, what they have to do to stop hurting themselves, and a moral need, what they need to do to stop hurting at least one other person. Samantha’s psychological need is escaping the prison of mediocrity she’s built for herself by realizing she’s not obligated to work the office job that’s slowly killing her. We didn’t mention another character in the original draft, so let’s add in a subplot with her mother. The hurt she’s putting onto others should be coming from the lie; let’s say her mother wants to move in with her boyfriend, but Samantha doesn’t trust him and thinks it’s safer to stay separate. So her moral need is that she should let her loved ones take risks if that makes them happy.

The Want

If the needs represent the character’s internal drive, the want is the external one. This is what grounds the story with a concrete goal. This usually remains static, although it tends to become more generalized at the midpoint. At the major setback, the want is typically what is sacrificed for the character’s need. Samantha generally wants financial stability, in the first half she wants the short term stability offered by the cash prize and in the latter half she wants the long term stability offered by working a job she likes. At the major setback, she sacrifices the stability of the job she has in order to interview for the job that will bring her fulfillment.

Dialogue

When your character speaks, their words should be trying to accomplish something. A good rule of thumb is that if the dialogue can be put in the narration, such as small talk, it doesn’t need to be put in quotations. When we talk about creating effective dialogue, it’s helpful to look at the structure of dialogue.

Within a circle labled context, there are three layers. On top is text, below that is subtext, and on the bottom is intent. — The Structure of Dialogue

The actual words they speak are the text, and to give the dialogue depth it should be pointing to what they’re really saying, i.e. the subtext. This is informed by their intent, that is what they are trying to accomplish with the dialogue. Finally, all of this is coloured by the context in which the dialogue is being received. Withholding information creates conflict, so this layered communication gives some weight to dialogue. Be careful, though, if all the conflict in the story is due to miscommunication it will lack depth. Even in farcical narratives, there is usually a deeper cause of the conflict.

In Samantha’s speech about why she loves model trains the text is her memories of her dad, the subtext is that she has a deep seated connection to model trains, her intent is to display her passion and commitment for model trains and the context would be that she’s trying to convince a panel that she should be given the job of educating the youth about model trains.

Apart from serving a purpose, dialogue should also be unique to a character’s voice. If you cover the dialogue tags and can’t tell who is speaking, the character(s) in question are speaking with your voice, not their own. To figure out how your character should speak, look at their personality and background. Samantha grew up working class, is frequently in situations where it’d be beneficial to hide this fact, and lives a life defined by compromise. Samantha’s pattern of speech, therefore, would involve hedging and code-switching. She would soften her language and positions to avoid an upset and, in formal scenarios, occasionally let slip some of the patois she uses when conversing with her mother.

Managing Attention

If your work is going to have an audience, it’s worth considering how you will get, keep, and manage their attention. A large part of that is focusing on the action, starting the scene as late as possible and ending it as soon as possible. During Samantha’s refusal of the call, she’s doing paperwork at home. We don’t need to see the start of her evening, just that pertinent part. Likewise, after her attention redirects to the bills on her desk, the audience has all the information they need from the scene so we move on to the next one.

A helpful tool for managing attention over multiple scenes is having something else to cut away to. This is easiest when you have another plot line or character to switch the attention to. After Samantha wins the model train contest, we could switch over to the subplot and see her mam have a row with her boyfriend about their living arrangement, or have the follow up scene be Samantha miserable at work to establish contrast and set up the situation there deteriorating.

Now What?

As I said before, this information will probably be more helpful when figuring out what went wrong than what to write. That said, if you’re stuck on a story and don’t know where to go next, it may behoove you to see where you are structure-wise and what the next major beat will be, or take a look at your character’s motivations and go from there. Last thing I’d like to clear up is that if you doubt me, show don’t tell. These rules are meant to be broken, frankly those are my favourite stories, but know why you’re breaking them beyond just seeing if you can, i.e. make it contribute to the narrative.