what’s in the arc?
UPDATE: this post was written in 2020. The “future installments” referred to are REAL!
a second book, “Power’s play”, was published in 2021; a third, “DOOm’S DAZE”, in 2022; and the final book, “spring’s eternal”, in 2023.
Good morning, all! Here it is Saturday am, and what am I doing? Thinking of the future— the future installments in my book series, that is. Thoughts that began with: how many books will there be in this series?
Four. There, I told you. Oh, you want to know why?
At first, not gonna lie, I chose four because that’s how many cool titles I thought of. Yep, I have 3 more cool wordplay titles with apostrophe “s”. But this morning— I pondered it while slugging Café Bustelo, as is my wont— it dawned on me that the four books I’d jotted notes about corresponded neatly to the classical story structure, aka the “arc”, in four acts:
the setup
the complication
the crisis
and the resolution.
Of those, I’ve written the first one (FOOL’S PROOF) and there are three more to go. But to do them right, thought I, I’d better have more than just the vague, unspoken feeling that I know what the points of the arc are. In fact, to know what something is, I ought to know its purpose— because nothing explains what a thing is for better than imagining what would(n’t) happen without it. Capisce? Here, then, friends, are my insights. <slurp from steaming mug>
The purpose of the setup is to make us care.
Most people think of the first act in terms of an “inciting incident”. Yes, something has to occur to kick off the narrative. But unless the writer has set up a cast of characters and described their situation, however briefly,what we have is not a story but only a report. Without a setup— and a good one— the response will be: so what? A guy got hit by a bus, which in turn caused a traffic jam. Ugh, sorry. I guess I sort of care. Poor guy, and nobody likes traffic, and all that. And maybe something else will happen now? I’m waiting, writer. Go on, wow me, but hurry up because I’m getting bored already.
But what if we know the guy had just run out into the middle of the street yelling “Wait! Come back!”?
All of a sudden the traffic jam seems ominous. We want to know more. Who was he chasing? Why? All this change in tension, just because of the setup.
Now, in FOOL’S PROOF we have characters who’ve come through an entire book to be where they are now. The fact that I’ve even heard the question “So? Come on! What happens next?” tells me it has fulfilled its purpose as the series setup. So far, so good.
The purpose of the complication is entertainment value.
Surprisingly, I don’t think this is common knowledge. Most writers are just told that there has to be complication, aka conflict, because “it’s the story driver”. So, not questioning what a “story driver” actually is, and having been informed that they ought to “put their character in a tree and throw rocks at her”, they just shovel in a lot of happenings and hope for the best. But I want to know the purpose of complications, remember? And so after long consideration, I’ve come to the conclusion that they are strictly there to give the reader her money’s worth.
Think about it: you could certainly relate something without a complication. Setup, crisis, solution. If the solution is fun enough, you’ve told a joke or made a witty observation. But it isn’t a story, much less a novel, much less a series.
And you could put in complications galore, but if they aren’t valuable to your reader— to your specific reader— they are useless. That Dragon Tattoo girl book had already bored me matte beige with its fully written-out urls and furniture dimensions; Stieg Larsson suddenly dumping a whole box of ultraviolent perversion on the floor and flinging it at the walls was not, to me, a plus. Yet, the fact that it was a giant bestseller (and spawned a franchise) means that some people loved his complications: I suppose his genius was in knowing that there are people out there who read the IKEA catalog while wearing bondage gear.
What this means to me is that as the series’ complication, my second book is going to be the make-or-break one. After writing just ONE book I’m already going to have to know my readers’ tastes well enough to write a sequel that draws them in so powerfully they’ll either beg and cry for the third one, or go back and read the first one. Yeeks, no pressure there.
The purpose of the climax, also known as the crisis, is… to collect energy for the resolution.
Again, I don’t think this is immediately obvious. Most people, if they think about it at all, assume that the climax is “the important part” or “the solution” or even “the payoff”. But I suggest that it isn’t. I suggest that the resolution is the payoff and that the climax has a different job to do.
Think about that moment when the hero is on the ropes. That is the climax. Darth Vader is really about to kill Luke this time. The toys really are at the edge of the incinerator. That laser is ON James Bond’s crotch, people, it is right there. Now you see why the climax cannot possibly be the payoff: if that’s where the movie ended, would anyone be happy about it? Hell no. (Here, I imagine a riot at the old Catlow theater in Barrington, IL where I grew up. Great old classic theater, which used to have those velvet seats, you know the kind?— I picture enraged fans tearing them up and hurling them at the screen when the words “THE END” appear just as the Ark of the Covenant is being pried open.)
Nope, I posit that the climax is a coiled spring, a charged capacitor, the water built up behind a dam. It is what gives the mental “click” of the resolution its satisfying power. In fact, without the climax, the resolution wouldn’t click at all; like the inciting incident without a setup, it would be no more than a reported fact: why, yes, they are currently living happily ever after.
What this means for me is that the third book is going to have to end with unanswered questions. Maybe not literally— man, I wouldn’t JRR Martin all of you on the individual book level. Or, uh, maybe only a little. But on the series level, it’s going to have to end in a configuration where the characters’ futures are poised on a knife edge, so that readers will crave that fourth book like… like…
The purpose of the resolution is a dopamine hit.
The resolution is the part we waited through the whole movie, read through the whole book, watched that entire series of television to experience. People have been known to jump off the couch and punch at the air. Theaters cheer. Readers scream out loud in delight. Why? Drugs.
Yeah, when it all comes down to it that’s our bag, baby. We want that sweet sweet brain drug— it’s why the aha moment feels like— well, according to this article it feels like skyrockets in flight, afternoon delight.
The craving for resolution is why we want to see how the hero escapes (or dies), and later on when we see him living happily ever after (or suffering in tragedy), we want that detail that warms (or freezes) our hearts. We want the climax resolved before our very eyes, for good or for ill— but here’s the important part— in a way that we did not expect.
It has to be unexpected. One hundred percent must be. The kiss of death is “I could see it coming”, and everyone who’s ever heard or read or seen a story knows this. But why? If solving the problem is what releases the delicious dopamine reward pellet, why does the way it’s done matter?
I posit that it’s because getting something valuable that you didn’t expect is a very, very different experience from earning your pay. One is a delight; the other is your due. Lotto ticket yayyy!!! 50 years of hard work boooo! If the resolution is something the reader could have imagined for herself, why did she bother reading the book? All of a sudden it feels like it was a slog. You could have been on the edge of your seat up until the murderer is revealed, loving every minute of it… but the moment you realize that yes, you guessed the butler did it way back on page 8, all of a sudden it’s: piece of shit book, there went my whole weekend. Whereas you can know from the start that yeah, yeah, of course there’s going to be a happy ending— but if it happens in a way you didn’t even know you wanted, it’s magic.
What this means for me is that the fourth book is going to have to take the characters in a really unexpected direction— yet leave them in a satisfying place. The series can’t end in a way that readers thought it would; sure, the individual book might have a surprising conclusion but if the whole series was like “oh, well obviously Fred was always going to (insert obvious thing)”… oh, hwhoopsie, friends. I guess I should have just let you fanfiction it then. Clearly you didn’t need me.
All right. Those of you who’ve read all the way to the end of this, my longest blog post ever ever, what do you think? Do the purposes of the “acts” make sense to you as I’ve explained them, or do you write your own stuff under a different set of rules? Comment if you dare!
