Is this structure right for this message?

writing
#1

I’m trying to take what I want to say and make sure the storyform says that, but it’s hard without a set of simple instructions that say, “If you want to say this, pick those.” I have an MC who has avoided life because of fears fueled by an anxiety disorder and has come to regret it when, at the beginning of the story, he finds out just how much great stuff he’s missed out on. In the end, he changes for the better to take more chances and sees that much of his fear is unfounded. I struggle with that personally, so it’s hard to think objectively and separate MC from OS.

Other characters aren’t so anxious, but also are driven to choices that unwittingly perpetuate unhappiness due to the desire to avoid emotional pain. I’m sometimes unsure when that’s about Innermost Desires (they want emotional fulfillment, love, avoid regret) or Impulsive Responses (trying to avoid anxiety sensitizes people to it and the instinct to avoid pain turns it into a vicious, ironic cycle, Worry).

So, if I want to say that the only way out of fear is through it (don’t, say, avoid pursuing your dreams due to stagefright or you’ll regret it and that’ll hurt more than the discomfort of facing your fear of the stage) or that avoiding fears leads to regret, should my structure be:

OS Concern: Innermost Desires (I think this gives me the most sensible Static Plot Points, with Requirement of Impulsive Responses. I agree that for them to attain a goal of emotional fulfilment , they would need to resist the impulse to escape anxiety).

OS Problem: Avoidance? Temptation?

#2

What would be running through a burning fire? That might be the solution, since the “only way” is" through it". Wouldn’t they need to heed the impulse to push “out of fear…through it”? just mulling it over

#3

I was thinking more like pushing through psychological pain (like fear of failure, guilt, or inadequacy) rather than something physical like a fire. “It’s better to have tried and failed than be left wondering and regretting”-- that kind of thing. It’s kind of mixed up with my intended message that avoiding things you fear makes them worse by reinforcing them. I don’t know if I must focus on one or the other, if that’s even possible when they go hand in hand, or if they both have places at different parts in the story or maybe I can combine them into one statement with the right words. The former theme sounds like Innermost Desires and the latter sounds more like Impulsive Responses.

#4

Hey Sharkcat,

First of all, sounds like a cool idea for a story! And you’re definitely on the right track with pinning down a storyform. But I think it might help us to hear a bit more about the story itself. For example, do you have an influence character who plays opposite your MC yet? If so, how did they meet? What situation brought them together, and how do they feel about each other? What goals, if any, do they have in common?

I ask because I’ve found that leaning on my subconscious inspiration in the form of the storytelling can help me figure out the precise nature of the message I’m trying to convey. If I know my MC and my IC both share physical disabilities, for example, that might help me work out which domain the RS should be in.

Also, it’s worth mentioning that you don’t have to find the perfect story structure before you write anything. If you work out one that makes sense to you initially, but find in the writing process that it doesn’t perfectly match your ultimate intent, it still served its primary purpose, which is to get you one step closer to having a story that works!

#5

Sorry for the long post, but I think details are important to convey context.

What IC does
I do have an IC who is Confident and impulsive and I like the idea that he’s always rambling around in an RV, looking for opportunity like dumpster diving for “treasure” and old stuff to fix and resell, taking odd jobs, and busking w/ a guitar for money and attention (I don’t know if that’s too much stuff. Should I just choose “fame seeker” or “rescuer of discarded things”? Or is one IC’s role in OS and the other his role in his own throughline?

I also considered that maybe IC is a garbage man, but I like the traveling, living out of an RV thing-- Maybe IC and MC are both running from fears of rejection while craving love and approval, but IC hides/denies it better (OS Issue of Denial or Closing things prematurely?). They are both passionate and want to adventure, maybe invent things (cool, but writing about inventing sounds boring when I don’t know what they’d invent) but those are common interests, not problems. MC being too terrified to board an airplane is an obstacle if they want to travel, but that’s MC’s problem.

I’m thinking of plots where IC tries pushing characters into performing with him or otherwise riding the coattails of a has-been movie star related to MC. I like the general idea, but keep drawing blanks on the specifics or feel inner resistance if the research would be dry-- a character trying to write a script with someone sounds interesting enough, but learning all about the logistics of how movies are made to see if the idea is viable within the timeframe when I’m not 100% invested in that direction sounds dull and demotivating. I struggle with making choices since I imagine the butterfly effect that might occur and sometimes fear making a choice that ruins the whole thing.

Blind spot problems
I’ve struggled with the OS and storyform for years since like my MC, I have a subjective problem with anxiety, so that makes it hard to tell where my blind spots are and what throughline the fear belongs in (subjective or objective?). It’s like coming up with an OS has been an afterthought since I’ve been more invested in writing about feelings, which feel subjective to me-- MC stuff.

I have trouble making choices when no options feel quite right (ex. several similar ideas about what IC does) and if I don’t pick a direction that I’m passionate (or certain of? Relying on Certainty could be a problem for the characters) about (even if an anxiety cycle is Impulsive Responses, I can’t get away from the idea of fears vs. passion, which draws me to Innermost Desires), then I can’t get going.

In my guts, I suspect that something is off no matter what storyform I use, but I know I can’t necessarily trust my emotions as a decision-making gauge because if those were accurate, then I wouldn’t have anxiety problems to begin with! Then I wonder if all these related problems I’m having belong in my cathartic story, like maybe one of those is the “real” thing I’m trying to say rather than the intent I’m thinking of that “running from fears make them worse” and I worry about getting off track throwing everything and the kitchen sink in it. I don’t have solutions to all my personal problems that I can write about (like self-worth stuff), but I can say from experience that the way to free yourself from living in fear (well, at least decrease the fear, one lives in) is to face them (or at least don’t let them hold you back from pursuing desires) and become desensitized.

The other problem is being preoccupied by logic. I have ideas that I really want in there, but I’m not sure they make sense (like I’m unsure how to justify having good characters do questionable things, or how to go about having a character change his mind in a believable way) or what throughline they belong to. I have a problem with black and white thinking, so if I hear that a writer is supposed to “kill their darlings” and mercilessly cut things out, I start wondering, before even having a first draft, if I’ll be forced to cut out everything I like if I can’t perfectly justify it (Impulsive Responses > Worry?) and that saps my motivation because without passion, what’s the point (Innermost Desires?)?

Story Beginning:
Finding MC’s cryptic old diary among trash brings IC to the ruins of a “mad doctor’s” manor, now overrun by an abandoned forest, where he discovers MC, a lonely hermit.
MC Backstory: Over 100 years ago, MC felt like a hopeless failure at life and a “cowardly” burden to loved ones due to (undiagnosed) OCD fears of being responsible for harm befalling others, so after a particularly painful failure caused by giving into his compulsions (these are meant to alleviate anxiety, but actually reinforce it-- the irony of avoiding fear making it worse is supposed to be the overall theme of the story), he ran away and, being

  1. a dreamer intrigued by the Future and the promise of technology to solve life’s problems (Would continuing to mistakenly seek external solutions, such as avoidance or attempting to absorb the courage of others in order to avoid the intimidating task of actually confronting his fears make him a Do-er? I pictured that despite his physical limitations, his personal problems are psychological, and he’s always thinking about consequences so I chose Be-er… or does that belong in OS?

  2. Having no hope or belief in himself to muster the strength to resist his fears and be like a normal person,

MC figured that his only usefulness was letting the doctor use him for a dangerous experiment, which turned him into something of a disembodied vampire (the world is otherwise pretty mundane and set in the present or recent past), who will need to rely on IC or others to do most physical tasks and that will exacerbate his fears of being a “burdensome parasite” undeserving of love and happiness.

MC and IC meet
The story starts with MC living a calm, but dull, life living off a tree until the IC shows up, which stirs MC’s thirst for novelty, companionship, and knowledge as well as the fear of causing and experiencing emotional suffering (ex. giving into the temptation to return to the outside world only to fail all over again, hurting himself and those counting on him in the process.) that hamstrings the pursuit of desires that would allow him to live the way he wishes to (self-confident and with the purpose, novelty, and companionship that belonging to society provides), fulfilled and free of regret and anxiety. MC gives into his fears and decides to avoid potential pain (which is what I assume he’ll have to Change in the end, getting a Judgement of Good) and attempts to scare IC away, but ironically draws attention to himself. IC will not let this “amazing discovery” go and uses MC’s curiosity about the “wonders of the Future” to tempt him into leaving the forest.

IC wants to help MC return to society (or at least convince MC to help with performances to gain fame) for selfish and selfless reasons that may clash-- out of the goodness of his heart, because he doesn’t believe in quitting, liking a “fixer-upper” challenge, and to exploit MC for fame. I don’t know if that’s too many motivations. I think the goal is collective rather than just everyone exclusively focused on what to do with MC, but that makes it harder to write short statements for stuff like Instant Dramatica and I wonder if I should narrow my focus.

Theme
Is OS where the overall “what this story is about” goes (ex. trying to avoid fear makes it worse <Impulsive Responses?> or Pain of regret for having never tried is worse than the pain of trying and failing <Innermost Desires?>), or does that fall under MC since MC is the shoes where the audience places themselves?

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#6

Hmm. You’ve got a lot of ideas going on, and I think that’s a good thing, but right now they’re a little bit like a roiling pot of soup. It’s hard to figure out which thing goes where. I can understand that.

So your MC changes, and the story judgement is positive. That’s a good start.

I like the idea of your IC as being interested in both gaining fame but ALSO in rescuing discarded things. If the MC has some fame/potential for it but has ALSO been discarded by the world, then that puts the IC in an interesting internal conflict about which desire is more important to him.

The way you’ve described your MC makes it sound to me like his problem is Evaluation and his solution is Reevaluation. He has a very low opinion of himself and his abilities that needs to be reexamined in order for him to achieve happiness. In the end, he does reevaluate his sense-of-self, and in doing so resolves his inner conflict.

If you make this choice, then Evaluation/Reevaluation are the problem and solution pair is the OS as well, as well as the RS if the story ends in failure). This also makes sense to me, as it seems your IC and MC will both undergo a process of having to reevaluate each other as the story progresses. The MC starts out intending to push the IC away, but winds up reevaluating how he feels about the IC, and presumably to his own benefit.

Does any of this sound alright to you?

#7

Thanks for taking a look at all that :sweat_smile: There’s even more, like with a brain monster that means well but grows out of control to King Kong proportions by absorbing every living thing it can to protect them from harm (seems to be a metaphor for how excessive safety, like how MC’s obsessive fears of causing harm or failing stop him from taking healthy risks, stifles one’s freedom to live as desired), and it just gets ridiculous…

I get confused because consciously, I want to say “act in spite of fears of failure,” which sounds like a simple enough and cliché moral, but other problems of mine that I’m not sure have a place in that moral (and its storyform), creep in because there are 4 throughlines (so maybe those sources of conflict do have a place?) and I personally can’t separate my issues with fearing failure from stuff like tying self-worth and happiness to external validation since as an artist, I need to gain an audience in order to sell art to make the money to be free to do what I love and am good at, which will make me happy.

Since I feel like a great portion of my happiness depends on career, which depends on external validation, the idea of fame, self-worth, and dependence got mushed all up in my facing-fears story. Guilt over dependence on others is another overlapping conflict.

Do they have a place in the structure or is that illustration stuff, rather than source of conflict, that’s sidetracking me?

What I know for sure is:

MC Resolve: Change
Driver: Action (IC showing up in the forest leads to MC having to decide whether to act on desire or fear)
Limit: Optionlock
Judgement: Good (By actually facing fears, MC learns something like he’s stronger and more capable of improvement than he thought.)

Maybe MC in OS, along with the other characters, learns that there’s more freedom from suffering to be found in facing fears while MC as, well, MC learns to believe in himself.

I did get help on a storyform and ended up with:

MC Issue: Worry (works well with stuff like Proven/Unproven since he prefers to stick with what has proven to work in the past or takes past failure as proof of future failure, and Impulsive Responses covers the anxiety disorder and Worth). Works great across from IC Issue: Threat since IC is a risk-taker and that makes MC nervous but reconsiders his own fears.

But OS of Being didn’t always sit right with me, despite a lot of ideas about acting or self-expectations (“It is better to be independent and capable, therefore if I fail to be as productive as others, I didn’t try hard enough therefore am lazy and selfish, which is immoral, therefore I don’t deserve to be happy.”-- that’s more MC talking, but the others sometimes act selfishly for fear of consequences).

Talking about this stuff, I keep mentioning stuff like conflicts of desire vs fear, feelings and passion, which sound like Innermost Desires. Maybe if Innermost Desires doesn’t work, I could still keep the illustration but bump it up to Fixed Attitude then keep Impulsive Responses since if not for that visceral aversion to suffering, fear wouldn’t exist.

I also wonder, is fear the real source or is it what the characters do or don’t do (Activities?) in response? Part of my argument is that pain is inevitable and trying too hard to avoid it is not only futile, but makes it worse. I can’t deny that if they had no fear, then there’d be no problem, but if they acted more rationally, then they’d see that a lot of the fear is unfounded, or at least not as bad as they thought. Actually, maybe that’s still an internal thing since “rationally” is the requirement.

Maybe I oughta just switch the Being/Impulsive Responses throughlines for:
OS: Worry: Characters do counter-productive things because their fear consequences clouds judgement.
and MC: Being: stuff about MC wanting to find a place in society and grappling with trying to act in an acceptable way according to his and society’s expectations (Accurate/Non-Accurate)

Just to clarify a bit of backstory,
MC wasn’t discarded but removed himself from the world because he didn’t believe he could change and wanted to give up and end his suffering. Being obsessed with morality, he’d justify leaving his parents in the lurch by convincing himself that it’s in everyone’s best interest if he just stayed out of the way. So, there’s a selfish/selfless, Responsibility theme adding further noise when it comes to trying to focus.

IC, on the other hand, was disowned by his parents for quitting college, so when MC gets rejected by a living relative, that hits a nerve for IC and motivates his nobler desires to help.

#8

Well I still maintain it sounds like the problem you’re ascribing your MC is Evaluation.

Beyond that, I’m not quite sure what your question is here. Are you asking us to help you determine the appropriate storyform for your story, or have you already decided what storyform you are using?

#9

I think it’s fine to write something you can’t perfectly justify at the moment, or that you can’t justify at all. A writer isn’t supposed to “kill their darlings”, it’s only a guideline which can sometimes help a few writers. If you love some of your sentences but think it might be pointless for the story, try searching why, and improve your sentences and its purpose. Sometimes you like them because they show personalities. If you had to cut out all your favorite sentences, what would particularly stand out in your writing style, your novel?

#10

I have been working with a storyform and have tried variations as well as different ones, but I get stuck on illustrating all of the story points and feel weird. I don’t know if my hang up means:

  • the storyform is objectively off

  • I’m questioning it due to getting distracted by other themes that I subjectively experience as related when I should just stick with “the story’s lesson is ‘don’t let fear of failure hold you back if you want to be happy’ so OS Concern is Innermost Desires (or Impulsive Responses.)”

  • Fear of committing to illustrations I’m not sure about for fear that I’ll choose wrong and be unable to fix it,

  • or if it’s just, as I’ve been cautioned against, a means of procrastinating on the hard part of writing (but it’s hard to find direction when you’re questioning what the exact cause of conflict is)

So, I wanted to ask for objective opinions and some questions:

  1. Does anyone have experiences/advice about personal blind spots or choosing ideas when writing?

  2. Should OS be Impulsive Responses, Innermost Desires, or something else? Ok, so characters make their fears worse by trying too hard to avoid them. Is the source of that problem the Impulse to avoid pain? Is it characters feeling insecure because of past events that they interpret as “failures” or just the Desire to belong?

#11

I was more worried about big plot events or stuff like “how do I make this character do X without making them unlikable or bending them out of character to serve a plot?”

#12

I wanted the story to end a certain way, so I had to do a major overhaul of a certain character, making him younger and teen-mind scattered, so another character could continue being the main influence IC. I find it helps to type where the characters are supposed to be, a sentence a chapter, with the end I want. Then think it over.

#13

A. In this case, I believe your storyform is off.

B. That strategy of determining your OS concern is unfortunately not very sound. This is because “not letting failure hold you back” might represent any number of concerns.

C. You can always change illustrations. The story belongs to you. You are in control of it. Shape it however you like. Moreover, you’re entitled to make mistakes. What’s that saying-- there’s no making an omelette without cracking a few eggs? That applies to the writing process as well.

D. Yes, you probably are procrastinating, but you’re caught between a rock and a hard place. Writing a novel is hard; pinning down a storyform is hard. Creating anything is hard. The only way to avoid that challenge is not to create anything at all. I hope you don’t take that path, but if you choose to keep trying, you will have to tackle one side of that equation or the other and wrestle it to the ground until you’ve got it pinned. Sorry to say there’s no way around it.

  1. My advice: learn to take a leap of faith. Either take one with regards to trusting your own instincts, or take one with regard to trusting the guidance of people on this forum. But you’ll have to learn to trust someone’s judgement or the damn novel’s never going to get written.

  2. The OS concern of your story should be either Learning or Conceiving, depending on whether you put the OS in Physics or Psychology. I would suggest Learning, as it seems like a better fit. (OS: Physics)

Your MC problem is Evaluation. His throughline is in Universe. Your IC is in Mind. Your MC is a linear do-er who changes by the end of the story. The story is driven by Action and ends with a judgement of Good.

You are now down to two storyforms, depending on whether the OS ends in success or failure.

Why do I think this? You described the story lesson as ‘don’t let fear of failure hold you back if you want to be happy.’ So the OS goal is either learn how to manage fear of failure or conceive of a way to manage fear of failure.

#14

I do like that kind of thing, like writing an objective “MC feels X because of Y.”

#15

More like more like running on the stones of Brighton Beach during the storm and so and so standing on the skittle/ship/whatever and another ch watching/waiting/whatever.

#16

Just wanted to add to what @Audz is saying, and remind you that you do not need to know the full storyform before you start writing.

Even if you’re only sure of Judgment, Resolve, and who the MC & IC are, that’s still WAY more than most writers know before they start.

So either take a leap of faith and go with a storyform you’re not sure of (you can always change it later to match what you end up writing). Or, proceed with only what you know about. Either way, you’ll get something written.

Even when you do have a full storyform that you’re 100% sure of, it doesn’t magically make the writing easy. It’s still hard … and you still have to decide what happens in the story, what the characters are like, etc., yourself. You still have to trust your gut every time.

I’m going to point you to this post by @decastell. He’s a successful novelist with lots of experience yet it’s not uncommon for him to flounder around for a while (probably true for most novelists). But notice that even while he’s floundering, he’s writing.

#17

I can’t necessarily trust my emotional evaluation since I know that just because I like something, doesn’t mean it’s good writing. I mean, look at all the author-insert Mary Sues out there. :sweat_smile:

I suppose it’s my fault for loving to watch funny critics mock awful movies and cartoons or that time in college where I drew an abstract fox that my illustration professor thought was a bird and I learned that I had to evaluate my work by putting myself in the audience’s shoes, which hardly seems objective.

That’s basically MC’s problematic approach to the rock and a hard place.

Does being in a similar position to MC mean that I have to think in terms of everything relative to MC throughline because I can’t be objective? Or do I take the message I know that I want to say (about fears) and set the OS to that while MC and IC pushing each other is my internal tug of war between the urge to give up fighting vs. persistence?

But how do you choose when either one is fallible? My POV is subjective and must be full of blind-spots, but I’m sick of feeling unable to… feel as confident and self-reliant at creative stuff like before art school critiques (illustration, specifically) taught me to keep analyzing my work in terms of “what will the audience see?” and by extension “How will they or potential employers judge my work?” rather than say “This is X and it’s great the way it is.”

Others may be more objective but not have all the information (which is why I write overly long posts, in case details might change the context) I’ve tried both, though halfheartedly because I’m incapable of 100% trust in anything. Does my present emotional struggle with this indicate that my storyform should be about that?

#18

But my gut clamored for Innermost Desires, Future, Becoming, and Obtaining, which must’ve been wrong since others have had different ideas about it and then my gut wonders if that nagging thought about whether I’ll turn out to have been right all along or not means anything.

#19

No no! Sorry I wasn’t clear. I meant trust your gut on what to put in the story, not on how to analyze the story. Like if you have some cool idea for a scene or a character, and it feels like it will fit, then go with it (even if you don’t know how it works in the structure).

#20

For what it’s worth I think you must possess an incredible amount of courage and dedication to be writing a story that so closely mirrors your own personal struggles.

I think I tend to write stories where the characters’ conflicts are around problems that I want to have, not ones that I do have. (I mean, no I don’t literally want to have to resist an alien taking over my body or a nightclub filled with zombies or struggle to figure out who threw my wife off a cliff. But it would be cool to try, for a while…)