{"id":2134,"date":"2019-11-05T09:00:07","date_gmt":"2019-11-05T14:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/?p=2134"},"modified":"2020-02-04T11:31:13","modified_gmt":"2020-02-04T16:31:13","slug":"baking-literary-bread-part-2-the-right-recipe-for-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/baking-literary-bread-part-2-the-right-recipe-for-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Baking Literary Bread, Part 2 \u2013 The Right Recipe for Success"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[This blog was originally published in Night Owl Reviews<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In my last column<\/a>, I talked about the critical ingredients to craft a coherent story. You might recall my genius bread-baking metaphor: like a story, there are an infinite number of different kinds of bread you can bake, but all loaves of bread have certain ingredients in common that make it bread <\/em>rather than cake or pizza. However, just knowing what ingredients to put in isn\u2019t enough. You also need to know the ratio<\/em> of each, and the order <\/em>in which they should be added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Luckily, the mix is pretty simple. I\u2019ll summarize what Larry\nBrooks explained in detail in his book Story\nPhysics<\/em>: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hook<\/strong> should happen immediately; it\u2019s the reason your audience keeps reading past Page One. Then comes the inciting incident<\/strong>, which can happen any time before plot point 1 (PP1)<\/strong>. A growing readership with shrinking attention spans has caused many editors to push for an inciting incident as soon as possible; heck, I recently read a book where the hero agreed to father the heroine\u2019s baby by the end of Chapter One\u2026talk about slamming on the plot accelerator. However, resist the urge to frontload your story with action and drama. The reader needs at least a basic understanding of who your protagonist is and the world they inhabit in order to understand why the inciting incident is important. The story with the sudden baby-pact? I stopped reading around Chapter Four, because while an exposition dump explained the situation, I felt like I hadn\u2019t gotten to know the characters well enough to care about their baby-making adventures, and my sense of emotional whiplash never lifted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next is PP1<\/strong>,\nwhich should happen ~20-25% of the way through your book. For instance, if your\nbook is 100,000 words, then PP1 should happen 20,000-25,000 words in.\n\nSimilarly, the midpoint<\/strong> happens ~50% of the way in (no kidding, right?), plot point 2 (PP2)<\/strong> happens at the 75%\nmark, and the climax\/denoument<\/strong>\nhappens in the last 90%.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Why are these the correct ratios? For the same reason a\nrainbow looks \u201ccorrect\u201d if the colors are in the order of red -> orange ->\nyellow -> green -> blue -> purple, and the same reason musical chords\nsound \u201cright\u201d compared to a bunch of random notes\u2014it\u2019s a law of nature (hence \u201cStory\nPhysics\u201d). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Messing up the mix causes a whole host of problems; conversely, understanding the mix can fix<\/em> a bunch of problems. How, you might ask??? Read Baking Literary Bread Part 3<\/a> to find out! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[This blog was originally published in Night Owl Reviews] In my last column, I talked about the critical ingredients to craft a coherent story. You might recall my genius bread-baking metaphor: like a story, there are an infinite number of different kinds of bread you can bake, but all loaves of bread have certain ingredients … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Baking Literary Bread, Part 2 \u2013 The Right Recipe for Success”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[494,497],"tags":[390,391,385,386,387,389,471],"class_list":["post-2134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft","category-plot","tag-climax","tag-denoument","tag-hook","tag-inciting-incident","tag-plot-point-1","tag-plot-point-2","tag-story-physics-by-larry-brooks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Vyi8-yq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2134"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2550,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2134\/revisions\/2550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}