I’ve been working on a story I call The Magical Vessel (or TMV for short) since NaNoWriMo 2012. Here’s the plot in a nutshell: In an effort to save his twin brother Eden from the lethal amount of power coursing through his body, Aden devises a way to disperse half of it across the city. But through a series of unexpected events, the spell fails and the power transfers to a single person: Ayalisse.
I wrote the current drafts of TMV during the April and July 2017 Camp NaNoWriMo sessions, my first times participating in that version of NaNoWriMo. At some point in the sessions, I realized that TMV was a mess, but I didn’t know how to fix it. Thus began my obsession with researching new writing techniques.
I read tons of books, blog posts, and magazine articles about writing, anything I could get my hands on. Over time, I learned enough tips to help me improve my story. I worked on three key areas: plot, characters, and the fantasy elements.
Plot
The first aspect I focused on was my plot. The upside of only writing 17,000-30,000 words for Camp NaNoWriMo (as opposed to NaNoWriMo’s 50,000 words) was that I could see the story more clearly. Unfortunately, one of the things I saw were the big ol’ plot holes. That could not stand.
To help me fix my story, I checked out James Scott Bell’s Writing Fiction: Plot & Structure from the library. Plot & Structure is part of a series of writing books produced by Writer’s Digest. I’d previously cited the book in a research essay in college, but I only read the parts relevant to my assignment back then. This time, I read the whole thing and learned how to properly organize a story.
In the book, Bell presents a general story outline. He talks about the characteristics and events that make up a story’s beginning, middle, and ending. Then he explains that those same three parts represent Acts 1, 2, and 3 respectively in what’s called the “Three-Act Structure.” Although I later learned that the Three-Act Structure is actually a well-known writing technique–it popped up in nearly every writing book I encountered during my research–I had never heard of it before. Bell also provides timeline illustrations that show when each act should start.
The most relevant structure for me in the book was the “Mythic Structure,” which reworks the Three-Act Structure for fantasy stories. It includes events like “A ‘call to adventure’ or a disturbance interrupts the hero’s world” and “A mentor may appear to teach the hero.” That was exactly the type of outline I needed to see.
As per an exercise in Plot & Structure, I drew my own timeline to see how well TMV followed the Mythic Structure. The results were bad. I had trouble pinpointing the beginning of the three acts and the major turning points. The beginning of TMV Pt. 1 belonged either at the end of Act 1 or at the beginning of Act 2. It was horribly unbalanced, with a lot of filler and a rushed ending. Meanwhile, some of the events in TMV Pt. 2 were out of order. I had to heavily revise my timelines to correct these problems.
Just as I was digesting the Three-Act Structure, I discovered the Five-Act Structure through a Vox article. I saved the article for future reference, but I opted to stick with the less-advanced Three-Act Structure for TMV. One step at a time.
Characters
The next aspect of TMV that needed improvement was my characters. I turned to another book in the Writer’s Digest series I had briefly consulted before, Writing Fiction: Dialogue by Gloria Kempton. In Dialogue, Kempton obviously talks about the process of writing dialogue, but she also explains how to create characters. Her reasoning is that you have to know your characters well enough to anticipate what they will or won’t say.
One particular line showed me how to take my characters to the next level: “Whenever your characters open their mouths, they start telling the truth about what’s motivating them.” In other words, I needed to develop motives and goals for my characters, something I hadn’t done up. Although Kempton provides a chapter on the Enneagram Personality Types to help with this task, which are like character archetypes, I used my technical communication skills to make a character chart instead.
The chart has four columns:
- Character tells the character’s name(s).
- Details lists personal info about the character (occupation, relationships, etc.).
- Goals outlines the things the character wants to accomplish in the story.
- Motives explains why the character wants to accomplish those goals.
Once I finished filling out the information for every character in TMV, I saw that Kempton’s advice was correct. Most of my characters’ motives and goals were either unclear or weak. For example, a supporting character named Imogen wanted to help Eden control his power for completely unclear reasons. Another character, Hee-Seo, only had the weak goal of reclaiming her ex-boyfriend. Not cool.
As much as the chart helped me work through the kinks, I still needed to go deeper into my characters. While browsing back issues of The Writer magazine through the library’s RBDigital service, I found an article called “Fail-Safe Your Fiction: Seven Steps to a Stronger Story” (November 2017). There, I was introduced to the WORST acronym for character development. WORST roughly stands for Wants, Obstacles, Risks, Stakes, and Transformations. Thus far, I’d only been focusing on the W, what the characters want and why. WORST isn’t perfect–the risks and stakes often seem to have the same answer to me–but it works. I revised my character chart to reflect the new traits.
Even with all of that work, I just could not figure out certain characters. Luckily, Writer’s Digest–the magazine–came to the rescue again. The article “Kill Your Darlings” (July/August 2017) argues that an overly problematic character might actually be unnecessary to the story. It includes tests for identifying those characters and tips for potentially saving them. Very informative!
I identified several troublesome minor characters in TMV. Parker failed the “Action Test,” which gauges how important the character is to the overall story. He only existed in TMV as Ayalisse’s love interest. I saved Parker by giving him some powers and a more prominent role in the story (aka the “The Upgrade” technique). Poor Liam, who failed nearly all of the tests, is undergoing similar changes.
Fantasy Elements
The last aspect I worked on was TMV‘s fantasy elements. The magical parts of my story are awful. Straight-up awful. As much as I love reading fantasy books, I suck at writing them.
A LitReactor article about creating magic powers revealed my biggest mistake: I didn’t establish magic rules for my world before I started writing. I don’t even know the answer to the two most basic questions of the story: why does Eden have so much power and how come can only Ayalisse hold it? None of the theories I’ve come up with have made sense so far.
Thankfully, I found two books through the Hoopla service that pointed me in the right direction.
The first book, Writing the Paranormal Novel by Steven Harper, is like the textbook for writing fantasy novels that I needed. Harper explains basic concepts like supernatural elements, fantasy cliches, character archetypes, and most importantly, magic systems. I followed the book chapter by chapter, making notes about everything. I learned some new plot techniques such as the “Rule of Three,” wherein the story builds upon a trio of similar events, and the idea that each character should have at least two goals.
Writing the Paranormal Novel also gave me the idea to revisit old notes from earlier versions of the story. I went through the Scrivener project for Magical Mistress, the precursor to TMV, to see if there was anything I could incorporate into the story. I found an entire folder called “World Building” where I had written notes about how the magic worked. Talk about luck!
Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy by Crawford Killian is another great book. Though Killian occasionally (and admittedly) focuses more on the science fiction genre at times, he covers similar ground as Harper. Some interesting topics include the history of the fantasy genre, the state of the fantasy publishing industry, and the characteristics of each fantasy subgenre. I took careful notes on his version of the Three-Act Structure too.
I may never be able to write a good fantasy story, but it definitely won’t be for lack of trying.
Conclusion
I felt optimistic about my story by the time the first 2018 Camp NaNoWriMo session rolled around. I had fixed some of my plot problems, enhanced my characters, and boosted the fantasy elements of TMV. I was so excited about implementing my changes that I chose to write a second draft of TMV Part 1 instead of writing the third part as I’d originally planned.
Find out more about April’s Camp NaNoWriMo session and my revision process in Part 2.