Draw your story

In which I actually discuss writing!

Last week I was struggling. My picture book wasn't working. It was a great idea, interesting character, good plot, lovely language, perfect beginning and ending, and yet. still. not. working. and I. didn't. know. WHY?!?! AAAAAHHHHH!!!!!! (bangs head on wall)

I got a little frustrated. I showed it to anyone who would look. Everybody agreed: it was fabulous, but then not...somehow. I was ready to feed it to the squirrels.

And then I took it to one of my critique groups and listened to Diane read it aloud.

"OH!" I said. "I see what's wrong! The story goes like THIS, instead of like THIS!" And for the "THIS" parts, I made squiggling gestures with my hands.

Because they are wonderful and because they know my peculiar craziness, my critique group did not laugh, though they did stare a bit.

"See?!" I went on. "It needs to do THIS." And I drew a bunch of squares in my notebook. "But right now, it's like THIS." And I drew a graph.

Again, you gotta love my critique group (I do) because they were like "Oh, yeah, we see," and then gave great suggestions for resculpting the story.

Today I want you to draw your story. Not illustrate it, but graph it. You can use boxes, where each box is a scene and the stairs climb up as the tension does, or climb down as things get worse for your character. Or, you can set up an X and Y axis and draw a line graph. The top graph over to the left shows how I want my story to go; things get less :) for the character until the very end. The bottom shows how it was going, and why it wasn't working.

What shape is your story? And does it have the shape you want it to? Three things to consider:

1. Where does your story really start? If the beginning of your story shape is flat, if your scenes read "intro intro intro," there's too much intro. You get one box or a small bit of graph line before we need to go up or down. Otherwise, I'm bored.

2. Is your story going somewhere overall? Or is it a series of same-sized peaks and valleys? And what shape do you want it to be? Personally, I like to be able to discern a trend amidst the squiggles; if things aren't getting progressively worse for your character, if everything comes back to where it was after every episode, I never have to get emotionally involved, since I can rest assured all will be well.

3. Where is the peak or point of no hope of your story? Part of the problem I had was that the emotional climax of the story came too far before the end of the graph. Whether it's a picture book or a novel, you want very little time between the climax and the end. One box, maybe, or a little zip up on the graph.

So today, I want you to draw the shape of your story. No, seriously, just try it. And report back what you find.