writing structure

In this episode, Jeff sits down with author Ian Worrall to look at a piece Ian has written. They talk about making the piece "dialogue centric" or "screenplay ready," they discuss maintaining the energy of the dialogue while balancing inner thoughts and prose, and they talk about finding the segments within a conversation.

For more on writing dialogue, check out https://dialoguedoctor.com/

This episode showcases the effectiveness of using the story spine structure. The story spine is a story structure as old as time. It’s the model every fairytale follows. It works really well for all stories because it’s intuitive. It’s in our collective unconscious. 

You will hear three prompt responses from Writing Class Radio’s First Annual Key Largo Writing Retreat. We told our students to think about a time everything changed and then we walked them through the story spine. Kim Costigan, Pamela Lear, and Dr. Jane Marks brought the bag!

You will also hear about the other stories at the retreat that were published after hard core edits. Start planning to attend our next Key Largo Writer’s Retreat in Dec 2023.

Writing Class Radio is hosted by Allison Langer and Andrea Askowitz. Guest host Zorina Frey. Audio production by Matt Cundill, Evan Surminski and Aiden Glassey at the Sound Off Media Company. Theme music is by Emia.

There’s more writing class on our website including stories we study, editing resources, video classes, writing retreats, and live online classes. Join our writing community by following us on Patreon. 

If you want to write with us every week, you can join our First Draft weekly writers groups. You have the option to join Allison Langer on Tuesdays 12-1 ET and/or Zorina Frey Wednesdays 7-8pm ET. You’ll write to a prompt and share what you wrote. If you’re looking to take your writing to the next level, or if you are a business owner, community activist, group that needs healing, entrepreneur and you want to help your team write better, check out all the classes we offer on our website: writingclassradio.com.

Join the community that comes together for instruction, an excuse to write, and most importantly, the support from other writers. To learn more, go to www.Patreon.com/writingclassradio. Or sign up HERE for First Draft for a FREE Zoom link.

A new episode will drop every other WEDNESDAY. 

There’s no better way to understand ourselves and each other, than by writing and sharing our stories. Everyone has a story. What’s yours?

For a transcription of today’s episode click here.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A dose of reality for today.

“Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse

Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com

Instagram: @authordevindavis

Twitter: @authordevind

The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage.

[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the show Writing in the Tiny House. The entire point of this podcast is to help the tormented artist by sharing what I know about writing, publishing, and stress management, so that you can have the tools to produce the content that you have been eager to write. If you have the steps in place, you can produce a short story in as few as three months or a novel in as few as 18. And hopefully through the ideas in this podcast, you will have the wisdom to adjust that timeline if you need to. I am Devin Davis, the guy who lives and writes in a tiny house in Northern Utah. Thank you for tuning in, and please enjoy today's episode of Writing in the Tiny House.

 Hello and good morning. It is another [00:01:00] Wednesday. And here we are in the tiny house doing another episode of this awesome show guys. It has been rough. Things have been rough, and I will compile another clip episode on my experience with beta readers later, just because that whole process isn't finished yet.

I have a few beta readers who have not given feedback. I'm going to be meeting one of them tonight for drinks. I'm excited to hear what she has to say, but there has been a reality check in my life, and I have decided to share that reality check with you all today. at the same time, I don't want this to sound bitter or whatever, just because sometimes when we have moments like this, it's really easy to just get mad and it's okay to get mad.

It is also a very healthy way to realize your life and to realize what you're doing, to realize the next [00:02:00] steps to realize. Your reality, hence the reality check. here's the fundamental question with all of this that I don't know that I've addressed in a previous episode of writing in the tiny house, what does it take to be a writer?

What does it take for a person to say that they are a writer and like with so many art based things? I mean, in reality, you don't, you don't have to have painted anything in order to say that you're a painter, you certainly don't have to have sold any of your paintings to say that you're a painter and you don't have to have any of your artwork in your house.

It is something where you can say it. And it is true I mean, with painting, perhaps you, you need to have held a brush at some time in your life, and that could have been at any time. And at that moment in time, you were a painter and you could still claim to be a painter because, because, because of opinions, because of, [00:03:00] you know, time isn't real, anyway, stuff like that.

Writing is the same. If you have written an essay ever in your life, you are a writer and today you could still claim to be a writer. If you have not written a single word since that essay in junior high school at the same time, though, if you do claim to be a writer, people will want to see.

the fruits of your labor. They will want to see what you have done. And so if you say that you are a writer, especially if it is your profession instead of your hobby, and that's another tricky part with this friends, if you want it to be your profession, there's a lot of stuff that you're going to have to do.

and the fact of the matter is most writers in this world do not support themselves through their writing. If you want to support yourself through your writing, there is a [00:04:00] lot you are going to have to do, and it will take a long time. I mean, there are always exceptions to all of the things that I'm going to be saying, but by and large, most writers don't support themselves with writing and.

Those who do it has taken a long time to get there, or a lot of the writers that we see today are able to write full time because a loved one is actually supporting them Or whatever they write full time because they don't need to worry about income.

Income is being provided somewhere else, either through a loved one or inheritance or whatever, whatever. and like I said, there's always exceptions to that. , but here we are here. We here I am. I finished another pass with TIS and we're doing the beta readers and I received feedback that ti needs to be longer ti needs to be a full on novel instead of just a Nove The beta reader who said that [00:05:00] had all of the reasons to back it up, had all of it for this reason and that reason and whatever the thing is, I originally wrote his. thinking that it would just be a short story. And so I worked it out in the method that we see short stories.

There aren't many characters. There aren't many characters who speak, everything feels pretty condensed. and that's how I wanted it, but was it the best way to do it? This beta reader has shown me that probably it wasn't. So while there were definitely strong parts in Ts, and I appreciate that and I love knowing that those things were there.

thus far, I've gotten a lot of good feedback from ti. Another trick, like another kind of interesting thing with beta readers is if somebody says that they don't like the main character and another person says that they do like the main character, the thing is both of those beta readers are right.

I mean, there's always a chance that the first person missed [00:06:00] something or there's a chance that I didn't do it. Right. Or there's probably. A greater chance of a little bit of both of those possibilities, but I've received very good feedback from ti thus far, but one beta reader wanted to understand the scope of it all.

the thing is TIS is supposed to be the first book of a world of books. I. Hesitate to say that it's a, well, it would be a series, but the thing is, each of the books is not necessarily a continuation of the previous book. Most of these books will have different characters with different plots and different things, but they all take place in the same world.

And so this collection of books, this tales from LAER stuff. That we've been doing for the past while is actually a world of books. It is [00:07:00] a world of lives. It's a world of people and not necessarily all of the books are continuations of a previous plot. and that's where we are. So we have stories that take place in this city.

We have stories that take place in another city and the stories are unrelated except for a single element that ties in later. And of course, all of this builds for the final thing at the end, just because that's how it gets to be. Right. You build for 10 books and then you have the final trilogy at the end with a big battle.

it? It's something that we've seen a lot in fantasy. going back to this idea of being a writer and what it all kind of looks like this beta reader wanted to understand the scope of where we were headed with this of where T was going of the [00:08:00] future projects. that are on the horizon, so to speak.

And she said that the story is too big and the world is too complicated. And the intricacies of the magic system are such that it cannot all be properly developed in a Nove. And the thing with releasing a collection of short stories and a collection of Noves over time is the entire world is not fully developed in each Nove.

And unless the Noves are all released at the same time, the reader is only going to get a half baked world in each Nove over the next. Many years until I'm finished with them. And so I can either release a collection of Noves all at once, or I can kind of flex my muscles and do all of the world building and make [00:09:00] TIS a big beefy novel, which will then set off this entire collection of this entire world of books with a splash.

There's a lot of. heat writing on the first book of any collection of stories and any series. The first book is super important and I am convinced right now that a Nove is not the best way to do a first book. It was a year ago. That I was seeing a trend of people releasing a Nove as a way to test a theory or to test the market, to see if releasing something larger or something, you know, along those lines of the Nove later would land well.

And so the novella was a way to test the market and the thing. Now that we are [00:10:00] 18 months beyond that, beyond me hearing about that first trend, I have not seen the fruit of any of the people following those trends yet. I know of one person who released a Nove. His name is Daniel Green. and it was his first, anything that he ever wrote, he has a very large following on YouTube, a very respectable, big following.

And so he's self-published because he already has a big audience that he directly addresses, I think two times a week on his channel on YouTube. And he released a novella and I don't know what has come of. I don't know if he has continued with that or not, or if it was just a good project that he did.

And now it's done. Who knows? I mean, I could, I could figure it out and I probably shouldn't include that on a podcast episode, but here we are just standing here thinking so. [00:11:00] considering the length of time that comes in between these projects is a Nove the best way to go. Like I said, I'm convinced that it's not, that also means that ti gets to be largely rewritten.

And so to be a writer, here's the thing, friends here is the hard thing

to be a writer you write to be a writer does not mean that other people will have to read what you have written. You do not need to land yourself a big following in order to be considered a writer. I have thus far written, literally hundreds of thousands of words. Literally hundreds of thousands of words that all belong within this world of lado.

And this dates back to my first novels that I released when I was 24. I mean, this was forever ago. And I mean, it's what happens when you're 24 and you're eager to have a book out in [00:12:00] the world. And so you release a book that has not had a final proofread. So those books are not available now, but they take place in lado and so, here we are. I have written hundreds of thousands of words. I am going to write hundreds of thousands of more words until a readership gets a hold of any of it. And so the question of the day is, and I ask this very seriously because I already know my own answer, but I'm going to pose it to you.

The listeners of writing in the tiny house. I'm, I'm assuming that most of you are writers are hoping to be whether professionally or as a hobby or whatever writing fulfills in your life. If you end up writing hundreds of thousands of words and a handful of people only ever get to read some of it, is it all worth it?[00:13:00] 

So go ahead and think about that because hundreds of thousands of words represents hours and hours, hundreds of hours. if not more and as a writer, is it worth it? If only a handful of people ever read a fraction of the stuff you have written. So for me, the answer is yes, that's something that I've been toiling with for a long time.

And I have this big ass series. That I have been struggling with for a long time to begin to start. And now, because life is different than it was 10 years ago, I can start it, but this is something that will likely carry me into my sixties. There's enough books and enough, there there's enough content to carry me into my sixties.

we get to just wonder if something that takes up so much [00:14:00] of my life, doesn't get read by somebody else or only a handful of other people and whatever else is it going to be worth it, something to think about. So thank you for joining me. And I leave you with that sobering thought.

 And that is it for today. Before we go, I need to say that my current work in progress Tiz the next installment of Tales from Vlaydor is ready for beta readers, people to read the novella and share with me their experience. It's a big, important step before publishing. So if you wish to be a part of this project, reach out to me on my social media handles; on Instagram I'm @authordevindavis, and on Twitter I'm @authordevind. And remember that my short story Brigitte is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible as an audio book. Check those out today. [00:15:00] 

Songwriting structure, how do yo you write a song with good structure? In this video I lay out how I go about creating good structure in my songwriting. 

Songwriting download - https://www.dottedeight.com/artist

You'll notice that I place a huge amount of importance on song structure, I think it play such a huge role in good effective songwriting.
This quick songwriting tip about structure will point you and your songwriting in the right direction

I use cubase pro by steinberg as my digital audio workstation, but you could just as easily use the free version of garage band, audacity, pro tools, or heaps more

From Musician to Artist is a podcast designed to help musicians level up into recognised music artists, music artists that can sell tickets to shows, and build a genuine fanbase. If you're interested in learning from the experiences and research i have done you can connect with me at by subscribing on YouTube, searching 'from musician to artist' into your favourite podcast app, or heading to https://www.dottedeight.com

My name is Craig Honeysett, and I work out of the Dotted Eight Studio
I use the Panasonic Lumix S5 to shoot my video
I edit in Final Cut Pro
I capture my audio with the RE20 by SE electronics
into the presonus studiolive
and mix that in cubase pro

Chapters
00:00 From musician to artist intro
00:08 Songwriting tip, using structure
01:36 How I lay out structure
01:55 The benefits of good structure
02:55 Takes away the overwhelm
03:29 Songwriting checklist
04:08 From musician to artist outro

Intro/outro music by Robbie Mortimer 
All other audio from https://www.audiio.com

#musician #songwriting #musicartist

Let's go through an analysis of my short story Brigitte and compare it to the beat sheet Save the Cat.

“Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse

Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com

Instagram: @authordevindavis

Twitter: @authordevind

The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage.

[00:00:00] Last week we learned about beats. Now we are going to save the cat today on Writing in the Tiny House. Hello. Hello. Hello. And welcome back to the show. Welcome to Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy who lives in a tiny house who writes stuff and talks about it on a podcast.

The goal of this podcast is to introduce the language of writing of creative writing, help you to develop a process so that you can have a manuscript that is ready to publish, whether you choose to self-publish or [00:01:00] whether you choose to approach an agent and do the traditional route, your manuscript will be ready.

And if you are doing a short story, perhaps you can crank it out in three months. If you are doing a novel, perhaps you can do it in 18 months. And I hope that with this podcast, you can also have the foresight to see if you need to adjust that timeline or not.

So we're going to be talking about my short story, Brigitte that I released back in October, and I wrote that and published it in eight weeks.

It is totally possible to do. Some people are super fast at it. Some people aren't. Hurray for timelines. At the same time, let's use our brains and our wisdom and make sure that we are publishing good things. We talked last week about beats. We talked about what a beat is, that a beat is something in the story.

It is the smallest thing in a story that advances the story, that makes the story [00:02:00] move forward. And it can be an action and inaction. It can be a response. It can also just be a setting, just something like that that makes the plot move forward. And I said, last week that this week we are going to go through what is called a beat sheet.

So it is a collection of beats and how they are organized as a way to just kind of touch base to see if your story is working. Doing this in this way, it makes writing pretty formulaic and there are good and bad qualities to having a formulaic way of writing. First of all, it kind of cranks out things that all resemble each other.

And some people don't like that. At the same time, though, it can be a good tool. I have found. Many of the different things that I do. I'm a person who has like a million different hobbies that the more that I understand the rules of something, the [00:03:00] easier it is for me to naturally incorporate them into what I'm doing.

And it is easier for me to bend or break them and do that with purpose to do that intentionally. And so, while something like Save the Cat is formulaic and mechanical in its approach to creative writing. A few weeks ago, we also talked about the hero's journey, which is very much along these same lines.

It is good to see where the things fall, just because all of these are common points and common events and common things in good stories that have all been successful. I'm not going to pretend that all successful things have each of these beats in them, but as we go through this and compare it to my short story, Bree sheets, we can see that it's all there.

Like it's there. There might be something. May not work. And we'll talk about that. [00:04:00] I did not consult the beat sheet of Save the Cat when I wrote Brigitte back in October. And so this is going to be kind of an experiment for all of us. So Save the Cat was made by a gentleman named Blake Snyder. He died a few years ago, but he was a filmmaker and a screenwriter and Save the Cat is actually the original of it is actually meant for screenplays, but it's all storytelling. And so it applies very strongly to novels. And this goes with a three act structure. And if you remember how I said things a few weeks ago with the three act structure, act one very generally speaking is about 25% of your book. Act two is 50 and then act three is the remaining 25. And so just bear that in mind, as we go through the different [00:05:00] beats of Save the Cat, as we see if Delphine the main character of Bridgette, which was Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor did she save the cat or not?

So yeah, like I said, I did not reference this while I wrote the book. However, we're going to find out together. If these things are all still there, if it's all kind of there. And with the short story, we get to understand that these things are likely all in there somewhere, but condensed. There's not a lot of room in a short story to fill a thing with 15 different beats.

With a novel, when you have a higher word count, it's easier to work in all of the beats. So let's go through and talk about this.

Let's, let's start with act one. Again, act one is the first fourth of the novel or the story.

[00:06:00] So the first beat of Save the Cat is the opening image and it is a snapshot of how the world is. So the first scene of this short story actually takes place at the end of the story. I did one of these really weird framework things where I give you a glimpse at the end of the story as a way to set a tone for the whole story itself. And so Delphine is at the train station.

You can tell that she is on edge. She is tired. She has a bag of money and she is being chased. She is being pursued or at least feels that she is, she's being pursued by a group of people, an unknown group of people. And she is taking her daughter to flee to another city to start a new life. And from there, it's a short scene, but it is a great snapshot of what the entire story is going to be like. It brings [00:07:00] in a lot of questions. It brings in a lot of intrigue and it sets the stage for the entire rest of the story by glimpsing at how the story ends. So that was just kind of a trick there as a way to fulfill this setting the scene.

 Before the story starts or before, like the action of the story happens. So with Bridgette, we have Delphine who is about to deliver her daughter, Bridgette.

She is alone in a monastery and she has a midwife with her. We can kind of get a sense of time and place a little bit from the lack of technology and just this way of delivering a baby. Also she goes through and we talk about the flowers that were delivered to her room from the crone and. We understand that there is contention between Delphine and the crone based on Delphine's attitude toward those [00:08:00] flowers.

And so we get a sense of what her world is like, what her own personal world is like through the various flashbacks that she has while she is in transitional labor. And so, yeah, the opening image is established there. The next beat is the theme is stated a single scene beat in which a statement is made by someone other than the protagonist, that hints at what the protagonist will learn before the end of the story.

So this is more complicated. The thing is all of this is general and so we can make things work and see how it fits. So a statement by someone other than the main character to just kind of show how the main character is going to be or what their circumstances will be and what they want to avoid. In her flashbacks, Delphine reflects on an old friend named Jackleen who had an affair and was kicked out [00:09:00] of their city, who was removed from this priestess hood and lost her status and her place in the city. And so she knew from that experience, that things got to be handled differently with this new pregnancy of hers. The next beat is the setup and this can take place over several scenes, but

we get a sense of the protagonist life and what the world is like with all of its flaws and everything as it is. And so throughout her reflections and throughout her flashbacks, we see Delphine, we see her struggle with her faith. We see her struggle with her place as the high priestess of this church and the struggle that she has with the crone, who is kind of over the priestess program of the city of Brianne.

The next beat is the catalyst, and this is the life-changing event that happens to catapult the [00:10:00] protagonist into this new world or a new way of thinking. So the catalyst was Bridgette herself. So the thing that happens is Delphine has a baby and the delivery almost kills Delphine and it's this new daughter.

The daughter is also a legitimate And it creates a big change in Delphine's world because she wants to keep the history and the origin of her daughter a secret. And they don't understand. She doesn't understand her daughter's abilities. The next beat is a debate. So it's a Multisim beat where the protagonist debates what they will be doing next.

All of this happens in the first chapter, too. Just going through the flashbacks, Delphine finally arrives at the conclusion that she will be protecting her daughter [00:11:00] at all costs and that she will be keeping her daughter away from the crone, especially. Until she comes to understand what it is about her daughter that makes her daughter so dangerous so that things can be dealt with on her terms rather than on the Crone's terms.

The next beat in act one is break into two. It's the scene Where we are catapulted into act two. And the protagonist decides to accept whatever the next actions are going to be. And so there was the moment of insecurity and worry about what would happen to have an illegitimate child, and then to have an illegitimate child with such a dangerous ability.

Brought on more complications. And then the break into two beats is where phene decides to keep her [00:12:00] daughter more of a secret, the origins, a secret so that she can decide. What her daughter is actually all about what her daughter can do and to hide the fact that her daughter is a legitimate.

So let's move on to act two. All of that was act one, act one has a lot of beets. It has a lot of foundational stuff to set the scene for the story act two, the beats are a little bit more broad. one Of the beats for act two is the B story. So it's the B plot with Bridgette and with Devin, we have the subplot of the crone wanting to make money.

We have her little background, we have what she is doing with the enchanted water source found in the basement of the monastery. We have that. The next beat is fun and games. It's where the reader gets to see the protagonist, either shine or flounder in this new world. So there wasn't a lot of [00:13:00] struggle between Delphine and this new world, but there was an amount of figuring out she was with her daughter, Bridgette and Bridgette was playing with toys.

Bridgette was cutting a tooth and any way throughout this process, Delphine pieced it together. What Bridgette little ability is that Bridgette actually SAPs energy from people around her in order to heal herself. And that was why during her traumatic birth, she almost killed her mom. So that's a cool thing.

That's what fun and games are all about. The next beat of act two is the midpoint. It's where the fun and games section either culminates into a false victory or a false defeat. So this is the scene where Delphine and the crone have a confrontation. And it is a short conversation about [00:14:00] how the crone wants to do a ritual on Bridgette in order to find out for herself and therefore publicize what Bridgette can do if she has a gift at all and declare her lineage.

If this were allowed to happen, Bridgette would be ratted out as legitimate and Delphine would be forced out of the city, which the crone wants anyway. In that confrontation, Delphine's stands up to the crone and puts her in her place at the same time though.

The crone gets that last word in it, just as that last stabbing remark that. If Delphine does not comply by a certain day, the crone is going to declare Bridgette to be a bastard, which would ruin Delphine and her family. So moving on to the next bits of act two the bad guys closed in.

So this is right after the false victory. This happens in the story when it Bridgette is [00:15:00] kidnapped and then all is lost. This is Delphine reacting to Bridgette going missing. Aunt, her daughter's reacting to that to Delphina already has a lot of daughters and they were in charge of watching Bridgette and breezy.

Disappeared. So those beets still happened and then all is lost.

All is lost is when the bad guys. Appear to be winning. And so you have the captors of Bridgette over-powering her, of her struggling of her getting away. And then the dark night of the soul is the 12th beats of this entire thing. A dark night of the soul is. Multisim beat in which the protagonist takes time to process everything that's happened so far.

And it is the darkest hour. In, in my short story, Bridgette, this happens pretty rapidly. This is when everything [00:16:00] falls apart. This is when Bridgette falls into the spring, bumps her head. And due to her injury and the nature of the spring combined causes everybody around her to die.

So there's a big commitment there and a huge escalation of stakes. That's what the dark night of the soul is all about. And it is at that point that we break into act three. It's where the protagonist realizes that they must do a thing to fix the story.

So this is when the protagonist deals with the aftermath of this climax of this dark night of the soul. This is when, in my story, it is when Del phene finds breezy. And she goes into the basement of the monastery where this magical spring is located. Bridgette is there, she's wet. She's okay. Due to her own strange and dangerous healing abilities and everyone around her is dead.[00:17:00]

And so Delphine takes a moment to process through all of this and then decides that they need to skip town. And that propels us into act three.

And act three, there are a couple different little parts of, one big beat. The beat is the finale. This is Delphina. Speaking to her daughters revealing the affair that she had. That brought Bridgette into this world. And then her daughter is working in concert to get Delphine and Bridgette out of the city to catch a train to flee away.

So the finale has a lot of different parts. The parts here are gathering the team. Delphine speaks to her daughters. And that is kind of a way of gathering the team, gathering resources, packing a bag, executing the plan. The higher tower surprise is the protagonist spaces, a twist or a surprise that forces them to prove their worth.[00:18:00]

The high tower surprise is not really a part of the finale of my story. There's not really that. The dig deep down is not having a backup plan. The protagonist has to dig deep inside themselves to find the most important weapon of all the strength and courage to overcome their fear or false belief. And then the execution of a new plan.

So all of these are little sub-parts Of this larger beat, that is the finale. And some of those don't 100% apply to my story. I said earlier that Bridgette was not written in reference to Save the Cat, but as we go through and we see the way that the different points play out, you can see that I touched on a lot of these points pretty.

Okay. The points are there and so it is good to know. Beat sheets. It's it is good to know where things happen and where they should happen, so that you can become familiar with that when you are formulating your own stories. And as you're writing also as you're revising. [00:19:00] So these are a good thing to reference while you are doing the revision of your own short stories.

And as we demonstrated, I did pretty okay with this. There are some details in the finale beat that don't 100% apply to my story, but that's okay. I mean, This is a list of 15 beats and they're all there in the story. So that's pretty okay. I did pretty okay with this guys. That is what. Save the cat is all about.

Now we need to visit the title itself, save the cat. Like why are we calling anything? Save the cat when saving a cat is not a beat in the story. And I bring this up at the end on purpose. The guy who came up with saved the cat, he said, in different versions of this beat sheets. You can find these beat sheets kind of everywhere.

If you look up, save the cat beat sheet, you can find some, and they all say similar things. I recommend. [00:20:00] Referencing the original resource material all the time, but you can find beat sheets all over the place. This gentlemen said that one of the things that is missing from most stories, especially nowadays most modern stories, modern films, screenplays novels, is this beats in particular.

And like I said, in the original save the cat, there was a beat called save the cat. And it was the moment where we find that the hero is worth rooting for that the hero is worth cheering for And so I ask you my dear listeners in your experience of reading Bridgette installment, one of tales from late, or did Del phene ever save the cat.

next week, we're going to talk about a few other things with developmental edits inspired by the works [00:21:00] of George Saunders. And so tune in next week for another episode of writing and the tiny house.

Devin Davis:

And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

“Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse

Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com

Instagram: @authordevindavis

Twitter: @authordevind

The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage.

The episodes this year have mainly been about story structure. And today we are going to cover what beats are as we continue covering story structure today on Writing in the Tiny House. Hello? Hello. Hello. Welcome to the show. Welcome to Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy in the tiny house in Northern Utah who writes stuff.

And talks about it on a podcast. So in the intro of this show, I have said that mainly this this podcast is for adults who work a nine to five, who really just want [00:01:00] to get that work of fiction out of their brains and onto paper. And while I certainly still stand by that, I've decided to refine that whole target audience.

this is what this show is. And I really like this on this show. This show pertains to everybody who wants to write, whether you work a nine to five, whether you are a 15 year old in high school, who wants to write short stories or work on your first novel or whatever this show has stuff for all of you.

If you want to do your own memoir, if you want to do this or that a collection of short stories. We like all the things on this show, we learn the terminology. And we develop a process so that you can have a manuscript that is ready to publish. If you are writing a short story, you can get that manuscript ready in as little as three months. And if you [00:02:00] are writing a novel, you can get it ready. in as little as 18 months, and hopefully in this podcast, We also give you the big picture and the reality that you might need longer than that, which is great. And some of you might say, no, there are plenty of short stories in this world that took years and years to write. And I am not going to disagree with you. And there are novels in this world.

There are flash fiction novels that took under three months to write. And so. What is the value of putting a timeframe on completing a work in progress when it is going to be different for everybody, it is simply to convey a possibility. The Thing is sometimes we don't get started with projects just because we don't understand how big the project is going to be. But knowing that getting started and with some practice, you can crank out a good short story in a pretty short amount of time. I [00:03:00] can give you encouragement to get started in the first place.

And to know that when you are writing a novel, if you stick with it and you practice, eventually you can get your process down to 18 months or 12 months, just depending on how diligent you are with it. Granted, there are a lot of long novels in this world that took years to write. I don't want to try to fill your head with unrealistic expectations, but to me, those expectations are realistic. from start to finish, I wrote the short story Brigitte in eight weeks. And so if you have your process down, you can definitely whittle out some of the time that it takes to get a good story.

And that is what this show is for. It is to learn the terminology and develop a process in order to have a manuscript ready to publish in a short amount of time. That's the thing and it can be done. And for your first few works in progress, it will take longer [00:04:00] than that.

So just know the things also, your process will likely be different from mine, and it just might be slower or faster. And that is why we are all different people. And that makes the world interesting to live in. Just some quick housekeeping stuff with with creativity. I have felt my creativity battery gradually recharge over the month of January.

For those of you who paid attention to my podcast. At the beginning of this year, there was a lot of personal stuff to get through from November until January 1st and going through that really drained my creative battery. And so I had a short story that I was in the middle of in the beginning of November.

That died on the vine. I am shelving that short story. It was called auto. I may pick it up again in the future. I may not. It was going to beInstallment Two of Tales from Vlaydor. But [00:05:00] instead Instllment Two of Tales from Vlaydor is now called Tiz. The idea of this short story has been in my head for the past six months.

And I have been eager to get started on this short story, but I thought for the longest time that I simply had to finish auto first before I could carry on. Tos and the thing is with creativity, it doesn't have to be linear and it doesn't have to work that way. And so, because I am eager to get started on this short story, I decided I might as well just start on it and we can deal with auto later.

So Tiz takes place about 170 years before Bridgette does. And it is about a linguist whose discoveries bring about the magical industrial revolution of the entire land ofVlaydor, so it's going to be a treat. It's going to be a wild ride. And I am very excited to explore the relationship of Tiz with her fiance [00:06:00] and.

It's just going to be good times and I'm so excited about it, guys. It is so good to be excited also with Tiz I have described before that, as far as writing goes, I am largely a pantser. I don't like to outline in a lot of detail, but with this one, I decided to approach it differently. And I decided to shove aside the pantser part of my creative writing process.

And to focus on outlining so that I can be the plotter and it's okay to flex both sets of muscles. And so I have been outlining, I have been doing character maps. I have been doing a real map. I mean, a real map of a fake place, because this is all fiction. But it's been good. And just the preparation that comes from doing all of that first has been very valuable.

And so there's value in all of it friends and it's okay. If for one short story, you are largely a pantser and [00:07:00] that equates to a lot more revisions and it's okay. If the next short story you are more of a plotter. So that your first draft can be a little farther along the process because you have such a good outline.

So there's that. We are excited to be back in the writing process and it's been good to build that foundational creativity so that in the next few days I'm going to start drafting this sucker and it's going to be great. I have over the past few episodes, I've talked about the three act structure and I went into what each of those acts is.

I also covered the hero's journey, which is a big outline of different points. That are typically found in an adventure story. And last week I covered the arc types that are found in the hero's journey and the arc types are just the different types of people that show up and the roles that they play in order [00:08:00] to further the story along.

So the hero, the mentor and more, and the list goes on. Today we are going to step back and talk about something a little bit more basic. One of the goals of this podcast is to talk about the terminology. Just because if you are hoping to revise your work and you're going to be sending it to people you don't know, or you're going to be sending it to professionals in order to get it critiqued.

Edited and improved upon if you are hoping to get any sort of positive feedback or feedback that is meant to help you in your process, you need to know the terminology. And I'm not talking about just sentence, structure and grammar. I'm talking about the terminology as it pertains to storytelling and as it pertains to creative writing.

And so today we are going to cover beats [00:09:00] and what beats are. And then next week we are going to see how Bridgette. Holds up to one of the most common and widely used set of beats. And just see how it goes. So a beat is the smallest measurable thing of storytelling.

A beat is an event or a moment or whatever that furthers the plot along. So a beats can be a moment of action. It can be a moment of reaction. It can be a moment of inaction. It can also be a scene. It can be a various number of different things so long as the plot progresses and if you get smaller than a beat, you're no longer working with just story elements.

You're more working with the fundamentals of sentence structure. So you're kind of stepping out of story if you are getting smaller than a [00:10:00] beat. So in the book, a swim in a pond in the rain by George Saunders, I highly recommend reading that book. That book has been one of the biggest. Resources for me on developmental edits and developmental edits.

You cover beats. It's all about beats. A swim in a pond in the rain is a collection of seven classic Russian short stories that George Saunders, who is a very successful, very well-known various. Celebrated and loved short story author. He goes through and picks them apart and analyzes them in many different ways, as a way to show you how you can do it, how all of this can be done.

And so sometimes it is pretty technical, which includes like charts and graphs. Sometimes it is more broad and it is actually more of a lesson in life, which I like all of that. I love a [00:11:00] really big approach to something like this. And so I have been eating up this book. I started this book a long time ago.

I didn't finish it, but with the way that my week has now started to unfold, now that I've taken on some additional activities, I have some time. To sit down and actually read a book. That's not on tape. That's not a recorded audio book. So I listened to audio books in the car, but I wanted something like this, like a resource book to be a physical copy so that I can reference it more easily.

I don't reference audio books very easily. So that's why I chose to do it this way. But in that book, in the book, a swim in the pond, in the rain by George Saunders, he says, The way to build intensity and the way to escalate your plot is to never repeat your beats. [00:12:00] So. Beats are these little events. They are the little things that drive the plot forward.

And if you repeat your beats, if you have a beat that shows up more than once in an identical way, it causes. The steam in your story to just kind of deflate and the story loses energy and your reader will lose interest. So that's what beets are when you have your first draft completed, or if you are detailing out a really good outline

depending on how you approach your process. If you like to do the big outlines or if you like to do just kind of a first draft and then fill in whatever is missing in your first draft, it is really good to compare your story to a sheet of beats. So there are things in this world called beat sheets, and to be perfectly honest, the hero's journey is a beat sheet.

It [00:13:00] has. Just the little different events and what they are for and what they do. And if you are writing an adventure story, you can kind of go through and see where the things are. You can see what they are and the order that they typically would go in and you can assign that to your story. You're like, oh, well, yeah.

I mean, crossing. Threshold happens in my story when this kid who, who has an overbearing dad stands up to his dad and then leaves. And that happens, you know, really early in the story. And it totally fits with this beat sheet. One of the more common or very well-known. Beat sheets. It's also a book it's called save the cat.

And it is a collection of 15 beats and it is structured in a similar way to the hero's journey. So it is a three act structure and important things happen in each [00:14:00] act. And we are going to go through next week. I am going to take you through an analysis of my short story, Brie sheets and plug it in to save the cat.

So save the cat. Like I said, it is a book.

It is written by Blake Snyder and there are actually several different versions of save the cat now. save the cat is originally for storytelling and screenwriting, but it absolutely applies to novels and other forms of storytelling too. And so you'll, you'll find many different applications. Of save the cat, but yeah, all those books are available on Amazon and I highly recommend referencing those books.

It is okay to have the references so that you know, the terminology. tuned in for that next week where we go through an analysis of Bri sheets and if breezy. [00:15:00] Saved the cat or rather if Del phene the main character of Bridgette saved the cat next week on writing in the tiny house.

Devin Davis:

And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.