R. B. Fleetwood - The Monster Novel Structure Workbook: How to Plot Without Getting Stuck

Copyright 2018, 2020 R.B. Fleetwood

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

The advice and strategies found within may not be suitable for every situation. This work is sold with the understanding that neither the author nor the publisher are held responsible for the results accrued from the advice in this book.

bronwenfleetwood.com/monster

Writing a novel is, to put it mildly, challenging. It's downright hard. It can take years of your life, stretched across multiple phases: planning, drafting, revising.

It's easy to get mired in the nitty gritty. Enthusiasm may carry you through the first however many pages, but at some point you run out of vision. What happens next? How? Why? Where are these characters going?

Writers often refer to the "Muddy Middle" of novels, otherwise known as Act II, or everything between the Beginning and the End. Setting up your story and knowing how you want it to end are a cinch compared to filling two hundred pages with... what? Stuff happens, but what stuff? In what order? How do you make any of it matter and not bore readers?

The solution to this dilemma is novel structure. And no, I don't mean the super basic diagram your high school English teacher drew on the board.

This diagram is Freytag's Pyramid. It's a highly simplified explanation of how stories operate. But it's just that: simple, and novels are anything but simple. The pyramid is missing a ton of steps, and everything is out of proportion. The Pyramid implies that there's an equal amount of time spent leading up to the Climax and coming down from it. Who ever heard of a Climax that takes place right in the middle of a story? While Freytag's Pyramid is useful for the basics, it doesn't help when you want to construct a novel of your own.

To construct a novel with its myriad moving parts you need something that echoes the novel's complexitywithout itself being complex.

In other books on writing craft, many, many people have tried to simplify novel structure to its barest elements. They wind up with something that looks a lot like Freytag's Pyramid, with only a handful of steps. They are trying to conform to absolutely every story ever.

But a novel isn't absolutely every story ever, it's a novel. Novels are a particular kind of story. And while they do follow a pattern, a structure, that you can learn and apply to your work, the novel will never be the same as a short story or a TV series or an anecdote.

So let's stop trying to be all things to all stories. Let's focus on novels.

I developed the Monster Novel Structure Chart and Workbook after exhaustive research and much gnashing of teeth. I studied fiction in college and went on to read over seventy-five writing craft books and countless short articles about structure, not to mention all the actual novels I read, all to immerse myself in the study of novel structure.

I found that while everyone agreed structure was essential, very few people agreed on what elements belonged in that structure, never mind what to label them or how to apply them. They focused on a small handful of story beats, and they called them different names, with different definitions. For example, I would think I had a handle on Turning Points only to pick up another book and learn that they defined Turning Points in a completely different manner. I struggled to understand the Inciting Incident. What was it, really? Over and over again I read about how important it was, but I couldn't explain it to save my life.

There were commonalities across the different terms and usages, so I began compiling my notes and cross-referencing. I continued to seek out more sources and layered in their wisdom.

Then I used my skills as a professional graphic designer to translate those notes into something visual. I'm a hybrid learner, and my capacity for understanding words on the page had been reached, I needed a way to see what I was dealing with. I needed to organize the information in another way, so I could understand how each beat acted in relation to the next.

Thus was born the Monster Novel Structure Chart. (You can see the whole chart in .)

This chart clarified so much for me. I could see at a glance how urgent a beat was. I could see approximately how far into the novel it should fall. I understood why everything worked.

Using the Monster I've plotted the overarching structure of novels in a matter of days. I've revised to create stronger, better books. The people I've shared the chart with have also had successes, coming to understand their stories on a deeper level.

What has to happen for the biggest emotional impact? The Monster will tell you. It will guide your creative instincts toward a better story. You won't lose the vision you had for your book, instead you'll shape it like a sculptor into its best artistic form.

As the Monster began to coalesce in my brain, I kept thinking, "I wish someone had just told me about this."

Reader, I'm here to tell you about it. I don't want you to wade through all the information I did, extracting minute kernels of gold from heaps of craggy boulders. I don't want you to spend years laboring over index cards and outlines, wondering where you went wrong and why the story isn't working.

The tool is here. It's in your hands. I'm including all my side tools as well, downloads which you can purchase with the ebook or separately. I want you to be ready.

Let's make story magic together.

This is an image-heavy book, so you'll want to view the ebook on a color screen. I don't recommend reading it with any kind of color filter, like a blue-light blocker.

Ideally, you should have a printed copy of the chart and the worksheets in front of you for reference at all times. This way you can make notes on them and compare what's written to the graphics. Instructions for downloaded the materials are provided in .

Images are included in this ebook, at a reduced resolution. You can tap on an image to see it isolated, and zoom in.

In we'll talk a bit about the characters who are crucial to your story, the protagonist, or Main Character, and the Antagonist.

In we'll look at the Monster Chart and then all 21 beats that make up your novel, one at a time. This section also includes questions to ask yourself as you work, and the questions are included in a Word document in the downloads.

In we'll discuss floating beats which dont have precise homes within the structure but may be good to include.

In we'll analyze several books, movies, and plays to see how the Monster Novel Structure applies to themand where they break it.

In we'll take a look at different ways to use the Monster theory, from pantsing to revision.

wraps up the book.

I suggest reading through the book once, then you can start applying it to your own novel.

Youve purchased the ebook with download bundle. An explanation of how to download the materials is available in .

The download package includes:

• PDF of the Monster Chart, suitable for 8.5"x11" printing.
• PDF of the Monster Worksheet.
• DOCX version of the Monster Worksheet.
• DOCX containing all the Monster Questions (Act I, Act II Part 1, Act II Part 2, Act III)
• PDFs of the example stories.