User blog:Zathronas/Author's Advice: Story Structure

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Hello and welcome back to author's advice. Today we'll talk about the single most important challenge for a writer. Story structure.

Story structure is very difficult to grasp. There is no set rules to follow but at the same time there's a basic guideline that is generally accepted. Problem is that once you get to a certain level in your writing those guideline limits you but we'll get to that. Let's start with the basics.

The most basic story guideline is something everybody has heard. A story has a beginning a middle and an end. Junior school stuff you would say but often it is not followed. Often, a story in an existing universe as RWBY is the slice of life type since you have to go around what has already been shown. Problem is often the writer takes the beginning as already established by the show and forgets that even in you slice of life you have to begin somewhere.

Then you get another story structure in high school. Introduction, complication, climax and denouement. Much better and I will mostly focus on these stucture in this blog since it is the one mostly used. I'll destroy everything i'm writing here in the next ;) To explain how  this works I'll use volume 1 as an example.

INTRODUCTION

There are 4 types of character in a story. Protagonist, antagonist, main support, secondary support. You can even separate it more but for our purpose we'll leave it at that for now. In RWBY, the protagonis are: Ruby, Weiss, Blake and Yang. The antagonist are: Roman, Cinder, the grimm, the white fang and Cardin. The main supports are: Jaune, Pyrrha, Ren, Nora and Ozpin. Secondary support are:  Glynda, Peter, Bartolomew, Velvet and Qrow. ( I don't think I missed anybody)

RWBY has a lot of characters from the get-go which complicates the introduction because all 4 groups has to be introduced and the first 3 groups has to show their motivation and background. It was in fact too much for the volume. So Monty made trailers to help. If you look at all 4 trailers, you'll notice one thing in common. They show motivation, Ruby and the grave, Weiss and the song she sings, Blake and the hijack, Yang and the mysterious picture. All are motivations. Even then it will take the whole season to show background and motivations. One last thing that needs to be done in the introduction, since RWBY is set in another world than our own, we don't know the rules. Volume 1 only gave us broad strokes on the rules of the world. You can bet volume 2 will give you much more.

COMPLICATION

Once you explain the rules of the world, show your protagonist motivation and introduce at least one antagonist, you can start the complications. A story without complication is possible but extremely rare and difficult to pull off properly. Complications are hurdles your protagonist and support needs to jump over to grow as characters. It usually start small. Like arguments between Ruby and Weiss. The REAL compications of the story has yet to be revealed but it will be more than one. How do I know that? Because the main complications almost always come from protagonist and we have four right now that are not all working together. That means more than one complication. That's usually the case in a recurring series.

CLIMAX

Another name for the climax is the resolution. At this point you solve the complication you set up earlier. This is what I like to call the payoff. Everything you've done until then is for this. And because it is the culmination of everything you've done before, if you screw it up then the story is screwed up...no pressure. For good or for bad you have to resolve your story at some point or you'll lose your audience. This is not necessarily the end of your story but I'll explain that in a little bit.

DENOUEMENT

This is the fallout of the climax. What changed? What's different in the world? The protagonist, th antagonist and the support? Another name for the denouement is the consequence. Want to know why Twilight is so vilified? Because there is absolutely no consequences in the action. If there are no consequence then your back at complications because no complication or climax was worth it. The big bang theory had a funny scene that explained exactly that. Sheldon shows to Amy " Raider of the lost ark"  Amy points out that it has a glaring hole. Sheldon says it's impossible and to make his jaw fall down. Here is what she says:

If Indiana Jones had not been in the movie, everything would have happened the way we see it. The Nazi's would have found the ark, brought it to the island, opened it and died. Nothing that Indiana did had consequences.

Sheldon's jaw does drop.

Tomorrow, I show why everything I just said in this post is crap! ;)