The Three Key Events Of A Story
My daughter's recently been getting into novel writing, which means that she and I have been having lots of conversations about writing, and how to structure stories. It’s really got me thinking about the nuts and bolts of writing in a way that I hadn’t done before — or at least, it’s made me verbalise them in ways that I hadn’t done before.
!Disclaimer: I’m well aware that many, many writers have opined on the craft of writing, and that in this, any subsequent posts, I will be reinventing many wheels. But I’m thinking people might find it interesting to hear my spin on things.
Here’s one I thought of yesterday, which is that there are (often, not always) three key events in a story:
The Initiator: the event that moves the protagonist from the life they’re living into the story.
The Twist: the event, discovery, or revelation that changes the nature of what the story appeared to be, or more specifically, reveals what the story was actually about, all along.
The Concluder: the event or action where the protagonist resolves the story (which would usually have a twist or revelation of its own).
Say you’ve got a cosy mystery featuring a community nurse. You could have:
The Initiator: a community nurse goes to visit an elderly patient only to discover him brutally murdered, and due to typical cosy reasons, ends up investigating the murder.
The Twist: she discovers that fifty years ago, he was the perpetrator of a heinous crime, meaning that the answer to the question of who killed him likely lies fifty years in the past.
The Concluder: she discovers that he actually was framed for the crime at the time, went along with it for reasons, but has now decided to come clean, and was killed by someone connected to prevent this.
Obviously, this makes more sense for mystery / action type stories, but I think it works in other areas as well.
Perhaps a wife’s world is shattered when her husband says he wants to end their marriage (Initiator), she then finds out that the reason he said this is because he’s terminally ill and wants to spare her (Twist), and eventually she either works things out so they will stay together, or decides to let him go (Concluder).
