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    Eight Points To Writing A Story

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    April Cabarlo
    The document outlines an eight-point story arc structure for crafting narratives: 1) Stasis, 2) Trigger, 3) Quest, 4) Surprise, 5) Critical Choice, 6) Climax, 7) Reversal, 8) Resolution. Each point represents a stage in the story that builds upon the last. The eight-point arc provides a framework to ensure stories avoid pitfalls and guides the plot from the initial setting to a changed ending.

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    Eight Points To Writing A Story

    Uploaded by

    April Cabarlo
    285 views4 pages
    The document outlines an eight-point story arc structure for crafting narratives: 1) Stasis, 2) Trigger, 3) Quest, 4) Surprise, 5) Critical Choice, 6) Climax, 7) Reversal, 8) Resolution. Each point represents a stage in the story that builds upon the last. The eight-point arc provides a framework to ensure stories avoid pitfalls and guides the plot from the initial setting to a changed ending.

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    An assistive reference for writing a story.

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    Eight Points to Writing a Story

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    The document outlines an eight-point story arc structure for crafting narratives: 1) Stasis, 2) Trigger, 3) Quest, 4) Surprise, 5) Critical Choice, 6) Climax, 7) Reversal, 8) Resolution. Each point represents a stage in the story that builds upon the last. The eight-point arc provides a framework to ensure stories avoid pitfalls and guides the plot from the initial setting to a changed ending.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    285 views4 pages

    Eight Points To Writing A Story

    Uploaded by

    April Cabarlo
    The document outlines an eight-point story arc structure for crafting narratives: 1) Stasis, 2) Trigger, 3) Quest, 4) Surprise, 5) Critical Choice, 6) Climax, 7) Reversal, 8) Resolution. Each point represents a stage in the story that builds upon the last. The eight-point arc provides a framework to ensure stories avoid pitfalls and guides the plot from the initial setting to a changed ending.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
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    The key takeaways are the eight point story arc structure which includes stasis, trigger, quest, surprise, critical choice, climax, reversal and resolution.

    The eight points are stasis, trigger, quest, surprise, critical choice, climax, reversal and resolution.

    At the 'critical choice' stage, the protagonist needs to make a crucial decision between a good but hard path and a bad but easy path, revealing their true character.

    Eight Points to Writing a Story

    My battered, torn and heavily-pencil-marked copy is a testament to how useful Ive found it over the years. Although the cover appears to be on the verge of falling off altogether, Ive risked opening the book once more to bring you Watts very useful Eight-Point Story Arc a fool-proof, fail-safe and timehonoured way to structure a story. (Even if youre a short story writer or flash fiction writer rather than a novelist, this structure still applies, so dont be put off by the title of Watts book.) The eight points which Watts lists are, in order:

    1. Stasis 2. Trigger 3. The quest 4.Surprise 5. Critical choice 6.Climax 7. Reversal 8. Resolution
    He explains that every classic plot passes through these stages and that he doesnt tend to use them to plan a story, but instead uses the points during the writing process: I find [the eight-point arc] most useful as a checklist against which to measure a work in progress. If I sense a story is going wrong, I see if Ive unwittingly missed out a stage of the eightpoint arc. It may not guarantee you write a brilliant story, but it

    will help you avoid some of the pitfalls of a brilliant idea gone wrong. So, what do the eight points mean?

    Stasis
    This is the every day life in which the story is set. Think of Cinderella sweeping the ashes, Jack (of Beanstalk fame) living in poverty with his mum and a cow, or Harry Potter living with the Dursleys.

    Trigger
    Something beyond the control of the protagonist (hero/heroine) is the trigger which sparks off the story. A fairy godmother appears, someone pays in magic beans not gold, a mysterious letter arrives you get the picture.

    The quest
    The trigger results in a quest an unpleasant trigger (e.g. a protagonist losing his job) might involve a quest to return to the status quo; a pleasant trigger (e.g. finding a treasure map) means a quest to maintain or increase the new pleasant state.

    Surprise
    This stage involves not one but several elements, and takes up most of the middle part of the story. Surprise includes pleasant events, but more often means obstacles, complications, conflict and trouble for the protagonist.

    Watts emphasizes that surprises shouldnt be too random or too predictable they need to be unexpected, but plausible. The reader has to think I should have seen that coming!

    Critical choice
    At some stage, your protagonist needs to make a crucial decision; a critical choice. This is often when we find out exactly who a character is, as real personalities are revealed at moments of high stress. Watts stresses that this has to be a decision by the character to take a particular path not just something that happens by chance. In many classic stories, the critical choice involves choosing between a good, but hard, path and a bad, but easy, one. In tragedies, the unhappy ending often stems from a character making the wrong choice at this point Romeo poisoning himself on seeing Juliet supposedly dead, for example.

    Climax
    The critical choice(s) made by your protagonist need to result in the climax, the highest peak of tension, in your story. For some stories, this could be the firing squad leveling their guns to shoot, a battle commencing, a high-speed chase or something equally dramatic. In other stories, the climax could be a huge argument between a husband and wife, or a playground fight between children, or Cinderella and the Ugly Sisters trying on the glass slipper.

    Reversal

    The reversal should be the consequence of the critical choice and the climax, and it should change the status of the characters especially your protagonist. For example, a downtrodden wife might leave her husband after a row; a bullied child might stand up for a fellow victim and realize that the bully no longer has any power over him; Cinderella might be recognized by the prince. Your story reversals should be inevitable and probable. Nothing should happen for no reason, changes in status should not fall out of the sky. The story should unfold as life unfolds: relentlessly, implacably, and plausibly.

    Resolution
    The resolution is a return to a fresh stasis one where the characters should be changed, wiser and enlightened, but where the story being told is complete. (You can always start off a new story, a sequel, with another trigger) Ive only covered Watts eight-point arc in brief here. In the book, he gives several examples of how the eight-point arc applies to various stories. He also explains how a longer story (such as a novel) should include arcs-within-arcs subplots and scenes where the same eight-point structure is followed, but at a more minor level than for the arc of the entire story.

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