All right, let's review real quick.  In the last lesson, we learned about conflict.  Conflict is the reason why the audience is paying attention to your story.  It's the premise of the story!

And to design a conflict, we have a handy one-sentence mad lib, a seemingly simple one-sentence mad lib.  "Someone wants something badly, but they have trouble getting it."  The someone who wants something badly is called the protagonist.  The thing that they want is their objective.  The reason why they want it badly is their motivation.  And the trouble that they face is their antagonism.

Once you've designed a good conflict, you're off to a great start... but you don't have a story yet.  What you're missing is the plot!  What happens in the story?  What happens when the protagonist tries to achieve their objective?  What happens when they face their antagonism?

The plot grows out of the conflict.  They work together.  You can't really know what your plot is, until you have a conflict.  And you don't know what happens with the conflict, until you have a plot.  But once you have a conflict and a plot together, you have a complete story!

So when you're ready to design a story, I think you need four sentences to do it.

The first one you already know: that's the conflict.  Someone wants something badly, but they have trouble getting it.

Next, we've got the exposition.  Exposition is the context.  What does the audience need to know about the conflict, in order to understand what happens in the story?

After the exposition is the culmination.  And the culmination is what happens when the protagonist faces their antagonism!  What happens when they collide together??

And the last part you need is a resolution.  This is when we find out: does the protagonist achieve their objective?  Do they achieve part of their objective?  Do they achieve none of their objective?  What happens, and how does it affect them?  Is it definitive??

Conflict, exposition, culmination, and resolution.  An entire story, in just four sentences!  So now let's take a look at how I think about each of these components of a plot, when I'm filling out this story chart.

When I start designing exposition, I try to stay strict.  If the audience is starting out with 0 information, then what's the bare minimum that they need to know, in order to follow along with the rest of the story?  Not what they want to know, not what I'm excited for them to find out.  What do they need to know?

Because if I get excited about the story that I'm developing-- the world & the characters & the themes-- then I can start putting down in stone what the story is about.  But then later, if that stuff doesn't help the audience understand the conflict, then I might have to get rid of it, in order to make the story work!  And I don't wanna get rid of that stuff!  I like that stuff!

So I'm very strict at the beginning, when I'm figuring out the exposition.  These are the basic rules that the audience needs, in order to play the game.  And then all of the cool characters & themes & settings can come out of that exposition, from the stuff that the audience needs to know.

 

From the audience's perspective, it's important to keep exposition down to a minimum because they're coming into this place, this world that you're building, they're meeting all these characters... and if you give them too much at once?  It can be very overwhelming.  "Here, you want a taste of this story?  You wanna find out more about this story?? You wanna find out more about this story??"

For example, there's a character in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.  Gibbs, Gibbs is his name, and he's got great sideburns, and he seems like a nice enough guy.  But they don't give the character anything to do, except pop up at convenient times.  When you're fighting the sea monster, he knows the lore, and he can come and recite the lore.  So you in the audience can go to sleep for a couple of lines of dialogue!  And then you'll wake up & you'll see what happens in the action & you'll figure out how to fight the sea monster.  Like, why do we have to listen to, "Arr, y'don't know about the Blind Belfast, do ya?  They say that it's the--" oh my god, stop.  They are really good sideburns though, so it's kind of okay.

Another example: one of my least favorite endings ever is Psycho.  The rest of Psycho is great!  Who doesn't love Psycho?  Fun movie, good time, very scary.  Narratively interesting, because they kill the protagonist halfway through the movie.  How do you get away with that??

But in the ending of Psycho, the characters who we've been following aren't really in the movie anymore, at the end of Psycho.  Instead-- spoiler-- the killer's been caught.   And a therapist analyzed the killer offscreen, and then he comes onscreen.  He might as well be played by Alfred Hitchcock!  He walks onscreen & turns directly to the camera & says, "Here's the subtext of this character.  Here are the themes of this movie, in case you missed them!  Folks, we learned a lot here today.  We learned some lessons, let me tell you about them."

The ending of the movie should be where the characters are revealing their truest self.  They should be demonstrating all the stuff that's going on behind the scenes.  And then the audience can fill in the blanks, play along, figure out what's going on behind the scenes.  Ultimately, that's the challenge of exposition.  You want to demonstrate as much of it as possible, through the characters' actions.  You can tell some of it-- that's totally allowed-- but try & play the game.  Find out how little of it you can reveal!

My professor, David Howard-- he's the one who taught me, "Someone wants something badly, but has trouble getting it" --David Howard says that once you make you bulletpoint list of all the exposition that the audience needs to know, you should wait.  Postpone sharing it w/ the audience, for as long as you can.  And by the time you reach the ending, you may be surprised by how few of those bulletpoints you needed!

Now, of course, eventually you can have a lot of exposition!  When the audience is comfortable with your story-- when they're excited to know more about the setting & the characters & all that fun stuff, then you can start going more into detail.  But at this early point in the process, the more strict you are about keeping things minimal, the easier it will be to develop the rest of the story.

For the culmination, it's protagonist versus antagonist!  What happens when the two of them lock horns??

Now, to describe protagonism & antagonism-- to describe any of this stuff-- we're using very confrontational language, right?  "Conflict, antagonist, how do they collide, what's the trouble they face?"  Which may be part of why so many of our stories, as humans, are inherently violent.  Which is fine!  If you want to write a story with violence, that's totally cool.  I like violent stories as much as the next person.  But I do think it's important to remember that when you're writing a culmination, it doesn't always have to be character versus character.  It can be subtler than that!  It can be a more low-key problem.

For example, every Friday morning, I call my dad... because I need to schedule it.  He & I don't get along great.  Even though we both try really hard, we're just never quite on the same wavelength.  It doesn't quite work.  So every Friday morning, I have this huge conflict with myself!  I am my own antagonism.  I have to build up the courage to call this guy, knowing that the conversation isn't going to work out, knowing that it's going to shape the rest of my day, how well it goes or doesn't go.  But he can only do mornings, because he's a morning person, so it's just going to shape my Friday.  And what are you going to do about it?

So there's a whole intense internal monologue inside of me!  "Don't psych yourself out about this.  The more relaxed you are, the more you can just chat with your dad, the more likely the conversation is going to go well."  Whereas if I call him full of nerves & terrified, then that's going to seep into my side & it's going to make the conversation automatically terrible.  But if I can calm myself down, which is a tough thing to do... and so on.

So you see, there's no lightsaber battle in that scene.  My dad & I don't fight.  We're probably many years overdue for a fight!  I just kind of let him get away with stuff, and that's how I've survived.

Now, could I take our dynamic & make it into a violent story?  Could I tell a story, with a son character who's kind of like me & a dad character who's kind of like my dad, and it winds up being a lightsaber battle?  Absolutely!  That would probably be an interesting lightsaber battle.

But your culmination can span like the whole range of human conflict.  It can be as overt as blowing up a planet... or as internal as a character struggling with, like, "What do I say next?  What's the right thing to do in this situation?"

You get to decide the stakes.  You're the writer.  So the trick is:  think about your protagonist & design the culmination as a reaction to whatever they think is the most important thing in the world, at that particular point in their life.

When I'm ready to design the resolution, I'm thinking about the finish line.  If you'll recall, the objective is basically the character's finish line.  Do they cross it?  Do they partially cross it?  Do they not cross it at all?

What are the specifics of the end of the story?  They might be interesting, satisfying, cathartic, tragic, frustrating.  What big emotional note can you leave the audience on at the end of this story?  And how can you demonstrate it by the protagonist’s achieving, failing to achieve, partially achieving their objective?

There are a million examples of this, and you'll see some in the Creative Challenge.  The protagonist gets what they want & they live happily ever after.  The protagonist fails to achieve their objective, but they get something better in the process.  Something that they needed-- not just something that they wanted-- something that they actually needed.  The protagonist achieves their objective & realizes, eh, this actually wasn't what I wanted, but the process of trying to get it has taught me what I actually want, and so now I'm a better person.  You've seen a million examples of these resolutions.  And there's probably a million more.  And if you play around with it, then you can probably invent your own!

The resolution becomes easiest to write when you understand what the theme is.  Because if you understand what the theme is, then you can answer, "What does achieving the objective mean to the character, and what does the storyteller think it should mean to the audience?"  But we'll talk about that more in detail, when we do theme.

So notice that I didn't say, "A plot is a beginning, a middle, and an ending."  Even though exposition, culmination, and resolution kind of are beginning, middle, and ending!  Because you can start off with the context that the audience needs, in order to play along with the story.  That's a pretty good beginning.  Then they go up against their antagonism.  That's a pretty good middle.  And then we find out if they get what they want or not.  What more could you ask of an ending??

But they don't have to be in that order, at all.  The character is living their life in linear fashion.  One thing happens to them, and then the next thing happens, and then the next... from the moment they're born until the moment they die, right?  But the audience can see those events in any order that the storyteller wants them to!

A classic example of this is a mystery.  When you're designing a mystery, you have at least two stories, two storylines, two plotlines.

On the one hand, you've got the criminal's storyline, right?  The criminal wanted something badly, but they had trouble getting it.  So they committed a crime to do it.  And they either got it, or they didn't.  That happened in linear order, 1-2-3.

And then you've got the detective's storyline!  And the detective (most of the time) is the one who the audience is really hanging out with.  So their objective is to figure out what happened in the criminal's storyline, because they don't have all of the exposition.  So they're starting either with the criminal's culmination (where they committed the crime), or they're starting the resolution (by noticing, hey, the bank got robbed... or hey, there's been a murder).

So the detective either starts in the middle or at the ending of the criminal's story!  They're rarely starting at the beginning, with the exposition.  They search for clues, to try to figure out what the exposition was in the criminal's story.  So the criminal's beginning is the detective's middle.  And then either the detective (finds the criminal / identifies them / captures them / whatever it is they're trying to do), or they don't.

So that's just one example of non-linear plotting. There are a million other ways to do it.

But the overall point is: the audience needs a beginning that they're sitting through, a middle, and an ending.  And the beginning should get them interested in the story, the middle should keep their interest, and the ending should satisfy them.  But the beginning of the audience's story & the beginning of the character's story can be two very different things, and same for the middle & the ending.  The components that you always need are exposition, culmination, and resolution... and they can come in any order that you want them to!  Whatever works best for your story.

Conflict, exposition, culmination, and resolution.  With these 4 sentences, you can start planning your story... on every level.  You can start by designing a standalone story.  And if you want to break it down into chapters?  An easy way to do it is with this 4-sentence summary!

What's the conflict of the chapter?  Now the exposition, the culmination, and the resolution?  And that's Chapter 1, which leads to Chapter 2.  So okay, what's the conflict of Chapter 2?  What's the exposition, culmination, and resolution?  Which leads to Chapter 3, and so on.

And when you're ready to dive deeper & start planning the scenes in the chapter?  You can use the 4-sentence summary!  Scene 1, what's the 4-sentence summary of that?  And that leads to Scene 2, and then Scene 3.

You can even use a 4-sentence summary to plan an individual action!  The most important moments of your story.  A character makes a meaningful choice. Maybe they sign a contract.  Or they say the word, "Yes."  Just the word "yes"-- if it's important in your story-- can have a 4-sentence summary, that gives it thematic depth & power.  That "yes" is gonna hit the audience when it lands, because you put a whole story's worth of organization into it!

You can also use a 4-sentence summary to plan a trilogy, or a series.  What's the conflict of the overall series?  Exposition, culmination, resolution.  And hey, maybe the first part is exposition, and the second part is culmination, and the third part is resolution.  Wouldn't that be convenient?  Doesn't have to go that way, you can put them in any order.  But you can still use a 4-sentence summary to define the overall arc of an entire series!  So truly: once you know this 4-sentence summary, you can design your story, at every single level that you're interested in planning it.

 

So now let's talk a little bit about how to connect the first story that you write with a (sequel / prequel / midquel).  How do you design 2 stories that connect together?  Well, you do it with the resolution!  Because instead of resolving the objective entirely, you leave part of it unresolved... in an interesting way.

Maybe the antagonist isn't fully defeated, and they're going to come back later.  They've learned a lot about the protagonist, and now they have a better plan to stop what the protagonist is trying to do.  So the protagonist has to grow that much more, in order to decisively defeat the antagonism.

Or maybe it's a cliffhanger.  Maybe you're being a storytelling jerk, and hey, this character's about to get this thing... but they also might fall off the cliff!  You know when would be the worst time to pause the story?  Right now!  So let's go see what these other characters are doing!!  That's a way to make a sequel: a cliffhanger.

Maybe the protagonist just flat-out fails to achieve their objective, but it's not in a satisfyingly tragic way.  They did everything right, but it didn't work out.  And the audience thinks they should have gotten it, but they didn't.  We're not going to end the story there, probably.  So we'll give them another try!

You've already heard the terminology for this narrative tool.  It's called a twist ending.  And if you take a look at the scenes & chapters of the stories that you love, you might be surprised by how many twist endings happen!  How often the conflict of a scene is unresolved-- in an interesting way-- which prompts a sequel scene.

So now the exposition is everything that happened in the previous scene.  And the culmination is, "Here's the character going for it again, right?  Going up against some (new / recurring) form of antagonism.  Do they get it this time??  Or do we get a twist, which prompt another sequel scene??"

It's like building blocks.  Once you know how to stack 'em, you can build whatever story structure you want!