It's that time again

Well, since I'm at the start of a new book - and procrastinating wildly - I've hauled my plot board out from behind my desk again. As always, I've had different Idea of how I'm going to lay it out this time. But I'm not sure the actual look of the thing makes a blind bit of difference as I've decided that it's not how the finished article that is important, but the process I go through, ordering my thoughts about the story and getting the key plot points and themes in my head.

Since I've been reading "Story" by Robert McKee and listening to sessions from this year's RWA conference by script-consultant Michael Hauge, I've decided to do something a little more sophisticated (and flexible) than my normal method of pinning on 20 cards with the major plot points of the story. This book, my plot board is all about story structure.

I've clocked up a fair number of "How to.." books on writing in the last few years and, while they all have different terms for the necessary building blocks for a story, there are certain key elements that pop up again and again and I thought I would blog about these as I finish honing the shape of Louise and Ben's story.

I've decided to use Michael Hauge's method of six phases of the story, with 5 turning points (TPs) as transistions from one to the next. Not as many things to remember as Vogler's Hero's Journey and a little more detail than the classic three-act structure.

The whole thing divides up as follows:

• Set-up (ending with TP1 - Opportunity)
• New Situation (ending with TP2 - Change of Plans)
• Progress (ending with TP3 - Point of No Return)
• Complications and Higher Stakes (ending with TP4 - Major Set-back)
• Final push (ending with TP5 - Climax)
• Aftermath