Sabriya's Hope Writing Journal No. 15

 

Scenes/Beats for Final Battle of Sabriya's Hope

I'm finally there, at the granular level, not the structural or plot level, for the final chapter of Sabriya's Hope.

Although the online serialization of Sabriya's Hope is current at Chapter 22, it's only halfway through the novel. There are about 23 more chapters...depending on how I parse what is written. All of the chapters are written (or I should say drafted) except the Final Battle, which may stretch into 2 chapters. 

In the final battle (charted above), I need to resolve about 12 subplots; a few require only 1 beat to resolve. Of course, Sabriya's character's final resolution requires eight beats.  The challenge is how to do that efficiently so the reader can follow the action, much of which is simultaneous. 

My solution was to create one e-card for each beat of each of the 12 subplots on a Keynote slide. I DID NOT know what order the e-cards (and beats) should be in when I started, but as I created them, I placed them approximately in sequence from left (beginning) to right (end).

Then I had to sit back and try to envision the characters' entrances and exits, what happens to each, and move the cards around until I felt good about the action sequence as it would be explained in words. When I was done, I had 9 scenes (each bounded by a green box above).

Starting tomorrow (April 10, 2026), I will begin writing words and full sentences (not outlines). As I write, I'll decide which beats in each scene to describe first, second, etc., and then figure out the transition to the next scene. 

This will take several days, a lot of word-smithing, and many on-the-fly revisions. It may be 4,000+ words and need 2 chapters. Then I 'll let it sit for a day and come back and try to make the sentences more fluid, eliminating repetitive words, and working on ending sequences with emphatic (hooking) action. I will use One-Look Thesaurus extensively. 

STORY FORCES

 

It's time to revisit the most basic concepts behind successful stories—the forces that make stories work. There are more sophisticated ways of diagraming the above, just search Google images for "story through-lines."  If you follow this blog you've see the following more complex renditions of "The 13/20 Roller Coaster Beats," or posts on how to intertwine subplots so they support the same plot.  The BASICS never change as I've tried to diagram above:

• NOBLE (or villainous) VALUES always drive the
• Protagonist's or Hero's decisions and action, that are always obstructed by an
• Antagonistic or Villainous force, in an effort by the Protagonist or Hero to always achieve a
• NOBLE (or villainous) GOAL

NOT diagramed above are subtleties critical to a cathartic story structure:

• Noble Values always reflect NEEDS required for human survival.
• Ignoble Values always reflect WANTS that lead to human destruction.
• At first the protagonist is often motivated by a WANT but... 
• Close to the story's midpoint (The Moral Premise's "Moment of Grace") the protagonist comes to realize the difference between their WANT and their NEED.  
• The protagonist may be a heroic or a tragic character (but always opposite the antagonist).
• The antagonist may be a heroic or a tragic character (but always opposite the protagonist).

The above diagram relates the never changing forces of a successful story. The above diagram is the most simple illustration of the through-line, the plot, the backbone, the theme, or the moral premise. But there can be sub through-lines related to various subplots, and all tied together with supportive themes, and Nicomachean Moral Premises. (I've blog extensively about all this before.) A story becomes interesting when the through-lines, plots, and theme are imbued with irony, motifs, red-herrings, and secrets.

For example, there can be, in one story the:

• physical through-line of the main plot
• emotional through-line of the central protagonist
• symbolic through-line of various 3-beat motifs
• thematic (moral premise) through-line of the protagonist
• secret through-line of information held back from the audience

But in the end there ALWAYS must be:

VALUES that motivate the PROTAGONIST to battle the ANTAGONIST in order to achieve an GOAL.

In a redemptive story the value and goal are noble and focus on a NEED.

In a tragic story the value and goal are scandalous and focus on a WANT. 

The are almost 400 posts in this free blog that discuss these issues. My book, The Moral Premise sets forth the foundation for all successful stories. My free Storycraft Training series dives deep into these topics. And I'm sometimes available for story/screenplay consulting on specific projects. 

Final Draft 12's Beat Board, Outline, and Script Insertion Function

 
You that follow the Moral Premise know I'm sort of a Story Structure freak. But then my Story and Script consulting clients encourage me. I have been continuously helping writers structure their screenplays, scripts, and novels since 2007... and I still enjoy it. (But then I'm being paid to do it. THANK YOU.) 

If you've rented or purchased lessons from my on-line Storycraft Training you also know how much I rely diagrams (graphic metaphors) for beating out a story and structuring it properly so it will emotionally connect with audiences. 

Over time I've come up with some fairly simply ways of beating out stories (on paper or electronic cards) and then copy-pasting the content of those cards into Final Draft for writing. It has worked well. 

Recently, Final Draft released Version 12 with an updated Beat Board, Outline, and Script Insertion Function that is very exciting. I've spent some time with it, and have begun to turn some of my recent clients onto its functionality. I'm not sure how "smooth" it works on PC's, but I'm on a Power Mac, and in my environment it has a ways to go so the operation and functionality are smooth and easy to use. But the ideas are very good, and I want to encourage writers to encourage Final Draft to keep working on this. 

So, as part of a new addition to my on-line Storycraft Training series, Lesson 11 - Visualizing Story Structure, I included a short video to introduce writers to what Final Draft is doing. You will find it below. I've used a bit of editing (Final Cut) to make this look smoother operating than it currently is, but with some encouragement I hope they get it polished. Please write Final Draft via Feedback and encourage them.

Here's the video.

Introducing the Beat Plate (8 Mini-Movie Template)

The editable (and thus functional) Apple Keynote files used to illustrate this post can be downloaded for a small fee. See this link. Also see the Beat Plate blog post here.

During a recent story consultation I unwrapped the Story Diamond and laid it out vertically in an Apple Keynote file based on the eight-mini-movie scheme. In the image of the template at right, each mini-movie is 12.5% of the story. The straight forward layout provided an easy to manipulate document that allowed us to beat out the story over Zoom by sharing my screen.  (See Moral Premise's Writing Aids page.)

While the structural elements (colored boxes) are locked in place, the white boxes can be typed in with any style or color of text, and the boxes can be changed in size or moved easily. 

The template at right is laid out for four characters, where each of the character's main beats journey vertically from top to bottom. But this is probably not as practical as using the entire beat plate for one character's entire main plot. Thus  you'd have much larger boxes and probably only one column. (see image below)

One of the great aids this template suggests is to start each mini-movie with the character's goal for that 12.5% or 12.5 pages, and end each with a disaster where the mini- goal is NOT achieved, and which spurns the character on to the next chapter in the story.  Only the end of mini-movie 8 ends with success. This also provides the dynamic and REGULAR roller coaster effect you want for your audience (no dull or slow spots, if the disaster escalate and truly endanger your protagonist's achievement of the goal.)

The template (as displayed here) should also remind you that the story is about the protagonist (thus the most beats) and less about the other characters (with fewer beats.) 

How to Plot a Long Historical Novel

I have successfully used this story plotting technique with dozens of my screenwriting clients. Movies, however, are much shorter than (long) novels.  So, to put particulars to the work flow, this post explains the plotting effort used to construct my long historical novel Wizard Clip Haunting (WCH).

THE SIX STEPS IN MY INSTAGRAM POST ABOVE reveals why I haven't been blogging recently. I've written or edited a number of books in my career but I had never written a novel. In  2014, after several drafts of a WCH screenplay I started to think seriously about ditching the screenplay and writing the novel. The research travel I was doing in a bid to improve the screenplay provided fodder that turned out to be much more interesting as a novel. For the movie script I was limited by time and words; and the actual historical events became more interesting the more I traveled and got to know the real-life characters. (The genealogical sites like Ancestry.com and Geni.com were very helpful).

I JOKE that when I have money I make a movie, and when I don't I write or edit a book. While I wait for one screenplay to gain some traction in L.A. (there are things a-foot) and while I wait for the last book to be printed in mass in China, and while the H U G E sailboat refit project is under winter wraps until late March....I dug out the novel effort, last worked on in 2013–2014. Every time I pick it up again, there's were more significant plot points to include.

ONE OF THE IRONIC "OBSTACLES" to completing long projects,  and which I always recommend it to story clients, is to read lots of material similar to what you're trying to write. In that stead, and for his novel project, Pam and I just finished reading aloud to each other Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth. It was a great read. I felt myself getting emotionally involved with the characters, and even got a mild case of vertigo one night. None of that happens when I watch a movie. Movies are over toooo quickly. But Pillars, due to its length (about 400K words) can last for weeks on end, two hours every night. I was sure  reading and hearing Follett's cadence for words would help when I start revising and reading out loud my own work. (Update 2023 - Follett had an effective on me. The novel is finally done and released, and it's 372,000 words. Agh! Had to self-publish it under my distribution banner since no publisher would touch it. LOL!)

The image above is actually the carded plot of the novel. I've actually written about 50K words of it, but stopped to revisit the plot and fully card it out. Here are the steps I've taken over the last few years, weeks, and days:

1. Researched the historical events. There area a few short books and dozens of articles and references in history books of the period and event itself.

2. Used the Story Diamond to identify the 13 main plot points.

3. Wrote 3 drafts of the movie screenplay.

4. Got some good and some bad notes.

5. Let the story sit for a couple years as I went onto other projects.

6. Took two road trips to research the actual events and my imagined events. One to New Orleans and Pittsburg, and a second trip to Maryland, West Virginia and eastern Pennsylvania. Both trips were immensely rewarding in terms of discovering ironic "true to history" material, which widened the story's scope—fodder I could not include in the screenplay without turning it into a mini-series (a pitch deck for a TV series now exists.)

7. Poured over the hundreds of photographs and documents and books and interview transcripts collected on those two trips. Before I committed to writing the novel, I experienced frustration because all the good stuff I was discovering would not fit into a screenplay. 

8. Made another revision of the screenplay and pitched it a few time. No takers.

9. Let it sit for a few years...went sailing, etc.

10. About 8 years ago, I wrote a few chapters as a test of my novel writing skills. I wasn't satisfied. Put it aside again. Then, last month I read Dwight Swain's "Techniques of $elling Writers" and "Hit Lit" by James Hall (recommended by my friend "The Other Chris Pratt")  Both books revealed that I was doing a lot of things right, and they gave me the courage to take the novel seriously. So,  I re-edited those early chapters and wrote a few more, read them aloud to Pam. We both liked them.

11. The original Story Diamond was not geared for a novel, however, but for a movie. I also realized that the Diamond was not formatted (being in the diamond shape) to track subplots easily. For that I needed a WIDE horizontal surface. I have a vertically mounted 4'x8' Story Diamond on casters that I roll out for clients who come to my office for beating out a story. In that process we use a drawer full of colorful 3"x3" Post-Its. 

Stored behind the Story-Diamond-on-casters are a couple pieces of 3/16" black Foamcor I use for small set lighting (or blocking the light).  I got them out and set them side-by-side behind my desk, and opened the drawer of Post-It's. Now, I was able to break the story according to characters and subplots and keep each on its own colorful row. The picture on the left is 3/4 of the whole thing toward the end of the exercise. (I found the Post-It's stuck better once I dusted off the Foamcor. : )



But I was not going to be able to let this piece of Foamcor sit as a reference in the walkway behind my desk for the year it would take to write. And as more ideas came, I'd need to write out some detail notes that would not fit on the Post-It's. So I opened up Apple's Keynote, which I use for creating the slides for my workshops, and opened a new file that was 4,000 pixels (W) and 1,500 pixels (H) and recreated the Post-It plot board into Keynote. It took me a day to create the file you see here. Click on it to enlage.

Although I work on a Medium speed Mac Pro with two large displays (which I use to edit 2K and 4K videos) Keynote is not designed for such a large file. It claims to be only 451K (not big, really), but with this many cards and objects on a single large "slide" it requires some patience. The app only slowed down, however, toward the end. (I use Keynote as well for creating Story Diamond files but set the Keynote file and my monitor vertical.) Keynote is much better (on the Mac) for this sort of thing than anything else, including Power Point. It's very easy to create, color and align objects, and change the size of both cards and text in them. [BTW: these are TEXT boxes filled with color, not rectangles with text overlaid in them. Thus, there is ONE object per card to move and manipulate, not two.]

12. Once I got all the cards in place (along with a number of story notes (the cards with a lot of text on them), I grouped them with green rectangles to denote preliminary chapter groupings, with each card within a green rectangle being a scene or a sequel (see Scene-Sequel post). The light pink near the top row are my SCENE GOALS, and the dark pink are the SCENE DISASTERS. The SEQUELS are not always individually carded but are implied by the contents. The blue is the antagonist, and the other colors are minor characters. The white boxes at the top represent most of the 13 traditional beats of a story, and the yellow boxes are dates to keep the chronology in order—since this is a historical story that takes place over a 37 year period with both of the story taking place over just 4 years.

13. I write long form projects in Scrivener, as I did the first draft of this project's screenplay (I finish up screenplays in Final Draft and novels in MS Word). I love Scrivener's flexibility for moving text blocks around. I used the old screenplay file for the novel. While I have about 50K already written of the first chapters, I will now populate the Scrivener folders/chapters with the chapters designated by the green rectangles in the Keynote Card file, and identify the doc-files/scenes within each Scrivener chapter by the individual cards in the Card Plot file.

14. Finally, as I write in Scrivener on my right display, the Keynote card file will occupy my left screen, along with other writing aids like my favorite thesaurus: http://www.onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml. Thus, I can keep updating the card plot as I write, and it allows me a bird's-eye view of the story, showing me how the scene I'm currently writing connects to the whole.

Blessings,

stan

How Subplots Enrich Your Story

Here's fresh insight that will refine your subplots and reinforce your story's main physical and psychological spines.

But first let's set the stage.

In other places I explain how a story's subplot can be devised and used to reinforce the Moral Premise of the story. In short, those explanations have focused on these traits:

1. Each subplot follows a particular character in their pursuit of a specific goal.

2. Each subplot has fewer dramatic beats than the story's physical spine.

3. The psychological arc of every character in every subplot lies someone along the arc between the opposing values anchored by the Moral Premise Statement.

For example, let's say we have a story titled HOT WATER. Our story's main plot (or physical spine) centers on a protagonist—an elderly but persistent widow—who battles a secretive landlord who refuses to provide more than 65/F of heat to the hot water heating system during the winter months.  The widow's goal of the main plot is to sue the landlord to reveal how much profit he's making by keeping the temperature at 65/F, and thus force him raise the temperature.

But the landlord's position is that his financial records are private, and he further argues the tenant agreement specifically states that the maximum temperature that he needs to provide tenants is 65/F, not a degree more.

Let's say the Moral Premise Statement for our story is:

HOW IS THE MORAL PREMISE EVIDENT IN EVERY SCENE?

Recently I received a gracious letter from Sina H. Pour with a question attached. (Sina gave me permission to use his full name.) He's a film worker based in Stockholm, Sweden and an aspiring screenwriter.  Since I had recently completed a screenplay that violated one of my own rules, which was also at the root of Sina's question, I thought I should write a blog to myself in answer. 

Here 's the question with one of the gratifying things he said about The Moral Premise. Thanks, Sina for your kinds words; they keep me going. 

SINA'S QUESTION

The moral premise should be evident in every scene, but what does this mean in practice? How is the moral premise made evident in EVERY scene? Is it only the vice for the first half of the film and the virtue for the second or the entire premise for every scene throughout the movie?

I truly hope you are able to answer this cry for help, but most of all I hope you see this as an honest testament of the power of your book and how it has affected writers across the globe. Your work is of great importance to us and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

MY RESPONSE

Dear Sina:

The variations on what I explain below are infinite, and may not be as obvious to the audience as I will try to make the example below. Movies work because they force the audience to work. How does the audience work? They work to fill in the narrative gaps purposely left by the screenwriter, director, and editor to create intrigue, suspense, identification, that is the dramatic force that keeps the story ever moving forward. That story "work ethic" is involved in what I'm about to explain, but at a subtle level. A layer purposely made subtle of the filmmakers.

CONFLICT OF VALUES

As you know EVERY act, EVERY sequence, EVERY scene, and EVERY exchange of dialogue, (or cut in an action sequence) is the result of CONFLICT. To keep it simple, if two people are in a scene, they are each trying to get the other to do something. Those "somethings" are opposite in some way. The conflict is the consequence of the two characters embodying or subscribing to opposite moral values, e.g. greed vs. generosity. Each is trying to get the other to change. To some degree, along the journey, this happens in different ways, in different strengths, and with different sub-plots in every scene.

Thus every scene will embody in some way the greed vs. generosity concept of values, which forms the motivational basis for the moral premise statement...

greed leads to _____ but,

generosity leads to _________.

Greed and Generosity are like two themes... one dealing with the motivation to give and the other dealing with the motivation to take. e.g.

Greed leads to isolation and sadness, but

Generosity leads to friendships and joy.

What gives a story deep interest, while still being about the same thing, is that greed and generosity can apply to many aspects of a person's life.

WELL ROUNDED CHARACTERS

One character may be greedy with money, but the other may be greedy with time. Each of these aspects of their lives can serve to generate subplots. In this case, you have two subplots but one Conflict of Values, or one moral premise.

A character can also be greedy with possessions, or status, or appearance (e.g. "One character is driven to always look better than another.") At the same time these characters' counterparts may be more generous with money, time, possessions, status or appearance (e.g. "I don't mind looking like the slob if it makes you look better.")

Of course when a character takes a journey they take both a physical journey and a psychological journey. Making it simple: a protagonist at the beginning of a movie may be generous with her time, but greedy with possessions. We will see that contradiction or conflict in her life as she interacts with another character who has the opposite motivations, e.g. he is generous with his money, but greedy with his time. Conflict. As the story progresses the characters change for reasons that are logical based on the experiences put upon them by the writer-filmmaker. Such experiences, or scenes and sequences are logically connected by cause and effect as we find in Natural Law. And so, in every scene there is both a subtle and an explicit representation of the two values. And to say it again, there may be only those two UNIVERSAL values, but if there are five characters each pursuing goals in different aspects of their lives, we  may have a dozen different expressions of greed and generosity that show up in the various scenes of the film.

CHARACTER MOTIVATIONS

It's important that the character's outward actions are motivated by their internal values. In a movie most of what you show is a character's actions, (with some dialogue to tell the audience what's hard to show.) But just as real people take no action without being motivated by a value (i.e. "value" = "moral motivation"), so your characters must not act without being motivated by a value.

METAPHORS

Now, in really good movies the physical story will be a metaphor for the psychological journey. That is how the audience SEES what's going on INSIDE the characters. Thus, the hero may want to be elected to an important office because she is greedy for power. Wrong reason. And as a result of that vice in her life (a greedy lust for power) she can't make progress because the town's people see what she is like and they won't vote for her or help her. But when visiting the home of a friend our hero meets a little crippled girl who can't walk very easily or get around the house. She likes to sit by the window, and look down on the street but she can't always get up to the wide windowsill. But she is naturally generous with her time and she makes a pretty flower with paper for her big brother. She does it out of the generosity of her heart. And he, naturally, wants to show his appreciation to her for her love, and so he says, "Hey, sis, would you like to sit up on the sill and watch the people and cars." She smiles real big... and her brother lifts her up and puts her on the sill. Now, our hero, who is visiting the family for something he didn't really want to be there for (she's greedy with her time)... sees this beautiful act of generosity (actually two acts of generosity), and it connects. Our hero realizes that it is not her selfish greedy desire for power that accomplishes things, but the desire of the people when she chooses, for generous (not manipulative) reasons, to serve the people. And it's when she loses her greed for power, and embraces her generosity of time for others, that the people elect her to the seat of power (without her ever trying)... not to rule over them, but to serve them. So, the metaphor of the sister and brother reveals the journey our hero must take from her vice of greed) to the virtue of generosity.

There are many, many ways to make the moral premise practical.

SUBPLOTS & GOALS

The key to telling a well-rounded story about one thing is to examine the lives of each of your characters. Give them goals in various aspects of their lives and then give each of those goals an arc that is describe by the moral premise. Realize that characters can move toward the good, toward the bad, or not move at all, although your protagonist needs to change.

The more prominent the character, the more aspects of their lives your story will investigate. Your hero's life may be examined in this way with say, five different subplots, one of which will be the movie's spine. For example: personal life, professional life, family life, public life, and hobby life. While a very minor character's arc may only involve one aspect and thus one sub-plot: his financial life. Each of those aspects of the character's life needs to have a goal and a moral premise arc -- which constitutes a sub-plot.

FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE END

So, in each scene the conflict of values is evident in one or more aspect of a character's life, as they strive toward a goal and meet the challenge that the conflict of values in their lives present. And in good movies, not all characters change dramatically. Humans change slowly. So must your story characters. At the beginning of BRUCE ALMIGHTY, Bruce Nolan has a fear of commitment to Grace (they are not married), and at the end of the movie, although his actions toward Grace have improved (and he's no longer expecting a miracle), that fear of commitment is still evident: although he's introduced her as the future Mrs. Nolan, THEY ARE STILL NOT MARRIED. So from the beginning to the end the two poles of the conflict of values will be evident, but in different amounts as the journey progresses.  (See Table 12 in The Moral Premise).

MY PROBLEM

What was my own rule that I had violated? I had five minor characters that did not have arcs or subplots of their own. They were just there like absent-minded decoration, popping in or out of the story as was convenient.  What was worse, I had been through this particular project over the past 3 years about a dozen times making two major revisions and many other tweaks and polishes.  Finally, finally, something clicked. I think it was a indirect comment from a reader. Suddenly making the next pass jumped to the top of my priority list. Finished it yesterday. Now each of the minor characters have clear beats that correspond to the moral premise and reinforce what the movie is really about. And yes, it stretched the script 4 pages. But the extra length is well worth it. When we do this the story gets better, always. See my post about Tamera Alexander's recent book and the note from her editor. Same thing.