Episode 121 - Story Structure and Character Motivation with Edwin Hill
February 22, 2022
Edwin Hill discusses CHARACTER MOTIVATION AND STORY STRUCTURE. We discuss the motivational continuum, and how you can move from depicting the everyday world of expectation to the world of dreams and dreads, which is where the most engaging stories take place. We discuss where the key turning points in a work of fiction occur, and how you can use them to decide where your story may need to be expanded or tightened up. And we look at movies, including THE WIZARD OF OZ and FATAL ATTRACTION, as examples of works that build tension and support character motivation through their structure.
Edwin Hill’s critically acclaimed crime novels include the standalone thriller, The Secrets We Share, and three novels featuring Hester Thursby: Watch Her, The Missing Ones, and Little Comfort. He has been nominated for Edgar and Agatha Awards, featured in Us Magazine, received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal, and was recognized as one of “Six Crime Writers to Watch” in Mystery Scene magazine. He lives in Roslindale, Massachusetts with his partner Michael and his favorite reviewer, their lab Edith Ann, who likes his first drafts enough to eat them.
"The midpoint is really helpful in a novel because the middle of a book is when people get bored. I mean, that's just true. There's a lot of plot in the middle of the book, and so if you have something that you can write to and then right away from, it actually helps draw you, the author, into the novel as well." —Edwin Hill
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[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Edwin Hill. Hey, Edwin, how are you doing?
[00:00:05] Edwin: Hello! How are you doing?
[00:00:07] Matty: I am doing great, thank you. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you, Edwin Hill's critically acclaimed crime novels include the standalone thriller, THE SECRETS WE SHARE, which I have an ARC of right here, which was very exciting to receive.
[00:00:20] Edwin: That's going to be a collector's item because it has the wrong cover on it.
[00:00:24] Matty: Yes. I think the ARCs usually do have some kind of slightly different one, so, yes, if I ever get dire financial straits, you might see it on eBay, but otherwise I'm hanging on to it.
[00:00:35] His three novels featuring Hester Thursby, WATCH HER, THE MISSING ONES, and LITTLE COMFORT. He has been nominated for Edgar and Agatha awards, featured in Us Magazine, received starred reviews in publishers weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal, and was recognized as one of six crime writers to watch in Mystery Scene Magazine. And he lives in Roslindale, Massachusetts with his partner, Michael, and his favorite retriever, their lab, Edith Ann, who likes his first drafts enough to eat them. Might be an argument for going paperless there.
[00:01:06] I was lucky enough to participate in a webinar that Edwin gave on story structure and character motivation and on how those things intertwine. And so before we dive into the details of that, I always like to ask people when we're talking about craft topics, Edwin, what did you see either in your own writing or the writing of other authors that led you toward this theory of the interconnectedness of story structure and character motivation?
[00:01:34] Edwin: Oh gosh. That's such an interesting question. I was led to this topic both through teaching, because I teach at an MFA program here in Boston at Emerson College, and so, one of the things you want to bring to your students is some kind of structure, some kind of guidelines that they can follow as they're feeling their way through the writing process.
[00:01:52] And I think I came to it too just because I was looking for, like many people, I came to writing, I really had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know about structure; I didn't know how stories were constructed. And so I was looking for a structure that worked for me and sort of a formula that could work for me, so that, it wasn't too complicated, but it gave me enough of a roadmap to follow as I was working through my own novels. Like a lot of writers, I spent a lot of time on my first novel, I didn't really know what I was doing, I felt my way through it over many, many, many years, and as I learned more about these two topics, they were the topics that sort of resonated with me and stuck with me.
[00:02:30] I mean, as I tell my students this all the time, you get advice, including advice today, you get advice all the time from people on what you should do with your writing. And some of those tools are going to be useful for you, you're going to keep them in your tool chest, and you're going to pull them out and use them. And some of them are not going to resonate with you at all, and you can just toss them out and not use them later on.
[00:02:50] Matty: I think that's a great message. I don't know that I've ever had a guest come on the podcast and talk about craft topics and say, you must do this. I think every one of them has said, here's a guideline, and if it works for you, great. Here's an idea, and if it works for you great, and if it doesn't, toss it away and find another one.
[00:03:08] Edwin: Yep.
[00:03:09] Matty: So I know that when you spoke about this at the webinar I attended, there was this idea of a motivational continuum for character motivation. Can you talk a little bit about what that is?
[00:03:21] Edwin: Sure. So one of the first things that I do when I'm coming up with a novel, I'm a pantser, so I just kind of figure out who the characters are and where they're going, and one of the things that I need to do is to figure out what they want. And that's called character motivation. It's very simple. What does your character want? And so then out of that, I go through this exercise. I did not come up with this. This is something I stole from an author called Michael Kardos, and this is from his book called THE ART AND CRAFT OF FICTION. And he calls it the motivational continuum. And this is a really simple concept, but if you work through it on your own, it can really help you get to the root of your story.
[00:04:02] So if you think about your day-to-day life, most of us live in the world of expectation, which is right at the center of the motivational continuum. So the motivational continuum is going to start at expectation, that's going to move out and I'll tell you about the different pieces as we go. So expectation is, I had an interview today with Matty at 10 o'clock, I had to show up. That was the expectation. I have a manuscript due to my editor in a couple months, I have to make that deadline and get that manuscript to him. That's the expectation. So most of us spend most of our lives in expectation. I mean, it’s not the most interesting place, but it's actually the place that you spend most of your life.
[00:04:37] And that's the issue with character motivation. So if you've got a character who's living in expectation, it's not a very interesting story. so if you move away from expectation, right outside of the expectation, you're going to get fears and you're going to get hopes.
[00:04:51] And this is sometimes where you'll land with your character motivation as well. It's definitely more interesting than expectation, but it's not pushing the boundaries as much as you want to.
[00:05:02] So I actually just had to run an errand before this webinar today, so I had a fear that I was going to be late for it, but me being late for a webinar is not an interesting story. And I also hope that you guys are going to enjoy this content today, but that is not interesting enough. It's just not an interesting story.
[00:05:19] So you can think about your fears and your hopes, and everyone has those in their own life, I was just mentioning my manuscript, so I often have a fear that I'm not going to make my deadline and get the manuscript to my editor. And lo and behold, generally I'll write to my editor and say, I'm not going to make my deadline, and he generally says, take an extra month to finish it. So there's no interesting story there, right?
[00:05:40] Matty: Interesting for people who are plugging with editors. Now they're all making a note saying, oh look you can ask for an extension.
[00:05:46] Edwin: Oh, you can always ask for an extension, but you cannot write a novel about asking for an extension, it's just not interesting enough. So you go out from expectations to fears and hopes, and then if you go a little bit further away from fears and hopes, you get to dreams and dreads. And that's really where do you want to find the center of your story, and that's where you're going to find that character motivation that makes the story really, really interesting.
[00:06:09] And so taking the example of my manuscript, if you go a little bit further away from fear into dread, maybe I would dread that they're going to cancel my contract and I'm going to wind up living in obscurity. Having a story about someone living in obscurity, having a story about someone who touched on fame and now is living in obscurity, there are lots and lots of stories about that. And that's an interesting story, right? Because you're looking at something that could have happened and what actually happened and what actually happened was the dread that that character had the entire time.
[00:06:43] And then on the flip side, the dream side would be, maybe I'll get my manuscript in, and I'll get reviewed in the New York Times and become a runaway bestseller. And following the dream of that runaway success is also an interesting story, because success can lead in all sorts of different paths.
[00:06:58] So when you're looking at your characters, you want to think about how can you really push the boundaries of what they dream of and what they dread? And then look at your story and think, what is happening in that story that either stirs that dread, makes the character actually feel the dread of what they're dreading, or thwarts a dream, gets in the way of a dream. So you might have, in my boring little story about selling my novel, you might have a character who gets a review in the New York Times. That's a dream come true, right? And that publicity leads to something, like uncovers a murder in their past or something, like that famous author has killed, I did not kill someone in the past, but that famous author has killed someone in the past and all that publicity leads to that being exposed. So now you're thwarting that dream with your plot points. So that's the basic motivational continuum.
[00:07:51] Matty: And do you have to have a character experience the expectations and the fears and desires before they get to the dreams and dreads, but you just want to get through it quickly in order to get to those more interesting dreams and dreads?
[00:08:05] Edwin: Have that experience a bit, you want to be able to say what they are, you as the author, you want your reader to really understand, what is motivating this character? What are those things that are making them make decisions and making them take action?
[00:08:17] So one thing that I do when I'm writing my own novels is, I use this prompt right at the beginning that I usually take out as I revise the novel, but it really helps me get at the heart of what the character wants, whether it be a dream or a dread. And the prompt is, I'm reading this, the one thing he couldn't tell anyone, the one thing he almost couldn't admit to himself was ... And then I do a free write on that, and I usually do about a three or a four-page free write, so maybe 15 to 20 minutes, as I explore
[00:08:44] what that character wants and why they're keeping a secret.
[00:08:48] I write mystery novels, so there are often secrets in my novels. And once I finished that, I use that desire to inform the action that my character goes through for the rest of the novel.
[00:09:00] Matty: We had talked about using the WIZARD OF OZ as an example, and I'm going to use the movie, because I think many more people are familiar with the movie than the book. So can you say the sentence again, and we can work through how that applies to Dorothy as a character?
[00:09:15] Edwin: Oh, sure. I'll make this clearer as we keep talking. Motivation for a character changes, and so for this course that Matty sat in on, I often use movies anyway for examples because people know them. They're cultural reference points that we can all come to and I'm not spoiling books that people haven't read yet.
[00:09:32] But think about the WIZARD OF OZ. There are three acts in the WIZARD OF OZ, and we'll get into the three act structure in a bit. So think about the sentence, the one thing Dorothy couldn't tell anyone, the one thing she almost couldn’t admit to herself was ... What is the one thing that Dorothy wants? She sings it in the very first song of the movie, she wants to go over the rainbow, she wants to leave. So that's her character motivation, it's very clear. Actually, musicals will often have a song at the very beginning, it's called the "I want" song, and so they are good models for this. And so the I want song is basically the character, the main character, could be Belle in BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, it could be any different characters. But Dorothy in the WIZARD OF OZ, she sings this song where she says, this is what I want. And Dorothy is singing about going over the rainbow, and what she wants is, she wants to leave home. She doesn't want to tell Aunt Em or Uncle Henry; she doesn't want to feel ungrateful or anything like that.
[00:10:22] Matty: And then it's the fact that she gets her dream that leads to the dreads that come later.
[00:10:28] Edwin: Yeah, exactly.
[00:10:31] Matty: So, does it make sense to segue into the three-act structure, or is there anything else about the motivational continuum that makes sense to establish first?
[00:10:38] Edwin: So just think about dreams and dreads, and we'll talk about the WIZARD OF OZ. And one of the things, so this I got from a great author, Wendall Thomas, who really made me understand the plot points in a three-act structure in such a simple way recently, when she did something for Sisters in Crime, which is a crime writers’ organization.
[00:10:57] There are six points in a three-act structure, they are plot points. You have your inciting incident, the thing that sets the story off. You have your plot point one, which is a place where the story turns on itself. And again, we'll use the WIZARD OF OZ as an example, as I talk through each of these things, and I hope you'll see how they all work together.
[00:11:18] You have the midpoint of the novel, which happens dead center, right in the middle of the novel. And that's again, where the character motivation, something happens to the character, so that the story turns on itself.
[00:11:28] You have plot point two, which happens about two-thirds of the way through the novel.
[00:11:32] And then you have your climax, where all of the stories come together.
[00:11:36] And Wendall, she actually used an example of, so I'm going to switch to another movie really quickly. She used an example of FATAL ATTRACTION to help us understand what the midpoint of a story is. So the midpoint, again, it happens right dead center. And one thing, this is so funny, because I've written many novels and I've done this intuitively before, but I didn't quite understand what I was doing, even though I'd done it intuitively. What can happen at one of these plot points is, the motivation of the character, the main character, changes and it flips on itself. So that in the first half of the novel, you might've been writing towards something else, and then the motivation changes and now you're writing towards something else.
[00:12:15] So here's the example from FATAL ATTRACTION. So if you remember FATAL ATTRACTION, you have Michael Douglas, married, has a cute kid. He cheats on his wife with Glenn Close. And so, the first half of that movie is all about Michael Douglas wanting to ignore her and make her go away. She even says this, I will not be ignored. You might remember that.
[00:12:38] And so the whole first half of the movie, he's like, I'm going to ignore this woman, I'm going to ignore this problem until it goes away. I'm going to protect my family, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:12:46] Then the midpoint of that movie, and again I want to thank Wendall Thomas for this, the midpoint of that movie is when she shows up and she says, I'm pregnant with your kid. And all of a sudden, the movie flips, because now she can't go away. So his whole motivation for whatever the first hour of that movie was, I want you to go away. Now she's pregnant, she can't go away. So now his motivation is, I'm going to protect my family and protect them from this woman. we can talk about maybe a FATAL ATTRACTION, we can talk about how dated it is and its themes and everything, but just think about it as an example.
[00:13:19] But now he is protecting his family from this woman. And we all know, she winds up doing things to his family that he wouldn't want her to do.
[00:13:27] Matty: That are dreadful.
[00:13:28] Edwin: That are dreadful, exactly. So just think about that, how the motivation flips on itself.
[00:13:33] Now we're going to talk a little bit about Dorothy, a much sweeter movie, and think about in terms of character motivation, how her motivation changes throughout that movie. And it just goes back and forth between two things.
[00:13:48] There are a couple of changes, but you have the first character motivation, which is the inciting incident. She wants to leave. And she leaves because her dog Toto is threatened by Miss Gulch. Miss Gulch is going to kill her dog, so the inciting incident in that movie is when Dorothy decides to take Toto and run away.
[00:14:06] So then she runs away, and you might remember, she finds the real-life version of the Wizard in that little house, and they talk to each other, and the Wizard shows her that Aunt Em is very sad that she's left.
[00:14:16] So now all of a sudden, her motivation changes and she wants to get back home. So that's, the inciting incident's when she leaves. Plot point one is when she gets home and the house has taken off in the cyclone and she lands in the woods in Oz, and she is told that the only way to get home is to talk to the Wizard.
[00:14:35] So now her motivation has changed from wanting to leave to wanting to go home. And so after the first plot point, which happens about one third of the way through the movie, her motivation has now changed to getting to the Wizard. So all she wants to do for that part of the movie is get from Munchkinland to the Emerald City and find the Wizard, so the Wizard can take her home. That's what that whole part of the movie is about.
[00:14:57] So, now we get to the midpoint of the movie, and the midpoint of the movie is when the Wizard says he's not going to do what she has asked, and the only way that he's going to help her as if she gets the broomstick from the Wicked Witch. So now, that's the midpoint of the movie.
[00:15:12] So Dorothy has just spent the last bit of the movie saying, I'm going to find a Wizard, and now all of a sudden, the motivation changes and she no longer needs to find the Wizard. Her motivation now is to find the Wicked Witch. And her motivation completely changes.
[00:15:27] There's always this sort of secondary motivation of wanting to get home that sort of drives that whole part of the movie, but the sub-motivation is either finding the Wizard or finding the Witch.
[00:15:38] So that's the midpoint, and then the second plot point. So we go from the midpoint to the second plot point, and that whole part of the story is finding the Witch and getting the broomstick. So the second plot point is when she throws the water at the Wicked Witch of the West, the Wicked Witch of the West melts, she gets the broomstick. She's achieved her goal, she has achieved her character motivation, and now her motivation is to get back to the Wizard so that he can fulfill her wish.
[00:16:07] And then the climax is when they find out that he's a fraud of course, but she winds up going home anyway.
[00:16:12] Matty: So how exactly is the midpoint at the midpoint? Like if someone has written a draft of the story and it's 300 pages long, and if they turn to page 150, how close should they be to that midpoint event that you're describing?
[00:16:27] Edwin: Oh, I mean, with anything like this, you want to use, I'll say this many, many times, you want to use what is useful to you. So the midpoint is really helpful in a novel because the middle of a book is when people get bored. I mean, that's just true. There's a lot of plot in the middle of the book, and so if you have something that you can write to and then right away from, it actually helps draw you, the author into the novel as well. So I will tell you that for mystery novels, if you pick up most mystery novels, if you pick up a 300-page mystery novel and turn to page 150, there's usually a chapter break there, and it's usually something that turns the plot.
[00:17:07] Matty: It would be an interesting test that if there's something not quite working with your story to do that, you know, it turn to the exact midpoint, and then if you're able to identify what the structural midpoint is, not the physical midpoint, and you realize that it happened 50 pages before, maybe you're short-changing the buildup to that midpoint, or if you find it's not actually happening until 50 pages later, maybe you're stretching out the story more than it needs to be during those earlier sections.
[00:17:37] Edwin: Yep, that's absolutely true. I mean, drafting a novel is a very long process and you make some mistakes along the way, but with THE SECRETS WE SHARE, I had come up with the midpoint for that book as being a certain event that happens in the book. And as I was drafting it, I realized that the midpoint was taking me too long to get to that plot point. And so I took that event that happens in the novel, and I actually made it the first plot point instead. So I greatly reduced the action down, so instead of writing 150 pages, I wrote about 90 pages to get to that first plot point. And so then I had to come up with a new midpoint where the plot turned on itself in a different way.
[00:18:18] But I think it is really helpful to use this. What I do is I break my novel up into six parts. The first part is the beginning to the inciting incident. The inciting incident can happen anytime. Remember, there's a little asterisk that there are no rules, but my inciting incident always happens somewhere between page 1 and page 50. And so, I usually have it happened around page 50, though sometimes it's a little earlier.
[00:18:41] So I break my novel up into six parts. Part one is page 1 through the inciting incident, wherever that happens to be.
[00:18:49] Part 2 is the inciting incident through plot point 1, and that's usually page 50 to 100. And then part 3 will be plot point 1 to the midpoint, which is usually pages 100 to 150.
[00:19:03] And then part 4 is the midpoint to plot point 2. Again, that's the next 50 pages. And then, I usually write from the plot point two to the climax. And then after the climax of your novel, there's this little thing called the denouement, which is where you tie up all of your plot points. It usually is only a chapter or two. If you have a lot of plot points that need to be tied up, it might be a little bit longer, but it happens after the climax.
[00:19:25] So if you've ever read a novel where there's a ton of action, then it just ends, that novel probably needed a little bit, just an extra chapter to keep the story going on.
[00:19:35] Matty: Yeah, I find that with my own denouements for my Ann Kinnear stories, which started out as suspense but then became mystery. That's a whole other topic of a podcast, how do you rebrand a series that's made that kind of change? But I find that the endings work better if there's enough remaining, oh, so that's why that happened, to make that part interesting and not just a mechanical wrapping up of plot points. And also so it feels organic and not just, oh my God, I never explained what happened to Auntie Em so I better put a scene with her going to the PTA meeting or whatever.
[00:20:12] Edwin: Yeah, well, in the WIZARD OF OZ, the denouement would be the scene where she's in bed and all the characters who were in her real life and were in Oz show up. And it's not very long, it's only that one little scene.
[00:20:22] Matty: It would be interesting to actually time that, because that might be the world's most efficient wrapping up of the story.
[00:20:29] Edwin: Yes, and again, movies and books are different, so movies are always more efficient than novels.
[00:20:34] Matty: Yeah. I did have a question about motivation. We've been talking about what a character's wants are. And sometimes you also hear this twist that is, what does the character need? So you had spoken about how Dorothy's motivation changes over time, she thinks what she wants is to get away from home, but what she needs is a deeper understanding of what she has. And actually one of the things, if I'm remembering the movie right, it always surprised me that the movie goes back to black and white when she wakes up in Kansas, I think. And I always thought it would be a little on the nose, but more effective if Kansas was now colorful, the way Oz was colorful, when she's come back with this greater appreciation of what she has. It would be interesting to know why they made that decision to not have that be color.
[00:21:28] Edwin: Well, I mean, isn't everyone disappointed at the end of Wizard, like secretly wouldn't you like to stay in on in Oz?
[00:21:37] Matty: Yeah, other than the fact that she kind of missed everybody, like you want her to just be able to teleport with the farm hands and in the end, all go back to the Emerald City.
[00:21:47] Edwin: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:21:49] Matty: Do you know how the book ends? Does the book end similarly?
[00:21:53] Edwin: The book's very different, I mean, there's a whole series, and Dorothy comes back to Oz and is part of the Oz universe. And I think, if I remember correctly, Aunt Em and Uncle Henry also come to Oz, so it's more real in the books than it is in the movie.
[00:22:08] Matty: Yeah, I love those books. My parents, I had that Oz series of books that belonged to one of my parents when they were young, so it was a very old one.
[00:22:18] Edwin: Yup. Dorothy also becomes a supporting character in the later series, which is sort of a fun route too.
[00:22:26] Matty:
[00:22:26] Another question I had is, are these guidelines about expectations, expanding fears and desires, expanding to dreams and dreads, do you apply those to other characters other than the protagonist, maybe at different levels?
[00:22:39] Edwin: You can apply them to
[00:22:40] Matty: anyone.
[00:22:40] Edwin: And again, these are guidelines, but you can apply them to your antagonist. I mean, everyone writes different types of novels, right? So every one of my novels has been a multiple point of view, so I want to do it for each of the point of view characters, even though in general, there's one protagonist in your novel, in general. Even in our multi POV novel, so you really want to understand it for that protagonist.
[00:23:02] But my novels tend to have four to six POV characters, and so I really want to understand what each of them is bringing to the story, and what's making them tick for that story, and what justifies me giving them a point of view. And part of that justification is understanding what their character motivation is.
[00:23:54] Matty: I had a completely selfish question because why not? So I'm finishing up my fifth Ann Kinnear suspense novel. I already had the idea for the sixth, so I've been with Ann for quite a while. And I often got the comment from readers that they wish they knew Ann better, and so as time went on, I've tried to be a little more explicit about Ann, spend a little more time with her.
[00:24:17] But what I realized just recently is that I'm approaching it almost like a Columbo episode. So you see a lot of action going on and then the crime occurs and then Columbo shows up. And I don't neglect Ann's private life this much, but you don't know anything about Columbo's private life, right? You never see him go home, you never see his wife until finally they showed his wife, and then that was disappointing. You only see him at work in the case. And so I realized that I'm doing a modified version of that, that I have to set up this scenario where Ann Kinnear, who's a woman who has a consulting business based on her ability to sense spirits, now arrives, because there's somebody who needs or wants to get in touch with a dead person.
[00:25:03] And it would be interesting to apply this structure that you've just described to a COLUMBO episode and see how it differs or a similar to a scenario like WIZARD OF OZ, where Dorothy shows up at the very beginning and she's there the whole time, and it's her arc that you're following.
[00:25:21] And I've got to believe that the challenge that I'm describing is more common in mysteries, because in a lot of mysteries, you have the person who's going to solve the mystery show up after the crime has taken place. Have you found this in your own mystery writing, this dilemma, especially in a series, of how you work your protagonist in with that underlying storyline that's what they're reacting to?
[00:25:46] Edwin: Oh, that's such an interesting question. I mean, for people that are listening, think about what you know about Hercule Poirot. Nothing. Like he shows up and he's arrogant and he has Hastings sometimes, and he doesn't have Hastings other times. But really, he's from Belgium, but we don't know anything about who his parents were, who he loves or anything like that. We don't know anything about him. And that is an interesting model and there are lots of mysteries that use that model.
[00:26:11] I have a series where I have a woman named Hester Thursby who finds missing people. She's a Harvard librarian, but on the side, she finds missing people. I've written three of those books. And so one of the things I tried to do with those three books, and this sounds like I planned it more than I actually did, but I tried to give her a character arc within that set of three books. So she has a partner named Morgan. They have a child that they care for who isn't theirs named Kate. And so I tried to delve into her home life and sort of her relationship with Morgan and how they got along, and they both have some issues with their childhood that we got into. And so that would almost be like the B plot in each of the novels.
[00:26:52] But I also showed their relationship progressing and I showed her relationship with Kate in particular. She was ambivalent to Kate at first, the poor little three-year-old, and then by the end, she's come to terms with the fact that Kate is someone that she loves and that she cares for. So I always think of that as the B plot, and I definitely explored that. And I wanted there to be some resolution at the end of the third book. I figured that out as I was writing the second book, that I needed to do this. Again, like my first book, I was just figuring out what I was doing.
[00:27:20] And so, for anyone who read that whole three-book series, I would hope that they would feel like there was a character arc for those three central characters. And so if I do another set of three books in that series, I would do the same thing. I'd want to see Hester and Morgan and Kate progressing someplace over those three books. They've worked through the issues that they worked through in the first three books, and I don't want to return to those issues.
[00:27:45] Matty: I hope I'm not taking us too far off the character motivation and structure topic, but I'm the representative plotter. I don't think I've ever interviewed anyone on the podcast who's a plotter, everyone's a pantser. But still, when I wrote the Lizzy Ballard books, for example, the Lizzy Ballard books turned out to be a trilogy, but I didn't know that when I started. And so when I started working on the second and then as I was getting toward the end of the second, I realized there was going to be a third and I had a sense that three was going to be it. As you were saying, if I ever returned to Lizzy, it would be a whole different scenario. She's a teenager in first three, she'd be older and in later series.
[00:28:23] But it's like TV shows that don't know whether they're going to get renewed or not, and they're coming to the end of a series, and then they have to decide whether they're going to leave it on a cliffhanger or not. And it's similar if you haven't plotted out your entire series so that you can nicely work in that overarching arc for the main character, I guess in some cases you just have to hurry up and do it, if you're getting to the end of what you think is going to be the last in the series.
[00:28:52] Edwin: This is my strategy. for a series, I've written four books. If I write another series, I would not write a series without a three-book contract or without a three-book concept, I think. And I would work in it in series of three.
[00:29:05] So I would bring storylines to a close, I'd bring all of the lingering plot lines to a close at the end of those three books, and if the publisher wanted another three, I do another three. But on a business level, I wouldn't sign a series again without having a three-book contract with my publisher.
[00:29:21] Matty: And now we're getting really far afield from motivation and structure, but I have to ask you this. So I suppose that you can't require that if you're just starting out, but once you have a track record, how easy or difficult is it to say to your editor or your publisher, I only want to tackle this if it's going to be a set of three?
[00:29:39] Edwin: Well, it depends. But it would depend on your relationship. It depends on your sales. It depends on how much negotiating power you have. So if you have good sales and you have a good relationship with your publisher, you're going to be able to have a conversation with them about where you want your career to go. If your sales are spotty or non-existent, you're going to have less negotiating power there.
[00:29:59] But a series is a different thing from a standalone book, and they're both really valuable experiences, but readers expect certain things from series, and so you need to have some kind of plan in place so that the series is giving your readers what they want. And one of those things is just the continuity of having characters that they like, whether it be a Columbo or a Poirot or it be, like Armand Gamache from Louise Penny's books, which is, you know, her books follow that character. I mean, I think she's on number 14 now. That character has grown and changed for all 14 of those books.
[00:30:34] Matty: I think that the equivalent for independently published authors is, implicitly or explicitly you're setting an expectation with your readers in the same way that in the traditionally published world and the relationship you have with your publisher and the negotiating power you have and all those things you mentioned, on the indy side, you're making that commitment to the readers. And whether you say it or not, I think readers sense if you've started out, they sense that this is probably going to be a three-book thing. But my recommendation is probably don't commit to three books until you have a pretty good idea of what the three books are going to be, so you don't disappoint them.
[00:31:11] So we had talked about the three-act structure and character motivation with the WIZARD OF OZ. Any other examples, instructive examples from the WIZARD OF OZ?
[00:31:21] Edwin: To look at this three-act structure, looking at really sort of classic, simple movies is the best thing that you can do to really understand how characters change and what characters' want changes as the novel goes on. Another example people will use a lot is STAR WARS, which is also a very simple, simple story. You think about what Luke Skywalker wants, and he's also leaving home and coming home and leaving home. But just look at where things happen in that movie. I think that movie is exactly two hours long, and so the midpoint is going to be at one hour. So just think about what happens at the hour mark in that movie and then break it up.
[00:31:58] The other thing that's always helpful with the three-act structure is, how many pages is each of the acts? And so I always tell my students, think about your first act is going to be between a quarter and a third of the novel. So if you had a 300-page novel, it's going to be between 75 pages and 100 pages. That's your first act.
[00:32:18] Your second act is going to be anywhere between a third and a half of the novel. So if you have a 300-page novel, your second act is going to be somewhere between 100 pages and 150 pages. And this is where you get that wiggle room that you're asking about. Everything doesn't always have to fit into a neat tiny box.
[00:32:36] And so the last act is going to be again, it's going to be anywhere from one quarter to one third of the novel. So again, in a 300-page novel, it'll be between 75 and 100 pages.
[00:32:47] And so think about that with movies too. When you see a movie is usually about two hours long but think about a 90-minute movie. A 90-minute movie, the first act is going to be 30 minutes, the second act is going to be 30 minutes and the third act is going to be 30 minutes. And right in the middle of that second act, you're going to have your midpoint and it's going to be bracketed by your first plot point and your second plot point.
[00:33:08] Matty: This is less of a consideration now with streaming, but it would be interesting to look back at TV shows with commercials in them and see how the writers accommodated the fact that they were a little more constrained because of where the commercials were going to appear.
[00:33:23] Edwin: Back in the olden days, an hour-long TV show used to be structured in exactly this way. You'd have your little cold opener where they set up what the plot was, and then you'd have a commercial at 15 minutes, you'd have another commercial at a half hour, you'd have another commercial at 45 minutes, and then you'd have your final act.
[00:33:39] And the whole thing would be, that would be your three-act structure, with that commercial at 30 minutes being the midpoint of the TV show. Now TV shows have six or seven commercial breaks, so it's not quite the same.
[00:33:52] Matty: The thing that I think is interesting, well, The WIZARD OF OZ and STAR WARS are great examples because they are kind of cartoonish, they're a little bit exaggerated. And I think it's sometimes a challenge to look at a more subtle, realistic book, and it's not a planet blowing up or the witch melting. It's something much more subtle, and that maybe recognizing where those moments normally come can help people recognize when they're happening in a more subtle work too.
[00:34:27] Edwin: Yeah. But again, to really understand that, look at something simple. Like FATAL ATTRACTION is another good example, it's a relatively simple story. But look at something simple, understand where those beats are, and then of course you're going to write something more complex than the WIZARD OF OZ story, but you can still start applying those to your novel and your writing.
[00:34:46] Matty: Well, I guess that's the homework assignment, is for people to take notes of the structure and the character motivation advice you've provided and go off and watch those or read them and see what they're finding.
[00:35:01] Edwin: My suggestion, whatever book you're reading right now, see if you can find, not every novel is going to follow the three-act structure. There's a lot of theory around structure out there, there are many structures that you can follow. This is the one that I like, and this is the one that works for me, and you can search on story structure online and find all sorts of different ones.
[00:35:18] But I would encourage you, especially if you're reading a crime novel, try to figure out where these beats are happening. Figure out where the inciting incident is happening, figure out where the plot point 1 is happening, where is the story suddenly shifting in another direction. And do that thing where you open the novel up right in the middle, if it's a 300-page novel, open it up on 150 and see what's happening at page 150, or right around there, it might be off by a page or two. You'll find that midpoint there, and it's just an interesting thing to explore.
[00:35:49] Matty: Great. Well, Edwin, thank you so much. I've taken lots of notes and I'm going to go back and hold it up to my own books once I've tested it out on some other books. So please let the listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online.
[00:36:01] Edwin: Oh, sure. You can just go to my website, it's edwin-hill.com, if you just search on my name, I come up too.
[00:36:07] Matty: Great, thank you so much.
[00:36:09] Edwin: Thank you.
[00:00:05] Edwin: Hello! How are you doing?
[00:00:07] Matty: I am doing great, thank you. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you, Edwin Hill's critically acclaimed crime novels include the standalone thriller, THE SECRETS WE SHARE, which I have an ARC of right here, which was very exciting to receive.
[00:00:20] Edwin: That's going to be a collector's item because it has the wrong cover on it.
[00:00:24] Matty: Yes. I think the ARCs usually do have some kind of slightly different one, so, yes, if I ever get dire financial straits, you might see it on eBay, but otherwise I'm hanging on to it.
[00:00:35] His three novels featuring Hester Thursby, WATCH HER, THE MISSING ONES, and LITTLE COMFORT. He has been nominated for Edgar and Agatha awards, featured in Us Magazine, received starred reviews in publishers weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal, and was recognized as one of six crime writers to watch in Mystery Scene Magazine. And he lives in Roslindale, Massachusetts with his partner, Michael, and his favorite retriever, their lab, Edith Ann, who likes his first drafts enough to eat them. Might be an argument for going paperless there.
[00:01:06] I was lucky enough to participate in a webinar that Edwin gave on story structure and character motivation and on how those things intertwine. And so before we dive into the details of that, I always like to ask people when we're talking about craft topics, Edwin, what did you see either in your own writing or the writing of other authors that led you toward this theory of the interconnectedness of story structure and character motivation?
[00:01:34] Edwin: Oh gosh. That's such an interesting question. I was led to this topic both through teaching, because I teach at an MFA program here in Boston at Emerson College, and so, one of the things you want to bring to your students is some kind of structure, some kind of guidelines that they can follow as they're feeling their way through the writing process.
[00:01:52] And I think I came to it too just because I was looking for, like many people, I came to writing, I really had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know about structure; I didn't know how stories were constructed. And so I was looking for a structure that worked for me and sort of a formula that could work for me, so that, it wasn't too complicated, but it gave me enough of a roadmap to follow as I was working through my own novels. Like a lot of writers, I spent a lot of time on my first novel, I didn't really know what I was doing, I felt my way through it over many, many, many years, and as I learned more about these two topics, they were the topics that sort of resonated with me and stuck with me.
[00:02:30] I mean, as I tell my students this all the time, you get advice, including advice today, you get advice all the time from people on what you should do with your writing. And some of those tools are going to be useful for you, you're going to keep them in your tool chest, and you're going to pull them out and use them. And some of them are not going to resonate with you at all, and you can just toss them out and not use them later on.
[00:02:50] Matty: I think that's a great message. I don't know that I've ever had a guest come on the podcast and talk about craft topics and say, you must do this. I think every one of them has said, here's a guideline, and if it works for you, great. Here's an idea, and if it works for you great, and if it doesn't, toss it away and find another one.
[00:03:08] Edwin: Yep.
[00:03:09] Matty: So I know that when you spoke about this at the webinar I attended, there was this idea of a motivational continuum for character motivation. Can you talk a little bit about what that is?
[00:03:21] Edwin: Sure. So one of the first things that I do when I'm coming up with a novel, I'm a pantser, so I just kind of figure out who the characters are and where they're going, and one of the things that I need to do is to figure out what they want. And that's called character motivation. It's very simple. What does your character want? And so then out of that, I go through this exercise. I did not come up with this. This is something I stole from an author called Michael Kardos, and this is from his book called THE ART AND CRAFT OF FICTION. And he calls it the motivational continuum. And this is a really simple concept, but if you work through it on your own, it can really help you get to the root of your story.
[00:04:02] So if you think about your day-to-day life, most of us live in the world of expectation, which is right at the center of the motivational continuum. So the motivational continuum is going to start at expectation, that's going to move out and I'll tell you about the different pieces as we go. So expectation is, I had an interview today with Matty at 10 o'clock, I had to show up. That was the expectation. I have a manuscript due to my editor in a couple months, I have to make that deadline and get that manuscript to him. That's the expectation. So most of us spend most of our lives in expectation. I mean, it’s not the most interesting place, but it's actually the place that you spend most of your life.
[00:04:37] And that's the issue with character motivation. So if you've got a character who's living in expectation, it's not a very interesting story. so if you move away from expectation, right outside of the expectation, you're going to get fears and you're going to get hopes.
[00:04:51] And this is sometimes where you'll land with your character motivation as well. It's definitely more interesting than expectation, but it's not pushing the boundaries as much as you want to.
[00:05:02] So I actually just had to run an errand before this webinar today, so I had a fear that I was going to be late for it, but me being late for a webinar is not an interesting story. And I also hope that you guys are going to enjoy this content today, but that is not interesting enough. It's just not an interesting story.
[00:05:19] So you can think about your fears and your hopes, and everyone has those in their own life, I was just mentioning my manuscript, so I often have a fear that I'm not going to make my deadline and get the manuscript to my editor. And lo and behold, generally I'll write to my editor and say, I'm not going to make my deadline, and he generally says, take an extra month to finish it. So there's no interesting story there, right?
[00:05:40] Matty: Interesting for people who are plugging with editors. Now they're all making a note saying, oh look you can ask for an extension.
[00:05:46] Edwin: Oh, you can always ask for an extension, but you cannot write a novel about asking for an extension, it's just not interesting enough. So you go out from expectations to fears and hopes, and then if you go a little bit further away from fears and hopes, you get to dreams and dreads. And that's really where do you want to find the center of your story, and that's where you're going to find that character motivation that makes the story really, really interesting.
[00:06:09] And so taking the example of my manuscript, if you go a little bit further away from fear into dread, maybe I would dread that they're going to cancel my contract and I'm going to wind up living in obscurity. Having a story about someone living in obscurity, having a story about someone who touched on fame and now is living in obscurity, there are lots and lots of stories about that. And that's an interesting story, right? Because you're looking at something that could have happened and what actually happened and what actually happened was the dread that that character had the entire time.
[00:06:43] And then on the flip side, the dream side would be, maybe I'll get my manuscript in, and I'll get reviewed in the New York Times and become a runaway bestseller. And following the dream of that runaway success is also an interesting story, because success can lead in all sorts of different paths.
[00:06:58] So when you're looking at your characters, you want to think about how can you really push the boundaries of what they dream of and what they dread? And then look at your story and think, what is happening in that story that either stirs that dread, makes the character actually feel the dread of what they're dreading, or thwarts a dream, gets in the way of a dream. So you might have, in my boring little story about selling my novel, you might have a character who gets a review in the New York Times. That's a dream come true, right? And that publicity leads to something, like uncovers a murder in their past or something, like that famous author has killed, I did not kill someone in the past, but that famous author has killed someone in the past and all that publicity leads to that being exposed. So now you're thwarting that dream with your plot points. So that's the basic motivational continuum.
[00:07:51] Matty: And do you have to have a character experience the expectations and the fears and desires before they get to the dreams and dreads, but you just want to get through it quickly in order to get to those more interesting dreams and dreads?
[00:08:05] Edwin: Have that experience a bit, you want to be able to say what they are, you as the author, you want your reader to really understand, what is motivating this character? What are those things that are making them make decisions and making them take action?
[00:08:17] So one thing that I do when I'm writing my own novels is, I use this prompt right at the beginning that I usually take out as I revise the novel, but it really helps me get at the heart of what the character wants, whether it be a dream or a dread. And the prompt is, I'm reading this, the one thing he couldn't tell anyone, the one thing he almost couldn't admit to himself was ... And then I do a free write on that, and I usually do about a three or a four-page free write, so maybe 15 to 20 minutes, as I explore
[00:08:44] what that character wants and why they're keeping a secret.
[00:08:48] I write mystery novels, so there are often secrets in my novels. And once I finished that, I use that desire to inform the action that my character goes through for the rest of the novel.
[00:09:00] Matty: We had talked about using the WIZARD OF OZ as an example, and I'm going to use the movie, because I think many more people are familiar with the movie than the book. So can you say the sentence again, and we can work through how that applies to Dorothy as a character?
[00:09:15] Edwin: Oh, sure. I'll make this clearer as we keep talking. Motivation for a character changes, and so for this course that Matty sat in on, I often use movies anyway for examples because people know them. They're cultural reference points that we can all come to and I'm not spoiling books that people haven't read yet.
[00:09:32] But think about the WIZARD OF OZ. There are three acts in the WIZARD OF OZ, and we'll get into the three act structure in a bit. So think about the sentence, the one thing Dorothy couldn't tell anyone, the one thing she almost couldn’t admit to herself was ... What is the one thing that Dorothy wants? She sings it in the very first song of the movie, she wants to go over the rainbow, she wants to leave. So that's her character motivation, it's very clear. Actually, musicals will often have a song at the very beginning, it's called the "I want" song, and so they are good models for this. And so the I want song is basically the character, the main character, could be Belle in BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, it could be any different characters. But Dorothy in the WIZARD OF OZ, she sings this song where she says, this is what I want. And Dorothy is singing about going over the rainbow, and what she wants is, she wants to leave home. She doesn't want to tell Aunt Em or Uncle Henry; she doesn't want to feel ungrateful or anything like that.
[00:10:22] Matty: And then it's the fact that she gets her dream that leads to the dreads that come later.
[00:10:28] Edwin: Yeah, exactly.
[00:10:31] Matty: So, does it make sense to segue into the three-act structure, or is there anything else about the motivational continuum that makes sense to establish first?
[00:10:38] Edwin: So just think about dreams and dreads, and we'll talk about the WIZARD OF OZ. And one of the things, so this I got from a great author, Wendall Thomas, who really made me understand the plot points in a three-act structure in such a simple way recently, when she did something for Sisters in Crime, which is a crime writers’ organization.
[00:10:57] There are six points in a three-act structure, they are plot points. You have your inciting incident, the thing that sets the story off. You have your plot point one, which is a place where the story turns on itself. And again, we'll use the WIZARD OF OZ as an example, as I talk through each of these things, and I hope you'll see how they all work together.
[00:11:18] You have the midpoint of the novel, which happens dead center, right in the middle of the novel. And that's again, where the character motivation, something happens to the character, so that the story turns on itself.
[00:11:28] You have plot point two, which happens about two-thirds of the way through the novel.
[00:11:32] And then you have your climax, where all of the stories come together.
[00:11:36] And Wendall, she actually used an example of, so I'm going to switch to another movie really quickly. She used an example of FATAL ATTRACTION to help us understand what the midpoint of a story is. So the midpoint, again, it happens right dead center. And one thing, this is so funny, because I've written many novels and I've done this intuitively before, but I didn't quite understand what I was doing, even though I'd done it intuitively. What can happen at one of these plot points is, the motivation of the character, the main character, changes and it flips on itself. So that in the first half of the novel, you might've been writing towards something else, and then the motivation changes and now you're writing towards something else.
[00:12:15] So here's the example from FATAL ATTRACTION. So if you remember FATAL ATTRACTION, you have Michael Douglas, married, has a cute kid. He cheats on his wife with Glenn Close. And so, the first half of that movie is all about Michael Douglas wanting to ignore her and make her go away. She even says this, I will not be ignored. You might remember that.
[00:12:38] And so the whole first half of the movie, he's like, I'm going to ignore this woman, I'm going to ignore this problem until it goes away. I'm going to protect my family, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:12:46] Then the midpoint of that movie, and again I want to thank Wendall Thomas for this, the midpoint of that movie is when she shows up and she says, I'm pregnant with your kid. And all of a sudden, the movie flips, because now she can't go away. So his whole motivation for whatever the first hour of that movie was, I want you to go away. Now she's pregnant, she can't go away. So now his motivation is, I'm going to protect my family and protect them from this woman. we can talk about maybe a FATAL ATTRACTION, we can talk about how dated it is and its themes and everything, but just think about it as an example.
[00:13:19] But now he is protecting his family from this woman. And we all know, she winds up doing things to his family that he wouldn't want her to do.
[00:13:27] Matty: That are dreadful.
[00:13:28] Edwin: That are dreadful, exactly. So just think about that, how the motivation flips on itself.
[00:13:33] Now we're going to talk a little bit about Dorothy, a much sweeter movie, and think about in terms of character motivation, how her motivation changes throughout that movie. And it just goes back and forth between two things.
[00:13:48] There are a couple of changes, but you have the first character motivation, which is the inciting incident. She wants to leave. And she leaves because her dog Toto is threatened by Miss Gulch. Miss Gulch is going to kill her dog, so the inciting incident in that movie is when Dorothy decides to take Toto and run away.
[00:14:06] So then she runs away, and you might remember, she finds the real-life version of the Wizard in that little house, and they talk to each other, and the Wizard shows her that Aunt Em is very sad that she's left.
[00:14:16] So now all of a sudden, her motivation changes and she wants to get back home. So that's, the inciting incident's when she leaves. Plot point one is when she gets home and the house has taken off in the cyclone and she lands in the woods in Oz, and she is told that the only way to get home is to talk to the Wizard.
[00:14:35] So now her motivation has changed from wanting to leave to wanting to go home. And so after the first plot point, which happens about one third of the way through the movie, her motivation has now changed to getting to the Wizard. So all she wants to do for that part of the movie is get from Munchkinland to the Emerald City and find the Wizard, so the Wizard can take her home. That's what that whole part of the movie is about.
[00:14:57] So, now we get to the midpoint of the movie, and the midpoint of the movie is when the Wizard says he's not going to do what she has asked, and the only way that he's going to help her as if she gets the broomstick from the Wicked Witch. So now, that's the midpoint of the movie.
[00:15:12] So Dorothy has just spent the last bit of the movie saying, I'm going to find a Wizard, and now all of a sudden, the motivation changes and she no longer needs to find the Wizard. Her motivation now is to find the Wicked Witch. And her motivation completely changes.
[00:15:27] There's always this sort of secondary motivation of wanting to get home that sort of drives that whole part of the movie, but the sub-motivation is either finding the Wizard or finding the Witch.
[00:15:38] So that's the midpoint, and then the second plot point. So we go from the midpoint to the second plot point, and that whole part of the story is finding the Witch and getting the broomstick. So the second plot point is when she throws the water at the Wicked Witch of the West, the Wicked Witch of the West melts, she gets the broomstick. She's achieved her goal, she has achieved her character motivation, and now her motivation is to get back to the Wizard so that he can fulfill her wish.
[00:16:07] And then the climax is when they find out that he's a fraud of course, but she winds up going home anyway.
[00:16:12] Matty: So how exactly is the midpoint at the midpoint? Like if someone has written a draft of the story and it's 300 pages long, and if they turn to page 150, how close should they be to that midpoint event that you're describing?
[00:16:27] Edwin: Oh, I mean, with anything like this, you want to use, I'll say this many, many times, you want to use what is useful to you. So the midpoint is really helpful in a novel because the middle of a book is when people get bored. I mean, that's just true. There's a lot of plot in the middle of the book, and so if you have something that you can write to and then right away from, it actually helps draw you, the author into the novel as well. So I will tell you that for mystery novels, if you pick up most mystery novels, if you pick up a 300-page mystery novel and turn to page 150, there's usually a chapter break there, and it's usually something that turns the plot.
[00:17:07] Matty: It would be an interesting test that if there's something not quite working with your story to do that, you know, it turn to the exact midpoint, and then if you're able to identify what the structural midpoint is, not the physical midpoint, and you realize that it happened 50 pages before, maybe you're short-changing the buildup to that midpoint, or if you find it's not actually happening until 50 pages later, maybe you're stretching out the story more than it needs to be during those earlier sections.
[00:17:37] Edwin: Yep, that's absolutely true. I mean, drafting a novel is a very long process and you make some mistakes along the way, but with THE SECRETS WE SHARE, I had come up with the midpoint for that book as being a certain event that happens in the book. And as I was drafting it, I realized that the midpoint was taking me too long to get to that plot point. And so I took that event that happens in the novel, and I actually made it the first plot point instead. So I greatly reduced the action down, so instead of writing 150 pages, I wrote about 90 pages to get to that first plot point. And so then I had to come up with a new midpoint where the plot turned on itself in a different way.
[00:18:18] But I think it is really helpful to use this. What I do is I break my novel up into six parts. The first part is the beginning to the inciting incident. The inciting incident can happen anytime. Remember, there's a little asterisk that there are no rules, but my inciting incident always happens somewhere between page 1 and page 50. And so, I usually have it happened around page 50, though sometimes it's a little earlier.
[00:18:41] So I break my novel up into six parts. Part one is page 1 through the inciting incident, wherever that happens to be.
[00:18:49] Part 2 is the inciting incident through plot point 1, and that's usually page 50 to 100. And then part 3 will be plot point 1 to the midpoint, which is usually pages 100 to 150.
[00:19:03] And then part 4 is the midpoint to plot point 2. Again, that's the next 50 pages. And then, I usually write from the plot point two to the climax. And then after the climax of your novel, there's this little thing called the denouement, which is where you tie up all of your plot points. It usually is only a chapter or two. If you have a lot of plot points that need to be tied up, it might be a little bit longer, but it happens after the climax.
[00:19:25] So if you've ever read a novel where there's a ton of action, then it just ends, that novel probably needed a little bit, just an extra chapter to keep the story going on.
[00:19:35] Matty: Yeah, I find that with my own denouements for my Ann Kinnear stories, which started out as suspense but then became mystery. That's a whole other topic of a podcast, how do you rebrand a series that's made that kind of change? But I find that the endings work better if there's enough remaining, oh, so that's why that happened, to make that part interesting and not just a mechanical wrapping up of plot points. And also so it feels organic and not just, oh my God, I never explained what happened to Auntie Em so I better put a scene with her going to the PTA meeting or whatever.
[00:20:12] Edwin: Yeah, well, in the WIZARD OF OZ, the denouement would be the scene where she's in bed and all the characters who were in her real life and were in Oz show up. And it's not very long, it's only that one little scene.
[00:20:22] Matty: It would be interesting to actually time that, because that might be the world's most efficient wrapping up of the story.
[00:20:29] Edwin: Yes, and again, movies and books are different, so movies are always more efficient than novels.
[00:20:34] Matty: Yeah. I did have a question about motivation. We've been talking about what a character's wants are. And sometimes you also hear this twist that is, what does the character need? So you had spoken about how Dorothy's motivation changes over time, she thinks what she wants is to get away from home, but what she needs is a deeper understanding of what she has. And actually one of the things, if I'm remembering the movie right, it always surprised me that the movie goes back to black and white when she wakes up in Kansas, I think. And I always thought it would be a little on the nose, but more effective if Kansas was now colorful, the way Oz was colorful, when she's come back with this greater appreciation of what she has. It would be interesting to know why they made that decision to not have that be color.
[00:21:28] Edwin: Well, I mean, isn't everyone disappointed at the end of Wizard, like secretly wouldn't you like to stay in on in Oz?
[00:21:37] Matty: Yeah, other than the fact that she kind of missed everybody, like you want her to just be able to teleport with the farm hands and in the end, all go back to the Emerald City.
[00:21:47] Edwin: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:21:49] Matty: Do you know how the book ends? Does the book end similarly?
[00:21:53] Edwin: The book's very different, I mean, there's a whole series, and Dorothy comes back to Oz and is part of the Oz universe. And I think, if I remember correctly, Aunt Em and Uncle Henry also come to Oz, so it's more real in the books than it is in the movie.
[00:22:08] Matty: Yeah, I love those books. My parents, I had that Oz series of books that belonged to one of my parents when they were young, so it was a very old one.
[00:22:18] Edwin: Yup. Dorothy also becomes a supporting character in the later series, which is sort of a fun route too.
[00:22:26] Matty:
[00:22:26] Another question I had is, are these guidelines about expectations, expanding fears and desires, expanding to dreams and dreads, do you apply those to other characters other than the protagonist, maybe at different levels?
[00:22:39] Edwin: You can apply them to
[00:22:40] Matty: anyone.
[00:22:40] Edwin: And again, these are guidelines, but you can apply them to your antagonist. I mean, everyone writes different types of novels, right? So every one of my novels has been a multiple point of view, so I want to do it for each of the point of view characters, even though in general, there's one protagonist in your novel, in general. Even in our multi POV novel, so you really want to understand it for that protagonist.
[00:23:02] But my novels tend to have four to six POV characters, and so I really want to understand what each of them is bringing to the story, and what's making them tick for that story, and what justifies me giving them a point of view. And part of that justification is understanding what their character motivation is.
[00:23:54] Matty: I had a completely selfish question because why not? So I'm finishing up my fifth Ann Kinnear suspense novel. I already had the idea for the sixth, so I've been with Ann for quite a while. And I often got the comment from readers that they wish they knew Ann better, and so as time went on, I've tried to be a little more explicit about Ann, spend a little more time with her.
[00:24:17] But what I realized just recently is that I'm approaching it almost like a Columbo episode. So you see a lot of action going on and then the crime occurs and then Columbo shows up. And I don't neglect Ann's private life this much, but you don't know anything about Columbo's private life, right? You never see him go home, you never see his wife until finally they showed his wife, and then that was disappointing. You only see him at work in the case. And so I realized that I'm doing a modified version of that, that I have to set up this scenario where Ann Kinnear, who's a woman who has a consulting business based on her ability to sense spirits, now arrives, because there's somebody who needs or wants to get in touch with a dead person.
[00:25:03] And it would be interesting to apply this structure that you've just described to a COLUMBO episode and see how it differs or a similar to a scenario like WIZARD OF OZ, where Dorothy shows up at the very beginning and she's there the whole time, and it's her arc that you're following.
[00:25:21] And I've got to believe that the challenge that I'm describing is more common in mysteries, because in a lot of mysteries, you have the person who's going to solve the mystery show up after the crime has taken place. Have you found this in your own mystery writing, this dilemma, especially in a series, of how you work your protagonist in with that underlying storyline that's what they're reacting to?
[00:25:46] Edwin: Oh, that's such an interesting question. I mean, for people that are listening, think about what you know about Hercule Poirot. Nothing. Like he shows up and he's arrogant and he has Hastings sometimes, and he doesn't have Hastings other times. But really, he's from Belgium, but we don't know anything about who his parents were, who he loves or anything like that. We don't know anything about him. And that is an interesting model and there are lots of mysteries that use that model.
[00:26:11] I have a series where I have a woman named Hester Thursby who finds missing people. She's a Harvard librarian, but on the side, she finds missing people. I've written three of those books. And so one of the things I tried to do with those three books, and this sounds like I planned it more than I actually did, but I tried to give her a character arc within that set of three books. So she has a partner named Morgan. They have a child that they care for who isn't theirs named Kate. And so I tried to delve into her home life and sort of her relationship with Morgan and how they got along, and they both have some issues with their childhood that we got into. And so that would almost be like the B plot in each of the novels.
[00:26:52] But I also showed their relationship progressing and I showed her relationship with Kate in particular. She was ambivalent to Kate at first, the poor little three-year-old, and then by the end, she's come to terms with the fact that Kate is someone that she loves and that she cares for. So I always think of that as the B plot, and I definitely explored that. And I wanted there to be some resolution at the end of the third book. I figured that out as I was writing the second book, that I needed to do this. Again, like my first book, I was just figuring out what I was doing.
[00:27:20] And so, for anyone who read that whole three-book series, I would hope that they would feel like there was a character arc for those three central characters. And so if I do another set of three books in that series, I would do the same thing. I'd want to see Hester and Morgan and Kate progressing someplace over those three books. They've worked through the issues that they worked through in the first three books, and I don't want to return to those issues.
[00:27:45] Matty: I hope I'm not taking us too far off the character motivation and structure topic, but I'm the representative plotter. I don't think I've ever interviewed anyone on the podcast who's a plotter, everyone's a pantser. But still, when I wrote the Lizzy Ballard books, for example, the Lizzy Ballard books turned out to be a trilogy, but I didn't know that when I started. And so when I started working on the second and then as I was getting toward the end of the second, I realized there was going to be a third and I had a sense that three was going to be it. As you were saying, if I ever returned to Lizzy, it would be a whole different scenario. She's a teenager in first three, she'd be older and in later series.
[00:28:23] But it's like TV shows that don't know whether they're going to get renewed or not, and they're coming to the end of a series, and then they have to decide whether they're going to leave it on a cliffhanger or not. And it's similar if you haven't plotted out your entire series so that you can nicely work in that overarching arc for the main character, I guess in some cases you just have to hurry up and do it, if you're getting to the end of what you think is going to be the last in the series.
[00:28:52] Edwin: This is my strategy. for a series, I've written four books. If I write another series, I would not write a series without a three-book contract or without a three-book concept, I think. And I would work in it in series of three.
[00:29:05] So I would bring storylines to a close, I'd bring all of the lingering plot lines to a close at the end of those three books, and if the publisher wanted another three, I do another three. But on a business level, I wouldn't sign a series again without having a three-book contract with my publisher.
[00:29:21] Matty: And now we're getting really far afield from motivation and structure, but I have to ask you this. So I suppose that you can't require that if you're just starting out, but once you have a track record, how easy or difficult is it to say to your editor or your publisher, I only want to tackle this if it's going to be a set of three?
[00:29:39] Edwin: Well, it depends. But it would depend on your relationship. It depends on your sales. It depends on how much negotiating power you have. So if you have good sales and you have a good relationship with your publisher, you're going to be able to have a conversation with them about where you want your career to go. If your sales are spotty or non-existent, you're going to have less negotiating power there.
[00:29:59] But a series is a different thing from a standalone book, and they're both really valuable experiences, but readers expect certain things from series, and so you need to have some kind of plan in place so that the series is giving your readers what they want. And one of those things is just the continuity of having characters that they like, whether it be a Columbo or a Poirot or it be, like Armand Gamache from Louise Penny's books, which is, you know, her books follow that character. I mean, I think she's on number 14 now. That character has grown and changed for all 14 of those books.
[00:30:34] Matty: I think that the equivalent for independently published authors is, implicitly or explicitly you're setting an expectation with your readers in the same way that in the traditionally published world and the relationship you have with your publisher and the negotiating power you have and all those things you mentioned, on the indy side, you're making that commitment to the readers. And whether you say it or not, I think readers sense if you've started out, they sense that this is probably going to be a three-book thing. But my recommendation is probably don't commit to three books until you have a pretty good idea of what the three books are going to be, so you don't disappoint them.
[00:31:11] So we had talked about the three-act structure and character motivation with the WIZARD OF OZ. Any other examples, instructive examples from the WIZARD OF OZ?
[00:31:21] Edwin: To look at this three-act structure, looking at really sort of classic, simple movies is the best thing that you can do to really understand how characters change and what characters' want changes as the novel goes on. Another example people will use a lot is STAR WARS, which is also a very simple, simple story. You think about what Luke Skywalker wants, and he's also leaving home and coming home and leaving home. But just look at where things happen in that movie. I think that movie is exactly two hours long, and so the midpoint is going to be at one hour. So just think about what happens at the hour mark in that movie and then break it up.
[00:31:58] The other thing that's always helpful with the three-act structure is, how many pages is each of the acts? And so I always tell my students, think about your first act is going to be between a quarter and a third of the novel. So if you had a 300-page novel, it's going to be between 75 pages and 100 pages. That's your first act.
[00:32:18] Your second act is going to be anywhere between a third and a half of the novel. So if you have a 300-page novel, your second act is going to be somewhere between 100 pages and 150 pages. And this is where you get that wiggle room that you're asking about. Everything doesn't always have to fit into a neat tiny box.
[00:32:36] And so the last act is going to be again, it's going to be anywhere from one quarter to one third of the novel. So again, in a 300-page novel, it'll be between 75 and 100 pages.
[00:32:47] And so think about that with movies too. When you see a movie is usually about two hours long but think about a 90-minute movie. A 90-minute movie, the first act is going to be 30 minutes, the second act is going to be 30 minutes and the third act is going to be 30 minutes. And right in the middle of that second act, you're going to have your midpoint and it's going to be bracketed by your first plot point and your second plot point.
[00:33:08] Matty: This is less of a consideration now with streaming, but it would be interesting to look back at TV shows with commercials in them and see how the writers accommodated the fact that they were a little more constrained because of where the commercials were going to appear.
[00:33:23] Edwin: Back in the olden days, an hour-long TV show used to be structured in exactly this way. You'd have your little cold opener where they set up what the plot was, and then you'd have a commercial at 15 minutes, you'd have another commercial at a half hour, you'd have another commercial at 45 minutes, and then you'd have your final act.
[00:33:39] And the whole thing would be, that would be your three-act structure, with that commercial at 30 minutes being the midpoint of the TV show. Now TV shows have six or seven commercial breaks, so it's not quite the same.
[00:33:52] Matty: The thing that I think is interesting, well, The WIZARD OF OZ and STAR WARS are great examples because they are kind of cartoonish, they're a little bit exaggerated. And I think it's sometimes a challenge to look at a more subtle, realistic book, and it's not a planet blowing up or the witch melting. It's something much more subtle, and that maybe recognizing where those moments normally come can help people recognize when they're happening in a more subtle work too.
[00:34:27] Edwin: Yeah. But again, to really understand that, look at something simple. Like FATAL ATTRACTION is another good example, it's a relatively simple story. But look at something simple, understand where those beats are, and then of course you're going to write something more complex than the WIZARD OF OZ story, but you can still start applying those to your novel and your writing.
[00:34:46] Matty: Well, I guess that's the homework assignment, is for people to take notes of the structure and the character motivation advice you've provided and go off and watch those or read them and see what they're finding.
[00:35:01] Edwin: My suggestion, whatever book you're reading right now, see if you can find, not every novel is going to follow the three-act structure. There's a lot of theory around structure out there, there are many structures that you can follow. This is the one that I like, and this is the one that works for me, and you can search on story structure online and find all sorts of different ones.
[00:35:18] But I would encourage you, especially if you're reading a crime novel, try to figure out where these beats are happening. Figure out where the inciting incident is happening, figure out where the plot point 1 is happening, where is the story suddenly shifting in another direction. And do that thing where you open the novel up right in the middle, if it's a 300-page novel, open it up on 150 and see what's happening at page 150, or right around there, it might be off by a page or two. You'll find that midpoint there, and it's just an interesting thing to explore.
[00:35:49] Matty: Great. Well, Edwin, thank you so much. I've taken lots of notes and I'm going to go back and hold it up to my own books once I've tested it out on some other books. So please let the listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online.
[00:36:01] Edwin: Oh, sure. You can just go to my website, it's edwin-hill.com, if you just search on my name, I come up too.
[00:36:07] Matty: Great, thank you so much.
[00:36:09] Edwin: Thank you.
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