Serpentine Squiggles

Once upon a time
Once upon a time there was a middle of a story
But fuck it, they need some ends
—‍ clipping. ‍-​ “Ends”

I once decried the three act structure. I once called “beginning, middle, and end” the worst of high school english class truisms.

And yet, when someone came to me asking for advice, what’s the most appropriate thing I thought I could say?

It’s been a few years. I’d like to check back in on that old post on the no‍-​called Ur‍-​development and see how I feel now.

But I’m busy at the moment, so a proper dissection will have to wait till later. The bones of what this post will turn out to be have already been written; this blog is finally returning to its roots and responding to a reader question I received on tumblr.

I have a question, how do you structure your stories? like Hostile Takeover for example. What is your technique on plotting?

There are two answers to this question. “Do as i say”, and “do as i actually do.”

Here’s the most direct and unhelpful to this question: to plot stories I think really hard about what would be cool to happen in the next chapter. Then I write five chapters and now journey and destination are both unrecognizable and my crops are dying.

For all that it doesn’t much matter, Hostile Takeover actually has the unique distinction of being the first story I have both outlined and polished. While i have a lot of stories that are written like stories rather than summaries, and while I also have a lot of outlines, usually I end up with one or the other.

On 2023‍-​10‍-​31, not long after reading Tessaract, I had a thought about how you could structure a J/Uzi dynamic. (It was your classic “What if Uzi reminded J of Tessa?” idea, but back in 2023, I didn’t see anyone else thinking of that yet.)

I noodled on the thought some, and I ended up crossbreeding this idea with an old V/Uzi idea that hadn’t panned out, and the pieces started clicking together.

Now, to be clear, at this point I still had no plans to write this. I wasn’t a fanfiction writer. I just wanted to explain how the idea would work to some friends. So I pulled open up a brainstorming channel on discord and starting typing. I didn’t stop typing till long after it had grown far, far too long to post on discord.

I wrote 10k words that day, in fact. If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know this isn’t an uncommon occurence. I think of a story idea, lock into hyperfocus, and yap a whole novella trying to explain why the story idea is so cool.

If you dig around on my site, you can find a few example of outlines written in this fashion. The fact that I went on to flesh out that outline with actual prose is what seems most miraculous about Hostile Takeover‍ ‍—‍ without exception, this is the step that has killed every other outline.

But I’m really getting off track here. You asked about how to structure stories, so circling back to talk about my outline process rather than my fleshing‍-​out process seems prudent. (But put a pin here, we’ll come back to this later because there’s a big caveat I need to mention.)

There’s a difficulty in me talking honestly about outlining, because I barely structure my stories, at least not consciously.

You see, first I notice an idea is really cool, and I think about who in my friends list I’m going to subject to my bullshit explain it to, and it naturally adopts an “okay, but before i can get to that, you first need to hear about this so that everything hits just right,” and on and on until I’m starting off at least ten pages away from the actual point.

But I guess there is a structure even in that, because I’m not consciously thinking about these sentences I as I write them either‍ ‍—‍ yet that’s not because i don’t know how to structure nouns and verbs, it’s that I’ve spent so long thinking about them that I don’t need to anymore.

There’s something deceptively, lede‍-​buryingly coy about me acting like I have any difficulty talking about outlining. I think my tumblr audience largely doesn’t know, but I’ve been writing essays about how to write for years. Outlining might be the thing I’ve written about the most!

The three most relevant are, “Ur‍-​Development”, “Outlines as Temporarily Embarrassed Drafts”, and to a lesser extent, “Pacing is Madness”

Embarrassed Drafts is the one I’d suggest you read, if you’re going to read one, because it’s specifically my response to a friend asking me a very similar question (i.e.: “How does one start plotting a story?”)

Ur‍-​Dev is an old essay, written two years ago a this point, and I’m not linking it because it’s a bad essay. Mediocrely written, and I don’t fully agree with its prescriptions as much as I once did, but it was still a major turning point in how I thought about stories. It’s essentially my take on the Hero’s Journey (part of why I dislike it).

But that outlining essay was written before I wrote Hostile Takeover, so I have about a year’s more experience now. So here’s how I would boil it all down in 2024.

Telling a story is just raising then answering a question using drama and detail. Now, drama comes down to how you write characters, detail comes down to how you write prose (or render images)‍ ‍—‍ but the questions themselves? That’s what plot is.

Vaguest of all, this is questions like “what happens next” or “how does it end?”

But these questions suck, because they ask you to draw the rest of the owl. The really good questions are ones like “how does this happen” or “why is she like that”‍ ‍—‍ they’re directly prompts for you to explain.

Now, I don’t think think in terms of questions. Like I said, I think of the cool stuff first.

If you read or watch videos about how to write, you’ll quickly run into the idea of “plotters” and “pantsers”, and I think the essence of this distinction is whether the answers or the questions come first.

And how best to answer this ask depends on which you are‍ ‍—‍ do you have a premise that you want to explore and find a story in, or do you have a payoff that you want to lead the reader to appreciate?

I’m ambidextrous myself, I’ve gotten good results from either approach, but I identify as a planner just because I can never feel comfortable starting paragraph unless I already know what the last word is.

But both kinds of writers are producing the same thing in different orders. The structure that arises when you raise and answer questions has three steps: presentation, transition, and conclusion. (Or if you prefer, beginning, middle and end)

To make this all less abstract, let’s sketch out an example. I have a whole vault of J/Uzi fic ideas I don’t have time to write, but one of them is based on a simple idea: what if Uzi pointed her gun a little lower when she fires the first shot in the pilot, taking out N’s core?

And since I’m the one writing it, this leads back to J/uzi somehow. Those two plot points already gives us tentpoles to span a story between.

My first piece of advice for the presenting the beginning is that stories should start in a state of ambiguity or falsehood. What every the story is about‍ ‍—‍ whatever the big question might be‍ ‍—‍ in the beginning, we must not yet know the final answer.

To see what it looks like if you don’t do this, imagine we wrote the fic like this. Uzi kills N. She goes “holy hell” and does a fistpump, and walks back to the outpost high on her new accomplishment. She tells her dad and her classmates about how she killed a murder drone, and they’re all impressed. She goes to bed feeling super cool. The end.

Now in fairness, it’s all about the execution. This could very well be a good fic! (I think there’s a nice oneshot to be written in the sheer novelty of Uzi actually doing what she planned to in the pilot and winning her dad’s respect and stuff). But I think a good fic would only be good by virtue of adding stuff that’s not there in this short summary.

This summary isn’t a good story (arguably not a story at all), and there can in fact exist one‍-​paragraph ideas that are good and story‍-​shaped.

The problem is that all those scenes of Uzi walking back and talking to other drones don’t add or explore anything that wasn’t presented at the start with her killing N. it doesn’t inform the audience of anything or transform the ideas, it’s just a repetition of the “Uzi killed N” core idea.

Here’s an improvement. It goes mostly the same‍ ‍—‍ Uzi’s thrilled, the whole colony is proud of her, everything seems great, but then that night when she goes to sleep, there’s a tremor of unease. She’s remembering the battle without the thrill of digital adrenaline, and did she see that yellow cross flicker to fear a frame before the end? That night, she has nightmares, witnessing silver hair and yellow eyes torn apart as she watches.

This is would be a pretty cliche story, but I do think it’s a story, and it illustrates what I’m talking about. Here, we’ve decided the core question is “how does Uzi feel about killing N?” and the this fic starts with a false answer to that question (“She’d think it’s awesome!”), and builds to the real answer (“She’d actually feel a bit guilty about it.”)

But here’s another angle. Uzi has killed N the same way she canonically killed J at the end of the pilot‍ ‍—‍ this implies that after Uzi leaves, we’ll wind up with eldritch N worming it up. We know that material collection starts off pretty stealthy, so we might imagine that when J and V return, N’s corpse has already skittered off.

J could be thrilled to be rid of a synergistic liability (or maybe she knows he has backups), but V would be shattered. Her whole reason for playing along with killing workers was to protect N. Maybe she spends night after night searching for sign of him, or sinking into a depression, but either way J will immediately grow frustrated with the tanking productivity.

Meanwhile in the outpost, there’s celebrations at Uzi’s accomplishments‍ ‍—‍ but one drone is giving her a very significant look. For once, Lizzy and Doll aren’t laughing at Uzi. Lizzy’s smiling with all the rest of them, of course, but Doll has a calculating stare. That night, when Uzi goes to her room, Doll’s waiting for her, red eyes shining the dark, a cheerleader jumpscare.

Doll has a question. She watched her parents be killed by murder drones. But her father managed to snap a picture of it. She shows that to Uzi, asking if the goth killed that drone. She hadn’t. Uzi expected disappointment, but Doll smiles. Excellent, she says. I’m going to kill this one‍ ‍—‍ and you may assist me. Uzi is indignant‍ ‍—‍ assist her? Excuse me? Uzi’s the hero here! Doll doesn’t respond, simply stating to meet in the locker room after cheer practice if she’s interested.

I’m getting carried away here, so let me stop before I outline a whole fic. the point here was to illustrate the other way to draw a proper story out of a premise.

More complex than correcting a false answer to the question, you can extrapolate a chain of answers. Characters react and make plans and new scenarios arise as a consequence of what happened before.

What happens when J & V arrive to an empty nest? What happens when Doll and Uzi work together to take down V? In order to answer these questions, you have to go step by step.

Now, there’s hidden magic even in this tutorial. I could have written this scenario any number of ways‍ ‍—‍ I chose to have Uzi make it home, instead of encountering V and J in the spire, or along the way back. I chose to have J and V react in a way that pit them against each other. I chose to have Doll want to recruit Uzi rather than be jealous, and I specifically chose to have her appear all creepy‍-​like in Uzi’s room.

Part of plotting stories is coming up with these ideas and making these choices as to how events progress. Some of these choices make for better stories, but it’s hard to give much specific advice for learning how to generate and evaluate these idea‍-​seeds‍ ‍—‍ “keep reading and writing stories” will get you there, though.

I do want to highlight how I already I can see neat beats to steer this nascent story towards. For instance, what does Doll and Uzi’s partnership look like on the every day level? Wouldn’t it be interesting if, riding on the wave of fame and appreciate Uzi gains from her heroics, Lizzy and Doll tried to integrate the goth into their clique‍ ‍—‍ genuinely preparing her to be popular?

But ideas are honestly cheap. The beginning of the story is all about presenting interesting questions to the reader. The middle of the story is all about exploring, developing, and working out the answers to that question.

The word I used earlier is transition, but transition to what? You can’t really understand middles or what their purpose is until you understand endings.

Many centuries ago, the greek philosopher Aristotle said something I love to quote. The conclusion to a story should be surprising, yet inevitable. (I think there’s a single word that captures this spirit: ingenious. Or perhaps even just creative.)

This is why I insisted that a story should start in a state of ambiguity or outright falsehood regarding its core question. The final answer can’t be any surprise if it’s something we already knew, so we should be uncertain or falsely sure until the very end.

That can’t be all of it. After all, “Uzi kills N. Will she go home or stay in the spire?” is a question we start off unsure about. But this can’t be a core question, because there’s nothing surprising nor inevitable her choice either way. It’s filler worth eliding over, as I did in my summaries above.

Except we can make it an interesting question. What if Uzi wanted to scavenge more than the railgun macguffins from the murder drones lair‍ ‍—‍ what if the murder drones had tons of useful supplies that she could bring back to the outpost. …Except, her railgun is still in cooldown and as she looks around the base, she sees clear signs there are other murder drones.

So, is Uzi the type to risk it all, or play it safe? Posed that way, suddenly it not only seems like she would stick around in the spire, but it also feels like it’s satisfying writing to resolve the dilemma this way.

…Except, remember that she nearly died in her fight with N. Remember that he stuck her hand with his nanite acid, and this time he’s not around to kiss it better. Uzi can barely hold her railgun, let alone scavenge for supplies.

(Her return to the outpost will play out differently, won’t it? Instead of celebrations the next morning, she’d probably stagger in, exhausted from pain and oil loss, wake up in the repair bay with her concerned father giving her a stern talking to.)

But I digress again. You might notice that I’ve incidentally been demonstrating what it takes to craft a middle here. Story transitions are all about drawing out the reasons why a plot point ought to go one way or the other, pitting them against each other and crowning the victor.

payoff needs to be earned; transitions are about building toward the conclusion. if stories about about answering a core question, why not just write out the question and the answer? “what happens if Uzi kills N? she’d feel guilty about it. the end.” that’s lame as fuck. you need the triumph and celebration, to see Uzi getting the recognition she always craved, so that when she lays down and feels that one atom of guilted unease tug at her, it lands like a poignant gutpunch in miniture.

Middles are so hard because they serve two contradictory purposes. You have to convince the audience that this is all building toward the final conclusion, and you have the convince the audience that it’s not gonna turn out that way at all ;]

Surprising, yet inevitable. Too inevitable, and the audience loses interest in the predictable slog. Too suprising, and the audience starts to think you’ve lost the plot and forgotten what the story is supposed to be about.

There’s another stumbling block for endings. Remember worm N? What was I cooking with that? There’s a very similar version of this post where I never mentioned or thought of material collection at all, and just said Uzi kills N like she killed J in the pilot and continued plotting out the rest.

I can already tell you, I have ideas for where that story goes from there, and right now worm N doesn’t factor into any of them.

It’s a loose plot thread. Sometimes, in the process of trying to answer one question, you raise another that you have no interest in answering. But the audience has no way of reading your intent, so they could be following along expecting a synthesized “Giggle.” and never getting it.

Really, there’s a whole host of missteps I probably should have brought up before now. Sometimes, you try to raise a question and the readers dont catch it, or they don’t care for it.

It’s not enough to ask “what if Uzi kills N?” (though fanfiction grants the definite advantage that, because we’re Murder Drones superfans here, we already care enough about these characters to be piqued by that alone).

No, you have to convince the audience that this is a really interesting question, and they need to see where you’re going with this.

But I dont know how much of that is a question of plot stucture vs writing well generally.

So let’s start wrapping up this essay.

You can explain a lot of otherwise finnicky writer‍-​speak through this lens.

What is a hook? It’s the core question the story aims to resolve. It’s the protagonist’s goal, it’s the mystery, it’s the crazy what if scenario.

What are stakes? It’s the possible answers to the question presented early on, especially ones that that would be bad for the characters we’re invested in.

What is setup? It’s plot points and exposition that give the reader the pieces that’ll eventually click together into the final answer.

What is tension? It’s pieces that don’t fit; it’s setup for one of the bad ends specified by the stakes.

What is payoff? It’s when all the build up finally arrives, in spite of all the tension, at the answer promised by the hook.

So, what is my technique for plotting a story? Start with the hook or the payoff. Whichever one comes first, I know that the other has to be different, inverted via a surprising twist. Then I figure out what faultline of conflict runs between those two points. what interacting plotlines must collide to transform one to the other?

After that comes the detailed work of crafting lines of logic that follows that flow.

And this, finally, is where I pull out the pin in that big caveat I mentioned thousands of words ago‍ ‍—‍ this is where I finally start talking about Hostile Takeover.

I mentioned that I outlined Hostile Takeover from start to finish in one day, producing a 10k word first draft. But in a meaningful sense, that outline was not hostile takeover (on my computer, i now have it saved as “Lethal Acquisitions”)

Hostile Takeover is 190k words and counting, and barely covers the first thousand words of the outline. Here’s what that looks like:

What you’ll notice about this outline is that it’s mid as hell.

All of the most interesting parts of HT aren’t here. Now, some of the drafting process involved repurposing later beats earlier than expected (the first Tessa flashback was at the start of chapter 6, acting as a sort of bridge between “act one” and “act two”; and N and V’s hunt together repurposes some ideas I planned to introduce in battle among a field of windmills)

But that can’t explain all the enusing bloat and sprawl.

It would be a understatement to say HT grew in the telling. No, it’s not so much outlined as loosely inspired by the outline.

I say that in the tone of a joke, but this represents my new outlook on what outlines are for. It’s not like the guidelines in a sketch layer, where subsequent inking and rendering might refine bits of anatomy and tweak the pose while being defined traced over what came before. It’s more like a musician improvising new melodies and chords while playing an old standard.

The outline is the prototype, the test run. It’s a route from A (the hook) to B (the payoff), but it’s just one route through the landscape. It lets you get more familiar with the terrain, spot some of the landmarks and hazards, but it’s a birds eye view; when you’re traveling on foot, you’re going to have to diverge, and you’re going to stop and smell the flowers.

The embellishments that define what HT really is still are the result of applying these principles at the lower level, though.

For instance, the outline had called for a Solver glyph to flash on a random drone’s screen just because. But wasn’t it a better a payoff that this was hidden in the catacombs beneath a church that the squad had to battle to penetrate? And now that I’ve added a whole spooky solver cult, that suggested other plot developments, and this is how things compounded and snarled.

This post has gotten long. Maybe, just maybe, I managed to convey a thing or two about how I plot stories.

Thank you for the ask and for sitting through all that; I hope it wasn’t too long and rambling.