A Manual of the Short Story Art by Glenn Clark

A Manual of the Short Story Art 

by 

Glenn Clark

 

 FOREWORD BY OLIVIA SALTER

When it comes to the art of storytelling, few individuals possess the depth of knowledge and passion for the craft like Glenn Clark. In his seminal work, "A Manual of the Short Story Art," Clark shares his decades of experience as a writer, teacher, and connoisseur of literature to provide a comprehensive guide for aspiring writers and avid readers alike.

In today's fast-paced world, where attention spans are shrinking and communication is often reduced to bite-sized snippets, the short story stands as a testament to the power of brevity and conciseness. It is within the confines of these limited pages that a skilled writer can distill the essence of human experience, capturing a moment, an emotion, or a thought that resonates deeply with the reader.

What makes "A Manual of Short Story Art" truly exceptional is Clark's ability to dissect every aspect of this unique form of storytelling. From the initial spark of inspiration to the meticulous crafting of character setting and plot, Clark offers invaluable insights into the creative process. He explores the various elements that contribute to a successful short story, including theme, conflict, pacing, and dialogue, providing practical advice and thought-provoking exercises that will help writers hone their skills and elevate their storytelling abilities.

Furthermore, Clark delves into the importance of reading and analyzing short stories as a means of improving one's own writing. By examining the works of established masters of the craft such as Edgar Allan Poe, Guy de Maupassant, and Anton Chekhov, he demonstrates how studying these literary classics can serve as a wellspring of inspiration and guidance.

Beyond the technical aspects of writing, Clark reflects on the profound impact that short stories can have on our lives. He emphasizes that despite their brevity, these narratives have the power to unearth profound truths, challenge our perspectives, and evoke a wide range of emotions. The stories we encounter become a mirror through which we can better understand ourselves and the world around us.

In an era where storytelling has taken on many forms, from novels and films to podcasts and social media, the short story continues to hold its own as a timeless art form. "A Manual of Short Story Art" is a thoughtful and illuminating exploration of this unique genre, serving as a guidepost for both aspiring and seasoned writers as well as a source of inspiration for lovers of literature.

Glenn Clark's passion for the short story is infectious, and his expertise shines through on every page. As you embark on this journey through his manual, prepare to be captivated, challenged, and ultimately transformed in your own understanding and appreciation of the art of the short story.

Olivia Salter 

04/14/2023

 Overview

This 1922 how-to textbook, intended for teachers and students, includes exercises to get a writer started; lessons in visualization, dialogue, and theme; a list of thirty-six plot situations; and, as examples, short stories by Anthony Hope, Gertrude Hamilton, Edna Ferber, O. Henry, Beatrice Walker, and Wilbur Daniel Steele.

The PDF might take a minute to load. Or, click to download PDF.

If your Web browser is not configured to display PDF files. No worries, just click here to download the PDF file.

 

Fiction Writing Tips Article Index Page

Does Meter Matter? by Randy Ingermanson | Advanced Fiction Writing

 

Does Meter Matter?

 

by Randy Ingermanson 

 

Advanced Fiction Writing

 

I’ve been thinking lately about meter. I’m been doing final polishing on a novel, and I’ve found myself tweaking sentences so the rhythm of the words work better.

Another word for “rhythm of the words” is meter.

So What?

Which raises the question: does meter matter?

It certainly matters in certain kinds of poetry. You can’t write a good limerick or sonnet, for example, without paying very close attention to meter.

But fiction isn’t poetry.

Does meter matter in fiction?

One way to study that question would be to look at some example sentences from a few novels to see whether they have meter, and if so, how much.

As a quick test, I chose several novels off my shelf and looked at the first sentence in each. Then I asked whether the sentence had any recognizable meter, and what kind of meter, and for how long it ran.

Testing Some Example Novels

Here are the novels I chose, along with their first sentences:

From The Hunt for Red October, by Tom Clancy:

Captain First Rank Marko Ramius of the Soviet Navy was dressed for the Arctic conditions normal to the Northern Fleet submarine base at Polyarnyy.

From The Promise, by Chaim Potok:

All around us everything was changing in the order of things we had fashioned for ourselves.

From The Matarese Circle, by Robert Ludlum:

The band of carolers huddled at the corner, stamping their feet and swinging their arms, their young voices penetrating the cold night air between the harsh sounds of automobile horns and police whistles and the metallic strains of Christmas music blaring from storefront speakers.

From The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini:

I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975.

From Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling:

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

From A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

From Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon:

It wasn’t a very likely place for disappearances, at least at first glance.

What do you think? Is there a discernible meter in these example sentences?

Some Observations

My first observation is that the sentences from The Kite Runner and A Tale of Two Cities show the clearest signs of meter. They aren’t nearly as regular as the meter you’d find in a limerick, but it would be weird to write a novel with a meter that regular. I judge them to be somewhat more regular in their meter than ordinary English.

My second observation is that all of the examples show some hints of meter, even the examples from Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum. Neither of those writers would be called literary novelists. They were commercial writers through and through. Yet both show some signs of rhythm.

The first four and a half words of the Clancy example (“Captain First Rank Marko Ramius…”) have exactly the same meter as the first five words of The Raven, by Edgar Allen Poe: “Once upon a midnight dreary…”

Likewise, there’s a sequence of words in the Ludlum example with the identical rhythm: “…strains of Christmas music blaring…”

And the Gabaldon sentence has almost the exact same meter here: “… wasn’t a very likely place for …” (if you pronounce “wasn’t” as a single syllable, which is common.)

Accident or Design?

What’s going on here? Is this meter we’re seing accident or design?

I suspect that part of it is that English has a lot of two-syllable words with the accent on the first syllable. And it has a lot of one-syllable words, some that are naturally accented and some that aren’t. So it’s fairly easy to write a short sequence of words that alternate stressed and unstressed words, purely by chance.

As an example, I wasn’t thinking of meter when I wrote the last sentence of the previous paragraph. Yet, without any planning at all, I began the sentence with a sequence of three feet in this alternating meter. By tweaking things a little on the rewrite, I could easily extend that to eleven feet: "So it's fairly easy then to write a sequence having alternating stressed and unstressed words.” You wouldn't pronounce this with a heavy stress on the accented syllables, and you might not even notice the meter consciously when reading it. But the sentence flows well.

My hunch is that, consciously or unconsciously, a lot of authors edit their work to extend these sequences. Because “it sounds better.”

But of course there are other kinds of meter than simple alternation (which is called either Trochaic or Iambic depending on whether the stressed syllable comes first or second.)

English also has many Latin-based and Greek-based words, and these often have three syllables. Most of these words have a natural meter with one stressed and two unstressed syllables in various patterns (Anapestic or Dactylic or Amphibrachic are your options here).

So again, if you happen to string together a couple of feet that are almost in one of these meters, it’s fairly easy to tweak things to make the meter exact for two or three feet.

Notice that in the preceding paragraph, again without thinking about it at all, purely by accident, I began with three feet in Anapestic meter: “So again, if you happen to string…” It would be very simple to extend this another foot with a simple rearrangement: “So again, if you happen to string a few words…”

I don’t know how many authors do this consciously. I know that I often notice a couple of feet of meter that happened at random in my writing. When I see it, I sometimes reorder words or tweak my word choices to get a slightly more regular meter. I might notice that I’ve got two feet in some particular meter and stretch it out to three or four. I do it because it sounds better when the voice in my head reads it back to me.

What I don’t do is to try to force entire sentences into a single meter. That would draw undue attention to the meter.

Recently I listened to the famous “I have a dream” speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This speech is absolutely brilliant on several different levels. Since I’ve been thinking about meter lately, I noticed that the speech works very well on the level of meter.

Listen to it yourself on Youtube and see if you agree:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I47Y6VHc3Ms

Conclusions, Such as They Are

So what’s the bottom line on meter?

I don’t really know, so I’d hesitate to tell anyone what to do.

My thinking is that meter is the sprinkles on the icing on the cake. The cake is your story—your characters and plot and story world and theme. The icing is the structure of your paragraphs and sentences that show your story in an emotively powerful way. Until you’ve got the cake baked and the icing smeared on, it’s premature to put on the sprinkles.

Here are the guiding principles I use for thinking about meter in my own work:

• Meter happens naturally at random when you write normal English.
• When doing your final edit, if you listen to the sound of the text, you’ll find short stretches of meter all over the place.
• If you find a few feet in some given meter, you may choose to extend it another foot or so by tweaking your word order or word choices.
• This really onlymakes sense if it sounds better that way AND doesn’t monkey with the meaning.
• But it would be weird to go overboard and try to force a long sentence into a single meter.

Homework

• Do you use meter intentionally in your fiction?
• Does it show up at random, even if you aren’t trying? (You’ll need to read a few paragraphs to see.)
• Does it improve things to tweak the words to get more meter in your work?

 

About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

More Advanced Fiction Writing

 

Making Irony Work by Randy Ingermanson | Advanced Fiction Writing

 

Making Irony Work

 

by Randy Ingermanson 

 

Advanced Fiction Writing

 

If you’ve spent much time at all on email lists or social media, you’ve probably noticed a couple of weird things that happen:

• You make a hilarious comment, and then some whacko you don’t even know takes your remark seriously and thrashes you for being “stupid” when you were actually being ironic.
• Somebody you don’t know says some incredibly ridiculous thing, so you take the time to point out how dumb that is, and then they claim they were just being ironic and you didn’t get it, so you’re the dummy.

Never happened to you? Well it’s happened to people I know.

What’s going on here?

Context is King

Irony, satire, sarcasm—call it whatever you want—only works when your listeners or reader have context.

When you use irony, your intended meaning is the opposite of the face value of your words. So people need to understand you and the context of the situation, or they won’t even recognize you’re being ironic.

It’s dangerous to toss out an ironic remark when people don’t have the context to spot the irony.

Tone Matters

Even if people don’t have much context, they can often tell from the tone of your voice or your facial expressions that you’re being ironic. Which is what makes email lists and social media so tricky. Because written words don’t pronounce themselves or make appropriate facial expressions. Written words just lie there dead on the screen.

If you’re a good writer and you write enough words, people can often pick up cues from your written tone. But it takes longer to establish a written tone than a verbal one.

Using Irony in Fiction

You can use irony and satire and sarcasm in your fiction. You just have to lay the groundwork.

You need to set the context clearly, and that takes time. There’s no rule on how many words it takes to set the context. Use enough to get the job done.

Irony and sarcasm give you a golden opportunity to create conflict in your novel. One character says something they mean as a joke. Another character takes it literally. Sparks fly. It happens all the time in real life. It’ll be believable in your fiction—but only if your reader gets the intended meaning. Which goes back to filling in the context.

Homework

• Do you use sarcasm or irony or satire in your novel?
• What information will your reader need to know in order to get the joke?
• Will that information be generally known ten years from now? In a foreign country? By people who aren’t in your subculture?
• Are there any ways you can work in some of that information into the story so your book is accessible to more people, for longer?

 

About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

More Advanced Fiction Writing

The Gaps Between Your Scenes by Randy Ingermanson | Advanced Fiction Writing

 

The Gaps Between Your Scenes

 

by Randy Ingermanson 

 

Advanced Fiction Writing

 

---

Scenes are the fundamental units of fiction.

What does that mean? It means the following:

• A novel is made up of scenes.
• Each scene is a miniature “story-within-a-story”.
• Your reader consumes these scenes in order.

Just as an example, if your novel is 100,000 words, and if your scenes are, on average, about 1000 words, then your novel would have about 100 scenes. Your own numbers will be somewhat different than these, but I give these as an example to show what orders of magnitude we’re talking about.

But scenes don’t live alone as separate things. They tend to cluster into groups, which I call “sequences of scenes.” (I don’t think there’s any standard term; few books on fiction writing even talk about these sequences.) The scenes in each sequence work together to form a chunk of your story. When you submit a synopsis to a publisher, usually each paragraph of the synopsis tells what happens in one scene sequence.

A sequence of scenes is typically somewhere between 2 and 7 scenes. It typically is clustered together in time (and often clustered in space). A sequence of scenes is often clustered together in theme. A novel will typically have around 20 of these scene sequences.

Now here’s the important point. Very often, there’ll be a gap in time between your sequences of scenes. Maybe all the scenes in one sequence happen in the same day, and then time skips forward by a few days before the next sequence begins. Or maybe all the scenes in a sequence happen over the course of a few weeks, and then time skips forward several months or even years.

How do you handle those gaps in time? If you’re not careful, you can lose your reader. (“Hey, it was January for several scenes, and now suddenly it’s July! I feel like I’ve missed something.”)

There are a number of techniques you can use to help bridge the gap between sequences of scenes. In this article, we’ll talk about three of them, but you can probably think of others.

Character Continuity

Most novels are written so that each scene has a point-of-view character. It’s very common to use several different POV characters, switching between them every time you switch to a new scene.

If that’s your strategy, you can help bridge the gap from one scene sequence to the next by using the same POV character in the last scene of the earlier scene sequence and in the first scene of the later scene sequence.

Then, even though time has passed, the reader feels less of a “speed bump,” because at least they’ve crossed that big time gap inside the skin of the same character.

Plot Continuity

Scenes typically are of two types:

• Proactive Scenes, which begin with a Goal, work through an obstacle course of Conflicts, and end with a Setback.
• Reactive Scenes, which begin with a Reaction, work through a Dilemma, and end with a Decision.

(If this is new to you, you might find helpful my book How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method.)

When you’re making a transition from one scene sequence to another, you can smooth the gap by either of the following two strategies:

• End the earlier scene sequence on a Reactive Scene with some Decision which then forms the Goal for a Proactive Scene that begins the next scene sequence.
• End the earlier scene sequance on a Proactive Scene with some Setback, and begin the next scene sequence with a Reactive Scene in which the Reaction responds to the Setback of the previous scene.

Either way, you’ve made a plot bridge that will help carry your reader across that gap in time.

Theme Continuity

Stories are “about something.” Most stories are, anyway. Theme is the thing that the story is about. This is often some abstract thing like freedom or hope or love or hate or death or war or whatever.

If your story is very strongly theme-oriented, then you’ll have some scenes in which the theme rises to the top and is highly visible.

If you arrange to end one scene sequence with your theme highly visible, and then begin the next scene sequence with that same theme still highly visible, you’ve bridged the gap nicely.

Homework:

• How many scenes does your current novel have?
• And how many scene sequences? (If you’ve never noticed the scene sequences before, now is a good time to look at them. In a synopsis of a few pages, typically each paragraph covers one scene sequence, so that’s an easy way to spot them.)
• Do you have any large gaps in time between any of your scene sequences? (Some novels don’t, but some have several. Either situation is OK, but you should be aware of what you’re dealing with.)
• Do you need to do any work to bridge these time gaps, if you have them? (You may have already done all your time transitions perfectly, but it doesn’t hurt to check and make sure there are no speed bumps in your story.)
• If there are a few large breaks in time, what strategy can you take to ease your reader through each one, so they don’t feel disoriented?

 

---

 

About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

More Advanced Fiction Writing

Courage by Randy Ingermanson | Advanced Fiction Writing

 

Courage

 

by Randy Ingermanson 

 

Advanced Fiction Writing

 

---

What’s the point of Story? Why are people hungry for Story? What can you do to ensure that your stories give people the one thing they so desperately want?

A couple of years ago, when I was writing my book How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method, I realized that Story is a community project. The point of Story is to keep the community alive.

The Tale of the Tiger

In that book, I gave as an example a story that must have been told zillions of times by our ancestors—the Tale of the Tiger. It’s a story of how a village deals with a threat to its survival when a marauding tiger targets the village’s herd of goats.

The village fights back, in the Tale of the Tiger, by organizing a tiger hunt. This is a high-stakes battle. A drought has ravaged the village’s farms, and the goats are the village’s last defense against starvation. If the village doesn’t kill the tiger, the village will die. Which means that every villager must be willing to die, if that’s what it takes to kill the tiger.

In the Tale of the Tiger, the viewpoint character is the youngest man in the village, the weakest link that the tiger attacks in the final showdown. Our hero has heard the Tale of the Tiger many times, and the Tale has taught him how to face his fears, face the tiger, and attack when all his instincts tell him to turn and run.

A Hero Is Not Enough

The key insight I had when writing the Tale of the Tiger is that our hero is not solely responsible for killing the tiger. The rest of the village plays a role by driving the tiger out of hiding.

The village story-woman plays a role, by the thousand times she has told the Tale of the Tiger in the past.

In some sense, the Tale of the Tiger itself kills the tiger.

The Powers We Face

It’s rare that any of us ever have to face a literal tiger. And yet we face metaphorical tigers every day. We face:

• Vindictive bullies.
• Well-meaning family or friends.
• Broken relationships or depression or loneliness.
• Governments or corporations or faceless organizations that do us harm.
• Damaging social and cultural and political forces.
• A hostile environment.
• Our own mortality.
• And on and on.

In a word, we face what theologian Walter Wink called the Powers. The Powers are mostly abstract and non-physical, but they’re real all the same.

The two key features of the Powers are these:

• The Powers are stronger than we are.
• The Powers will destroy us unless we find a way to defeat them.

Why Story Matters

The point of Story is to teach us how to defeat the Powers that threaten us, whatever they may be.

The Powers you face on any given day may be different from the ones I face. Therefore, the tactics you use to defeat the Powers may be different from the tactics I use.

But no matter what tactics we use, we all need one thing in order to face the Powers.

We need courage. Courage to face the tiger. Face the bully. Face your family. Face your friends. Face your government or your church or the company you work for. Face whatever Power means you harm.

Without courage, tactics are useless. Without courage, you will fold. Without courage, you will be destroyed by the Powers.

Story and Courage

The reason we desperately need Story is because Story puts us inside the skin of a character who has the courage to face the Powers.

By doing that, Story gets inside our own skin and trains us in the way of courage. Story builds our emotional muscle memory. Story trains us to face down any Power, however strong.

The more I learn about Story, the more I see that it’s all about giving my reader a blood transfusion of courage. And the side benefit is that it gives me a blood transfusion of courage.

Think about the last novel you read or the last movie you watched. Who was the lead character in the story? What Powers did they face? In what way did the Powers threaten to destroy the lead character? How did the lead Character defeat the Powers they faced? (Or how was the lead Character defeated by the Powers?) What role did courage play in the lead character’s victory? (Or what role did a lack of courage play in their defeat?)

Homework

• Who is the lead character in the story you’re writing right now?
• Do they face a Power?
• Does the Power threaten to destroy them?
• Where does your lead character find the courage to fight back?
• Does thinking about the Powers and courage help you clarify your story?

 

About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

More Advanced Fiction Writing

When You Can’t Finish Your Story by Randy Ingermanson | Advanced Fiction Writing

 

When You Can’t Finish Your Story

 

by Randy Ingermanson 

 

Advanced Fiction Writing

 

 

When you can’t seem to finish the first draft of your story, that’s a sign something’s wrong. You could try to power through to the end, but if you try that repeatedly and you still can’t finish, then the story is probably broken.

In that case, you have two choices:

• Throw it away and start over.
• Fix it.

Usually, fixing a story is a lot more economical than throwing it away. If the story can’t be fixed, then yes, go ahead and throw it away. But most stories can be fixed. It’s a matter of asking the right questions. Below are a few that may be useful.

Did the Story Have a Plan?

Many writers don’t plan before they start writing. They just write without a plan, and a story emerges.

That’s the theory, anyway, and it very often works beautifully. But in practice, sometimes a coherent story doesn’t emerge. It happens.

When it happens, when you can’t make a story emerge, it may be time to take drastic action. You may need to make a plan, based on the story you have so far. One way to do this is to use the Flowsnake Method that I talked about in the April issue of this e-zine. The Flowsnake Method essentially works my Snowflake Method backward, starting from the story and ending up with a one-sentence summary. And a plan for the story.

Depending on how complicated your story is, using the Flowsnake Method will take you anywhere from a few hours to a couple of weeks. That’s a big time investment, but if you’re stuck, it’s a price you might be willing to pay to get unstuck.

Did the Story Follow the Plan?

You may have started with a plan, but that’s no guarantee of success.

I’m pretty sure no author ever made a plan for a story and followed it exactly. I never have, and I don’t expect I ever will.

Things change as you write the story. Some characters walk on the stage and say things you weren’t expecting. Others just don’t play as big a role as you had expected. Sometimes, small story strands turn into major plot threads. Or the story veers in a direction you couldn’t have foreseen.

Your story evolves. That’s not bad, that’s good. Usually, that evolution takes you to a better place than the story you had planned, and all is well.

But sometimes your story evolves in a way that paints you into a corner. When you’re painted in a corner, you can either walk over wet paint or break a wall. Either way, you need to change from evolution to revolution.

What that means is you need to replan your story. That shouldn’t be hard. You planned the story once, so you ought to be able to plan it again.

But before you make the new plan, write down what’s wrong with the actual story you wrote. And keep that in front of you when you write up the new plan.

Was the Original Plan Bad?

Sometimes, you wrote something pretty close to what you originally planned, but it turned out to be a bad plan.

That can be hard to swallow. You like to think you’re a good writer. It’s tough to admit you made a bad plan. But if the story isn’t working, it’s better to own up to your mistake than to stick to a plan that was bad.

Read the plan again, looking for fundamental errors:

• Can you summarize your storyline in one sentence?
• How does your protagonist change in the story?
• What is the theme of the story?
• Are the storyline and the character arc and the theme in sync with each other?

If you look long enough, you should be able to spot the cracks in your original plan that prevented you from writing the story you wanted.

The hard part is to make a new plan. You may need to break large parts of the story. You might need to throw away some scenes. Or some characters. Or rethink who those characters are.

Do what you need to do to make a plan that actually works. Then get back in gear and follow the new plan.

It’s helpful to remember that writing isn’t some mindless paint-by-numbers thing.

Writing is Hard

If writing was easy, everyone would write a bestseller, and nobody would earn any money, because there would be too many great stories available to buy and not enough buyers to buy them all.

So be glad writing is hard. But that means you’ll often get stuck. Everyone gets stuck. When you’re stuck, you don’t want to hear that writing is hard and everyone gets stuck, but it’s what you need to hear. Because the first step on the road to getting unstuck is to recognize that you’re stuck.

Homework:

• Is your current story stuck in the first draft?
• Did it have a plan to begin with?
• If it had a plan, did you drift so far away from it that you need a new plan?
• If you followed the plan, was it a bad plan to begin with?

 

About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

More Advanced Fiction Writing

The Flowsnake Method by Randy Ingermanson | Advanced Fiction Writing

 

The Flowsnake Method

 

by Randy Ingermanson 

 

Advanced Fiction Writing

 

 

Let’s say you’ve written the first draft of a novel, and now an editor or agent asks you what it’s about—in 25 words or less.

Maybe you’re brilliant and you have a perfect summary sentence already lined up. Good for you if you do! Trot it out and see if it sticks.

But what if you don’t? What if you don’t see how anyone could possibly summarize your heartbreaking work of staggering genius in only 25 words? Then what do you do?

Your task is this: You’ve got a novel of (typically) 100 scenes and 100,000 words, and you want to boil that down to one sentence of 25 words.

That’s hard, but it’s doable.

Reverse-Engineering Your Story

Here’s what you do, and it’s going to take some serious effort—about ten to fifteen hours. But the value to you will be immense. The process breaks down into 8 steps:

1. Flip through your manuscript and summarize each scene in one sentence. Save this to a word processor document, and for the moment, let each sentence be in its own paragraph. This will take you five to ten hours, but at the end of it, you’ll have 100 sentences, each with maybe 20 words, so you’ve now summarized your manuscript in under 2000 words. This is progress.
2. Make a copy of your list of scenes that you can edit. Keep the original in case you need to get back to it later. Scan through that list of scenes looking for sequences of scenes that form the large blocks of your story. Typically, each sequence of scenes will have somewhere between 2 and 7 scenes. On average, each will have about 5 scenes. This will take you about an hour, and at the end of it, you’ll have about 20 paragraphs, each with about 100 words. You haven’t reduced your word count, but you’ve now got a manageable set of chunks.
3. Make a copy of your document that you can edit. Summarize each paragraph so that you capture the main gist but cut out any redundancy. Shoot to reduce each paragraph in half. This will also take you about an hour, and at the end of it, you’ll still have 20 paragraphs, but now they’re only about 50 words apiece, which gives you a total of 1000 words. This is only one percent of your original manuscript.
4. Identify the Three-Act Structure of your story. Start by highlighting all the disasters in green. Then identify the most critical disasters in pink. These will be the major turning points of the story. The first typically happens about a quarter of the way into the story, and it marks the point at which your protagonist finally commits to the story. The second typically happens at about the midpoint, and it marks the point where the protagonist realizes that what they’ve been trying isn’t working, and they commit to a different approach. The third typically happens about three-quarters of the way into the story, and it marks the point where the protagonist commits to some definite step that will end the story, for good or ill. If you can’t identify these three disasters, then what? Is your story doomed? Not necessarily, but it means you don’t have a Three-Act Structure for your story. You can decide that the story is awesome and you’re going to live with it, or you can decide to add some disasters at suitable points to give your story a true Three-Act Structure. Your choice. This should take you about 15 to 30 minutes, depending on whether your major disasters are in place already.
5. Divide your document into four Parts. Part 1 is everything up to and including the first disaster. Part 2 is everything up to and including the second disaster. Part 3 is everything up to and including the third disaster. Part 4 is everything after the third disaster. This should take you five minutes.
6. Make a new copy of your document for further editing. Summarize everything in Part 1 into a single large paragraph of 50 to 100 words. Do this by focusing on the more important story threads. It’s okay to ignore less important story threads. You are trying to summarize only the main story here. You can also insert an initial paragraph that summarizes the backstory or the story world, but keep the length to somewhere betwee 50 and 100 words. You need to be disciplined here. Shorter is better, but absolutely no more than 100 words per paragraph. This step will take about an hour. When you’re done, you’ll have somewhere between one and two pages, adding up to 250 to 500 words.
7. Make a new copy of your document for final editing. You are going to be brutal here. You have five paragraphs. The first is story setup. The next three summarize Parts 1, 2, and 3, each culminating in a major disaster/turning point. The last paragraph summarizes the ending—happy, sad, or bittersweet. Now reduce each of these to a single sentence. This will hurt if you overthink it. Don’t overthink it. Just cut to the bone. Cut each sentence down to absolutely no more than 25 words. No exceptions. If you do this fast, it’ll take you 15 minutes, and you should have about 100 words total in one paragraph. This is your one-paragraph summary.
8. In the same document, at the bottom, write a single sentence of 25 words or less that summarizes ONLY the first two sentences of your one-paragraph summary. Why are you summarizing only the first two sentences? Because the last three sentences contain spoilers. When an editor asks what your story’s about, they’re asking for the story setup—the part that identifies what your protagonist is trying to achieve. They’re not asking for how your protagonist achieves it.

A Backwards Snowflake

If you’re familiar with my Snowflake Method, you’ll see that the steps above have reversed the plot-oriented parts of the ten steps of the Snowflake.

That’s why I call this reverse-engineering process the Flowsnake Method. It’s a backwards Snowflake.

It really doesn’t matter whether you plan your story first and then write it, or write it first and then reverse engineer it. In the end, you need a first draft and you also need a sound story structure. The Snowflake will give you both. So will the Flowsnake. Use whichever works better for you.

Homework

• Can you summarize the storyline of your current work-in-progress in one sentence?
• If not, when will you do this essential task?

About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

More Advanced Fiction Writing