Can you feel the energy? Suddenly everything seems possible! So let’s celebrate - and also talk about getting your book DONE by the end of the year - in very practical terms.
First, some math. We’re headed into August. Hopefully you’ve been following the posts here and have taken the last month to do some brainstorming: Index Cards, Story Structure Grid, Premise work, Protagonist work.
—Getting & Expanding on the IDEA
—What's Your PREMISE? — Identifying the ACTION LINE of your story
—Three Things You MUST Know About Your Protagonist
—Index Cards and Story Structure Grid
For the rest of the year, you could bash out a first draft in four months, one Act per month:
August: Act I
September: Act II: Part 1
October: Act II: Part 2
November: Act III
To get even more specific, that’s 20K words per month, 5K words per week for an 80K book. Not even 1000 words per day! So doable!
Then you’d have the month of December to get quite a bit of revision done.
Voila: a book by the end of the year.
I have a lot of post links at the end of this newsletter to prompt you on Act I, and I strongly suggest starting with this one, which has questions to help you define each of these essential Act I Elements for your story:
Now, if you’re new to this newsletter, you may be wondering about this Four Act Structure thing. And it’s always good for everyone to have a refresher.
I teach the Three-Act Structure in four Acts, because books have largely assimilated this four part structure from filmmaking. Here’s a very brief history of what happened. Before the advent of the moving camera and location shooting, movies were shot on sound stages with a stationary camera, and written by playwrights in a format much like plays, with a classic Three Act Structure. There were three approximately equal acts, with a longer Act I, a slightly shorter Act II, and Act III ending up the shortest. (This progressive shortening of acts automatically creates pace!)
(More on this history in the Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workbooks.)
Once technical innovations allowed the camera to move and film production moved off the sound stage into real life locations, films started emphasizing the action of the story, and used the camera to take the audience on a journey into new worlds, which is Act II territory. Act I (the set up) got shorter —because film makes it easy and quick to set things up visually. Act II got longer —to allow the kind of exploration of action and spectacle that are such strengths of film.
This evolved into a Four-Act Structure of roughly equal quarters:
Act I
Act II: Part 1
Act II: Part 2
Act III
And the structure of books kept pace and evolved along with the movies.
BUT— if you’re writing category romance or a shorter (60K words) book (and often cozy mysteries fall into this category) then you’ll probably be writing a more classic Three-Act Structure, which tends toward a longer Act I because it emphasizes character and relationships.
Now let’s make that structure work for you—and get your book written by the end of this year.
To repeat my math, we’re talking about writing one Act per month, 20K words per month, 5K words per week, for an 80K book— and potentially a whole month less for a shorter book.
But don’t worry about word count unless that's motivating for you! The important thing is to be writing scenes and to have that story structure road map to keep you on track.
It might even be especially good timing for you to take advantage of the energy of Nanowrimo to power through the notoriously challenging Act II:2 to The End in November. Hopefully I can be some help on that, too.
Ready to go?
Again, here are the must-have story elements of Act I, with questions to help you define each of these Elements for your story.
If you need quick pointers, prompts or a kick of inspiration, probably the fastest way is to watch one of these videos on Act I - all shorter than 10 minutes:
These videos demonstrate how to set up a powerful Act I with a few popular movie examples:
If you prefer to read, here are more:
More Act I next week!
—Alex
-Why subscribe?
Screenwriting Tricks for Authors is a reader-supported publication. Please consider contributing to this work by becoming a free or paid subscriber!
Subscribe to the Screenwriting Tricks for Authors YouTube channel
for fifteen minute doses of craft to elevate your writing right now!
Likes, Comments and Shares are really helpful and much appreciated.
Need some help? The Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workshop is available online, as a self-paced course with all the videos, assignments, movie breakdowns and personalized feedback you need to get that book written this year, 15 minutes at time.
In three parts, and you only pay for what you use.
If you have a first draft of a book or script already, or need more feedback, get targeted help getting you over the finish line in The Writers’ Room.
Get the workbooks:
Stealing Hollywood ebook, $4.99, also available as print workbook
Writing Love ebook, $2.99
All material ©Alexandra Sokoloff