STFU! But nice...

Learn about the value of sometimes using fewer words!

“Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse

Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com

Instagram: @authordevindavis

Twitter: @authordevind

The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage.

[00:00:00]

Last week we asked the question, did Delphine save the cat in the short story, Brigitte which was Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor that I released back in October, but today we are going to move in a slightly different direction as we talk about trusting your audience by limiting the amount of words that you use today on writing in the tiny house.

 Hello, hello, hello. I am [00:01:00] Devin Davis. Welcome to this show. I am the guy who lives in a tiny house who writes stuff and talks about it on a podcast. And the reason behind this podcast is for us to improve our creative writing, to learn the parts of creative writing, to learn how it all works together to develop a practice.

And then to complete a manuscript that is ready to publish in a short amount of time. It is possible to write a short story in three months, and it is possible to write a novel in 18 months. Hopefully through this podcast, you will also have the knowledge and the wherewithal to adjust that timeline if you need to. Many of us hesitate to even get started on a project because we don't know how long it will take. But if we are prepared with the right tools and if we know how everything works, and if we approach it with better understanding of how it all [00:02:00] happens, we can get things done with really good quality and on a better timeline.

So this week we are going to discuss something that is a touchy subject. A lot of people say things like show don't tell. Or whatever other cliche words, cliche phrases that we hear in the writing community. And oftentimes we are led to believe that if we describe, describe, describe, we are helping our readers fully understand what is going on in the story and what is going on in the scene and what is happening with everything. There is a problem with describing stuff like that, with using a lot of words. And that is what we are hoping to tackle today. I have been reading the book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, by george [00:03:00] Saunders,

and one of the things that hit home so much was the authority that the story itself plays in the story telling. And what that means is the story itself gets to dictate what is important and what is not important. And that's okay. Just to quickly demonstrate. So this is going to be a pretty short episode and that is just fine, but to quickly demonstrate there was a trick that I described in a previous episode where you describe the cat in the house, and in describing the cat, you also describe the house. That way you don't have to describe the house.

You don't need to take up the pages and the paragraphs to describe the house if we already understand the cat that lives there. It's this this fancy shortcut to making things precise [00:04:00] and still conveying something without using 5 million words to do so. And with something like a short story specifically, there is no room for fluff.

There is no room to simply, uh, blow smoke in our pros. And so one of those tricks is to describe the cat in order to describe the house. This one is kind of the opposite, but a similar thing. So if I were to tell you that our main character, Brian has a family photo that he keeps on his desk, what do we already understand or can safely assume about that photo?

If it is a photo that he keeps on his desk, odds are, it is framed. Odds are it sits on his desk in a frame and it sits in a way for him to see it all the time. Unless I take time to describe that differently, because that [00:05:00] is a normal thing that people do, we can let the reader assume that it's going to be a normal thing that our main character does too.

When we mentioned the picture on the desk, we don't need to say that it's in a frame unless the frame is important. We don't need to describe the frame because the frame is not important, but we kind of get that the frame is there. Why is the frame important or why is the frame not important? This is what we like to touch on when we say that the story itself has authority on what's important and what's not. It's not important because the story doesn't mention it. The story does not bring attention to the frame because it doesn't need to. And, allowing the reader to just assume a couple things to assume normal behavior and to figure some stuff out [00:06:00] on their own.

It allows the reader to imagine for themselves kind of a little bit what is going on here, especially if it's in a typical setting. I read a book recently that was laden with so much description that it slowed down the pacing of the story, and it made the story hard to pay attention to, and really challenging to read.

And sometimes you get to let the story dictate what is important by leaving things out. In the book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, there is a short story in that book called Darling that George Saunders analyzes for you. And, in that short story, it is a pattern short story.

And George Saunders goes crazy with what we can do with a pattern story. So it's one of those things where we just see the pattern of behavior. A woman meets a man and falls in love, and then the [00:07:00] man dies. And then she meets a man and falls in love. And then the man dies. It's more than that. But you understand what I'm trying to say. And some of the things that the story purposefully leaves out, George Saunders brings attention to as a way to highlight what negative space can do to improve storytelling. So after this woman's husband died, six months go by and she meets who will become the next love of her life.

But the story doesn't say the grieving process of those six months, the story leaves all of that out and just simply says, six months later. Because the story doesn't say those things, the pacing of the story is better. And focusing on the manner that this woman is grieving, isn't the point of the story.

And so we don't focus on it. The story says that that is not important. And so it's left [00:08:00] out and we are left to assume. And so that is something that we can do with our own work. Sometimes when we sit back and we go to revise our stuff and we go to revise our works in progress or whatever, sometimes there is too much. Sometimes more is not better. With things like prose especially in prose sometimes in dialogue, more isn't better.

We get to trust that our reader is intelligent and we get to trust that sometimes the negative space or the ability to fill in the blanks is actually a very good gift for the reader. And it improves the pacing and the flow of the way the story is going. And so with your work in progress, I challenge you to comb through and see if there are parts that you can clip or tighten up.

I have been listening to another book. It's [00:09:00] another fantasy book. Sometimes you just get to read a fun, YA fantasy book. I started paying attention to this more closely after I read this analysis by George Saunders. And so I was like, I wonder how often that happens because I was under the impression that in fantasy specifically, it happens a lot.

And so I have been listening more closely to exposition based dialogue. And I think to myself, how much of this was actually necessary to the story. And did it have to come out this way? Would it have been okay to simply remove this little bit of dialogue altogether so that this response could have been shorter? So a lot of the exposition that we get, especially exposition based dialogue is largely for world building. A lot of people understand that info dump in their prose isn't a good [00:10:00] thing. And so they info dump in their dialogue instead. And oftentimes it is to world build. It is to help the reader understand how the world works.

And if it's a fantasy novel, oftentimes it's to help understand that the magic system that the author is trying to establish. And so with that, with the book that I have been listening to recently that I finished just the other day, the magic system is a pretty hard magic system. It's largely not very mysterious.

It has a lot of rules. I mean, the author could have written a text book explaining the magic system that he created in this world. And the thing is, as the reader, I don't care. I don't care about the magic system as much as I care about the story. And so the story gets to hold the authority on what is important.

The story itself would have been much easier [00:11:00] and natural had the author chosen to simplify the magic system or chosen to let some of the things that happened with his magic remain mysterious instead of explaining away every little detail, because he wanted so badly for whatever reason to have this be a hard magic system, which is a magic system that is very well-defined instead of a soft magic system, which is one that is more mysterious and not as well understood.

I'm sure that there are good reasons for all of the rules and all of the ways that the magic works and governs itself in this world, in this book. At the same time, I know that a lot of it did not specifically apply to this story. And instead it was hard to read and it was kind of hard to slug through.

So again, Go through your work in progress [00:12:00] and see what you can remove and give your reader the gift of negative space so that sometimes they can use their own imagination to fill in the blanks. It's a fun thing to do. It requires an amount of trust, but you would be surprised or not.

By how much better? A couple perfect words are compared to several paragraphs of a lot of description.

Devin Davis:

And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse [00:13:00] to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

Check out this episode!

Did Delphine Save the Cat?

Let's go through an analysis of my short story Brigitte and compare it to the beat sheet Save the Cat.

“Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse

Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com

Instagram: @authordevindavis

Twitter: @authordevind

The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage.

[00:00:00] Last week we learned about beats. Now we are going to save the cat today on Writing in the Tiny House. Hello. Hello. Hello. And welcome back to the show. Welcome to Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy who lives in a tiny house who writes stuff and talks about it on a podcast.

The goal of this podcast is to introduce the language of writing of creative writing, help you to develop a process so that you can have a manuscript that is ready to publish, whether you choose to self-publish or [00:01:00] whether you choose to approach an agent and do the traditional route, your manuscript will be ready.

And if you are doing a short story, perhaps you can crank it out in three months. If you are doing a novel, perhaps you can do it in 18 months. And I hope that with this podcast, you can also have the foresight to see if you need to adjust that timeline or not.

So we're going to be talking about my short story, Brigitte that I released back in October, and I wrote that and published it in eight weeks.

It is totally possible to do. Some people are super fast at it. Some people aren't. Hurray for timelines. At the same time, let's use our brains and our wisdom and make sure that we are publishing good things. We talked last week about beats. We talked about what a beat is, that a beat is something in the story.

It is the smallest thing in a story that advances the story, that makes the story [00:02:00] move forward. And it can be an action and inaction. It can be a response. It can also just be a setting, just something like that that makes the plot move forward. And I said, last week that this week we are going to go through what is called a beat sheet.

So it is a collection of beats and how they are organized as a way to just kind of touch base to see if your story is working. Doing this in this way, it makes writing pretty formulaic and there are good and bad qualities to having a formulaic way of writing. First of all, it kind of cranks out things that all resemble each other.

And some people don't like that. At the same time, though, it can be a good tool. I have found. Many of the different things that I do. I'm a person who has like a million different hobbies that the more that I understand the rules of something, the [00:03:00] easier it is for me to naturally incorporate them into what I'm doing.

And it is easier for me to bend or break them and do that with purpose to do that intentionally. And so, while something like Save the Cat is formulaic and mechanical in its approach to creative writing. A few weeks ago, we also talked about the hero's journey, which is very much along these same lines.

It is good to see where the things fall, just because all of these are common points and common events and common things in good stories that have all been successful. I'm not going to pretend that all successful things have each of these beats in them, but as we go through this and compare it to my short story, Bree sheets, we can see that it's all there.

Like it's there. There might be something. May not work. And we'll talk about that. [00:04:00] I did not consult the beat sheet of Save the Cat when I wrote Brigitte back in October. And so this is going to be kind of an experiment for all of us. So Save the Cat was made by a gentleman named Blake Snyder. He died a few years ago, but he was a filmmaker and a screenwriter and Save the Cat is actually the original of it is actually meant for screenplays, but it's all storytelling. And so it applies very strongly to novels. And this goes with a three act structure. And if you remember how I said things a few weeks ago with the three act structure, act one very generally speaking is about 25% of your book. Act two is 50 and then act three is the remaining 25. And so just bear that in mind, as we go through the different [00:05:00] beats of Save the Cat, as we see if Delphine the main character of Bridgette, which was Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor did she save the cat or not?

So yeah, like I said, I did not reference this while I wrote the book. However, we're going to find out together. If these things are all still there, if it's all kind of there. And with the short story, we get to understand that these things are likely all in there somewhere, but condensed. There's not a lot of room in a short story to fill a thing with 15 different beats.

With a novel, when you have a higher word count, it's easier to work in all of the beats. So let's go through and talk about this.

Let's, let's start with act one. Again, act one is the first fourth of the novel or the story.

[00:06:00] So the first beat of Save the Cat is the opening image and it is a snapshot of how the world is. So the first scene of this short story actually takes place at the end of the story. I did one of these really weird framework things where I give you a glimpse at the end of the story as a way to set a tone for the whole story itself. And so Delphine is at the train station.

You can tell that she is on edge. She is tired. She has a bag of money and she is being chased. She is being pursued or at least feels that she is, she's being pursued by a group of people, an unknown group of people. And she is taking her daughter to flee to another city to start a new life. And from there, it's a short scene, but it is a great snapshot of what the entire story is going to be like. It brings [00:07:00] in a lot of questions. It brings in a lot of intrigue and it sets the stage for the entire rest of the story by glimpsing at how the story ends. So that was just kind of a trick there as a way to fulfill this setting the scene.

 Before the story starts or before, like the action of the story happens. So with Bridgette, we have Delphine who is about to deliver her daughter, Bridgette.

She is alone in a monastery and she has a midwife with her. We can kind of get a sense of time and place a little bit from the lack of technology and just this way of delivering a baby. Also she goes through and we talk about the flowers that were delivered to her room from the crone and. We understand that there is contention between Delphine and the crone based on Delphine's attitude toward those [00:08:00] flowers.

And so we get a sense of what her world is like, what her own personal world is like through the various flashbacks that she has while she is in transitional labor. And so, yeah, the opening image is established there. The next beat is the theme is stated a single scene beat in which a statement is made by someone other than the protagonist, that hints at what the protagonist will learn before the end of the story.

So this is more complicated. The thing is all of this is general and so we can make things work and see how it fits. So a statement by someone other than the main character to just kind of show how the main character is going to be or what their circumstances will be and what they want to avoid. In her flashbacks, Delphine reflects on an old friend named Jackleen who had an affair and was kicked out [00:09:00] of their city, who was removed from this priestess hood and lost her status and her place in the city. And so she knew from that experience, that things got to be handled differently with this new pregnancy of hers. The next beat is the setup and this can take place over several scenes, but

we get a sense of the protagonist life and what the world is like with all of its flaws and everything as it is. And so throughout her reflections and throughout her flashbacks, we see Delphine, we see her struggle with her faith. We see her struggle with her place as the high priestess of this church and the struggle that she has with the crone, who is kind of over the priestess program of the city of Brianne.

The next beat is the catalyst, and this is the life-changing event that happens to catapult the [00:10:00] protagonist into this new world or a new way of thinking. So the catalyst was Bridgette herself. So the thing that happens is Delphine has a baby and the delivery almost kills Delphine and it's this new daughter.

The daughter is also a legitimate And it creates a big change in Delphine's world because she wants to keep the history and the origin of her daughter a secret. And they don't understand. She doesn't understand her daughter's abilities. The next beat is a debate. So it's a Multisim beat where the protagonist debates what they will be doing next.

All of this happens in the first chapter, too. Just going through the flashbacks, Delphine finally arrives at the conclusion that she will be protecting her daughter [00:11:00] at all costs and that she will be keeping her daughter away from the crone, especially. Until she comes to understand what it is about her daughter that makes her daughter so dangerous so that things can be dealt with on her terms rather than on the Crone's terms.

The next beat in act one is break into two. It's the scene Where we are catapulted into act two. And the protagonist decides to accept whatever the next actions are going to be. And so there was the moment of insecurity and worry about what would happen to have an illegitimate child, and then to have an illegitimate child with such a dangerous ability.

Brought on more complications. And then the break into two beats is where phene decides to keep her [00:12:00] daughter more of a secret, the origins, a secret so that she can decide. What her daughter is actually all about what her daughter can do and to hide the fact that her daughter is a legitimate.

So let's move on to act two. All of that was act one, act one has a lot of beets. It has a lot of foundational stuff to set the scene for the story act two, the beats are a little bit more broad. one Of the beats for act two is the B story. So it's the B plot with Bridgette and with Devin, we have the subplot of the crone wanting to make money.

We have her little background, we have what she is doing with the enchanted water source found in the basement of the monastery. We have that. The next beat is fun and games. It's where the reader gets to see the protagonist, either shine or flounder in this new world. So there wasn't a lot of [00:13:00] struggle between Delphine and this new world, but there was an amount of figuring out she was with her daughter, Bridgette and Bridgette was playing with toys.

Bridgette was cutting a tooth and any way throughout this process, Delphine pieced it together. What Bridgette little ability is that Bridgette actually SAPs energy from people around her in order to heal herself. And that was why during her traumatic birth, she almost killed her mom. So that's a cool thing.

That's what fun and games are all about. The next beat of act two is the midpoint. It's where the fun and games section either culminates into a false victory or a false defeat. So this is the scene where Delphine and the crone have a confrontation. And it is a short conversation about [00:14:00] how the crone wants to do a ritual on Bridgette in order to find out for herself and therefore publicize what Bridgette can do if she has a gift at all and declare her lineage.

If this were allowed to happen, Bridgette would be ratted out as legitimate and Delphine would be forced out of the city, which the crone wants anyway. In that confrontation, Delphine's stands up to the crone and puts her in her place at the same time though.

The crone gets that last word in it, just as that last stabbing remark that. If Delphine does not comply by a certain day, the crone is going to declare Bridgette to be a bastard, which would ruin Delphine and her family. So moving on to the next bits of act two the bad guys closed in.

So this is right after the false victory. This happens in the story when it Bridgette is [00:15:00] kidnapped and then all is lost. This is Delphine reacting to Bridgette going missing. Aunt, her daughter's reacting to that to Delphina already has a lot of daughters and they were in charge of watching Bridgette and breezy.

Disappeared. So those beets still happened and then all is lost.

All is lost is when the bad guys. Appear to be winning. And so you have the captors of Bridgette over-powering her, of her struggling of her getting away. And then the dark night of the soul is the 12th beats of this entire thing. A dark night of the soul is. Multisim beat in which the protagonist takes time to process everything that's happened so far.

And it is the darkest hour. In, in my short story, Bridgette, this happens pretty rapidly. This is when everything [00:16:00] falls apart. This is when Bridgette falls into the spring, bumps her head. And due to her injury and the nature of the spring combined causes everybody around her to die.

So there's a big commitment there and a huge escalation of stakes. That's what the dark night of the soul is all about. And it is at that point that we break into act three. It's where the protagonist realizes that they must do a thing to fix the story.

So this is when the protagonist deals with the aftermath of this climax of this dark night of the soul. This is when, in my story, it is when Del phene finds breezy. And she goes into the basement of the monastery where this magical spring is located. Bridgette is there, she's wet. She's okay. Due to her own strange and dangerous healing abilities and everyone around her is dead.[00:17:00]

And so Delphine takes a moment to process through all of this and then decides that they need to skip town. And that propels us into act three.

And act three, there are a couple different little parts of, one big beat. The beat is the finale. This is Delphina. Speaking to her daughters revealing the affair that she had. That brought Bridgette into this world. And then her daughter is working in concert to get Delphine and Bridgette out of the city to catch a train to flee away.

So the finale has a lot of different parts. The parts here are gathering the team. Delphine speaks to her daughters. And that is kind of a way of gathering the team, gathering resources, packing a bag, executing the plan. The higher tower surprise is the protagonist spaces, a twist or a surprise that forces them to prove their worth.[00:18:00]

The high tower surprise is not really a part of the finale of my story. There's not really that. The dig deep down is not having a backup plan. The protagonist has to dig deep inside themselves to find the most important weapon of all the strength and courage to overcome their fear or false belief. And then the execution of a new plan.

So all of these are little sub-parts Of this larger beat, that is the finale. And some of those don't 100% apply to my story. I said earlier that Bridgette was not written in reference to Save the Cat, but as we go through and we see the way that the different points play out, you can see that I touched on a lot of these points pretty.

Okay. The points are there and so it is good to know. Beat sheets. It's it is good to know where things happen and where they should happen, so that you can become familiar with that when you are formulating your own stories. And as you're writing also as you're revising. [00:19:00] So these are a good thing to reference while you are doing the revision of your own short stories.

And as we demonstrated, I did pretty okay with this. There are some details in the finale beat that don't 100% apply to my story, but that's okay. I mean, This is a list of 15 beats and they're all there in the story. So that's pretty okay. I did pretty okay with this guys. That is what. Save the cat is all about.

Now we need to visit the title itself, save the cat. Like why are we calling anything? Save the cat when saving a cat is not a beat in the story. And I bring this up at the end on purpose. The guy who came up with saved the cat, he said, in different versions of this beat sheets. You can find these beat sheets kind of everywhere.

If you look up, save the cat beat sheet, you can find some, and they all say similar things. I recommend. [00:20:00] Referencing the original resource material all the time, but you can find beat sheets all over the place. This gentlemen said that one of the things that is missing from most stories, especially nowadays most modern stories, modern films, screenplays novels, is this beats in particular.

And like I said, in the original save the cat, there was a beat called save the cat. And it was the moment where we find that the hero is worth rooting for that the hero is worth cheering for And so I ask you my dear listeners in your experience of reading Bridgette installment, one of tales from late, or did Del phene ever save the cat.

next week, we're going to talk about a few other things with developmental edits inspired by the works [00:21:00] of George Saunders. And so tune in next week for another episode of writing and the tiny house.

Devin Davis:

And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

Check out this episode!

One More Time, on the Beat!

“Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse

Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com

Instagram: @authordevindavis

Twitter: @authordevind

The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage.

The episodes this year have mainly been about story structure. And today we are going to cover what beats are as we continue covering story structure today on Writing in the Tiny House. Hello? Hello. Hello. Welcome to the show. Welcome to Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy in the tiny house in Northern Utah who writes stuff.

And talks about it on a podcast. So in the intro of this show, I have said that mainly this this podcast is for adults who work a nine to five, who really just want [00:01:00] to get that work of fiction out of their brains and onto paper. And while I certainly still stand by that, I've decided to refine that whole target audience.

this is what this show is. And I really like this on this show. This show pertains to everybody who wants to write, whether you work a nine to five, whether you are a 15 year old in high school, who wants to write short stories or work on your first novel or whatever this show has stuff for all of you.

If you want to do your own memoir, if you want to do this or that a collection of short stories. We like all the things on this show, we learn the terminology. And we develop a process so that you can have a manuscript that is ready to publish. If you are writing a short story, you can get that manuscript ready in as little as three months. And if you [00:02:00] are writing a novel, you can get it ready. in as little as 18 months, and hopefully in this podcast, We also give you the big picture and the reality that you might need longer than that, which is great. And some of you might say, no, there are plenty of short stories in this world that took years and years to write. And I am not going to disagree with you. And there are novels in this world.

There are flash fiction novels that took under three months to write. And so. What is the value of putting a timeframe on completing a work in progress when it is going to be different for everybody, it is simply to convey a possibility. The Thing is sometimes we don't get started with projects just because we don't understand how big the project is going to be. But knowing that getting started and with some practice, you can crank out a good short story in a pretty short amount of time. I [00:03:00] can give you encouragement to get started in the first place.

And to know that when you are writing a novel, if you stick with it and you practice, eventually you can get your process down to 18 months or 12 months, just depending on how diligent you are with it. Granted, there are a lot of long novels in this world that took years to write. I don't want to try to fill your head with unrealistic expectations, but to me, those expectations are realistic. from start to finish, I wrote the short story Brigitte in eight weeks. And so if you have your process down, you can definitely whittle out some of the time that it takes to get a good story.

And that is what this show is for. It is to learn the terminology and develop a process in order to have a manuscript ready to publish in a short amount of time. That's the thing and it can be done. And for your first few works in progress, it will take longer [00:04:00] than that.

So just know the things also, your process will likely be different from mine, and it just might be slower or faster. And that is why we are all different people. And that makes the world interesting to live in. Just some quick housekeeping stuff with with creativity. I have felt my creativity battery gradually recharge over the month of January.

For those of you who paid attention to my podcast. At the beginning of this year, there was a lot of personal stuff to get through from November until January 1st and going through that really drained my creative battery. And so I had a short story that I was in the middle of in the beginning of November.

That died on the vine. I am shelving that short story. It was called auto. I may pick it up again in the future. I may not. It was going to beInstallment Two of Tales from Vlaydor. But [00:05:00] instead Instllment Two of Tales from Vlaydor is now called Tiz. The idea of this short story has been in my head for the past six months.

And I have been eager to get started on this short story, but I thought for the longest time that I simply had to finish auto first before I could carry on. Tos and the thing is with creativity, it doesn't have to be linear and it doesn't have to work that way. And so, because I am eager to get started on this short story, I decided I might as well just start on it and we can deal with auto later.

So Tiz takes place about 170 years before Bridgette does. And it is about a linguist whose discoveries bring about the magical industrial revolution of the entire land ofVlaydor, so it's going to be a treat. It's going to be a wild ride. And I am very excited to explore the relationship of Tiz with her fiance [00:06:00] and.

It's just going to be good times and I'm so excited about it, guys. It is so good to be excited also with Tiz I have described before that, as far as writing goes, I am largely a pantser. I don't like to outline in a lot of detail, but with this one, I decided to approach it differently. And I decided to shove aside the pantser part of my creative writing process.

And to focus on outlining so that I can be the plotter and it's okay to flex both sets of muscles. And so I have been outlining, I have been doing character maps. I have been doing a real map. I mean, a real map of a fake place, because this is all fiction. But it's been good. And just the preparation that comes from doing all of that first has been very valuable.

And so there's value in all of it friends and it's okay. If for one short story, you are largely a pantser and [00:07:00] that equates to a lot more revisions and it's okay. If the next short story you are more of a plotter. So that your first draft can be a little farther along the process because you have such a good outline.

So there's that. We are excited to be back in the writing process and it's been good to build that foundational creativity so that in the next few days I'm going to start drafting this sucker and it's going to be great. I have over the past few episodes, I've talked about the three act structure and I went into what each of those acts is.

I also covered the hero's journey, which is a big outline of different points. That are typically found in an adventure story. And last week I covered the arc types that are found in the hero's journey and the arc types are just the different types of people that show up and the roles that they play in order [00:08:00] to further the story along.

So the hero, the mentor and more, and the list goes on. Today we are going to step back and talk about something a little bit more basic. One of the goals of this podcast is to talk about the terminology. Just because if you are hoping to revise your work and you're going to be sending it to people you don't know, or you're going to be sending it to professionals in order to get it critiqued.

Edited and improved upon if you are hoping to get any sort of positive feedback or feedback that is meant to help you in your process, you need to know the terminology. And I'm not talking about just sentence, structure and grammar. I'm talking about the terminology as it pertains to storytelling and as it pertains to creative writing.

And so today we are going to cover beats [00:09:00] and what beats are. And then next week we are going to see how Bridgette. Holds up to one of the most common and widely used set of beats. And just see how it goes. So a beat is the smallest measurable thing of storytelling.

A beat is an event or a moment or whatever that furthers the plot along. So a beats can be a moment of action. It can be a moment of reaction. It can be a moment of inaction. It can also be a scene. It can be a various number of different things so long as the plot progresses and if you get smaller than a beat, you're no longer working with just story elements.

You're more working with the fundamentals of sentence structure. So you're kind of stepping out of story if you are getting smaller than a [00:10:00] beat. So in the book, a swim in a pond in the rain by George Saunders, I highly recommend reading that book. That book has been one of the biggest. Resources for me on developmental edits and developmental edits.

You cover beats. It's all about beats. A swim in a pond in the rain is a collection of seven classic Russian short stories that George Saunders, who is a very successful, very well-known various. Celebrated and loved short story author. He goes through and picks them apart and analyzes them in many different ways, as a way to show you how you can do it, how all of this can be done.

And so sometimes it is pretty technical, which includes like charts and graphs. Sometimes it is more broad and it is actually more of a lesson in life, which I like all of that. I love a [00:11:00] really big approach to something like this. And so I have been eating up this book. I started this book a long time ago.

I didn't finish it, but with the way that my week has now started to unfold, now that I've taken on some additional activities, I have some time. To sit down and actually read a book. That's not on tape. That's not a recorded audio book. So I listened to audio books in the car, but I wanted something like this, like a resource book to be a physical copy so that I can reference it more easily.

I don't reference audio books very easily. So that's why I chose to do it this way. But in that book, in the book, a swim in the pond, in the rain by George Saunders, he says, The way to build intensity and the way to escalate your plot is to never repeat your beats. [00:12:00] So. Beats are these little events. They are the little things that drive the plot forward.

And if you repeat your beats, if you have a beat that shows up more than once in an identical way, it causes. The steam in your story to just kind of deflate and the story loses energy and your reader will lose interest. So that's what beets are when you have your first draft completed, or if you are detailing out a really good outline

depending on how you approach your process. If you like to do the big outlines or if you like to do just kind of a first draft and then fill in whatever is missing in your first draft, it is really good to compare your story to a sheet of beats. So there are things in this world called beat sheets, and to be perfectly honest, the hero's journey is a beat sheet.

It [00:13:00] has. Just the little different events and what they are for and what they do. And if you are writing an adventure story, you can kind of go through and see where the things are. You can see what they are and the order that they typically would go in and you can assign that to your story. You're like, oh, well, yeah.

I mean, crossing. Threshold happens in my story when this kid who, who has an overbearing dad stands up to his dad and then leaves. And that happens, you know, really early in the story. And it totally fits with this beat sheet. One of the more common or very well-known. Beat sheets. It's also a book it's called save the cat.

And it is a collection of 15 beats and it is structured in a similar way to the hero's journey. So it is a three act structure and important things happen in each [00:14:00] act. And we are going to go through next week. I am going to take you through an analysis of my short story, Brie sheets and plug it in to save the cat.

So save the cat. Like I said, it is a book.

It is written by Blake Snyder and there are actually several different versions of save the cat now. save the cat is originally for storytelling and screenwriting, but it absolutely applies to novels and other forms of storytelling too. And so you'll, you'll find many different applications. Of save the cat, but yeah, all those books are available on Amazon and I highly recommend referencing those books.

It is okay to have the references so that you know, the terminology. tuned in for that next week where we go through an analysis of Bri sheets and if breezy. [00:15:00] Saved the cat or rather if Del phene the main character of Bridgette saved the cat next week on writing in the tiny house.

Devin Davis:

And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

Check out this episode!

The Hero's Journey Archetypes

“Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:

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Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse

Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com

Instagram: @authordevindavis

Twitter: @authordevind

The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage.

[00:00:00] Last week, we went over the three act structure of the hero's journey. And this week we are going to cover the arc types or the different people we meet in the hero's journey today on writing in the tiny house. Hello. Hello. Hello, and welcome back to the show. Welcome to writing in the tiny house. I am the host of this show, Devin Davis, and I live in a tiny house in Northern Utah, and I write things.

[00:00:51] Mainly fiction, mainly fantasy fiction. And I'm here to show you the different ways to get started with writing so that whatever work of fiction you have in your brain, you can actually get to work starting it so that you can have that done. By the time you die or so you can have it done in a timely manner.

[00:01:14] Sometimes it takes a long time to write a book and that's just fine, but it's important to know the easy ways to get there. So last week we discovered the different events or the different beats that happen with the hero's journey. I explained last week that the hero's journey is kind of the step-by-step outline that many epic stories seem to follow, and it is meant to be generic because.

[00:01:45] Is meant to be applied and followed in its own unique way. But as we went through those different points and as they fell into act one and two and three, we saw where those points are in many popular works of fiction. I talked about the Lord of the rings. I talked about Harry Potter. I also brought up the broken earth trilogy by NK Jemisin.

[00:02:08] And today we're not going to be talking about plot structure, but we are going to be talking about archetypes. And an archetype is the type of person that you see represented in fiction or in mythology or whatever. And they serve different roles in progressing the plot and they need to be in the story to keep the story interesting.

[00:02:34] And to keep the story complete. If you have a story where everybody has the same personality type, that story will not have as much conflict as it could. And the characters won't be related to. The easiest way to build a character that is relatable is to see how they interact with other people. And that means that you get to have a lot of different types of people.

[00:03:00] So this is eldest of things that relates back to the hero's journey, which is a book that I referenced last week. The hero's journey written by Christopher Vogler. And so if you want to check that out, go ahead and do so. But these eight arch types are commonly found in all types of high adventure series, where a person leaves their home to go out on an adventure And does all of the things along the way until they come back, if they come back. So the first arc type or the first type of character that is mentioned in this collection of things is the hero. And according to this specific list, So the hero is not necessarily the main character, just because of this one personality type or this one quality that, that this hero has a hero must be willing to self sacrifice.

[00:04:07] So a hero needs to be willing to leave their house to go out on the adventure. If you are writing a novel. That the main character doesn't have that quality. Then your main character doesn't fit the role of the hero in this respect. However, another character might. And so if you're still writing an adventure novel, it is entirely possible that you have a hero, even though it's not your main character, which is interesting because sometimes that can be fun.

[00:04:38] Sometimes. Main character can be like really afraid and really look up to somebody else who is the hero, who is their hero. And so the role of the hero is still filled, which is cool. The next archetype is the mentor. Last week I talked about Dumbledore and I talked about Gandalf and I also talked about some different characters in the lion, the witch and the wardrobe by CS Lewis, just because many different characters can be mentors.

[00:05:12] However, It's easiest to see the ones that that's their entire role at all. So Gandalf comes into the story. He is there to teach. He is there to protect and he is there to provide gifts. So the reason why I brought up the lion, the witch and the wardrobe. Last week is because there are several characters who fulfill this role in order to teach.

[00:05:40] We have Mr. , who is talking about the world and about life as. Creature in servitude or in slavery or whatever, to the white, which we have the white, which herself, who teaches specific things to one of the children. And we have as LAN who teaches the biggest things to, or the biggest, most important things, the biggest life lessons to the children.

[00:06:07] And it's interesting. One of these qualities is to provide a gifts in the lion, the witch and the wardrobe. Who is the guy who gives the gifts. It's Santa Claus. I've kind of ranted about Santa Claus in the lion, the witch and the wardrobe before, because it's one of the biggest plot conveniences in fiction.

[00:06:30] Luckily this is a children's story, so we can allow the plot conveniences, Santa Claus doesn't belong in the lion, the witch and the wardrobe. But, but I bring it up here just because. As Christmas gifts because it was Santa Claus. He brings these children weapons that are used in the great battle at the end and are used to win that battle.

[00:06:56] And so in a way, Santa Claus, even though he has a very limited role and really shouldn't be in that story anyway, meets the criteria of being a mentor, just because he gives them weapons that. Proved to be vital to the success of the war. So that's an interesting thing. The next step or the next arc type is the threshold guardian.

[00:07:25] This is the character that has meant to be menacing, but can still be overcome. So sometimes that can be perhaps a parent. Like the dad or the mom who is not approving of the child's decision to do this or that, and is standing in the way what this arc type does is provide the hero a moment to be brave.

[00:07:54] Usually the first moment to be brave as a way to. To see to the reader and to the hero and to whatever else to prove that they can go out and do the harder things after. The next archetype is the Herald, who is the person who brings a new challenge. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any specific character who simply serves as a Herald.

[00:08:20] it's easier to think of examples of mentors and heroes, but these next four fall into. The categories of just kind of the sub character cast. And as we talk about them, you can see how they all need to be there in order to have a rich cast. So the first is the shape shifter, or it is the character who changes constantly in the hero's point of view.

[00:08:48] And sometimes from the reader's point of view, it's the person who sometimes they're good. Sometimes they're bad. It's the one who keeps you guessing. The next is the shadow that represents the power of the dark force of this adventure. So in like space operas, like star wars, it's really easy to identify the people who fall into the dark side of the force.

[00:09:15] Like we have the emperor and. They represent and embody the dark side or the evil side of whatever is at work in this book. The next is the ally and an ally is a person who travels with the hero. And supports and serves them The ultimate ally is Sam in the Lord of the rings. Especially how he's portrayed in the movies, just because, especially in the movies, Sam did a lot and Sam.

[00:09:51] Is a hero in his own. Right. But absolutely serves the role of the ally when it comes to these different archetypes of the hero's journey. And the final arc type is the trickster. This is the person who is into mischief and has a desire to change. So it is not necessarily pranks. It is not. Necessarily the guy who wants to just blow crap up all the time.

[00:10:19] Usually this is the person with a more radical moral code who has more radical thoughts and is more eager to act on those thoughts and make really fast, big decisions. Having that character. Really drives the plot forward and can create higher stakes and a bigger sense of urgency in the story itself.

[00:10:46] So those are the eight archetypes of the hero's journey.

[00:10:52] 

[00:10:52] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time. 

Check out this episode!