Do you ever wonder why some stories just work, while others do not? It may have something to do with what is called the “Story Milestones.”
If you haven’t heard this term, don’t worry, because you’ve likely heard of some of its other names such as “story acts”, “story beats,” or “plot rise and fall.”
All of these refer to the same framework that every story needs.
These are
- Backstory or Exposition
- Inciting Incident
- First real challenge to over come (Slap 1)
- Second real challenge to overcome, but we start to lose hope (Slap 2)
- Climax, or pinnacle of the action
- Resolution
Or it may look something like this:
While you can get more granular into the story elements, for the purpose of this post, we are going to stick to these six milestones.
Stories that hit all six of these major story points will feel complete, and leaving the reader satisfied that they were told a story. Leave one out, and you will find the story falling flat on its face. Let’s dive deeper into what each of these are.
Exposition or Backstory
This is the area of your story where you get to indulge in some of your world building, character dynamics, and helping your reader connect to your characters.
This is what will tell your reader if they are in the modern world or in a made up one. You also get to show whose perspective we will be primarily following in the story. This should also give your reader clues into what your character cares about most
This should take no more than the first ten percent of your novel. (i.e. if you are writing a 100k word novel, this is your first 10k words.)
Inciting Incident
This is where the fun begins. Inciting Incidents are the point where your character’s life will never be the same from here on. Their point of no return. It is what sets our story in motion and gets the character sent on their quest.
Without this element, your story never really gets started.
Some examples of this from popular novels are
- Bilbo sets out on his adventure, catching up to the dwarves.
- Harry finally gets to read his letter delivered by Hagrid
- Eragon receives his mark from his pet dragon Saphira.
All of these mark a point where our hero must step outside their comfort zone.
** A Note**
Every book inside a series must have its own inciting incident. However, your first book must provide the series Inciting Incident.
In my series, The Comstock Chronicles, here are the individual inciting incidents.
The Fire Drake: Ross’s powers get out of control and he ends up killing his mentor by accident. This causes him to run away from home.
The Earthspark: Nienna begins teaching at Alturis University. While there, she is assigned to map the spread of a disease in the Feltus forest.
The Raider’s Curse: Nienna’s brother is attacked by foreign raiders. When she interrogates the attacker, he marks her with a brand that steals her magic.
The Queen of the Night: Nienna is set back in time and is captured by a shape-shifting dragon.
The Siren’s Call: Nienna’s delegation to the North is attacked and she is kidnapped.
The Phoenix & The Wolf: Nienna crosses the wall into Ballitus. (You can read chapter one here.)
The overall inciting incident for the series happens when Nienna falls into an old lava chute and meets one of the fabled elemental Guardians. Her life, for the rest of this series, is never the same again.
Ideally, the inciting incident should happen within the first twenty percent of your story. (First 20k words of a 100k word novel.) If it happens later than this, you need to reconsider the front half of your story. You may need to bump up timelines or simply start your story in a new place.
If you know your inciting incident is going to take a while to get to, you can also do a mock incident, to help the story feel like it’s getting going. For an example of this, think about The Matrix. When the main character is offered the blue pill or the red pill, it feels like an inciting incident, but the real one happens much later.
Slap 1 or the first major problem
Every main character in a story needs to face challenges and problems in the story. Without them, stories are flat, and frankly boring. We don’t enjoy reading about people living happy lives where nothing ever happens to them. We want stories where the hero gets knocked down, and then picks themselves back up.
This shows to the reader that they can do the same thing in their own lives. We all face challenges, and when we read about characters who find ways to rise above challenges, this gives us hope that we can do the same thing. This is the beautiful part of stories.
While you should throw struggles at your characters the entire story, Slap 1 comes when your character learns something new about themselves. It is a major achievement.
They overcome something and see they are stronger than they thought. This gives them (and the reader) a confidence boost.
This element should happen anywhere from the thirty percent mark to fifty percent.
Slap 2 or the second major problem
This challenge is different from slap one. It needs to be harder. Stretch the character more. And it should come with a cost.
There are a few ways you can take this one. Here are some ideas, but they are not a complete list.
Option 1: Your character comes out on top, but they lose something they care about.
Option 2: Your character got cocky from their first success, and fall hard. This should make them doubt their capabilities, and whether they are strong enough to face the final conflict.
Option 3: The character doesn’t win, but they dedicate themselves to the task more, and we see them progress from this point.
** If you are writing an epic (a longer story) You may even have a third slap before your final conflict. However, I would recommend not including more than three in one story as the pacing can start to drag at that point.
This happens around the sixty to seventy-five percent mark.
Climax
This is the highest, most tense point in your story. All the set ups and challenges that have built up the story to this point need to come together in this moment.
You should reveal the big secret you’ve been holding in for the whole book and it needs to come out in an emotionally evocative way. We need to care that the hero beat the bad guy. We need to care that the guy finally kissed the girl.
The point is, this moment needs to have enough build up behind it that when your character comes out on top (unless you write tragedy stories) it has to feel earned.
This should occur in the final eighty to ninety-five percent of your novel.
Resolution
The final milestone our stories need to reach is the resolution. All the set ups that pertain to the story need to be paid off, and the big questions must be answered. There needs to be real aftermath and consequences attached to the story’s ending.
If they were in a big battle, the character could still be injured. They could have lost friends and loved ones. They could have lost part of themselves, and are not the same as they were when they left home.
If you were writing romance, there needs to be some kind of conclusion to the relationship. Do they get married? Do they make up and get back together? Do they remain friends?
What is the world like now that they won?
Going back to our mountain climber example. If you were to hike the tallest mountain near you, even if you return home from your adventure just fine, you will still be a different person because of your experience.
You will be tired. You may have sprained an ankle. You may have been caught in a lightning storm as you reached the peak, and will now have slight trauma every time you hear thunder (speaking from experience!).
That adventure changed something about you and the same is true for your character.
Give the reader a chance to come off the adrenaline high and see the aftermath of the story.
Unless you are writing a series! Then you need to approach the resolution of each story different.
The first books in a series can still leave several open-ended questions as long as the main conflict for that story is resolved. However, it is important to leave some mystery at the end to entice readers to jump into book two and so on.
Just make sure that all the big questions are fully resolved by the end of the series. Otherwise, readers will be left disappointed.
Some homework
Now that you understand better the framework found in every good story, I encourage you to go back to your favorite book or movie, and apply this framework to it.
Identify the backstory and where the inciting incident occurred. What did they do?
What were the major challenges the characters overcame and how did it shape their perceptions of themselves?
Did they face the climax with courage, doubt, or fear? Who helped them along the way?
How did the story resolve? How did the characters grow and change?
Once you see this framework in action, it becomes easier to outline and write your own stories, making them stronger and better because of it.
If you want more help in crafting the outline for your novel, check out these articles.
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Until next time,
