The fact that the Heart doesn’t show up in most fiction formulas is meant to alarm writers.

One reader must have become alarmed after reading it in my new article: THE HEART OF THE STORY: What Is it, Where Is it, and How Do We Get There?

I’m grateful to writer, Rahma Krambo, for Tweeting it because it reminds me why I’ve been hammering away on this issue for so long. The Heart doesn’t appear in most writing manuals!

Is anybody else alarmed?

It surprises me that I hadn’t previously devoted an article to the Story Heart such as I’ve done here — not on my own blog but over at Helping Writers Become Authors.

Click on over and see what all the ruckus is about.

I have to thank K.M. Weiland for offering her wonderful website for my heart rant. I can’t think of another writer who appreciates what might really be going on in this little-known heart of a story.

Thanks, Katie!

Coming up in a day or two, the next episode in my Travel Series:

Deep Travel: When Have You Gone Too Far?

I was browsing Amazon’s Kindle Store this morning.

In the Story Structure Department I noticed a drama unfolding:

“Writing by the rules” vs. “Organic writing.”

On  one side it’s all structure and story engineering while the other camp is chanting, Don’t get it right, get it written!

But hold on a minute. The traditionalists insist that structure doesn’t mean formulaic.

The debate rages on writing blogs where the “rule rebels” get to express their disenchantment with the confusion of so many story theories. And who can blame them?

Enough already!

To hell with story theories

To hell with graphs and grids  and plot points and page counts and blogs and eBooks and audiobooks and podcasts and webinars and all those online courses with all their marketing savvy—that’s the growing mood out there.

One writing guru has published a title clearly meant to fan the flames of discontent. The subtitle of his book reads: How to Write Unforgettable Fiction by Breaking the Rules.

Who doesn’t like to break the rules!

Well, it turns out to be a pretty standard writing text. Can’t say that I’m surprised. The book’s author is an accomplished novelist, he knows very well what a story is. I’ll bet he knows the rules so well that he knows how to break them. He’s probably a master story engineer.

“Prose is architecture,” said Ernest Hemingway.

And if that’s too didactic, try this:

“Structure is only the box that holds the gift.” ~ K.M. Weiland.

That’s straight from K.M. Weiland’s bestseller, Structuring Your Novel.

The gift that lies at the heart of fiction

I love it.

If the rebels reckon they’re beyond story structure, then they should explore “the gift” that lies at the heart of fiction. Yes, there exists a scene in every good story that lies beyond story structure.

I call it the hole in the story.

A story is two stories separated by a gap

The most ruthlessly simple overview of story suggests that a good story is actually two stories separated by a gap.

A chasm so deep that the plot comes to a halt at the brink.

The plot seems to serve this purpose—to hound the protagonist into this existential nothingness. This scene—often called the “Act II crisis”—is structure’s gift.

Story structure exists fore and aft of this hell hole, which becomes for the hero a chrysalis of moral adjustment. This is the gift.

Here, in the heart of the story, the hero disavows himself of himself. All strategies, structures and belief systems fall away and the human organism finds itself in a position to transcend its own self-serving delusions. This is the gift.

I introduce this concept in my short eBook, Story Structure to Die For.

The heart of the story

Fiction moves beyond structure when the protagonist lands in the heart of the story.

The story heart knows nothing of story mechanics. The heart doesn’t do reason or rules. It has nothing but disdain for a character’s logic, strategies, and petty desires.

Here in the heart we encounter a story’s “sacred mechanics.”

Here the hero finds freedom from the rules that have been preventing his true happiness.

Free of rules! This sounds like the very place an “organic” writer wants to be.

But consider this:

If the rule-rebel-writer wants to love her protagonists sufficiently to deliver them to the gift at the heart of the story, she’ll need a structure to get them there.

A writer needs a story structure to love her fictional characters the way a writer ought to.

If thinking of “story” like this makes sense to you, let me know.

I am a big believer in creating an outline of your story and keep telling other writers how much it will help them with writing their novel. They nod their head, when they really want to pat me on the head and say, “Thanks, but no thanks.” So tonight read the beginning of K.M. Weiland’s “how to write book” titled, OUTLINING YOUR NOVEL, hoping to find someone else who could help persuade others to realize how much it will help them with their manuscripts. After reading the excerpt below, I bought the book and I hope you will check it out. She lays out some good reasons to outline.

Here it is:

Benefits of Outlining Your Story

1. Ensures Balance and Cohesion

In an outline, you can see at a glance if the inciting even take place too late in the sotry, if the middle sags, or if the climax doesn’t resonate. Instead of having to diagnose and remedy these problems after the first draft, you can fix problems in the outline in only a few keystrokes.

2. Prevents Dead-End Ideas

How many times have you started writing an exciting new plot twist, only to realize – 5,000 words later – that it’s led you to a cul-de-sac? You either have to spend valuable time bactracking and trying to write your way around the roadblock – or you have to cut the subplot altogether and start afresh. Outlines allow you to follow plot twists and subplots to their logical end (or lack thereof) in much less time. You can identify the dead-end ideas and cull them before they become annoying and embarrassing ploy holes.

3. Provides Foreshadowing

It’s nearly impossible for an author to foreshadow and event of which he has no idea. As a pantser, when a startling plot twist occurs late in the book, you’ll have to go back and sow your foreshadowing into earlier scenes. Not only is this extra work, it can often be difficult to make the new hints of what’s yet to come flow effortlessly with your already constructed scenes. Because an outline give you inside knowledge about what’s going to happen in subsequent scenes, it provides you the opportunity to plant some organic foreshadowing.

4. Smoothes Pacing

Like foreshadowing, pacing often requires inside knowledge. If the author doesn’t know the protagonist is about to be shot in the back, he can hardly adjust the pacing to introduce this shocking new event in the right manner. An outline shows you the places where your story is running too fast and the places where it is lagging and sagging.

5. Indicates Preferable POVs

When working with multiple points of view it can often be challenging to know which scene should be written from which POV. Too often, we write a scene from one character’s POV, only to realize a different character’s narrative perspective would probably have offered a better experience for the reader. As a result, we’re forced to go back and rewrite the entire scene. Outlines allow us to make educated decisions about POV, thanks to insights regarding plot and character. Just as importantly, outlines permit us to look at the balance of you POVs over the course of the entire novel, so we can ensure each character is getting an appropriate amount of time at the mic.

6. Maintains Consistent Character Voice

When writing without an outline, we’re often discovering the characters right along with the readers, and because our perception and understanding of our character often evolve over the course of the story, the result can be an uneven presentation of the character’s voice.

7. Offers Motivation and Assurance

Writing a novel can be overwhelming. Typing thousands of words is an undertaking in itself – but when those words all have to hang together in a way that is sensible, entertaining, and resonant, that’s enough to make our knees start shaking beneath our desks. Outlines give us the assurance that we can craft a complete story; all we have to do now is fill in the blanks. And because those blanks are ones that fascinate us, outlines also motivate us to keep on writing through the tough spots, so we can get to the good stuff.

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy