Backstory
The backstory is the leisurely middle of Act 1—a bridge between the dramatic action of the hook and the trigger. This checkpoint is usually at least a chapter long, and in some cases, it can be a large percentage of the book.
- Tell Protagonist’s History The backstory is an excellent place for history. Backstory, by its very nature, is a mixture of plot and story. By telling your readers about events in the protagonist’s past, you’re revealing his or her emotional character.
- Introduce Characters The backstory is also a good spot to introduce other characters. It’s best to introduce as many important characters as you can before the end of the backstory. Of course, in the case of a mystery, it may not be possible to introduce the antagonist during the backstory. The structure of your plot may dictate that the protagonist can’t encounter the antagonist until far later in the story. But any characters who will play important roles in your story should be introduced as early as possible.
- Set the Stakes Another important activity in the backstory is to set the stakes. This is where you establish the ground rules under which your detective will operate. If it’s a matter of life and death, you should indicate it here. What does your protagonist have to gain or lose through success or failure?
- Start the Clock The backstory is a great time to start the clock running. In order to create a sense of urgency, it’s best to predefine an amount time in which something must happen. For example, the murderer must be found before an innocent person loses his job, spouse, or life, is convicted of a crime, is sent to the gas chamber, and so on.
- Finalize Your Viewpoint The backstory is also your last chance for new point of view changes. If you’re going to shift to characters other than your protagonist, do it now. If you’ll be shifting between the points of view of two characters, switch back and forth between them several times before the end of the backstory so we understand your technique. If there will be more than two viewpoint characters, show us a third before the backstory ends.
Trigger
The trigger is the powerful event at the end of Act 1 that propels the protagonist into crisis at the beginning of Act 2. Because of his or her flaw, the protagonist will be unable to cope with the situation created by the trigger.
Epiphany
The protagonist’s epiphany occurs at the end of Act 2. It is a moment of pure story. It is the most important moment of your entire mystery.
This catapulting event will, in a spectacularly emotional moment, finally thrust the protagonist out of the crisis (and the struggle that prolonged it). Ending the crisis is part of the nature of the epiphany. In this way, Act 2 is bookended by crisis on one end and its emotional ending on the other.
Plan
Once your protagonist has struggled through his ordeal and realized his flaw in the epiphany, he can come up with a plan to solve his troubles. The plan may make use of a weapon, physical evidence, or something intangible such as knowledge or guesswork. It will take courage to implement the plan, but having had an epiphany, our protagonist now has that courage.
In some forms of fiction, the audience (and perhaps other characters) may have known about the plan for some time, but probably not in a good mystery.
Solution vs. Plan
Every good mystery needs a solution. This is not necessarily the same thing as the plan. The plan is the part of your story in which the protagonist puts together a strategy for defeating the antagonist. The solution is the deduction of who done it.
| In the best stories, the antagonist isn’t defeated by the protagonist; he’s defeated by his inability to overcome his own flaw. |
Resolution
Whether happy or sad, it’s important you show your readers the fate of every important character. You can’t just drop the story line for a major character three chapters from the end. You’ll get angry letters!
The Story Outline
The story outline is your road map. It contains the nine checkpoints you devised earlier, plus reminders for every scene you’ll write as you journey through those checkpoints. Like the story idea, the story outline does not contain snippets that will be reused in the long form. In fact, to guarantee this, you’ll write your story outline in present tense—not a likely choice for the long form. This discourages you from becoming so absorbed in flowery details that you lose site of the goal. And that goal is to describe every important scene in your long form.
You won’t achieve this goal in your first outline. That doesn’t matter. The outline gives you the opportunity to start putting down important thoughts about action, dialogue, deductions, and emotional development that will be expanded into complete scenes later.