‘Readers Expect Structure — They Get Antsy If It’s Not There’

by CWC Marin administrator | Mar 15, 2019 | Classes and Workshops, Craft, Events, interview

A Conversation with Author, Coach, Editor, and Teacher C.S. Lakin

C.S. Lakin is an author, coach, editor, teacher, and more, and on March 24, she’ll be presenting “10 Key Scenes That Frame Up Your Novel” at Book Passage, a workshop for the California Writers Club Marin. (Find out more and register at cwcmarin.com.)

Earlier this week, I spoke with her on the phone — she lives in Morgan Hill —  to learn more her about her writing and her workshops.

When she answered the phone, she said, “This is Susanne.”

Q: I assume Susanne is the “S” in C.S. How did you come to be called C.S. when you so enthusiastically call yourself “Susanne.”

I started writing fantasy and used a pen name because many fantasy fans are male and most of my protagonists are male. I wonder if J.K. Rowling would have been as successful if she wrote under the name Joanne.

Q: My first question, well, my second one now, is about you — your journey to becoming a writer, editor, teacher. How did you come to focus on structure?

First of all, I’m very excited about doing this workshop. I look forward to meeting you all.

I’ve been writing for 30 years — it took me 23 years to get my first book contract. As for what got me started, well, I always loved editing. When I started doing that professionally, about 14 years ago, I got all riled up because I had clients who wanted me to polish their novels, but so many of them were structured poorly. The premises didn’t hold up. The characters didn’t ring true. All those important foundational elements were subpar. I was being asked to put frosting on a bad cake.

I began focusing on critiquing — not line editing. I’m interested in story. Novels have an expected structure, very much based on five turning points. Most writers know them intuitively, but they don’t necessarily think about them.

I encourage writers to take a different approach — what I call a layering method. We start with your first ten important scenes, then layer in the next ten.

Q: Can you give a sneak preview of one of the ten scenes you’ll be talking about?  

Most writers know you have five turning points — an inciting incident, midpoint, dark night of the soul, climax, resolution. We’re going beyond that.

Michael Hauge, a Hollywood story consultant, says that modern stories are simple: they’re about one character pursuing a short-term goal. Every movie and every book has this same basic structure. You start with the setup, and then you go to your inciting incident, which triggers the story, moves the character out of what they were doing. If it’s a mystery, that’s when the dead body shows up.

Unfortunately, all too often, beginning writers spend half the book doing backstory.

Q: How do writers harness the formula without making it too formulaic? We’ve all read books or watched movies where the formula is too obvious.

People love formula. If you write Harlequin romances, there’s a strict formula. The danger is trying to be too original and rejecting the formula. Readers expect structure. They get antsy if it’s not there. They know intuitively there should be an inciting incident early on.

I used to buck the whole idea of structure. I wanted to be original. I didn’t understand structure is not only necessary but desirable. Think about a building. If you follow engineering principles — foundation, shear walls, and so on, you can create a basic structure that could turn into a fancy house, a restaurant, a museum. How you style it is what makes them different. But they all have that solid foundation.

Screenwriting is extremely precise — if you’re writing a two-hour movie, it’s 120 pages. A page a minute. When you turn to page 60, the midpoint must be there. When we watch movies, we’re so trained, we expect the midpoint right at that moment.

I’ve become a firm believer in structure after critiquing hundreds of novels.

Q: What are you writing these days?

I’m writing a sci-fi thriller called Lightning Man, so I’ve been reading and diagramming books. Best sellers.

I wrote a summary of each of six books, mapped out each scene. Across the top, I wrote scene 1, scene 2, scene 3, and so on. And then a scene synopsis for each book. I could see that what happened in all six books was the same. Usually, the first scene was high action that highlighted the protagonist, showcased their skills, abilities. Then the next scene something happened that changed everything, kicked us into the story.

The twist in Lightning Man is that the protagonist, who has been struck by lightning many times, has suffered memory loss, and he doesn’t know, until the end, that early in his life, he killed his 9-year-old brother while out on a boat. He thinks he’s an only child. He is angry at his parents for splitting up, but he doesn’t understand why. Meanwhile, I’m dropping hints along the way that tell another story. Other people know about what happened with his brother, but he doesn’t. Until he does.

Q: One last question. You’ve written dozens of books. You’re a writing coach and editor and blogger. You teach workshops. When do you sleep?

I sleep plenty. I also write fast. A lot of times I’ll write a novel in two or three months. I pick up an index card and write the scene. That’s because I’ve already mapped out the structure.

As important as structure is, I would add that there are two equally important things you need. One is an amazing concept. Something unique. If I tell you my elevator pitch, you should say “wow.”

I recently wrote a dark comedy The Menopause Murders. The protagonist is a woman suffering from menopause, and when she kills people, it relieves her symptoms. Her husband is the lead detective assigned to catch The Tacoma Terror. That’s a wow premise. He knows it’s her. She knows he knows. It’s a comedy. I have a co-writer, a very funny man. The book has publication offers, and you can see a sneak peak at themenopausemurders.com.

The other thing you need is a twist. Something surprising at the end of the story.

Like The Sixth Sense. Like The Planet of the Apes, where Charlton Heston discovers the Statue of Liberty in the sand, and we learn that the planet of the apes is really Earth.

You want to have this I-didn’t-see-that-coming moment.

Q: Like Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent?

That’s exactly what I was thinking of. A great twist that’s at the heart of the book. Something that the reader does not suspect but almost seems inevitable once you see it.

Q: But how do you create that twist? I’m thinking about the novel I’ve just about finished, which has a strong premise, but no twist as dramatic as Presumed Innocent.

The trick is how can you make things seem different than they really are.

A great example is Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper. The premise is that the parents have a young girl with leukemia, and they have another baby for only one reason — to be a donor for the older sister.

The story starts with the younger sister suing her parents. There’s a high-stakes legal battle. In the prologue, we’ve seen this younger sister, Anna, thinking about how she might kill her older sister. We think Anna hates her sister. The twist is that the older sister, fighting leukemia, has begged Anna, please kill me. But Anna doesn’t want to. The beginning is misleading, on purpose. You think the whole book through that she hates her sister, because she’s thinking about killing her at the beginning. But the author misleads the reader, so the twist is surprising. That’s what I’m aiming for in Lightning Man.

To fool your reader, you might make a list of things readers assume. What can you make readers think it’s true, when it’s not?

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[Register for “10 Key Scenes That Frame Up Your Novel” here.]