by A.C. Williams @ACW_Author

Do you use formulas in your writing projects? No, it’s not a trick question. The idea of formulaic writing might concern some people, especially because the industry-wide demand for originality, but we need to understand an important truth about storytelling:

There are no new stories.

Sorry to burst your bubble if you believed you had the first original story in a generation. Every story has been told. Every story was already told before you were born.

How is that possible?

Well, for one, people have terrible memories. Only a handful of classics have survived the 8,000 years or so of human history, and how many of us have actually read them? If humanity can’t remember our own countries’ histories for a dozen generations, do we actually think we’ll remember a book we read once?

The other explanation is a little easier to swallow. I’ve actually heard it said that there are only two kinds of stories: A story of External Change and a story of Internal Change. Of course, there are many different ways to frame those two kinds of stories, but ultimately every story is about a character who makes a choice, with the consequences either affecting their circumstances internally or externally.

It’s the always-popular comparison between Frodo Baggins (internal) and Indiana Jones (external). But it holds true for every story ever written when it’s boiled down to its most basic components.

The Main Character faces a choice, makes a choice, and then responds to the consequences of that choice. That is how a story works. There’s a beginning, a middle, and an end. When you look at a story from that perspective, every story is formulaic.

But does that make it boring? Not at all. On the contrary, following a trusted formula to construct a story is your best option to building a book that will withstand the ups and downs of the market. Frankly, formulas become formulas because they are effective.

This is a topic that requires much deeper study than a simple blog post can provide, but in the space we have left, let’s talk briefly about three popular story formulas that will give you the building blocks for a fantastic story, regardless of genre.

Each of these formulas are based on individual character arcs, specifically for a single-POV novel. I’m sure you can adapt these formulas to multi-POV stories, but the complexity of that kind of a project makes my eyes cross. A character arc is the blueprint for a protagonist’s emotional journey through a story. I am still a student of character arcs, but the better an author learns to make the most of character arcs, the more emotional resonance their stories will have.

The Help Arc

The idea of a Help Arc is to present a character who believes he or she is sufficient on their own. Some event in the past caused the protagonist to believe that asking for help or relying on another person to assist them will only end in pain, and the subsequent story beats function to teach the protagonist the value of working together with others.

Elements of a Help Arc:

– A protagonist who believes he or she can complete a task alone

– A plot that challenges that (false) belief

– A friend or a team who offers support

– A final challenge where the protagonist must accept help if he or she wants to succeed

The Unique Skills Arc

The idea of a Unique Skills Arc is to present a character who values or idolizes someone else’s methods of doing things. It could be a mentor or a parent or an older sibling, but whoever they are, the protagonist wants to mimic them in every way because they don’t believe they have anything valuable to offer on their own. The story functions to show the protagonist that using someone else’s gifts to solve a problem isn’t as effective as embracing their own abilities.

Elements of a Unique Skills Arc:

– A protagonist who believes that he or she has no skills of value to offer

– A plot that challenges that (false) belief

– A secondary character who the protagonist idolizes or attempts to mimic unsuccessfully

– A final challenge where the protagonist embraces his or her own abilities in order to accomplish the goal

The Courage Arc

The idea of a Courage Arc is to present a character who is avoiding or hiding from a choice or a path that they fear. It could be a job. It could be a person. It could be just about anything, since people can fear just about anything. No matter what they fear, the story is focused on showing the protagonist’s creative solutions to avoiding the choice, until the story forces him or her to value the goal more than what they fear.

Elements of a Courage Arc:

– A protagonist who avoids making a choice out of fear

– A plot that forces the protagonist to make the choice in spite of fear

– A final challenge that helps the protagonist value the goal more than they fear what is preventing them from making a choice

You will find these arcs most prevalently in speculative fiction, mostly because they are straightforward and allow a deeper focus on worldbuilding and magic systems without distracting from the story. But each of these story types will work for any genre, and many authors have made use of them in classic novels over the years.

Can you think of any stories you’ve read that feature character arcs like these?

A.C. Williams is a coffee-drinking, sushi-eating, story-telling nerd who loves cats, country living, and all things Japanese. Author of more than 20 books, she keeps her fiction readers laughing with wildly imaginative adventures about samurai superheroes, clumsy church secretaries, and goofy malfunctioning androids; her non-fiction readers just laugh at her and the hysterical life experiences she’s survived. If that’s your cup of tea (or coffee), join the fun at www.amycwilliams.com.