Plotting | Write Sex

Story Structure – Four Acts in Erotic Romance

Feb 242011

Every author knows that the structure of a story should follow a pattern, one that on the outside is fairly predictable. The Four Acts, the one tool used by playwrights, screenwriters and authors of any genre can make or break the story.

For those who are used to hearing of Three Acts, let’s cover them and then add in the Fourth.

ACT ONE – INTRODUCTION
Here we meet the characters, get into the basics of our conflict

ACT TWO – CONFLICT
The main issue is slowly brought to light and dealt with using the characters old ways of being.

ACT THREE – RESOLUTION
The characters learn lessons and change their ways of being to resolve the core issue.

All of your plotting focuses around one central issue and how the characters in your story respond or react to that issue.

In any story we write, our focus is on a specific issue. Especially in Erotic Romance, where our conflict preventing the HEA (Happily Ever After) ending is both outward and internal, we have just the one issue. The world we create for our characters must revolve around that issue and force our characters together. In a BDSM novel for example, the issue is always trust. So our characters would react and respond differently to various scenarios where trust is forced out, using old behavior and thinking.

All of the various factors involved in character creation come into play here. The background we sprinkle throughout the story, the behavioral patterns, the thoughts, they all come into play here to resolve around the ONE issue. Even better if the world we’ve created for our characters helps to hinder and create conflict.

Now I mentioned in the title a fourth act. This I learned from my mentor, Morgan Hawke, who did a TON of research so make sure you stop by her website and check out her fine books.

ACT THREE – THE REVERSAL
In this act we give the characters what they think they want, rather than what they need. We also make things more difficult in order to FORCE new behavior on our characters.

With the REVERSAL, our HEA for romance authors is so much sweeter because we’ve built up that anticipation and crescendo the actions and scenes until it’s time for that needed release.

As we throw a wrench into the plot with our characters, we’ll surprise the readers with that act and prompt them to read further, and more of our work.

I will better define React/Respond and old ways of being in my next post as well as how to apply this in erotic romance/erotica.

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Creating Plot as a Writer

Sascha Illyvich 3 Responses »

Jun 242010

Hello Readers,

The last time I had the blog we discussed the basic writing scene structure including how to craft sex scenes in an order that makes sense to the eyes based on movies. I did promise we’ll break that down but I wanted to take a step back here for a moment and focus on plot. I’m in the process of writing novel length stories (60k+) with the goal of expanding my brand. One of the questions that came to mind was word count and how I get a novel done so quickly while other writers are struggling with deadlines and feeling the definite stresses more than I ever will.

The reason for this is because I plot in a very militant manner while NOT trying to come up with a knock out drop dead bad ass best seller. The secret is not to worry about crafting that great American novel. I’ll repeat that because too many authors try to spend time doing this. You do NOT need to plot the great American novel unless that’s your goal. You’re plotting for SALES and a CAREER. The great American Novel may get you recognition but what else?

In the genre of erotic romance, the plots are always based on two things. First, sex MUST forward the plot through character development. In other words, we’re writing our sex scenes as part of the series of events that trigger growth between our heroes and heroines. Next, the ROMANCE between the two characters, regardless of genre is emphasized.

Plot is what happens to the characters and I’m sure by now you’ve all seen my breakdown of a basic romance story and a basic erotica story.

In EROTICA sex is the plot. The ONE event (depending on the story length) is that the characters have to end up in bed. This can be conflict driven.
Boy and Girl meet
Boy and Girl get off
Set up for another round or end the story.

In EROTIC ROMANCE sex FORWARDS the plot.
Boy and Girl meet
Plot happens to throw boy and girl together and they end up in bed
Character behavior occurs and they split up
Somehow can’t keep their hands off each other, yet the plot happens still
Resolve the ISSUE and HEA/HFN.

Without the sex forwarding the plot you have a story WITH sex.

Now when it comes to breaking down that plot, we have to analyze where in our stories the sex falls, what types of sex scenes need to occur and what sorts of events need to happen AROUND the sex scenes. You have to factor in where the characters are in their growth stages with the emotional arc and the plot arc. Then we have to look at story length because emotional arcs differ as do plot arcs from short story to writing a novel.

It’s a lot of work.

This is why I detest the porno/erotica argument especially when labeled against erotic romance. All the work put in to create a story is just that. WORK!

If you’re not writing in the erotic romance genre, that’s fine but if you’re adding sex it better make sense. Story with sex isn’t something readers want to read.

If they want that, they can go to Peacock Blue for quality literature.

We’ll start breaking plot down. My goal overall is to give you a good base from which to learn from and I think our other authors have done that with the why and how of why we write as we do, but future posts are going to get a little deeper in content as we grow.

Until then, keep it sexy!

Sascha Illyvich
http://saschaillyvichauthor.com