Interview With Jeanne Cavelos, Founder of Odyssey Writing Workshops

 

Today I'm so excited to be interviewing Jeanne Cavelos, the founder of Odyssey Writing Workshops. We'll be chatting about her new program, Your Personal Odyssey Writing Workshop.

Jeanne Cavelos is the director of the Odyssey Writing Workshops Charitable Trust. She was a senior editor at Bantam Doubleday Dell, where she worked for eight years, editing the fantasy/science fiction program, the Abyss horror line, and other fiction and nonfiction. Jeanne is also the bestselling author of seven books and numerous short stories and articles. She has won the World Fantasy Award and twice been nominated for the Stoker Award.

Jeanne has run the Odyssey Writing Workshop for the last 26 years, and this year announced the breakthrough new program Your Personal Odyssey Writing Workshop.

You can find out more about Jeanne here and more about the Your Personal Odyssey Writing Workshop here.

--- Interview by Nicole Pyles

WOW: Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today! Tell us about how you came to start Odyssey Writing Workshops.

Jeanne: After eight years in publishing, I left my position as senior editor at Bantam Doubleday Dell to have more time for my own writing.  I’d gone into publishing with the plan that would be my day job while I wrote at night.  But editing gradually took over my life and I ended up with no time to write.  So I realized that I needed to make a change and moved to New Hampshire. 

 

The part of editing that I enjoyed most was working with authors and helping them strengthen their books.  That’s actually only a small part of the job of being a senior editor, sadly.  But as I left publishing, I wanted to be able to continue working with writers and to work with them in a deeper, more meaningful way, so I wouldn’t just be helping an author with one book, but I would be helping an author improve her skills and all her future writing.

As I started to think about how I could work with writers, I remembered my earlier experience earning my MFA in creative writing.  I was the weird girl who wrote science fiction, fantasy, and horror, and none of the teachers in the program knew much about science fiction, fantasy, or horror.  I thought how great it would be to have a program at an MFA level that focused on those genres, with teachers who were experts in those genres and believed in their value as art, and with students who all knew and loved those genres.  Those were the thoughts that led me, in 1996, to create the Odyssey Writing Workshop, an advanced, intensive, six-week, in-person program held each summer in New Hampshire. 

WOW: I love that you started a program based on your own experiences and need in an MFA! What is the Your Personal Odyssey workshop like and who is it for?

Jeanne: Let me first explain why I decided to transform Odyssey into this new program, Your Personal Odyssey Writing Workshop.  Holding Odyssey online for the last two summers due to the pandemic revealed to me that a huge number of talented writers want an in-depth, challenging program to build their skills but can't attend a six-week, in-person workshop.  More than that, the last 26 years have taught me that a six-week program is not the best format for all students. All writers do not write or learn at the same pace. While Odyssey students step up and make their deadlines, all-nighters don't always produce work that best reflects the student's progress. I've also learned the great value of one-on-one sessions with students to generate goals and plans, discuss concepts, suggest techniques, brainstorm solutions to story problems, answer questions, and get to know each student so I can do my best to help them move ahead in their writing journey.  And I've learned that Odyssey's structure doesn't allow me enough time with each student to do all that.

All of this led me to create Your Personal Odyssey Writing Workshop.  Your Personal Odyssey is a one-on-one, personalized, online program that combines the intensive, advanced Odyssey lectures with expert feedback and deep mentoring in an experience designed to maximize your learning and improvement.

For each writing topic, you watch the lecture recordings; do readings, writing exercises, and critiques; work with me to create and complete an individualized assignment; and write a story or novel excerpt. Penetrating, detailed feedback by myself and guest critiquers will be provided, and I'll work closely with you in mentoring sessions to provide guidance and to help you follow the unique path that is most helpful for you.  You can study topics in whatever order you feel will be most helpful and can spend extra time on a topic and go deeper into the content to work on a particular problem area.

You can choose how long they want to complete Your Personal Odyssey. Those who want to fit their learning into six weeks can apply for the first session, starting June 6. Those who feel they could learn and improve more with an experience spread over more time can apply for the second session, starting August 8 and lasting three months; or the third session, starting November 14 and lasting six months.

The program includes great guest lectures by bestselling authors Brandon Sanderson, Meagan Spooner, and more, and guest critiques by award-winning authors R. F. Kuang, Elizabeth Hand, and more. 

WOW: I love the in-depth teaching and mentoring this provides! Who would you say this program for?

Jeanne: If you want a program customized for you, that focuses on your writing strengths and weaknesses and what you want to achieve as a writer, this is it.

To succeed in Your Personal Odyssey, you need to be highly motivated, eager to try new writing tools and techniques, open to feedback, and willing to work intensely and move outside your comfort zone. You need to be ready to hear about the weaknesses in your writing and ready to work to overcome them.

If you are, then Your Personal Odyssey will teach you the skills you need to become the writer you want to be.

WOW: I think that must be the biggest hurdle: an eagerness to overcome your own weaknesses. So, what are some of the common problems you see in writers who join your workshop?

Jeanne: The biggest weakness of most writers is plot.  Most developing writers don’t have their protagonist struggling to achieve a goal.  The protagonist often starts the story by waking up, thinking about her life, and then going about her day.  If things get worse for the protagonist, it’s often due to outside forces that act randomly on the protagonist rather than other characters doing something in response to the protagonist’s attempt to achieve a goal.  That creates a weak protagonist and a weak causal chain, and it makes it difficult to create a powerful climax that feels both surprising and inevitable. 

Another common problem is weak characters. Many characters feel inconsistent, or overly familiar, or are simply not very interesting. Usually authors imagine their characters are much richer and more developed than they are on the page.  Or they provide extensive exposition—background information—about the character in the story, but that background is irrelevant to the story or never affects the character’s actions in the story.  The character should be mainly defined by what they do in the story, not by their background.  And we should feel that the character’s struggles really challenge the character, leading the character to change.  Too many protagonists remain static, unchanging, which makes us feel like the events of the story didn’t matter much.

A related problem is excessive exposition.  The writer has planned out an extensive background and history for the characters, some of the plot elements, and in the case of fantasy or science fiction, the world, along with its technology or magic.  The writer often feels compelled to put all of this exposition into the story, often in large chunks we call infodumps.  Usually, most of the exposition doesn’t need to be put in the story.  The way to incorporate the pieces that are necessary is seldom to simply have the narrator explain them or the viewpoint character think about them.  There are many techniques an author can use to convey exposition while moving the story ahead, so writers need to learn those.

WOW: I see a lot of my own weaknesses in this list! What are some of the transformations you've seen from people who have joined your workshops?

Jeanne: That’s one of the reasons I love working with writers and have devoted so much of my life to it.  I love to see writers have those lightbulb moments, and it’s wonderful to read an author’s latest submission and see the breakthroughs they’ve made.  Each writer comes with their own writing strengths and weaknesses, so all different kinds of improvements and transformations have happened at Odyssey.  As I mentioned, many writers struggle with plot, so I see many students who start out writing stories with vivid descriptions and strong voices in which the protagonist wanders around and thinks a lot but doesn’t do much, and the situation doesn’t really change—or if it changes, it’s due to another character taking some action.  By the end of the workshop, these students are writing protagonists who are struggling against obstacles to achieve goals, and those struggles lead to crisis points and turns, and through a strong causal chain the conflict escalates, leading to a surprising but inevitable climax.  It’s wonderful to see! 

One student, a fantasy writer, struggled to get emotion into his stories.  His plots were strong and his characters were interesting, but he told his stories from such a distant point of view that it was hard for readers to feel much about what was happening.  Once he understood the different ways in which he was making his point of view distant, the point of view started getting closer and closer.  He started to describe settings, situations, and other characters the way the point of view character would experience them.  And suddenly his stories became so much more involving and emotional! 

One science fiction writer came to the workshop able to come up with innovative premises, create fascinating worlds, and build some nice rising action, but she was unable to make characters that felt well developed, believable, or compelling, and any attempts at a character arc felt forced.  She tried in several submissions to use different techniques we discussed, but the characters still felt flat and unbelievable.  But we kept talking these issues out in one-on-one meetings, discussing what her characters needed and how the characters in her previous stories could be improved, and in her final submission she had a great breakthrough, writing a story with an extremely engaging and compelling character who changed in a completely believable and tragic way.  I was blinking back tears at the end of that story.  All the techniques and elements we’d discussed had come together in the most beautiful way.

WOW: These transformations are inspiring! What would you say to a writer who is uncertain about taking an online writing course?

Jeanne: An online course is definitely different than an in-person course.  If you’d like the group experience of an in-person class, there are many good programs you can seek out. 

 If you’re considering an online program, be aware that there are huge differences between online writing courses.  Many of them simply provide video lectures and leave you to apply the content.  A few provide feedback on a couple of your pieces in addition to providing lectures.  I think many people find online courses not as helpful as they might be because simply learning concepts or techniques from a lecture doesn’t have much effect on someone’s writing.  It’s the same as reading a book on writing.  The content of that lecture or book goes into one part of your brain, the rational part, but your writing generally comes out of another part of your brain, the irrational, instinctive part.  So one of the important tasks any writing program needs to accomplish is to help students make connections between these two parts of the brain, so the concepts learned in lecture actually become incorporated into the writing process.  That only happens through extensive practice of the techniques, both in writing exercises and in writing stories or novel excerpts, and receiving in-depth feedback on a series of pieces that lets you know how you’re doing.  Most online courses don’t do that.  Maximizing your progress also involves addressing your personal needs, which most online courses don’t do.

Your Personal Odyssey Writing Workshop is held online, but it’s a unique program unlike any other online program.  You’ll not only do that extensive deep practice and receive expert feedback, but you’ll also have extensive one-on-one deep mentoring sessions to help you overcome your personal writing weaknesses, struggles, and challenges.  Maybe a helpful way to think about it is you're going into the wilderness to discover your writing powers with wizard mentors teaching you and guiding you along the way.

Online classes definitely pose several challenges, such as working out of your home with whatever distractions are there, and working independently.  If you aren’t able to carve out significant hours to work, and if you aren’t able to motivate yourself to put in the work, then it will be hard to get much out of an online program.  But those are also skills you need to be a writer, so developing those can also help you in your writing career.

WOW: Your workshop sounds incredible! Thank you so much for interviewing with us today. Writers, if you want to sign up for Your Personal Odyssey Writing Workshop, be sure to sign up today. You have until April 1st to apply!

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Interview with Jeanne Cavelos, Director of the Odyssey Writing Workshops Charitable Trust

Jeanne began her professional life as an astrophysicist working at NASA. After earning her MFA in creative writing, she moved into a career in publishing, becoming a senior editor at Bantam Doubleday Dell, where she edited award-winning science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels and won the World Fantasy Award. Jeanne left New York to pursue her own writing career and find a more in-depth way of working with writers. She has had seven books published; her last novel was Invoking Darkness, the third volume in her bestselling trilogy The Passing of the Techno-Mages. Her writing has twice been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. Jeanne is currently working on a near-future science thriller, Fatal Spiral.

Since Jeanne loves working with developing writers, she created the Odyssey Writing Workshop in 1996, which quickly became one of the most respected programs in the world for writers of the fantastic. In 2010, she launched Odyssey Online Classes; live, intensive, interactive courses that use the techniques that have proven so effective at the workshop. Three online classes are announced each fall with an application deadline of December 7. Jeanne is also an English lecturer at Saint Anselm College, where she teaches fiction and nonfiction writing.

Connect with Jeanne and the Odyssey Writing Workshops on Odyssey’s website and blog, on Facebook and on Twitter. For more information about Odyssey, check out this YouTube video.

Make sure you read Jeanne's blog post about building structure with changes of significance then come on back!

----- Interview by Nicole Pyles

WOW: Thank you for chatting with us today! So, tell us about Odyssey Writing Workshops and why you created it.

Jeanne: Odyssey is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to helping writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror improve their work. I created Odyssey in 1996. I wanted to get out of the corporate rat race of New York publishing to focus on my own writing, but I also loved working with writers and wanted to create some method for doing that in a more meaningful way than my job as senior editor at Bantam Doubleday Dell had allowed. When I started trying to figure out what sort of structure I could create in which I’d have useful, meaningful interactions with writers, I thought back to my experience earning my MFA in fiction writing.

I was “the weird girl who writes science fiction” in the MFA program, the only student not writing literary fiction. While the professors tried to help me, and did teach me some valuable lessons about style, they really didn’t know much about genre fiction. They couldn’t provide much insight into how genre fiction works or how my stories and novel might be improved. I ended up teaching myself most of what I know about writing, by writing, by studying the works of other writers, by reading probably a thousand writing books, and by critiquing and editing manuscripts for years and years and years.

So when I thought about what might help writers the most, I thought of a program like an MFA program, but focused entirely on fantasy, science fiction, and horror, where all the students and all the instructors write fantastic fiction and believe in its value as an art form. That’s when Odyssey began to take shape.

We started by offering our six-week, in-person workshop, which is now considered one of the top programs in the world for writers of the fantastic. In the following years, we added a one-week, in-person workshop for graduates of the six-week program, a critique service, online classes, consultations, coaching, and many free resources. While our nonprofit mission remains to help writers of the fantastic, many of our programs have helped writers of other genres as well. As Odyssey’s 25th anniversary approaches in June, it’s wonderful to think about all the writers Odyssey has helped and the great successes of graduates.

WOW: That's incredible! How is your writing workshop different from others?

Jeanne: The six-week Odyssey workshop is different in several important ways.

Many workshops focus predominantly on workshopping. Students sit in a circle and provide feedback to each other. This can be very helpful. It’s not helpful, though, to hear about the weaknesses in your writing if you aren’t also learning how to strengthen them. Odyssey provides an advanced, comprehensive curriculum that covers the elements of fiction writing in-depth, teaching you how to use tools and techniques that can make a major improvement in your writing. Class meets for over 4 ½ hours, 5 days a week, and about 3 hours of that is lecture and discussion. Students learn about their weaknesses in critique, but they also learn how to strengthen those.

Most workshops are run by writers. While I’m a writer, I spent 8 years as an editor in New York publishing, which gives me a very different approach when I work with other writers. Many of the writer/teachers I know say something like this: “Here’s how I do it, so you should do it this way too.” There’s nothing wrong with that; it can be very helpful to know how a great writer handles some challenge. But it’s also limiting. Every writer thinks differently, and the ideal writing process for each person is unique. As an editor, part of my job was to help writers find that ideal process, to offer them techniques and methods that match up with the way they think and work to yield the best result. So when I work with writers at Odyssey, in addition to lecturing and workshopping, I meet one-on-one with students to help them develop that ideal writing process.

Some six-week intensive workshops switch between different instructors. This provides different perspectives but it can leave students without clear direction. One week, the instructor might tell them their characters are weak. The next week, the instructor might say their plot is weak. The next week, the instructor might say they need to strengthen their point of view. So students don’t really know what to do. At Odyssey, we bring in a guest lecturer for about 24 hours each week, so students receive a variety of perspectives and feedback. But I’m also there for the entire six weeks, meeting with students at the beginning—after reading three of their stories--to explain their overall strengths and weaknesses, helping them to choose an area for improvement, offering ways they can improve, charting their progress with each story, and sending them home with a sense of what they’ve accomplished and what they still need to work on. That continuity has proven to be very helpful.

Since I’m there throughout the six weeks, I also have a better sense of student dynamics and how the atmosphere of the class is developing than someone who comes in to teach for just a week. If you’ve participated in writing workshops, you probably know that things can easily go wrong. Participants can attack each other to make themselves feel superior. They can provide lazy critiques that don’t teach them anything and don’t help the author of the piece. Participants can hold grudges over previous critiques and seek revenge in later critiques. The atmosphere can easily become toxic. To prevent this and to make the workshopping process as helpful as it should be, it’s important to establish rules at the start and to talk to any participants who aren’t providing truthful and helpful feedback. Workshopping can be a painful process, and I’m proud of the students at Odyssey who have stepped up and provided the best feedback they can to their classmates. At Odyssey you won’t be coddled, and you won’t be attacked. You’ll receive unflinchingly honest, concrete, detailed feedback. Because I’m a former editor, and because I know how much editing the works of others taught me about writing, we put a lot of stress on critiquing at Odyssey. My own critiques average over 1500 words each, with extensive line edits in addition. Other workshops don’t provide that level of feedback.

A few other differences: At Odyssey, students can work on novels if they aren’t interested in writing short stories. And we’ve got some great resources for graduates, so you aren’t left on your own at the end.

WOW: I love the one-on-one work you do! Tell us about the upcoming workshops that students can join.

Jeanne: Odyssey offers online classes each winter, so those are the next programs coming up. We only offer three courses, so we can ensure high quality. Each course is limited to 14 students. They’re held live, creating a virtual classroom experience in which students can participate in discussions, ask questions, and learn from an instructor who is responsive, in the moment, to students' concerns, confusions, and thoughts. Between meetings, students interact with each other and the instructor in a discussion group, complete demanding assignments, and give and receive in-depth feedback. Each student also has a one-on-one meeting with the instructor. Graduates of Odyssey Online regularly praise the depth and value of the content provided in the courses, the rigorous, carefully designed assignments, and the insightful, detailed critiques from instructors.

We try to focus courses on some of the biggest challenges writers face. This winter, award-winning novelist Barbara Ashford is teaching The Heart of the Matter: Bringing Emotional Resonance to Your Storytelling. If readers aren’t feeling the same emotion you are when they read your work, this course will help you bring out that emotion. This course will take you from "setting the stage"--understanding the heart of the story you are telling--to "getting it on the page"--exploring techniques that will not only show the emotions of your characters but orchestrate the overall emotional experience of readers. Then your stories can take readers on a journey that satisfies their hearts as well as their minds.

Scott H. Andrews, the World Fantasy Award-winning editor-in-chief and publisher of the fantasy magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies, is teaching Standing Out: Creating Short Stories with That Crucial Spark. If you’ve gotten your writing to the point where you’re receiving encouraging personal rejections but just can’t make that sale, your stories may lack a spark. By reading the hundreds and hundreds of stories that come into his magazine, Scott has developed a theory that there are four main ways to create a spark--with a fascinating concept or thematic impact or emotional resonance or potent voice. Scott will explain how each of these types of sparks works, and students will study examples and work to add a spark to their own stories.

I’ll be teaching Three-Act Structure in Fantastic Fiction. If there’s one problem most writers have in common, it’s plot. One of the best tools for strengthening plot is the act. Plotting in acts creates a more suspenseful, unpredictable, and emotionally satisfying experience for the reader. This course will start by defining key units of structure--the scene, chapter, and act--and explore why we need acts. We’ll discuss the effect of acts and how acts work in short fiction and novels. We’ll learn how to plot in three acts and what makes a strong three-act plot. We’ll look at powerful methods of ending an act. We’ll explore how to create a causal chain that generates escalations and leads to a strong climax, and the critical connection between structure and character transformation. With a strong act structure, the protagonist will face challenges that will put him, and readers, through an experience they will never forget. (You can find my blog post on “Building Structure with Changes of Significance” here)

Writers of any genre of fiction are welcome to apply to the online classes, and the application deadline is December 7.

Our six-week workshop will be celebrating its 25th anniversary this summer. Odyssey has become known as one of the most effective programs in the world for writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Graduates commonly describe Odyssey as inspiring and transformative and say they learned more in their 6 weeks at Odyssey than they did in "3 years of creative writing classes" or "an entire MFA program" or "30 years of reading the 'How to Write' books."

The workshop will be held June 1 to July 10 at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. Guest lecturers will include Brandon Sanderson, Yoon Ha Lee, J.G. Faherty, Barbara Ashford, Scott H. Andrews, and Sheila Williams. Scholarships are available, including the George R.R. Martin-sponsored Miskatonic Scholarship. The application deadline is April 1.

WOW: Those classes sound incredible! What can students expect from your workshops?

Jeanne: You can expect that a lot of thought has gone into every aspect of the program, that it’s been designed to be as helpful as possible, and that the instructor wants you to succeed and will be honest about the strengths and weaknesses in your work to help you make progress.

You can expect a lot of work. To make Odyssey’s programs as effective as possible, we pack in a lot of content and a lot of homework. And you can expect critiques that are more thorough and in-depth than you’ve ever received before.

You need to be ready to hear about the weaknesses in your writing and be willing to change your writing process and try new techniques to strengthen them.

WOW: What kind of success have students from your workshops experienced?

Fifty-nine percent of Odyssey's graduates have gone on to professional publication, and they include award winners, Amazon bestsellers, and New York Times bestsellers. Here’s some recent news from graduates. R. F. Kuang, class of 2016, won the Crawford Award and was nominated for both a Nebula Award and a World Fantasy Award for her first novel, The Poppy War, published by HarperVoyager in 2018. The novel was included on multiple "Best of 2018" lists (including the Washington Post's and Time magazine's). Linden Lewis, also from the class of 2016, sold her trilogy to Skybound/Simon & Schuster in a major auction; the first book will come out next year. Booklist Online named I Am Still Alive by Kate Alice Marshall (published by Penguin Random House), class of 2005, one of the "Top 10 First Novels for Youth," and Universal has optioned the movie rights. Ben Affleck will co-star and produce. Nightbooks, by J. A. White (class of 1996), is being produced as a movie for Netflix. And it was just announced that The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter (Saga) by World Fantasy and Locus Award-winning author Theodora Goss (class of 2000) is in development as a television series on the CW. Other recent publications include Jumpship Hope (Tyche Books) by Adria Laycraft, class of 2006, which started as a flash piece written at Odyssey, and Undying (Disney-Hyperion) co-authored by New York Times bestseller Meagan Spooner, class of 2009.

WOW: That is inspiring! Thank you again for taking the time to talk with us today. 

Connect with Jeanne and the Odyssey Writing Workshops on Odyssey’s website and blog, on Facebook and on Twitter. For more information about Odyssey, check out this YouTube video.

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Building Structure with Changes of Significance by Jeanne Cavelos

Jeanne Cavelos

Stories often start too soon or too late. They get mired in the middle. When they finally emerge, the climax can seem forced or random. Even if they avoid all those problems, the plot often carries little emotional impact.

In my 32 years working with writers, as a senior editor at Bantam Doubleday Dell and then as director of the Odyssey Writing Workshops Charitable Trust, it's become very clear that writers struggle most with plot and structure.

One reason for this titanic struggle is that creating a strong structure requires a writer step back from the story and see it as a reader sees it. What does the reader care about? What is the reader worried about? What does the reader hope happens? If you can't answer these questions with some certainty, it's hard to overcome those problems.

To build a strong structure, you can start with the smallest unit, a scene, and expand the story one unit at a time, stepping back periodically to assess and strengthen the overall structure that is being revealed (known as writing from the seat of your pants, or pantsing). Or you can start with the overall plan, an outline, and build units to fulfill the plan, stepping back periodically to compare the actual structure being revealed to the plan and make any necessary changes (known as plotting). In either case, that smallest unit, the scene, is key. If your scenes are weak, your structure will be weak.

A STORY IS ABOUT CHANGE

A story, with few exceptions, is about change. That means your structure is the physical expression of that change. That smallest unit of structure, then, the scene, must show change. Just showing any change, though, is not enough. The scene must show change that moves the story forward in a significant way.

What does that mean, exactly? Two things:

1. Each scene must show a change in a value of significance to the main character of that scene
2. The change must have an impact on the rest of the story

When something important to the character changes, and that change has an impact on the rest of the story, the scene pays a critical role in the story and moves the story forward in a significant way.

Let's look more closely at those two requirements. In the first one, what exactly is meant by "a value of significance to the main character"? Well, what does your character value? The love of her husband? Trust in her friends? Her health? Her freedom? Ethical procedures at the hospital where she works? Helping others? Being recognized for her achievements?

In that case, here are some ways a scene might show a change in a value of significance to this character:

• she catches her best friend in a lie and goes from trusting her friend to distrusting her friend
• she discovers falsified records at the hospital and goes from believing her colleagues at the hospital are ethical to realizing some of them are unethical
• when the head of security detains her, she goes from freedom to captivity
• when a colleague pushes her down the stairs, she goes from health to serious injury

You can see that I am describing these changes as reversals, from one quality to its opposite. Aristotle, in fact, called the change each scene should have a reversal. That's a very useful way to think about it. Robert McKee discusses this concept further in his excellent book Story.

Values of significance are often tied to a character's goal. If a character forms a particular goal, that should mean the goal is important to her. The fact that it's important to her likely means the goal is intertwined with her core values. For example, let's say our character's goal is to clear herself from false charges of negligence at the hospital. What values might be involved? Success in her career, recognition for her achievements, competence, the ability to do what she loves (her job), the respect and love of her husband, her freedom—all these are at stake. For values of significance to change, they must be at stake. They can be gained or lost. This creates emotion in the character and hopefully emotion in the reader also.

"For values of significance to change, they must be at stake. They can be gained or lost. This creates emotion in the character and hopefully emotion in the reader also."

You might ask why values need to be involved. Can't a scene just show a change of significance? Weakening requirement #1 can lead to weak scenes, as writers try to convince themselves that any minor change is a "change of significance." I once wrote a scene in which the antagonist searched for a parking place on a busy city street so he could go execute his evil plan. At the end of the scene, he found a parking space! Ah, the change of significance! The scene was about as interesting as it sounds. If I had considered a "change in a value of significance," I would have found that there is no major value at stake in finding or not finding a parking space. So this would not fulfill the requirement or make a strong scene. That search for a parking space could instead be downgraded to a sentence at the start of the scene in which he attempts to execute his evil plan, or skipped over entirely.

More commonly, the author isn't just missing a value change; the author is missing a change of any sort. A character wakes up and thinks about his life, or walks around and thinks about his life, or two characters exchange information, but nothing much changes at all. This is a common problem in opening scenes (and in many other scenes as well). Often the author is preoccupied with establishing certain background information, setting up character relationships, or describing the world. While those are important tasks to accomplish, they should be accomplished while the plot is simultaneously moving ahead, not while the plot is stuck at a standstill. A scene in which no change in a value of significance occurs is a scene that is not moving the story ahead. It should be cut or revised so that it does create such a change.

Fulfilling requirement #1 rigorously and consistently will help to ensure that each scene shows significant change that will have an emotional impact on the character. That could make an involving scene. But for that scene to form an effective piece of the larger structure, it needs to connect to the rest. That leads us to the second requirement.

Odyssey Workshops

A CHAIN OF CHANGES

The second requirement reveals that the "change in a value of significance" can't be one that matters only in that individual scene. It must matter beyond that scene, having an impact on the rest of the story. For example, if our protagonist catches her friend in a minor lie and goes from trusting her friend to distrusting her, but that change has no impact on the rest of the story, the scene will feel unnecessary, an unimportant sidetrack. Indeed, that scene would not belong in the story. If, later on, the protagonist discovers that the minor lie actually reveals her friend's role in the unethical practices at the hospital, the initial change will have a big impact on the rest of the story.

The impact of a scene's change on the rest of the story isn't limited to the plot, though. Often (and I'd really like to say always), part of the impact is expressed through the character. A character who believes she can trust her best friend and then discovers she can't is no longer the same person. In future scenes, as she faces her husband, or her boss, she will wonder if her trust in them is as misguided as her trust in her friend. She'll be more wary, more emotionally reserved. And this will have further effects on the story.

"A character who believes she can trust her best friend and then discovers she can't is no longer the same person. In future scenes, as she faces her husband, or her boss, she will wonder if her trust in them is as misguided as her trust in her friend."

A scene with a strong change in a value of significance to the character is a scene that alters the character, perhaps temporarily, perhaps permanently. And as the chain of changes develops, the character will evolve, for good or ill.

A writer struggling to revise a story that readers call "slow" or "uninteresting" may be failing to fulfill requirement #2. The writer might try to make her story more interesting by revising a scene to create a bigger change in a value of significance--she could add explosions and characters dying. But if that value change doesn't have an impact on the rest of the story, the scene doesn't belong, and readers still won't be happy.

When each scene's change has an impact on the rest of the story, then your overall structure is made up of an interconnected chain of changes. This helps you to create a unified structure, in which each piece is important and all the pieces work together.

AN EMOTIONAL JOURNEY OF CHANGE

When each scene fulfills the two requirements, your story will have significant values at stake for the character, will show major changes in which those values are gained or lost, and will thus move the story ahead in a significant way, generating emotion and having an impact on the character and the rest of the story.

That sounds like a story I'd enjoy reading.

Creating scenes in this way can also help you avoid some of the most common problems writers have with structure and plot.

• If you start your story too soon, the opening scene (or scenes) will most likely either lack a change in a value of significance, or the value change it has will not make an impact on the rest of the story. If you start your story too late, that opening scene may well be overstuffed with multiple changes to values of significance, making it murky, with a confused mix of emotion, and the rest of the story may feel the impact of multiple value changes that occurred before the story began.

• If you get mired in the middle, you are most likely failing to fulfill one or both requirements, so scenes don't move the story ahead in a significant way and/or don't have an impact on the rest of the story.

• If your climaxes seem forced or random, that means they are not the culmination of all the value changes that have gone before. Events may seem to be impacted by something outside the previous scenes, or the character may behave in a way that doesn't reflect the evolution we have seen.

• If your plot elicits little emotion, then you may be writing the equivalent of the antagonist-looking-for-a-parking-spot scene. Remember that you need to do more than just show any change in the scene. You must show a change in a value of significance to the main character of that scene.

As you write scenes that fulfill the two requirements, you'll need to step back periodically to assess the overall structure you are building and try to see it the way a reader sees it. Whether you are pantsing or plotting, you'll want to consider what impacts each value change might have on future events and on the character, and what impacts the reader expects, hopes for, and fears. As you move forward in your story, you'll also want to look back on past scenes and consider whether their value changes are the most important ones for the story and whether the particular ways you create those value changes are the best ways for the story.

At some point in your story creation process, either early (if you're a planner) or later (if you're a pantser), you'll want to consider the best shape for this chain of changes, the overall structure. That will depend on the impact you want to create through the evolution of the character and the development of the plot. "Shape" is a product of several things, but most prominently, the number of acts. An act is another unit of structure, a much larger one. Is this a twisty story? That probably means three acts. One that builds in an almost unbearable way? One act. Is it the epic story of a character's life? Most likely five acts. Understanding the nature of your story and the impact you want to have on the reader will help guide you in making those larger-scale structural decisions. But that's a discussion for another day.

In the meantime, focus on making each small unit of structure the best it can be for your story. Challenge your character by putting the things she values most at stake. Relate events in which she gains or loses those things, creating powerful emotions. And tie each scene to the rest of the story so we can feel the impact of those events resonating through the plot and the character.

That's the way to build a strong structure with changes of significance.

***

Jeanne's online workshop with Odyssey

Jeanne Cavelos is a bestselling author, an award-winning editor, and the director of the Odyssey Writing Workshops Charitable Trust, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization devoted to helping writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror improve their work.

She'll be teaching the Odyssey Online class Three-Act Structure in Fantastic Fiction this winter.

Jeanne began her professional life as an astrophysicist working at NASA. After earning her MFA in creative writing, she moved into a career in publishing, becoming a senior editor at Bantam Doubleday Dell, where she edited award-winning science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels and won the World Fantasy Award. Jeanne left New York to pursue her own writing career and find a more in-depth way of working with writers. She has had seven books published; her last novel was Invoking Darkness, the third volume in her bestselling trilogy The Passing of the Techno-Mages. Her writing has twice been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. Jeanne is currently working on a near-future science thriller, Fatal Spiral.

Since Jeanne loves working with developing writers, she created the Odyssey Writing Workshop in 1996, which quickly became one of the most respected programs in the world for writers of the fantastic. In 2010, she launched Odyssey Online Classes; live, intensive, interactive courses that use the techniques that have proven so effective at the workshop. Three online classes are announced each fall with an application deadline of December 7. Jeanne is also an English lecturer at Saint Anselm College, where she teaches fiction and nonfiction writing.

Connect with Jeanne and the Odyssey Writing Workshops on Odyssey’s website and blog, on Facebook and on Twitter. For more information about Odyssey, check out this YouTube video.

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