the 30-day outline workshop

My first novel was auctioned in a bidding war. My agent called me late on a Sunday night to say that I had just been offered a million dollars from the president of Time Warner Books (they owned Little, Brown) to purchase the world rights to my little story that I had hand-written and then transcribed in a little over six months while I was on the road doing standup comedy. The book became a bestseller and won some nice awards. While I knew I had a certain facility with language, I also knew that I was not the author but the channel. Any talent I possessed was not really talent, but a certain amount of craft and self-trust.

Through a decade of writing and rigorous study, I had learned how to structure a story. I had discovered that story structure had little to do with plot, and that the engine driving the plot was connected to the protagonist's primal desire. I learned that story structure is not a concept or a formula, but a series of experiences that humans always seem to go through in their journey toward transformation. By distilling these experiences and codifying them, the mysterious veil of story creation gradually lifted and I began to see that everything you imagine can belong in your story when you distill it to its nature.

Many writers resist story structure because they fear it will limit their creativity and lead to formulaic writing. But here’s the thing: story structure is not an equation designed to reduce your story to quantifiable parts. This misconception may be the result of structure being taught by story analysts whose gifts lean more toward an ability to deconstruct the anatomy of an existing work than in exploring the nature of the author’s intention. This can leave the student with a keen understanding of how a particular story was assembled while struggling with how to translate that lesson into completing their own work. Although one might eventually begin to grasp the inner workings of structure by studying the various parts of a particular story, this approach is akin to dissecting a cadaver in order to understand what it means to be human – it suggests that story is primarily an intellectual endeavor. It isn’t. What makes your story universally relatable is its connection to the human spirit.

Story structure is a paradigm for transformation. It’s a way to trace the experiential beats of a character’s growth that lead to their shift in perception – that “aha” experience we’ve all had when we see something in a new way.

Without these three core elements, a story cannot satisfy its premise:

• Desire (Your protagonist wants something.)
• Surrender (Your protagonist lets go of the meaning they make out of their goal.)
• Transformation (Your protagonist reframes their goal, thus seeing it in a new way.)

Despite what you may have been taught, story structure has little to do with plot. In fact, the structure being referred to is the underpinnings of your theme, a primal drive that is going to get reframed through your protagonist’s quest.

But what is a theme exactly, and how does working with it help you to build your story? Whether you’re conscious of this or not, every character in your story has a relationship to your protagonist’s central dilemma – this is necessarily so, because your characters are all functions of the same dramatic question, therefore they are all in service to your theme. And it is through these various struggles that your theme is explored. By tracking your protagonist’s primal desire through the story, this dilemma gets explored.

Making a story is a process of moving from the general to the specific. You begin with a basic sense of a story, and through inquiry, your imagination fills in the details. If you hold too tightly to any story element, you limit your story from moving in the direction of its most fully realized form.

In Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ seminal book On Death and Dying, she illustrates five key experiences that one moves through in the grief process. In the same way, there are a series of experiences that are essential in tracing your protagonist’s arc leading to their transformation. Although the five stages of grief may overlap, they tend to move in a particular direction: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance. When you examine these experiences, you likely sense a certain internal logic to the process. In fact, if you ponder them, eventually your imagination is likely to begin conjuring a story.

We all have access to an empathetic imagination that allows us to connect to our common humanity. Just as the five stages of grief are universal, so are the key experiential stages that lead to your protagonist’s transformation.

COURSE BREAKDOWN

Week One – Unlock the Story Within
Through a series of exercises, you will connect to your protagonist’s dilemma at the heart of the story. The dilemma is the source of the story from which all tension and conflict arise. We will explore your protagonist’s wants and needs, uncover their transformation at the climax, and discover why you are uniquely qualified to tell this story.

Week Two – Act One/Thesis
We will take a close look at the first act of your story. Through lecture, discussion, and one-on-one work, we will cover the five key stages in your protagonist’s Act One journey.

Week Three – Act Two/Antithesis
In this workshop, we will explore the four key stages that your protagonist goes through in order to create a dynamic and compelling second act that builds in meaning as it progresses.

Week Four – Act Three/Synthesis
In this workshop we will explore your protagonist's dark night of the soul, and how this event allows them to rise from the ashes of despair and reframe their relationship to their desire, thus propelling them towards their transformation.

Week Five – Integration
In this workshop we will integrate the material covered in the previous four weeks and deepen our relationship to the process of marrying the wildness of your imagination to the rigor of story structure.