Looking to become a story genius? Josh Wilcox, experienced developmental editor and bibliophile, knows all about it. Enjoy this guest post on how to write bestselling scenes from our amazing guest poster and be sure to check out the other posts in his series, like how to flatline your theme to immortalize your creativity!
Heartbreak.
You’ve mastered scenecraft, had an amazing idea, and are finally ready to write a new, full-length story. You dive in, fingers flying. So many words. So many great scenes.
Then cracks start to appear. The momentum slips. Your word count drops. And finally…
You hurl your laptop into the temporal loom, and it detonates, taking you, your story, and all of reality with it.
We’ve All Been There
Is it because our ideas are bad? Our skills underdeveloped? Do we lack the talent?
Is it as my dear friend Kyro says, “You’re a disappointment, Josh Wilcox.”
Could be. But what if it wasn’t?
What if we could launch our book with:
- A novel’s worth of momentum.
- Pinch points to accelerate us faster along the way.
- A heart that detonates the reader’s at the end.
Let’s do it, or delete this article trying!
The Idiots Guide to (Story) Genius
Story Genius by Lisa Cron masterfully details how to create a deep, rich character with the emotional wounds capable of propelling a story to a five-star-review.
We’re going to take her biggest lessons then add in other accelerants to give our story idiotic levels of momentum.
The good news is, you’ve already started!
In this article’s opening, when you lost the plot, threw your laptop into the temporal loom, and destroyed reality, you suffered your emotional wound or Foundation of Misbelief.
Foundation of Misbelief
The first step to building unstoppable momentum for your story is the Foundation of Misbelief. This is the emotional wound your character suffers that will take a whole novel (at least!) to fix. And it happens before the core story even begins!
You’ve seen this before. Magneto in X-Men believes he’ll stay with his parents before being ripped from them and concluding humans are innately inferior and must be eliminated.
Megamind believes he can fit in at school until he causes too many problems and concludes villainy is the only thing he’s good at.
Molly in Molly’s Game believes she can be an Olympian until bad luck ruins her body and she concludes life picks favorites and to get her due, she must rig it.
Of course, Foundations of Misbelief are often not onscreen. Sometimes they don’t even involve villains whose names start with M.
Iris in The Holiday realizes once again that her misbelief is true.
The foundation of misbelief entails:
- A character hoping for one thing.
- Getting another.
- Associating the wrong belief with the events.
Just like you, right now, associating throwing laptops into temporal looms with the destruction of reality, when the actual cause is Apple products.
Now Write It!
You must write your character’s Foundation of Misbelief, even if it won’t appear on in your story. Images, feelings, and even characters from it will creep in. You can see this in The Holiday. We never see Iris’s Foundation of Misbelief, but she talks about her past with Jasper multiple times to defend her misbelief and explain her pain.
And don’t stop there. We don’t just want to write our Foundation of Misbelief. We also want to write three more scenes that CONFIRM this misbelief. Scenes where your character leans into the false belief and gets rewarded for doing so, like Megamind growing up to be revered in prison.
These scenes provide believable ammunition whenever your character faces a difficult decision, ramping up the momentum of your story. Just as importantly, they give the reader a way to track how the character is or is not changing.
- Will Megamind always be a villain?
- Will Iris always be a side character?
- Will Molly always use her brains to cheat?
- Will you forever be the destroyer of worlds?
The Foundation of Misbelief also provides the way we’ll…
Add Story Genius Accelerant
It’s not enough to have a misbelief. We’ve got to test it with fire. False truths need to be challenged. The character’s world must crumble.
We do this in the Story Genius three parts.
#1: The Upside-Down World
At the end of the first act, Metro Man dies. Molly starts running her own game. Iris goes from snowy Surrey to sunny L.A.
And you start writing your new story (again on an Apple product!) in a reality that’s far better than the one you previously destroyed.
The world is thrown upside down, challenging your character’s misbelief, either by taking them away from it or steeping them in it.
You should be excited about this, and terrified for your character. Your reader should feel the same! This is what they bought the story for. It’s even in many titles like The Holiday, The Hunger Games, and Molly’s Game.
The more upside-down you make this world, the harder it will be on the character and their misbelief, and the more momentum you will carry to the second speed increase:
#2: The Mirror-Moment Midpoint
James Scott Bell’s Write Your Novel From The Middle is an outstanding deep dive into why the midpoint of your story is so important. The crux is this: The Upside-Down World blow up and the character asks the question the reader is wondering: How will I survive this with my misbelief intact?
The answer is, they shouldn’t! But they’re going to fight tooth and nail to do just that.
Molly, who’s poured everything into running an illegal, high-stakes poker game, has all her clientele stolen.
She knows it’s over. She stares off into LA’s streets but what’s she’s really looking at is herself and asking, ‘Is this the end of me?’
This threat to misbelief should feel like the threat of phycological death.
Megamind’s lack of self-belief leads him to decide he must create a superhero to play villain against.
Iris is told she’s not the leading lady of her own life.
At the universe-wide celebration of your election as prime ruler of your new reality, you realize your story, again, isn’t working.
A great Mirror-Moment Midpoint makes the audiences ask, ‘Will Megamind really spiral out of his chance to be good?’ ‘Will Iris, after all her failures, finally find self-belief?’ ‘Will our new prime ruler destroy our reality in a second fit of outrage?’
Think BIG on your midpoint.
THEN THINK BIGGER.
Weak midpoints are the biggest culprit for a story losing steam. Your midpoint should hurtle your story into an unstoppable new trajectory. There should be no coming back.
#3: All Is Lost
The final accelerant comes at the doorway to our story’s last act. This All Is Lost moment hurtles our story (and readers) into its end.
In Molly’s Game, Molly is robbed, beaten, and arrested.
Her misbelief fails her.
In Megamind, Megamind’s false, honorable persona is revealed to Roxanne and everyone abandons him, including Minion.
His misbelief fails him.
In The Holiday, Jasper begs Iris to take him back, the one thing she dreamed of before she met Miles and Arthur, and the one thing that’ll take her away from these new, faithful friends.
Her misbelief fails her by threatening to kill her new, true self.
And you, celebrating writing The End, throw your MacBook into the sun and your new, perfect reality explodes as well.
Your misbelief fails you.
The All Is Lost should be terrible. More terrible or terribly perfect than your first few ideas will likely be. Because this isn’t just a random tragic event.
The All Is Lost must destroy your character’s core worldview and force them to reevaluate everything.
The Story Genius End
If you’ve created a deep Foundation of Misbelief and adding your three accelerants properly, your final two words should beg to be written. You’ve brought your character to their knees. Forced them to face psychological death. Now all that remains is the final decision. Will they reject their false belief once and for all and accept their new self? Or will their ending be tragic?
Congrats!
You…
Are a story genius.
If you don’t feel like you have unstoppable momentum yet, go back and see if you can take the Upside-Down World, Mirror Moment, and All Is Lost to another level. Go big, and your story will have incredible momentum for writing and for reading.
Then congratulate yourself as I congratulate myself! This article succeeded, and you’ve learned its lesson:
Reality will be destroyed by Apple products.
Now go and learn even more unbelievable truths by subscribing to this blog and checking out other great articles that’ll make crafting your story a breeze, like Kyro’s Four Corners Opposition and Author’s Voice: Why Your Story Needs it Now!
