Hello!
I am going to write a historical fiction style journal of Peter the Apostle. But as I was going over His life in the Bible, I couldn’t find a lot of obvious points to line out on the three act thing. Would people still want to continue reading if I kinda drifted away from an organized feeling like that and did an informal journal style of his life. I’m going to plan it out and all, but it didn’t fit into the three act thing at all! LOL! I hope someone can help me out here! I’m really stuck, and I don’t want to go forward because I don’t want to have to redo tons of my manuscript!
Thank you!
-Colleen A.
Hey Colleen. That’s a tough spot.
Most of the time, you would selectively choose events from the true story in order to get it to conform to a satisfying plot structure. So where are the big moments, and which parts can you skip to make those fit a little better?
You also don’t have to tell all of Paul’s story. Rather than a big saga, you could choose a particular series of events that fits a narrative structure better. Is there a moment in Paul’s life, for instance, that you think would make a really cool “epiphany” moment. Start there, and then you can build the the story around that spot.
Alternately, you can tell events out of order. What is the What by Dave Eggar had a really interesting approach in this way. He alternates between two timelines in order to help the true story reach a more satisfying story arc.
With either of these methods, you could also employ an “episodic” approach. In an episodic story, you have individual stories that are loosely related to each other. John Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat is an example of this type of story. We have a common cast of characters to the stories, common themes, and a general sense of timeline, but also each “episode” (short story) can stand on its own. These episodes are ordered in such a way that we do feel a sense of the overall story arc, but it’s not quite as rigid as we typically expect from a cohesive narrative.
Those are some things I would think about in your situation. It’s a common issue that people who write true stories often face, so you’re not alone! 🙂
Thank you Brad! I think that’ll help a lot!!