Bestselling author Dean Koontz has a simple yet effective method for outlining a story.
Let’s go through his four points, try it ourselves, then write a story using it together!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we go over Dean Koontz’s story structure.
Watch a short version of the stream here or scroll down for what we wrote.
Writing a Story Using Dean Koontz’s Story Structure
- There are many methods you can use to structure a story, and it’s good to try a bunch of different ones until you find one that works best for you
- Today we’ll take a look at one used by the famous author Dean Koontz, from his book How to Write Bestselling Fiction, and outlined by Jerry Jenkins on this website
- I like the method because of how simple/effective it is. There are only 4 steps, and when put together they can create a very compelling story, so let’s take a look!
Step 1: Plunge your main character into terrible trouble as soon as possible*
- The type of trouble depends on your genre, but in short, it’s the worst possible dilemma you can think of for your main character.
- For a thriller, it might be a life or death situation. In a romance novel, it could be a terrible breakup.
- It should fit your main character too. If they love their family, perhaps they lose one/all of them. If your character hates bees, maybe they have to become a bee farmer.
- Whatever trouble it is, its stakes must be high enough to carry the entire novel.
Example 1: In the short story I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison, a small group of humans are tortured by a malevolent, omnipotent AI who has prevented them from dying for decades.
Example 2: Larry the Lobster has never been confident in his claw-snipping skills, and one day he’s snatched up from his ocean home, unable to cut the net. He’s put into a grocery store fish tank, purchased by a fat man excited for Lobster Thursday.
*One caveat: whatever the dilemma, it will mean little to readers if they don’t first care about your character. Make sure to have a scene where we get to know them a bit first before bas things happen.
Step 2: Everything your character does to get out of the terrible trouble makes things only worse
- Avoid the temptation to make life easy for your protagonist. That’s boring!
- Every complication must proceed logically from the one before it, and things must grow progressively worse.
- The conflict should always be increasing, never decreasing, all the way up to the story’s climax
Example 1: In the short story I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, the humans trek up a painful, icy mountain, hoping to find something to save them at the end. All they get along the way is more torture and permanent disfigurements from the AI.
Example 2: Larry does his best to claw his way out of the bag he was bought in, making a mess of it, then falls out of the car into a scorching hot desert. Vultures pick at him and snakes lick him, but he just wants to go back home to the ocean.
Step 3: The situation appears hopeless
- Even you, the author, should wonder how you’re ever going to write your character out of this.
- That level of hopelessness is what’s going to make the reader want to turn the page and find out what happens next
Example 1: When the humans finally reach the icy cave, they find it’s full of delicious canned food, but they have no way of opening them. It’s just yet another torture from the AI.
Example 2: Larry the Lobster gets tangled in a thornbush and can’t move. He’s delusional from the heat, and the desert creatures are closing in on him.
Step 4: Finally, your hero succeeds (or fails*) against all odds.
- Reward readers with a payoff from all the setup beforehand
- Ideally your main character uses what they gained from facing the previous obstacles to become heroic, proving that things only appeared beyond repair.
- *Occasionally sad endings resonate with readers.
Example 1: The leader of the group realizes that their only escape is death, and he uses an icicle to kill everyone else in the group besides himself, putting them out of their misery. Before he can kill himself, the AI transforms him into a smooth, gelatinous blob with no arms/legs for all eternity. He has no mouth yet he must scream.
Example 2: Larry only has one claw-snip left in him, and he needs to make it count. He puts all of his remaining strength into it, cuts the stem of the bush he’s stuck in, and it rips away from the ground in the desert wind. It turns out he was stuck in a tumbleweed, and it carries him away inside of it all the way back to the ocean. Overjoyed, Larry goes back into the sweet, salty water… until he gets eaten by an octopus.
After that, we generated some random “inspirational posters” from Inspirobot, and of course chat voted that we use this one to practice the story structure:
We came up with four different stories, and did each step for each of them:
Step 1: Plunge your main character into trouble as soon as possible
- #1. A glassblower accidentally shatters their masterpiece (a “glory hole” is a furnace used to reheat unfinished glass for the purpose of shaping or polishing it)
- #2. A glassblower is teaching a class and a kid blows some glass and the glass explodes, fragments going into the kid’s face. He forgot about the goggles.
- #3. Uncle Randy’s “glory hole,” a sausage BBQ pit during 4th of July, where a bunch of fireworks fall into the pit and go off
- #4. Main character achieved glory (money and fame) by digging themself into a “hole” (lying about a bunch of stuff), but now they finally have to make good on all their lies through action
Step 2: Everything your character does to get out of the terrible trouble makes things only worse
- #1. Glassblower is so flustered that they accidentally set fire to the whole workshop.
- #2. Glassblower doesn’t want to get in trouble, so he tries to remove the fragments himself without calling a doctor, causing tons of bleeding.
- #3. Uncle Randy tries to pour water on the pit but accidentally picks up gasoline.
- #4. MC was on a reality TV show where they pretended to be a psychic and knew everything about the other contestants, but only because they had access to info beforehand and did research, but now they’re on live TV being asked to show off their psychic powers
Step 3: The situation appears hopeless
- #1. The workshop and everything in it burns down to ashes.
- #2. The glassblower removes a final shard of glass, plucking out the child’s eyeball with it
- #3. Uncle Randy goes up in flames himself
- #4. The MC has failed to predict anything about any of the hosts, and the producers of the reality TV show look like they’re going to investigate and sue them
Step 4: Finally, your hero succeeds (or fails*) against all odds.
- #1. But! Among the ashes is the broken masterpiece the glassblower made, warped and altered from all the heat, it’s even BETTER now, moving him to tears with its beauty… too bad he can only afford 50% of his insurance payment by selling the masterpiece
- #2. The glassblower makes a glass eye for the child, pops it into the kid’s socket good as new, and presents him back to his parents. He doesn’t think he’ll get away with it… until he sees that the kid’s parents are horrible alcoholics who don’t care about him anyway. Thank goodness for abusive parents!
- #3. Uncle Randy cooks to a fine, blackened crisp, and then his family peels off their skin, revealing they’re lizard people underneath, and devour him, just like they’d been planning for years after fattening him up.
- #4. MC panics and says he’s having trouble with his powers because they’re being clouded by DEATH, death is in the studio, death is all around them. An old lady gets scared, has a heart attack, and dies, making them a legendary psychic.
After that, chat voted that we write the Uncle Randy story.
Here’s what we came up with:
Every Fourth of July, I love nothin’ more than firin’ up the ‘ol glory hole. That’s what I call my BBQ pit in the backyard. Uncle Randy cooks your sausage like you ain’t never seen before in his hole o’ glory, and all he asks in return is a nice cold beer and a shoulder rub afterward. Maybe a smoke if you’re feeling ‘specially kind.
Anyway, I’m there tending to the plump wieners gettin’ mighty glorious over my hole, listenin’ to the all the family kids runnin’ around makin’ a ruckus. I just flip the juicy sausages to get nice and toasty on the other side, and chuckle to myself, excited for what’s comin’ later. Off the side of ‘ol glory is a bucket full of enough fireworks to make an elephant sh*t sparklers for weeks.
Uncle Randy got no kids ‘o his own, so what can I say? I like to spoil my nieces and nephews. Gonna be sure to give ‘em a Fourth of July they cain’t never forget.
I flip the thick meats to make sure I’ve given enough love to every grease-covered inch, and inhale the musty, smoky scent of the fluids that ooze out. Mmmhmm. Most people love watchin’ the wienerwursts get all plump n’ full, but it takes a real sausage connoisseur to appreciate the afterglow. Listenin’ to the little suckers whistle out as they slowly shrink back down from their cookin’ climax, closin’ my eyes to enjoy every wet pop and spit, now that’s Uncle Randy’s glory hole really workin’ its magic.
I shiver with pepperoni pleasure, and accidentally slip onto the side of my glorious pit. Before I can catch myself, my elbow knocks into the bucket ‘o fireworks, and the whole shebang-a-rang plunges into the flames, lappin’ up the roman candles and sparklers and Howlin’Andy’s and everything else.
My sausages shoot up unto the air, screamin’ one after another, pissin’ out rainbows of fire and smoke. Uncle Randy’s glory hole been darn blown out tonight! Ain’t a barbeque no more, it’s a pit straight from the maw of Satan himself!
I do a quick thinkin’ and dash for my safety water, a can of Mother Earth goodness ready to go in case I ever needed protection from a particularly nasty sausage. The fireworks are roarin’ even louder now, I need to douse that sucker before ‘lil Anne-Marie and Tommy and Bonnie and Jemkins and Susie and Carvile and Mabel and Joe go up in flames like the devil done took ‘em! I unscrew the lid of the safety water, shake it up for good luck, and yell with the lungs that Jesus gave me.
“Our actions begin where the glory holes end!”
With my well-trained, meaty hands, I squeeze the bottle so hard that in one second flat, a thick stream of liquid shoots out the can, straight into the flames.
Unfortunately though, now that I’m lookin’ at it right n’ proper, the can does say “gasoline” on it.
A bang and a glory hole delivered Uncle Randy from the world, just as a bang and a glory hole delivered him into it.
Be sure to check out the video for a dramatic reading, and to see how we used the elements we went over when writing the story!
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Images: Unsplash