I would like to revive this topic a bit. I have a question for the more experienced writers. The question may sound a bit strange, but I am still a newbie and I want to learn. So I want to ask for an oppinion. Here is the issue I have:
Before I went to Tapas, a few people reviewed a part of the story. One person - apparently he is also a writer, gave me a a review I can´t really get behind, because it felt odd and a bit stubborn. Since he is almost half my age, I don´t know how serious I should take his advice. He was talking about story structure. Act one â setup, act two â confrontation, act three â resolution. He wasn´t wrong, but he said this should be applied in every episode. If we would be talking about arcs (my story has 4 major arcs) or standalone episodes â 100% yes. But if a storyline is not so linear or several episodes form a cohesive part, I think this should not apply to every episode but the part as such (witch it does). And it also doesn´t fit every kind of story.
When I disect the start of my story, Michelle starts as a regular high school student. And since the story is written mostly from her perspective, as the story goes we mostly learn what she learns. So basically ep. 1+2 is the setup, conflict is inside Michelle and what could pass as resolution is found in ep.3 what creates the setup for another bigger inner conflict. And sometimes the episodes end with a questionmark or a scene that directly continues in the next episode.
His other complain was that the first episode gave almost nothing away except for the big question â who are the new students that look and behave complety out of place (and straight away asked if I have something against people that are different). Michelle is something like a hobby school detective â too curious for her own good. I don´t think it would be good to give everything away directly in ep1 instead of creating a hook. The mystery and tention build up would be missing.
But what do you think? Thank you
