The "Somebody Wanted But So" Technique

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Welcome to the Inside Creative Writing podcast, the weekly discussion of craft and technique for writers of fiction and creative nonfiction. And now here's your host, writer and educator, Brad Reed. Episode 14. On today's show, we'll be talking about a plotting technique called somebody wanted but so, a great way to avoid flat characters, lifeless plot lines, and stories that don't go anywhere.

Okay, welcome back to the show after a surprisingly extended hiatus. It is episode 14. I appreciate your patience with the podcast. You know, as I make this transition into full-time teaching, honestly, these shows are going to be a little bit hit and miss. That's just the nature of a high school teacher. The students have to come first, so I hope you'll bear with me as I head off in this new adventure and how it affects this podcast.

Along that line of thinking, the reason I've returned to doing this show really is for the students. A huge part of my educational theory is that our students are not getting enough reading input in order for them to effectively create output in the form of writing. You see, everything I do in the classroom hinges on a vibrant and divergent reading experience, which depends on having a great class library.

So this podcast is now primarily a means to raise support for building and maintaining this classroom library. If you appreciate the show, I hope you'll take a few minutes to head on over to the show's website and see how a donation as little as $5 could help provide books for the next generation of readers and writers. It would mean the world to me and to my students.

Introduction to Plotting Technique

But enough about that. On to today's topic, Somebody Wanted But So. Okay, so Somebody Wanted But So. This is a technique that I discovered as I was learning to teach high school English. And really, it's a technique to help students identify the main plot line of a story.

So what is it? What is this Somebody Wanted But So? And we'll get to how this can improve our writing in just a moment.

But first of all, in its simplest form, think of it like a paper divided into four columns. And at the top of each column, you're going to have written Somebody. The second column is Wanted.

The third column is But. And the fourth column is So. So in that Somebody column, you're going to have your main character. You're going to write his name and just a little bit about that character.

So we'll use the example of Harry Potter to kind of illustrate this for you. So an example in our Somebody column, I would write Harry Potter, a young boy living under the stairs who finds out that he is a wizard. So that's going to be our first Somebody column.

The second is Wanted. Now the Wanted is the Somebody's desire. What is their main desire in the story?

So in keeping with our Harry Potter example, Harry Potter just wants to live in a world where he can be with his friends, where he can use his magic for good, and live a happy life. That's Harry's Wanted. So that's our Somebody Wanted. The But column. The But is what stops the Somebody from getting their want.

So that's our third column. What is the but of the story? So in our example of Harry Potter, our but is Voldemort, right? Voldemort is seeking to destroy everything that's good in the world, especially to destroy Harry Potter.

So that's a pretty big but in our story. And the fourth column is the So. The So is how the Somebody overcomes or maybe doesn't overcome the but of the story.

So in our example, our fourth column, the So would be something like Harry Potter relies on his friends and his own abilities to destroy Voldemort. So there we have the main arc of the Harry Potter stories. Now that probably seems overly simplistic. And it is, I'll admit that.

But that doesn't mean that it doesn't get ignored all the time. Now, many of the stories I've read from unpublished authors suffer from a failure on this basic level. They don't have a clear Somebody. They don't have what they want. They don't have but what gets in the way of that want. And they don't have the so.

How does the story resolve? So these are really key things to keep in mind. So this is really where the technique begins. It's kind of a 10,000 foot view of your story as a whole. Can you clearly define each of these four points in your story? Is your Somebody compelling and interesting?

Is there want something strong enough to drive the story forward? Is the but that is stopping them from getting it presenting enough conflict? And how does the Somebody get past the but?

In other words, what is your so? So because this is a podcast, you do have the option and the ability to pause it. And I hope that you'll actually do that right now. I'd like you to take just a few minutes, grab a paper, divide it into those four columns and think of the story you're working on right now. See if your story has a clear Somebody, Wanted, But, So in there.

So take just a minute and do that. And welcome back. I hope you actually took the time to do that. It's it can be an interesting experience to to find that you thought you had a solid story and you're missing one of those key elements.

Expanding the Framework

Now I want to complicate the simple idea in a few ways. Somebody Wanted But So is great for the basic structure of a story, but it can also be used to bring your entire story as well as each of the characters alive. If you've got the Somebody Wanted But So down, I want you to add another element, another column to that. I've found that adding a needed column immediately improves my stories.

So sure, the character wants something. They want fame or money. They want the girl. They want the guy. They want the job. Maybe they just want to keep on staying alive.

But what they need is often very different and may even be a mystery to your somebody. So somebody who wants fame might actually need self-acceptance, something like that. So figure out what your character needs and then create a but and a so for that need, just like you did for the want. Your story immediately gets more interesting, more real and more relatable to your reader. After all, we all want things and we all need things, but how often are those two things diametrically opposed to each other?

Now that's interesting fiction when that happens. So now we've got the basic structure down, the journey and change of our main character. But we're still just seeing the tip of the iceberg of the effectiveness of this technique.

Character Development

Now do the same thing for all your other main characters. That's how we really make this work. If you have flat characters, it's because their only purpose there is to advance the plot of your main character. They don't actually have their own authentic wants and needs. They don't have lives of their own.

Applying Technique in Scenes

So now build a Somebody Wanted slash Needed but so for each of your major characters and they'll come alive in your story. Give them an agenda that they are trying to accomplish. Even if that agenda doesn't fully reveal itself in your story, just by you knowing what that character is after, your story will deepen. And finally, I want to talk about where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. In each and every scene of your story, we can use this technique. It's my opinion that every single scene, every single interaction can benefit from a scene level Somebody Wanted but so.

Now what do I mean by that? Before you write a scene or definitely before you revise a scene, spend some time sketching out what each character is after and what's stopping them from getting it. Each character in that scene, no matter how major or minor, should have a want and a need.

Now your characters will act differently. They'll talk differently when they all have an agenda that they are trying to accomplish. And just like in real life, everyone you meet is after something. They have things that are stopping them from getting that something. And they're all working all of that out through all of their interactions in the world. We can make our characters behave the same way and make them more authentic.

So there you have it, really a simple technique that when applied across all of your writing from that 10,000 foot level right down to the scene level, can improve your stories dramatically. So in the interest of time, I'm dropping the weekly wise word and weekly writing challenge. You'll also notice that some of these podcasts may begin to skew a little shorter than previous podcasts. I'm trying to tone down my perfectionist personality a little bit and decide that it's more important to get this information out on a more regular basis than kind of wait until everything's perfect and I have a full 30 minute show.

So I'm dropping the weekly wise word and weekly writing challenge just because it seems to me that almost all of the episodes contain a kind of inherent writing challenge. And advice on writing is as close as a Google search. I hope it's something that you're doing every once in a while is just Googling what other writers have to say about writing. It always opens my eyes.

So until next time, I hope you'll drop in at the show's website and start a conversation with your fellow writers about today's topic. And please do consider helping support my classroom library project so I can get that up off the ground and so that I can justify the time investment in this podcast in the future. As always, remember the best way to improve your craft is by writing. That's what I'm off to go do and I hope you're off to do the same.

So let's get some words on paper this week and we'll meet up again soon for another episode of the show's website. Thanks for listening to the Inside Creative Writing podcast with your host, writer and educator Brad Reed. We'll be back next week, but until then, join the conversation at the show's website.