Storytelling: The B-M-E Method

by Jay Speyerer

We tell stories for many reasons, from illustrating a point during a business presentation to just having fun at the family reunion retelling the one about Grandma getting locked in the outhouse. Many of our true stories can be told using fictional structure. Structure means the order in which you tell the events of your story.

Most writers start at the beginning of the story and write through the middle toward the end simply because that’s the way events unfold. That’s the B-M-E method: beginning, middle, and end. This method is born of a long and noble tradition, having been first codified by the Greek philosopher Aristotle more than 2,300 years ago. It was a Tuesday, it was raining, and he had nothing else to do, so he established this enduring and deceptively simple concept. To paraphrase his description: before the beginning there is nothing, and after the end there is nothing. That sounds a bit metaphysical, but he simply meant that before the story begins, nothing happens that we need to know about, nor after the end of the story. It doesn’t matter whether you’re describing a life-altering event or an illuminating anecdote. All the events in the story are self-contained. Read the following anecdote, then we’ll dissect it.

The Story
I was a missing person when I was three ... according to Mom.

We were a slightly extended household in the small town of New Brighton, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1952. My father’s sister, my Aunt Bea, lived with us then, so that made four of us. (Yes, I have an Aunt Bea. Call me Opie.) My father worked in a factory not far from our two-bedroom house. Aunt Bea was a young, single woman working in an office. Since her name was Beatrice, her family nickname was Beedee. But at 3 years of age, I had trouble pronouncing that, so to me she was "Aunt BB." She drove a big black 1936 Chevy, but she took the bus to work, leaving her car in our ramshackle garage. My mother was a housewife, back when it was still permissible to use that term. I held down a full time job as a toddler.

One morning, Dad and Aunt Bea were at work, and Mom was home with me. She was cleaning upstairs when she realized she couldn’t hear me. In fact, she hadn’t heard me for a while. She looked in both bedrooms and the bathroom; I wasn’t there. She looked downstairs in the dining room, living room and kitchen. No me. The basement door was locked, and the latch was too high for me to reach, so she knew I couldn’t be down there.

Unease building, Mom looked in the back yard. Not there. The front yard. Still nothing. She knocked on the door of our elderly neighbor, Mrs. Heinzig. I wasn’t there, nor had Mrs. Heinzig seen me. Panic at a peak now, she called our other next-door neighbor, a young man named Jim. As Jim stepped over the low fence that separated our two properties, my mother ran to him, crying. "I can’t find Jay!"

"Don’t worry," Jim said. "We’ll find him."

They glanced at the garage and its weathered wood and flaking paint, but the side door was closed, a small wooden peg still securing the lock’s hasp. As with the basement door, I couldn’t have gotten in there either.

They scoured the rest of the neighborhood, knocking on door after door, but no one had seen me. By this time, Mom had passed panic. She and Jim returned to the back yard, simply because there was nowhere else to look. Then my mother noticed the big garage door.

Aunt Bea’s Chevy was long, and the garage was old, so old that it was too short for the car. When the car was parked in the garage, the big double doors would close only part way, not quite touching the back bumper. This resulted in a small gap. Mom and Jim pulled the doors open and entered the gloom of the garage.

They moved to the side window of the car and there I was, calmly sitting in the back seat. I looked up at the two relieved faces and happily informed them, "Me go in BB’s car."

The Breakdown
There’s a writer’s rule of thumb about structure that says "get your hero up a tree, throw stones at him, then get him down."

Problem is introduced, problem gets worse, problem is resolved.

Can’t find child, can’t find child anywhere, find child.

Beginning, middle, and end.

Read any conventionally plotted novel or watch any TV show or see any mass market American movie, and 999 times out of a thousand, you’ll find this structure if you look for it.

The first line of the story was to get your attention. Onward.

In the rest of the setup, I wanted to provide enough details to allow you to paint a picture in your mind and still not overburden you with minutiae. What details did I provide? No matter what year you read this, you know how old I am now since I was three in 1952. You know our immediate family structure and living arrangements. The detail of my aunt’s 16-year-old car says as much about economic circumstances as about how they built cars in those days. Really, what more do we need?

(One important fact not in evidence is that my mother was a very conscientious parent. She misplaced me only that one time.)

As you tell your story, answer the questions that every reporter asks: who, what, when, where, and why. Just be careful about where in the story you answer them.

Beginning: who, when, where, some of the what.

Middle: who, more of the what.

End: who, the rest of the what, and all of the why.

We don’t learn the why until the end. If you provide too many answers at the beginning, you don’t need to tell the story.

In the beginning of the story, your job is to do three things:
1) Introduce the characters. Who is the story about and who takes part in it? My mother, our neighbor, Jim, and, offstage for most of the action, yours truly.
2) Establish the setting. Where are we and when are we? My house in a small Pennsylvania town in 1952.
3) Establish the problem or issue that is being dealt with. A child is missing.
The middle is where the problem might get worse or more complicated; this is known as "rising action." Complications and reversals arise, exacerbating the problem. Not only can my mother not find me in the house, she can’t find me outside in the yards, at the neighbors’ houses, or anywhere in the neighborhood. Fiction writers talking shop will speak of conflict, and, being human, we find conflict interesting (other people’s conflict anyway; we don’t like it when it happens to us). In our equation, conflict = problem, and no problem = no interest. The conflict doesn’t need to be a war, it can just be someone seeking something or someone, and being unable to immediately achieve that goal.

Not all events have rising action, but if you structure it properly, your story will seem to have a middle. Do not make up details! Just tell us what happened by starting slowly. Introduce a minor aspect of the main problem first, then move to the knottier parts of the problem, then finally, the solution.

In the end, we have the resolution wherein the problem is resolved. Mom and Jim find me in Aunt Bea’s car. In some true stories, the problem might not be completely solved, but some kind of closure is achieved. Many times in life – too many, sadly – problems drag on and on and seem never to come to a resolution.

Remember: Whether it's fact or fiction, if the series of events doesn’t have a conclusion, it’s not a story.