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Tag Archives: plotting
Write that Novel 3!
Looking for a story idea? Here are a few titles that just might get you started.
- Courage in the Face of Commas
- All’s Well That Doesn’t End in Murder
- It’s All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses Their (His/Her) Life
- Romancing the Keystone State
- The Top Ten Things I Really Shouldn’t Have Had for Breakfast
- Zen and the Art of Golf Ball Fishing
- Monster Sandwich
So write that novel—but what’s the plot? Share your craziest idea for a book with any of the above titles in the comments!
Photo by Malik M. L. Williams
The basics of plot
Last week at ThrillFest, NYT bestseller William Bernhardt gave eight basics of plot as part of the CraftFest track. And my favorite point might just be his first.
1. Plot is the writer’s choice of events to tell the story of the character’s progression toward the goal or desire.
Sometimes as authors, we can let our characters run off with our story. That’s all well and good until suddenly they’re far afield from what we’d planned and going off in another genre and not even doing that well and stuck in a corner, and none of us knows how to get out. (Been there, done that!)
We, the authors, are in control. We get to choose the events. We get to create the characters. Your characters not doing what you want? Change their motivations. Work harder on getting to what they really want, and then manipulate the story circumstances or character so what they want will get them to do what you want.
This reminds me of a great example from a writing book I know I’ve read (I want to say Jack Bickham’s Scene and Structure, but it might be from Donald Maass or Sol Stein). In this example, the author needed the character, a nurse, to go back to check on a patient. Not hard, right? But the nurse was also busy, the patient on the other side of the complex, and a capable staff the nurse trusted was attending to him. So why would she make herself late and give herself the extra work when she knew the patient was in good hands?
I can’t remember the exact solution, but the author found some little detail that would bug the nurse—thinking she’d left something undone, perhaps. The nurse thought about that nagging little detail, watching the clock count down until the moment she could run back and check on it. This transforms the character action from the author jerking the character around to the author guiding the character and molding her into the person who would do exactly what you need her to.
This relates well to Bernhardt’s second point:
2. The plot must be right for the character—and vice versa.
The rest of the points:
3. The plot is composed of a series of conflicts. (See point 8 here.)
4. The protagonist should fail many times before succeeding.
5. The protagonist’s story is only as interesting as the antagonist makes it.
6. Readers like to be surprised.
7. Readers hate coincidence.
8. Conflict can be inner, personal or external.
What do you think? What’s your favorite “plot point”? (LOL)
Photo by Matthew McVickar
Write that Novel 2!
Looking for a story idea? Here are a few titles that just might get you started.
- Say Bagels and Laugh
- The Book of Unhappy Endings
- Dumped by Paris
So write that novel—but what’s the plot? Share your craziest idea for a book with any of the above titles in the comments!
Photo by Georg Mayer
Guest Post: The Mess in the Middle
I enjoyed this post when I read it on Writer Unboxed—and then Miss Barry’s publicist emailed it as a potential guest post. I jumped on it!
By Brunonia Barry, author of The Map of True Places
One year into a two-year book deadline, I have reached page 165 in my manuscript. So far, my characters have obediently done everything I’ve asked of them, but today something changed. This morning, they couldn’t seem to take a step without tripping over their feet. So they decided to stand still. I couldn’t make them go forward, and I couldn’t make them go back. When I asked what the problem was, they told me they were confused.
I’d be panicked about this situation except that I’ve been here before. Twice. And even more if you count the screenplays I wrote when I lived in LA or the books I’ve written for ‘tweens. While I don’t like it, I have come to expect that there are times when characters just won’t move.
For me, this always happens in the same place, maybe not always on page 165 but some place close to it. It’s always in the middle of the book. “What was it you wanted me to do?” seems to be the question my characters ask, and when I tell them, they become skeptical. Since I trust characters over plot every time, I tend to listen when a character tells me “I wouldn’t do that kind of thing.” And the middle of the book is always where they seem to doubt their motivation.
There’s a name for this. It’s called the mess in the middle. It’s an expression I first heard when I was enrolled in one of Robert McKee’s screenwriting workshops. I was writing a comedy called Sluts, a sort of West Coast Sex in the City with an edge, when my characters refused the adventures I was trying to send them on and threatened to infect me with a case of writer’s block if I persisted in giving them directions. They were angry with me, and who could blame them? As a relatively new writer, I was lost and confused.
Confusion, in itself, doesn’t bother me. I honor it as part of the writing process, a byproduct of communing with the muse. It is a frequent ailment, but not a serious one. Unfortunately, the mess in the middle is a different illness. If left unchecked, it can be fatal. I’m willing to wager that this midpoint is where most writers abandon their projects. I know it has been true for me. I have several unfinished manuscripts sitting in drawers, including that screenplay. One day, knowing what I know now, I may open the drawer and dust off those stories. Meanwhile, I’ll tell you exactly what the mess in the middle is, and what you can do about it.
I’m sure you’ve heard that old story about the mountain. You are climbing a tree lined mountain trail in an effort to see the view from the top. You’ve been walking for quite a while. About halfway up, you realize that you don’t have any idea where you are. You can no longer see the bottom of the mountain, and you cannot yet see the top. You begin to panic. If it were up to you, you’d just quit, but you can’t. You’re halfway up the side of a mountain for God’s sake.
So what do you do? If you’ve prepared for the hike, you’ve been smart enough to bring a map. Though it’s an exercise in blind faith, you have no choice but to follow it.
In writing, my map is my step outline. Though I write free form for quite a while when I’m starting a project, I am not a pantser. I believe very strongly in outlines. Once I’ve captured the voice of the characters and know them well enough to ask that first what if question that propels them forward, it is time to create a step outline.
My outline is simple enough. It contains only the major steps of the story. Sometimes it’s a sentence or paragraph, sometimes a list of bullet points. I spend more time on it that any other aspect of my writing, because it’s the only tool that allows me to see the big picture. It particularly helps with pacing and with the progression of character changes. If I follow it, I seldom get into trouble.
The problem is, sometimes I don’t follow it. I am moving along so fast, and the story is going so well, that I just keep writing. This is exactly what I discovered this morning when I went back to look at my outline. A few days ago, I was writing so furiously that I skipped a step, and, as a result, my characters missed an important turn. If they had reached the impasse immediately, I might have spotted my omission. Unfortunately, the dead end hadn’t come until the following chapter, several turns later.
If I hadn’t taken the time to create my map, I might never have found my mistake. The manuscript might have ended up in that drawer with my screenplay. Luckily, with my step outline and just a bit of work, I was able to get my characters back on track. They are now happily moving forward.
How are your story maps constructed? Do you outline? Have you experienced the mess in the middle?
Author Bio
Born and raised in Massachusetts, Brunonia Barry, lives in Salem with her husband and their beloved golden retriever, Byzantium.
Barry is the first American Writer to win the Woman’s International Fiction Festival’s 2009 Baccante Award (for The Lace Reader). Her second novel, The Map of True Places is out now.
For more information please visit http://www.BrunoniaBarry.com, and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter.
Photo by Jack Keene
Post © 2011 Brunonia Barry, author of The Map of True Places. Reprinted with permission.
Posted in Technique
Tagged brunonia barry, guest post, mess in the middle, outline, plotting
3 Comments
Q is for Questions
Questions can be a great way to get ready to write. We looked at some character questions last week. This time, I want to look at my favorite idea/plot generating questions.
- What if . . . ?
- How could X happen?
- What would it take
- How can this be more? Do I have any other ideas this would combine with well?
- What’s the worst thing that could happen?
- What does this character want?
- What kind of person would want/not want this?
- What else is going on in his/her life?
- Who is the least likely suspect?
- Who would be the worst/most painful person to do this to the protagonist?
- Why would s/he do such a thing?
- How can I get A to do/want/say Q?
- What other part of the story can I tie this to?
- Who else is in play here?
- How can this character have a subplot that parallels the main plot?
- What else can go wrong?
- How can I make something go right, but at such a wrong time that it just makes everything worse?
- Who else is out to get them? Why?
- What else is going on in this setting? How can that tie in?
- Can I make things worse?
Sometimes, I find myself just answering these questions subconsciously as I plot and write, but usually I can trace my thought process back through the questions I asked myself to get there.
What do you think? What kind of questions do you ask yourself when plotting?
Photo by Gillian Maniscalco
P is for plotting (and pantsing)
Personally, I think there’s a wide spectrum when it comes to whether or not you outline before you write. Yes, okay, having an outline or not having an outline is pretty cut-and-dried, but there are a lot of in betweens:
- An idea for an opening
- An idea for a beginning and a middle
- An idea for a beginning, a middle and an end (a mental outline, perhaps?)
- Ideas for several major guideposts in the story (written down?), with room to figure out how to move between them
- A written outline of the major guideposts and all the transitions between them.
- A chapter-by-chapter synopsis of the story.
- A scene-by-scene spreadsheet, possibly including dialogue, setting, exposition.
Once upon a time, I was at the pantser (as in “by the seat of your pants”) end of the spectrum. And my stories were often a mess. (Winchester Mystery Story, anyone?) Whether or not they’d turn out all right was hit-or-miss.
Then I got into a larger project: parallel novels written simultaneously with a friend. We had to work to coordinate our timelines. There was no way to pants this without ruining one another’s books. I broke down and plotted. And to my surprise, it was even better than pantsing!
But while I’m definitely a plotting convert, I’m not a hard-core-plan-every-scene-to-the-final-detail kind of writer. Like pantsers (and probably most plotters to some extent), I need at least a little discovery and creativity to make drafting fun for me. I’m still experimenting at how much discovery vs. planning I need—my last draft was a little short on the planning. It wasn’t until I sat down and figured out my path in a little more detail that I could finish the book. (And I’m going to need to add some more structure in some parts—that darn sagging middle!)
So where do you fall? How did you come to be a plotter or pantser?
Photo by fracacta
“Brainedness” and plotting
I recently took one of those half-brained quizzes. Er, um, right-brain/left-brain quizzes 
. I was a little surprised at my result (though my husband guessed what I was right off the bat. Go figure.).
There are positives and negatives to both sides. Traditionally, left-brained people are the analytical and logical. Right-brained people are the “creative types.” Personally, I didn’t want to be left-brained—who wants to be characterized as someone completely devoid of emotion and creativity?—and I didn’t want to be right-brained—who wants to be seen as flighty and incapable of reason?
Thinking about all this got me wondering whether “brainedness” had anything to do with whether or not you plot your stories in advance. Are right-brainers less likely to plot? Are left-brainers more likely to? So, I’m asking you:
Because the quiz I linked to always gave a “whole brain” 16/16 result, I reset the poll. Please answer again, and if you need to, here’s a quiz that gives real results.
Click through to take the poll!
(If you’re not sure where you fall on the brainedness spectrum, this quiz—that quiz is rigged, try this one only takes a couple minutes. On the plotting spectrum, I tend to be quite generous—if you’ve written down a plan for the course of your story with specific events, even if you don’t follow it or the events aren’t super specific, I consider that plotting.)
What do you think? Did your results or the poll’s results surprise you?
Free PDF guide for the Plot Thickens
Our blog series on plotting was well-timed to get us prepared for NaNo (even though I’m not participating).
Ready to review our whirlwind tour through the hows and whys of plotting, as well as several different methods? Good news—the free PDF of The Plot Thickens is ready!
I know several readers are doing NaNo, but many aren’t. Any votes on what we should look at next?
Posted in Technique
Tagged free guide, free writing guide, guide, mwahahaha, pdf, plotting
3 Comments
