Plot Plotting

June 30th, 2010 by Sara

Today I got out a rag and cleaned off my white board. The wide open surface and blissfully erasable markers make it the perfect tool for me to see my story as one big picture. Once I have it there, I can see where the action falls and whether events should come sooner or later. Where it might be dragging or maybe overwhelming the reader with information.

It’s an interesting exercise, but it can also be a confusing one. Everyone agrees that stories should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. But the theories on just how these should play out are endless and often contradictory. People write whole books on the subject, make their living teaching seminars about it, and create graphs detailing just how and when tension should rise or fall.

These differing pictures of plot are confusing enough without even mentioning three act structure or the hero’s journey or A and B plots.

The truth is that each book is different and plot often can’t be distilled down to an x and y axis. But it’s still important that we ask ourselves: How do we keep the tension going in a story? How do we hook the reader over and over so that they keep reading? How do we divvy out information? How do we reveal secrets? Which scenes do we show and which do we skip over?

Pacing and tension are some of the most challenging things to do in a book and though editors might be able to help you shore up your story structure, you’ll never get that help if an editor isn’t interested enough to read your book in the first place. So I keep some personal rules in mind.

• If I’m bored writing a scene, then people will be bored reading it. Sometimes we write scenes purely to maneuver our character into the situation we want them to be in. But this is always a mistake. That sort of scene does nothing to advance the plot. In addition, it often forces our character to behave in ways that don’t feel natural.

• The problem can be the solution. Problem: The scene is boring. Answer: Make the character bored. They will get restless and automatically get themselves into trouble. Which, ultimately, is right where you want them.

• Let your characters lead and shape your story. I tend to write plot heavy books, but even so, this is a crucial rule. If you create three-dimensional, interesting, and believable characters, then, like volatile chemicals, they will mix together in ways you never could have imagined. Trust them to move the story in unexpected directions. They will find their own way through your plot.

• And lastly, be mean to your character. The best way to make your story interesting is to make your character take risks and suffer. This can be hard because we grow to love our characters, even the villains. Not to mention that they are often aspects of ourselves. But despite this, we must push them to their breaking points. Only then can they be truly triumphant.

Graphs and theories can be infinitely helpful tools when it comes to creating novels. But the key is to listen to your story and trust that it will find its own way through. Beginning. Middle. And End.

Posted in Characters, Hooks, Writing

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Hearing Your Story

June 14th, 2010 by Sara

Writing a new story is like inhabiting a new world. It doesn’t matter whether you’re writing about high school crushes or aliens or high school crushes on aliens, there are strangers you’ve never met, unfamiliar landscapes, traditions you don’t yet understand. And the trick is, you don’t just need to get to know this new world, you have to make it come to life in full technicolor glory.

Some people suggest that when writing crucial scenes in your book, you should employ at least three out of the five senses. As in: “Sara listened to the computer hum impatiently while she tried to think of a good example. She stalled, grimacing as she took a gulp of bitter coffee-gone-cold. The shiny, smooth keys of her computer beckoned her to be brilliant, but alas, she wrote this instead.”

This is a great technique and I like to expand it to the story creation process. Because unless the world feels real to you, in all five senses, it’s not going to feel real to the reader. Bringing your fiction into the physical world anchors you in your character’s voice and setting in a way that nothing else does. So in the past I’ve talked about building dioramas, collecting shoe boxes full of stuff my character loves, and, most importantly for me, finding a soundtrack to my story.

In my last project, I incessantly listened to the soundtrack to Battlestar Galactica, letting its Taiko drums and wailing flutes build tension and tone in my writing space. I can’t help but feel that the words are infused with a sense of that music, much like honey is flavored by the flowers that bees visit.

So when I started a new story, I felt lost without music for my new world. I started avidly listening to the radio, asking friends what they were listening to, paying attention to soundtracks in movies. At the same time, I was searching for the voice of my main character. For a while, writing was frustrating, my words feeling more like an outline than a book. Then I found Sigur Ros.

This Icelandic band has a raw tone that feels bleak and wistful and, occasionally, soaringly hopeful. The first song I heard by them stunned me. I could literally see one of my key scenes unfolding in my mind. It was like being given a key to this world I had been circling and spying on for so long. Suddenly, I could walk with my character through the streets of my story. Amazingly, when my husband heard the same song later, he had the same experience. For weeks I’d been talking about this world, about this character, bouncing ideas off of him, and this song triggered the same emotions in him as it did in me.  Now I could not only visualize my world, I could hear it too. And in the space of one song, my story had come to life.

Posted in Characters, First draft, Writing

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