The Annotated "Saving the Planet & Stuff" Unplanned Post: Ripped From The Headlines!!!

Oh,  my gosh.  The  Saving the Planet & Stuff storyline involves Michael discovering that a major store chain has been selling insulation with mold. The Earth's Wife, the magazine he's working for,  has the opportunity to blow this story sky high, but the new managing editor has kept the story from publisher Nora Blake because he wants to take The Wife in a different direction. Michael finds himself in a dilemma that involves one of the book's major themes--how do we decide what is the right course of action, the right thing to do?

Well, just now I read that Home Depot is phasing out toxic vinyl flooring from its stores! Now moldy insulation that causes hallucinations isn't toxic flooring "linked to a laundry list of ailments." Plus it sounds as if Home Depot is acting pro-actively in requiring the the chemical in question no longer be used in flooring it carries while the company in Saving the Planet & Stuff doesn't. But except for all that, I see a parallel. It's there! I'm not hallucinating. (Well, not much.)

Man, what luck that I republished Saving the Planet & Stuff  a mere two years before this happened so everyone can ooh and aah over how prescient I was, huh? Also, what luck that I still haven't replaced the flooring in my kitchen. When I go shopping, I'll be checking out the chemical content of those vinyl squares I'm looking at.

Update To Add Excerpt

A reader asked for a Saving the Planet & Stuff excerpt related to the mold storyline described above. Ask and ye shall receive!

     "Oh, you're familiar with the story I'm working on?" Doug asked, sounding pleased.
     "Sure. I saw the e-mail about the hallucinations, remember? What kind of hallucinations are we talking about, anyway?" Michael asked.
     "They involve sounds. People have been hearing things," Doug explained.
     "Voices telling them to do stuff?" Michael asked hopefully.
     "I wish! There's no way they could keep a lid on that kind of story. No, these hallucinations involve hearing annoying songs. There was one person who would hear Frank Sinatra singing and see all his furniture dance along."
     "Wow," Michael said appreciatively. "So people have been seeing things, too. And hearing Frank Sinatra. That's bad."
     Doug laughed. "I'd be seeing a doctor if it were happening to me."
     "Isn't it funny the way everyone carries on about how awful heavy metal is, and it's Frank Sinatra who people hear when they're hallucinating?" Michael asked.
     "Ironic, isn't it?"

The Weekend Writer: Revision Means Getting Rid Of What You Don't Need

I'm in the midst of a big revision right now, and I'm doing things a little differently. I had two influences.

The Plot Whisperer

In The Plot Whisperer Martha Alderson writes about making sure that scenes include dramatic action, character development, and thematic significance. I'm working with a chart to keep track of those three elements in each chapter. What about material that doesn't relate to any of those things?

Some Disappointing Reading

For several years, one of my sons and I have been slowly making our way through a beloved fantasy series. I gave him the next volume last year for Christmas. He passed it on to me earlier this year with the comment, "It's not very good."

I finally started reading it a few weeks ago, and I have to agree with my offspring's assessment. Right away I could tell what was bothering me about the book. There was lots of clever, even amusing, material that didn't relate to any story. It didn't deal with the dramatic action and character development Alderson wrote about, and that early into the story I had no way of knowing if it had anything to do with thematic significance. This somewhat random wordiness made the book  slow reading. It was difficult to tell just what the narrative line was, so I had little desire to follow it. In fact, I've put the book aside.

What Does This Mean For My Project?

Taking the two influences together--Alderson's contention that dramatic action, character development, and thematic significance be included in every scene and my reading of a book with scenes that included a lot of material that didn't relate to any of those things--led me to become hyperaware of material in my manuscript that had nothing to do with action, character, or theme. What I'm finding is that a lot of that material no longer seems necessary. It drags down my reading. So it's being cut.

Right now I'm not missing it.

The Weekend Writer: Organic Writers And Plotters

I am an organic writer, as I said earlier this month, which makes it difficult for me to talk about plotting. What is an organic writer, you ask? I've seen references to us for a long time, but usually the references aren't very involved, as if many people aren't clear on what we are. ("I may not know organic writers, but I recognize one when I see one!") We are said to write by the seat of our pants. Thus you sometimes hear us referred to by the mildly vulgar term "pantsers." We are said not to plot. I once saw a blogger describe us as using our first drafts to find our stories, meaning we sit down to write before we know what our story will be.

Plotters, on the other hand, presumably plot out their stories before they start to write. My understanding is that they know what they're going to write, they just have to sit down and do it. I once read a plotter describe spending three months working out his plot before he started actually writing. I don't know if most plotting writers do that, or if plots spring from their heads fully formed, or how they work at all. I can only guess what they do.

My last Weekend Writer post dealt with The Plot Whisperer by Martha Alderson. Alderson provides some of the best writing on organic writers that I've ever seen.

Organic writers, she says, tend to think in pictures, as in "the big picture,"  rather than language, while plotters go the other way. They are more analytical and detail oriented. Organic writers tend to prefer writing about characters while plotters prefer dramatic action. Organic writers tend to see a story as a whole and are short on details. Plotters tend to see the story in its parts. Organic writers may concentrate on character and end up being weak on the action that drives readers to stick with a story. Plotters may concentrate on action scenes and lose readers who need human interest.

I agree with a lot of what Alderson has to say about organic writers. Our interest in the big picture tends to leave us going, Okay, how do I get to that big picture? This is why formulaic plotting plans often aren't very useful for us. They involve coming up with details. A problem to solve and roadblocks to solving said problem or, heaven help me, metaphorical doors to go through or not are more mystifying than not for us. If I have problems coming up with details, telling me to come up with details isn't going to provide me with a lot of help.

Plotters are like engineers who design every element of a project so that it can be built into a completed whole. Plotters supposedly know what's going to happen in their story after they have their plot worked out, just as engineers know how their project will turn out once they've finished their, though both may have to make some changes before the job is done. Organic writers are also like engineers, engineers who have to "fast track" a project, meaning construction begins before they've finished the design. Organic writers frequently begin writing before they even are clear on what the basic story is going to be. Their process is all about design changes.

In future posts, I'll have more to say about writing process for organic writers.

The Weekend Writer: Hunting For Your Story With Plot And The Assistance Of A Dead, White Male

I forgot to mention in my discussions of plot that we can use it to help us find stories. Remember, plot is different from story. A plot is the series of causal events--one leading to another--that make up a story, an account of something that happened to somebody. So if we've been having trouble getting from an idea that is merely a situation (such as a guy riding a stationary bike along with the Tour de France riders, who he is watching on a TV) to an account of something that happened to somebody (I do not know what that would be for the Le Tour stationary bike guy), working to come up with a basic plot is one more thing, like working with characters, setting, point of view, setting, theme, and voice, that can help us make the trip.

Okay, Freytag's Pyramid. What does that have to do with plot? Well, Freytag's Pyramid describes with a nice graphic a basic plot structure. It's the plot that many of us learned about in school. Aristotle's name gets thrown around a bit when discussing writing, and, sure enough, you can find talk of Aristotle's Incline in relation to plot. Aristotle's Incline is sort of a lopsided Freytag's Pyramid. Both plot plans involve action that becomes more and more intense until there is a climactic moment in the story--the bully is defeated! the vampires and werewolves fight! Then the excitement drops off. Both graphics can work, depending on how rapidly you think action should drop after a climax or how much resolution/wrap up you want to do after the climactic moment.

I am particularly fond of  boring, white, dead guy Freytag's Pyramid for one reason and one reason alone. It is simple. There are big sections on Freytag's Pyramid for rising and falling action, but he doesn't go on about doors and steps and when we should be adding what where, which some plotting schemes require. (Yeah, I'm talking about you, Hero's Journey.) Elaborate plot constructions for writers to follow may result in fine books, but for this writer, they are like having to solve a puzzle before I even get started writing. I don't like puzzles.

Notice that Freytag's Pyramid includes an "inciting incident." I've become very interested in inciting incidents, or what I prefer to think of as a "disturbance to the protagonist's world." A post for another weekend.

The Weekend Writer: Give Your Character Something To Want--Just How Useful Is That?

Several years ago when I started thinking that maybe I'd find writing a lot easier if I studied up on plot, I attended a plotting talk at a weekend retreat. The speaker, a writer who had published only one book that had won a very big award, described a well-known system for creating plots. She said to create a plot by first giving your main characters something to want. Then keep it from them.

I didn't walk away feeling I'd experienced a revelation. But I have been thinking about this workshop ever since. It took a while, but I finally decided I didn't see how this system could be particularly useful.

First off, I don't see this as a method for generating plots. Remember, plot is the series of causal steps that make up a story. Do we see any causal relationships here? At all? Instead, I see the give-them-something-to-want-and-keep-them-from-getting-it concept as a formula. It will create a story about someone overcoming adversity (the keep-them-from-getting-it part) in order to live a dream/achieve happiness/an uplifting ending (the give-them-something-to-want part). There's nothing wrong with a formula story, if it's a formula you happen to enjoy. But that's a long way from a plot.

Imagine you are a writer who really does enjoy reading and writing stories about overcoming adversity. Then imagine you've just been told to give your main character something to want and then keep it from him or her. Even if you've already done all the work we've discussed these last few months so that you are close to a story idea about someone overcoming adversity--a story being something that happens to somebody and its significance--won't you be left wondering, What? What do I give him or her to want? If you haven't gotten to the point of a true story idea, won't you really be stumped? And then, okay, you've come up with something for him or her to want. How do you come up with a reason your character can't get what he or she wants?

That was one of my first thoughts after that workshop--Where is this stuff supposed to come from?

Many times, when writers say they have trouble with plot, they mean they have trouble coming up with material. All the give-them-something-to-want-and-keep-them-from-getting-it system does is tell us to come up with material, which is the very thing we have trouble doing.

There has to be some other ways to do this.

The Weekend Writer: Beginning To Play With Plot

I put off discussing plot, because it's so difficult. Many people complain about plotting. It's particularly a problem for organic writers such as myself. We have this overall impression of a profound and meaningful concept or situation, but we don't have the details down. And plot, which is the series of causal steps that make up a story, has a lot to do with detail.

So many people have trouble with plot  you'd assume that it's a good thing that so much is written about it. There are lots and lots of plot planning information and how-tos out there. Over the next few weeks, I'll be writing about some of them. To get started, take a look at Why The Hero's Journey is a Tourist Trap by Lisa Cron (Wired for Story), which appeared at Writer Unboxed just this past week.

The Hero's Journey describes common elements that occur in mythic tales and even some contemporary ones. In the years since it was first identified by Joseph Campbell, it has become the basis for workshops and books on plotting. In Cron's article for Writer Unboxed, she argues that writers should start with character before plot and that conforming to a plot pattern like the very formal one involved with the Hero's Journey doesn't necessarily mean creating a a particularly compelling story. It's just a structure.

Cron says, "Focus on the story first, then worry about structure..." But, remember, that means knowing your story in the first place.

Brushing Up On Plotting For The May Days Project

My May Days project involves coming up with an outline for a book I've been thinking about writing for, maybe, ten years. I got started with research and a few notes twice. But with my last few writing projects, I've been trying to get away from the organic writer thing and do more pre-writing plotting. So that's what's happening this month with this latest shot at this book.

Sometime before I wrote my last, for the time being, unpublished book, I invested in a copy of Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell. As a result, I've been very interested in plots starting with a disturbance to the main character's world, which he writes about. I really don't care for the give-characters-a-problem thing that I've heard so much about, but a disturbance to their world makes perfect sense to me. In fact, that's how almost all my books began before I'd even heard anything about disturbing a world. Disturbing people may come naturally to me.

Needless to say, that's how my May Days project is starting, with a disturbance.

Looking at my Plot & Structure notes this morning, I saw that Bell talks about plot patterns. I have three significant characters, and I'm going to try to give each one of them a different pattern, which is more or less their goal. For instance, one character's plot pattern/goal is revenge, the second's is a quest, and the third's is what Bell calls "one apart"--a loner who is forced to act.

Now, sometime in the past I found the following story structure plan at a website called Storyfix. It involves thinking of your plot as having four parts with a mid-point.

Part 1. Set up.

Part 2. Collecting information. Either the author, or the protagonist  Some people will talk about complications at this point in a story, but as an organic writer, that leaves me wondering “What complications? Where am I supposed to get those?” Sending my character out to collect more information about what’s happening to her or her world, makes more sense to me and it’s phrased dynamically.

Mid-point—Plot twist or maybe moment where protagonist changes

Part 3. Protagonist uses information

Part 4. Ending

I like this structure because it is so simple. And it tells me what to do. And it is a structure, not a formula, like the give-your-character-something-to-want-and-then-keep-it-from-her thing that I have also heard a lot of in the past.

So this is what I'm working on this month with my May Days project.

Do You Need Someone To Draw You A Picture To Understand Plot Shapes?

If so, 21 Plot Shapes and the Pros and Cons of Each could be for you.

I found this article over a month ago and e-mailed the link to myself so I'd remember to read it. It worked! I just found it in my in-box and did, indeed, read it.

It took some effort on my part, though, because at first I thought all the different line drawings describing plots were a joke. But, no, it's for real. And many of them do make sense. Fortunately, the author, Mette Ivie Harrison (turns out I've written about her before here at OC), used a lot of children's/YA novels as examples, and I happened to have read them. Plot 2 relates to The Hunger Games and 3 to The Queen of Attolia. Plot 7--Holes. Plot 19--Some books by Holly Black. Many of the other plot shapes relate to well-known books, TV shows, or movies.

My two favorite lines appear in Plot 14. "There is no climax, no high moment, no resolution. There is only death."

So What's Your Story?

The Biggest Mistake Writers Make and How to Avoid it at Writer Unboxed has a big connection to my long-term thinking about plot. The article is written by Lisa Cron, whose book, Wired for Story, I happen to be reading.

I am not the only writer who struggles with plot. What I've come to believe is that those of us who find plotting hard do so because we don't know the story we want to write about yet. Our ideas come in the form of scenes or situations. There is no "something that happens to somebody and what it means." Without the basic story that we can describe in a sentence, how can we possibly create a plot? "Wouldn't it be neat if someone woke up and found she could fly?" describes a situation. In order for it to become a story, what happens to that character as a result of the situation and what it means to her life have  to be worked out

So we all have to learn how to back up and figure out the story. The horse (story) really needs to go before the cart (writing the story).

Plot Vs. Theme

For a couple of years now I've been writing about my lack of enthusiasm with the Wants/Obstacles/Resolutions writing plan often lauded as a way of creating plots. I don't find it very helpful because:

1. You're supposed to give characters something to want. Well, what are they supposed to want? And, for that matter, what characters? Then there's the matter of coming up with obstacles for them to overcome so they can get what they want. Who is supposed to come up with those things, anyway? This seems to me like pulling a plot out of...ah...nowhere.

2. It also seems to be less a method of creating any kind of plot than it is a method of creating a formulaic story about overcoming adversity, the adversities being the obstacles to getting what the protagonist wants. Even if you're not talking a traditional problem or victim story, but a journey story, survival story, or romance in which the protagonist wants to get somewhere, live, find love, there's an overcoming adversity aspect if you are simply tossing in problems for characters to overcome. There's nothing wrong with formula stories, if you happen to enjoy the particular formula involved. But telling writers to use a give-them-something-to-want-and-then-keep-it-from-them formula is not really telling them how to create a plot--which is, by the way, supposed to be a series of causal steps leading to resolution and not just problems to overcome.

I recently finished a reread of Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular. The author, Rust Hill, says of formula stories "...the formulas were sometimes wonderfully nebulous, like the almost equally famous "Twelve Basic Plots" (or however many it was), which would present one of the so-called "basic" plots in a single word like SEARCH, then start listing: "Search for identity," "Search for loved one," "Search for the father," and so on. The categories never seemed to have much connection to plot; if they had any relevance at all, surely it was to theme."

Rust didn't elaborate on his thinking. But I think the Wants/Obstacles/Resolutions or give-them-something-to-want-and-then-keep-it-from-them format isn't a plot any more than "search for identity" is a plot. It's a formula and formulas, as Rust says, are all about theme. "Searching for identity" is thematic. It's about a story's world view, a world view that determines that individuals need to learn who they are. "Overcoming obstacles so you can achieve your heart's desire" expresses a world view that that type of thing can actually happen.

Formula/theme may have an impact on plot. But it isn't a substitute for plot.