The Weekend Writer: Like One Plot Isn't Difficult Enough

I am often frustrated reading books that include material that I feel doesn't serve the basic storyline. The main character in the mystery Truly Devious, for instance, suffers from anxiety. I never figured out why. Multitudes of children's books include sick siblings, estranged parents, and misunderstandings with friends when the books appear to be about something else entirely, like surviving in a post-apocalyptic world. And then how many adult mysteries have I read that included a romance when the book seems to be about restoring order to the world after a crime has been committed?

An article in the September issue of Writer's Digest by Jane K. Cleland called Subplots Aren't Secondary has led me to think that what I have been reading as random material may really be subplots. What's more, maybe I should be thinking about including some in my writing.

The Function Of Subplots, And They Have One

Subplots, Cleland says, should provide support to the main story by moving the plot along, developing character, controlling pacing, and contributing to the ending. In short, they should be doing a lot.

It sounds as if books should include two subplots:

• One relating to an interpersonal relationship. Presumably those parental and friend issues I was just mentioning.
• One relating to a nonfiction element.

Since they are supposed to support the main story, plotting a subplot should help generate material for that basic story and not just produce a lot of filler. They sound as if they could actually be...helpful.

As For Me And My Plots

In a couple of my unsold books I think I've created subplots without being aware that's what I was doing, particularly in terms of nonfiction elements. It's something I'll be paying a lot more attention to in the future.

Good article, if you can find 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: The Plot Whisperer

Now, let's see...What was I talking about before I got distracted by a conference? Oh, yes. Plotting. This could be a good time to discuss The Plot Whisperer: Secrets of Story Structure Any Writer Can Master by Martha Alderson.

There is lots of good material in The Plot Whisperer. There is also just lots of material in The Plot Whisperer. Though I came away with some new knowledge I think will be very helpful, I also sometimes felt overwhelmed while I was reading.

For instance, Alderson talks about what she calls the Universal Story, a common structure she believes underlies all stories. She also talks about The Writer's Way, which is sort of motivational. I sometimes wondered if this material could have been two separate books. However, I read The Plot Whisperer as an eBook (if memory serves me, I ordered it when it was being offered for free). The Universal Story and The Writer's Way sections of the book were laid out differently than the rest of the text and with an eBook readers don't get a good look at that. How the page is laid out helps comprehension, and I wasn't getting the benefit of that. Those people reading this in another format may not have the same response I did.

Putting that issue aside, there are many, many good takeaways with this book. Among them:

• The difference between plotters and organic writers. This book is very good on organic writers, though I may be biased because I self-identify as one.
• The three major plots for a story--dramatic action (what); character emotional development (who), and thematic significance (why). Many writers don't think about theme at all while they're writing and only identify their theme after they're done. I like the idea of recognizing your theme early on and working with it throughout the writing process.
• Back story, and when to use it, versus front story.
• Scenes show, summaries tell. In order to keep a story from appearing episodic (all scenes), you need some judicious use of summary.
• Cause and effect. In order to create the causal relationship necessary for a plot to be a plot and not a series of random events, Scene A should set up the cause of the effect that will occur in Scene B. There should be a linking effect.

Writing books are like cookbooks. Every reader of a writing book is going to appreciate different things, just as every reader of a cookbook is attracted to different recipes. So other readers are going to jump at other parts of The Plot Whisperer. I am finally working on a new manuscript, one in which I've been concentrating a great deal on planning scenes. A lot of the points I just checked off above are having an impact on the writing of this new work.

Plotting is hugely important, Weekend Writers. You really should consider some study before trying to do it. Martha Alderson maintains a plot whisper blog, and she has a plot series on YouTube, How Do I Plot a Novel, Memoir, or Screenplay. She has another YouTube series in which she analyzes a piece of writing for plot and structure. She also sponsors an International Plot Writing Month in December. So she offers quite a bit of free material on plotting that new writers can take advantage of.

The Weekend Writer: Disturbing A Protagonist's World

A couple of weeks ago, I left you with some transitional material, something that helps connect one part of a piece of writing to another. Remember the last paragraph?

"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."

Yeah, well, this is that other weekend.

What Is A Story Again?

Remember that a story is an account of something that happened to somebody and that event's significance. Here is a way to help clarify what I mean by that: Think of a joke that is told as a story. We're talking a funny story. In those cases, the story is an account of something that happened to somebody and the punchline is what's significant about what happened.

People who are setting about writing something presumably have some kind of idea. Otherwise, why would they be interested in writing? If the idea you have hasn't exploded from your mind as a story idea--something happening to somebody and so what?--then you need to develop it, to hunt for the story. That's what we've been talking about here for several months.

 Stumbling Along Without A Story

Sometimes people will advise writers who don't have a full story idea to skip the development part and simply give their character a problem that s/he will have to solve over the course of the story. This is similar to the something-to-want plot plan we talked about a couple of weeks ago. You haven't done any character, setting, theme, or point of view work, you know virtually nothing about anything. So where are these problems and desires supposed to come from?

In his book Plot & Structure, James Scott Bell talks about a disturbance to a main character's world. He says, "In the beginning of your novel, you start out by introducing a character who lives a certain life. That is his starting point or, in mythic terms, the hero's ordinary world."  "...something has to disturb the status quo." "It can be anything that disturbs the placid nature of the Lead's ordinary life." I find the idea of a disturbance to the protagonist's world hugely helpful. In fact, in looking back on my own writing, every single book involved a disturbance to the character's world. I just didn't know it at the time and couldn't make good use of it while plotting. Plotting was torture.

Disturbance--Something Happening

A disturbance to a world is dynamic because it sets the character up to respond to the disturbance and move on from there. Aliens land. A body is found. A new child moves to the neighborhood. A new school year begins. These are all disturbances. Disturbances are also all about story. Something happens to somebody, our definition of story. Aliens keep coming to Will and Rob's house and they have to deal with them. Jaspar is forced to sit between Butch and Spike on the first day of school and has to deal with them for the rest of the year. A substitute teacher turns up in Therese LeClerc's classroom and she has to deal with the report assignment he gives her, which she wasn't supposed to get. Michael Racine accepts an invitation to stay with two strangers and is stuck dealing with them.

The disturbance is what causes the rest of the action. It comes out of your initial story situation or idea. The disturbance gets the character moving naturally. Giving characters a problem or something to want, on the other hand, is sort of just dumping on them. It creates a much more static situation. There isn't much natural movement from that point.

For a writer, looking for a disturbance is a helpful way to get started on a plot.

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.

Another May Days Wrap-up

Well, the merry old month of  May came to a close three days ago. That means the May Days Facebook group I am part of is pretty much done for the year, too. The May Days involves a group of writers working on writing two pages a day, every day. How did I do? Better than last year, at least.

I was better prepared going into this project this time, but still not as well prepared as I'd hoped I'd be back on January 1st when I set a goal of working on an outline for a mummy book for May Days. I had achieved only one of the 3 objectives I'd wanted to reach before May. I also kept getting diverted once the month started, first by the NESCBWI Conference, then by an illness and a long recovery that didn't actually take me out of play, but left me not at the top of my game.

Nonetheless, I now have:

3 pages of a first chapter (Yeah. Hurray.)
6 and 1/2 pages of notes on historical background
9 pages of character notes
9 pages of scene notes, which are laid out in the order in which they could possibly occur, so that's like the beginning of a plot.

That's a total of 27 and 1/2 pages

Additionally, I worked on the two unmet objectives from my original May Days goal back in January. I've read 38 percent of The Plot Whisperer (That's right, I'm reading it on my Kindle.) and I've been going over old research I'd collected for this project. On top of that, I got a few Original Content posts out of this. With the May Days, blog posts count toward the goal of writing 2 pages a day. And as a result of the plot studying I've been doing, I'm in the process of pulling together what I might call a...a...plotting philosophy.

So while this didn't turn out exactly as I hoped back in January, I am far, far ahead of where I was before I started working on May 1st. I have a number of irons in the fire, balls in the air, so I can't continue to give the mummy book as much attention as I did last month. But  I  am at a point where I think it is realistic to try to dedicate a few units of time a week to it.