plot

Stuff Happening Does Not Equal a Plot

Author: April 10, 2021 0 Comments

I recently wrote a brief article recalling an old episode of Seinfeld with the central joke that Elaine is dating a man with the same name as a notorious serial killer. I’d forgotten all about the episode and Joel Rifkin. It’s often amazing how time works; back in the early 1990s Rifkin was definitely big news where I lived, and once reminded I can recall how much his name was in the news, which sells Seinfeld’s joke. Thirty years later, it’s amazing to realize I’d completely forgotten about a man who killed 17 people.

Seinfeld was, of course, famously about “nothing.” Of course, that’s cute and all but not really true: The show’s episodes definitely had plots in which characters did things, those actions had consequences, and there were defined arcs. But I think of it now because I’ve recently read a series of novels by aspiring writers that appear to have been informed by the Seinfeldian Nothing Rule. In other words, they don’t have much of a plot.

Plot is So Bourgeois

Now, you can pull off a novel that doesn’t really have a plot, of course, but that’s not what I’m talking about. The problem with these recent books is more fundamental, because the authors think they have a plot. But they don’t. What they actually have is a series of events. A lot of writers apparently confused “stuff happening” with plot.

Plot requires shape. I won’t get into the different models for a story, the theories about rising action and when your protagonist should experience despair — the point is, your story should not be a flat series of events. You need conflict, setbacks, twists, and a discernible arc of some kind as your characters move through the story. If all you’re doing is listing the things your characters are doing, it doesn’t really count as a plot, does it?

And yet so, so many writers make this mistake. They come up with some characters, they come up with a goal or, worse, a scenario of some sort, and then they just … describe things that happen.

An easy way to make this mistake is to assume that if the events you’re describing are dramatic and powerful on their own, that’s all you need. While describing a terrifying or dramatic event can make for some good writing, it still isn’t a plot. Even describing how your characters react to the event in question isn’t a plot unless it has shape to it, unless their reactions drive them to other actions that intersect with other events and/or the desires and intentions of other characters (preferably in conflict with them).

One way to test whether you have a plot or a series of events is to check each action taken by your characters and ask if they’re acting in their own interests or simply reacting to external forces. This isn’t foolproof, but if the answer is the latter every single time, you likely have a series of events instead of a plot.

It’s true that life is just one damn thing after another. But that’s why we need stories that aren’t. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to drink six beers in ten minutes. Don’t ask why, just dial emergency services.

plot, Writing

Plot Holes: Gaslight ?Em

Author: April 11, 2018 0 Comments

To the outside world, writing probably seems easy. We sit around daydreaming, then spend a few hours typing, and a few weeks later we email a manuscript and receive a million dollars, probably. We writers, of course, know better—most of us are going to end up broke, insane, and working at a local big box store mopping the bathrooms and muttering to ourselves about how hacks stole all of our ideas.

Even worse, the act of writing is rough going sometimes. Ideas that flare into being as bright, perfect creations wither into rotten, saggy lumps when we get our potato hands on them. Characters fail to become real people, Netflix suddenly drops a full season of a new show with the exact same premise as your WIP, and plot holes infest your story until it’s more hole than plot.

A Feature, Not a Bug

I recently had a manuscript reviewed specifically for plot holes; I braced myself, because my mind wanders at the best of times and I am no stranger to the hell of realizing the character who saves the day in Chapter 31 was killed off in Chapter 9. I’m a person who lives very much in the present; I forget things so quickly and utterly I am not kidding when I say that by the time I finish a manuscript there are elements of the early chapters that I have zero memory of. It makes taming a plot into coherency kind of difficult.

This time there were no big plot holes to worry over, thank goodness, but it did prompt me to consider my usual tactics for dealing with plot holes.

Sometimes, of course, the only way to deal with plot holes is to eliminate them even if it means yet another extensive revision to the story. This is only necessary when the plot holes in question make your story a mess. But going back to fix up a plot hole isn’t always necessary—and sometimes causes ripples in the rest of your story, a domino effect of fixes opening up new rifts.

So, sometimes—sometimes—the best thing to do is to take your plot holes and celebrate them. Elevate them from subtle to screaming. To gaslight your reader with them.

This isn’t a technique you can use a lot. The story has to have a certain elasticity to it, a certain loose relationship to realism—if your plot is rooted firmly in the real world, playing around with plot holes like this won’t work. But if you’ve got some leeway with the point-of-view, if your narrator is unreliable or the reality of your fictional universe is a bit skewed, you might be able to take a plot hole and turn it into a feature instead of a bug.

Easier said than done, of course. But then, so is writing a novel in the first place.

plot, Writing

Plot Holes: Gaslight ?Em

Author: April 11, 2018 0 Comments

To the outside world, writing probably seems easy. We sit around daydreaming, then spend a few hours typing, and a few weeks later we email a manuscript and receive a million dollars, probably. We writers, of course, know better—most of us are going to end up broke, insane, and working at a local big box store mopping the bathrooms and muttering to ourselves about how hacks stole all of our ideas.

Even worse, the act of writing is rough going sometimes. Ideas that flare into being as bright, perfect creations wither into rotten, saggy lumps when we get our potato hands on them. Characters fail to become real people, Netflix suddenly drops a full season of a new show with the exact same premise as your WIP, and plot holes infest your story until it’s more hole than plot.

A Feature, Not a Bug

I recently had a manuscript reviewed specifically for plot holes; I braced myself, because my mind wanders at the best of times and I am no stranger to the hell of realizing the character who saves the day in Chapter 31 was killed off in Chapter 9. I’m a person who lives very much in the present; I forget things so quickly and utterly I am not kidding when I say that by the time I finish a manuscript there are elements of the early chapters that I have zero memory of. It makes taming a plot into coherency kind of difficult.

This time there were no big plot holes to worry over, thank goodness, but it did prompt me to consider my usual tactics for dealing with plot holes.

Sometimes, of course, the only way to deal with plot holes is to eliminate them even if it means yet another extensive revision to the story. This is only necessary when the plot holes in question make your story a mess. But going back to fix up a plot hole isn’t always necessary—and sometimes causes ripples in the rest of your story, a domino effect of fixes opening up new rifts.

So, sometimes—sometimes—the best thing to do is to take your plot holes and celebrate them. Elevate them from subtle to screaming. To gaslight your reader with them.

This isn’t a technique you can use a lot. The story has to have a certain elasticity to it, a certain loose relationship to realism—if your plot is rooted firmly in the real world, playing around with plot holes like this won’t work. But if you’ve got some leeway with the point-of-view, if your narrator is unreliable or the reality of your fictional universe is a bit skewed, you might be able to take a plot hole and turn it into a feature instead of a bug.

Easier said than done, of course. But then, so is writing a novel in the first place.

plot, Writing

The Elevator Pitch Test

Author: December 18, 2017 0 Comments

One of the most sobering and terrifying moments for first-time novelists is when their agent or publisher demands a synopsis of their book. Boiling the story down to a very, very short but coherent synopsis is much harder than you might think, and if you polled a room full of writers about their least favorite aspect of professional fiction, the synopsis will absolutely be in the top three.

If you think it’s easy, try it on any novel you’re familiar with. Go on, we’ll wait.

The thing is, the synopsis is a useful tool, and not just for marketing purposes. In fact, one of the best things you can do for any steaming-fresh manuscript is to sit down and try to work out the “elevator pitch” for your plot.

Thirty Seconds to Glory

An Elevator Pitch is a fast, effective, razor-sharp description that can be rattled off in the time it takes for an elevator ride. The basic idea is a salesperson or other employee who finds themselves riding the elevator with their boss or a potential client—they have thirty seconds to pitch them, so they need to have that pitch ready to go, written, practiced, and perfected.

One thing you need to know about the book you just wrote is whether or not the plot works, and unfortunately you’re probably too close to it to truly know the answer to that question. Letting your book sit for a while will help, because time will erode your memory of it and you’ll come back to it a bit fresh, but working up an Elevator Pitch for your plot—basically, writing the plot synopsis long before anyone actually asks you to do so—is even better. It offers up three distinct benefits:

1. It will reveal plot obscurities: If you can’t find a simple way to convey a concept, chances are no one will understand what you did there.

2. It will exposed logical fallacies: Sometimes we’re so intent on getting from Plot Point A to Plot Point C we overlook the fact that Plot Point B makes zero sense—or simply doesn’t exist.

3. It will give you a hint as to the marketability of your book: Even if you don’t care about commercial success, if you can’t give potential readers a short, punchy reason to read the book, you won’t have any readers.

So, start boiling. The fewer words you need to convey the basic spine and tone of your novel, the more successful a novel it is. If you find yourself writing a second novel to explain your novel, something has gone horribly wrong.

Novels, plot, Writing

Stop Fighting Yourself

Author: December 6, 2017 0 Comments

One of the biggest mistakes writers make is trying to force themselves to write in ways that run counter to what they really want to be writing about, or which eschew their clears strengths in favor of what they think they’re supposed to be writing.

This comes in two basic forms, one macro and one micro. On the macro side you have moments when you convince yourself you should be writing something other than what your heart wants you to write. Maybe you love writing pulpy, action-packed sci-fi stories but you convince yourself that you need to be writing serious litchure that gets all profound and deep. On the micro side, you’re writing the book you want, but you’re forcing yourself to take an approach or to concentrate on aspects of the story that you think are important, but what you really want to do is just have characters talk to each other, luxuriating in their snappy repartee, or introduce a murder simply because you feel like it.

You know what I’m about to say: Stop fighting yourself.

If You’re Bored Your Book’s Boring

I recently had a writer contact me to ask for advice; they were excited about a book idea, but kept getting lost in the details of their universe instead of actually writing. Often this is because you’re trying to force yourself to write what you ?should’ be writing, instead of what you actually want to write. Sure, you eventually have to get that plot worked out and on paper—but if your brain wants you to work on the details of your universe, give in and do so. There’s no wasted time when it comes to working on any aspect of your novel.

Is there a point where you’re spending too much time on the ancillary stuff? Maybe. Yes, if you’ve been working on a book for five years and have mountains of background info but no actual story you might be overdoing it, but when you find yourself in that situation it’s more likely that you’re fighting yourself in another way—maybe this isn’t the book you want to write in the first place?

I personally believe people find a way to do the things they want, if they have the discretion and freedom to do so. You attend the parties you want to attend and you find excuses for the ones you don’t. So if you’ve been trying to write a book for years but can’t get started; ask yourself if you’re just coming up with excuses because it’s not the story you really want to tell.

My tendency to endlessly discuss novels, of course, is why I don’t get invited to parties any more. That and the tendency to pass out in the bathroom. Don’t judge me; I’m a writer.

General, plot, Writing

Break Up the Party to Move the Plot Along

Author: November 27, 2017 0 Comments

Most writers hit at least one point in the first draft or outline of a novel where inspiration dries up in regards to plot. One moment you know exactly where your characters are headed. The next your characters are sitting around a room playing cards and checking their watches while you try to figure out what to do next. Whether you’re a Plotter or a Pantser, Plot Confusion is real.

There are a million ways of dealing with Plot Confusion, of course, from the brute force of writing your way through it to pulling a Crazy Ivan and introducing an insane twist to the old Leonard standby of having someone with a gun walk into the room. One trick I like to use sometimes is a little simpler and often offers surprising developments: I break up my characters.

Odd Pairings

As in real life, your fictional characters will have a tendency to clump up into expected and repeated groups. This is sometimes a function of plot; for me, though, it’s also due to a certain linear way of thinking that I struggle with. I dislike jumping around from place to place dealing with different groups of characters so have a tendency to simplify by keeping everyone together. Hey, normally it works for me.

When it doesn’t, though, forcing my characters to separate, especially into unexpected groupings, is often a jolt of energy. You find yourself having to mesh together two different speech patterns, plot roles, and other aspects. It also means that lazy patterns I’d fallen into while writing similar exchanges between the same couple of characters have to be jettisoned, and new patterns figured out.

It’s actually a lot of fun, and just as in real life putting two people together unexpectedly often reveals surprising things about both. Even brief scenes sometimes jumpstart the whole story.

The best part is that unlike real life, if my surprise character pairings turns unbearably awkward and dull, I can always go back to that guy with a gun and really spice things up. Sometimes it’s even fun to write an entire sequence where that guy murders all of my characters and I am, for one wonderful moment, a vengeful god. Like Galadriel, all shall love me and despair and then I save the file and start over.

characters, plot, Writing

Surviving a Novel: Diversionary Tactics

Author: November 10, 2017 0 Comments

In a lot of ways, Plotting and Pantsing aren’t such different approaches to writing a novel. Really, they’re just time-shifted ways of doing the same thing. Plotters try to work it all out in advance, Pantsers try to just let inspiration be their guide, but either way you find yourself at the same plot moments, and you’ll struggle at similar points when you’ve written yourself into a bit of a corner.

Every writer, whether staring down at a neat outline or riffling through hundreds of pages of already-completed manuscript, has hit that moment when they don’t know what happens next in their plot. Sometimes you’ve maneuvered your characters into a spot you can’t get them out of, sometimes you just don’t know what to throw at them next, or how to get from A to B.

When that happens to me, I save my file, close it, open a blank file, and start a short story.

Outfoxing Myself

The brain is a wonderful thing, and it’s going to keep working on your story even when you’re not consciously thinking about it. Sometimes, though, when you’re staring at a problem you get in your own way. The best thing to do is to trick yourself.

When I start a short story in the middle of a novel, it’s like hitting the reset button, because my brain shoots back into Beginning Mode, where the blank page is all possibility, instead of Problem Mode, where the blank page is all block and confusion. I get back to that crazy energy at the beginning of any story, when you’re excited and the story could branch off into any of a zillion possible routes. It’s very cathartic when I’ve been stuck on a plot point for a long time.

It doesn’t matter what the story is about, or whether it turns out to be any good. All that matters is that I take a break from my current plot problem and think on something else for a while. Just about every time I try this technique, I come back to my novel with a new idea for solving whatever plot problem I’ve been wrestling with. It’s basically tricking yourself, but it works.

Plus, you get a bonus short story that maybe you can sell somewhere. Or, sometimes, a rambling short story that ends with everyone dying in a plane crash because that story also led you to a maddening dead end. In writing, it’s often turtles all the way down—or, you know, instead of turtles, failed stories. I need a drink.

Novels, plot, Writing

Surprise Yourself

Author: November 3, 2017 0 Comments

One mistake a lot of writers make is to forget to look at their work like a reader. Writing requires a certain mind-frame, a distancing from your subject matter. You have to be a sort of dispassionate god of your fictional universe, moving chess pieces around and casually destroying villages and slaughtering populations, putting your hero in jail or murdering their wives.

But you can take that distance too far and get lost in your own references, your own cleverness, your own intricate technique. And you can get too attached to the plot you think you’re writing, and ignore the fact that it’s not working and getting less and less interesting, because you’re thinking too much like a writer, impressed with how you’re solving plot problems that a reader would never even see.

If you’re finding the book to be a bit of a struggle, if you’re less and less excited about what you’re doing, it’s time to step back and think more like a reader—and surprise yourself with a plot move that even you weren’t expecting.

When I was a very, very young novelist I wrote a sci-fi novel—the first novel I sold, technically (there was a contract, but the company went out of business before it could publish)—and I got bogged down halfway through, uncertain of where I was going. So I suddenly had the main character arrive at a planet where magic appeared to work in a standard sort of epic fantasy setting. And it was delirious and insane, but it got me super excited about how to tie everything together, and that’s what led me to finish the novel.

The Crazy Ivan

This sort of out-of-left-field plot device is a bomb that blows up your narrative, of course. You were writing a police procedural thriller, and suddenly vampires show up and start tearing people apart. You were working on an epic fantasy about a religious war in a universe where the gods are alive and involved like the old myths, and suddenly it’s revealed as a holographic illusion that’s contracted a computer virus. All your careful plans, ruined.

But ruined in an exciting way, because for a moment you’re just as amazed and stunned as the reader would be—and that’s powerful. You get a glimpse of what it would be like to actually read your novel without any idea of what’s coming.

And, sure, it’s probably disaster. Those kinds of crazy swerves can destroy the clockwork of your universe, undermine characters, and generally sow nothing but chaos. But if your story isn’t working anyway, why not? Throw some magic into a hard-sci fi world, and see what happens.

Or get really, really drunk. That sometimes works too.

Novels, plot, Writing

Keeping Right in Sight

Author: October 25, 2017 0 Comments

I’m a shaggy, ragged, disorganized Pantser of a writer, usually. I like to take a red-hot idea, still glowing from the forge and dive in, making a mess. If a draft gets to a point where it’s clearly going somewhere but I’ve lost my through-line, I’m happy to step back and apply some serious Plantsing to the story, but my preferred way to write a novel is to just dive in without any prep or research. Like they say in the movies, if there are any problems we can fix them in post.

What this means is simple: The joy of the first draft is that you don’t have to get it right. You just have to keep right on the map.

A Room with a View of Right

Some writers are perfectionists, of course; some don’t even start writing words until they’ve planned out every detail. And bully for them, but I’ll never be that, no matter how attractive it is in theory sometimes (usually when I’m halfway through a fifth of bourbon and weeping openly over my keyboard because I just realized even I don’t understand my plot any more). And you know what? It’s okay to realize in the middle of a first draft that you’ve made some serious errors, and nothing is quite right with it. Because you can fix it all later.

The key though is to keep right in sight. There is a point where a story is so screwed up, filled with bad writing and poor plot decisions (and possibly a lot of notes that say [FILL IN LATER]) where you’re better off just giving up on a draft. That point is different for every writer, and it’s kind of a personal thing you have to figure out for yourself. Just know it does happen.

Short of that, though, you don’t need anything close to good in a first draft. You just need to be able to see good from the hole you’re digging. As long as you can, you can eventually map out a route to it.

Sometimes this will involve cutting thirteen chapters and introducing a new character. Sometimes it just requires line-by-line adjustments to eliminate references. And it almost always requires liquor. If you don’t indulge in substances, friendo, I don’t know how you write novels. I really don’t.

Novels, plot, Writing

Plot Skipping

Author: September 22, 2017 0 Comments

You may have heard the old line from Elmore Leonard about skipping the boring parts when you write, and that’s powerful advice. Most people apply it in a micro sense, or as we now know it, the Game of Thrones Season 7 sense, which is usually expressed as no one wants to see Jon Snow in a boat traveling south for six episodes. In other words, detailing your character as they drive seven hours someplace is maybe not worth you or your reader’s time.

Another aspect of “skipping” can be just as powerful. Simply put, if you’re having trouble writing a scene or sequence in your novel, consider just skipping it (for now) and writing something in your plot’s “future” that’s more fun.

Getting to the Good Stuff

Now, some writers already work in a non-linear fashion, writing scenes in any order and then piecing them together. Even then, though, some scenes are easier than others. Some scenes are more fun than others. And some scenes are like black holes that suck you in, and six months later you’re still struggling to find the right approach.

You probably have to write those scenes eventually, but if you’ve been struggling for a while on a specific scene, take a break. That doesn’t mean you take a break from the book in general. Instead, you could just take a break from that scene and skip over to some other scene that’s more fun. An action sequence, or a fun moment—or maybe the climax of it all, the Big Moment you can’t wait to write. Sure, you’ll likely have to do a fair bit of clean up work, but in the short term it’ll get your writing jump-started. And you might learn something about your story that will help you when you get back to the tough scenes.

Or maybe you’ll realize you don’t need the tough scenes at all.

This does require a bit of Plotting, so for Pantsers this might be a tougher trick. Even Pantser usually have some notion of where their story is going, or at least of cool moments they want to include. Skip to those cool moments, then skip back, refreshed and re-energized.

Or go the Somers Way and have a cocktail. It’s almost as effective.

plot, Writing