TECH: Plotting from A to Z (a moldy oldie!)

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original posting 5 July 2011

The April, 1992, issue of the Writer, had an article on pages 15 to 17 with the title, "Plotting from A to Z" by William F. Nolan, the author of Logan's Run and other books. It starts out...

"Plot has a double purpose in fiction. Actively, is the driving force of any story or novel... Passively, it's the spine of a story, the structure around which the story is told."

"A strong, surprising plot is essential if you are to capture and hold readers. The plot must keep them engaged and draw them deeper and deeper into the narrative."

So the plot's the thing within which we'll capture the readers... With apologies to Shakespeare.
( Mulligan stew )

TECH: Order, Please (moldy oldie time again?)

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original posting 7 July 2011

Writer's Digest, February 1992, had an article by Nancy Kress on pages 8 and 10 with the title "Order, Please." The subtitle was "How to arrange your story scenes for maximum impact."

Nancy starts out with a banker, a protagonist, and the protagonist's wife. Three events -- the banker denies the protagonist a loan that will save his business, the protagonist learns that the banker is in love with his wife, and the wife confronts the banker. Which do you show first, second, third?

"The order in which scenes are presented has a profound impact on how readers react to a story.... How do you decide what is the best order for the scenes of your story?"

Nancy points out that the first thing is to realize that you can change the order! Beginning writers often insist on chronological order, in particular, the order they thought of them in.

Then Nancy suggests some options. No matter how you do it, the first scene needs to have something interesting happening. Of coarse, your story is just brimming with interesting things, so how do you pick the best one? Well, five common choices are:

1. Start with the first crisis. Mysteries often start with a murder. Lots of stories start with a crisis that pushes the whole story along. Fairly often, this means the second scene is flashback or exposition, explaining who the characters are and how they got there. Backfill! This also means that the end of the first scene needs to have enough of a hook -- cliffhanger! -- To keep the reader going through that second scene.

2. Start with the last, major crisis. This crisis leads directly into resolving the story's conflict, so dramatizing the resolution this early may seem odd. But, handled right, you've got your reader asking, "How did the protagonist get here? What's going to happen?" So tossing this crisis in early, and then backfilling for most of the story, can actually build a lot of tension and drive. Readers want to know what happened, and how it's going to turn out.

3. Start before the crisis, with circumstances that create the crisis. Start with the first time the main characters meet, the contact with the secret agent, the future doctor starting his internship... Things that point to what's going to happen. The main advantage this has is clarity -- the reader knows what's happened, and has grown to like the main character. Disadvantage is that preliminary events may not be compelling. You may want to mix in more than just the content -- social satire, comedy, hints about what's coming.

4. Start after the crisis. Frame story. A scene long after the plot is over, then dropping back to tell the story. By giving the reader a glimpse of things to come, you hope to engage the reader. On the other hand, since the reader doesn't know the characters yet, the frame may just be boring. (tink notes: you may also lose tension -- we know the protagonist lived through all this, because he was an old man in the frame.)

5. Start with a limited dramatic scene. "A limited dramatic scene is one in which a problem is attacked by a character -- but not necessarily the problem that will form the main crisis, and not necessarily by the main character." Movies and TV shows often start with a little tiny story -- an opener that's relatively easily and quickly resolved. Thematically and causally related to the major crisis, and sometimes showing us skills of the character that will be important later, it's a way to quickly engage the reader. "The scene foreshadows a limited but dramatic form how the major crisis will evolve."

What if you're just not sure? Well, you could write three different versions. It's a lot easier just to put the scenes on note cards, with the main action, characters, feelings, motivations, and what they learn. Then try rearranging the cards. Which order works best? Play with it. (tink notes -- you could probably do the same thing in Word or your favorite editor -- make up little outlines or notes about each scene, then copy and paste in several different orders. See which one you like!)

"Considering different orders will reveal to you more about your characters than if you had just written the first order that occurred to you and regarded it as carved in 10 ton stone. No part of a first draft should be immovable."

Good advice. How do you decide where to start?