The Place For My Writers Notes

Meandering Our Way through Plot and Structure (9)

Onward and upward. Walking slowly through Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell. This time we are taking a look at strong beginnings (aka Chapter 4!).

Bell starts out by listing several tasks that the beginning of the novel needs to perform:

1. Get the reader hooked
2. Establish a bond between the reader and the lead character
3. Present the story world -- setting, time, and immediate context
4. Establish the general tone.
5. Compel the reader to move on to the middle. Why should the reader care enough to continue?
6. Introduce the opposition.

That's a lot of work! Catch the reader's interest and yank them right into the story. Tie them into the lead character, and make sure we know the environment of the story and what kind of story it is. Shake hands with the opposition, and then makes the reader eager to find out what happens next. And don't forget, this is where the disturbance happens. The normal world of the lead character gets yanked out of alignment, either subtly or by an earthquake, but something happens to shake them up.

Next Bell walks through this. "The first task of your beginning is to hook the reader." One approach is opening lines. Bell notes that Dean Koontz likes to start with a one line paragraph that names a person and gives an immediate interruption to their normality. Another approach is action. Start in the middle of things, in medias res. Or with a spot of dialogue complete with conflict. A third approach is with raw emotion, something that the lead character and your reader can feel about. A fourth approach is the look-back hook. These are the bits that start out with something like "the problem that would not end for five years all started . . . " A tiny setting and an immediate flashback, which leaves the reader going along for the ride to catch up to that implied resolution - now five years in the future! Finally, especially first-person narration, sometimes captures attention through voice and attitude.

That's probably enough for this go around.

Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to go out and look at five books or stories that you really liked. But just pull out the initial paragraph or segment. What is it? Why does it work? Does it fit into one of Bell's suggestions? Then take a look at your own story or novel, and check the beginning it uses. Does it grab the reader? If you were going to use one of Bell's approaches (or one of the ones from your books), which would you use? Go ahead and write up a new draft beginning using the approach you like. How well does it grab the reader?

More soon.

Original Posting 11 July 2007

Meandering Our Way through Plot and Structure (7)

Where were we when we stopped last time? That's right, in Chapter 3 of Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell, having just realized that write who you are is critically important, so take a good hard look at yourself. Now, let's consider how you come up with good ideas. A lot of people think you just dream one up, then start working. That's not quite the approach that Bell suggests. Instead he suggests coming up with  hundreds of ideas, throwing away the ones that don't excite you, and then spending some time to nurture and develop something good. Bell is going to suggest 20 (twenty!) ways to come up with lots of ideas. But before we get to that, he's got some rules about how to do it. Let's take a look.

1. Schedule a regular idea time. At least once a week.
2. Relax, in a quiet place where your imagination feels comfortable
3. Give yourself at least 30 minutes of uninterrupted time
4. Select one or more of the exercises and read the instructions
5. Start by letting your mind, your imagination, come up with anything and everything, and record it all on paper or the computer
6. The most important rule is not to censor yourself. Forget about editing, reasonableness, salability, or any of those other filters that stop us. Let the ideas come out in whatever way, shape, form they want to. Don't judge.
7. Have fun. You should have lots of fun at this point. Laugh at yourself, get tickled.
8. Save all your ideas.
9. After two or three sessions, that's when you assess or prune your ideas. That's a later section, but sometimes it helps people to know that it is coming. During idea generation, though, just let the ideas sprout.
10. Repeat as needed.

So are you ready to generate ideas? I'm going to summarize the 20 methods that Bell suggests. For the full instructions, you're going to have to get the book. Hopefully you get the idea though.

1. The what-if game: whenever you read, see, or think of something interesting, ask yourself, "What if??" Let your mind ramble, and write down your what-if questions. Put them aside, come back later, and add some notes. What if?
2. Titles. Make up a title, and then write the story that goes with it. Quotes, random words, first lines from novels. Make up a title using them, then write the story.
3. The list. Make a list of nouns from your past, then use those personal touchstones to help you start thinking about possibilities.
4. Issues. What upsets you, what really gets you excited? Make a list, and then think about writing a book about it.
5. See it. What do I want to write about right now? List the first three things you think of. Pick the one that excites you the most right now. Then close your eyes and watch the movie. Let the movie keep going as long as it will. Then start writing what you remember from the movie. Do this every day for a little while, then take a break, and look at what you've written.
6. Hear it! Let the music take you, and think about the pictures, scenes, and characters that it inspires.
7. Character first. Start with a dynamic character, and see where he or she takes you. Close your eyes and imagine a person. Describe them, put them in a setting, ask who is after them or who they are chasing. Or re-create someone you knew. Change their occupation, their sex, their family, and tell us who they are. Take a look at the obituaries! And to make sure you plumb the character, ask the question, "what is the worst thing that could happen to this person?"
8. Borrow some plots and characters. Make sure to turn it into your own story, but starting with someone else's worked for Shakespeare. Imitate the best!
9. Flipping a genre. Take the conventions, the standard tropes and themes of the genre and stand them on their head. Mix, slice and dice, and make the genre salad your own.
10. Predict a trend. Take a look at cutting edge technologies and issues, dig through the magazines, blogs, and discussion groups, and think about who cares, what they're going to do about it next year or in 10 years, what if all of society adopted or rejected it, and who it hurts the most.
11. Read newspapers. Scan the sections and watch for sparks or things that catch your interest. Do the what if games, and see what comes out.
12. Research. Immerse yourself in a subject, travel, talk to people, read the books and Google madly. As you go, skim for overviews, jot down ideas, and then dig further. You aren't really trying to become an expert and prove your ideas, but you do want to get those connections right.
13. What I really want to write about is. First thing in the morning, let your mind roll, and free write for 10 minutes about what I really want to write about is . . .
14. Obsession. Create a character around an obsession. Then throw complications at them. What happens?
15. Opening lines. Write an opening line. Tweak it so that it grabs you. Then write the rest of the book.
16. Write a prologue. Write an action scene with something exciting mysterious, suspenseful, or shocking happening in about a thousand or 2000 words. You may or may not actually use this in your story, but the ideas are what we are after now.
17. The mind map. Write a word or concept in the middle of a sheet of paper. Jot down connections and associations linked to it, in a free-form line and bubble format. At some point, you'll feel a new sense of direction. That is the idea you want.
18. Socko ending. Go ahead and come up with the climactic scene, with music, emotions, and characters. Adjust it until it is unforgettable. Then start backtracking to figure out how you got here.
19. Occupations. Keep track of interesting occupations, take a look at the dictionary of occupational titles from the US Department of Labor, or think about who makes toothpicks or something else that we don't ordinarily pay attention to. Now think about the character to fit that job, or maybe the character who doesn't quite fit?
20. Desperation. Write anyway. Put down words, one after another, without paying attention to whether it's good or not. Just write. Let your mind suggest things. What was that? Okay, write about that. And then . . .

That's Bell's list. A bit long, but I wanted to just get it down so that you got something to think about. One of the important points I think is to have several idea starters that you are comfortable with and use regularly. Picking three random words out of the dictionary, take two random quotes and call me in the morning, whatever works for you. And practice them. As Bell suggests, having a regular time when we're sprouting ideas helps our mind to decide that it's okay to have ideas now. And pretty soon you may find that you have more ideas than you know what to do with. Guess what, the next section is about how to nurture ideas. How to take a rough idea, polish it a little bit, and then decide whether or not it's worth following up. But we'll do that in the next session, okay?

This week, gives sprouting ideas a try. See if you can come up with a list of 20 ideas using one or more of Bell's techniques.

tink
(I hope this is the next one - I'm still reeling from return jetlag, and not sure which way is up. More soon :-)

Okay, so I forgot to write you about the book last time. It's Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell, part of the write great fiction series by Writer's Digest books. And so far we've managed to get through the introduction where Bell suggested that at least the craft of writing really can be learned and Chapter 1 where Bell laid out LOCK (lead, objectives, confrontations, and the knockout ending) along with the spices of characters, settings, and dialogue.

And now we' re coming up on Chapter 2! The chapter title gives us a hint, "Structure: What Holds Your Plot Together." Structure puts the parts of a story together in a way that readers follow. Bell suggests that plot is about elements, the things that need to be mixed in to make the story, while structure is about orderly arrangement and timing, so we put the pieces in the right places.

If you haven't heard about it already, Aristotle told us to use a three act structure. And we're still using it. Act one, the setup. Act two, the body or complications. And act three, tada, the payoff, the resolution, the end of the rainbow. Or to be more formal about it . . .

Beginnings. Introduce the who of the story. They also present the story world, getting us into the setting, the time, and the context. They set the tone, suggesting what kind of a story this is and what kind of a narrator. Compel the reader to move on to the middle,  often through a story question or puzzle. And they usually introduce the opposition, the person or situation that opposes the lead.

Next comes the middle. This is the battlefield for the confrontations. It's also where subplots mix in and complicate the picture. This is also where you need to deepen the character relationships, keep the reader interested and caring about what's happening, and set up a final battle or confrontation.

Oddly enough, the third act is the end. This is where you resolve the story. Usually, they tie up loose ends but also give a feeling of resonance, leave us thinking about the story even after we close the book.

I'll skip lightly past the discussion comparing the hero's journey or mythic structure with the three act structure. Especially since Bell gives a nice version for you to remember as a disturbance and two doorways. The disturbance is what is often called the inciting incident in writing texts. Don't get stuck on the jargon, but the idea that the lead needs something to disturb the ordinary world, the status quo, and get them moving is a very common one. So we need a disturbance to kick off our stories.

The disturbance is not the first gateway though. Usually, the hero can return to normal life, can ignore the call, until something forces him through a doorway of no return. Something happens that forces the character out of the ordinary world and into confrontation in such a way that he or she cannot go back or ignore it until the situation has been resolved. The first doorway is when they are forced out of the ordinary world and into the confrontations, which fill the middle. The second doorway, oddly, intensifies this, forcing them out of the confrontations into the final battle, the final showdown, the finish.

So the disturbance gets the action moving. And when the Lead gets forced into a confrontation where they cannot simply walk away, where they can't turn it over to the police or Grandma or whoever is handy and just sit back and wait, that's where they go through the first doorway and start slugging. Then when something happens to set up the final confrontation, that's the second doorway.

So the beginning has a disturbance that introduces the lead, his world, and the tone of the story.  We learn about his objectives here, too. The middle begins with an incident that forces the Lead into conflict with the opposition through a doorway of no return. Finally, some setback, crisis, discovery, or clue pushes the Lead through the second doorway of no return into the knockout ending.

Believe it or not, that's chapter two. Take LOCK and add in the notion of the disturbance and two doorways, or the three-act structure. Okay?

Exercises? Sure. Let's see what Bell suggests.

First, try analyzing some novels or movies in terms of the three act structure or a disturbance and two doorways. When you get bored in reading some novel or watching some movie, try to figure out why. Is there something in the LOCK or the three-act structure that's missing?

Second, take a look at a plot you're working on. Are you using structure? If you're deliberately breaking it, why and how do you think the readers will react?

Third, go ahead and design a plot. Lay out a disturbance scene and events for two doorways of no return. Write them down in summary form, and then play with them to make it original and interesting. Does it look like a story to you?

Originally posted 11 June 2007

I'm slowly working my way through Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell. Right now I'm on page 8, with a section about the power of story. This is where Bell talks about "telling a story in a way that transports the reader." Let's face it, most readers want to get away from their world. They want an experience that is different than their normal day-to-day routine. Or as Bell puts it, "what the reader seeks is an experience that is other." A story gives the illusion of a different side of life events. And we want conflict, story, experience. The plot is a structure that helps readers get into the fictional dream and stay there. Okay? I don't think we need to pound this little two page section to pieces, but it is important to think about it.

Bell says we'll be going over it again, but his basic approach to plot is called the LOCK. Lead, Objective, Confrontation, and Knockout. Simple, right? Just four letters to remember to get a lock on your plots!

L is for Lead. I am pretty sure he means lead character, not lead pencils. So a strong plot needs an interesting lead character. "In the best plots, that Lead is compelling, someone we have to watch throughout the course of the novel." Not necessarily sympathetic, but someone that we want to watch. Okay? So that's our Lead, the L in our LOCK.

O  is for Objective. Where is the character going? He needs an objective, a want, a desire. Normally the character either wants to get something or get away from something. The story question is pretty simple -- will the lead achieve their objective? Note: the objective needs to be important to the lead. So now we have LO in LOCK, our Lead and their Objective.

C is for Confrontation. Opposition, obstacles, something gets in the way. Make it tough for the lead to get to their objective. Confrontation! That's the LOC in LOCK - a Lead with their Objective and the Confrontations on the way.

Last, but obviously not least, K is for Knockout. What Bell is talking about here is the ending. A clean finish, with one person standing and the other knocked out. It shouldn't be obvious, necessarily, but it should have a real knockout finale that makes the reader satisfied. Send the lead over the top, let them find a hundred yellow ribbons round the old oak tree,  blow the bad guys into little balls of juicy hamburger, whatever, but don't wimp on the ending.

And that, in a nutshell, is Bell's basics. A Lead, with an Objective, who faces Confrontations, and has a Knockout ending. LOCK that up and write!

Page 13? And there's over 200 in the book. We are going to be reading a while, aren't we?

I've recently acquired a copy of Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell. It's apparently part of a series called Write Great Fiction, and while I certainly should be doing other things, I expect to be reading it over the next little bit. For the fun of it, I thought I might toss some notes up here along with some contemplation. Obviously if you'd like to join in, that will make the trip a bit more interesting. I'll probably forget to cite the book in every posting, but here's the information from the inside page:

Bell, James Scott. Write great fiction: plot & structure: techniques and exercises for creating a plot that grips readers from start to finish. Copyright 2004. Published by Writer's Digest Books.

Okay? So let's take a look at the beginning, the introduction.

The introduction starts out with consideration of what Bell calls the Big Lie. "Writing can't be taught." Or maybe "writers are born" with the implication that you either have it or you don't.  We've discussed this a time or two here on Writers, and I know it is a somewhat sensitive point, but I'm just reporting that Bell considers this the Big Lie.

So what is the truth? "The Truth is that craft can be brought and that you, with diligence and practice and patience, can improve your writing."

Now, Bell does suggest some discipline or practice that you need. Craft doesn't just fall into your lap, you have to work at it. What are his basics?

1. Get motivated. Make the commitment to write. And do it!
2. Try stuff. Writing is not a passive experience. Pen or pencil on paper, fingers on the keyboard, or even dictating madly into a voice-recognition program, you have to try things, do things, put the words out there, watch the reactions, and try again.
3. Stay loose. Writing is a creative pastime, and you need to have fun at it. Too much rigor squashes the innovation.
4. First get it written, then get it right. Go ahead and splash the first draft out there, without worrying too much about whether every comma and diddle is just right. Then go back and revise and tinker as needed. The first draft is just a draft, so let it blow!
5. Set a daily quota. Write, write, write. Most people do well with a certain number of words, although others prefer a certain amount of time. Either way, sit down and do it.
6. Don't give up. Writing requires persistence. To get the stories done, to submit them, to keep going despite rejection, and then to keep going through the long process of publication!

So, that's Bell's introduction. He's going to talk about craft, and he's going to ask us to write. Regularly, with zest and fun, and keep it up!

Sounds like a plan, doesn't  it? So let's go!