The Place For My Writers Notes

Original posting 4 Jan 2010

Writer's Digest, March 2004, page 42 to 49, has a bonus section with the title, "Novel Writing Boot Camp," by Bob Mayer. I'm probably not going to summarize all of the bits and pieces, but let's pick out some of the odds and ends.

Pages 44 and 45 describe narrative structure. Bob focuses on five elements: inciting incident, complications, crisis, climax, and resolution. That's the basic blueprint for the story.

The inciting incident is the hook. It's dynamic, something happens that upsets the balance and kicks your protagonist into action. The rest of the novel is the protagonist responding to the inciting incident. Inciting incidents don't have to be bad -- positive events can certainly make protagonists react, too. What happens when Joe wins the lottery?

Complications pile on complications. The growth of complications -- suspense and conflict -- is what fills in the middle. Make sure that it keeps the readers interested.

The crisis forces the protagonist to make a choice. It should not be obvious to the reader which way they're going to go. The crisis is usually the darkest time for the protagonist.

The climax? With the choice made, the balance is restored or a new balance achieved. The protagonist needs to be involved -- an active part of finishing the job.

The resolution is where you wrap up plots and subplots. Make sure that the reader knows what happened, and has a sense of closure.

Plot. This is the sequence of events -- what happens in the novel. Usually, looking at the climax and making the events drive towards that goal helps keep the story focused. But beware of coincidence, and of plots where the author's fingerprints are too obvious. The plot should have internal logic -- it should make sense.

Where to begin. "There are actually two beginnings to a novel: the first words the writer puts down to start the manuscript, and the first words the reader sees as she opens the completed book." Bob points out that since you're probably going to rewrite the beginning extensively, it's not worth worrying too much about where to start. Just get started and plan to redo the beginning. When you do get around to picking the starting line, think about the purpose of the beginning. You need to get people started reading. The beginning needs to hook the readers, introduce the story theme or problem, and introduce the main characters. Don't overwhelm the readers by putting too much into the first chapter. Leave some for later.

The meat of the story. Characters are the most important. Know their motivations -- just like actors, you can't write a part unless you know their motivation. Setting it is also important. Make sure you know where and when things are happening. Point of view -- there are lots of possibilities, but the key is to make sure that the reader knows what is going on and doesn't get confused.

Ending. Characters, locales, points of view, the plot lines -- it all comes together at the end. This is the resolution of the problem that you introduced at the very beginning.

Inciting incident, complications, crisis, climax, resolution. A sequence of events that takes us through all of that. A beginning that grabs the readers. Characters with their motivations, setting, and a firm hand with the point of view. Finally, an ending that ties it all up and makes the reader sigh with the emotional release.

Write!

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?