The Plot Thickens

I distrust plot for two reasons: first, because our lives are largely plotless, even when you add in all our reasonable precautions and careful planning; and second, because I believe plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren't compatible. ~ Stephen King



I like Stephen King’s quote here, largely because it justifies my own sad inability to plot. Well, I don’t totally lack the ability, I’m just not very good at it. I envy those who, like JK Rowling, saw the entire span of her storyline unfold with perfect clarity, from the very get-go. What must that be like? I rarely know what’s going to happen paragraph by paragraph. I am like a climber rose that someone forgot to provide with a trellis, so I just meander all over the place.

In an effort to discipline myself, I bought some how-to books. I even read them. You may be familiar with some titles: Twenty Master Plots, The Writer’s Journey, First Draft in 30 Days, Scene & Structure, and Beginnings, Middles & Ends. The one I found the least helpful is First Draft in 30 Days, by Karen S. Wiesner. This book may be exactly what many writers need, but it was too cerebral for me. Formats, outlines, daily goals, worksheets, timelines. I do some of this on my own as I write, when I organically need it, but I find I can spend all day filling out detailed character worksheets (What kind of clothes does she wear? What kind of job does she have? If she was a dog breed, what dog breed would she be? This is fun!) and forget to do any actual writing.

Twenty Master Plots, by Ronald B. Tobias, is a dead useful book. Any aspiring novelist or screenwriter should read it, simply for the ideas it presents. Obviously, you should not approach a novel as if it were a recipe, and Tobias does not. He indicates that your story is probably already following one of these master plots anyway, and the first job is recognizing which one it is. Not too many stories fall neatly into the twenty, but he gives great examples, and the breakdown gives the rambling writer a trellis on which to climb. I couldn’t sort out, for example, whether my 19th-century novel was a quest plot or a maturation plot. It has elements of both, but in reading through the examples and how each unfolds, I felt I had a much better handle on how my story should progress.

From the Elements of Fiction Writing, the Writer’s Digest how-to series, comes Scene & Structure, Beginnings, Middles & Ends, and Plot. All three books were interesting, but Scene & Structure is essential. It might even be the first book any aspiring novelist should read, because the most common mistake I see in new writers is an inability to write in scenes. As that author, Jack Bickham, points out, a novel is basically a series of scenes. Once you figure out what scenes you must include to get your story told, you’re going to have something very much like a plot outline. On the downside, I found that Bickham’s actual rules of what a scene is supposed to look like are too rigid for me; most novels I read, too, simply do not follow his pattern, which is “1. Statement of a goal, 2. Introduction and development of a conflict, and 3. Failure of the character to reach his goal, a tactical  disaster.” While that seems awfully formulaic, and we can all think of a million counterexamples, it’s a decent loose idea for a writer to have in the back of her mind. It’s also not a bad way to approach a scene you’re struggling with.

The Writer’s Journey, by Christopher Vogel, is such a classic that I’m willing to bet most of our followers have it on their bookshelf. I love this book; I love thinking about it as I read a novel or watch a movie: Ooh! Our hero has just crossed the First Threshold! Ooh, we have just met the Mentor! Ooh, I bet that guy is the Shapeshifter! Uh-oh, I think we’ve just approached the Supreme Ordeal. It’s the kind of book you should think about as a consumer of stories, but I don’t pay a great deal of attention to it when I’m structuring my own … the Hero’s Journey on which the The Writer’s Journey is based is deeply subconscious. It doesn’t work well, in my experience, if you consciously design a story based on the timeless structure. (Unless you are George Lucas.)

A last point I’d like to make about plotting is that the subject tends to come up as an either-or: Either you are someone who writes the way King does, making it all up as you go along; or you are someone who comes up with a complete outline before you type a word of story. I don’t think too many people really fit these extremes. Although I’m more a seat-of-the-pants writer, I find that after about 100 pages of happily pounding at the keyboard in an undisciplined manner, I start to see an actual story emerge, with a possible endpoint. At this point I really need to do a little outlining: not because it’s The Rule, but because I feel compelled to. I set up a couple ways the story might go, in summary, and see how I feel about each. Then I have that trellis on which to twine the next 100 pages. This also helps me identify what major scenes I’ll need to get the story told, to get my main characters from the beginning of the story to the end.

How do you work? Do you agree with King about plot, or are you a meticulous plotter-aheader? Where did you get your ideas about story plotting?