Plotting and Structure

June 27,2018

I’m a little late to this conversation but it’s a topic I’ve been thinking about for several months. I’ve finished two “books” and am writing a third now. I’m a native pantser.

I’ve never liked the concept of character interviews and detailed outlines. I bought and read The Snowflake Method, bought and read Story Engineering, downloaded a series of blog posts by Jim Butcher about the writing process, bought and read Blueprint Your Bestseller, bought and read a series of books about fiction writing from The Writer’s Digest, followed several blogs about writing, bought-and-read or downloaded-and-read or joined-and-read a whole bunch of advice.

What I understand, for myself, is the following:

1. You have to understand the theme(s) of your story. Is it a story about friendship, family, loyalty, fear, heartbreak, healing, <name your theme>? This is the point of the story, why you’re writing about the characters and the situation in the first place. Without themes, your characters have no purpose.

2.You have to know your genre. Why? Because the genre gives you the overarching question(s) inherent in the story. War story? What’s the mission and does it succeed or fail? Romance? MC1 meets MC2. Do they fall in love? Forever or for a day? Mystery? What’s the crime and does the perpetrator pay the price? On and on and on…

3. You have to understand the big, burning question(s) your main character and your villain face. What do they want? What do they need? What is their potentially fatal flaw that will preclude them from achieving their own satisfying goal? Neither of them can be weak approximations of a main character or a villain, so this one question gives the story a level playing field and allows you to engage your plot and move your story forward – answer each of those big, burning question(s) as well as the little questions that move your chapters forward.

Those are, for me, the big three. I’m reading a book now that says you should write your story’s first sentence and its last. This way you know how it starts and how it ends. Kind of like knowing you’re going to take a vacation and the destination is Palm Springs. Where’s your starting point? Nome, Alaska? Hmm, mode of travel? Route? Way stations? Going to run into bears? Torrential downpours in Washington state? Earthquakes in California? Direct flight? From Nome? You can see all the questions so I guess #4 is:

4. Write your questions down and make sure you answer them.

As I said, I’m a native pantser and those first two books aren’t very good. My WIP is now on hold because I realized the MC whines a lot and reacts to everything happening to him but doesn’t have a purpose for doing any of the things I’ve got him doing. Several folks want to see where I’m going with this, but I didn’t have a clue. I’ve just done 1-4 and started rewriting the story. For the second time. I guess #5 is, Learn from your mistakes.

But that’s me and it’s taken me several years to get to say I finished two “books” and am working on a third.

Do you belong here? You bet you belong. This is the best community to learn your craft. The feedback is gentle unless you ask for more pointed feedback – and I have and it was still given with warmth and caring.

Do you belong here? Absolutely. There aren’t a lot of communities that have the same camaraderie (yes, some of us are curmudgeons), the same generosity, and the same consistency.

Do you belong here? Yes. You can make mistakes here. You can develop friendships here. You can grow here.

This is a writer’s place where people don’t quit on you. All you have to do is show up and try.

Don’t quit.

Deb
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June 28, 2018

Tina:

I think the point of reading everything and watching everything you can stomach is to get structure in your head. I believe what you said in your post – you get it “naturally.” Like sunshine on your skin helps the uptake of vitamin D. Lots of sun, lots of vitamin D. Lots of books and movies, better understanding of basic structure.

I’m rewriting my WIP for the second time. I started writing my story about four months ago and my MC was spinning like a top after about 25K. So I restructured the story and sat down to write again. This time I have 50K words and my MC hit a brick wall. There was no way out except by magic but it’s not a fantasy story. All my readers wanted to see where the story would go next. Do you think? I wanted to know the answer to that question, too. I took a breather and one night I woke up from a deep sleep knowing I had, again, failed the story’s structure.

I’m a pantser. I don’t outline, but, thanks to Wendy Pearson (a fellow pantser) I picked up a book about plotting. I created the big story question, theme, beginning and ending lines, and my little what if questions. The plotting book is flawed – grammar and inconsistencies – but my big takeaway is that structure matters. Nail structure and you will be forgiven a host of flaws.

Got a hook? Is your inciting event clear? Did you close out Act 1 with a well defined key event? Does your midpoint contain the point where your MC recognizes he must change or die? (Sorry, that’s the title of a book – Change Or Die.) Does your climax – your climactic event – occur after the 75% mark?

You can see that structure is all math. The expected word count of my genre divided by the optimal number of words per chapter gives me the number of chapters in the book. Act 1 is 25% or 20,000 words (in an 80,000 word story). Act 2 is 50% or the next 40,000 words. Act 3 is the last 25% or 20,000 words. I use Scrivener so I created my own template and now my structure is laid out. I used the index card function and noted what had to occur at key points. From there, I’m following the dots.

I was an information technology process specialist in a former career and I’m kicking myself for taking so long to recognize what I lacked. Structure. When it’s cut-and-dried, it’s easy to lay out structure. The creativity – the pantsing part – is in the scenes that 1) answer your story’s questions, 2) force the MC to change, and 3) validate the theme.

Do I deliberately plan the specific book? Nah. But I do work on consistent structure.

Deb