Write Great Fiction--Plot & Structure (2 page)

Most successful fiction writers make a word goal and stick to it. A time goal can easily be squandered as you sit and agonize over sentences or paragraphs. Sure you were at your writing desk for three hours, but what did you produce? Write a certain number of words instead.

I have a spreadsheet that logs my words. I record the number of words I write on my projects. The spreadsheet automatically tallies my daily and weekly production.

I review this log each week. If I'm not making my quota, I give myself a talking to and get back on track.

But be kind to yourself. If you don't make your quota one day or one week, forget about it. Get to work on your new week.

The daily writing of words, once it becomes a habit, will be the most fruitful discipline of your writing life. You'll be amazed at how productive you'll become, and how much you'll learn about the craft.

But if you're one of those writers who thinks he needs inspiration to write, then I ask you to please follow the advice of Peter DeVries:“I only write when I'm inspired, and I make sure I'm inspired every morning at 9 a.m.”

[6] Don't give up.
The main difference between successful writers and unsuccessful writers is persistence. There are legions of published novelists who went years and years without acceptance. They continued to write because that's what they were inside, writers. That's what you are. That's why you're reading this book. Whenever I hear from students I've taught at writers' conferences, I always end my communication with them with two words: Keep writing.

In the end, that's the best advice there is.

Are you ready now? Are you convinced of the Truth? Do you dream of writing novels with plots that keep readers up at night? Then come along. I'm going to do my very best to show you how.

plot / 'plät / n.:

1. A small piece of ground, generally used for burying dead people, including writers.

2. A plan, as for designing a building or novel.

Plot happens.

You might be one of those writers who likes to have the story all worked out in your mind before you write your novel. You preplan, plan, and revise the plan before writing. Maybe you have index cards all over your wall or you store your scenes in your computer.

Or you might be one of those seat-of-the-pants writers who loves to plop down each day at the computer or over a pad of paper and just write, letting the story flow without planning, anxious to see what your wild writer's mind comes up with.

You could also be a 'tweener who does a bit of planning but still seeks some surprise and spontaneity in the daily output of words.

No matter what kind of novelist you are, there's one thing you will have when you've completed your manuscript — a plot.

It might be a lousy plot, a disjointed plot, a mess, or a masterpiece. But the plot will be there, staring you in the face.

The only question at that point will be, “Does it work?”

By “work” I mean
connect with readers
. That's the function of plot after all. The reading experience is supposed to transport people, move them through the power of story. Plot is the power grid that makes it happen.

You may be one of those writers who doesn't care if your novel connects with readers. You write what you want, the way you want it, and that's that. Writing is its own reward. If someone happens to like it, fine. But you don't want to be bothered with bourgeois concepts like plot.

Fine. No one's forcing you to connect with readers. But if you want readers, if you dream of writing novels that get published and sell, then you have to give plotting its due. Because that's what agents, publishers, and readers think about when they open books. Consciously or not, they are asking questions:

• What's this story about?
  
• Is anything happening?
  
• Why should I keep reading?
  
• Why should I care?
  

These are all plot questions, and if you want to make it as a writer of novel-length fiction, you must learn how to answer them satisfactorily, wonderfully, surprisingly.

That's what this book is about.

“What about character?” you might ask. “Can't I just write about a fascinating character and see what happens?”

Yes. The
what happens
is your plot. And, as with any plot, it can turn out flabby and incoherent even with great characters. This book will help you avoid that outcome.

How about a stream-of-consciousness novel? One that's all about the language, and can't be limited by such mundane matters as plotting?

It's a stretch to call such a thing a novel. Fiction, yes. I'll even accept
experimental novel
. It might be fascinating in its own right, but is it really a story? I suppose that's an academic debate.

But if you're interested in selling your books, plot is something you need to wrestle with.

And wrestling makes you stronger. Even if you ultimately decide, as a writer, that you want to forget about plotting conventions, the effort to understand them will serve you well. You'll become a better novelist.

Some writers, critics, and other assorted literati sniff at plotting as a tool of craft. A synonym for plotting, in this mindset, is
slumming
, something decent people just don't do.

Author Jean Hanff Korelitz sums up this thinking. She wrote about her experience as a young editorial assistant in New York trying to be a novelist. She and her contemporaries were snobs about literary prose, she says, elevating wordsmithery above such mundane matters as telling a good story.

But then Ms. Korelitz ended up writing a legal thriller, and discovered — gasp — that she liked it! Her mind was changed, as you'll see below in this excerpt from “Story Love,” which appeared on Salon.com:

When you get right down to it, there's something uniquely satisfying in being gripped by a great plot, in begrudging whatever real-world obligations might prevent you from finding out what happens next. And it is especially satisfying to surrender to an author who is utterly in command of a thrilling and original story, an author capable of playing us like fish, of letting us get worried, then riled up, then complacent and then finally blowing us away when the final shocks are delivered.

Ms. Korelitz ultimately concluded that, while glorious prose is a fine thing, “without an enthralling story, it's just so much verbal tapioca.”

Now, if verbal tapioca is your thing, we have a First Amendment that guarantees your right to produce it.

But if you want readers, you must consider plot, whether you sniff at it or not.

Plot and structure both serve the larger enterprise — story. In the end, that's what this whole novel thing is about. Telling a story in a way that transports the reader. Let's talk a little about that.

If a reader picks up a book and remains in his own world, there was no point in picking up the book in the first place. What the reader seeks is
an experience that is other
. Other than what he normally sees each day.

Story is how he gets there. A good story transports the reader to a new place via experience. Not through arguments or facts, but through the illusion that life is taking place on the page. Not his life. Someone else's. Your characters' lives.

Author James N. Frey calls this the
fictive dream
, and that's accurate. When we dream, we experience that as reality.

I still get those
late-for-an-important-event
dreams. When I was in school, it was usually a test. Lately, it's been a speaking engagement or a meeting with some important person relating to my work.

I'm late, and I realize it with about two minutes left, though I'm miles away and can move only in slow motion. And everything I do seems to create a further obstacle.

You see what's happening? Conflict. Story. Experience.

I'll leave it to the professionals to determine what this indicates about my psyche. But as writers, we need to understand that story is how readers dream. They demand it.

Plot and structure help them get into the dream and keep them there.

Agent Donald Maass, who has written a superb book called
Writing the Breakout Novel
, is of the opinion that
story
is what sells the book — not advertising, not a huge promotional budget — but story. And he believes the key to long-term success as a novelist is the ability to write book after book that builds up an audience. How? The power of story:

What causes consumers to get excited about a work of fiction? Reviews? Few see them. Awards or nominations? Most folks are oblivious to them. Covers? Good ones can cause a consumer to lift a book from its shelf, but covers are only wrapping. Classy imprints? When was the last time you purchased a novel because of the logo on the spine? Big advances? Does the public know, let alone care? Agents with clout? Sad to say, that is not a cause of consumer excitement. In reality there is one reason, and one reason only, that readers get excited about a novel: great storytelling.

Plot and structure help you reach that mark.

In college, I signed up for chess lessons from a fellow who promised I'd be able to compete with master players. He assured me he could teach the basic principles that, if applied, would give me a solid foundation for a good game against anyone. Though I might not win, I'd certainly not look like a fool. From there it would be a matter of applying my talent (if I had any) to study and practice.

He was right. I learned to play a solid game of chess. And while I probably can't go more than fifteen moves with Garry Kasparov — one of the world's greatest chess players — at least he'd know he wasn't playing a chucklehead. By applying the principles I learned, I can play a decent game of chess.

It's the same with plotting the novel. There are a few basics that, if understood and applied, will help you come up with a solid plot every time. How far you go from there is, like most things, a matter of plain old hard work and practice.

After analyzing hundreds of plots, I've developed a simple set of foundational principles called the LOCK system. LOCK stands for Lead, Objective, Confrontation, and Knockout. We'll talk about each of these in detail later. For now, here's a quick overview. Even if you get nothing else out of this book, a grip on the LOCK system will serve you well your whole writing career.

Imagine a guy on a New York City street corner with a
Will Work for Food
sign. Interesting? Not very. We've seen it many times before, and we wouldn't stand and watch him for a minute.

But what if the guy was dressed in a tuxedo, and his sign said
Will Tap Dance for Food
? Hmm, a little more interesting. Maybe he has a yellow pad and the sign says,
Will Write Novel for Food
. I might buy him a hamburger to see what he comes up with.

The point here is that a strong plot starts with an interesting Lead character. In the best plots, that Lead is
compelling
, someone we
have to watch throughout the course of the novel.

This does
not
mean the Lead has to be entirely sympathetic. This point hit me one day years ago when I was browsing the paperbacks at my local library.

I was looking at the new releases when I saw they'd brought in a new paperback version of
An American Tragedy
by Theodore Dreiser. I'd never read it and didn't know much about Dreiser, though I knew vaguely that his literary reputation has suffered in recent years.

But I also knew the novel was the basis of one of my all-time favorite movies,
A Place in the Sun
, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift.

So I checked it out, all 814 pages of it, not expecting to actually read the whole thing, but just to skim and see how similar it was to the movie.

Well, I had one of those wondrous reading experiences where I got sucked in. Big time. And as a budding novelist, I asked myself why. The book's style is everything the critics said it was: ponderous, heavy-handed, at times sloppy. On page 156 is the sentence: “Gilbert chilled and bristled.” And on page 157: “Gilbert bristled and chilled.” I couldn't make that up.

In fact, the
New York Times
once called
An American Tragedy
the “worst written great book ever.” But something makes it a great book, even though the Lead character, Clyde Griffiths, is not a nice guy. We first meet Clyde, the son of fundamentalist evangelists, at sixteen, and then watch as he descends to the point that he lets his pregnant lover drown.

Why does it work?

Because Clyde is compelling, though negative. Because Dreiser gets us into his head, there is a “car wreck” dynamic at work here. Just as people slow down to look at wreckage, we can't resist seeing what happens to fully drawn human beings who make an unalterable mess of their lives. A skilled novelist can make us feel that “there but for the grace of God go I.”

(
Note to readers:
This book uses the simplest model — one Lead character involved in the main plot — for teaching purposes. Mastering this will enable you to approach increasingly complicated situations later, for example, a multi-viewpoint novel.
See chapter eight for more on complex plots.
)

Back to our
Will Work for Food
guy. What if he tossed down his sign, put a parachute on his back, and started climbing the Empire State Building?

Interest zooms. Why?

This character has an
objective. A want. A desire
.

Objective is the driving force of fiction. It generates forward motion and keeps the Lead from just sitting around.

An objective can take either of two forms: to
get
something or to
get away
from something.