Wordcraft -- Where did I park my plot?

Reading an overflowing inbox of stories for back to back writing workshops left me with an overriding question. Too often, after reading five, ten, even twenty pages of a novel, I had no idea where the story was going.

And these aren’t the only writers suffering from missing plot syndrome. The fearsome gong show at this spring’s DFW Writers Conference included more than one opening page that left agents asking, but what’s it about?

I think it’s a symptom of a deeper problem -- fear of foundering under all the freight the opening of a story must carry. In his guide to writing, Plot & Structure, suspense writer James Scott Bell tells us the beginning of a novel must “get the reader hooked.” Oh, and establish a sympathetic lead character, provide setting and context, set the story‘s tone, provide compelling reasons for the reader to keep reading, and introduce the opposition. No wonder we freeze.

Screenwriting guru Dan Decker complained in his Anatomy of a Screenplay that “novelists can write and write and write” while screenwriters are bound by predetermined lengths, and Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! guide to screenwriting insisted on setting, theme, and character within the first ten pages (translating to the first ten minutes of screen time). But even though books have longer page counts than screenplays, I’ve heard the same ten page limit mentioned by agents looking for novels. If they don’t say: first page.

Here’s a suggestion to get that plot moving -- open with the main character. Then add the problem she must solve. Practice to see how close you can get the two together.

Remember the character’s problem is not that she’s in a new school or at a new job or on a battlefield. Her problem is not that she’s unhappy or has a crazy family. It’s not even the antagonist, although he’s important, too. The problem is something specific and concrete, something potentially solvable, with enough power to draw her through an entire story.

Want an example? “Elizabeth Ferguson looked around at the Saturday-morning comings and goings of townspeople, and saw parents who had lost or were losing their kids, kids who had lost or were losing their minds.” That’s on the first page of Anne LaMott’s Imperfect Birds. Who it’s about -- Elizabeth -- and what it’s about -- the drug problems preying on her community’s children.

But you’re writing genre fiction, you say, and your critique group tells you to start with immediate, violent action. How about this: “I knocked on the green door and knew that in the next five minutes I’d either be dead or I’d have the truth I needed.”

That’s the first sentence of Jeff Abbott’s thriller, The Last Minute. The violent action hasn’t happened yet, although we know it’s coming. But violence is not the character’s real problem. His problem -- what the book will be about -- is his search for a particular truth, a truth he’s willing to knock on the door for, a truth he’s willing to die for.

A final example, this one from Linda Castillo’s mystery, Gone Missing. “My mamm once me that some places are too beautiful for anything bad to happen. . . I had no way of knowing that some predators come from within and beauty has absolutely nothing to do with the crimes men commit.” Now you know the essence of the entire book about crime within the Amish community.

  

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Next Monday, guest blogger Julianne McCullagh brings news from this year’s Mayborn Conference sponsored by the school of journalism at the University of North Texas. Her writing has appeared in Loyola Press and the Mayborn’s Best of the West anthology.

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Looking for a small press? After two years of publishing only nonfiction, Arizona press Moonlight Mesa Associates will start accepting fiction manuscripts this fall, probably in September, publisher Becky Coffield reports. See www.moonlightmesaassociates.com/ for details.

Wordcraft -- Bones of a novel, part III

With one week left in this November’s NaNoWriMo (national novel writing month), I’m hearing cries of anguish as even writers who have kept pace with goal of writing fifty thousand words in thirty days feel the strain. The main reason, I think, is starting the race without a map.

Okay, I’m crazy about structure. But I got crazy by learning the hard way how tough it is run a race without knowing where the track is. A reminder came earlier this fall at Pyr editor Lou Anders’ writing workshop.

I’m writing a contemporary novel, but, desperate to enter the science fiction/fantasy workshop, I pulled out the first chapter of a nearly decade old fantasy novel to enter. Despite some qualms, Anders liked the premise and characters, but when he asked for a pitch-length synopsis, I was stuck. The remainder of the novel sprawled too hopelessly even to summarize.

It’s coming together now, thanks to help from Anders’ one-day novel writing workshop.

I posted about the three-act format of screenwriter Dan Decker (author of Anatomy of a Screenplay) last month. But with only a week of NaNoWriMo to go, how about fantasy author Michael Moorcock’s suggestions for writing a novel in three days? Yes, THREE DAYS!

First step -- have a lot of people after the same thing. And make it something concrete. (Sorry, world peace isn’t achieved in three days.)

At first glance, this sounds like every fantasy quest plot. But the more I thought, the more it seemed to apply to a multitude of genres -- a search for a ring of power or a wedding ring. For Princess Leia or Rapunzel. For the evidence to convict a suspect or to clear a family’s honor.

Second step -- have a protagonist ready to walk out on the whole thing when something else comes along. Notice, you don’t need to open with the heroine’s birth. Just her moment of decision, her fateful choice, her call to adventure -- whatever term appeals to you. He gets an offer he can’t refuse. The doorbell rings and an old love appears. (Just don’t make it the alarm clock sounding. It’s been done too often. Trust me.)

Third step -- the end. (Wiping the sweat from your brow!) But don’t ignore the end. According to Anders, for the ending, Moorcock suggests looking back to the beginning and picking a character from the past.

I love having the end mirror the beginning. I’ve heard suggestions elsewhere to have the final scene echo the opening one, but with a difference. Bilbo returns to his hobbit hole, only to find all his possessions being sold at auction. Or, to look forward to Friday’s adventure classic, A Wrinkle in Time, the opening sentence, “It was a dark and stormy wind,” is permuted into the final one, “But they never learned what it was that Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which had to do, for there was a gust of wind and they were gone.”

I’ll write more later about structure, and suggest you take a look at what author and former editor Kristen Lamb has to say at www.warriorwriters.wordpress.com/ But for now, watch out for the bones, and a happy ending to all!

Wordcraft -- The bones of a novel, part II

Editorial director of the science fiction/fantasy imprint Pry, Lou Anders, promised the members of his recent writing workshop at FenCon a discussion of the three-act method for structuring their novels. Then he spent the first half of his discussion, based on Dan Decker’s Anatomy of a Screenplay book and classes, instructing us about characters. Did he misspeak?

He insisted he had not -- that the characters must come first in writing a story. “Page counts, events at act breaks, ups and downs are all by-products of proper Character Structure,” Decker wrote. “Putting the by-products first is writing backwards.”

Accordingly, in defining the functions of Act I (read: approximately first quarter of a novel), Anders listed the introduction of the main character, the villain (opponent or antagonist) and relationship character. In a screenplay for a two-hour movie, these occupy the first thirty pages. Within the first eleven to thirteen pages of the screenplay, the main character must make a fateful decision -- a yes or no answer to a choice that determines whether there will be a movie (or novel) or whether we’ll quit and go home.

Although the page numbers are for 120-page screenplays, I’ve noticed that even in 300-400 page novels the main character’s decision arrives almost as quickly as in a screenplay. It was a lesson all the workshop’s participants seemed to have absorbed. With rare exceptions, their protagonists made the fateful choice at least by the end of the first chapter.

The first half of Act II -- up to the story midpoint, whether for screenplay or novel -- consists, Anders said of “asking questions.” The act’s second half begins to answer those questions and ends with the low point that finds the protagonist as far as possible from the goal. The purpose of Act III is for the protagonist to fight from hopelessness to win the goal. The last act’s tension, Anders said, “is not for ‘will she win?’ but for what she goes through to achieve it.”

He reminded us that achieving a goal doesn’t mean the ending is always the happiest one. Using the movie Casablanca as an example, the main character, Rick, doesn’t walk off the screen with his lover Ilsa. He doesn’t get what he wanted. He gets what he needed -- redemption and purpose.

Writing partner Robin Yaklin (see her blog at http://debutauthors.wordpress.com/) and I are on a novel structure jag that includes Randy Ingermanson’s “fractal” approach. There’s so much more that after a break next Wednesday for another topic, I’ll be back with more ways to structure a novel, including additional suggestions from Anders.

(By the way, Anatomy of a Screenplay is temporarily out of stock at http://www.amazon.com but available at another online book source, http://www.alibris.com/ And if you read this before Friday, you’ll get to see a new Halloween skeleton illustration from another one of my favorite sites, http://commons.wikimedia.org/ Or see its link at the bottom of this page for wonderful copyright-free images.)

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Correction to Monday’s blog -- The Heard Museum’s Halloween event is this Saturday, October 22, instead of October 29, as originally reported. Tickets are available online for Halloween at the Heard, http://www.heardmuseum.org

　


　

Wordcraft -- Bones of a novel, part I

image: Wikimedia commons

On the last day of the recent FenCon writing workshop, workshop leader Lou Anders wanted to teach us to write screenplays. Why, some participants must have wondered, would Anders, editor for a press that publishes novels, want to discuss screenplays in a nonscreenwriting workshop?

Because when he taught it to other novelists, he said, their beta readers went from merely sighing to weeping aloud at the climax of their books after putting the principles of Dan Decker’s Anatomy of a Screenplay into practice. And maybe because Anders, who has taken Decker’s classes, is a former screenwriter himself. And he’s the guy you’ve got to please if you want to get published at the Pyr imprint where he’s the editorial director.

Having struggled with the structure -- rather, nonstructure -- of the fantasy novel I pulled out of my files for the workshop, I was willing to learn more. I’d read enough books on screenwriting to be a fan of adapting the three-act structure of screenplays to the longer format of a novel. But I’d struggled not only with the structure but also with character relationships.

Protagonist I could pretty well get, although it helped to hear Anders point out that the protagonist’s desire -- the overriding reason for the story -- must be concrete. “It can’t be ‘happiness,’” Anders said.

Okay, but why, when I picked out a bad guy, didn’t he (or she) always work the way an antagonist is supposed to?

Surprise, Anders said, clicking through the stills from classic films that illustrated his talk. The antagonist is out to prevent the protagonist from achieving his desire, but he’s not necessarily a bad guy. So in the movie Casablanca, the antagonist isn’t the Nazi. He’s “good guy” Victor Laszlo -- because Laszlo and protagonist Rick want the same thing -- Laszlo’s wife, Ilsa.

And when Anders mentioned a third party, the “relationship character,” most of us looked knowing until he told us, this person isn’t necessarily the romantic interest. Instead, the relationship character is the one who accompanies the protagonist on his journey, has often “been there” before, and is the person to whom the protagonist expresses the theme of the story. Or who may express it himself. So in Casablanca, the relationship character isn’t Ilsa. It’s Claude Rains’ Captain Renault, who insists that Rick is a sentimentalist at heart, and who stays with him to the end, even when Ilsa leaves.

Those less steeped in older classics might find Anders’ analysis of the Batman movies more helpful. The relationship character is the Joker -- he’s always there.

Now we had a triangle of character relationships -- protagonist, antagonist and relationship (also known as dynamic) character. Need to expand the list of characters to fill the needs of a novel-length work? Give each member of the trio her own corresponding triangle, remembering that every antagonist and relationship character is the protagonist of her own story, every protagonist is somebody else’s antagonist or relationship character. Happy writing!

(But wait, is that it? Where are the three acts? Coming up next Wednesday, in bones of a novel, part II.)