Tag: how to create plot

How to Fix Your Sagging Plot

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Does your story sag in the middle? Do you feel like you’re plowing through boring scenes just to get to the cool ones? Is your protagonist wandering around aimlessly, looking for the climax?

It’s not enough to have all the major events written down in a neat little list – what you need is structure.

An important distinction

Structure is not formula:

  • Formula is like having the same floorplan over and over.
  • Structure is a floor, walls and roof: you can organize them into whatever floorplan you like – but you can’t build a house without them.

Structure is the ebb and flow of tension and discovery that keeps you readers moving through the story. Structure helps you:

  • Keep the pace up
  • Know what’s important and what isn’t
  • Understand when to start and end the story

The following is a time-honored plot structure endorsed by Syd Field and others.

Structure of a Plot

setup, problem, confrontation, setback/decision, resolution

Photo by total13

Setup

In Act I, or the beginning of your story, you introduce the hero. We learn what he cares about and decide if we like him. This part should be relatively short. Keep the backstory to a minimum: it’s only an introduction.

Examples:

  • Bilbo celebrates his eleventy-first birthday
  • Luke buys some used droids
  • Passepartout starts a new job under Fogg

Problem

Within the first or second chapters, introduce the problem. Syd Field calls this Plot Point 1, which hooks the action and spins it into the next act. James Scott Bell calls it the first “pillar” of your plot “bridge,” or the first Door of No Return. This usually happens in a single scene – maybe at the end of the same scene you used to introduce the character.

Examples:

  • Frodo learns an evil something is coming to the Shire in search of Bilbo’s old Ring.
  • Luke’s aunt and uncle are killed, and he’s got the droids their killers are looking for.
  • Passepartout’s new boss bets some friends he can circumnavigate the globe in 80 days. Starting tonight.

Confrontation

Now we’re in the middle, or Act II of your story. This is the biggest chunk of the book. Your hero will face a series of obstacles, each more difficult than the last. As he overcomes each obstacle, the plot thickens, the tension increases, and the stakes are raised. In other words, new developments reveal that the hero stands to lose (or gain) even more than he originally thought.

Your hero should be getting more and more desperate; the pace should get quicker and quicker.

Examples:

  • Frodo and his friends face wraiths, orcs, trolls, giant spiders, etc.
  • Luke saves a princess, escapes the Death Star, loses his mentor, etc.
  • Passepartout and co. fight through bad weather, savage attacks, etc.

Setback/Discovery

Plot Point 2, the second pillar of the bridge, or the second Door of No Return. This is the worst setback and/or the major discovery that signals the climax. Your hero is now either armed with new information that leads him to a final showdown with the villain, or has been brought to his lowest point – he is betrayed, or he’s been shot, or the girl he’s been trying to save all this time gets killed, etc. The villain believes he has won.

It’s at this point the hero must make a decision. The ultimate decision.

Examples:

  • Setback: an army of orcs between Frodo and MountDoom. They disguise themselves as orcs. Decision: Frodo decides whether to keep or destroy the Ring.
  • Setback: Luke, now a rookie rebel fighter, is the last armed fighter left against the giant space station. Decision: Whether to trust the computer or the Force.
  • Setback: After being detained, Fogg and co. believe the game is lost. Decision: Fogg decides to marry the girl he loves.

Resolution

The End, or Act III. The climax and conclusion are the results of his ultimate decision. Does he win or lose, learn a lesson, live to fight another day?

Examples:

  • We find out who survived, who married whom, and who leaves Middle Earth.
  • We find out if Luke succeeds or fails and what that means for the Rebel Alliance.
  • Passepartout sets out to find a priest to do the marrying, when he discovers they arrived in town a day early – and we find out if they make it in time.

So there you have it. Just follow the bridge to get safely across to happily ever after.

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How to write plot

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“I have a great book idea, but I have no plot.”

I hear this pretty frequently. Most new writers seem to think that plot lines are supposed to spring into their heads fully formed. Then they feel deficient when they come up dry. But plotlines rarely appear out of the blue – and never fully formed. More often an idea is nothing but a world, a character, a single scene, or a mere image. We must take these fragments and grow them into stories.

But how? Yes, some of it still has to be inspiration, and I can’t teach you how to be inspired, but here are some methods that will help:

Image – have nothing but a picture in your head? Don’t fret. C.S. Lewis started out with nothing but a mental picture of a faun carrying an umbrella, and got the seven-book Chronicles of Narnia out of it. Let yourself daydream about the image for a while. Once it has grown into a scene, read below.

Scene – Markus Zusak got the idea for I Am the Messenger when he noticed a 15-minute parking zone outside a bank and wondered what it would be like to be stuck lying on the floor of the bank during a robbery, worrying about a parking fine. So start by writing down everything you know about that scene. Is it a beginning scene, a middle scene, or the climax? Who is there? How did they get there? What will be the result of their actions ?

World – maybe your idea centers on a world that has some interesting little difference from ours (like it’s full of mutant humans with magical powers). How did the world get that way? (Are they mutating due to a nuclear explosion, or are they doing it to themselves intentionally?) What are the social, political, religious ramifications? (Are they suing a power plant? Are they fighting laws against genetic manipulation?) What are the real-life ramifications for an individual person? (Is the psychic teenager ostracized by his parents? Is the housewife fighting crime at night?)

Character – maybe you’ve invented Sherlock Holmes, Sydney Carton, or Margo Roth Spiegelman and this person is begging to have a story written about them. Again, write down everything you know. Pretty, plain, strong, smart, cowardly, kind, mean, funny? What is the most important thing in the world to this character? Maybe it’s his wife, maybe her son, maybe it’s getting into Harvard or on Broadway, or escaping prison. Then, threaten this thing. Take it away and make them rescue it. Endanger it and make them protect it. Entice them to pursue it, and throw obstacles in their path.

Moral – Stop. Rewind. I forbid you from writing a book based on a moral alone. It will come off as salesy, preachy or both. Come up with some other idea, follow the directions above, and if a moral happens to grow naturally out of the story you are already writing, more power to you.