Tag: how to write 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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26 Tricks to Keep Readers Reading

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Image by Cayusa

Image by Cayusa

Unmet desire. That’s how author Steven James defines tension. Unmet desire drives your hero, drives the story, and drives the literary agent and the bookstore browser. The desire to know what happens next, the desire to feel something – this is the D in AIDA that leads to the A. Action.

The second A in AIDA


Action in this case is taking the time (and/or spending the money) to finish reading your book. Which means you have to create a page-turner. Something un-put-down-able.

Here’s the best advice I found.

 

The Mindset

Who cares?

James Scott Bell advises you to constantly ask yourself this question as you write. Adam Gidwitz suggests you picture someone you know who is in your target demographic. Someone with a relatively short attention span. Predict their reactions to each scene in your mind. Ask yourself what would make them turn the page.


The Structure

Elizabeth Sims has a brilliantly simple method for plotting an un-put-down-able book, which she calls the HCM method (HCM = Heart-Clutching Moments). List all the HCMs in your story – pivotal points like chases, escapes, kidnaps, revelations, and love at first sight. Then, think of more. Find opportunities to dramatize what you previously only summarized, or left out entirely.

Construct your story around these moments, rather than on a loosely-constructed storyline.

 

Milk it

Get the most out of every scene:

  • Put chapter breaks just before or just after HCMs to create cliffhangers
  • Carefully delay some action – like making Pandora argue with herself for hours before opening the box
  • Use surprising but logical plot twists. Victoria Lynn Schmidt notes the art is in making the reader wonder what could possibly happen next, without making them incredulous after it happens.

 

Don’t be a drag

Don’t let those pages get cold:

Steven James warns you to avoid these tension killers:

  • Background exposition
  • Repetition – use your fight scenes, explosions and tender moments sparingly
  • Waking up from the scary dream and realizing it was just a dream – is a deflation, not an escalation

Tips on dialogue from Elizabeth Sims and Jessica Page Morrell:

  • Avoid using dialogue for information dumps – cut it down as far as possible
  • Don’t use dialogue to rehash or comment on events – show those events instead
  • Do use dialogue for tension – power struggles, mind games, etc., wherein strong emotion runs underneath, but is never explicitly stated
  • Try blending dialogue with action – like during a car chase instead of over a quiet dinner
  • Dialogue should mostly be short sentences with lots of fragments and white space – avoid conversations that go on for pages

Plus, remember:

  • Perfect people are boring. Show readers your hero’s emotional needs, wounds and skeletons in the closet
  • Don’t waste time – begin the story at the last possible moment

Dig deeper

Most good stories have both an internal and an external struggle. Make sure you’re inside the hero’s head, wanting and fearing everything he wants and fears.

 

Give ‘em Hell

To keep raising the stakes, you have to train yourself to think of the worst possible ways to hurt your hero. What will cut him deepest? What will complicate matters most? You can’t save the life of a minor character just because you like them (or worse, because you don’t want to put the hero through the pain of losing them). Here are some ways to say “no more Mr. Nice Writer”:

From Jessica Page Morrell:

  • Introduce new characters, settings and circumstances that throw your hero off-balance
  • Throw a devastating curve ball just when the hero is about to accomplish his mission

From Elizabeth Sims:

  • Add an unpredictable character – someone who’s “not all there” and may do something dangerous at any moment

From James Scott Bell:

  • Can you raise the stakes with outside events, like oncoming war or a natural disaster?
  • What’s the worst thing that can happen in the hero’s professional life? Family life? Love life?
  • How are the people the hero cares for most effected by events?
  • Think from the villain’s perspective – how else can he thwart the hero?

 

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What the heck is AIDA? If you missed the original post, read it here.

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man reaching

How to make your book “un-put-down-able.”