The Plot Pot

Writers and writing coaches can argue passionately about whether story springs from plot or characters. The divide has become particularly pronounced since the appearance of “literary” fiction, a genre which implies it might be okay to write a novel where a gorgeous voice and memorable characters compensate for lots of stasis. 

On the opposite end of the spectrum, some novels offer escalating danger, but it befalls characters whom readers can’t relate to and don’t care about. 

Isn’t it the mesh of character and plot that propels story? After all, adversity is the best way to meet characters—to test their mettle. 

As K.M. Weiland puts it in “Plot vs. Character: Which Is More Important?”:

Fiction is about balance—in so many ways—and certainly nowhere more so than in the matter of plot vs. character. Good writing should not be about pitting plot against character, but rather about finding the harmony between them. 

The indivisible integration of plot + character has always built narrative. And isn’t that still, despite numerous experiments, what the novel is for? After all,

In our modern age, there are writers who have heaped scorn on the very idea of the primacy of story. I'd rather warm my hands on a sunlit ice floe than try to coax fire from the books they carve from glaciers. ― Pat Conroy, My Reading Life

Tip: Story comes from what happens to characters readers are invested in.

You probably agree. But what if, like many novelists, you’re either fantastic at tension-rich events or fantastic at characters sufficiently full-fleshed to cast shadows. Perhaps you worry that you'’ll never be equally skilled at both. 

The remedy? Quit viewing character and plot as separate entities. Happily, this works whether you’re starting a first draft, halfway through it, or at any point in the revision process. 

Perhaps the best way to visualize characters in context is some version of a Scene Goal Outline. So what’s a Scene Goal, anyway? An “Intense, explicit character desire that impels choice and action” (Laurel Yourke, Beyond the First Draft).

For each scene, distill the goal down into as few words as possible. How else can you assess whether you’re revealing characters and propelling the story forward causally rather than causally?

Watch your verbs. Contrast “was worried about the next hour” versus “terrified about the phone ringing.” The latter verb reflects character emotion and thus causes action. Since scenes are about tension, a Scene Goal always involves forcing characters to act rather than think or react.

How many Scene Goals do you need? Ideally, one for each scene. Keep those goals super-short and harness verbs to reveal character feelings, since that’s what connects readers to story.

Use the Scene Goal Outline to make the plot and dramatic personae intertwine inseparably. Because, as Heraclitus put it, “Character is fate.”

An Outline of Outlining for the Novelist

Outlining was never meant to emphasize A, II, or b. When novelists ignore rigorous rules about potentially punctilious patterns or parallels, they can benefit from the focus, organization, and clarity that one’s personal, idiosyncratic version of a novel outline can provide.

As K.M. Weiland puts it in Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story, “Examine your story. Where does it truly begin? Which event is the first domino in your row of dominoes? Which domino must be knocked over for the rest of the story to happen?”  Some form of outline is a useful strategy for checking such issues.

Tip: A relaxed version of an outline can aid the novelist during every stage of the process.

~ The preliminary overview.

You can save yourself time—not to mention stress—by sketching out the evolution of your protagonist’s journey. How much detail do you need? You’re the only judge. No one’s looking over your shoulder checking length or format. But do give yourself some goals.

• What are the five of six pressure points that create your protagonist’s arc?
• Where is the midpoint? In The Emotional Craft of Fiction, Don Maass calls this the moment when the protagonist can no longer turn back.
• What’s the climax of your novel?
• How does each scene advance the plot and keep the stakes high?
• For each scene/chapter, what is the primary goal of the protagonist (or perhaps antagonist)?
• Does each scene inevitably cause the subsequent one?

Though some writers consider outlining too confining, you needn’t obey your outline rigorously. The preliminary outline supports if you feel stuck and promotes a high-tension, causal movement from inciting incident to denouement. But are you on fire with new ideas? Follow them.

~ The post overview.

This is where you outline what you actually wrote, perhaps ignoring your initial outline entirely. 

• If the novel has multiple points of view, who delivers each scene?
• In what you actually composed, is there sufficient tension?
• Does each scene both build from what precedes and escalate toward what follows?

~ The optional final overview.

Personally, I had great luck outlining my post outline to make it even more compressed. For me, this third step clearly revealed how to emphasize causality, escalate tension even higher, and omit scenes that didn’t earn their keep. 

However tedious, time-consuming or unnecessary outlining might seem, it’s one of the best ways (if not, in fact, the very best) to insure that each chapter/scene fulfills not just the author’s needs, but those of your story and thus your reader. Isn’t that worth the time?

Getting to Know What Readers Know—or Don’t

Unless you enjoy clairvoyance along with creativity, you’ll never be certain what readers find baffling or belaboring. But you can develop significant skill at approximating, and the better your guesswork becomes, then the likelier you are to avoid dispensing too much or little. 

If readers have chosen your novel, don’t they want to hear everything you have to say? Of course not. 

Here’s the sort of thing they want you to omit.

“x.” What they’ve already heard.

Never be less aware of repetition than your readers.When writers revise over and over, as we definitely need to do, we sometimes forget what’s been established. This is especially treacherous when informing other characters about preceding events. Assume your readers are smart and have good memories. This encourages you to replace repetition with swift summary.

“x” Abstract description of emotions.

You “tell” every time you say, “Esmerelda was angry,” or “Romanov was sad.” Novelists frequently adopt such wording when transitioning from a general overview to a specific example. But that solves one problem by introducing another. Engage readers with body language and literal or symbolic imagery.

“x” Tedious logistics.

It’s charming that you can pinpoint the distance between the village where Prudence lives and the park where she makes love with Oscar in the bushes. Still, the lovemaking intrigues readers, not the park being 7.4 miles northwest of town, how long it takes to bike there, or even the exact number of hills Oscar must surmount to reach his beloved.

“x” Painful didactics.

Just because you know all about shipbuilding in ancient Greece, Caillebotte’s palette, or every detail about America’s greatest quarterback, don’t assume that readers also want to know. Never bury the plot or lose your voice. Instead? Integrate facts into the story itself, or use them as a delaying tactic to escalate suspense. Keep the emphasis on the fiction—not the “non.” 

Of course you must also guess what readers do want. That’s qualities like these:

~ Clarity.

Readers want to feel grounded. Who is this guy? When did the revelers leave the house? Where are we, and how did we get there?

~ Causality.

What induced this moment? Reveal motive not only through scene goals, pressure points, and character arc, but at the level of the sentence with words like “while” and “but.”  

~ Mystery. 

Manipulate details so that readers can frequently infer without ever feeling confused. That’s the not-so-secret secret to what readers want to know.

Tip: Successful fiction masters the delicate balance between inference and explanation.

Structure Your Scenes—All of Them

Coaches like Jack M. Bickham and Dwight Swain offer terrific suggestions for scenes, yet focus more on the building blocks than the writer’s perception of what happens next.

Tip: Plan your scenes to meet the goal of tension on every page.

Here’s an alternative: Character Goal…Hook…Hook.

~ The goal.

Know what your character wants. Instantly. Why can’t the character achieve this right now? And what’s the immediate result of failing?  “Instantly” and “immediately” are the key words. A casual, long-term possibility offers little at this moment. And readers, who have all sorts of other ways to spend their time, don’t want to wait. Don’t make them.

An added bonus: if you identify what your character desires, then you know where the scene needs to go. Win/win/win: characters get motive; readers get conflict; writers get strategy.

~ The hooks.

Use your protagonist’s goal to start every scene with a genuine hook, or anything that whets reader appetite.  Hint: it’s rarely just the setting. Consider these possibilities:

• Seemingly unwinnable goal
• Snazzy dialogue
• Question
• Short sentence that pops
• Secret
• Complex emotion
• Huge dilemma
• Grave danger
• Emotional upheaval
• “Ticking clock” (as Noah Lukeman put it)

Launch the scene with a hook, and conclude every scene but the last with another hook. Again, a bonus not just for readers, but for writers. Hooks help identify which material needs to be in scene while maintaining high tension right up to The End.

Now for the frosting. It’s often the writer’s motive, but less so the reader’s. Some examples:

Ø  Backstory

Ø  Themes

Ø  Symbolism

Ø  Allusions (literary or others)

Ø  Social commentary

Ø  History or geography or any other kind of “lesson”

Ø  Poetic moments

Like frosting, perfectly delightful. But in small doses, and never as a substitutes for the actual cake. The good news? Build scenes from hooks and goals, and you can add that delicious frosting without distracting from the plot. That’s where tension thrives.

Ready, Set, Scene Goal

Whether drafting or revising, writers often imagine what could happen next and start typing immediately. For the lucky few, that’s a great strategy. For everyone else, it’s ignoring an opportunity that may sound like busy work, but in reality is anything but.

Among other things, Jack M. Bickham is known for observing that “Writers write. Everyone else makes excuses.” The quote lets us know we can trust him. In Scene & Structure (1993), Bickham differentiates the protagonist’s over-arching goal from the pressing one in the scene at hand. This is what he says about scene goals:

The prototypical scene begins with the most important character—invariably the viewpoint character—walking into a situation with a definite, clear-cut, specific goal which appears to be immediately attainable. This goal represents an important step in the character’s game plan—something to be obtained or achieved which will move him one big step closer to attainment of his major story goal.

In the last two decades, a lot has happened in and about fiction. Today, one might describe the scene goal this way: Whatever a character desperately wants to get or avoid.

The scene goal differs radically from the author’s goal. Successful scenes do more than supply backstory, introduce minor characters, create atmosphere, or break for an info-dump.

Tip: Focus on character desire; this gives scenes energy, focus, and momentum.

Scene goals assist with every stage of the writing process. Here’s what the scene goal can give you:

~ A genuine hook.

Avoid the summary or context that don’t truly entice.

~ Focus.

You detect details that don’t belong in this scene, or possibly not in any scene.

~ Tension.

How will other characters respond to the protagonist's determination?

~ Foreshadowing.

How will the protagonist fail or learn from that failure?

~ Launch pad.

Before the climax, the goal isn’t realized, only appears to be, or results in worse trouble.

Isn’t it worth that little extra effort to build scenes from what characters—not authors—want? After all, that’s what readers want.

It’s Spring: Take a Risk!

Stick your head through the dirt and you could get frosted. Open fragile petals to blazing sunlight, and you could get burnt. Scenes are similar; it feels safer to proceed cautiously. Few would mind year after year of early, sunny rebirth with just the right amount of rain (preferably at night). But if every scene feels the same, then—every scene feels the same!

The problem starts with structure. Scenes usually begin with a hook and a location. Soon after, the scene goal is introduced. The characters grapple with that for a bit, the tension rises, and then at some intriguingly unresolved moment, there’s another hook to launch the next scene.

Perhaps you’ll argue that everyone does it this way every time because there’s no other way to do it. Maybe. Maybe not?

Tip:  Unless your scenes suggest varied goals, rhythms, and patterns, then a sense of redundancy will diminish your novel as a whole.

It’s spring, time to prune, clean out old habits, dress up old plantings, and seed something new. Apply the following strategies to your scenes. Not all of them will work every time, and some will take effort to engineer, especially at first. But this is a great time to experiment, when it feels as if the air itself is warm and moist with energy.

v  If you always start with a hook about immediate psychological threat, how about replacing that with a hook about the environment? Something breaks down, as things constantly do. Maybe the weather’s about to change or the old furnace about to give out. Look for new ways to begin.

v  If you always start with a hook about physical threat, what if the danger is psychological instead? Or the reverse.

v  If most of your scenes begin outside or inside, switch that. If many of your scenes begin with someone en route, start with them already there.

v  If you always give your protagonist a new worry as the scene closes, try making your protagonist happy and cheerful but clueing readers in on what a false, false hope this is.

v  If you always resolve each scene, stop before the end. Begin a new chapter in medias res with an interrupted scene.

v  Or keep readers wondering how—and if—they ever resolved that issue.

v  If you always present the setting and then the hook, try the opposite order. Better yet, integrate setting and hook into a single sentence—but not every time.

Play with the goal of doing one thing in a truly different way—for each scene. This not only vitalizes scenes but forces you to probe beneath the surface. That’ll provide a bountiful harvest in ways you haven’t even imagined yet.