Plan to Keep the Plot Pot Boiling

If only you could add the right ingredients and without watching the flame, maintain a roiling, steam-producing rhythm without the flame rising too high or sinking too low. But more cooks can smoothly simmer spaghetti than writers can instinctively reach The End with optimal heat.

Fortunately, there’s a straightforward (though not necessarily painless) method every writer can use. And it’s easier than boiling an egg.

The answer is an outline, but a unique one. Novelists frequently associate outlining with the first draft, since a plans promotes credibility and causality from the start. Besides, if you get stuck, as often afflicts the novel’s middle, at least you know where you thought you were headed.

Useful as such can outline is, it won’t help you assess tension. Here’s something that will:

For each scene, complete first I then II. Because you want to focus on conflict,  it’s crucial to start with the obstacle, desire, force, or change driving the scene. Hint: verbs best express that.

I. Write one brief, non-detailed, super-short sentence that captures what the scene’s point of view character wants—or doesn’t. Here are a few examples:

     Abe covets Beth’s reassurance that their marriage remains sound.

     or

     Carol fears humiliation if Don dismisses her flirtation as ridiculous. 

     or

     Ed agonizes over Dr Fred sharing only part of the medical truth.

* Part I reflects tension and suspense. Passion, sexual or otherwise, is always involved. 

2. A brief contextual statement of where the characters are and what happens. Such as:

    Beth arrives late at the restaurant she reluctantly agreed to and leaves Abe there alone.

    or

    Don ignores Carol rubbing herself against him during a study session at the college library.

    or

    Dr Fred admits that Ed is ill but refuses details even when Ed insists.

* Part II is context. It’s where the characters are and what happens to them.

Like most things, this technique gets faster and easier with practice. Stick with it, though, and you’ll have a way to evaluate whether each scene possesses the oomph to be a scene. More important, you’ll not only know what happens, but what matters. Readers choose fiction for the emotion it evokes, and that comes from—high stakes.

Tip: Whichever method you choose, assess the tension in every scene of your novel.

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.”

Does Your Novel Behave like a Story or like a Sestina?

Even if you’re unsure what a sestina is, you don’t want your novel resembling one. Novels must thrust forward, rather than circling around plot, theme, or character emotions.

What’s a sestina? A complex 39-line poem dating back to 12^th century France. Since novels can be 390 pages, the two forms illuminate in distinctly different ways.

The sestina takes the last word of the first six lines (123456) and creates this pattern from those six words: 615243, 364125, 532614, 451362, 246531. The six words reappear one last time in the final three-line verse. By repeating and revisiting, the sestina reveals different conclusions about the same idea, which—ceases to be the same idea.

Though this might seem excessive, each recurrence changes the word’s context, even its meaning. If you’re curious about the sestina, check out what Elizabeth Bishop does with the simple words “house,” “grandmother,” “child,” “stove,” “almanac,” and “tears.”

The technique is not only terrific for poets but an excellent exercise for deepening a novel. You might quite usefully compose a sestina about dilemma, subplot, or backstory. But it’s no way to structure the book itself.

Here’s why. Lauren Groff liked Joshua Ferris’s “To Rise Again at a Decent Hour,” but said of the protagonist’s arc: “If I never found the novel an ‘opera of bracing suspense,’ it may be because I was so worn down by O’Rourke’s incessant circling around his self-hatred and fear and inability to make a substantive effort, that when change does in fact come to him, it feels a bit limp and clammy.”

Novels generally trace the journey from weakness or difficulty to strength and power. Progress won’t be steady. There’ll be set-backs, wrong turns, resurrection of self-destructive habits, and worship of false truths.

This doesn’t mean you get to repeat as sestinas do. How can you avoid that?

~ A scene goal outline.

Check how often the protagonist progresses or retraces.

~ Physical/emotional balance.

The more characters ruminate, worry, and plan, then the more static your novel will feel.

~ Motivated dialogue.

Do conversations actually advance plot, or exist only to break up the narration?

~ A character arc.

Do events cause the character to grow, or is success sudden and inexplicable?

Tip: Life often seems to go in circles, but readers don’t want novels imitating that.

Write Fast and Revise Later, or…?

There’s something to say (see Anne Lamott) for getting to “the end” and doing the worrying later. That way you have a completed draft behind you.

There’s also something to say for avoiding what ultimately seems so discouraging or despicable that revision resembles cleaning out the Augean Stables.

Finally, there’s something best of all to say for choosing something in-between. Why write chapters without scene goals, paragraphs without focal points, and sentences so tortured that even the author can’t decipher the meaning? Why compose an entire whole novel in passive voice while repeating, dragging out, and “telling”? Nor would it help to write so sloooowly that you lose all faith in what originally motivated you. What can you do instead?

~ Make a plan.

This might be a scene goal outline, a storyboard where you write whatever scene turns you on that day, character arcs for everyone important, or even an old-fashioned outline. It doesn’t matter what plan you choose or whether you later change it radically. It only exists to help you produce prose neither ghastly nor too polished for your first stab.

~ Keep a schedule.

Life, as they say, happens. Accidents, birthdays, trouble coming in threes, flu, migraine, date night, and so on. Why pretend that you won’t have dozens of reasons to prevent churning out pages? Create a reasonable, realistic commitment, i.e. x hours a week or y hours a day. Then you won’t have to pretend.

~ Advance both the plot and the number of pages.

It won’t help to have thirty exquisite pages if they’re all you’ll have for the next few years. If your time is precious, don’t squander it reworking material that you’ll change after you know your characters and their journey—because your first draft is done.  Don’t proceed as if you know nothing about how novels work. Also don’t proceed as if you must immediately accomplish everything you know about how novels work.

~ Follow the dream.

Write this book because you love it. If you don’t, maybe you’d rather find a better day job instead. Feed the dream. Don’t starve it by worrying about everything you’ll have to fix. Productivity and passion blend beautifully. Negativity and passion do not.

~ Decide what a strong first draft means to you.

If you can define that without rationalizing, you’ll know just what you need, how much revising you should do right now, how much later. Only you know how good is “good enough.” Set the standard. Follow it, even if you’re having a wildly bad—or good—day.

Tip: You know your process better than anyone. Honor it, but get the first draft done.