Three Ways to Skin a Plot

[Hillsy]

As a award winning, best selling author, the question I get asked most often is: Why do you tell so many lies?

(Pause for chirruping crickets and the inevitable passing tumbleweed)

As an aspiring author I read a lot of interviews, blog, essays, transcripts of Q&As, etc of successfully published authors. I occasionally peek in through their windows in the early hours of the morning if I can disable their burglar alarms, but you can’t read the sheets of A4 strewn across their desk. (They don’t like it when you break in and watch them sleep). It seems the most common question fielded is: How do you get your ideas?

The answer is, of course, they steal them all from me. My therapist says I’m paranoid, but I’m positive he’s in the employ of the clandestine council running the top publishing houses, made up of Stephen King, J.K.Rowling, Stephanie Myer, Dan Brown and the posh academic one from the American Pie films who was pleasuring Stiffler’s Mother.

The answer is rolled out in 2 parts. Firstly, the writer says he has too many ideas, that he couldn’t possibly put them all to paper. Then comes the inevitable “What if”: “I just ask myself ‘What if’ and start from there. What if a man and a chicken solved the problem of cold fusion at the same time? What if the next stage in the cinematic evolution was to take narcotics at set point to heighten the emotional experience?” And so on, and so forth.

Great! Problem is an “Idea” isn’t a novel. Even snakes on a plane expanded on an Idea….
“There are snakes on this plane!”
“And?”
“They’ve escaped!”
“It’s ok, they’re in the hold. And anyway, snakes rarely attack people. It’s only a Hollywood affectation, designed to play on people’s fears of being bitten by something they can’t see.”
“Oh. OK then. Stewardess! Another mojito here, please.”
…..so really the question should be: How do you come up with your plots?

Having read through a few interviews, and listened to the wonderful, brilliant, “writing excuses” podcasts, the answers seem to get blurred a bit with another answer. Some say they outline furiously, lining up the dominoes to fall one after the other with a single push from their word-fingers. Others discovery write, shaping form and plot out of some horrific literary equivalent of a Jackson Pollock painting (Stephen King calls it “Diarrhoea of the keyboard”- some say Mr King’s output lives up to that description). Most people are somewhere on a sliding scale between the two. But actually this explains how to move along a story, not how to build one. Think of it like this: Someone who jumps in a car and drives can end up at the same place as someone who meticulously plots the route in advance. The question is not “How do you get from A to D via B and C?”, but “How do you decide what A, B, C & D are in the first place?

I offer three broad methods (which, considering my status of unagented and unpublished, is a bit like receiving advice on engine tuning from an Amish stableboy).


1) I am definitely here, wherever ‘here’ is.
“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveller is unaware”. In the widely accepted “What If” model, this is the technique. We take our Idea, put it on the road, and see where it leads us. Whether that’s done before putting sweaty fingers to keyboard (my house gets very hot) or after it doesn’t matter. From our initial premise we must construct the best characters to deal with the situation, then follow their progression - adhering to logic and believability of course.

In order to keep the tension rising we add in obstacles and block off the easy routes, have our characters make poor choices, anything to make the journey more complex, more wretched for the characters. Finally, the tension proves too much. The antagonist blocks all possible routes and the protagonist must face him. Climax. Denouement. Character walks off into sunset. The End.

This is the ‘classic’ method. Start at the beginning and progress, each new plot marker evolving out of the conflict of what has happened before. But it isn’t the only way.

2) “I’m coming honey. I’ll be there in about 200 pages”
Carl Sagan said: “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe.” If you’re wondering if I just used this quote to appear cool and sophisticated: you’re right. But it does show that everything has a history prior to the immediate. Plotting this way means settling on a destination and tracing back through the realms of possibility, again adhering to logic and believability, to where it all truly began. If you hit the Big Bang, you’ve gone too far.

So you want the end of your novel to be a girl, screaming at the cloud-choked sky from the roof of a burnt, broken building, possibly a school, while in the distance clouds of crows approach, hungry and unfeeling. Cool, eh? But how do you get there? Why is she screaming? How did she get on the roof? How did the school end up broken? Why are the Crows intelligent? Where is everyone else? You see what I mean: instead of “What next” you ask “Why” or “How”.

It is, in short, an alien way of thinking: I know where I’m going, but I don’t know where I’ll be where I start my journey. It allows you to hit the climax you’re aiming for and, with that in mind, layer in the foreshadowing. OK it might take a while working out the best place to start from, but isn’t the trade off of knowing where you’ll end up?

In both of these cases you have committed to nothing but a single point. The rest of the journey is flexible, including the start and end. But there is third, more lateral way.

3) Today, I’m on a submarine, but tomorrow I’m due at a tea party in 1833!
This is probably the most creative, least sensible method of plotting. In the race to the finish line of coherent, fully structured plots, this method is the bear trap laced with valium. Naturally, this is how I plot (See aforementioned status of unagented and unpublished).

With method 1 you nail your start, your premise, into the map of your world and wrap the start of your plot around it like a bit of string. Trace out the events and the string marks your path. Method 2 is the same, but backwards. This method it akin to opening fire on a map with a nail gun after downing a quart of bourbon and watching fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. 15 times in a row. Backwards. All you’ve got is a map bristling with plot markers. Now go play.

In the simplest form, you have a start and an end. You’ve got to get your plot string from A to B, go anyway you like, adhere to logic and believability, but get there. Often, this scattergun approach means you don’t necessarily know where to start, or finish, but you’ve got scene’s you want to hit on the way.

It’s like having a to-do list, no time limit, but only half a tank of gas. You have to work out which is the best order, where to start, if it’s even possible to hit all your destinations. You’re constantly plotting backwards AND forwards, but these way-markers will force you, and your characters, to be inventive.

It’s out of this pot of innovation the narrative forms, but, as often as not, the gestation hasn’t worked. The world is full of half-wrought plots; Frankenstein’s novels lumber, moaning and bemoaning their imperfection while their creators give chase with gleaming literary toolkits, wondering if it’s worth trying to save them through drastic editing surgery.


Whichever way you plot, whichever blend of outlining and discovery you use to bring that plot to life, I wish you well.

Now, as I’m also the creator of the popular TV sitcom ‘FRIENDS’, I often get asked…….

[Claudie]

I like this, Hillsy! I've used all three ways in the past, but I work best with a mix of 2 and 3. It's important for me to know the end. If I don't, I feel I'll get lost. Why is also my favourite plotting and worldbuilding question.

On the other hand, I don't work straight from the end to the beginning. I go back and forth in the plot until everything is as tightly tied together as I can make it.

[Fenris]

Why is also my favourite plotting and worldbuilding question.

Same here, but with a slight variation--half the time it's "Why not?" Obviously I have to adhere to enough relatable traits to keep readers interested and able to connect with the characters/world, but I have to keep them entertained too. Somehow I think Terry Pratchet was of this mind when he wrote Discworld...

I've actually done all three at some point or another. My current WIP began as a mix of the first two, with a bit of the third at the very end (everything had to happen in a specific order), but mostly it was "Okay, so I have to start here, and end over here. Now how to get there...?" And then things got crazy.

I'm also working on a project with a friend which definitely fits the third one. It's currently gathering dust on our mental shelves, mainly because we went to such painstaking lengths to come up with great ideas and plot points that by the end all desire to actually write the darn thing was all but gone and the "map" looked like some kid had played Connect-the-Dots without adhering to the proper order in which to do it. The moral: Fenris is a pantser.

[Claudie]

Why is also my favourite plotting and worldbuilding question.

Same here, but with a slight variation--half the time it's "Why not?" Obviously I have to adhere to enough relatable traits to keep readers interested and able to connect with the characters/world, but I have to keep them entertained too. Somehow I think Terry Pratchet was of this mind when he wrote Discworld...

Oh yes, he was probably thinking exactly that. I sometimes wonder if he'd taken some sorts of drugs, too. ;) What I love though is that Pratchett sticks to his gun, and every weird decision he took has lots of strange consequences, which he takes the time to explain. Why are people trying to go over the edge? To determine A'Tuin's sex. Why are his direction rimwards and hubwards? Because the world is a disc. This is what makes his world works despite the utter craziness behind it. That's why he's awesome. :D

So yeah. Why is great for worldbuilding as much as for plotting (this, my friends, is my desperate attempt to stay on topic. XD)

[Watcher55]

I don’t think I really used any one of three methods for plotting. I think I used the same method the ghost in the machine used for this thread. It took a slice of spam in Vegas to resurrect the map and shake a lot of the extraneous pins loose. Now all I have to do is yank all the ones clustered around the beginning of the end, which is also the end of the beginning. In some ways it’s even the middle. As strange as all that sounds it’s true except the part about the Spam (“I don’t like Spam”) and Vegas. I’m afraid to go to Vegas because I’m afraid I’ll happen then have to stay there.

Seriously, I had the beginning and the end and those are the only parts that stayed the same. It took a long time to figure out which pins were actually “C and D”.

btw all the stuff about the beginning of the end and the end of the beginning being the middle is actually true.

Why/Why not are important questions. Another question I like to ask of my characters is "What next?"

[Fenris]

Another question I like to ask of my characters is "What next?"

True, but that can be dangerous with some of my characters, as quite often they ask it of themselves: "What will we wreck next?"

[Watcher55]

Another question I like to ask of my characters is "What next?"

True, but that can be dangerous with some of my characters, as quite often they ask it of themselves: "What will we wreck next?"

Doesn't that also render "Why?" moot?

btw I know some kids I'd like you to meet.

[Fenris]

Doesn't that also render "Why?" moot?

Haha kinda. Though not as often as you'd think.

[Claudie]

While I'm not the kind of writer who speaks with her characters, I can assure you they would refuse to answer "What next?" knowing that if they did, I would take that thing they want to do, and make sure that they either do not get there, or that I can turn it against them.

[Watcher55]

While I'm not the kind of writer who speaks with her characters, I can assure you they would refuse to answer "What next?" knowing that if they did, I would take that thing they want to do, and make sure that they either do not get there, or that I can turn it against them.

Thet's the point where my characters have to turn the question around and ask "Now What?" and all they get in return is the original question "What next?" as in "Now whadda you gonna do?"

[Claudie]

Spoiler:

Thet's the point where my characters have to turn the question around and ask "Now What?" and all they get in return is the original question "What next?" as in "Now whadda you gonna do?"

I kinda hope you had some evil laughter to that question, just for kicks. ^^ I would.

[Watcher55]

Spoiler:

Thet's the point where my characters have to turn the question around and ask "Now What?" and all they get in return is the original question "What next?" as in "Now whadda you gonna do?"

I kinda hope you had some evil laughter to that question, just for kicks. ^^ I would.

More like an evil smirk >:] (?) not sure how to do that with the keyboard; but it's definitely not a friendly question.