Three Ways to Skin a Plot
Posted: October 6th, 2010, 11:23 am
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…….
(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…….