I met with a writer-friend the other night and spent a couple of hours, discussing plot.
This woman has wonderful characters with incredibly detailed backstories. She’s lived with the characters for six years or so. She has written thousands upon thousands of words, scene upon scene. She has three books wavering around in her head.
Her problem was that she didn’t have a beginning, a middle, and an end, for the book she’s presently working on. As she told me about the story, I saw a plot emerge. We determined that a story has to start with a character in conflict. That character has to want something. And someone or something has to stand in the character’s way.
The easy way to do a plot is to have the character work toward her goal, and fail. She can plan and fail and land in worse shape, over and over, until she finally has learned enough along the way to defeat the foe and achieve her goals. If she is, at that time, tempted to turn back the story will be even stronger than if she defeats her foe without any inner struggle. The black night of the soul makes the climax all the better. If the protagonist sacrifices something she wants, in order to serve the greater good, we will cheer.
This is a very easy plot to work with.
But my friend didn’t have this kind of story. Her story pulled me along because there were so many questions I wanted answered. But in the middle of the book my friend lost her grip on the story. One reason for this is that the conflict the character faces at the beginning of the book does not have anything to do with the conflict she faces at the climax.
There is a reason for this. At the beginning of the book the character doesn’t know who she is. She can’t know what she’s working for as her big goal, because she has woken up with amnesia. So her first conflict is that she doesn’t know who she is and the story is very interesting because of all the mystery that surrounds her.
My friend and I discussed the plot and we decided that the character has to figure out who she is and then she has to take off on the new goal. She has to have a new conflict. Once she remembers who she is, she has to go to work trying to defeat the problem she had before she lost her memory.
It will work.
Not all stories have to be written like a hero’s journey. Not all protagonists have to hear and heed the call to adventure. Not at the beginning, anyway. Or you might have several smaller calls to smaller adventures, before you get to the one adventure that will carry you to the climax.
All that matters is that the story is interesting.
But it’s nice to know that no matter what kind of story we have, if we get lost, we can always look at what we have, and we can plug in elements we know we need—desire, conflict, plans, set-backs, and finally success—and bring the book back on track.
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Oh yeah, I’m a terrible plotter. Plot happens to me while I’m planning on writing a different story. Then I have to go back and fix, fix, fix. I’ve bought all the plot books. They all flummox my brain cells and arrest my creativity. Being a Star Wars nut, I KNOW the hero’s journey. And yet, I have trouble writing it. I like the headlight analogy. Have you heard that? When driving at night, you don’t need to see the whole stretch of road, you just need to drive as far as your headlights can illuminate, and then you will be able to see the next chunck of road. I know that makes me a pantser. I’ve tried to sit down and carefully plot. Problem is, once I start telling the story, it never seems to follow that plot I carefully concocted before I got to know my characters.
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Sally, you wrote:
“We determined that a story has to start with a character in conflict. That character has to want something. And someone or something has to stand in the character’s way.”
This greatly simplifies the whole thing, but as you and Trisha state, plotting can be more involved and difficult than this.
You also wrote: “Not all stories have to be written like a hero’s journey.” True. I’ve written one of those, and it was a simpler thing than the story I’m telling now. The new story is challenging, because the first was single pov and this is multiple, with many subplots. Yikes, I need prayer even to set my pen to paper again.
Enough of me, what I want to say is that I enjoy your way of simplifying complex things and pointing a way to achieving a goal, in this case telling a story.
Trisha, I like the headlight method, too. I like to plot the whole book out, but I have only a rough idea of what the scenes are. A sentence per scene. And I have to constantly go in and readjust things because once I start writing the characters take me in different directions and offer me new ways to travel.
Maria, thanks for dropping by and offering feedback. I know how you feel trying to write a story that seems to be too challenging. I feel that way every time I start a book. I have to remind myself to keep on pressing through because every book feels like it will never work.