This is number 131 in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
“MY PLOT has more holes than Swiss cheese!” said many a new author—and often seasoned authors as well.
Plots are hard. Sitting down to make a point-by-point list of how the plot will develop can seem a daunting task at best. So much so, that when Chris Baty started the now-defunct National Novel Writing Month, he wrote a book called No Plot, No Problem to encourage people to take up the challenge of writing a 50,000-word novel in a month.
Chris had a good idea, and thousands of writers followed it over the next twenty-five years. But the title doesn’t really say it all. Many writers got bogged down in a morass of disconnected thoughts, actions without motivation, and emergency sex scenes in order to pad out the word count. Much like the authors on SOL!
In the case of at least half the authors, that’s not so. I jest.
In my case, it’s not true of at least half my stories.
I’ve been consulting on people’s writing for many years. There are a few writers I’ve helped to bigger and better things. Like becoming an accountant.
For several years, I chaired a category of the Pacific Northwest Writers’ Association Annual Literary Competition. The poor people in the short non-fiction (memoir) category were exposed to my critique. I read hundreds of essays about things that happened in the authors’ lives.
The problem I saw with most is what I called anecdotalism. I think I just coined that term. In general, the ten-page essay amounted to telling about an amusing incident—or a life-changing event—in the person’s life. And that was it. They were the type of stories you might tell the coffee klatch on Friday afternoon, but they really held no interest beyond that. Why?
Because they had no point!
When authors approach me with a book about their lives, I always ask, “What’s the point?”
For many people—and this is for novelists as well as memoirists—the point is simply to leave a legacy behind for their descendants to know their grandmother a little better. That’s fine, but there is no real reason to have that book cluttering up the online bookstores or to be disappointed in its sales.
In the same way, having a great character or set of characters and tossing conflicts at them in order to inspire action isn’t quite enough to make a book. What’s the point?
I’m personally not a fan of game-based novels and movies: Halo, Pokemon, Final Fantasy, The Legend of Zelda, Assassin’s Creed, and Tomb Raider to name a few. They often seem to be determined by the throw of a die, albeit a 20-sided one. The author doesn’t have a clear path for the story, or even to know how long her merry band of adventurers will be on the road.
However, one thing that most games have is an objective. There’s a point to playing. Discover a new land, slay the dragon, get the treasure, become the king, etc.
All I’m saying is there should be a point to your novel. A goal. What is it?
So, your simplest plot for the story is to ask yourself, “What is the goal?” When you can answer that, you have a plot. Conflict comes in the way of things that will prevent the MC (main character) from achieving the goal. Action will come in the way the MC overcomes conflict. Overcoming all the conflicts will lead to the achievement of the goal, and thus to the end of the plot.
What’s the point? No matter how long your story is, whether a contest entry or even shorter work, or if it is an epic fantasy, you can keep it moving by sticking to the point—or at least returning to it.
In RPG (role play gaming) there are often side quests—basically opportunities to chase after squirrels. Take them. They make the story more interesting. But always come back to the main goal.
I’m big on character development, as you have seen from previous posts. One of the comments I hear most often in November—we still write novels in November even though NaNoWriMo is no more—is that the characters took over and the author can’t get them on track.
Okay. They’re off on a side quest. Eventually, though, they have to slay the dragon. That’s the point. If they spend fifty years as a drunkard in a tavern in Genovia, they still are going to have to face the damn dragon. If they won’t go out to get him, he’ll come there.
That doesn’t mean the intended two have to get married. They might have to put up with a less suitable pairing—Think Harry and Ginny and Hermione and Ron. That’s characters when they drive things. But they still have to defeat the Death Eaters.
So, characters drive action, action drives plot. You get action by creating conflict. Easy-peasy, right?
Since everything revolves around character, you should have a variety of them. Each should be just as well developed as the others. One of the faults new writers trip over is only having one interesting character in their story. The rest are cardboard cutouts the MC is supposed to interact with. That makes things kind of boring. All the MC has to do is walk up to the cardboard cutout and push it over.
When the villain is as well developed as the hero, there is potential for real conflict that is not a pushover. When ancillary characters are well-developed, there is opportunity for love, betrayal, hurt, distrust, and friendship. The MC isn’t going to go down the street holding hands with a cardboard cutout, nor is she going to fall into bed with one.
Each character should have his or her own distinct voice, too. It is hard on the reader if they all sound the same. Just remember that with all these characters in mind, you won’t bring them into conflict unless you have the goal in mind.
Many authors say there is nothing more intimidating than a blank page. Next week we’ll talk about Facing Pages.