Write Great Fiction--Plot & Structure

by James Scott Bell

  Some purists object to the teaser, as it is not adding anything to the plot. It’s just using plot material earlier, they say.

  To which one answer is, So what? If it functions to grab the reader and create interest, then it is doing its job.

  For a teaser, do this:

  Select a highly charged scene from your story.

  You may choose to use the exact same wording, or rework it a bit.

  Stop short of resolution, so you truly tease your readers to move on.

  ESTABLISHING A BOND WITH THE READER VIA THE LEAD CHARACTER

  Before I started to sell my fiction, I had a major weakness with characters. I would come up with a plot or situation, but I’d stock it with cardboard story people, characters who seemed to be on the page just because I stuck them there.

  Then I happened across Lajos Egri’s advice about living, vibrating human beings being the secret of great and enduring writing. Egri suggested that if you truly know yourself, deeply and intimately, you will be able to create great, complex, and interesting characters.

  That’s because we have all experienced, to a greater or lesser degree, every human emotion. By tapping into our emotional memories, we can create an infinite variety of characters.

  This is not a book on character creation though there is overlap. Plot doesn’t work without characters; the stronger your characters, the better your plot. For your character work, I recommend reading Creating Dynamic Characters or Write Great Fiction: Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint, both by Nancy Kress. Strong characters draw readers into your plot. This dynamic is called the bond.

  Ways to Establish the Bond

  After conceiving a compelling Lead character, you must go a step further and figure out how to create an emotional bond with the reader. You can accomplish this by mastering four dynamics — identification, sympathy, likability, and inner conflict.

  Identification

  Since the Lead character provides access to a plot, it follows that the more the reader can identify with the Lead, the greater the intensity of the plot experience. With identification, you create the wondrous feeling that the story, in some way, is happening to me.

  Identification means, simply, that the Lead is like us. We feel that we could, under the right circumstances, find ourselves in the same position in the plot, with similar reactions.

  The Lead appears to us to be a real human being.

  What are the marks of a real human being? Look inside yourself. Most likely, you are: (1) trying to make it in the world; (2) a little fearful at times; and (3) not perfect.

  In The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Stephen King gives us nine-year-old Trisha McFarland, who is walking in the woods with her mother. The trouble begins when Trisha gets lost, and why does she get lost? Because she petulantly stomps away from her mother to relieve herself. It’s such a simple, human response that we easily identify with it. That’s how King draws us into his Lead character’s immediate crisis.

  Trisha’s not perfect. She has normal human flaws.

  Your key question here is: What does your Lead do and think that makes her just like most people? Find those qualities, and readers will begin to warm to the Lead.

  This works even with (perhaps most crucially with) the heroic Lead. Take Indiana Jones. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, it would have been tempting to leave him as some sort of superman, overcoming all odds without a hitch. But the filmmakers wisely gave him an understandable human flaw: a fear of snakes. This humanizes Jones and makes him more accessible.

  Another word for identification is empathy.

  Sympathy

  In contrast to mere empathy, sympathy intensifies the reader’s emotional investment in the Lead. In my view, the best plots have a Lead with whom some sympathy is established. Even if the Lead has negative qualities, like Scarlett in Gone With the Wind, you can find ways to generate sympathy nonetheless.

  There are four simple ways to establish sympathy. Choose wisely. Don’t overload them, as it may make the reader feel manipulated.

  [1] Jeopardy. Put the hero in terrible, imminent trouble and you’ve got the sympathy factor at work right away. In Tom Gordon, Trisha is lost in dangerous woods after she stomps away. That’s immediate, physical jeopardy.

  Jeopardy can also be emotional. Dean Koontz often uses this device. In Midnight, FBI agent Sam Booker is close to an emotional abyss. His teenage son hates him, and he is fighting to find reasons to keep on living. He is in emotional jeopardy. Part of the depth of the book comes from his finding reasons to carry on.

  [2] Hardship. If the Lead has to face some misfortune not of her own making, sympathy abounds. In The Winner, David Baldacci gives us a poor, southern woman who grew up without love, education, or good hygiene (even her teeth are bad). So when she takes steps to overcome her state of affairs, we are rooting for her.

  Forrest Gump, who suffers from physical and mental challenges as a boy, gains our sympathy from the start.

  The key to using hardship is not to allow the character to whine about it. Sure, there can be moments when the character lashes out emotionally due to the hardship, but don’t let her stay there. We admire those who take steps to overcome.

  [3] The Underdog. America loves people who face long odds. John Grisham has used the underdog in many of his books. One of his best, The Rainmaker, is the classic David-and-Goliath story switched to the courtroom. We can’t help rooting for Rudy Baylor as he battles a huge defense firm.

  Rocky Balboa became a permanent part of our culture when Sylvester Stallone brought him to the screen in Rocky. The movie was a phenomenon not only because it was about a pug fighter’s chance to beat the champ but because it was like Stallone’s own story as a struggling actor.

  [4] Vulnerability. Readers worry about a Lead who might be crushed at any time. In Rose Madder, Stephen King follows a battered wife who, after years in a hellish marriage, finally gets up the courage to run away from her psychopathic cop-husband. But she is so naive about the ways of the world, and her husband so good at tracking people down, we worry about her from the moment she steps out the door.

  Likability

  A likable Lead, not surprisingly, is someone who does likable things. For example, likeable Leads do favors for people. Or they are witty in conversation. They are supportive and engaging. They are not selfish. They have an expansive view of life. These are people we like to be around. Think about people you like, and then incorporate some of those characteristics into your Lead.

  A witty character, a character who doesn’t take himself too seriously, is likable. So is the character who cares about others without calling attention to himself.

  Irwin Fletcher, in the Fletch books by Gregory MacDonald, is witty and self-deprecating. So is Elvis Cole, the private investigator creation of Robert Crais.

  But note that people who try too hard to be likable often miss the mark. It’s a fine line your characters walk, but worth the effort to get it right.

  You can write about an unlikable Lead if you compensate in other areas. Giving the Lead power is one good method. Scarlett O’Hara has a certain power over men. She also demonstrates her power to overcome obstacles as the story progresses.

  In The Godfather,Michael Corleone is a monster, and a powerful one.

  Make the unlikable Lead fascinating in some way, or readers will be turned off.

  Inner conflict

  Characters who are absolutely sure about what they do, who plunge ahead without fear, are not that interesting. We don’t go through life that way. In reality, we have doubts just like everyone else.

  Bringing your Lead’s doubts to the surface in your plot pulls the reader deeper into the story.

  In How to Write a Damn Good Novel II, James N. Frey writes that inner conflict “can be thought of as a battle between two ‘voices’ within the character: one of reason, the other of passion — or of two conflicting passions.”

  Many times it is fear on one side, telling the Lead not to act. Inner confli
ct is resolved when the Lead, by listening to the other side — duty, honor, principle, or the like — overcomes doubt and acts accordingly.

  Present the Story World

  What sort of world does your Lead inhabit? Not merely the setting, though that is important. But what is life like for the Lead?

  In Mystic River, Dennis Lehane gives us Jimmy Marcus’s story world in the first chapter after the prologue:

  After work that night, Jimmy Marcus had a beer with his brother-in-law, Kevin Savage, at the Warren Tap, the two of them sitting at the window and watching some kids play street hockey. There were six kids, and they were fighting in the dark, their faces gone featureless with it. The Warren Tap was tucked away on a side street in the old stockyard district …

  We get a sense of Jimmy’s life and routine here. He’s an average guy in a working-class location (near the stockyard). The rest of the section gives us more explanation of Jimmy’s situation — how he’d been in prison, but now has a wife and three daughters and owns a store. He’s a guy just trying to make it in the world.

  Sometimes we begin with the Lead practicing his chosen profession. This allows for some explanation, as in Lawrence Block’s Eight Million Ways to Die:

  She said, “You used to be a policeman.”

  “A few years back.”

  “And now you’re a private detective.”

  “Not exactly.” The eyes widened. They were very vivid blue, an unusual shade, and I wondered if she were wearing contact lenses. The soft lenses sometimes do curious things to eye color, altering some shades, intensifying others.

  “I don’t have a license,” I explained. “When I decided I didn’t want to carry a badge anymore I didn’t figure I wanted to carry a license, either.” Or fill out forms or keep records or check with the tax collector. “Anything I do is very unofficial.”

  “But it’s what you do? It’s how you make your living?”

  “That’s right.”

  Notice this isn’t just raw exposition. Block shows us the narrator’s close observations, and some of his attitude about “official” things.

  Set the Tone

  Chapter one of Steve Martini’s The Judge begins like this:

  “You have two choices,” he tells me. “Your man testifies, or else.”

  “Or else what? Thumbscrews?” I say.

  He gives me a look as if to say, “If you like.”

  Armando Acosta would have excelled in another age. Scenes of some dimly lit stone cavern with iron shackles, pinioned to the walls come to mind. Visions of flickering torches, the odor of lard thick in the air, as black-hooded men, hairy and barrel-chested, scurry about with implements of pain, employed at his command. The “Cocoanut” is a man with bad timing. He missed his calling with the passing of the Spanish Inquisition.

  We are seated in his chambers behind Department 15 …

  A legal setting and a tough tone from the narrator; a lawyer facing a tough, unfair judge. We know this is going to be a certain kind of book with a distinct voice.

  Contrast that to the following excerpt from Tom Robbins’s Another Roadside Attraction:

  The magician’s underwear has just been found in a cardboard suitcase floating in a stagnant pond on the outskirts of Miami. However significant that discovery may be — and there is the possibility that it could alter the destiny of each and every one of us — it is not the incident with which to begin this report.

  Notice any difference in tone? I think you do. Readers want to settle into a consistent tone. That does not mean a serious novel can’t have comic relief, or a comic novel some drama. In fact, that variety is a good thing — it keeps readers engaged.

  But the overall impression one gets from a novel should be consistency of tone.

  Hook Readers With the First Page

  “Don’t warm up your engines,” Jack M. Bickham counseled in The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes. “Start your story from the first sentence.”

  Bickham warns of three beginning motifs that can stall your story on the very first page.

  Excessive description. If description is what dominates the opening, there is no action, no character in motion. While some brief description of place is necessary, it should be woven briefly into the opening action. If a setting is vital to the story, at least give us a person in the setting to get things rolling.

  Backward looks. Fiction is forward moving. If you frontload with backstory — those events that happened to the characters before the main plot — it feels like stalling.

  No threat. “Good fiction,” wrote Bickham, “starts with — and deals with — someone’s response to threat.” Give us that opening bit of disturbance quickly.

  COMPEL THE READER TO MOVE ON TO THE MIDDLE

  All of this Act I material described above exists to move the reader on to Act II. Why should they care to read on?

  Because you have given them the following in Act I:

  A compelling Lead

  Whom they bond with

  And whose world has been disturbed

  And when the Lead passes through the first doorway of no return into Act II, we must know who or what the opposition is.

  Not that a complete identity has to be established. It is perfectly all right that there is a mysterious opponent out there, someone to be revealed later. But that there is an opponent is all important.

  Make sure the opponent is as strong as or, preferably, stronger than the Lead. And do not scrimp on the sympathy factor! Give the opponent his due, his justifications. Your novel will be the stronger for it.

  Handling Exposition

  Nothing will slow down plot faster than an information dump. This is where the author merely tells the reader something he thinks the reader needs to know before moving on with the plot.

  It’s bad enough when this is done in the narrative portion, but dreadful when it is done in dialogue.

  For example, you might run across a paragraph like this:

  John was a doctor from the east. He went to medical school at Johns Hopkins where he was a star student. He completed his residency in New York City when he was 30 years old. He lived with relatives on Long Island while he was an intern. John loved New York.

  Now, in certain contexts this might be perfectly fine. Sometimes telling is a short cut, and if it is indeed short, it can work. But take a look at all exposition like the above in your manuscript, and ask yourself if you can be more creative in how you give this information to your readers.

  I have a few rules about exposition in the beginnings of books. I have formulated these only because I saw in my own writing the tendency to put in a lot of exposition up front, thinking the reader needed this to understand the story.

  Not so. Most of the time I could cut with impunity and not lose the flow of the story; in fact, my novels started to take off from the beginning.

  Don’t start slowly with useless exposition. Thus, the rules:

  Rule 1: Act first, explain later. Begin with a character in motion. Readers will follow a character who is doing something, and won’t demand to know everything about the character up front. You then drop in information as necessary, in little bits as you go along.

  Rule 2: When you explain, do the iceberg. Don’t tell us everything about the character’s past history or current situation. Give us the 10 percent above the surface that is necessary to understand what’s going on, and leave 90 percent hidden and mysterious below the surface. Later in the story, you can reveal more of that information. Until the right time, however, withhold it.

  Rule 3: Set information inside confrontation. Often, the best way to let information come out is within a scene of intense conflict. Using the characters’ thoughts or words, you can have crucial information ripped out and thrown in front of the reader.

  TWO EXAMPLES OF SUCCESSFUL BEGINNINGS

  In the first chapter of Midnight, Dean Koontz skillfully weaves in exposition during a tense jog at night:

  First sentence: “Jan
ice Capshaw liked to run at night.” Follows the rule: Open with a character — named — in motion.

  Next two sentences: Author explains something about her running, gives her age and something about her appearance (healthy).

  Next five sentences:We learn the time and place (Sunday night, Sept. 21, Moonlight Cove). Description of the place. Mood established (dark, no cars, no other people). Background on the place (quiet little town).

  Next three sentences: Mood details in the action (as she runs).

  Next two sentences: Background on Janice’s likes about night running.

  Next five sentences: Deepening details about Janice (why she likes night).

  Next three sentences: Action as she runs. More details and mood.

  Next sentence: Action as she runs. How she feels.

  Next seven sentences: Deepening Janice by describing her past with her late husband.

  Next two sentences: First sign of trouble.

  Next three sentences: Her reaction to the sign.

  And so on throughout. Read this opening chapter. It is a great example of handling exposition.

  For the next example, let’s widen our scope and look at how Final Seconds, by John Lutz and David August, progresses within the first six chapters:

  Prologue: New York public school has bomb scare. Harper, a grizzled veteran, and his young partner, arrive. Tension builds as he tries to undo the bomb. Finally, left holding a bit of explosive, Harper is almost there when … boom. His hand is mostly blown off.

  Chapter one: Two-and-a-half years later, Harper is going to see his partner (who was sort of at fault for the accident). He’s working security for techno-thriller author Rod Buckner. Harper is no longer with the NYPD.

  Chapter two: Harper can’t talk his old partner into coming back to the NYPD. As he’s driving away from this very secure complex, a tremendous explosion is heard. The whole house, along with Buckner and all the others, is blown up.