Write Great Fiction--Plot & Structure

by James Scott Bell

  Abby clapped her hands and burst into laughter. Breathing hard from the singing, Karen reached down and punched a number into her cell phone. She felt guilty about the way she’d spoken to Will at the airport.

  This part of the scene is not intense. It does not need to be. It is a relatively short beat that lays the groundwork for later emotional impact. We don’t need a drawn-out segment full of show. It is enough here to tell us that Karen felt guilty.

  Soon, however, the intensity is ratcheted up near the top of the scale. Abby has been kidnapped from the house. Karen is confronted by a stranger in the house who tells her, “Abby’s fine. I want you to listen to me.” Karen’s reaction requires show, and Iles obliges:

  At the word “Abby,” tears filled Karen’s eyes. The panic that lived beneath her skin burned through to the surface, paralyzing her where she stood. Her chin began to quiver. She tried to scream, but no sound came from her throat.

  By showing us through physical description what Karen is feeling, Iles enables the reader to experience the emotion directly.

  Another example in the same vein is from Ridley Pearson’s The Pied Piper. A woman worries about having left her four-month-old with a babysitter for the first time. Near the beginning of a restaurant scene, we have an intensity level of about 3. So Pearson merely says of the mother, She was sick with anxiety.

  Later, after calls home have gone unanswered, the tension level moves to around 7. Thus, we are given a more vivid description: The knot in her stomach twisted more tightly. Her fingers went cold and numb.

  Raymond Carver, whom some might call the king of show (he was a master at finding the right, illuminating detail), naturally followed this strategy. His story “Neighbors” begins by quickly telling us the condition of the characters: Bill and Arlene were a happy couple. But now and then they felt they alone among their circle had been passed by somehow.…

  By the end of the story, however, Carver writes: They held each other. They leaned into the door as if against the wind, and braced themselves. The context of the story is in these lines, left to work their magic in the reader’s imagination.

  Using the Intensity Scale for Balance

  A good plot is an exercise in proper balance. For example, a thriller needs some relief from the action so a reader can catch his breath. A literary novel that delves deeply into character should find respite on occasion through comic relief, action, or some other change of pace.

  The Intensity Scale can help you with this balancing act.

  A novel usually revolves around a few big scenes. These act like guideposts as the novelist moves from one to the other up through the climax. In between, scenes of differing degrees of intensity are used to vary the pace.

  Determine which chapters or scenes in your novel are the ones that your story cannot do without. There are no hard and fast rules, but a novel of 100,000 words might contain half a dozen big scenes.

  Write these scenes for all they are worth. Get the narrative quickly into the show zone and stay on the high side, in the 8–10 range. Scenes that are transitional can be a mix. They might be quiet and reflective, moving from 2 to 5 or 6. Or they may have a seething inner conflict that feels like a 7 or 8 to the character.

  You can actually graph each of your scenes on cards, lay them next to each other, and step back for a look at your novel as a whole.

  The simple point is this: By staying aware of your scenes’ levels of intensity and writing accordingly, you’ll make your own novels fresh and memorable to your readers.

  10: Over the top! Use with care; only two or three scenes per book should hit this level.

  8, 9: Good range for your big scenes, those turning points that every novel needs.

  6, 7: Conflict, important emotions, sharp dialogue, inner turmoil.

  5: A good place to start scenes that build to the higher ranges.

  3, 4: Setup scenes (short) and other transitions.

  1, 2: If you start here, get out quickly.

  0: Don’t even think about it. For instance, lengthy descriptions (e.g., weather, place), especially in the first chapter, will flatline your novel and induce yawns (and rejections) from editors.

  EXERCISE 1

  Pull a novel at random from your shelf. Open to any scene and read it. Now analyze:

  Was this an action scene? Identify the places where you learn about the character’s objective in the scene and the conflict. How does the scene end? Do you want to read on? Why or why not?

  Is this mainly a reaction scene? What is the emotion the character is feeling? How does the author show it? At the end of the scene, what has the character decided to do, if anything? Is the character different? Stronger? Weaker?

  EXERCISE 2

  Now find an action scene and chart its intensity using the blank Intensity Scale that is provided above.

  EXERCISE 3

  Look at one of your chapters and analyze the hook, intensity level, and prompt at the end. How can you strengthen each aspect?

  Chapter 8

  Complex Plots

  Writing is very much like bricklaying. You learn to put one brick on top of another and spread the mortar so thick.

  — Red Smith

  And brick by brick, you can add levels of complexity to your plot. Because while a fast-moving story is a good thing, a story that lingers inside the reader long after the last page is another accomplishment entirely.

  A memorable plot requires that you take your writing to the next plateau. There are numerous ways to add complexity to your plots. We’ll look at a few of them in this chapter.

  But first, we ought to ask, “Why complex? Isn’t the prevailing rule in life KISS — Keep it Simple, Stupid?”

  Not when you consider the beauty of complex structures. They seem simple because they work so well. That’s the effect you want to achieve in your own work.

  DEVELOPING YOUR THEME

  At some point in your plotting, ask yourself what the take-home value of your story is going to be. What is the lesson or insight — the new way of seeing things — that you want the reader to glean?

  Put it into one line. This will be your theme.

  Think of theme as the meta-message, the one big statement about the world your work of fiction will convey. A novel should have only one meta-message, though it may offer several submessages.

  Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov propounds numerous messages, such as the futility of pure intellect and the burden of free will. But it has only one main theme, which might be phrased faith and love are the highest values of human existence.

  Themes deepen fiction, but you must beware of a common danger. It is tempting for a writer to take a theme and force a story into it. This results in a host of problems, including cardboard characters, a preachy tone, a lack of subtlety, and story clichés.

  How can you avoid these novel killers? Here is one simple rule to remember: Characters carry theme.

  Always.

  Develop your characters fully and set them in the story world where their values will conflict with each other. Allow your characters to struggle naturally and passionately. Theme will emerge without effort.

  Subplots

  Weave theme into plot. Like a tapestry, thematic strands must come together in a seamless way to create an overall effect. The feel must be organic. This is most often done through subplots.

  A subplot can be primarily thematic, concerned with what the Lead character needs to learn.While the outer action of the main plot is going on, causing all sorts of problems for the Lead, the thematic subplot focuses on issues that are personal and interior.

  For example, you have a detective who is trying to solve a murder. In the main plot, he is going to interview witnesses, follow leads, avoid death, fight with his partner, run up against his captain, and so forth.

  At the same time, he is having trouble at home. His wife has started drinking because of the stress. This is affecting the kids. The detective’s marriage is falling apart b
ecause he has not learned how to give his wife what she needs.

  This is the subplot that carries a theme, which might be learning to love is as important as success at a job.

  A thematic subplot can end on a positive or negative note and still carry the meta-message.

  If the wife leaves the detective at the end, that’s a negative, but the Lead has learned the lesson in a bitter fashion. He may not accept the lesson, but it has hit him in a personal way.

  Or the detective figures out he must sacrifice something of his professional life to keep his marriage alive. He and his wife reconcile, a positive note. Same lesson.

  A thematic subplot adds depth and meaning to a story. It allows you to make a statement about the important things in life, even if the main character isn’t thinking about them most of the time.

  Symbols and Motifs

  Symbols and motifs deepen your plot, but only if they are not larded on. Again, naturalness is the key.

  A symbol is something that is representative of another thing. A motif is a repeated image or phrase.

  Norman Maclean’s “A River Runs Through It” is a story where water is a central motif. It begins: “In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana. …”

  From the start, we have a connection between water, religion, and family (not to mention the symbolic significance of fishing). The river becomes the central image repeated throughout the story. When the narrator watches his brother fly-fishing from a boulder, he reflects “the whole world turned to water.”

  And at the end, the narrator tells us “all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. … I am haunted by waters.” The motif was literal at the beginning, symbolic at the end. It frames and defines the story.

  Janet Fitch weaves symbols and motifs into White Oleander. The oleander plant — tough, attractive, poisonous — represents Astrid’s mother, who tries to control Astrid’s life from prison. The tomato plants “groping for a little light” signify Astrid herself as she faces various challenges. These elevate the story from a collection of plot incidents to a commentary on life, love, and human resiliency.

  Whales become a symbol of hope in Lisa Samson’s The Living End. The grieving narrator, Pearl Laurel, is having doubts about life. She goes on a whale-watching trip, and someone tells her it would be awful to go through all this trouble and see no whales. This causes Pearl to reflect. “I am convinced. This life is more than just the face value. It has to be. There have to be whales at the end.” In the next scene, Pearl gets a look at the whales and takes pictures, “the first pictures I’ve taken on this camera in years.”

  Here is an opening moment from my novel Breach of Promise. The father of a girl named Maddie is looking back on happier times:

  And then the time we were watching It’s a Wonderful Life on TV one Christmas. Maddie was four. Donna Reed and Jimmy Stewart started singing “Buffalo Gals” as they were walking home from the high school dance. I glanced at Maddie and she seemed mesmerized.

  … aaaannnd dance by the light of the moon.

  Jimmy and Donna, singing.

  Maddie looked at me then. “Can we do that?” Paula was on the phone in the kitchen. I alone had to field this one, and knew from experience that Maddie’s questions sometimes threw a bolo around my head.

  “Do what, honey?”

  “Dance by the guy in the moon?”

  “By the light of the moon.”

  “Whatever, Daddy.”

  “You bet we can.”

  “Now?”

  It was one of those things you don’t stop and analyze. I think God implants a certain instinct in fathers (who are somewhat slow on the uptake) which tells them to heed their children without extensive cross-examination.

  “Sure,” I said. I lifted her off the couch — she in her soft cotton PJs with rabbits and me in my cutoffs and Dodger tee-shirt — and went to the kitchen to tell Paula we were going up on the roof of the building. Paula, phone at her ear, put her finger in the air, telling me to be quiet.

  I carried Maddie up to the roof.

  The moon was almost full. It seemed huge. It cast a glow over the hills, where million dollar homes gawked somewhat incredulously at the apartment buildings below. The kind of homes I dreamed of living in, with Paula and Maddie and a big, fat $20 million contract to star in the next Ridley Scott movie.

  But tonight I did not care that I was on an apartment building roof. Maddie had her warm arms around my neck, and I held her and swayed, swayed, swayed. Time went completely away as we danced by the light of the moon.

  The moon and the dance became a motif that was to repeat in memory, and in a final image of the novel. I had not planned it that way, but after writing the above decided this was exactly what I was looking for. It held the whole book together for me and gave me an image in my mind as well.

  You find symbols and motifs in your work by paying attention. Write scenes rich in sensory detail and look closely at what you’ve created.

  LONG NOVELS

  Length of novel, especially when it involves expanse of time, presents another layer of complexity. One challenge for the novelist of long books — epics, histories, and the like — is how to keep the reader interested for 500, 800 or 1,000 pages. With such scope there is plenty of room to go wrong, pad, or overstay your welcome. Even some of our best novelists have fallen into the abyss of prolixity from time to time.

  Style alone is not enough to pull the reader through.

  Furthermore, the episodic nature of some long novels seems to defy the LOCK system and three-act structure. But, as we’ll see, this is mere illusion.

  Let’s take a historical novel as an example. Suppose the author wants to tell the story of young boy in Ireland in the 1860s and end with him being a crooked and successful politician in the 1920s. There will be settings in Ireland, England, on board a ship, in Boston, and eventually in New York. In New York, there will be several parts chronicling the Lead’s climb to the top.

  Along the way, too, the Lead’s objectives may change. In the early parts of the book, his struggle is to survive. In the middle, it is to make friends with the powerful. In the latter parts, he is trying to gain power.

  There will be different opponents over the course of time. A villainous neighbor, an oppressive sea captain, a crooked cop, a Town Hall mayor.

  You get the idea. Loads of material and plenty of ways to stall.

  How do we keep a plot of such complexity paced for readability?

  The same way you eat an elephant: one bite at a time.

  Each bite, in this instance, is a major section. And the jaws of mastication are the old reliables, the LOCK system and three-act structure.

  Simply treat each section as a mini-plot.

  Let’s say the Ireland section of our proposed historical novel is to take our Lead through his hard youth to his setting off for London. Let’s say, further, that this section will be about 20,000 words.

  Think of this section as a 20,000-word novelette. Use the LOCK system, only turn the L for Lead (which in our example remains constant) to Locale and turn the K from Knockout to Kick-in-the-pants prompt — you want the reader to be compelled to read the next section. At the end of the novel, you will write a knockout ending.

  In the following table, the Lead is always going to be Connor, an Irish lad:

  LOCALE OBJECTIVE CONFRONTATION KICK

  Ireland Get out of Ireland Father, Neighbor Beats up father and runs

  England Find work; survive Constables, crime boss Framed; he flees

  Ship Avoid punishment Evil captain Jumps ship

  Boston Find a niche Prejudiced cops, Irish rivals Kills cop

  New York 1 Make money Cheating partner Gains business

  New York 2 Get power Political bosses Knock out ending

  Within each sectio
n, you may construct subplots, adding further to the complexity. A subplot character may also span the sections, making connections with the main plot.

  The movie Forrest Gump is like that. There are several sections, beginning with Forrest as a boy. He goes to Vietnam, later becomes a Ping Pong champion, then makes it as a shrimper, and so on.

  But consistent throughout is his relationship with the girl, Jenny.

  Now let us subject our sections to the three-act structure. We’ll use the first New York section as an example.

  In Act I of this section, Connor arrives in New York and finds lodging with a friend of his family, an Irish immigrant. There is some equilibrium established here. The rundown tenement on the East Side becomes Connor’s new “ordinary world.”

  But then the friend is forcibly evicted for not paying the rent, and Connor is out in the street. This is the new inciting incident, the disturbance in the ordinary world we’ve established.

  Connor’s objective becomes to make money. He believes that money is the key to everything in America.

  He meets a fellow who convinces him to become business partners. Connor signs an agreement with the man, linking the two — a “doorway of no return.”

  Over the course of this section’s Act II, however, Connor becomes suspicious of the way the business accounts for its money. There are ups and downs as Connor pursues his objective, money. He runs across a major clue or suffers a major setback that puts him in direct conflict with his partner, who has been cheating him. This becomes the second doorway, leading us into Act III.

  Through some clever ruse or with the help of a lawyer, Connor cheats the cheater and gains control of the business. Suddenly he has a taste of power. What will he do with it?

  That’s the kick that propels the reader forward.

  The LOCK system and three-act structure will never let you down, no matter how long or short your novel.