Write Great Fiction--Plot & Structure

by James Scott Bell

  This narrative outline will be revised and edited several times until you feel you have a solid story.

  The David Morrell Method

  As you already know from earlier chapters, I’m a big fan of the books of David Morrell, especially Lessons From a Lifetime of Writing. Morrell’s method is geared toward getting deeper into your story idea, finding out why you really want to write it. It’s a trip into the subconscious and the place where real writing power resides.

  It’s a simple concept. You write a letter to yourself. You ask yourself questions about your idea. The most important question is, Why? Keep asking that one over and over.

  I used this method for my novel Breach of Promise. Here is the first part of what I wrote:

  Why am I writing this? I am writing this because I want readers to feel the story of a man coming to learn what it is to be a father, only to have the system tear his guts out. And the fact that he’s discriminated against even while doing what’s right … wow. What does he do?

  Is that all? Well, I want readers to love Mark and follow his spiritual journey. And why do people love someone? If he cares about someone else (his daughter, of course; another character?). If he is vulnerable (worries, fears, hopes — and he’s the underdog).

  What, exactly, is the journey about? He goes from being a guy trying to be an actor, to someone who discovers deeper values — -his daughter, for one. He really loves his daughter.

  Why? What is it about having a daughter that is so important to this guy? Maybe he had a kid sister? Who died in a terrible way? And maybe Maddie helps him cope with that. (Or maybe that’s too much. It detracts from the real part of the story, which is just him trying to get Maddie back?)

  Is there some other reason for Mark to be so attached to Maddie? Maybe because he’s never been really successful at anything — he failed at baseball, even though injured, and his acting deal isn’t coming along. There might be a moment where Mark realizes that he had better be a success for his own daughter. Too many other people mess this job up. Let’s get back to the spiritual journey.

  Every day I would add to this journal, deepening my understanding of the material. This is a powerful technique even NOPS will love.

  The Borg Outline

  If you are a pure OP, if you desire to know just about everything that is going to happen in your novel before you begin writing, here’s a simple plan to help you get there. I call it the Borg outline.

  The Borg, as Star Trek fans know, is a cybernetic life form that assimilates all life forms it can in order to create a collective, advanced consciousness. If you are a super OP and you want that kind of all-encompassing system, this will work for you.

  You go from the general to the specific, and then you tweak the specifics until you’re ready to write.

  Here are the steps for you to follow:

  [1] Define the LOCK elements. As discussed in chapter one, a solid plot needs at least four things:

  A Lead

  An objective for the Lead

  Confrontation in the form of an opposing force

  An idea of what kind of knockout ending you want

  So spend a good deal of time defining your LOCK elements. It can be as simple as this: Sam Jones is a cop who wants to find out who really murdered the mayor. He is opposed by the killer, who turns out to be the mayor’s wife. In the end he is triumphant, but I want the feeling to be bittersweet.

  That’s very general, as it should be. If you’re going to construct a complete outline you don’t want to commit yourself too quickly at any point in the proceedings. Stay fairly loose to give your imagination some breathing room.

  [2] Write your back cover copy. As mentioned elsewhere, begin by getting your summary statement into shape. See Appendix B for a worksheet for this part of your outline. This will be your overall story guide as you continue to put together the outline.

  [3] Create the overall structure. Using the principles in chapter two, begin to get a sense of your overall structure. Think in terms of three acts. For example:

  Act I: Sam gets the case.

  Act II: Sam struggles to solve the case.

  Act III: Sam solves the case.

  Next, think about the two doorways of no return. Ask yourself why Sam must solve the case. What incident is going to force Sam to take the case? It might be as simple as being assigned the case. That means he has a duty that he must obey. That would be the first doorway.

  Then Sam comes across a major clue or suffers a possible setback, which becomes the second doorway. This may be a vague scene at first, but write it down in general terms either on an index card or however else you like to keep track of your scenes.

  Come up with a possible ending scene and add that to your list.

  [4] Do some character work. If you like to do extensive character biographies, now would be the time to work on those. You should at least know the minimum information as laid out in chapter four and the character arc as discussed in chapter nine. Take a few days just to work on characters. Make them colorful and unique because this will suggest possible scenes.

  I find it handy to distill all my character work into a one- or two-page grid with the following information:

  Character Grid

  Name Description Role Objective & Motive Secret Emotion Evoked

  [5] Create act summaries. You have three acts already laid out. Give a summary of each act. What is going to be accomplished in each? We are getting more specific now. For example:

  ACT 1

  Sam Jones is a New York cop. He has been on the job nearly twenty years, the last five as a detective. He has a wife and daughter, but things are not so good at home. His wife has been hitting the bottle pretty hard for the last few years but won’t go to seek treatment. His daughter is thirteen and rebellious. Sam is from a family of four boys and is clueless about how to raise or relate to a daughter. This is affecting his work. He has not been as sharp on the job lately, and he has heard about it from on high.

  When the mayor of New York City is murdered in a particularly grisly fashion, Sam gets the case. This is the doorway of no return because this is Sam’s duty.

  ACT 2

  Sam and his partner, Art Lopez, begin at the crime scene and encounter a sloppy ME who seems new. A series of witness interviews follows, each one adding perplexity to the case.

  Meanwhile, his daughter has started smoking and staying out at night. Sam’s wife is beside herself and seems to be cracking up. Sam has no idea what to do about either one of them.

  A clue points to the mayor’s office as the source of a possible hit on the mayor. How could that be? As Sam and Art close in on some answers, trouble comes their way in the form of an assassination attempt. The two of them figure out that there is something very big going on behind the scenes. A conspiracy? This clue is the second doorway. Sam is going to be forced to confront a much bigger problem than he thought.

  ACT 3

  Sam begins to focus on the mayor’s chief of staff. He follows him around, but is not satisfied with what he sees.

  He gets a call from the hospital informing him that his wife has overdosed on sleeping pills and nearly died.

  Torn between his personal and professional obligations, Sam almost gives up his job. But then he discovers that the chief of staff is having an affair with the mayor’s window. The clues fall into place.

  Sam confronts the two of them and is almost killed by their hit men accomplices. But he survives.

  Sam quits the force to dedicate himself to his family.

  [6] Create chapter summary lines. For each act, start creating one-line summaries of possible chapters. Again, you can put these on index cards or simply list them. You will be manipulating them a lot, so be flexible. Some of your chapter lines for act one might go like this:

  Prologue: The mayor is murdered.

  Chapter 1: Sam questions a witness in an unrelated homicide. The witness freaks out.

  Chapter 2: Sam is dressed down by his
captain for being overzealous.

  Chapter 3: Sam gets drunk and complains to his partner. Doesn’t want to go home.

  Chapter 4: At home, Sam yells at his wife and daughter. His wife drinks.

  Chapter 5: A newspaper reporter corners Sam about the witness incident. Sam is assigned the case with a partner, Art Lopez.

  Chapter 6: The killer’s point of view: watching the news on TV.

  And so on. This part of your outlining can take a long time, and it should. Give yourself a realistic deadline and strive to meet it.

  Lay out your plot on index cards or in some other form so you can get the big picture. Give yourself some time away and then come back to your plot once more for fine-tuning. Maybe you’re going to want to add or subtract scenes. In fact, you should.

  [7] Do full chapter summaries. Expand your chapter lines into short summaries of the scenes you are going to write. Put down the locations, times, and characters involved. See chapter seven on scene writing.

  Strive to keep these summaries to less than 250 words. For example:

  Chapter 1

  We meet Sam Jones as he is in the middle of questioning a Korean store owner who witnessed a shooting outside his store. The perpetrator was black and the victim apparently white, though the storeowner is unclear about who was who. This neighborhood has been the scene of racial tensions, and Sam feels the need to get a quick solution. Sam is also a little on edge, thinking about his wife and daughter at home. Things have not been going well there lately, and it is affecting his work. Sam is resentful about that. But he keeps his attention on the store owner, a middle-aged man who is full of fear. Sam knows that this witness is withholding information because he is afraid of retaliation. Despite Sam’s assurances that he will be safe, the storeowner resists. Sam has had it and starts yelling at the store owner that he better be worried about what Sam will do if he doesn’t cooperate. The store owner freaks out and starts screaming. He runs out of his store where he is nicked by a kid on a bike. This freaks him out even more and he starts threatening, “Lawsuit! Lawsuit!” Sam rolls his eyes. Another wonderful night as a New York cop.

  [8] Take a breather. You deserve it.

  [9] Write your novel. Follow the chapter summaries, step by step, as you write your book. If you come to a place where you’re absolutely compelled to deviate from your outline, pause and think about it, and if need be, change the outline from that point forward. Yes, it involves work and new chapter summaries. But you are an OP, and you love this.

  [10] Revise your novel. See the next chapter.

  EXERCISE 1

  Answer the following questions quickly, recording your first response:

  [A] When you go to a party, you most look forward to:

  1. Seeing old friends

  2. Meeting new people

  [B] If you had to choose which music to listen to, you would choose:

  1. Classical

  2. Rock

  [C] What subject were you better at in school:

  1. Math

  2. Art

  [D] How would your closest friend place you between:

  1. Control freak

  2. Wild child

  [E] Whom would you rather spend an hour with:

  1. William F. Buckley

  2. Jack Black

  [F] You most like:

  1. Security

  2. Surprises

  [G] You would be happier as a:

  1. Software developer

  2. Poet

  All right, this was a little unscientific. But honestly, if you have mostly ones, you probably fall on the OP side of the continuum. If you have mostly twos, you might very well be a NOP. Choose a system that fits your “profile” and give it a try.

  EXERCISE 2

  Make a list of your favorite novels. Put down at least ten titles. Now look at the list. Is there a similarity to them? Are they heavy on plot and action, or do you prefer more character-driven books? Or is there a mix?

  There are more NOPs on the literary/character-driven side, and more Ops on the commercial/plot-driven side. Take this into account in choosing a system. You should be writing the type of novel you most like to read.

  Chapter 11

  Revising Your Plot

  Let your characters have their way. Let your secret life be lived. Then at your leisure, in the succeeding weeks, months or years, you let the story cool off and then, instead of rewriting, you relive it.

  — Ray Bradbury

  We’ve all heard that writing is rewriting. True. But how do you rewrite? What do you work on first? What do you decide to keep and what do you toss?

  This chapter is an attempt to give you a systematic approach to revision. Whether you are a NOP or an OP, left-brained or a righty, your plot will only get stronger if you give it some cool, rational attention.

  Ernest Hemingway had a rather personal way to describe first drafts. To paraphrase, he said all of them are like, ahem, biological waste.

  I don’t think I’d go quite that far. Hemingway, after all, ran with the bulls, so he knew how to fling it. There is some truth in what he said, however. The first draft exists to be rewritten.

  GETTING THE FIRST DRAFT DONE

  You’ve got to have something to revise, so rule number one is finish that first draft!

  What’s the best way to do that?

  Follow one of the systems in this book (see chapter ten). Then write it as quickly as you comfortably can.

  This means you don’t spend hours, Proust-like, laboring over pages and words. You can do that later. Oh, you can linger a little, looking for just the right style, but keep pushing ahead. Set a good-sized word quota for each day, and then write on through to the end. This is the “what’s happening” draft.

  The reason you press on is that your heart will be eager to take your imagination in hand and explore fictional possibilities. If you stop and get too technical, too concerned with getting it exactly right, you may never find the most original parts of your story. A promising road or rivulet may lie forever undiscovered! Even if you’re an OP, be a little like Lewis and Clark on that first draft. Try things.

  You can edit your previous day’s work before moving on, but that’s it. Fight the temptation to go back and do more.

  You can also use the step-back technique see chapter fourteen) but only to make sure you have your bearings — use the LOCK system to analyze your story so far.

  Keep writing. Get to the end. Don’t allow yourself to abandon the project. You must finish what you write.

  But what, you ask, if I have a chaotic mess at the end?

  Celebrate. This is the way it usually is, even for veteran novelists. Stephen King describes seeing his first draft as “an alien relic bought at a junk-shop or yard sale where you can hardly remember stopping.”

  You Ops may feel you’ve got things pretty well in hand at the end of the first draft. If you have followed your outline, the LOCK system, and the three-act structure, chances are it will indeed have a solid foundation.

  But now’s your chance to change things for the better. Here are the steps in the revision process.

  Step 1: Let It Cool

  Your first draft needs a cooling-off period. So forget all about your novel and do something else. You might try some different forms of writing during this period, just to stretch and grow. Write some poems, essays, or op-ed pieces. Or begin work on your next novel. You’re a writer, not someone who has written a book.

  All the while, your first draft is cooling in the recesses of your brain, where a lot of good stuff happens, unnoticed.

  After two or three weeks you’re ready for the revision process to really kick in.

  Step 2: Get Mentally Prepared

  Writers vary in their embrace of revision. “I don’t like writing,” some say. “I like having written.”

  For others, the rewriting process is like getting to take the final exam over again. And again. And each time your grade gets better.

  Whatev
er camp you fall into, do some things to get mentally ready for revision. And by that I mean try to get pumped about it.

  Tell yourself these things before you sit down with the manuscript and red pencil:

  Rewriting strategically is only going to strengthen my book.

  Rewriting strategically is fun because I know what to do for each step.

  Rewriting is what separates the real pros from the wannabes.

  I don’t wannabe a wannabe. I wannabe a pro.

  With all that in mind, get ready to work on your plot.

  Print a fresh copy of your novel. Yes, on paper. You want to re-create the conditions a reader will be in when she reads your book.

  Step 3: Read It Through

  Take this copy to a quiet spot and read. If you can read it all the way through in one long sitting, great. If not, make time to get through it as quickly as you can. Do not get bogged down in details at this point. What you want is the big picture, the overall impression. You can take very brief notes if you wish, but try not to slow down for any considerable period.

  Develop a System for Your Read-Through

  It helps to have an orderly approach at this point. One of the worst things you can do is start at page one and just tinker with each problem you see as it comes up. I use a red felt-tip pen and some symbols to help me mark up the manuscript quickly as I go:

  A checkmark for pages where I feel the story is dragging.

  Parentheses around incomprehensible sentences.

  A circle in the margin where I think material needs to be added.

  A question mark for material I think might need to be cut.

  And that’s it. Otherwise, I plow through the manuscript as fast as I can.

  You should work from the big issues down through the small ones. Sol Stein calls this the triage method, which the American Heritage Dictionary defines as: A process for sorting injured people into groups based on their need for or likely benefit from immediate medical treatment. Triage is used on the battlefield, at disaster sites, and in hospital emergency rooms when limited medical resources must be allocated.