Fiction Plotting 1/4

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Fiction Plotting 1/4

By: PEAbresch

BookMarc –  Plotting Fiction

    Part 1 of 4 parts

Sometimes plots can grow organically, just moving from one

scene to the next. But if you'd like to know about the

problems of plotting, or would like to get a better handle on

it, maybe this is the time to actually examine what a plot is

and how to put one together.

Never underestimate federal asses. Urban legend has

it that when a reporter wanted to find out how many people

worked for the CIA, he called the Russian Embassy.

This was at the height of the cold war and the

reporter was doing a story on the new CIA building in Langley,

Virginia. When he asked the CIA how many people worked out

there, he was told that information was top secret. So on a

whim, he called the Russian Embassy, and the Russians, in what

had to be a gleeful tweak of the CIA's nose, told him.

When the stunned reporter asked them how they came

upon that top secret information, they reveled they simply

counted all the toilet paper the building ordered each month,

and knowing how much other government buildings ordered and

their number of employees, they extrapolated the information

accurate to plus or minus twenty.

Nice little story? It's what we call plot. Catchy

first line. Second line teasing deeper into it by revealing

the what, but withholding the why. Finally, sucked into it

now, we reveal the less interesting where and when. Then

seeking information in why. And finally answering the

contract of the first line with a satisfying ending of how.

FYI, I tried out eight opening lines before I came up with the

one above.

The basic plot of a novel is someone wants something and

strives to attain it. This want could be the reason for start

of the novel. A young person goes to New York to become an

actor. Or the opening conditions of the story could create

the want. A man returns to a parking garage to find it closed

with his car locked inside. This actually happened to me

which became the opening of If They Ask for a Hand, Only Give

Them a Finger. Or a man goes out on the deck of his boat to

see a woman sitting in the rain at the end of the dock, the

beginning of Me and Snack McGhee. The want of the novel could

be anything except sitting in front of a TV and drinking beer

for three hundred pages.  Hmmm?

Also, the want must propel our protagonist into action.

Characterization comes a little later, but for now we need our

reader to buy into his/her need. Let's call our

protagonist Protag for brevity and to also allow us to drop

the awkward his/her business.

The simplest way I can describe a plot-line is for Protag

to be standing at the base of a mountain with a want to get to

the top. The desire for climbing Plot-line Mountain could be

anything: the pure joy of standing at the top; a love object

waiting there; or a pointer to the Holy Grail.

But we must make winning the mountaintop Protag's

most desperate need. If Protag doesn’t really care, why

should the reader care? And the need must remain upmost in

Protag's mind until either the goal is reached, or Protag

is defeated, or the want is replaced by something more

important.

Okay, the most obvious way for Protag to get to the top is

to hop in a Humvee, yank the sucker into four-wheeling, and

plow straight up the mountain side. The thing is,

there's no conflict here. We might as well drink beer in

front of the TV.

So what we must do is to put someone in Protag's way,

like an antagonist. This is the snarling beast from hell who

is against us just because we are really nice guys, good

looking, stout-hearted, brilliant, brave, and humble. The

beast could be a man, woman, Satan, the Gods, fate, the

weather, or the mountain itself. The beast could even be the

doubt that lingers in Protag's own mind. And it must

always remain in doubt whether Protag is going to make it to

the top or not. In fact, failure may be Protag's fate.

What matters in plot, unlike football, is not whether Protag

wins or loses, but how well Protag plays the game.

On the way to the top Protag must continually face

obstacles and overcome them, growing stronger mentally if not

physically. We all want to be a winner. So each time Protag

scales another barrier, showing guts, tenacity and

ingenuity--traits we all believe we have in our best

selves--the more intense is the reader's desire to see

Protag succeed.

In Plot part 2, we'll take up the need for the

obstacles to vary in intensity, to occasionally break in

protagonist's favor, and above all, they must be

logical.

July 27, 2014

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Comments

Will

Peter E. Abresch is the author of Easy Reading Writing, which you can get from Amazon.com (or the first link below). But don't miss out on Mr. Abresch's other great writing goodies which can be found by pasting the following links into your browser:

http://blog.easyreadingwriting.com/
http://www.elde...

November 5, 2014
·

booboo17

I read the whole protag thing. but I think I like this first part best. It really helped me understand.

November 6, 2014
·

Bootsie

This helped me a lot too.

November 6, 2014
·

Fiction Plotting 1/4

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