Article written by Rory Hawkins.
Look up “plotting novel” in your search bar – you’ll immediately find over a dozen hits on what you need to do to finally write that masterpiece of complex human themes you daydream about.
That’s actually one of my biggest gripes with anything creative writing: the articles and guides. Slap “creative” on the front and you’ve swung the doors wide open to everyone’s opinion on the matter. Bright side: no one has a monopoly on that kind of advice. Not-so-bright side: it’s over saturated as hell.
To me, plotting a novel is the least ambiguous aspect of writing to talk about – it’s about drawing all the other subjective parts together so that they’re more than a sum of their parts. The mechanisms of what makes a plot work better are known and not at all hard to identify.
My thoughts? You don’t need to be a definite ‘pantser’ – ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ writer, who comes up with everything as they go – or even a true plotter. Switch between the two to whatever feels natural at the time. This way you can maintain a coherent plot (as multi-threaded as you wish) whose characters still have enough personality that they don’t seem like plot devices themselves.
I won’t put too much focus on plotting out each and every detail; it’s your story, so you should have some room to breathe or make changes. Here’s some generic advice: YOU DO YOU! Overdoing any method can be tiresome and you’re the only person who knows how you want to write. Before you’ve even truly finished, the narrative should’ve already gone through a few iterations – that’s what developing something means!
The basic formula still stands the test of time: 1) introduction/premise; 2) substance/conflict; 3) climax/conclusion. Traditional plot models worship a line rising upon a graph – sigil of our Lord, The Rising Tension. Introduce new information and develop your cast of characters, either by making them react to what is newly introduced or by reacting to one another.
Character motives can’t be ‘just because’ the plot demands it. Characters themselves are part of the plot (and so to some extent are devices) but that doesn’t mean you can forget about humanizing them – actions need justification and there needs to be an amount of build-up to a decision. The separation between motive and action is important. Well-developed characters won’t change on a whim; this process and change over time is fundamental to how plot changes over time, no matter the breadth.
Each series of events should gain more and more importance. This builds to the climax and a resolution, be that the expected outcome or otherwise. The hero slays the monster! The orphan discovers a place to belong! The weary traveler finds redemption!
A personal note: try to present your story as linear as possible. As smart as you want your readers to be, time-jumps can still confuse the heck out of people. Flicking between different character perspectives is enough to keep up with, let alone going back and forth in time.
There are rare novels that do this well (David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, a personal favourite) but only because chapter layout is set to easy to follow rules, i.e. every other chapter is set in 20XX. If you’re going through with this, remember that the disclosure of information as the story continues shouldn’t be the only reason for the narrative to continue – example, a character searches for a hidden past as their ancestor’s story is also directly told to us.
To summarise, plot is everything that happens in a narrative: the physical events; the emotional development characters go through; the order of these events; the period of time this all takes place over; even the narrative themes you use and how you present them.
Hopefully, “narrative themes” was the most artsy phrase in that word salad. They’re the core ideas you want people to think about during and after they’ve read your work – the overall message you wanted out, explored in your imagination. Whether done consciously or not, narrative themes are actually what drive you to form a series of events around that initial idea.
What was the first thing that made you want to tell this story? This is as much about inspiration as it is to early plotting, a direct ‘what to do’ rather than writer’s theory. There has to be an imagined moment before any kind of definite planning. Less structure, more oomph: a powerful narrative moment. A character held before something they want, fear, maybe even both. Something emotionally engaging, a scene you can see in your mind’s eye but is so much harder to sum up in a few words.
But then, that’s a writer’s job. For every description you make, you need to justify where that feeling comes from. In doing so, you ask question after question. How did this happen? Why is it even happening? What led to this moment between these people?
Focus on developing the first emotive scenes that cross your mind – they generate the hows and whys that you’ll use to expand that initial idea. Where could this fit into a wider story? Is this the pinnacle moment, or simply part of the build-up? You don’t need to write the ending first, but you do need to know what it will be.
We’re told “it’s about the journey, not the destination” – but it’s the small, specific moments that our minds punctuate with feeling. We don’t remember in montage. If a climax falls flat, then what was the point of reading all of that? A plot needs to have takeaway points for it to seem relevant to the reader. Will characters get what they want, or something else? What does this mean to them? How does this reflect on our own lives?
Test how far a scene can go and you’ll see how much of a story you’ve got on your hands. Not everything can be stretched out to novel length – quality over quantity. If the climax was the only part that seemed at all interesting, there’s always more room in the world for short stories. But don’t ultimately discard these ideas as such, you can always thread them into your next bigger work.
If you want more advice and methodology around plotting out a story, I recommend checking out the following blog posts. Well Storied covers how plot can vary depending on how a writer approaches telling their story; they offer well-known bestsellers as examples. Find them at http://www.well-storied.com/blog/3-awesome-plot-structures-for-building-bestsellers. Equally, Randy Ingermanson – aka ‘the Snowflake Guy’ – offers his own well-established approach to planning and writing a novel. Check his advice out at https://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/ .
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