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- Question
Number One: What is the story?
- If
you’ve seen me speak before or you’ve read my website, you’ve probably heard me go on about Action Plots
and Emotional Plots.
- The
Action Plot of a book is simply the external action or conflict that the characters experience. A great detective solves the
case of a haunted house on a lonely moor. A team of heroes journeys to Mordor to get rid of a ring. An orphan boy goes to
wizard school, where he makes friends, flies a broomstick, and discovers a whole lot of backstory.
- If
you break it down to its most basic elements, Action Plots usually fit into one of three categories: Conflict, Mystery, or Lack. (You can read more about all of these in my talk “The Essentials of Plot.”)
- The
Emotional Plot of a book is the internal action, or to be more specific,
the moral and emotional development of your characters as a result of the external action.
- Both Action
Plots and Emotional Plots revolve around change: a conflict being settled; a
mystery being solved; a need getting fulfilled.
- Things are different at the end than they are at the beginning.
- So
we might restate Question Number One as “What changes, and how does that change happen?”
- You
remember I told you to have a completed project or WIP in mind at the beginning here.
- Quickly
now—in thirty seconds, no more—I want you to write down the central Action Plot of your book, in two lines at
most. Go.
- How
many of you found that easy?
- How
many found it really, really hard?
- How
many aren’t sure they got it right?
- Sherlock
Holmes says, “Nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person,”
and the same is pretty much true for a story.
- Look
at what you just wrote. It ought to be a sentence where your protagonist is the subject and the action regarding his problem
is the verb.
- At
a summer camp for juvenile delinquents, Stanley
digs up a long-buried mystery, eventually earning friends, self-respect, and a fortune that helps his family
- Claudia
and Jamie run away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they discover a mysterious statue that might have been sculpted
by Michaelangelo
- For
SO TOTALLY EMILY EBERS, I might say:
- In
a series of letters to her absent father, Emily Ebers deals with moving
cross-country, her parents' divorce, a new friendship, and her first serious crush.
- One
easy way to determine what your central plot is: Look at the climax.
- What
gets resolved there? Is that the conflict or situation that occupies most of the action of the book?
- Do
all of the developments of your story ultimately lead to that ending?
- If
not, then maybe you need to adjust either your climax or your story.
- (EMILY,
like STANFORD before it, has several climaxes, because its multiple plotlines each need individual resolution.)
- Once
you have that down, you have just completed TRUCK #1: Write a two-line summary
of the plot of your book.
- And
in terms of making revisions, these two lines are useful because it gives you a focus:
This is your narrative backbone, this is the change you have to accomplish. Everything else is embroidery.
- And
it can prove useful in many other ways as well
- In
query letters and at conferences when you’re pitching
- In
copy blurbs when you publish it
- At
family reunions when people ask you “So, whatcha writing?”
- Several
of the TRUCKs we will discuss are basically expansions of this two-line story summary in greater levels of detail.
- Before
we go on to that, though, I want to think about character:
- Your
main characters don’t have to be wholly likeable or admirable, but they have to prove themselves worthy of the reader’s
interest and time.
- And
they have a very limited time and space at the beginning of the book in which to do so.
- So,
TRUCK #2: List the first ten meaningful things your protagonist says or does.
- Viewed
objectively, out of the context of the action, who does that character seem to be? Would you like him or her? Or at least
be interested in what s/he’s going to do next?
- That
is who that character is to the reader.
- If
your character flops down on his bed first thing and says “I hate Smallville. There’s nothing to do in this town!”
that character is a whiner. And while we might sympathize with him, he’s not that easy to like from the beginning.
- On
the other hand, if he is first seen building a raft out of driftwood to float downstream and get the heck out of Smallville,
then he’s creative and resourceful and will probably be someone the reader wants to follow
- If
he’s not sounding like someone you’d want to spend time with—then consider bringing out more of his positive
qualities upfront.
- Humor—even
sarcasm—creativity, kindness, can-do spirit, unique take on the world, original observations
- Energy,
in general
o Now we’re
going back to expanding on that one-line summary of the story
o TRUCK #3: Write
the flap copy for your book.
§
Flap copy, as you know, is a two- or three-paragraph summary of a book’s events
§
The difference between actual flap copy versus what you’ll produce for this exercise is that yours
should not include adjectives or try to be clever.
- Just
try to write what happens in the book in about 250 words
- Not
what you want to happen, or what you think should happen, but what actually does happen in the draft you’re working with.
- Generally
this includes
- the
opening situation
- the
inciting event of the action—the thing that gets the story started
- at
least one action your protagonist takes to follow that up, setting up the conflict or mystery
- the
stakes
- Flap
copy generally does not give away the ending, but for the purposes of what you’re
doing here, I’d include that too.
- And
when you’ve done it, congrats—you have a draft of your first query letter.
- More
than that, you’ve had to identify all the things I listed above—the opening situation, the inciting event, the
action, and the stakes.
- Now
think about those features of your flap copy. Are any of them missing? Or do they not feel as strong as you’d hope?
- Was
there any point at which you were writing the copy when you were surprised the story took the turn it did? Where it deviated
from what you thought should happen in the novel, or what you wanted to have happen
in the novel? How does that feel to you now?
- Please
look at handout #1 from the Word document. This is one of my flap drafts—I call them “flapdoodles”—for
SO TOTALLY EMILY EBERS.
§
What should you notice here?
· Opening
situation
- Emily
Ebers is having a bad summer. Her parents just got a divorce.
· Inciting
event
- Then
Emily meets Millicent Min
· Action
of the protagonist . . .
- Er,
ah: “Life getting back on track”
· Stakes
- Emily’s
life and happiness, implicitly
§
What’s missing or feels weak?
- In
this case—there doesn’t seem to be much action of the protagonist, honestly.
- But
that’s fine, because this is a
very domestic book, built entirely around its characters’ relationships and speech. For the first half of the book,
which is more or less what flap copy covers, Emily is a victim of her parents’ betrayals. Her journey in the book is
discovering and coming to terms with those betrayals, and deciding on her own reactions—that’s the action that
the flap copy doesn’t get to.
- However,
coming to terms with something doesn’t make for the most exciting flap copy. And so:
§
Please look at handout #2 from the Word document. That’s the final flap copy.
- This
reworking was Arthur’s idea, and it was a great one, because it really highlighted the strength of the book: Emily’s funny, strong, dynamic voice.
- We
knew that was the great draw of the book—perhaps even more than the plot, since many readers would already know Emily’s
story from STANFORD and MILLICENT.
- So
that’s what will appear on the inside jacket, come next April.
o Expanding further
on that 250-word summary, let’s move on to
o TRUCK #4: Outline
your novel.
§
Sit down with your book, go through it chapter by chapter, and write out a one-line to one-paragraph
summary of each chapter’s events.
- Make
it even more detailed if you like and go scene-by-scene. But I would start out chapter-by-chapter to keep the focus on the
big stuff.
- Try
to include the key information included in each chapter—if you have a mystery, note the places you’re laying clues;
if it’s a romance, the major steps in the development of the relationship.
§
What this lets you see is development:
· Do the plot events follow each other in a logical physical and emotional order?
· Is all the information there? Is it where it needs to be for the greatest plot and emotional
impact?
· Do thoughts or events repeat themselves?
· What is your main character doing all this time? Is he at the center of the action?
§
Look at each plotline or subplot individually.
· How does each one develop? Do some plots disappear for a long time?
§
Please look at handout #3 from the Word document: the preliminary
outline for the second draft of SO TOTALLY EMILY EBERS. (I didn’t do one for the first draft.)
§
A few things to notice here:
· July 19, July 21, and July 23 are all dates marked “MM talks to Alice.”
Probably Lisa was trying to establish how well Alice (Emily’s mom) and Millicent were getting along, and excluding Emily.
· The problem was, I got this point very quickly, which means I felt bored by the time we
got to July 23.
o I asked Lisa to cut July 23 in her revision.
· Another example: What happens June 22? (EE
starts volleyball)
· She meets Millicent at practice on the 26th; then when iss the next time we
hear about what happens at volleyball? (July 24)
o So I suggested that Lisa add a few more brief scenes or updates about what’s going on at volleyball throughout.
This gives the volleyball plot continuity and makes it feel more like Emily’s real life.
- Finally, look at August 1. Just in that one day, there’s seven actions: “EE goes to the dentist, argues with Alice (who is still a hippie), self-tans, sees SW and
MM at the library, goes to Maddie’s, gets a postcard from Dad, and fantasizes about his visit to Rancho Rosetta”
- As
a reader, I found it really hard to figure out what was most important in that chapter. What was I supposed to focus on there?
What should I take away?
- I
asked Lisa to simplify it.
- Now
take a look at handout #4, the outline of the second draft with my suggestions.
- I
went over these ideas in much more detail on the actual manuscript, but this was a quick way for Lisa to see the book and
the ideas as a whole.
- You
see I suggest adding references to volleyball, and there’s a little bit of rearranging at the beginning
- July
19 is interesting: That’s where Emily was telling Millicent the story of
how her parents met, when Alice was a reporter for Rolling Stone and she was sent
to interview Dave “the Dude” Ebers.
- Fictionally,
Emily’s telling the story here worked to reinforce the relationship between Millicent and Emily, because we saw them
sharing confidences, and show us what a natural romantic Emily is—both good things.
- But
Alice told Emily the story later in the book when they were taking a walk together,
and that served to show the slowly thawing relationship between Alice and Emily,
and Alice coming to terms with her divorce.
- But
readers didn’t need to hear the story twice. So we weighed the value of Alice
telling it to Emily vs. the value of Emily telling it to Millicent—
- And
we finally decided to cut Emily’s telling, as we had enough other examples in the book of the girls’ friendship
and Emily’s romantic nature.
- Make
sense?
o Moving on to
TRUCK #5: The Plot Checklist
§
Please look at handout #5 from the PDF, or click here for a blank checklist.
§
This is something I developed for a talk I gave earlier this year, "The Essentials of Plot"
§
And basically it asks explicitly all the questions we’ve been broaching implicitly here
· Is
the action driven by the characters, particularly the main character?
· How
does that action develop?
· What
are the stakes?
· Do
things change?
- Once
you have that, again—are your answers satisfactory to you? If not, how can you strengthen them?
- I
didn’t run this on EMILY while editing it because I hadn’t invented it yet!
- But
I did it just for this conference—and it was hard
- It’s
based on Aristotle’s Poetics, and designed more for novels with a single
straightforward storyline than the web of relationships we have here
- But
it helped me because it made me identify the kind of plot I had—a Lack, where Emily Lacked a true understanding of her
relationship with her father
- And
the story of the novel is her getting that understanding and coming to terms with it.
Back to Part I | Forward to Part III
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