A Writer’s Guide to
the Nefarious Methods of Great Story
Plotting once meant to me the nefarious rubbing together of
hands and a long thin mustache. Pantsing
sounded equally horrible, like something the neighbourhood toughs did to the
gifted kids on the playground. In more
enlightened times, I discovered that writers divide themselves into these two
categories.
Plotting still sounds rather evil to me, an implication of
over-planning and pre-destiny that amounts to controlling the characters in
your book until they are nothing more than a puppet at the mercy of plot. An evil plot.
Pantsing, once I knew what it was, sounded much more like what I do as a
writer, so I confidently put myself in that category: a crazy dreamer who has
no idea where her stories come from.
Except, it’s not that black and white, and what I do, I
discovered, is not pure pantsism. There
are some writers who don’t know anything before they write. They just write and eventually a character
presents herself, someone challenges her, and maybe a bad storm and earthquake
wreck havoc on all their plans—or not.
We’ll see. They have no idea how
it will end until it does. Oh, the
humanity!
I know several things before I write. I know the ending. Yes, that’s right, I am absolutely, 100
percent sure of the last few pages of the story. I even write the last scene and rarely change
a word. So there is some element of
plotting going on, plotting to bring my characters to the conclusion I intended
when I decided to write this story. I
know the main character and the main antagonist and then I write the first
scene, and just keep on and on until the character arrives at the
conclusion. And boy, have they been
through hell in the process.
For me, the reason I write this way is because I have a
reason for what I write, a point I want to make, a moral of the story. I know that these two characters will end up
making a huge sacrifice to be together, or that they will suffer the
consequences of putting money before people, for instance. I want to present an aspect of human nature
or the world we live in and shed some light on what happens to people in these
circumstances. I have an opinion, and I
want my readers to think about that.
Plotters like charts. They like to take the elements of their story and see it on a
graph or a bulletin. or on pink and blue cards spread out over their
office. It’s a good way of organizing a
story and documenting what each plot point does and how it serves the
story. There are plenty of templates in
books such as Robert
McKee’s Story, and even software to help you do this from Dramatica to Scrivener. For the plotter, this is nirvana.
Robert McKee, author Story |
I appreciate, even admire this process. Power to you, if you can do it well. It will save you a ton of rewrites,
especially if you are writing for genre or a more commercial audience, because
readers and certainly editors of these books look for those markers, and you
had better have them if you hope to find a publisher and then an audience. Trying to fit them in later is possible, but
much more difficult.
For a pantser, these charts and programs are frustrating,
fascinating, helpful and infuriating.
How can you daydream from a chart?
How can a new character walk onto the page and take your story by the
throat, running in a whole new and exciting direction, taking your protagonist
with it? Plotters will tell you that
this is exactly what they are trying to avoid.
That if you’ve planned the story you want to tell, these nefarious
characters will not be able to hijack your story and tie your protagonist to
the railroad tracks, rendering him a victim and not a hero.
But wait a minute—who is writing this story anyway? If your protagonist is strong enough, he will
find a way to take the story back from this nefarious character, and what a
ride that will be. The element of
surprise is a big part of what makes a story unique, and rivets readers to your
page. So it comes down to a key element
of the true storyteller, plotter and pantser alike: however you arrive at your
story, controlling or dreaming as you go along, the story structure has to be
strong and equally unpredictable.
Your main character is the love of your life and she is the
centre of this story. Her actions drive
the story and the rest is background. If
he starts out as a victim and does nothing about it, just takes the hits over
and over, that’s not a story but a list of events. So if you plan out your story with a great
flood, and your intention is that your main protagonist is going to change her
life and those around her, then it’s what she does when the flood arrives that
makes the story.
If you can plot that out, you can start to see what you are trying to say, and build the story elements around that. If your point is that meek people can overcome incredible odds because they care about others when things go horribly wrong, then planning out a setting that restricts your character at the beginning and showing how they chafe at that will set up the central conflict when the waters rise. (For a riveting historical fiction against the backdrop of a flood, read Ann Weisgarber’s The Promise.)
For instance, let’s say our hero has been shifted from place
to place, a spinster with no home, who is eventually put in a teaching position
she does not want, but is given no choice.
So she makes the best of it and bonds with the children, endearing
herself to the reader. And then, little
Bobby is beaten up in the school yard, and Miss Teach goes to see the bully’s
father. Only Mr. Bragg is proud of his
son for defeating the weak and ensuring his place in his world.
Does Miss Teach go hide in a cupboard? No.
She shows some backbone and ingenuity.
She may not be able to do anything about Mr. Bragg’s hold on the
community, but she isn’t taking this lying down. She risks her reputation and her position to
stand up for little Bobby. It might be a small action, like finding someone to
teach him to fight back, or giving him a chance at a scholarship so he can get
out of this backward town, but she’s going to assert herself. So when the flood comes, and her charges are
in danger, we know she will rise above her natural timidity and sacrifice
herself to save the children. Where it
goes from there is up to you and Miss Teach.
K.M. Weiland in her blog post “Your
Book’s Inciting Event: It’s Not What You Think It Is” contends that there
are actually three inciting incidents that take place in the first act, and
five steps to achieving them. Her First
Act Timeline is outlined in the blog and in her book, Structuring Your Novel.
Driving plot through character is so crucial to a good
story, because readers know how they might react to a crisis but they want a
window into the soul of someone they care about, so they can empathize on how
this person reacts and where that leads them—to heroism or tragedy. If a writer relies too heavily on plot to
drive the story, it will seem predictable and uninteresting, a series of events
that don’t change the character. If
however, a writer relies only on what the character is feeling, and this does
not change the character’s actions or the world around them, then the reader
will lose empathy and want to get out of the character’s head.
Plotting and pantsing are both important writing techniques:
one ensures pacing and the other surprise.
There is no recipe to ensure a writer will get this right, and each
author will have to choose for themselves what works best for them. In my sphere of creative writers, many of
them WCDR (Writers’ Community of Durham
Region) members or partners, about half are plotters and half pantsers, demonstrating
that both methods can be effective.
But
within those two groups, most use some combination of plotting and pantsing,
however much they fall to one side.
Notorious pantser Stephen King stated in his book On
Writing, “I won’t try to convince you that I’ve never plotted any more
than I’d try to convince you I’ve never told a lie, but I do both as
infrequently as possible.”
The main thing is that writing should feel good, whatever
method you use to get it down. I love
first draft work because I can’t wait to see what happens next as my characters
take over the world I created for them.
For plotters, I suspect the thrill of seeing their blueprint come to
life is a driving factor. Some writers,
mostly plotters, hate first draft, but love the subsequent edits.
So is there a right or wrong way to tell a story? Snidely Whiplash may
try to harass and lasso the dreamers, but in the end, the hero always
wins. And so we know that whatever
begins the tussle, the main character will come to the rescue. And that’s what really makes a story work and
a reader want more.
Great article. I think the sweet spot is something betwixt the two.
ReplyDeleteI think so. Whatever side you fall on, the story emerges as the people in it guide you. After all, sometimes they are more real than we are!
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