Unusual Historicals: plot

Showing posts with label plot. Show all posts

22 June 2010

What Surprised Me: Plotting, Pantsing and Puzzling

By Anna C. Bowling

When I first started creating my own stories, I didn't know any techniques. Then as I started to learn more about writing, I learned about plotting. A character's journey is from wanting something to either getting it or knowing they will never get it. How do they get there? Lots of options. There's the snowflake plot, the W plot, Goal, Motivation and Conflict. Rising action. Falling action. Plateaus. Arcs. Augh! Getting characters from point A to point Z, precisely pinpointing exactly where points B, C, and D through Y are along the way can be too confusing for many a new writer, and anyway, don't real writers run on pure creativity?

At one point I thought so, and it sure seems to work for authors like Jo Beverly. Her Flying into the Mist talk originally given at an RWA conference in 1999 has helped many pansting writers accept that, for them, writing isn't something that can be captured in index cards or character charts. So I tried flying through the mist, hither and yon as the day took me, only to find that for me, flying through the mist more often turned into a belly flop on the rocks. I needed more order than that.

So if plotting wasn't working and pantsing wasn't working, what was there left? Hopeless, utterly hopeless. I threw my (metaphorical) hands in the air and decided that all I could do was all I could do and if I was going to tell my stories, it would have to be my way. I knew where my story started and I knew where it had to end, so what if I tried working both ends toward the middle? What if I worked on what I knew and prodded, poked and even bribed those headstrong characters until they coughed up the information I needed to see where things were headed? What did I have to lose?

Sure enough, things came. A little bit here, a little bit there. Things didn't come in order, but who cared? I wrote things as they came, labeled each new section and figured I'd put them together later. I didn't know this was a technique of its own, or that it had a name, but when I read Emily Bryan's "Only One Right Way to Write a Novel" blog post, "puzzling" did seem to fit the bill. Puzzling with a bit of layering, to be more specific. Different bits from different methods fit together, often over a few different passes through the manuscript.

I never thought that I'd wind up with notebooks full of color coded sticky notes, numbered scenes and a rainbow of highlighted passages, song lists, images and the like, but so far, so good. All of that gives me the picture I'm working toward as I fit the puzzle together. Your mileage may vary. The way that works is the way that works for you.

14 May 2007

Hellyeah Moments

Note: I haven't caught up with any of this year's television -- now that the shows are winding down, we'll catch up in the summer, when it's too hot to do anything but sit in front of a fan and chug water!

My husband and I watch a lot of TV throughout the year. But we take full advantage of technology 'round our house, too, so we don't schedule around primetime TV. Between DVDs and downloads, wee able to watch whatever we want whenever we want it. Case in point: we watched the first 14 episodes of Lost, Season 3, in 2 days, while we were both too sick to do anything else.

Over the past six years of our marriage, we've collected and dropped TV shows to our repertoire. We like quirky comedies, intense dramas, great dialogue, action, and character development (we stuck with Alias even when it began to fizzle in season 3, then redeemed itself in season 5, only to make us roll our eyes so much we passed out during season 6...). We're not TV authorities because we don't like all TV, and we can close the book on a series (how's that for a mixed metaphor?) mid-season if we've gotten let down after a handful of episodes.

Last autumn, the new season rolled around and we started weeding through the new shows. One of these was The Nine. We only made it to episode two. The show has some great hooks and all, but I just don't care about it. I like the actors: I just adore the actress who plays Katherine, who played Audrey on 24, Chi McBride's great, and all the others were really good, too. I'm kind of disconcerted by seeing Scott Wolf looking older than Matthew Fox, but I can deal. But something was missing. I got to thinking about why I didn't care.

I realize that characters must have weaknesses. I don't like characters that don’t. Even Clive Cussler realizes that his superhero-like Dirk Pitt and offshoots need their share of weaknesses...even if they can swim a mile underwater with no air tanks uphill in the snow. But I don't like stories where all the characters are just plain weak, and that's the feeling I got with the close of The Nine, season 1, episode 2. It depressed me.

I think it could be rectified very easily, and maybe that's what frustrates me. You've got a cast of well-developed (if morally weak) characters, you've got great character hooks, and it's a mystery in the idea of "What happened inside the bank?" And you've got plenty of conflict: episode 2 dealt with everyone's work-related troubles, and work-related troubles are totally...well...relatable to the audience.

But the conflict didn't have any high points. I'm going to take the most conflict-driven, conflict-dependent show out there as an example here and talk about 24 for a moment. The show gives me ulcers. I worry and worry and cringe and cry and look away and, at the same time, can't force myself to quit. I love the exact characters I hate: I mean, come on, President Logan is the worst of the worst, a true devil, and I concede that he's probably the best villain in the history of television. But damn, is that guy interesting. I can see all sorts of connections between his badness and the badness of pre-Logan seasons. But amidst all the badness, the "good guys" get a win here or there, whether it's by a line or an action. And we're pulled along from win to win.

On Alias, Jack Bristow seemed to be responsible for most of the hellyeah moments. But they don't have to big, jaw-dropping turns of event, either. On Buffy, everyone got them in one form or another: remember when Dawn thought she was a Potential? There were some heavy slopes for that girl to slide down, but at the end, when she's at her lowest, Xander says the very right thing to her and boom, they both get their hellyeah moment.

I think it's the driving force behind American Idol, too. The Simon Phenomenon, I’ll call it. You meet all these different characters, and through the course of a few months the protagonists become clear. You know who you want to win, and every time they get a bad evaluation, you feel just a little bit of their disappointment or pain. The voters at home kill off the characters. And the show becomes more intense during the finals. For each harsh comment Simon has made to Your Favorite, each praise is more potent. And with each praise, you say to yourself, "Hell, yeah!"

I love writing conflict and angst, but I try to remember to write a hellyeah moment in every few chapters through my middle, to remind me why I like a character, and to keep me rooting for them. Toward the end, when things start to get very dark, readers will need to draw encouragement from the character's previous triumphs.

So what about you? Do you recall any hellyeah moments in film, TV or literature?

23 March 2007

Breaking Down the Mental Block

I'm in the first stage of writing my story for the third book of my Warring Hearts trilogy – Light in a Hollow Place. The second book is being released May 11 – Fragments of Light, so I need to complete my third book for a May 2008 release. This means I have to send my story to the editor by September.

I've been struggling coming up with the plot for months. For some reason, nothing really excited me. It takes place during World War II, towards the end of war. I love my characters, so that wasn't the problem. Since it's a romance, Richard and Claire have to be together in most of the chapters. And, that was the rub. He's an intelligence officer working in Europe and she's a struggling artist living in New York.

I needed help. On my vacation last week, between walking along the ocean, dining out, and shopping, I forced my sisters to brainstorm with me. We had a great time coming up with outlandish ideas and ridiculous plots, but out of all of this craziness, my oldest sister hit the jackpot. She gave me the one idea I needed to jumpstart my enthusiasm.

So, my question for today is: what tricks do you use to break down the mental block preventing you from beginning your story?
Vicki - http://www.vickigaia.com

16 March 2007

How history (along with my husband) saved my plot...

History enriches my writing in so many ways. It also proves very helpful when I run into plot problems. Take yesterday, for instance.

I was almost ready to chuck my current wip. Seriously. I've been through several plotlines for my heroine and nothing was working - I thought I had something last week, but in working through things, I discovered it just wouldn't work. The plot was full of holes and totally illogical. Not good.

My husband (wonderful man that he is) first said "Well, maybe you should just chuck it. You wouldn't be the first writer to throw out a story that wasn't working." I sat and thought about it for a few minutes. It's one thing to say it myself, quite another to hear someone ELSE say something so drastic.

Once I was calmer I said "I'd chuck it EXCEPT I think there really is a good story here somewhere." and then went on to explain the exact problem. Sean listened and agreed that my plot as it stood wouldn't work (I love that he's so candid), then suggested another angle I'd never even thought to tap into. Something that was historically likely and to his mind, entirely possible. He's a historian too and though he doesn't know that period in as much detail as I do, he picked up on the obvious solution to my problem.

Now I'm not saying in a contemporary story there aren't elements in the current world that can't work the same way, but for me the thrill was being able to tie yet another aspect of French Revolutionary history into my story. To my mind, it will give it more depth and ground my story more firmly in the period. All very important things. And that's one of the main reasons I so love writing historicals - combining history and fiction.

How about you - have you ever chucked a story? Has history ever saved your plot?

10 February 2007

To Plot or Not to Plot

Unlike everyone else on this list (I think), I write with a partner, Marisa. She lives about 2 hours north of me, and we manage to get together once every other month or so. Mostly we rack up long distance phone bills (ok, we have a total phone package deal but it doesn’t sound the same) and email each other like a pair of stalkers.

Usually, we outline a story, get the first few chapters finished together, then divide the rest of it up. Once our latest section is sent off to the other, we tweak that part then I add it into the story as a whole. Depending on things, and if we like the way we’re actually progressing, a story will take us about 5-6 months. But then we both have full-time jobs and outside interests that suck up our time. Plus we tend to go back and self-edit quite a bit. Our goal for this year is to cut that time in half.

So my for everyone out there: Forgetting for a moment Work, Family, Non-Writing-Commitments, and most importantly Life (and how it has that annoying little habit of getting in the way of writing) how do you plan a story out and, assuming all goes well, about how long does it take you to finish it?