(Reposting a 2013 post from the Anna Katherine co-tumblr)
Here, have some really straightforward, practical thoughts about plots and plotting. Of which I have way too many, btw.
(Previous nuts and bolts caveats apply, naturally. Assume I have so many thoughts about this stuff because I’ve fucked it up pretty often.)
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1. A short story is a single idea, examined or played out. (Movies are also short stories. This is why turning books into movies leads to tears.) Figure out what your “idea” is – or the goal of your story, or the point you’re trying to make, whichever terminology floats your boat – and aim toward that without wavering.
2. Your plot and your characters go hand in hand. They inform each other – if you have one, you have the other. It’s one of the ways that storytelling is the least like real life. The entire plot might as well be a metaphor for whatever issues are going on in the characters lives – but once you realize that, you can use that fact to reverse-engineer your characters or your plot if you’re stuck without one or the other.
3. Frequently problems with plots are just problems with structure. Go find your favorite book (or rather, your favorite book that is most like the kind of book that you’re trying to write) and break it down, section by section, until you’ve got something really basic like “meet-cute” and “things go bad” and shit like that. Then see if you can’t just drape your plot right on over that structure like a brand new Sunday suit.
4. It’s okay to borrow structures. It’s okay to borrow stories, for that matter. Plots can come from a lot of places. “Write what you know” clearly meant “steal every anecdote in England” to Chaucer, and he became the father of English literature, so.
5. Middle sections of books are terrible. They just are. Everyone wants to give up. This is the number one reason to have an outline or at least a game plan, oh my god. You want to see some hope of a way out, because the middle of a book lasts twice as long as the end of infinity.
6. To that end, once I’ve got some characters and a vague idea of what I want to do with them, I like to put together a list of “adventures”. It’s just stuff I’d like them to do during the course of the story. Sex scenes, car chases, dress fittings, amusing adventures with food, anything like that. Just stuff that I think would be fun to write, and that I know I will need to fill the endless fucking wasteland of the middle of the book.
7. (Those adventures? Should reflect the issues of the characters. Because characters and plots are the same thing. See point 2.)
8. For short stories, have an end point to aim toward, along with a general emotional zone to wallow in. I had a short story whose working title was literally “and then somehow, making out,” which was indeed the end point I was aiming at. The emotional zone I wanted to stay in was fairly light with some emotional dips into heavy stuff for contrast. But mostly what it said on the tin.
9. For books, writing the last scene right at the start of your process is sometimes nice, because it gives you a sort of mark to aim for. (You can always rewrite it later.)
10. Try to capture some really vivid mental pictures of strong scenes. Add those to your “adventure” list, or, better, just write them down. It doesn’t have to be perfect – if you want, just bro it out like you’re describing your favorite badass robot move from Pacific Rim to someone who’s never seen it. At that point there are barely any characters, there’s just the broad sweeps of movement across the page.
+1. Remember: You are the god-king of the book. If worse comes to worst, have a plague of shrews suddenly appear and make your characters deal with it. You can do anything! If you don’t know what to do, do anything. It’s better than doing nothing, and frankly, if it doesn’t work, at least you’ll have written something. You can always delete it tomorrow.
+2. No, seriously, I was writing a book and I could tell there needed to be some kind of big turn in the narrative (because of structure!), and I couldn’t think of what, so I literally wrote down a list of random shit I could make happen to the characters. Just because I could. That list included:
set house on fire
airplane explosion
hunting accident
heatstroke
I was willing to set a house on fire, possibly by having a plane explode on it, just to get my characters doing something for another twenty pages. And the best part was: All I had to do was write the consequences, and add some foreshadowing, and I’d get away scot-free. The perfect crime. GOD-KING, Y’ALL.
Katherine Crighton 