Plot--Or How to Shave Whiskers Off Old Ideas

[mfelizandy]

In story writing, there are some basic plotlines that have been around as long as people have been telling stories. There is the coming-of-age adventure story (which FMA largely is), the romance story, the mystery story, the tea-cozy story...all venerable old plotlines. Contrary to common belief, this is not a bad thing.

Have you ever read a story, say a mystery, expecting to find out which of the many suspects did the criminal deed--then have it revealed at the end that the narrator, the character you trusted to tell the story to you straight, was in fact the criminal? I read one like that once, and I felt betrayed and cheated by that ending. There are certain conventions, tacit agreements between the reader and the writer, when it comes to plot and character development. The reader expects the narrator to be honest with her (if not necessarily with other characters), include only events and characters that are somehow significant to the progression of the story, and provide a satisfying ending that answers most of the questions raised and establishes whether the protagonist(s) won or lost.

(Again--for a really good reference, read Mark Twain's "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses".)

Because there does need to be a win or a loss, in a proper story. (Leaving out the drivel foisted off as "literature" in modern high school and college classes--but that's another rant.) Every good story, of every genre, pits a protagonist against an antagonist. The antagonist might not be a character or a living thing--it can be a harsh environment or a significant illness/injury or even a character's own conflicting desires. But there has to be something for the lead character to struggle against. Otherwise, there is no story. This is why drabbles usually aren't stories. They're snatches of dialogue and description, and some of them are wonderfully evocative of some feeling or another, but they're not fully-fledged stories.

In my experience, plots usually start from characters and develop with the characters' worlds. You start with one or several characters--what do they want? What are the obstacles in their path to that goal? How will they overcome (or not overcome) those obstacles? How will characters change as they move through the storyline?

That last question is the big one--because in the end, a story is about characters. A character who doesn't react and adapt to the events in the story is a flat, uninteresting caricature--what's the point of reading the story, if the lead character isn't touched and affected by the events somehow? Balancing development and plausibility is a tricky business, though. If you're going to take a character from one extreme to another--say turning a demon into an angel--you're going to have to make sure to include a lot of intermediate steps, so that the reader can follow along and will believe in the change.

Argh. Gotta go. More later!

[violetteszabo]

"Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" should be required reading. No, actually, it shouldn't, because that would make many otherwise-sympathetic people hate it (and I would dearly love to see your rant about reading at gradepoint, because I have silently fumed about that one for AGES), but it should be STRONGLY ENCOURAGED and much, much better known than it is.

I love these a lot, keep posting them! Your point about bond between reader and narrator is much appreciated--I absolutely couldn't stand a book that placed this vast, chilly crevasse between the main character and the reader so I had zero reason to feel sympathy for them. Yet my English teacher adored the thing and spent ages pontificating about the perfection of this book.

I have a weirdly-specific question that might not have much at all to do with this post--you don't have to answer it, really, just a thought.

Say you have two stories set in places very, very different from you average, contemporary, North American John Q. Public's ordinary sphere. They have lots of detail based in this very different world's setting, climate, attitude, culture, etc. One of them is fascinating and richly-detailed and a great read. The other is a tremendous bore under its thick layer of impenetrable facts. What makes the first one good, and how do you avoid writing the second?

[mfelizandy]

I love being asked to pontificate on these things, so fire away with the questions! I might not be right or even coherent in my answers, but I'll give it my best shot! Or maybe Havoc's--he's a much better marksman than I am.

Anyway--I've read both kinds of stories you're talking about, the one that creates a wonderful world that's entirely different from the workaday world we live in, and the one that smothers a reader under piles upon piles of detail. I've got a few notions as to why one is a delight and the other a chore--have a look and see if your gut agrees or thinks I'm off my cams.

A good story, no matter what world you set it in, gives the reader a "place to stand". For some reason I'm thinking of how I would feel on first entering a far-future space station--I'd want to find a spot where I could stand and sort of look it all over for a while, before I moved on to meet people and do things. If your story is set in a place and time you expect your readers to be familiar with--say a grocery store in Plain Old Suburbia, USA--then you don't need to do much in the way of description to set up the scene before yelling "Action!" at your cast. If it's a big chain grocery store, a few lines about the bright lights and sale stickers and the creaking of carts with jammed wheels will be enough.

If you're reaching way out into the future, or creating an alien race from scratch (which is a trickier business than it might seem--I'll have to get into that later, it's already past my bedtime), setting up a fantasy world, or digging into the deep past, or introducing your readers to a culture they're probably not familiar with, you're going to have to give your reader more cues, and more time to stand on the set looking around before you start the action. If it's a space station in the far future, stand there as if you were a newcomer to it, and describe what draws your senses. Is there a funny smell to the station's recycled air? Maybe some of the inhabitants don't bathe often enough, or use too much perfume, or they cook weird things. Is it a cramped, claustrophobic warren of twists and turns and exposed conduits and ductwork and computer terminals, or is it a spacious, soaring amphitheater with acres of viewing portals to look out at the docked ships and the stars beyond? Are there decorative touches, like plants and paintings, or is it a strictly-business utilitarian color everywhere? What about the people? Are there thousands of them jamming every square inch, just a few strolling along, or squads of busy dockworkers? Whatever the answers are, give a few of them to the reader, just enough so that she feels ready to meet the characters and find out what will happen to them.

The danger here, early in the story, lies in trying to explain everything all at once. Too much standing around can make anyone impatient, and impatient readers start skipping pages (at best) or go off to do something other than read your story. All you need to give is the first impression--something like the things you would notice within the first thirty seconds of entering a new place. You can explain the rest as your characters move and interact with their world.

The easiest and most common way to introduce a reader to a new world is to use a "stranger" as a lead character in the opening of a story. To use that space station again, the Stranger would be someone who'd never visited that station before, perhaps had never been on one at all, and thus could believably stand still for a moment to look around--and through her, the reader gets a chance to look around, too. Then the reader is gradually introduced to the way the world works as the Stranger learns.

A more difficult, but in my opinion more rewarding for both writer and reader, method is to use an Insider--a character already comfortable in the environment. This is tricky because you as the writer have to balance introducing your reader to an unfamiliar world, without having your Insider standing around thinking about or explaining things that are second nature to her. If you use an Insider character, you almost have to start the action immediately, and pace it so that the reader can pick up the necessary details as she goes along. A space station Insider might go rushing by the reader's eyes, flipping switches and chattering in jargon to someone in a control room somewhere, then climb into the engine bells of a crippled ship and start banging around without stopping to explain why her errand is so important or what her jargon meant. You as the writer have to work a bit harder to find ways to reveal the crucial information through dialogue and action, rather than description and direct teaching from a helpful character. If you want to read some examples of using an Insider character to good effect, pick up some books by C.J. Cherryh. (To this day I have no idea how to pronounce that last name.) The Morgaine Saga, The Faded Sun trilogy, and the Chanur series are all very well done stories using Insiders--and teaching the reader what she needs to know along the way.

Argh--I really have to get to bed. I'll have to ramble some more on this tomorrow. I'll get around to doing my worldbuilding ramble, my language ramble(s), and my Literature-Class Rant sooner or later--poke me if I forget a few or there's something you'd like more rambling on! I have been known to literally talk people to sleep--and that was just in telling old marching band stories.

[LJ Harris]

A really good book is "On Writing" by Stephen King. Now, say what you want about the man, you either love him or you hate him, there doesn't seem to be a middle ground there. The fact of the matter is, he does write prolifically and quite well.

Anyhow, a piece of advice he gave in "On Writing" sticks with me, and it's something I prefer to do in any story. Drop the character into a situation he would never willingly or knowingly place himself into...

...then block all the exits. Watch what happens.

Then make his only escape one where he gets into a worse situation that's even harder to get out of. It's like throwing an angry cat at the character... in a dark room that's littered with furniture, bodies or just plain junk. And hiding among all the detritus... are more angry cats, just waiting for the chance to pounce the instant the character trips over one.

That was what I did with Ed and Al in the beginning of 'Balance of Power' -- and what we kept doing to all the characters throughout the story. In the end, there was only one avenue of escape -- which will land them all into a situation that isn't -much- better than the one they left. And will, inevitably, become worse.

The joyous thing about doing this, is that if your character(s) are fully-fleshed, you can easily -show-, rather than tell, what they're made of. And when you show, that brings the character to life for the reader.

[mfelizandy]

"Show, don't tell"--the old cliche of writers. Often the only thing of any use taught in writing classes--and it's poorly explained at that. I think I'll put my ramble on that in a different thread--one talking about the use of the language, because the "show" versus "tell" is really a matter of the language.

As for Stephen King--he's run down a lot by the nose-in-the-air types, largely, I think, because he's popular and he's voluntarily read by lots more people who bother with contemporary poetry and depressing "literature". I personally can't read most of his books, because my hyperactive imagination spooks way too easily when it comes to horror. But I can respect his success.

His advice is sound, too. One has to be at least a little bit sadistic when it comes to one's characters. After all, without a conflict in the story, something to make a character uncomfortable and drive her to some action that's outside her normal routine, there won't be a story at all.

I do think it's a good idea to make it seem as though the character has to choose among several potential "escape routes"--because the reader learns something about how the character thinks by observing such choices.

[phyl]

I think another big factor -- well, two factors, really -- are a) whether you have a character that the reader can really identify with or want to follow through this world; and b) whether you've got a good story to tell in it. If the story is really good, the detailed world will carry it, but if the story isn't so great, the world will overshadow it.

Also, that point about revealing things gradually rather than too much all at once, is an excellent one. And the way they're revealed is also important. If the narrator has to go into a detailed exposition explaining the world, that's usually a bad method. But if things just get mentioned matter-of-factly as the characters live their lives, and the picture of the world builds up that way, it's a great way of doing it. Plus, those details become like a trail of crumbs that the reader eagerly follows, looking for more, getting more and more intrigued.

I have a novel where I tried to do that in the first chapter. The characters casually referred to the fact that they had "declared their official religious preference at age 18." And the main character contrasted his brother's choice (Hinduism) with his own choice (Mormon Catholic). At that point, the reader hopefully would be going, "Hey, wait a minute. Declaring a religious preference to the state? And Mormon Catholic?? I have to find out what this means."

That's another show-don't-tell kind of method.

[phyl]

And I just thought of another thing, though I don't know if it goes in this thread exactly. But it kind of relates.

And this is that in a fanfic kind of milieu, it's very easy to have characters in there simply because you like them, and not because they're really integral to the plot.

Which I was thinking of as a general thing already, and suddenly saw Lorrie and Liz sparring about hilariously re: getting Scar into the story, and now Alfons. Liz is, of course, doing it right -- trying to make them integral to the plot, because she really does know that you can't just throw characters in because you like them, if the plot doesn't really need them. ;D

[mfelizandy]

Feb 16, 2009 23:20:04 GMT @phyl said:

...and suddenly saw Lorrie and Liz sparring about hilariously re: getting Scar into the story, and now Alfons. Liz is, of course, doing it right -- trying to make them integral to the plot, because she really does know that you can't just throw characters in because you like them, if the plot doesn't really need them. ;D

Right! The trick is to take the characters you want in the story, and twist the plot around until they become absolutely necessary. Which Scar is, of course, because he's cool and his death in the anime just didn't do him justice...and I've got this whole drawer of deus exes past their expiration dates...

I'm still working on weaseling Alfons in somehow. I have a lot of commute time between now and the posting of the last chapter to plot! (Plotting is why I have been known to go cruising right past my exit and not even notice--the part of my brain that drives is very good at maintaining a safe following distance and adjusting the cruise control, but it has to get confirmation from Central Command to get off the freeway--and there are times when Central Command is far too absorbed in more interesting matters to be bothered with such minor details as reaching a given destination.)

Phyl's point about an overload of exposition is an understatement, in my opinion. Spending too much time standing around cataloging the furniture and counting the rug fibers will bore any reader silly. It's also something of a breach of the tacit contract between writer and reader--if you go into exhaustive detail talking about a character's car, the reader is going to file that detail away and expect the car to be very important to the development of the tale. If it turns out that you as the writer just happen to love cars and couldn't resist writing three pages of loving detail about a minor prop, the reader will be annoyed with you for having been led to believe that there was significance to an object that played no real significant role. The rule to follow with exposition is "when in doubt, cut it out".

I say "cut it out", and not "leave it out" because I can't leave out that exposition, especially when I'm starting a new story. I have to set the scene for myself, and get all the background set up and clearly defined, before I can move on. The trick is to then go back through that first draft, and pull everything that either isn't relevant at all or can be introduced in some later scene. Ruthlessness is a good trait to apply to exposition, because when you think about it, exposition is literary mayonnaise. You need a little of it to glue the egg-salad story-sandwich together, but it's not that interesting in and of itself. What makes a car or a room or a bit of history interesting is how a character interacts with or reacts to it.

In my reading experience, Hemingway and Tolkien exemplify the extremes to avoid. Hemingway wrote too little exposition, and Tolkien's exposition overwhelmed his characters. Hemingway's characters existed in a formless gray fog, when I was forced to read those books in high school. His characters weren't exactly relatable either, partially because not one of them was likable and there was no particular plot for them to follow, but also because they didn't have a world to move around in. I have no idea why anyone considers Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald to be literary giants. Neither of them wrote characters worth caring about, their plots barely existed, and all I ever got out of reading any of their books was...depressed. If I wanted to be depressed, I'd watch the news, and at least be currently depressed.

Tolkien took worldbuilding to the opposite extreme, even going so far as to create several separate languages for his elves and dwarves and such--and he just couldn't resist showing off all that detail. As a result, he overloaded his characters and buried his plot in mountain ranges of fictional history and cultural exposition--and bored me right out of the series. The Hobbit is a decent book, in my opinion, but the Lord of the Rings trilogy is a lush and lovingly-crafted world populated with stock characters and shortchanged as to plot--in reading those books, I got the strong feeling that the characters and plot were afterthoughts, generated as excuses to write endless exposition.

With the exception of Gandalf. The wizard was the only character that hinted to me that he might actually have a multi-faceted personality and a history worth looking into. Had Tolkien stuck with Gandalf and had me looking over his shoulder throughout the series...well, I might have read those books more than once.

Anyway--it's past my bedtime again.

[phyl]

Right! The trick is to take the characters you want in the story, and twist the plot around until they become absolutely necessary.

The reverse is true too, though. It also takes a lot of objectivity and maturity, as a writer, to recognize that if an entire plot has to be rewritten just to include a character that wasn't there before -- maybe the character just shouldn't be there. Unless the story was clearly deficient before, and the plot will clearly be improved now.

Which I'm not , incidentally, applying to the question about Alfons being there (since I could be happy either way, and don't really have a horse in that race). I just mean it generally, because I think it's an important general rule.

I once rewrote an entire novel I'd written in one of my fantasy worlds, changing the plot entirely just so one of my favourite characters didn't die at the end after all. My motivation wasn't right, but by happy coincidence, it really did improve the plot, and resulted in later stories that were quite good. So I dodged a bullet in that one.

Lorrie and I have often chuckled over a possible sequel I could write to Apotheosis, that would alter a certain end result of the story, but we both recognize that although we would want that sequel on an emotional level, it would completely destroy Apotheosis as a story. (And it's my baby, my magnum opus, one of the best things I've ever written.)

So that sequel will never be written. The emotional wishes have to be overwritten by the correct editorial/writing decision, for the sake of the story itself.

(Even if I've got huge chunks of that sequel existing in my head.) ;D

[phyl]

Oh, and...my only comment on Lord of the Rings. I do agree that some of the descriptions really were overdone (like all that journeying through the wilderness, which just went on and on and on...much like the entire final book of the Harry Potter series and all that damn CAMPING...but I digress).

However, the languages and the complexity of the world? That speaks to different tastes. That was the part I loved madly, and I couldn't wait to get to the Appendices, which were my favourite part. And I've loved the Silmarillion stuff and the stuff in the 12-volume Unpublished Works even more than LotR, because it contained even more of that stuff. (I've got every single volume, and they hold pride of place on my "Special books" bookshelf.)

So...some of that is simply the taste of the reader too. For some readers, the details enhance the experience, and for others, it detracts.

[violetteszabo]

I love the language and detail of certain books, too, but only so long as I don't have to go running to a glossary if I want to understand what's going on and can't remember the in-text explanation. This is running into pretty obscure territory, but Diane Duane's Cat Wizards series were pretty good ones with regards to the human/cat language vocabulary. Any use of their word for dog or human came accompanied with a little accompanying detail to let you know 'oh, that's right, that's [X]." In the avoiding-the-explanation-altogether department, you can't get much better than the Speech, which (for good reason) she leaves unexplained but for a few words that couldn't be avoided.

In the tradition of how not to write in detail, I'd say large swaths of Tolkein qualify. Heard of Neal Stephenson, famed writer of absolute doorstoppers of books? (Chances are, the thickest book in your nearest bookstore is Anathem right now). The thing that doesn't put Neal Stephenson in the same category for me is that when he's writing up detail, it's stuff I don't know, and wouldn't know if not for his digressions into Sumerian gods or code-making--the latter especially, because he describes them well enough to let you try and work out how to do it on your own. Whereas descriptions of fictional hallways are never going to come in handy and will really just bore me to tears.

[mfelizandy]

Profound agreement with you on the last Harry Potter book, Phyl. The first three books of that series were a lot of fun, in my eyes, but the series started to bog down after that, and I only read the last book to find out who lived and who died and whether or not J.K. Rowling had written a good ending for such a monster series.

On the matter of twisting the plot to make space for a favorite character--yeah, sometimes you just can't do it without making a hopeless mess of the rest of the story, and much as I hate to admit it, I'm having a hard time shoehorning Alfons in for anything more than a short cameo.

Which means I'm going to need to generate a side-story or post-Eden Gate plot to haul in Alfons. The Epilogue of this story is going to be half as long as the story itself, if we write all the stuff we could.

Which reminds me--one of the elements that warns me I'm not going to enjoy a book is a lengthy "dramatis personae" printed before the start of the story. That's a warning flag saying that either the writer was too lazy to introduce the characters naturally (i.e., in the course of the story), or created such an overflow of characters that even she couldn't keep them straight without a cheat sheet. Glossaries and appendices are fine, placed after the last page of the story--but I as the reader had better not have to go flipping to the back to make sense of what a character just said in dialogue. Talk about breaking the immersion. It's hard work to introduce a reader to an alien culture without putting her through a training class first, but it's good discipline, and being able to figure it out for myself not only draws me further into the story, it gives me a little pleasure to know I worked it out.