demystifying plot

[isiscolo]

Last week it seemed that all the writers on my flist were doing that writing meme, and when it came to the question that was simply "Plot?" most people answered some variation of, "I wish I could!" (Including a few people who have written some stories I consider quite plotty!) It's odd to me that not only are most writers apparently scared of

Comments

[angiepen]

A lot of long stories have deadwood scenes which don't do anything, and I suspect that's because the writer was thinking "ooh, nifty!" rather than "how does this aid or hamper the resolution of conflict?"

Ooooh, yeah, definitely. [headdesk] I just love trying to explain to a newbie writer why the coolest scene or paragraph or description or whatever really needs to be cut out of their story. It's so easy to think that just because something is really good it therefore needs to stay, but that'd be like if you came up with the most wonderful, yummy chocolate sauce in the world and poured it on your tuna casserole. :P

I was in a writing class at college when I was eighteen or nineteen and this one guy wrote a story that was about four pages long, and a page and a half or two pages of it was just paragraphs and paragraphs of truly beautiful description of mountains and trees. Lovely scenery, wonderfully described, but it was like half his friggin' story, and it wasn't even relevant. The story itself, the plot part, could've taken place anywhere. But we're going around the room commenting and everyone's all, "Oooooh! I just loooove your descriptions! They're so wonderful, so beautiful! Like poetry!!! I wish I could write descriptions like that!!" And I was sitting there all o_O because yeah, they were beautiful, but.... So it was my turn and I agreed that yes, they were beautiful and well-written, but they didn't add anything to the story, and with a piece this short they were just dead weight. I suggested that he cut it down to like a paragraph or so of mountain-and-tree-description and get on with the actual story itself.

Lordy, you'd have thought I'd suggested cutting the arms and legs off a baby! [moaning facepalm] The others are all, "Nonono! I love it! It's like poetry! I want to see more of it!!" Gads. :/ And these weren't kids, either -- it was a night class and I was the youngest one there. Most of the other workshoppers were in their late twenties, thirties, up to some retired people.

At least in this age of computers and word processors, I can tell my stricken writers that they can cut and paste their lovely but useless scene or whatever into a file and save it, that it might come in handy somewhere else. That the excess limbs removed from this baby might some day be usefully transplanted onto another one who needs them desperately. [wry smile]

Angie