demystifying plot
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 plot, many of them can't even recognize it in their own stories. For me, plot is a natural aspect of story; story ideas "bring their own plots," so to speak, and I find plotty stories natural and enjoyable to write.
So here is what works for me. Maybe it will work for you. Although frankly, I have no idea if this will make sense to anybody else!
Okay, to get it out of the way, I am going to start by noting that by the classic definition of plot = conflict -> climax -> resolution, pretty much all stories have plots. Even PWP (plot, what plot?) is not so much plotless as contextless, when you consider climax in the, er, sexual sense. The problem (for me, as a reader) is when there isn't any conflict. Conflict doesn't have to be an overt opposition - it can be as simple as one character wanting something that he doesn't know whether the other character also wants. Conflict is what gives a story tension, and tension is important because it pulls the reader along to the climax, making him or her care about what happens.
I think of stories as being shaped sort of like this:
where as the story progresses towards the climax, the tension increases, and then after the climax it falls off into a resolution. Of course this is just a simple story - a more complex story looks like:
where there are a series of small climaxes and resolutions, each ratcheting the sense of tension higher, until the final climax which resolves the key conflict at the heart of the entire story.
What most people probably think of, when they think of "plotty stories", are stories that have complex plots, or more than one plot interwoven. For example, an action-adventure slash story where there is the romance thread and the action thread. This sounds scary, but in a way it's easier to make a story with multiple threads interesting, because when you resolve one mini-climax in one thread, you can ratchet up the tension in another thread at the same time.
I've been trying to analyze how I write my stories, and what I've come up with is a procedure along the lines of the snowflake method (although not nearly so formal). This applies to all stories, whether their plots are simple or complex.
1. Start with a story idea.
2. Determine the beginning, the climax, and the end.
3. Find some waypoints in the middle.
4. Write from the beginning to the first waypoint. Let the characters drive.
5. More waypoints will come into view as you progress.
6. Always work between waypoints: know where you are coming from and where you are going.
7. When you hit the end, you're done.
1. Start with a story idea.
When I say that stories bring their own plots, what I mean is that my story ideas are, in essence, statements of plot. For example, the story idea for Double Occupancy (SGA, John/Rodney) was: John ends up sharing Rodney's body through a mishap with Ancient tech. The story idea for Scars (HP, Harry/Remus) was: Harry and Remus bond over Sirius's refusal to change out of dog form. The story idea for Across the Great Divide (DS, Fraser/RayK) was: after Fraser dies in an avalanche during their quest, his ghost accompanies Ray until a crisis prompts him to discover how to go back in time and undo his own death. All of these are two-pronged plots, with some sort of adventure or drama running alongside the romance/sex plot.
2. Determine the beginning, the climax, and the end.
Because my story ideas bring their own plots, this step is fairly easy for me. I just imagine the characters in the situation I've devised, and the endpoints are pretty obvious. For Double Occupancy, clearly the story begins with the two characters being put into one body. I wanted to end the story with them realizing that they need each other, and with sex yay. The plot climaxes are separate: one is the point at which they discover they work seamlessly together, and another is the point at which they discover that they want each other. For Scars, the story starts with Harry learning that Sirius is refusing to change, and ends with Sirius's problems resoved and Harry and Remus in a relationship. The climax here is dual; Harry and Remus deciding to have a relationship is the final straw that provokes Sirius into changing. For Across the Great Divide, I wanted to begin with Fraser's ghost coming back in time to warn viewpoint-Fraser, reach a peak with Ray having a crisis and viewpoint-Fraser's ghost going back in time, and end with the cycle broken and Fraser's ghost becoming alive again.
If your story ideas don't suggest plot in the same way - I know a lot of people begin with a single, simple image - you need to ask questions to expand the idea and figure out the beginning and the end. For example, suppose you are starting from the idea of Rodney discovering John's actually female. Okay: how does he discover this? How does he react? How has John been able to hide it? What does John do when his secret is compromised? Or maybe you just see Ray licking Fraser's ear. Why is he doing it? Where are they? What have they just been doing? What does Fraser think about it? What does Frannie, who is watching, think about it? Move from imagining the scene you see to the scenes before and after. Find the logical beginning and the logical end of your story, and identify the climax you're working toward.
3. Find some waypoints in the middle.
When I get a really cool story idea, my brain just goes off in little fantasies of its own accord, visualizing scenes, imagining interactions. These are not necessarily sequential, and I don't think of them in any particular order, but they're all things that I can see happening in the story. Sometimes I start thinking about a question - how would Rodney react to having John's consciousness in his head? Why would the Ancients build a body-sharing device in the first place? I let the characters drive and show me what would happen, and I use canon as guidance.
For Double Occupancy, I imagined Rodney being all "ooh, ancient tech!" and accidentally triggering the device. I thought it would be really funny to start seeing Rodney and John sharing the body from someone else's perspective who didn't know they were in the same body. I imagined that they'd be all bumbling at first, allowing for a lot of humor, and then gradually integrate with each other - and that gave me the idea that when they did split it would be angsty and traumatic. I imagined that John would have a wet dream and wake up and masturbate, forgetting he was in someone else's body, and it would really annoy Rodney, who would later "show" John how annoying it was to have someone else basically making your body have sex, but then get turned on by it. I decided that the canon answer for "why this device?" would be to allow doubling up of expertise on a mission, and that suggested to me that the adventure plot would center around them first being denied going on a mission due to their condition, and then having to do a mission together.
These are my waypoints. Usually, the scenes near the beginning are fairly well set in my head, but the ones occurring later in the story are more vague; for example, at this stage I had no idea what the mission would be about, just that there would be one. That's okay! I look at this process kind of like crossing a river. I am standing on one bank (the beginning), and I can see the other bank (the ending), and maybe there's a big obvious island most of the way across (the climax). I can see the first couple of stepping stones in front of me, and I can see a few of the other ones farther off; I can't see an unbroken line of stones, but I know that they're there. So I step off onto the stones I do see, and I can always see a farther stone or even the far bank, so I know what direction I'm going, and I just trust that the stones I need to get there from here will show up in front of my feet.
Look, here's a picture!
4. Write from the beginning to the first waypoint. Let the characters drive.
At this point I start writing. I have the first several scenes fairly clear in my head, and then things get fuzzy, but that's okay. As I write, I strive for the point where the characters drive, where the story writes itself. Rather than approaching it as: Ray is going to say this, and then Fraser is going to say that, I let the characters do and say what they want, given that they are in a situation that I've put them in, and that I am gently nudging them toward the next waypoint. But it's totally possible that they might approach it in a different direction than originally planned. For example, I was originally planning the fight between Fraser and Ray, that precipitates the crisis in Across the Great Divide, to be because Ray hated being babysat, that he knew he wasn't as competent as he needed to be but he was embarrassed by it and felt he needed to prove himself to Fraser. But when I got to that bit, it came out all differently - Ray resented that Fraser was there only as a ghost, that he wasn't really there, that he couldn't touch him. And that ended up working much better because it introduced and justified the romantic part of the plot.
5. More waypoints will come into view as you progress.
It was really a revelation to me to discover that I didn't have to have the whole thing mapped out in advance - that the story will unfold for me as I continue across the metaphorical river.
For example, with Scars, I was starting from the idea that each character is affected by the scars (physical and emotional) he carries, so when Remus started discussing his work (researching magical artifacts, which I invented on the spot), he mentioned that he was having difficulty getting permission to actually see the artifacts, because the Ministry didn't trust him as he was a werewolf. Harry's Gryffindor nature came out, and he became outraged and decided to go to the Ministry to appeal on Remus's behalf...and as I wrote that, I realized that his scar - marking him as the Hero, the Boy Who Lived - will also influence the Ministry. That suggested the scene in which Harry easily gets the access Remus is denied - and also the scene in which he tries but fails to get Remus these privileges.
As I wrote Double Occupancy, I kept imagining future scenes, which gained solidity as I wrote toward them. For example, when I started I knew only that there was going to be some kind of mission. As I wrote, I thought about what these particular characters would be involved in, and the bit from canon with the Genii wanting Rodney to build them a nuke came into my mind. Then the whole thing became clear - that the original team would get kidnapped and Rodney would be required to go through - while John was still in his head.
So, in pictorial form:
You might notice in that second picture that one of the fuzzy waypoints moved when it solidified. That's because hey, maybe my original idea for that wasn't so good, or didn't mesh with the rest of the story. But the story in general continues across the river - it doesn't go rocketing off in an entirely different direction.
I should add here that I don't outline, but I frequently make a pseudo-outline, especially when I have multiple POVs. The pseudo-outline is just a few words for each scene, along with the POV character. This helps me stay on track. I modify the pseudo-outline as the story progresses.
For example, the pseudo-outline for Double Occupancy looked something like this early on:
1. Rodney: discover the device
2. Elizabeth: discover the device
3. Rodney: infirmary
4. John: figuring things out
5. Elizabeth: dinner, progress, beginning of mission plot
6. Rodney: preliminary exploration of platform
7. John: dream, wake, wank, argue
8. Rodney: work on solution
9. John: more sex
10. Rodney: solution almost at hand but omg crisis
11. John: learn situation for mission
12. Rodney: mission, omg!
13. John: transfer back, lonely as hell
14. Rodney: lonely as hell, find John, yay sex
And then as things progressed, new bits got added and things got rearranged:
1. Rodney: discover the device
2. Elizabeth: discover the device
3. Rodney: infirmary
4. John: figuring things out
5. Elizabeth: dinner, progress, beginning of mission plot
6. Rodney: preliminary exploration of platform
7. John: dream, wake, wank, argue
8. Elizabeth: send the team
9. Rodney: tension about relationship, working on solution
10. John: meet with team, more sex
11. Rodney: solution almost at hand but omg crisis
12. John: learn situation, plan rescue
13. Rodney: rescue, terror, exuberance
14. Elizabeth: observing the transfer back
15. Rodney: lonely as hell
16. John: lonely as hell, let's go visit
17. Rodney: yay sex
6. Always work between waypoints: know where you are coming from and where you are going.
If you know where you're going, it helps to maintain direction and tension. If you just kind of wander around, your story will seem focusless and lose the reader's attention. If you are always moving toward something, it helps keep the tension going, and the reader will want to find out what happens next...and what happens after that...and what happens after that. It's the difference between a series of unconnected events, and one thing leading to another leading to another.
If you know where you are coming from, you can work in references from earlier in your story into your current scene. In Chekovian terms, if you remember where the guns are that you hung on the wall earlier, you can use them now. It's funny, but sometimes I don't even realize I'm hanging a gun until I get to a later scene and find the perfect spot to refer back to something that happened before. Really. It just sort of happens. One example is in Double Occupancy, when John is flying, and he refers back to Rodney having told him that he can "fly the jumpers, but you don't get to fly Rodney McKay." In Scars, I never intended a subplot in there about Harry getting a new job, but the bits of conversation I'd laid down before, with his friends telling him that he was wasted playing Quidditch, worked perfectly to lead into his realization that he wanted to work in artifact research.
I find that themes just kind of show up while I'm writing - but once I identify them, I can use them later. It's very rare that I go back and hang guns in earlier scenes (although it happens) - usually, what happens is that something I've written in without any intention of significance turns out to be something I can use later.
7. When you hit the end, you're done.
Well, modulo beta-reading, and fixing all the holes the betas find, and figuring out a title, and so on.
I hope this was useful, and not too confusing!
So here is what works for me. Maybe it will work for you. Although frankly, I have no idea if this will make sense to anybody else!
Okay, to get it out of the way, I am going to start by noting that by the classic definition of plot = conflict -> climax -> resolution, pretty much all stories have plots. Even PWP (plot, what plot?) is not so much plotless as contextless, when you consider climax in the, er, sexual sense. The problem (for me, as a reader) is when there isn't any conflict. Conflict doesn't have to be an overt opposition - it can be as simple as one character wanting something that he doesn't know whether the other character also wants. Conflict is what gives a story tension, and tension is important because it pulls the reader along to the climax, making him or her care about what happens.
I think of stories as being shaped sort of like this:
where as the story progresses towards the climax, the tension increases, and then after the climax it falls off into a resolution. Of course this is just a simple story - a more complex story looks like:
where there are a series of small climaxes and resolutions, each ratcheting the sense of tension higher, until the final climax which resolves the key conflict at the heart of the entire story.
What most people probably think of, when they think of "plotty stories", are stories that have complex plots, or more than one plot interwoven. For example, an action-adventure slash story where there is the romance thread and the action thread. This sounds scary, but in a way it's easier to make a story with multiple threads interesting, because when you resolve one mini-climax in one thread, you can ratchet up the tension in another thread at the same time.
I've been trying to analyze how I write my stories, and what I've come up with is a procedure along the lines of the snowflake method (although not nearly so formal). This applies to all stories, whether their plots are simple or complex.
1. Start with a story idea.
2. Determine the beginning, the climax, and the end.
3. Find some waypoints in the middle.
4. Write from the beginning to the first waypoint. Let the characters drive.
5. More waypoints will come into view as you progress.
6. Always work between waypoints: know where you are coming from and where you are going.
7. When you hit the end, you're done.
1. Start with a story idea.
When I say that stories bring their own plots, what I mean is that my story ideas are, in essence, statements of plot. For example, the story idea for Double Occupancy (SGA, John/Rodney) was: John ends up sharing Rodney's body through a mishap with Ancient tech. The story idea for Scars (HP, Harry/Remus) was: Harry and Remus bond over Sirius's refusal to change out of dog form. The story idea for Across the Great Divide (DS, Fraser/RayK) was: after Fraser dies in an avalanche during their quest, his ghost accompanies Ray until a crisis prompts him to discover how to go back in time and undo his own death. All of these are two-pronged plots, with some sort of adventure or drama running alongside the romance/sex plot.
2. Determine the beginning, the climax, and the end.
Because my story ideas bring their own plots, this step is fairly easy for me. I just imagine the characters in the situation I've devised, and the endpoints are pretty obvious. For Double Occupancy, clearly the story begins with the two characters being put into one body. I wanted to end the story with them realizing that they need each other, and with sex yay. The plot climaxes are separate: one is the point at which they discover they work seamlessly together, and another is the point at which they discover that they want each other. For Scars, the story starts with Harry learning that Sirius is refusing to change, and ends with Sirius's problems resoved and Harry and Remus in a relationship. The climax here is dual; Harry and Remus deciding to have a relationship is the final straw that provokes Sirius into changing. For Across the Great Divide, I wanted to begin with Fraser's ghost coming back in time to warn viewpoint-Fraser, reach a peak with Ray having a crisis and viewpoint-Fraser's ghost going back in time, and end with the cycle broken and Fraser's ghost becoming alive again.
If your story ideas don't suggest plot in the same way - I know a lot of people begin with a single, simple image - you need to ask questions to expand the idea and figure out the beginning and the end. For example, suppose you are starting from the idea of Rodney discovering John's actually female. Okay: how does he discover this? How does he react? How has John been able to hide it? What does John do when his secret is compromised? Or maybe you just see Ray licking Fraser's ear. Why is he doing it? Where are they? What have they just been doing? What does Fraser think about it? What does Frannie, who is watching, think about it? Move from imagining the scene you see to the scenes before and after. Find the logical beginning and the logical end of your story, and identify the climax you're working toward.
3. Find some waypoints in the middle.
When I get a really cool story idea, my brain just goes off in little fantasies of its own accord, visualizing scenes, imagining interactions. These are not necessarily sequential, and I don't think of them in any particular order, but they're all things that I can see happening in the story. Sometimes I start thinking about a question - how would Rodney react to having John's consciousness in his head? Why would the Ancients build a body-sharing device in the first place? I let the characters drive and show me what would happen, and I use canon as guidance.
For Double Occupancy, I imagined Rodney being all "ooh, ancient tech!" and accidentally triggering the device. I thought it would be really funny to start seeing Rodney and John sharing the body from someone else's perspective who didn't know they were in the same body. I imagined that they'd be all bumbling at first, allowing for a lot of humor, and then gradually integrate with each other - and that gave me the idea that when they did split it would be angsty and traumatic. I imagined that John would have a wet dream and wake up and masturbate, forgetting he was in someone else's body, and it would really annoy Rodney, who would later "show" John how annoying it was to have someone else basically making your body have sex, but then get turned on by it. I decided that the canon answer for "why this device?" would be to allow doubling up of expertise on a mission, and that suggested to me that the adventure plot would center around them first being denied going on a mission due to their condition, and then having to do a mission together.
These are my waypoints. Usually, the scenes near the beginning are fairly well set in my head, but the ones occurring later in the story are more vague; for example, at this stage I had no idea what the mission would be about, just that there would be one. That's okay! I look at this process kind of like crossing a river. I am standing on one bank (the beginning), and I can see the other bank (the ending), and maybe there's a big obvious island most of the way across (the climax). I can see the first couple of stepping stones in front of me, and I can see a few of the other ones farther off; I can't see an unbroken line of stones, but I know that they're there. So I step off onto the stones I do see, and I can always see a farther stone or even the far bank, so I know what direction I'm going, and I just trust that the stones I need to get there from here will show up in front of my feet.
Look, here's a picture!
4. Write from the beginning to the first waypoint. Let the characters drive.
At this point I start writing. I have the first several scenes fairly clear in my head, and then things get fuzzy, but that's okay. As I write, I strive for the point where the characters drive, where the story writes itself. Rather than approaching it as: Ray is going to say this, and then Fraser is going to say that, I let the characters do and say what they want, given that they are in a situation that I've put them in, and that I am gently nudging them toward the next waypoint. But it's totally possible that they might approach it in a different direction than originally planned. For example, I was originally planning the fight between Fraser and Ray, that precipitates the crisis in Across the Great Divide, to be because Ray hated being babysat, that he knew he wasn't as competent as he needed to be but he was embarrassed by it and felt he needed to prove himself to Fraser. But when I got to that bit, it came out all differently - Ray resented that Fraser was there only as a ghost, that he wasn't really there, that he couldn't touch him. And that ended up working much better because it introduced and justified the romantic part of the plot.
5. More waypoints will come into view as you progress.
It was really a revelation to me to discover that I didn't have to have the whole thing mapped out in advance - that the story will unfold for me as I continue across the metaphorical river.
For example, with Scars, I was starting from the idea that each character is affected by the scars (physical and emotional) he carries, so when Remus started discussing his work (researching magical artifacts, which I invented on the spot), he mentioned that he was having difficulty getting permission to actually see the artifacts, because the Ministry didn't trust him as he was a werewolf. Harry's Gryffindor nature came out, and he became outraged and decided to go to the Ministry to appeal on Remus's behalf...and as I wrote that, I realized that his scar - marking him as the Hero, the Boy Who Lived - will also influence the Ministry. That suggested the scene in which Harry easily gets the access Remus is denied - and also the scene in which he tries but fails to get Remus these privileges.
As I wrote Double Occupancy, I kept imagining future scenes, which gained solidity as I wrote toward them. For example, when I started I knew only that there was going to be some kind of mission. As I wrote, I thought about what these particular characters would be involved in, and the bit from canon with the Genii wanting Rodney to build them a nuke came into my mind. Then the whole thing became clear - that the original team would get kidnapped and Rodney would be required to go through - while John was still in his head.
So, in pictorial form:
You might notice in that second picture that one of the fuzzy waypoints moved when it solidified. That's because hey, maybe my original idea for that wasn't so good, or didn't mesh with the rest of the story. But the story in general continues across the river - it doesn't go rocketing off in an entirely different direction.
I should add here that I don't outline, but I frequently make a pseudo-outline, especially when I have multiple POVs. The pseudo-outline is just a few words for each scene, along with the POV character. This helps me stay on track. I modify the pseudo-outline as the story progresses.
For example, the pseudo-outline for Double Occupancy looked something like this early on:
1. Rodney: discover the device
2. Elizabeth: discover the device
3. Rodney: infirmary
4. John: figuring things out
5. Elizabeth: dinner, progress, beginning of mission plot
6. Rodney: preliminary exploration of platform
7. John: dream, wake, wank, argue
8. Rodney: work on solution
9. John: more sex
10. Rodney: solution almost at hand but omg crisis
11. John: learn situation for mission
12. Rodney: mission, omg!
13. John: transfer back, lonely as hell
14. Rodney: lonely as hell, find John, yay sex
And then as things progressed, new bits got added and things got rearranged:
1. Rodney: discover the device
2. Elizabeth: discover the device
3. Rodney: infirmary
4. John: figuring things out
5. Elizabeth: dinner, progress, beginning of mission plot
6. Rodney: preliminary exploration of platform
7. John: dream, wake, wank, argue
8. Elizabeth: send the team
9. Rodney: tension about relationship, working on solution
10. John: meet with team, more sex
11. Rodney: solution almost at hand but omg crisis
12. John: learn situation, plan rescue
13. Rodney: rescue, terror, exuberance
14. Elizabeth: observing the transfer back
15. Rodney: lonely as hell
16. John: lonely as hell, let's go visit
17. Rodney: yay sex
6. Always work between waypoints: know where you are coming from and where you are going.
If you know where you're going, it helps to maintain direction and tension. If you just kind of wander around, your story will seem focusless and lose the reader's attention. If you are always moving toward something, it helps keep the tension going, and the reader will want to find out what happens next...and what happens after that...and what happens after that. It's the difference between a series of unconnected events, and one thing leading to another leading to another.
If you know where you are coming from, you can work in references from earlier in your story into your current scene. In Chekovian terms, if you remember where the guns are that you hung on the wall earlier, you can use them now. It's funny, but sometimes I don't even realize I'm hanging a gun until I get to a later scene and find the perfect spot to refer back to something that happened before. Really. It just sort of happens. One example is in Double Occupancy, when John is flying, and he refers back to Rodney having told him that he can "fly the jumpers, but you don't get to fly Rodney McKay." In Scars, I never intended a subplot in there about Harry getting a new job, but the bits of conversation I'd laid down before, with his friends telling him that he was wasted playing Quidditch, worked perfectly to lead into his realization that he wanted to work in artifact research.
I find that themes just kind of show up while I'm writing - but once I identify them, I can use them later. It's very rare that I go back and hang guns in earlier scenes (although it happens) - usually, what happens is that something I've written in without any intention of significance turns out to be something I can use later.
7. When you hit the end, you're done.
Well, modulo beta-reading, and fixing all the holes the betas find, and figuring out a title, and so on.
I hope this was useful, and not too confusing!