About Writing: Plots and Plotting
It's been a while since I wrote a post about writing, so I'm going to write one about my old nemesis: Plots.
My usual disclaimer applies: I am not an expert, this is my opinion and not gospel, what works for me might not work for you, and your mileage may vary.
I use the movie Battleship as an example, so please don't click if you don't want to be spoiled for this movie.
If there's one true thing in this universe, is that no one approaches a task, a project, or a problem the same way, and well they shouldn't, because otherwise this would be a really boring place to live.
If there's something that's even more true than that, it's that a single person never addresses a task, a project, or a problem the same way every time. God knows I don't.
I know that I'm a primarily character-driven writer (where I come up with a character first and the story later). But I never write the story itself the same way. Sometimes I come up with the characters' entire life beforehand, or I make it up as I go (most common). Sometimes I write sequentially (most common), or I write in crazy disjointed bits.
But sometimes, and this is rare, I come up with the plot first.
Some examples of my plot-first fics are We Are All Diamonds, Stop Watching, and Gold and Glory, Heart and Home. Why are they plot-first? They are plot-first because I came up with the summaries describing the story before I even started writing the story (Diamonds), or because I picked a particular prompt (Stop Watching, Gold and Glory).
There is no wrong way to start writing a story. There is no wrong way to tell a story. But it took me a really freaking long time to figure out what a plot was, and once I finally clued in, I realized that plot is not what I thought it was.
A plot is not the story's goal. A plot is not a fable. A plot is not a morality tale. A plot is not the story.
A plot is the sequence of events that tells the story.
A plot is the compilation of challenges, good and bad, that a character or a situation encounters to get to a final resolution.
A plot is a series of actions that the character(s) undertake to get to a foregone conclusion.
Basically...
A plot is the compilation of scenes/events that get you from point A to point Z.
The day that I realized this, I had a holy shit moment. My friend, who is well-meaning and asks me all the time, "Wow, your characters sound really interesting and the opening is a great hook. But what's the plot?" really fucked me up for a long time, because it turns out that he didn't know what a plot was, either. He still doesn't, but that's okay, because whenever he asks me that question now, my brain rephrases it to:
"What is the story that you want to tell?"
If you go to a kinkmeme, or if you go to a prompt list for a fest (as examples), or even if you come up with an idea yourself -- those are stories that you want to tell. How you do it, well, that's the plot.
A plot is just a bunch of scenes that tie in to each other: a scene, a situation, a conflict, a resolution. And those scenes? They fall into several separate divisions (with the understanding that there are no set rules, and that your mileage may vary):
An introduction (or an exposition) where you set up the setting -- the characters who are involved, the tone of the story, the triggering action that starts the events in motion that tell the story. This usually takes up a quarter of the fic (or book). It could take one, two, maybe five scenes, depending on how long the scenes are.
The middle, which is composed of two parts --
Part A, which is a string of rising action, or conflict. These are drawbacks and advances, actions and reactions, an exploration and a revelation -- a back and forth dance where the character is struggling to get to a tipping point. In a lot of ways, it could be best described as an one-step-forward-two-steps-back scenario that leads to the
Climax (the holy shit, oh my god, I have it all figured out, I think, I can fix this, why am I such an idiot, why didn't I see this before situation)
Which leads to Part B. Part B is the slippery slope of falling action, the characters scrambling to tie the loose strings, fix problems, correct ills and resolve wrongs. It's as slippery and as steep of a slope as you want to make it, but generally it is faster (or shorter) than Part A. There's also a lot more tension in part B, because there is a lot of action going on here.
The middle takes up a good half of the fic (or book).
And finally, you get to the ending, or the denouement, which is basically the conclusion or the resolution to your story. It's no longer than your introduction; in fact, it can be as short as you like, as open as you like, or, if you're like me, you leave it on a To Be Continued cliffhanger. Everything that started in the beginning needs to be concluded in the ending.
I'll give you an example, and I'll steal it straight from the movie Battleship (mostly because I just watched it for the 3rd time). You'll notice that they don't exactly keep to the three-act rule of beginning, middle and end. Like I keep saying, there are no right and no wrong ways to write a story. It all depends on how you lay it out. I'm simplifying the movie a bit here, because there are plot threads I haven't described:
Story: An alien race comes to conquer Earth, and they would win, too, except they didn't count on fucking up their own communications array or the humans getting in the way.
Main Character: A troubled man living in the shadow of his (greater) brother, who's a constant fuck up, who needs to step up his game if he's going to save the world and get the girl.
Plot:
Introduction/Prologue: Main character's backstory.
Scene one: Argument with his brother, who's a commander in the army, who's disappointed in him and wants him to make something out of himself.
Scene two: Meets the woman of his dreams at a bar, but she won't give him the time of day so he goes to extremes to prove himself to her.
Scene three: He gets arrested and has no choice but to join the army to escape jail time
Introduction (Middle, Part A)
Scene one: Character is now in the army. He is playing footie against the teams from other international Navies. Loses the game.
Scene two: Fucks up his chance of asking his girlfriend's dad to marry her after he fights in the bathroom with a guy on one of the other teams.
Scene three: Gets threatened with losing his commission and getting booted out of the army, but "now is not the time" because they're about to play war games against the other countries' Navies, and "for the love of God don't fuck up."
Middle:
Part A:
Scene four: The aliens arrive
Scene five: Gets sent to investigate up close, but in the resulting skirmish, his brother's ship gets blown up.
Scene six: In his grief, retaliates and attacks the alien ships, but that means that the other ships out there get hit, too, and in the ensuing battle, they end up the last ship standing.
Scene seven: They have an alien body on board. They learn an important detail in overcoming the enemy, but not without great costs as they get attacked by a not-dead alien.
Scene eight: More attacks, but they manage to get the upper hand.
Scene nine: They realize that the aliens are just as blind as they are right now without radio communication.
Climax/Turning Point:
Scene ten: They have a way to track the enemy and blow them out of the sky... er. I mean, ocean.
Part B:
Scene eleven: They play a tension-filled Battleship game with the enemy. The enemy launches weapons at them, but they survive. They launch weapons at the enemy, the enemy doesn't survive.
Scene twelve: They get information about the aliens' attempts to re-establish communications and the necessity of blowing up this attempt or the Galaxy Is Fucked.
Scene thirteen: They realize there is a third ship coming right at them, and attempting to Battleship against them fails miserably because they can't outwit the other ship, so they execute another tactic.
Scene fourteen: Tension-filled scene as they try to outrace the enemy ship and wait for the perfect moment to use the alien's weakness (learned in Part A) against them. They win! But..
Scene fifteen: There's no way of escaping the enemy's last ditch attempt to get rid of them and their ship goes down. This sucks because they now have no idea how they're going to stop the aliens from using Earth's communication array to contact their home planet.
Scene sixteen: They still have one ship left. Challenge one: It's an old battleship reconverted into a museum. Challenge two: they don't have the crew. Challenge three: they need time to get to position.
Scene seventeen: One big heart-in-throat scene to challenge the biggest baddest motherfucking alien ship of them all. They win... but...
Scene eighteen: Yeah, they only have one missile left so they use it to blow the communication array (big self-sacrifice scene) instead of saving themselves when the aliens lob something else at them. At the last minute they're saved.
Conclusion:
Scene one: Award ceremony honouring the brave and the dead. He finally gets his prospective father-in-law's respect, the promise of his own command, and the girl of his dreams.
The end.
My scene descriptions don't do the movie justice, but the point I'm trying to make is that the theme of introduction, rising action, climax, falling action and conclusion is constant throughout the writing process. You can see it within a scene, and you can take a step back and see it as part of the full plot.
And once you take another step back, away from the scenes and the plot, you get the story.
I will admit that I don't outline my stories like this. Some people are particularly gifted at outlining, then writing stories from outlines. I am not one of them. I can do it in reverse but I can't do it going in without pulling my teeth with rusty pliers as I go along. But when I'm stuck, or when I don't know where my story is going, this is what I do.
I "plot" -- I break down the scene I'm working on into its individual components, then I answer the question of "where am I going with this". It shakes loose the cobwebs and helps me find ways to fix what's broken and tie things together.
But more importantly, it helps me remember that plot is less important than telling the story you want to tell.
.
My usual disclaimer applies: I am not an expert, this is my opinion and not gospel, what works for me might not work for you, and your mileage may vary.
I use the movie Battleship as an example, so please don't click if you don't want to be spoiled for this movie.
If there's one true thing in this universe, is that no one approaches a task, a project, or a problem the same way, and well they shouldn't, because otherwise this would be a really boring place to live.
If there's something that's even more true than that, it's that a single person never addresses a task, a project, or a problem the same way every time. God knows I don't.
I know that I'm a primarily character-driven writer (where I come up with a character first and the story later). But I never write the story itself the same way. Sometimes I come up with the characters' entire life beforehand, or I make it up as I go (most common). Sometimes I write sequentially (most common), or I write in crazy disjointed bits.
But sometimes, and this is rare, I come up with the plot first.
Some examples of my plot-first fics are We Are All Diamonds, Stop Watching, and Gold and Glory, Heart and Home. Why are they plot-first? They are plot-first because I came up with the summaries describing the story before I even started writing the story (Diamonds), or because I picked a particular prompt (Stop Watching, Gold and Glory).
There is no wrong way to start writing a story. There is no wrong way to tell a story. But it took me a really freaking long time to figure out what a plot was, and once I finally clued in, I realized that plot is not what I thought it was.
A plot is not the story's goal. A plot is not a fable. A plot is not a morality tale. A plot is not the story.
A plot is the sequence of events that tells the story.
A plot is the compilation of challenges, good and bad, that a character or a situation encounters to get to a final resolution.
A plot is a series of actions that the character(s) undertake to get to a foregone conclusion.
Basically...
A plot is the compilation of scenes/events that get you from point A to point Z.
The day that I realized this, I had a holy shit moment. My friend, who is well-meaning and asks me all the time, "Wow, your characters sound really interesting and the opening is a great hook. But what's the plot?" really fucked me up for a long time, because it turns out that he didn't know what a plot was, either. He still doesn't, but that's okay, because whenever he asks me that question now, my brain rephrases it to:
"What is the story that you want to tell?"
If you go to a kinkmeme, or if you go to a prompt list for a fest (as examples), or even if you come up with an idea yourself -- those are stories that you want to tell. How you do it, well, that's the plot.
A plot is just a bunch of scenes that tie in to each other: a scene, a situation, a conflict, a resolution. And those scenes? They fall into several separate divisions (with the understanding that there are no set rules, and that your mileage may vary):
An introduction (or an exposition) where you set up the setting -- the characters who are involved, the tone of the story, the triggering action that starts the events in motion that tell the story. This usually takes up a quarter of the fic (or book). It could take one, two, maybe five scenes, depending on how long the scenes are.
The middle, which is composed of two parts --
Part A, which is a string of rising action, or conflict. These are drawbacks and advances, actions and reactions, an exploration and a revelation -- a back and forth dance where the character is struggling to get to a tipping point. In a lot of ways, it could be best described as an one-step-forward-two-steps-back scenario that leads to the
Climax (the holy shit, oh my god, I have it all figured out, I think, I can fix this, why am I such an idiot, why didn't I see this before situation)
Which leads to Part B. Part B is the slippery slope of falling action, the characters scrambling to tie the loose strings, fix problems, correct ills and resolve wrongs. It's as slippery and as steep of a slope as you want to make it, but generally it is faster (or shorter) than Part A. There's also a lot more tension in part B, because there is a lot of action going on here.
The middle takes up a good half of the fic (or book).
And finally, you get to the ending, or the denouement, which is basically the conclusion or the resolution to your story. It's no longer than your introduction; in fact, it can be as short as you like, as open as you like, or, if you're like me, you leave it on a To Be Continued cliffhanger. Everything that started in the beginning needs to be concluded in the ending.
I'll give you an example, and I'll steal it straight from the movie Battleship (mostly because I just watched it for the 3rd time). You'll notice that they don't exactly keep to the three-act rule of beginning, middle and end. Like I keep saying, there are no right and no wrong ways to write a story. It all depends on how you lay it out. I'm simplifying the movie a bit here, because there are plot threads I haven't described:
Story: An alien race comes to conquer Earth, and they would win, too, except they didn't count on fucking up their own communications array or the humans getting in the way.
Main Character: A troubled man living in the shadow of his (greater) brother, who's a constant fuck up, who needs to step up his game if he's going to save the world and get the girl.
Plot:
Introduction/Prologue: Main character's backstory.
Scene one: Argument with his brother, who's a commander in the army, who's disappointed in him and wants him to make something out of himself.
Scene two: Meets the woman of his dreams at a bar, but she won't give him the time of day so he goes to extremes to prove himself to her.
Scene three: He gets arrested and has no choice but to join the army to escape jail time
Introduction (Middle, Part A)
Scene one: Character is now in the army. He is playing footie against the teams from other international Navies. Loses the game.
Scene two: Fucks up his chance of asking his girlfriend's dad to marry her after he fights in the bathroom with a guy on one of the other teams.
Scene three: Gets threatened with losing his commission and getting booted out of the army, but "now is not the time" because they're about to play war games against the other countries' Navies, and "for the love of God don't fuck up."
Middle:
Part A:
Scene four: The aliens arrive
Scene five: Gets sent to investigate up close, but in the resulting skirmish, his brother's ship gets blown up.
Scene six: In his grief, retaliates and attacks the alien ships, but that means that the other ships out there get hit, too, and in the ensuing battle, they end up the last ship standing.
Scene seven: They have an alien body on board. They learn an important detail in overcoming the enemy, but not without great costs as they get attacked by a not-dead alien.
Scene eight: More attacks, but they manage to get the upper hand.
Scene nine: They realize that the aliens are just as blind as they are right now without radio communication.
Climax/Turning Point:
Scene ten: They have a way to track the enemy and blow them out of the sky... er. I mean, ocean.
Part B:
Scene eleven: They play a tension-filled Battleship game with the enemy. The enemy launches weapons at them, but they survive. They launch weapons at the enemy, the enemy doesn't survive.
Scene twelve: They get information about the aliens' attempts to re-establish communications and the necessity of blowing up this attempt or the Galaxy Is Fucked.
Scene thirteen: They realize there is a third ship coming right at them, and attempting to Battleship against them fails miserably because they can't outwit the other ship, so they execute another tactic.
Scene fourteen: Tension-filled scene as they try to outrace the enemy ship and wait for the perfect moment to use the alien's weakness (learned in Part A) against them. They win! But..
Scene fifteen: There's no way of escaping the enemy's last ditch attempt to get rid of them and their ship goes down. This sucks because they now have no idea how they're going to stop the aliens from using Earth's communication array to contact their home planet.
Scene sixteen: They still have one ship left. Challenge one: It's an old battleship reconverted into a museum. Challenge two: they don't have the crew. Challenge three: they need time to get to position.
Scene seventeen: One big heart-in-throat scene to challenge the biggest baddest motherfucking alien ship of them all. They win... but...
Scene eighteen: Yeah, they only have one missile left so they use it to blow the communication array (big self-sacrifice scene) instead of saving themselves when the aliens lob something else at them. At the last minute they're saved.
Conclusion:
Scene one: Award ceremony honouring the brave and the dead. He finally gets his prospective father-in-law's respect, the promise of his own command, and the girl of his dreams.
The end.
My scene descriptions don't do the movie justice, but the point I'm trying to make is that the theme of introduction, rising action, climax, falling action and conclusion is constant throughout the writing process. You can see it within a scene, and you can take a step back and see it as part of the full plot.
And once you take another step back, away from the scenes and the plot, you get the story.
I will admit that I don't outline my stories like this. Some people are particularly gifted at outlining, then writing stories from outlines. I am not one of them. I can do it in reverse but I can't do it going in without pulling my teeth with rusty pliers as I go along. But when I'm stuck, or when I don't know where my story is going, this is what I do.
I "plot" -- I break down the scene I'm working on into its individual components, then I answer the question of "where am I going with this". It shakes loose the cobwebs and helps me find ways to fix what's broken and tie things together.
But more importantly, it helps me remember that plot is less important than telling the story you want to tell.
.