Write Great Fiction--Plot & Structure Read online

  Ms. Korelitz ultimately concluded that, while glorious prose is a fine thing, “without an enthralling story, it’s just so much verbal tapioca.”

  Now, if verbal tapioca is your thing, we have a First Amendment that guarantees your right to produce it.

  But if you want readers, you must consider plot, whether you sniff at it or not.

  THE POWER OF STORY

  Plot and structure both serve the larger enterprise — story. In the end, that’s what this whole novel thing is about. Telling a story in a way that transports the reader. Let’s talk a little about that.

  If a reader picks up a book and remains in his own world, there was no point in picking up the book in the first place. What the reader seeks is an experience that is other. Other than what he normally sees each day.

  Story is how he gets there. A good story transports the reader to a new place via experience. Not through arguments or facts, but through the illusion that life is taking place on the page. Not his life. Someone else’s. Your characters’ lives.

  Author James N. Frey calls this the fictive dream, and that’s accurate. When we dream, we experience that as reality.

  I still get those late-for-an-important-event dreams. When I was in school, it was usually a test. Lately, it’s been a speaking engagement or a meeting with some important person relating to my work.

  I’m late, and I realize it with about two minutes left, though I’m miles away and can move only in slow motion. And everything I do seems to create a further obstacle.

  You see what’s happening? Conflict. Story. Experience.

  I’ll leave it to the professionals to determine what this indicates about my psyche. But as writers, we need to understand that story is how readers dream. They demand it.

  Plot and structure help them get into the dream and keep them there.

  Agent Donald Maass, who has written a superb book called Writing the Breakout Novel, is of the opinion that story is what sells the book — not advertising, not a huge promotional budget — but story. And he believes the key to long-term success as a novelist is the ability to write book after book that builds up an audience. How? The power of story:

  What causes consumers to get excited about a work of fiction? Reviews? Few see them. Awards or nominations? Most folks are oblivious to them. Covers? Good ones can cause a consumer to lift a book from its shelf, but covers are only wrapping. Classy imprints? When was the last time you purchased a novel because of the logo on the spine? Big advances? Does the public know, let alone care? Agents with clout? Sad to say, that is not a cause of consumer excitement. In reality there is one reason, and one reason only, that readers get excited about a novel: great storytelling.

  Plot and structure help you reach that mark.

  PLOT MADE SIMPLE

  In college, I signed up for chess lessons from a fellow who promised I’d be able to compete with master players. He assured me he could teach the basic principles that, if applied, would give me a solid foundation for a good game against anyone. Though I might not win, I’d certainly not look like a fool. From there it would be a matter of applying my talent (if I had any) to study and practice.

  He was right. I learned to play a solid game of chess. And while I probably can’t go more than fifteen moves with Garry Kasparov — one of the world’s greatest chess players — at least he’d know he wasn’t playing a chucklehead. By applying the principles I learned, I can play a decent game of chess.

  It’s the same with plotting the novel. There are a few basics that, if understood and applied, will help you come up with a solid plot every time. How far you go from there is, like most things, a matter of plain old hard work and practice.

  After analyzing hundreds of plots, I’ve developed a simple set of foundational principles called the LOCK system. LOCK stands for Lead, Objective, Confrontation, and Knockout. We’ll talk about each of these in detail later. For now, here’s a quick overview. Even if you get nothing else out of this book, a grip on the LOCK system will serve you well your whole writing career.

  L Is for Lead

  Imagine a guy on a New York City street corner with a Will Work for Food sign. Interesting? Not very. We’ve seen it many times before, and we wouldn’t stand and watch him for a minute.

  But what if the guy was dressed in a tuxedo, and his sign said Will Tap Dance for Food? Hmm, a little more interesting. Maybe he has a yellow pad and the sign says, Will Write Novel for Food. I might buy him a hamburger to see what he comes up with.

  The point here is that a strong plot starts with an interesting Lead character. In the best plots, that Lead is compelling, someone we have to watch throughout the course of the novel.

  This does not mean the Lead has to be entirely sympathetic. This point hit me one day years ago when I was browsing the paperbacks at my local library.

  I was looking at the new releases when I saw they’d brought in a new paperback version of An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser. I’d never read it and didn’t know much about Dreiser, though I knew vaguely that his literary reputation has suffered in recent years.

  But I also knew the novel was the basis of one of my all-time favorite movies, A Place in the Sun, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift.

  So I checked it out, all 814 pages of it, not expecting to actually read the whole thing, but just to skim and see how similar it was to the movie.

  Well, I had one of those wondrous reading experiences where I got sucked in. Big time. And as a budding novelist, I asked myself why. The book’s style is everything the critics said it was: ponderous, heavy-handed, at times sloppy. On page 156 is the sentence: “Gilbert chilled and bristled.” And on page 157: “Gilbert bristled and chilled.” I couldn’t make that up.

  In fact, the New York Times once called An American Tragedy the “worst written great book ever.” But something makes it a great book, even though the Lead character, Clyde Griffiths, is not a nice guy. We first meet Clyde, the son of fundamentalist evangelists, at sixteen, and then watch as he descends to the point that he lets his pregnant lover drown.

  Why does it work?

  Because Clyde is compelling, though negative. Because Dreiser gets us into his head, there is a “car wreck” dynamic at work here. Just as people slow down to look at wreckage, we can’t resist seeing what happens to fully drawn human beings who make an unalterable mess of their lives. A skilled novelist can make us feel that “there but for the grace of God go I.”

  (Note to readers: This book uses the simplest model — one Lead character involved in the main plot — for teaching purposes. Mastering this will enable you to approach increasingly complicated situations later, for example, a multi-viewpoint novel. See chapter eight for more on complex plots.)

  O Is for Objective

  Back to our Will Work for Food guy. What if he tossed down his sign, put a parachute on his back, and started climbing the Empire State Building?

  Interest zooms. Why?

  This character has an objective. A want. A desire.

  Objective is the driving force of fiction. It generates forward motion and keeps the Lead from just sitting around.

  An objective can take either of two forms: to get something or to get away from something.

  The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is about a girl lost in the woods who desperately wants to get back to civilization.

  In Jaws, Brody desperately wants to get the shark.

  In Rose Madder, Rose wants to get away from her psycho husband.

  In The Firm, Mitch McDeere wants to get away from the Mafia.

  Solid plots have one and only one dominant objective for the Lead character. This forms the “story question” — will the Lead realize her objective?

  You want readers to worry about the story question, so the objective has to be essential to the well-being of the Lead. If the Lead doesn’t get it (or get away from it), her life will take a tremendous hit for the worse.

  Here are a few hints on making that objective c
rucial.

  If the objective is related to staying alive, that always fits the bill. Most suspense novels have the threat of death hanging over the Lead from the start. Death can also hang over others — Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs is driven to stop Buffalo Bill before he kills another innocent victim.

  Not all objectives have to involve death, however. The essential thing is that it is crucial to that Lead’s sense of well-being.

  Consider Oscar in Neil Simon’s play, The Odd Couple. He is a very happy slob. Nothing pleases him more than smoky poker games in his apartment, and he not cleaning up afterward. He takes in his suicidal friend, Felix, out of compassion. But Felix is a clean nut. Eventually, this drives Oscar crazy. If he doesn’t get rid of Felix, his happy life as a slob will be ruined! The story works because Simon establishes just how important being sloppy is to Oscar’s happiness.

  C Is for Confrontation

  Now our human fly is halfway up the Empire State Building. We already know he’s interesting because he has an objective, and with a little imagination, you can think up a reason why this is crucial to his well-being.

  Is there anything we can do to ratchet up the engrossment level? Yes! New York City cops are trying to stop him. They have plans to nab him around floor 65.Worse yet, a mad sniper across Fifth Avenue has him in his sights. Suddenly, things are a lot more interesting.

  The reason is confrontation. Opposition from characters and outside forces brings your story fully to life. If your Lead moves toward his objective without anything in his way, we deprive readers of what they secretly want: worry. Readers want to fret about the Lead, keeping an intense emotional involvement all the way through the novel.

  Some wise old scribe once put it this way: “Get your protagonist up a tree. Throw rocks at him. Then get him down.”

  Throwing rocks means putting obstacles in your Lead’s way. Make things tough on him. Never let him off easy.

  K Is for Knockout

  I once asked an old sports writer why he thought boxing was so popular. He smacked his fist into his hand. “Pow!” he said, letting his arm fall like a sack of potatoes.

  People watch boxing for the knockout, he explained. They’ll accept a decision, but they prefer to see one fighter kissing the canvas. What they hate is a draw. That doesn’t satisfy anyone.

  Readers of commercial fiction want to see a knockout at the end. A literary novel can play with a bit more ambiguity. In either case, the ending must have knockout power.

  A great ending can leave the reader satisfied, even if the rest of the book is somewhat weak (assuming the reader decides to stick around until the end). But a weak ending will leave the reader with a feeling of disappointment, even if the book up to that point is strong.

  So take your Lead through the journey toward her objective, and then send the opposition to the mat.

  Our human fly can make it to the top victoriously or fall tragically. He can crawl through a window that is a metaphor for a new life. The range of endings is massive.

  Personally, I’d like to see him make it and write a best-selling novel about the experience.

  HOW MANY PLOTS ARE THERE?

  While there are a number of plot varieties (see chapter twelve for a discussion of patterns in plot), you can boil them all down and fit them into the LOCK system. A Lead with an intense objective, thrust into confrontation, runs through the story until it ends.

  Let’s see how this stacks up against some popular plots.

  How about Love? Sure, that’s simple. Boy wants girl. Girl denies boy his objective. He battles to win her love. He confronts her resistance by buying her flowers, singing her songs, protecting her from bad guys and all that romantic stuff. He gets her at the end or not. That’s one variety of the love plot.

  You can substitute the boy’s and girl’s families as the opposing forces, and you come up with another variety of the love story. See Romeo and Juliet.

  Take another plot, Change. Here, the plot focuses on an inner transformation in the Lead character. The Lead desires to stay as he is. Forces arise that challenge his complacency. He tries to resist the forces. But he is overcome at the end, and he changes. See A Christmas Carol.

  Objectives can be external or internal. The confrontation can be physical or psychological. But the LOCK system works in all cases.

  Your book can be literary or commercial, and you have a huge platter of plot varieties to choose from. But if you keep a compelling Lead battling to achieve his desire, you’re going to have a solid story every time. As novelist and writing teacher Barnaby Conrad puts it, “Once you get a character with a problem, a serious problem, ‘plotting’ is just a fancy name for how he or she tries to get out of the predicament.”

  WHAT’S THIS ABOUT LITERARY AND COMMERCIAL PLOTS?

  The difference between a literary and a commercial plot is a matter of feel and emphasis.

  A literary plot often is more leisurely in its pace. Literary fiction is usually more about the inner life of a character than it is about the fast-paced action.

  A commercial plot, on the other hand, is mostly about action, things happening to the characters from the outside.

  A commercial plot often feels like this:

  A literary plot often feels like this:

  Of course these are overly simplistic diagrams. There can be both literary and commercial elements in a book.

  Scott Smith’s A Simple Plan reads like a literary novel — what happens inside the first-person narrator is primary — while moving ahead like a commercial crime novel.

  The strength of Stephen King’s commercial plots is in his characterizations. He always seems to be writing about real people, and not merely players for his high-concept concoctions.

  Literary fiction is much more comfortable with ambiguities. The endings may be downers or leave the reader wondering. We don’t know what’s going to happen to Holden at the end of The Catcher in the Rye, and that’s part of the power of the book.

  In commercial fiction, you usually have the good guy winning over the bad guy.

  Sometimes literary fiction is called character driven, and commercial fiction, plot driven. Plot driven usually means heavy on the action and light on character work. Character driven, on the other hand, often implies a slower story with less action and more interior work.

  I find this to be an arbitrary and unhelpful distinction. All plots are character driven. Without a character facing trouble that is understandable to the reader, you don’t have a plot at all. That’s why LOCK begins with Lead.

  Further, you can have all the action in the world, but if your characters don’t ring true, your story will fail.

  Instead, I will use the more common markers literary and commercial if only because that’s how bookstores and critics and readers often think.

  But plots need characters, and characters need plots.

  Literary vs. Commercial Fiction: Two Simple Suggestions

  Keep these tips in mind as you construct either literary or commercial fiction:

  If you write literary fiction, add a good sense of pace and even a commercial element or two. You may find you like these elements. You will probably find your readers do, too.

  If you write commercial fiction, deepen your characters. This will make the story much more satisfying to readers.

  WON’T THIS LEAD TO FORMULAIC WRITING?

  Some writers object to thinking about plot because it may lead to formulaic writing. They miss a critical distinction. Why does something become a formula in the first place? Because it works!

  Here is a formula for an omelet: Crack a couple of eggs. Scramble them. Heat up a skillet. Butter it. Pour in the eggs. Cook them a bit. Add ingredients. Fold the eggs over the ingredients. Serve.

  This is a formula that works. But notice the variables.

  Depending on the cook and the experience level, the omelet can be delicious, a disaster, or something in between.

  And with the addition of cert
ain spices, the flavor can vary.

  It’s still an omelet, it’s still a formula, but it has a whole range of outcomes.

  Same with plotting. There are principles that work. But used alone they don’t guarantee an original novel. You still have to add your spices, your skills, your talent.

  Knowing why plots work is freeing. Master the principles, and you’re at liberty to add all of your personal touches.

  Good chefs have their secret spices, ingredients they use to give their creations something extra and unique. For writers, the spices you add to make your plot your own include characters, setting, and dialogue.

  Characters

  In his book, The Art of Creative Writing, Lajos Egri asserts that the key to originality in fiction comes from characters. “Living, vibrating human beings are still the secret and magic formula of great and enduring writing. Read, or better, study the immortals and you will be forced to conclude that their unusual penetration into human character is what has kept their work fresh and alive through the centuries. …”

  Note the word formula.

  Let’s test this.

  What is it that sets Dickens apart in our minds? Fagin and Wilkins Micawber; Uriah Heep and Miss Havisham; Peggotty and Barkis. Characters who sparkle in his plots like jewels.

  How about a more contemporary example? I mentioned Stephen King. Study his work and you will see that his character development is every bit as original as his plot lines. The two work together. Take a look at the myriad characters in The Stand; you will not find a dullard anywhere.