Plotting a Novel: Where to Start!

I've started planning my new novel, working title: DEER LEAP.

It's been so long since I started a significant piece of writing, so I revisited what worked that first time around. A writing tutor introduced me to a useful tool for brainstorming plot some time ago:

MAP YOUR PLOT

• The situation with the main characters
• The characters
• The main conflict
• Initial idea for final resolution
• Characters who will help
• Characters who will hinder
• Other obstacles
• Minor conflict 1
• Minor conflict resolution
• Minor conflict 2
• Minor conflict resolution
• False resolution (optional)
• Place of resolution
• Resolution

The 'Map Your Plot' tool allows you to brainstorm eventualities. I found it useful to start there, and then add more detail to the plot following the three act structure. (Image borrowed from Raindance, the film organisation).

Act One

• Takes up about 25% of the novel.
• Introduces us to main character and setting, their hopes and dreams.
• Presents the protagonist with an inciting incident, from which there is no return.

Act Two

• Takes up about 50% of the novel.
• The protagonist should face minor obstacles which they may overcome, only to be faced with another, more significant conflict. 
• At the midpoint, something happens which changes the way the protagonist sees the world, and how they are dealing with their major conflict.
• At the crisis of Act two, we can't see a way out for the protagonist - the stakes are raised even higher.

Act Three

• Takes up the remaining 25% of the novel.
• In the climax, the protagonist must face whatever or whoever has caused the conflict in the story. Usually, because of what he or she has learned in the process, they win, and the problem is resolved.

I recommend this as a good post on plot from Janice Hardy.


An Act 1 example from KEPT:
This is a detailed example of the original plot I mapped out for KEPT. Planning to this level of detail works for me, but others like to be more spontaneous.
Just Act 1 for fear of boring you!

Sequence A

• Katherine, 30, wakes up hung-over and heartbroken
• Katherine opens a letter from a solicitor, revealing that she has inherited a lighthouse from her estranged paternal grandmother
• Katherine is reminded of the father that abandoned her before she was born, and locks herself in the bathroom to get her emotions under control
• Katherine breaks the news to her mother, Sally, who insists that she sell the property.
• Katherine’s step dad Simon books a house clearance company to make the arrangements, and Katherine is annoyed that he is sticking his oar in.
• Katherine decides to defy her mother and make a secret visit to the lighthouse.

Sequence B

• Katherine takes the train to Weymouth, but it breaks down and to her frustration she is delayed for several hours, giving her time to worry about her mother and about what she might find out about her father.
• Katherine meets the solicitor, who makes her feel like a little child that doesn’t know anything
• Katherine enters the lighthouse, and is repulsed at the state it is in, and realises that she does not know this woman that called herself her grandmother
• Katherine tries to find meaning in photographs and possessions, but doesn’t get very far.
• In the master bedroom, she finds a painting of a young lady rolled up underneath. She is intrigued by the painting.
• Katherine realises she will have to spend the night here, and has a restless night on the itchy sofa.
• Having slept very badly, Katherine is happy to pack up a few items (including the painting) and heads home early.

Sequence C

• Back in London Katherine tries to go back to normal, but can’t hide her disappointment that she has not found her father.
• Katherine tries to go back to normal, going out drinking with her work friends, but has a run in with her ex, Marcus, who makes her feel like she knows nothing about art
• Katherine is reminded of her single status by her married housemates
• Katherine does some research on the painting she brought back from the lighthouse and finds out that it was stolen from the National Gallery in the 1950s.
• Katherine decides to take the painting to the police.
• It dawns upon Katherine that the girl in the painting looks familiar. She has seen this face in photographs in her grandmother’s album, and she thinks it’s the same woman but she can’t be sure.
• Katherine decides she has to go back to Portland and check, before the house clearance company destroy the evidence.
• Katherine pretends to be ill to avoid her housemates’ questions, and does some more research on the internet, not getting anywhere.

Sequence D

• Katherine travels to Portland again.
• Katherine searches the lighthouse for photos of the girl in the painting, which she recalls seeing in the wedding album
• Katherine finds the wedding album, but is interrupted by a knock on the door
• Paul from the clearance company arrives a day early to clear the house, with his assistant Josh
• Katherine and he exchange words, and he agrees to come back another day, but Katherine is left feeling hurt and foolish
• Katherine finds a photo of the girl from the painting, with the name ‘Olive’ on the back

The Secret to Flash Fiction

Flash fiction is a great way to craft a story without it becoming so daunting that you spend most of the time procrastinating. At Watford Writers, our Flash Fiction competitions are around 300 words, but other groups and competitions will define it somewhere between 50 - 1000. We have a competition about once a month, so I've had some practice now at this form of art.

The ones that tend to win have:

• Immediacy (we know where we are and who we are with within in the first sentence or two - and we aren't confused by too many characters or settings)
• A subtle twist (but pandering to a punchline at the expense of good writing and solid grammar will lose you marks)
• Every word working for the author (including a carefully considered title)

This month I won third prize in on the theme of REVENGE. Congratulations to Cynthia and Steve who came first and second. My entry is below.

For some extreme flash fiction (140 characters to be precise), get involved in #1lineWed on Twitter.

 

A Close Shave

“Are you wearing false eyebrows?” Charlotte asked, squinting at me.

“No.” I raised the menu higher. She nudged it down with her index finger.

“You are!”

I said nothing.

“Why on earth are you wearing them?”

I sighed, shielding my face but being careful not to dislodge the eyebrows. “It’s a long story.”

“I’m listening.” She leant back, laying her menu down on her plate.

I felt my face redden. “Well, I was giving John a trim, you know, with the clippers.”

“And you accidentally shaved your own eyebrows off?”

“No!” I shot her a look.

“Sorry. Carry on.”

“I didn’t realize the guard wasn’t on, and took a really closely shaven strip out of the back of his head.”

Her mouth formed an ‘o’. “Was he mad?”

I shrugged. “Quite possibly.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t know how to tell him, so I just pretended everything was normal.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. And then nothing happened, he went to work and nothing. Came home – nothing.”

“No-one noticed?”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Until…?”

“Until I looked in the mirror yesterday morning and I had no eyebrows.”

“Oh my God! He shaved them off?”

I nodded.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. He had already gone to work. So I bought these and let him wonder how I had miraculously grown my eyebrows back during the course of one day.”

“Oh dear. You two are a right pair.”

I raised a false eyebrow and shrugged, thinking about the permanent marker I had picked up from the stationary cupboard at work. I leaned back, took a sip of wine and plotted my next move.

When is it time to stop re-drafting and move on?

Today I got a reply from a literary agent to a submission of KEPT.

Not quite her thing, she said. (Heart sinks).

BUT she'd be interested to read the psychological thriller I mentioned I was developing in my notebook.

Heart leaps! Then I realise that this means I actually need to write the damn thing. It means leaving behind the novel I have toiled over for the last five years and moving on before I've seen it grow up in the world.

It got me thinking: when is the right time to move on?

Most authors become better writers over time. Some people believe it's a gift, but you only have to read the early work of Curtis Sittenfeld to see how she developed from Prep to American Wife. Better writing comes with practice. Editing is a different kind of discipline.

That's not to say that we should abandon our first work completely. But we should not let our emotional attachment to it hold us back. Even if it does not get picked up ever, it is not wasted, because every sentence written took us forward to becoming better writers. It may not be the first novel that catches the agents attention. In July 2015, Harper Lee published her second novel Go Set a Watchman, which was written before To Kill a Mockingbird.

There are many more literary agents I could (coulda shoulda woulda...) contact, but I also see the value in coming back to editing with a more critical eye from practicing.

Screenwiting: turning a novel into a 15-minute screenplay

I've been trying my hand at screenwriting in preparation for a big annual Christmas Watford Writers competition: The Writer's Block.

I decided to turn my 93,000 word novel into a 15 minute screenplay. Tricky, you might think. You are not wrong. Here is what it has involved so far:

• Simplifying everything
• Showing, not telling
• Cutting characters that were not crucial to the story
• Cutting scenes were not core to the plot

Now I know why films are never true to their original texts! But it's actually pretty good advice for any aspiring writer. After all, if something is in your story, it must add value or move the story on in some way.

An added complication is that my novel is set across two generations. That's two lots of characters to get to know in 15 minutes. I looked at films that have done this, and the common themes were:

• Narrator in present day looks back at an episode in their past (Saving Mr Banks, Life of Pi, Titanic, or the book The Poison Tree that was turned into a 2-part drama)
• People in different time periods or places whose stories inter-relate in some way (The Hours, Love Actually)

But in my novel, there are no characters that appear in both the present and the past. Still, with such a visual medium, so much can be put across with a look, a juxtaposition of two frames. I am attempting show likeness between the present day protagonist and her war-time Grandmother in the similarity of physical positions, of facial expressions and reactions when placed next to each other.

Whether I can pull it off remains to be seen. It's tough, but enjoyable, and there will be things I can take back to my normal medium of writing. I would recommend this as an exercise to other writers!

Writing rocks! Editing is boring!

Does anyone else find editing boring?

 

I watched a TED talk from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Positive Psychologist, on Flow – the secret of happiness. 

Flow is the state you get in when you're really happy. Everything just clicks, you lose yourself, hours pass like minutes. One poet describes it as “opening a door that floats in the sky”. It’s when what you are doing becomes worth doing for its own sake.

It reminded me of why I love writing. But this state feels like almost a “magical” thing – how can we recreate it at will?

Mihaly did some research to work out what is going on when people are in flow. He found out that people in flow are facing higher than normal challenges, and feel they have higher than normal skills to deal with them.

So – how does this help with editing?

Well. According to Mihaly and the diagram, I must either think the challenge of editing is too easy, or I don’t feel I have the skills to deal with it.

Well… surely I’m not so arrogant to think it’s easy?

So, tomorrow night I’ll be reading up on how to edit a novel.

Ciao for now.