David Schwinghammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "plot-points"
How to Structure Your Book
The best way I've found is to map out my book on artists sketch pad paper. You want to aim at plot points. Your book is formatted in three acts. Act one is when you introduce your main characters, give them a setting and give them a problem or goal. Plot point one is around page seventy or seventy five when your main character sets out to accomplish his goal. Act two is about 150 pages long and plot point two is around page 140-150. That's where you add a new wrinkle or twist to throw off those inveterate readers, like me, who think they know who did it (if it's a mystery) or what's going to happen otherwise. Plot point three or Act Three happens around page 210 when you set up your climax. How long your climax lasts is up to you, but when it's over wrap it up pretty quickly, unless you think you need an epilogue to tell the reader what happened to the characters later. I love those. Now, you're going to write down the scenes you think you need on the sketch paper under each Act.
I tend to write twenty-page scenes, but that's just me. I include a lot of verisimilitude (research and active description) that makes the characters and the situation more real for me. While writing SOLDIER'S GAP, I read LIVING LIFE'S CIRCLE: Mescalero Apache Cosmovision, by Claire R. Farrer, which helped me with one of my main characters, Mingo Jones, the night deputy in Soldier, Minnesota. Mescaleros believe in ghosts, and SOLDIER'S GAP is kind of a ghost story. I did a lot of suspension of disbelief, so don't let that scare you. There's also a definite theme: it's about kids falling through the cracks and a kind of spiritual journey Deputy Sheriff Dave Jenkins goes through while chasing a killer.
Anyway, if you use this plot structure, you should have little problem with the first draft. I can write a first draft in a couple of months, if that long. This may explain James Patterson's publishing frenzy (not really). Rewriting takes me a lot longer. As I said I like to add verisimilitude, and I do that while I rewrite. I also read HELTER SKELTER while I was writing the first draft and rewriting. Olive Randall, one of the major characters, is a lot like the Manson girls, and I wanted to get her right.
It's hard to let go of your book, so you want to find some reliable readers who aren't too close to you or who aren't sycophants. You can find some pretty good ones on the internet, believe it or not.
I tend to write twenty-page scenes, but that's just me. I include a lot of verisimilitude (research and active description) that makes the characters and the situation more real for me. While writing SOLDIER'S GAP, I read LIVING LIFE'S CIRCLE: Mescalero Apache Cosmovision, by Claire R. Farrer, which helped me with one of my main characters, Mingo Jones, the night deputy in Soldier, Minnesota. Mescaleros believe in ghosts, and SOLDIER'S GAP is kind of a ghost story. I did a lot of suspension of disbelief, so don't let that scare you. There's also a definite theme: it's about kids falling through the cracks and a kind of spiritual journey Deputy Sheriff Dave Jenkins goes through while chasing a killer.
Anyway, if you use this plot structure, you should have little problem with the first draft. I can write a first draft in a couple of months, if that long. This may explain James Patterson's publishing frenzy (not really). Rewriting takes me a lot longer. As I said I like to add verisimilitude, and I do that while I rewrite. I also read HELTER SKELTER while I was writing the first draft and rewriting. Olive Randall, one of the major characters, is a lot like the Manson girls, and I wanted to get her right.
It's hard to let go of your book, so you want to find some reliable readers who aren't too close to you or who aren't sycophants. You can find some pretty good ones on the internet, believe it or not.
How to Plan Your Novel
1. Diagram your novel on a horizontal line on a large sheet of paper (art paper, or butcher paper), entering plot point one, midpoint, plot point three, and climax. Draw vertical lines between Acts One, Two, and Three. When you come up with a definite scene, tag it and put it beneath the line in a sort of outline.
2. Generate scene cards (who’s in the scene?, situation and conflict, action, sensory detail, props etc. Hook, segue to the next scene). You make these so you can move them around when necessary and you can see the flow of your novel. Strive for forty cards, ten for Act one, twenty for Act II, and ten for Act III. Act one, from beginning to plot point one is exposition. You want to introduce your overall conflict and your main characters. When you get to plot point one, around p. 75, your main character starts working on his goal (ex. finding his kidnapped daughter). Act II is development; aim at midpoint where something significant will happen to send your character in another direction; your character is then propelled toward plot point two, where Act III, the resolution to your goal begins. Shortly thereafter your climax occurs, where your character either achieves his goal or is denied (Girl he loves chooses another man). Wrap it up in a hurry, not much more than a few pages. I like epilogues, but maybe that’s just me. You’ve been with these people for at least a week, and you want to know what happens to them in the future.
3. Non-scenes. Don’t worry if there isn’t much of a conflict for some of your scenes. Non-scenes are sometimes called incidents or happenings. An incident is a sort of abortive scene where a character attempts to reach a goal but meets no resistance or conflict. When a boy seeks to kiss a girl who wants to kiss him back, you have an incident. A happening just brings people together, no goal or conflict. Happenings and incidents add realism to your work, but don’t hold interest very long. If you structure your book according to scene and sequel, you can put your incidents and happenings in your sequels. Scenes sound like they’re happening in real time with lots of dialogue; sequels sound like narration, where the author is telling instead of showing. Something has happened at the end of a previous scene and your character is trying to solve the problem. He/she looks at the different possibilities and rejects all but one, then enters the next scene. He/she might be having a beer with a friend who helps him make his decision.
4. Setting. Should be like a character in your book. Tony Hillerman’s Navajo reservation; SHIPPING NEWS, set in Newfoundland; Huck Finn, the Mississippi River Valley; the Yukon in Jack London; the Red River Valley in SOLDIER’S GAP. Small town America is a good setting, although it’s been done to death.
Dave Schwinghammer's novel, SOLDIER'S GAP, is available on Amazon.com.
2. Generate scene cards (who’s in the scene?, situation and conflict, action, sensory detail, props etc. Hook, segue to the next scene). You make these so you can move them around when necessary and you can see the flow of your novel. Strive for forty cards, ten for Act one, twenty for Act II, and ten for Act III. Act one, from beginning to plot point one is exposition. You want to introduce your overall conflict and your main characters. When you get to plot point one, around p. 75, your main character starts working on his goal (ex. finding his kidnapped daughter). Act II is development; aim at midpoint where something significant will happen to send your character in another direction; your character is then propelled toward plot point two, where Act III, the resolution to your goal begins. Shortly thereafter your climax occurs, where your character either achieves his goal or is denied (Girl he loves chooses another man). Wrap it up in a hurry, not much more than a few pages. I like epilogues, but maybe that’s just me. You’ve been with these people for at least a week, and you want to know what happens to them in the future.
3. Non-scenes. Don’t worry if there isn’t much of a conflict for some of your scenes. Non-scenes are sometimes called incidents or happenings. An incident is a sort of abortive scene where a character attempts to reach a goal but meets no resistance or conflict. When a boy seeks to kiss a girl who wants to kiss him back, you have an incident. A happening just brings people together, no goal or conflict. Happenings and incidents add realism to your work, but don’t hold interest very long. If you structure your book according to scene and sequel, you can put your incidents and happenings in your sequels. Scenes sound like they’re happening in real time with lots of dialogue; sequels sound like narration, where the author is telling instead of showing. Something has happened at the end of a previous scene and your character is trying to solve the problem. He/she looks at the different possibilities and rejects all but one, then enters the next scene. He/she might be having a beer with a friend who helps him make his decision.
4. Setting. Should be like a character in your book. Tony Hillerman’s Navajo reservation; SHIPPING NEWS, set in Newfoundland; Huck Finn, the Mississippi River Valley; the Yukon in Jack London; the Red River Valley in SOLDIER’S GAP. Small town America is a good setting, although it’s been done to death.
Dave Schwinghammer's novel, SOLDIER'S GAP, is available on Amazon.com.
