The Year of Prime and Who Lost the Plot?
Okay. Here goes. Remember that little plot triangle your 5th grade teacher taught you?
Guess what? IT'S TRUE! It's true. It's true. Hell, it's true, and as easy as it is to draw a triangle, creating one with words is about as easy as a non-anesthesized root canal. Painful.
But, as writers, we have to have a plot.
Yes, this probably seems obvious. A plot. Of course every novel would have a plot.
I speak from experience. FREEZE FRAME pre-editorial notes had a plot ... just not in the right triangle order. It looked a lot like this.
It absolutely had its ups and downs. It just didn't build toward anything, climax anywhere (admittedly, I didn't even REALIZE what my climax was), and never came to some kind of reasonable conclusion. It was a book filled with scenes -- somewhat disconnected -- and characters. It had no structure.
I called it my Choose Your Own Adventure being read straight through.
Every writer has strengths and weaknesses. The key is knowing what those are and knowing where you'll need extra help.
Enter: Arc Angels, Raiders of the Lost Arc for me -- the "Arc-impaired" ... So, how do you map plot? How is it remotely possible to get all those ideas in a cohesive arc and structure?
There are a few key things to remember:
1. Every single relationship in the book has its own arc
2. When you're ready to hit the climax, all of those relationships need to explode like popcorn, creating a kind of domino effect of mini climaxes to get to the big bang.
3. All of these explosions need to be resolved. (I don't mean that everything needs to be tied up in a pretty package. Everything, though, needs to be addressed. Just as we shouldn't have any hanging modifiers, we shouldn't have any hanging arcs.)
Once you have the relationships organized.
Voila! Plot maps.
It's basic. It's something we've all been forced to fill out in one English class or another. AND, it's something you should probably fill out for your own novels. I personally don't do this until I'm DONE with my novel because I get too caught up on the structure and lose my groove.
Here's an example of a plot map from JK Rowling and THE ORDER OF THE PHONIX ... The far left column is her time line. Then there are the chapter titles. The third column is the main plot and the subsequent columns are her sub-plots that build to the final, main plot, and how each of those sub-plots are addressed in each chapter. (You'll go blind trying to read it, but I think you get the idea.
She's a plot master. Unbelievable!
Everybody writes differently. Some plot out novels. Some outline. I don't. That's why I have to be extra careful to make sure that, at the end of the day, my novel actually HAS a plot and builds toward something. Plotting can be excruciating.
Plotting IS excruciating. But with a little inspiration from one of the plot masters, it's definitely do-able!
Guess what? IT'S TRUE! It's true. It's true. Hell, it's true, and as easy as it is to draw a triangle, creating one with words is about as easy as a non-anesthesized root canal. Painful.
But, as writers, we have to have a plot.
Yes, this probably seems obvious. A plot. Of course every novel would have a plot.
I speak from experience. FREEZE FRAME pre-editorial notes had a plot ... just not in the right triangle order. It looked a lot like this.
It absolutely had its ups and downs. It just didn't build toward anything, climax anywhere (admittedly, I didn't even REALIZE what my climax was), and never came to some kind of reasonable conclusion. It was a book filled with scenes -- somewhat disconnected -- and characters. It had no structure.
I called it my Choose Your Own Adventure being read straight through.
Every writer has strengths and weaknesses. The key is knowing what those are and knowing where you'll need extra help.
Enter: Arc Angels, Raiders of the Lost Arc for me -- the "Arc-impaired" ... So, how do you map plot? How is it remotely possible to get all those ideas in a cohesive arc and structure?
There are a few key things to remember:
1. Every single relationship in the book has its own arc
2. When you're ready to hit the climax, all of those relationships need to explode like popcorn, creating a kind of domino effect of mini climaxes to get to the big bang.
3. All of these explosions need to be resolved. (I don't mean that everything needs to be tied up in a pretty package. Everything, though, needs to be addressed. Just as we shouldn't have any hanging modifiers, we shouldn't have any hanging arcs.)
Once you have the relationships organized.
Voila! Plot maps.
It's basic. It's something we've all been forced to fill out in one English class or another. AND, it's something you should probably fill out for your own novels. I personally don't do this until I'm DONE with my novel because I get too caught up on the structure and lose my groove.
Here's an example of a plot map from JK Rowling and THE ORDER OF THE PHONIX ... The far left column is her time line. Then there are the chapter titles. The third column is the main plot and the subsequent columns are her sub-plots that build to the final, main plot, and how each of those sub-plots are addressed in each chapter. (You'll go blind trying to read it, but I think you get the idea.
She's a plot master. Unbelievable!
Everybody writes differently. Some plot out novels. Some outline. I don't. That's why I have to be extra careful to make sure that, at the end of the day, my novel actually HAS a plot and builds toward something. Plotting can be excruciating.
Plotting IS excruciating. But with a little inspiration from one of the plot masters, it's definitely do-able!
No comments have been added yet.
