Week 7 -- Focus on Fiction

Week 7 – Focus on Fiction



Parts of the Plot

Your workshop facilitator highly recommends James Scott Bell’s book titled Plot & Structure, published by F + W Publications, 2004. This book's info is the predominant meat of this juicy article.


We have touched on this, but let’s glance over how characters, settings, and dialogues fit into the LOCK (Lead, Objective, Confrontation, and Knock out ending) system for writing a novel.


Characters

In his book, The Art of Creative Writing Lajos Egri asserts that they 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 Haversham; Peggotty and Barkis: characters who sparkle in the plots like jewels.

Consider 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 in the myriad characters in The Stand; you will not find a dullard anywhere.

Don’t let any of your characters plop into your plots like plain vanilla. Always find a way to spice them up.

Another Thought: Character First

Perhaps the best and fastest way to get a story idea is through a character. The process is simple: develop a dynamic character, and see where he leads.

There are a variety of ways to come up with an original character. Here are a few:

• Visualizing Close you eyes and “see” the first person who pops into your mind. Describe this person. Drop him into a setting, any setting, and see what develops. Later ask yourself “Why is this character acting this way? What pattern of character is developing here?”

• Re-Creating Who You Know Take a fascinating character from your past. Don’t try to copy him. Give him a different occupation. “Re-create” him. Even better, change his sex. What would your crazy uncle be like if he were instead a woman?

• Obituaries Every day newspapers run obituaries. These are character biographies for the taking. Adapt them. Take the interesting parts and apply them to a character of your own choosing. You can alter the age and the sex of the character and see how things play. Let loose.

• The Worst Thing Once you have your character, ask this question: What is the worst thing that could happen to this person? Your answer may very well be the start of a novel of suspense, a novel the reader just can’t put down.


Settings

Can you take us to places we’ve never been before? That will enliven any plot. And I don’t necessarily mean some place far away from home, although that is an option.

It could mean simply setting your scenes in places that are fresh. Think of this challenge like having sex somewhere else other than the bed in the bedroom. Add the notion of possibly being caught, and you have an arousing situation. How many times do we have conversations between two potential lovers in a restaurant? Back and forth they go, with the only original element is what they are served by the waiter.

Why not put them in a tree house? Or on the subway track stuck in a tunnel? Or underneath the boardwalk by the sea?

Setting also includes the details of the life involving the Lead character. Tom Clancy created a whole new genre called techno-thriller because he put his hero, Jack Ryan, into a world of complex military hardware. That was new.

Readers love to read about the details of other people’s working lives.

Do research. Immerse yourself in some occupation, either by training or by interview, or observing if you’re allowed permission (I spent one shift as a pharmacy tech. I know what the job is, and I found out I don’t want to do it. However, it’s a good job for one of my characters someday.)

Whatever you do, don’t show characters practicing their chosen professions in the same old way. Dig deeper and discover original details.

You can still write about cops, lawyers, and truck drivers, but only if you give them updated challenges and settings. Find out where they are, and spice up your writing.



Dialogue

Dialogue is another great opportunity to spice up your plots. Don’t waste it.

Dialogue helps to create original characters and to move the plot along. If it isn’t doing either of these things, it should probably be cut.

While the subject of dialogue alone is worth another book in this series, here are a few tips for freshening plot through dialogue.

First, make sure your characters have a unique way of speaking. No two characters should be exactly alike.

And second, the words they use should tell us something about who they are(education, geographic background, age, social group, etc.)

If a character is a charge-ahead type, he’ll speak that way. His words will be forceful and direct. Sam Spade in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon is just like that. Here he confronts the odd little intruder, Joel Cairo:

I’ve got you by the neck, Cairo. You’ve walked in and tied yourself up, plenty strong enough to suit the police, with last night’s killing. Well, now you’ll have to play with me or else.

But the dandy, Cairo, smelling faintly of gardenia, uses fancier verbiage:

I made somewhat extensive inquiries about you before taking any action, and I was assured that you were far too reasonable to allow other considerations to interfere with profitable business relations.

We know, simply from the words, that these two are very different characters. Think of dialogue as weapons used in the plot. Plot is about confrontation. It’s a battle. So verbal weapons are naturally going to be employed by the characters who are trying to outmaneuver each other.

There is a whole range of weaponry to choose from---anger, epithets, pouting, name-calling, dodging---virtually anything from the arsenal of human interaction.

John D. MacDonald’s The Executioners (the basis for the two Cape Fear movies) is about a lawyer, Sam Bowden, whose family is stalked by the sadistic rapist, Max Cady. Cady’s first act is poisoning the family dog. Sam has not been totally up front with his wife, Carol. She challenges him:

(Notice how the intensity escalates as the conversation goes on. The escalating argument is a great tool for writers to have at hand.)

I’m not a child and I’m not a fool and I resent being . . . overprotected.

Her volley is direct, telling him she resents the coddling. Sam responds:

I should have told you. I’m sorry.

Sam’s apology is meant to diminish his wife’s anger. But his words ring hollow to her, and she continues to advance:

”So now this Cady can roam around at will, poison our dog, and work his way up to the children. Which do you think he’ll start on first? The oldest or the youngest.”

“Carol, honey. Please.”

“I’m a hysterical woman? You are so damn right. I am a hysterical woman.”

Carol uses sarcasm, Sam tries again to soften her up, and she responds with bitter observation, and a curse word. Sam they lawyer tries another tack:

”We haven’t any proof it was Cady.”

She threw a towel into the sink. “Listen to me. I have proof it was Cady. I’ve got that proof. It’s not the kind of proof you would like. No evidence. No testimony. Nothing legalistic. I just know.

Seeing that this has had no effect on her husband, Carol quickly shifts and brings out her heavy artillery:

”What kind of man are you? This is your family. The dog was part of our family. Are you going to look up all the precedents and file a brief?”

She has attacked both his manhood and his profession. Sam attempts an answer, but Carol cuts him off (interruptions are good weapons too):

”You don’t know how—“

“I don’t know anything. This is happening because of something you did a long time ago.”

“Something I had to do.”

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t have. You tell me the man hates you. You don’t think he’s sane. So do something about him!”

Carol wants instant action, and Sam knows he can’t provide it. The stress of the situation brings out weapon like dialogue.

The plot moves ahead with originality and pace because dialogue is used as a weapon.



Scene Selection

The choices you make for scenes, the raw “what happens” material, also contribute to your spice.

But our ideas naturally jump to clichés as we decide what to write next. Don't employ a cliche--period. Editors hate them with a passion.

As an example, consider the parting words between Rick, the cafe owner, and his former lover Isla Lund.

"We'll always have Paris . . . we didn't have until you came to Casablanca . . . . "

This classic movie was made in 1942. The line, "We'll always have Paris" was original, then in 1942. Every time it has been used consequently, it has become a bit more tried and tired, "used up" slips along into "fed up"--with hearing it from overuse, beacuse it has become a cliche. Perhaps a younger writer might get by with using a few cliches, but adult writers ought to steer clear from them like the plague (Did you catch that i justed "cliched" on you again?). The meaning becomes diluted, and eventually lost from overuse, so be an adult and don't use cliches in your writing,

In your facilitator's opinion, if Paris Hilton's "hot" isn't cliche yet, let's help it move along out of usage. Jeez, sometimes I just wish I could just get people to use a thesaurus, and find the exact subtle meaning of a word to use. Words I hate include: good, bad, pretty, nice . . . get the idea. Expand your vocabulary and your reader's vocabulary.



That’s one good reason why it’s critical to develop the sort of an imagination that considers several possibilities before deciding what scene to write

You can do this by just pausing, jotting a quick list of possibilities, and waiting for something to click.

Do this with the scene you are writing. Maybe you start out thinking that you’ll have a cop burst into a house and engage a bad guy in a gunfight, ending with the bad guy dead.

Stop a moment. What if the cop ends up dead? Or there’s an innocent bystander in the house? Or a dog? Or, there’s not really anybody there after all.

Think about it. Choose something fresh.

Hold Readers Tight

Once you have the reader’s attention, you can concentrate on the second essential of the scene—intensity. Every scene must have it, to a greater or lesser degree. Without it, your scene will sit there like a deflated blimp—it may have potential, but it ain’t gonna fly.

Masters of the craft know this. Dean Koontz’s aptly entitled Intensity is filled with scenes of impending danger as a woman tries to escape a sadistic killer. As the story builds, so does the possibility that she will be discovered by the villain. Virtually every scene in the first half of the book is built on the chance she’ll be found out.

He stood just outside the cab door, thirty feet from her, stretching almost lazily. He rolled his big shoulders as if to shake weariness from them, and he massaged the back of his neck.

If he turned his head to the left, he would see her at once. If she didn’t remain absolutely still, he would surely spot her slightest movement, even from the corner of his eye.


The intensity level of your scenes should increase as the story moves toward the climax. In the Koontz novel, the heroine, Chyna, is captured. The last half of the book chronicles her attempts to escape with another prisoner before they are killed.

Chyna stretched out on her stomach, leaned into the skylight, and used the mop to push the stepstool toward the back of the hall and out of the way. Dropping down onto it, one of them might have broken a leg.

They were so close to escape. They couldn’t take any chances,


This occurs just before the killer dogs come after them (Dobermans are intense by definition) and we’ve moved to a scene of even greater intensity. Koontz holds us in his grip by increasing the physical peril as the book progresses.

Literary fiction, on the other hand, usually concentrates more on the emotional turmoil of the character. John Fante’s classic novel, Ask the Dust, has numerous evocative scenes showing us the yearnings of the young writer Arturo Bandini:

Now I prayed to St. Teresa again. Please, sweet and lovely saint, gimme an idea. But she has deserted me, all the gods have deserted me, and like Huysmans I stand alone, my fists clenched, tears in my eyes. If someone only loved me, even a bug, even a mouse, but that too belonged to the past . . . .


The language here is fiercely personal (gimme an idea; if someone only loved me) with emotional images (fists clenched; tears). The tension level is just as great as a scene about physical actions.

So pack your scenes with tension. How? Primarily through the writer’s best friend: conflict. When two characters with opposing agendas meet, you have built-in tension. A cop questions a witness that doesn’t want to talk; a would-be lover tries to get a woman to give him the time of day and she won’t; a parent tries to find out what his wayward teenager is doing, but can’t. Your novel’s central story should present endless possibilities for conflict—if it doesn’t, this isn’t the novel you should be writing.

Even scenes with allies—two characters who agree on a goal—should have tension. Otherwise, you’ll end up with dull exchanges of informational dialogue.

That’s how best buddy movies work. Lethal Weapon partnered a straight-arrow, soon-to-retire cop (Danny Glover) with a suicidal wild man (Mel Gibson). The tension in the scenes elevates the movie above the standard cop thriller.

And we all remember the scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when Butch is trying to get Sundance to jump from the side of a cliff into the river. The heat in their argument rises until Sundance lets loose his dark secret: “I can’t swim!”

Always go over the scenes you’ve written with an eye for intensity level. If it isn’t strong enough, try to ratchet it up. Even a relatively quiet scene (which you use to moderate the pace of your novel) can give us the thoughts of the viewpoint character, showing us her worries or anxieties, thus allowing for emotional intensity.

If a scene still doesn’t provide adequate intensity, use the writer’s next best friend: the delete key. Your readers will be happy you did.

The Intensity Scale

One of the best plot rules, of course, is show, don’t tell. But this is not a law. Sometimes a writer tells as a shortcut, to get on to the meaty part of the scene. Showing is essentially about making a scene vivid. But if you try to do it constantly, the parts that are supposed to stand out won’t. And your readers will get exhausted.

So when do you show and when do you tell? Though we covered this briefly in a previous article, this is a little different perspective on show and tell. A little tool called the Intensity Scale will help you answer that question. Every scene in your story will vary in emotional intensity. And the intensity level within each scene will shift around. This is the natural ebb and flow of fiction.

In fact, one could argue that the skill of the fiction writer boils down to the ability to exploit intensity. The most intense moments, the places where you want the reader to feel the greatest emotion, must not only come at the right time; they must also stand out as the most vivid parts of the narrative.

With the Intensity Scale, you have a way to accurately gauge those moments. Simply put, you judge each scene you write on a shifting scale from 0 – 10. A 0 means there is no intensity at all; a 10 is over the top. As your scene moves along in time, the intensity level will move around.

As a general rule, your scenes should never drop to a 0 and rarely get to a 10. Almost all of your scenes should be written in between.

Furthermore, most scenes will have a natural build. They will start in the lower intensity range, then elevate to the higher.

There is room for variation, of course. Sometime you might want to jump into a scene in medias res (in the middle of things) and stay there. Another technique is to start high, drop back to low, and build again. Whatever your choice, the Intensity Scale helps make decisions regarding show and tell.

The diagram below illustrates a common pattern: A scene that begins around 1 or 2, gradually builds to a 7 or 8. It doesn’t go over the top (a book can only sustain one or two such scenes), nor does it fall into a coma land (a reader can stand no such scenes).

Scene Intensity Scale

10

9

8

Show Zone

7
6

5 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
4

Tell Zone

3


2


1

0_______________________________________________________________


Scene progression

(If you can copy and connect the dots, you'll have a better visual.)The scene begins
at about 1 and 1/2, to 3, back to 2, building to a 5, sliding back to 4, increasing to a 7, back down to a 5, and end the scene on an upward swing on the graph (I tried to type the chart, but my dots ran.)

The simple rule is this: when your scene goes ABOVE the median line, you are in the “SHOW ZONE”. Lean toward showing as much as you can.

When you are BELOW the median line, in the “TELL ZONE,” you can err on the side of tell. Why? Because the reason your scene exists, if you are doing it correctly, is what happens in the “Show Zone.” If it is not, then you need to seriously consider cutting the scene.


Some Examples

One example is from Ridley Pearson’s The Pied Piper. A woman worries about having left her four-month-old with a babysitter for the first time. Near the beginning of the restaurant scene, we have an intensity level of about 3. So Pearson merely says of the mother, She was sick with anxiety.

Later, after calls home have been unanswered, the tension level moves to about 7. Thus, we are given a more vivid description: The knot in her stomach twisted more tightly. Her fingers went cold and numb.

Raymond Carver, whom some might call the “King of Show” (he was a master a finding the right, illuminating detail), naturally followed this strategy. His story “Neighbors” begins by quickly telling us the condition of the characters: Bill and Arlene were a happy couple. But now and then they felt they alone among their circle, as if they had been passed by somehow . . . .

By the end of the story, however, Carver writes: They held each other. They leaned into the door as against the wind, and braced themselves. The context of the story is in these lines, left to work their magic in the reader’s imagination.


Using the Intensity Scale for Balance

A good plot is an exercise in proper balance. For example, a thriller needs some relief from the action so the reader can catch his breath. A literary novel that delves deeply into character should find respite on occasion through comic relief, action, or some other change of pace.

The Intensity Scale can help you with this balancing act.

A novel usually revolves around a few big scenes. These act as guideposts as the novelist moves from one scene to another up through the climax. In between, scenes of differing degrees of intensity are used to vary the pace.

Determine which chapters or scenes in your novel are the ones that your story cannot do without. There are no hard and fast rules, but a novel of 100,000 words might contain half a dozen big scenes. (At 250 words per page, how many pages is 100,000 words typewritten? I don’t know about you, but I don’t see a 4,000 page novel in my immediate future.)

Write these scenes for all they are worth. Get the narrative quickly into the “Show Zone” and stay on the high side, in the 8 – 10 range. Scenes that are transitional can be a mix. They might be quiet and reflective, and move from a 2 to a 5 or 6. On the other hand, they may have a seething inner conflict that feels like a 7 or 8 to the character.

You can actually graph each of your scenes on cards, lay them next to each other, and step back for a look at your novel as a whole.

As a facilitator's note, I'd just like to add that this is your call. You must judge and quantitatively value the intensity or stress in your scenes, It's the writer's job.

The simple point is this: By staying aware of your scenes’ levels of intensity and writing accordingly, you’ll make your own novels fresh and memorable to your readers.


You may want to come up with your own form to graph the Intensity Scale of your scenes. You are welcome to copy the image below, taken fromPlot & Structure, or you might want to use “store bought” graph paper, or perhaps create your own graph for plotting the levels of intensity in your novel.

Here are some indications of different levels of intensity in scenes:

10. Over the top! Use with care; only two or three scenes per book should hit this level.

8, 9. Good range for your big scenes, those turning points that every novel needs.

6, 7. Conflict, important emotions, sharp dialogue, inner turmoil.

5. A good place to start scenes that build to higher ranges.

3, 4. Setup scenes (short) and other transitions.

1, 2. If you start here, get out quickly.

0. Don’t even think about it. For instance, lengthy descriptions
(e.g. weather, place), especially in the first chapter, will flatline
your novel and induce yawns (and rejections) from editors.

And that’s a good place to break for this article. Write calmly, but stress and tension are conflict tools you want to use for your characters.

Of course, you’ll want to spend time going forwards and backwards through your manuscript this week. I’ve included four exercises in hopes that all participants will be able to share the first couple of exercises, perhaps all four. I’ll leave a link to post to the group area at the end of this article.

We are 19 participants and one facilitator now. I’m honored to have members joining us from around the world. The level of literary mastery in this group is tremendous, and I’d like you all to be able to share your writing so you can see the creative talent pool we have here.

Please answer the exercises as a new item in your portfolio. Perhaps by early next week we can all post, share, and investigate each other’s writing. I haven’t hear the details of all the participants manuscripts, but the ones I have are very detailed and have proven to be loving works of art, and quite intriguing.

Exercise 1 . . .

Pick a novel from your bookshelf, and make it a favorite. Open to any scene and read it. Now analyze.

Was this an action scene? Identify the places where you learn about the character’s objective in this scene and the conflict. How does the scene end? Do you want to read on? Why or why not?

Exercise 2 . . . .

Is this mainly a reaction scene? What is the emotion the character is feeling? How does the author show it? At the end of the scene, what has the character decided to do, if anything? Is the character different? Stronger? Weaker?

Exercise 3 . . . .

Now find an action scene in the same book, and chart its intensity using the blank intensity chart that is provided below. (In our situation I guess you’d have to print an intensity scale from one chart or the other, plot your scene, and then scan it back to your computer to save as an item (a form for your future use, perhaps).

Scene Intensity Scale

10

9

Show Zone

8

7

6

5 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

4

Tell Zone

3

2

1

0______________________________________________________________________

Exercise 4 . . . .

Look at one of your chapters and analyze the hook, intensity level, and prompt at the end. How can you strengthen each aspect?




Enjoy Mother Nature’s most generous heating situation this summer. Did you know that humans should actually drink 8 – 8 ounce glasses of water each day (That’s a gallon of water intake, and sodas and coffee don’t count.) . "They" also say to avoid alcohol and caffeine. Drink up Mates!

If you have any questions or comments about this week’s article or the exercises, e-mail me, and send me your exercises next week in an article with your “bitem” number to [e-mail]. Follow the link below to post your item on our group space:

Week 7 Exercises -- Focus on Fiction  (13+) Workshop participants, please save your exercises as an item, then post it to share. #1799404 by a Sunflower in Texas

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