If you’re the type of writer who writes by the seat of your pants (pantser), there are times when you have to sit down and plan. How you plan out your story depends on which method suits you as an individual. I know writing by the seat of your pants feels comfortable, but when your story starts getting away from you, that’s when you know it’s time to stop, take a deep breath, let it out, and organize your plot/subplots.
Tag: plot
One Line Premise
The definition of a one line premise— It is a one line summary of your story plot.
Three Elements of a one line premise
| Three Elements | Definition of each Element |
|---|---|
| Protagonist | Said in two words. E.g. headstrong woman or a narcisisstic man |
| A goal | What does the protagonist want or need? |
| Crisis | A situation or crisis the protagonist is up against or in. |
Example
- A headstrong woman seeks to find the truth about her parents but discovers a sinister family secret going back to the Magi that could ultimately destroy her.
In the above example headstrong woman is the protagonist. Seeks to find the truth about her family is the goal. Sinister family secret and could ultimategly destroy her is the crisis.
Flashbacks
Have you ever read a story that had a flashback, and it left you wondering why the flashback was used? Simply put, if your flashback doesn’t drive your plot forward in any way; or if it doesn’t build your characters, don’t use it. Flashbacks should be used sparingly. They must serve a purpose or you risk the reader getting bored. What happens when readers get bored? They put the story/book down.
Life Long Learning
The years spent writing my first novel weren’t just spent writing. What I discovered early on was that I didn’t understand how to put a book length story together. To be specific, I needed to learn story structure. Thus, great care was taken to spend time learning about the craft of writing a book. Much trial and error occurred, and through all of that I discovered what worked and what didn’t work for me.
Other story elements I had to brush up more on were story flow, word flow, grammar, plot, character development, dialogue, character emotions, the list goes on and on. This all takes time, yes, but it is well worth it. While I was learning and brushing up on these skills, I wrote as well. There were times of frustration, when I had to delete part of my story and start over. But the more I wrote and learned, the easier the whole process became.
You won’t be the best straight out of the gate. No one ever is. But the more you learn and learn continuously, and practice what you learned, the better and easier it will become. So where do you start? Start with your weakness. What areas of writing and grammar are you weak in? Start there and move forward.
Now, two books later, the ride has become more fluent. The words flow more, and I know way more about story structure than I did years ago when I first started. This doesn’t mean there isn’t anything else to learn. I still continue to learn. Learning is what keeps us going and maturing and moving to the next level.
Story Trees
The beauty of a tree is intricate. There are so many parts, yet they are all part of one trunk. Everything comes together to make up the whole. We see the individual parts, but we also see the one.
Stories work much the same way. There is one main story, but within it are ‘branches’ or ‘offshoots’ of smaller stories that, when you put them all together, make up the main story. The end result is one story with many parts within it. They all connect. With a tree if you take a part of it and replant it, it grows into another tree. The same applies to a story. If you take a part of the story, you can create another story.
Get Back to It
If you’re writing a story, whether it’s a short story or a novel doesn’t matter, try to write everyday or every other day. If you take too much time off from your story, you tend to forget it. Then, when you go back to it, you have to spend much time going back through parts of what you’ve already written to remind yourself where you wanted the story/plot to go.
Sometimes life rears its ugly head and you have no choice but to put your writing down for a while. Instances like this can’t be helped. If this is the case, one thing you can do to keep reminding yourself is to revisit your story if only for a 10 to 15 minutes each day to remind yourself of the story/plot. Writing yourself reminders also helps, so keep journal handy.
I took three days off the last three days and forgot where I was going with what I wrote. I had purposefully stopped my writing session last Friday, July 1st in the middle of a scene that could easily continue on (prevents writer’s block). Today I picked up where I left off and forgot where I was going with the scene. The result? I had to refamiliarize myself with the scene in hopes of remembering. I didn’t remember, but then another idea struck. It all worked out.
It isn’t that you won’t come up with something if you forget. It’s that the time taken to get back into your writing and to get the flow going again can drag on and take up some valuable time.
Continuity
Let’s say you are writing a novel or something shorter such as a novella. As you’re writing chapter 20, you forget about some details you wrote in chapter 3 or maybe 4. Because you forgot what was in chapters 3 or 4, the information you write in chapter 20 about the same details may be contradictive. Maybe this is happening in different places throughout your book (these are called plot holes or inconsistencies). There are three ways you can fix this.
- Keep track of the information in each chapter on note cards and keep them handy as you write.
- Don’t worry about fixing them until you finish your first draft, then go back to the beginning and read each chapter, keeping track of the details as you go by writing little notes in the side margins on what information needs to be fixed. Then fix them.
- Have another person in addition to yourself read your first draft to look for these issues.
If you don’t fix plot holes, your readers will end up not being very happy with you. You want to make sure the read for them smooth. You don’t want them to have to stop and wonder.
Types of Conflict (Part 3)
Person vs. Nature
This type of conflict would be any story with a plot where a person or people are going up against nature. What immediately comes to mind is a story with a husband and wife who go hiking up into the mountains and an unexpected snow storm hits. They are prepared for cold weather but not for a storm. They try to get back down the mountain to safety before it’s impossible to do so. But they continue to run up against set back after set back…..
Books with Person vs. Nature Conflict:
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
To Build a Fire by Jack London
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
Deliverance by James Dickey
Movies with Person vs. Nature Conflict
Cast Away (2000)
Life of Pi (2012)
Meek’s Cutoff (2010)
The Call of the Wild (1972)
Grizzly Man (2005)
Plot Holes
Have you ever read a short story or a novel and somewhere along the way the story/plot didn’t make any sense? It felt as though information was missing, or there was a lack of consistency. The result of all that is you scratching your head in wonder, putting the book down, or leafing back through previously read parts to see what you missed.
That gets too distracting. So how do you as the writer avoid making those same mistakes as a writer? In your own writing, some of the inconsistencies you may be aware of and some you may not be. For the ones you know of, write them down in a plot holes log. For the ones you are not aware of, you will catch those later in your editing.
To expand on this, here is what I do. In the writing software I use, Scrivener (You can find it at Literatureandlatte.com), I create an extra file labeled Edits. Within that file folder I have various files for the different types of editing I will do later. One of those files is called Plot Holes. When I know of a plot hole that I need to address later, I write it there. When I am finished with my manuscript later, one of the things I do is go to that list and fix those plot holes one by one. THEN I start reading my manuscript from page one and go straight through to the end. Along the way I am searching for any more plot holes I may have missed. I make note of them in the manuscript with my red pen and move on. When I get to the end of the manuscript, I go back to those plot holes I made note of in red pen and fix those. Please note…..when I am reading for plot holes like this, plot holes are the only things I am searching for as I am reading. DO NOT fix anything else or make note of anything else during this process because you will lose track of what you’re doing, and you don’t want to start over. If you have to stop to run an errand or cook dinner or something, mark your spot and go back to it later. Trust me, this is the process I used and it served me well.
Dialogue: The Don’ts
In the real world we talk everyday, and what we say and talk about at the time could be part of a directed conversation about a topic or you may move from topic to topic. But, generally, what your are saying has nothing to do with moving a story forward, as in a book. Therefore, the dialogue/conversations in a the story you are writing should move the story forward. However, it needs to be done in such a way that it sounds real and everyday. So, how do you do this? Yes, this is a lot to think about, but remember you can go back later and fix it. I’ve said this before, get the words on the page first. Here are some things to keep in mind when writing dialogue.
- Remember your dialogue tags. You don’t need a dialogue tag after every line of dialogue. Every now and then put one in to remind the reader of who is speaking.
- Small talk is a killer. In real life we make small talk all the time for different reasons. Maybe we’re nervous and don’t know what to talk about, so we end up saying little tidbits of information to try and break the ice. In real life though, we aren’t trying to advance a story/plot. So, leave the small talk out of your dialogue, unless of course it advances your story/plot.
- Keep it natural. Make sure your dialogue sounds natural. One good way to tell if it sounds natural or not is to read it out loud.
- No same sounding characters. This closely relates to voice. I touched on this in a previous blog post (Voice from September 21, 2021) Make sure your characters sound different when they are speaking. Word choice, dialect, and how they say something all plays a part in this. Maybe one of your characters has a signature word they like to say. Use that.
- Using names in dialogue. Normally, one wouldn’t use someone else’s name when speaking to someone else unless one is trying to get the attention of the other or make a point. However, if it DOES work, then use it. But be careful.
- Using exposition can bore. When a character explains the story in dialogue it ends up being a form of telling. What happens when you ‘tell’ a story vs. ‘show’? You risk losing the reader. Obviously, you don’t want this. So, stay away from this.
- Don’t use ‘said’ all the time. Please refer to my blog post Words to Write By on October 18, 2021.
- Be accurate and consistent with punctuation. Some writers like to use double quotation marks (“), and some writers like to use single quotation marks (‘). Pick one and stick with it. Just don’t forget to use them. I knew a writer who, when I asked her what she felt her weakness was as it relates to story writing, said it was remembering to put the quotation marks in.
- Conversation that is unimportant doesn’t belong. If a conversation between your characters doesn’t cause some kind of friction, tension, or if it doesn’t advance the story/plot at all, leave it out.
- Silence is a good thing. Too much conversation can be detrimental to the story so be careful. Silence can add a lot to a conversation sometimes.
I know this is much to think about, but don’t sweat it too much. If you need someone to check your dialogue, have a writing buddy read it and give you feedback. Also there are some good books out there about dialogue. Here are some suggestions below (You can find any of them on Amazon):
How to Write Dazzling Dialogue: The Fastest Way to Improve Any Manuscript by James Scott Bell
The Writers Guide to Realistic Dialogue by S. A. Soule
Writing Vivid Dialogue: Professional Techniques for Fiction Authors by Rayne Hall
WRITE TIME AND AGAIN 