Perseverance and Luck—Advice from Shawn Warner

An author sits at a table in a grocery store, trying to sell his book. He’s sat there for hours, ready to sign books for buyers, but few stop to talk, and even fewer to buy. At last, one man does stop, and offers to post a video of the author on TikTok. Soon after, the post goes viral and book sales soar.

Luck?

You may regard that author as the luckiest writer alive, the chance winner of some literary lottery. But I’ve left out parts of Shawn Warner’s story. He might well agree with a quote attributed to filmmaker Samuel Goldwyn: “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”

Perseverance

That book signing in the grocery story hadn’t been Warner’s first. He hadn’t just dashed out a book. He’d been writing for fifteen years, without much success.

The TikTok influencer, Jerrad Swearenjin, hadn’t chosen to post to an uninterested audience about some third-rate tale. The novel, Leigh Howard and the Ghosts of Simmons-Pierce Manor, delighted the young TikTok readership.

I took the opportunity to hear Shawn Warner speak this past week, and he seemed well plugged in to the current publishing scene. He gave his audience sound, up-to-date advice about the writing business. Although I’ve heard and read some of these tips from others, Mr. Warner conveyed them in plain, easy-to-digest nuggets. I’ll just summarize a few of my takeaways.

Plot vs. Character

You may write either a plot-driven story or a character-driven story, Warner said. But today’s publishers are rejecting the former and accepting only the latter. (This disappoints me, for I like reading and writing the plot-driven kind.)

Characters

You should make your protagonist seem a real person with strengths, weaknesses, and friends. Your antagonist, too, must seem real, with strengths and weaknesses, but the bad guy requires no friends.

Warner discussed what he called the ‘A-Story’ and the ‘B-Story.’ The A-Story involves the external plot, with the protagonist reacting, at first, to events that strike at that character’s weaknesses. The B-Story involves the protagonist’s internal struggle against weaknesses. For books being published today, the B-Story takes precedence. As the tale progresses, the protagonist begins to solve the internal flaw and acts (with what is called ‘agency’) to resolve the A- and B-Stories.

Edit by Audio Recording

Warner suggests making your own audio recording of your manuscript. Then listen to it and edit your written manuscript based on what doesn’t sound right, or where you stumbled while reading.

Taglines

Warner suggests you develop a one-sentence tagline to answer the question, “What is your book about?” For his novel, he says, “It’s about a teenage girl who teams up with a ghost of multiple personalities to solve the mystery of her parents’ murder.” He advises that you memorize and rehearse your tagline until you can roll it out without hesitation. Obviously, you’d want to do that for all your published and upcoming books. Further, I’d suggest a tagline to answer the often-asked question, “What do you write about?”

Conclusion

Mr. Warner offered other bits of advice, but I’ll keep this post short. I’ve blogged before about Malcolm Gladwell’s theory in Outliers that genius requires 10,000 hours of practice, plus luck. I consider Shawn Warner a good example of that. Yes, luck smiled on him that day in the grocery store. But it occurred only after the 10,000 hours of writing, the perseverance to sit for book signings, and the writing of an excellent book.

Perhaps, after the same amount of perseverance, a similar bolt of luck will strike you and—

Poseidon’s Scribe

An Outline Every Writer Can Love

Ah, outlines. Some writers love ’em. Others despise ’em. In which camp do you pitch your tent?

Dilemma

In general, plotters love outlines. Plotters plan before writing, and that requires an outline, as detailed as possible. It comforts them to know where they’re going, what to write next.

In contrast, pantsers (as in writing by the seat of) abhor outlines. Too restrictive, too inhibiting. They want to write free of constraints, letting the story take them where it will. They figure if they don’t know how it will end, the reader won’t guess either.

Might there exist some rare species of outline acceptable to both types? Such an outline would strike a perfect balance, detailed enough for plotters, yet simple enough for pantsers.

Solution

The folks at Author Accelerator may have found it. They call it the Two-Tier Outline. (For pantsers repulsed by the very word ‘outline,’ you may call it the Two-Tier Guideline, or some similarly inoffensive term.)

The Author Accelerator post explains it better than I can. Although they focus on novels, the technique should work as well for short stories and novellas.

The method is simple: list your story’s scenes. For each scene, add two sub-bullets. The first states what happens in the scene, and the second states why the scene matters to your protagonist. Keep the whole thing under four pages.

How Plotters Benefit

Plotters often focus on action, on events, the essence of plot. When they do, what gets left out? Feelings, emotions, motivations, thoughts. Good plotters add those to the manuscript as they write. Bad plotters fail to include them in the story. The resulting work bristles with action, but contains flat, uninteresting characters.

The Two-Tier Outline forces plotters to include these otherwise missing elements. Also, the three-page limit constrains plotters’ tendencies to over-plan.

I blogged about a different way to factor in motivations here, but the Two-Tier Outline seems simpler.

How Pantsers Benefit

A simple, minimalist outline format grants pantsers plenty of freedom to go where the story leads them. However, having thought through the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of the scenes beforehand, pantsers may avoid writing themselves into a box, and therefore avoid major rewrites.

Also, if the story does end up deviating far away from the original outline, the pantser hasn’t wasted much time outlining. Nor would it take much time to re-do the outline, if desired.

Worth a Try?

Maybe this in-between, one-size-fits-all outline method will work for you. Consider adding it to your writer’s toolkit. If it works, great. If not, modify it to suit you better, or discard it.

An outline tool useful to both plotters and pantsers? Until Author Accelerator introduced it, nobody could have imagined such a thing, least of all—

Poseidon’s Scribe

Taking Vonnegut’s Story Shape Theory Further

Is it possible to depict all story plots in graphical form? If you could, would you find some graph shapes more common than others? The late author Kurt Vonnegut thought so.

In 2004, he gave a lecture describing his system and that talk is so good, you ought to watch the video, at least the part starting at minute 38. He’s entertaining. Someone has animated Vonnegut’s graphs at this delightful website.

His lecture covers several basic story types illustrating a protagonist’s experiences of good or ill fortune as ups and downs on the graph. If the author writes well, the reader will feel uplifted during the ‘good fortune’ periods and sad during the ‘ill fortune’ portions.

The main story types Vonnegut presents in his lecture are ‘Man in a Hole,’ ‘Boy Meets Girl,’ ‘Cinderella,’ and ‘Metamorphosis.’ Watch the video to hear his descriptions of each one.

Vonnegut comments that we humans often struggle to recognize and appreciate times of good fortune in our own lives. Therefore, I think, we often experience, and can relate to, the uncertainty of Hamlet.

Then Vonnegut’s system breaks down. He tries to illustrate Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ and ends up drawing a boring, straight line. Since Hamlet doesn’t know if the ghost he’s seeing is real, or significant, he spends much of the play in a state of uncertainty, not knowing if he’s experiencing good fortune or ill fortune.

Still, it is possible to depict uncertainty on a graph. Scientists use error bands, often shown as shaded areas.

My graph is one possible way to depict the uncertainty faced by Hamlet. In general, readers don’t like uncertain characters or vagueness about their state of mind. If a character doesn’t know if her life is good or bad at a given moment, the reader could dismiss her as being stupid.

With a skilled writer, like Shakespeare, however, we understand Hamlet’s confusion and sympathize with him. We don’t think he’s dimwitted or insane, despite his attempts to feign madness.

You can depict uncertainty on a Vonnegut-style story graph. In fact, I think the entire mystery genre involves uncertainty to some extent. For much of these stories, the detective can’t tell if a given clue gets her closer to solving the case or not. The detective strives to diminish uncertainty until the end.

I’ll leave you with one more observation about Vonnegut’s graphs. I don’t believe the ones he covered in his lecture constitute the only possible graphs, and I think he would have agreed. Story graphs may take any shape, but some (the ones he showed) work better with readers than others.

In the end, it’s the writing that matters. It’s how you convey the emotional highs and lows to the reader that counts. If you tell a good story, you can make almost any graph shape work.

This concludes your combined Math and Language Arts classes for the day, thanks to your favorite professor—

Poseidon’s Scribe

Do You Begin with Character, Plot, or Theme?

You’re thinking about writing a novel. Do your first thoughts focus on a character, events, or ideas? Whichever it is, opportunities and dangers await you.

This past week, I listened to an online lecture by author Emily Colin on the subject of “Hooking Readers and Publishers with Your Opening Pages and Never Letting Go.” She mentioned these three types of starting points, and that got me thinking.

I discovered a post by author PJ Parrish dealing with two of the three—character and plot. She listed strengths and challenges associated with each mindset. Using her post as a starting point, I’ll present my own list of pros and cons for all three.

Character-Based

Your first question is, “Who?” and you imagine a character, or more than one, fully formed, with backstory, personality, and appearance all locked in. Your character is like family to you.

Pros:

  1. Reader Empathy. People care about characters, and if yours are interesting and well-drawn, your novel will entrance readers.
  2. Writer Empathy. You know your character so well, you’ll have no problems writing actions, behavior, and dialogue at any point. You’ll know the character’s appropriate action in, and reaction to, any situation.
  3. Editor Empathy. Character-driven stories dominate the fiction market now. A story with engaging characters may be easier to sell.

Cons:

  1. Idolizing. If you fall in love with your character, you may see no flaws, and therefore no change will result, no learning will occur.
  2. Meandering. If your plot is weak, events may seem disconnected or illogical. The plot may seem contrived, with scenes designed to showcase the character instead of presenting a series of increasingly difficult challenges.
  3. Puzzling. If you neglect theme, readers might like your character, but be left wondering what the book was all about, and why they should care.

Plot-Based

Your first question is, “What if?” and you imagine the conflict, the journey, the rising and falling tension, the escalation of stakes, and the resolution.

Pros:

  1. Blurb. You know your back cover blurb already, as well as the story outline and synopsis. A ready blurb makes the story marketable.
  2. Suspense. The thing that keeps readers reading on—suspense—comes easy to you. You’ve lined up the twists that keep readers surprised.
  3. Structure. The writing may go easier for you, since you know where the story’s going.

Cons:

  1. Unsurprising. If you adhere to your plot outline too rigidly, the ending might be predictable. Or you might force a character to act out-of-character, because it’s necessary to your plot.
  2. Boring. In peopling your plot, you may end up with characters who are flat, uninteresting, even stereotyped.
  3. Puzzling. If you neglect theme, readers might like your plot, but be left wondering what the book was all about, and why they should care.

Theme-Based

Your first question is, “What’s the point?” You have something to say to the world. You’d like to persuade, to bring about change. You feel deeply about a message you want to convey.

Pros:

  1. Elevation. Strong themes, well expressed, can raise a book above common genre books into the realm of literary fiction.
  2. Double-Take. Books with strong themes make readers think. Only later do they realize the power of the message, and that makes them love the book even more than when they first finished it. Such books can change lives.
  3. Endurance. Well-written stories that say something true and eternal about the human condition can become classics.

Cons:

  1. Preaching. If you beat your fist on the pulpit too strongly, the reader will walk out on your sermon. If you can’t weave themes into your fiction with subtlety, write a textbook instead.
  2. Forcing. Readers will sense when you’ve engineered your plot to make your larger point, especially if effects don’t follow from causes.
  3. Over-Simplifying. If your characters lack dimension, if they can be summed up in one word, if their purpose is just to symbolize an idea in support of your theme, they’re not realistic.

In summary, it’s okay if you’re any one of the three types of writers. (I’m plot-based.) Strive to recognize your tendency and compensate for the cons associated with your type. Think about the other two aspects as you write and shore up those areas you’re weak in.

Interesting bonus fact: if you rearrange the letters in the words “character,” “plot,” and “theme,” you cannot come up with the words—

Poseidon’s Scribe

Rethinking Plot Structures

The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know. I thought I knew something about story plot structures, and even blogged about the subject a couple of times—here and here.

Then I watched a webinar on March 2, taught by writer Madeline Dyer, titled ‘The Art of Narrative Structures.’ She referenced a blog by Kim Yoon Mi, who’s made a thorough study of how to structure stories. One post, in particular opened my eyes.

Like many people, I’d taken my cues from Aristotle, with ideas later expanded on by Gustav Freytag. Those ideas resonated, since they comported with the types of stories I’d read all my life, and the TV shows and movies I watched. Between Aristotle and Freytag, they’d pretty much nailed down the way to structure any story.

Nope. Not even close.

Kim Yoon Mi lists 26 different story structures. These include many I hadn’t heard of, such as the Bengali Widow Narrative, Bildungsroman, Crick Crack, Griot, Hakawati, Jo-Ha-Kyu, Karagöz, Robleto, and Ta’ziyyah. She admits there are even more she hasn’t studied yet.

It’s clear there’s more than one way to tell a story. Kim Yoon Mi asserts that the Aristotle/Freytag methods over-emphasize conflict. I’ll have to study and think more about telling a story without emphasizing conflict.

Her main point is that a story must evoke an emotional response in the reader, or make the reader think. There are many ways to do that. A writer can choose from numerous story structures to achieve that end.

Down through the ages, people in different times and cultures came to prefer stories adhering to certain structures. They came to expect things a particular way, and writers in those cultures delivered. These preferences became unwritten standards, then firm rules.

If the ‘rules’ established in the Greco/Roman/European culture seem so pervasive, it’s not because they’re the one, true way. It’s because they’re the rules passed down to us, but there are many other ways.

The whole idea of making rules for story structures now seems wrong-headed. It puts the focus on the path, not the destination. If the goal is a reader’s emotional response, and many paths lead there, why limit yourself to one?

In theory, a writer could think more about maximizing the reader’s emotional response, and select the best story structure from the dozens available to achieve that end.

In theory. As the philosopher Yogi Berra said, “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.”

A writer who feels free to pick any story structure faces two obstacles—editors and readers. Editors and readers belong to whatever time and culture they’re in. As stated before, they’re used to stories being written a certain way. An editor may not accept your story if it strays too far from the norm—the rules. If it does get published, readers might not enjoy it.

Still, rules are meant to be broken. Traditions get challenged all the time. Editors and readers sometimes become fascinated with the new and different, or something old that seems new to them.  

Nothing wrong with trying out a different plot structure. Learn something new. Never assume that the font of all knowledge is—

Poseidon’s Scribe

Scene Plotting

It’s tough enough to lay out the plot for a book. Now I’m supposed to have a plot for each scene? Seriously?

Yeah, seriously. This past week I watched on online Zoom presentation by author John Claude Bemis. He called the technique ‘microplotting.’ I’ll introduce it here, in my own words. Any differences between what he meant and what I wrote are my errors, not his.

First, why does each scene of your book need a plot, if the overall book already has one? Bemis says it’s because there won’t be enough truly dramatic moments in your book to hold a reader’s interest. You need something in between those moments to keep your audience engaged.

What’s that something? Smaller dramas along the way. A plot for each scene. These small plots may lack the overall intensity or import of your book’s overall plot, but they should contain elements of anticipation, tension, and expectation to keep readers eager for more.

According to Bemis, each scene should either advance your overall plot or deepen the reader’s understanding of a character, or—better—both. He suggests putting yourself in the mind of the reader. Your scene should introduce a question in the reader’s mind. Before answering that one, introduce another question to keep the anticipation going. Don’t forget to answer each question, though, to resolve the tensions you’ve created.

Bemis provides five questions to ask yourself as you start to structure a scene:

  1. What does the character want? Maybe to reach a location, to obtain something, to answer a question, or to persuade someone.
  2. Why can’t the character get what she wants? Some obstacle, some friction with another person, or some internal barrier, perhaps.
  3. What will the character do about the problem? It’s better to have characters earn their objectives by their own efforts, rather than by luck or coincidence.
  4. Why don’t the character’s efforts work? Use events and dialogue in the scene to challenge your character. Introduce twists and turns. Don’t make the problem easy.
  5. How will this ‘microplot’ end? If with success, you’ll satisfy reader expectations. If with failure, at least you’ve got the reader rooting for your character as the book goes on.

Just as a magnifying glass reveals small and interesting details that make up a whole picture, so your microplots keep a reader fascinated enough to make it through your whole book.

Be careful with your magnifying glass, though. Don’t misuse it to burn up any books by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

January 16, 2022Permalink

6 Things Story-writers Can Learn from Songwriters

Many songs tell stories. Can our musical counterparts—songwriters—teach a few things to prose fiction writers like us?

Many songs, perhaps most, just convey a mood or a thought. Today I’m only considering ‘story songs’ and I’ll define them as tunes having (1) one character with a problem, (2) a plot where the character struggles to solve the problem, and (3) an ending where, as a result of the character’s actions, the problem is resolved. That’s the definition of a story, too.

Songwriters have a few advantages over story-writers. They can:

  • set the mood of the story with the tune and instruments alone;
  • use melody, rhythm, and the tone of their singing voice to convey emotions and the up-and-down cycling of tension;
  • use pauses to delay a surprise ending until the time is right; and
  • can repeat phrases (say, in a chorus) without the listening audience getting bored by the repetition.

By contrast, story-writers must convey their tale using words alone.

On the other hand, songwriters operate under a couple of constraints not faced by story-writers. They must tell their story in a very short time (typically four to ten minutes), and most often they must do so in poetic rhyme. Due to the brevity of story songs, many of them resemble flash fiction stories, those with 1000 words or less.

From what I’ve gleaned in my research, story songs are more prevalent in country music and folk songs than in other musical genres. Also, certain singers are more drawn to story songs than others. Examples include Harry Chapin (“Taxi,” “Cats in the Cradle,” and “Flowers are Red”) and Johnny Cash (“A Boy Named Sue” and “One Piece at a Time”).  

Story songs tend to be somber, dark, or even tragic in tone and message. There are some humorous ones, such as Meatloaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” and upbeat ones like “Devil Went Down to Georgia” by The Charlie Daniels Band, but these are exceptions.

Often, like most songs, story songs tend to involve young love, or lost love. Further, they tend to be about ordinary people, poor or middle-class people with troubles.

What can story-writers learn from songwriters?

  1. Set the scene with a few well-chosen words. Don’t start with backstory—you can fill that in later. In “Puff the Magic Dragon” by Peter, Paul and Mary, we’re only told the dragon lived ‘by the sea, and frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honahlee.’
  2. Introduce your main character early, and make that character compelling, someone with whom readers will identify. In Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana,” we are drawn to Lola, not because she’s a showgirl with yellow flowers in her hair, but because she and Tony ‘were young and had each other, who could ask for more?’
  3. Early on, force your character to face a difficult conflict, one that’s serious and will drive the plot. The very first lines of “Coward of the County” by Kenny Rogers are, ‘Everyone considered him the coward of the county,’ setting up an inevitable test of manhood. In “Stan” by Eminem, the narrator establishes early that he’s got an irrational obsession, a hero fixation that is messing up his life.
  4. Choose a few key details to describe things. There’s no need for complete descriptions. “Hotel California” by The Eagles is masterful, giving us mental images such as cool winds, warm smell of colitas, hearing the mission bell, lighting of a candle, etc. The song zeros in to give precise details about a few things, and listeners fill in the gaps.
  5. Resolve the conflict in a way that the character learns something, perhaps something unexpected. In “Margaritaville” by Jimmy Buffett, the song’s chorus keeps changing as the narrator learns who’s really to blame for his troubles. In “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman, the narrator thought a man with a fast car would drive her to a better life, but in the end tells him to ‘take your fast car and keep on driving.’
  6. Story ideas. Take your favorite song and convert it into a story. Twist it enough so you don’t violate its copyright, but you can channel the same emotions inspired by the song into your story.

About now, one of the songs I mentioned is stuck in your head, right? I better quit, since you’re busy humming a tune and no longer reading words written by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

End of the Story

…and they lived… Well, how exactly does the story end? Some time ago, I discussed rules for writing endings, but today let’s explore various ways stories can end.

I did a little research, and writers agree there are only five or six possible story endings. However, they each have their own categorization methods, so there may be well over six, even after counting for overlaps. (In each case, I’m simplifying their lists for brevity.)

For example, author C. Patrick Schulze categorizes endings by the protagonist, the goal, and the protagonist’s state of mind:

  1. Attains goal (happy)
  2. Attains goal (sad)
  3. Doesn’t attain goal (happy anyway)
  4. Doesn’t attain goal (sad)
  5. Realizes goal was flawed (doesn’t care)

Scott Francis categorizes in terms of the protagonist, the goal, and things greater than the goal:

  1. Attains goal (happy)
  2. Doesn’t attain goal (sad)
  3. Attains goal, but loses something greater (classic tragedy)
  4. Sacrifices goal for something greater
  5. Ending is ambiguous or bittersweet (literary fiction)

A blogger known as NDRW postulates these five more plot-centric endings:

  1. Happily ever after
  2. To be Continued…
  3. Learn something
  4. Deux Ex Machina
  5. Sorrowfully ever after

Dean Elphick’s six endings are different, but also plot-based:

  1. Resolved Ending
  2. Unresolved Ending (to be continued)
  3. Implied Ending (ambiguous, often unsatisfying)
  4. Twist in the tale (surprise)
  5. Tie-Back (ending foretold at beginning)
  6. Crystal Ball (months or years later/epilogue)

The Write Redhead cites writer Michael Orlofsky’s six ending types (mostly character-based):

  1. Death Ending
  2. Recognition Ending (learn something)
  3. Framing with Recognition (cyclic, return to beginning)
  4. Surprise/Revelation Ending
  5. Journey Endings (protagonist starts a new journey)
  6. Response to Theme (need to balance emotional and intellectual power)

These various bloggers and writers may differ in how they categorize ending types, but they do concur that endings must flow naturally and logically from the story.

I also think they’d all agree you should spend a lot of time getting the ending right. Take the same effort you did in coming up with the perfect beginning hook, to make sure you’ve ‘nailed the landing,’ as Michael Orlofsky put it.

If you’re unsure how to end your story, look over the list above, read the blogs I’ve linked to, and write a few different endings. Your optimum story ending should emerge from that effort.

Now, with the perfect ending to this post, I’ll close with my characteristic sign-off, as—

Poseidon’s Scribe

January 17, 2021Permalink

Writing Sideways

You have a problem. Perhaps you’ve written your main character into a plot trap. Or you’re trying to create an irresistibly likable character. Or you need a good motivation for the antagonist. Or you don’t even know what to write about. I don’t know what your problem is. Still, let me help you solve it.

By writing sideways.

No, that’s not what I mean by writing sideways

Well, it’s really called ‘lateral thinking’ but I like to think of it as writing sideways. I’m indebted to Shane Snow for the ideas in this post. He discussed problem solving in general, but my post is about solving problems while writing fiction.

His article starts with a clever problem to illustrate his method, but I’ll choose a different one. Your character is in a new house wired by a crazy electrician. The character sees three switches in the basement and knows each switch controls a different incandescent lamp on the first floor, but doesn’t know which switch controls which lamp. How can she find out, by making only one trip upstairs?

Shane Snow’s method has five steps, but you might not need all five for every problem. I’ll rephrase his steps in my own words:

  1. Examine the assumptions. All problems have assumptions, but some are so obvious most people ignore them. List all the assumptions you can think of, and examine each one. Is it really true? Are there other options? For our Switch-and-Lamp problem, the assumptions might include:
    • You need to know which switch controls which lamp.
    • Each switch controls a different lamp.
    • You can only make one trip up the stairs.
    • You can’t see the lamps from the basement.
    • You can determine a switch-to-lamp connection by flipping the switch on and looking at the lamp.
  2. Question the direct approach. Think about the way most people would solve the problem. Then ask, “what if I couldn’t do it that way?” For the Switch-and-Lamp problem, most people would flip a switch or two, then go upstairs and find they’ve only identified one of the three connections. They’re stymied by the limitation of being allowed only one trip upstairs.
  3. Re-write the Question. Often by examining the question, ingenious new answers emerge. Why is it so vital to know which switch controls which lamp? Why am I only allowed one trip upstairs? Does it matter that they’re ‘incandescent’ light bulbs?
  4. Approach the Problem Backwards. This is a common method used with mathematical problems. Imagine you’ve already solved the problem and think about what form that solution took and what route you must have taken to get there. In our character’s case, her solved problem consists of going upstairs and finding the three lamps in three different states, so she can know which switch controlled which lamp. That seems impossible, since lamps have only two states—on or off, right?
  5. Get a fresh perspective. Look at the problem from different angles and sides. In a problem involving fictional characters, think about how each of them see it. In our switch-and-lamp problem, look back and notice how we’ve constrained our thought by thinking of lamps as binary—either on or off, but we need some third state of a light bulb to know, in one trip, which switch controls each lamp. Is there a third state of a light bulb other than on or off?

Readers love books that break molds, defy conventions, and explore new ideas. They enjoy characters that are out of the ordinary, or who solve bedeviling problems in ingenious ways. Perhaps these techniques of writing sideways will help you.

Oh, yeah. I forgot about the lamps. By now, you know one answer: your character must turn the first switch on and wait a few minutes, then turn that one off, turn the second switch on, and go upstairs. Your character will find one light bulb off but warm (switch 1), one lamp on (switch 2), and one lamp off but just room temperature (switch 3).

That’s the problem’s classic solution, but what if the problem permitted no trips up the stairs? Then our character could drill a hole in the basement ceiling and construct a periscope so she could see at a glance which lamp comes on as she operates each switch.

If you apply the sideways writing techniques, you’ll come up with even more solutions to this problem and many others, solutions far beyond the imagination of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

What’s the Price for That Nice Plot Device?

You’ve heard of plot devices, but do you know what they are? Are they good or bad? Can you name any? For answers to these questions, you’ve come to the right blog post.

No, wrong kind of ‘device.’
From www.snappygoat.com.

Before we can define the term ‘plot device,’ let’s review what a plot is, and how a writer develops one. A plot is a sequence of events in a story, events connected by cause and effect. The writer aims to construct this sequence such that it accomplishes at least the following goals:

  1. illustrates the human condition,
  2. introduces a conflict and depicts the protagonist striving to resolve it,
  3. grabs and sustains the reader’s attention,
  4. leaves the reader with a powerful emotion at the end, and
  5. reflects believable cause-and-effect connections.

If you’re a writer crafting your story, it can be difficult to achieve all these purposes successfully. Often a complication develops. Unlike the reader, you know the story’s end and you’re aiming for that point. You might hit a snag where the next logical event in a cause-effect chain will not result in your desired story ending. To put it another way, to get to the end you want, something illogical has to happen. Your options at this point include:

  • re-writing earlier sections to make the strange cause-effect chain believable
  • re-thinking the ending of the story
  • introducing a plot device to get past the difficulty

Often the first two options are undesirable, so that drives writers to the third—the plot device.

The ‘device’ in the term ‘plot device’ refers to its original definition of a plan, scheme, or technique, not its modern connotation of a mechanical or electronic gadget.

Here are some examples of plot devices:

  • Bogus alternatives. This one comes from the Turkey City Lexicon. Sometimes, to make the plot work, the author needs a character to take an uncharacteristic action. An inexperienced author will walk the reader through the character’s mental list of options, rationalizing why the character chooses one action and not the others. This interrupts the story’s pace, pulls the reader out of the story, and is unnecessary.
  • Deus ex machina. A surprise entity comes out of nowhere to save the protagonist from a plot problem. Let’s see, Jules Verne thinks, I’ve got the title, The Mysterious Island, and I’ve got my heroic castaways who survive mostly by their wits, except sometimes they need outside help. I know! I’ll let them be aided by an unknown benefactor, later revealed to be Captain Nemo!”
  • Idiot plot. This is another one from the Turkey City Lexicon. If the writers plot problem is serious, one solution would be to set the story in the land of idiots, which would explain any unusual action taken by any character. They can all act to further the author’s plot, no matter how irrational any character’s actions seem.
  • MacGuffin. The protagonist pursues an object, believing it to be important, though (to the reader) another object could work as well. “Listen, Dashiell, I like novel, but can we change this Sicilian Vulture statuette to something else…say, a Maltese Falcon?” “Okay, sure.”
  • Plot voucher. Someone gives the protagonist an object that turns out to be the one thing needed later to get the hero out of a bad situation. “Holy plot device, Batman, why are you loading bear repellent in your utility belt?” “Better safe than sorry, Robin.” <later> “Holy Ursa Major, Batman! We’re surrounded by hungry grizzlies!” “Yes, lucky thing I happened to bring…”
  • Red herring. Anything used by the author to distract the reader’s attention away toward the unimportant and away from the important. Most frequently used in mysteries to lead the reader toward an incorrect conclusion. The term dates from the use of strong-smelling fish to divert hounds from chasing the hare. I haven’t read Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, but I understand it contains a character with an Italian name that translates as “red herring.”
  • Shoulder angel. A plot device used in visual media such as comic books, animated cartoons, or screenplays to illustrate a protagonist debating with her conscience, sometimes accompanied by a devil (temptation) on the other shoulder.

 From the tone of my post, you’re probably concluding that plot devices are bad, and it’s best not to use them. I’m not going to take that stance. Most writers try not to need them, but end up using them from time to time. The trick is to write well enough that readers get so swept up by your story that they don’t notice you’ve used a plot device.

To sum up, what is the price of that nice plot device, as I so poetically asked in the post’s title? The answer is, it’s free to use, but if you don’t use it well, readers won’t enjoy your story. Take it from—

Poseidon’s Scribe