Plot - Steven R. Southard (Poseidon's Scribe)

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Story Versus Craft, in a Cow Pasture

We’ll consider story and craft first, then relate them to a cow pasture.

Impetus

I read Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses, hoping to learn to become a better writer. The book’s second half helped with that. The first half, which I read first, differed. It enumerated a list of grievances with a writers’ workshop that the author attended.

To understand the gist of his complaint, let’s start with definitions.

Story

For our purposes, let us define a ‘story’ in broad enough terms to encompass all human cultures across all human history. We could say a story is a text narrative featuring one or more characters in one or more settings, in the course of which, one or more events occur.

Craft

Craft, we’ll say, is the way a writer writes a story. It includes the techniques the writer employs, the story aspects the writer emphasizes, the words the writer chooses, etc.

The Universal and the Particular

We’ve defined ‘story’ in a universal manner so it includes campfire tales told by prehistoric tribes, Gilgamesh, The Story of Tambuka, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and King Lear. ‘Craft,’ by contrast, varies across cultures and time periods. A particular technique, word cadence, or plot structure might resonate in one country but not another, one century and not another.

Controversy

A difficulty might arise when a writers’ workshop or Master of Fine Arts (MFA) course teaches craft suited to its culture, but a student accustomed to another culture’s craft attends.

That occurred when Matthew Salesses, a Korean-American, attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. To him, the workshop seemed too prescriptive, too intolerant of other approaches.

My Take

Never having attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, I can neither validate nor dismiss Salesses’ experience. That workshop, founded in 1936, produced graduates who went on to earn Pulitzer Prizes, Booker Prizes, National Humanities Medals, and MacArthur Fellowships. Five graduates went on to become U.S. Poets Laureate.

Matthew Salesses has written six books and dozens of essays, been named one of thirty-two Essential Asian American Writers, and received multiple awards and fellowships for his writing. He runs his own graduate-level workshops in creative writing.

Perhaps the Iowa Writers’ Workshop had been teaching craft suited for modern-day tastes of U.S. readers. Perhaps Salesses found that approach too rigid and inflexible, based on his experience with Korean literature. If so, his dissatisfaction appears understandable, despite the success and staying power of the workshop.

As I’ve noted, though, craft changes, often based on reader whims and sudden fads. A given formula works well for a while, then readers tire of it and it becomes stale. A different kind of novel catches on, perhaps one from a foreign country, or one written in a foreign style, or a nostalgic return to a previous style from long ago. Other authors then write in that vein to capitalize on the trend, to catch the wave. In time, that style fades in its turn, soon replaced by another.

Why do these fads, these literary waves, occur? The fickle nature of readers doesn’t explain it all. I suspect some influential readers, eager to experience fresh books, seek something unusual, find it, and enjoy its newness. They see beyond craft to the underlying story. They spread the word, sparking a trend.

The Cow Pasture

Permit me a silly, Iowa-based simile. Think of story as a cow pasture, one of vast size with grass growing in every acre. Readers are the cows, gathering to devour grass/stories in a particular area. We’ll call that particular patch of grass the craft. In time, the cows consume the grass in that place, and have deposited cow-pies there, rendering that grass less desirable.

One cow moves on, finds a fresh patch with tall, tasty grass and begins munching there. Other cows notice and join the loner.

The process continues, cows moving from zone to zone. They drop fertilizer as they go, so previously grazed parts grow and become fresh again later.

Takeaway

Writers generate stories. They grow the grass, but don’t control the cows. Writers can create stories using currently successful craft. Or they can write stories outside that craft and hope a straying cow notices and draws the herd. A writer might dislike the popular and crowded area, and might fume that his favored grass zone attracts no cows. But cows go where they go.

Hey, cows! Over here! The tastiest grass is grown by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 3, 2024Poseidon's ScribePermalink Leave a comment

Entwining External and Internal Journeys

Often, the best stories show us two journeys. In one, the protagonist contends with an outside force, possibly another person, to confront and resolve a problem. We call that the plot. The other journey takes place within the protagonist’s mind and involves emotions, beliefs, personality, and, in the end, learning and change.

You’ll find a nice overview of this in editor and writing coach Ley Taylor Johnson’s post here and I encourage you to read it. My post emphasizes different points but (I hope) expresses the same overall view.

The 4 Aspects

Johnson says your main character should have a want, an obstacle, a need, and a flaw. She states them in that order since that’s the sequence for revealing them in the story.

The character wants something, and that strong desire provides motivation. However, the obstacle stands in the way. The obstacle could be a person, some aspect of the setting, or some other negative force. You should establish the want and the obstacle early.

Later, introduce the character’s need. The need is the reason for the want, and goes deeper than the want. The need is the underlying, emotional, psychological, or philosophical answer to the question, “why does the character want what she wants?” The character may be unaware of the need early on.

Most often, protagonists also suffer from a flaw. Like the need, the flaw resides within the character—a personality defect, a phobia, a suppressed memory, etc. As with the need, the character may be unaware of the flaw at the beginning, or might have grown accustomed to concealing it.

How the 4 Aspects Relate

The want and the need both propel the character forward. The obstacle and the flaw oppose that movement. The want and the obstacle are, most often, tangible and external to the character. The need, as mentioned before, explains the want—providing the underlying reason for it. The want may not last to the end, or may change. The character may abandon the want. But the need usually does not change, though it may be satisfied at the end.

How do the obstacle and the flaw relate? The obstacle, whether wittingly or not, preys on the flaw, targets and exploits it. While the obstacle appears early, the flaw may lurk unseen until late, though the writer might provide hints of the flaw all along. In the end the character must confront both the obstacle and the flaw, and resolve, in some way, the problems they create.

The Journeys

In the external journey, the character pursues the want but is stymied by the obstacle. When asked what a book is about, a reader often answers with this external journey, the plot.

The internal journey takes place in a different realm, one of doubts, fears, bouts of sadness, joys, thoughts, prejudices, mindsets, etc. Within her mind, the character journeys first to understand the need and eventually to attain it, despite being opposed by the flaw.

The Journeys Intersect

Much of the time, the external journey moves forward through action and dialogue, leaving only brief moments for a character’s fleeting thoughts. A good writer won’t let the internal journey slow the pace of the most intense scenes of the external journey.

Use the down-times between high-tension scenes to allow the internal journey to come to the fore. During these interludes, the character takes time for reflections, deeper thoughts, realizations, revelations, and learning—progress on the internal journey.

In the end, both journeys reach completion. The external journey features the character confronting and overcoming the obstacle to either attain the want, or to achieve a larger goal. The internal journey shows the character confronting and overcoming the flaw to satisfy the need.

Perhaps two other journeys end here, as well. You’ve finished reading this blogpost, and the writing has been completed by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

August 11, 2024Poseidon's ScribePermalink Leave a comment

These Days, Character Beats Plot

In a recent post, I mentioned author Shawn Warner said plot-driven stories are dead. Publishers, he advised, want character-driven stories, so, if you want to sell what you write, do the character-driven kind.

Definitions

What are Character-Driven (C-D) and Plot-Driven (P-D) stories and how are they different? The C-D types focus on the characters—their personalities, thoughts, motivations, changes, and growth. P-D stories emphasize what happens to characters—the events, action, twists, setbacks, and triumphs.

The Spectrum

Don’t think of these as either-or, binary choices. Consider it a spectrum, with C-D on one side and P-D on the other.

At the extreme C-D end, you have stories with clearly defined and memorable characters, to whom nothing happens. People used to say the TV show “Seinfeld” was about nothing. It wasn’t, but that view of “Seinfeld” may help you visualize the far C-D end of the scale.

At the far P-D end, you find stories with non-stop action, but stereotypical, one-dimensional characters who don’t change or learn anything. Think, perhaps, not about the James Bond or Indiana Jones movies, but the knock-off imitators of those franchises, the forgettable TV shows, movies, and books that tried to cash in on that style.

Near the midpoint of the spectrum you’ll find stories with interesting characters and well-constructed plots.

The Bad News

I grew up loving plot-driven stories. I still love them. That’s the type I write, too. Imagine my disappointment upon hearing Shawn Warner tell me P-D stories are dead.

If that experienced author spoke the truth, it left little hope for me. It meant editors and publishers wouldn’t want what I write. By extension, it meant readers didn’t want what I write.

Yet I sensed the truth of his pronouncement. In recent years, I’ve seen the submission calls. “Give us interesting characters we want to care about.” “Make us love your characters.” No fiction market asked for pure action or intricate plots.

Was I a literary dinosaur, writing in a style gone extinct?

Or should I hope for a pendulum shift? Perhaps a fickle reading public will tire of the C-D fad and turn to my P-D stories as the next new thing.

Causes

What’s behind the trend toward C-D stories? Why are readers preferring them and thus causing editors and publishers to shun my beloved P-D stories?

I can’t say for certain. This blogpost by Abbie Emmons claims character-driven stories are more memorable. We retain memories of distinctive characters longer than we do interesting plots. Maybe, though the reverse may be true for me.

Perhaps, instead, the explanation lies elsewhere. Maybe we live in a more introspective age than did readers of previous centuries. Since the advent of psychology, we’ve turned inward, demanding to know what drives characters, what shapes their personalities.

Or consider a related, but different rationale for the C-D trend. Perhaps readers simply tired of plot-driven tales. After the thousandth car chase, gunfight, starship battle, etc., readers needed a break. Maybe plots had become passe, formulaic, and stale.

Dilemma

Where does this leave me, and all other P-D writers? Should we hop on the C-D bandwagon, go where the market demands, and change our style to the character-driven side? Or should we soldier on, writing the stories we love, suffering low sales, praying for the day when trends shift our way again and plot-driven stories predominate once more?

Solution?

Perhaps Goldilocks was on to something. Maybe the middle of the spectrum is ‘just right.’ Aren’t the best stories really those with engaging characters and intriguing plots?

To attain that ideal balance, writers like me must make the effort to lean toward the C-D side. The fact that I begin with plot and then populate the story with characters doesn’t mean the characters can’t be fascinating in their own right.

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

March 17, 2024Poseidon's ScribePermalink

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

February 4, 2024Poseidon's ScribePermalink

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

November 5, 2023Poseidon's ScribePermalink

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:

Reader Empathy. People care about characters, and if yours are interesting and well-drawn, your novel will entrance readers.
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.
Editor Empathy. Character-driven stories dominate the fiction market now. A story with engaging characters may be easier to sell.

Cons:

Idolizing. If you fall in love with your character, you may see no flaws, and therefore no change will result, no learning will occur.
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.
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:

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

Cons:

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.
Boring. In peopling your plot, you may end up with characters who are flat, uninteresting, even stereotyped.
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:

Elevation. Strong themes, well expressed, can raise a book above common genre books into the realm of literary fiction.
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.
Endurance. Well-written stories that say something true and eternal about the human condition can become classics.

Cons:

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.
Forcing. Readers will sense when you’ve engineered your plot to make your larger point, especially if effects don’t follow from causes.
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

April 24, 2022Poseidon's ScribePermalink

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

March 6, 2022Poseidon's ScribePermalink

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:

What does the character want? Maybe to reach a location, to obtain something, to answer a question, or to persuade someone.
Why can’t the character get what she wants? Some obstacle, some friction with another person, or some internal barrier, perhaps.
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.
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.
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, 2022Poseidon's ScribePermalink

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?

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.’
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?’
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.
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.
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.’
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