I’m currently interested in the architecture of a fiction, whether screen/teleplay or book. To that end I’ve taken apart (deconstructed, maybe) a few, most recently ‘Tinker, Tailor’ by John Le Carre. Holy smoke! In retrospect, it’s probably not the ideal work to get involved in for this purpose.
Even in less ambitious fictions, there are often 2-3 major plot lines interweaved with shorter story arcs coming and going and generally contributing to the sum of the parts. In addition, the main plot lines are often not told chronologically; we’ll start, say, 2/3 through and flashback part way and then maybe the whole way.
I read that David Simon (The Wire) had a wall on which he had a huge sheet of butcher paper divided into a grid where a horizontal row represented a character arc and a column (left to right) a time unit – that works great if you’re telling a purely linear story but not if you’re using flashback, as many do.
In understating what the author has done I’ve used flow charts and diagrams, one chronological, one as the story is told – I use plural because it’s sometimes easier to break off smaller story arcs until they impinge on the main plots. I’m not, however, convinced I’m doing this in the most easily understood way.
How on earth do authors deal with complex forward-back-forward plotting, especially when there’s a weave of other arcs?
Some authors outline. Some just write and see where things go. Some of the subplots you notice were not in the author’s original conception, but were thought of later on and then fleshed out when editing. So if halfway through an author discovers the seed of an interesting subplot, he can flesh it out in the early going to make it seem like he’d been thinking about it from the start.
I’m currently writing a book filled with flashbacks and multiple plotlines. I just write what seems interesting at the time. So far, I discovered that a character I was only planning to use for a scene or two has become one of my two main protagonists, and that my villain really isn’t.
When I finish the first draft, I’ll then edit things to weave the arcs together and to foreshadow the things I’m discovering about the characters as I write.
Other authors outline it all – chapter by chapter. I can’t do that (once I know the entire story, I lose interest in writing it). Some write detailed outlines; others put it all down on a page.
Find a movie you love and have watched a million times, watch it again and just notice how everything that happens is simply cause and effect. This actually hit me while watching “Garden State”:
Mom dies so he has to go to jersey—> goes to jersey to meet his dad---->dad talks about getting more dose of drugs---->goes to doctor meets pretty girl etc. etc.
Once you get that down it’s merely filling in dialogue that emphasies getting from points A-B-C…and boom…you have a story.
I do something like this. The timeline doesn’t have to be chronological. The purpose is to order scenes in a way that makes sense in terms of the flow of the story. It also let’s you see if you’ve left a character/idea sitting unused for too long or if event X is properly lead up to by all events previous to that point.
If you put it in a database, you’d be able to toggle whether to order by time or by scene order.
You might want to read Zen in the Art of Writing, by Ray Bradbury and On Writing, by Stephen King. They both talk a lot about the art and process of writing, and they are both great books.
I used to have a rolling blackboard in my writing room. I now have a large white board on one wall that I use to keep track of and chart what is going on, and what happened to whom in any given story.
I just can’t get my head around not giving all key characters full bio’s and complete backstories before plotting, but I think you’re right in that everyone has to find a way that works for them.
I’ve been musing on this for quite a while myself. It is interesting and I continue to look at it though I suspect not everything will work in that way.
Nice. Thanks for those. Both look very good!
I think this is important for me as well - though it might be just to keep track of chronology rather than the flashbacks and weaving together storylines in the flashbacks.
It dawning on me that a vital part of writing isn’t writing at all but quite complext planning and not getting lost!
I’ve had my first couple of forays into lengthy fiction writing this past year, and while I did invent backstories for my main characters, I quickly found that as I was writing, the backstories needed to be fleshed out more or tweaked to fit the events that unfolded. Other times, small characters ended up having a much greater influence on the story than I intended, so I needed to give them more backstory.
For me the method that worked best was coming up with a fundamental framework for the story (for example, the first long story was a gay romance, which went basically “A and B meet, fall in love, and have to overcome their hesitations, as well as the prejudices of their families and cultures, to have a relationship”) and then writing various scenes that furthered that basic plot. As I wrote, new things would pop out at me and helped fill in the gap between the beginning and the ending. Subplots happened because the more I wrote, the more I got to understand the way the characters I was creating would react in various situations, and sometimes a throwaway sentence would suddenly give me an idea.
I’m just an amateur, so I don’t have the skills of foreshadowing and interweaving plots that many published authors do. But I did begin to see ‘where the magic happens’ when - in the middle of writing the second long story - I saw how I could tie seemingly unrelated events together to lead to the conclusion I wanted, rather than just having it come out of nowhere. I think what distinguishes ‘writers’ from ‘people who write’ is the ability to do it again and again, and on command.
I usually just start with one idea, one scene in my head. I start with that one scene and I write until the story seems like it’s going somewhere (which is rare… most of my fiction doesn’t get beyond fifty pages because I get bored). Once it’s clear I have a novel in the works, I think about the direction I want the story to go a few chapters at a time. I might have some ideas for the last section of the book, but as Sir T-Cups points out, it’s all cause and effect and I might end up in a completely unexpected place by then. So the first draft is really just writing to see where the adventure takes me.
For the second draft, however, I usually write down the story arc to see if there are any structural problems. I divide the work by sections with tabs so that I can quickly cross-reference anything. The sections that are a hot mess usually end up getting rewritten completely, and may change key details that require me to shift the story arc.
It’s just an ongoing process. People would be amazed how complete random the whole thing can be though. Thematic elements, cohesive plot structures, symbolism, gripping characters… it mostly just happens, without any foresight. Once you create the characters, they write their own story.
My only experience is two unpublished drafts, but this description is familiar to me. For the first book I established the “high point chapters” and then wrote out a chronology/outline to link them up, and background bios on all the characters. By the time I’d finished it I’d kept the high points but the chronology had changed, the bios had been overwritten, and new characters had appeared. I’m going to guess that’s not uncommon.
Although I cannot find any evidence William Faulkner did so except while writing A Fable, a literature professor of mine claimed that Faulkner created an outline of his current project on the walls of his workspace, daily choosing a point on his outline that he would write up to before quitting for the day.
I believe that I am completely incapable of writing with Faulkner’s (alleged) formula, and any fiction I write begins with an idea that I attempt to write towards - an overarching theme or plot point I find interesting, for example. The result of this is that most of my decent writing rarely has much to do with what I intended in conception. FTR, I am not an accomplished writer and probably should develop a more practical technique.
3 Disasters
2 Motifs or Themes (1 major, 1 minor)
1 Big Plot Twist
Don’t believe me? Test it against your favorite book/movie/story, and see if the theory holds.
Four disasters are too many, and with only two there isn’t enough to build tension for the climax. And every story has a theme; it’s what the story’s about. But unless it has a second theme or motif, it’s just a lecture. And all great authors are expected to manage the reader’s expectations in an unexpected and rewarding way, and the most popular way of doing this today is the “Plot Twist”.
Part of the problem with doing this is that you eventually realize that a minor character shouldn’t do what you think he/she would when you first started, and it’s easier to be flexible if you haven’t spent too much prep time on establishing a back story for characters that don’t have a starring role.
I’m about 3/4ths through with a novel (and 1/2 through the sequel) and it just occurred to me this week where something has gone wrong: it would be better/more realistic if the protagonist’s story from when she was young was not believed, and that since she was little she’s had to deal with people accusing her of having committed a hoax. This will change the tone of the novel in what I think is the correct direction. And because I’m changing this, I’m also changing and expanding the role of one of the minor characters, Daisy, too. So far she’s merely been the person who got the protagonist to use her gift for a living and the first person to ask for help, but now she’s going to be someone who works with grieving people doing group therapy, which will allow her to direct business towards the protagonist.
If I’d decided ahead of time what I wanted Daisy to do, it would be harder to allow myself to make the changes I need to for the sake of improving the story because I’d be attached to the character’s back story.
