Plot Points

Editing makes a person consider plot points.

Definition? A plot point is a turning point in the story for both protagonist and plot.

Start with your protagonist at a moment of  change - and this had better be a significant, life-changing change, rather than a decision to wear heels rather than flatties. Feed in a few general details to give us a grasp of normal life because then we will appreciate the changing incident more. This first plot point marks a change in and for the protagonist, indicates the direction the story is about to take, and hopefully engages the reader. The most difficult question to answer is the last one. How can we know if it strikes any sort of bell for the reader?

Once you have your protagonist marching in his new direction, he should run into conflict, both expected and unexpected. How he handles these is a learning curve for him and strengthens his character. As the climax of the story approaches the hero has to face his most difficult challenge of all. How he handles this will define the rest of his life - and sometimes if he has a life after this. 

It is easy to forget the emotional side of this last confrontation when writing the action. Don't forget the effort it takes, the courage, strength and persistence to keep moving forward toward a goal. I suspect I have skipped over this point too lightly in my story of Matho, but I will fix that as I reach the last chapters in what will hopefully be my final edit.

Afterwards, your protagonist and mine should be a different person. The same, but more so, with added strength and knowing what he can do when pushed to the absolute limit.The next question is, what does he do then? Go back to obscurity? Hardly.

Plot and Structure

Spent a most uncomfortable night with Tim after his surgery, (he was so comfortable he left little of the bed for me!) so did a fair bit of reading about plot and scene structure. This book said straight out that it is not enough to have great characters and a compelling problem. I also need a strong inner logic to my story - a step-by-step ordering of events that makes sense and feels satisfying to a reader.

I'm finding as I go through this last edit that my story is not always logical - at least, not as logical as I thought it was. It's hard for crit partners to detect this fault, for they read chapters at a time and rarely get to see the whole thing. But agents and editors spot it immediately, and there's many a near miss because of lack of structure.

So, there has to be a compelling story, well written and with engaging characters. Plot and structure have had the least attention with me - so far. perhaps now is the time to concentrate on that side of things. A basic plot structure begins with Act 1 - the beginning or set up. Here you introduce your main characters, your setting and what life is like for your characters. Readers need to connect right away with the characters. These things can be covered quite quickly, often in a few pages, certainly in the first chapter. Show who your main character is and what motivates him/her and hint at the troubles and problems to come.

At the end of the set-up comes the inciting  incident, or first plot point, whatever you want to call the event that jerks the main character out of his/her normal life into some of of journey or problem to be solved.

Then comes conflict......but at the moment I'm having conflict with Tim who has woken up,
is bored and wants to go OUT.

Plots v Genre

Sad to say, but a lot of books I read today are less than memorable. They are mostly well written but the storylines are not original. Now this isn't a criticism of the authors - at least, it is not intended as one - but more a comment on the impossibility, after four hundred odd years of printed fiction, of coming up with an original plot.
Someone once said there are only 7 original plots in the world.

• Monster: The Grendel-Beowulf type of the hero defeating the monster and that plot has been around for centuries.
• Then there's the rags to riches story, where the poor person makes good. Lots of books on that theme.
• Then there's the Quest where the hero sets out to find something he desperately wants and overcomes many difficulties but finally achieves it.
• The Voyage, easily confused with the Quest. This time the hero sets out in a magical land and returns wiser than when set out. 
• Comedy - strangely, lots of romance stories fall into this category
• Tragedy - best known example here is MacBeth. 
• Re-birth - akin to tragedy but the hero realises error before it is too late

Click and see a much more detailed explanation.

At first glance it is quite hard to separate plots from genres - but here is a link to Genre.
(When did Blogger start highlighting only one letter of a link? So easy to miss.) so I shall read both and see if I can appreciate the difference.

Picture: Tim monitoring the bees among the heather...

Plot

I'm wrecking my first Matho story. I have a safe copy tucked away, and currently I'm going to town on the experimental copy. Chapter One has been discarded. I loved it, worked for hours on it, but no one else ever loved it as I did, so now it has gone. The scenes that made up the original chapters 2-4 are getting the treatment now.

At least one scene has been discarded. The fragment of necessary info it contained has been transferred into another scene. I'm juggling the scenes around seeking a better story flow, and giving  the protagonist Matho greater prominence. Some scenes I'm re-writing, others just need a few tweaks. In at least two places I found a basic mistake - in one  instance mentioning something and then contradicting it. In the second, I realised the time sequence was so flawed my characters would be eating raw meat!

It's an interesting experience, critiquing my own work. I've read that top novelists cut and hone each scene to make sure each has all the necessary elements - pace, conflict, tension and suspense - and I thought I'd already done that, but this latest exercise is proving I was wrong. I only wish I'd realised this sooner!

Yet more on conflict

Greenhouses at Chatsworth

Conflict also has to come through plot though it is not divorced from character.  Having a brand new character suffer tragedy on their first appearance in the pages won’t work because the reader is not emotionally involved with the character. Having said that, let me qualify the statement. The only way it will work is if the tragedy is an early event in the life of the hero or heroine and we’re going to find out in the rest of the book exactly why it mattered so much. This sort of event often sits at the front of the book as a prologue, and it has to grip the reader and make them want to find out what happened next.

Personally I’m not in favour of childhood incidents that then resonate through the life of the major character when we pick up the story thirty years later. For me this would be better handled as a mystery thread, making the reader wonder why the hero acts as he does until we find out at a late point in the story what that dreadful childhood incident was. If it’s something in the near past, say a year ago, then it’s OK to treat that differently, for then it adds a different element to the tale, because the reader knows that the hero will react badly to certain stimuli that are certain to arrive sooner or later.

I heard a tale locally of a writer reading her first page to her writing group. It began with graphic sex, which made everyone uncomfortable, not because of the sex, but because they had no point of reference. They didn’t know either character involved and therefore were not “clued in” to the story or the strangers performing such intimate acts.

 It’s a lesson worth remembering!

Characters

Gorse, broom, plant a genet

It seems to me that characters make stories rather than plot. On the other hand, where would the Da Vinci code be without plot? Maybe I should have said I prefer stories that are character-driven rather than plot-driven.
What a character does in response to the inciting incident defines the action for the rest of the story, and this in turn defines the plot line. The character may react in a different way to you or your best friend, but that does not make the reaction incorrect. It might be different, a tad out of the ordinary, but it doesn't mean his reaction is wrong. That's simply how he is. He may be unskilled, or uneducated and naive, but he'll learn as he goes, as we all do.

Some people make the same mistake again and again. Most of us take a little time to learn something, and while our first error might well be catastrophic, the second stab at the same thiing will hopefully have smaller repercussions because we are aware of where we went wrong the first time. But hey - who makes the perfect response every time? And don't you love reading about a character who makes mistakes, but plods on and gets it right next time? I know I do.

Gorse is blooming again in our neighbourhood. It shouldn't be. It should wait until May or June and then spring into banks of glorious yellow flowers. The world has gone crazy.