Oct 10
In her book The Plot Whisperer,
The climatic scene directly answers the question at the outset of the novel—will the protagonist reach her goal and be victorious?
Alderson says, “A writer who has not experienced a transformation in her own life often cannot see, feel, touch, smell and hear the scene depicting such a moment for the protagonist.” Read more
Sep 14
Writer’s Digest recently offered a webinar on how to plot a novel by the Plot Whisperer, Martha Alderson, that I found very helpful. Alderson has a YouTube channel with 27 short videos for each step of the process.
The first video in the series is below (she says to ignore the barking dog in the background).
If you’d like to view more of her videos, her YouTube channel is: http://www.youtube.com/user/marthaalderson
And the remaining 26 videos for her plot tutorial can be found here.
Enjoy!
Successful writers know not to “info dump” on their readers. In other words, they don’t stop the flow of their story to give the reader paragraphs or pages of detailed information.
Information dumping or fire hosing, as I like to call it, slows down the story, the narrative, and everything else. When I come across a book that stops to describe, in great length, a new character—everything from their looks to their clothing—I cringe. If it happens close to the beginning, then I know it’s going to be like this the entire way through.
I finally had to stop reading one fantasy series because every time the main character changed clothes, we had to read about it. The sad part is that the storylines kept me interested, but I just couldn’t read one more time about the protagonist’s favorite pair of Nikes. Read more
In literary agent April Eberhardt‘s short story workshop at the recent Pacific Northwest Writer’s Contest, she gave us a list of six elements to look for in stories.
Eberhardt suggests that we write our story first and then overlay these six elements on it to help polish our work.
Six elements of short stories:
Setting. Set the stage close to the beginning of the story. In my earlier post, I quote poet Nelson Bentley, “Give the readers a place to stand, and then you can take them anywhere.” Read more
In TV-land, actor Hugh Laurie plays Dr. Gregory House, a drug-addicted medical genius with the bedside manner of Attila the Hun who speaks perfect American English. In real life, Laurie hails from England and speaks with a British accent.
He is also a comic and gifted musician. If you listen to him sing with your eyes closed, you’ll swear he’s a great African American blues singer. (As my cousin did when she heard his CD “Let Them Talk” playing in my home). The multi-talented Laurie sings, plays a mean guitar and is a stunning pianist. (In TV-land, House has a wall of guitars and a piano in his apartment).
After experiencing Laurie and The Copper River Band play Seattle recently, I’ve decided the blues is my new favorite genre of music.
Listening to the blues reminds me of putting together a novel. I love the way the different instruments—guitars, sax, bass sax, drums, piano, bass fiddle, etc—riff back and forth and talk to one another. It reminds me of different aspects of a novel—dialogue, plot, characterization—and how they all work together. Sometimes there’s dissonance which brings a certain friction to the piece and other times there’s harmony. Through it all there’s a sense of passion that drives the entire work. Read more
The movie The Way written and directed by Emilio Estevez and starring his father Martin Sheen depicts the spiritual journey of a father who’s estranged son dies on the first day of his pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago, an 800-mile trek from the Pyrenees to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, the burial place of St. James.
The father, a widowed ophthalmologist living in California, flies overseas to collect his son’s body but ends up walking the road and becoming a pilgrim himself. The movie is a touching story of a father’s reconnection with this son and awakening to life. It has everything going for it (as long as you don’t mind not seeing something being blown up every two seconds): incredible scenery, the father’s emotional transformation into a person his son would be proud of, great dialogue, humor, sadness, perfect pacing, and micro-tension between characters that builds throughout the story.
The script is a great example of plot defined as characters in conflict. Each character is a study in human nature. How they interact over the course of the story is a study in how the microcosm of character reflects the macrocosm of the story world. As I work through my current project, I picture this cast of characters and think about how I can create more conflict for my characters.
The Way is beautifully written, superbly rendered, and highly recommended this holiday season!
In honor of Halloween, I thought I’d write about plot. The word plot used to scare me more than the time I was ten years old and my cousin dragged me to the local haunted house our little town hosted for Halloween.
I screamed my head off (cliches are okay at Halloween when the veil between good and bad prose is thinnest)—monsters lurching out of the dark, re-enactments of beheadings and hangings, cobwebs tangling in my hair, but when a hand reached out and grabbed my ankle in that dark hallway, I let loose a blood-curdling scream that would make the director of “Saw” proud. (Not that I would ever see said movie). I nearly trampled all the people in line in front of me to get out of there. I’ve never been in a haunted house since. To this day, I still shiver when somebody mentions haunted house and Halloween in the same breath.
But I digress…. Notice, I said the word plot used to scare me. That was before I started reading James Scott Bell’s Plot & Structure.
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