Tag: plot

The 8 C’s of Plotting: Preparation and Problems

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This is Part 5 of The 8 C’s of Plotting. Read parts one, two, and three first, if you please. Click here for the whole series on the 8 C’s. Click the image below to be taken to the General Fiction Feed.

I’m back! This week has been a bit crazy, but here’s Preparation and Problems for you, which is usually the longest section of the book.

After the Complication (C3), the action has started and the adventure has begun. (Or the lovers meet, or the protagonist begins a journey of self awareness. I’m going to go with adventure stories as examples because I know them best.)

Preparation and Problems

This is generally the longest segment of the narrative, when the protagonist makes friends and enemies and learns new skills. In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (or Philosopher’s Stone, for my friends across the pond that got the original HP series), this is where Harry meets Ron, becomes friends with Hermione, is pitted against Snape and Draco, plays Quidditch, plays chess, etc.

If there’s a skill you protagonist needs to know, or if your protagonist needs a certain tool or ally in order to WIN THE STUFF,* then he or she will acquire that during this section.

*You know, defeat the bad guy, get the girl, that sort of thing.

You can throw in some backstory here if you want, or you can be like William Goldman and wait to add all the backstory for secondary characters (Inigo, Fezzik) until the Gloom section. (We’ll get to that next week.)

The Preparation and Problems is also where the Protagonist’s problems will intensify. Think of it as a two steps forward, one step back movement. Those “step backs” are setbacks or confrontations with the/an antagonist. Don’t let your reader forget the antagonist and what is at stake for the protagonist!

Let’s review the Preparation and Problems for The Lion King and The Hunger Games.

In The Lion King, Simba meets Timon and Pumbaa, he learns Hakuna Matata and grows up into a big strong lion. This is upward movement.

Don’t get too comfy—The camera shoots back to Pride Rock to remind us that there’s still a problem Simba’s going to have to face. This is the first Pinch Point. Highlight between the brackets to see the text, which may contain spoilers: [Zazu and even the Hyenas aren’t happy with the way Scar runs things.].

Here’s what Larry Brooks has to say about Pinch Points:

A pinch point allows the antagonistic force of the story roaring onto center stage to announce itself and remind us of its dark intentions and inherent threat to the hero’s quest.  To stick it right into our face so that we may fear and [loathe] that which the hero fears and [loathes].

…Every story has a hero.  Every hero has a journey, a quest, a problem to solve, a need to fulfill.  There are obstacles in the way of that quest, often (usually) embodied in the character of an antagonist, or the bad guy.  A pinch point is when the primary opposition to the hero’s quest comes front and center in the story, showing itself to the hero and to us.

…If the hero is being chased by a bear, the bear will show up at the pinch point.  If the story is about an airplane crashing, something that reminds us we’re about to crash will show up at the pinch point.  If the story is about trying to win back lost love, the pinch point is when the departed lover turns up in the arms of another.

—From “The Help” – Isolating and Understanding the First “Pinch Point”

Then there’s the stargazing scene. Simba thinks about his dad, Rafiki has a realization, and Nala shows up. Can You Feel the Love Tonight?

Now, when I first plotted out The Lion King, I put the love ballad in the slot for “Elation.” Except it isn’t. Nala showing up isn’t the real confrontation. She’s more of a set back in Simba’s plan to forget his past. The real confrontation? We’ll get to that next time.

In The Hunger Games, [The Games begin. Katniss nearly dies of thirst (1), she dodges fireballs and gets burnt (2), she takes refuge in a tree and Haymitch sends her ointment for her burn].

You’ll see that there are two big problems that Katniss has to overcome while trying to stay alive during the Hunger Games. The second one is the pinch point—it’s when we are reminded that The Capitol controls the games. In the movie, the Gamemakers get their own scene.

When you have a pinch point—and there are at least two—you have a choice. You can either have another character remind the protagonist about it (Nala telling Simba what is going on at Pride Rock), or you can actually show it, unfiltered by the protagonist’s eyes (A scene devoted to Scar, showing him doing mean, awful things). The latter is more powerful because the reader will experience it for him or herself.

Depending on the length of your book, I’d shoot for two pinch points BEFORE the Confrontation. One can be direct, and one can be indirect. The rest of the time, you can move the plot along by throwing in other obstacles, like general problems or minor antagonists.

Next time we will be talking about the Confrontation, Elation, and Collapse, and we will relate them to the 3-Act Structure’s Midpoint. I can’t make any promises, but I think I’ll publish another post about the 8 C’s before next Friday, since this post was late.Stay tuned, and Write Now!

The 8 C’s of Plotting: Reaction and Complication

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This is Part 4 of The 8 C’s of Plotting. Read parts one and two first, if you please. Click here for the whole series on the 8 C’s. Click the image below to be taken to the General Fiction Feed.

With the Prologue, Opening, Captivation, and Change we discussed last time, the Reaction and Complication flesh out the rest of Act One, if you are familiar with the 3-Act structure.

I told you that I’d start using The Lion King and The Hunger Games as examples to illustrate. To get you up to speed, here are the Prologue, Opening, Captivation, and Change for each. I’m not hiding these, because even if you haven’t seen either, this information is pretty standardly given in a movie trailer.

The Lion King

Prologue—The Circle of Life, Simba introduced

Captivation—Lions! In Africa! Great Soundtrack!

Opening—Simba Just Can’t Wait to Be King

Change/Inciting Incident—Elephant Graveyard; Scar makes a plan to become king

The Hunger Games

Prologue (Movie)—Panem, District 12

Captivation (book)—It’s the Reaping. What’s the Reaping?

Opening—The Reaping

Change/Inciting Incident—Katniss’ sister is chosen as tribute in the 74th Hunger Games. Katniss volunteers in her place.

Up to speed? Here’s the Reaction and Complication. They don’t need very long descriptions.

Reaction

The reaction is anything that happens after the Change. How does the protagonist (and/or the antagonist) react to the change?

In The Fugitive, Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) is convicted of killing his wife, though we are pretty sure he didn’t do it. The conviction is the change. The reaction? He is sent to be executed.

In The Lion King, (highlight the area between brackets to read the spoiler) [Simba still trusts his uncle Scar, so he willingly, naively, sits at the bottom of a canyon waiting for his dad, not knowing that Scar intends to trample him with a stampede of wildebeests.]

In The Hunger Games, [Katniss and Peeta go to the Capitol and train. Katniss isn’t very cooperative (or likable) as far as Haymitch is concerned. This includes the parade, the training, and the arrow through the apple.]

The reaction can play out in different ways, but whatever the Protagonist does during the “reaction” stage, he or she will do something else after the complication.

Before or during the Complication, it’s a good idea to show what the antagonist is doing.

Complication/Campaign

This is whatever happens to make the protagonist stop reacting (likely due to a “complication” or obstacle of some sort), and start acting (setting upon a “campaign”).

It can be a switch from passive to active, like in The Lion King.

Or it can mean a change of direction or a different approach, like in The Hunger Games.

It might also be the entrance into a new world or setting, like in the monomyth.

In a character-driven story like Toy Story, the complication:

  • is a bad decision, mistake, or accident
  • which grows out of the Reaction
  • and ends unfortunately,
  • resulting in the need to make new plans—the “campaign” of Act Two.

—”Act One: Threatened Characters Make Mistakes“

The Complication corresponds with the 3-Act structure’s First Plot Point or the End of Act One and is often a MAJOR SCENE. Major scenes have their own beginning, middle, and end.

In The Fugitive, Kimble is riding the bus, on his way to be executed. His fellow convicts plan an escape, but that backfires. A guard gets shot. Kimble, a doctor, is unchained to help the guard. The bus crashes. It crashes on a train track. The train is coming. Kimble has to escape from the train. Once he escapes from the train, a fellow convict frees him. Now he’s free…a fugitive on the run. And because he’s a fugitive, the US Marshalls get put on the case. This introduces Gerard, the antagonist and in some ways, a secondary protagonist.

In The Lion King, [Scar kills Mufasa and blames Simba, Simba runs away.]

In The Hunger Games, [Peeta declares his love for Katniss during the interview. She freaks out, but Haymitch teaches her that she needs to play up the audience to get sponsors]

complication

(See my deconstruction of Toy Story’s Act One and how it relates to the story’s theme.)

Any questions? Ask below. Just don’t include spoilers. If you disagree with my assignments of plot points, all the power to you, as long as you are thinking critically.

Next week I will devote the entire post to the Preparation and Problems segment, which nearly always takes up the longest chunk of narrative, and is what Blake Snyder calls “Fun and Games.”

The Hunger Games: Analysis to come!

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I interrupt my vacation to let you know that this week I’m reading The Hunger Games.

And also to let you know that I’ve decided to use The Hunger Games to illustrate my 8 C’s of  plotting.

So if you don’t want the whole plot of the first book given away to you, I’d advise you pick up the book or watch the movie before April 13th. If you don’t, I’ll try whiting out the spoilers, so you have to highlight them to read them. Still, The Hunger Games seems like the best choice right now, since so many people have read the book or seen the movie. If you can think of another movie that has seen such a big audience, let me know and I can try using those. I think The Lion King is a pretty good choice. If I must, I can refer to Titanic, but I’d rather not.

In other news, never try blogging on WordPress.com from your iPhone, unless you want to be seriously annoyed and unable to italicize reasonably. Yeah, there’s probably an app, but apps take up waaaay too much space on my phone. Space I can use for movies or videos of my child roaring at dinosaurs.

Until next week.

Write now.

The 8 Cs chart

The 8 C’s of Plotting: Prologue, Opening, Captivation, Change

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This is Part 3 of The 8 C’s of Plotting. Read parts one and two first, if you please. Click here for the whole series on the 8 C’s. Click the image below to be taken to the General Fiction Feed.

I’m grouping all four of these parts of the 8 C’s together because, well, some authors do it all in one. single. sentence.

But before I get to examples, let me explain what these four elements are. And to really mess things up, I’m going to do it in the order you figure them out, NOT the order in which they appear in your book.

Change

The Change, or “inciting incident,” is what gives you a story. A character starts off with a sense of stability, something rocks the normalcy boat, and the protagonist is thrown into a sea of chaos. The boat gets shattered by a giant squid, the protagonist can’t swim, there are sharks in the water, and your guy floats on flotsam and jetsam until he gets to shore, where he finds a new stability. He kisses the sand, and the camera fades to black.

Normal->chaotic->normal. This is plot at its simplest.

The Change takes the character out of normal life and changes things. Hence the name. In Finding Nemo, it’s when Nemo gets bagged by a snorkeling dentist.

This is where you start thinking about the beginning of your book.

Opening

Your opening is anything that happens before the change. Do whatever you want with the opening—as long as you keep a reader’s attention. The opening can be your first line, it can be the first scene, or it can be the first chapter. It’s the calm before the chaos, the Status Quo before the inciting incident. Put the change in your first sentence, and your opening is a matter of words. Mind you, they need to be finely crafted, carefully chosen words. (I’ll get to opening lines in a minute.)

In the opening, give your protagonist likable features to make sure the reader likes him or her. Donna Macmeans calls these Rooting Interests, and she posts a list of them on her blog. When I started writing my novel, I didn’t like my protagonist. You know you’re in trouble when YOU don’t like your own main character. Solution? I got him punched in the face and watched him fight back. There. Now I like him.

To show an opposite example, I will never like Catcher in the Rye because Holden Caulfield annoys the crap out of me. To me, Holden is the phony one, not everybody he comes in contact with. (Just count how many times the word “phony” appears in that book.) If Salinger’s intent was to explore the irony of a teenager projecting his own phoniness, then I can appreciate the irony. I will still never pick it up again.

Prologue

If you desire to have your audience skip over a chapter of your novel, entitle it “Prologue.”

Seriously, so many people don’t read the prologue. I remember hearing of one author who’s own daughter skipped over his. I used to be a skipper. Apparently once I read a prologue that completely gave away the ending, because for years I assumed I’d stumble over a spoiler in that section. And I hate spoilers. My husband could hide my birthday present in plain sight, and I’d refuse to look at it until my birthday. He could put it in the refrigerator, and I’d be digging around in there with my eyes closed, using my sense of smell to guide me to the taco salad.

I’m glad I have a nice husband.

Anyway…what if you are writing something and it is ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE that you fill the reader in on something before the story starts? Well, if you ask me, you make it your first chapter. Take a hint from Ms. Rowling and just slap a “Chapter One” on that bad boy and be done with it. But it had better have the Captivation in the first paragraph, and you’d better put some foreshadowing or character building in there, too. Otherwise your editor, if she’s worth her salt, will scrap those pages for you. I could be wrong, but I don’t think anybody gets paid by the word anymore. In this day and age, if you want people to read what you have to say, ya’ll better get to the point.

Captivation

This is the first C because it is what makes or breaks a deal with a publisher, not because it necessarily comes first. It’s sort of floating around on the plotting diagram not only because it’s hard to pinpoint, but because it can happen in the opening or prologue, or it can be the statement of the change. The Captivation is what publishers call the “Hook.” To me, the hook is elusive. It might be a characteristic of the protagonist, the setting, an event, or a single sentence, the voice, the style of writing. Basically it depends on genre.

The one rule about “hooks” is this: the earlier it occurs, the better. If you can blow away your reader with the first line, you can guarantee they’ll read the next one. Your first chapter is the most important in the book, and your first line is the most important line. I’m not just talking about selling books, I’m talking about people reading your books. Publishers are readers, too. Let’s talk about opening lines, shall we?

Opening Lines

We are going to start with my favorite first line of all time.

“Once there was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.” —C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Home run. Introduction of the character, characterization, and a humorous style.

Here’s my other personal favorite:

“The year that Buttercup was born, the most beautiful woman in the world was a French scullery maid named Annette.” —William Goldman, The Princess Bride

You can tell that I’m a sucker for a humorous narrator. This line begins with voice, setting, and if you pay attention, motif (beauty). It also makes it clear that, though it’s going to start talking about Annette, Buttercup is the main character.

Meredith Borders has an article on The Top 10 Best Opening Lines of Novels. In it, she says, “The first line should tell the reader what to expect in terms of language, plot and character. It should be mysterious and compelling, either poetic or shockingly abrupt.”

While I think her points are valid, I don’t completely agree. I think there’s a bit more leeway. First, I’d say that it should show (cough cough) the reader what to expect in terms of language or style, yes. If the rest of your book is poetic, then make your first line poetic. Just make sure it doesn’t look like somebody else wrote it.

Second, I’m not sure what she means by telling the reader what to expect in terms of plot. I assume she means theme, since she listed the first lines of Pride and Prejudice and Peter Pan in her list. And theme is the backbone of a good story. But plot is what happens in a story. Theme is why the story needs telling.

Third—what to expect in terms of language, plot and character—I’d use the conjunction “or” instead, since some opening lines use either plot or character, not both. I prefer characterizing in the first sentence, since it is a more concrete method than creating a lofty observation. To a writing teacher, concrete is always preferable to abstract. If you start with an abstract line, your second one best be specific and concrete. Otherwise use that observation to characterize a smarmy narrator.

Fourth, how about setting? My writing professors always beat us over the head with three things:

  1. Show, don’t tell.
  2. Concrete, not abstract.
  3. GROUNDING (That’s the war cry which translated means, “Be specific to paint a clear image.” If you use proper nouns, you are certainly grounding.)

Tolkien didn’t start The Hobbit with, “Some place a creature lived.” He also didn’t start with “There once was a hobbit.” He created setting and characterization in just ten words: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

Want 25 more openers? Check this out (some repeats are lengthened here).

Nine Ways to Start a Novel

There are other ways to start a novel. Roseanne Knorr lists nine:

  1. Startle
  2. Action
  3. Anecdote
  4. Dialogue
  5. Introduce protagonist
  6. Introduce conflict
  7. Establish setting
  8. Establish arena
  9. Generate Emotion and Personality

Read her explanations in the full article here. Notice she uses the word “capture” in the title, another word for “hook” or “captivate.”

Discussion

Think of your favorite books. How did they captivate you? What are your favorite opening lines? Comment below with your response.

Exercise

Write at least 3 different openings for the same story. You can use a current work in progress (WIP) or choose someone else’s novel to practice with. Consider which approach is your favorite.

Related post: WATCH, or: Where to Start and End your Novel

WATCH-01