Write Great Fiction--Plot & Structure

by James Scott Bell

  I find more than a bit of confusion among writers over terms like plot point, inciting incident, and others commonly used by writing instructors, sometimes in contradictory ways.

  I want to stay away from these terms in this book, and instead try to describe what actually should happen at crucial points in the plot. It’s all really simple if you don’t get hung up on the technical jargon.

  I’ll refer here to a disturbance and two doorways. If you understand what happens with each, structuring your novel will be a breeze.

  The Disturbance

  In the beginning of your novel, you start out by introducing a character who lives a certain life. That is his starting point or, in mythic terms, the hero’s ordinary world. And it’s the place he’ll stay unless something forces him to change. Unless he does change, we’re going to have a pretty boring story because only a threat or a challenge is of interest to readers.

  So very early in Act I something has to disturb the status quo. Just think about it from the reader’s standpoint — something’s got to happen to make us feel there’s some threat or challenge happening to the characters. Remember Hitchcock’s axiom. If something doesn’t happen soon, you’ve got a dull part.

  This disturbance does not have to be a major threat, however. It can be anything that disturbs the placid nature of the Lead’s ordinary life. Dean Koontz usually begins his novels with such a disturbance. Here’s the first line of The Door to December (written as Richard Paige):

  As soon as she finished dressing, Laura went to the front door, just in time to see the L.A. Police Department squad car pull to the curb in front of the house.

  Now that’s a disturbance, something small to begin with, but a disturbance nonetheless. We don’t usually feel complacent about a police car pulling up to our home.

  The number of possible disturbances is endless. Here are some examples:

  A phone call in the middle of the night

  A letter with some intriguing news

  The boss calling the character into his office

  A child being taken to the hospital

  The car breaking down in a desert town

  The Lead winning the lottery

  The Lead witnessing an accident — or a murder

  A note from the Lead’s wife (or husband), who is leaving

  From a structural standpoint, the initial disturbance creates reader interest. It is an implicit promise of an interesting story yet to come. But it is not yet the main plot because there is no confrontation. The opponent and Lead are not yet locked in an unavoidable battle.

  In Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, young Michael Corleone is determined to go straight, avoiding his father’s way of life. But when the Don is shot and nearly killed, Michael’s world is rocked.

  Yet Michael is not yet thrust into any confrontation. He can leave New York and start a new life elsewhere. The confrontation doesn’t happen, the story doesn’t take off, until the Lead passes through the first doorway.

  In the George Lucas film Star Wars, there is an action prologue. Darth Vader and his troops chase and capture Princess Leia, but not before she dispatches a pod with R2-D2 and C-3PO in it. The droids land on the planet Tatooine and get captured by the Jawas, the junk merchants.

  We meet our Lead character, Luke Skywalker, at work in his normal world on Tatooine, where he lives with his aunt and uncle. His uncle buys the two droids. Within five minutes of this, we have a disturbance to Luke’s world — the distress hologram from Princess Leia asking for Obi-Wan Kenobi’s help.

  Eventually, Luke connects with Obi-Wan, who views the hologram and asks Luke to help him answer the call for help. Luke “refuses the call” (in mythic terms) by telling Obi-Wan he can’t leave his aunt and uncle.

  This is still not the doorway into Act II because Luke can go on with his normal life. But when the Empire forces destroy Luke’s home and kill his aunt and uncle, Luke is thrust into the Rebellion. He leaves his planet with Obi-Wan, and his adventure begins.

  Doorways

  How you get from beginning to middle (Act I to Act II), and from middle to end (Act II to Act III), is a matter of transitioning. Rather than calling these plot points, I find it helpful to think of these two transitions as “doorways of no return.”

  That explains the feeling you want to create. A thrusting of the character forward. A sense of inevitability. We are creatures of habit; we search for security. Our characters are the same. So unless there is something to push the Lead into Act II, he will be quite content to stay in Act I! He desires to remain in his ordinary world.

  You need to find a way to get him out of the ordinary and into the confrontation. You need something that kicks him through the doorway; otherwise, he’ll just keep sitting around the house.

  Once through the doorway, the confrontation can take place. The fight goes on throughout Act II, the middle. But you’re going to have to end the story sometime. Thus, the second doorway of no return must send the Lead hurtling toward the knockout ending.

  These two doorways hold your three acts together, like pins in adjoining railroad cars. If they are weak or nonexistent, your train won’t run.

  Through Door Number 1

  In order to get from beginning to middle — the first doorway — you must create a scene where your Lead is thrust into the main conflict in a way that keeps him there.

  In a suspense novel, the first doorway might be that point where the Lead happens upon a secret that the opposition wants to keep hidden at all costs. Now there is no way out until one or the other dies. There can be no return to normalcy. Grisham’s The Firm is an example.

  Professional duty can be the doorway. A lawyer taking a case has the duty to see it through. So does a cop with an assignment. Similarly, moral duty works for transition. A son lost to a kidnapper obviously leads to a parent’s moral duty to find him.

  The key question to ask yourself is this: Can my Lead walk away from the plot right now and go on as he has before? If the answer is yes, you haven’t gone through the first doorway yet.

  Book I of The Godfather ends with that transition. Michael shoots the Don’s enemy, Sollozzo, and the crooked cop, McCluskey. Now Michael can never go straight again. He’s in the conflict up to his eyeballs. He cannot walk away from his choices.

  For Nicholas Darrow, the charismatic minister in Susan Howatch’s The Wonder Worker, the inner stakes are raised when he receives a shock to his upwardly spiraling ministry — his wife and the mother of his two sons leaves him. It’s a blow that sends him reeling and forces him to confront his own humanity. He definitely cannot walk away.

  The First Doorway

  Lead’s normal world, a place of safety and rest, is on one side of the doorway. Problems may happen here, but they don’t threaten great change. Lead is content to stay here. Something has to happen to push him through the door.

  On the other side of the door is the outside world, the great unknown, the dark forest. A place where the Lead is going to have to dig deep inside and show courage, learn new things, make new allies, etc.

  It’s crucial to understand the difference between an initial disturbance (sometimes called an “inciting incident”) and the first doorway of no return (sometimes called a “plot point” or “crossing the threshold” in mythic terms).

  In the movie Die Hard, for example, New York cop John McClane has come to Los Angeles to spend Christmas with his estranged wife, Holly, and their children. He meets up with her at high rise building where she works for a large company. While McClane is washing up in a bathroom, a team of terrorists takes over the building and all the people there. Except McClane, of course. He escapes to an upper floor.

  We are now about twenty minutes into the film. This is definitely a disturbance. But it is not yet the transition into Act II.

  Why not? Because McClane and the terrorists are not locked in battle yet. They don’t know McClane is in the building. He might open a window, climb out, and scurry away for help. Or figure out a
way to get a phone call out. While McClane is trying to figure out just what to do, he secretly witnesses the murder of the CEO of the big company.

  So McClane gets to an upper floor again and pulls a fire alarm. This is the incident that sets up the conflict of Act II. Now the terrorists know someone is loose in the building. There is no way for McClane to resign from the action. He’s through the first doorway, and there’s going to be plenty of confrontation to come. This all happens at the one-quarter mark.

  Through Door Number 2

  To move from the middle to the end — the second doorway of no return — something has to happen that sets up the final confrontation. Usually it is some major clue or piece of information, or a huge setback or crisis, that hurtles the action toward a conclusion — usually with one quarter or less of the novel to go.

  In The Godfather, the Don’s death is a setback to peace among the mafia families. It emboldens the enemies of the Corleone family, forcing Michael to unleash a torrent of death to establish his power once and for all.

  These doorways work equally well in literary fiction. Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River has two perfectly placed transitions. The first occurs when Reuben’s older brother, Davy, shoots and kills two people and must flee. This thrusts Reuben into the middle — the quest to find Davy. The second doorway opens when Davy reappears, setting up the final battle within Reuben — should he reveal where Davy is?

  Is it possible to write a novel that defies these conventions of structure? Certainly. Just understand that the more structure is ignored, the less chance the novel has to connect with readers.

  The Second Doorway

  Lead is facing a series of confrontations and challenges on one side of the door. It will go on indefinitely unless some crisis, setback, discovery opens the door to a path that leads to the climax.

  On the other side of the door the Lead can gather his forces, inner and outer, for the final battle or final choice that will end the story. There’s no going back through the door. The story must end.

  ORGANIZING STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS

  Here is how the structural elements line up in the classic movie The Wizard of Oz:

  ACT I

  In the opening scene, we meet Dorothy, a girl who lives on a farm in Kansas with her aunt and uncle, a dog named Toto, and some goofy farmhands. She dreams of someday going to a place far away, somewhere “over the rainbow.”

  Next comes the disturbance. Miss Gulch arrives by bicycle, demanding that Toto be turned over to her so she can have him destroyed. Her demand is backed up by the law, so Uncle Henry reluctantly gives Toto to Miss Gulch. Dorothy is devastated.

  But Toto escapes from Miss Gulch’s basket and runs back to the farm. Dorothy, knowing it could happen again, decides to run away. She meets the Professor, who engineers a little “magic” to induce Dorothy to return home.

  She and Toto get back just as the big twister hits. Dorothy gets knocked in the head, and thus enters through the first doorway of no return. The twister picks up the house and lands her and Toto in a Technicolor world called Oz.

  ACT II

  The “muddle” of The Wizard of Oz is all about Dorothy trying to get to the wizard so she can find a way home. Along the way, she encounters plenty of trouble. There’s a wicked witch who wants to stop her, some apple-throwing trees, a lion with more bark than bite, and so on. She picks up three allies along the way, including the aforementioned lion. The trouble increases when the quartet finally gets to see the wizard, and he delivers some bad news: Before he’ll help Dorothy, she and her allies have to bring him the broomstick of the wicked witch.

  So they set out through a dark forest, and then they fall through the second doorway of no return. Dorothy is captured by the flying monkeys and taken away.

  ACT III

  The final battle has been set up. The three allies — the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman, and the Cowardly Lion — must find a way to save Dorothy from the witch. They get inside the castle where things go wrong again, and it looks like they’re all going to die at the hands of the witch and her minions. But then the witch goes too far, setting the Scarecrow aflame. Dorothy throws water on him, also dousing the witch. And we all know what happens then!

  This is not quite the end. There’s a little twist with the wizard that gives an added measure of suspense. But Dorothy winds up at home, and all is well.

  WHAT STRUCTURE LOOKS LIKE

  The three-act structure comes from drama and is used extensively in film. In this formulation, the first “doorway of no return” usually happens about one-fourth of the way into a film (in other words, within the first thirty minutes of a two-hour movie):

  In a novel, however, that first doorway needs to happen earlier, or the book will seem to drag. My rule of thumb is the one-fifth mark, though it can happen sooner.

  In addition, the final act may take place more toward the end. So while the three-fourths mark is still a good signpost, you can slide it to the right a little if you so desire.

  The three-act structure for a novel should look like this:

  Mastering structure and transitions will make your novels more accessible even if you choose to deviate from a linear unfolding. Add a ripping good story, and your novels may turn out to be unforgettable.

  A SUMMARY OF PLOT AND STRUCTURE

  These basic plot and structure elements will never fail you.

  A plot is about a Lead character who has an objective, something crucial to his well-being. The major portion of plot is the confrontation with the opposition, a series of battles over the objective. This is resolved in a knockout ending, an outcome that satisfies the story questions and the readers.

  A solid plot unfolds in three acts — a beginning, middle, and end.

  In the beginning, we get to know the Lead, his world, the tone of the story to come. We have some sort of disturbance in the beginning to keep away the dull parts.

  We move into the middle through a doorway of no return, an incident that thrusts the Lead into conflict with the opposition. We need some sort of adhesive to keep them together, something like professional or moral duty, or a physical location. Death — physical, professional or psychological — is often a real possibility until the conflict is settled. Some setback or crisis, or discovery or clue, pushes the Lead through the second doorway of no return.

  Now all the elements are there to get to that final battle or final choice that’s going to end the story.

  EXERCISE 1

  Analyze some novels or movies with a view toward understanding their three-act structure. Specifically note:

  When is there a disturbance to the Lead’s ordinary routine? What change happens early on? (If it doesn’t, does the book or film seem to drag?)

  At what point is the Lead thrust into the conflict? At what point can he not return to normal?

  When is there a major clue, crisis or setback that makes the climax inevitable?

  If you’re bored, ask yourself why. Look to see if the LOCK elements or three-act structure is weak.

  EXERCISE 2

  Look at the elements of your current plot. Are they lining up in a way that will help readers get into the story? Or are you ignoring structure? If so, why?

  EXERCISE 3

  Using the structure diagram, map out your current plot. Come up with a disturbance scene and events that make up the two doorways of no return. Write these down in summary form. Tweak them to make them original and involving.

  Chapter 3

  How to Explode With Plot Ideas

  There is only one type of story in the world — your story.

  — Ray Bradbury

  In Woody Allen’s movie Annie Hall, there is a passing conversation between some players at a fancy Hollywood party. One guy says, “Right now it’s a notion, but I think I can get money to turn it into a concept … and later turn it into an idea.”

  As with all satire, the scent of truth lurks underneath. Before your plot exists, it is a notion you have. A spark,
which at some point ignites. But it is here where many stories are doomed from the start. Not every idea is of equal value. To find the best plots, you need to come up with hundreds of ideas, then choose the best ones to develop.

  That’s what this chapter is about.

  And before you jump into the top twenty ways to get plot ideas, you need to spend some time on the person who is going to turn them into fiction gold — you.

  That’s where you start in finding plots.

  William Saroyan, whose novels have more passion in them than most, was once asked the name of his next book. “I don’t have a name and I don’t have a plot,” he replied. “I have the typewriter and I have white paper and I have me and that should add up to a novel.”

  That’s why Saroyan’s work seems so fresh. He was not content with the old advice, write what you know. He figured out early that the key to originality was write who you are.

  Fiction writers, especially those who write to inspire, should follow Saroyan’s example. By going deep into your own heart and soul, you will find a wellspring of ideas to write about. Moreover, your writing will come alive, and your stories will have the chance to truly move your readers.

  A word of caution, however. To write who you are does not mean producing a fictionalized autobiography. All writers have one autobiographical novel inside them, and that’s usually a good place to leave it. These days publishers are wary of autobiographical novels because the prospects of turning them into good sellers are practically nil.

  The market wants gripping fiction without clichés, standard characters, or tired plots. And the key to satisfying this market, to making your fiction sing with originality, is to write who you are.