Write Great Fiction--Plot & Structure

by James Scott Bell

  Only letters, labored, indifferent, yet full as she can make them of herself. Letters, I finally hear, singing with all they have, scores of them swirling round me in voices I’ll never understand, but beautiful all the same, god smiling and smiling and smiling.

  Dialogue

  Often, dialogue works as a resonant ending, so long as it doesn’t feel tacked on. How do you avoid that? By planting, earlier in the novel, similar dialogue.

  In one of my novels, The Nephilim Seed, I have a bounty hunter helping a mother find her kidnapped daughter. He has a rather loose approach to his work. At one point, the mother asks him what they are going to do to get out of a particularly bad situation. The response: “Improvise,” he said.

  As the novel progresses, they are drawn to each other, but each has personal reasons for not wanting to get involved. At the end, however, the mutual attraction can’t be denied. The last lines:

  He took her hand then, and faced her. “I’ve been alone for so long,” he said. He didn’t have to go on. Janice knew that this was his way of asking her if there was any way she could find a place in her life for him. In his voice and look were the collected vulnerabilities of a man who had been fleeing from life for years and didn’t quite know what stopping would mean for him.

  “It’s been so long I guess I just don’t know what to do next,” he said.

  Janice smiled. She reached her hand behind his neck and pulled him gently toward her, kissing him softly on the cheek. It was warm and a little stubbly, but resilient. Then she whispered something in his ear.

  “Improvise,” she said.

  Description

  If there is a particular description of setting or character that is just right, this can make for a perfect ending.

  In Stephen King’s The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, the rescued girl, Trisha, taps the visor of her cap and points her index finger up at the ceiling, a gesture that resonates because it has been explained earlier in the novel. She doesn’t have to say a thing for the meaning to be clear.

  Or a description can carry haunting reminders of what’s been, and what may be to come. As in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca:

  He drove faster, much faster. We topped the hill before us and saw Lanyon lying in a hollow at our feet. There to the left of us was the silver streak of the river, widening to the estuary at Kerrith six miles away. The road to Manderley lay ahead. There was no moon. The sky above our heads was inky black. But the sky on the horizon was not dark at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood. And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea.

  A Summing Up

  There is a way to sum up the feelings of a character without making it seem like author intrusion. As we saw earlier, this is exactly how Dean Koontz does it in Midnight. Sam Booker has had a hard time with his teenage son, Scott. After all that has gone on in the novel, Sam returns home with people he has come to care for, and is able to embrace his son. Both begin to cry:

  Looking over Scott’s shoulder, he saw that Tessa and Chrissie had stepped into the room. They were crying too. In their eyes he saw an awareness that matched his, a recognition that the battle for Scott had only begun.

  But it had begun. That was the wonderful thing. It had begun.

  AVOID THE RUSH

  It is a tough slog to write a novel, so it’s understandable that near the finish line writers might want to take a short cut.

  Sometimes writers rush through their endings because they’re so anxious to finish the novel after being at it so long. Professional writers working on deadline are especially prone to this.

  How can you avoid getting tired and rushing your ending? Here are some suggestions:

  [1] Dream. The most original material in our entire writer’s body dwells in dreamland. And the nice thing is it can happen all the time. You can dream at night involuntarily, or you can daydream at will.

  So as you go through your novel, carve out times when you allow your imagination to feed you images, even if you already have mapped out an ending.

  Get in the habit of jotting down your dreams when you get up in the morning. Keep a dream journal. Ask yourself how that dream might relate to your ending. Maybe it won’t have any direct bearing, but it will give you a starting point for thinking more deeply about the ending.

  You can encourage daydreams by listening to music. I like movie soundtracks for their various moods. Do some daydreaming and make notes. What you come up with may be the perfect image or scene for your ending.

  If you do this periodically when writing your novel, you won’t feel like you have to rush toward the ending.

  [2] Think big. Don’t pull your punches at the end. Pour everything you have into it. You can always scale back during the rewrite. But you need good material to work with, and that comes from being passionate and working at optimum creativity on your ending.

  [3] Take your time. This requires discipline. Don’t back yourself into a tight deadline corner. If you need to take a daylong break before you begin writing your ending, have the flexibility to take it. I don’t recommend longer than a day because you want to keep the flow of your material coursing through your veins. But you don’t want to feel like you have to break the sound barrier in order to finish.

  EXERCISE 1

  Reread the last couple of chapters from five novels you love. Analyze each of them. Is it closed-ended? Up or down? Does it have a twist? Why does it work for you? This will help you understand your own writing preferences.

  EXERCISE 2

  What sort of ending do you have in mind for your novel? Try writing the climactic scene. This does not have to be the scene you’ll actually use, but it may be. At the very least it will get your writer’s mind working on the end and allow yourself to understand your characters more deeply. Use this information in your writing.

  EXERCISE 3

  Come up with two or three alternative endings. List as many as ten one-line possibilities. Then choose the two or three most promising, and sketch out the scenes in summary form (250 words maximum). If an alternative seems stronger than the one you’ve had in mind, use it. Keep the old ending as a possible twist at the end. Or keep your original ending, and use one of the alternatives as a possible twist.

  EXERCISE 4

  Make a list of all the loose ends in your novel. You can do this as you write by keeping a separate document and recording the items as they come up. Create a strategy for tying them up with plot developments, minor characters, or using a newspaper story.

  Chapter 7

  Scenes

  The novel of a thousand pages begins with a single scene.

  — Proverb in Waiting

  A good plot is about disturbance to characters’ inner and outer lives.

  Scenes are what we use to illustrate and dramatize those disturbances. Scenes are the essential building blocks of plot. And a plot is only as strong as its weakest block.

  Readers may be willing to forgive other writing sins if they are reading scenes that plop them down on an emotional roller coaster. On the other hand, flat scenes are like the trams that take us to and from the park — slow, crowded, and hardly worth the ride. And readers aren’t likely to take a ride like that more than once.

  So make your scenes count, every one.

  WHAT IS A SCENE?

  A scene is a fictional unit. If you string scenes together and they somehow relate, you can write a novel.

  If you can make each one of your scenes truly unforgettable, you can write an unforgettable novel.

  An unforgettable scene has something fresh. It has something surprising, and emotionally intense. It has characters we care about doing things that we must watch. You create unforgettable scenes by freshening what is forgettable, making the scenes come alive with tension and originality.

  Write a scene for all it’s worth, and then look at it again later. Change the dull parts. Try something new.

  Most often, the best way to create an unforgettable scene is to
intensify the clash. Two characters oppose each other. They have the strongest possible reasons to do so.

  THE FOUR CHORDS OF A SCENE

  Scenes do four things. I call these the four chords of fiction.

  The two major chords are: (1) action and (2) reaction.

  The two minor chords are: (1) setup and (2) deepening.

  These chords are often played together. Action and reaction tend to dominate, with the minor chords dropping in.

  But these four chords will enable you to write any scene to serve any purpose in your plot.

  Let’s also distinguish between a scene and a beat (both of these terms come from the theater). A scene is the longer unit. Much of the time a scene takes place in a single location, and almost always is played out in real time. If you change location or jump ahead in time, you may jar the reader — but a scene can also be designed to do just that.

  A beat is a smaller unit within a scene.

  In The Wizard of Oz, there is the scene where Dorothy is confronted by the Cowardly Lion. The scene begins with threat and ends with the lion’s agreement to join the group on the way to Oz. There is obviously action and conflict. But there is also an emotional beat after Dorothy slaps the lion’s nose. And it deepens the character of the lion.

  Let’s take a closer look at the chords:

  Action

  Action happens when a character does something in order to attain his main objective. In a given scene, he has a scene purpose.

  A scene purpose may be anything that is a step toward achieving the story goal.

  A lawyer wants to prove his client’s innocence. He goes to the home of a witness for an interview. His purpose in that scene is to get information that may help his client.

  That’s action.

  But a scene needs conflict, or it will be dull.

  So the witness doesn’t want to talk to the lawyer. Now we have confrontation (an essential element of the LOCK system), and we can write an action scene.

  Commercial fiction will feel like it is mostly action scenes.

  Here is a straight action scene from a novel of mine called Final Witness (it was easier to grant myself permission to reprint than jump through financial and legal hoops to get access to another novel. I beg the reader’s indulgence). The point-of-view character in this scene is a Russian immigrant who has built up a nice little life for himself in America with a bit of trafficking in drugs:

  Now, sitting in stocking feet in the living room of his own stylish home, he could pop in a little platter and watch virtually anything he wanted.

  Tonight it was Independence Day.

  Sarah was out at her weekly social gathering. Dimitri was proud of her accomplishments, too. … She had become a fixture in the upscale community where they both lived. Best of all, she didn’t ask detailed questions about his enterprises. They were a perfect fit.

  With a vodka in hand Dimitri clicked the remote and started the movie. …

  [A simple objective to start. A man wants to watch a movie. He’s having a quiet night at home.]

  He thought he heard a sound from the garage just after the credits finished. It was a thump of some kind, as if someone had dropped a soft bag on the floor. But no one could be in the garage, fixed as it was with a double security system. No one except Sarah could get inside without tripping the alarm.

  Maybe she was home early. No, it was too early. She hadn’t been gone more than half an hour. …

  Something told him he wasn’t alone. It was instinct, born of the Soviet system where someone was always looking over your shoulder.

  Dimitri Chekhov hadn’t felt that in a long time, but he felt it now.

  [An obstacle arises to his objective. A feeling that he is not alone.]

  “Sarah?” he called.

  No answer.

  He got up from his easy chair and turned toward the front of his house. There was only darkness and shadow. Again, his mind told him no one could be inside. He had the finest security system money could buy. He needed it. The business he was in was not free from cutthroat competition — literally. … But his house was secure. He decided to sweep through the house once, put his fears behind him, and get back to the talking toys.

  He had a .38 in the antique desk in his study. He went for it just in case. As he walked through the hallway he flicked on the lights. No sudden image of an intruder. Nothing but cold emptiness. …

  Feeling more confident than fearful, he strode toward the kitchen.

  [Action taken to overcome the obstacle, which is his fear.]

  He turned on the lights and, as he expected, saw only the glistening tile and pine of his wife’s newly remodeled kitchen. …

  A hand covered his face and pulled his head back. A searing pain shot through his neck. Dimitri felt another hand grab the gun from him, twisting his wrists until he thought they might break. He was pulled backward, off his feet, dragged across the kitchen floor. …

  [The confrontation now is physical.]

  Dimitri pumped his arms, trying to hit his assailant with an elbow. He made contact with the body, but with hardly any force. He tried to twist out of the grasp but the man snapped his head back again, causing incredible pain. In the next instant Dimitri felt himself being shoved in a chair, and rope being thrown around him.

  The hand on his face released him for an instant. But before Dimitri could turn his head a heavy cloth was snapped over his eyes and pulled tight. Dimitri tried to move his arms, but the rope restrained him. It took only a few seconds more before he was completely incapacitated and blind to the world. …

  One of the men turned his chair around. He heard activity on the other side of the garage, as if the other man were moving something.

  “You can have it all,” Dimitri said. “Both of you. I’ll leave. I’ll take my wife and go back to New York. I won’t come back.”

  The only sound he heard was the tinny knock of a large can of some kind. And then he knew, suddenly, the whole thing. As he cried out, “Don’t do this!”he felt the gasoline being poured on his head, smelled the sickening smell. …

  Then Dimitri felt the sodden blindfold being lifted from his head. He blinked, his eyes burning from the gas. He coughed as the fumes assaulted his lungs. Shaking his head, he tried to focus. The lights were on, blindingly bright. Sensing his assailants behind him, he turned his head, but couldn’t see them.

  He looked forward, finally able to make out images, and saw someone sitting across from him. Perhaps one of the men, ready to talk, to negotiate. Perhaps they were not unreasonable men after all.

  And then Dimitri Chekhov screamed. It came through muffled, the thick rope in his mouth muffling his sound.

  Dimitri screamed again.

  In a chair, secured with ropes, was the lifeless body of his wife. Her head hung limply to one side. …

  He jerked himself violently in his chair, tipping himself over, falling hard on the concrete. His head hit with sudden force. He almost blacked out. He wished then for death. He cried out once more.

  Then he closed his eyes and began to cry. When the flames came, instantly covering his entire body, it was almost a relief. Dimitri Chekhov did not scream again.

  [The prompt at the end: Who was behind this grisly death?]

  Reaction

  A reaction scene is how a Lead character feels emotionally when something (usually bad) happens to him.

  The lawyer doesn’t get anything helpful from the witness. In fact, the witness says she saw his client pull the trigger at point blank range.

  Now the lawyer is going to have to mull that one over. How does he feel about it? What’s he going to do about it?

  When he finally decides what he’s going to do, you can write another action scene.

  A literary novel may feel like a lot of reaction scenes because they are generally more about the interior life of a character.

  Reaction is often done in beats. Here is a short reaction beat from my novel, Final Witness. Rachel Ybarra is
a paralegal who is helping on a big case at the United States Attorney’s Office. A reporter named Stefanos has made her acquaintance and told her she must meet with him. We get a peak into Rachel’s thought process here:

  Rachel arrived at the marina at half past six. She parked on the street near the Red Lobster, grabbed her briefcase and checked it. She had a legal notepad and a hand-held tape recorder inside.

  Stefanos had told her they would meet at his office, but had to connect first by the seafood restaurant. Wind was whipping off the ocean as the sun set in the west, casting an orange wake across Marina del Rey and the entire southern California coast. Rachel thought momentarily how nice it would be to live near the beach. The glory of creation, the cleansing of the sea breeze, the purity of it — what a lovely contrast it would be to the cold lines and dark corners of downtown.

  The thought of peace brought on a sudden urge to jump in her car and drive away. What was she doing here? She had no business getting involved at the investigatory level on a case as big as Supevsky.

  [Internal questioning.]

  But she gave herself two reasons for staying. The first was to find out why she was in danger. The second was to see if there was really something Stefanos had to help the Supevsky case. In her mind, the latter reason was the most important. She wanted to help Lakewood get his case back. She wanted another chance.