As many of you know, nanowrimo is almost upon us. I'm all signed up, got a writing buddy (my daughter, who "won" last year). Been working out by drawing up characters, world-building and... attempting to come up with a plot.
Truth is, I can write a scene and I can create very realistic characters, but I just cannot come up with good plots.
So tell me, Gather Folk, do you have any tips for me? Any books that you recommend? Any experience that taught you something you'd be willing to share?
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An example - say my character is a 35 year old car mechanic, and he lives in a small town. I'll pick out which town, what's it like, what does he do for fun, whether he likes his job, is good at it, or if it's merely a means to persue his real life, and then establish friends and family. Basically, making him more and more of a human. Once I figure out who he is and what he likes, I figure out what he doesn't want/like. To me that's the most important aspect, because from there I can establish the trouble he has, or how his world just went topsy-turvy. Since the basic plot for a story is Stability + inciting incident = instability and trouble, the rest of the story is him (any character) trying to regain some kind of stability in his life again, and ultimately learn something about himself. The only difference between a short story and a book is how much trouble hits. In a short story, I can only have him maybe lose his job and his wife. In a book, he could lose his job, lose his wife, lose his house, break his leg, and his dog runs off after urinating on him. Now, knowing who the character is so well before I even start, I've already established if he's the type of guy to forgive the dog or kick the dog. Short story or novel though, this poor mechanic will have to re-establish his stabilty no matter what I throw at him. It's just the difference of how many problems hit him. Develop the character, come up with the trouble, and then make it harder and harder for the character to get through the battles to win or lose his war. Win or lose, at the end, he has to resolve how to live in his new stability.
Did that help?
Seriously, though, it may help. I'm gonna have to ruminate on it a bit.
This is a fantasy story (s/b book-length I hope) that got started from the question, "Suppose that the world really did work by perfect karmic justice, where the consequences of every deed come back to the doer over multiple lifetimes. How would the accounting end of that work?" I have the world-behind-the-world worked out, and I have several great characters with strong interrelationships. I have the setting as well, and a number of incidents that make the beginning of a great plot and should be a lot of fun to write.
Part of my trouble is that I have two characters who have the moxie to be the primary focus, and I'm trying to figure out a plot that lets them each do their thing and wind up in the same place at the end.
So I'm gonna start figuring out the worst thing that could happen to each of them and see where that gets me.
Thanks again, Lynn. At least I have something else to try!
Fear is the projection of past trauma into the imagined future.
That gives me, as an author, a way to make my characters' past MUCH more functional. By working on creating the dilemma (and thereby helping the reader to experience the character's increasing unease), when I bring out the cause of the fear I can make the scene much more affecting.
Possibly I knew this -- I'm not a fan of the sort of French-maid exposition that some authors dump on you right at the beginning. But formulating it this way seems to make it clearer to me...
Thanks, Lynn.
Very interesting discussion, however. I learned some things, and maybe I will just use the time to work on character development.
Truthfully, must admit, been writing my book already, but things happen, so I can't keep writing every single day. Because of that, I go back to read the last chapter with the concept of getting back into the flow, only to end up editing my last chapter and not getting enough time to keep going. With that, Chapter 3 keeps looking better and better, but Chapter 4 keeps not getting done. lol
Messy, but it might work for me...
But I've heard that if you know your character inside out and they are REAL to you that the plot will come from them and it'll take care of itself. I suspect that's often how mine come to me - through them.
Chris Baty, the creator of NaNoWriMo has a book out called No Plot, No Problem. He's a pantzer, as they say. No plot and just goes along blindly discovering the plot along the way.