Or at least gains a few pounds. A spare tire if you will. As promised, here's the first in the three-part breakdown of the main elements of a scene. (The other two are character and setting, remember.) The details so to speak, with one little comment: I likely will not cover everything there is to cover about plot in this post. I'll get more detailed, but plots are amazingly sinuous creatures, with so many little twists and turns that you just can't cover it all in a single LJ post. So we're still talking surface work here . . . just a little more depth than in the scene post. And remember, this is just me ruminating about this in the hopes that I point out something helpful along the way. Here goes:
And the Plot Thickens . . .
The plot is, arguably, the main skeleton of the novel itself. You cannot have a novel without plot. It must be there. Perhaps not in every scene, and it might not be a huge, jaw-dropping, awesome, never-seen-before (because everything's been seen before) plot, but it's there. As stated in the scene post, a great novel will have plot in every scene however. So what is plot?
Contrary to popular belief, plot is not action. Oh, action can be plot (notice the "CAN be"), but plot itself is not all about the action. Someone pointed this out when I posted about the scenes, because I had not made it clear in the scene post that I was not equating plot with action. Action is PART OF plot. It's the easiest part to point to and say, "This is plot," which is why everyone thinks of plot as being action.
But no, plot is . . . movement. Not necessarily physical movement, but progression. Think of it in terms of steps. In your scene, if it's a great scene, then during the course of the scene there must be a step taken, progress made, movement. This movement can take many forms. The obvious movement is action: a fight scene where someone dies, or someone is saved, or someone shows extreme mercy; a car chase; an escape from the collapsing dungeon. All of these can be called plot AS LONG AS they involve some sort of change. You can't simply have a car chase and call that plot. Sure people are moving around, but that's not what I mean by MOVEMENT. Movement means that something has changed during the course of the car chase. Something must be discovered, or something must be resolved. And if something is discovered, that something needs to be important later on in the novel. Take Back to the Future. There's a car chase there (the Iranians are after the Delorean), but the chase itself isn't important. It's what the chase DOES, the movement that the chase creates in the plot. Which is of course to get the Delorean up to 88 mph so that it can be flung into the past. If the car didn't get flung into the past, the car chase itself could not be called a plot element. It would have been there just for entertainment. (This is what alot of people in Hollywood fail to realize about action movies, IMO. Action is not enough. Action must DO SOMETHING.)
Plot can also be alot more subtle. Let's talk about Back to the Future again. In the beginning, Marty goes into the kitchen where his parents and siblings are at the table eating breakfast and talking. That's it. Just talking. But this entire scene sets up so much plot it blows my mind. The most significant plot element introduced is that we get the story of how the parents met. HUGE plot element there. HUGE! (I'm sitting here at the computer in awe over how huge this was, and how smoothly they pulled it off.) That alone would have made that scene good. But factor in all of the rest of the plot they threw in there . . . it seriously blows my mind.
Anyway, they got the plot across in an ordinary conversation. So plot doesn't have to be all about the action. You simply need to introduce some key point that's necessary for something later in the book. If at the end of the scene, something significant has happened, something has CHANGED, then you've advanced the plot. It can be done with action, with a conversation, with a character simply thinking and coming to a revelation, or it could involve no people at all (the lightning storm in Back to the Future for example). If something new is introduced, or something old is moved forward or resolved, then you've got plot. So at the end of the scene, ask yourself, "What changed?" Keep in mind that what changed could involve the character of the characters themselves. This is also plot. Character and plot are so intertwined that it's hard to separate the two.
In any case, now that we know what plot is *cough cough*, how do you make certain that plot happens in every scene? Obviously this isn't a REQUIREMENT, but it is recommended. Remember, it doesn't have to be a huge change, but a little change in every scene is good. There are a kazillion ways to do this, and all of them are right, but here's what I do (and it works for both organic writers and outliners as well):
At the end of writing a scene, ask yourself the question, "What changed?" That change is key. Once you know what has changed, ask yourself, "What next?" That change altered something, and that alteration must have consequences, either for the world, or the characters, or the plot itself. Something must come next. Something that logically unfolds from that change. Whatever that "thing" is that happens next . . . that's the skeleton of your next scene. Flesh it out, build the characterization and setting around it, and then ask yourself what change occurs in THAT scene. What happens is like dominoes, at least for me. One scene leads to another, and to another, and to another. It helps if you have a "final" scene in mind, something that you know is supposed to happen later on in the novel, because that gives you a point to aim for. If you do have a "future" scene in mind, then ask yourself an additional question as you flesh out the new scene, "How does this scene get me closer to that final scene?" Every scene should be a step toward that final goal.
So, that's my take on plot, and how to get plot if you don't think you have it. As I said, this is still surface material. We haven't really gotten our hands dirty with the whole plot idea yet.
And now I feel the strange but sudden urge to go watch Back to the Future. Hmm . . . I wonder where that came from?
And the Plot Thickens . . .
The plot is, arguably, the main skeleton of the novel itself. You cannot have a novel without plot. It must be there. Perhaps not in every scene, and it might not be a huge, jaw-dropping, awesome, never-seen-before (because everything's been seen before) plot, but it's there. As stated in the scene post, a great novel will have plot in every scene however. So what is plot?
Contrary to popular belief, plot is not action. Oh, action can be plot (notice the "CAN be"), but plot itself is not all about the action. Someone pointed this out when I posted about the scenes, because I had not made it clear in the scene post that I was not equating plot with action. Action is PART OF plot. It's the easiest part to point to and say, "This is plot," which is why everyone thinks of plot as being action.
But no, plot is . . . movement. Not necessarily physical movement, but progression. Think of it in terms of steps. In your scene, if it's a great scene, then during the course of the scene there must be a step taken, progress made, movement. This movement can take many forms. The obvious movement is action: a fight scene where someone dies, or someone is saved, or someone shows extreme mercy; a car chase; an escape from the collapsing dungeon. All of these can be called plot AS LONG AS they involve some sort of change. You can't simply have a car chase and call that plot. Sure people are moving around, but that's not what I mean by MOVEMENT. Movement means that something has changed during the course of the car chase. Something must be discovered, or something must be resolved. And if something is discovered, that something needs to be important later on in the novel. Take Back to the Future. There's a car chase there (the Iranians are after the Delorean), but the chase itself isn't important. It's what the chase DOES, the movement that the chase creates in the plot. Which is of course to get the Delorean up to 88 mph so that it can be flung into the past. If the car didn't get flung into the past, the car chase itself could not be called a plot element. It would have been there just for entertainment. (This is what alot of people in Hollywood fail to realize about action movies, IMO. Action is not enough. Action must DO SOMETHING.)
Plot can also be alot more subtle. Let's talk about Back to the Future again. In the beginning, Marty goes into the kitchen where his parents and siblings are at the table eating breakfast and talking. That's it. Just talking. But this entire scene sets up so much plot it blows my mind. The most significant plot element introduced is that we get the story of how the parents met. HUGE plot element there. HUGE! (I'm sitting here at the computer in awe over how huge this was, and how smoothly they pulled it off.) That alone would have made that scene good. But factor in all of the rest of the plot they threw in there . . . it seriously blows my mind.
Anyway, they got the plot across in an ordinary conversation. So plot doesn't have to be all about the action. You simply need to introduce some key point that's necessary for something later in the book. If at the end of the scene, something significant has happened, something has CHANGED, then you've advanced the plot. It can be done with action, with a conversation, with a character simply thinking and coming to a revelation, or it could involve no people at all (the lightning storm in Back to the Future for example). If something new is introduced, or something old is moved forward or resolved, then you've got plot. So at the end of the scene, ask yourself, "What changed?" Keep in mind that what changed could involve the character of the characters themselves. This is also plot. Character and plot are so intertwined that it's hard to separate the two.
In any case, now that we know what plot is *cough cough*, how do you make certain that plot happens in every scene? Obviously this isn't a REQUIREMENT, but it is recommended. Remember, it doesn't have to be a huge change, but a little change in every scene is good. There are a kazillion ways to do this, and all of them are right, but here's what I do (and it works for both organic writers and outliners as well):
At the end of writing a scene, ask yourself the question, "What changed?" That change is key. Once you know what has changed, ask yourself, "What next?" That change altered something, and that alteration must have consequences, either for the world, or the characters, or the plot itself. Something must come next. Something that logically unfolds from that change. Whatever that "thing" is that happens next . . . that's the skeleton of your next scene. Flesh it out, build the characterization and setting around it, and then ask yourself what change occurs in THAT scene. What happens is like dominoes, at least for me. One scene leads to another, and to another, and to another. It helps if you have a "final" scene in mind, something that you know is supposed to happen later on in the novel, because that gives you a point to aim for. If you do have a "future" scene in mind, then ask yourself an additional question as you flesh out the new scene, "How does this scene get me closer to that final scene?" Every scene should be a step toward that final goal.
So, that's my take on plot, and how to get plot if you don't think you have it. As I said, this is still surface material. We haven't really gotten our hands dirty with the whole plot idea yet.
And now I feel the strange but sudden urge to go watch Back to the Future. Hmm . . . I wonder where that came from?
