Question of the Month
copyright 2001 by Alicia Rasley
Ask me anything.... about writing, that is. It's all I know.
This month everyone's interested in plot-- so a question about motivation, another about pacing, and another about whether it's okay to write out of sequence. (Yes. That's what I do, so it must be okay, right?)
Want some old questions? Click here for an archive.I'm writing a murder mystery, and a critiquer pointed out that I don't have reason for the amateur sleuth to start investigating the murder. He doesn't have any motivation except he's in a murder mystery and so he has to investigate, but maybe that's not enough.
uestion:
Cathy
nswer:
Cathy, that's a problem I have too– I keep thinking it should be enough that the protagonist is just curious and wants to see justice done! And maybe in a conventional murder mystery, especially a "cozy", that is enough. But probably for romantic suspense and thrillers, the protagonist requires more motivation to take on what is probably a fairly dangerous mission.
First question I'd have is: Why isn't he letting the police do their job? And that's something you probably have to account for in some way, like the police don't think it's murder, or they're investigating but going off in the wrong direction, or it's a little tiny town and there aren't any police, just an ancient town marshal who doesn't even carry a gun. In other words, make some reason why the protagonist feels he has to investigate or justice won't be done.
And then probably yes, you might want to provide a unique personal reason why he's all fired up to investigate this murder. I don't mean motivation strictly out of the backstory, like "His mother was murdered." I mean a for-real for-now reason why this guy wants to or has to investigate this particular murder– something concrete. (He can have internal reasons for wanting to see justice done or needing to ease his feelings of guilt or whatever, but he also probably needs an external motivation too.)
I find it really helps just to ask,
"What would make him do this? What combination of factors would get him to do this?"For example:
- His mother was the one murdered and the police aren't doing anything.
- He's the primary suspect.
- His best friend's the primary suspect.
- Someone hires him to investigate and he needs the money.
- He owes someone a favor and that someone asks him to look into it (who? why? why him?).
- His girlfriend's decided she's Nancy Drew and is going to investigate, and he's afraid she's going to get hurt.
- He's writing a mystery novel and thinks this would be good research.
- He's a reporter and all he wants is a good story, but the deeper he gets into reporting, the more investigating he finds himself doing.
- He's a defense attorney used to defending the guilty, and he's defending the murder suspect, who is in jail when another similar murder is committed, and he realizes he might have that blue-moon rarity, an innocent client.
- He has a grudge against the victim's brother, and hopes to make life a bit difficult by investigating him for murder.
In other words, what makes this protagonist go to this much trouble? Just keep listing reasons why this man would do that, and eventually you'll find the one that works for him.Best of luck! Just think, "Unique and concrete."
Alicia
Hi Alicia, I like your articles, but all this talk of structure makes me nervous. I just write scenes as they come to me, not in order, and I don't know if they're "the point of no return" or what. I just write
them and then I try to put them in the right order. Am I doing this wrong?
Davey
Davey, nothing that works is "wrong". In fact, I often write in the same way you do, especially when I'm just starting a book– write little bits of it here and there, all the little scenelets that just appear to me... and then I go back and try to fit them together. What I need then is some sense of the journey or plot destination so I can get all these pieces in the right sequence.Anyway, let me explain my "filer and piler" theory. The world is divided into two types, those who file and those who pile.
The filer gets a stack of papers and picks one up and says, "Oh, this begins with A, so I'll file it in the A folder." "This begins with B, so I'll put it in the B folder." Eventually all the papers are filed away neatly in the pre-existing and universally recognized alphabetic order.
The piler gets a stack of papers and picks one up and says, "Hmm. I think this should go into... this pile. Don't know why. And this paper... emanations tell me it should go in THIS pile." And when the papers are all distributed into piles, the piler picks up a pile, looks through it, and finds a common thread. "Oh! Of course! These are all about MOVIES. So this is the MOVIE pile. And this pile, they're all about BOOKS. So this is the BOOK pile." And each pile gets a yellow sticky note stuck on it. And eventually every pile is identified in a clear but definitely idiosyncratic way. (And the file cabinet is probably not sorted alphabetically but by color or something. :)
So if I give you a list of potential turning points that could occur in your book, there are those who will look at these and say, "Oh, I need an initiating event. Let's see, what can I write? And after that, I need a conflict emergence event." And for each event, they'll figure out (probably in order :) what needs to happen. This is like the filer, perfectly comfortable with frameworks and organizational structures, and able to use that organization to spark creativity.
But maybe you look at that list and go, "Huh?" because what you have is a big pile of scenes and pieces of scenes and scraps of dialogue and maybe a thread of theme. You're panicking! You
can't just write an initiating event to order! Well, you're a piler. What will work for you is to look through what you've got and find out which sort of seems like an initiating event, now that I've given you the name. And stick that at the beginning. (You can refine later. :) And gee, this kind of seems like a reversal! So you stick that in the middle. Rather than write scenes to order, you find among the plot stuff you already have and stick the yellow sticky notes on them.
"Initiating event." "Reversal." You'll find that there are probably gaps, but gaps are easy to fill when a piler has the -boundaries- of the gap.I'm a piler. The only way I came up with the structure I've evolved is to look at lots of books and see what was already there and in what order and apply labels to them. (I also never balance my checkbook. <G>) I wish I were a filer, because I'd love to write in sequence. But either way, you can come up with a coherent plot. Pilers generally have to be open to a lot more revision and re-organizing, however, because sequencing scenes written out of sequence takes a lot of good transition-crafting.
Anyway, either one of these can produce a good plot. And both of them need structure– they just go about getting it in different ways.
Best of luck!
Alicia
Any thoughts about what pacing is and how to make it work in a novel?
Tammy
Okay, some thoughts about pacing....
I think of pacing as making sure that important events happen frequently enough that the reader doesn't get a chance to quit reading. That doesn't mean every scene has a turning point, but every scene has to have some event that affects the overall plot, or
that scene is basically "skippable". And every scene can help set up for a later turning point.So my first rule is:
Every scene should have an event that affects the plot in some way, however minor.
There should be some measurable change that happens because of this event. I have to say, as soon as I started applying this rule, my pacing picked up, because the plot had more events and more changes.It really helped to think of the scene building towards this event-- gave me a real purpose for the scene. For example, I might have planned as the event "Genia finds her mother's safe deposit key in Bill's glove compartment." How is it a plot-changing event? "She realizes that Bill's been lying to her (romantic effect) and she now can use the key to find the missing will (external effect)."
It's also really helpful if the event propels the plot into the next scene-- say in the next scene she goes to the safe deposit box and opens it with the key and finds not the missing will, but a birth certificate of a sister she never knew she had. This sets up the cause-effect link from scene to scene that keeps readers reading to find out what's going to happen.
My second rule is that scenes should set up if possible for later Big Events or turning points. I think of these as "timebombs" that are set in one scene and explode several scenes later.
For example, let's say that in Chapter 9, Genia is going to learn from the birth certificate that the home-care nurse Terri she suspects of murdering Mom is actually Mom's older daughter, given up early for adoption and back in Mom's life in the last year.
Big revelation, obviously. We have Genia reeling from this news, and thinking back, so that's why Mom always treated her so kindly, gave her that car for Xmas! I was right to be jealous and feel like Mom was preferring her to me!
Perfectly understandable reaction.
BUT... there will be no force there -unless- you've set this up earlier.
For example, this should not be the first time Terri appears. She should, in fact, probably appear in an early scene with Mom AND Genia. That is, we need to make the connection early, that Terri and mom are somehow in this triangulation with Genia, even if G doesn't quite understand it.
Second, we need to set up that Mom is treating Terri specially, and Genia must notice it and probably comment on it.
Third, we have to put that gift car in there, probably in a fun way, like Genia notices Terri is driving a car just like Mom's, and mentions it, and Mom says, well, it IS my car-- I gave it to her-- and it makes Genia angry and also starts her thinking that Terri is exploiting Mom.
And we probably also have to beef up the internal subplot of Genia's relationship with Mom-- if it's completely lovely except for this, probably that won't work. The jealousy, Mom preferring Terri ("at least Terri is around-, unlike you!"), etc, suggest a relationship
in trouble. Think about what that will do to Genia's emotions when Mom dies-- maybe on top of grief we'll have to add a bit of guilt for 1) not being the perfect daughter and 2) not getting along with her at the end of her life.I think I might also go back and see whether I can slip in something about how it's hard being the only child when parents are failing, or how at least she doesn't have to squabble with siblings about what to do with Mom... something to set up the "sibling" motif.
Setting those timebombs in one scene to go off in a later scene can improve pacing by connecting events, creating that "narrative drive" that keeps the reader interested.
But you can see, a lot of replotting is required now that we've come up with this Chapter 9 brilliant plot twist... both internal and external replotting.
Don't know if that's any help! One other thought, and this comes from Merline Lovelace-- she suggested trying to keep chapters short, like 10 pages or less, maybe only one or two scenes. It's a way of making sure there's very little downtime and the reader feels like she's skipping along.
I wish I had really practical advice like that, but my thoughts on pacing are pretty vague. I also remember Brenda Joyce saying, "Figure out your major turning points, and write fast between them"-- that is, if very little is happening, as between major events,
summarize! Use a narrative bridge like "two weeks later, she was still trying to track him down, but..." and then get to the next big event, when she finds him.I've also found that pacing is aided by a compression of time-- eight big events taking place in two weeks will "pace" faster than the same eight events in two months. The less downtime the characters have, the more intense the experience will be. So I do try to keep the action of the book confined to a couple weeks, if possible, and set up some
sort of deadline to enforce that ("Genia must find out the truth about her mother before the reading of the will on Saturday").Alicia
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