How to build a complex plot based on a simple message (Part 1)

One of the questions my writer friends always ask me is how I can come up with intricate, complex plots for all the novels I write. Well, I never really thought about it. So I decided that maybe I should think about it. So that is what this series is about: how to build a complex plot based on a simple message.

A few disclaimers:

• I’m not a professional novelist, but I have written many complicated novels that a lot of people enjoy thoroughly. I hope to one day join the ranks of professional novelists, but I’m not there yet.
• I probably break every rule there is. So be aware that what follows in this nine-part series is the results of a scrambled brain spitting out the bare essentials of what it has learned over the last 20 or so years of amateur writing.
• And I am also extremely random. You have been warned. 

Part 1: Choose your message

First off, what is plot? Plot was first described to be as the chain of events in a story. It’s what happens next, a sequence of events that leads to a decisive (or not so decisive) end.

The goal of this series is to demonstrate how to plot a novel using a simple concept or message as a foundation. So we’ll walk through the whole process, and maybe I’ll run with the concept I develop afterward. Who knows? If you want to take it and do something with it, go ahead.

Where do you start? How do you start? What’s the right way to do it? Is there a right way to do it? There are so many options, so many paths to choose, so many methods to try, you just have to find what works for you. And then, you can try something different to see if it works better.

But the best thing to do is to start.

Just do it. Don’t wait for inspiration to hit you or lightning to strike. Just take the initiative and do it. You can always edit later.

There are a few different ways to build a plot.

You can start with a CHARACTER and build a story around a character. That works. Maybe that will be the next guide to plotting I do. Because that works too. But my preferred method of plotting is based on MESSAGE.

Everything starts with message. Your story has to have a point or there’s no reason to write it. That’s my philosophy. Others may disagree, but I’m old fashioned like that. I like my story to have a point, whether I agree with that point or not. Stories need to make a statement. So you need to design a story based on what statement you want to make.

Messages can be as simple as telling people not to steal or as complex as some political ideology you want to proliferate. Just remember that your message doesn’t have to be complex. It can be extremely simple. Oftentimes the best novels have the simplest messages.

Examples?

• Twilight – sacrificial love
• Harry Potter – doing the right thing
• Hunger Games – standing up for what you believe in
• One for the Money – tenacity is a valuable asset
• Count of Monte Cristo – sometimes life happens
• Pride and Prejudice – don’t judge a book by its cover
• Lord of the Rings – power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely

Take Lord of the Rings. The main message is a relatively simple concept: power is dangerous. But what makes LOTR epic is the characters and the subplots and Tolkien’s ridiculous gift at linquistics and world building. But even in all of the subplots, the main message remains constant – power corrupts.

So to start out, identify your main message.

We’re going to keep it simple. I mean super simple. So let’s aim for a morality tale.

The message for this example plot will be: Stealing is wrong.

In Part 2, we’ll discuss how to choose a direction.

Update on 2012 writing goals

Well, it’s halfway through February already. Yikes. But fortunately, the last month or so has been extremely productive. So I’m hoping to keep up the rhythm and knock out some more things before the first quarter of the year is up.

I really haven’t made any progress on the e-publishing part of the goals, although thanks to some wonderful insight by some readers, I have located some other e-publishing options to pursue that I hadn’t thought of. So I’m still in the research stage at this point, but I’m really excited about the possibilities that are appearing.

For the novels, those have been going really well. The one that was a third of the way drafted in January is now completed. It’s sitting on the shelf until I can get back to it. I’m currently rewriting the beginning of one novel. As soon as that is finished, I need to go back through the “final” draft of a completed novel and spice up a few scenes that I had originally cut down. Then, the sequel of that novel is almost done — just have to rewrite a few opening scenes. And the book on Guatemala is in its first draft and making the rounds through my first-version readers (it’s super rough, though, and still needs loads of work).

As far as short stories go, I got one edited and ready to ship in January. And I have written a brand new one for February, all set to go to my critique group at the end of the month. It’s a little rough, but I want to get their opinion on it before I make any comments on it. I’m plotting another one for March. We’ll see if it happens.

And for skits and plays? Got five or so skits written for the drama group at church, but I don’t think we’re going to end up using them. And I haven’t made any progress on the Easter play, but that possibility is still there.

The only hang-up I’ve run into so far is the payment from the publication that bought the rights to a short story I wrote. It was my understanding that I was going to be paid in January, since the story ran in December. But I haven’t received payment yet, and I haven’t been able to get ahold of my original contact there. So that’s a bit troubling. I’m sure it will all work out, and I’m going to do a little more digging before I do anything else.

But I guess there always has to be some element of drama going on otherwise I might get bored, right?

Evoking Emotion in Writing Part 3

In Evoking Emotion in Writing Part 1, I talked mainly about evoking emotion by showing the effects of it instead of just telling us about it.

In Part 2, I touched on the fact that emotions aren’t pure. They’re usually a combination of a vast array of emotions.

Well, in Part 3, this last installment (for now) of this little forray into writing about the way characters feel, I wanted to talk about being careful not to overdo it.

You have to find a balance, especially when you’re portraying strong emotions like anger or love. Anger and love can be overwhelming if you pump them full of sap.

To this day, there are parts in movies that I can hardly bear to watch because they’re so uncomfortably sappy (usually in the Twilight movies, not in the books though). There are parts in books that I skim over because the language and the situation and the actions being written about are so over-the-top that I just get sick of it.

Now, I did state in Part 1 that I am not an emotional person. So that might have something to do with it. But I still believe you can do too much when it comes to heavy emotionalism in writing.

How do you find the balance?

The best example I can give is to read good romance. They will usually give you good examples of both love and anger. And if you find yourself squirming because it’s too much, make a note and try to identify what it is that’s making you squirm.

For me, in some of those crazy romances, it’s the overly long descriptions of the guy or the girl. They just go on and on with crazy terms like ebony hair and ivory skin and azure eyes. Ugh. Maybe a little is okay, but too much is too much. Just get back to the story!

Dialog can be too much too. If all your people are doing is bantering back and forth and it serves no purpose and doesn’t advance the story and doesn’t reveal anything about their characters, get rid of it. I have skimmed over so many conversations in romance novels because it simply doesn’t interest me.

Okay. An example of portraying emotion without being sappy about it?

First example that comes to mind is Mr. Darcy’s letter to Elizabeth Bennett in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. And this probably breaks all the rules that I just laid down because it’s mainly exposition, but by the point you get to read Mr. Darcy’s letter, you already know what Elizabeth’s opinion of him is – and then to have his letter contradict everything she believes so completely? Wow. I remember crying when I read that part. And I don’t cry in books.

Second example—well, it isn’t a book. It’s a movie. But I was thinking about what a beautiful example it is. It’s a small scene from the movie Ever After, with Drew Barrymore and Dougray Scott. It’s a minor minor scene with virtually no dialog at all. But every time—every time—I see it, I bawl because it’s so beautiful. It’s the part just after Danielle has risked life and limb to save Maurice, the elderly servant, from being sold. She returns Maurice to his wife and to the other servant woman in her family. The whole scene is emotional. It doesn’t really advance the plot, but you get a glimpse into a truly joyous moment in the lives of four people who don’t really have a lot to be joyful about.

Two parts stand out to me: Maurice’s old wife runs toward him on skinny legs with her skirts hiked up as far as they’ll go. She can barely walk but she’s toddling toward him at top speed. The other woman servant, a life-long friend, can’t get her skirts up and she’s having to hop as she runs toward them. It’s the combination of joy and enthusiasm and relief and gratitude and sorrow and loneliness and hopelessness that makes the whole scene work. And I’m certain that it would be very difficult to capture in the written word, but I know it has to be possible. (I’ll let you know when I figure it out.)

One final thought on portraying emotion: look for an uncommon method of depicting it.

A good example is this: How do you show that a man loves his wife? He brings her red roses, right? But wait. What if he’s resorting to a cliché to get her off his case about something? That doesn’t show that he loves her.

Instead, establish in the story that the wife loves the beach. Have her mention that she hasn’t been to Florida in ages, or she weeps over a picture of her grandma playing with sand at the beach or something. And then have her wake up one morning and find a child’s sand bucket outside with a bucket of sand from the beach her husband/significant other brought back for her.

That kind of effort is either love or insanity. And there may not be much of a distinction between those.

Unusual methods of demonstrating love stick with us because they make us think.

Notice in all of these examples, you have to build your characters and your story and your plot and your setting first before you start putting emotion into it. Because emotion doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Emotion is something we experience in response to an outside force.

You can’t just tell us that your character loves someone. Or that he or she hates someone. We need proof to back it up.

Evoking Emotion in Writing Part 2

In Evoking Emotion in Writing Part 1, I talked mainly about evoking emotion by showing the effects of it instead of just telling us about it. Emotion is action, especially in writing.

In Part 2, I wanted to touch on the fact that emotions aren’t pure.

Oftentimes you’ll see written that someone felt pure rage or they experienced pure love. And maybe those sound like good ways to describe the way someone is feeling, but what do they actually mean?

Pure rage means that somebody’s super angry. But what does it tell me about them as a character? The same with pure love. What does that mean? And is any love actually pure (other than Westley and Buttercup’s love, of course)?

Simply put, human emotions can’t be contained to a singular descriptive term. They’re too complicated. Emotion is too complex to describe in real life terms, so why do we try to describe it simply when we’re writing about it?

For example, take anger. Anger is a complicated emotion. When you first think about it, it doesn’t seem complicated. Anger hits us fast, like a sudden storm, but just because it comes (and sometimes goes) quickly doesn’t mean it’s simple.

First of all, there are different kinds of anger.

There’s irrational anger, like a hormonal woman who is upset about something completely superfluous.

There’s righteous indignation, the anger someone feels when reacting to the unjust treatment of themselves or someone else.

There’s a temper tantrum, what a childish person throws when he doesn’t get his way.

There’s blind rage, where some event has driven someone to the point where anger is all they can feel and they don’t care who they hurt or what wrong they do.

The list can go on and on and on.

Notice in all of those situations, anger doesn’t just happen. Something sparks it. Something has to incite it. And that opens a whole new world of possible contributing emotions.

Anger can come from shock. Anger can come from jealousy. Anger can come from immaturity. Anger can come from feeling helpless. The list of inciting emotions is at least as long as the different types of anger.

So, all that to say that if you’re going to portray an emotion, don’t just paint a picture of one emotion. Don’t confine yourself to the single emotion your character is feeling because then they won’t feel real.

No real person just feels anger. A real person feels anger mixed with a myriad of other instigating emotions. So if you show the whole range of emotion, you’re more likely to create a more believable character, one who your readers can identify with on a personal level.

Part 3 will be about not overdoing it.