Plotting 101

I've said before, at this blog, that the two things I enjoy most about writing short stories are plotting and dialogue. I think most of my fellow writers agree with me about dialogue---it's just fun to write--but very few agree with me about plotting. And beginning writers seem to be either confused about it or terrified of it. One asked me, "Why do I have to worry about the plot? Can't I just dream up some interesting characters and give them something to do?" Well, sure you can. But what they do is the plot.

It's not as hard as it seems. One way to address this, I think, is to talk about some plot techniques, or devices. Here are a few that come to mind:

1. Foreshadowing

Wikipedia says foreshadowing is "a narrative device in which a storyteller gives an advance hint of what is to come later in the story." I like to think of it as something you put into a story, usually early on, that makes later action believable. It's not always used, or always required, but it's helped me many times when I needed to make something work in what would otherwise be an illogical sequence of events.

Example: If you want your story hero to be rescued from attacking headhunters at the last minute by a helicopter, you must at least mention that helicopter earlier--maybe there's a military training base nearby, etc. If you don't, nobody's going to buy that too-convenient ending. Or if the murderous bad guy is sneaking up on the good guy during their hunting trip and falls instead into a bear pit, be sure to have a guide warn them earlier to "Watch out for bear pits." That kind of thing. The best movie example I can think of is Signs (2002)--there are at least half a dozen instances of foreshadowing in that film, little things that are casually introduced during the story that seem meaningless at the time, but later turn out to be necessary to the ending.

There's also another kind of foreshadowing that can come in handy. Sometimes a character or a place can  be mentioned early in order to build suspense and anticipation. Example: A counselor is leading a group of campers on a hike when one of the group spots a line of scarecrows in the distance and asks, "What's that?" and the leader says, "Oh, that's the Forbidden Zone. You don't want to go there." If that happens, of course, that's exactly where the unfortunate campers will wind up, before the story's done--and the reader will both dread it and look forward to it. As for using a character for that kind of thing, think of The Misfit, in Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." He's mentioned only in passing, in the opening paragraph, but the attentive reader suspects that the traveling family will cross paths with him at some point--and they do. 

2. Raising the stakes

This isn't really a device, it's just good practice, and always a smart thing to do when plotting fiction. Example: Someone comes to a private eye asking for help with a relatively minor problem, maybe to find a missing friend or to shadow an unfaithful husband. That could possibly make for an interesting story in itself, but it's far more interesting if there is then an escalation of some kind, maybe a related murder or a kidnapping--something to make matters more serious and more dangerous. I think I'm right when I say the best and most popular stories, at least if they lean more toward "genre" than "literary," will include situations and villains that are life-threatening.

I've always liked the idea that fiction is problem/complication/resolution. Get a man up a tree, throw rocks at the man, get him down again. It's not enough to just get him in trouble and then rescue him; you must make things as difficult and stressful as possible for him in the middle of the story, with steadily rising action, before his situation get better. 

I'm convinced the biggest reason the TV series Lost was so successful was that it had tension and conflict on so many different levels. First the survivors of a plane crash are trapped on an unknown island, which is scary enough, but then (1) they start fighting among themselves, (2) they're haunted by their own personal demons, (3) otherworldly things begin happening around them, and (4) just when they're getting organized and trying to address all these issues, they hear distant roars and growls and see treetops swaying in the surrounding jungle. Things just get worse and worse and worse. Viewers loved that.

3. The ticking clock

Alfred Hitchcock once said, and I'm paraphrasing, that the best way to generate suspense is to put a ticking clock in your story. In his example, several men are sitting around a table playing poker, and there's a bomb under the table that they don't know about. Hitch said it doesn't matter to the viewer what the guys are talking about--sports, movies, politics, women, anything. What matters is that there's a bomb under the table.

I've done this kind of thing many times in my own stories. It of course doesn't have to be a clock--but it should be some form of countdown or deadline or pending event. It could he a scheduled execution, an approaching asteroid, a sinking ship, a terminal illness, a pilotless airplane, a final exam, a restless volcano, a slow-acting poison, a runaway train, even a trial date. In one of my stories, titled "Twenty Minutes in Riverdale," it was a ticking clock on a bomb--in fact the story consisted of nine scenes, and the title of each scene was a specific time (8:10, 8:15, 8:18, 8:26, 8:28, etc.), counting down until the blast.

One of the best examples, moviewise, is High Noon (1952), where an old enemy is coming in on the noon train to meet his henchmen and kill the sheriff, who can find no one willing to help him stand up to them. Throughout the film there are a dozen images of clocks, ticking off the minutes until the train's arrival and the shootout.

4. Plot reversals

I dearly love this plot device, and I use it regularly in my stories. (Probably because I like to encounter those twists and turns in the stories that I read.) I think one of the best ways to keep a reader interested is to have the story change direction unexpectedly--and not just at the end. Everyone talks about twist endings, but this kind of thing is effective anywhere in the storyline. And the reversals don't only provide surprise. They generate constant suspense because now the reader doesn't know what to expect. 

The best example of this, as all of us know, is the movie Psycho. When the most recognizable actor in the cast is killed half an hour into the story, viewers are shocked, I tell you, shocked. If that can happen, they think, hold onto your lap straps--anything might happen. In fact, I can think of only several other movies and TV series where the biggest-name stars died early and unexpectedly in the story: L.A. Confidential (Kevin Spacey), Deep Blue Sea (Samuel L. Jackson), Executive Decision (Steven Seagal), Scream (Drew Barrymore), and Game of Thrones (Sean Bean). I'm sure there are others, but hey, I can't watch them all.

Other examples of mid-movie plot reversals: Gone Girl, Marathon Man, From Dusk to Dawn, and Knives Out. And even though some critics still frown on twist endings, viewers and readers love them (The Usual Suspects, Planet of the Apes, The Sixth Sense, To Kill a Mockingbird, etc.).

There are plenty of other plot techniques writers can use--flashbacks, framed stories, MacGuffins, false endings, red herrings, etc.--and I have used them all at one time or another. When they're well done, they can greatly improve a story.

How about you? Which plot devices are your favorites? Which have you used the most? Which do you think are most effective? As for plotting in general, is that something you enjoy doing? Do you find it easy? Hard? How detailed is your plotting? Do you bother to outline? If you do, is it written or in your head? Do you think in terms of individual scenes?

I heard someplace--I forget where--that a plot is two dogs and one bone.

Let the contest begin . . .