[Writerpreneur] Riveting Storytelling 06

EFFECTIVE PLOTTING DEVICES: Leading the reader constantly onward without interruption has certain devices to accomplish this. Here are some more key ones...

Sequels of Scenes. Above, it was pointed out that the sequels of scenes constitute the binding elements which tie one scene to another and so provide the continuity of a plot.

Having failed in one scene to achieve his purpose, our hero in the sequel must resolve upon a new attempt, this new attempt to be developed into a following scene. Thus the sequels of scenes are extremely important for plotting in every sort of fiction. Not in frequently these sequels are longer than the scenes they follow.

This is particularly true of the sequels to the concluding scenes of the three main divisions (Beginning, Middle, End) of a story.

It is in the sequels of scenes that one learns what the state of affairs is, what the plight of our hero is. Successful plotting, therefore, depends perhaps more upon the proper handling of sequels of scenes than upon any other one thing. Of course the scenes should be in them selves convincing.

Adhesive Incidents.

In addition to scenes, incidents may be used to stick a plot together now and then. For example, let us suppose that one man threatens another. In an incident there is no resistance to the threat; the hero disregards the warning. The incident in itself is not exciting to the hero, but may be thrilling to the reader in spite of the absence of conflict, because the reader sees the disaster coming, a disaster all the more terrible since the hero is unprepared to meet it. Even happenings, though less often used, may have this adhesive quality.

Overlapping Paragraphs.

Toward the end of each paragraph in a well-written story, continuity is provided for by suggesting, in some word or phrase, more or less vaguely, what is to come in the paragraph following. This method of preparation in one paragraph for the next may be described as overlapping paragraphs.

For example, near the end of one paragraph, you find the words: “It was odd that Mary had mentioned Jim; Elinor had not thought of him for months, she,told herself.” In the next paragraph you find something like this: “The usual crowd were at the dance. Yet the first person she saw there was Jim!” In making transitions by indicating time (a favorite device), the beginner will do well to avoid obvious statements such as “Five hours later . . .” Instead, employ something smoother, something that keeps the character in mind, something like this:

“Joe was still feeling sick five hours later, when. . .” Emotional Rhythm. To carry your reader with you and avoid disturbing his progress through your story, you should try for such pace and timing, such rhythm and cadence, as will be appropriate to the emotion you wish him to feel. This will avoid a jerky or too slow advance. To assure this you should strive for a flowing style in which the words ripple along and carry the reader with them.

Every device which will make for smooth transitions should be employed to provide plausibility. Remember that one thought or emotion fades slowly out of the human mind, and that the one that follows should be not too strikingly different. You should fade into and fade out of each emotion and each phase of your story so that the reader is never bounced rudely out of his mood.

You should exercise versatility and ingenuity in doing this.

Action and Familiarity.

In the novel of action the plot supplies the element of surprise, and it therefore falls to the characters to provide the element of familiarity. Many readers, in fact, feel that the hero is so familiar that they identify themselves with him. Even without such identification the reader is chiefly concerned to know what will happen next to his old friends, the characters. In the novel of character, the characters themselves supply the surprise. And the story, if any, therefore must carry the burden of familiarity. The reader watches the characters, not in suspense as to what will happen next, but in curiosity as to what manner of men he has encountered. Therefore in the ‘‘action" novel characterization must deal chiefly with typical and social traits which make for immediate recognition and immediate approval or disapproval on the part of the reader. These familiar types and standards being set up, the reader is set free to concentrate his interest upon the plot, upon what happens. In a novel of character, on the other hand, where interest must center upon the persons in the story, the author will of course stress the human and individual traits as being more engaging and more surprising and therefore more likely to appeal to the reader’s sympathy and curiosity.

The substitute for plot in a novel of character is simply a quality of roundness and balance, which is found only where nothing superfluous is included. This roundness and balance prevents detail from becoming mere clutter. It is all a matter of proportion, and results from the author’s having brooded upon his subject and thought all around it before beginning to write. Technically it is the result of a right relation between subject and manner, of making sure that every detail is significant, and that this significance ties into the main idea and situation of the novel. One way of achieving this balance and roundness is to choose a point of view through which the story may be seen to best advantage, and then rigidly sticking to that point of view. Nothing is so destructive of proportion, balance and significance as jumping about from one point of view to another, looking out through the eyes of one character in one paragraph and through the eyes of another in the next. It is true that point of view may be changed and that a subject may be presented in a series of reflecting mirrors instead of in one only, but there must be a good reason for any shift in point of view.

In American fiction the public has been accustomed to having its novels cast in the form of scenes. Now scenes mean dialogue, and dialogue multiplies the difficulties of the author. Very few good novels have been told entirely through dialogue. Very few good novels have as much as fifty per cent dialogue. In writing for any given magazine market, you should discover what proportion of dialogue is found in novels published there previously, and then use less rather than more than that proportion.

Dialogue is bad in a novel because it is wasteful of words, it is roundabout, it is over-emphatic, and it is not suited to telling the story. When people talk in real life, particularly people who are involved in a problem of some kind, the significance of their conversation lies, not in what is said, but in what is taken for granted.

Now since the reader cannot know what is taken for granted by the characters without some explanation, this explanation has to go into the dialogue, with the result that it becomes thoroughly unnatural, long-winded, and boring.

Dialogue should be used for the crest of the action to corroborate what the author has told us his characters think and do. This method of alternating thought and action with dialogue provides a contrast which somehow keeps the reader aware of the passing of time and helps the novelist solve one of his two main problems.

It is not easy to indicate the lapse of time, and there is no use throwing away any device which can be used for the purpose.

Lapse of time can best be suggested in passages of transition between dramatic climaxes. Also a slow pace makes the reader more aware of time passing. Do not be afraid to go slowly. A measured march always seems inevitable, more ominous than a sprint.

The Dark End of Your Story

TOWARDS THE END of any story there is a Dark Moment where the hero is faced with a momentous decision, generally between right and wrong. Wrong is presented as glamorous, and right as difficult, and the choice is thus made simple.

In real life, of course, it is not always easy to distinguish right from wrong, since real life is complex and the truth is never simple.

But in fiction any hero can distinguish right from wrong at a glance: his trouble is to make the decision. Note that his decision is a moral decision, not an intellectual one, and once he has made it almost anything may happen. In fact, this decision in most stories is a knockout blow to plausibility, which never recovers entirely during the remainder of the yarn. Plausibility, indeed, is so groggy after the decision that the reader will accept almost anything in the sequel, however improbable. If you must introduce Providence, this is the part of the story in which it might appear without wrecking the plot—not as a solution, but as a kind of blessing or reward.

A very simple plot is sufficient for the short story: any adjustment of your hero or heroine to anything outside him. A mere change of mind is enough. For example, a story in which a woman makes up her mind which of two men she will marry. All stories are action stories in this sense; since, as Hegel puts it, “contradiction is the root of all movement and all life, and only in so far as a thing incorporates a contradiction does it possess impulse and activity.” Thus, even in the wildest of Wild Western magazines, you will find, as often as not, some story wherein, as some wag has put it, there are “no guns, no hits, no errors.” No menace, no villain appears—only a personal adjustment of some kind.

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The difference in the pulp, slick and quality magazine stories is largely one of difference in habit of thought on the part of the readers. In the pulp magazines, the reader seeks emotional release primarily, he does not wish to think at all. In the slick story, the reader enjoys thinking about the problems which arise, though he is still quite sure of his ability to tell right from wrong and truth from falsehood. In the quality magazines, the reader expects to do much more thinking, and is not likely to be satisfied with an oversimplified problem, not likely to be sure that truth and error, right and wrong, can be so readily distinguished.

That is to say, mental habits and experience alter a reader’s standards of plausibility and therefore his standards of interest. The man who has discovered the fun of thinking about life will never be satisfied with a hard-and-fast, black-and-white world of fiction: he will insist upon values; his world will be one of subtle light and shade. The complexities of life and truth do not annoy or baffle him; they delight him. Without them, he could not believe in or feel the story at all.

For the writer these differences boil down to methods of handling appropriate to readers of different tastes. But the methods are, in essence, the same for all: they consist, in a word, of taking for granted what the readers of any given market take for granted. It is merely a matter of knowing your reader intimately.

A good story consists of intangibles, and an author is not unlike the fisherman in the Arabian Nights who found the brass bottle, drew out the cork and released the genie. In our dreams objects appear extraordinarily bright and glamorous. Everything seems to have a heightened significance, but we are not generally aware of very many things at one time. So in fiction the author presents one fact or a few facts at a time and uses these as a springboard to emotion. The facts in themselves are nothing, and the fewer they are the better. For example: If you wish people to feel homesick you cannot, and you will not, give them a detailed picture, much less specifications, of the old homestead. Rather, you will select some detail associated in their minds with comforting sensations and emotions and through this project them into a mood. You make up a song about the old oaken bucket, and every man who was once a farm boy and drank from such a vessel will probably react sentimentally and be filled with nostalgia for the good old days. Note that there is only one bucket, described in considerable detail. Two buckets would be a distraction, three ridiculous, a dozen merely so many articles on a shelf of the general store. Just so you should select most carefully the detail upon which your reader may hang his emotion. The bucket must be an oaken bucket, not a galvanized iron pail.

Of course persons too young to have seen such a bucket will not react emotionally and will not understand how others can.

You will, therefore, choose details to serve as springboards to emotion with which your readers are sufficiently familiar to react emotionally, then dwell upon those details and so release the genie from the brass bottle. Then, if you have done your work well, he will loom large enough to fill the whole sky, and you will have created the intangible which is a story.

As a painter expresses light in terms of pigments so a writer of fiction expresses heat (emotion) in terms of light (the visible world). But his story is heat, not light; emotions, not people or things.

These intangible emotions, powers and dominions, eternal and eternally at war, meet and clash overhead in the clouds, but that cosmic struggle can only be made real to readers by presenting it in terms of things and people resembling those of the actual world. The lightning must be brought down and made to brighten familiar rooms before we realize it exists. The storm is overhead but we see it reflected in the mud puddle.

One picture, the proverb tells us, is worth a hundred thousand words. Words cannot make pictures. Therefore the author dispenses with that attempt as much as he can, and carries his readers from the seen to the unseen. That is his sphere of action.

Thus appetite appears in the guise of an apple. Romance may appear in the form of a six-shooter or the floating mantle of a woman. The emotions which take on the forms of earthly things and people go on forever; only their reincarnations perish. A good story is coeval with Man. This emotion, which bathes everything in a good story, is a magic, life-giving thing, a veritable fountain of youth. Everything it touches vibrates with life; everything untouched by it, in fiction, withers and dies. Plot, situation, scene character, setting all are mere lumber without this, an insubstantial pageant.

At the risk of seeming repetitious: fiction is the art of making readers feel emotion.

A story is like a couple of captive balloons, if you like, banging together overhead, though we are all the time watching the men who hold them captive. The battle of the blimps: a man, an emotion—and a rope to connect them.

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With these devices, you're set with all the tools you need. Yet a mention needs to be made about one last element. Some consider this optional. Others insist its vital...

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(From the works of Walter S. Campbell - founder of the OU Professional Writing courses.)

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