I don’t praise plots as accurate representations of life, but as ways to keep readers reading. When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away—even if it’s only a glass of water. ... When you exclude plot, when you exclude anyone’s wanting anything, you exclude the reader, which is a mean-spirited thing to do. You can also exclude the reader by not telling him immediately where the story is taking place, and who the people are. ... And you can put him to sleep by never having characters confront each other. Students like to say that they stage no confrontations because people avoid confrontations in modern life. “Modern life is so lonely,” they say. This is laziness. It’s the writer’s job to stage confrontations, so the characters will say surprising and revealing things, and educate and entertain us all.

- Kurt Vonnegut

In our character-based approach to writing fiction, we have spent time developing complex, dynamic characters with rich backstories. We have placed those characters into interesting situations where they have faced conflict. We have considered how they will tell their story (or who will tell it for them), and we have thought about what themes we will be explicated in the telling of the tale. In short, we have developed myriad starting points and conceived a plethora of methods for telling a story, and now it's time to finally get on with it. Now it's time to chart a course, and whether it's a short story, novel or screenplay, it's worth remembering that it's probably going to have the following basics elements:

• A Beginning
• A Middle
• An End

That may sound overly simplistic, but the reality is that keeping these three points in mind as you write and revise will help give your story structure, and lack of structure is what keeps so many stories from ever being finished.

The traditional narrative line in Western literature begins with rising action. This rising action builds to a climax, where resolution (of the central conflict) may or may not happen. Keep in mind that a story always has some form of resolution, even if that resolution is the fact that the conflict did not get resolved. Following the climax, there may or may not be a period of falling action in which loose ends are tied up. Plot is what holds this narrative together. Plot is the series of related events that drive the story from beginning to middle to end.

One of the biggest challenges new writers often face is sustaining a great start over the course of an entire story. After you have developed your character(s), conceived of your central conflict and overall themes, and decided how you intend to tell the story, it may be worthwhile to chart a course through the story using the exercise below. Knowing what you think the beginning, middle and end might look like can help you as the writer stay on task and get the story finished.

When charting a course through a story, be sure to consider not only the series of related events (the plot) but also how the character(s) will develop with the plot. A good plot will help drive character development, and character development will help drive the plot. In other words, your characters will develop because of the events they experience, and, in turn, they will influence future events because of the characters into which they have developed.

Of course our characters may well surprise us, and that's okay. As we get deeper into the tale, we may learn that the real central conflict is something other than what we thought it was. We may learn that a different theme is emerging or that an event you planned just isn't going to happen. That's okay--that's what revision is for.

Writing Exercises

Mapping out a plot visually is quite helpful to many writers once you know the basics of character, conflict and theme. For this exercise, divide your story into scenes and devote a 3x5 notecard to each scene. Don't get into too much detail on each notecard. Simply give each scene a descriptive title, list the characters who are involved, and give a two-line description of the action of the scene. In two-line description, one line should be focused on the nuts and bolts of the event (the action), while the other should remain focused on the protagonist's motivation in that scene. In terms of the motivation line, be sure to answer the question: What is the primary motivation that gets the protagonist into and out of the scene. Keep in mind that this may be as simple as "Jane is starving, as she didn't have breakfast and it's already two p.m." or as complex as "Jim finally realizes he just doesn't care what people think anymore."

It is interesting to do the above exercise using a story you have already read. Forcing yourself to break down a story you admire in this way can be very instructive in terms of learning the craft.

* * *

Homework: Outline your project with a beginning, middle and an end. Note the central conflict, who the protagonist is and who or what the antagonist is. Think about what the climax will likely be, and how the central conflict will be resolved. Determine what theme (or themes) you will be addressing. Put all of this together into a one-page synopsis, and bring it to class (with copies for everyone, of course). If you have time, continue working on your draft.

Suggested Reading for Next Week: "Miles City, Montana" by Alice Munro; "Paul's Case" by Willa Cather.

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