Write Great Fiction--Plot & Structure (9 page)

Of all the strata of the pyramid, passion is the most important for your writer's soul and, almost always, your ultimate success. While it is fine to do journeyman work for money (if you are learning the craft), I believe we writers must nourish and nurture our individuality. Only then do we rise above the commonplace.

As Brenda Ueland says, “Work with all your intelligence and love. Work freely and rollickingly as though they were talking to a friend who loves you. Mentally (at least three or four times a day) thumb your nose at all the know-it-alls, jeerers, critics, doubters.”

You may even, if you wish, thumb your nose at me. Just make sure you're passionate about doing so.

On the next level, you consider the possible reach of the idea to an audience. For a moment, take off your artist's hat and assume the role of a potential investor. If you were going to put up many dollars to publish this book, do you have a chance to recoup the investment and make a little profit besides?

Be ruthless in your evaluation. Does an eight-hundred-page fictional rendition of a few years of your life hold much interest for a circle wider than your immediate family? It may, but tell your investor-self why.

Are you entranced by the romance of fish gutting? Explain this to your investor-self.

And do a little market research. You ought to subscribe to
Publishers Weekly
and keep up with the business. What is being published? Each issue of
Publishers Weekly
lists “Forecasts,” short reviews of upcoming books. Ask yourself what the publisher sees in these plots.

Don't copy. Just be aware that much of the potential of a published work is in the author's original voice and vision.

Note, too, that your assessment of potential need not be with the largest possible audience in mind. Genre writers know they are limiting themselves to a distinct group of potential readers. Even within genres, there are subgroups. Many science fiction writers, for example, are not writing “hard” science fiction, but rather books about deeply held philosophical ideas. They know that such novels appeal to some sci-fi readers and not to others. That's fine. They are motivated by
passion
, which we've already discussed.

Looking at potential, then, is just a tool to help you make a decision. It is not a “rule.” As with any tool, use it wisely.

Finally, be precise in your plot goals. If you are passionate about your idea and reasonably certain about the potential it has to reach readers, trim away anything that is not in line with that potential. If the plot is going to be for a suspense audience, aim it there. Don't anticipate using anything else that will distract from that goal.

I have used Dean Koontz's 1989 thriller,
Midnight
, in my suspense writing class because it was a runaway bestseller (Koontz's first No. 1 hardcover on the
New York Times
list), and it uses many of the techniques discussed. I'll tell you what you need to know about the novel, but if you want the full benefit I suggest you get yourself a copy and read it through at some point.

Since this chapter is about getting ideas, you might ask yourself how Koontz got the idea for
Midnight
. We can only speculate, but here are some distinct possibilities. More than one may have played a part:

• Predicting a trend.
  Koontz often uses the abuse of new technologies in his books. In 1989, he anticipated nanotechnology (tiny, biologically implanted computer chips) and expanded on it brilliantly.
  
• Villain.
  The villain, Thomas Shadduck, has one of the more bizarre and startling introductions in
  Midnight
  . He is a supervillain, humanized. The plot could have been written around him. Alfred Hitchcock once said that the strength of a suspense story is equal to the strength of the villain. Perhaps Koontz started with Shadduck and wrote the plot from his machinations.
  
• Title.
  The word “midnight” conjures up all sorts of images, usually of the dark and sinister variety. In fact, the novel takes place mostly at night, during a short period of time, and midnight is also the time when something very bad is going to be triggered. All of this may have occurred to Koontz based on the title alone.
  
• A great prologue.
  Many page-turners begin with a mysterious, shocking, or otherwise gripping prologue. The
  Midnight
  prologue introduces a character who is jogging at night and who is killed by a mysterious beast at the end of the prologue. We never see her again. But we are left wondering about the cause of her death (as, indeed, are the lead characters). Koontz may have just written this prologue off the top of his head, and only later figured out what to do with it.
  
• Stealing a plot.
  This is my nominee for most likely device Koontz used to come up with the plot for
  Midnight
  . Reading it, I was struck that here we had a mixture of two classic plots — the great '50s film
  Invasion of the Body Snatchers
  and the classic H.G.Wells tale,
  The Island of Dr. Moreau
  . And, indeed, Koontz cleverly mentions both of these later in the novel. It is as if he is winking at those readers who picked up on the similarities!
  

So you see, there are any number of ways a master storyteller like Dean Koontz may have come up with the initial idea for his first
New York Times
No. 1 hardcover bestseller. What's stopping you from doing the same?

This week, choose two ways to get ideas. Set aside at least one hour of writing time for each exercise. Do them.

Pick the idea you like the best from the previous exercise, and give this idea a hook, line, and sinker.

Now, apply Bell's Pyramid to your idea. Is there enough passion, potential, and precision to make you want to continue?

Even if you decide not to dedicate a whole novel to this idea, going through the process will help you the next time. But if you like the idea, use the rest of this book to get it into fighting shape.

Resolve to set aside a few hours a month just for getting ideas. Stay alert to the idea possibilities all around you. Jot down notes. Rip out newspaper items. Once a month, go through your ideas and nurture them.

We start to make up our minds about other people within seven seconds of first meeting them.

— Roger Ailes,
You Are the Message

Act I, the beginning portion of the novel, has several tasks to perform:

• Get the reader hooked.
  
• Establish a bond between the reader and the Lead character.
  
• Present the story world — tell us something about the setting, the time, and the immediate context.
  
• Establish the general tone of the novel. Is this to be a sweeping epic or a zany farce? Action packed or dwelling more on character change? Fast moving or leisurely paced?
  
• Compel the reader to move on to the middle. Just why should the reader care to continue?
  
• Introduce the opposition. Who or what wants to stop the Lead?
  

Do these things well, and your plot will have a strong foundation. Your readers will feel they are in the hands of a competent storyteller. And that's not a bad thing to be, is it?

The first task of your beginning is to hook the reader. Period.

And remember, that first reader is going to be an agent or editor. Tough crowd. These are people who have too many manuscripts to go through each day. They are just itching for a reason to put yours down.

Don't give them that reason.

Then you have the bookstore browser, who might (because the marketing and design departments have done their jobs) open up to the first page to see what's there.

This is the battle you fight. There are nine billion other things the reader can do besides read your book.

First impressions are tough to shake. Make a bad one, and you have to work twice as hard and twice as long to get back to square one. You may not even get the chance.

So it pays — in life and in fiction — to make a great first impression. Here are some ways to grab readers from the start.

Take a look sometime at the openings of Dean Koontz's novels. Often, they are one-line paragraphs with a named person and some sort of immediate interruption to normality:

Katharine Sellers was sure that, at any moment, the car would begin to slide along the smooth, icy pavement and she would lose control of it.

— Dance With the Devil
, written as “Deanna Dwyer”

Penny Dawson woke and heard something moving furtively in the dark bedroom.

— Darkfall

Tuesday was a fine California day, full of sunshine and promise, until Harry Lyon had to shoot someone at lunch.

— Dragon Tears

In his onyx-walled room in the occupation tower, Hulann — a naoili — had disassociated his overmind from his organic regulating brain.

— Beastchild

What are the successful elements of these opening lines? First, they give the name of a character. This specificity creates the illusion of reality from the get-go. A variation on this is to begin with a pronoun:
She heard something moving in her bedroom
.

What I like about the Koontz approach, however, is that a name gives that extra measure of verisimilitude and makes the “willing suspension of disbelief” that much easier.

The second thing to notice is that something is happening or about to happen to the character. And not just anything — something ominous or dangerous. An interruption to normal life.

Give readers a feeling of motion, of something happening or about to happen. Give them this feeling from the very start.

If you begin with long, descriptive passages (something that was much more acceptable in the past), the feeling you'll create is not one of motion but of stasis.

Don't misunderstand. Descriptions are not out of bounds —
so long as you include text that gives the feeling of motion
.

And only a character can be in motion. So — give us a character as soon as possible. Take a look at this next example from Anne Lamott's
Blue Shoe
:

The world outside the window was in flames. The leaves on the pistachio trees shone fire-red and orange. Mattie studied the early morning light. She was lying on the side of the bed where her husband should have been sleeping.

Here Lamott starts with description. But she gets a character into it in the third sentence. And then she drops in a line of something amiss — her husband is not there, where he
should have been
.

We have a feeling of motion, that Mattie is in the midst of a troubling situation
and is going to have to do something about it
.

That's what a feeling of motion is. Not necessarily overt action (though that works, too) but the sense that action is or is about to take place.

Unless something disturbing happens to your Lead early on, you risk violating Hitchcock's Axiom: A good story is life with the dull parts taken out.

So stir up the waters.

What happens doesn't have to be huge, like a house blowing up. It can be something as seemingly innocuous as a telephone call in the night or a bit of unsettling news.

For example, we meet Margaret Mitchell's Scarlett O'Hara at the very beginning of
Gone With the Wind
this way:

Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.

This is Scarlett and her world at the beginning — she can catch men with her charm. She likes to do so.

She meant what she said, for she could never long endure any conversation of which she was not the chief subject. But she smiled when she spoke, consciously deepening her dimple and fluttering her bristly black lashes as swiftly as butterflies' wings. The boys were enchanted, as she had intended them to be …

So far so good. Scarlett is charming the twins, controlling them. Then the conversation turns to the upcoming barbecue at Twelve Oaks. The twins want to tie up Scarlett for the waltzes, and promise to tell her a secret if she'll consent. The secret is that the engagement of Ashley Wilkes and Melanie Hamilton is going to be announced at the party.

Scarlett's face did not change but her lips went white — like a person who has received a stunning blow without warning and who, in the first moments of shock, does not realize what has happened.

Disturbance! A few pages later, we learn why:

Ashley to marry Melanie Hamilton!

Oh, it couldn't be true! … No, Ashley couldn't be in love with Melanie, because — oh, she couldn't be mistaken! — because he was in love with her! She, Scarlett, was the one he loved — she knew it!

So the world Scarlett thought she ruled — the world of beaux and marriage — has been riled up.

Consider the opening from Jonathan Harr's brilliant book,
A Civil Action
. This is nonfiction, the true story of a complex case involving several deaths and illnesses caused by two large companies that recklessly poisoned the water supply of a small town. But it reads like the best fiction, and it does so right from the start.

The first sentence reads: “The lawyer Jan Schlichtmann was awakened by the telephone at eight-thirty on a Saturday morning in mid-July.”

What this does, from the very start, is give you a Lead character and a phone call that wakes him up. We've all received late night or early morning calls, and they usually portend bad news. So we want to read on and find out why the call was made. We're hooked from the very first sentence.

The opening chapter then goes on to reveal that the call is from a creditor telling Schlichtmann that if he doesn't pay up, his car will be repossessed. Twenty minutes later another call comes from the County Sheriff, who is coming for the car. We learn Schlichtmann is involved in a huge case and is at the end of his financial rope. Things are so bad he could lose everything — his business, his home, his possessions. And we learn that the jury is out, deliberating on this case that will make or break Schlichtmann. We follow the now carless Schlichtmann as he walks down to the courthouse to wait in the corridor while the jury begins another day of deliberations. Our last image is of this lawyer, alone, waiting.