Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (19 page)

Step 4: Work out the primary motives for each character who introduces a complication. Then list all secondary motives, and underline the last one you wrote down. Pick a scene involving that character and reverse that character's motives, as you did in the Reversing Motives exercise in chapter six.

Follow-up work:
For at least three complications, work out who will be hurt the most when it happens. Incorporate that damage into the story.

Conclusion:
Most authors underutilize their secondary characters. Adding complications is a way to get more mileage out of your cast.

Plot Layers

I
n understanding how breakout novels are built, it is crucial to grasp the difference between a subplot and a layer: Subplots are plot lines given to
different
characters; layers are plot lines given to the
same
character. Contemporary breakout fiction makes extensive use of plot layers, which reflect the multitiered complexity that most people feel is the condition of life today.

Think back to our earlier discussion of Dennis Lehane's mystery novel
Mystic River.
In the story, Boston detective Sean Devine's two boyhood friends Jimmy Marcus and Dave Boyle both have subplots: Jimmy struggles with the murder of his teenage daughter and his belief that Dave killed her; Dave struggles to suppress the homicidal urges of The Boy, an alter ego that surfaced in him following his abduction by child molesters years earlier.

What gives the novel its resonance, though, are Sean's own three plot layers we looked at earlier: (1) He is the lead detective in the investigation of the murder of Katie Marcus, and, although he owes his childhood friend Jimmy his utmost efforts, he struggles against a debilitating emotional numbness. (2) His wife has left him, taking with her the baby daughter who may or may not be Sean's, and he doesn't how to get her back.

Then there is the final layer: (3) Because the case reconnects him with Jimmy and Dave, Sean must with them face again what happened to them all one afternoon as they argued about whether or not to steal a car. Another car with two men inside stopped, Dave got in, and his two friends did not. Guilt over this random event haunts Sean powerfully in the present:

"Like this Dave Boyle stuff," his father said. "What does it matter what happened twenty-five years ago to Dave? You know what happened. He disappeared for four days with two child molesters. What happened was exactly what you'd think would happen. But here you come dredging it back up again because . . ." His father took a drink. "Hell, I don't know why."

His father gave him a befuddled smile and Sean matched it with his own.

Plot Layers

"Hey, Dad."

"Yeah."

"You telling me that nothing ever happened in your past that you don't think about, turn over in your head a lot?"

His father sighed. "That's not the point."

"Sure, it is."

"No, it isn't. Bad shit happens to everyone, Sean. Everyone. You ain't special."

But Sean
is
special, and so is the case of the murder of Katie Marcus. It draws together all three of the layers that Lehane has given his hero. Because it is Sean's job to investigate, he cannot avoid revisiting the past he shares with the victim's father, Jimmy, and the prime suspect, Dave. Nor can he avoid the loss of his wife, whose spooky phone calls torment him as much as his survivor's guilt. Sean is a man beset by multiple conflicts, outer and inner. Who cannot identify with that?

In his complex and erotic literary novel
The Sixteen Pleasures,
Robert Hel-lenga demonstrates a similar flair for laying down plot layers. The novel's opening paragraph nicely reveals the two principle reasons that his heroine, American book conservator Margot Harrington, decides to travel to Florence in 1966:

I was twenty-n.ne years old when the Arno flooded its banks on Friday 4 November 1966. According to the Sunday
New York Times,
the damage wasn't extensive, but by Monday it was clear that Florence was a disaster. Twenty feet of water in the cloisters of Santa Croce, the Cimabue crucifix ruined beyond hope of restoration, panels ripped from the Baptistry doors, the basement of the Biblioteca Nazionale completely underwater, hundreds of thousands of volumes waterlogged, the Archivio di Stato in total disarray. On Tuesday I decided to go to Italy, to offer my services as a humble book conservator, to help in any way I could, to save whatever could be saved, including myself.

Thus, Margo embarks on an outer journey (visit Italy, save rare books) and an inner journey, a search for the self that she could not find in America in the mid-sixties:

Instead of going to Harvard, I went to Edgar Lee Masters College, where Mama had taught art history for twenty years. Instead of going to graduate school I spent two years at the Institute of Paper Technology on Green Bay Avenue; instead of becoming a research chemist I apprenticed myself to a book conservator in Hyde Park and then took a position in the conservation department of the Newberry Library. Instead of getting married and having a daughter of my own, I lived at home and looked after

Mama, who was dying of lung cancer. A year went by, two years, three years, four. Mama died; Papa lost most of his money. My sister Meg got married and moved away; my sister Molly went to California with her boyfriend and then Ann Arbor. The sixties were churning around me, and I couldn't seem to get a footing.

Margot is a woman clearly in need of an awakening, and where better to find it than in Italy? Margot's two layers are strong; all that remains is for Hellenga to weave them together, which he does by means of a masterfully conceived device that becomes the
node of conjunction
between these two journeys—and which I will discuss in the next chapter. Stay tuned.

Best-selling novelist Nora Roberts cut her teeth writing short "category" romances, but has since become expert at building the layers that turn romance stories into breakout-level fiction. Her best-selling novel
Carolina Moon
is the story of a wounded young woman who returns home to face her past, and who finds love in the process.

There's nothing new in that. That story has been told hundreds, maybe thousands, of times. Roberts does not allow her novel to remain that simple, however. She starts with a strong first layer: As a child, heroine Tory Bodeen was regularly and savagely beaten with a leather belt by her fanatic, sharecropper father. Tory longs to face those memories in the town where they happened, open an upscale gift store there, and prove to herself that she can be happy.

Brutal childhood beatings would be plenty to load up any backstory, but Roberts goes further. At age eight, Tory had a special friend in Hope Lavelle, whose family owned the land that Tory's father farmed. One night the two girls planned to sneak out of their homes for a midnight adventure. Hope escapes to their rendezvous in the woods, but Tory is prevented by her father, who chooses that night to administer another beating.

Eight-year-old Hope is raped and murdered. Even in the present day, the murderer remains at large. This second layer of guilt and mystery also might be enough to heap on a heroine, but not for Roberts. To this burden she adds another: Tory has the gift of second sight. She can "see" the minds and memories of others, particularly those who have suffered extreme distress. On the night Hope was murdered, Tory helplessly saw the whole thing happen, sharing the horror of the incident—though not the knowledge of who murdered her best friend.

That makes three layers, by my count. But why stop there?

Tory's gift of sight continues to plague her into the present. She would like to be free of this "gift," but Roberts has other plans: Soon enough, Tory's sight reveals to her the horrific experiences of fresh victims of Hope's long-ago killer. Tory must both cope with the psychological pain of what she witnesses and follow the imperfect trail opened by her visions—for not only is the identity of Hope's killer within reach, that killer now has targeted Tory.

Enough? No way. Roberts has still more in mind. Her heroine is staunchly uninterested in men, having been badly burned by an early love: "I don't intend to be involved again. Once was enough." Naturally, there is a fabulous and caring man waiting for her in her home town of Progress, South Carolina. The identify of this love interest provides one of the powerful nodes of conjunction that connects up the now—Do I have this right?—five layers of Tory's story.

Childhood memories to face down, an unsolved murder, painful-but-persis-tent visions of violence, a love that she does not want yet cannot avoid . . . there's a lot happening in the life of Tory Bodeen, don't you agree? Is this plot overloaded? I would argue that it is effectively layered: It is the multiplicity of Tory's problems that makes
Carolina Moon
engrossing—and Nora Roberts one of America's best-selling storytellers.

How many layers have you heaped on your protagonist in your current manuscript? Just one? Heck, get busy! As you can see, even two layers may be too few to build a breakout novel.

______EXERCISE

Building Plot Layers

Step 1: What is the name of your protagonist? Write that down.

Step 2: What is the overall problem he must solve? Write that down.