Plot considerations
Feb. 14th, 2005 02:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
resonantI've been reading a book about plotting. I'm finding it very inspiring, though I'm not sure whether that means it's an outstanding book or not; it's possible that it's just wildly exciting for me to have even the most incomplete and flimsy sort of conceptual framework for thinking about story structure.
(For what it's worth, the book is Plot, the author is Ansen Dibell, and it's part of the Elements of Fiction Writing series from Writer's Digest.)
Ever since I started writing fanfic, I've been wondering: How did I manage to read so much fiction without getting an intuitive grasp of what's necessary to make a good plot? I mean, I picked up other aspects of fiction writing -- sentence structure and characterization and dialog and how to write explicit sex and so on -- just from reading; why didn't I do the same with plot?
And then I hit this quote:
And suddenly I realized: It's a personality trait.
See, I've got a puzzle brain. I solve problems. Present a knotty hypothetical situation to me, and I will automatically go through a process like this:
1. Clarify where we are.
2. Clarify where we want to be.
3. Find the shortest path between those two points.
(This is assuming that I've got enough distance on the situation to see it clearly, and that doing item 3 doesn't conflict with my fundamental laziness.)
Seriously: I'm good at doing that. It's fun for me to do that. But it's exactly the opposite of the kind of thinking that gives you a story, which apparently goes more like:
1. Clarify where we are.
2. Confuse the characters, so that they think they're someplace else. Two different someplace elses.
3. Clarify where each character wants to be, and make sure the two destinations are as far apart as possible.
4. Tie their ankles together, then send them off in the opposite direction of where they want to go, and at right angles to each other.
5. Every time they appear to be on the verge of getting somewhere, fling an angry wombat into their path.
(For what it's worth, the book is Plot, the author is Ansen Dibell, and it's part of the Elements of Fiction Writing series from Writer's Digest.)
Ever since I started writing fanfic, I've been wondering: How did I manage to read so much fiction without getting an intuitive grasp of what's necessary to make a good plot? I mean, I picked up other aspects of fiction writing -- sentence structure and characterization and dialog and how to write explicit sex and so on -- just from reading; why didn't I do the same with plot?
And then I hit this quote:
"Play with Murphy's Law. Try to think of what, within that fundamental situation, could go surprisingly wrong."
And suddenly I realized: It's a personality trait.
See, I've got a puzzle brain. I solve problems. Present a knotty hypothetical situation to me, and I will automatically go through a process like this:
1. Clarify where we are.
2. Clarify where we want to be.
3. Find the shortest path between those two points.
(This is assuming that I've got enough distance on the situation to see it clearly, and that doing item 3 doesn't conflict with my fundamental laziness.)
Seriously: I'm good at doing that. It's fun for me to do that. But it's exactly the opposite of the kind of thinking that gives you a story, which apparently goes more like:
1. Clarify where we are.
2. Confuse the characters, so that they think they're someplace else. Two different someplace elses.
3. Clarify where each character wants to be, and make sure the two destinations are as far apart as possible.
4. Tie their ankles together, then send them off in the opposite direction of where they want to go, and at right angles to each other.
5. Every time they appear to be on the verge of getting somewhere, fling an angry wombat into their path.