Whether your plot is driving your work or following in the wake of your characters, there are certain techniques to getting from A to B without losing your passengers. Try the classical approach...
While every book is different, almost all classic plots go through a number of stages: beginnings, initiating event, quest, surprise, critical choice, climax, change and conclusion. It’s these stages that a reader subconsciously expects to find when reading a novel, and by omitting them you can risk losing your audience. Of course, you don’t have to use the classical structure when writing – deviating from it can lead to some surprising and rewarding places – but it’s always best to learn the rules before you go renegade.
Every story has to have a beginning, an event that kick-starts everything else into motion, that disrupts the life of a character. This provocation – posh folk call this the ‘initiating event’ – can be a cataclysmic external change, like the breakout of war, or something internal, more personal to a character. It can be something so slight as to be almost unnoticeable.
It’s this initiating event that gets the ball rolling, that sets events in motion. It’s the thing that forces your characters out of their comfortable, everyday world – their once upon a time – into one that is strange and alien. When plotting out events, this initial provocation doesn’t have to come straight away (look at the extended opening of Sophie’s Choice), but it should happen fairly near the beginning. It’s the conflict that will make your characters act, either by choice or by necessity, and it’s their reactions to it that bring them to life, and make a plot worth following.
The effect of this initial event – this trigger – is to awaken your characters from an inactive state. In other words, it establishes a quest for them. Almost all classic stories can be read in this light: a character wants or needs something, and goes off to find it. Of course the plot for each new version of the story is different – they might need to find a lost love, be looking for meaning and self-revelation, seeking revenge, trying to get hold of some cash, growing from childhood to adulthood; it might even be laughable (think of poor old Don Quixote) – but the underlying story remains the same. A character’s quest doesn’t have to be external or physical – it could be a psychological or emotional journey. And the quest can change – although if your character starts out looking for power and ends up seeking love, the transition has to be believable.
When plotting, it’s vital to understand how the quest affects your character psychologically. You have to establish resistance for your character to fight against, obstacles they have to overcome. Why? Because paradoxically, the narrative surprises that prevent the character from enjoying a smooth journey to their goal are what pull the story forwards. Your characters’ responses to these setbacks and conflicts – their ‘critical choices’ (posh folk, again) – are what keep readers interested. This resistance can be anything: another character, a global catastrophe, a domestic misunderstanding, a love interest who’s not interested – but what it must do is provoke your character into making critical choices, and acting them out.
The result of these actions is the climax. A man’s father is murdered by his uncle (initiating event), the man decides to get revenge (critical choice) and murders his uncle (climax). The critical choice and the climax might occur almost in the same moment, or, as in Hamlet, they can take almost the entire length of the text to play out. A climax isn’t always the final stage in a plot, however, and you can have more than one, but they have to lead to something, otherwise why did they occur? If a climax doesn’t change a situation, then it’s spectacle – action for the sake of action. Climaxes are the culmination of your characters’ responses, and should change their emotional or physical status. If the surprises, critical choices and climaxes you use in your work don’t lead to this change, readers may end up disappointed.
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