Writing Outside the Box - Writing Plot
Scroll to the end of the blog to watch the video tutorial for this session or read on for a full transcript of the workshop:
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Introduction:
Every story has a plot. The plot is simply the sequence in which events happen. You might not realise it, but you use plot almost every time you have a conversation with another person. You naturally make subconscious decisions about how you’re going to explain what happened when you went to the supermarket to buy a pint of milk or when you share a funny anecdote about something that happened to you on holidays. Your brain automatically thinks through which detail to share first and then makes a link to the next detail, ordering them into a kind of sequence. Imagine how confusing it would be to listen to someone explaining how to brush your teeth if you began in the middle of the action, then jumped to the part where you put your toothbrush away and finished by squeezing out the toothpaste. It would be really hard to follow and wouldn’t make much sense. Plot helps to shape a story so it’s easy for the reader or listener to follow. Without plot nothing would happen in your story. It would simply be description.
Plot doesn’t have to be really complicated. A story can be built around a small amount of action and can still be really intriguing if it’s properly developed. You might like to spend some time reading a few short stories and looking for the plot line. Ask yourself what happens? What are the consequences of this action? What makes it believable and interesting? I’ve included a tiny short story of my own for you to consider. If you have a little more time I’d recommend reading a couple of fantastic short stories where a small amount of action generates a huge amount of plot. I’d recommend “The Quiet” by Carys Davies, “Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff and “So Much Water So Close to Home” by Raymond Carver. Or you could have a go at reading this short Postcard Story.
“TV Aerial”
After the storm we couldn’t get a good picture on our telly. Dad lifted the aerial down and fiddled around with it for a bit but the picture on screen was still fuzzy and pixelated. He went outside and stood in the garden holding the aerial aloft. Mum stuck her head out the living room window and shouted at him, “that’s a wee bit better, Sammy. Maybe try the signal a bit further down the street.” Dad huffed. It was beginning to drizzle. But he still did as he was told and walked towards our neighbours’ house holding the aerial above his head. As soon as Dad was standing outside the Andersons’ drive the picture on our telly changed suddenly and we found ourselves watching the inside of our neighbours’ living room. We could hear everything they said as they sat on the sofa eating dinner. Further experiments with the TV aerial revealed that the same thing happened with our neighbours on the other side and across the road. Mum was delighted. She said it was almost as good as having Eastenders back on again. She sent Dad out with the TV aerial every evening. Dad was not so delighted. It was cold outside, and his arm was sore, and he never got watch the telly himself anymore.
When it comes to writing stories there are many plot structures you can download and follow. Some are really detailed and complicated. I prefer to keep things simple. In this session we’ll be following a really easy formula for writing a story. All you’ll need is a book or magazine of some sort and a bit of imagination.
Interactive Writing Exercises:
· Beginning writers often make the mistake of including too much in their short stories. Short stories are focused and tend to explore one perspective of a bigger picture. It helps me to think of taking a physical frame and placing it round a small section of a picture or painting with lots of detail in it. The story focuses in on what’s happening in this picture.
· Find a photo, picture or image online with lots of action. Take a good look at it. Choose a small section of this image and draw a frame round it.
· Take a piece of paper and write a rough description of what’s happening inside the frame you’ve drawn. Be as detailed as you can but don’t worry about using fancy language. This is only background for your story.
· What you’ve done is create a context; a world for your story to be set in.
· Every story includes three basic elements. Together these form a very simple plot structure. 1. Inciting incident. 2. Action 3. Consequence.
· Let me give you a quick example, then I’ll take you through each of these steps.
· If I were using the TV aerial story above, the inciting incident is the TV breaking, the action is Dad being sent out to try and pick up a signal, and the consequence is the entire family getting to snoop on their neighbours’ lives.
· Let’s break the steps down. Firstly, you need an inciting incident. This just means a change or a crisis; something which kicks the story off.
· For this exercise we’ll cheat a little. Pick up a book, any book and flick through ‘til you find a line of text where something’s happened or changed. You can steal this as your inciting incident and use it as the first line to kick off your story.
· Write this line down down. Think about it happening in the context of the background you took notes on earlier. What might happen because of this inciting incident? Make a note of it. This is the action part of your story.
· Finally, ask yourself what are the consequences of these actions? Write this down.
· You’ve just created a simple plot structure for a story.
· Pick a narrator for your story; this is the person who’s telling the story. It could be someone included within the frame you’ve drawn, it could be an outsider looking in or it could even be what’s known as an omniscient narrator, (this is just an anonymous observer who, like God, knows all the details of the story).
· Spend some time filling in the details, using what you know of your background to flesh out the three points of your plot, turning it into a story.
· Try to write between 250 and 400 words, making sure you cover inciting incident, action and consequence.
· If there’s time, take a few minutes to share your story with the group.
Example:
I’ve lifted a copy of an Agatha Christie novel, opened it at random, and chosen the line, “he was literally down to his last meal,” for my inciting incident. The image I’ve chosen is a famous painting called “Nighthawks” by the American artist Edward Hopper. It captures a couple and a man at a late night coffee bar with a single waiter serving them. I’ve chosen to draw my frame around the waiter and tell the story in an omniscient voice, as if someone’s watching him and knows all about his life. Try to identify all three elements of the plot in this story. I’ve kept my story reasonably short but feel free to write a couple of pages if you’re enjoying your story.
The waiter was literally down to his last meal. Last week’s pay cheque had already disappeared into the gas meter and he was surviving on the scraps of whatever the customers left behind. He had to be careful. If the boss caught him eating leftover piecrusts or drinking the dregs of kids’ milkshakes, he’d be out on his ear. He’d been down and out without this job; he wouldn’t even be able to make rent. It was a slow night. Just three customers: a couple and a single guy to his left. The guy was completely out of it, downing black coffee in a futile attempt to sober up for the walk home. The waiter had his eye on the dame to the right; a good looking kind of women with flame red hair. She, on the other hand, only had eyes for her date. She was all over him, her whole body turned away from the bar, so it was easy enough, to reach over the counter and palm the twenty buck note from the top of her purse. While his right hand was otherwise distracted topping up her coffee, his left hand was in and out before he even really knew what he was doing. Twenty bucks was the difference between some stranger’s half eaten sandwich and a fresh hot dog from the vendor on the corner. Twenty bucks meant not having to pull another double shift this weekend. Twenty bucks would buy milk and bread and smokes and put money enough in the meter to keep the apartment heated all week. Twenty bucks, it turned out, was enough to get the waiter not just fired, but arrested too. You should never underestimate an off-duty cop. He’d learnt that one the hard way. The guy to his left might’ve looked absolutely wasted, slobbering all over the counter but he’d still been watching. Off duty cops are never strictly off-duty.
Developed, written and presented by Jan Carson
Produced by Alan Meban
Funded by Arts Council NI
