Anyone Wanna Talk About Plot?

[lil_elvis]

It can vary for me. Sometimes it's a situation and finding how the characters deal with it.

More often it's a place I've been or a person I've met (or just observed), later, often in a totally unrelated context, such as driving to work, an idea sprouts about the place or person and goes from there, followed by a lot of questions. Where was he going, what was he doing there, who was he looking for, who did he meet?

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I tend to have a storyline in mind before I start writing. Like you, it's usually geared to some mentalimage, but unlike you, I tend to ruminate on the image and build a plot before I start writing.

On your scene, why not write it? Just that scene, without any concern for the story around it. I tend to believe your character will start talking to you as you write it and in telling you about himself, you will get some direction in how he got there and where he might be going.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

I tend to have a storyline in mind before I start writing. Like you, it's usually geared to some mentalimage, but unlike you, I tend to ruminate on the image and build a plot before I start writing.

On your scene, why not write it? Just that scene, without any concern for the story around it. I tend to believe your character will start talking to you as you write it and in telling you about himself, you will get some direction in how he got there and where he might be going.

Well stated, my dear lady.

 

[CharleyH]

Where do you get it? How do you develop it?

Just put your characters together and see what they do? Or see the situation first or feel the emotional tone? Planned or intuitive? Non-existent?

I tend to write stories from images that seize my imagination. I'll imagine two people together doing something, and then write my way towards it, and usually along the way a story develops that explains what they're doing.

Lately I've got a bunch of images but not a hint of a story. I think it's because these aren't porn stories or even erotic. Just horror. In one of them a kid digging in his backyard finds a giant vein under the earth filled with red mud. I don't know what it means or what happens, and I'm terribly stuck and fristrated.

I need a mental jump start.

And speaking of things under the earth, I read this interview with some author who said that the worst part of novel writing for her is the first 3 months, while she's trying to come up with a plot. She described it as "digging at granite with your fingernails."

That about sums it up.

Hm, good and tough question. For me it depends on whether I write for me or write for someone else, and writing for someone else generally consists of more conventional plot points than perhaps I, myself, enjoy.

Writing for me? I think plot is an individual thing, although we all have that dreaded universal unconscious and often come up with the same thematic points time and time again - but plot is individual since the forward movement solely depends on the characters. This makes me think that character and plot are like siamese twins, but that's another story .

The seed starts with what I know or have experienced as a primary player, secondary observer or even as just a thinker. It can be an instance of seeing someone (character) on a streetcar - the way they are dressed, or the germ can come from my childhood and as it might play out now. I am not sure than many people think of childhood as a sexual time, but it was a time, perhaps more than now, when we had more fascinations, curiosities and were willing to explore them with or without fear. (I'm not a child porn advocate by any means) I am just saying that the childhood memory sticks on things more .... and exaggeratingly ... which is what a sexual plot is - an exaggeration and a fantasy.

Developing the plot depends on all of the above, plus for me association. One plot may just play out in my mind and for another plot I may need 4 notebooks just to keep track of it. I think plotting is individual.

You give an example of where you are stuck, so I will give my feedback on this from a variety of my 'plotting POVs':

From the artist: red = clay = statue + vein = pulse and both = alchemy.

From the feminist philosopher: the pulse of the earth, a discovery of mother/nature Rousseau/Masoch/ Woodsworthian masochism - purity of masochism rather than the bastardized contemporary version. (horror in itself)

From the Sci-fi fan: Selena touched on this - but it could in a way be an umbilical cord like thing - buried = life/death dichotomy of sex. Plot = from life to life (vein) thru death (dirt) but fear in getting there. Sexually it could be sex is the only point a person feels both alive and close to death via petit mort?

Everything else I could say would be typical I think, but here is an example of my personal process: answering your question, getting to the germ thought and sorting (germinating) out the best plot avenue for me. Mucho luck Doc - hope you find your way.

 

[Carmenica Diaz]

1. The basic idea (what I call the what if...)
2. Characters (names, aspects)
3. How the characters react within the basic plot (see 1.)

 

[Guest]

I usually know what I want to happen in the story.... in a vague kind of flash-forward type of way....

unfortunately my problem is getting the characters from their 'beginning' to where my head is already in the story

 

[Stella_Omega]

I just did something I've never done before- I sat down and wrote out the plot for a cycle of poems. Since I've never written poetry on purpose before ,I have no bad habits to break, I guess!

mybe it will follow over into my prose?

Nawwww...

 

[Varian P]

Plots have emerged in drastically different ways for the stories I've written/am writing/am dreaming of writing.

My first novel was born, essentially, of a single scene which I found tremendously arousing, and where the arousal came from a feeling of fear bordering on terror. But I had massive constraints in that I didn't want the fearful character to be a ridiculously delicate flower, and I didn't want the terror-inspring guy to be a creep, so I toiled long and hard to develop a plot that would generate that fear within those constraints. That little baby now weighs in at about 200k words.

For the embryonic novel spawned during NaNo I had the bare skeleton of a story arc in mind, starting writing from the opening scene, and just plowed through, beginning to end, and the characters and the flesh of the story just took form as I wrote.

Now I've got an idea for a thriller, with loads of suspense and mystery and a couple crazy twists, and I'm meticulously laying out the minutiae of the plot before I write a single word, because all the details are going to be interdependent.

 

[Varian P]

Lately I've got a bunch of images but not a hint of a story. I think it's because these aren't porn stories or even erotic. Just horror. In one of them a kid digging in his backyard finds a giant vein under the earth filled with red mud. I don't know what it means or what happens, and I'm terribly stuck and fristrated.

I need a mental jump start.

The first thing that popped into my mind as I read this was the recent "War of the Worlds" flick, with giant biomorphic machines digesting human bodies and spraying the liquefied flesh through tentacle-like tubes.

In a completely different direction, the red mud could be found to have some metallurgical or chemical property that makes it desireable, but could ultimately wreak havoc on humankind in one way or another.

It could be a subterranean river of mystical ooze; a protoplasmic biproduct of human evil.

Good luck jump-starting. Get yourself a nice pick axe and spare your nails.

-V

 

[Unsung Muse]

Lately I've got a bunch of images but not a hint of a story... In one of them a kid digging in his backyard finds a giant vein under the earth filled with red mud. I don't know what it means or what happens, and I'm terribly stuck and fristrated.

I need a mental jump start.

If anyone can turn that stark horrific image into an erotic story, you can (not that it couldn’t be non-erotic, of course). There is a dark and wonderful poem in it, at least.

 

[Green_Gem]

I usually start with a couple of ideas floating about in my head, from which I mentally create a plot. By the time I start writing I have the main characters fleshed out in my mind and I have a basic idea of how the story is going to be set and the manner in which it is going to move forward. But I find that when I actually start writing the real flesh and bones comes out. The characters then take on lives and 'personalities' which invariably influences the way the story turns out. I seldom have a fixed ending in mind and usually have no title in mind until the very end.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

his town is built all unbeknownst over the beating heart of Qadgop the Mercotan!!

How did you know? You've been reading my notes.

From the artist: red = clay = statue + vein = pulse and both = alchemy.

From the feminist philosopher: the pulse of the earth, a discovery of mother/nature Rousseau/Masoch/ Woodsworthian masochism - purity of masochism rather than the bastardized contemporary version. (horror in itself)

From the Sci-fi fan: Selena touched on this - but it could in a way be an umbilical cord like thing - buried = life/death dichotomy of sex. Plot = from life to life (vein) thru death (dirt) but fear in getting there. Sexually it could be sex is the only point a person feels both alive and close to death via petit mort?

How much would you charge to whip me while you talk like that?

Seriously, I was thinking of incorporating alchemy. People used to think that metals grew in the earth like fruit grows on trees. Base metals like lead and tin were just thought to be immature gold, so a lot of their weird practices were attempts ro "ripen" base metals , kind of like you'd put a tomato on the window sill.

Anyhow, I think the problem I'm having comes from dealing with non-porn for the first time in a long time. Porn is basically easy. Once your strip away the bells and whistles, it's two people making love, and the sex act itself has all the elements you need in a drama. You just have to get them in bed together

Once you leave porn behind, you're working without structure, and anything could happen. It's kind of bewildering and disorienting to me.

On the other hand, I think there's something to Charley's weird subtextual analysis. Finding a vein in the earth made me think (subconsciously, actually) of other hidden forces moving below the surface in these kids' lives, and I immediately started thinking that one of these kids' parents are getting divorced and he doesn't know how to cope. Another one of the kids is 13 and on the edge of puberty, and so things are moving around in his body as well. What happens then is still up in the air, but I'm starting to see the characters now.

Weird how that works.

 

[cookiejar]

 

[Aurora Black]

If I told you where I get my plot ideas I would be laughed off the board. Suffice it to say they usually work for me.

Why on earth would you think that? I wouldn't laugh at you.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Seriously, I was thinking of incorporating alchemy. People used to think that metals grew in the earth like fruit grows on trees. Base metals like lead and tin were just thought to be immature gold, so a lot of their weird practices were attempts ro "ripen" base metals , kind of like you'd put a tomato on the window sill.

But it's also a deep spiritual practice, and in Jungian circles is a modern metaphor for transformation... turning our psychological lead into gold. There is an element to the alchemical of not needing to separate the material dimension from the interpretive, symbolic or philosophical which is intriguing...

and at its most basic, alchemy is an initiation... perfect stuff for the life of a young boy...

but if it's taking a sexual bent at all, alchemy is all about the tension of the opposites... and the bringing together of those opposites, after applying great heat (or psychic energy/libido, in Jung's case)... he's talking about the inner marriage, but it is reflected in the outer, too... and of course, the bringing together of the conscious and unconscious...

rich, ripe stuff there!!

 

[Guest]