Write Great Fiction--Plot & Structure Read Online Free PDF Page A

of plotter you might be? Are you suspicious of plot? Are you more concerned with the “gossamer wings” of literary style? If so, consider how your writing might be doubled in strength if you learn some plotting craft.
EXERCISE 2
    Take some of your favorite novels off the shelf and analyze them using the LOCK system. See how each element is at work in the books you love. Use these questions to help you:
What is it about the Lead character that captures you?
What is it the Lead is trying to get or get away from?
When did the story kick into “high gear”?
What was the main opposition to the Lead’s objective?
How did the ending make you feel? Why did it work?
EXERCISE 3
    Write a quick plot for your current idea. Use four lines, one line each for LOCK.
My Lead is a ______.
Her objective is to ______.
She is confronted by ______ who oppose(s) her because ______.
The ending will be a knockout when ______.
    If you have filled in the blanks, you have the skeleton for a solid novel. The rest of this book will help you flesh it out.
EXERCISE 4
    Start a collection of your favorite “spices” from the novels you read. Look for:
Unique settings
Colorful characters
Dialogue that zings
Scenes with tremendous impact
    When you come across these things, analyze them. Why do they work? What techniques did the author use?

Chapter 2
Structure: What Holds Your Plot Together
    If you build it, they will come.
    â€” Otherwordly advice from
Field of Dreams
    And if you structure it, they will read.
    When my son, Nate, was four, he wrote a novel. It was four pages, each page containing one sentence. Very Hemingway-esque.
    Nate spelled the words phonetically. Here is the entire novel, sans the crayon illustrations. The spelling has been updated for modern readers:
Robin Hood went riding. A bad guy came. They fought. He won.
    Now it is true he needed some work on pronouns and subject agreement. But the fact is he wrote a perfectly structured story. Somehow Nate had absorbed the essentials of plot construction — perhaps from Dad’s stories at bedtime or the movies he was starting to love on tape and television.
    The lessons drawn from this modest example can help us understand the value of structure in a novel. Simply put, structure is what assembles the parts of a story in a way that makes them accessible to readers. It is the orderly arrangement of story material for the benefit of the audience.
    Plot is about
elements
, those things that go into the mix of making a good story even better.
    Structure is about
timing
— where in the mix those elements go.
    When you read a novel that isn’t quite grabbing you, the reason is probably structure. Even though it may have good characters, snappy dialogue, and intriguing settings, the story isn’t unfolding in the optimum fashion.
    Of course, the author may protest that this is
his
way, and how dare anyone dictate what’s right and what isn’t about his novel!
    That’s an author’s prerogative. But if we are talking about
connection with readers
, we have to talk about structure.
THE THREE-ACT STRUCTURE
    Why talk about a three-act structure?
    Because it works. It has since Aristotle sat down to figure out what makes drama.
    Why does the three-act structure work? Probably because it is in line with how we live our lives. A three-step rhythm is inherent in much that we do.
    As the writing teacher Dwight Swain pointed out, we are born, we live, and we die. It feels like three acts. Childhood is relatively short and introduces us to life. That long section in the middle is where we spend most of our time. Then we have a last act that wraps everything up.
    Daily life is like that, too. We get up in the morning and get ready to go to work. We work or do whatever we do. Eventually we wrap up the day’s business and hit the sack.
    We live each day in three acts.
    On a micro level, three acts is typical. Say we are confronted with a problem. We