Turning Points

Turning points keep your story moving in surprising and organic directions to more fully engage the reader and audience and satisfy universal expectations.

I spoke about Turning Points in Step #11 of the wacky Plot Series posted on YouTube. 

I move with less resistance and greater joy if I follow the energy. The energy has taken me to presenting the information caught on the video camera rather than post the words here. 

So, rather than read plot tips, stop by and watch them.

Plot Series: How Do I Plot a Novel, Memoir, Screenplay?

The steps are presented in an organized format from Step One to Step Thirty-Two. We film Step 12 tomorrow.

Feel free to randomly click on any video. The 5 to 8 minute presentation will leave you energizes and with a new sensibility of your story.

This is all new to me. Hope you'll follow me into the great unknown...

Plot Series: How Do I Plot a Novel, Memoir, Screenplay?

Resistance and Writing

Saturday's plot workshop reminded me of how powerful writers' resistance is. I had forgotten.

The group was intimate and our time short. Plot in 5 hours working through lunch. I know from experience that all plot workshops build to a crisis point in the form of overwhelm generally expressed by the highly creative, big picture writers. Either the linear, detail oriented writers aren't as overtly demonstrative as the other group or the plot techniques of standing back to arrange the scenes of a story in a linear form are not as daunting for them.

A writer I had warned (foreshadowed) that he'd come to hate me, declared it so at the beginning of the 4th hour. At around the same time, another writer stood up. First her face crumbled, then she fell apart. I won't go into the details here but before long she reclaimed her authority over herself and the first writer assured me he was only kidding.

I'm grateful for the wake-up call. I had done what I promised myself I would never do. I lost touch with how it feels to be convinced I'd never understand plot. My mission is not to rob you of your power but to empower you. It took me nearly 12 years to learn what I was trying to teach in 5 hours on Saturday. What can I say? I'm a concrete learner. People like me weren't teaching plot with pictures when I was learning to write. 

It's different now. Plot is the cool thing. I'm glad.

But, I never want to forget knowing the part resistance plays in interfering with forward progress. 

Both writers came into the workshop knowing exactly what part of their story was not working. The first writer had been told his beginning didn't work by very important gatekeepers in the trade. The second writer knew her crisis wasn't quite right.

They understood they needed to fix something in their story on an intellectual level. The knowing had not traveled deeply enough, making it impossible for either one of them to give up what they had written. First came denial. Then anger. Finally, I believe and hope, they left with concrete "fixes" though, I fear, work is left to be done before either one of them come to a place of true acceptance. 

My question is: how do we so easily take ownership and control over the creative process? When does that happen? At first, it's a marvel, a miracle, a delight when words flood out of us from some unknown and sacred place. 

The story comes through us. Our job is to present what comes in a pleasing form to the reader and audience. That takes setting ourselves aside and opening our minds for the greatest good of the story. 

Cause and Effect in Plot

Without cause and effect there is no plot. Without cause and effect, events are simply episodic happenings.

Writers who write by the seat of their pants, or pantsers, versus plotters, those writers who pre-plot before and during writing, are able to craft entire stories through cause and effect.

This past weekend at the SCBWI retreat in Northern California, I met a classic pantser, Kathleen Duey an outrageously generous and creative and successful author of more than 50 books for children, middle graders, and young adults. She, and others like her, are able to write scene after scene by asking: because that happens in this scene, what does the character do next? Because of that, what does she after that?

I used to say simply, because that happens, what happens next? Kathleen's more focused strategy is even better. Because of what just happened in that scene, what does the character do next?

Not all scenes can be or need to be linked by cause and effect, but the more scenes that are causally driven, organically rising up from the action that takes place from one scene to the next, the better.