Plotting a novel can get complicated, fast. Plot can be as simple as beginning, middle or end. Alternatively, you can use complicated plot structures that make your literature professor salivate. There a plenty of resources out there to help you improve the way you plot your novel, but rarely do aspiring authors get to ask questions about plot with which we really struggle.
This week’s episode is structured as a question and answer forum. I scoured the internet, social media and picked the brains of fellow aspiring authors for the questions they wished they could ask. Then I provide answers from my research and own writing practice.
Key knowledge you will acquire in this episode:
For more information on related content check out my website at www.TheRealGaryKhan.com
Additional Resources:
Music Credits:
Is it fine if i kiss you? by Barradeen | https://soundcloud.com/barradeen
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en_US
Plotting a novel can get complicated, fast. Plot can be as simple as beginning, middle or end. Alternatively, you can use complicated plot structures that make your literature professor salivate. There a plenty of resources out there to help you improve the way you plot your novel, but rarely do aspiring authors get to ask questions about plot with which we really struggle.
This week’s episode is structured as a question and answer forum. I scoured the internet, social media and picked the brains of fellow aspiring authors for the questions they wished they could ask. Then I provide answers from my research and own writing practice.
Key knowledge you will acquire in this episode:
For more information on related content check out my website at www.TheRealGaryKhan.com
Additional Resources:
Music Credits:
Is it fine if i kiss you? by Barradeen | https://soundcloud.com/barradeen
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en_US
Welcome, everybody. Welcome. All right, settle down. Everyone, please. Ladies and gentlemen, please please settle down. Settle down. Thank you. Thank you. Never before have we faced such an unprecedented time. If you give me a chance I shall assist you with unraveling the mysteries of plot and will vanquish this villainous thing called getting stuck. Now settle down, settle down. Now we shall we begin. Greetings, Kryptic fans and welcome back to another episode of The Author's Journey with your boy Gary Khan. TIme to get on with the show. Before we get into the show, a big shout out to Greg from Barcelona. Thank you for your support of the show. Thank you for sharing it with the masses and helping us reach new audiences. We appreciate your support, good sir. Blessings to you. In this episode, I'll answer the questions on plot that have challenged authors for centuries. You may not struggle with plot, but many authors do. Hollywood struggles, we can see the authors of cheesy novels struggle, and the general decline of our literary quality has allowed poor plots to slip through the cracks. Take the recent Star Wars franchise movies for example. I'll give you a few tidbits later on in the episode which just shows that that kind of story is riddled with blood caps galore. And you don't want to be one of those authors. They are whole sub reddits dedicated to those kinds of authors. So ultimate goal is stay off the forums. Don't make the same mistake so many writers do, and ignore the lessons to be learned on plot, strap into your seats, and let's get cracking on the questions you wish you knew the answers to. Our first question is, what is the best plot structure to use when plotting a novel? And when should the various plot points appear in a novel? I've written an article on this so you can check it out on my blog. At TheRealGaryKhan.com, definitely a must read. What structures do you use? There are many out there on the internet. You can research any one of them but the ones that I've proposed have nine plot points or PPs. Plot point number one is introduction. And this obviously happens from zero to around about 25%. Then you have your plot point two, which is the inciting event at 25%. Then you have your rising action, which sits around between 25 to 50%. Then you have the turning point, which is your middle, and that's it 50% then you have the puzzle, which is between 50 to 60%, the trials 60 to 85%, the climax 85 to 90%, the falling action 90 to 95% and the denominator or resolution 95% to 100%. And that's really the structure and where in the novel, you want to have your plot points scattered. What are each of these introduction you introduce your world, your characters and the conflict. The inciting event is an A is something that occurs that sets your hero on a particular journey. It's a point of no return. Once that happens, they cannot go back to the old life. And in some aspects and other literary genres, it's particularly cold for call to action. The rising action is your pinch points. This is where you make things complicated for your character, you get them further invested into the story, you make it personal by having the villain do something that just twists the knife in the back of the character that just drives them forward. The turning point is where a key set of information is revealed, or a turning point in the story where your character starts to really understand what's happening, and really takes to heart the new cause, and starts to champion that forward. The puzzle is where you have some set of information that's required to ultimately defeat the villain or conquer evil, as it were. The trials are the various tests before the climax where you're here proves himself or herself, capable of defeating the Dark Lord or the evil one or the great evil, whatever that might be. The climax is the great epic battle, or the major internal resolution or realization that your character has. If the plot is more internal based, the falling action is where you start to tie up loose ends and bring all your subplots to a close. And then the denominator or resolution is where you really finish off the book, the ending. So definitely check out my blog post on that topic, where I go into a lot more detail around each one of the plot points. The next question, my plot is not compelling, why. Basically, you are missing crucial plot points, or the ones you do not have or do have are not being used correctly. They are areas that writers often neglect which can make or break your story. Most novels slip on the Rising Action, the Turning Point and The Puzzle. In other words around the middle. The second biggest issue is usually in the inciting event. It does not get the reader invested enough. The third biggest issue is in the beginning. Usually, the way you start your novel doesn't capture the reader's attention. Interestingly enough statistics is that most readers will potential readers put a book down around after five pages. If you don't grab them in those first five pages, and make them care about your character and the conflict that they're facing. They won't continue reading it. The fourth biggest issue is with the climax. The Epic final battle has to be epic, and it has to be unique. Stop saving the day with luck or the power of love. I'll use an example to illustrate. In the new Star Wars series. We have raid, a young person supposedly strongly The force, and then you have Kylo Ren, who is a descendant of Darth Vader, he trained under the greatest Jedi of the time, Luke Skywalker, and effectively not only was a Jedi but then twisted and became a Sith Lord, and has basically skill sets from both sides of the force with prodigious skill. This is the person who can stop a lightsaber blast in midair. The force is so strong within him. And yet, lady who has never picked up a lightsaber before to save a life, lift one and beats that guy. Now we are tired of seeing this kind of thing in literature. And you can see the big epic battle, the hero stumbles on to success. It's an old Hollywood trick. And the new fans and the modern era are tired of seeing that kind of cliche run out. So make sure you avoid that kind of thing. Make the epic better. Epic and make the hero really have something to lose, potentially they could lose their lives, their arms, something their minds, whatever. But give us something to do to know that there could be real loss or real stakes for the hero. Otherwise you just have an action, old Hollywood action when the henchmen can't land a single bullet on your hero. What is up with that? The fifth major issue usually with plot is in the end, your ending just sucks. It does not satisfy the reader in Now again, when you conclude a book, understand that you are making a promise at the start and you have to deliver on that promise at the end. If you are writing a rom com, or romantic movie, the reader is expecting the two to get together unless you're writing a tragedy or something else like that. For whatever it is that you promise you have to deliver on So you need to give your readers a satisfactory end. I can use Harry Potter is a prime example. The series ended with the readers wanting a lot more, it left the readers wanting. As the saying goes, don't do that. You don't want to end off a series in such a manner, that the conclusion is not satisfactory to the fans. They've been in stuck out with you for many years as they read through your books. You've got to give them something. The next question is, how do I use flashbacks and flash forwards effectively, in my plot, especially at the beginning? You can experiment moving things around. But I would say never start with your inciting event. If you have not got the skills to get us invested early. You can do this in your second or third book if you really want to where you take us in medias arrays in the middle of things, but never in a first book, and I'll explain why you've never seen a series start in the middle as the first episode. Right? The first thing you see is in the middle of some action where you are not invested as a reader, you really don't care who wins that good defeat evil or evil defeats good. It doesn't matter to you because you don't know who to support. An example of this is the series lost. They did very well. Even though they use a lot of flash forwards and flashbacks. They don't start off with that. The story follows a logical start introducing the characters or going on a plane ride, and it shows the relationships and the various things that they are each dealing with. And then it goes to the inciting event where the plane crashes on a mysterious island and they realize that how is not going to come because something weird is going on. And not only that, they realize that they are others on the island. Dun dun dun. That is perfect. Once you've established that later on in the seasons, and later on in the series, write various episodes, whatever you want to call it, you can now introduce flashbacks and flash forwards because you've got the general structure of who's who, and you understand the conflict, and why it matters to you as a reader. That is key. Now that that's out of the way, what you can do is start with the rising action, or the trials just before the climax. That's again, a cliche thing, but that's usually the best way or place plot point to bring forward in front of your introduction. Then jump back to before the story began once you settle in for either the rising action or the trials. In fact, you can use anyone and try to be unique and creative with how you do it. But basically take the plot points as they structured and juggle them around. But you don't want to mess with that too much because you will leave your readers feeling whiplash. Another thing use flashbacks and flash forwards sparingly, it is cliched. And you can see that every season of every episode of every series uses that. Right so Don't do it. Don't overdo it. It's overdone already. Make sure not to give too much away. Or, for example, think about the powers the magic the concepts or the abilities that you gain to use in the start when you're going in medias res. If we have not been exposed to these concepts yet, you can't use them. You can't talk about your MC or main character using the flippity Bob to attack sinister henchmen. If we don't know what a flippity Bob is. Seriously, what is that shit? The next question how closely does theme relate to plot? The theme in a story is the underlying message or big idea in our other words, what critical belief about life is the author trying to convey? This often transcends cultural barriers. It's a universal concept in nature. When the theme is universal, it touches on the human experience regardless of race or language. And this is what story really means. Often a piece of writing will have more than one theme. So pick an idea that you are trying to convey. Write a problem statement in relation to your story. For example, this is a story that sets out to prove that a man chasing justice will ultimately fail in obtaining that justice if they use unjust means to achieve it. That's a good hypothesis. Now you've got to prove it. Ask yourself, does each of my plot points help me answer the question, does it point to that theme, and at the end of the novel, has the hypothesis been proven or disproven? This will help you, especially in your the nominal resolution when you tie things off neatly at the end of the story. And that's where a lot of authors go wrong. That way you can see the theme is very closely related to plot, because it is trickled in the plot is the canvas that you use to form the painting, which is your story and all the other elements that go into a dialogue character setting. The next question is Do I still have to plot a novel if I am a pantser? For the non literary types listening to the show? a plotter is someone who plans out the novel before they write it. A pencil is someone who flies by the seat of the pants, meaning they don't plan out anything or plan very little. Some people like me call themselves planners, which means they're in a little bit of a both. According to Goodreads, some of the most famous plotters include JK Rowling L. Stein. And john Grisham. Now Grisham says, "The more time I spend on the outline, the easier the book is to write. And if I cheat on the outline, I get in trouble with the book." Some important words the some famous tenses include Margaret Atwood, Pierce Brown, and Stephen King. And for myself, if anyone wants to know, I'm both. Regardless of which type you are, you have to understand that you've got to have some modicum of planning when approaching your work. The best writers can be pencils because they have spent a lot of time practicing and perfecting their craft to such a point that they plan well or have come up with a method for writing that they just repeat in use, often, perhaps a structure that they set in the minds. If you are still new to the game, plan your novel and therefore rely more heavily on plotting upfront the future you will thank you If not, you will get stuck in your novel and have to go back to the drawing board and start again several times. This has happened to me. It's hella frustrating. So take it from someone who knows, save yourself the trouble. And my last question, what are great resources to use to learn how to plug better? That's a fantastic question. I have some books that have really made a difference in my own writing, and I'll share them here with you. But there will also be in the description of this podcast episode so you can check them out there with the links to Amazon where you can purchase them. The first one is How To Write A Damn Good Novel I and II by James N.Frey also, Plot and Structure Techniques And Exercises For Crafting A Plot That Grips Readers From The Start To Finish by James Scott Bell, a definite must read. You can also check am W.M. Weiland's two books. The first is Outlining Your Novel, and the second is Structuring Your Novel: Essentials For Writing An Outstanding Story. Then the last one I want to note is The Anatomy Of Story: 22 Steps To Becoming A Master Storyteller by John Truby. These are fantastic resources that will just help you take your plotting to the next level. As we've seen, plot is so essential, it is the core, the foundation on which everything else is built. So you really have to go out of your way to make sure you have the right plot structures that you plan your novel out well. And then you have the freedom of just writing the damn thing and the security of knowing that it will turn out well because you've planned it accordingly. Now, this episode has been part of my plot series. Next week, I go into some more details around specifics in plot so take a look at those episodes and stay tuned for that. Alternatively, you can go into my blog as a have mentioned early on in the episode that has a lot more details, technically around how to go about doing this, which should also be very helpful to you. If you've enjoyed the show, you know what to do like it, share it. And make sure to subscribe so you can get the latest and greatest episodes as they release every Wednesday around the world, no matter where you are. That's all for me so far. I hope you've enjoyed it. I hope you've learned how to plot better novels. Now go and plot the damn thing and take it to the next level. I can't wait to read your novels. For the Kryptic fans out there. Send me your stuff. I'm in desperate need of great novels. And now you know how to plot them. So bonus. I'm just happy because I've made my contribution in making sure that we ensure the plots once and for all. But that's it for myself as the Shona people say Sarah mutia Transcribed by https://otter.ai