Walter on Plots

Plots are like Musical Movements

This is the Sean Stewart description of plotting: the symphonic theory of the novel. You can’t have fortissimo all the way.

1. First movement is the sonata. Introduce the theme and then a variation on the theme in a second key, and then variations that blend the two.
2. The second movement is usually slow, passionate, emotional. Very different than the first movement.
3. The third movement is a lively scherzo or minuet.
4. The fourth movement is a new theme that blends with the rest and then finishes with a boom! Themes appear and reappear here.

Types of Stories/Narratives

1. The story of resolution, in which there is a problem, then attempts to resolve it, then either the failure or success of those attempts. Example: Nova by Samuel Delany.
2. The story of revelation, in which the character must discover something, often about themselves. Examples: stories by James Joyce, H.P. Lovecraft’s "The Shadow over Innsmoth", Bob Shaw's“The Light of Other Days”.
3. The story of character, in which the central character is put under pressure in order to show the reader what s/he is like. Example: “Lot” by Ward Moore.
4. The story of paralysis, in which a passive character is not in control. This is usually not seen in genre fiction.
5. Trick endings, which used to be a staple of science fiction.
6. The story of decision, in which a character must make a decision. The trick is to surprise the reader with the result.
7. The story of explanation, in which a character is puzzled until they figure the explanation out. Example: stories where the ending turns out to be “We are all living in a jar of Tang”.
8. The mystery story, where a character must find out something that is hidden.

Stories can fit into multiple categories – you can blend and mix these as the themes of one’s story.

Some additional types of plots:

• The “one damn thing after another” type story.
• Deliberately unplotted, a technique which is for experts only. Examples: The English Patient (book, not film); Course of the Heart by M.J. Harrison.
• An idea with variations. Examples: Heinlein’s juvenilia, particularly The Puppet Masters.

Avoid plot coupon stories: “First, get the Spear of Wanking, then the Cup of Congratulation, then travel to the Mountains of Metaphor for the Simile of Smiting." In a quest story, each stage changes the hero. You have to bring something to the formula that makes it unpredictable.

Ways of Plotting

• The Daniel Abraham method – he sets a word limit, figures out 14 chapters, in which each chapter is four scenes of 1500 words each.
• The Stephen Brust method – he doesn’t know what he’ll write, just starts and is charming and entertaining while he writes towards a big scene in the middle. If something is introduced in chapter three, it gets worked out three chapters from the end.
• The Walter Jon Williams method – Like a multi-stage rocket or multi-act play, with one huge reversal in each stage. Work out the three or four big scenes in each stage and write towards those. Lather, rinse, repeat as necessary, with the biggest at the end.

Mickey Spillane example with a reversal in the last word.

One reason to have multiple people on stage is because that creates many, many options. (Connie).

Plot whole-heartedly – “If you’re going to bump it, thump it when you bump it.” (Gypsy)

Get really close to characters and they will behave in the ways they should.

While I was off at Taos, apparently the Armageddon message boards blew up when a post about how the world had gone to hell since women got the vote was moderated. I just deleted two nasty posts and warned the posters, and then had someone earnestly tell me that they were “just making fun of political correctness.”

But here’s the thing:

For one, those boards are often the first thing a potential player sees about the game. I don’t know that threads like “Girl-boobs” are the best representation of the community, but okay. I know that posts where people use the word “faggot” or tell people to “get back into the kitchen, bitch” step over the line, though.

We want more female players. One of the strategies for getting them is not to have a board where they are marginalized, objectified, or insulted on a daily basis. This is one of the reasons that we DO have more female players than similar games.

Beyond that, language shapes our perception of reality. If I saw someone beating a child, I’d step in. If I see someone else perpetuating thought models that allow, for example, Matthew Shephard to be beaten to death because of his sexuality, in a place that I sponsor and pay to have maintained, I will step in again. That doesn’t happen on my dime. Never. People are welcome to talk about how horrible it is that their free speech is being curtailed. It’s not a right that is extended on those boards, and we’ve been at great pains to make that clear. And yet, every year, it comes up once again.

Walter on Plotting II

Put people in a situation and apply Murphy’s law. - Connie

Controlling Information

            Controlling information is critical to suspense and keeping the story moving. Shock and suspense is critical to the story. You can do anything as long as you set it up so there will be suspense.

Each scene should do one of two things, and preferably both, while invoking at least three of the five senses:

1. Tell something about the character
2. Advance the plot

The only exception is a tour de force scene, a scene where such skill is displayed that the reader can excuse the fact that it doesn’t do either of those.

Examples: Conventions of War by Walter Jon Williams, the opening of Bleak House.

Killing Your Children

As far as the question of what to take out and what to leave in: KILL YOUR CHILDREN.

How to know when you should do so:

1. Process bogs down narrative.
2. Beginning at the beginning is not always the best idea.
3. Always know the end and next big scene and write to one of them.
4. Tell me what I need to know so I can stop worrying about what’s going on and wonder what happens next instead.

If the reader doesn’t understand what’s going on, and give them something else to think about. This happens, for example, in The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. Similarly. Agatha Christie will often offer a small solution halfway through.