Writings On The Beach

A frequent discussion on {Facebook, Google+, Twitter} involves writers taking very firm stances either side of the plotting versus pantsing argument.

And I’ve noticed that there is something missing on the plotting side of the discussion.

I’m an unabashed plotter. I need to have a pretty good grasp of what I’m going to write long before I write it. I regularly spend more time in the planning process than I do writing the first draft

But here’s the thing: plotting for the sake of plotting is all well and good, but if you’re not plotting to a structure, I’m not sure what benefit you’re gaining.

And no, plotting to a structure does not make a story formulaic. There are rules to story telling. We humans expect a certain structure, a certain beat, a certain rhythm. We instinctively know what feels right, and what doesn’t.

This holds true for any genre.

It may be that this “instinctive” feel may well be the result of decades of brainwashing, but the simple fact remains – miss the structure and you’ll have a story that doesn’t “fell right”.

And here’s the best part (if you’re a beginning writer): the structure is straight forward. An introduction. A plot point at the 20% – 25% mark that sets your hero on their journey, the core essence of the story. This can be something as overt as a cop discovering his prime witness pointed out a fellow cop as a killer (Witness) to something a lot more subtle, like Summer hesitating before expressing her love for Tom ((500) Days of summer).

A middle point, which one of my writer friends calls the “OMG point” because, when done well, it reveals something that makes the reader got “OMG” (OMD in France). A new piece of information, a parting of curtains letting our hero see the true story.

An all is lost point near the 75% mark where the hero appears to be defeated. (For some inexplicable reason, Hollywood stage these “all is lost” moments in either fire or flood.)

Then, at about the 75% mark the final clue/tip/reveal that proves to be the final piece of the puzzle for our hero. He and/or she knows what is required of them (the reader may not have a clue, yet) and it’s just a matter of time and perseverance for the hero to succeed, battle obstacle along the way.

This is a simplistic view, but it is still a ton more than no structure at all. And I guarantee you that even if this is all the structure you follow, if you do it properly you’ll end up with a much better story.

More detail, and links to even more can be unearthed here.

Happy writing. And make the time you spend plotting count.

You know me. Structure is everything. You can write the most compelling character profile, in the most descriptive prose seen by man, and if the structure of the story isn’t there it will be blah.

So we deconstruct movies to see how the professionals do it.

Why movies? Because you can get through one in less than three hours (unless Peter Jackson is at the helm) and, for the most part, the structure is etched in stone.

Conventional wisdom says a page of screenplay is equivalent to 1 minute of screen time. A 100 page script, therefore, translates to a 100 minute movie. And in that script (and movie) the first plot point will be on page (minute) 25, the midpoint will be on page (minute) 59 and the second plot point will be on page (minute) 75.

In a movie those points will very rarely be off by more than a minute or two.

In a book you’ve got a little more flexibility.

A little more.

Don’t let your first plot point slide to 30%, but don’t feel you have to force it to 25%. I’ve seen them as early as 20%, but that was in a fast-paced action/adventure thriller. The tolerance zones in novels is much broader than it is for movies.

That doesn’t diminish the usefulness of movie deconstructions. If anything, a movie deconstruction provides a novelist with the minimal tolerance zones for the critical points in the story, and with those points clearly defined we can understand how the scriptwriter did it. In well-built movies the plot points, pinch points, mid-point all take place organically. Scenes leading up to these plot points are logical, and the scenes leading out of them are also logical. Nothing is extra and nothing is wasted.

Knowing and understanding how the rules are applied gives a novelist the freedom to build their world around a solid, well-defined and accepted framework.

With that in mind I’ll be breaking down Breaking Bad in a couple of weeks. Well, just the first episode. After that, I’ll tackle Witness.

I’m watching “The Firm”, a Tom Cruise movie made before he was well and truly Tom Cruise, and a thought occurred to me.

I mean, other than the the thought that Tom Cruise seems to run in every movie he’s in. Those short little legs pumping for all they’re worth. He should do a movie with Will Smith – they can run for 90 minutes.

Anywho…

I am, as you may know by now, a huge proponent of the four-part story structure. I kind of go on and on about it here. The though that occurred to me was that if you are unsure what constitutes a First Plot Point, Midpoint Context Shift or Second Plot Point, just get a stop watch, imdb.com and a calculator.

imdb.com is the movie lovers website. (imdb = internet movie database). If you go to their entry for “The Firm“, you’ll see it’s 154 minutes long. Based on the tried and true principals of story structure, the FPP, midpoint and SPP will be at 38.5 minutes, 77 minutes and 115.5 minutes. And they are (I’m going to post a deconstruction of this movie later, on the weekend).

You can do that for any commercially successful movie, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a drama, comedy, legal thriller, or space opera. You key points will be in roughly the same place in each of them. Look for a scene which changes the course of the story, and that’ll be it.

Grab your favourite DVD, check the running length and look for them. Guaranteed, or your money back.