Plot is Conflict

When we sit down in front of the computer screen to write a story we think of plot. Consciously or not, we think of plot. Plot can be defined as the series of events, chronologically arranged, that make up a story. This last week as I took a break from school I read an excellent chapter on a little book titled “The Art of Fiction,” by Ayn Rand. The chapter in question “The Plot-Theme,” deals with plot and how the apprentice writer should go about structuring (plotting) his stories. She argues that plot is conflict. A series of chronologically arranged events don’t constitute a story worth anything. Plot is conflict. When we sit down to write a story we should ask ourselves something like: “how am I going to plot the conflict of this story,” as opposed to “how am I going to plot this story.”

This realization (plot = conflict) is crucial in my understanding of how to construct a story. It’s amazing how a simple word can provide a totally better perception of things. It is like that scene in Shrek where he tries to explain to donkey the nature of an ogre by using an onion as an analogy. (I hope you can understand what I’m trying to say).

For me plot was a series of events chronologically arranged. So, when I sat down to write a story I just had to think of the events that will make up that story. Not anymore. Now I think about plot as conflict. The next time I sit down to write a story I will think about events that make up the conflict of my story. Ayn Rand says: “To appreciate what makes a good plot situation, you must identify not only a character’s specific purpose, but also all the conflicts that this purpose necessarily engenders.” In other words you must come up with all the necessary scenes that will lead to the central conflict of your story. She suggests: “Before you construct a story, you must decide on the central conflict, which will then serve as the standard telling you have to include in order to fully develop this conflict, and what is superfluous.”

Another word that can help you understand the nature of plot and conflict is action. Action equals conflict. A literary equation would be. Plot = conflict = action. In other words write meaningful scenes for your story. Scenes that will lead to the main conflict in your story. Get rid of any scene/s that will not contribute to the main message of your story, and will not lead the reader to the main conflict.

 Check this book out by Ayn Rand:

This one is a classic by John Gardner: 

How many kinds of plots you think are there? 

The Importance of Conflict

Conflict is perhaps the most important ingredient in a story. Without it, the story is flat and lacks intensity. The difference between fiction and real life is that real life is boring. We do the same thing every day; we eat at the same time, we go to work, we talk to the same people, we watch the same TV shows, and we probably go to bed at the same time every night. I know what you are thinking, what about all the memoirs that are coming out lately? You are right. If you’ve had an interesting life so far I would encourage writing about it. Even in memoir, the reason they were written is because they have a good deal of conflict. In his excellent book Story in Literary Fiction, author William Coles says that “conflict can be physical, mental, or emotional. The action is presented by placing the reader in the scene or by narrative telling, and resolution involves a change in the character, either a reversal of some thought or trait in the character or the character’s recognition of something not understood before.”


Conflict is anything that will prevent the character from achieving his goal. In order to write a good story, we must have conflict in mind. Donald Mass says, “where there is conflict, there is rich soil to plant a story.” So how can you add conflict to your story? First, determine your protagonist’s goal, and then just start thinking about thing that will make things hard for him to achieve that goal. That simple.

Two books to check

David Benioff, City of Thieves, and Joe Hill 20th Century Ghost

                  

Style

This week I'll write about style as in grammar style. As you write your stories and novels you will acquire a personal style. In your early days you probably try to emulate your favorite authors hoping to discover your own. This is a good thing and I would encourage you to imitate your favorite writers as much as you can.

Discovering your own style is a long journey. It will take hours of writing before you can actually start noticing a particular form in your writing. I feel, after more than 5 years writing every single day that I’m now developing my own voice. I can think of many things that can help you find your own style; reading all kinds of genres and authors, writing in all kinds of styles and forms, and grammar. Yes, grammar. You are probably thinking: “What are you talking about?” That’s a given. Not necessarily. I write my stories in my first language Spanish. English still feels awkward to me even though I am writing this blog in English. I noticed that paying attention to a few grammar principles, my writing improved tremendously. I will share two principles that have improved my writing. These two principles are taken from the excellent book by Roy Peter Clark, Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer.

1.              Order words for emphasis. Place words at the beginning of the sentences and at the end of a sentence or paragraph. Consider for example this sentence by Shakespeare: “The Queen, my lord, is dead.” That word dead at the end of the sentence resonates with special power.

2.              Watch those Adverbs. Use adverbs to change the meaning of a verb. At their best adverbs spicy up a verb. At their worst they express meaning already contain in it. Consider these two sentences.

I smile happily.

I smile sadly.

Which one works best? I think the second sentence as the word smile contains the meaning of happily.

Consider applying these two principles to your writing and start noticing how your writing changes dramatically. 

Check these two books: 

See if you can stand Irvine Welsh's style and use of grammar in his famous novel Trainspotting

Check Roy Peter Clark talks about one of his favorite tools: "Order Words For Emphasis."

Why You Need to Show and Tell

One of the first writing tips you’ll receive as an apprentice writer along with have your main character always want something is the show don’t tell advice. Show don’t tell? What does this mean? Basically it means that by showing you are creating a picture in the reader’s mind as oppose to just enumerating a bunch of facts about something. Because fiction’s main purpose is to create an imaginative world for the reader is necessary then that our writing is vivid and evocative rather than informative.

In his book, This Year You Write Your Novel, novelist Walter Mosley argues that the highest possible praise for the fiction writer is a complement like “the words came right up off the page.” He says that when the reader feels that he is actually experiencing the sensations and emotions, the life and atmosphere, the novelist is showing rather than just telling. He offers some good advice that all of us should consider when we are writing our stories:

            “It is often better if you use images and physical descriptions rather than mere informative language to present people, places, things, and events in your novel. To be told that someone is violent or seems to be violent is too general; the reader is left to come up with their own notions of Piggott based upon their personal experience with violence.”

Is telling a bad thing? Telling is a great and necessary element in your story. Am I supporting both then? Yes, I am. Telling creates a balance. You don’t want to write your entire story show-writing from beginning to end. You will tire your readers. They need to take a rest from all the action, and that’s when you tell-writing. Telling is necessary when you need to summarize, or create background for one of your characters. So, How do you choose when to show, and when to tell? I’ll borrow Alice LaPlante advice from her book Method and Madness. “Ideally, these two elements of writing are organically intertwined. That is, what we tell doesn’t just echo or repeat what we show. We use the two together to achieve whatever effect we want. When a section of “telling” can be eliminated without taking away from a creative work’s meaning, then by all means cut it, and allow the showing to carry the piece. But the opposite is also true: often we can tell something more efficiently, elegantly, beautifully, or subtly than we could hope to do if dramatazing it. in such cases, we should eliminate the dramatization, or scene, in favor of the narration.”

Now go write. 

Check out this two amazing books where you will find both; showing and telling equally balanced.

Junot Diaz The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies

Check this brief interview with Junot Diaz

I HAVE NO IDEA, I SAID. Dialogue in Fiction

I’d like to talk about dialogue today. I’d like to start by saying right off the bat that dialogue isn’t as simple to write as one may think. Dialogue must be one of the most difficult elements in fiction to do well. I personally hate to write dialogue because most of the time my dialogues come out fake. When we write dialogue there are a few things we need to remember: 

1) Dialogue must be instinctive. In other words dialogue must not sound fake or that we are trying too much. 

2) Dialogue must be competent. Dialogue must exposed features of the personality of your characters and also slowly present some clues about the plot. 

And 3) Dialogue must be real. This is the most difficult thing to pull off. A dialogue that is real means that your readers are able to recognize the personalities of your characters through dialogue.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez said once that the reason his novels don’t have much dialogue is simple because he isn’t good at it. Now, Gabo is a literary genius and because of his tremendous narrative abilities he can get away with no writing dialogue. Unfortunately for the rest of us who are not genius, at least I am not one, we have to learn how to write dialogue and incorporate it into our narratives.

The best tip I can suggest to you all in regards to dialogue is simply to read fiction (read your favorite writers) with lots of dialogue and write it ‘til your fingers bled. 

Check out this book from one of the masters. A master piece of dialogue is found here in this collection. "Hills Like White Elephants." 

Ernest Hemingway, The Short Stories. 

Listen to this teacher talk about dialogue

The Importance of Setting

Have you asked yourself why we fall in love with a novel or a short story? I have a theory. We tend to remember and endear stories, (some people can recall almost every detail of it), not only because of their characters, but also its settings. I would venture to say that the reason why the plot of a story stays in our memory is because of a perfect combination of well- rounded characters and the perfect setting. Think of the novels you have in your top ten list and I can guarantee the reason those novels are so vividly fresh in your mind that you probably reread every year (I read Garcia Marquez’s Of Love and Other Demons once a year) because it seems that we were there along with the characters living every minute of the story with them.

Know how to choose the ideal setting for your story is very important to create a feeling of unity, and more important to create the right mood for your story. In his book The Nighttime Novelist, Joseph Bates has great words of wisdom about setting. He says: “setting – the time, place, and space of your story- isn’t simply four walls you’ve dropped your character into so he’ll have someplace to sit, nor is it a larger, objective, impersonal world that only just happens to include the people you’re focusing on, tangentially. Setting is directly related to your character, another way of revealing and deepening our understanding of him and his quest.”

Although the mood and nature of a story can have a setting that doesn’t exactly fit with the genre of the story, (it is always better idea to create a setting according to the mood of your story) give your setting always a sense of place so you can achieve suspense and excitement.

Check out these two novels: Blindness by Jose Saramago

The Shadow of the Wind By Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Watch Carlos Ruiz Zafon talks about The Shadow of the Wind

POV

Last week I discussed the importance of the main character in your story. This week I will talk about POV(Point of View) and how to choose the right one for your story. Many apprentice writers don’t give POV the importance it deserves. They think the narrative voice is irrelevant as long as the writer is being consistent with the POV he chooses to write his story. David Jauss says; “Point of View is arguably the most important element of fiction writing, for it is inextricably linked to characterization, style, and theme, yet it is perhaps the least understood of all aspect of fiction.”

My early short stories were all written using the third person POV. One of my favorite writers is Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Almost all of his stories are written using a third person POV. Back then he was the only writer I thought was worth reading and emulating. Fortunately, I realized the importance and the relevance of POV when rereading these same early stories of mine, I noticed that many of them lacked narrative strength. I rewrote them all. Some of them became better stories when I changed the POV. Others were just as bad no matter how many times I played with the POV. Since then, I submit all my stories to the POV test. How to determine what POV to use for your story? There is one principle that I always use to determine which is the best POV for my story.

In choosing a POV, between 1^st, 2^nd, or 3^rd POV you must determine on what POV your story would have a stronger impact on the reader. So, say you have a story that just doesn’t feel right, feels weak on its narrative voice, rewrite the most important passages of your story using a different POV.

Check the POV on these two novels by two great writers: Italo Calvino, "If on a winter's night a traveler." italo-calvino.com

William Faulkner,"As I lay Dying" williamfaulkner.com

Watch Evelyn Lau, author of "Living Under Plastic," talk about POV