END NOTES:

Matters of Structure

Plot springs from the marriage of substance and structure. Plot is dictated less by our own choices than by those of our characters, who seek either to gain happiness or to rid themselves of an irritant preventing it.

The more we try to dictate or force the plot, the less satisfactory the result. Rather than force it, we should discover it along with our characters, through inhabiting a viewpoint located firmly within the world of the story itself, not outside it.

Similarly, beginnings are best arrived at by simply following the impulses suggested by our materials, and not by resolving to “grab” readers by the throat (or any other body parts).

Unless they serve an urgent or organic purpose, flashbacks and framing devices should be shunned.

The writer’s first impulse should be to provide information, not to conceal it to generate false suspense and tease readers.

A good climax is one that exhausts all the possibilities suggested by the setup of a story, while subverting—or at least not satisfying— readers’ expectations.

A great ending is surprising and inevitable. It is supported by everything that comes before it. It is like the night-blooming Cereus that blooms once, then closes its petals for good, but not before exuding its exquisite, lingering scent.

Q.WHAT’S THE BEST WAY
TO COME UP WITH A PLOT?

A.Through characters with motivations. Remember that there are really only two plots: Plot A, where a character is routinely unhappy and suddenly seizes an opportunity for happiness, and Plot B, where a character is routinely happy but some circumstance or irritant destroys or undermines his happiness, and he must act to reinstate his status quo. The solution to plot is to make sure you are dealing with one of these situations.

Q. WHAT ABOUT POINT OF VIEW? HOW DO I
KNOW IF I’M HANDLING IT CORRECTLY?

A.If your story or novel isn’t working well, if the scenes don’t quite come off, if the characters feel shallow, if the structure isn’t satisfying, or if you’re finding the writing process itself an uphill struggle, question your point of view.

Do you have a point of view for each of your chapters or scenes? Have you embraced that point of view purposefully, thoroughly, and consistently (understanding that you may be switching points of view)? If you are writing from the limited perspective of one character, have you immersed yourself (and the reader) sufficiently in that character’s psyche? If you are writing objectively, presenting your material with no subjective content, is that unusual choice serving your purpose? If you are writing omnisciently, have you—from paragraph to paragraph—immersed us purposefully, thoroughly, and consistently in whatever P.O.V. applies to the moment in question?

Remember: Omniscience is not a license to be sloppy or half-baked; on the contrary, it requires more, not less, effort than a limited viewpoint.

Q. HOW DO I COME UP WITH THE
STRONGEST BEGINNING?

A.Not by worrying about wonderful opening sentences or paragraphs, but by asking, “Where does the story really start?” and starting as close to there as you can. Where does the main character’s life veer away from his or her status-quo existence? What inciting incident or event causes that veering away? At what point is the character first prompted to take some action— defensively or off ensively—in order to achieve the goals of either Plot A or Plot B? Begin there. The wonderful opening will then generate itself.

Q. WHAT IS THE BEST STRATEGY FOR USING
FLASHBACKS OR FRAMING DEVICES?

A.The best strategy is to avoid them if at all possible. Assume that the same Aristotelian ideal that applies to drama— unity of time, action, and setting—applies to stories and novels as well—and why shouldn’t it? If you could possibly dramatize a character’s condition in one setting, with a single scene, through a single action, why would you choose to use six scenes, a prologue, two flashbacks, and to mount the entire story in some clever framing device? You wouldn’t, and shouldn’t want to.

Think of Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” and how simply and beautifully it not only conveys the lot of a depressed old man, but the whole human condition, through a single dialogue of a few short pages.

Q. AND SUSPENSE? HOW DO I BUILD SUSPENSE?

A.By raising questions in your reader through providing information, not by withholding it. False suspense results from such withholding; it makes readers wonder not what’s going to happen next, but what’s happening, and why, and to whom? Real suspense raises real plot questions. A story that begins, “One morning Gregor Samsa awoke from troubled dreams to find himself transformed into a giant beetle,” provides us with a good deal of information that in turn raises genuine plot questions (“How did this happen? What will he do? How will his family react?”).

Poor writers assume that by being stingy with information they can entice readers to beg for more. Good writers know that the opposite is true: that the more generous they are with information, the more readers will want to know.

Q. WHAT ABOUT SETUPS AND PAYOFFS? HOW
DO I KNOW THEY ARE BEING ACHIEVED?

A.Often we don’t; they just happen by themselves. But just as often we need to go back into our drafts and make sure that effects achieved at the ends of our stories have had their seeds planted in the beginning, and vice versa, that many if not all of the seeds planted early in our stories germinate and bloom at or toward the end.

Q. HOW DO I KNOW IF I’VE WRITTEN AN
EFFECTIVE CLIMAX?

A.Two characteristics mark a good climax or ending: First, it should surprise us; second, it should feel inevitable. Typically the reader experiences these two qualities almost simultaneously, with, “Oh, my God!” followed immediately by, “But of course!” An ending or climax that is surprising but not inevitable— in fact not even all that plausible—isn’t going to satisfy much. Likewise, an ending that is inevitable but on the other hand totally predictable won’t do much for readers.

And remember, too, that a climax needn’t be violent to be effective. It can even be anticlimactic, provided it still satisfies the requirements of surprise and inevitability.