Writer’s workshop 7

How to transform a trivial list of events into a deliberate, focused plot

The first step in designing a story is to get together a collection of events.

1 Take 10 minutes to write an account of something you did yesterday. Include as many different events, no matter how trivial, as you can, to give yourself plenty of material to work on.

Look at what you’ve got and how your piece works on the level of event.

• Did you tell your events in strict chronological order or is there a point where you’ve darted backwards or forwards?
• Is there something in these events that you might call a “climax”? Is there some event that all the others led up to? Or are all your events of equal weight?
• Do you just have one string of events, or do you have more than one?
• Have you told another story in miniature, perhaps to explain something in yesterday’s events? Have you referred to some past action, or some future hope?
• Is there a second character who creates a second mini-story?

2 Now rearrange all the elements that you have.

• If you have a strictly chronological piece, try putting the end at the beginning, or telling it backwards.
• If you have a climax, try streamlining everything else to make the climax more forceful.
• If you have several kinds of events, several characters or any references to past or future, arrange the piece in a flashback structure, a story-within-a-story or as two parallel stories.
• Where your piece ends, ask the question “and then what happened?” See if you can give the plot another twist.
• Invent new events and discard real ones as it suits your purposes. Try to rearrange the piece as differently as you can, even if the original structure seems the best.

3 Next, look at your piece from the point of view of secrets. Rewrite it with the following questions in mind:

• Is there something the narrator knows but isn’t telling the reader?
• Is the narrator deliberately trying to mislead the reader?
• Is there something the reader knows that the narrator doesn’t?
• Is there something that a character knows that they’re not telling?
• At what point should information be given: should it all be laid out at the beginning or should information be withheld until the end?
• Is there something that should never be made quite clear, something that should stay obscure?

4 Lastly, let’s look at the focus of the piece.

• Give the piece a title, or several titles.
• Write a one-line summary of the piece.
• If you can, give the piece to someone else and ask them to think of a title for the piece, or summarise it. Their way of seeing it may lead to new insights.
• Is there some unifying thread through all the events? Did they all happen to the same person, for example, or are they all tragic?
• Has anything been repeated in the piece: a word, a kind of action, a feeling, an image?

The answers to these questions will probably give you some idea about the focus of your piece. Now rewrite it, sharpening the focus. Remove or play down anything that doesn’t help to focus it and invent anything you can to make the focus clearer.

5 The focus of a piece can change drastically as you explore it further. See if these shift the focus of your piece at all:

• Delete the first paragraph of your piece so that the second paragraph becomes the start of the piece. Does that suggest a different emphasis?
• Make the piece half as long. What have you left out?
• Make the piece twice as long. What have you added?