How to Bake a Plot
Anyone who has read the early drafts of my stories knows that plot is my weakest skill as a writer. I tend to start writing with a character or setting in mind, work my way into an opening scene, and then look at what I have, saying, “Now what?” I’m better about this with my short stories than with my long ones, but it’s a shortcoming. I am incredibly blessed to have a good workshop that will not only point out the deficiencies in my plots, but will help me figure out how to work what I already have into a much tighter and complete narration. But it’s the story element that stresses me the most, and the one which is most likely to cause me to worry about and to doubt everything about the work I’m doing while I do it.
In the literary world, I’m a “pantser”, not a “plotter”. The first flies by the seat of their pants, the second meticulously plots out their work ahead of time. Many use a combination of both methods; I am not one of them. (One of the most famous examples of a combination of factors is J.R.R. Tolkien, who planned out his works carefully, but still managed to discover Strider at the inn in Bree without knowing who he was).
What I lose from this method is the tightness of a neatly expressed plot, wrapped in gift paper and bound in a beautiful ribbon. Well, maybe I keep the ribbon, but the paper may not be as neat as it should, and I’ve used extra tape. It doesn’t mean that the contents aren’t ultimately satisfying, but it may be that I’ve got some pieces of the plot that aren’t quite as cosmetically satisfying as I would like it to be.
Of course, that’s what revision is for; to take things that don’t quite fit, shave the edges off, and mortar them together with details that make the plot into a coherent whole. I am not one of those who can write a tight plot in a single draft.
And I’m not sure I want to be. Because part of the process for me is seeing how those pieces fall into place, and having those aha! moments when I see how it all fits. A number of years ago I spent two years or so worrying about two different and inconsistent pieces of plot in the book I was working on at the time. After watching it kick around in my backbrain for all that time, I suddenly had the lightbulb go off, and the two pieces fell into place – connected to each other. That was the idea I had been missing, and once it clicked, the story took off. (Someday I will take out and dust that work off, rewriting it with what I now know about writing).
What I don’t want to do is to leave the plot hanging. I know a couple of authors who do this, and they drive me crazy. One of them in particular I ought to love; her prose is beautiful, and though I have some other issues with her style as well, she can set a scene with the best of them. But it frustrates me, because of the fact that she tends to have meandering plots that don’t hang together, and then tries to make them come together with hints and implications rather than with a solid buildup in the story.
I may not be strong at plot, but I understand its importance. As a reader, I notice if a story doesn’t hang together, or if it has long, dangling threads. I don’t enjoy that. If I like the book enough, I may choose to overlook it – one of my two favorite authors does this occasionally, and I would still read anything she wrote, even the phone book – but it frustrates me, because when she is on top of her writing, there is no one better. I get know easy that is to do, and I don’t want to disappoint my own readers with this same issue.
There is a place for a hanging plot, usually leaving space for a sequel or a series, but even so, the individual story told in a single book needs to have some sort of satisfying conclusion: the story within a story, so to speak. If the wider story is left open, the smaller story should still be wrapped up. Otherwise, the reader is left with a feeling of dissatisfaction, a sense that they have been cheated and have not gotten their full measure of the author’s effort.
And that is part of something I’ve discussed before: the contract between the author and the reader. Certainly writers can write to please themselves. There are no actual rules that forbid them to do this. But if one wants their work to be read and to be loved, they need to understand and address the needs of the prospective reader. Chief among these needs is a requirement for a story to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that end should be, not necessarily signaled ahead of time, but should be supported ahead of time. It also needs to make sense, and have an internal consistency, or again, the reader will feel cheated.
That consistency and support plays into a tighter plot, which is the flour holding the cake together. The other ingredients give the cake its flavor, but without flour, you won’t have much of a cake. Likewise, you may have tasty ingredients such as character, setting, and theme, but you won’t have much of a story without a plot. Simple or intricate, convoluted or straightforward, the story needs to come together into a coherent whole.
Just remember, the cake isn’t complete until you bake it. Before then, you can still add flour. That’s called revision. Hopefully, when you take the cake out of the oven, it’s fluffy, aromatic, satisfying, and ultimately, complete.