The Craft of Plots

Basically with every possible plot already created, some say Shakespeare covered them all, how does a person create something new when really there isn't much (if any) that is? I think you do it by putting your own twist to that plot. You take the bones of a common plot, stir in something you read, maybe someone you knew or an event that you saw, and evolve it all into something that, despite similarities to other stories, will be uniquely yours. If a plot device is classic, if it's been used a lot, that means it appeals to humans.

One other thing is to write your own ideas without a major concern for whether you can sell the end result. Writers write whether they can sell or not. They create because it's in them to do it whether it's a type of fiction or non-fiction like the blogs.

My thinking on how you craft a fiction plot (in this case romances) comes out of a belief that for a good one, there are some similar qualities. My thinking on what those are has been influenced by Joseph Campbell's writings on the power of mythology because a great romance really is a kind of myth as well as an emotional catharsis. So what must it have?

Usually to start, a grounding of where the hero/heroine is before the story begins. Where are they living, who are they before comes what is called the gatekeeper experience?

The gatekeeper is what ushers the characters into another world and on their way to their adventure. It might be meeting their soul mate. It might be a disaster, but it has to be strong enough to get them out of their world and enter a new one. The new one is where change happens. Writing the gatekeeper section for me has to be believable. If there isn't a strong enough reason to move forward, the story falls apart.

Then, when in the adventure, there should to be growth, threat, relaxation and then more of each. Some name that the W which means you start out one place, go into a valley and then something helps you get back up to the next apex and back you go.

A good romance has those valleys and hills. Excite, relax, back to threaten. The romantic moments can come in either place but they are part of them.

There has to be an obstacle. Man loves woman. Woman loves man. No obstacle. Story over. I want that obstacle to feel real because too many romances have something that feels phony.

Ideally I like to write something that makes the reader and the character think this is it, they got it... and then comes the letdown, the boom, the threat, the demand they must go somewhere they don't want to go but it's the only way forward. So something fun, light, maybe even humorous, romantic, and then the character faces a challenge. Great moments followed by a what the heck is this ones.

Good music is like that also. There is the build up and then the drop, the filled with joy part and then the threat right behind it. For writing fiction, I like writing to movie soundtracks. I have quite a collection of Western soundtracks and like their emotional quality when I am trying to find those words. Even when it's not a western plot (actually I only have written one true western) but rather something contemporary, those western soundtracks have that emotion for which I am looking. For me, it's hard to write to any music with lyrics although I have used a few soundtracks where the lyrics seem to be submerged in the melodies-- best though is something like the soundtrack to Red River. Perfect!

Then comes the point in the plot where the story must be wrapped up, and a writer really has to think about that. It has to seem as though it was right that it happen that way. I hate a story or movie where it seems the writer just made something happen that earlier hadn't been going that direction. Yes, life is full of surprises but even then it must make sense.

You know in life there are many mysteries, things that seem to drop onto us with no logic to them. We have to accept that in life, but in my stories, I want it to make sense because I can do that where I often cannot in my life.

Besides the ending having to seem as though it was believable, I also don't like a drop in ending. All of a sudden it's rush to a conclusion where it's not really wrapped up but just dropped. Don't cheat the reader. Where it comes to a romance, a person has spent a number of hours with these characters and needs to care that they are getting, at least for the moment, a satisfying wrap-up.

My stories all have happy endings (although some suggest that that ending might be temporary) which means I have to make that seem believable. Save tragedies for literature. Romances are not meant to be tragedies. There is enough tragedy in life without my creating it for a book, without my dwelling on it for the months most manuscripts take to create. I like to write what I'd like to read and that's something that makes me feel better when I set the book down than when I first picked it up.