Chapter THREE:
the bones of your story
STRUCTURE AND PLOT
Plot is what happens in your story, and structure is the shape of that plot.
Your outline is a map of the plot and structure you’ve worked out so far.
Now we’ll look at what makes a great plot and which story structures work
the best. No one hires an architect who doesn’t have a blueprint. Your
outline is your blueprint—we need to make sure it’s sound before you put
a lot of work into building your novel from it.
When you’re just getting started, you need to give your right brain a
chance to play in the orchards of creativity. That’s why it’s best to listen to
your ideas and scene card your outline before considering structure. Then,
your left brain gets a chance to do its favorite dance.
There’s no secret recipe for a good plot. Brilliance can be born of anything from a twelve-layered mystery to one old man in a boat trying to catch
a fish. It’s all in the telling. But make sure your plot has the elements of
great storytelling: believability, heart, and tension. (We’ll address believability in chapter six when we discuss detail, and we’ll address heart in
chapter five when we discuss character. We’ll discuss tension here after a
short introduction to structure.)
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What kind of structure makes a great story? Here are some examples of
story designs that work:
Rags to Riches. A character (Cinderella, Rocky) starts at the bottom
and, through many adventures that show off his pluckiness, ends up
on top. This structure works because everyone can relate to being
at the bottom and everyone hopes to find happiness. All feels right
with the world when the good guy (or gal) gets rewarded.
Boy Meets Girl. Two people meet, we want them to end up together,
they are separated by something, and through many adventures
they get back together for a happy ending. Romance novels usually
have this structure. Fred and Ginger movies do, too. But the ending
does not have to be happy, as in Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier,
or the relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff in Wuthering
Heights, by Emily Brontë. Whether or not the fates were aligned, this
structure works as long as the love was real. Readers want to believe
in true love.
Coming of Age. The protagonist grows up and discovers a strength
from within. This can be a literal coming of age, when a character goes
from childhood to adulthood, as in Jacob Have I Loved, by Katherine
Paterson, or The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane, or it can
be an emotional coming of age, where a character has to transform
emotionally or spiritually into the person he is meant to be. In Steve
Martin’s The Pleasure of My Company, the obsessive-compulsive hero
has to battle his own mind to become a functioning adult.
Fall of the Corrupt. A bad person is brought down from a seat of
power to the feet of justice: The Caine Mutiny, by Herman Wouk, for
example.
The Making of a Hero. The protagonist starts in humble powerlessness, is at first reluctant or doubtful, then rises to save the day: for
example, The Dead Zone, by Stephen King, or Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling.
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There’s No Place Like Home. The protagonist longs to throw off her
past and strives to get the goodies while the getting is good, only to
discover that greed has a price and the original situation is ultimately
the better deal. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum, is a
classic example. Faust-based tales are also examples—The Devil and
Daniel Webster, by Stephen Vincent Benet; The Year the Yankees Lost the
Pennant, by Douglass Wallop; The Firm, by John Grisham.
Salvation. Someone struggles to open the damaged heart of another,
the way Heidi warms her grandfather’s heart. (This one doesn’t
work well without a happy ending.) It can also work with someone
saving not just one heart but a whole community, as in Chocolat, by
Joanne Harris.
Another way of looking at types of story structures is through the concepts
of Man vs. Man, Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Society, and Man vs. Self.
Man vs. Man. The protagonist is fighting a person or persons—your
hero is battling the villain who wants to steal his land, romance his
sweetheart, ruin his reputation.
Man vs. Nature. The protagonist is fighting some literal force of
nature—your hero is determined to get back to her family and has
to fight a raging blizzard to do so.
Man vs. Society. The protagonist is fighting a group of people with
a certain mind-set or code—your hero is trying to set up a college
for young men and women of color in 1950s Alabama, to the disapproval of the Klan.
Man vs. Self. The two halves of the protagonist’s personality are
fighting—your hero wants to keep everyone happy and at the same
time needs to break free. Will she stay in her loveless marriage for
the children’s sake, or run off with the traveling salesman?
Your story does not have to easily fall into any of the above categories, but it
needs to do what they all do—deliver. Readers want to care about the characters
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and what will happen next. And when readers pick up your book, they make
a deal with you. If they buy your book and it’s a romance, they expect to fall in
love. If it’s a thriller, they expect to be thrilled. No matter what kind of story you
choose to write, when it’s done it needs to hold up its end of the bargain.
Are You Writing a Subculture Story?
Sterling Watson, whose first novel, Weep No More My Brother, was about prison
life, believes that many first novels are subculture books. A young protagonist
is shockingly thrown into a strange, new world with its own rules, language,
hierarchy of characters, goals, prizes, rites of passage, and themes. Watson
believes the subculture must be implied, rather than explained, so the reader
is thrown into this new world in the same shocking fashion as the protagonist.
Some examples include:
• The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald: the rich
• A Separate Peace, by John Knowles: prep school
• The Godfather, by Mario Puzo: the Mafia
• The Secret History, by Donna Tartt: elite colleges
• Hell’s Angels, by Hunter S. Thompson: motorcycle gangs
Using the Three-Act Structure
To get a fix on the shape of your story, divide your plot into three acts.
Act I. You create a problem for your characters and bring them to
a turning point.
Act II. You complicate the story with tension and deepen the characters, holding out hope but throwing wrenches into the works, then
end with another turning point.
Act III. You make the situation even harder to overcome, build to a
climax, and deliver the resolution. The story can either end happily
or unhappily.
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Here are some examples of stories broken into three acts.
The Thr ee Bea r s
Act I. A family of bears has a problem with the temperature of their
breakfast food. They go for a walk. While they are out, a little girl
shows up at the house and (here’s a turning point in your plot)
she’s hungry.
Act II. Goldilocks tries the various bowls of food, the chairs, and the
beds. She’s cuddled down for a nap upstairs when the bears come
home and (here’s the next turning point in your plot) they don’t
know she’s upstairs, and she doesn’t know they’re downstairs.
Act III. The bears discover, one by one, that their furniture and
vittles have been tampered with. They climb the stairs and find a
human child in the smallest bed. Goldilocks wakes (the climax)
and runs away screaming. The resolution, though not perfect, at
least leaves the bears with a house free of humans and with most
of their furniture intact. (We also assume Goldilocks has learned a
lesson and will no longer break into strangers’ houses, steal food,
or destroy chairs.)
Sta r Wa r s
Act I. There is trouble afoot, a hero is needed, Princess Leia calls for
help, Luke Skywalker meets the wise mentor Obi-Wan but refuses the
call to act. The turning point comes when Luke’s aunt and uncle are
killed and he leaves home ready to accept his role as hero.
Act II. Obi-Wan and Luke find allies in Han Solo and Chewbacca,
they face danger as they rescue Princess Leia, Obi-Wan’s death is a
sacrifice for the cause. The turning point comes when Han quits
and Luke goes on without him.
Act III. The final battle and the return of Han. The climax occurs
when the Death Star is blown up.
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Jur assic Pa r k
Act I. The concept of the DNA experiments is introduced and the
major players brought in. The turning point is Oh my God! there are
real dinosaurs walking around.
Act II. Conflict is created between the scientists who are curious
about dinosaurs but have a respectful fear of nature and the business people who are greedy and foolish. The humans are placed in
the dinosaur world. The turning point is when the humans discover
that the fences are down and the dinosaurs are hunting them—it’s
life or death now.
Act III. Dinosaurs munch on some people and miss others—a chain of
action cliffhangers. The climax occurs when the humans escape.
Look for the three-act structure in your own story. Where are your turning points? Where does the plot thicken? Where is the beginning of the
end? If you can’t find the dramatic peaks, look back at your scene cards
and find the best spots to raise the stakes. You don’t want a flat story line.
Give your plot shape.
Denouement
Denouement is the way a story winds down after the climax. This is when
the story lines resolve. You don’t start rolling the end credits on Star Wars as
soon as the Death Star explodes. You don’t bring down the curtain as Juliet
stabs herself. You don’t end To Kill a Mockingbird with the discovery of Bob
Ewell’s dead body. There needs to be an unraveling and a debriefing. A brief
debriefing—you don’t want to go on too long. Go back and read the ends of
your favorite novels. Try and feel where the climax ends and denouement
begins. Now think about the climax of your own novel. How will you resolve
your story lines? As readers we need a little decompression time, especially
if the book is crammed with action or full of psychological suspense.
There are certain circumstances in which denouement is not recommended. If you are ending your novel with a kind of surprise, it might be
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more effective to leave your readers in shock. On the last page of Rebecca,
Daphne du Maurier catches us off guard by closing with a powerfully understated description of the great manor house at Manderley burning down.
It is so short we are left breathless, especially because the rest of the details
in the story, down to what was served for tea, were described at length.
Denouement may also be excluded if the suddenness of the ending
is meant to make the reader think—“How can it end there? We never
found out who killed the dog. Or did we?” If upon reflection the reader
realizes the clues were there all along—the fact that the bicycle was gone
means the butler must have done it—denouement is excluded in favor
of an abrupt ending that encourages the readers to tie off the loose ends
themselves.
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