Part VIII: PLOT: John Barth and his Incremental Perturbations

***This post is the last in a series of eight exercises designed to take our short stories from rough draft to finished "masterpiece"(or as close as we can get ;-) with the help of the late John Gardner and a host of other well-known authors and teachers.  Click here for Part I ***


You’re probably scratching your head right now wondering why on earth I saved “plot” for last, and you’re probably right to wonder about that. Maybe back in August (when we began the work of turning the first drafts of our short stories into unforgettable masterpieces) we should have begun our revisions by studying plot before we talked about all those other things-- like dialogue, structure, setting, and emotion, or how to engage readers using authenticating detail.  

Well, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about writing fiction, it’s that no matter how hopeless or unwieldy the task may seem, it’s never too late to fix a troublesome passage—or even an entire manuscript, if that's what's required.  If we’ve taken the time to introduce our characters and delineate their myriad flaws, fears, and emotions, and to fill their little mouths with crackling, subtextual dialogue… And we’ve gone through all the effort to create vivid, dynamic descriptions of the settings they inhabit, why would we not invest the time necessary to tell our story in the most compelling way we can—no matter how many revisions it takes—until we’re satisfied that the story on paper is as good or better than the one that originally took shape in our heads?

“Though character is the emotional core of great fiction, and though action with no meaning beyond its own brute existence can have no lasting appeal, plot is—or must sooner or later become—the focus of every good writer’s plan.”  Wise words from the late John Gardner, novelist and creative writing teacher, and our mentor for this series of short story exercises.

So what is plot, exactly? And how can we apply it to the draft of a story we’ve already written (and in fact have already been revising for the last three months)?  First, a definition of plot from a few of my favorite mentors:

From The Lie That Tells A Truth by John Dufresne:  “An idea is not a story.  A first draft is not a story.  A moral is not a story.  A character is not a story.  A theme is not a story.  A plot—now, that’s a story! So where do I get me one? you might ask. At your writing desk.  Because plots don’t exist.  They can’t be shopped for or ordered on-line.  They are coaxed into being.  They develop.  They grow in the course of the writing.  A plot begins to form as soon as you begin to ask yourself the appropriate narrative questions: What does my central character want? What is preventing her from getting it? What does she do about the various obstacles in her way? What are the results of what she does? What climax does this all lead to? Does she get what she wants in the end? Plot, then, is the element of fiction that shapes the many other elements—character, theme, point of view, language, and so on—into a story.  It’s the organizing principle of narration, let’s say. […] Plot is the force that holds the universe of your story together.”

From Fiction Writer’s Workshop by Josip Novakovich: “If you don’t write from an outline, once you have finished a story, you still should be able to see its outline, the way after a touchdown it’s easy to draw a chart of what happened in the play.  Something must happen, and in the end, we must know why it has happened.  Plot is partly what you discover in the writing of a story, not what you “insert.” You raise questions and seek answers, connect your sentences into paragraphs, paragraphs into chapters, chapters into novels.  This thread of investigation may be a thin one, but you must have it to give yourself and your readers something to look for.”

From Brandi Reissenweber in her lecture on “Plot & Structure”: “Structure and plot are the architecture of storytelling. The façade of a building may be beautiful, brilliant, breathtaking even, but it can only be that way if it is standing, right? That’s where these foundational elements come in. All other aspects of fiction—characterization, description, what distinguishes your voice from others,—hang on the basic structure and plot of the story.”

John Barth, noted novelist, short story writer, and witty professor of creative writing, writes that “Dramatic effect, not linear chronology, is the regnant principle in the selection and arrangement of a story’s action,” that “a story’s order of narration need not be the strict chronological order of the events narrated.”

However we decide to arrange the “action” in our stories, that action traditionally includes the six ingredients below. [Bracketed explanations are capsulated passages from “Incremental Perturbation: How to Know Whether You’ve Got a Plot or Not,” an essay by John Barth. To learn more, and to understand his "systems analysis" theory on the workings of plot, read Barth's classic (and humorous!) essay in Creating Fiction]:

1.  Status Quo: [the less-than-stable “Ground Situation.” An overtly or latently voltaged state of affairs preexisting the story’s present time; one that tends to regulate itself toward equilibrium but is essentially less than stable (otherwise there would be no story). The Montagues and Capulets have been hassling each other in Verona for a long time before the story begins: a taunt here, a street scuffle there, but nothing the two families can’t quite absorb.  No ground situation, no story, however arresting the action to come, for it is its effect upon the ground situation that gives the story’s action meaning.]

2.  The Inciting Incident: [A present-time turn of events that precipitates a story out of the ground situation… “And then one day,” as the narrative formula puts it, the dramatic vehicle rolls into town: Young Romeo Montague falls for young Juliet Capulet, and vice versa.] 

Note: David Harris Ebenbach of Gotham Writers Workshop says it’s the responsibility of the writer to begin the story at the point of change (the inciting incident), when “something’s happening that stands out.” Take Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” for example.  Carver didn’t begin his masterpiece “a few weeks earlier, when nobody was coming to visit.  [He began with] the day that’s the focus of the whole piece.”  In order to “drop the reader right into the middle of the action” and almost simultaneously provide him with the necessary information to set up the ground situation (exposition), you’ll have to work hard to strike just the right balance.

3.  Complications (escalating conflict): [Incremental perturbations of the ground situation; the successive complications of the conflict. (The star-crossed lovers declare their love, but…) In the story’s middle these “perturbations” follow not only upon one another but from one another, each paving the way for the next (as the story’s middle performs its double and contradictory functions of simultaneously fetching us to the climax and strategically delaying our approach thereto)]

4.  Climax: [A comparatively sudden and consequential effect triggered by comparatively small incrementations, like an avalanche, or the click of the thermostat—whether or not it involves the fall of the mighty from the height of fortune to the depths of misery.  Even in the most delicate of epiphanic stories, the little insight vouchsafed to the protagonist (or perhaps only to the reader), the little epiphany that epiphs, does so in a comparative flash—and, for all its apparent slightness, is of magnitudinous consequence]

5.  Denouement: The consequence of the complications and climax. [measured by the net difference it effects in the ground situation.  If nothing of consequence about the ground situation has been altered, no story has been told…. The equilibrium of a story’s denouement is not that of its opening: The surviving Capulets and Montagues are sadder but perhaps at least temporarily wiser in the “glooming peace this morning with it brings.”  It is an equilibrium complexified, qualitatively changed even where things may appear to all hands (except the reader/spectator) to be back to normal.  Otherwise, what we have attended may have its incidental merits, but, for better or worse (usually worse), it’s not a story].

6.  Wrap-up [the little coda, closing fillip, or dolly-back shot often appended to the denouement like a jazz drummer’s “roll-off” at the end of a number, and usually suggestive of what the story’s completed action portends for the principal characters].

John Barth: “Incremental Perturbation: How to Know Whether You’ve Got a Plot or Not,” from the text Creating Fiction, edited by Julie Checkoway

John Dufresne: The Lie That Tells A Truth

John Gardner: The Art of Fiction

Josip Novakovich:  Fiction Writer’s Workshop

Brandi Reissenweber: Instructor, Gotham Writers' Workshop, and author of the "Ask the Writer" column for "The Writer" magazine. Be sure to check out "Letterpress," her wonderful blog on the craft of fiction.

David Harris Ebenbach: The chapter "Plot: A Question of Focus" in Gotham Writers' Workshop: Writing Fiction, The Practical Guide (also contains the full version of "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver)

Write A Short Story:  

Part I: Introduction

Part II: Setting & Emotion  

Part III: Character Motivation & Change

Part IV: Story Shape

Part V: Dialogue

Part VI: Authenticating Detail & Description

Part VII: Tension & Reader Anticipation

Part VIII: Plot

Write a Story, Part III: Character Motivation & Change

***This post is the third in a series of eight.  From now through September I'll be posting weekly exercises designed to take our short stories from rough draft to finished "masterpiece"(or as close as we can get ;-) with the help of the late John Gardner and a host of other well-known authors and teachers.  Click here for Part I ***

Now that we’ve set the mood of our stories and grounded them in time and place, let’s focus on our main characters for a bit. What motivates your character to behave the way she does?  What does she want at the beginning of the story, and how does that desire change by the end? Does your character at least begin to undergo a change by the end of the story?

Of course, not all protagonists change during the course of a story, but according to Brandi Reissenweber of Gotham Writers’ Workshop, they should at least “possess the ability to change, and the reader should see this potential. Change is particularly important for a story’s main character.  Just as the desire of a main character drives the story, the character’s change is often the story’s culmination…. If you don’t create the potential for change, the character will feel predictable and the reader will quickly lose interest.”

Showing character change (and the potential for change) is not simple.  Nancy Kress, author of Beginnings, Middles & Ends, devotes twelve pages to character motivation and change, and tells us how to pull it all off in her chapter “Under Development: Your Characters at Midstory.”  The first thing we need to do, she says, is to convince the reader that a character is capable of change by “showing him doing it” either through flashback or small parts of scenes that “can foreshadow your character’s ability to become whatever you eventually have him become” (for example: maybe the reader sees through flashback that your character has changed his mind once before).  In a short story (as opposed to a novel) you obviously won’t have much time (words?) to accomplish all of that. 

Once you’ve shown that a character is capable of change, the next step is to show the character actually changing, and to convince the reader that the change is genuine.  This, according to Kress, is accomplished through a pattern of incidents that the character is forced to live through.  As Kress says, “…one mention [of your character changing] on page sixty-eight isn’t going to do it.”

Josip Novakovich, author of Writing Fiction: Step by Step says, “When you introduce a character, imagine what her motive is.  Setting several characters in motion, with conflicting motives, may give you enough momentum for the whole story.  You need not worry about plot as much as about getting several characters together with strong motives at cross-purposes.  Let the motives in conflict work until a climax, a showdown, occurs, and from there a conclusion will flow.”

Nancy Kress: Beginnings, Middles & Ends

Josip Novakovich: Writing Fiction: Step by Step

Brandi Reissenweber: Gotham Writers' Workshop: Writing Fiction, the Practical Guide, "Character: Casting Shadows"

Write A Short Story:  

Part I: Introduction

Part II: Setting & Emotion  

Part III: Character Motivation & Change

Part IV: Story Shape

Part V: Dialogue

Part VI: Authenticating Detail & Description

Part VII: Tension & Reader Anticipation

Part VIII: Plot

Surprise Platter

Here's a fun one. I love to apply this exercise to a slow passage in my fiction, one that's necessary to the plot, of course, but one that lacks texture or is a bit too predictable.  It works especially well for quiet moments, love scenes, and scenes with lots of dialogue.  


In fiction, surprises are not limited to plot twists, revelations, and tricky surprise endings.  In The Joy of Writing Sex -- A Guide for Fiction Writers (an absolute must-read if your story is going to include a sex scene) author Elizabeth Benedict says that, "Good writing offers all kinds of surprises and pleasures--of scene, plot, character, and language--and good writing about sex does, too."

Benedict lists five categories of "ordinary surprises good writers spring on us, often so subtly we aren't aware of it, in order to give depth and texture to their sex scenes…" These include surprises of action, speech, distraction, insight, and language.  Surprises like these are essential to all good writing and we should consider including them to improve not only our sex scenes but every other type of scene as well. Booker Prize-winning author, Peter Carey, in reviewing The Joy of Writing Sex wrote: "Read it because it will teach you everything you need to know about writing good fiction, whether your characters are having sex or having breakfast."  I agree one-hundred percent! 

Below is brief description of each of those categories of surprise, but you should read The Joy of Writing Sex to get the whole scoop--including excerpts and advice from some of today's most celebrated authors--and in particular, how surprises like these can add depth and texture to a sex or love scene.

l Surprise of Action: in which something unexpected happens. An action doesn't need to be huge or dramatic to be surprising. It can be something as monumental as a stranger storming into the room brandishing an automatic weapon, or an action as subtle as an ill-timed cough.  

l Surprise of Speech:  in which characters speak during the scene, and what they say is surprising or unexpected. "As with all good dialogue, dialogue in [a sex scene] should be there for a reason integral to the characters and the story.  We should learn something about the characters or their circumstances from what they say to each other in bed."  [Elizabeth Benedict]

l Surprise of Distraction: in which a character is distracted by another character, or by a sound, a smell, a memory, a poison oak rash--anything that takes the character's attention away from what he is supposed to be concentrating on in the scene.

l Surprise of Insight: the character realizes something she didn't before. Perhaps she intuits the true nature of the situation. Something  clicks in her brain and suddenly the pieces of a puzzle fall into place. Perhaps she makes an observation and her thoughts interrupt the action in the scene. 

l Surprise of Language: in which the writer surprises the reader with "original language and metaphor that demand our attention, words that are particularly eloquent at doing what our words are meant to do: move the reader to feel what the character feels at that moment, whether it is arousal, excitement, melancholy, fear, or revulsion." [Elizabeth Benedict]

These are only a handful of the many kinds of surprises writers use when creating memorable moments in their fiction. As Benedict says, you will certainly encounter others in your own reading and writing. 

The exercise this week is based on something Benedict refers to in her book as a "Surprise Platter," a scene that contains several different surprises in one scene.  To illustrate this, she gives us a scene from Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint in which the teenage protagonist, determined to lose his virginity, visits a prostitute along with a group of his friends--a scene in which almost every line "serves up something unexpected, and the stakes keep rising higher and higher." [Roth's passage is found on p. 68 of Benedict's book]

I've had so much fun applying this "Surprise Platter" technique to my own writing, including both "breakfast" scenes and sex scenes; scenes-in-progress; and scenes going through their eighth, ninth, and tenth revisions. In almost every instance the results have triggered further insights into the characters and their stories. Because of the added moments of surprise, a scene will often take off in a totally new direction--something that can be especially helpful when you find yourself in the sagging middle of a fizzling rough first draft.


This is an exercise I came up with based on Elizabeth Benedict's five categories of surprise:

 

Elizabeth Benedict: The Joy of Writing Sex, A Guide for Fiction Writers  Click here to listen to an interview with Elizabeth Benedict on ABC Radio Australia, talking about sex in literature.

Surprise Ending

Not all of us love a surprise party, but most of us probably enjoy a well-crafted and unexpected turn of events in the stories we read (be they fiction or nonfiction) just when we thought we had the whole thing figured out. I'm not talking about those playful-but-clever O. Henry kind of endings, but endings that feel organic and right--satisfying on every level. How do writers come up with those great endings? I wish I knew. I wish there was a simple formula for that -- or even a complicated one. 

Needing a break from my novel and the slow, seemingly never-ending progress I've been making on my third rewrite,  I thought I'd tackle something new for a while -- a project I could start and finish in a month or two -- a short story, maybe, just a few thousand words.  A piece of cake, or so I thought. 

It wasn't difficult to come up with a premise right away. A week later I even had what I thought was a pretty decent rough draft of the first two-thirds of the story.  So far so good, but as always, the final third of the story had my brain tied up in knots.  How do I find that perfect surprise ending, the kind of ending that resonates and sends the reader back to the beginning to see how in the heck I pulled it all off?  An ending that's totally unexpected, but feels in retrospect like the story was working up to that final moment all along...?  

To pull off a surprise like that, we need to really know and understand our characters, especially those who'll be surprising us with their unexpected and seemingly unpredictable actions.  We need to know who they are and what they're capable of.  What motivates them to behave the way they do? Have they shown through past action that they are capable of such behavior?   What are their secret and not-so-secret yearnings and fears? 

In Writing Fiction Step by Step author Josip Novakovich suggests that in order to avoid the sense of "foregone conclusion" when creating and defining our characters we should look beyond simple "character traits" that tend to pigeonhole our protagonists and other characters into behaving in predictable ways:   

When we do what Novakovich suggests above, we need to make sure that we've prepared the reader ahead of time. We don't want to spoil the reader's surprise, but we want the ending -- and the character's unexpected behavior -- to ultimately make sense. 

Brandi Reissenweber, author of the “Ask the Writer” column for The Writer magazine (and my all-time favorite online writing instructor at Gotham Writers Workshop) explains in the following three snippets (from one of her many in-depth lectures on craft) the importance of carefully setting things up so that when the surprise comes it doesn't feel forced:

My favorite bit of advice on "endings" and "surprise" comes from author and creative writing professor John Dufresne in his enthusiastic and inspiring book on craft, The Lie That Tells A Truth.  It comes from his chapter on plot titled "The Queen Died of Grief." I find myself returning to this passage every time I approach the ending of a new story, and I imagine that you will, too:

Below the exercise I've listed a few of my favorite short stories with surprise endings that work really well. I'd love to hear about some of your own favorites. The more we read stories with good surprise endings, the closer we'll get to actually pulling one off ourselves.  Oh, and hey -- if, during your travels and studies, you happen to come across a simple formula for generating the perfect surprise ending, be sure to let me know, would you?

Maass notes that in his workshops, "nearly three-quarters of participants find that they prefer the approach to the scene that this exercise yields.  Why is that? First choices in writing a scene often are the easiest: the ones that make sense and feel safest.  But safe choices make a scene predictable. Reversing motives shakes up a scene.  It makes its course less expected, yet no less logical since the action still comes from your character's true, deep motives." 

Seems to me that you could use this same exercise for the "endings" of stories as well. Or the endings of novels.  Or the endings of chapters in novels. What is it your character yearns for? Make a complete list of his reasons for wanting it.  Come up with several new and surprising "endings" based on each of the motivations on your list and write a brief summary of each.  Do any of these new endings surprise you more than others? If so, find places earlier in the story to show that your character is capable of such an unexpected action. Can you convince the reader through your character's past experiences that his surprising action later in the story is not only plausible, but right? 

A few of my favorite short stories available to read online:

"Neversink" by David Benioff  

"Twin Study" by Stacey Richter 

"The Wig" by Brady Udall (transcript from "This American Life", NPR) -- my favorite flash fiction piece (only 372 words!)

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Josip Novakovich: Writing Fiction Step By Step

Donald Maass:  Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook

John Dufresne:  The Lie That Tells A Truth

Brandi Reissenweber: writing instructor for Gotham Writers Workshop and author of the "Ask the Writer" online column for "The Writer" magazine

Telling Detail & First Impressions

I was re-reading one of my favorite Hollinghurst novels recently, hoping to somehow absorb through osmosis his exquisite way with language -- ah, those gorgeous sentences!  His character descriptions in particular are lovely little works of art:  lush, accurate, and insightful; and as Anton Chekhov would most likely say, "rendered with immediate and telling detail."  Even his walk-on characters come alive on the page with just a quick, simple stroke of his brush.  

In average stories minor characters and walk-ons are often easy-to-forget cardboard placeholders given little attention by their authors.  In better stories authors turn simple character snapshots into living, breathing personalities, usually by adding one or two carefully chosen "telling" details (think of them as significant, revealing, or defining details—not to be confused with "show, don't tell") as in these examples from several award-winning authors and literary giants:

=  She was fifteen and she had a quick nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors, or checking other people's faces to make sure her own was all right. [Joyce Carol Oates]

=  His eyes were pinpoints of trouble, his mouth a flat line of pain, his shoulders so strong and high that he appeared to have no neck at all.  He entered the room as if he'd just been asked to ascend a throne and, after an initial reluctance, now meant to show just how decisive he could be. [Edmund White]

=  [He was] very good company but somehow remote, the sort of person it is hopeless to fall for, as I quite did at first, with his hooting laugh and witty sentimental conversation. [Alan Hollinghurst]

=  There was something very strange in him; there was a light in his eyes as though of intense feeling--perhaps there were even thought and intelligence, but at the same time there was a gleam of something like madness. [Fyodor Dostoevsky]

=  There was a hint of spring in her sloe-green eyes, something summery in her complexion, and a rich autumn ripeness in her walk. [Toni Morrison]

=  [He] was geeky, nerdy.  His body was a stalk supporting the tulip of his brain.  As he walked to the car, his head was often tilted back, alert to phenomena in the trees. [Jeffrey Eugenides]

=  He was easily over six feet tall but appeared to regret it. [Edmund White]

=  Doa Vicenta, a woman with a dull brain, who when she was not sleeping, was complaining of everything, especially the noise… [Miguel De Unamuno]

=  He had on the grey suiting of a business man, but with unusual tucks and vents, which seemed to hint at his role in the arts. [Alan Hollinghurst]

=  She had a radish-white, almost raw-looking body and a tiny head made big by puffed-up hair.  He never saw her out of her old torn kimono. [Edmund White]

=  A priest. A young priest, black-suited, with a black felt hat, one hand stiffly in his jacket pocket, thumb hooked outside, the other holding a black breviary, finger keeping the page.  So tall, his head had a stoop. Wire-framed spectacles saddled his nose.  Oddly, ever so, foreign-looking. [Jamie O'Neill]

=  She recognized most things about him, the tight jeans that showed his thighs and buttocks and the greasy leather boots and the tight shirt, and even that slippery friendly smile of his, that sleepy dreamy smile that all the boys used to get across the ideas they didn't want to put into words.  [Joyce Carol Oates]

=  He was quite spotty, although probably about my age, and wore hopeless clothes--shapeless jeans, fluorescent trainers and complicated musician's knitwear; but he was beautiful, with his dirty blond hair and chestnut eyes. [Alan Hollinghurst]

=  Connie saw with shock that he wasn't a kid either--he had a fair, hairless face, cheeks reddened slightly as if the veins grew too close to the surface of his skin, the face of a forty-year-old baby.  [Joyce Carol Oates]

=  His ungloved hands, as big and white as boiled hams, hung down at his side.  He was wearing a velvet-collared Chesterfield which he'd thrown open as if to breathe more easily, or to cool off, though it was a cold night. [Edmund White]

=  He had fair brown hair, with a lock that fell onto his forehead. His sideburns gave him a fierce, embarrassed look…  [Joyce Carol Oates]

In Writing Fiction, The Practical Guide (from Gotham Writers' Workshop) Chris Lombardi defines what Chekhov means when he refers to telling detail:

A telling detail does what it says: it tells the essence of what it's describing.  Telling details are the scotch tape holding up Susie's hemline in the back, the tiny piece of ice that never seemed to melt in the bottom of Mom's martini, the street sign on the corner that still says, to this day, SCHOOL CROSSING, though the school is long gone. A telling detail can speak volumes in a very short amount of time.  They help you achieve a golden mean--enough description to paint the picture, but not so much as to weigh it down.

Brandi Reissenweber, author of  the "Ask the Writer" column in "The Writer" magazine, cautions not to use too many details when one or two precisely-chosen details will accomplish the task:

Many writers will pile on details in an effort to capture a character, setting, or moment. This is certainly useful in early drafts, as writers don't often hit on the best details right away. Over describing can be a great way to find telling detail. It's important to go back and pare out what isn't necessary so that the good stuff doesn’t get lost in the clutter.

Miguel De Unamuno, The Marquis of Lumbria

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty and The Folding Star

Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

Jamie O'Neill, At Swim, Two Boys

Edmund White, Hotel de Dream

Joyce Carol Oates, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"

Chris Lombardi,  "Description: To Picture in Words" from Gotham Writers' Workshop, Writing Fiction, The Practical Guide

Brandi Reissenweber, "Ask the Writer"

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