Plotting the Second Half, Pt. 3

If you've been following this blog you've probably realized that I have slowed waaaay down on my posts, and I have NaNoWriMo to blame for it. I whizzed along for the first ten days thinking I could toss off this little 50,000-word exercise without breaking a sweat. When I hit mid-point in the novel those 1667 words per day began to come a lot harder.

Third Act Doldrums
So I called up a lady who knows a thing or two about plotting. Jamie Morris runs the Woodstream Writers Group in north Florida. I put the question to her: In a four-act structure, what the hell is supposed to happen in Act 3? Your character has bottomed out. She has to make it from that deep hole to the climax. Additionally, we're supposed to be right in the middle of "fun and games" as Blake Snyder puts it in his excellent book on plotting screenplays, Save the Cat. Where's my fun? Where's my games?

Here's what Jamie had to say:

Plotting the Second Half, Pt 2: The Mavens Weigh In

Yup, bad sh*t happens in Act 3

Yesterday we talked a little about issues with plotting your novel's second half. I'm using a four-act structure rather than a three-act, and I'm a little concerned with how I'm going to keep the tension in my WIP from flat-lining after the midway point. So I got in touch with two of my fiction mentors, Jamie Morris and Joyce Sweeney, who invented the Plot Clock I'm using. Today I'll give you Joyce's take on this brain-teaser (look for Jamie's words of wisdom tomorrow).

Sweeney, being all
smart and stuff

Joyce says that the low point in the story comes at the end of Act 2 in both the four- and three-act models. After your character hits that low point, "it doesn't mean all the tension is over, you keep raising the stakes all the time," she says.

Plotting the Second Half

Halfway through:
But what's on the dark side?

I've burnt up the first half of my WIP at a rate I'd never imagined possible during NaNoWriMo. But just as I'm about to reach what I've plotted as the low point (the worst that could happen) I feel myself getting nervous about what's to come.

In the plotting workshop I took in September, we talked about how the halfway point of a novel can be the place where your main character hits bottom. Hits it so hard you can hear the thud a hundred miles. Just after that point, your MC realizes she has to change. Something she's doing isn't working. She figures that out. Once she does, she's on an upswing, piling up small victories and realizing new strengths, until the novel's climax (the battle of the book.)

Fine so far, but how do you keep tension in your novel when your character is racking up the smaller victories, and those leading to larger ones, and it looks like all is well?

Dan Harmon's Plot Embryo

I've been obsessing about story structure lately. So I was glad to find, in this month's Wired magazine, a piece about Dan Harmon, the 38-year-old creator of the cult-sitcom Community. Harmon has invented plot circles, which he calls "embryos;" they share some similarities to the plot clocks Joyce Sweeney and Jamie Morris have come up with. I actually prefer the Sweeney/Morris version, but I think Harmon's vision is a useful one too. Harmon says this story structure is so "tattooed on his brain" that he can't not see it when he watches a movie, hears a song, or reads a book. Here's the breakdown on how it works:

Querying for Emotion

Querying an agent? Make her swoon.

We talked yesterday about how to forge an emotional connection between yourself and your concept question as a way to make your writing more powerful and true.

But there's another sort of emotional connection we'll have to make when our novels are finished--the connection between our query and our dream agent.

Over on her kidlit blog, Mary Kole put this clearly. She says she wants a query to make her care. Well and good. But she's talking about more than showing high stakes and conflict, or teasers about the troubled backstory of our MCs. What Kole is asking for is a gripping, powerful emotional connection that occurs through a finely wrought combination of language and storytelling.

Do You Connect With Your Concept?

Rockin' Around the Plot Clock
I just spent an amazing weekend with a dozen other writers, holed up in a house in Mount Dora, Florida. We dedicated 48+ hours of workshop time to thinking about plot.

I did a pretty good job plotting my first novel by the seat of my pants (I went back in revision and created a detailed step sheet), but I never really felt like I "got" plot. No matter how many craft books I read on the subject, how to structure a novel for maximum impact (and I mean, I wanted it to kill) just wasn't gelling for me.

After this weekend, consider me gelled. I get how the plot points fit together now, and how they ought to resonate off each other. I merely had to spend some time with Joyce Sweeney and Jamie Morris's brilliantly simple Plot Clock. The Plot Clock features in most of the Sweeney/Morris Next Level Weekend Craft Intensives, and I can't recommend these workshops too highly).