Plot layers

icon by Peg Ihinger

First, I have to apologize for this being late. There was a huge thunderstorm Monday night that knocked out my power and internet, and while the power came back quickly, it screwed up my router, which meant lots of fiddling around, and I didn’t get everything put back together until just now. So here’s today’s post, at last.

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Story plots have layers. The simplest one is, there’s “what happens next” and there’s “how this happens.” “What happens” are the plot points. In the original version of my current WIP, the first few “what happens” looked something like this:

• Protagonist discovers castle financial problems
• Protagonist meets new character
• Secondary viewpoint character finds mysterious items
• All characters consult about mysterious items
• All characters visit traitor in dungeon
• Protagonist sends message to scholars

The revised version looks like this

• Protagonist discovers castle financial problems
• Protagonist visits traitor in dungeon alone
• Protagonist sends message to scholars
• Protagonist meets new character
• Secondary viewpoint character finds mysterious items
• All characters consult about mysterious items
• All characters visit traitor in dungeon

On the surface, this makes it look as if all I did was add one plot point (the first dungeon visit, in bold) and move one plot point (the message, italicized). The fundamental things that happen are the same, and if I were to break down the list into “key information that needs to get out in each scene,” you’d see much the same thing—a few bits of new key information rearranged, a few new bits added, but nothing that looks like a major rewrite.

Dig a little deeper, though—that is, look at the actual draft of the story—and it is obvious fairly quickly that there are significant changes. That’s because there are multiple ways each of those key plot points can happen. The what can be the same, but the how can be very, very different.

For example, the first plot point in both versions is “discovers castle financial problems,” which needs to establish the following: 1) The castle is short of money. 2) Two of the protagonist’s advisors want to raid minor kingdoms in the surrounding area to replenish the treasury. 3) The protagonist and several other characters reject this idea, for different reasons. 4) The two in favor have different reasons for wanting to raid. In other words, none of the plot points or the key information for that scene actually changed at all.

Which two of the protagonist’s advisors come to present her with the problem is not particularly key…but the scene plays slightly differently depending on whether the subject comes up because the military commander is worried about the castle defenses, because the cook is worried about stocking up provisions for winter, because the protagonist asks the steward about starting an expensive new project, or because the castle steward considers it urgent enough to bring it up directly. Each approach provides a slightly different take on the characters and their reactions. The protagonist’s mother is more likely to get involved in a discussion of stocking up food for winter, while the protagonist’s personal guard is more likely to voice an opinion if it’s repairing defenses that are the precipitating problem.

Note that all of these things—repairing defenses, stocking up for winter, funding new projects, generally running low on funds—are all happening in the background regardless of how I choose to play the scene. I wanted to introduce the military commander and the castle steward, so I chose the two of them as the ones who present my protagonist with the problematic state of the castle defenses and finances. I am currently thinking of adding the cook to the scene in order to a) introduce the character and b) make the urgency of the financial situation clearer—it’s affecting everything, not just the military.

Having a list of “what needs to happen/get covered” in the next scene or chapter can be useful, but when writers complain that they don’t know what happens next, it usually means they don’t know how it happens, or that the “how” they thought of isn’t satisfactory for some reason. In my first draft, I didn’t stop to think long enough about how many different people would have problems due to the castle’s poor finances, and thus could be among those chosen to approach my protagonist. A lot of that was because I was solidly in my protagonist’s viewpoint when I was thinking about the scene, and she didn’t know there was a problem until the castle steward showed up…so I didn’t think about alternatives any more than she did.  In the first version, the characters who brought it up were both military commanders; in the second, I switched one of the commanders for the castle steward, which changed how things got covered, but not what things were covered.

Knowing what needs to be covered is just the first step. The second step is looking at 1) how many different ways there are of covering that information, and 2) which characters besides the most obvious ones and/or what events besides the one you’ve thought of could convey that key information. (Dialog is only one way of covering information. I could, for instance, have had my protagonist stop at the castle vault and notice that it’s practically empty, instead of picking various advisors to bring it up.)

Finally, you want to look at what other interesting/important information these alternative options can get in (or what they lose), besides the stuff you’ve already identified as “what needs to be covered.” In the case of the castle finances, I stayed with the main character being approached by two advisors because I wanted to show the cultural differences between them and my protagonist. Changing which advisors they were expanded my ability to do that, because they wanted the same thing, but for different reasons (and they had different expectations of how my protagonist would react, and what arguments she would find persuasive).