Ms. Wrede, do you use a plot skeleton? asked the earnest student. How do you apply it to your work?
I sat there for a minute, completely slumguzzled. Because the question was coming from such an alien perspective that it took me a while to come up with an answer that seemed even remotely sensible to me. I eventually babbled something, but it was pretty disjointed; fortunately, having a blog gives me a chance to be a little more coherent.
The problem with that question, for me, is that little verb, use. All my books have a plot skeleton, but it’s like the skeleton of the human body. I use my eyes to see things and my hands to type and my legs to walk with; my skeleton is one of the underlying things that makes it all possible. I don’t use my skeleton any more than I use my stomach or my circulatory system; it’s just there, doing its own thing, deep under everything else, and I don’t much think about it at all, except when something goes wrong with it.
I also don’t see how a plot skeleton can be “applied.” It’s just there. Or not. Reading about happy people sitting around being happy isn’t particularly interesting to most people (either to read or to write about), so you start off with a protagonist who has a problem. People who sit around being miserable without doing anything aren’t very interesting, either, so you have your protagonist take action in order to solve the problem. The action can succeed, fail, or be a partial success/failure-but, at which point the protagonist will either declare the story over (if it’s a short one), or try again and again until he/she either permanently succeeds or permanently fails or gives up (if it’s a novel).
The basic plot skeleton is descriptive, not prescriptive: it’s just a way of pointing out the way most stories move, not a recipe that has to be followed. This is why there is only one of it. Your bones – your skeleton – may be slightly larger or smaller than mine, but if our skeletons were the only parts of us that showed, we’d all look practically identical. It’s the cartilage and muscle and tendons and skin and hair that make people look different from each other (unless you’re an expert). Plot is just the skeleton of the story. You need one in order for the story to stand up straight, instead of collapsing into an unreadable pile of goo, but if you strip the flesh from Great Literature, you will find the same bones underneath that you find in schlock.
It is also worth noting that the plot skeleton does not say anything at all about content. A lot of people seem to think that “plot” and “action-adventure” mean the same thing, but they don’t. A story can have a plot that’s chiefly emotional or intellectual – one that’s focused on the protagonist coming to terms with a parent’s death, for instance. The incidents of the story will be something like “Protagonist is depressed after funeral; protagonist goes to a movie to try to cheer up; cheerful movie makes protagonist feel even worse” rather than “Monster is attacking village; protagonist tries to kill monster; killing monster enrages monster’s Mom, who is even more dangerous,” but the skeleton underneath is still “Protagonist has problem; protagonist tries to solve problem; attempted solution makes matters worse.”
Why even bother with the concept of a plot skeleton, then? Because it can be useful if a) one isn’t very good at plotting-by-instinct, or b) there’s something wrong at that level of the story. “A)” tends to happen during the pre-writing stage, when the author is having trouble coming up with the “what happens” part of the story. Asking basic questions like “What is the main character’s problem here?” and “What does he/she do to try to fix it?” and “What goes wrong, and what’s the new/worse situation that results?” can often result in useful answers that build a solid series of cause-and-effect incidents.
“B)” is something one usually notices after one has written a bunch of stuff that doesn’t seem to be working. At this point, the same questions (“What’s the problem? What does she do about it? How do things get worse?”) can be useful to pinpoint what’s missing, if something is. Sometimes, in order to do this kind of analysis, one has to unwind all the secondary and subplots first, because each plot and subplot has its own skeleton and in a complex, multi-stranded novel it’s a lot easier than you might think to lose track and leave out a critical piece. As soon as you line everything up in order, though, it becomes obvious: “OK, the monster attacks the village; then the monster’s Mom attacks…hey, I never did the bit where the protagonist kills the first monster!”
It’s common sense applied to writing, that’s all.
It sounds to me like they’re asking if you figure out the basics of your main plot before you begin writing. That’s what I would have meant if I’d asked that question, although I would have probably asked about your outline rather than “plot skeleton”(which is a phrase I’ve never heard before).
Angel – Your question makes a lot more sense to me, frankly. But context is everything, and given all the other questions this particular student asked, he really did mean “Do you use a plot skeleton when you’re writing every day?” Or something like that – I still haven’t figured out how I’d “use” a plot skeleton.
I’ve heard writers say ‘on page x/at y% into the book, this needs to happen, then that needs to happen – things like inciting incident, turning point, complication, dark moment etc. And I cannot help but think that for this reader at least a book that follows such a rigid structure always reads prefictable – *I* know what is coming and when it is coming, so I’m cheated out of discovering the story.
To me, that’s less of a plot skeleton than a corset.
Green Knight: I don’t know if you intended to type “prefictable”, but whether you did or not it is an awesome word for a common problem 🙂
I’ve never heard the term “plot skeleton” before. At first I assumed it was describing a device–“She reached up into the high cupboard, feeling around for her grandfather’s suitcase, but when she pulled back her hand she was holding HIS SKELETON!!!” *DUH DUH DUHHHHH* Like that.
Is it just a colorful way of saying outline? I can see the metaphor, with the knee-bone connecting to the–thigh bone (etc), but it does seem a bit elaborate.
A ‘plot skeleton’ sounds to me like dead bones culled from stories once living, plus rules for how they can be articulated together, so that a fleshy layer of verisimilitude can later be slapped down upon an otherwise bare and unconvincing armature. I know that – as with every other method – there are actually authors with the bent and the skill to make this sort of necromancy work, but it’s no go for me.
I maybe think more in terms of plot-seeds. When I get a beginning and a probable ending and a poetically correct connection between them, I generally know that I’ve got a sunflower-seed or an acorn or a rose-pip – and I know what sunflowers and oaks and roses look like in general, so I can sort of work to whatever that structure is. But the result is seldom any more like what I expected, than the archetypal Oak is like a particular oak-tree’s unfolding.
And now and then it turns out not to be any kind of oak I’ve ever heard of, or no kind of oak at all, or a fungus-riddled husk that will never grow to anything, or…
Then there’s the redraft, which strains this metaphor so offensively that both the writer and the gardener in me just shouted me down before finger could strike keyboard. But plot skeletons don’t come off well there, either.
(I’m now struggling with a ferocious urge to write a fairy-tale in which most of the plot is incited by a singing stripping skeleton of the ‘Take off your skin and dance around in your bones’ variety. Muse help me, I even think I know why he’s doing it! Must resist…)
green_knight – That kind of layout isn’t a plot skeleton at all…though it still can be unpredictable if you use the right content. Surprising the reader is just a lot harder than it needs to be if you’re trying to make the surprise happen in the same place at the same time every book. I think those people are trying to take pattern recognition to a new and improbable high (and they’re probably also looking for a fill-in-the-blanks recipe, which never works for writing anyway, so I don’t know why they bother. Unless they’re trying to write for one of those places that has that kind of extremely prescriptive formula, of course, but those places will tell you.
allegra – No, a plot skeleton is not an outline. An outline is different for every book, because it talks about the content of the book. An outline for “The Wizard of Oz” would talk about Dorothy and the cyclone and the Munchkins and the road to Oz; an outline for “Sleeping Beauty” would talk about the christening and the bad fairy and the curse and the spinning wheels. The plot skeleton for each of them is the same: problem, attempt at solution, worse problem. The problems are different: wanting to go home for Dorothy, the christening curse for Sleeping Beauty. The attempts at solution are different: going to the Emerald City for Dorothy, burning the spinning wheels for Beauty. The worsening of the problem is different: being assigned to kill the Witch of the West for Dorothy, getting pricked by the spindle anyway for Beauty. But the pattern is the same.
Gray – Again – DESCRIPTIVE, not PRESCRIPTIVE. Also, you’re talking about process (and as I said, I can’t see how anyone can use a plot skeleton for process, though I bet somebodym somewhere, does.) Because you can’t actually construct a person by starting with the skeleton and layering stuff on, any more than you can construct a tree by starting with the xylum and phloem and building the rest of it on. People, animals, trees, and bushes all have to grow; the structural part happens organically along with the muscles and hair and flowers and leaves and whatever. I do like your tree metaphor, because with gardening, you can look ahead and do some pruning and kind of guide the ultimate structure into a more pleasing shape. Also, the gardening metaphor speaks far more to process, which as-you-know-Bob is one of my key interests, rather than to after-the-fact analysis. Though perhaps the plot skeleton can be viewed as the platonic ideal of the “pleasing shape” into which one is trying to prune things? I’m not sure; I may need to think about this a lot more.
I don’t know about the bones of the plot skeleton, you sort of put those together as best you can and maybe you get a person, or a rodent, or a stegasaurous. What always gets me are the tendons. No matter what your skeleton looks like, if you want the thing to actually walk, the tendons need to be hooked up correctly.
I think I’m using this as a metaphor for inciting incidents, cause and effect, and motivation and action. It’s also probably because I’ve discovered a real mess with all of these thing in the second half of my book, and I’m worried i’ve been building a giraffe, when i was trying to build a horse, and spending so much time on the neck that the legs aren’t working, and it keeps overbalancing forward.
I’m having problems with losing track of plot strands, and then tying them all up really quickly in the last 5 chapters. And my viewpoint character is dead inside.
Why can’t I get anything right? (Sorry. Ignore despair.)
I have never heard of a plot skeleton before, but I suspect that it wouldn’t do much without the story mussels and such. However, the story would probably get pretty wobbly without that basic structure.
In my own work, I have been having a lot of trouble writing conversations. Mine seem to go on and on forever without any structure. I wondered if you have ever made a conversation outline? Like, I have such and such to convey during this conversation and I want this person to say this, then this person say this. If not, how do you keep your conversations from running on forever?
Because I have a tendency to either not have enough happen or get too melodramatic, I actually do actively use a plot skeleton while writing. I have to remind myself of that basic problem7attempted solution/result/new problem sequence to keep me on track with the right level of energy.
Pat – to me pattern recognition sounds like a bad thing because I recognise the pattern early on – I know _which kind of book_ I am getting with certain patterns, which breaks my sense of disbelief – if I have evidence that the author is manipulating characters and events to fit a certain scheme, they lose their aliveness.
I’d say reading for ‘how is the writer going to tackle this problem’ is a different reading protocol – valid, but not mine.
Grary – Then there’s the redraft, which strains this metaphor so offensively that both the writer and the gardener in me just shouted me down before finger could strike keyboard.
Bravo. It was a very vivid and organic metaphor to start with, and it resonates with me. ‘It’s an oak, or is it’ is a level of recognition that can identify with as a reader – when I look at the seedling, I want to have no idea, and watch it grow slowly and be delighted to see its development.
Becca – part of my revision process is a paragraph-by-paragraph outline. (Very useful for producing a synopsis, too). That way I can collapse my conversations to
– Kieron apologizes for being pushy
– Venna says she doesn’t have his energy
– Kieron states she’s spent a lot of energy supporting a third character
This makes it easier to recognise the flow of the conversation – am I skipping around, am I repeating things (and sometimes you want the repetition!).
During the writing, I just let them talk.
green_knight – I still think you’re taking the pattern-recognition thing up a level or two from what I’m talking about, but I’m not positive. In any case, manipulating characters and events to fit a particular detailed pattern is something that works so very, very rarely that I really don’t recommend it to anyone.
Becca and green_knight – I don’t outline my dialog scenes, but I do often have a few bullet points that I think of as “stuff they have to talk about in this scene.” It helps keep the conversation on track. The other trick is to write the conversation and let it ramble, then go back and take out lines until it gets down to a reasonable size. It’s more work to do it that way, but sometimes it’s the only thing that does work.