Fiction
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org,
please feel free to visit the school website)
According to Dwight Swain in Techniques of the Selling Writer (1965:1),
“You need to know only four things in order to write a solid story:
How to group words into motivation-reaction units;
How to group motivation-reaction units into scene and sequel;
How to group scenes and sequels into story pattern;
How to create the kind of characters that give a story life.”
Let’s start with the first; grouping words into motivation-reaction units. I think of motivation-action units as action exposition, dialogue and internal dialogue. Anne Lamott says in Bird by Bird (1994:25), “Very few writers know what they are doing until they’ve done it. You need to start somewhere—start by getting something—anything—down on paper.” I used this quote to give you hope. Not even an experienced writer like Anne Lamott approaches a project knowing the outcome. We come to a project with excitement, trepidation and a willingness to learn. That’s what writing is all about. We begin to tell a story by creating scenes made up of these motivation-reaction units. Something happens in our scene (motivation). A child is born, someone dies. Then our point of view character, or someone else in the scene, reacts to the event (reaction) and we’re off and running. The story will then begin to unfold itself, naturally leading you to the next scene and then the next.
Dialogue, both between characters and internally, is the heart of good fiction. Through dialogue, even more than exposition, the character is portrayed and the story is moved forward. Dialogue in a book is more compressed than in real life so, “...weed out fancy polysyllabic words unless the use of them is right for the character,” writes Browne and King in Self-Editing For Fiction Writing (1993:65)
Many writers are squeamish about dialogue, and are uncomfortable writing it, so they over-explain the story in long-winded passages of exposition that often lose the reader. One hundred years ago, it was perfectly acceptable for a novelist to go on and on in the omniscient point of view, describing every detail of a person or place ad nauseam. Today, if a writer does this, this writer would never find an agent or a publisher. In Self-Editing For Fiction Writing (1993:17), Browne and King tell us, “A good rule of thumb is to give your readers only as much background information, history, or characterization, as they need at any given point in time.”
By telling the story through action scenes and sharp dialogue, the pace of the story moves along. When the story is moving at break-neck speed and you sense a need to slow down, you can use a sequel to slow the pace temporarily. A sequel is often the “Point of View” character ruminating over something that has just taken place, and it can work well if the author doesn’t digress for too long. Writing is, as with most things in life, a matter of balance and awareness. Too much sequel can slow your story and lose your reader. A scene is a string of motivation-reaction segments placed back to back with a goal, a motivation, a conflict and a resolution which moves the reader into the next scene. Debra Dixon, GMC: Goal, Motivation, And Conflict (1996:108-9), says a scene should do at least one of the following:
- Dramatically illustrate a character’s progress toward the goal or provide an experience that changes the character’s goal.
- Bring a character into conflict with opposing forces.
- Provide a character with an experience that strengthens his motivation, or changes his motivation.
Dixon goes on to give a list of common reasons to include a scene in a book:
| Introduce suspect | Reveal secrets |
| Discover clues | Speed the pacing |
| Sexual tension | Establish trust between characters |
| Comic relief | Betray trust between characters |
| Foreshadowing | The list goes on...and on… |
Dixon dissects The Wizard of Oz as an example of a well-structured piece of writing. She starts with Dorothy’s goal, to go back to Kansas. In the scene with the wizard, Dorothy’s motivation is to convince the Wizard to help her with her goal, to be rid of the Wicked Witch and go home. Conflict arises when the Wizard refuses to intervene and sends Dorothy to face the Witch without his help, telling her if she succeeds, he will help her to go home. Dorothy, though disappointed, resolves to confront the Witch (her fears) and, through this, find a way home. This resolution leads to the next conflict, with the witch and her troop of flying monkeys.
In this story, the goal, motivation and conflict is clearly spelled out, moving the story along. Following the format of a well-structured story, the GMC format plays out in every scene. In some scenes, there is hope for success, in some only despair until, finally, at the darkest moment, there is resolution. This type of structure is often referred to as a W because of its peaks and valleys. Usually the story starts with a hook at the first tip of the W. Then there is a crisis, followed by a resolution. The next crisis is darker and deeper and after its resolution, the plot thickens until the darkest moment, when the hero has to make a choice. This leads to the final resolution. In the case of the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy returns to the Wizard triumphant only to be told he has no magic to help her home to Kansas. Just when things look the bleakest, Dorothy discovers she can click her heels together and go home. She had the ability to overcome her fears all along and just needed to discover it. She has faced her darkest feelings and can now be at peace.
This W also coincides with the formula in writing that there are always two “plot point turns” in a good story. Within the first few scenes of a story, the first plot point emerges, which is the challenge for the main character. The story cruises along and for the most part is about overcoming that challenge. Then the story takes a whole new twist, the second plot point turn, and turns another direction, the story becomes a deeper, bigger or new challenge for the main character. The Wizard of Oz had these two plot point turns. The first plot point turn came when Dorothy was displaced from Kansas and has to find her way home. The second was the issue with the wizard not having true magical powers.
When scenes are interspersed with sequels into a sequence, beginning with a clear character goal that meets an immovable conflict (with small resolutions and further barriers along the way), what you have is a plot. “Simply, plot is the harmonic design of the action (the events) of a story. There is a cause-and-effect pattern. Plot is the framework that holds the story together.” Pat Kubis and Bob Howland say in The Complete Guide To Writing Fiction And Nonfiction And Getting It Published (1990:1).
In Christopher Vogler’s, The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structures for Writers (1998:13), the plot is defined as The Hero’s Journey. “At heart, despite its infinite variety, the hero’s story is always a journey. A hero leaves her comfortable, ordinary surroundings to venture into a challenging, unfamiliar world.” That journey can be an external one, into an actual place, or an internal one of the mind, the heart and the spirit. The strongest stories are often both external and internal struggles, where the hero must face new challenges on the outside that force him or her to confront conflict inside.
Stories must ultimately be character centered, character driven and your hero’s motivation will effect where the plot goes. In order for the story to feel real, your reader must identify with a hero who simulates a real person, not a plot driven robot. The reader needs to understand what the hero is doing and why the hero does it. This is true identification. “Aristotle defined a weak plot as that which had a contrived mechanical ending in which outside forces step in and resolve the plot. Such an ending was called deux ex machina,” say Kubis and Howland in The Complete Guide To Writing Fiction And Nonfiction And Getting It Published (1990:3). A way to avoid a contrived plot and ending is to know your characters well enough that you know how they would cope with or react to anything you, the author, may toss their way. Anne Lamott in Bird By Bird (1994:45) says, “...you need to find out as much as possible about the interior life of the people you are working with.” In this way, you’ll be able to grasp their motivation and actions.
Phyllis Taylor Pianka in How To Write Romance (1988:38) says, “Character is created through a layering process that develops over a period of years, rather than through a single set of circumstances. To create believable characters, we must establish a past history for them.”
I like to think that getting to know my characters is like getting to know a friend. When I meet my characters in chapter one, I know very little about them. As I go along, I have an opportunity to know them better and better. I always go back after I’ve completed the first draft and rewrite the first few chapters based on what I’ve learned about the characters and the plot. To speed the process, you can write a history of your characters, especially your main characters, noting who they are, what they like and dislike, their habits and characteristic ways of doing things, as well as their fatal flaws. Flawed characters seem more real to the reader and have more to overcome through the course of the story. Unflawed characters are downright boring.
As I mentioned earlier, dialogue is one way the reader gains insight into your characters. Through sharp, accurate, natural dialogue, you can tell more about a character than through reams of exposition. “No one can teach you to write good dialogue. Basically, it takes a perceptive ear. If you want to be a good writer, sit back and listen to people talk.” Kubis and Howland give this pointer in The Complete Guide To Writing Fiction And Nonfiction And Getting It Published (1998:78).
When developing characters, another important consideration is Point of View. There are three basic Points of View, the first person (or I), the third person (or he/she), or the omniscient, but the omniscient is less often used in modern fiction. According to Phyllis Taylor Pianka in How To Write A Romance (1988:21), “The Viewpoint Character is the person in the story who has the most to gain or lose through the outcome of the critical situations. It is also the specific character or characters with whom the writer wants the reader to identify. Romance novelists have a choice of using first person viewpoint, third person/singular, or third person/multiple viewpoints.”
The element of fiction that ensures that the reader keeps turning the page is pacing. If the writer opens with a “hook,” clearly states the hero’s goal, and then turns up the heat by throwing what looks like insurmountable obstacles in the path of success, until the darkest moment near the end of the story when it looks like all is lost, the reader should have trouble getting to work or fixing a meal because he or she can’t put the book down. At least that’s the hope. With the use of action verbs, with few adjectives and even fewer adverbs, there should be a crispness and clarity to the writing and movement of the story. It has been said that writers should use adjectives like black pepper and adverbs like cayenne, a good rule of thumb. Sparse use of descriptive words leaves more to the reader’s imagination, engaging the reader fully.