Writing Fiction!

A Crash Course in Creating Characters, Plot and Setting

What is it?

How do you make one?

Plot

How do you make a GOOD one?

What is the difference between an essay or a work of expository prose and a story?

Essays generally have a thesis, are primarily factual and reflective (not dramatic), are “narrated” by the actual author, and are usually structured as traditional, a-temporal arguments.

Stories don’t have a thesis, are primarily dramatic and fictional, are narrated by an invented character, and have temporal structures.

Don’t confuse a first-person narrator of a story with the author of the story! They are not (necessarily) the same person!

Plotting a Story

What's a plot?

o A sequence or pattern of events.

What sets a story in motion?

A QUESTION is posed, explicitly or implicitly, and you want to know the answer!

Or: a balanced situation becomes…unbalanced! Some sort of equilibrium is disturbed.

Keep in mind overall estimated or intuited length (remember in media res).

This question linked to CHARACTER = a stronger story.

Plot—Don’t Plod! Building Suspense

o Introduce additional narrative questions. Create multiple obstacles, physical or emotional.

o Control the rate of revelation. Slow pace = interior monologue, description, dialogue, exposition. Fast pace = action, answers to narrative question.

o Provide false clues, misdirection. Develop sub- or parallel-plots which delay revelation in the main plot.

o Consider creating your backstory gradually. Don't give main character’s full story immediately. Let it evolve.

o Provide powerful IMAGERY which heightens tensions.

Students almost NEVER use imagery with feeling.

SETTING can also reveal character.

What else is important to plot?

Scene Developmento A unit of time and place in which (usually) important action takes

place.

o Can be like mini-stories within the larger story.

Scene transitionso Provide a simple extra space on the page. This is common these

days.o Transitional phrases. o “Jump cuts.” Allowing for ellipses, intuitive connections,

leeeaaaps… (cut out needless exposition and crud).

Note: many students are not aware of where their scenes stop and start, and their transitional passages are consequently “muddy”: over-elaborated, bogging the whole story down.

Helpful Plot Devices

Framing Flashbacks Foreshadowing Parallel or intersecting plots or sub-plots False clues “Hooks” (these are not so much “devices” but

integral elements; sometimes they’re referred to as complicating actions, triggers, or twists)

Delay

Scene-setting (exposition)

XX XX

XX

XX

XX

Hook

XX

XX

XX

XX

Crisis

ResolutionWhat SPEEDS pace?

What SLOWSPace?

Introduction of minor parallel plot

Hook

Hook

Hook

Flashback

XX

XX

Partial answer

Hook = “triggering action” or “complicating action” or “narrative question” or “twist.” Different sources will call these by different names.

False clue

Increasing tension

Standard rising and falling action

ACTION!

Dialogue.Internal monologue.Description.

What we’ve been examining so far is the traditional, linear, “rising action” plot…

And did you know: each carries with it its own ideological assumptions about the nature of time, desire, purpose, even human existence itself?

Alternate Plot Structures

Framed narrative. (Or this is actually a plot device.)

Montage or collage.

Multiple and intersecting plots.

Chronologically backwards plot. (Yes—backwards. See Lorrie Moore’s “How to Talk to Your Mother.”)

Static plots. (See experimental stories by Robbe Grille.)

All flashbacks, or footnotes, or exposition.

Different plots can express alternative ways of experiencing TIME and REALITY!

See an O’Brien story you read. How was his arranged?

Plot Things to Avoid

The “it was all a dream” ending. (Besides the fact that it already happened to Dorothy, it’s just a cheap solution to the difficulties raised in the story.)

Suicide endings. (Sorry—your characters will have to find some other way out of their problems. Avoid this kind of ending at least for now.)

Twist endings. (Clever, but get old fast. The twist becomes the whole point of the story, and ultimately has limited interest.)

Tidy, comprehensive endings in which everything comes out well, all loose ends are neatly tied up, and the universe is pretty much explained to one and all. Let your stories end inconclusively now and then. Let them end with questions rather than answers.

Keep in mind that…

Does a story have to be plot-centered?

A piece can be A piece can be charactercharacter-driven, -driven, imageimage--driven, driven, ideaidea-driven, even -driven, even settingsetting--driven.driven.

Tim O’Brien’s,

“In the Field”

What do you make of PLOT in this story?

Characters Day #2

How do you make them?

How do you make them INTERESTING?

Types

Flat (or Simple, Secondary, Static) Round (or Complex, Primary, Dynamic)

Need to Be Believable, Real Consistent Distinctive

Worst beginner faults: characters who are all alike (can’t tell one from the other), or are generic.

Try starting with a Try starting with a CHARACTER idea, not CHARACTER idea, not a plot idea!a plot idea!

TIP!TIP!

Look at character development in…

applied to CHACTERIZATION

1.1. Let only the tip of the iceberg show—Let only the tip of the iceberg show—the right details will the right details will evokeevoke the great the great complex mass of what lies beneath.complex mass of what lies beneath.

2.2. Show, don’t tell.Show, don’t tell.

3.3. Provide fewer, but better, details. Provide fewer, but better, details. (Less is more.)(Less is more.)

4.4. Avoid platitudes, like the ones I just Avoid platitudes, like the ones I just used. used.

Try a OPTIONAL, verbal “character sketch”…

I.e., invent someone…

a person who will be with you the rest of the semester.

You can explain many things, but try to describe more than explain.

At least 3 paragraphs. Can be notational.

Sometimes it helps to LITERALLY sketch or draw the character!

My character’s name is X and she is an X. She’s from X and first Xed when she Xed…

Look again at your character sketch.

What were you doing? Your character is FLAT! BORING! GENERIC! 2-dimensional!

www.ndsu.nodak.edu/instruct/cinichol/CreativeWriting/323/HarmoniousWhole.htm

SETTING and IMAGERY

What do SPECIFIC ITEMS in the setting say about the main character?

– What is in your invented character’s bedroom?– What is in YOUR bedroom?– What is in the jungle in “How to Tell a True War Story”?

What mood is created by the setting and by the story’s imagery?

How do the setting and the imagery contribute to theme?

In what ways might a story actually be ABOUT setting? (setting that is almost a character)

Settings which tell us very GENERAL kinds of things about the characters (socio-economic

class, general historical time and location), though some are at

least evocative)

These tell us more about the specific individuals living in

them

The $3 Exercise: What’s the Story? Day #3

Where to?

• Possible pts. of view: – You– Receiver– Teacher– Onlooker

• Point of entry– Instructor giving assignment– You on your way– Teacher waiting– Handing the money over– Someone reflecting back (frame)

• Narrative question:– What will receiver do? (action story about people in conflict, danger)– What will happen to me when I encounter the receiver? Can I make myself do it? (character-

based story about personal growth; tiny coming-of-age piece)– Why is instructor doing this? (story about education; maybe mentor-piece; battle-of-wills piece)– What will students think of this assignment? (the burned-out teacher; the evil teacher; the heroic

teacher)• Triggers, hooks, complicating actions, mounting tension

– Dialogue with other students on the way– New thoughts on the way– Diversions; delays; false leads– Setting: how do things LOOK when one is stepping directly into the unknown?

• Climax• Dangers of this story

– Pat theme

Editing prose for maximum INTEREST

PowerPunchTextureNuanceElegance

JuicyCrispThickFluidFlatSmoothSpareEllipticalBrittle

Worst High School Metaphors

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. Instead of 7:30. 

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. Traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. At a speed of 35 mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.

18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are want to do.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

less is more (style)

It roars down the road. The engine howls, a caged animal begging to be set free; plumes of bronze smoke blast skyward with every scream. Dust billows in airborne whirlpools behind gargantuan tires. Its ominous shadow bears down upon everything trapped in its destructive path. Ever closer it approaches, once a mere speck on the horizon this beast becomes a veritable leviathan.

It roars down the road. The engine howls, a caged animal begging to be set free; plumes of bronze smoke blast skyward with every scream. Dust billows in airborne whirlpools behind gargantuan tires. Its ominous shadow bears down upon everything trapped in its destructive path. Ever closer it approaches, once a mere speck on the horizon this beast becomes a veritable leviathan. Once a mere speck on the horizon, ever closer it approaches.

It roars down the road, a caged animal. Bronze smoke blasts skyward, dust in airborne whirlpools behind gargantuan tires. Once a mere speck, its shadow bears down upon everything.

Silences aren’t silent.

Silences aren’t nothing.

Being good with words means knowing when to shut up.

Fiction:Some #1 Things to Look Out For • Day #4

Before handing in workshop material, ask yourself at least a few of these questions:

1. Does the story rely entirely on plot? Are other story elements—character, setting, perspective, language, image—ignored?

2. Does the plot in turn rely entirely on an "O'Henry twist" or trick ending? This is fun maybe once or twice, but it gets old really fast. You should only be doing this sparingly. The outcome is a foregone conclusion for the writer and so no discoveries have been made. One of the central pleasures in writing—for the writer—has been missed.

3. A related problem is the plot based heavily on a clever, "ooh-aah" or "oh wow" premise. Such a premise or basic concept is fine if the story is otherwise fully developed, but too often the premise becomes the only point, a gimmick of interest for about 3 seconds. Try founding your story on some interesting and unresolved, possibly unresolvable problem of character rather than plot. The premise may seem less snappy or clever at first, but ultimately the story will be richer and take the reader (and you, the writer) into more interesting territory.

4. Is the plot "front-heavy"? That is, does it have page after page of initial scene-setting and exposition, followed by screaming slide to a conclusion?

5. Is there a suicide ending? Come on.

6. Are there plenty of specific, concrete, sensory DETAILS so that the reader can really see and feel the setting and characters? Or is most of the language general and abstract?

7. Are the characters in the story distinctive? Can you tell one apart from the other, or are they all basically the same person?

8. Are the characters developed? Do you really know the central people in the story—their desires, physical quirks, beliefs, contradictions? Does the main character leave an impression? Do you know everything there is to know about the main character? (you shouldn't!).

9. Are scenes* in the story distinctive and delineated? If they all kind of run together, chances are there's a lot of inconsequential action which is diluting the best stuff so we can't see it or experience it vividly. Go through and mark where scenes in the story begin and end, and consider cleaner transitions from one scene to another.

10. Look at the scenes you've marked. Is each one sufficiently developed? Notice where some good scene opportunities are being brushed over. These are places where you probably SUMMARIZED or used EXPOSITION rather than developed the moment with sensory detail.

11. Are the scenes well-modulated? You want to alternate action, reflection, dialogue, and exposition—not action scene followed by action scene followed by action scene. If there's no modulation, the high points just run together with the low points and the story will feel monotonous.

12. Is the point of view modulated? You want "distant shots" as well as detailed "close-ups."

13. Is there real engagement with language? Or, oops, is the prose style pretty much a soggy paper towel?

14. Look out for dull, hackneyed language; cliché words and expressions:

a. "sly smile"b. "evil smirk"c. "deep into his eyes"d. "heart leaped to his throat"e. "face etched with concern"f. "blacker than night"g. "bitter tears"h. majestic sunset," etc.

15. Try some interesting figurative language! Look for evocative, surprising, moving, vivid, juicy metaphors and similes.

16. Watch out for monotonous sentence length and style; no rhythmic, modulated, or otherwise engaging sentences.

17. Listen for voice—does your narrator, whether she's wholly omniscient, limited omniscient, or first-person—have a distinctive way of talking?

* Scene = an unbroken stretch of time and action, usually in one place. Unlike a summary or exposition, which may overview a broad period of time, a scene generally covers a brief, detailed, circumscribed period. Scenes are almost like small stories in themselves.