by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Some questions for you today as we consider what we write and what readers want from our writing.

A book recently showed up on Project Gutenberg called Plotting the Short Story. It was published in 1922, just as the golden age of pulp was taking off. And while its focus was on short-form writing, I found much of what it said relevant to full-length. Let’s have a look:

The modern short story calls for speed and snap. We have made this remark before, but, if one is to judge by the number of spineless manuscripts that swell the average editor’s daily mail, it will bear repetition many times. The story must be placed before the reader with trip-hammer strokes. Readers who seek mental relaxation in short stories are usually busy people who read in much the same manner that they eat—“quick-lunch” style. They have not the time to wade through pages of rambling descriptive matter or absorb weighty paragraphs of philosophic reflection. They refuse to be instructed; they want to be amused, and like their stories served up piping hot, as it were.

Don’t you think that still hold true? Certainly people are busier than ever. The year 1922 seems positively soporific compared to today. And consumers of commercial fiction still “seek mental relaxation” (which is another way of saying don’t make them work too hard to figure out what’s going on, or wear them out with “weighty paragraphs.” (See Pat’s post and the comments thereto).

On method:

There are a great many writers, of course, especially among those who have “arrived,” who do not find it necessary to commit their plots to paper, but who work them out in their minds before they begin their stories, or build them up detail by detail after their stories are begun. To these writers, plot balance and movement have become instinctive, and they find that their words flow easier and that their imaginations are more active when they begin their stories with only a half-formed plot in mind or, indeed, with no plot at all, their theory being, that the creative mental powers are given fuller play if permitted to invent while the story itself is in the process of development than if forced to form a fixed plot-plan before the story has begun to materialize.

Your dedicated panster could not have put it more elegantly. But a word of warning:

But in the main these writers rely upon word-grouping (style) more than upon plot to put their stories “over,” and even the best of those who adopt this policy occasionally come to grief, for it is not an easy matter to fashion a plot and beautifully formed word groups at one and the same time. Such a plan, if consistently followed, usually proves fatal to the beginner.

A technically-correct plot upon which to build one’s story is as essential to success as a thorough understanding of the language of one’s country; and the only way for the novice to make sure his plots are free from technical flaws is for him to work them out on paper, according to fixed rules, with the same care that he would use in solving a knotty mathematical problem.

This describes my own journey. I was a free-flowing pantser at first, traipsing joyfully in the meadows of my imagination each day, trusting that it would lead to the kinds of stories I loved to read. It didn’t.

Authors…should therefore make an exhaustive study of the plot, calling to their aid several authoritative text books in order to get the teacher’s point of view, and analyzing the stories they read in the current magazines so they can get a line on the plot as it is handled by successful writers, and at the same time become acquainted with the editorial preferences of the different periodicals.

So I started to study, diligently, and apply what I was learning to my writing. Then I started to sell. Thus, I do believe getting foundational plot principles into a writer’s “muscle memory” will save them years of frustration:

Once the simple rules of plot construction become fixed in his mind, and he gets the feel of the plot, the writer can begin a story with nothing to build on but a vague idea and a burning desire with some hope of working out a well-proportioned plot after the story is well under way, but until he does master these rules he courts disaster each time he begins a story unless he has worked out his plot in advance.

Toward the end, the author states:

Enthusiasm is the chief requisite in plot making.

That is, plot principles alone aren’t enough. To this must be added—

—a spark…that starts a conflagration in the writer’s brain and makes him an object to be pitied until he sits down before his typewriter and pounds out a story to make us sit up half the night to read. 

A machine can construct a plot. It can even produce “competent” fiction. But as Brother Gilstrap recently put it, “Stories need to be more than conduits for plots and twists. Books we love connect with us emotionally because a human author infused that emotion into their work.”

All of it works together—plot, speed, snap, spark. You must learn them through experience, and without an aversion to that little word work.

Comments welcome.