How to Write Activist Literature – Four – Write Out the Plot
By Andy Heath
Now you’ve got some busy times behind you. Now you’re ready for the hardest step thus far – and the most interesting and rewarding. This is where the plot comes together. As I said before, a plot is MUCH different than the one line summary. This plot will touch on nearly everything you want to include in your book. You’ve got all the characters sketched and you’ve got a few events, which you did in Step 3, so you’ll start with that.
Note that you’re not even writing something like what you’ll see on the back of a book cover. You’re not writing teaser copy. You’re writing a PLOT. This plot is going to include all the events, the characters, the twists and turns, the beginning, the middle, and the end – just not necessarily in that order!
The purpose of writing out the plot is not to get the idea of everything that’s going to happen in order. It’s just to get an idea of everything that’s going to happen. This is where the relationships between the events are considered. The most important questions you can ask in this stage are, “Why?” and “How did this come to be?” This is a stage where you will have to think in more than one direction. You’ll have to think forwards and backwards and every other conceivable direction.
So to give you an example from Preston, I decided that I wanted Preston to be highly religious and that I wanted him to pray in front of his bed every night. So that caused me to ask the question, “How did this come to be?” It is my job as the author to set everything up. Characters must always do things for good reason, not a bad reason or no reason. In this case, I had to answer the question of how it came to be that Preston prayed in front of his bed every night. So that put into the works another event that answered that question. In this case, I decided that when Preston was a little boy – a littler boy, that is – there were some stained glass windows that were put into the church and that Preston was so moved by them that he devoted his entire life to God. Was that the best way to answer the question, “How did this come to be?” Perhaps not, but that is the answer I gave.
Another situation in my book was that Preston had a bad relationship with Jake, the star football player. Again, the question was, “How did this come to be?” I knew that if Preston and Jake were going to have a bad relationship, I had to set that up. So I staged a scene on Preston’s first day of school where Jake and Preston meet and have a bad encounter. I also set it up so that Preston would be a better football player than Jake, and that would fuel Jake’s hatred of Preston. The reason Jake had to hate Preston was that his hatred would fuel even more actions on Jake’s part that would move the book along.
This is, perhaps, the hardest part of writing the book. In my humble opinion, it’s even harder than writing the manuscript, so let’s take it slowly, one step at a time.
Free writing
One very good technique to use in creating a plot is free writing. Basically writing everything that comes into your head about the book. The free writing should be done in long hand and should be stream of consciousness writing. I no longer have the free writing exercise I did when planning Preston or I would simply post some of it on here… but the following is a fabricated excerpt of what could have been my free writing exercise and what you can expect to happen when you’re planning your plot:
“I want Preston to pray every night. But why does he pray every night? There must be some reason. It could be that he saw some stained glass windows when he was younger and was so moved by them that he wanted to pray. At the end of the book, I want Preston to show that he gives up his religion, and I guess I could do that by letting him blow out a candle or something like that. That means that he has to pray in front of a candle every night. But I guess he would blow it out every night, so there has to be some reason that he doesn’t blow it out. Maybe there could be a draft in his room and it blows the candle out every night and then Preston considers that his communication device with God.
“But then what? Why does Preston give up his relationship with God? Maybe it’s because he falls in love with someone – someone he can’t have. He can fall in love with Eric, his best friend. And then he will realize that he is involved in a sin, so he has to question whether he should be gay or religious. I guess Preston and Eric can meet the first day of school because their schedules are messed up so they can go to the guidance office together. But why are their schedules messed up? Because the principal is a moron. Yeah, the principal has a bad relationship with the superintendent so he is trying to improve that. Maybe I can use that bad relationship to show that the principal is hard on gay people so that will fuel the story as well.”
Then what? There has to be more. There is a psycho religious fanatic named Billy. How do I show he’s a fanatic? I will show him murdering someone at the beginning of the book. But then he has to meet Preston and try to recruit him. Yeah, he will take advantage of the fact that Preston is religious and try to recruit him into the psycho religious group…”
Now just sit at your computer and close your eyes and imagine me writing that in long hand. You can probably see my creative juices flowing as I run across problem after problem and simply solve it. The issue is that once you solve a problem, often it creates another one. So you have this winding, twising, turning, almost nonsensical and not very well written long hand plot that will fill pages and pages and pages and pages and pages. Be prepared to spend more than a week on this. You need to just write. Write and write and write. Pose what you want to happen in the story and then solve the problems that arise. Answer the questions, “Why?” and “How did this come to be?”
Like I said, this is the hardest part of writing the book. Every time you sit down to work on your plot – and it WILL have to be in several sessions if you do it right – first review your theme and your one line summary from Steps 1 and 2. When you write out the actions of your characters, refer to Step 3, and they will surprise you. They might look at you and say, “I’m not doing that! as Holly Lisle noted on her website for writers.
Keep going. Keep working. Keep answering those questions. If you find that some aspect of your characters doing work, then change them. It’s ok. Writing a novel is a messy process, so bring an eraser or be willing to mark through a lot of things.
In your free writing exercise, you’ll find that sometimes you’ll write something and you find out later that it doesn’t work. That’s ok. Just leave it and change it as you write. Say something like this, “No wait. I said Preston was going to be a karate expert before, but now I think he should be a football player…”
Like I said, this is a messy step. It’s going to be long and incoherent and maybe even difficult to read, but this is part of the process of solidifying the story. You have make sure that things flow a certain way and make some sort of sense.
When writing out your plot, always keep the following in mind:
Make sure characters always act for good reason, not a bad reason or no reason.
If Sam always gets up at 5 AM and goes to work, then he had better have a good reason for not doing exactly that one day. Is he sick? Then don’t show him going in when he’s sick. He has to have a good reason for not going to work if that’s what he always does.
That is a simple example, but this is important. In the course of writing a novel, characters are going to change. In Preston, Preston gave up his religion. He had been highly religious for years, and that said, he would not just give up his religion. He has to have a reason. When he realized that the church persecuted him for being gay, he was willing to give up his religion. But even then, you have to keep in mind…
Set everything up before it happens
Preston had a good reason to give up his religion, as noted above, but I had to set it up. I can’t leave my readers shocked – too shocked, anyway – that he gives up his religion. It’s okay for a reader to think to himself, “Wow, I didn’t see that coming, but it makes sense.” I just don’t want him to say, “Where the hell did that come from?” If they say the latter, then I have done something wrong, and I will need to go back and change something in the story.
I could probably write volumes on how to free write a plot, but the important thing is just to do it. If you get stuck, feel free to start over. Don’t give up. Like I said, this is, by far, the hardest part of writing the whole book. If you can just get through this one free writing exercise, the rest will fall into place naturally.
The Ending
With a quick note on the ending of your book… yes, you want to know what it is. You don’t get in your car and choose and interstate and start driving unless you have some idea of where you want to go. The same is true of writing a piece of activist literature. You must know where you’re going. As part of your plotting exercise, you’re going to have to put the end down. Describe it in detail. Write down exactly what is going to happen, and keep your theme in mind. Remember, each of these steps works together, and the fact that you’ve already written the theme does not mean that you can just put it out of your mind. When you have decided what your ending is going to be, then make sure that you stay true to your theme and decide if you are going to set up to prove or to disprove that theme. You have to know in advance. Make sure your ending makes sense, that it is set up, and that the changes the characters have gone through are for good reason.
Free writing the plot will lead us to Step 5, which is to fill in the gaps, and that will come in two days.
