Storytellersunplugged

(I apologize for posting this late. I literally forgot Gerard sent it to me because he posted it in the body of an e-mail, and when I got to looking and didn’t see an attached file, I … well, anyway…here it is…sorry it’s late - DNW)

by Gerard Houarner

In an effort to be at say something at least occasionally useful to new writers who may be lurking on this board, I’ve been wanting to babble a bit about plotting.

Some writers spend an enormous amount of time worrying about plot. I know I have. Folks here have talked about their plotting/story generating techniques, and I’ve eagerly lapped up the information and perspective. Every little bit helps.

The one tried and true method that’s worked for me, mainly because it’s one of those things around which I can consistently wrap my feeble little brain, is to approach a plot as a set of consequences.

Shit happens. All the time.

You think you put a cup on the table but you missed and the cup fell and shattered against the tile and broke into a million pieces.

What are the consequences?

Are there kids or animals in the house? Is someone about to get cut? Did the cup have an emotional meaning for someone? Did the noise trigger an unexpected reaction in you – sadness, joy, rage? Is there someone else in the place, and how do they react to the accident?

You might try the left-brain thought balloon exercise and free associate from that central action and see what jumps out.

The point of the exercise is, I believe, that it forces, or perhaps tricks, a writer to think of the details of a story without actually thinking: I’m going to write a story now, and then freezing up in front of a blank page or screen. It’s a way to structure the imagination. It’s the old “what if?” of science fiction. But instead of a premise based on scientific principles and a writer’s development of a chain of consequences based on that principle that leads to an unexpected set of circumstances and conflicts for character, the story starts with an action – something, anything happens. What’s the reaction? And once you shoot off a reaction – a barefoot little boy comes running into the kitchen to investigate the sound, eager to catch mommy breaking something for a change, and cuts his toe – what happens next?

And why?

If that doesn’t grab you, maybe a mother or father yelling from the next room, treating the adult who just accidentally broke the cup like a child, will spark something. Off we go on another series of free-association idea balloons.

I like the idea of free-associating because it allows whatever’s bubbling inside to rise to the surface in the writer, become part of the story, without the need to become overly intellectual about the process. This helps get the creative juices flowing, the writer excited and engaged with the story.

However you do it, starting off with an action and exploring the consequencest just seems to me a natural story and character generating method for a certain kind of writer. Pick up a newspaper, watch a travel show, and you can start your story off.

I suppose it’s a little Twilight Zoney – meteor crashes in a lake, so what are the consequences: takes the bridge out, forces bus passengers to hang out in a coffee shop. Out of those actions, a Martian and a Venusian make appearances. But out of an action, characters are created, and the writer is forced to explore them in order to continue the cascade of consequences. At some point, the writer “knows” the characters and the story “writes itself.”

In the old days, the “action” serving to inspire the writer might be the cover to the latest pulp magazine an editor just bought and now needs a story to go along with it. These days, it could be a “theme” anthology (shifting just a bit from an action to a situation or a setting as a method of setting off a chain of consequences) – pirates seem to be hot, as do sea stories. So the premise isn’t the action of a cup breaking, but a ship at sea - why is out there? Who’s the captain, and why is he, or she, out there? What’s the crew up to? Is there a storm? An attack? A questionable or interesting cargo? Someplace to go?

There I go again – looking for something to happen to set things off.

Of course, actions aren’t the only way to set off the big bang of consequences.

People are consequences waiting to happen. Because of this or that awful thing that happened in your past; because you were born with this or that kind of sweet or obnoxious personality; because you are having one or another kind of day, you are primed to react (or not react). What are the consequences?

Bad decisions have consequences. Characters making stupid decisions are a staple of story telling, but when those decisions aren’t examined in the story, aren’t supported by details and character development, they become just a cheap way to move the story forward. Bad decisions grounded in a character’s history or personality displayed in the conflict of a scene leading to that bad decision create consequences. Story. Aristotle says so, or something like it, in his Poetics (you know, I spent a semester with Greek tragedy thirty two years ago, and things get a little hazy after a while, especially after the prof was still arguing about the meaning of plot at the end of the term – no wonder he didn’t last as department Chair….).

There must be truth in those consequences of character action. They must come from some understandable, logical place, just like science fiction is based on a ground work of familiar scientific principles. So the work of a writer becomes drilling down into the details of why each reaction happened, so the next consequence follows in logical, and hopefully surprising, order.

Decisions judged to be “good” by society have consequences, too. Taking a risk for someone else, sacrificing oneself, protecting the weak, helping someone through a tough time.

I suppose this is a “genre” or even “pulpy” way of generating stories. No slippery stream of irony or narcissistic metafiction here. Some might call it the “what happens next” school of writing, what happens being whatever pops into a writer’s head at the moment, without grounding in character or setting or previous actions (actually, that might be metafiction). But my point here is that thinking in terms of consequences forces a writer to look more closely at all the things that might come together to create a reaction, and presents a way to clarify and focus characters as they move forward and interact. Given x,y,z, a character is going to act this way, but because of an action, another character, a particular setting, something else happens.

You can start with a precipitating event that catches your attention – murder, vanishing, noises in the night, meteor crash, a falling cup. Or you can kick off with a “character” (including the possibility of an individual or conglomeration of people you’ve met) you feel strongly about, doing something that sets off a reaction around him or her. However you choose to start, looking at the series of consequences generated from an action or the way a character behaves is a way to create a story.

If your brain happens to work that way….

–Gerard Houarner