Part 5 (1/2)

If any scene seems not yet exciting enough, think of introducing a new character into it, which always generates possibilities for conflict, especially if the new character has something important at stake in what is happening in that scene.

If you get stuck, there's another device some writers use. Think of the worst thing that could possibly happen to you right now. Don't censor. A layman instinctively covers up. A writer disciplines himself to uncover.

Now think of your very best friend. Conjure up a picture of him or her in your mind. Remember the good times with your best friend. What is the worst thing that could happen to him or her at this very moment? It has to be something different from the worst thing you imagined happening to you. It should be linked to your friend's character, ambitions, or desire.

Now imagine the same worst thing happening not to your best friend but to the character in your story. Would that create a suitable obstacle in the plot you are developing?

The protagonist's biggest obstacle is usually the antagonist and what he does. But there can be numerous other obstacles that will thwart the protagonist on the way to achieving his goal, including, perhaps, what you imagined happening to your friend.

There are other techniques to get your plotting motor going. By thinking of certain conventional obstacles, less conventional obstacles will occur to you. For instance, your character needs to get someplace right away. The car breaks down. (In a melodrama, the breakdown may have been precipitated by the villain or an accomplice.) Or the weather changes drastically and impedes progress. If the weather won't do, think of any unexpected, uncontrollable event.

Here are some other stimuli. A deaf person fails to hear something. A blind person fails to see something. A recluse refuses to tell what he has seen. An airplane flight is aborted on takeoff. Water is needed immediately for an urgent purpose; suddenly there is no water in the tap.

There are larger obstacles that can stimulate your plotting: a sudden illness of an important character. Help is unavailable. An accident happens on the highway to someone the reader cares about. Or an accident at home-someone falls in the bathtub or off a ladder. A natural disaster (flood, earthquake, hurricane, forest fire) puts your character at great risk.

It's common to think of the obstacles of all being generated by the villain, but we've seen that acts of nature can also be obstacles. And there are always other people b.u.t.ting in. You can devise an unwanted intervention by someone who wants to help but makes things worse. Or you can have an unwanted intervention by someone unrelated to the villain who wants to block the protagonist for reasons of his own. You can have a previously absent person return who causes problems because she is not up on what has transpired during her absence. The list could go on. But you get the point. You can always check your daily newspaper for obstacles in the lives of people in news stories.

One caution. Some obstacles need to be planted ahead of time so as not to seem arbitrary devices of the author.

Writers who feel the need of discipline in plotting can sometimes benefit by preparing a list of every obstacle they plan to use in their plot. They then can ask themselves, is the first obstacle strong enough to hook the reader? Do the obstacles build? That means as each obstacle is faced and overcome by the protagonist, an even greater obstacle has to present itself.

I know novelists who have very strong first obstacles, but they do not follow up with stronger obstacles, with the consequence that the reader feels the story winding down. As a result, the reader either gives up reading before the end or, even if he's persistent, won't rush to get that author's next book.

Some writers I've worked with find it difficult to develop plots because they're not sure their plot ideas would be of interest to readers. Here are some clues to areas of reader interest: * Reading about enemies trapped together. In life, one of the most uncomfortable experiences people have is being with someone they don't want to be with. In fiction, when readers observe someone else in that predicament, it engages a strong concealed emotion. The reader wants to know the outcome.

* Experiencing a character's embarra.s.sment involves the reader. Causing a character to be embarra.s.sed will almost always create an interesting plot development.

* Experiencing a character's fear creates enormous tension. It can be fear of mortal danger, of course, but experienced novelists generate fear from small things. Eric Ambler's The Light of Day has a scene in which the protagonist is chauffeuring a car with a loose door panel concealing smuggled arms. As the screws rattle, so does the reader, afraid that the car's owner in the backseat will hear the rattling. The scene is full of tension.

* Change in a relations.h.i.+p invites the reader's tense interest in the outcome. In life, people get bored when nothing changes even though changes in life are fraught with peril. If the perils of major change happen within the covers of a book, the reader will be absorbed.

* Readers enjoy being surprised. Nice surprises are one of the pleasures of life. We like to receive surprise presents, good news, the announcement of an unexpected visit by friends we want to see. Bad surprises in life bring hurt, sadness, misfortune. But in books readers thrill to the unexpected. A new obstacle, an unexpected confrontation by an enemy or a sudden twist of circ.u.mstance all start adrenaline pumping and pages turning. Novels, stories, plays, and screenplays thrive on bad as well as good surprises.

Surprises are not difficult to create. Look at each important incident in your plot and see what you would normally expect to happen next. Then have the exact opposite happen. At least half the time an idea will suggest itself that will surprise your characters as well as yourself.

You can surprise yourself (and your readers eventually) by picking an unusual locale that you know well enough to depict accurately. Then choose a character you have already created who is most unlikely to show up in that locale. Put that character in that locale. Imagine what happens when the character shows up there, and other characters react.

Finally, I would like to suggest an easy means for getting character-derived plot ideas. Sometimes even experienced writers get stuck. I counsel them to examine the cla.s.sified personal ads, which frequently have the following characteristics: * They are written by people who want a relations.h.i.+p so badly that they are willing to advertise for it.

* What they want is a mate, which is a high category of desire and the subject of much fiction.

* The ad writers are doing two things at once: they are trying to describe the kind of person they want to meet; they are describing themselves (sometimes unknowingly).

* The ad writers are frequently fantasizing about their ideal as well as about themselves.

* Readers of the ads usually get a far different impression from the one the advertiser intends.

The personal ads I've seen that are useful appear in New York magazine, the Village Voice, L.A. Reader, L.A. Weekly, and the New York Review of Books. Some are available nationally at better newsstands or by subscription. The New York Review of Books, a highbrow biweekly with a large international following, is a fine source because some of its ads are quite imaginative. I quote one of my favorites: VERY UNUSUAL MAN.

I'm looking for a very special woman-probably someone who rarely if ever, answers ads. Very well-educated and extraordinarily bright, funny, beautiful, athletic, sophisticated, outdoor oriented, honest, nurturing, vulnerable, financially secure, very sensual and able to be open and present to other people. Someone who is very successful in her own way, courageous and psychologically grownup. Probably 35-45, with a great appet.i.te for exploring life with another person. I'm extremely well-educated, post-doctoral in humanities, and work at the top of the business community. Handsome, 6', 180 lbs., athletic, very, very successful financially and professionally. I am a psychologically secure, well-balanced man who is totally natural and curious, sometimes brilliant, intuitive, funny, honest, genuine, direct and very open. I spend two to three months a year off doing interesting things other than work. I am a very complex, very special man with deep values and a good heart. I need to find someone who has gotten to the same place in her life and is headed in the same direction. Note/phone/photo a must.

I've read that ad at a number of writers' conferences. Invariably, the audience keeps laughing throughout. They laugh because of the discrepancy between their image of the advertiser and the person's self-image, ideal stuff for stories. If several writers were to choose the same ad as a source for a character-based plot, I can guarantee that they would come up with entirely different plots. Personal cla.s.sified ads are a good emergency resource.

In this chapter we have covered the elementary essentials of devising a plot. Now let's take a look at some innovative ways of plotting.

A plot consists of scenes: What follows is an excellent way of creating almost any scene.

In mid-twentieth century, the home away from home for most superbly talented American actors was a white wooden church on scruffy West 44th Street in New York City that had become the locus of the Actors Studio. The building contained offices and rehearsal areas, but its core was the auditorium one flight up with its makes.h.i.+ft stage and hard seats. The physical environment didn't matter. All who entered there knew they were in the cathedral of American theater, where the most talented aspirants got a chance to be scourged by Cardinal Lee Strasberg and where celebrated stars honed their work.

In time an a.s.sociated Directors Group brought some of the best stage and film directors to work in the Actors Studio. Missing were writers, the playwrights who needed to see their work-in-progress being performed by professional actors, guided by experienced directors, all willing to commit long hours of rehearsal and performance without compensation except for the arduous pleasure of work and the spurt of hope that once in a great while a scene coming to life at the Actors Studio might turn into a production and a job.

In 1957, along with Tennessee Williams, William Inge, Molly Kazan, and Robert Anderson, I was one of ten founding members of the Playwrights Group of the Actors Studio in New York. As word of the group got around, it expanded to include talented newcomers like Edward Albee and Lorraine Hansberry, and novelists like Norman Mailer who hoped to write for the theater. Writers could now see their new work performed by superlative actors guided by talented directors. During its earliest years, the weekly meetings of the Playwrights Group included a trial performance of a play or a part of a play before an audience of fellow writers, directors, and actors, who would afterward comment on the work.2 For us writers, a high learning time came from the less formal exercises that did not require weeks of rehearsal by actors. In these exercises, writers were transformed into actors for the benefit of their colleagues. I was one of two writers picked by the director for an early exercise. The other writer was Rona Jaffe, the author of several bestselling novels. The director who worked with us that day was Elia Kazan, director of five Pulitzer Prize-winning plays and winner of two Academy Awards. For the writers in the audience-and for the ”victims,” Rona Jaffe and me-it was an experience that gave us one of the most valuable techniques a writer can have.

We were to improvise a scene for which there was no script. I was to play the part of the headmaster of the Dalton School, a private establishment in New York for the privileged young. Rona Jaffe was to be the mother of a boy who had been expelled by the headmaster. That's what the audience knew.

Then Kazan took me aside, out of everyone's earshot, and told me that the mother of the expelled boy was coming to my office, undoubtedly to try to get the boy reinstated. This incorrigible boy had disrupted every cla.s.s he was in, did not respond to the warnings of his teachers, and under no condition was I to take him back.

After this briefing, which took half a minute, I returned to the makes.h.i.+ft stage and Kazan then took Rona Jaffe aside. What do you think he told her?

None of the writers-myself included-knew what Kazan told Rona Jaffe till afterward. He told her that she was the mother of a bright, well-behaved boy, a first-cla.s.s student, that the headmaster was prejudiced against him, had treated him disgracefully, and that Rona had to insist that the headmaster take the boy back into the school immediately!

Rona Jaffe and I were turned loose on the stage to improvise a scene in front of the audience. Within seconds we were quarreling, our voices raised. We both got red in the face and yelled at each other. The audience loved it. We were battling because each of us had been given a different script!

That's what happens in life. Each of us enters into conversation with another person with a script that is different from the other person's script. The frequent result is disagreement and conflict-disagreeable in life and invaluable in writing, for conflict is the ingredient that makes action dramatic. When we get involved with other people, the chances of a clash are present even with people we love because we do not have the same scripts in our heads. And the tension is even greater when we are involved with an antagonist.

You are now armed. The secret of creating conflict in scenes you write is to give your characters different scripts.

Over the years, in teaching writers at the University of California and at writers' conferences and workshops, I have stage-managed an exercise involving members of the audience that enables these principles to be remembered. In teaching the Actors Studio method of creating conflict, I ask for one male and one female volunteer. I take the male student around a corner out of earshot and tell him that he is to visit a woman he loves and tell her, ”I got your message.” No matter what she answers, he is to insist he got her message. I then take the female student out of earshot and tell her that a fellow she thinks is obnoxious is coming over. She didn't leave a message for him. She just wants the money.

When both students come on stage in front of the group, the male student arrives at a make-believe door, knocks, is let in, and says, ”I got your message.”

The woman, as instructed, answers, ”What message? Did you bring the money?” The usual reaction is loud laughter from the audience. Whatever the man and woman then say, the audience enjoys their adversarial dialogue, each relying on a different script.

That's what you do with your characters. Whatever scene they are in, give them different scripts and you'll have conflict in the scene and an entertained reader or audience. This technique works well for scenes in both commercial and literary fiction, with the scripts in literary fiction differing more subtly. This craft technique contains a range of possibility for every kind of writing.

Let's clarify this simple procedure. You are imagining a scene with two characters. Before you write the scene, make a note as to the ”script” or tack (keep it simple) of the first character and then of the second character. Make sure the scripts are different and at odds. Only you will be privy to the scripts of both characters. Let them play out the scene in front of you as you write. And if you have a third character in the scene, give that character a script different from the other two.

A ”script” in this exercise is not the actual lines of dialogue, only the intent of the character in that scene. Think of the character as getting instructions from you, the writer. It is important to keep the instructions brief. In the example devised by Elia Kazan, my script consisted of knowing who I was supposed to be (the headmaster of the Dalton School) and that I had thrown out a badly behaved boy. Rona Jaffe's script was equally simple: the headmaster was in the wrong and she was determined to get her marvelous boy reinstated.

One of the values of using this method is that if Kazan had used two different writers for the exercise and given them the same scripts, the audience would have heard different extemporaneous dialogue and perhaps the scene would have taken a different direction than it did with Rona Jaffe and me. If you gave those scripts to a dozen different writers, you'd get a dozen different stories.

As an exercise, jot down the scripts of each of the characters in a given scene of any novel you may be reading. The writer probably wasn't thinking of the character's positions as scripts. The Actors Studio technique is a shortcut to the intuitive and learned processes that experienced writers use in creating dramatic confrontations in stories and plays.

It's a wonderful technique. Use it well.

In the previous chapter, we were privy to the Actors Studio technique, giving your protagonist and antagonist different scripts and letting them tangle. While two characters can have different scripts throughout a book, the Actors Studio technique is most valuable for planning individual scenes.

For plotting an entire work, I especially like the use of a crucible. In ordinary parlance a crucible refers to a vessel in which different ingredients are melded in white hot heat. The word has come to mean a severe test, which leads us to its use in plotting fiction. Author James Frey refers to a crucible as ”the container that holds the characters together as things heat up.”