James Scott Bell - Plotman to the Rescue: A Troubleshooting Guide to Fixing Your Toughest Plot Problems

Copyright 2019 by James Scott Bell

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN 10: 0-910355-47-9

ISBN: 13: 978-0-910355-47-6

Published by Compendium Press

Woodland Hills, CA

Long, long ago, on the planet Plotto, there lived a king named Story and a queen named Structure. So deep was their love that they knew neither of them alone could rule the planet justly. They needed each other. So did the people.

Thus, together, King Story and Queen Structure ushered Plotto into its golden age.

Naturally, they were thrilled when a royal baby was born.

But alas, an evil villain, Vektor Formless, hatched a plan to blow up the planet. The plan was discovered, but not in time to stop the Formless Doomsday Machine countdown.

With tears in their eyes, King Story and Queen Structure lovingly placed their baby into a little rocket ship and sent him to a distant blue planet.

The rocket came to rest in a field in Kansas. An elderly couple, the Essbees, found the baby and decided to raise him as their own. They named him Jay.

As Jay Essbee grew, he began to understand that his mother was a frustrated writer. She had been working on a novel for years, and it was now being rejected by publishers in the east.

This made his mother sad, and Jay Essbee wanted her to be happy.

One day he went into the study and found his mothers manuscript. He read it all the way through in an hour.

When his mother came in and saw Jay sitting in a chair with her pages on his lap, she was astonished.

What are you doing with my book, Jay? she asked.

I read it, Mother, Jay said.

But youre only eight years old!

And yet I read it and understood it.

Mother Essbee trembled into a chair. What did you think?

I think there is a germ of a great plot, Mother. But the first act drags, and the main character is not forced through a doorway into a great conflict. Some of the scenes lack tension. The plot meanders in places. There is some definite sagging in the middle.

For a long moment Mother Essbee sat frozen, staring at the boy. Then she cried out, Father!

Father Essbee came running into the room.

Our son, Mother Essbee said, is a book critic!

Not a critic, Jay said. I can help you fix these things.

But how? said Mother Essbee.

It must be he has powers from his own planet, Father Essbee said.

Over the next few weeks, Jay Essbee worked with his mother on her manuscript. When they were finished, Mother Essbee sent it to an agent in New York. The book sold at auction for a million dollars and then to the movies for another million.

After the movie premiere, Mother and Father Essbee took Jay out for ice cream. Mother Essbee said to her son, We cannot keep your wonderful gift to ourselves. You must take it to the world. Henceforth, you shall be known as Plotman.

She produced a little costume with a large P on the front, and a cape with the same P. No one seems to know how the costume grew right along with Jay and still fit him when he was an adult.

But we do know this: Plotman has sworn to uphold plot, story, and the bestselling way!

So youve decided you want to write a novel. Lawrence Block, the well-known crime writer, has a suggestion at this point: Take two aspirin, lie down on the sofa, and wait for the feeling to pass.

But what if it doesnt? You really, really want to write a novel.

If youre starting from absolute scratch, do some self-evaluation first. Here are the basic questions you must answer:

Why do I want to write a novel?

Go ahead. Write 250 words right now answering that question. Ill wait.

Welcome back.

Here are some acceptable answers:

• For the love of telling stories.
• Because Ive always wanted to, but never took a shot.
• Because Im compelled to; something inside me wont let me alone until I write a novel.

Unacceptable answers:

• My mom says Im really good.
• I think it would be neat to be able to say Im a writer.
• Its an easy way to make money.

Before you move on to the next question, make sure your answer is something that grabs you emotionally. Youre going to be putting in a lot of time to become a writer of compelling fiction. You will have lots of opportunities to quit. Unless your heart is invested from the get-go, you will not finish the race.

What kind of fiction do I want to write?

There are two general categories of fiction editors and agents talk about: commercial and literary. Theres also a hybrid category they call up-market, which is a combination of both.

Commercial fiction always has a strong, plot-centric concept. An example is Thomas Harriss The Silence of the Lambs. The concept: The hunt for a serial killer comes down to a young FBI trainees battle of wits with a brilliant and dangerous flesh-eating psychiatrist.

Or Ambush by James Patterson and James O. Born: Only Detective Michael Bennett stands in the way of two lethal cartels fighting for New York Citys multi-million-dollar opioid trade. And they know where Bennett, and his family, live.

Literary fiction, on the other hand, tends toward the character-centric. Thus, The Shipping News by Annie Proulx, has the following concept: A man and his two emotionally disturbed daughters return to their ancestral home in Newfoundland, looking to cobble together new lives.

Feel the difference? The latter still has a plot. Every novel has a plot.

What kind of fiction do you want to write?

What if you love both?

Then decide whats more important to you: money or adulation. Its not that you cant get both (eventually), but in the main people who write commercial fiction want to get some good income, while literary writers (while welcoming any moolah) want to demonstrate stylistic brilliance (and perhaps win a literary prize).

And though there are exceptions, this remains a general truth: literary fiction doesnt sell as well as commercial fiction.

So what have you got now? The spark of an idea? A What if? scenario?

Maybe its a character who is pinging around in your imagination, dying to get into a story.

Or a story world dying to be central to a plot.

Maybe youve got nothing, absolutely zippo. But you want to write a novel!

Lets see what we can do.

First of all, what is a plot anyway?

It is the record of how a character fights with death through strength of will.

There are three kinds of death. Theres physical death, as in most thrillers. But theres also professional death and psychological death.