The Year of Prime and Who Lost the Plot?

Okay. Here goes. Remember that little plot triangle your 5th grade teacher taught you?

Guess what? IT'S TRUE! It's true. It's true. Hell, it's true, and as easy as it is to draw a triangle, creating one with words is about as easy as a non-anesthesized root canal. Painful.
But, as writers, we have to have a plot.
Yes, this probably seems obvious. A plot. Of course every novel would have a plot.
I speak from experience. FREEZE FRAME pre-editorial notes had a plot ... just not in the right triangle order. It looked a lot like this.

It absolutely had its ups and downs. It just didn't build toward anything, climax anywhere (admittedly, I didn't even REALIZE what my climax was), and never came to some kind of reasonable conclusion.  It was a book filled with scenes -- somewhat disconnected -- and characters. It had no structure.
I called it my Choose Your Own Adventure being read straight through.
Every writer has strengths and weaknesses. The key is knowing what those are and knowing where you'll need extra help.
Enter: Arc Angels, Raiders of the Lost Arc for me -- the "Arc-impaired" ... So, how do you map plot? How is it remotely possible to get all those ideas in a cohesive arc and structure?

There are a few key things to remember:
1. Every single relationship in the book has its own arc
2. When you're ready to hit the climax, all of those relationships need to explode like popcorn, creating a kind of domino effect of mini climaxes to get to the big bang.
3. All of these explosions need to be resolved. (I don't mean that everything needs to be tied up in a pretty package. Everything, though, needs to be addressed. Just as we shouldn't have any hanging modifiers, we shouldn't have any hanging arcs.)

Once you have the relationships organized.
Voila! Plot maps.
It's basic. It's something we've all been forced to fill out in one English class or another. AND, it's something you should probably fill out for your own novels. I personally don't do this until I'm DONE with my novel because I get too caught up on the structure and lose my groove.
Here's an example of a plot map from JK Rowling and THE ORDER OF THE PHONIX ... The far left column is her time line. Then there are the chapter titles. The third column is the main plot and the  subsequent columns are her sub-plots that build to the final, main plot, and how each of those sub-plots are addressed in each chapter. (You'll go blind trying to read it, but I think you get the idea.

She's a plot master. Unbelievable!
Everybody writes differently. Some plot out novels. Some outline. I don't. That's why I have to be extra careful to make sure that, at the end of the day, my novel actually HAS a plot and builds toward something. Plotting can be excruciating.
Plotting IS excruciating. But with a little inspiration from one of the plot masters, it's definitely do-able!

The Year of Prime and WHO'D BUY THAT?

2011 is a prime number, and it also is the sum of 11 consecutive prime numbers (11 being prime itself): 157+163+167+173+179+181+191+193+197+199+211 

So what?

Well, May 3, 2011 (5th month -- prime, 3rd day -- prime, 2011th year AD -- prime) my next novel,  COMPULSION, will be released. Much of COMPULSION deals with prime numbers and my main character's need to find the primes in his life ...

That said, to celebrate the prime numbers of the year, I'm going to only blog a prime number of times per month on prime dates, just because ... And my first month of blogs of the year (January) will be entirely dedicated to writing. Writing tips. Writing ideas. How I write. Basically, the craft of writing. There might be an occasional slip from the theme if I find something worth sharing. Otherwise, January is the month of writing!

So today, I want to talk about characters, and some tips on how to create some interesting characters that I'd definitely want to read about. One of the coolest sources for off-beat, quirky, and sometimes just plain kitsch characters is your friendly neighborhood SKY MALL catalog. Browse the pages and ask the simple question: Who'd buy that? (And, no, I have not invented ANY of these items because I'm simply not this creative.)

So after answering, "Who'd buy the Sumo Wrestler Coffee Table?", answer, "Why?" Yes. We're all asking, "Why?" But it's your job to answer it. And finally ask, "For whom?" One table. Three questions. Not only do you have yourself a pretty complex character, you might even have a little back story, developing story arc to go with it.

• What if it's a first generation Japanese-American boy who's embarrassed about his parents' foreign ways, so as a huge joke, he buys the table for his dad for Christmas, making sure his friends are in on it?
• OR ... what if it's a young girl who, that though she's from Kentucky and was born in 1995, she believes she's been reincarnated because in her previous life, she was a famous Geisha, born in 1830, and had married the most powerful and important Sumo wrestler in Kyoto? When she finds the table at an flea market, she's sure it's the face and body of her past-life husband and goes on a search to find the model.

Same table. Two very different stories. 

Another great character source: The classified ads. Read the ads. Who placed the ad? Why? And you don't necessarily need to go to an exotic or strange place for ads. I took these from THE NEVADA APPEAL -- the local paper in Carson City, Nevada.

Coke machine, 10 cent vendo 1950s, stored in home, runs, very good cond, with 4 cases of empty bottles.

 

Harley Davidson Ceramic Beer Stein.

MOVING - ENTIRE HOUSEHOLD MUST GO NOW! EVERYTHING NEGOTIABLE! New Sectional Oak Wall Unit Oak Gun Case Full Pedestal Bed w/Drawers LOTS of Misc. MORE

 

 

The most essential part of creating characters is the detail. Everything they own, every conversation they have, every minute detail of their bedrooms, habits, what they wear, who they admire, how they talk, is a window into who your character is and a way to create tension, reveal something about a character, move the plot forward, or even HIDE something about a character. Sifting through classifieds and funny catalogs is a great way to create more depth, humor and maybe find a key piece that's may be missing to make your character memorable.

A few unforgettable characters or character items in lit:

• Rudy from The Book Thief and his obsession with Jesse Owens. (I really love that kid. Really, truly.)
• The leg lamp from A Christmas Story ... (Yeah. It's a movie. But the movie wouldn't be the SAME without that horrible, tacky leg lamp.)
• Violet Durn from Feed and her broken feed
• Cameron from Going Bovine and his obsession with Tremolo the Portuguese recorder player

When you think about your characters, think details. Because that's where their essence will be revealed.

Happy writing!

And the Winner of NAME THAT LAME-DUCK NOVEL is ...

With such an overwhelming response to the contest, it was hard to figure out who should win, so I decided ALL THREE ENTRIES are winners!! (Yes, this could be considered diplomacy, but it's just me happy that there were three entries.)
The winners have been contacted with elaborate prize-winning plans and wishes for a happy new year. In the meantime, here are the answers to the books that I somewhat hack-described!

 

1. GOING BOVINE: A string theory novel about a kid with mad cow's disease.
2. THE ASTONISHING LIFE OF OCTAVIAN NOTHING: TRAITOR TO THE NATION: A Revolution era novel written in eighteen century language about a kid who's basically a living petri-dish for a bunch of radical philosophers.
3. A CROOKED KIND OF PERFECT: A novel about a little girl whose father suffers from mental illness and mother is a work-aholic, enters  a wheeze-bag organ competition playing FOREVER IN BLUEJEANS.
4. THE BOOK THIEF: Death narrates his experiences in WWII Germany.
5. THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHTTIME: A kid's obsession to discover the truth behind the mysterious death of the neighbor's dog leads him on a perilous journey.
6. SKIPPY JON JONES: A Siamese cat dreams about being a Mexican Chihuahua superhero.
7. THE BIG SPLASH: A Sam Spade-style , hard-boiled detective novel about a middle school with an organized crime ring that deals in forgeries, stolen test papers, and more, where a kid is hired by the underworld boss to do a simple job.
8. THE CHOCOLATE WAR: A kid refuses to sell chocolates in the school's annual fundraiser.
9. GILEAD: An older father, who is a small town's preacher, writes a long letter to his son.
10. STUCK IN NEUTRAL:  A genius is stuck in a body that doesn't work for him, and he thinks his dad wants to kill him.