McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Plotting the swampy middle.
buglovin:
Hi. First post, so bear with me. A little intro. I'm a novice screenwriter/director with grand delusions that I want to tell stories to entertain the masses. I had a concept that I was going to write as a screenplay, but realized early on that it was far too in depth for 100 minutes of screen time. So, I put that on the back burner, wrote a few more screenplays, filmed most of a movie (production died a horrible death), and then lost all confidence in my writing/creative prowess.
Well, I'm back. After a year(or so) of heavy self-loathing, and only a few creative endeavors, I'm feeling the need to be creative again. So I've dusted off my over zealous script idea and decided that the characters really want to be a part of a book. I've been working on the idea in my head and it has branched to trilogy of plotlines, a fairly interesting cast of characters, and a heaping of pseudo-political intrigue(which really isn't my thing, go figure?).
In steps my problem. You see, I'm an outliner. Not a rigid, everything is there outliner, but a solid backbone, see where the story goes between major scenes type of guy. This works pretty well for me in the screenwriting world. But for this idea, I have what I think is a strong start and a great finish where all three subplots come crashing together, however, the "great swampy middle", is playing hard to get. How should I best approach the middle if I'm feeling strong at the beginning and end? I've been trying to go from the end, and work my way backward, but as an analytical type of person, my brain is giving me fits. Almost always in the past, I've started at scene 1 and plotted straight through to "the end".
It's not that I don't know what I need to do in the middle. My subplots have logical needs, but the change from screenplays, where everything is somewhat vague and not as full bodied to a robust, no holds barred novel setting is bogging me down. When you outline a novel with multiple threads, do you outline individual subplots and then weave them together, or is it better to look at the project as a whole? The swampy middle has me and I can't find my hip waders. How do you guys go about multiple subplots in the initial phase of writing?
All help is greatly appreciated and I've learned a great deal just from reading this forum.
buglovin
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
I am unconvinced middle is inherently swampy, but that could be just me.
How I would do that would be; structure, structure, structure.
You have three subplots ? Locate the key scenes along them, the ones that really matter. Then figure out where you want to put them, pacing wise. They're the pillars for your suspension bridge. (Jim's concept of the Big Middle seems to me in the same direction as this notion, except that he as I understand it is talking about a single major support between beginning and end, and myself I tend to use more, though I suspect if I could ever write a novel as short as Storm Front it might well only need one.) Do you want them coinciding ? Do you want them complementary - key moment of revelation in thread A while threads B and C are in moments of transition ? Do you want the transitions between threads to play up similarity or intensify contrast ? How can you make them echo well off each other ? How much are the people in any thread thinking of the others ? How much can little things in any one of the threads echo defined key things in the others ?
buglovin:
--- Quote ---How much can little things in any one of the threads echo defined key things in the others ?
--- End quote ---
See. After reading that, I think I understand a little more of my trepidation. My biggest problem, is that the threads need to be woven together in such a way that the "thread echos" do define and trigger events and understanding in the main character. The intricacy of the weaving is what is killing me. I keep thinking that the middle won't work as well if I keep to my old screenwriter's loose outlining style. I need to plot out more pillars so that it is less likely to run astray.
I think the fact that I'm adding more subplots in a novel that I would have ever thought about for a standard screenplay is what has me stalling.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: buglovin on October 22, 2009, 07:12:00 PM ---I think the fact that I'm adding more subplots in a novel that I would have ever thought about for a standard screenplay is what has me stalling.
--- End quote ---
I think at best a screenplay can accurately represent a story the size of a novella (unless you happen to be William Goldman, which basically not many people are). Either significantly longer (or indeed significantly shorter, as witness the stuff added to Where the Wild Things Are to make it at all workable as a feature-length film, the text is ten sentences long) just isn't going to work like a screenplay; and I am quite out of sympathy with the Robert McKee-ish notion of writing novels as if they were screenplays.
What are all the subplots for, and how do they each add to what you are doing as a whole ? Does that give you some means of organising them ? I'm currently in the process of writing the ending to a roughly 500,000 word novel with eight major viewpoint characters, after leaving it on the backburner for a long while, so this is in the front of my mind recently.
Kris_W:
Somebody sagely said, “You can make a story a comedy or tragedy simply by selecting the point where you begin and end the tale.” From that I (somehow) get to the idea that every point in a story is the beginning and the end of something.
So, best way to handle the middle is to find those beginnings and ends embedded in there. At every moment in your tale ask yourself “What would the story be like if I start telling it here?” AND “What would this story be like if I end the tale here?”
Pull the excitement you need for the middle by showing aspects of those beginnings and endings.
* Sounds good, and dang, I wish it were really that easy. *sigh*
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version