The Art of Extrapolation.

One question people ask writers, one big mystery of the universe, is "where do you get your ideas?" And writers answer that in a ton of different ways that range from discussions about creativity, imagination, or the practicalities of beginning with a blank page.

But I always end up talking about premises. Before I have a premise, I have nothing--maybe a nugget or two, little story concepts that juggled around long-term memory until they click together in some meaningful way and I have a premise.

See, ideas get me to a premise, but a premise becomes my story. A good premise extrapolates straight into character and plot. By the same principle, if a premise doesn't inherently suggest the story that should follow, I know it's incomplete. More ideas need to click into place.

A lot of writers struggle with extrapolating from their premise, however. They have a great idea that gets them twenty pages in, and then, they lose steam. What happens next? That sense of long-term purpose is buried within your original premise.

Say, for example, that you have a story idea about someone discovering they have a superpower. (Overdone. I know. But we'll make it unique, okay?) This is such a common idea that you should already be able to think of plenty possible conflicts--the MC is afraid of being discovered; are they alone; where did the power come from; what if the FBI or evil scientist discovers them?

From these inherent conflicts, we also have some basic plot points--they have to discover/receive their power (inciting incident;) they must learn how to use their power, or they set out on a quest to discover where it came from. All clearly ACT I. Our leap into ACT II starts when they are discovered, or almost discovered, or they learn about a bigger purpose for their powers. And the climax in ACT III is where they deal with their ultimate conflict.

Those are all the building blocks inherent to this premise. Most anyone can look at this premise and get an idea of what will happen next.

What's missing is the unique twist. The hook. The aspect of a premise that grabs you, makes it sound interesting. This is the bit that will really define your character and their world and make it worth writing to you. And let's be honest--until now, it probably hasn't been that interesting. Right? You've heard all those plots before.

To continue the example, let's make this premise unique. Let's try and do something completely different.

Say our MC's superpower gives them the ability to know when someone will die, before it happens. A classic plot is about the character's journey to try and prevent people's deaths. In our version, what if the MC sells their power as a service--preventing the death of those who can pay? It switches up our entire premise. We could start extrapolating from here, and get a whole new plot, all new conflicts.

Or, perhaps our character can teleport. We could make them thieves. But what if instead of robbing banks, they join the police force, they solve crimes on their own. We could try a genre mashup: the editor of a highschool-paper can reads minds and uses their ability to write an "anonymous" gossip column, ala Gossip Girl meets Smallville.

This all sounds a little more interesting, yeah?

Purposefully extrapolating from a premise works great when trying to take a premise and developing it into a full novel. From my own experience, though, there's a few things to watch out for later down the road:

Premature story death –

• Sometimes if you’ve attempted something that you can’t seem to execute, the story can waffle and fail. That may mean your premise needs work. Or maybe it’s time to abandon a non-functioning aspect of your premise. At other times, it means you wandered away from a core aspect of your premise that you need to return to. It’s important to learn when to abandon a premise, and when to stick to it.

Loss of interest –

• Other times, you come up with a story concept that has a great hook, but it’s not exciting to write about. Evaluate what about your premise isn’t engaging you. Should your MC change ages, is the setting wrong, do you need an emotional climate versus a political one? Backtrack and try a new direction.

Not knowing how to explore a premise—

• This I think, is the worst of all. How many books can you think of that had a great premise, buy wandered away from it in the writing? A good premise foreshadows the MC’s journey, goals, conflicts, and climax. If your story shifts focus or doesn’t explore the premise in writing, go back to your original premise, and consider what natural building blocks it suggests. Did you follow through those? Or did you start writing on a tangent?

A good premise leaves you with all the pieces you need. Learning how to explore it can help you maintain a sense of direction and purpose down the road. For someone like me who can't/doesn't outline, this is an essential way to keep myself from wandering off track.

Truly and always,

-Creative A

Drafts and Revision

“The only draft that really matters is the final one, but the three-draft rule of thumb does seem to correspond to some fundamental rhythm in the process. First comes conception. Second comes development. Third comes polishing…”

-Stephen Koch, The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop

I’ve been thinking about the revision process a lot lately. To some people, the first draft is just that – the first whole draft they ever write of something. I tend to think of it as the first whole draft of any particular re-imagining.

I may write multiple drafts on the same premise, but if enough core elements have changed, I call it a new first draft. I do this because there’s a vital difference between writing a novel and re-writing it. First drafts are allowed to be crap. Second drafts, not so much.

Authors from across genres agree; stories start from some fundamental idea. It can take the form of a creative nugget. Or a persisting question. As the writer thinks about these things, they form a type of vision for the story. You don’t need to know the ending or the inciting incident, the main character or the main conflict; you just need this idea, this sense of what you want to write about.

And that’s all the first draft is. Writing about your vision. You are trying to find your story.

Sometimes I imagine a big jar of beads dumped out on the floor, and a little child with a long piece of string, creating a mishmash of a necklace. You sort the beads even as you create a pattern. It’s going to change every second, because half of it will be choosing which stories you don’t want to write about.

This is the value of outlining; you get to experiment before you ever begin writing. Incidentally, this is why outlining is not for everyone. I need to write my story before I can know it: outliners need to know their story before they can write it.

Your second draft (or drafts) takes all your experimentation, all the raw data you’ve gathered, and tries to find a focus. It takes the string of beads and looks for the natural pattern.

Your first draft is probably a gaggle of plots, thematic elements, and even premises – ideas you tried to work into your novel. Now is the time to find your core story. So in the second drafts, you do a lot of identifying.

What are your main characters, your main story arc, your main plot? What is your core conflict, theme, and voice? What tense, point of view, and narrator? What style best fits these elements? Second drafts are about finding your focus, and then shaping the story around it.

By the time you reach the middle drafts, the story going to be complete, but jagged. You will have all the right pieces and they will all fit together. Your goal now is coherency in everything: flow, pacing, continuity. So you begin honing. Tightening. The excess is cut, the remains are improved. This is when most of the fleshing out happens. This is also where you start adding subtleties, foreshadowing, and thematic elements.

You are making the story deeper. All the parts must come together – the small things must work together, and they must work with the big things, and the big things must work with the small.

By the finishing drafts, your goal is much simpler. All the shuffling and focusing is done. All the roughness is smoothed and the honing is complete. Finishing drafts are for making each chapter, scene, and sentence as dynamic as possible. You’ll unleash the inner editor. You’ll make your dialogue snappy, your descriptions live, and your exposition profound.

Whatever you made better in the first drafts, you want to make best in the finishing drafts. And you keep doing this. Until changes are worse than what they replaced, until you have fixed your fixes so many times, that neither solution feels right.

Then you are done.

 

-Creative A 

Middles. Must I say More? – Secret Sin #7

Anyone who ever started a novel knows, beginning is the easy part. And anyone who ever tried to finish knows, the middle can be a nightmare. This is a universal truth among all writers of all creeds. For whatever reason – be it lack of confidence, lack of drive, lack of planning – the middle is one rather large bump in the road.

Many people never get over this bump. I mean, it’s a serious problem. Folks come up with all sorts of tricks and cures and ways of getting around it. I know some who outline, some who pack it with action sequences, and others who just try to plow through it headfirst.

Everyone reasons that the important thing is to write the middle. Doesn’t matter how. Doesn’t matter if it sucks. Just write it.

As much as that makes sense, and as much as I empathize, I’m always frustrated with the outcome. I read a novel because the premise is intriguing. So often, I’m disappointed by a middle that won’t even touch this premise. I’ve read middles that deflated once I reached them, complex middles that have nothing to do with the ending, and middles that jerked me around so many different ways, I didn’t even care about anymore.

How do the middles get like this? No condemnation, but this sort of thing happens when the author goes for a “fix.” It can be any combination of fixes, with a few in particular that I’d like to point out: 

Bridging – point A to point B.

When you bridge the middle, it’s with the purpose of getting from your beginning to your ending. You come up with “stuff” for the characters to go through. You weave in subplots that will resolve themselves once they aren’t needed. This is the middle that is quaint, perhaps enjoyable, but inconsequential. It’s a detour. Red herring. Wild goose chase. No one is fooled.

The worst part is, a bridged middle coasts over plot events that might have held credence to the ending – as is, whatever happened in the middle simply isn’t important anymore.

Stuffing – throwing rocks.

Some writer advised that whenever things lag, drive your character up a tree, and pelt him with rocks. Monica Wood calls these “situations.” You have a guy in a tree, and someone’s throwing rocks at him: then what? He either comes down, climbs higher, or stays where he is. You either keep throwing rocks or you stop.

As much as you play with the situation, it’s always going to come back to a guy in a tree.

Many writers stuff their novels with situations to add action where it’s lacking. It’s a trip, all right, but an astute reader will notice the lack of any real development. Others may have a vague sense of being unfulfilled. It’s crazy and fun, but like a bridges, stuffing doesn't do much for the ending.

Overcomplicating – act vs react.

This is the trickiest one of all, because it starts out as a good solution. You have a situation, and then you complicate it. Take our character-in-the-tree. Perhaps someone joins are rock-thrower and starts climbing after the character. The higher they get, the smaller the branches are. If they climb too high, they could fall. And also, someone lost control of a fire. It’s spreading to the tree. Does our character climb higher, wait it out, or come down? What if he notices a thin branch that stretches out over a river? Should he crawl out and jump? What if the other climber gets stuck? Does the character help him, or leave him to die?

You can go on and on. But at some point, the character needs to deal with the situation. If all he does is react, and continue to react, the plot starts to feel overwrought – or worse! – manipulated. The reader feels jerked around. The story isn’t reliable anymore. No one trusts it. Too many complications without resolution leave everyone dissatisfied.

 

Any and all of these “fixes” may feel right at the time. You may figure out how to prevent them in your first draft. Or you may not. At some point, the middle does need addressing. When that time comes, what do you do? How do you fix a “fix”?

Focus on your main story goal.

Your middle needs to accomplish two things: deal with your beginning premise, and prepare your characters for the climax. This doesn’t have to be a physical preparation. It can be emotional as well. Hopefully, your climax requires both a physical and an emotional task; perhaps conflicting tasks.

Look at your climax. What is the final challenge your characters face? How has your middle prepared them for this task? Go back and find places to prepare your characters. Try to make your middle a series of lessons that build, one upon another, for the final test.

Make the journey as important as the destination.

If an event isn’t vital to your main story goal, it must at least compliment it. Pretend that you want to cut your middle by ten thousand words. Look for as many shortcuts to your ending as possible. What if the killer confessed, instead of leaving clues to pique the police? What if character A overhead character B explaining the whole gag?

The shortcuts would probably destroy your story, but that’s okay; you aren’t keeping them. Instead, look at which shortcuts make your story worse – less tension, less conflict, less development, etc – and which only cut back on your wordcount. Was something there “just because?” Cut it. Die, darlings, die.

(*Scaredy-cats are allowed to weave the main story goal into otherwise unnecessary scenes.)

 

One final thought. If you have a uninvolving story goal, your middle is going to sag no matter what you do. The characters should change. They must face challenges, they must learn and grow, and at times they must fail. Your story is important to you, right? Otherwise you never would have started it. Make it important to the reader, as well.

 

- Creative A 

Knowing the Difference

A few weeks ago I read a post by Nathan Bransford  that challenged the casual definition of plot, premise, and theme. It got me thinking.  What *is* the difference between the three? Do the differences matter?

I’ve read novels with wonderful, amazing premises, but a plot that left you feeling cheated. I’ve seen books where after a great first few chapters, the author halted the plot so he could delve into the theme. And one of my biggest faults is that I like starting a story based on a premise—it takes me half a novel of struggling to realize that I don’t have a plot.

I think these differences, however subtle, are important; especially when you get around to crafting pitches and queries and such.

 

Theme

In general, theme is a recurrent idea or motif, such as the theme of a party or the theme of an art gallery. But the theme of a story has a deeper meaning. It’s what the author it trying to explain to the world.

In general terms, it could be something like “true love,” “justice,” or “revenge.” Terrorisim is a popular theme nowadays, along with things like pollution, overpopulation, and racism. You might say that theme is the emotional growth of a MC, or the personal vendetta of the antagonist. Some authors create characters with the single purpose of talking about theme—politicians, vigilantes, serial killers; the like.

Sometimes theme is also what the author is trying to discover, to understand, so writing about it becomes cathartic. A lot of literary novels focus on the theme more than anything else. This is where the illusion comes from that literary writing is more sophisticated than genre. (Not to start a spitfight; I’ll cover that some other day.)

Theme gives a story a sense of purpose, but can also make your writing preachy. Look out for that.

 

Premise

One dictionary described the premise as “a proposition for a conclusion.”  When writing, it’s what usually comes to me first—the idea that sparks my writing, the thing I’m writing my story about. It’s the spark of magic that makes a book come alive.

Another way to think of this is as the questions writers’ ask themselves: what if you had a time machine? What if aliens were real? What if you got sucked into a black hole?

When you write a query letter or a pitch, the one-liner is a distilled version of your premise:

“Get Real” is about four young, angst-ridden writers liberating themselves through fiction, unleashing a monster they never knew existed: themselves.

Your pitch would be a little different, but somewhere along those lines.

 

Plot.

Okay. This is where I and the rest of the world seem to look at things differently. I’ve heard lots of definitions for “plot” and I’ve only liked a few of them. Nathan had a good one – he said that the premise is like opening a door, and the plot is what keeps it open. That’s nice, if not a little vague.

I can tell you what plot is—a series of events, the roadmap of a book, the outline, the architectural plans—but if you try to give me your plot in 25 words, I bet you won’t get it right.

“A man and a woman are being chased—”

Nope.

“Todd and Steffi must escape—”

Nope again. They both sound like plots, but technically they’re not. They are premises. This is plot:

“A man kills people. He goes after a woman. She runs for help. Cop tries to save her. They stop the killer. Cop and victim fall in love.”

There you have it. A series of events. Nothing more, nothing less.

I hate to say the obvious, but you can’t write a story without a plot. A plot is the execution of your premise. Your synopsis is a 1 – 5 page breakdown of your plot – not the premise or theme, but what actually happens inside a story.

Sometimes you may want to use your plot as a pitch, but all the pitches I’ve seen tend to read more like premises. 

If you’re querying, look at what the particular agent/publisher has to say about it and then follow their guidelines.

 

So to recap: A theme is the sense of purpose in a novel, the lesson learned. Premise is the idea behind the story, what the author is writing about. And plot is a series of events that make up the story.

Pop quiz: who can describe their plot, theme, and premise each in 25 words? And get them right? Brownie points to anyone who posts theirs in the comments section.  -.-

 

-Creative A