Chapter Four

Construct Your Plot Planner

To start, retrieve the numbers you generated in chapter three, as well as a roll of banner paper.

Adapt the following ideas in this chapter to stimulate a feeling of excitement, expectancy, and enthusiasm for your story. The looser you stay, the easier it is for discovery to flow. Confidence and joy create a safe atmosphere in which to explore. If, at any point, you are motivated to write, put your plotting work aside and do so.

As we discussed in the previous chapter, the Plot Planner is divided into three parts: Part One: The Beginning, Part Two: The Middle, and Part Three: The End. We will begin at the beginning.

There is no right or wrong to what I’m offering here. These are some ideas that have helped other writers, and I offer them to you so you do not have to go it alone. At the heart of this book lies the intention to support you in your writing.

The Beginning

The beginning portion of your book ends with a scene of high intensity and meaning.

The beginning serves several functions:

• It establishes your contract with your readers by letting them know what your story is and is not about.
• It introduces the story’s time and setting.
• It sets up the dramatic action and the underlying conflict.
• It introduces the protagonist and all the other major characters with an idea of who they are, their emotional makeup, and the weight they carry in the story.
• It introduces the protagonist’s short-term goal and at least hints at a long-term goal.
• It introduces the theme of the overall project.

Now it is time to decide on the structure of the beginning portion of your project. Refer to the figures you generated in chapter three, or use your own judgment. A scene may stand out in your imagination because of its high dramatic action or because it shows the character’s emotional development at its peak. If this scene also evokes a sense of leaving something behind—the character’s innocence, restrictions, limitations, safety, or known world—for the unknown, use that scene to end the beginning portion of your Plot Planner.

As I’ve mentioned before, the parameters we set in chapter three are meant only as guidelines. It is not necessary to follow the figures exactly. For now, decide where you believe the beginning portion of your story begins and ends

Create the Plot Planner

Position the banner paper so it lies horizontally on the table in front of you. Unroll only part of the paper, just a couple of feet, for now. Draw a line, starting about one-quarter of the height of the paper, so that it sweeps steadily upward. A fast-paced, high-action story demands a sharper and steeper line than does a slower, internal story, because it represents a sharper and steeper degree of intensity in the energy of the story as the beginning progresses.

At the end of the line, write “the end of the beginning” to mark where the beginning leaves off and the middle begins. Above the line, indicate how many scenes you envision for the first quarter of your story. Use the number for the beginning that you generated in chapter three.

The End of the Beginning

The first peak in the Plot Planner represents the end of the beginning and generally occurs one-quarter of the way through the page or scene count.

To produce a powerful end of the beginning (and, for that matter, a powerful climax toward the end of the end), a writer must introduce everything in the beginning that will have an impact on the end of the beginning. Toward the end of the beginning, one door after another slams shut on the protagonist. For each of the closed and locked doors to bear significance, the reader must first have seen what is behind each door and understand what each one means to the character.

The beginning ends when the last door shuts and the character knows there is no turning back. The end of the beginning is a major turning point, the termination of everything the character knows. At this point, the protagonist has no choice but to go forward and face the unknown.

The end of the beginning is the first high point in the story, and it reflects the catalyst that propels the protagonist into the rest of the story. It marks an emotional peak for the protagonist. The incident or revelation or conflict that indicates the end of the beginning sets the true drama in motion.

The Pulitzer Prize–winning novel All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr contains two ends of the beginning: one for each of the protagonists. These ends of the beginning appear in alternating chapters. First comes a scene with Werner, an orphan in a mining town in Germany, on the day before his departure as he attempts to convince his younger sister that he will return from the school for “the best boys in Germany.” She’s old enough to understand the “atrocities” boys from this school are committing and refuses to accept his lies. “Ten hours later, he’s on a train” bound for the school.

When the Nazis occupy Paris, Marie-Laure, a blind girl of twelve, flees Paris with her father to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo and her reclusive great-uncle. She leaves behind all she knows and enters the great unknown with her father and thousands of others. The unknown turns even more exotic as she takes up residence in a tall house by the sea. However, the true end of the beginning is in the chapter following Werner’s end of the beginning scene when Marie-Laure finally meets her great-uncle, a character pivotal to both protagonist’s plots.

Changing POV

If your story shifts the point of view between two or more main characters in alternating chapters, draw more than one Plot Planner line. Represent each shifting point of view, or any main characters who change and transform due to the dramatic action of the story, with a different Plot Planner line on your banner paper, one above the other, one line each for the two major characters. Use these lines to plot out the characters’ individual plots. Develop a plot profile (see chapter eleven) for each character to help you envision their individual character transformations. This way you’re sure to have two (or more) deeply developed characters, and you will be able to plot out their individual stories and how the two intertwine and reinforce the overall meaning of the story.

There. That’s all there is to creating a Plot Planner for the beginning of your story.

The Plot Planner provides enough form and structure to tame chaos and bring meaning to all the ideas rolling around a writer’s head.