Reading time: approximately 8 minutes
Hello my darlings!!! 💖 I am thrilled to report that my February has been 80% less of a train wreck than January was. I very much hope that your February has been going pretty well too.
Unsurprizingly, at this point, my writing life has gone in an unexpected direction. Perhaps I am just the antithesis of plans and order! Perhaps my greater purpose is barely restrained chaos! 🙄
Seriously, though. I have buckled down and made a strange sort of progress. On…a Writer’s Grimoire.
{At least, that’s what I’m calling it. Because it sounds so full of flair & drama, right?!}
What is that even? Omg I am so excited to tell you! I read Thrill Me and while it filled in many insights for me, because it’s a bunch of essays, the information is very readable but essentially disorganized. His ‘let’s talk about process and structure and plot mechanics all together’ style made me realize—hey, this is a good bit of why I get confused. When I try to apprehend all the story bits at once all I can see is the whole, not the parts.
So my Grimoire is the parts. I organized the way I am starting to think about story craft, creating a Notion page and listing my best references on each subject, quoting the juiciest passages, and listing what tools I have to help with that piece of craft.
This might be easier to show than explain. This is basically my Grimoire’s table of contents:
1. Metawriting
Why tell this story?
Character change arc(s)
Character goals and motivations
Plot arc
Structure
Reversals
Conflict / Getting what they need
Subplots
Outline and/or zero draft
Character exploration
Research / Worldbuilding
2. Drafting
Lower-order goals
Summary vs Scenes
Scenes are events
Delay gratification & withhold information
Turnstile of Mysteries
Moments and Image-moments
Action-Reaction (Beats)
Separating external beats and emotional beats
Emotions?
3. Revision
Strengthen metawriting & drafting elements
Set Piece scenes
Revealing character
Style
Point of view
Voice
Active setting
Active dialogue
Symbols / Motifs
Rhyming action
Repetition
Specificity of details
Opening / Beginning
Reversals, line-level
Intent
Meaning
Theme
Writing the Other
Clarity
Author-reader relationship communication
Emotional reactions
I know, some of these entries have weird specific names because I’m using the terms I understand as defined by specific authors. For example, the Turnstile of Mysteries is Benjamin Percy’s term for the plot mechanic of revealing an answer to a story question, but that answer raising new questions. It’s one of those concepts I was never able to see happening in a story on my own until I read Percy’s definition. Now I get it and it’s brilliant, and I see how I have in the past tried to intuit this mechanic but not really hit the mark.
{An example: In McKinley Valentine’s lovely flash fiction “The Code for Everything,” [spoilers] the narrator is at a university party when a cat suddenly starts talking to her. So the mystery is: Why is there a talking cat?? How is it talking??
The mystery remains open and unsolved—making our curiosity grow—until six paragraphs later. The cat says that the other cat he is waiting for is late, which means the narrator is going to be late, which will piss off the fairies, which is never good.
So the mystery of how this cat is talking and why it is there is pretty much solved: the cat knows fairies, and therefore, magic is involved. And the cat is there at the behest of the same fairies. End of mysteries. But wait, fairies?! And what is the narrator going to be late for?? And why is it never good for the fairies to be mad???
Our curiosity and interest is sustained by this “turnstile” of mysteries.}
The individual items in the Grimoire aren’t in a specific order. I just don’t want to be thinking about symbolism in my story when I am trying to get a draft done. I don’t want to worry about developing the overarching character goal at the same time as crafting a scene. Not that these things don’t all need to be considered together at some point to make a cohesive whole, but not in the middle of the act of creating. At least, not until this stuff becomes second nature. Until that magical day, this thinking in layers is helping me.
It’s helping me so much I started re-watching the TV show Stargate Universe (SGU). It was on a whim, but I’m finding that the claustrophobic, petri-dish-like nature of the show—so much of the story happens in these barren sets where the walls, floors, and ceiling are all featureless metal, and all the main characters are lost on a spaceship together—make it easier for me to pick out plot mechanics.
For example, let’s take the pilot.
{spoilers}
So there is a military base on a far off planet, which in the first episode is attacked by aliens. The base must be evacuated, and the only way to flee is through a Stargate (wormhole) that’s set to who knows where. The evacuees find themselves on a huge spaceship hundreds of galaxies away from Earth with no way home.
Before (or during) the attack, we are shown many inciting incidents for the main characters was whatever brought them to be in that base on that day. One character spent a month solving a problem in a video game that led to him being recruited to the Stargate project that very day. A Senator and his executive aide were there to investigate what all the government funding for this program was getting the American people. One of the military characters should have transferred out two weeks before to her new assignment, but got held up. Another was in the base’s jail when the attack happened.
But the inciting incident for THE SHOW is the alien attack. That attack sets off the unfolding of every event that makes up this particular story.
The characters’ inciting incidents—why they were at that location on that day—provide the fuel for character goals, reactions, motivations. They set up the interpersonal conflicts that start about 5 seconds after everyone arrives through the wormhole onto the ship.
But the inciting incident for the show sets up all the external plot events. They evacuate from the alien attack onto this ship. Then they find out they are on a millenia-old, busted-ass ship and things keep breaking. Each episode, inevitably, something new is wrong with the ship and the characters need to figure out how to fix it.
Which all suggests to me that we can think of the world as its own character. The world’s “actions” are the big external events of the plot. These actions affect the other characters, and the other characters also affect the world “character.” One of the biggest problems I have with understanding plot is how the characters need to generate it by making decisions and taking action, but also completely external things that the character has NO control over also need to happen. Like weather and car crashes and parades and cancelled plane flights. These completely external things must be not random coincidence but chosen by the author with care to support the growth and change of the characters.
{Which is debatable, actually, according to Matthew Salesses in his book Craft in the Real World, but that’s a fun tangent for another day.}
Thinking of the world as a character that is also pushing and pulling on the motivations and goals of the other characters—in a very ‘the universe is teaching me a lesson’ type way—helps me make sense of things.
Also, I never really got the idea of “reversals” and how they work in stories. But I think I get them now!
Reversals = the literary equivalent of “well THAT escalated.”
😇
So um yeah that’s been my February. I really thought I was just getting distracted by research again, but I realized that I started February really lost on building a plot arc for my novel. And instead of spinning my wheels and getting frustrated, my unconscious yanked me off on a whirlwind research adventure and now I actually might understand plot well enough to try again.
I’ve also realized that the idea of a zero draft intrigues me and I might want to try my hand at doing one for the novel. I never have before! It honestly sounds…..like….fun?!
Writing can be fun?! What?!
I’m still working on building up the references in my Grimoire. I’m also studying some flash fiction in depth, pulling apart the pieces. Wow, it’s a lot easier to do that now that I get what the pieces are and how they work (mostly). The next step when I’m done is to try to write my own flash, using the same tricks in the same order (but completely different subject matter). I’m excited to try.
Craft book rec: The Magic Words, by Cheryl B. Klein. Yes, it’s specifically for YA, but plot character and setting all work on the same principles no matter the age group.
Thank you so much, those whom have made it down to the end!! I’d apologize for being such a craft nerd, but honestly, you all should know what you are in for from me by now. 😊
mountains of 💖s,
Elnora
Coffee, sparkles and magic. It's what I needed this morning. If only I could throw sparkles on my essay for class. :)
Expansive appreciation for these craft thoughts. "She's Crafty !"
I realize you've been working on this Grimoire as a project for yourself - to untangle the immense ball of yarn, to thread the maze, to wrestle the angel, to build confidence when casting the spell of "Story" with ever more pleasing results.
I find I have intense interest in your Writers Grimoire project and want to encourage the manifestation of this essential and elusive tome.