The Plot Summit

Short-Story
Guide

Plot a new short-story in six clear steps

Daniel David Wallace

Escape the Plot Forest: the Plot Summit

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Hi. I’m Daniel David Wallace. This guide will walk you through the process of
creating a short story, starting with an engaging character with big problems.
It’s also your preview of our plotting summit, and the kind of lessons you’ll
participate in when the event begins.
If you haven’t already, register for the plot summit here:

https://forest.plotsummit.com

(Quick note about copyright: please use these lessons for your own personal
writing. And share them with writer friends. Enjoy! You can also teach the
lessons, as individual prompts or a complete course, to a classroom. However,
please do not post the actual pdf to an online forum or community page; do not
do anything creepy, like pass these lessons off as your own.)

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Welcome

I’m Daniel.

This quick guide will walk you through the creation of a new short story.

You'll write the central scenes of a completely new piece of work.

You'll also end the series with a clear idea of what additional scenes you need
to write to get the story done, polished, and ready to send to publishers or share
online. The basic idea is this: I will supply a very flexible plot structure and
premise; you will supply the setting, the main character, and the hidden depths
of that character which the plot will uncover.
My students love this sequence of writing challenges and I hope do you too.

Here's the basic picture of the story we're about to write:

A character with a problem, who has just suffered a major setback or defeat,
visits a strange place. This strange place is a location in her local area that has
always seemed mysterious, magical, taboo, or risky. However, in that strange place,
to her surprise, she receives an offer of help. The people or objects of the strange place
want to help her, and when she returns to her regular life, she immediately achieves
a stunning success. At last, she seems on the verge of achieving her ambition. Her
friends are amazed. And for a while, everything seems like it is going to work out,
but then…

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That sounds like a pretty interesting story, I think.

This course will teach you how to construct your own version of it.

When I was starting out as a fiction writer, this was exactly the kind of
guidance I longed for: someone who would help me practise the key steps
involved in writing a story, or the opening of the novel.
I didn't want a formula, or to be spoon-fed: I loved writing.
I wanted to work hard.
But I did want some advice about which tasks to attempt in what order.
So I created this guide for you.

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One: The Place Where You Live

The first step in writing this story is to build up a setting.

We’re going to describe the area where you live.
Alternatively, if your circumstances make that impractical — instead, describe
your home, the area where you are from.
Whether you choose to write about your current location, or your home, that’s
where this story will begin.
You may be thinking: “My home? Wait, is this a course in LITERARY
FICTION, that awful thing my parents warned me about? Are we going to write
stories where nothing happens? Will my protagonist simply stare out of the
window of his expensive studio in London or New York, thinking deep thoughts
about clouds, or shoes?”
Well, you can write anything you want, and any kind of fiction can be great,
but to answer your questions: no, that’s not why I suggest you write about your
most familiar environment.
I have two reasons why.
The first is a little poetical.
I think that it’s all too easy to believe that where we live, and our experiences,
and our situation — that these are not good places, or good experiences.
It’s easy in today’s world to feel like there are other places that are more
remarkable, more distinctive.
Or that, in order to be interesting, we have to fake an acquaintance with
somewhere more central, more hip, or more extreme.
Sometimes in my fiction classes, my students place their stories in a bland,
featureless “hospital,” or a vaguely described “wealthy beach town.”

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In those moments, I often wish I could tell them to trust in the power and
depth of their own lives. I want to tell them that their own experiences are a valid
starting point for great fiction.

The second reason is that this story, the story we will be writing together over
the course of these six emails, is going to move quickly.
Once we have settled on a familiar location, we are going to add something
strange, eerie, even magical to that landscape. We are actually going to begin the
tale with your protagonist paying an unexpected visit to that strange place. And
that eerie or magical place is going to offer your protagonist some vital help in her
quest, in fact.
Additionally — once we get going, this story is going to move fast. It’s going
to turn. And because this story is going to be fast-paced, with a quick opening,
there isn’t going to be time for a lot of extravagant world-building. The reader
should be able to figure out roughly where we are from the first paragraph.
If, instead, you decide to set your story in the year 4000 AD, and your
protagonist is the last warlock-pony of Mars, fighting to avenge all the other
warlock-ponies, the reader will have many questions.

Does Mars have an atmosphere? How do warlock-ponies cast spells?

Now, there’s nothing wrong with setting a story in the far-pony-future, but for
this particular writing course, I propose we keep ourselves to the here and now.
The here and now is remarkable enough.
However, there's a twist. I have a constraint for you.
I believe that to set a story in a familiar environment, it can be valuable to try
to re-see that environment, to see and feel it afresh, as if new.

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Sometimes we get bored by the everyday and stop noticing it.

That would be a terrible state of mind to write fiction in.
In fact, to help you get in the right frame of mind for fiction, I am also going to
impose a constraint on you.
It’s the constraint that lets the magic happen.
For this opening paragraph, you are only allowed to use words of one syllable.

Here’s the full challenge / prompt / assignment:

Sketch out or write a paragraph of five sentences, more or less, in which you
1. describe your setting, as though you, or a fictional character, were travelling through it,
whether on foot or by car.
2. incorporate something “red”, or something connected to “red”: sunsets, blood, outdoor
grills, red velvet cupcakes etc.
3. use only words of one syllable.

One syllable, really? Yes.

Now, if you aren’t sure if a word only has one syllable, or if you simply can’t
think of another word for “mountains,” even though "mountains" has two
syllables, don’t worry. A few cheat words in a paragraph will be okay.
But only a few. Or the magic won’t work.
When my students start to write like this, they say that they feel like
completely different writers.
It's like they are working with a new language.

Here’s one from me:

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I love my street when the air turns cold and the leaves fall. We are high, here, and
our street hugs the height of the long ridge. At the end of the year, you can look down,
to the north, and see homes lit up on the next hill. With no leaves to block my sight,
more homes show up, streets that were closed off from sight all year. To the south,
there is snow on the far peaks some days. Those mountains seem close, as though I
could reach out and touch them. There's a grey or white note to the air, and it makes
the cars and the trees seem sharp, clear, fine. Up here on the ridge, I smell the smoke
of grills, and I see a man stoke a fire on his porch, as I walk my dogs in the cold.

Now it’s your turn. Describe this area where your story will take place.

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Two: The Strange Place

In the last section, we started a new story: we described the area where you
live.
Now we'll add some character to your setting.
We're going to create something weird, magical, or eerie about the setting, a
peculiar feature of the community or landscape.
Why?
Well, the basic idea of the story we're writing is this: at the start of the story,
we meet a protagonist who is focused on a very practical, very sensible everyday
goal.

• He wants to launch a new arts festival in Johnson City, Tennessee.

• She wants to buy the abandoned old house in her favourite part of town.
• They have been promised a permanent teaching position in the local college.

However, just before the story begins, this protagonist has met a serious
setback or rejection.
And while she is still recovering from the defeat, she finds herself heading
towards that strange place you invented.
So let's invent that strange thing now, before we get wrapped up in plot and
narration and other complicated things.
In other words, we are just going to brainstorm some ideas right now. We're
not necessarily going to start drafting the story itself.
So this part should be easy:

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Think of something unusual, interesting, even potentially scary about your own culture,
home, society. Something curious about your story's setting.

I like to do a mind-map of possible “things,” scribbling down ideas: places,

customs, habits, sayings. Don't judge what comes to mind. Just write.
When I’ve done this exercise with local Tennessee writers, they come up with
ideas like “the people at the end of the street who make the killer bbq,” or “the
abandoned farm near our house,” or “the greenway that runs all the way to the
mountains,” or “the lonely church that my father warned me about.”

• The two guys in the truck full of tools.

• The Orthodox Jewish centre that has an art show every fourth Friday.
• The anxious but cute librarian who keeps referring to the "secret stacks."

Try to come up with six things. Then choose one of those six.
Here's the next challenge:

Write a few sentences about that one strange place. You are just brainstorming. There's
no need to put these lines in a character's voice, not unless you want to.
Just, for now, speculate.
Evoke the strangeness of this thing with sentences like
• "____ always makes me feel that___"
• "By dark, ___ looks___"
• "I've always wondered if ___ was really___"
• "If ____ had a magical power, it would be___"

The story is about to begin.

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Three: A Desperate Character

We’ve developed the setting of your story. First we explored the area where
you live.
Then we introduced a weird or magical strange part of the landscape, a strange
place.

Now we're going to introduce a character to that landscape.

The protagonist can be you, or a fictional version of you.

The protagonist can also be a completely made-up person.
The only rule is: this protagonist arrives in the story having just experienced a
significant set back or defeat.
He wants something, this protagonist, and he has been trying very hard to get
it. However, just before the story begins, he has suffered what seems like a final
defeat.

The key for now is that the character wants something and — so far — hasn't
been able to get it.
Whatever you decide, the goal here is to begin quickly. We want to meet our
protagonist when she is already in a state of desperation.

• Lydia still couldn't believe the meeting was over. She drove around town with
no idea of her destination.
• Looking back, I shouldn't have reacted like that. My wife had just wanted to...

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Our story begins with our protagonist already motivated to take extreme
action.
Why?
Well, when readers begin reading your short story or novel, they
unconsciously expect the basic premises of the tale to be laid out quickly.
Just like with baking, there is a point where you have put the story "in the
oven." At that point, the ingredients are kind of settled, and good or bad, you
have to let it rise on its own: you can’t go back and add in something major.
If all the characters in your novel are magical ponies, for instance, we probably
(probably) need to know this before the book’s second chapter.
It would be weird if the narrator never mentioned a swishing tail or sparkling
hooves, for instance, for the first hundred pages.

So.
The goal is to introduce your main character.
Just before the story begins, something bad has just happened.
Progress has been hard, much harder than expected, and just before first page
of the story, the character has received a crushing setback.
She has been rejected, refused, denied.
The blow to her confidence has been immense. She is still shaken, dazed.
But rather than give up, she moves towards the strange or mysterious thing
you invented in section #2.
Why? Maybe she already believes this strange place or thing can help her.
Maybe it's just an intuition, a weird feeling.
Or maybe your dude is simply lost.
Whatever you choose — the end result is that a frustrated, desperate person
has arrived at the place of strangeness.

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Therefore, in this initial paragraph, you need to:

1. Introduce the main character, so we understand who this person is and what sort of
resources, experiences, interests this person has. (Narrating in either first or third person is
fine.)
2. Sketch out or hint at the awful setback that has just occurred.
3. Describe the scene. Where is she? What does the border of the strange place look like,
sound like? What's the temperature? Scents? Sounds?
4. Hint at something odd, magical, mystical, curious, or weird about the strange place.
Right now, the protagonist doesn't know much about it. But she probably senses that it's an
odd kind of deal.

One last suggestion: I encourage you to narrate this opening section from a
distance, with the kind of rapid, confident exposition that we find in fairy tales.
There's no need to limit yourself to the character's eyes and what he sees.
This is narrative fiction, and the narrator can say anything.
You might begin: "Six years ago, I found myself at the edge of..." or you might
begin:

"On a warm April night in one of the most expensive suburbs of Atlanta, Melanie Jones,
an intelligent and ambitious woman with a remarkable amount of credit card debt, whose face
was reddened from an hour of crying and cursing, found herself at the edge of a strange
estate, a grand old manor, where..."

Now, everyone writes in their own unique way.

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You may want to use the material you have already written, which you wrote
for lessons one and two, as pre-writing. Or you might decide to use those words
in the actual story we are creating, as the opening page.
Either way is completely fine.
Here's an example from me.
This is a story about a magical outdoor grill. The tale begins with the one-
syllable paragraph from challenge one, continues with the description of the
strange place from day two, and leaps into action on day three:

Lesson One: The place where you live

I love my street when the air turns cold and the leaves fall. We are high, here, and our
street hugs the height of the long ridge. At the end of the year, you can look down, to the
north, and see homes lit up on the next hill. With no leaves to block my sight, more homes
show up, streets that were closed off from sight all year...

Lesson Two: The strange place

On one of the apartment blocks on our road, there's a man who is always out grilling
on a huge, ornate grill. He is a heavy fellow, usually bare-chested, despite the freezing
cold air, with a hairy body and a bristling face.
His huge grill takes up most of the porch, and I don't think the other people on that
floor like him. Once, I saw a wife demand that her husband do something about this
grilling man — my Spanish is not good enough to know exactly what she said — but the
husband refused. He looked afraid.
And, to be honest, I find the bare-chested man a little odd, too.
You see, there's something weird about his grill. At night, it seems to…

Lesson Three: The desperate person

I never thought I would inherit that strange man's grill.

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Here's how it happened.

The day after I was fired, I took my dogs on a long walk.
As I passed the apartment where the strange grilling man lived, he closed the lid of his
huge grill — I thought I heard an odd sound emerge from it, like a scream.
He waved to me. I waved back. I felt empty inside. I was unemployed. I had failed in
the most public way possible. My wife kept asking how we were going to survive without
my job.
So I had gone out, taking the dogs. Just walking. I had no idea what else to do.
I was about to go on, keep going away from my house, but something told me to look
across the street. From the porch, the bare-chested man seemed to be staring at me,
staring, full of hate and fear.
As I watched, he clutched at his chest, and staggered. He tried to grab the handle of
his grill for support, but he missed, and fell backwards. I heard a hard thump as he
collapsed.
I ran with my dogs to help.

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Four: Build Up Your Protagonist

Now, after three writing challenges, we have a starting point for a story: a
character with a problem who visits a strange place.

• A man is desperate to make his artists’ market a success, but it keeps losing
money. So one day he visits the couple at the end of his street with the crazy-good barbeque,
and he asks them to cook for the next weekend’s event. But the strange thing is, when this
couple agree to help him…
• A woman has lived alone on a farm in the hills of East Tennesse all her life.
However, when a tree falls on the roof, she has to walk through the haunted woods to the
next farm and ask for help…

That's the premise.

However, before we get deeper into the magical barbecue house, or take a scary
walk through the woods, the reader first needs to bond with the protagonist.
Before things get strange, we should first understand the human want and
need underpinning the protagonist's actions.
Why? Well, before we move into the plot, readers will want to get closer to the
character, so they can stand in that person's shoes, see how they see the world.

Here's a general craft observation:

Often when I read student work, or the stories that aspiring writers share on
Reddit, I'm struck by how little internal or mental narration there is.

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It's like the writer is directing a film, and the only possible descriptions are
those of the surroundings, or the characters' appearance, and dialogue, and
actions. It's like the narrator is a camera, not a storyteller.
I'm never really sure why this is. Perhaps the writer is trying to obey "show
don't tell," although this seems a misapplication of the rule: it's fine to show us
what the character is thinking.
But although I don't know why other writers do this, I do know why I used to
do it.
I know that in my early work, I often failed to describe the main character's
thoughts because I felt scared. I didn't know what my character really thought or
felt, so I tried to hide that by leaving things mysterious.
Or maybe I thought that what I wanted them to think was silly, or boring, and
if I told people, they would lose interest in my story.
It would have been better to have made a choice, and simply said what was
going on, even if it was trite or dull, rather than painting a vague tale, and have
left the reader confused, unsure what was happening and why.
Showing the main character's thoughts and feelings early on helps the reader
build empathy and concern for that character. It's part of what makes a reader
care.
P.S. If you're still worried that sharing the protagonist's thoughts will remove
the mystery and tension from the story, my suggestion is to read a story or two
from Helen Oyeyemi's story collection, What's Not Yours Is Not Yours, or James
Baldwin's Going to Meet the Man. We learn a lot about these characters' beliefs
and thoughts — yet there is still plenty of mystery and wonder to go around.
Knowing how the protagonist sees the world still leaves the world full of
enigmas.

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So now your goal is to write out one paragraph that describe the setback the
protagonist has just experienced. What has the protagonist gone through? Why
was it so hurtful?

These are thoughts and reflections that occur to the protagonist as he or she
stands on the edge of the strange place. Show us the protagonist's anguish, anger,
longing.

Additionally, it would be great if you introduced (very briefly) a secondary

character, someone whom the protagonist recalls during these thoughts of
frustration and reminisce.
This secondary character has one important job.
He should be remembered saying one particular thing: something that
clarifies to the reader that the setback really is bad, that the protagonist is really
in trouble.

For example:

He remembered, as he stood at the door of the weird old diner, how disappointed Maggie
had looked in the meeting. It's over, she had told him, when the board members walked out.
They'll never fund us now. He could smell the wonderful cooking just beyond the shack's
entrance, but in his mind he saw again Maggie's mouth tremble, her eyes turn red. I have just
wasted, she had said, a year of my life. Remembering those words made him wince, go numb.

Sounds good?

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Now, maybe you're thinking — another character? But my protagonist is an

old lady who lives alone in the middle of a dreary wood — she doesn't know
anyone.
Or maybe you're thinking: my protagonist is the last pony alive on Mars. All
his friends are dead, slain in heroic battle. Alone, he fights the robot legions of
Neptune, seeking vengeance.
Firstly, I would say: I told you not to make your protagonist a pony!
Lord.
Secondly, I would say: this other character can be imaginary. This secondary
character can be a childhood friend, or a now-deceased pony comrade.
You'll see why this is important in the next lesson.
So. Write out a paragraph where we get to know how your protagonist sees her
situation, and how she understands the strange place she is about to enter. There
doesn't have to be any forward action in the plot.
It's purely a mental moment of reflection, flashback, consideration.
It's where we readers learn to share the protagonist's goals and dreams.

Sounds good? Start writing.

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Four and a half: The Wheel of Drama

Now we write the first dramatic scene in your story.

This is where the character enters the strange place, and slowly becomes aware
that things are even stranger than he thought.

Wow... this bbq brisket is amazing... no wonder everyone here looks so happy and
content... it's almost as if…

Or:

Wait... this party of people pretending to be figures from the cold war... that person
dressed up as Chiang Kai Shek, and this attractive guy I've been flirting with, the one who
looks just Che Guevara... they aren't actors... they aren't pretending…

The scene ends with the character explaining her problem to someone in the
strange place, or finding some kind of tool that seems oddly powerful, and
unexpectedly receiving aid of some kind.
Now she can return to the real world newly empowered.

PS You may be thinking: but there's nothing magical or powerful about the
strange place I created.
OH MY GOD. Did I do it wrong?

Daniel, I just imagined some homeless people in the local Salvation Army shelter who
need help with their disability paperwork.

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or…

My character went to a racy burlesque show for people who have a thing about dirt and
leaves. There's no one rich or famous there.

That's fine. You just need to show, very clearly, that the character leaves your
strange place with new found confidence and certainty. Helping out the homeless
gives your character fresh strength.

Here's the plan. We're going to write three paragraphs now.

The first paragraph will show our character making her way into the strange
place, and starting to notice that it is even stranger than she thought. Nothing
crazy. It's not like a dragon scoops her up and together they burn New Delhi to
the ground. It's just that things are odder than she expected.
The second paragraph will be another flashback to her moment of defeat. This
will remind the reader that the character is truly OBSESSED. She walks into a
burlesque dance about sexy plants and all she can think about is her setback, and
her (seemingly) lost goal.

The third paragraph will be a repeat and intensification of paragraph one. The
character is now getting deeper into the strange place, and things seem even
weirder. The character's skepticism and indifference are being replaced by
wonder, fear, intrigue.
That's it.
But there's more.
I want to make these three paragraphs even easier for you. So I would like to
present a craft technique for writing dramatic scenes.

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I call it the wheel of drama.

It is basically the same idea that Jack Bickham presents in the book Scene and
Structure, and very similar to the way that Robert McKee teaches scene design in
Story.
I am making it even simpler than they do, so that if you are reading this email
while holding a baby or hiding in the corner of a busy office, you will still be able
to write a killer dramatic scene.
The idea is simple. We write a long paragraph or half-page of dramatic prose by
cycling through a fixed sequence of moments.
It's a "wheel" because the scene builds by repeating this cycle over and over
again, each time more intensely.
This repetition and rise in tension helps the reader to buy into the idea that
(for instance) the people at this party really are ghosts from the cold war.
The wheel goes like this:

Cycle 1
1. Observation. The character observes something about the scene.
2. Desire. This leads her to want something, to have a desire that leads to...
3. Action. The character takes a small, low-risk action to get the thing she wants...
4. Surprise. The surrounding environment does not react the way she expects!
Something odd happens, leading to a new cycle…

Cycle 2
1. Observation. She tries to make sense of what just happened.
2. Desire. She now wants something slightly different, or looks for a new way to get
what she wants.
3. Action. She tries a slightly more extreme tack, hoping that this bigger step will get
her what she wants.

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4. Surprise. But this second, stronger move also doesn't go how she expects. She is
thwarted again, or she is satisfied in a way that she did not plan. Now she is feeling quite
confused, which leads to a new cycle, which in turn leads to...

If you are a really deft writer, you could theoretically run through two cycles
in just eight sentences. But you probably need a little more space than that.
Here's an example from me of one cycle:

Melanie found the grand party intimidating, as the actors all wore impeccable tuxedos,
evening gowns, and military uniforms, and she was still dressed in her wrinkled skirt-suit.
At least there was a cash bar: she needed a drink. However, when she asked for a mojito,
the bartender inspected her dollars with an unhappy eye.
"It's Taiwanese yen tonight," he said. "You should know that."
Melanie blinked. Rude.
But she didn't want to reveal that she hadn't been invited, so she nodded. "My broker
couldn't find a good rate."
Two stools down from her, a good-looking man in a dark suit, who looked eerily like a
young Che Guevara, placed some faded bills on the bar.
"I'm not surprised your man failed to supply you with Taiwanese yen," this Guevara-
esque stranger remarked. "It has been a dead currency for some seventy years."

Observation - desire - action - surprise.

Which leads to another round of observation - desire - action - surprise...
which leads to...
Sounds good?
Okay. That's the wheel of drama.

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Now, you can either write out this cycle two times in a row, and then pause for
a paragraph of flashback and reflection, or you can pause between them, and
insert the paragraph of flashback there. That second option is what I would
recommend.
Either way, in this paragraph, your character pauses, retreating from the
weirdness of the strange place for a moment, and goes back to dwell on her
failure, her defeat.

Melanie thanked Mr. Guevara-a-like without meeting his eye, and turned back to
regard the general flow of the party. She still couldn't believe her presentation had been
such a disaster! How could she…

Now, here's one last thing. We're now going to introduce one more mystery
into the story, to really hook the reader. Include in this flashback one final
complication: remember the friend, the secondary character, the one who was
upset that our protagonist had failed?
Have your protagonist now remember, as she flashes back, an odd thing that
the secondary character had said.
This remark, delivered to our protagonist in a moment of high tension and
distress, should hint that the disaster was somehow the protagonist's fault.
But it should be so vague that neither the protagonist nor the reader has any
idea what it means. Indeed, the protagonist can simply reject it, or muse at it
blankly, before the weirdness of the night resumes.

As she went over and over the events of the day, Melanie still couldn't deal with how
upset Janice had looked. "You always do this!" Janice had cried. What on earth did that
mean?

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This moment should be really brief and simple. Don't over-think it. Just write
some moment within the flashback seem to suggest that part of the defeat is
connected to the character herself, that she is more to blame than she
understands.
If you have no idea what this blame might be, that's fine.
You won't need to figure it out until later.

So. We have written (or at least begun) the story's first dramatic scene.
And the reader should now be on our character's side, hoping that she
somehow can recover from her disaster.
The reader should ALSO be curious about two mysteries.
One: what is this strange place?
Two: what did the trusted friend mean when she said our hero was to blame
for the defeat?
This is a great start to a gripping story.

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Five: You Have Great Success

Hey.
Before we go on, I want to congratulate you. You have completed most of this
guide. That's fantastic.
During my life, I've taken all kinds of courses, from Finance lectures at the
London School of Economics to Spanish lessons in the mountains of Guatemala.
The one common thing about all those courses: many people do not make it to
the end.
This has been true even when the class was great fun, or promised to make the
students rich. People are busy. Life can be hard. Other stuff is interesting.
Thank you for following this one through.
We are not finished yet, of course. Now we are going to start weaving together
our different plot threads and mysteries to great effect.

All right.
Now we have a setting, a protagonist, and a story premise.
The protagonist is in trouble, but at the start of the story, he or she enters a
strange place or meets a strange person who, unexpectedly, can help.
Perhaps…

• The strange eerie grill, inherited from a dying man, turns out to cook simply
irresistible sausages and hamburgers, and our character uses it to...
• The cool party with the people dressed up like historical figures from the cold
war leads to a secretive, wealthy person's promise to...
• The ghost of a long-lost friend enables our character to...

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Now we're going to jump ahead, and write out the next scene, the one that
comes after the offer of help.
In this scene, the protagonist returns to the scene of his earlier defeat, and,
with the help of the strange place, achieves a stunning success.
As this happy scene ends, the protagonist is riding high.

Plot is Repetition

Plot is kind of a mysterious thing to describe. It seems essential to fiction —

but it is hard to pin down in words exactly what it is.
I'd like to offer one definition: plot is repetition with change. I am adopting
this idea from Peter Brooks, from his scholarly study Reading for the Plot.
I find this idea very powerful.
In other words, we understand that things are developing in a story when past
elements repeat themselves. We feel we are experiencing a "plot" when those past
elements return — slightly changed.
That was why it was so important to introduce that secondary character, in the
previous email. Remember her? The secondary character who was present at the
protagonist's moment of crisis, just before the story began?
That character will now return for this new scene, but rather than being
unhappy and devastated, she will be delighted and relieved.
Her change in mood is what helps the reader understand that the plot has
moved forward.
Only through the repetition, and change, do we have an easy, clear way to
understand the plot.
Maybe this seems too obvious, but I think writers often omit sufficient
repetition in their stories. Sometimes, especially if you are writing something

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unusual, this can leave the reader unsure — is this new development supposed to
be good or bad?
Imagine, for instance, that your magical Mars pony-warlock has fallen in love
with the leader of the enemy legion, a robot pony. Should we see this as a
mistake, or a hopeful step forward?
We are not ponies ourselves. We've never lived on Mars.
Well, that's why we need the ghost of our protagonist's best friend, or some
other secondary character, to comment on this new development.
By the change in the ghost pony's mood, from the first scene to the current
one, we will learn what to think about this blossoming pony-robot romance.
(If the friend is happy, for instance, it clues us in to see this development as a
good thing, at least for now.)
So. Write out now a satisfying, triumphant scene in which the protagonist
appears to be getting what he wants. He uses the powers of the strange place to
make a stunning comeback. He is making progress at last.
And show us, too, his friend, the secondary character, seeming happy and
relieved, and a little curious.
Can the good times last? Of course not.

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Six: The Fatal Flaw Returns

This series began with setting.

We explored the area around us, and invented or focused on a strange thing, a
weird or eerie or special place within that landscape.
Then we invented a character with a problem and a plan.
This character has been unable to get something he or she wants, and for some
reason, the usual, standard methods of getting that thing haven’t worked out.
So the character, rather than surrender, found herself seeking out that strange
place.

If you think of this story in terms of dramatic scenes, we might say that scene
one was the character standing on the edge of the strange place, wondering what
had just happened to her life, and that scene two was her entry into the strange
place, where she discovered hints at its powers and received an offer of help.

SCENE ONE: Protagonist is standing on the edge of the strange place. GOAL: To
process and make sense of her recent disaster. END POINT: The protagonist enters the
strange place.
SCENE TWO: Protagonist walks into the strange place. GOAL: To figure out / relax /
prosper / get help in the strange place. END POINT: The protagonist receives an offer of
help.
SCENE THREE: Protagonist returns to her old ambition, now bringing along the help
of the strange place. GOAL: To finally be successful, despite all her past defeats. END
POINT: The protagonist triumphs.

Now the plot thickens.

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That last scene, in lesson five of this series, was also showing the power of
repetition as a component of plot. We deliberately created a secondary character
who knew the protagonist when she was down and defeated, in order that, when
she was successful in scene three, the reader would understand the scale of the
change.
In the last lesson, I argued that plot was a process of repetition with change.
When characters and events and locations repeat in a story, slightly changed
each time, the reader begins to feel, intuitively, that things are developing.
Repetition is fiction's engine of meaning. It is by change and development of
old things that a story begins to clarify its meanings to the reader.
But there's another way to look at plot.
The second way of looking at plot is that plot reveals character. This was the
way that my teacher, Lisa Zeidner, taught me to understand plot.
In this sense, plot isn't a spiral of repeating elements. It's more like a journey
into the underworld. Each scene takes us deeper into the unknown.
Hold on.
That sounds very poetic. But what does that mean?
Well, we begin the story knowing the protagonist on a superficial level. In
fact, we probably start the story relying on the character's narration, or narration
that is close to the character's view of things, simply to make sense of the world
we have entered.
But as the story builds, every major incident and turning point reveals that
character to us more deeply. Each challenge or upset breaks off a little of the
character's customary actions, her protective persona. Each major developments
helps us to see who she really is.
In fact, this process of revelation might even seem like the reason for the
events of the story.

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Perhaps, by the end of the story, we know the character better than he knows
himself.
And this is a nice idea for writers, because it gives us a very simply rubric for
writing our stories. We simply need to invent situations that will force the
character to reveal more of their true nature.

The current goal is to plan a new scene. This scene starts to reveal something
previously hidden, or only hinted at, in our main character.
In other words: only now are we going to learn something surprising about
our protagonist.
This scene begins when the protagonist is delighting in her new success.
Everything appears to be working out. The strange place has led her to temporary
victory. Her friends are delighted.
But now...
Now she starts to cause problems for herself. She starts to act in a way that is
self-destructive, or reckless, or anxious, or counter-productive.
The reader starts to understand, as we watch the character endanger a
perfectly successful situation, that this aspect to the character was lurking within
all along. We just hadn't seen it yet.
But now the real source of her problems returns.
Remember that moment, in lesson four and a half, where the friend seemed to
blame our protagonist for the earlier disaster? Now the reader starts to grasp what
is going on.
The thing that was holding her back rises up once more. Whatever the
problem or flaw that has long beset the character: now it threatens all that
progress.
To put it more simply:

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Your character began our story having just suffered a terrible setback.
And to the character's mind, this is an unfair outrage. It's something external
in the world that keeps hurting her. She was doing her best.
But what we learn in this scene, SCENE FOUR, is that there is something
internal to the character that caused the crisis in the first place, or at least part of
that crisis.
For example:

WHY is the art festival dude always losing money? What is causing him to be a bad
businessman? After all, people do found art festivals, even in East Tennessee, and keep
them running, year after year. Why can't this guy manage it?
Well, once he has the magic bbq people on his side, that deep, buried reason has to
come out, and complicate things afresh. He should seem to be completely successful.
Everyone is amazed by the avid crowds attending his events. But now the thing about his
personality that always kept him back? Now it returns.

Or:

WHY has this woman been living on a farm, alone, all her life? That doesn’t seem very
sensible. Maybe she believes everyone else in the world is a devil worshipper. Or maybe she
believes her dead father is hiding in the woods, and wants to kill her.
Well, once she finally reaches her neighbour’s house, the reason that kept her isolated has
to come out. Perhaps, as the friendly couple feed her, she sees her father’s ghost in the
mirror, telling her to kill them all. Now the reader begins to understand: the real danger
wasn't out there, in the woods.

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Despite the weird or lucky or magical thing that she thought was going to fix
everything, well, her challenges only get more complicated, because she was all
along the real source of (at least part of) her problems.
In short, whatever the problem or flaw that has long beset the character: now
it threatens all that progress.
Now his friend, that secondary character from the story's first page, looks on
in confusion as the old problems return.
What was stopping your character from advancing?
By the end of this scene, the reader should understand exactly what the
protagonist's character flaw is.

Perhaps the character himself comes to an epiphany, a sudden realisation. He narrates, or

thinks, or whispers, or shouts the truth.
Perhaps the secondary character, the friend, announces it: she says that this is "always"
what our protagonist does.
Perhaps a stranger makes the announcement. A child at the art festival cries out a garbled
version of the truth. "You look like you think people are laughing at you in your sleep!"

Warning: maybe you don't like that last idea. Maybe you just recoiled at the
thought of being so obvious.
NO, NO, DANIEL. I CANNOT SIMPLY *SAY* WHAT THE SECRET OF MY
CHARACTER IS. NEVER!!

Show don’t tell, Daniel! SHOW DON’T TELL!!!

But I generally warn writers against this type of subtlety. In fact, I advise you
simply have someone come out and say what the character's problem is.

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If you worry this is too crass and basic, I promise that the reader's confusion
and bewilderment is a more important thing to worry about. Better to be basic
and beloved than to be clever and ignored.
Have a look at the stories in Mary Gaitskill's seminal story collection, Bad
Behavior, or those in Haruki Murakami's collection After the Quake. Frequently in
those stories, someone just announces what the story is supposed to be about, or
what the character's real problem is. It always works fine.

Now, this is almost the end of this pdf. I know our story is still unfinished.
However, the rest of the story should be simple to complete. Once you have
written this scene, SCENE FOUR, the scene where the character's flaw is revealed,
it's clear where the story has to go.
From here, the story's central dramatic question is whether the character can
overcome her flaw, or whether the flaw will destroy her.

Perhaps our art festival guy cannot accept his own essential vanity / obsession, and ends
up using the magic of special bbq people to destroy everyone he cares for.
Perhaps the old woman in the woods realises that her father's ghost has been lying to her
all this time, because he wants her to be his, alone, and at the end of the story, she breaks free
of his power.

Or perhaps — maybe this is the worst option of all — the protagonist uncovers
the true nature of his problem, and takes steps to overcome it, but those steps are
so extreme, so outrageous, that they leave him heading for a fresh disaster.
It's up to you.

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Conclusion: Wrapping Up

You've definitely got a few more scenes to write. I believe you can write them
really well.

1. You now should go back and finish the meeting between the protagonist and the
people of the strange place. That should be a fascinating scene where the protagonist grasps
that the strange place has a power of its own.

2. A very short reflection scene after the character's moment of success, a sort of
half-scene or mini-scene, that takes place after SCENE THREE, where the character tries to
make sense of what has happened. ("The magic had worked! He couldn't believe it! And now
he could…")

3. A climactic crisis scene, the peak of the story's tension. This comes after the
character's old habits or demons return: does the character come to understand him or herself
in time, or do those demons destroy everything? Can he grasp why he has got into trouble so
many times before, or will only the reader see the problem? Will his flaw destroy him, or will
he be able to change, improve, get free?

4. An optional final scene, where the magic retreats, and real life resumes. Maybe the
bbq people let it be known that they don't want to do any more festivals. Maybe the ghost
who led the protagonist through the wood vanishes, waving a silent goodbye.

Whatever you need to get the story ready to show to your readers.

I believe you can do it.

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Thank you so much!

I hope this series has been useful — and a lot of fun.

Now… would you like more plot instruction, both from me and brilliant
writers and teachers?

If so, I’ll see you in the summit.

Take a look at our schedule: https://forest.plotsummit.com/schedule/

Yours,
Daniel

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