Even plot driven books are about the characters. That seems so obvious when you think about it, doesn’t it? But it’s easy to forget that the plot is there to push the characters, not the other way around. Even in the highest concept books.
And guess what? I forgot it. Well, almost. I’m working on two very high concept books, and I’ve really, really been struggling to figure out where that sense of something missing is coming from. I know the plot kicks it. And I know the characters are great. But in trying to keep the pace hopping, I’ve forgotten that there has to be a connection between the two, the tight connection that pushes the characters to the end of their limits–not physically, but emotionally. Otherwise, who cares? Oh, another character needs to save the world. Yawn.
This is my epiphany from last week. I screwed up. Back to the drawing board. Back to the core of the story.
The changes aren’t huge, because the foundation is all there–at least in these books. It means going back to the beginning and doing another deep tension pass for where every event runs up against the characters deepest misconceptions and wounds, how it pushes the relationships between characters to the brink.
I went back to Lisa Cron, whose Wired For Story I’ve written about before. (If you haven’t read it yet, go forth and do so. Hurry!) Her newest book is Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere). If you have any doubt about why you’re having trouble making your story work on a deeper level, if your book isn’t as much of a page turner as you hoped, if it isn’t drawing people to your characters as you need it to, go and read this one. Lisa’s books just plain make sense.
Read the whole book, but if you read nothing else, take a look at her scene chart. I’ll paraphrase, but you really need the full description.
Alpha Point: The main point, the reason the scene can’t be left out of the book
Sub Plot Alphas: Why the scene advances the subplots
| THE PLOT | CAUSE What happens? | EFFECT The consequence |
| THE THIRD RAIL | Why it matters | The realization |
and so. . . | ||
The third rail of a nation’s politics is a metaphor for any issue so controversial that it is “charged” and “untouchable” to the extent that any politician or public official who dares to broach the subject will invariably suffer politically. It is most commonly used in North America.
Lisa explains it like this:
“You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are.”
― Joss Whedon
About the Author
Martina Boone is the acclaimed author of Compulsion and Persuasion, out now in the romantic Southern Gothic Heirs of Watson Island trilogy from Simon & Schuster, Simon Pulse. Illusion, the final book, will be out in October of 2016.
She was born in Prague in the shadow of a magical castle and grew up hearing stories about alchemists and hopeless dreamers, which may be loves to write about romantic, magical worlds the lost characters who live in them.
She’s on the Board of the Literacy Council of Northern Virginia and runs the CompulsionForReading.com program to distribute books to underfunded schools and libraries.
