In the preface to their recently published writing guide, Writer's Companion, Carlos J Cortés and Renée Miller state, “we set out to compile everything a creative writer needs to write well into a single reference volume.” We are posting “The Nuts & Bolts," the first chapter of the guide, in a series of posts on Open Book.
Check out Carlos and Renée's online writing community, On Fiction Writing, a website that is “dedicated to writers who are serious about improving their craft and helping other writers to do the same.”
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Read Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten and Part Eleven of "The Nuts and Bolts."
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1.6 Structure/Working, continued
1.6.2 Basic Plot Structure
A structure in rough draft is termed a basic plot, and consists of the first logical addition after outlining the concept. The aim of a basic plot is to outline the events that must take place in the novel in steps or broad strokes.
We are not looking for detail, characterization, or precision—but plot. We don’t need to worry about names, features, color, or background—just plot. Why stress plot, plot, plot like a mantra? Because at this stage, structure means plot.
Spaceship. A transmission from a nearby planet. The crew goes to investigate. The signal source is a derelict alien spacecraft. Inside they discover a chamber with eggs. John, a crew member, looks closer. A creature attaches itself to his face. Back at the ship, the crew attempts to remove the creature from John’s face. Soon the creature detaches on its own and dies. The crew resumes their trip.
John recovers, then a thing bursts from his chest, killing him and escaping into the ship. The crew attempts to locate and capture it. Soon they discover the thing is huge and vicious. It starts killing the crew. When Mark is the only one left, he manages to initiate the ship’s self-destruct sequence and narrowly escapes in a shuttle as the ship explodes.
As Mark prepares to enter stasis, he discovers that the thing is aboard the shuttle but manages to eject it into space.
Does it read familiar? In a basic plot of Alien, we need no description of anything, only events. Later we’ll add precision: Mark will become Ripley, there will be a cat and an android and the mother of all badass creatures.
In the following pages, we will focus on plot.
1.6.2.1 Basic Plot Structure Development
The first item we need is setting. Where is the treasure? If we can decide on a location, it may give us an idea of the treasure’s nature itself. If our alien has been hiding for a long time, cities are out of the question. We are left with the oceans and uninhabited or sparsely-inhabited land.
Aliens living in the ocean’s depths have been portrayed before. Besides, we would face a plot where the action would take place in submarines or deep-sea stations, which has also been done to exhaustion.
On land we have deserts, jungles, and mountains. Deserts don’t look too promising, and mountains would mean caves. We could try Antarctica, but that has been already done. The ideal thing would be something that adventurers have been seeking for centuries and never found, despite countless references to it. A lost city would do.
Problem is there are many lost lands, from the legendary Atlantis to scores of others whose remains have been found or have forever disappeared in cataclysms.
A writer should write about what he or she knows; this is the counsel of countless experts. Hence, if a real writer considered developing our plot he would choose an environment he’s more familiar with. In our team, one of the writers has had enough jungle experience to last a lifetime, so we sought a lost city in a jungle.
Ciudad Blanca, or White City, in Honduras is as weird as they come: People have been looking for hundreds of years, and many claim to have seen its buildings but nobody has ever found it. From 1526, when Hernan Cortes first recorded it, there have been scores of expeditions involving adventurers, governments and even the CIA. All came back empty-handed. Wonderful.
This highlights another issue of plot building. A writer should seek untried concepts, unexplored avenues, or original themes. There’s nothing new under the sun, but the writer must root for different angles or unique aspects for the plot to stand out.
Hernan Cortes heard the tale of a white gleaming city in the Honduran Mosquitia (or Mosquito Forest), the most impenetrable forest on the planet and, even in the twenty-first century, largely unexplored. But “city” can mean a large structure. However improbable, it could have been an alien craft. The craft crashes and there are reports of a huge white structure in the jungle. The survivors realize they can’t repair the thing, so they scheme to cover or bury it. Thus, the “city” disappears.
Adventurers have sought Ciudad Blanca because sixteenth century reports tell of gold by the truckload. So, we have a goal for any adventurer: gold. And a twist in the plot when whomever thinks he is onto the prize finds a lovesick hermaphrodite.
Let’s recap and lay another layer of structure.
Satellites detect magnetic anomalies in Honduras, consistent with low-grade ore. The Mosquitia is impossible. Scientists disregard the find. A rich villain thinks the anomaly is not mineral but Ciudad Blanca.
Villain puts together a bunch of muscle. Since he’s pushing seventy, his son will lead. Off they go kitted out with high-tech gadgets. Every day they report. When they near the spot, communications cease.
Two years later: Villain hears our hero giving a talk about jungle flora. Our hero has no formal training but an encyclopedic knowledge of the Mosquitia. He treks through the forest and lives off the land. Hero is a widower. He wants to rebuild his life and that of his kids (4) but his new sweetheart has contracted a rare illness. Villain finds out, and concocts the story of wanting his son’s remains brought home. He will give a sack of cash to Hero, enough to pay the best hospital for his woman.
When Villain marshals another team of mercenaries, Hero decrees no gadgets, or bulky equipment.
As the group nears the area where the first group disappeared, the mercenaries vanish one after the other until Hero is alone. He stumbles into a big cat, fights, and manages a pyrrhic victory; before dying itself, the cat mauls him to within an inch of his life.
Hero recovers in a strange place tended to by IT, a strange woman.
Hero is alive because he didn’t wear any electronic device, even his watch is wind-up (as befits that of any sensible person venturing into a rainforest). He meets several other women, much older, all that remains from the ITS, a race from another world.
Hero tries to escape. IT nabs him and locks him up deep within their complex. There he will learn the saga of the ITS. The flesh is weak and IT is most accommodating, though full of surprises.
A deranged Villain has had enough. Months have gone by. He bribes half the Honduran Army to find out once and for all what’s happened and find that damned Ciudad Blanca.
When the ITS sense an army is on its way, they go for broke. IT shows Hero a network of caves to get the hell out. The army deforests the area and when Villain arrives in a chopper, IT blows the place to smithereens.
Hero returns to his village with a pocketful of diamonds to get his woman on her feet and the kiddos to University.
IT is not dead, but hiding deep and very much pregnant. Hero’s ministrations have returned her fertility. Now she will kidnap the local talent, use them as breeders and rebuild the ITS.
This is a basic plot, with more holes than a Gruyere cheese (some Swiss cheeses have no holes), full of inconsistencies, problems, and details requiring much research. There’s no characterization, setting, atmosphere, subplots, or any of the myriad issues required of a full-fledged structure. But these 450 words, or one single-spaced page, have the bones of a 450-page novel.
1.6.3 Section Structure
In this chapter’s opening pages, we cited three important aspects of a good structure. The second point was to break the manuscript down into manageable chunks.
The story concept is like the drawing of a new airliner. No matter how beautiful and impressive its rendering, it’s empty. A member of the public will gape at sinuous aerodynamic lines, size, color, and overall aesthetic beauty. An engineer will cringe when he thinks about the gargantuan task of building the thing.
The same is true of fiction writing. We start with a concept, which can be awe-inspiring. The concept will grow from a basic single-word idea into a nebulous skeleton that gradually acquires focus and resolution. This is what we’ve done so far with our crazy plot.
No man or woman can build a modern aircraft from scratch, and no writer can write a book all at once. Some writers have phenomenal memories and can structure a novel in their heads, but the process is the same whether we plot on a piece of paper, on a screen, or in our brain.
When an aircraft dream matures from concept to design, the chief designer breaks down the job into sections: airframe, avionics, and power plant. Later, each of these major sections breaks down into many subsections and each subsection into a myriad of specific design jobs. One designer, or a team of them, will design the device to flush the toilets, and a different designer, or team, will tackle the struts for the landing gear.
Breaking a plot into sections is a rewarding experience. After thrashing about wild ideas, there comes a point when these concepts crystallize into physical containers, like the drawers on a chest.
In the following section we’ll explore the first major plot division.
1.6.3.1 Section Structure Development
On the loose structure, we had twelve loose points, which we will now double. The plot remains the same but, henceforth, in blocks with a semblance of order.
First Section: We ground down the premise.
1. Discovery of something odd in the Honduran Mosquitia.
2. Villain organizes a party led by his son.
The explorers disappear.
The section should be almost a prologue. Exposition must be reduced to a minimum and the plot should move forward swiftly.
Second section: We introduce the hero and lay down the challenge.
4. Two years later. Villain hears a Miskito Indian (Hero) giving a talk.
5. Villain recruits Hero.
6. Villain organizes a second party.
7. Hero lays down the law.
8. Second party hacks into La Mosquitia.
Second party disappears.
In this part, we enter into the real plot. We can blend in the backstory of the project and characterize the hero and the antagonist. We’ll hike the tension with a secondary character reporting to Villain behind Hero’s back and a few jungle scenes, to end when Hero is half-dead.
Third section: We introduce the treasure, the alien community, and the dilemma.
10. Hero recovers in a strange place tended to by IT.
11. Hero meets several other ITS.
12. Hero tries to escape.
13. IT nabs him and locks him up deep within their complex.
14. Hero learns the saga of the ITS.
15. IT and Hero develop a strange relationship.
This is the novel’s core section and the most fun to write. The alien’s characterization will be a challenge and will require much ingenuity to describe the environment and the particular biology of the ITS. Also, this will be the section needing the most research.
Fourth section: We stage the climax.
16. A deranged Villain has had enough.
17. Villain bribes the Honduran Army to find out what’s happened and locate Ciudad Blanca.
18. The ITS sense an army is on its way and gather to decide what to do.
19. IT shows Hero a network of caves to escape.
20. The army deforests the area and Villain arrives in a chopper.
21. IT blows the place.
This is a frantic section, with many short ticking-clock scenes, and it is the place to explore cinematic POV and fast shifts between the players to build the tension.
Fifth section: We tie up loose ends and explain everything.
22. News reports on a small meteoroid impact in La Mosquitia (to cover up the Honduran Army’s fiasco).
23. Hero returns to his village.
24. IT is not dead, but hiding deep and very much pregnant.
Rather than an epilogue, we should craft this as the real ending of the novel. When the reader is about to relax thinking that the tale is over, we will spring a different reality. The real nature of the ITS will leave the reader gasping.
At this point, it’s important to realize that nothing is static. Our twenty-four notes are not plot points. Far from it. They are like Post-It notes on a board. In the real world, we would spend weeks, perhaps months developing each section, gathering the research, discovering flaws, and attempting to remedy them. Of course, before we set to write down this plot, we had a good idea of the overall structure down to the smallest details.
But its genesis and development followed the process we’ve outlined. Structuring is not a matter of sitting down before a computer and striking keys, but a mental exercise; the writer adds details at odd moments. To memorize the sections and subsections is easy. Take item 22.
News reports on a small meteoroid impact in La Mosquitia.
With this in mind, the writer could work out the structure of that scene when having a drink with friends, if the program on the TV suddenly blanks out and a somber-looking anchor delivers news of a natural disaster. This is the purpose of structuring: to break down a plot into smaller parts and develop them in isolation.
Some writers start at point one, and that’s shortsighted. In this instance, we would start the story at point three and weave points one and two into the second section. We can only accomplish this because we already know what comes after points one, two, and three.
Once we break down the plot further, add detail, names, and events, the easiest thing in the world will be to shift elements about to suit the overall beat of the story.
"The Nuts & Bolts" is an excerpt from Writer's Companion (2011) by Carlos J Cortés and Renée Miller. Reprinted with permission.
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