Plotting

 Yes, I read a book in prison with the apt title of Plot, so you might say I was interested in the topic. Then I'm on Literary Hub when I  run across Plot Is Just Music You Sing In Your Mind: How Popular Rock Songs Can Help Shape Your Novel by  Katie Crouch which piqued my interest in the topic and the reference to Cake.

Oh, the millions Hollywood writing instructors have earned coming up with sure-fire formulas for plot! I’m not saying these people aren’t smart, because they are. It’s very comforting, when lost, to look at a grid of a Three Act Structure. Have you ever seen a Save the Cat beat sheet? It’s nothing less than mystical, how a regular human has broken down some of the best stories of the modern age into a series of bite-sized steps anyone can try for themselves. I’ve studied them all, often printing them out and tacking the sheets to my wall. But they don’t work for me. In the end I find myself scowling at them and marking them up with half-hearted scribbles.

Because here’s the thing: plot is everywhere. It’s just the way life moves, so that we can keep interested in what happens next. Paintings have plot. Twitter feeds have plot. Sex has plot. Life has plot, until it doesn’t. Do we know life ends? I think so. But what about the middle? How good are we at keeping the middle interesting? You might learn a new language, change careers, change partners, have a kid at 58. We don’t call that plotting, but it is. Plotting is keeping your existence interesting enough so that people gossip about you at the grocery store.

Got to agree. I probably should admit never using the Three Act Structure in my writing - at least,not consciously.

Then she examines Let Me Go by Cake - she plays it in the middle of her essay - by stopping the music at certain points. Read this, please. Seriously good advice is to be found here.

She finishes with these thoughts:

Let me wrap up with a coda myself: Please don’t make yourself miserable over plot, novelists. I personally guarantee that every single person who reads this can build a story because you’ve known, since you were born, how the arc of a narrative is formed. You took your first breath, your heart kept its singular beat, and then that breath was finished. Now: Find your song. Figure out your refrain. Show off your bridge. Make it beautiful. Keep it tight. Oh, and most importantly—get out of there with a nice clean ending. Remember Free Bird? The best songs and stories always know when to say when.

I feel reassured to think I might know what I am doing even if I cannot explain why.