Theme. Plot and Character:
I finally got a chance to take a look at K.M. Weiland's The Secret to Writing Strong Themes; as usual, more there than what I am quoting in her post.
Here’s the thing: if you have a functional story that’s working, what that means is that all three of those things—plot, character, and theme—are working. Even if you’re not conscious of theme—even if you didn’t do it on purpose, so to speak—if all three are in cohesion with one another, that’s what you want. If you can bring consciousness to your administration of theme, then you can do it on purpose.
Here’s how it works. Let’s say you come up with an idea for a plot. Necessarily, there must be characters in that plot. Although it may take a little time, as you flesh out that plot in your mind, you will begin to understand what kind of people are driving this plot. What kind of people are interested in going to the places and achieving the things that you want to see happen in this plot?
This works in reverse as well. If you start with an idea for a character, obviously you don’t have anything for them to do until there’s a plot. So pretty soon you start getting ideas for what these characters will do. What are they interested in? How are they interacting with other people? What do they want? What are they moving toward? Suddenly, you have a plot. Plot and character are not separate. One necessarily creates and brings with it the other.
The same is true of theme.
I have this thing where I get to the end of a story and realize that I need to change its opening since the characters slipped away into telling another story. I am using story there as a substitute for theme. Another thing that happens is I am often wrong about the theme.
One thing learned from reading Joyce Carol Oates' Faith of a Writer was that she frequently has to rewrite her first chapters. If it can happen to her, it can happen to all of us.
sch 8/28
Publishing Advice from a Serial Submitter to Literary Magazines
Amy L. Bernstein wrote this and Jane Friedman's blog published it. I read this on a day when my body seems to be in open rebellion. I think I am doing much of what is advised, but it is too good of advice not to share.
1. Devise a submission strategy that reflects your goals
(This may be the weakest for me - I am just trying to find a home. The Boll Weevil Song should be my theme.)
2. Study the fit
(Here I have a problem - where access is free, I am trying to sample the stories to see if they fit, but that is not all that much. My rejections have a recurrent thing - like it, but it doesn't fit.)
3. Follow the publisher’s directions—exactly
(This I have been doing - unless I screw up by accident.)
4. Track open-submission windows
(Google Calendar is full of these. What I just thought of is to move them up a year after I do a submission. I have taken a rejection of one story to be a rejection of all possible stories. This may not be a good idea.)
5. Build a relationship with publications accepting your work
(This I do not know how to do and, for me, the advice is not yet applicable - work with those who accept you. I have two who have accepted my work. One of those rejected several of my stories before accepting a speculative fiction piece.)
6. Keep rejection in perspective
(Never expecting acceptance helps here. What helps even more is knowing this is not a life or death situation.)
That there might be anything useful to a writer under the headline Two Sherlockians and a Former Journo Walk into a Zoom Call… may surprise you as much as it surprised me. Inspiration comes in different ways.
sch 8/29
From Necessary Fiction's Research Notes, A New Day by Sue Mell:
I quit the coach but maintained the daily writing practice I’d begun with him, and was just starting to make a little headway in the Bay Area clubs when my stint in standup was derailed by the unexpected and violent death of a close friend. Suddenly my material felt vapid and trite, and nothing struck me as particularly funny. Grief will do that. But the truth is I’d already begun thinking laughter wasn’t enough. I wanted to make people cry, too—or at least tear up.
I’d saved a flier for a workshop on developing monologues for one-person shows, but then I heard a piece on This American Life—a dark but very moving story of another untimely death. The guy who’d made it credited the website Transom.org for his learning how to produce independent pieces for radio. If he could do it, why couldn’t I? The first pieces I made were a mix of narration and interview, and recording them still held a small thrill of performance. I had some initial success, but it was hard to maintain, and as more and more my satisfaction came from the writing, I once again changed course. An idiosyncratic trajectory that would end up both driving and inspiring my work.
Like many of the characters in A New Day, I floundered through—or never achieved more than minor success in—several creative endeavors. Searching each time for the next, better, and more truly aligning field, the arena where I might best express the humor, pain, and beauty I found in the world, and the failures of romantic and other relationships that affected me so keenly. I wish I could remember that astrologer’s name, that I could track him down and let him know he was right. That it is the words—the words on paper—that have become most important to me.
The fears of vapidity, of being a dilettante, remains from when I was younger. That I found themes from life around here - things I did not see when younger - help me to see the solidity in my stories. But to make someone cry? Not I had that idea - more like I wanted them to think. Which has me to think about the wisdom of my efforts.
Authors Publish has Jess Simms' 3 Avoidable Submission Mistakes that Sabotage Your Acceptance Odds, which are
- Submitting work before it’s ready.
- Not following formatting guidelines.
- Not paying attention during the submission process.
Knowing when a piece is ready isn’t always easy. You don’t want to go too far the other way, either, where you end up never sending work out because you’re endlessly tinkering. The trick is to get some objectivity. In my experience, there are two main ways to do that:
- Get outside input from a beta reader, mentor, or workshop group—basically, another literary-minded human who isn’t going to lie to spare your feelings.
- Let the piece sit for at least a week after your “final” edit. You can use that time to research markets, but don’t work on the story. After this pause, read the story with fresh eyes. If it only needs a couple typos fixed or other small tweaks, you can submit it. If you find yourself making more substantial edits, it’s not ready yet.
I spent a small amount of time yesterday reformatting my play "Getting What You Asked For" to make it fit one journal.
Structure
Another item from K.M. Weiland - The First Half of the Second Act (Secrets of Story Structure, Pt. 6 of 12). I do not have any confidence in my understanding of structure. I might even be neurotic in my lack of confidence.
The First Half of the Second Act is the “reaction phase” of your story. This is where your characters find the time and space to react to the First Plot Point. Remember how we discussed the First Plot Point being definitive because it forced the characters into irreversible reaction? That reaction, which will lead to another reaction and another and another, creates your Second Act.
The First Plot Point hit your characters hard. Now, their lives are no longer running on the same smooth paths, and they have to do something about it. If you examine the First Plot Point in a story, you will see it is the characters’ reactions to the event that change everything and create the story. Even when the First Plot Point incorporates a life-altering tragedy (e.g., the murder of Benjamin Martin’s son and the burning of his plantation in The Patriot), the characters could conceivably continue their lives more or less as they had before. It’s their reaction (e.g., Martin’s becoming the “ghostly” militia leader who terrorizes the British army) that allows the chain of events to continue—and create a story.
***
Just because the characters are comparatively reactive in this phase does not mean they are passive. However, even though they are making choices and trying to move forward toward the plot goal, they are not yet able to be genuinely effective in doing so. Not until they reach a Moment of Truth at the Midpoint will they see themselves and the plot conflict in a clearer light. This will then allow them to switch into an “active phase,” in which their choices and actions become increasingly informed and calibrated in the Second Half of the Second Act. This is why the First Half of the Second Act is often where the character is learning the rules of the game—whether those are the nuances of a new relationship, the tricks of the trade in a new job, survival skills, or the social structure of a new neighborhood.
***
The First Pinch Point takes place halfway through the First Half of the Second Act at the 37% mark. Here, the antagonistic force can flex its muscles and impress with its capacity to disrupt the protagonist’s forward momentum. This moment serves primarily to set up the change of tactics the protagonist will soon learn. By reminding readers of the antagonist’s power, the First Pinch Point raises the stakes and foreshadows the central turning point at the Midpoint. Like all major structural beats, the First Pinch Point should focus on the central conflict rather than a subplot.
I need to come back to this and study it with a harshness for revising the novel.
I ahve put off reading it already, and today's email brought The Midpoint (Secrets of Story Structure, Pt. 7 of 12).
Legendary director Sam Peckinpah talked about how he always looked for a “centerpiece” on which to “hang” his story. That centerpiece is your Second Plot Point, the Midpoint, which divides your Second Act.
The Midpoint is what keeps your Second Act from dragging. It caps the reactions in the book’s first half and sets up the chain of actions that will lead the characters into the Third Act. Like all major structural turning points, the Midpoint directly influences the plot. It changes the paradigm of the story, requiring a definitive and story-altering response from the characters. This time, however, the protagonist’s response is no longer just a reaction. This is where the protagonist begins to take charge of the story by moving proactively against the antagonistic force and zeroing in on the final plot goal.
Yes, this is a good question and one that I think I can answer relatively simply – but, remember, this is just my answer, and I’ve only written one novel, and that novel had a strange form and was sort of, possibly, a fluke, but:
If there’s a “Story Club process,” it has to do, I’d say, with letting the story (or the novel) tell you, at certain key moments, what it wants to do.
Another way of saying this is that we are trying to ensure readerly engagement by reading like a first-time reader ourselves (even as we’re editing).
Yet another way of saying this: we’re trying to make a space for genuine surprise, for that feeling we get as readers when we feel a writer suddenly improvising in response to something they’ve just noticed being present in their own text.
So the “process” is really just about being alert to what’s actually going on in the text (what it’s evoking, what it’s causing the reader to expect) as opposed to what we’d planned or expected to be happening.
As you may be all too familiar, creativity isn’t a constant state; it ebbs and flows. Caitlin explores these cycles in her newsletter Input/Output. Having taught writing for years (I’ve been her student; she’s fantastic!), Caitlin realized the need for a broader discussion about creativity and created a space for that conversation. Her posts will give you a fresh perspective on your creative process. I’m so grateful for the insights she shares.
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