The Creative Writing Coursebook: Forty Authors Share Advice and Exercises for Fiction and Poetry by Julia Bell

Author:Julia Bell
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2016-01-28T07:00:00+00:00

8 Plotting and Shaping

Introduction

Julia Bell

In a prose or screenplay, a plot is the things that happen. Once you have created your characters, something has to happen to them in some kind of order. A plot is the sequence of events that take place within the narrative.

Plot is also the sequence of questions that the reader will be asking the narrative as they read it. Who dunnit? Why? Did they do it? And what happens next? If the events of the narrative are badly paced, or inadequately foregrounded, the story will be turgid, hard to read, and will lack the tension required to keep the reader turning the pages. Good plotting is about managing events over time. These events need not be monumental – you don’t need lots of action and adventure to have plot – they just need to unravel sequentially, keeping true to the logic of your story.

In teaching, it is useful to get students to look at, and think through, different types of plotting, to consider the kinds of stories they might be writing and the implications of structure on meaning.

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