http://www.writerq.com/mobile/PEAbresch/ Latest updates from Peter E. Abresch http://www.writerq.com/mobile/library/847/fiction-plotting-4-4/ Part 4/4

After all the ups and down and sufferings of our journey up Plot-line Mountain, we are now ready for the denouement. The big finale. But before we do that, we can take one more step. We ease off a bit. We want things to finally appear to be going Protag’s way. This is a set up. It might even seem formalistic. But it makes the finale that much more satisfying for the reader, which is what we’re all about. This is of the same variety as a movie where the villain is shot and presumed dead, and when the hero is making out with the girl, the bad guy looms up in the background. I think this fits all genres, especially mysteries, fantasies, and thrillers, but it does require finesse. It works as long as we avoid clichés and anything that looks like it was just stuck on at the end. Remember we said that if a device becomes obvious it loses it's effectiveness.

Okay, Protag has broken out of the trees and brush and brambles. Only a fifty-foot grassy slope awaits him till the summit, where there’s a helicopter ready to whisk him to safety, wine, women, and song. The sun is shining. The air is clear. The birds are singing. Everyone can relax. Protag has it made.

Ten feet further on a ten thousand pound grizzly jumps out. Carrying a rifle. The one that's been shooting at him. A great altercation takes place whereby there is weeping and gnashing of teeth--talk about Cliché City--as well as kicking and clawing and punching and pinching, until finally, ta da, our stout-hearted Protag miraculously, but logically, folks, always logically, overcomes the bear. Or, alternatively, Protag could lose the fight and gain great insight on what a bear's stomach looks like. We’re not like those phony Hollywood guys; we can take the tough endings.

See? By easing off a bit, it makes the final confrontation more vivid. If a thunderstorm slips in on a cloudy day, who notices? But have the sun suddenly blackened by an anvil cloud and you've made an impression. Remember when we talked of Dean Koontz’s monster in Tick Tock? Well, near the book's end, the hero reaches a safe house. And it's almost morning when the monster will die. The hero is home-free. But guess who comes knocking at the door?

So that’s it. Once the climax is over, get out. "Protag rides off into the sunset." Over, done with. Don’t drag it out. "Protag stopped at Aunt Martha’s for a piece of blueberry pie, washed his horse, polished his boots, and rode off into the sunset, meeting a blond with a figure like a brick excrement house, whereupon he altered his destination for Cliché City." Once the main questions of the story are worked out, we don't hang around to bore our reader. Remember the last movie episode of Lord of the Rings? There had to be five or six places where I thought the story was ending, but it kept going on forever. Boooooring. Better to leave our readers wanting a little more rather than feel overstuffed.

I think we need one last caution. Big caution.

The ending has to be satisfying. Happy or sad, the ending should leave the reader satisfied he made the journey with you. Fail to do that and the next time out, you might journey alone. For instance, I read a book once where a Bad Guy destroyed everything Protag had at the beginning, made Protag do his bidding throughout the book, and near the end the Protag got the bad guy's money--hoo rah--but at the very end, the bad guy got the money back and Protag got zilch. Now I know what the writer was doing, building things up for the next story in his trilogy. Weeell, I think you can do this between chapters, but not between books. I didn't read the next installment of this writer's trilogy. Since he left me swinging in the wind once, why would I journey with him again? Please, save yourself from this mistake. Each book has to be complete in itself.

Does this mean everything needs to be tied up at the end? No. Real life isn't like that. If two lovers finally get together and express their love at the end of a story, do we need to show them getting married and having kids as well? No. That's something for the reader's imagination. But we better make damn sure we tie up all the main questions of the novel. As a teacher of mine--David Hoof--liked to point out, we make a contract with our readers with the first sentence of our book. Better make sure we keep it at the end.

I think that’s everything I know about plotting. We'll have things to say about handling different kinds of stories as we continue on the journey, but for now we need to move onto the second leg of the writing tripod: plot; characterization; effective writing. See you in BookMarc #13, when we take up Characterization, part 1 of 6 parts

Peter E. Abresch - BookMarc© February 13, 1998. Updated September 13, 2014
************************************************************]]> http://www.writerq.com/mobile/library/847/fiction-plotting-4-4/ Sun, 09 Nov 2014 22:25:16 +0000 Peter E. Abresch http://www.writerq.com/mobile/library/846/fiction-plotting-3-4/ Part 3/4

In talking about plot in part one and two, we mentioned the need to face and overcome obstacles to build reader interest, and need for these obstacles to be logical.

For our example, let’s not start with a preconceived need–like joining meeting a friend at the top of a mountain. Rather, instead, in the opening lets create a need that will require our protagonist, Protag, to climb the mountain, just to show another way of doing it. This, BTW, is one way to handle thrillers, take an ordinary person and put them in an extraordinary situation and see how s/he plays the hand. So, remembering we said about hopping into a Humvee and plowing straight to the top is bo-oringgg, lets begin.

Objective: climbing Plot-line Mountain.

Starting point: the base of the mountain.

Our hero, Protag, is out for a Sunday drive in the wilderness. He crosses a bridge on his planed drive around Plot-line mountain, but jams on the brakes as the road is blocked by logs. Then an explosion blows away the bridge behind. And bullets start zinging off the Humvee’s downhill fenders. See folks, a casual afternoon has turned into what’s called, in Cliché City, a situation. Protag has a sudden need to get the heck out of there by the only way open to him, over the mountain, and maybe needs a restroom as well.

Protag slams the Humvee into gear, yanks the wheel and mashes the pedal, spraying gravel as he bounds over rocks and humps and bumps, hell-bent on a yo-yo for the summit. A few hundred feet up, out of rifle range, he finds an old logging road and eases along it with birds singing in filigree sunlight. All is right with the world. Oh yawn.

Then Protag barrels around a curve and over a crest hiding a deep wash, and the Humvee soars like a lead eagle. It mashes nose-down into the gulch, and Protag, neglecting to wear a seatbelt, no doubt earning him a traffic citation, crashes against the windshield. The birds now sing inside his head, and the Humvee rolls downhill. Backwards. Toward a sheer drop-off. And the brakes no longer work. Oh, and the door won’t open. On either side. Protag hops in the back and by punching and kicking and cursing and--when all else fails--praying, breaks open the tailgate. He dives out pancake-flat into a bed of thorns. The Humvee scrunches over him and plunges off the cliff. And we listen with Protag, dear writers, and wait, wait, and wait. A crunch of metal meeting stone, followed by an explosion, disturbs the idyllic day. A black cloud rides on an updraft to waft away in a gentle breeze. Ssssson-ofagun. Is this too obvious?

Protag climbs back up to the logging road on the other side of the gulch. Now the grade is easy again. A lazy zephyr drys the sweat on his brow, a chipmunk complains at his passage, and the scent of pine needles fills his nostrils. The sun is warm on his back. The reader’s eyes start to glaze.

When Protag checks out the view from a rock overlook, tiny puffs blossom at his feet, sprouting sprays of stone shards. Say what? A rifle crack echos in the mountain air. And again. Holy excrement--or whatever--someone is shooting at him. Protag dives for cover and lands in a rocky wash, bashing his knee. Oh darn. And breaking his elbow. Oh pshaw. And loose stones send him sliding down an escalator to hell. Egad gazooks.

Weeeell, you get the picture. All of this up and down is to get our readers to buy deeper and deeper into Protag's future, to grit their teeth in determination to hang with him till journey's end. Compare this to a Humvee driving up to the top in third gear.

Also notice that these setbacks are not equal in intensity. Or shouldn't be. At the outset there's a blast of guns and he quickly and easily gets out of danger. When he plows into the gulch and starts rolling for the drop off into oblivion, things become rather more stimulating. But once he is out of vehicle, the climb up the gulch to the trail is mainly one of exertion rather than danger. And finally when he is on the overlook and someone starts shooting at him, he easily dives out of the way, but the significance is that whoever shot at him at the bottom, is still around ready to take him out. Then landing on the loose stones and slipping down the hill presents another level of anxiety, Protag against the mountain.

If the intensity of our obstacles is always the same, it becomes obvious and therefore intrusive, and anything intrusive yanks us out of the story. So we need to plan our obstacles so they vary in intensity. It should be pointed out that I've used a lot of exaggeration–oh really–just to give the example. For instance, if your initial incident has too many things piling up again Protag, it becomes obvious. And I think it's worth repeating, when any technique becomes obvious it is intrusive, and intrusive yanks the reader out of the story.

One other thing we need to notice. Occasionally things happen in our hero's favor. Riding along on the easy road, and then walking on it after wrecking the Humvee. We could have had one bad thing happen after another, the ride up toward the trail and falling into the gulch and climbing up to an outcropping and getting shot at. I have read books like this, piling one obstacle relentlessly upon another, but I believe this brings about reader fatigue. It gets to be so much that it doesn't jive with what we would expect from real world events. Remember what we just said about a device becoming obvious. So we want to bring some relief into it and have things sometimes go easy for our hero, or at lest appear so.

The mountain is a metaphor for all plots. It is not the story, but an example of how to build our plot line before or as we write our story. As we mentioned earlier, Protag must continually face downturns and overcome them, growing stronger each time, mentally if not physically, till at last he’s ready for the big finale, the mountain-top climax we have targeted from the beginning.

But before that, in BookMarc #12, we have one more thing to do before the denouement, the final outcome.

How's this for leaving you in suspense?

Peter E. Abresch - BookMarc© February 13, 1998. Updated August 23, 2014
**************************************************************]]> http://www.writerq.com/mobile/library/846/fiction-plotting-3-4/ Thu, 06 Nov 2014 02:02:05 +0000 Peter E. Abresch http://www.writerq.com/mobile/library/845/fiction-plotting-2-4/ Part 2/4

In part one of the discussion on plotting, we said the more obstacles Protag overcomes through tenacity and ingenuity--traits readers identify with--the more intense will be their desire to see Protag to succeed. But everything, all the difficulties and successes, must play as real life. (Protag short for out protagonist)

We've all seen television shows where everything that possibly can go wrong, does, even to the point of nonsense. The problem with just making everything go wrong is it becomes an obvious device. Instead of building suspense, it yanks the rug from underneath it. It's like listening to a dull sermon, while the preacher's droning on and on while we're thinking lunch. There is also the danger of reader fatigue setting in. Occasionally something should break in the hero's favor.

The other thing about television shows is that even when they build up a modicum of suspense, they screw it up cliché obstacle. Have you ever seen a hero rush from one place to another or head for the airport w/o running into a traffic jam? You’ve heard of gratuitous sex? Meet gratuitous obstacles. Both rob our story of authenticity. If you’ve brought your reader into a state of suspense, don’t risk it all with a cliché traffic jam. Instead try to ratchet the main theme tighter till it crackles at the breaking point.

Let’s take an example from Dean Koontz’s Ticktock. In the climactic chapter, with a beast advancing across the livingroom to devour the hero, Koontz wants to stretch out the moment for the reader’s pleasure. Does he bring in a traffic-jam cliche? Chandelier suddenly falls in the way? Floorboards break without warning? No, Koontz does it naturally and cleverly by simply adding a few paragraphs to describe the beast in detail as it advances, the eyes, the sound it makes, the way it moves and how it smells--sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. What's the result? One part of our mind is absorbed with the beast's appearance while the other part is screaming for the hero to get the hell out.

What matters is not how we do it, but the finesse with which it's done. Once the device becomes obvious, it's as effective as a lawyer teaching ethics. A politician lecturing on truth?

Also, everything must be logical.

When our hero returns to his apartment and hears someone scurrying about inside, it might be good for our story for him to climb out a window over the balcony to catch the bad guy, but why not just call the police? Why would he put himself in jeopardy? It also might be good for our story if someone clicks on his revolver's safety, but there ain't no safeties on revolvers. Story line must always follow real world logic rather than trying to alter real world logic to follow story line. Once we lose credibility with our readers, they may not walk with us again.

Oooo-kay, with the preliminaries out of the way, we're ready for Protag to tackle Plot-line Mountain which is the subject of BookMarc #11, part 3/4 of Plot.

For upcoming subjects click on Table of Contents at top of page.

Peter E. Abresch - BookMarc© February 13, 1998. Updated August 16, 2014
***************************************************************]]> http://www.writerq.com/mobile/library/845/fiction-plotting-2-4/ Thu, 06 Nov 2014 01:53:22 +0000 Peter E. Abresch http://www.writerq.com/mobile/PEAbresch/ http://www.writerq.com/mobile/PEAbresch/ Wed, 22 Oct 2014 00:50:22 +0000 Peter E. Abresch http://www.writerq.com/mobile/library/716/black-moon-rising-by-peter-e-abresch/
Backwards.
I walked backwards.
Up to the library in Prince Frederick.
Not easy in eighteen inches of snow; eyes squinting against the glare of the sun; chest heaving from an adrenalin rush, sending clouds of condensation trailing behind like the little-engine-that-could. I had thought of snowshoes but I didn't have any; time was pressing and this was the best I could come up with.
The snow thinned to powder under the overhang at the side door of the glassed-in vestibule.
My hope was that people would see the tracks–I intended to follow them out–and figure they came from someone who had left the library when it closed. I was encouraged in this reasoning by a pair of footsteps doing precisely that, only women-size feet heading around the other side of the building.
The problem, of course, would anyone catch me breaking into the place? Early Sunday morning with snow on the ground? But you never knew when a churchgoer, or even an old girlfriend, would seek an early breakfast at Panera's across the street.
But apparently not today.
I dug lock picks out of my jacket as a new worry flashed in my head.
Suppose the lock is frozen?
I found it warm to the touch, heat from the inside, and went to work. In hardly any time–like a half a damn hour–I finally got it to turn, releasing the latch, and sidled into the foyer.
No sounds went off, no lights flashed, but that didn't mean something silent and deadly hadn't snaked out over the wires to the sheriff's office.
In for a nickel, in for a dime, to use a cliche.
I untied my boots–now this was a tough call. If I left them on I'd be tracking in snow and stuff for someone to notice, but if I needed a quick getaway, I'd lose time putting them on, unless I just made a grab and plowed through the snow in my stocking feet.
I searched the street, seeing no one, and eased the boots onto a piece of plastic I had brought along and placed on a fish-patterned rug.
The inner doors slid open at my approach and I slipped into the long nave of the library.
Light streamed through clerestory windows two floors up, birds twittered in the shelter of its overhang, and a faint aroma hung in the warm air, like a combination of furniture polish, paper paste, and old books.
I gazed down past the check-in desk, past cases that held newly released books to rows of computers resting on long tables and, behind them, periodical racks and easy chairs, part visible, part recollection from when I had cased the place.
I crossed the lobby, keeping right, until I reached the café area with its blue floor, and gazed out the side windows to my car parked at the back entrance to Panera's. Other than it, nothing of interest and nothing moving.
Awright!
Get in, get out, or get caught.
I hurried around the new-books bookcase to enter the main library, and stopped as my stockinged foot encountered a wet spot on the carpet. I looked up to the ceiling. Nothing. Still, something wrong here. Mental shrug.
I sped on, rushing down past three rows of computers to the second reference desk.
Then froze at the sound of a stifled sneeze.
And waited.
Birds squabbled in the clerestory overhang. Snowplows rumbled way out on Route Four. Dust settled in my wake. Other than that?
Had I actually heard it?
Perhaps something outside sounded like a sneeze. Like what? A sneezing snowmobile?
Riiiiiight.
I gazed back toward the entrance, and up at the ceiling, and things started coupling like railroad cars in a siding. The second set of footprints out front, the warm keyhole, the wet spot, the stifled sneeze, and clickity-clack–an express train barreled down the main line of my brain.
I caught a shadow out of the corner my eye, gone by the time I jerked around.
Cops? Not likely or I'd already be in cuffs. Which meant someone else was sneaking around. Looking for what?
What Else?
Black Moon Rising.
But creeping around also meant they didn't know where it was.
I bent down to a row of reference books, those not allowed to leave the premises, and reached for where I had shifted it when I had cased the place, in amongst tomes on the middle ages. And came away empty.
Gone or shifted about again?
I glanced up at a shoe scuffle in the next aisle. Through the space between the top of the books and the bottom of the shelf above, I saw a pair of tight fitting ski pants. The lack of an anatomical deformity in the crotch clued me in to the fact I was gazing at the figure of a woman. Not necessarily less deadly, but not a hairy ogre named Bruno either.
Back to business. I checked the next shelf down with volumes on geography, then caught the glare of a plastic wrapped book on the bottom shelf, next to Pirates and Privateers, and yanked it out.
Black Moon Rising, Preston Campbell, 1895, first edition, one of only two in existence.
"I'll take that, if you please.‟
She stood there, five three, tight curls of blond hair, red ski jacket, gun in her pocket pointed at me.
"Unless,‟ she said, breathing rapidly, "unless you want me to blast your gonads into little pieces."
My testes sucked up into my body.
Except... I didn't actually see a gun. And if she were pointing more than a finger-gun-in-the-pocket at me, why was she breathing so hard?
I wheeled around and headed for the door.
"Go ahead, shoot.‟
Three steps later it slammed into my back and sent me sprawling to the floor, the book sliding out of my grasp.
Sonofabitch, I had been shot.
Shot!
I was dying–-
I had been tackled.
I had been tackled and the lady was crawling over me reaching for Black Moon Rising.
Sonofabitch again.
I grabbed her, pulled her back, and rolled over on top of her, staring down into riveting blue eyes.
"Get off of me, asswipe.‟
Felt kind of good there.
Slender body under mine. Pretty face and warm lips. I kissed her. Sweet tasting mouth.
"Get off of me, you tongue pervert.‟
I got off of her.
And picked up the book.
She climbed to her feet and glared at me.
"How did you know that was here?‟
"When Louie the Lip was picked up on racketeering charges, and an odd murder or two, he surrendered in Panera's across the street, but in the inventory of his rare book collection, there was no mention of Black Moon Rising. What better place to hide it than in the reference section of a library?‟
"Won't do you much good if I go to the cops.‟
"Under racketeering charges, all property belongs to the Government. I work for the Government.‟
"Oh really?‟ Her lips turned down and she nodded. "Then why are the police scheduled to sweep this place tomorrow?‟
I shrugged. The lady was more than a pretty face. Still...
"I have the book.‟
"And I have a buyer.‟
I stared at her.
She cocked her head and wiggled her eyebrows.
"Seven hundred and twenty five thousand big ones.‟
I gave her a sterling view of my pearly whites.
"Are you telling me this might be the start of a beautiful friendship?‟
"Perhaps, but if you give me tongue again, I'll cut off your gonads.‟
She seemed to have a fixation on my testes.
I decided to overlook it.
And we walked out together, into the dazzling snow.]]> http://www.writerq.com/mobile/library/716/black-moon-rising-by-peter-e-abresch/ Sun, 28 Sep 2014 20:27:14 +0000 Peter E. Abresch