(The following is a excerpt from my book Novelsmithing.)
Just as most of the metals with which a blacksmith works are amalgams and alloys, a novel is generally said to have three constituents: plot, characterization, and setting.8 Plot is the author’s contrivance of storyline, its narrative structure. Characterization is the act of establishing identity, creating the ‘people’ populating the novel. Setting is the location wherein the novel takes place, and includes landscape as well as atmosphere, and mood or tone. The internal landscape of a character is also tremendously important as a “setting.” But the essence of a novel goes beyond these constituents. A novel is an organic whole, a living being, so to speak. Not only was Hephaestus the god of fire, who made armor for Achilles, he was also the craftsman who created the first woman, Pandora. The novelsmith should also view the creation of his novel as the creation a living thing. Everything in it contributes to its life. What doesn’t contribute to that life doesn’t belong, and should be removed. As Aristotle stated 2300 years ago:
[The story] must represent one action, a complete whole, with its several incidents so closely connected that the transposition or withdrawal of any one of them will disjoin and dislocate the whole. For that which makes no perceptible difference by its presence or absence is no real part of the whole.9
That pretty well isolates the story from everything not part of it. And you can keep most of the extraneous material from ever getting into your novel by knowing your entire storyline, doing all the plotting, before you start writing.
You might say that the initial plotting is a little like the blacksmith, or perhaps the metallurgist before him, taking the raw ore and heating it in his hearth until the pure metal separates from the slag. If you don’t do this work early, all the impurities you leave in will weaken your storyline and compromise the final work.
To expand a little, plot is the author’s ordered contrivance of storyline in the interest of furthering the reader’s emotional and intellectual experience. Plotting is a lengthy process, much of which will occur while writing the novel, but the bulk should be done up front before you put any of the actual words on paper. Avoid the temptation to start writing when you first get an idea. Holding off until you thoroughly know your entire storyline allows you to be on top of the story instead of totally within it. This gives the author perspective and the confidence to write with authority. Delaying the writing also minimizes mistakes, ensures that the author knows what to put in and leave out, but more importantly, it stores the creative energy so it can explode on the page. As the novelsmith, you can swing your hammer with confidence. Plotting allows you to develop story strategy as opposed to simply supplying a sequence of events littered with facts. Plotting up front separates the metal from the slag.
So how do you get a handle on this plotting process? The answer is that every story has a kernel from which everything else builds.
(I will continue the discussion of plotting in my next post, tomorrow.)
Novelsmithing