Last week I said this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Next week \u2026 I want to look at how very basic plot summaries can give us important clues about the entire novel. If you\u2019re doing our How To Write in 6 Weeks course, you\u2019ll know just what exercise I\u2019m talking about and (I hope) how illuminating it is<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What I asked people to do was to write a very short plot summary of their novel, either in 1-2 paragraphs or as bullet points: Status Quo, Inciting Incident, Midpoint \/ Developments, Crisis, Resolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Obviously, that kind of treatment is nowhere close to being an actual plan for a book. Writing a plan would take several pages of text, even if you were being quite compressed in your summary. I\u2019ll also add that I pretty much never write a plan; it\u2019s not how I work. It seems to me that a detailed plan is optional; a general sense of shape and purpose is not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And, OK, it\u2019s all very well performing an assignment, but what is it for? What are the lessons you\u2019re likely to get?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The short answer to that is that you need to test your plot for seaworthiness \u2013 and doing that at book length is (a) extremely hard and (b) extremely time-consuming. Asking the key questions of a micro-summary isn\u2019t going to give you all the answers by any means, but it does give you a fast, reliable way of understanding the basics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are some of the things you may well find:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Blandness<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s a plot:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Status Quo<\/em> Woman (45) is dissatisfied with her life<\/p>\n\n\n\n Inciting Incident<\/em> Her best friend pressures her to go to a pottery class<\/p>\n\n\n\n Midpoint<\/em> She resists the pottery, but ends up entering a competition, and failing badly<\/p>\n\n\n\n Crisis<\/em> She decides to give up the class and revert back to her old way of life<\/p>\n\n\n\n Resolution <\/em>Her new friends intervene and make her realise that she now has a group of friends who love her; she\u2019s turned her life around<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, I hope it\u2019s obvious that something like this genuinely describe an important turning point in someone\u2019s life. But as a novel? It\u2019s hopeless. It\u2019s just too dull, too lacking in bite to be picked up by anyone \u2013 agent, publisher, reader. Nearly all novels need a splash of the dark \u2013 and losing a pottery competition is not dark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Scale<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Another thing to ask is whether a novel has genuine novel-length scale. So take this example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Status Quo<\/em> Karob is a prince \u2013 the king to be. He\u2019s had a sheltered life and a loud, dominant father<\/p>\n\n\n\n Inciting Incident<\/em> Dragons prey on the northern territories. Defence is the traditional task of the crown prince<\/p>\n\n\n\n Midpoint<\/em> Karob fights the dragons and fails<\/p>\n\n\n\n Crisis<\/em> The king is ailing and courtiers are moving to prevent Karob from taking the throne<\/p>\n\n\n\n Resolution <\/em>He returns to the north with a larger force and defeats the dragons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And, OK, that has darkness. But does it have scale? Does that feel like a story that could sustain 100,000 words of prose? At the moment, it certainly doesn\u2019t. It feels more like a middle grade story that might run to 30-40,000 words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s always hard to be sure of these things when giving feedback to others. Is there more to this story than we\u2019re seeing in those bullet points? Maybe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But if you\u2019re doing the exercise for yourself, you know whether there is or is not meant to be more. And at the moment, that story is just too compact, too simple \u2013 too dull \u2013 to sustain a whole book. Basically it amounts to: X fights Y and loses, then fights again and wins. A book that can be summarised as briefly as that isn\u2019t really a novel. You have to be sure your outline has enough scale to build on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tangles<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The last big route to failure is writing a novel that doesn\u2019t know what it is. The first two examples might be hopeless, but at least they know what they\u2019re doing. That\u2019s not always the case:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Status Quo<\/em> Jax (27) is in a job that offers geopolitical risk assessment. Even she doesn\u2019t know what that is and she\u2019s kind of bored. Her last partner broke up with her 6 months ago and she\u2019s wanting to find someone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Inciting Incident<\/em> Yuri persuades Jax to help with his Azerbaijani import\/export business. Jax also meets Luigi, a very good looking Italian personal trainer. Jax\u2019s mother gets ill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Midpoint<\/em> Yuri is working with the CIA but had KGB roots and Jax isn\u2019t quite sure who she\u2019s helping. Meantime, she\u2019s dating Luigi but he becomes very controlling. Jax can\u2019t get to see her mum, even though the mum has a dementia diagnosis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Crisis<\/em> There\u2019s a major shootout in Baku. Jax is wounded. Luigi tells her that she has to stay at home and be an old-fashioned housewife. Jax\u2019s mother goes into a home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Resolution <\/em>Jax hands over her secrets to MI6, who give her a job as a central Asia analyst. She breaks up with Luigi. She sees her mum comfortably settled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And \u2013 erp? What is that story? Who is it for? Is it a rom com? An action romance? Is there any connection between Luigi and Yuri? Quite how does the mother connect to all this? It\u2019s not that you couldn\u2019t slot a romance into a geopolitical spy story \u2013 of course you can \u2013 but there\u2019s a theme about coercive control that just doesn\u2019t seem to fit into anything else. It\u2019s like there are three stories here and none of them have ever met before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You usually get this kind of issue when a writer just wants to write about their chosen subjects and doesn\u2019t take any feedback from the story itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Truth<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n And in the end that brings us to the essential element in this exercise \u2013 or really any writing exercise: truthfulness. You need to look at your work with a third-party eye, an unforgiving one. What, really, would an agent say about any of these three submissions, assuming they were being completely honest and not caring about the author\u2019s feelings? They\u2019d say: \u201cboring\u201d, \u201cthin\u201d, and \u201ctotal mess\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the advantages of an artificial exercise \u2013 like this bullet point one \u2013 is that it puts distance between you and your work. That distance should help you get as close to the truth as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pitch<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n And one more thing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Do you feel your pitch echoing through your plot summary? You should. If your pitch isn\u2019t there in the DNA, then your pitch is probably just a marketing sticker that you\u2019re gluing on after the fact. That doesn\u2019t work. The pitch IS your book, or should be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s all from me. I\u2019m going to take the rest of August off in terms of emails, but Feedback Friday will run as normal \u2013 and we\u2019ll give you some of my greatest hits so you still get your dose of Friday yumminess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The kids have built a massive fort in the garden, including a toilet (\u201cbut only for wees\u201d) and a bath, which is a wheelbarrow full of water. So far, they\u2019ve used a puppy crate, a guinea pig hutch, a ton of fence posts, an umbrella, two brooms, some towels and quite a lot of scrap wood. I\u2019m not allowed to look too closely because if I try, they tell me they\u2019re throw a spear at my head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t want a spear in my head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n FEEDBACK FRIDAY: How to Write a Novel \/ Module #5 \/ Tools<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n