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BACK TO PLOTTING - The best texts on plotting are other well-written westerns or historicals or novels from the genre you want to write.
Study them.
This is harder than it sounds.
When I set out to study a good, well-written novel, I find that the story takes me into the trance all writers try to create, and I forget to look for the things I set out to study.
It's easy to examine the bad books: you're not taken by the characters or the story.
But concentrate on the good ones: they're the ones you want to learn from.
It's easier to study the way the author did something after you've read the book once.
The second time you're not so entranced by the prose or teased into turning the pages to see what's going to happen.
Read it a second time, and third, and look at it objectively.
What is the length of the novel? What are the lengths of the chapters? How many main characters did the novelist use? How many heroes? How many villains? does the story have a theme? Is the pacing good? If he wrote in third person, did he switch P.
O.
V.
? That is, did he see some scenes through the eyes of the hero and some through the eyes of the villain, or some through the eyes of minor characters? This is plotting and construction-the hide, hair, and bones of a novel.
What's going to happen, when, and between whom; and through whose eyes is it seen.
If you are going to use multiple points of view, it's not important that you know before starting the novel whose point of view the scene is observed by.
It will come to you as you begin writing that scene, and it's fairly easy to change and rewrite a scene if you decide it would be better through the eyes of another, but try to keep each scene in only one point of view.
One of the most common mistakes writers make is switching point of view in mid-stream, or mid-scene.
It's jarring to the reader, even if they don't know why.
Kat, my successful wife, with over 50 novels, goes back and changes P.
O.
V.
a lot, and says "it's more emotional if seen though the eyes of the woman, or the child.
" And she brings them to tears in every novel, sometimes tears of joy.
Could we have written Ethan (in prior article) through the eyes of the bartender, a first person novel from his P.
O.
V.
? Not unless we're going to have Ethan kidnap the bartender.
Or unless the bartender is going to be part of the posse.
Then, unless you are very careful, it will become the bartender's story, not Ethan's.
Stay in the P.
O.
V.
of your main character or characters, and you'll sell your first novel.
SCENES: Scenes? What's a scene? Now that you're off and away writing, and you know what's an acceptable chapter length and an acceptable novel length, and who your primary characters are, write in scenes.
A scene is an action sequence containing conflict.
By action, I mean where something that moves the plot forward or shows characterization happens.
It doesn't have to be a fist fight or a chase, it can be the hero having a conversation about going to the box social with the heroine and it can be in her P.
O.
V.
or in his, or you can change P.
O.
V.
in the middle of the scene-I don't recommend it, but you can.
Except for scenes that dramatically reveal characterization (which usually is conflict), there's a rule-the scene's primary ingredient is conflict.
If it doesn't have conflict, it's not a scene and should be trashed.
Or it's a transition, at best.
Your heroine tells your hero she would prefer he didn't bid on her basket, he says it's a free world.
Besides, she makes the best apple pie in town.
That's conflict.
Not the most exciting conflict, but it will make a scene.
If they talk about going to the box social and there's no conflict, it's one sentence of another scene or a transition.
Ethan took Maggie's hand and told her he would see her at the social.
That's a narrative sentence out of a scene or a transition.
We'll talk about transitions later.
How long is a scene? How long does it take? You can have one scene to a chapter or several scenes.
You can break chapters in the middle of a scene (a Louis L'Amour trick).
It makes for compelling reading because many readers put a novel down only when they've finished a chapter.
It's hard to do in the middle of some kind of conflict, even if the chapter has ended.
Louis L'Amour was a master of chapter endings and beginnings.
He ended his chapters with a question many times, a question the reader wanted answered, so the reader read on.
When the reader finished, he told his friend he couldn't put Louie's novel down.
One of the best writing tips I can give you, the one that will help make your writing more compelling, is to enter a scene late and leave a scene early.
This is so important to good pacing, I'm again going to set it out in bold print: Enter late and leave early! No one gives a damn if your characters greet each other! "Hello, how are you?" generally adds nothing to a scene.
Neither does "good-bye.
" Enter the scene just before the conflict, or during the conflict, and leave the scene during or just after the conflict.
Now that you've decided how many main characters you're going to have, what P.
O.
V.
you're going to use, and what constitutes a scene, charge forward..
..
not that you might not change everything along the way.
That's my advice, charge forward, particularly for a first novel.
Writing the novel will present you with those hard to anticipate questions we may have or may not have discussed.
But you can't find the answers until you know the questions.
Once you know the questions (which will raise their fuzzy little heads as problems when you write), you'll be able to find the answers.
HOOK: Your first job is the beginning.
Good beginnings have hooks.
A hook is something that makes the reader want to keep reading.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times is the beginning of Charles Dickens's, A Tale of Two Cities.
One of the great hooks.
You want to know why it was the best of times and the worst of times, so you keep reading.
Sidney Sheldon, one of the great masters, wrote (as my memory serves me), as his opening: She wore a red nightgown so the blood wouldn't show.
Try to lay that little baby down without reading on.
It would take a nuclear explosion to move most of us away from his novel.
Or from Fredrick Forsyth's The Fist of God, which begins, The man who would die in ten minutes was laughing.
The little vignette earlier began: The town and the saloon looked friendly enough.
But looks deceive.
That infers that maybe they are friendly, and maybe again they're not.
But looks deceive is foreboding.
Look out reader, trouble is coming.
Enough to keep you reading? Tenkiller, my first western, begins: Johnny Tenkiller got his name in the usual way, from his father.
What was unusual was how seriously he took it.
Talk was he'd killed ten men by the time he was twenty-one.
But he must have lost count.
He was still killing them.
That's a hook.
Not the greatest.
Not the worst.
If it keeps the reader reading, it's a good one.
My second, Mojave Showdown, begins: He watched with cold, dark, unflinching eyes.
Patience was the first thing the desert taught him and he'd learned well.
He'd knelt unmoving, in the same spot, while the sun crossed a quarter of the morning sky and the roses and gold's of the dawn turned to watery grays and washed out, wavering tans.
Who watched? What and why was he watching? Why did he stay stark still? Who was this man, taught by the desert? Do you want to keep reading? If you do, I succeeded.
If not, it's a dismal failure; as dismal as watery grays and washed out, wavering tans.
One of my later, a contemporary suspense entitled Fourplay, begins: "Good God, Reno," he says, shaking his head as he reads.
"In Manila you killed a ninety pound woman with a baby strapped to her chest...
?" "Good thing I wasn't paid by the pound," I mumble.
I hope that's enough of a hook to keep them reading.
Lot's more in the following articles about how to get published...
mainly by writing well.
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