Plotting faults and solutions:

1. Story wanders aimlessly.

Solution: give the character a stronger motivation and more adversity. Rewrite without reference to the original.

2. Story has too much going on.

Solution: Cut down the number of characters to three or four, find one plot, rewrite.

3. Plot structure appears complete, but story seems pointless.

Solution: this is a character problem, not a plot problem. We must care about the characters, and it must matter what happens to them.

4. Ending is disappointing. Too obvious, or not planned and so feels arbitrary and tacked on.

Solution: Go back to the opening situation and replot.

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In the story of resolution, we get the “plot skeleton”:

1. A believable and sympathetic central character

2. has an urgent and difficult problem

3. attempts to solve the problem, fails, and the situation becomes more desperate

4. encounters a crisis, a final chance to win

5. through the character’s personal qualities of courage, perseverence, cleverness, etc., manages to win (or, in a tragedy, fails through his flaws).

In practice, the full plot skeleton is seldom seen in short fiction. There’s no room for step 3, and step 5 is too predictable. Instead, we see a conflict, with the outcome in doubt, and we get:

1. The terms of the competition set out

2. The contest itself

3. The outcome

The short fiction author will usually use this for misdirection, since otherwise it’s too predictable. The meaning turns out to be something other than the outcome of the contest. The conflict exposes character and keeps the reader interested until the revelation.

The story of revelation replaces the resolution (one outcome of the contest or the other) with a third thing that is a revelation. Or else it achieves rising tension in another way, without conflict (e.g. Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, where the choice gradually narrows down to one person), then springs the revelation (what’s going to happen to that person).

The trick ending does a bait and switch.

The story of decision needs to have a genuinely difficult choice that could go either way.

The story of explanation builds up the strangeness, then explains it at the end.

The story of solution is a puzzle or mystery (puzzles are solved by the characters, mysteries by events). Don’t attempt puzzle stories unless you’re familiar with what’s been done already.

The story of illumination is not a plotted story. A sequence of events reveals the meaning of a character’s life.

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Plot is a series of imaginary events designed to create anticipation, either anxiety (over the outcome of a conflict) or curiosity (over the solution to a puzzle).

The ending may take the form of a resolution (one side of a conflict wins), revelation, decision (about something important or difficult), explanation or solution.

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Conflict is something pushing back. If the character has nothing pushing on her, and she’s pushing on nothing, there’s no conflict.

Confrontation is not necessarily conflict. Violence loses its power very quickly, and should be used sparingly, and only when the story demands it.

Things being difficult can provide conflict – solving a mystery, having to make a hard choice.

Wish-fulfilment fantasies, in which a sequence of nice events occur, are not stories, because they lack conflict. Ask: What’s the catch?

A character who’s driven (by external forces) or obsessed (with an internal goal) isn’t going to walk away from the conflict when it becomes hard. We will find them interesting to watch. This is because we admire someone who, unlike us, has a clear goal; and we expect them to encounter trouble and exhibit their character in overcoming it.

The threat of loss of something the character values gives power to conflict.

People practicing their professions, even interesting professions, don’t make stories until something becomes personal.

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Situation: A dramatic situation is unstable. It will not stay as it is, and it has at least two possible outcomes, one desirable and one undesirable.

In a plotted story, the situation contains the germ of conflict, leading to change.

In an unplotted or circular story, the situation at the end is the same as at the beginning, but the reader understands it better.

If you start your story with a situation in mind, look for a character who has a stake in the outcome.

A story will often pass through multiple intermediate situations, some of them unexpected, on the way from beginning to end.

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Natural series and dramatic series:

The natural series of events is the mundane things that happen as we go about our lives. We need to mention them occasionally in fiction to fill in the pauses between dramatic events and give a sense of reality.

The dramatic series of events makes up a story. Real life seldom provides these (or we wouldn’t need fiction). A natural series will not naturally become a dramatic series.

Coincidences commonly happen in the natural series, but should be kept out of the dramatic series, because despite happening all the time in real life, they’re implausible in fiction.

#shortfiction Damon Knight