Today’s Writers’ Tip: The Wretched Excess Fiction Plot

April 21, 2014

Today’s Writers’ Tip

WRITING FICTION PLOTS

Plot Number 18:

WRETCHED EXCESS

Mildred Pierce

The Lost Weekend

Adam, Eve, and the Serpent

 

I think you’ll probably agree with my assessment of this plot. If you’re down in the mouth at the time, don’t write this fiction plot, and don’t read a novel with this plot in full swing. You might walk away depressed or in need of a good shot of caffeine to get you through the rest of the day. However, although this fiction plot can be a tear-jerker, it also requires intense planning and storyboarding, working your way to a whopper of a climax and a big “crash” at the end. Let’s take a look at the characteristics of the Wretched Excess Fiction Plot:

1. Wretched excess is generally about the psychological decline of a character.

2. Base the decline of the character on a character flaw.

3. Present the decline of your character in three phases:

a. How he/she is before events start to change him/her

b. How he/she is as he/she successively deteriorates

c. What happens after events reach a crisis point, forcing him/her either to give in completely to the flaw (tragedy) or to recover from it.

4. Develop the main character so that his/her decline evokes sympathy.

5. Don’t present him/her as a raving lunatic.

6. Take particular care in the development of your character because the plot depends on the author’s ability to convince the audience that the character is both real and worthy of their feelings for him/her.

7. Avoid being melodramatic. Don’t try to force emotion beyond what the scene can carry.

8. Be straightforward with information that allows the reader to understand your main character. Don’t hide anything that will keep your reader from being empathetic.

9. Most writers want the audience to feel for the main character, so don’t make your character commit crimes out of proportion of our understanding of who and what he/she is. It’s hard to be sympathetic with a person who’s a rapist or a serial murderer.

10. At the crisis point of your story, move your character either toward complete destruction or redemption. Don’t leave him swinging in the wind, because your reader will definitely not be satisfied.

11. Action in the plot should always relate to the character. Things happen because your main character does (or does not) do certain things. The cause and effects of your plot should always relate either directly or indirectly to your main character.

12. Don’t lose your character in his madness. Nothing beats personal experience when it comes to this plot. If you don’t understand the nature of the excess yourself (having experienced it), be careful about having your character do things that aren’t realistic for the circumstances.

So, the bottom line for writing this fiction plot is to do your homework. Thoroughly understand the nature of the excess you want to write about, and go for it!

Next time we’ll look at the fiction plot number 19 & 20: ASCENSION & DESCENSION.

All information compliments of:

Tobias, Ronald B (2011-12-15). 20 Master Plots (p. 189). F+W Media, Inc. Kindle Edition.

http://www.amazon.com/20-Master-Plots-Build-Them-ebook/dp/B006RAIXXI/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1390841564&sr=1-1&keywords=20+Master+Plots

(I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in writing good fiction in any subgenre!)

Happy writing!

Marsha

 

Please check my latest publication on Amazon:

No Furlough for Mandie

Volume 4

The Snyder County Quilting Bee Series II

 

Mandie and Tobias Schmidt, missionaries to Jakarta, Indonesia, have waited two years to come home to Snyder County for a six-month furlough. With their nine-month-old baby, Lydia, the couple plans to spend quality time with their families and travel to numerous states, presenting their ministry to Mennonite churches, whose congregations pray for the couple and sometimes offer financial support.

But Mandie and Tobias’s furlough is cancelled after only a few weeks because of a crisis back in Indonesia. What happens that forces the couple to consider returning to Indonesia immediately?

Read Full Post »

Meet the Author: Lisa Lawmaster Hess

Lisa Lawmaster Hess

Lisa’s Background:

Lisa Lawmaster Hess is a transplanted Jersey girl who has lived in Pennsylvania for most of her adult life.

Did she always want to be a writer? Lisa tells us, “In my eighth grade career report, I declared my intention to become a magazine journalist, but once at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA, I studied psychology and education.” After earning her master’s degree, Lisa worked as an elementary school counselor until June 2012. Now, she keeps busy as an adjunct professor at York College of PA by day, as a community education instructor in the evening, and writing whenever she can.

Lisa’s Published Works:

Lisa is the author of Acting Assertively and Diverse Divorce, both inspired by her interactions with her elementary school students. Currently, she’s at work on a non-fiction book on organization, a sequel to Casting the First Stone and revisions on a novel with a whole new cast of characters. For more information about Lisa, check out her website (www.L2Hess.com) or read her blog (“The Porch Swing Chronicles”) at www.L2Hess.blogspot.com. Casting the First Stone is her first novel.

Fun Facts about Lisa:

• Lisa is an adjunct professor of psychology at York College of Pennsylvania.
• She loves to tap dance but is incredibly rusty.
• Her favorite place to write is on a screened-in porch at the condo she and her husband rent at the beach. Their traveling companion is their teenage daughter, Leah, and there’s usually another teen along for the ride to keep things interesting.
• The title of her blog, “The Porch Swing Chronicles” was born when she wrote the first post sitting on a porch swing at her brother-and sister-in-law’s house one Memorial Day weekend.
• She developed a love of theatre in high school and she still does community theatre shows whenever she can. Currently, she’s in rehearsal for a cabaret that will be performed in April.
• Lisa sings with the contemporary choir at her church.
• Her Snyder County connection is a school counseling internship in the Selinsgrove School District under the tutelage of Wendy Hummel (still a Union County resident).
• Lisa spent six years living on-and off-campus in Lewisburg, PA, while pursuing her BA in psychology and her MS in education at Bucknell. During her final summer in Lewisburg, she worked the early A.M. shift at a daycare and evening hours at the Short Stop Mart, and she recalls more than one occasion in grad school when she was scraping change together to get her staple dinner—a meatball grinder from House of Pizza on Market St. In 1985, a grinder and a soda cost $3.17, a meal she still seeks out whenever she visits Lewisburg.

Thanks, Lisa, for stopping by my blog today and letting us know a little bit about you and your latest work!

Casting the First Stone

Marita Mercer and Angel Alessio are linked by only one thing—a relationship with the same man. When Angel’s husband decides to pursue custody of the child he fathered with Marita thirteen years ago, both women are forced to consider what they will—and won’t—do to protect the lives they have built and the families they have created.

http://www.amazon.com/Casting-First-Stone-determined-families-ebook/dp/B00I2F1A18/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397487312&sr=1-2&keywords=cASTING+THE+FIRST+STONE

 

Read Full Post »

Today’s Writers’ Tip: Fiction Plot # 17: Discovery

April 7, 2014

Today’s Writers’ Tip

WRITING FICTION PLOTS

Plot Number 17: DISCOVERY

Death of a Traveling Salesman

Ghosts

Oedipus Rex

If you’re considering writing a “discovery plot,” take a good look at these characteristics, which are quite involved. A writer who does an excellent job with this type of plot will create a character-driven plot. The universe revolves around him or her. Let’s review how to write a good discovery plot:

1. A discovery plot is more about the character making the discovery than the discovery itself.
2. If the protagonist is searching for something, the focus of the story is not the search itself; it’s a search for understanding about human nature.
3. Focus the story on who the character is, not on what the character does.
4. Start the plot with the understanding of who the main character is before circumstances change and force the character into new situations.
5. Don’t linger on your main character’s “former” life; integrate past with present and future.
6. Place the character on the pinnacle of change. Start the action as late as possible, but also give the reader a strong impression of the main character’s personality as it was before the events started to change his/her character.
7. Make sure the catalyst that forces the change (from a state of equilibrium to disequilibrium) is significant and interesting enough to hold the reader’s attention.
8. Avoid being trivial. Don’t dwell on insignificant detail.
9. Move the protagonist into the crisis (the clash between the present and the past) as quickly as possible, but maintain the tension of past and present as a fundamental part of the story’s tension.

I’ve never written a discovery plot, and in my opinion, it seems like one of the most difficult to master. But now that you have your ammunition, go for it!

Next time we’ll look at the fiction plot number 18: WRETCHED EXCESS.

All information compliments of:

Tobias, Ronald B (2011-12-15). 20 Master Plots (p. 189). F+W Media, Inc. Kindle Edition.

http://www.amazon.com/20-Master-Plots-Build-Them-ebook/dp/B006RAIXXI/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1390841564&sr=1-1&keywords=20+Master+Plots

(I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in writing good fiction in any subgenre!)

Have a great day writing!

Marsha

Please check my latest publication on Amazon:

No Furlough for Mandie

Volume 4

The Snyder County Quilting Bee Series II

 

Mandie and Tobias Schmidt, missionaries to Jakarta, Indonesia, have waited two years to come home to Snyder County for a six-month furlough. With their nine-month-old baby, Lydia, the couple plans to spend quality time with their families and travel to numerous states, presenting their ministry to Mennonite churches, whose congregations pray for the couple and sometimes offer financial support.

But Mandie and Tobias’s furlough is cancelled after only a few weeks because of a crisis back in Indonesia. What happens that forces the couple to consider returning to Indonesia immediately?

Read Full Post »