by Maureen Lynas
WARNING! If you follow these steps you may never enjoy a book or film ever again. You may even experience marital and family discord.
Now read on.
Candy's post on the First Page Panel in Singapore reminded of an activity I attempted (and failed) years ago.
I'd just bought my very first 'how to' book - James Scott Bell's
fabulous and essential Plot and Structure. The activity was:
Read four of your absolutely favourite
novels and analyse them, pull them apart, because these books
probably reflect the way you want to write and will give you a
structure to follow.
I'm paraphrasing because I keep buying
this book, lending this book and not getting this book back!
Great, fantastic advice, except –
analyse them for what? For me this was a catch 22 situation. I
couldn't analyse them until I understood story and I couldn't
understand story until I'd analysed the books. So began a long
journey to find out what makes a book tick. The other problem was –
which four books? Because the books I loved to read for myself were
not the books I wanted to write. I read adult books, but I wanted to
write children's books, so analysing The Lord of the Rings, The Time
Traveller's Wife or The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency was unlikely to
help unless I was about to write about a young Orc detective called
Sarumantha who can time hop. Gosh, there's an idea everywhere!
So, one thing I had to discover was –
which children's books should I analyse. Which children's books did I
want to read? And why? This took quite a bit of time but I
eventually landed on -
'I want to write the children's books I would
have loved to read to my children (when they were children) and to
the kids in my class (when I still had a class).' And 'It's my job to
make kids laugh.'
Having these two statements to keep me focused was a huge help. So now I had some idea on what to analyse
and once I started I couldn't stop. I became obsessed with getting to
the nitty gritty of an author's skills and would jump with excitement
when I'd 'cracked' another one. I would bore anyone who would listen,
describing the techniques they'd used to make me laugh, cry, think, in minute detail – as if all of my friends, family and
acquaintances were actually interested. Thank you for your patience!
Eventually I had to accept that not
everyone was as nuts as I was about writing and so I grabbed the
chance to run the North East SCBWI in York, just so that I had the
opportunity to share my obsession through chat, workshops and critiquing together. One day I found
myself running a workshop on analysing Horrid Henry.
I'm now sharing the notes from that workshop with you; they can be used to analyse any book or film, or used as a planning tool.
Henry's attempt to achieve his goal provides the major
event of each book.
The goal may be achieved during the event and the
result will be positive for Henry.
The goal may be achieved during he event but the
result may be negative for Henry.
Identify Act one, two, three.
Look for the inciting incident –
the action that triggers the story. Because Horrid Henry is for
young children this may be as simple as Mum saying, 'Bath-time!'
The doorway in to act two –
Henry engages with the story as a reaction to the inciting
incident. In adult crime stories it can be as simple as being given
a case to solve and the detective starts solving. In other stories
there is more of an emotional involvement to the trigger. Do a bit
of research – What is it in HH? Is it the same type of incident
and doorway in each book? Is HH propelled into the story by outside
forces or does he jump in?
Look for the doorway out of act
two and into act three. Does HH always solve his own problems in
order to get into act three?
Cut/mark the book into the three
acts.
Now for the real fun
The Seven Steps of Plotting
These are the seven steps to pacing and
plotting that I use in my own writing because they do away with the annoying
muddle in the middle. Five steps were found in an article in The
Complete Handbook of Novel Writing by Meg Leader and Jack Heffron
(thanks Geoff) and I've broken down the last one to include some
steps from Revision and Editing by
James Scott Bell.
The Seven Steps are
Name. Preview.
Contrast. The Event. Reflect. Reveal. React.
It's best to analyse in the following
order.
Using coloured pens, identify the
following (Just put one straight line from the top to the bottom of
each section)
Highlight the main
event of the book (achievement of the goal) in
red.
Highlight the contrast scene
(immediately before the event) in yellow.
What makes a contrast scene? A
contrast scene is the argument before the kiss, the campfire before
the battle, the success before the failure, or the failure before
the success depending on the tone and genre of the work.
Highlight Henry's reflection
(immediately
after the event) in dark green.
Highlight
what has been revealed (immediately
after the reflection) in mid green.
Highlight
Henry's reaction/action (immediately
after the revelation) in light green.
Now go to earlier in the story and
highlight any previewing of the event in
blue.
Is the main event (achievement
of the goal) shown in another way earlier in the story? Does a
similar event happen to another person earlier in the story? Does a
similar event go wrong for the protagonist earlier in the story.
e.g in the book about the visit to the dentist, Moody Margaret goes
into the treatment room just before Henry.
Highlight any naming
that takes place before the previewing. in
orange.
Naming is very short, e.g.
'Horrid Henry sat in the dentists waiting room' is naming this
event will be about HH having a battle with the dentist.
Other naming – Mentioning a
catapult on the mantelpiece as part of early description means that
you can use the catapult later. Or, you can use opposites to name
things e.g. 'This won't hurt,' is naming 'This will
hurt.' Or in a romantic comedy – 'I'll never kiss him' is naming
– 'I will end up kissing him.'
Of course you will have more than one event in a longer book so the steps can be intertwined.
You should also analyse for
Cause and effect.
Each scene's emotional
dynamic for each character.
Up – down
(happy to sad, excited to boring)
Down – up
(confusion to clarity, failure to success)
And there you have it. For now. Have you noticed - None of the above
deals with the words, the language. I'll delve deeper into Horrid
Henry horrendous world in my next blog on:
Conflict
Tone
Escalation
Rhetoric
Opinion
Back to the
apology mentioned at the beginning. If you do this properly – you
will irritate people. They don't seem to like it if you watch
a film pointing out the seven steps. I have no idea why. After all,
what's wrong with a running commentary of , 'Ayup, it's a contrast
scene.', 'Nice bit of naming there.', 'Did you see that gun on the
mantlepiece? You know what that means, don't you? Don't you, eh?', 'Where was the
preview! I can't believe there was no preview! How rubbish is that!' or 'Yay! I know what
the event's going to be!'
1. This bit I already knew: once you are earning from your writing, you must register as self employed, and start paying NI contributions (class 2), currently £2.65/week – unless you earn less than a threshold (currently £5595). You can find out more about this here. It may be wise to pay class 2 even if you are under the threshold – to keep your record of NI contributions for getting state pension, and so you can get things like maternity allowance. You also have to pay NI class 4 contributions as a percentage of your taxable profits when you pay your income tax - more here. So whatever your tax bracket is, add this on top. Ouch.
2. It is a good idea to keep records of writing expenses before getting published. Oops. Once you are treating your writing as a business – evidenced by things like agent submissions etc – you can carry these forwards as losses for four whole years. Though possibly you should have been registered as self employed over these years to do so – you can do this after the fact, though may get knuckles rapped by NI for not paying or claiming an exemption from NI contributions.
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