Plot, Dialogue, Transistions, Story Structure: Beginnings, Middles, and Endings

Plot, Dialogue, Transistions, Story Structure: Beginnings, Middles, and Endings

CHARACTERS

Characters should also be:

1. complex, multileveled just like real people

2. consistent—the main character might grow or change significantly in a story, but you should be able to recognize him as the same character as on page one.

3. individual—show real quirky people, not rubber-stamped imitations.

One way to develop complex, interesting characters is to begin character development before you start writing the story. Consider carefully the character's name. Names say a lot about a person. Also, do an outline of physical attributes, likes and dislikes. Give your character a history, even if most of that history never makes it into the story.

PLOT

The king died. The Queen died.
The king died. The Queen died of grief.

Look at this pair of sentences. What is the difference between them? Yes, the second one shows the reason the Queen died. Plot can be described as a series of related incidents that advance the narrative of the story. If you have ever told a tale to a preschooler you will recognize these questions: "And then what happened? And then? And what happened next?" These same questions can be asked of short stories.

Writers Allan Lefcowitz and Philip Jason believe that the third dictionary definition of "plot" best summarizes what plot is:

"in artillery, a point or points located on a map or chart."

These writers also said, "What the plot does is to organize the voyage."

Another way of describing plot is to consider it as a series of significant events in your story. Only include important events and actions. For each one included make sure you answer yes to the question, "Does this event or situation matter?" For each event or action, also ask yourself, "What is at stake here?"

All plots center on conflict. Conflict in stories can be of four different kinds:

1. between people

2. between a person and society

3. between a person and nature

4. between different aspects of the self

Some writers find the plots of their stories by writing them.

Then they go back and cut out all unnecessary incidents. Others outline or think through the whole story first and decide before beginning writing exactly what will happen in the story. Both ways have their advantages and disadvantages. You will have to decide which method works best for you.

Remember that all the elements of a short story must be unified: character, setting, plot, dialogue, mood, and voice. Plot has tremendous importance because it is the invisible net, hidden structure that contains the whole story.

ACTION

Action by itself is not plot. Action that changes the story's ending and consequences of the story is plot. For example, a character taking a shower in a story is usually totally unimportant and can be left out. However, in the movie Psycho, the shower scene is very important. Only include scenes that are necessary, and that will affect the ending.

WHAT YOU CAN LEAVE OUT OF STORIES

1. how characters get from one place to another.

2. any explanations.

3. what characters do between scenes

4. elapsed time. Orient the reader to the new time, but don't have the clock ticking in the background.

5. long descriptions

STORY STRUCTURE

One common way of looking at story structure the story arc. It has the shape of an inverted check mark. This shape shows rising action, a climax, then a much faster falling action, and resolution.

DIALOGUE

One definition of dialogue is simulated conversation. Examine dialogue sections in stories and you will find that characters in them do not speak as people do in real life. Dialogue instead is a kind of shorthand for speech, not an actual transcription. It is much shorter than real conversation, and quickly gets to the point. In good dialogue, unessential words are stripped away. Yet characters still sound like real people talking.

In a story dialogue accomplishes two main tasks. It helps build characters and advances the plot. It can also help set the mood of the story and provide humor and conflict. It makes the action seem more timely because dialogue is usually presented in the present tense, whereas the rest of the story is most often recorded in the past tense. It also makes the action seem more natural as it combines with conversation as really happens in daily life.

In stories there are several kinds of dialogue.

1. monologues where characters speak mainly to themselves. Quotes are not needed because the speech is not going back and forth between characters.

2. conversation where characters speak to or at each other. Quotes are used to separate each character's words.

Although not really monologues, characters can also express their thoughts in fiction as they do in drama in asides. These sections are italicized because they are not really spoken. A convention of dialogue is that each character's speech is indented in a new paragraph. This allows the reader to keep the charactersÕ voices straight.

Beginning writers often use fancy words for describing the simple terms, he said or she said. Instead of including basic words such as said or asked they might use: questioned, expressed, wondered, pontificated, etc. These words after a speech are known as tag lines. The simpler the better in terms of tag lines. In very fast conversations, the writer will skip some tag lines entirely. But always remember to provide as many as necessary to avert confusion about which character is actually speaking.

Advice for Writing Good Dialogue:

1. Be aware of pace. Dialogue often moves very fast, but it can be slowed with description and action intermixed. In emergencies, people speak fast and in fragments.

2. Don't have people speaking in complete sentences most of the time. This is not how people really talk.

3. Dialogue should always be interesting.

4. It should always be based on character. Don't have a car mechanic sound like a PHD or a bar maid sound like a nun.

5. Say your dialogue outloud as you write it and during revision. Revising dialogue can only make it stronger.

TRANSISTIONS

Transistions solve the problem of moving a character or characters from one scene to the next or from one time period to the next. A transition is simply a move or shift in the story. You can accomplish transitions with various elements: time of day, weather, darkness/light, a new character entering or leaving. These are only a few ways of doing transitions.

Any change of scene in a story requires a transition. You also need to make transitions between dialogue and the rest of your story. The one rule about transitions is to make them as seamless as possible.

BEGINNINGS, MIDDLES, AND ENDINGS

All three of these elements are vital to good story writing. But beginnings are the most important, because unless you hook your reader then, he or she will read no further. Beginnings set the tone and mood for the story, introduce the main characters and the conflict. They also orient the reader to the time and place or setting of the story. They introduce the writer's voice, which must be sustained throughout the story. Remember to always pick an interesting place to begin, in the middle of the action. Beginnings should be rewritten and rewritten until you get them exactly right.

Most writers don't give the same level of attention to the middle of stories.. In the middle the writer sometimes loses his or her steam. Yet middles are vital also. They play a significant role in connecting all the action before and after. They also continue needed character development and raise the level of tension or suspense.

Endings bear the twin weights of wrapping up the story, and providing closure.

One kind of ending that some stories share is known as an epiphany. In this "Aha" moment a character (or the reader) comes to a sudden realization that changes his attitude or awareness. This is usually not the very end of the story but during the falling action.

BEGINNINGS

"It was a mistake to take Lola there."
Graham Greene "The Innocent"

"True!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?"
Edgar Allen Poe "The Tell-Tale Heart"

"'Mister Deck, are you my stinkin' Daddy?' a youthful, female, furious voice said into the phone."
Larry McMurtry "Some Can Whistle"

"In the fall the war was always there but we did not go to it anymore."
Ernest Hemingway "In Another Country"

MIDDLES

"The inn was not quite where I remembered it."
Graham Greene "The Innocent"

"What seems dangerous often is not—black snakes, for example or clear-air turbulence."
Amy Hempel "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried"

"That spring our parents have a party to celebrate the sun's return."
Michael Cunningham "White Angel"

"Embarrassed, wasted, desperate, and sore, tear-faced Valerie anon turned her back on the dear, congenitally blinkered bastard whom she so loves and just then despised and stomped off toward the Light Street food pavilion and their parking garage, no objective in mind except breathing space and weeping room."
John Barth "Click"

EXAMPLES ENDINGS

"Darkness had fallen over the Atlantic, blank gray to its farthest reaches."
Frank O"Connor "The Bridal Night"

"'Villains!'" I shrieked, 'dissemble no more! I admit the deed!—tear up the planks!—here, here—it is the beating of his hideous heart!'"
Edgar Allen Poe "The Tell-Tale Heart"

"'It isn't fair, it isn't right,' Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her."
Shirley Jackson "The Lottery"

"'She would have been a good woman,' the Misfit said, 'If it had been somebody there to shoot her every moment of her life.'"
Flannery O'Connor "A Good Man is Hard to Find"

Some Advice about Endings from Barnaby Conrad:

1. Don't moralize.

2. Don't have your protagonist act out of character.

3. Don't feel you must tie up all loose ends.

4. Don't go on too long.

5. Don't explain too much.

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