Creative nonfiction – Plot your posts

In narrative writing, events unfold around a protagonist, which could be yourself or another. Jon Franklin, the guru behind the classic Writing for Story, declared that “a story consists of a sequence of actions that occur when a sympathetic character encounters a complicating situation that he confronts and solves.

Week three we discussed writing for narrative or thematic continuity, as well as features-style techniques. Today we'll explore the engine of the technique: plot.

A good story moves a character – and the reader's understanding and emotions – from one place to another. Blocking action adds spice to this mix. Give your protagonist hell. It forces him or her to evolve, ideally towards a defining moment, the climax, which produces some insight ... some raison d'être for the piece.

Jack R. Hart, author of A Writer's Coach, broke down plot arc thus at the 2005 National Writer's Workshop:

1. Exposition: introduce the protagonist, the person who makes things happen (if you're stuck, start with the protagonist's name and a transitive verb).
2. Inciting incident: something knocks the protagonist off the status quo. “Think of a movie ... a Hollywood movie, not a Danish one,” he joked.
3. Rising action: the protagonist struggles with confrontations.
4. Point of insight. The solution or outcome clarifies.
5. Climax: the confrontation resolves.
6. Denouement: Wrap it up.

Hart considers the “point of insight” most valuable. “Here's what people are looking for in stories. They want to learn from the experiences of others how to be a more successful human being. Find the universal theme.”

Narrative writing is an advanced technique. Experiment, but don't panic if this new medium takes time to learn. Mimicry really is the best tool. Read stories – and watch films – with these techniques in mind. Then perhaps try a brief post in the format. As the great writing coach Hart said, “narrative articles needn't be 100-inch goat-chokers”. The short length forces your concentration onto the plot – picking, choosing and crystallizing the essential elements – rather than a glut of expression.

Plot arc: get complicated!

Once you’ve pinned down the message – the essential nature of the post– draft a one-sentence summary. This needn’t be flashy, as it’s for your eyes alone. Many writers pin this declaration to the wall or paste it into the top of their computer file. A few examples:

1. The ostrich jockeys: running the big birds in the Valley of the Sun
2. Is it fair to take children on a gambling holiday?
3. Tea time: faded colonial splendor in Candacraig, Burma

This "capsule sentence" introduces your theme, the thread that leads you through the post. Your first paragraph (the "lead" or "lede") and conclusion will most likely reflect this key information. And all the bits between should be in harmony. Cut the retired showgirl anecdote, if the entry’s about children in casinos. Don’t get sidetracked by hang-gliding, if the subject at hand is mountaineering. Be ruthless – but don’t despair. All that excised material can be spun into other stories, so nothing’s ever wasted.

Professor Jon Franklin takes this a step further in Writing for Story. He encourages students to plot pieces by crafting two sentences in a noun-active verb-noun format. The first is the problem, the second its resolution. Then note three steps that advance the tale. For example:

Complication: Company fires Joe

Development:

1. Depression paralyses Joe
2. Joe regains confidence
3. Joe sues company

Resolution: Joe regains job

The telegraphed style focuses the writer's thoughts on the relationships in the story, he claims. Plus, "if there's anything wrong with 'Company fires Joe,' we need to discover it now, before we've written several thousand unusable words."

Avoid statements that are weak or static (includes the verbs be, am, was, were, have, has, being, been, do, does, did, could, would, should). "Stories consist of actions! Stories consist of actions! Stories consist of actions!" Franklin writes (he gets a free pass on the exclamation marks for helping to invent narrative nonfiction).

Not all journalism is plot-fueled, obviously; this approach doesn't suit every wearable-blanket brief and hotel review. Yet even a service piece benefits from a theme and an outline. Not the hideous textbook sort with nested subsets in Roman numerals like "I.E.iii.a". Rather a simple list of topics that need coverage, roughly in order. The "five boxes" stratagem – a sort of slapdash structure – remains popular with many journalists and bloggers.

Finding the right format

The Readership Institute discovered that US newspapers use inverted pyramid style for 69 percent of all stories, feature-style writing for 18 percent and commentary for 12 percent. Magazines, books and the Internet mix techniques a bit more. But a simple truth emerged from the Impact Study: publications “that run more feature-style stories are seen as more honest, fun, neighborly, intelligent, 'in the know' and more in touch with the values of readers.”

Not all topics merit the narrative treatment. A 250-word restaurant review, for example, rarely manages rising action. Some pieces are bulletins, some are stories. However, even a fact-based brief can borrow powerful tools, such as the universal theme, from features style. Likewise, a hint of inverted-pyramid prioritization or a nut graf can clarify a piece with a looser structure. The important first step, especially for a blogger, is to consciously choose a category for each post, then refine the concept.