How to Plot a Book: The First Steps to a Page-Turning Story

Welcome to the Inside Creative Writing Podcast, the weekly discussion of craft and technique for writers of fiction and creative nonfiction. And now here's your host, writer and educator Brad Reed. Episode 24, today we're building off an idea we explored in Episode 14 called "The Somebody Wanted But So". We'll modify that strategy today and learn to discover what your story is really about. Welcome back to the podcast. My name is Brad Reed and I am thrilled that you're here with us today as a listener. Thank you so much for tuning into the show and a very special thanks to the members of the Patreon team for supporting the show and keeping us fired up about bringing you great content every week. If you're interested in becoming part of the team, head on over to patreon.com/bradreadrights to check out some of the great rewards you have access to as a team member. I also ask that you take a minute and give us a review on iTunes if you're enjoying the show or on whatever podcast app you're listening to us. It's a great way to support the show and it really helps us spread the word about it. Alright, let's get to today's topic. A lot of writers and readers for that matter think that stories are about plot. Today we'll discover what stories are really about and how to explore your own writing to find out what you are really writing about. [Music] Before we jump into today's topic, it's worth going back for a quick review of a technique we talked about in episode 14 called the Somebody Wanted But So. If you have time, I encourage you to go back and listen to that episode but assuming that you don't will recap at least the basics here. So the somebody wanted but so is essentially a way that students are taught to summarize the main plot of a story. It's a really simple technique that when reverse engineered can benefit our writing in a lot of important ways. So to create a somebody wanted but so, all you have to do is imagine a paper divided into four columns. Now the first column is going to be labeled somebody, the second wanted, the third but and the last column so. What goes into somebody column is the main character, along with a few key details about who that character is, their name, maybe their age, their occupation, their personality trait, whatever is important to know about that character. An example of an entry in the somebody box would be Harry Potter and isolated young orphan boy who finds out that he is a wizard. So that would be our somebody box for our somebody wanted but so what would go in the wanted column is that somebody's desire. What are they? What is their main desire in the story? So continuing our example, Harry Potter wants to live in a world where he can be with his friends, use his and live a happy life. So now what goes in the butt column? What goes in the butt column is what stops your somebody from getting their want. So in other words, what are the obstacles in the way of getting what's in that wanted box? So for example, continuing with Harry Potter but Voldemort is seeking to destroy everything good in the world, especially Harry Potter. And that brings us to our so column. So the so column is for how the somebody overcomes or maybe doesn't overcome the obstacles that we identified in the butt column. So finishing off our example, but Harry Potter relies on his friends and his own increasing abilities to destroy Voldemort. So once you figured out each step of a somebody wanted but so chart actually my creative writing students started pronouncing this as swabis right somebody wanted but so and that's kind of stuck. So I'm going to use that from now on the swabis is what we're going to call the somebody wanted but so chart. So once you figured out each step of the swabis, you have the heart of your story in a single sentence. Listen to how the swabis works when you put it all together. Harry Potter, a young orphan boy who finds out that he is a wizard wants to live in a world where he can be with his friends, uses magic for good and live a happy life. But Voldemort is seeking to destroy everything good in the world, especially Harry Potter. So Harry relies on his friends and his own abilities to destroy Voldemort. So there is the entire story in a nutshell. It creates a strong through line for the books and gives the reader something to hold on to as they read they know what the main driving idea of the story is. So it gives the writer a kind of signpost so they don't get off track and they can keep their story moving within the main conflict. As we talked about in the original episode about the swabis, you can and probably should create a swabis for each of your main characters. Everyone in your story should be after something. Everyone should be facing obstacles to getting that something. And those obstacles are often provided by the other characters in your story that want different things. This is a great way to create well-rounded characters who are in your story for a purpose and they feel like actual living breathing humans because living breathing humans want things. They have desires and they have obstacles. And it's a great way to imbue your work with conflict. And conflict as we know is the essence of story. So if your characters are all after disparate or differing goals, then they can get in each other's way and cause all sorts of interesting trouble that keeps your readers turning the pages. But the swabis is usefulness goes beyond just overall story planning. A swabis can be used on every single scene of your story. What do each of the characters want in this particular scene? What is standing in their way of getting it? How does it resolve or does it resolve? This will ensure that every scene in your story is there for a purpose and has at least some element of conflict. The swabis can help you turn what might be a boring scene, something like a character driving to work. It can turn that into something interesting and compelling. We all end up with scenes like this where we simply have to move a character from one place to another. Without a swabis, it's just a boring scene of a person driving. Maybe interspersed with some internal thoughts or an opportunity for description of the setting. But a swabis brings that scene to life. We already know that somebody in the scene is your character that is driving somewhere. Their want for the scene might be something very small, something like they want to get to work on time so that they don't miss a big meeting. So now let's make it interesting by making sure our scene has a but element. What is stopping this character from succeeding? So maybe on his way to work, he cuts off someone in traffic because he's in such a hurry and this other driver kicks into road rage mode. So now we have conflict in the scene. Now we have a but. And now we have a swabis. Our character wants to get to work on time for an important meeting. But he cuts off another driver who runs him off the road and comes up to his car brandishing a tire iron. Now not only is the scene more interesting now, but we have an opportunity to learn about the character in the best way possible through their reaction to conflict. A character who begs for his life, he sobs out an apology, maybe he offers the guy all the money in his wallet to leave him alone. That's a very different character than the character who jumps out of the car and gets in the face of the tire iron wielding hothead and begs him just to try something just so he can sue the crap out of him. Those are two very different characters and of course there are lots of options between those two extremes. So the so of your swabis will always be an opportunity to teach your reader about who your character is in a way that is compelling and full of conflict. That's the power of the swabis on the scene level. One more quick example. Let's say we've got a couple that are having breakfast in the morning. So she that's our character. She wants him to say that he loves her before he goes off to work. But he's too busy thinking about the day ahead to notice her. So he leaves her in tears without even noticing. So this is very subtle in the scene, but we still have that somebody wanted but so so that we know that we're working with tension. We're working with conflict and we're learning about these characters to that process. So we've learned a lot about these two characters over a seemingly innocuous breakfast table. So before we leave the swabis behind I encourage you to bring it into all aspects of your story. story. From the planning stages where each character gets their main driving swabbess that will carry them throughout the story but also into every scene of your story. Okay, so now onto the promised topic of today's show. It's something we're going to call the snubbess. Again, thanks to my creative writing students who started calling this and it stuck. Three of the elements are exactly the same between the snubbess and the swabbess. So you have the somebody, you have the butt and you have the so. That's the commonality between the two. The difference is that we're no longer identifying a want but a need instead. So it's a somebody needed but so a snubbess. Now this can get confusing because they can initially sound the same. A character can both want riches and fame and in a way need riches and fame. But the difference here is one of character awareness. The want from the swabbess is the desire that the character is conscious of. They are completely aware that they want love or sex or fame or money or self confidence and so on. The need on the other hand is what your reader is going to realize your character needs that the character themselves may not even be aware of. So the best way to explore this as usual is through examples. We're going to use the 2013 film, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty as our example for this. Now I love to use this film as a teaching example of structure because I think the structure elements stand out fairly obviously in this film. If you haven't seen it, I recommend that you check it out. I think it's available on Netflix right now. It's not the world's greatest film by any means but it is an entertaining film. It's got a great message and I think it's a really good example of how structure works within a story. So anyway, even if you haven't seen the film, still going to work as a good example of a swabbess and a snubbess and how they work in the story. So here's the swabbess, the somebody wanted but so for the secret life of Walter Mitty. Walter Mitty, a single man working a mind numbing job and living a boring life wants to have a relationship with the new girl in the office. But he is too shy and uninteresting to approach her. So he is pulled into an adventure that changes him into a daring thrill seeker capable of winning her love. So that's the heart of the film. Now there's a lot of subplots and B stories and things like that but this is the through line. This is the main desire that keeps the whole story moving forward to its climax. But this isn't what the story is actually about. For that we need to look at the snubbess, the somebody needed but so. And here's how that might sound. Walter Mitty, a single man working a mind numbing job and living a boring life so the character hasn't changed so that piece is the same. He needs adventure in his life in order to become the man he is meant to be. But he's too scared to take any kind of risks so he is pulled into an adventure that requires him to learn to take risks and value adventure. So notice that Walter himself is entirely unaware of his need for adventure at the beginning of the film. He thinks his life is great other than he doesn't have the girl he wants. The audience on the other hand can plainly see what this guy needs. I mean it takes all the courage he can muster just to click a wink at this girl through an online dating site. He lives in a sparse silent apartment and the only adventure is when he's daydreaming of being this adventurous man that he kind of wants to be but doesn't really realize he needs to be. So in other words his need is only understood by the audience even though they may not be able to vocalize it. Walter thinks he's fine. The audience thinks they're watching a film about a guy trying to get a girl but really they're watching a movie about a man who needs to learn to take risks to become the man that he was meant to be. This is the power of the snubbess. It is what your story is really about underneath the plot. The snubbess is the way the character changes through the process of trying to fulfill what it is they think they want. Let's take a look at another example just to make sure that we have it. We'll choose a film that probably more of you have likely seen. Let's use Toy Story. We're talking about the first Toy Story movie here. So a swabis, somebody wanted bit so for Toy Story, might read like this. Woody, a well-loved toy belonging to a young boy named Andy, wants to get rid of an obnoxious newcomer Buzz Lightyear who competes for Andy's affections but Buzz and Woody become separated from Andy. So they must learn to work together to get back to him. Now there's the heart of the story, the through line that keeps the plot moving forward on a single track. But what is the snubbess? What's the somebody needed bit so? What do we as the audience realize that Woody needs that Woody doesn't even realize himself? Well he starts out the film as incredibly self-centered and selfish. Everything revolves around him. Woody knows he's the most important toy and keeping that status is the most important thing to him. Even if we don't consciously recognize his need to become less self-centered, we feel it through the way the film and the story is constructed. So Woody thinks he's fine but we can see, we can sense how Woody needs to change and fixing that need, addressing that need is what the story is really about. It's not about toys that come to life even though we think it is. It's really about how to overcome selfishness so that we can find value in other people. Now I read stories written by novice writers all the time and the reason that many of them are weak is because they've missed these two simple elements. There is either not a through line, not a main story that carries through the entire book to keep it moving or there's no deeper need. You could also think of it as a character flaw that forms the heart of the change in the character. Even when the plot is good and well conceived the lack of a snubbous leaves the reader asking, well so what at the end? Now neither of these things are easy to spot in our own writing and I think it's because we know our own stories so well. We've gone over them and over them and over them and everything in the story makes sense to us. We know our characters, we even maybe come to love our characters but our readers don't. They're starting with a blank slate. They need to know what a character's after. They need a goal to root for. That's the swabbess but they also need to see why the story matters. That's the snubbous somebody needed. But so you could have the greatest most interesting and original plot ever devised but if it doesn't change the character in some way then the story doesn't have any meaning for the reader. We don't actually read books or watch films because of the plot even though we think that we do. I mean sure the plot has to be compelling, it has to be original, it has to be interesting but we're actually reading books and watching films to discover how plot changes characters and character change lives in the snubbous, the somebody needed. But so do you know your story snubbous? Does your character have a character flaw and need that they aren't even aware of and have you made that need, that flaw clear to your reader? Does your plot provide enough conflict and tension for the character's flaw to be challenged and questioned and ultimately change? That's the power of the swabbess and the snubbess. Yes they seem incredibly simplistic on one level. I mean you're just filling in four little boxes on a chart but they form the essence of your story, the heart of your story. The last thing we're going to do with today's show is create a swabbess and a snubbess for a story from scratch. I think it's helpful to see this process as it happens so that you can recognize it in your own work. To do that we're going to need a story idea. What we'll do is we'll go back a few weeks to the episode on coming up with story ideas using what if questions and we're going to borrow the what if question from that episode to build our swabbess and our snubbess on. So whether or not it's a great idea is beside the point for today. I've mixed emotions about this. What if question? But we just want to use it to see how a swabbess and a snubbess can develop out of an idea. So here's the what if question we came up with in that episode a few weeks ago. What if your high school teacher was actually a mafia boss in the witness protection program? I want to read that to you one more time. What if your high school teacher was actually a mafia boss. in the witness protection program. So our first step here is to create a four grid chart. Now this could be super rough, just sketched out quickly on a piece of scratch paper, can even be done in your head once you get good at this and it becomes kind of second nature. So we'll need a somebody wanted but and so column. So let's go ahead and fill them out, see how this works. So in our somebody column, we're gonna flush out this character a little bit. We're gonna say he's a middle aged former mafia boss who is hiding out as a school teacher as part of the witness protection program. So there's our somebody, right? Just a quick little piece of a sentence. In our want box, let's give him a desire. And what he wants here is to take out or to kill, right? To kill the members of the crime family that's after him before they can get to him. But what's standing in his way? So our butt column is going to be, but he's isolated from anyone who can help him. And he's surrounded instead by high schoolers, right? So he doesn't have his normal team of usual suspects to do this kind of dirty work. And then our so, so he plans a seraptitious field trip that is really an opportunity to assassinate the head of the crime family. So let's put that all together and we can see the heart of our story. A middle aged former mafia boss who is hiding out as a school teacher as part of the witness protection program wants to kill the members of the crime family that's after him before they can kill him. But he's isolated from anyone who can help him and is surrounded instead by high schoolers. So he plans a seraptitious field trip that is really an opportunity to assassinate the head of the crime family. So there's the heart of our story or the heart of our plot. And I think you can see how plot ideas and scenes start to grow naturally out of this simple swabbus. If I were to actually write this story, now I wouldn't be married to the swabbus though. If while writing I come up with a better through line or my character's take me in a new direction that I like better, I'll go ahead and go with that. But I'll always come back and revise the swabbus so that it matches the story that I'm telling that way. I always know clearly what my through line is. And I'll have confidence that it makes logical sense and is capable of driving that story. So now that we know the plot of our story, the swabbus, we need to know what our story is really about. What is the somebody needed but so? So some of this is going to be the same, right? And our somebody column, we're going to have the same verbiage. A middle-aged form Ramafiobas, who is hiding out as a school teacher, is part of the witness protection program. But what does he need now? What is he not aware of? But the reader hopefully is aware of. Well, I think in this story, he needs to realize that there is goodness and purity in the world and then not everyone is out for themselves. So his need here is that he's been kind of contaminated by this mafia world that he's in to see everything in very negative terms. He distrusts everyone. So he needs to realize there is goodness and purity. He keeps turning people around him into someone like himself through his pessimistic outlook. So the but is that he can easily turn those he's interact with into people like himself that are distrustful, that are maybe even evil. So that's standing in the way of him being able to make that realization. So the story ends with-- so he meets the one student that is incorruptible, who shows him a better way to live and a better way to treat people. So let's bring that all into one sentence again and see how effectively this snubbous technique boils everything down into a simple sentence that we can use as a guidepost. So here's our snubbous for our story. A middle-aged former mafia boss who is hiding out as a schoolteacher as part of the witness protection program needs to realize that there is goodness and purity in the world. And that not everyone is out for themselves. But he keeps turning those around him into people like himself through his pessimistic outlook. So he meets the one student that is incorruptible, who shows him a better way to live and to treat people. Now even more scenes and even more characters now start to grow from the snubbous, just like they did from the swabbous. I can imagine the easily swayed students that accept the mafia boss's dark view of the world and begin to act like him. It can start to see those characters come to mind or come to life in my mind. And I can also envision that one student who is pushing back, she's not willing to give up her optimistic view of the world. She's the one who eventually brings the mafia boss around to seeing the world in a new way and reinventing himself. This is what that story idea is really about, right? How one person can change the life, change the worldview of someone else. So what we've discovered about our characters through creating these charts is the through line of the story. But maybe most importantly, we've discovered our character's main flaw. He's grown up in a world of violence and betrayal. And he can't trust that anyone is really actually good or altruistic. The audience will understand that the only way this guy can ever truly be happy is by turning away from his old self in embracing a new view of the world and the human condition. But all he'll see, at least until the change at the end of the story, is that he needs to kill the people around to get him and that he can't trust anyone. The audience knows better and they'll keep turning pages to see if he makes that change that he so desperately needs to make. So there you have it, the swabbess and the snubbess, that somebody wanted butzo and the somebody needed butzo. And here's what will happen now that you know these techniques. You're going to get busy writing. The ideas will start popping. And the next scene will jump into your mind and you'll be off and running. And you'll forget all about the swabbess. And the snubbess. You'll start writing scenes that begin to get off track of your main swabbess and your story will start to wander a little bit. You'll forget that your character needs to have their snubbess challenged. And the change will begin to falter. Now I know this because that's exactly what happens to me as I'm writing. So I need reminders. So what we're going to do is finish with a couple of techniques to help keep these concepts in the front of your mind as you write so that they're truly beneficial. So technique number one is the good old Post-it note. I have Post-it notes all over my computer monitor. And one of them is just a little Post-it note with two small four square grids. In one of them I have the letters swbs for somebody want a bit so. And in the other one I have snbs, somebody needed butzo. And that's often enough of a reminder just to see those grids there that I stop pretty often to think through these techniques as I'm writing. It's that little reminder I need to say, oh yeah, this character's flaw is X. So how would that influence this scene? How would that change his behavior in this scene? Or I forgot that he's really after X in this story. And this scene feels like kind of a distraction from that. The other technique the one I actually prefer is that I will drop little four box grids into my actual draft. At the beginning of every new scene, I copy and paste in a four box grid and I take just a moment to create a swabbus for the scene that I'm writing. In fact, I often drop in multiple swabbus grids, one for every character that's going to be in that scene. I want to know what each of them are after. And what's going to get in their way and how that's all going to sort out or maybe not sort out in that scene. I feel like I should take just a second here to define what I mean by scene. Now some people get confused and think I'm talking about chapters or maybe that I'm only talking about screenwriting which traditionally breaks things down more into scenes. When I talk about scenes, I am using a more filmic approach, but a scene for me is simply a series of actions that all take place in a single setting. And that's as applicable in prose writing as it is in screenwriting. So for example, if your characters are having dinner in a restaurant, everything that happens in that restaurant is a scene. If you suddenly jump to what's happening maybe in the kitchen, that's a new scene, right, a new location. When your character's finished dinner and go outside to wait for the Uber driver, that's also a new scene because they're in a new place. Now some of your swabbuses, swabbi, I'm not sure how to polarize that. Some of your swabbuses will carry over from one scene to the next for sure, but most of them actually won't. And it is actually possible for the swabbuss to change with in a scene. So keep an eye out for that happening in your fiction as well. the more specific. specifically and clearly you define your swabbises and your snubbises, the easier your story becomes to write. Because you know what the characters are after. You know what they'll say or do to try to get what they want. And you'll know how that scene fits into the overall story arc. So there you have it. The swabbis and the snubbis. Two of the most deceptively simple, but powerful techniques of fiction writing that you have at your disposal. Today's wise word comes from French writer Gustave Floubert. I hope I'm saying that right. Gustave Floubert. And it likely stood out to me this week because I'm so deeply invested right now in revising my current work in progress. And it's a process that often leaves me frustrated because I can never quite seem to get the words and sentences to do exactly what I want them to. Floubert must have had the same or a similar experience because here's what he says. I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within. Now even though this quote seems like a bit of a downer, right, it's the admission that our writing will never quite live up to our expectation. It's also full of hope for me. It helps to know that the great writers feel the same way as the rest of us hammering away on keyboards, hoping to create something good and great, but always falling a little bit short of what they envisioned. It reminds me of another quote from my favorite writer, John Steinbeck. In East of Eden, he has one of the characters say, "And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good." There's something freeing about knowing that you can't attain perfection, that your best will be good enough. Our weekly challenge this week is only tangentially related to today's topic, but it's a technique that I find really helpful in creating well-rounded characters. This week I'd like you to write two letters to yourself as if they were written by the main character of your work in progress. In the first letter, you're going to write a letter to yourself from your character telling you what kinds of things he or she hopes you will write about them in your book. You can start with this little sentence starter. Quote, "I heard you were writing a book about me. I just wanted to make sure that you were going to include. " "Dat, dot, dot, wherever your mind takes you." See what voice comes out of that character. This will reveal a lot about their hopes, their desires, their insecurities, and how they want to appear to your reader. Then once you've written that letter, write another one imagining that now the book has been released and your character has just finished reading it. Why are they furious with you now? What did you reveal about them that makes them angry or resentful or vengeful? You could start with this sentence starter. Quote, "I just read the book you wrote about me. I can't believe that you. " Now this is going to help you uncover their secret insecurities and learn a little bit how they react to conflict. Are they kind of passive aggressive or are they very in your face? These are the kinds of things we're going to learn. This is a really fun project and one that has always revealed surprising things to me about my character. So, what should I have some fun with this one this week? Before we wrap up, I want to mention that I recently did a real-time revision video for members of my Patreon team where I show in real time how I used the swabbus when revising a scene to make sure I have all the elements figured out. You can find out how to be a part of that Patreon team and get access to this video and a bunch of others like it by going to BradreadRights.com and clicking on the Patreon link. You'll also find today's show notes there as well. So that's going to do it for this week. Until next time, please consider leaving us a review on iTunes and share the show with your writer friends and writing groups. It's a great way to support the show and it helps ensure that we can keep producing it for you every week. So until next week, remember the best way to improve your craft is by writing. That's what I'm off to go do and I hope you're off to do the same. Let's get some words on paper this week and we'll meet up again next week for another episode of the Inside Creative Writing Podcast. Thanks for listening to the Inside Creative Writing Podcast with your host, writer and educator, Bradread. We'll be back next week. [BLANK_AUDIO]