Seven Basic Plots

From another writing course the idea that there are just seven basic writing plots.

(Originally Christopher Booker – 2004 Bookfinder )

I am not clear how valuable it is knowing that there are seven basic plots. I imagine that you are trying to write something unique and new.

If you see “Award Winning Writer” in your future I cannot imagine you getting there by following a pre-prescribed route.

However it might be useful to see what has gone before – here are the seven basic plots.

Overcoming the Monster (e.g. The Hobbit, Cloverfield, Dracula, Harry Potter)

1. Anticipation and call
2. Dream stage – thinks overcoming will be easy
3. Frustration – face to face with monster
4. Nightmare stage – final ordeal
5. The thrilling escape from death and death on monster

Rags to Riches (e.g. Jane Eyre, Great Expectations)

1. Initial wretchedness at home and call
2. get out into world – initial success
3. The central crisis
4. Independence and the final ordeal
5. Final union, completion and fulfilment

The Quest (e.g. Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit)

1. The call
2. The journey (archetypal figures)
3. Arrival and frustration
4. Final ordeal and last battle
5. The goal, treasure, prince/ess

Voyage and return (e.g. Sinbad, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, James and the Giant Peach)

1. The fall into another world (ie. Alice in Wonderland)
2. Initial fascination – dream stage
3. Frustration stage – dark shadow figure
4. Nightmare stage – its dominating looks like dark force will win
5. Thrilling escape and return to normal world

Comedy (e.g. Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, Witches Abroad)

1. Shadow of uncertainty and confusion
2. Confusion get worse – disguise men/women
3. Confusion gets resolved and lives happily ever after

Tragedy (e.g. The Martian Chronicles)

1. Anticipation stage
2. Dream stage
3. Frustration
4. Nightmare
5. Destruction

Rebirth (e.g. Jonathan Livingston Seagull)

1. Hero is cursed by dark power
2. Dream stage – talk of a curse
3. Curse takes hold and imprisons the hero
4. Nightmare stage – no way out, no hope until hero turns up and relies someone else to save the day
5. Miraculous redemption

Free Writing

A technique which appears to come up rather often. Variously termed free writing, timed exercises, stream of consciousness writing and so on.

Some people practice this as a distinct form of writing, which I had not considered as an option for example:

https://ashortconversation.com/about/

Both writing and counselling use this technique. (It is likely it is used elsewhere as it is so useful).

When used as part of counselling automatic writing is about whatever comes to mind. The idea being that this may access thoughts which are otherwise hidden.

It may also be used as part of a mindfulness practice. Writing tends to slow the thoughts and enable a person to observe their own thinking. This practice may make it easier to manage that thinking going forwards.

Expressive writing involves an allotment of time (say 20 minutes). In this time a person writes down their thoughts about a challenging aspect of their life. The writing should fully explore how they have been affected by it. The idea being that it helps the person to deal with the situation.

Evidence suggests it is effective for example in conditions like anxiety.

It is also used for assisting clients to deal with difficult situations from their past.

From the perspective of the author this is a time set aside for writing practice without preconceptions or plan. It is designed to assist in bringing out ideas. It can be used to try to help a writer become unstuck.

The very act of getting words on paper can bring out solutions to problems that you have been wrestling with.

There may be as many ways of attempting this as there articles about it.

I have this approach from one of the writing courses that I attended. It is as effective as any other method:

Decide in advance how long you would like to give the exercise and set a timer (smartphones do this very well).

Ten minutes, twenty minutes up to an hour are usual amounts of time. This is dependent upon how long you believe you can sustain the activity. (It might be easier to start with shorter amounts of time and build up as you get familiar with the process).

Once you have allocated the time, you have to write for the whole time. The main rule is that you do not stop, get up or in any other way interrupt the practice once you have started.

Observe certain rules to get the most out of the exercise.

There is no pausing once you begin. No reading what is already written. No stalling or gazing out of the window.
There is no editing during the process. No crossing out, punctuating, substituting words or similar.
Even if something is obviously wrong do not remove it. This includes things you did not expect/intend to write, poor spelling, punctuation or grammar. The writing can be as scrappy as you like including failing to respect ruled lines or margins.
Pretend you have no control over what you are writing – this may help you be more creative.
There should be no time for thinking – disengage brain and write.
If the writing turns out to be scary too self-exposing (or in any other way taking risks you’re unhappy with) go with it anyway. The idea is to use this energy.

The aim is to get to your truest writing self. This is where you no longer censor yourself but write what you are truly feeling and thinking.

Here are some of the exercises I completed on my course. I never worked out the characters any further than this so I doubt they will appear anywhere else:

Exercise

And I have found that the majority of people that I meet have skills which I have no experience of. I have no idea how they learned or why I didn’t.

I do not see that things that a person wears. I do not remember the look in their eyes, detect the tone in their voice. I do not remember that yesterday their hair was grey and today it is boot black.

The truth is that I do not detect the importance of these things. I am not clear that the investment of effort and of time yields the results that others, gleaming eyes, inform me of.

I believe that it causes a great darkness of gossip and inward looking. I am not clear that the knitting psychological effects do not offset this. I cannot be clear unless I develop the skill.

But this part of the brain is missing. I think now only of events of changes and of developments. Identifying things, items and moments has always been far easier more diverting. I have to relate that I find it impossible now to invest any energy in the skills that I do not have.

I am a parody of a person. Now an actor in which the outer shell is a charming soul who listens, perceives, comments and applauds. Internally I am mechanical. A whirring set of gears designated to achieve only the outcomes which I have selected important. A manipulator content for others to smile whilst I manoeuvre into a position that takes me where I wish to go.

And yet oiled and tuned as the machine has become I remain thwarted unsuccessful limited. I reflect upon those skills and wonder if the outer signs are not subtly detected. The dark inner facets of my soul displayed to those I seek to charm.

Exercise 2

Awareness, working and silence. Dark with the dull red gleam of the alarm clock humming oldly beside the bed. Then again a twitch and the bed shudders like the dying spasms of a large fat animal.

Damn 2:15am again. Pain across the eyes. The struggle upright and look at the ground. Vacant greyness as the cogs start to whirr. Carpet focusing and defocusing until finally he accepts – awake again.

Shuffling silent descending and mumbling through the early rituals 2 ½ hours early

No steadiness, no rest, no silence. At last angry at accumulated sleeplessness. He sits TV sound off and allows a vacancy to permeate his brain. Waiting for the drum drum announcement of heating water which informs him at last that day can officially begin. The routine scramble for leaving can finally take over.

The greyness now seems inside as well as out. Each action harder, each thought more tenuous. Minor accidents now creating great depths of anger disproportionate to their effect.

The heavy needles of warm water serve only to remind of sleep opportunity lost and long day to come.

Regret no less than annoyance – why no sleep again.

The journey is too difficult too trying. Each vehicle a personal slight on him. Too slow; too fast; too hesitant. An excuse for overheated annoyance to swelling bombasity.

Watch that. Quell it. Have control. Slip quietly back. Slow. Watch yourself. Quietly does it

The heavy mist lays down around the park. Silent trudging marks the finals stages of the journey. Miserable damp sticky. A wait for the self-important guard to release the security door. At last he reaches the place of all his concerns. Wheezing the final steps till he makes an arrival.

Exercise 3

Your careers teacher tells appalling lies. “There is nothing that you cannot do”; “Aim High”; “The World is your oyster”.

Pretty soon you determine that you can’t depend on your careers teacher unless you already know what to do.

You turn up and stare blankly at one another. Until, in desperation, you come up with a random idea. Which he/she sets to with relish as if it were part of some life plan for you.

Of course you may follow this through in the absence of any better idea. But beware if you hadn’t an idea beforehand. Following someone else’s idea is even worse.

Your parents will become amateur careers advisors the moment that they recognise the fix that you are in.

Be wary.

This is lies too.

Formed from good intentions no doubt. But of absolutely no use to you. “You need a trade” “it doesn’t matter what you do just do it well” “we’re proud of you whatever”.

This is not helpful.

Lastly do not pay attention to any of your friends. “Working in this job is easy”. “Why don’t you try what I do I hardly ever put in a full day’s work”. “I started in April and already they’ve given me a pay rise”.

Utter tosh.

You will find the truth yourself. Many aspects of that truth will cause you to resent those lies. It will cause you to doubt advice from that point onwards.

You are correct to question that advice. Indeed any advice. For what other person has any idea of how you think, believe, react.

http://skepdic.com/autowrite.html

https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/expressive_writing

https://www.mindful.org/a-writing-practice-for-those-who-like-to-keep-doing/

http://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/counsellor-articles/writing-as-therapy-a-silence-that-speaks-louder-than-words

https://psychcentral.com/blog/the-power-of-writing-3-types-of-therapeutic-writing/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sideways-view/201308/writing-therapy

The Scene

Yet more advice from a writing course this time on the scene.

The scene is a self-contained unit of story. You can write the scene by:

Setting
Character
Action

You can consider the book as if it were a film.

Short scenes keep people’s attention. This enables the quick switching of narrative between characters.

There is a single viewpoint for each scene – that character’s point of view. It is filtered through the thoughts and emotions of that character.

Do not switch between viewpoints in a scene – it is always through one character’s eyes.

Classically a scene has only one setting. However it can contain several settings or even a moving setting (in a plane, on-board ship and so on)

The beginning of a scene is a critical moment which you should use to capture the reader’s interest.

One technique is to begin the scene as if in the middle of something (in media res).
This could be the middle of some action (a fight?), some dialogue (an argument?) or anything which can hook the reader.

Chunks of description are a riskier way of starting a scene as it can risk boring the reader unless done well.

Description should be broken up for a more successful beginning. This could for example make use of dialogue between short pieces of description.

The aim is to grab the reader’s attention as soon as you can.

Where the scene is dark add moments of light relief.

The ending of every scene is as important as the beginning. Ideally the scene should end in such a way that the reader wants to read more.

There are different techniques to achieve this. The main character of that scene can fail attempting a goal. There could be a reversal for that character. The character may have to end one course of action and consider another.

However you choose to end the scene the reader needs to be left wondering what happens next and wanting to read on.

One method of achieving this is to hint at what is to come for example plans to achieve an outstanding goal.

The book then becomes like a series of short stories each of them linked together.

Setting the Header Image

Images are widely available on the Internet. But most of them will be copyright which precludes the use of them by a cheapskate blogger.

When I started with my blog I found a range of cartoons that I liked and enquired about the use of them. I found that the use of a cartoon on the page would cost $25.

In itself this was not a huge fee. However I had at the time huge aspirations involving creating a great deal of content. Every one of those pages I would have liked to decorate with cartoon imagery. Had this vision come to pass by now the bill would extend into many hundreds of $.

This leaves choices ranging from royalty free images to photographs supplied by friends and family.

Of course if you are artistic (I am not) you could draw your own images. That’s assuming drawing does not detract from the blogging activity of course.

When I first selected 2016 as my blog theme I noticed that across the top of the main page was a header image. To me this was the picture that every visitor would see.

This means the image has to be appealing.

I spent rather too long browsing through old photographs to find an image that I liked.

(Mostly because I am to photography what a mouse is to weight training).

After some false starts I decided to use this image:

If it wasn’t on a Procrastination pen related theme I reasoned that it appeared studious.

It is an image from inside the Porto bookstore https://www.livrarialello.pt/en/. This is reputedly the most beautiful bookstore in the world. (Worth a visit if you can stand the crowds).

As it has been more than a year I thought that I would now take a look at changing this image for something else.

I contacted a lady called Elaine Ku from a site called http://owl-ink.com/. She had some great pen-related images, notably this one:

She helpfully said I could use the image as long as I credited her for doing so. Oh and her site is worth a visit by the way.

How you change the header:

To change the header you need to be in the “My Site” part of the blog in WordPress:

Under “Personalize” click the button “Customize” next to “Themes”.

This gives the following options:

Select “Header Image”

I decided that the header for Procrastination would look better rotated. So that the pens appeared horizontal not vertical:

Photo-Aug-28-5-09-22-PM-rotated — Image courtesy of Elaine Ku at http://owl-ink.com/

Under “Current Header” select “Add New Image”:

Choose something from the Media Library or choose “Upload Files”.

Elaine’s image is on my computer so I uploaded it from there:

Add relevant caption information (thanking Elaine in this case). Then click on “Select and Crop”.

Select the area of the image you want to use and you will then have a preview of what the new image will look like:

Now that I have more than one header I have the option to select “Randomize uploaded Headers”.
This means that visitors will see one of the 2 headers I have uploaded so far. I have plans to try this with more images when I can find any suitable.

Photo by kinkate from Pexels https://www.pexels.com/photo/brown-makeup-brushes-211342/