Writer’s tips: Plot

NOTE: It’s a good idea to read the starting points post before this one.

People spend decades writing books and screenplays sometimes. This project is just a couple of days. So there’s a real need to figure out the plot and how everything will work together quickly. There are a lot of options available.

Simple plot explanation

A plot will need to have a beginning, middle, and an end. During the first GNW, I created a example in comic form:

The basic ideal being that in the beginning we figure out who the character is, and how they get into a problem. Then we have them face difficulty of some sort. Finally, we find a way for them to triumph (or in the case of tragedies, fail).

This may seem incredible straightforward, but it’s essential to determine the beginning, middle, and end, so that everyone knows what they are working towards. This doesn’t need to be done at the beginning, it could be figured out on the way, but readers expect this structure.

“Save the Cat”

Blake Snyder’s book, “Save the Cat” is a classic review of structure in Hollywood screenplays. It gives a quantitative structure of what needs to happen and where – minute by minute – in a film. It’s hard to use this as a one-to-one resource in a 48 hour graphic novel, as you will not know at the beginning how many pages you have to tell the story, but so far as giving a clear outline where you just need to slot in moments, it might be a good resource to review.

There are also a number of resources online to map out “standard” structures for various genres (mystery, romance, thriller, etc.)

Some people feel that following this sort of pre-fabricated structure makes films and books a bit too formulaic, and that might be true (I absolutely believe it’s true, but what do I know?). All the same, this will make the story familiar, and act as a guide for you in this process, and you might find that useful given the short timeframe available.

Story board

It might be useful for the writers to layout the story on a story board, either visually (possibly using the thumbnail drawings recommended) or with text post-it notes. This gives the ability to move concepts around, and see how everything fits.

This is also helpful to the artists – one of the biggest things we heard from artists in the first graphic novel weekend was that they wanted to know where they fit into the story. So having a large story outline where they can picture a little drawing of themselves and the words “you are here” will be very appreciated.

Let your freak flag fly!

The artists are likely to want to draw weird things. Few artists come to a comic book related project expecting to draw two people sitting at a table hashing out an argument. So, even if the writing team finds a story they want to tell that’s relatively straightforward and grounded, it would be a good idea to find a way to make sure that the artists can draw some more bizarre things. Structuring the plot around dream sequences, museums, film shoots, etc. can add that sort of spice into an otherwise straight ahead story.