PLOT OUTLINE OR SYNOPSIS; Which do you need?

 Plotlines and Synopses 

People often get muddled when referring to the plot outline or synopsis of their story. There is a huge difference between the two. Until you are ready to market your work, don’t attempt to write a synopsis, and refrain from calling any outline you write a synopsis, even in your own head. 

 A synopsis or proposal should not be written until after the work has been completed (at least in the first draft)  – it’s the overview that other people want to see, not something that you should work from. 

Meanwhile, as you create the work, you’ll need an outline of some kind (even if you are the most avid of ‘character-led’ writers). You can call this a plotline, plot outline, plot map, story outline...whatever you like, so long as you don’t call it a synopsis!

Try this Kitchen Table Exercise 

• 3Draw a representation of an ECG – the line your heartbeat takes electrically – on a sheet of paper. (You don’t have to be medically exact!). 
• This pattern is also an excellent plan of a good plot.
• Try to slot the plot of your story (short or long,) into the cardiogram.  
• There should be peaks or climaxes, where the action and drama rise to a point, and resting phases, which are absorbing to read but allow a rest between the action. 
• As we get to the middle of the story, the heart rate should increase, and the peaks shoot a little higher, reaching their highest point towards or at the end, just as your reader's heartbeat should increase as they 'get into' your story and begin to turn the pages faster.
• Take a look at what you've got. Did your plot go up and down?
• If you have to admit your story is in asystole, (a flat line), your story is as dead as the patient on the table. 
• If it seems to have fibrillation (too fast a heartbeat), you may have too much plot and not enough character development; your reader will want ‘resting phases’ as they read, which is why the pattern has peaks and troughs.
• NB: this is NOT your plot outline. It's an exercise to lead you into creating one.
• Now try Creating a Map of Your Story

 Creating a Map of Your Story

A plot is not just any map; it’s a treasure map. There are instructions for the reader at the beginning, danger (or at least tension) along the journey and a wealth of satisfaction at the end. There are more ways to map your plot than there are...well...plots! 

• Here is a list of just a few of these below:
• Fragmentary notes that jot down the ideas as they come to you. This might include:
• snatches of dialogue
• descriptive passages 
• character sketches 
  
• possible themes
• thoughts on how the story might work.
• A designated note book, with the title of the story on the front. At first, it will contain the fragmentary notes, but as these build up, you will include further techniques, such as those listed below.
• Diagrammatic forms might include:
• Webmaking; jotting previous ideas (including characters and their traits) all over a large sheet of paper, then seeing how they join up.
• Clustering; writing one phrase (or the title of the story) in the centre of a large sheet of paper, then using a ‘freewrite’ technique to create clusters of further thoughts. Each new thought comes out of a previous one, until it is exhausted. You then return to the first phrase and start again, so filling the paper. Afterwards, watch for the important clusters to jump out at you.
• Mindmaps, which spring out of brainstorming
• Character sketches, look for events, obstacles, opposition and conflicts to shape plot
• Lists that you might develop as the idea developes
• Timelines are useful, especially for longer stories or stories that use flashback a good deal. In this case, why not create a timeline of the plot and a timeline of the story (see the illustration above)
• Index cards, where your ideas can be shuffled around in front of you
• A pegboard or whiteboard technique, where you put things up, move things round and rub unwanted ideas out.

As you write, keep  asking:

• What is my character’s goal and how important is it to them?
• Who is my character’s opponent, and how much of a threat are they?
• What are my character’s obstacles, and how am I going to space them out in the novel, so that there can be peaks and lulls in the dramatic tension?
• Have I at least an idea about the final conflict, and how it may lead to a satisfying conclusion for my character?

Creating an Arc

However you start to gather ideas, most writers then want to pin these fragmentary thoughts to some sort of template or plotting device.  In his book Writing a Novel, Nigel Watts recommend the ‘eight point arc’, suggesting…every classic plot needs to pass through eight phases… Here are his eight points; 

• Stasis; the base reality, and the ‘status quo’ of the story. A ‘day like any other’ (although it might also contain conflict or opposition) 
• Trigger; an event, beyond the control of the protagonist, which turns the stasis from average to exceptional
• The Quest; not just about fantasy; the trigger will generate the quest which may take up
  the journey of the story
• Surprise; this is often an obstacle or conflict, but it could be pleasant; the heroine meeting the hero, for instance. A surprise definitely helps ‘middle slump’ 
• Critical Choice; a brick wall in the protagonist’s path means they have to make decisions. This is where causality is most necessary, otherwise the story can descent into chaotic coincidence.
• Climax; in literary theory, this is any great moment of intensity – the peak of a conflict situation. Watts give this example of the middle three phases…if the surprise is a burglar…the critical choice of the householder is self-defence, the climax is the burglar being hit over the head…
• Reversal; a story is better for having reversal, sometimes call the peripeteia in literary theory. Watts points out…if the climax does not result in reversal, a question is raised: is there a purpose to the climax other than as spectacle? Of course, you can have spectacle in your story, but it is plot event, rather than plot development. 
  
  
• Resolution; the completion of the plot, where a new status quo is established.

Aristotle and Freytag

It's probable that Watts developed his 8-point arc from the very first thinking on creating a structured plot. That may go as far back as Aristotle, who used the the term 'mythos' to denote plot and describing it as ‘the arrangement of incidents’. 

By studying Aristotle and the Greek playwrights, Gustav Freytag developed a plot pyramid in the 19th century, dividing story into five dramatic elements.

A Introduction
B Rise, or rising movement
C  Climax
D  Return or falling movement
E Catastrophe

The pyramid looks like this––   
                         

Gustav Freytag, from Die Gartenlaube (1886)

Be aware that a plot-based triangle  does not have to have the perfect symmetry suggested above. A crisis could arrive sooner, and often arrives further on in a story.

Almost all plotting structures and methods have evolved from Freytag’s Pyramid, but over time the original terms have slightly changed, especially our approach to the ending, ‘catastrophe’, refers mostly to a dramatic tragedy, and although you may certainly be writing one of those, it’s also possible you’re aiming for a happier end. 

Nowadays, you’re more likely to see:

A) Exposition, Stasis, or Ground State

B) Complication or Inciting Incident

C) Crisis 

D) Anticlimax or reversal

R Resolution or dénouement.

However, triangles beats, point-arcs etc, are not the only way to plot. Here's three  ideas that might suit your story better; 

1. Storyboarding. Film directors assemble a series of photographs or drawings on a storyboard, moving these pictures about, rejecting some and adding others until the relationships between them, and their relevance to the story, are clear. Writers can make storyboards in the same way. Use a large sheet of paper or new unlined notebook –use pin men if you’re not a natural artist.
2. Start with the characters It’s an excellent idea to plot through your characters, and you can do this as you write, but the problem will arise that you won’t quite know what will happen next, and you can trail down the wrong route for a long time without realizing – although some of these trails need to happen – they are a form of plotting in themselves. You might like to look at the alternative methods of creating plot maps above, to use alongside this method.
   
3. Fruitcake. Take a bowl, stir in a freewritten sentence– one that will grab you. Add handfuls of the ideas in your head – however feeble – while you continue to stir your freewrite. Pour in any of the list above of "Fragmentary notes". Feed in settings, themes, obstacles, problems, new characters, more problems and emotions. Keep writing. Add other problems. Open up to other possibilities. Keep stirring, and bake.

Finally, don't forget Cause and Effect 

Causality is a massive part of the plotting mechanism which will have a riveting effect on the plotting of your stories. Readers love to see the ‘story build up’, as events, thoughts, behaviour etc., set up in the early moments of the story, connect, build and develop the story. Causality is linked closely to the motivation and personality traits of the characters. As the plot unfolds causality results in a process of significant change which gives the reader regular emotional hits, until the conclusion is revealed. Using causality, a plot builds up from incidents that impact on one another. These incidents should not be a series of unrelated events. Causality will help you get a patterned, driven, tight plot that takes the reader on a journey via the motivation of the characters. Causality also helps you guard against implausibility; if the character’s motivation and conflicts are always directed by cause and effect, the writing will be far more believable. It is by combining causality with conflict that the strongest plot affects are gained. Conflict allows the ‘screws’ of cause and effect to tighten towards the end of the story. The reader knows all the complexities will be sorted, but they can’t for the life of them see how. A good ending will generally spring that sort of surprise; the ‘how’ of making a satisfactory and (if the author wants) happy ending, where the character has survived his ordeals, and learns and grows as a person. Using a learning/growing outcome often helps the plausibility of the story, and leads to a satisfying end, because the main character will have mostly sorted things out for himself and be responsible for most of the good outcomes. 

How is your plot going?

 Do let KitchenTableWriters know, by talking to us all through our comments page. Look forward to hearing from you!