Ask An Author: “How can you be sure that your plot is actually compelling, and not just a pile of stuff that happens?”

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Each week, a new author will serve as your Camp Counselor, answering your writing questions. Marivi Soliven, our second counselor, has taught writing workshops at the University of California, San Diego and at the University of the Philippines. Her most recent novel, The Mango Bride, is about two Filipina women, and the unexpected collision that reveals a life changing secret:

How can you be sure that your plot is actually compelling, and not just a pile of stuff that happens? — The Freelancer Society

Novelist Drusilla Campbell answers this question by comparing a novel and its parts to weaving cloth on a loom. Imagine your plot is a red weft—the thread that runs crosswise through that cloth. The events are all the vertical threads, called the warp, that your weft runs across. A compelling plot is a weft that intersects all the warps from one end of that cloth to the other: from the inciting incident that gets your novel on its way, to the many detours and adventures your protagonists take, all the way to the very last scene.  

If you build your plot correctly so that characters are reacting to events, even surprising scenes become logical.

At the end of the novel, you should be able to tug on that red thread and see each of the preceding scenes “pull” along with it. If that happens, chances are you’ve composed a compelling plot. If you pull and nothing happens, you’ll probably need to tighten or delete the irrelevant scenes. 

Additionally, I like to construct an “internal logic” which defines the way your imagined world functions. Your characters move according to the  rules you create so that their actions become logical or plausible to someone reading your story. When your story’s internal logic is strong, it enables readers to suspend their belief and go along for the ride, because what happens makes sense. Thus Bram Stoker’s vampire perishes in the sunlight, because that’s how his novel’s internal logic works. On the other hand, according to Stephanie Meyer’s internal logic, it makes it possible for her Twilight vampires to survive in the watery sunlight of the Pacific Northwest.

Next week’s Camp Counselor will be Patricia C. Wrede, author of fantasy novels such as the The Enchanted Forest Chronicles.

Ask her your questions here!

Apr. 11 2014
#nanowrimo #writing #amwriting #camp nanowrimo #by nano guest #marivi soliven
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    Internal logic. The thing missing in some mutant stories not within Marvel’s grasp like Heros
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