Let me clarify one thing. A classic is made by the way you think it should be written, so in that way I wouldn’t follow much past what I can believe in, which is myself and God because I’m writing the story, not some other person. But to clarify, your story can still stink.
Because I know that authors can get the big head pretty quick let me also clarify, there’s still plenty more to learn. Being at the top means there’s only one direction to go. By staying in the position of a learner rather than a teacher, you effectively make yourself bi-directional.
The following posts will be on the general mechanics of a potential classic. Once again, I cannot tell you “this is how you create a classic” because there’s no way to do that. I can tell you how I hope to do mine, but outside of that, it depends on how you write it.
Let’s start with plot.
“When my son, Nate was four, he wrote a novel. It was four pages, each page containing one sentence. Very Hemingway-esque.
Nate spelled the words phonetically. Here is the entire novel, sans the crayon illustrations. The spelling has been updated for modern readers: Robin Hood went riding. A bad guy came. They fought. He won.”
--James Scott Bell, Plot & Structure
I felt the best way to outline a novel’s plot was in the words of a four-year-old. In it’s most basic form is there anything more to it? Us writers with the Master’s Degree’s always seem to make the word Plot have to mean something so much more than that. Let me tell you, there’s more wisdom in the words of little kids with all their innocence than can be learned from a 60-year-old with all his exposure.
A plot is about your main character going on about his normal life, and then something happens. He wrestles against this change, this antagonist, and wins. Life-Change-Resolution.
It’s been said that the worst thing you can do is start out your book with a character getting up in the morning. I’d say do it. But only if the reason for the universe is sitting for no reason right next to his toothbrush, and now the entire universe is after your character. Plot is about introducing change and then resolving the change.
The twists come in mostly while resolving the change.
For example, Eragon was pretty popular when it came out. What happened in the story? It started with a chase just to get you interested (which was well-suggested by Paoulini’s mentor), and then it showed Eragon. He was minding his own business hunting for food for his family when wham…change came. The story is about how everyone is now dealing with that change. There are two (and hopefully a third) books explaining how a desperate throw from an elf changed the life of Eragon and the town that he lived in (it’s been awhile since I’ve read the book and all I can think of is Therinsford).
The only constant in life is change.
The change has to be dramatic though. Something like the reason for the universe plopping into someone’s lap. It can be something less dramatic, but you understand the point. It shouldn’t be a normal life hitch in the plans; it has to be something larger that shakes the foundations of your character enough for the tremors to knock your reader around.
Another thing I’ve heard from a few teachers is “identify the thing that is most dear to your character and then take it away from him.” He loves the house. Destroy it. His wife is the dearest thing to him. Kill her with cancer. Sound bad? Certainly. But what would the story be like? Can you take that and turn it where the reader also loves the house or the wife? Then when it falls and she dies the reader is right there screaming their lungs out. They may not be too happy with you at that moment, but they’ll remember the story.
Even while I suggest it though, I should also mention that it is not a pat tactic. For instance, in Christopher Pauolini’s Eldest the mysterious guy you want to like is now the bad guy at the end. I personally thought that was a stupid twist. The move is completely mainstream, completely commercial fiction. Understand that it is a good way to make your story stick with your reader, but don’t just use it blindly. It has to mean something more than “my editor suggested it.”
With this thing called plot, it can be complicated or not (and both can be good). The bottom line is still what was said before: Robin Hood went riding. A bad guy came. They fought. He won.
Plot can be very hard to think about for some. If it is for you just understand that plot is about presenting a problem to your characters normal life and then resolving the issue by the end of the book. It’s nothing bigger than that. The creativity is yours after that point.
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