Bomb-proof your plot!

Hi eyeryone!,  
Here are the notes from the workshop I gave yesterday at the Frome festival.  Thanks to everyone who came.  If you've got any questions about writing a tight plot - post it up on this website and I'll try and answer it!  Enjoy your writing.



Bomb-Proof Your Crime Plot!

Introduction:

Aims of this Workshop:

1. Understand 2 main approaches to writing crime – mystery and suspense.
2. Decide which kind of crime novel you're writing
3. Learn how to implement 4-Act Plot design to make your plot bomb-Proof!!!

Exercise: Share a brief summary of your synopsis if you have one.

What is a crime novel?

Crime fiction accounts for 20-25% of all fiction written in English and sold around the world. They make up almost half of the best-seller lists. Why?

Because crime fiction explores the dark side. Often good triumphs over evil. Sure, evil wins for a while – at the beginning someone is murdered, a child is kidnapped, a woman is threatened etc.

So, the balance of the universe is disturbed.

Your sleuth then plays a small part in restoring justice – and balance is restored.

Crime fiction is just modern day fairy tales – and fairy tales were always meant for an adult audience!

Part One - Genres within genres - Understand 2 main approaches to writing crime –

Is it Mystery and Suspense?

What's the difference?

1. Mystery – the end must come at the beginning. Your sleuth must solve the crime along with your reader. Hopefully, your villain is only unmasked right at the end. The plot relies on clues – both true and false. It needs an eye for detail. Example: 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle .
2. Suspense – fast-paced, an atmosphere of menace; your hero is in danger all the way through while they try to solve their immediate problems and outwit the villain. They might not understand the motive fully until the end of the book. Example: 'Losing You' by Nicci French.

The difference between them is crucial to the way you plot your novel.

Look over your story idea and decide whether it's mystery or suspense.

Exercise : Groups: You and a friend break into the local swimming pool late one night to go for an after-hours dip. While splashing around in the pool, you go into shock when a dead body floats to the top. Worse yet—it's someone you know.

If this story is a mystery – what happens next?

If this is suspense – what happens next?

Exercise: re-write your one-sentence story idea with inbuilt bomb-proofing...

a.) Try using this structure for suspense:

A [lonely] [wealthy invalid] narrowly escapes death at the hands of her murdering husband by [outwitting him], and changes her attitude to life afterwards.

b.) Try using this structure for mystery:

A [streetwise] [detective] uncovers a [murder] that nobody knew had happened, and falls in love with the murderer.

Part Two: Understand and Learn about 4-Act Plot design:

What is a plot?

Definition: Plot is the series of events in the story – chronological or not, which serve to move the story from its beginning through its climax or turning point and to a resolution of its conflicts.

Plot is also why a story happens (motivation in a crime novel) and why the protagonist learns or grows or begins something new or makes an unexpected choice.

In other words – Plot = Cause and Event...

Fast 4-Act Plot design:

Act One: Purpose – Setup - to bring your main character to her Moment of Meaning or MM

• Setup – in Act one your main job is foreshadowing. Don't overwrite or overcomplicate here. The setup includes
  • Mood or tone – Setting- A graveyard? Millionaire's mansion? Urban wasteland
  • Hook, Catalyst – Inciting Incident: (mysterious phone call, murder occurs...etc)
• First Plot Point = MM– this moment of meaning changes everything! Often it's just a discussion – a choice about a plan of action or a sudden realisation. Thelma and Louise decide to run away. A woman discovers the murder plot she's uncovered is a plan to murder her. A detective loses the man whose name she's trying to clear when he escapes from jail – and she wants to know why an innocent man would run.
• Tip: The First Plot Point makes us care about your hero and the outcome of your novel.

Exercise: Free-write for five minutes. Write down your setting, atmosphere, inciting incident and Moment of Meaning.

Act Two: Purpose – showing your hero's Response to the Moment of Meaning...

Responses could include:

• Running, hiding, analysing, observing, recalculating, planning, recruiting
• It's too early to attack the problem – it's about reaction through action (misguided if you're writing a mystery or a suspense) decision, indecision etc.
• Your hero (sleuth or victim) keeps failing in this part of the story. If she's too brilliant, heroic and keeps getting things right – you're in violation of the structural principles of storytelling!!!!

Exercise: Five minutes – focusing in on Cause and Effect: 1. Crystallise your hero's goals. Choose one from this list: Survival, finding love, getting away from love gone bad, acquiring wealth, attaining justice, stopping or catching the bad guys, preventing disaster, escaping danger, saving someone, saving the entire world... or anything else in the realm of human experience and nightmares. 2. List three possible, specific responses to your hero's Moment of Meaning... Think about how these responses might reflect your main character's main goal.

Midpoint Milestone: Something new comes along – new awareness, new information, and the story moves forward and shifts because of this...

Act Three: Purpose – Attack – your hero summons courage and applies creative thinking...

• Hero starts to conquer inner demons –
• Using new awareness, information gained at the Midpoint Milestone, hero becomes proactive.
• In mystery it's wronginformation
• Second Plot Point – the final injection of new information into the story

Act Four: Purpose – Resolution – all is resolved and order is restored.

• No new information can enter the story at this point
• Your hero makes a heroic choice (usually based on self-sacrifice)
• Your hero defeats the villain..
• You wrap up loose ends.

Exercise: All you need to do to bomb-proof your plot is make sure these nine scenes promote a ripple of cause and effect:

The Nine Main Scenes:

Act One:

1. Opening scene – think about atmosphere, tone & foreshadowing
2. Hook – moment of visceral, emotionally resonant intensity – how would this be different in a mystery compared to a suspense novel?
3. Setup to your inciting incident – otherwise known as back-story
4. First Plot Point or Moment of Meaning - a choice about a plan of action or a sudden realisation.

Act Two:

5. First Pinch – the antagonist or villain shows his card – a moment of ominous menace or complex puzzlement depending on whether you're writing suspense or mystery.
6. Mid-point Milestone – here the context shifts – what new discovery, information or awareness changes everything for your hero?

Act Three:

7. Second Pinch – the villain nearly wins again – does your detective get beaten up? Does your woman-in-jeopardy escape in a taxi only to find that the driver is her stalker?
8. Second Plot Point – final injection of new information

Act Four:

9. Final Resolution – pick the main or central scene to make notes on first.

Plot Point	Scene Notes: Setting, character/s, events
Opening scene
Hook
Setup
First Plot Point or Moment of Meaning
First Pinch
Mid-point Milestone
Second Pinch
Second Plot Point
Final Resolution

Conclusion:

Plot is just as important as character in a crime novel.

Now you know:

• the difference between mystery and suspense.
• how to approach writing crime based on whether your work is mystery or suspense
• the main 4-Act plot outline model and how to use it.

Keep on writing!!!

The Wolf in Your Bed by Jill Harris:

Interested in therapeutic writing? Have a look at this book and see how writing can heal the heart:

www.wolfinyourbed.com

Calls for submission:

I'm looking to publish supernatural stories – with a crime element. Please send synopsis and first chapter to my email:

jillharris1961@gmail.com

Have a look through the synopsis of the plots for 'Losing You' and 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'.

Can you highlight the nine main plot points?

If they are not all in the synopsis – make up your own!

Playing with the ideas of a tight plot will help you develop this skill – an important one when it comes to writing a great story – crime or not.

Example One: Suspense plot: 'Losing You' by Nicci French

The story is set on tiny Sandling Island which is joined by a tidal causeway, somewhere off the coast of East Anglia. In French's description, it comes across as the perfect setting for a thriller: bleak and remote. The tale describes the events of roughly eight hours in the life of Nina Landry, mother to daughter Charlotte (or Charlie as she is affectionately called), and son Jackson, ex-wife to the volatile Rory, new girlfriend to Christian and "The Food Person" to Sludge the deranged Labrador.

As if turning forty and having a surprise birthday forced upon her before the clock has even struck noon are not bad enough, Nina's day is about to get a lot worse. She hasn't finished packing for the family holiday to Florida where she and the children will spend Christmas with Christian, and Charlie seems to have disappeared.

The usual mothers' recce of friends, friends' parents and neighbours leaves Nina coming up blank and as time ticks past, Nina realises that Charlie could not - would not - have simply run away. They were going on holiday. Charlie was looking forward to it. With mounting alarm, Nina races from one part of the island to the next searching for Charlie and re-tracing her steps in a desperate bid to find her.

Increasingly frustrated at her own lack of success, she eventually calls the police, quickly grasping that the police are more interested in convincing Nina that this is normal teenage behaviour. Nina begins to appreciate for the first time in her life that she does not know her daughter as well as she had assumed she did. A cold, dark fear seeps into Nina's bones and she knows that she must find her daughter, with or without the help of the police, before it is too late.

As day turns to night on the island and a series of half-buried secrets lead Nina Landry from sickening suspicion to deadly certainty, the question becomes less whether she and her daughter will leave the island for Christmas and more whether they will ever leave it again.

Exmple two: Mystery plot: 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' by Conan Doyle.

Opens with a mini mystery—Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson speculate on the identity of the owner of a cane that has been left in their office by an unknown visitor. Wowing Watson with his fabulous powers of observation, Holmes predicts the appearance of James Mortimer, owner of the found object and a convenient entrée into the baffling curse of the Baskervilles.

Entering the office and unveiling an 18th century manuscript, Mortimer recounts the myth of the lecherous Hugo Baskerville. Hugo captured and imprisoned a young country lass at his estate in Devonshire, only to fall victim to a marauding hound of hell as he pursued her along the lonesome moors late one night. Ever since, Mortimer reports, the Baskerville line has been plagued by a mysterious and supernatural black hound. The recent death of Sir Charles Baskerville has rekindled suspicions and fears. The next of kin, the duo finds out, has arrived in London to take up his post at Baskerville Hall, but he has already been intimidated by an anonymous note of warning and, strangely enough, the theft of a shoe.

Agreeing to take the case, Holmes and Watson quickly discover that Sir Henry Baskerville is being trailed in London by a mysterious bearded stranger, and they speculate as to whether the ghost be friend or foe. Holmes, however, announces that he is too busy in London to accompany Mortimer and Sir Henry to Devonshire to get to the bottom of the case, and he sends Dr. Watson to be his eyes and ears, insisting that he report back regularly.

Once in Devonshire, Watson discovers a state of emergency, with armed guards on the watch for an escaped convict roaming the moors. He meets potential suspects in Mr. Barrymore and Mrs. Barrymore, the domestic help, and Mr. Jack Stapleton and his sister Beryl, Baskerville neighbors.

A series of mysteries arrive in rapid succession: Barrymore is caught skulking around the mansion at night; Watson spies a lonely figure keeping watch over the moors; and the doctor hears what sounds like a dog's howling. Beryl Stapleton provides an enigmatic warning and Watson learns of a secret encounter between Sir Charles and a local woman named Laura Lyons on the night of his death.

Doing his best to unravel these threads of the mystery, Watson discovers that Barrymore's nightly jaunts are just his attempt to aid the escaped con, who turns out to be Mrs. Barrymore's brother. The doctor interviews Laura Lyons to assess her involvement, and discovers that the lonely figure surveying the moors is none other than Sherlock Holmes himself. It takes Holmes—hidden so as not to tip off the villain as to his involvement—to piece together the mystery.Mr. Stapleton, Holmes has discovered, is actually in line to inherit the Baskerville fortune, and as such is the prime suspect. Laura Lyons was only a pawn in Stapleton's game, a Baskerville beneficiary whom Stapleton convinced to request and then miss a late night appointment with Sir Charles. Having lured Charles onto the moors, Stapleton released his ferocious pet pooch, which frightened the superstitious nobleman and caused a heart attack.

In a dramatic final scene, Holmes and Watson use the younger Baskerville as bait to catch Stapleton red-handed. After a late supper at the Stapletons', Sir Henry heads home across the moors, only to be waylaid by the enormous Stapleton pet. Despite a dense fog, Holmes and Watson are able to subdue the beast, and Stapleton, in his panicked flight from the scene, drowns in a marshland on the moors. Beryl Stapleton, who turns out to be Jack's harried wife and not his sister, is discovered tied up in his house, having refused to participate in his dastardly scheme.

Back in London, Holmes ties up the loose ends, announcing that the stolen shoe was used to give the hound Henry's scent, and that mysterious warning note came from Beryl Stapleton, whose philandering husband had denied their marriage so as to seduce and use Laura Lyons. Watson files the case closed.

'F is for Fugitive' by Sue Grafton

The sixth novel in the series sends Kinsey to Floral Beach, California, while back at home, Henry Pitts is having her garage apartment rebuilt after it was destroyed at the end of E is for Evidence. She has been hired by Royce Fowler, who wants her to delve into the past to exonerate his son of the murder of Jean Timberlake, seventeen years before. Bailey, who had been a teen tearaway, pleaded guilty to killing Jean, his sometime girlfriend, but escaped from prison soon afterwards. He's apparently been living the life of a model citizen under an assumed name but has just been recaptured and is claiming his innocence. Kinsey heads to Floral Beach, a tiny local community, to pursue the cold trail, and stays with the Fowler family at their motel. Royce is dying of cancer, his wife Oribelle is a diabetic and their daughter, Ann, Bailey's senior by 5 years, has taken leave of absence from her job as a counsellor at the local high school to provide care.

Bailey's lawyer, Jack Clemson, fills her in on the details of the case: Jean, 17 when she died, was a 'problem' child who was doing badly at school and engaged in numerous sexual encounters with the local boys at school - and, as it turns out, some of the local men too. She was pregnant at the time of her death. Everyone knows everyone in Floral Beach and Kinsey acquaints herself with a number of the locals in pursuit of the truth: Pearl, the local bar-owner, whose son's evidence put Bailey on the spot at the time of Jean's death, Tap Granger, who was Bailey's accomplice in several robberies before the murder, the unattractive local pastor Reverend Haws and his wife, and the local doctor Dr Dunne, whose wife Elva turns out to have a violent objection to being questioned. The High School Principal, Dwight Shales, who was in post at the time of the murder, offers some help, but Jean's single mother, Shana, whose friendship with Dwight is causing raised eyebrows around Floral Beach, and who is struggling with longstanding alcohol problems, is less co-operative, and refuses to identify Jean's father. Nobody seems convinced that the killer could be anyone but Bailey.

At Bailey's arraignment, Tap Granger stages a hold-up, allowing Bailey to escape once more, and is himself killed in the process. Kinsey gets confirmation from Tap's widow that Tap was paid to do it - for the first time providing concrete evidence that someone wants to keep Bailey discredited. Kinsey's room at the motel is broken into, and she receives threatening calls in the middle of the night as she pursues the case. Ori is murdered when her insulin, administered regularly by Ann, is tampered with.

Kinsey eventually establishes that Dr Dunne is Jean's unknown father, but Shana is murdered when she sets out to keep a rendezvous with him. Kinsey ends up running from the cops herself after she finds the body, and seeks refuge with Dwight Shales, who finally confesses that he was also having an affair with Jean, and was probably the father of her child. Kinsey wonders whether Dwight could be the link between the two, having realised that Ann Fowler seems jealous of anyone who comes into contact with Dwight.

She searches Ann's room, and finds evidence that Ann supplied Tap with the hold-up gun and made the anonymous phone calls. Unfortunately, she also finds Ann waiting for her, armed with a shotgun. Jean had confided in her, as school counsellor, that Dwight was the father of the child. Motivated by jealousy, Ann killed her, and being equally jealous of her brother's position as favoured child of their parents, Ann was happy to see him take the rap. Her plan is to use the money she'll eventually inherit from her parents to tempt Dwight, to whom she has been fanatically devoted for years, into marriage. She killed her mother to hasten the plan along, and Shana because she was jealous of her friedship with Dwight. Before Ann can kill Kinsey, she is accidentally interrupted by Royce, who wrestles the gun away from Ann, shooting her in the foot accidentally in the process.

Ann is arrested for the murders of Shana and Ori, and although there's insufficient evidence to prove her the killer of Jean as well, the circumstances are sufficient to ensure that Bailey is cleared.

Example Two: Suspense plot:

The Big Sleep begins with Philip Marlowe's taking an assignment to quash a blackmail attempt against Carmen Sternwood, the wild daughter of oil millionaire General Guy Sternwood. While they are talking, Marlowe learns that Rusty Regan--the ex-bootlegger husband of Sternwood's other daughter, Vivian--has been missing for a month, but the General stops short of asking Marlowe to find him.

Marlowe begins investigating the blackmailer, Arthur Gwynn Geiger, and discovers that he is running a pornography racket on Hollywood Boulevard. He tails Geiger to his house, breaks inside, and finds Geiger shot dead and Carmen Sternwood naked and drugged. He takes Carmen home to the Sternwood mansion, then returns to the scene of the crime and discovers that Geiger's body has vanished.

The next morning Marlowe learns three things: the Sternwoods' chauffeur (who once tried to elope with Carmen) was murdered during the night; crates of pornographic books are being removed from Geiger's store and taken to the apartment of a man named Joe Brody; and, Carmen Sternwood has received a third blackmail threat, this time involving nude photographs taken at Geiger's house the night before.

Marlowe goes back to Geiger's house and finds Carmen there, looking for the negatives of the nude photos. They are about to leave when Eddie Mars, a gangster and gambling-club operator whose wife is suspected to have run away with Rusty Regan, arrives and questions them at gunpoint about Geiger's murder.

Marlowe manages to talk himself out of the situation, then goes to confront Brody, who admits trying to move in on the pornography business but denies murdering Geiger. They are interrupted when Carmen Sternwood arrives with a gun and tries to get her photos back. Marlowe disarms her and sends her away, but another intruder barges in: Carol Lundgren, Geiger's gay lover, who kills Brody to revenge Geiger's death. Marlowe captures Lundgren and turns him over to the police. They lean on Marlowe for not reporting Geiger's murder sooner, and he agrees to a cover-up in which none of the murders are connected to the Sternwood family.

Marlowe's job--quashing the blackmail--is technically over, but he decides to continue investigating on his own to learn more about Rusty Regan's disappearance. He goes to talk to Eddie Mars at the Cypress Club and finds Vivian Regan gambling at one of the roulette wheels. She wins big and leaves the club. Marlowe follows and saves her from a stick-up attempt. She makes a pass at him on the drive home, but he turns her down. When he gets back to his apartment, he finds Carmen Sternwood waiting naked in his bed. He rejects her as well.

The next day Marlowe is tipped off to the whereabouts of Mona Mars, the woman who supposedly ran away with Regan.

He follows the lead to a hot car drop in Rialto and is ambushed by Lash Canino, Eddie Mars's hired gun.

Mona helps Marlowe escape, and he kills Canino in a gunfight.

After again settling with the police and district attorney, Marlowe is summoned to the Sternwood mansion, where the General officially asks him to find Rusty Regan.

As Marlowe is leaving, Carmen encourages him to take her to an abandoned oil field and teach her how to fire a pistol. He does so.

Carmen has an epileptic fit and tries to shoot him, failing only because Marlowe had the foresight to load the gun with blanks.

He returns to the Sternwood mansion and confronts Vivian, who admits that Carmen killed Regan because he, like Marlowe, refused her advances.

Vivian and Eddie Mars covered up the killing by hiding Regan's body in an old oil sump and faking his disappearance.

This is a great book.  It's about the craft of writing - all the skills you need to be a novelist.  Combine this with the eye of an artist and the creative soul of a human being - and you never need worry about writer's block again!