The Game’s Afoot

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit; and upon this charge,
Cry ‘God for Harry! England! and Saint George!’

Henry V (William Shakespeare)

The game is afoot. Now for our little problem.  (Sherlock Holmes)

So, this is a post about plotting. About those twists and turns that take us through a story to its resolution. I’ll get to that in a moment. First, let me digress a moment (there really is an arc to this story).

Friends who have been working through fertility treatments for several years are finally crossing-our-fingers successful. Their journey reminds me so much of me (mumbled) years ago when we found ourselves popping vitamins, changing our dietary regimen, monitoring basal temperatures and doing all the things only to watch others reproduce seemingly just by looking at each other.

The First Lesson: The Unexpected

Frustrated and wounded, after a lot of soul searching, we went with an open adoption program intended for couples with fertility issues. We took parenting classes and had our backgrounds checked. We read all the books, did all the counseling, and talked finances. We completed a statement of philosophy so expectant mothers could review us. Suddenly, after all that “nesting,” I was pregnant.

There’s a lesson in that.

We were convinced something would go wrong. We told only a few family members until I was five months along and it clearly wasn’t a beer belly (kidding, not kidding). We were both consummate planners. Every time we moved to a new home, my husband would leave people standing around holding a couch or mattress while he reconfigured the packed moving truck “just so.” It worked, but we weren’t laughing under 100-pounds of appliances while he demanded the rearrangement of six boxes, an entertainment stand, and the dining room table. We laughed later.

The Second Lesson: Things Fall Apart

And so, we planned pregnancy. From birthing classes to interviewing pediatricians to selecting a birthing center and making critical decisions about cribs and bassinets, cloth vs. disposable diapers (cloth … that didn’t last long), and reading all the books and magazines. We had a plan, right up until it all fell apart. The baby didn’t arrive on time: three weeks late despite interventions, when I was supposed to be halfway through my six weeks of maternity leave (and right when the rotation of new interns hit the OB floor. Talk about an “experience.”). In the sixteenth hour of labor when my son decided to do a 180 and wrap the cord around his neck, again came a twist in the plan. Instead of a relaxing tub and soft lights, it was hello spinal in a surgical suite, and a man with a machete that split me from navel to pubis in one swift whack. (I may be exaggerating a little, but boy I envy all those folks with a bikini cut).

The baby had lost at least a pound in that breakdown of the placenta that comes with being in the oven too long. I spent extra days in the hospital with an infection in the incision and once home couldn’t lift anything heavier than my 7-ish pound baby. We had to give him a high fat diet and try to ramp up feedings to fatten him up, which basically left mom chained to the couch with a breast pump. None of this fit the plan we had. And in the end, between juggling my allowed time for leave and reduced hours, when I was ordered back to work “or else,” (never defined) I gave two weeks’ notice and gave up the better health insurance.

There’s a lesson in that.

The Third Lesson: One Door Slams Shut. Another…

We had big plans for our family life. We made an offer on a farm. It was in rough shape. I took Master Gardener classes and went to Organic University. We planned to stock the ponds with fish, mapped where we’d plant vegetables and house the animals we would raise, how our son would grow up loving the earth and understanding where food came from. We would try for another child. We had workmen lined up to do remodeling before we moved in. My husband and his brother used to go for a drive on Sunday mornings with our then toddler and sit at the end of the driveway, drinking their coffee and making plans. Our house had never been so clean in the almost 10 years we’d lived there with an open house and for sale sign on the front lawn. Just weeks from the closing a head-on crash took my husband’s life. We didn’t plan for that.

There’s a lesson in that.

The Plot Thickens

This has been a really long route to talking about plot. (Yes, I remember that’s the subject of this post.) In Western literature, there really isn’t a story without a story, right? We want a story arc that describes a character in a situation working to achieve some goal until they reach a critical point, and then at last some form of resolution and closure. Story structures vary culturally and historically, but we often expect in Western literature to see that standard story arc. Lacking that, we often call it a vignette, a slice of life that’s incomplete. When not part of a larger story, it’s merely a picture of something, but what does it mean? What growth did the characters experience? How did they maneuver through the situation? Shrug. It’s a slice of life. Or as one editor remarked on a vignette story I submitted, “so what?”

So, we plot a route for our characters to take to some conclusion. But if the plot is too predictable, we aren’t satisfied either. We don’t want to guess the ending before we get there. Humans are programmed to solve puzzles; it’s why we’ve made it to the top of the food chain. We really are. Ask your Wordle buddies, your friends who spend all morning with the Sunday New York Times crossword or take up significant living room real estate with a picture puzzle. We go to escape rooms. We watch whodunnits and at the extreme, in the search for patterns to understand a problem, we get lost in conspiracy theories.

We may want to live a linear journey, but we never do. Twists of fate send us in other directions or leave us trying to figure out what’s next. We thought we were going to receive a fully constructed baby delivered by someone else and now we need to make some changes. We sacrificed a state job and its golden handcuff benefits because of inadequate family leave. We thought we were going to buy a farm and add to our family and instead, all our dreams died on a snowy road.

The Game’s Afoot: Build To Climax

(No, not that kind … but sort of.)

Our adages confirm these life conundrums: the best laid plans (of mice and men often go awry) .… Murphy’s law (if there are two or more ways to do something and one of those results in a catastrophe, then someone will do it that way).

Sometimes readers wonder why writers “torture” our characters as we bounce them from crisis to crisis. But that’s what life is. Algis Budrys argued story structure set to a try-fail cycle is the most satisfying to the reader, with the character growing and learning from each experience, until the climax when everything has gone to Hell and, finally, they succeed, fail, or die.

It mirrors life. It’s surviving one thing after another, making mistakes, learning from them, growing from the experiences. I am not the person I was when we first contemplated parenthood, or who gave up a career to freelance with a baby on her hip, nor who became the single parent of a two-year-old. I “accidentally” bought a farm (mommy, look, it’s for sale, get your purse, the then 4-year-old said of the farm across the road from the one I gave up after my husband died). I fell into a PhD I didn’t plan. Which led to teaching gigs I didn’t know I’d love. Which led to losing jobs I never thought I’d leave. I certainly didn’t see myself getting cancer, much less living, thus far, three years with it. At one point I dreamed of publishing novels that are finally available.

The Challenge Is the Point

For me, writing believable plots means putting characters into settings or situations that challenge them, are a puzzle, are the roadblocks we as readers can relate to as we struggle in our own journeys. We watch a character grow from cocky to wizened, or timid to brave, or step into their role as a leader.

For example (yes, I’m using The Lord of the Rings again), diminutive hobbits “Nine Fingers Frodo” and “Samwise the Brave” save the world. A reluctant heir to the throne becomes King Aragorn. Silly pranksters Merry and Pippin, who smoke, drink and eat too much, learn deep lessons and make their mark in the world. They don’t remain static. They face their challenges and grow through them.

I remember first reading The Lord of the Rings and being gripped by the story, even though it was written in that more distant third person omniscient more common in the early Twentieth Century. The Internet, video and gaming have ramped up our expectations for instant gratification, entertainment and quick movement through a work. Our attention spans flag. Deep reading becomes difficult. And more and more we see that impact in the written word.

We become impatient with an author who wants to spend a chapter laying out a setting, characters and backstory that a movie can accomplish in a 45-second establishing shot. We need to constantly give the reader something to attend to, lest their mind wander.

Denouement

I’m currently rewriting an old novel I never finished, involving a revolt that starts at a school for wizards. Sound vaguely familiar? At the release of Harry Potter, I put the WIP aside. It’s not remotely the same story but for that one thing. But the way I wrote then isn’t the way people read now. I’m cutting ruthlessly, and I think I’ll need to cut some more. All those fine details about magic, many vignettes that built character or deepened plot, but didn’t necessarily further the plot: snip, slash, cut. I’ve changed as a person in the intervening years. And as a writer.

Sometimes it feels like just getting a game’s final score and missing some of the most interesting plays.

Are there still stories that readers love, that you need to read deeply, want to read deeply, that we don’t just rush through to move on to some other story? I remember reaching the end of LOTR and reading the appendices, then reading The Hobbit and the trilogy again … and again, reading more into it each time. (I confess, I only read The Silmarillion once).

A plot that immerses us so deeply, that builds characters and a world that can suspend our disbelief and take us there and make us want to linger, is the perfect escape.

What are you reading? Does it grip you?

 

Cover photo of a tightly furled fern on the Hogarth Falls trail, Strahan, Tasmania, Australia by Meg Turville-Heitz

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