Don't Contrive Your Fiction

FICTION WRITING LESSONS, December 2006

What is Contriving a Story and How Does It Happen?

The "Organic" Version of Conceiving and Drafting a Novel

When you conceive a story, the story has already formed in your subconscious. The "Muse" knows it. The conception has the complete energy of the work…like a child just conceived in the womb that holds all of its potential being in its DNA, all of it held within the zygote.

Just as in a zygote where all the information exists that will produce the complete being upon successful gestation and subsequent parturition, certain choices remain dormant, only released by decisions keyed by circumstances…chemical reactions…as the embryo grows, so also the book. In draft, there can be volumes of possibilities dormant that may manifest or may not.

When drafting, you write on the energy. If the energy stops, you move to scene sketching, plot mapping, or "steeping." Many times this draft will follow branches that will stop before maturing, break off, or merge with other branches or the main trunk during the growth process.

Once the draft is done, the writer can go in with the help of the left brain and, with a surgeon's skill, prune and remold what is necessary to bring the book forth in perfection.

The "Inorganic" Version of Conceiving and Drafting a Novel

You come up with an idea. You begin writing it or planning it. The ideas flow and what happens next drives you forward. You see where there are subplots forming, where backstory needs to be incorporated, and you follow the process through until you reach the end and are satisfied that you have achieved a complete if rough draft version of the story, a solid work. Now you rewrite it or, preferably with this z7 group of authors, edit it to author final.

Contriving A Book or Contriving Parts of a Book

Whether you plan a book, organically create a book, or do a bit of both, IF and WHEN you back yourself into a corner, by left brain logic's objection, coersion, and intrusion, you begin to contrive. Many writers read back, and, in fact, will especially focus on the first few chapters over and over again. Analyzing what you have done and where you might be in trouble in a plot, starts a "second guessing process bringing fear in the equation, fear of a plot hole or plot problem. That's when you tend to begin contriving instead of creating. That's when you get yourself in trouble. If organically creating a book, it happens when you stop following inspiration and intuition, when you stop trusting yourself. It happens because you don't trust your subconscious — your "Muse" — anymore. Your left brain — the rational, pragmatist — wants to KNOW that you know where it is going before you get there. If "inorganically" creating a book, it happens when you stop "having fun" figuring out the puzzle. In both cases, what you do is begin to second guess and worry the book. You manufacture answers that fit the perceived (feared) problem rather than using successful techniques, methods, and tools designed to effectively "discover" the story.

When an author doesn't accept his/her first inclinations, when an author doesn't "write through" and just get the book done without overthinking or second guessing it, when an author keeps going back and back and back and back to add here, change there, adjust here before reaching The End, when an author fails to allow the work to dictate its needs to her or him, and, instead, listens to others or to her/his own fears concerning "problems in her draft story's logic (substantial basis), that is CONTRIVING. Only an author knows a book's substantial basis, and often not until the work is complete is that substantial basis fully solidified. Only once the complete draft is done and is then analyzed for substantial basis can plot holes and problems be found, then addressed using proper techniques, methods, and tools. ONLY ONCE THE DRAFT IS DONE CAN AN AUTHOR GO TO THE FIX PHASE, "discovering" the missing links.

A first book author and an author lacking confidence in her or his own work will often do this, and once a draft becomes subject to contrived revision upon contrived revision, then often it is extremely difficult for the author to get back to their original, pristine inspiration, energy, vision, and drive.

In drafting, you must write through to The End. You cannot go back and fix it before writing The End. You cannot FIX draft before it is a complete draft.

Yes, you can draft not knowing the end. NO, YOU CANNOT FIX PLOT WITHOUT HAVING THE WHOLE BOOK DRAFTED.

…And what is a draft?

A draft can be many things. It can be ordered scene sketches, ordered notes jotted in a running interface, a full-on formal chapter-by-chapter, scene-by-scene draft, ordered notecards… .

What a draft has is a beginning, middle, end, many crises, at least one turning point, at least one climax, most all its characters, its world and the majority of its setting(s), its story, its plot. It can have huge holes in between scenes where "something's missing," it can have plot holes that need filling, it can have substantial basis problems that need to be fixed, it can have an overabundance of extra scenes, characters, story events, etc. A DRAFT can be compared to an artist's sketch drawn in pencil on canvas prior to painting in oil. And even when the oil has dried (the author final), repainting can be accomplished. Not until the lacquer is applied is the work actually and completely FINAL. …And I won't get into revisions here and thus spare you even more sullied waters.

Lesson TOC (Table of Contents)…4

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