Plotting Your Way
A friend once asked me to look after her 20-year-old cousin, who was visiting the United States from England, for a morning while she took care of an unexpected errand. Nigel—as we’ll call him—was from a tiny rural village, had never traveled before, and this was his first day in the States. I took him out for breakfast at a cafeteria-style restaurant. All sorts of food lay in heaps, waiting to be chosen.
Pushing his tray along, Nigel looked boggled and nervous. We stopped at the hot-food station. The cook waited.
“What would you like?” I prompted.
“Eggs!” blurted Nigel.
“How many?” asked the cook.
“Oh! Two!”
“How do you want them?”
“Uh—fried!”
“Fried how?”
Desperately, Nigel muttered to me, “What does he mean, fried how?”
“Well,” I said, “you can have them sunnyside-up, or over easy, or scram—”
“I don’t know!” shouted Nigel. “There are too many choices!”
When I think of fiction writers trying to negotiate the overloaded buffet of plotting methods and styles, I think of poor Nigel trying to get some breakfast.
Aspiring novelists obsess about the process of plotting; everybody wants to do it “right” or “better,” because plot is the biggest element of fiction. We know we need a good hook to capture
