I believe that when we craft a story, there has to be a spark. That spark may be:
a person or group of persons (family) with a certain trait, life situation, job, medical condition, superpower, or such
an image in our minds of something happening: a discovery, a violent act, a happy act or occurrence (although we don’t really write novels about happiness, as the famous beginning by Tolstoy goes), a memory, a death, something unexpected
a series of events that hangs together, like a personal anecdote or short narratives
I believe this because it is how I write. I can tell you the impetus or spark or seed of all my novels. They are either based on a part of a person (not the whole person), an image in my head, or a narrative. Actually, most of them probably come from a collection of unconnected or disparate, or maybe not totally, sparks.
I often compare fiction writing to quilting, but in the old fashioned, organic sense. Quilting is my thing when it comes to arts and crafts, although I have one on a bed right now that needs the actual stitching by hand since I choose not to invest in a huge quilting sewing machine. Today quilting is controlled and prefabrication, and as an art form it is not even functional. I would refer you to the Southeastern Quilt Museum podcast I did in Fall 2024 and to their website. Those quilts are masterpieces but they hang on walls, they don’t keep a family warm. Some are quite avant garde and made out of everything but cotton patches.
It’s the old ones that fascinate me though, one because they are old and have a provenance and a story, and two because they were functional, and three because they were made up of the detritus of life. Leftover blankets, dresses, shirts, etc. There was one exhibit at the Southeastern Quilt Museum of two quilts made from little silk squares that were collected by the quilter, I believe in TX in the early 1900s. The squares were of the states and of countries; they either came in or could be obtained through a coupon found in cigarette packs. The two quilts were beautiful and had a South Asian flair to them, although knowing that they represented all that smoking took some of the appeal from it. They have other quilts from the 1800s made of wood and cotton clothing and they were stitched together to be strong, not hang on a wall. I have a quilt my grandmother made from old Polyester dresses of hers. It’s not much to look at and not even warm, but it has meaning.
So, what’s the connection? Fiction is a pulling together of the leftovers of experience into another narrative. It’s not a biography or memoir, that’s something entirely different. It’s an image here, a character there, an incident from elsewhere, etc, etc. and a lot of imaginative connection all put into a framework that coheres as a story along the lines of what we humans have come to expect in a story over many millenia.
The novel itself was not “invented”—well, there are disputes on this, but a commonly held belief is that the first one is Don Quijote by Miguel Saavedra de Cervantes in the 1600s. And it is brilliant, ironic, meta, and funny. The Center for Fiction says no, with this quote:
The world’s first novel is thought to be The Tale of Genji, written in 11th Century Japan by a woman known to us only as Murasaki Shikibu. The short biography of her that accompanies the novel’s Modern Penguin edition translation says, “After the death of her husband, she cloistered herself to study Buddhism, raise her daughter, and write the world’s first novel, Genji Monogatari, the tale of the shining Prince Genji.”
Now, I want to camp on this a bit. First, it is trendy to say that a woman from a nonWestern country was the first to do anything, and there is a second view that the first modern Western novel was La Princesse de Clèves, published in 1678, by Madame de Lafayette in France. It should not be a surprise though, that the first novelists were women or women of means or wealth. I would be able to name more women novelists than men, really. I still in my mind put Cervantes first because Don Quixote is so clever.
What I also want to add, though, is this quote from the same article on the Center for Fiction website:
That night at the temple, the full moon of the eighth lunar month shone up from the lake’s waters, and while she lost herself in its beauty a vision of the tale rose before her. She saw her hero, Genji, languishing in unjust exile on the shore of a moonlit sea, and the image was so compelling that, lest she forget it, she immediately wrote down what became chapters 11 and 12. After that, the legend says, she simply added the others until she had 54 in all.”
Ah, ha! My theory proven by the story of the first novelist!
I suspect many people want to write a novel based on family experiences but want to fictionalize it (use different names, places, and details) to protect the innocent. That is common and a lot of them get published, but you need more than experiences because the expereicnes and memories and images and people have to be massaged into a narrative format.
A colleague who teaches screenwriting says that there are two plots: a hero goes on a journey and a stranger comes to town. I am also suspicious of easy formula for something as huge and wonderful and unmanageable as the novel or fiction and story telling in general, but that’s kind of interesting to me. Because it’s so embedded in our culture, people who write about these subjects love to resort to Star Wars to prove their points, since Lucas wrote it based on Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey. But you know, a lot of great stuff was written before Joseph Campbell showed up, so Dostoyevsky and Twain and Austen and for sure Dickens and Gaskell and the Brontes or Collins or Forster didn’t have that or Save the Cat Writes a Novel to go by. Yes, I guess you can put all of these works sort of into that binary: Mr. Darcy is the stranger who comes to town. Anna Karenina goes on a journey (she’s not very heroic, though, unless you think she’s a hero for standing up for society—Tolstoy didn’t, and she’s a tragic character).
However, that two-sided approach to the beginning of a story isn’t necessarily the impetus upon which you build your story. I am reading Octavia Butler’s book Kindred, which is about time travel. I think her impetus was “what if” which I think is a great impetus framework: what if a modern African American woman was mysteriously transported back and forth to 1815 Maryland, Eastern shore no less, to a slaveholder’s estate? I am also reading (yes, I read several books at once) Silo, the Hugh Howey novel on which the TV show is based. What if 10,000 people live for hundreds of years in a massive, self-contained cylindrical tube lodged deep in the earth and can’t go outside without dying? That’s actual the pitch, not the writer’s start. Or maybe his impetus was a vision of people living in this dark, underground vertical world and he started there, or his what if was “what if after the nuclear destruction (we all know is coming) people live in a hole in the ground but don’t know why?”
On that point, I don’t know. I really just know my own impetuses or sparks:
A young Hispanic woman is strangled near a creek by her boyfriend’s jealous, disturbed brothers, and left for dead. Impetus: that was just a vision, really,
A black church is burned down during the Civil Rights era in a small southern town and no one ever really solves it. Impetus: a bombing in the Georgia town I lived in .
A lonely woman who lives by taking care of mothers who have just had babies gets stuck in a home with four orphaned children during the 1918 flu pandemic. This impetus was two realities by mother told me about from her childhood.
However, this is not enough. After the spark of imagination/inspiration, the hard work starts.
So, the rest of this is about the most central part of any fiction but esp. literary fiction: character.
Often it is said the character has to want something. I think that sometimes that “want” has to develop in the writer's mind after a while. A character always exists in a context. That doesn’t mean a character in 17th century Rome has not human relation to a person today, but that the character is not going to transcend their time and place and still be believable. So along with wanting something, which may not be immediately obvious, the character lives somewhere at sometime and some external forces play into their lives. If it’s 1863 in middle GA, the character is not going to be unaffected by the Civil War, no matter who they are: a nun in a convent, a ne’er do well gambler, a slave. So I am of the opinion that context and want are the two things that must be worked out, researched, stitched together, played with, however you want to put it before you can really start to craft the novel’s plot.
I think you have to also be careful not to be too certain about the outcome of the plot. That is one thing that makes genre fiction (romances, mysteries) different from literary fiction (there are several, but that’s one). In a romance, the couple gets together, and there is no unrequited love. In mysteries, the detective or cop gets the killer. No ambiguity. I have had people tell me that my character Cotella should get together with the man she comes to love, but I make it clear he is looking elsewhere for his second wife (he’s widowed). He respects and cares about Cotella, but …. to me it would not have been realistic or the story I wanted to tell if it was happily ever after.
As a side note to this, if you are writing a novel to make a point, stop right there. If you want to show that hard work always brings good rewards, or that free trade is the salvation of the world, or that a certain group is oppressed and victimized by another with no agency, or that we are all going to be living in a vertical tube because of a worldwide meltdown from nuclear power (not Silo’s point), well, just rethink that. Not that some good novels have been written with those viewpoints, but that’s going to be more of an exception to the rule than the rule.
This is why I am skeptical about the prefabricated novel structures although they are a a good place to start. I’ll talk about two:
From Donald Miller, who wrote the Evangelical world’s class: Blue Like jazz in the 90s, which was worth it to me for one phrase: we all have a self addiction. We have this from a book Storybrand Marketing:
A Character Has a problem who meets a guide who gives them a plan and calls them to action that ends in a success and helps them avoid failure.
Luke Skywalker has lost his family because of evil people and meets Obi Wan who sends him off in space and he saves the universe. Well, this is super simplified from the Hero’s Journey, which is:
The call to adventure
This is the moment when the hero receives a call to adventure, which could come in the form of a message, a dream, or an encounter with a mentor or guide.2 The refusal of the call
At this stage, the hero may initially refuse the call to adventure, often due to fear, doubt, or a sense of inadequacy. 3 Meeting the mentor. The hero encounters a mentor or guide who provides support, advice, and guidance on the journey ahead. 4 Crossing the threshold. The hero leaves behind the known world and crosses the threshold into the unknown, often encountering tests, trials, and challenges along the way.5 Tests, allies, and enemies. The hero must navigate a series of tests, trials, and challenges, often with the help of allies and the opposition of enemies. 6 The approach to the inmost cave. The hero approaches the innermost cave or the heart of darkness, often facing their greatest fears and challenges. 7 The ordeal. This is the moment of the hero’s greatest challenge, where they face a major obstacle or enemy and must overcome it to continue their journey. 8 The reward. The hero achieves a reward—often in the form of knowledge, insight, or a powerful object—that helps them on their journey.9 The road back. The hero begins the journey back, often encountering new challenges and obstacles along the way. 10 The resurrection. The hero experiences a moment of death and rebirth, often symbolized by a physical or metaphorical transformation. 11 The return. The hero returns home, transformed and changed by their experiences, armed with new knowledge and insights that they can use to benefit their community. 12 The freedom to live. The hero achieves a state of freedom and enlightenment, often living happily ever after or in a state of balance and harmony.
From Save the Cat Writes the Novel, this format:
I have written about and spoken on Save the Cat writes the Novel elsewhere:
Opening image, snapshot of hero and their world beforehand
2. Theme stated- Briefly alludes to the transformative journey that your hero will take and the flaw or flaws they will eventually conquer.
3. Setup – sets up your hero’s life and their status quo world befoe everything changes. This is a multi-scene beat where as the first is a short one. I think it’s like the opening of Indiana Jones and the lost ark versus his longer scenes as a professor.
4. Catalyst – Disrupts the status quo world with a life-changing event.
5. Debate – Shows how resistance the hero is to change and/or prepares them for the break into Act 2.
Act 2
6. Break into Act 2 – Bringst he hero into the upside-down world of Act 2, where they will fix things the wrong way. They are off on their journey and facing obstacles.
7. B story – Introduces the character who will somehow represent the B story/spiritual story/theme and help your hero learn it. This could be the mentor, the love interest, even a nemesis who teaches them something somehow.
8. Fun and Games – Delivers on the promise of the premise of the novel and hows us how your hero is faring in the new Act 2 world, either having fun or floundering.
9. Midpoint – marks the middle of the novel with either a false defeat or a false victory while at the same time raising the stakes of the story.
Whoa! What is this about. Raising the stakes? That’s a way of showing something is at risk and they might very well lose—its totally up for grabs that they might lose or fail. A lot of what we watch on TV has none of this. Downtown Abbey used to be the worst on this—it would seem like something terrible would happen but it all worked out. This is every Hallmark movie. Good storytelling leaves the outcome at least a reasonable surprise—this is a topic for another podcast, as to how that comes about, but it has to be consistent with what came before, not an “out of the blue” kind of thing. Raising the stakes also means the reader cares. The reader is invested in the character and wants to keep reading.
Also whoa at this point: How many more of these steps are there? 7. They get a little interesting, but if you feel like, “I can’t do all this with my story, it’s not what it’s about”…. Well I have two answers to that.
It maybe that you are and can, you just don’t realize it. My descriptions here are short. Yes, it’s sort of formulaic, and that was my feeling when I first read it, until I realized my books did these without me knowing.
On the other hand, is anything really happening in your story? I get asked to read a lot of fiction for people and critique it. I read 150 pages of a draft and I still didn’t know what the central conflict was, what the character wanted and why, etc. The first four pages were descriptions of the woman sitting in her bathtub contemplating bubbles. Something has to happen. Literary fiction does not mean no story or boring fiction, it means the character is more of a driver than a prefab plot.
As for the rest,
10:Bad guys close in. Provides a place for your hero to rebound after a false defeat at midpoint or fall down after a false victory at midpoint, all while the internal bad guys (flaws) are closing in.
11. All is lost, which illustrates the hero’s rock moment, lowest m of the story. (This is supposedly at the 75% point of the book.)
12. Dark Night of the Soul. Shows how your hero reacts to the All is lost and how they eventually break through to a resolution.
13. Break into Act 3. Brings the hero into the synthesis world of Act 3, where they will finally fix things the right way.
14. Finale. Resolves all the problems created in Act 2 and proves that your hero has learned the theme and has been transformed.
15. The Final Image: After snapshot of the hero and their changes.
I do recommend you get a sense of these, although reading about 100 good novels will do the same in getting them into your DNA rather than as a patch on your skin—a bandaid to your approach. Most people don’t want to take the time to write 100 good novels, and I only say that because it took me years to do that. Some literary novels get a little too wrapped up in their own consciousness and self-importance or technique.
So, we’re back to a person in a context who wants something but cannot easily get it, either because of their own self, opposing forces, or an ideological conflict (faithfulness to government or God; love of one child over another). Even if your impetus is a vision, or something else, to have a novel, that image must fit into that core that will start the story moving.
I want to end with the connection of truth and fiction. Fiction is lies that tell the truth, someone has said or I am loosely paraphrasing them. I suppose the idea that fiction is lies is acceptable, except that we all agree that fiction is “made up” so even if the lying is intentional, it’s intentional under an understanding that allows it. Here the distinction is between factuality and truth, which is a hard one for some. Better, “fiction is imaginative, acceptable lying that reveals truth about the human condition.’ That is not the same as writing to make a point. Leo Tolstoy wrote of a woman who committed adultery. The story is far more complex than that she ran off with her lover. Why did she? Because she didn’t understand herself, or her husband, or her lover, or morality, or the consequences? Because of self-deception? Because her husband was cold and mean and her lover so good and kind? Oh, and that is to say nothing of the two other story lines in Anna Karenina, which is embedded in late 19th century Russia where serfdom has ended but the society doesn’t know how to get to democratic forms of government like the rest of the world—and we still see today!
He wrote about human truth in a real context but yes, it was all a lie, in a sense. That’s what we do!
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