Note - it's another picture of Anthony McGowan - same guy from the previous post...

And now for the next post. This one was written by Olivia Heminway (see below) and I've added some bits.

Anthony McGowan on Plotting

Some people, like Meg Rosoff, Anne Fine and Stephen King, would say that “plot” is not important. Stephen King: “Plot is the last resort of the good writer and the first resort of the hack.” That said, McGowan thinks it is crucial, especially when writing for children.

The central question for young readers is, “What’s going to happen next?”

He presented Aristotle’s view of plotting (beginning, middle, and end – you shouldn't care about what happens before the beginning, it’s all about consequences; the middle relies on what comes before and points forwards; the end relies entirely on what comes before but doesn’t point ahead at all), but ultimately wasn't sure how helpful this was.

He also gave E.M. Forster’s view on plotting. Take the sentence: “The king died, and then the queen died.” This is stuff that happened. If you say, “The king died, and then the queen died from grief,” that’s a story – causally affected. McGowan still doesn’t find this idea terribly useful.

Freytag’s Pyramid is more useful. This was created by a German literary critic looking at classical drama and Shakespeare. In the Exposition section, background information is presented, giving information about the world that you need to understand the story. Then there is the inciting incident which sets the story in motion. Rising action increases the tension, with obstacles to overcome. The climax or crisis is the moment of greatest tension. This is  followed by falling action in which the conflict unravels (protagonist wins or loses. There may be a final surprise during the falling action. At the end we get to the denouement, the state of play at the end.

This can be a good way to look at Shakespeare and Sophocles. It shaped the dog and the crossbow story (which he had previously told to the audience).

He then turned to film script methodology (and talked about Contour, a software that can be downloaded to structure a screenplay). He has found this very useful. But please don’t see this as a straight jacket. Just take what is useful.

Centres around 4 questions:

• 1. Who is your main character?
  2. What are they trying to achieve?
  3. Who is trying to stop them? (the more villainous the better)
  4. What will happen if they fail? (death – real or figurative)

You have to answer these questions in order to have a decent plot.

In terms of the main character, the more sympathetic, the more accepted/easy the book will be (I'm not sure I got that last bit quite right). There are tricks to build a sympathetic character. “Pat the dog” (show him or being nice at the beginning, such as being kind to an animal). Or the opposite, undeserved suffering (bad things happening that are not the character’s fault).

These four questions drive story, stuff is happening and happening through character.

Classical elements to put into storyline  - archetypes:

• 1. The Orphan (in most successful films/TV shows, the character is often either a literal orphan, or there are absent, distant or unattractive parents). In a children’s books, parents are there to stop things happening to children. Things can get out of control – into peril – and add growing sympathy for your character.
  2. The Orphan becomes a Wanderer who goes on a journey to acquire skills, friends, etc. This could be figurative.
  3. The Wandered becomes a Warrior, fights battle against the baddie and loses it – this initialises the final stage.
  4. The Wanderer becomes a Martyr by sacrificing himself in some way and thereby ‘wins’. This can be the main character's willingness to sacrifice something important to him or her.

Contour goes through hundreds of screenplays, showing how this pattern plays out.

You can add tension and interest through playing with structure in the following ways:

1. You can change the chronology: can begin at any point during the narrative, and have flashbacks or series of flashbacks (this can make a not-very-exciting story seem exciting)
2. Can have different points of view
3. Can be told in present tense (e.g. Patrick Ness)

The younger the target age group, the more straight forward narrative structure should be used. And you can be too clever with structure (he gave the example of his own book, The Knife That Killed Me, where he added interjections in which the knife is getting closer. As Philip Ardagh pointed out in a review, this was too clever for its own good).

McGowan thinks you should plot meticulously. He generally knows what is going to happen in his books. He likes old-fashioned plots with a twist.

Writing the middle can be especially hard, and could be where the archetypal phases helps. Send your character on a journey, make there be a battle. Prune, ask what is or is not essential to that journey. Something has to be brilliant to earn its place if not serving the story. Librarians and reviewers care about beautiful writing, but this doesn’t necessarily sell or appeal to young readers.

A baddie’s job is to stop the main character from doing something. A baddie can be a bully (as usually happens in McGowan's books). Maybe we know that a bully isn’t pure evil, but the experience for the protagonist can extend to the feeling of good versus evil.

He thinks Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce (second mention at the conference) offers the best plot twist ever.

Software for planning can help. There is Scrivener, Storyist, Storymill. For him, this got in the way of his writing.