Hi there!
I’m very excited to tell you that the short story I’ve been writing for Comma Press —and using to deconstruct my writing process for you — is being considered by film companies for optioning!
This is super exciting because optioning is where a company pays a writer for rights to their story for a certain length of time in order to sell the idea for a film or TV series to a broadcaster, like the BBC or Netflix. Usually film companies pay more for optioning a work for 2 years than the publisher does for the whole book. Yup, you read that right. The whole book.
Of course, wonderful as that is, there is no guarantee that even if a book is optioned, it will make it to the big screen. So I’m not popping any champagne just yet! Oh well, maybe, because it’ll be Friday soon.
This is the blurb that Comma Press used to pitch Meat to film companies:
Set in present-day Bristol, ‘Meat' concerns an artist, Lily, who is staging her first solo exhibition consisting of memento mori ("remember you must die") paintings. Things take a sinister turn, however, when Lily's scientist husband, Lars, encourages her to incorporate his latest project into the exhibition - pieces of lab-grown cultivated meat. As art collides with science - with horrifying consequences - Lily is forced to confront some dark, uncomfortable truths about her marriage.
As a film adaptation, 'Meat' would make for a fantastic crepuscular horror. As a horror/sci-fi story, it works so well because the science aspect is so plausible. Most compelling of all, though, is the complex relationship study at the heart of the story: Lily, the artistic idealist, and her partner Lars, the ambitious, laser-focussed entrepreneur.
Thank you, David Sue, who wrote this blurb!
This essay has been freed from behind the paywall in celebration of six months on Substack.
In the third part in this mini series of The Process, I’m going to show you how and why I created a plot for Meat before I started writing.
I’m going to detail the key elements of story structure everyone needs for their story.
I’ll describe the essential elements needed to write in this genre (thriller/horror).
I’ll show you how I created a plot for my story.
You can read the previous two steps - coming up with an idea and creating an outline if you missed them:
The Process will, after this, only be for paid subscribers, so do please consider subscribing to view all my articles and essays on the craft of writing.
Okay, let’s get started - but to be clear, I don’t think plot is better than character or vice versa: we need both!
When I look back at the notes I made for the outline, they’re mainly
what happens next (and then what happens next).
what the characters are thinking.
lines of dialogue in the characters’ voices.
But how do you turn that into a plot?
In the words of one of our queens of crime fiction, Sophie Hannah:
“You wouldn’t start building a house without planning it first…why do the same with your novel?”
Some writers don’t plot in advance — I used to plot in the vaguest way for my first three books. I’m not going into the arguments for and against plotting here, but it works for me. I’ll explain how I do it, but first:
Why I plot in advance
it saves a shed-load of time. The more time spent constructing the plot and filling in the inevitable plot holes, the less time you’ll spend re-writing.
it helps create a compelling story that you hope your reader will not be able to put down.
you can brainstorm ideas before you’ve created a beautifully crafted scene that you then become attached to and won’t wish to jettison.
it’s my greatest challenge (I love creating characters, imagining settings, writing description, doing the research) so I need to make sure I properly focus on it.
The salient point to remember when you plot is that it’s not about chronology — what happens in real time — it’s about how you tell the story in the most compelling way possible.
Here is how I created a plot for my short story, Meat:
I wrote down all the key events in chronological order.
I worked out what events should go in Act I, II and III. This is based on the Aristotelian idea of narrative, which corresponds to three acts, seen first in plays and then used by film companies to create movie structure. However, I like to keep things simple, so for me, the acts correspond to The Beginning, The Middle and The End.
I then look at whether I have a) the key elements for story structure, b) specific elements I need for my genre.
The key elements for story structure are:
An inciting incident. This is the event that kicks off the story. It’s an event that happens and the protagonist chooses whether to react or not to react to this event. It’s up to you whether the protagonist acts, doesn’t act, or is forced to act. But just remember, when nothing happens, nothing happens.
Progressive complications. This is a term coined by Shawn Coyne in The Story Grid, and basically means that tricky things happen to the protagonist. Most importantly, the conflicts that the protagonist faces have to be a) different and b) grow progressively worse. If the first conflict is that the hero breaks her leg, the second conflict can’t be choosing which ice cream to have.
A mid-turn twist. This does what it says on the tin: something surprising that happens half-way through the story and potentially reverses what the reader thought or expected would happen or had happened.
A crisis point or question where the protagonist must make a decision and act in a way that reveals their character.
A climax - the finale of act III or The End, which arises out of the protagonists’s response to the crisis.
A satisfying ending that directly arises as a consequence of the inciting incident, but is, nonetheless, unexpected.
A resolution where some of the loose ends are tied up.
Specific plot points for the thriller genre:
A prologue. Some people hate them and they’re not always necessary. However, in a psychological thriller, it’s a way to set the tone so that the reader knows from the start that we’re heading somewhere dark and they haven’t accidentally stumbled into a romcom if the first chapter feels quite light.
In crime fiction, there is often violence or death at the start of the book, but in psychological thrillers the tension is largely from whether or what ‘bad thing’ might happen but which hasn’t happened yet. Hinting at what it could be in a prologue is a way of heightening tension and creating anticipation so that the reader will hopefully want to know how this bad thing happened, when it will happened and who did it.
You can read more about creating suspense in The Craft Review #4
Even if it’s not labelled a prologue, this technique can simply be a way of reversing the chronology to create tension. For example, in Lucy Foley’s The Hunting Party, the victim’s death is described first, but the murder doesn’t happen in the ‘real’ order of events until the end of the novel.
A Macguffin. Alfred Hitchcock is associated with this idea, and says it’s “the thing that the characters on the screen worry about.” It can be an object, an event or a character; whatever it is, the characters are invested in it, and it’s used to propel the story forward (for instance, the stone in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone). It is often (and this is how I use it) an object of desire for the antagonist or the villain.
A ticking clock. Adding in one or more deadlines is a way to heighten tension. An over-the-top example is in the movie Speed, where the bus will blow up if the speed of the vehicle drops below a certain level.
Red herrings - essentially other suspects for the crime.
A speech in praise of the villain (SPV in my notes in the photo). Again, thanks to Shawn for this one and no.6.
A scene where the hero is at the mercy of the villain.
A false ending. There’s an ending. You think it’s all over, but then there is a final twist. I love this about psychological thrillers. It isn’t over until it’s over.
So…once I’ve figured all that out I shuffle events round to make sure plot holes are filled and the mid-turn twist is actually in the middle.
The next stage in the process is:
create believable and authentic characters (coming up in The Process next).
create authentic and specific locations for each scene.
do the research.
And then, start writing! Phew!
Let me know what you think. Do you plot in advance? What’s your process like?
Next, I’ll look at how to create authentic, believable characters, followed by set and setting, then writing and editing.
Sanjida x
Writing exercise
Try and create a plot for the short story (that hopefully you brainstormed using the ideas in episode 1 of this mini series), or whatever you’re working on. Think about breaking it into three acts, beginning, middle and end.