When plotting a novel, the first thing I do is figure out my story’s shape. Yes, part of what I mean by that is the structure—the specific way the story will unfold over 350-ish pages. But it’s more than that. Story shape is also a feeling. Let me explain.
There is an organizing visual built into every premise. This visual is typically not noticed by the reader (unless you spell it out) but is rather felt. It’s a thing that gives the story a sense of continuity and order.
Sometimes the shape of a story is obvious. My first novel, The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress is a braid—three individual strands of one story woven together. Each woman shares her secrets with the reader and—combined—they solve the mystery of what happened to Judge Crater.
Flight of Dreams is also fairly straight forward. It’s a locked box. None of the passengers or crew on board the Hindenburg can leave. They are stuck inside for the entire flight. But to make matters worse, I compress the time (you know from the outset that the flight will only last three and a half days) and add a ticking clock (the Hindenburg explodes at the end). But it is the locked box that organizes the entire story and provides the reader with a sense of claustrophobia and looming dream.
Things got a bit harder with I Was Anastasia. Maybe because I’d grown as a writer. Or maybe because I wanted to challenge myself. Regardless, I had to return to the premise itself in order to ferret out the shape. (Your premise always holds the key to your story shape. That’s one reason I push so hard for writers to determine that premise line at the outset. So many issues can be solved later by having that one thing in place). In Anastasia I needed a shape that represented two individual stories, circling around one another, and connected by secondary characters. Aha! A double helix. The entire theme of the novel is focused on identity—whether or not Anna Anderson is actually Anastasia Romanov—so of course the story would take on the shape of DNA. It was there all along.
With Code Name Hélène, my initial scribblings centered around the fact that I wanted to give Nancy all of these little full circle moments throughout the story. I’d introduce a character in one timeline but you wouldn’t know his true importance until Nancy runs into him again in the other timeline. And then of course it occurred to me that the story needed to end at the exact moment that it begins. A circle! That story is literally a circle.
Which bring us to The Frozen River. It is, primarily, a murder mystery. But it is also a rape trial. And those two things cannot be separated. It is THIS but it is also THAT. It took me longer to find the shape for this novel than for any other. It was right there! I could feel it! I just couldn’t find it. It’s this but it’s that. This and that. It took months, but the shape eventually did come to me and when it did, I realized it had been obvious all along. It is THIS but it’s THAT. The story is a mobius strip. Two distinct things, interconnected, and inseperable.
“That’s all well and good, Ariel,” you say, “but why bother? What you’re suggesting sounds a bit woo-woo. Not to mention being a lot of unnecessary work and I could just let my story unfold organically.”
Sure! And that may work out wonderfully for you. Go with God. My goal with this series is to share the exact process by which I write my novels. (And this particular subject is one that I’ve spoken on often, and get the most questions about). Finding my story shape is the thing I do immediately after writing my premise line. It’s the next step in building a novel—the foundation for my plot. Everything else rests upon the story shape. Once I know it, I know how to organize the sequence of events that will flow from beginning to middle to end.
Have you ever thought of your novel as having a shape? Or is this concept new to you? Hit me up in the comment section below if you have any specific questions.
You know how much I love this topic. Our friend Diana thinks like this too. I’m not great at identifying my shape but this new book looks like a coronavirus.
This is a fascinating way to look at plotting! Now I'm thinking about my manuscript and what shape it's taking.