Writing From Scratch #5: The Inquiry Plot

Writing from Scratch #1

Welcome to Writing from Scratch!

I’ve been writing a long time, and sometimes it feels like I lose the trees for the forest. Writing from Scratch is a chance for me (and you!) to get back to the basics of storytelling.

If you’ve never written a story before, if you’ve never felt like you could come up with one that would be worth writing, my hope is that if you follow along with me here, you will have the confidence and know-how to come up with an idea, build it into a story, and share it with the world.

These posts will be little, easy-to-digest nuggets. At the end of every post, look for a prompt and share your response in the comments!

What Is a Story?

A story can be defined by what it contains: at least one plot, character, and setting, and a style through which it is told.

Story Bits

To begin, let’s take a look at the second smallest unit of a story – the sentence. A sentence is a set of words that conveys a complete thought. And communication is fractal, meaning each part shares the same pattern as the whole. A story and its components, therefore, will also convey a Complete Thought.

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Writing from Scratch #9

Complex Plots, Part 2: Modifying Plots

The second way we’ll try complicating a plot is through plot modifiers. This happens when a try-fail cycle not only furthers the solution of one plot-problem but spawns a new plot-problem. What these plots actually modify are the stakes. They can give far-off worst-case scenarios more immediacy, which is what the plot analysis we’ll be getting into today does. Or they can show clear examples of what’s at stake for more abstract cases (think of Gollum in The Lord of the Rings clarifies our fears for what could happen to Frodo).

How does this work? Let’s look back at the plot analysis I did for The Expanse, Season 1 Episode 2, “The Big Empty.” A brief recap:

The Background: The Knight, a small, rickety life-boat sized spaceship with 5 survivors is all that’s left of the Canterbury after an attack on the larger vessel.

The Problem: The Knight’s radio is dead.

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Auditions and Plays and Queries, Oh My!

Life-changing audition, a friend's play, and writing those queries. #actorslife #writerslife

Been gearing up for a big, potentially life-changing, audition.  It just doesn’t seem real yet.  I feel like I’m drifting along in a dream state, and this is some far off thing when it really isn’t.  I mean, I’m prepared.  I just feel like until I’m actually in the room, I’m not going to accept that this could be happening to me.  And maybe I’m just protecting myself from the very real…

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Writing from Scratch #5

The Inquiry Plot

The problem of an inquiry plot involves a question that needs answering for its solution. The classic is Whodunnit? But any who, what, where, when, why, or how style questions can provide the problem for an inquiry plot. Traditionally, try-fail cycles in an inquiry plot come in the form of following clues which can lead to more clues (or questions) or end up being red-herrings that have caused a set back in solving the riddle.

Let’s look at the classic mystery “A Night of Fright is No Delight,” Scooby Doo! Where Are You? Season 1, episode 16. (I went a little overboard on this one, but it’s just too fun!)

If you haven’t seen this classic episode, then a quick background is that the gang has been invited to spend the night in an allegedly haunted house for the chance to receive a part of an inheritance along with four other possible heirs.

The Question: Who is the Phantom Shadow?

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Writing from Scratch #4: The Milieu Plot

The Milieu Plot

The problem of the milieu plot involves a problem of location or setting. The character is often either in a place they need/want to escape from or not in the specific place they need/want to be in. The try-fail cycles will involve traveling away from or to the location. Gulliver’s Travels, The Great Escape, and The Hobbit contain milieu plots.

The Lord of the Rings contains one very large milieu – the problem of getting the One Ring from the Shire where its been hidden for a number of years to Mordor where it can finally be destroyed. We can further break this down into smaller milieu plots. Let’s look at one: the problem of crossing the Misty Mountains. (And we’ll use the events as they occur in the movie, since more people have watched that than read the book)

A few solutions they could try are not considered because they already know they are too dangerous, such as the northern route, which is swarming with orcs and goblins, and the Gap of Rohan, which gets too close to Isengard for comfort.

First try: take the Pass of Caradhras. Fail: No, they can’t cross this way, and Saruman is actively attacking them.

Second try: enter the Mines of Moria. Fail: Yes, they are able to enter, but the Dwarven reception committee they were expecting to lead them through is not there.

Third try: search Moria for the Dwarves and a guide through. Fail: No, there are no Dwarves to guide them, and goblins have now been alerted to their presence and are attacking.

Fourth try: run like hell away from the goblins. Fail: Yes, they are able to run across a chasm to escape the goblins, but a Balrog takes out Gandalf.

Final try: follow Gandalf’s instructions to flee (or “fly”). Solution: they get out of the Mines of Moria, and are on the other side of the Misty Mountains, ready to continue with another micro-milieu.

Prompt: write a flash fiction with a Milieu in which your character’s plot-problem is that they need to go to their grandmother’s house for Sunday dinner. The character, setting, genre, and stakes, as well as what is preventing them from simply going to Grandma’s is up to you. This simple plot can create a story that is anything from family drama to international spy thriller.

If you want to read more of my 80+ posts, you can check them out on my website theferalcollection.com

Writing from Scratch #2

What is a Plot?

Different people mean different things when they use the word “plot,” and they are all correct, if not as descriptive as they could be.

Some people mean a story structure, like the 3-Act Structure; some people mean a plot archetype, like an underdog sports plot or a heist plot; some people mean the negative to positive or positive to negative trajectory of the main character, like Rags to Riches; and some people mean “to plot” as in “to outline.”

Throughout Writing from Scratch, when I say “plot,” I’ll be referring to the definition I’ve already hinted at: a plot is a problem and its solution. Plots of this nature can be very long if the solution takes a while for the character to arrive at or very short if the solution is solved without much trouble. In a story with multiple plots of this type, the plot that has its problem first introduced and last solved is what I will call the Long Plot.

Plot-Problems

There are four umbrella types that plots of this kind fall under – all based on the type of problem the plot has. And these are called the MICE* plot-problems.

Milieu

Inquiry

Character

Event

Over the next few posts, I will be diving into each in turn.

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Writing from Scratch #4

The Milieu Plot

The problem of the milieu plot involves a problem of location or setting. The character is often either in a place they need/want to escape from or not in the specific place they need/want to be in. The try-fail cycles will involve traveling away from or to the location. Gulliver’s Travels, The Great Escape, and The Hobbit contain milieu plots.

The Lord of the Rings contains one very large milieu – the problem of getting the One Ring from the Shire where its been hidden for a number of years to Mordor where it can finally be destroyed. We can further break this down into smaller milieu plots. Let’s look at one: the problem of crossing the Misty Mountains. (And we’ll use the events as they occur in the movie, since more people have watched that than read the book)

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The Whole Potter-Dumbledore Relationship

Is Dumbledore actually evil or is he way more tragic than anyone realized? So I’ve been thinking recently about Harry Potter, and by recently I mean for the past decade and a half. But recently, as “since Thursday, February 11,” I’ve been thinking about a very specific thing in Harry Potter. Over at Tor.Com, Emily Asher-Perrin has a fabulous reread going on (that’s almost over *sob*), and in her…

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When writing descriptions, consider what you want to accomplish. Giving the reader an idea of the layout of a room will require different types of descriptions/different descriptive words than evoking emotions. Think also of who is giving the descriptions: a first person or subjective third person narrator should describe based on how they experience the setting, while an objective third person narrator may have more freedom to match the descriptions to your own preference.

Are you a “can’t write dialogue” writer or a “can’t describe anything” writer