Braiding - It’s not just for hair!
Saturday, February 9th, 2008
I can’t be more excited about today’s guest blogger…the incomparable, Alison Kent! I know that many of you started visiting our site because of links from hers and for a great part, Alison is responsible for Plotmonkeys being on the web. She was instrumental and invaluable in helping us design and maintain this site to this day and we all just love her more than words can say.
On a personal level, I remember very well the first time I met Alison. It was at the RWA convention in Orlando, my first year as a published author. I was pregnant, but floating around the literacy signing, meeting every Temptation author I could. I’d remembered Alison from her appearance on 48 Hours and had not only read her first book, CALL ME, but devoured it. This was the kind of romance I wanted to write! Ultra-sexy, a bit edgy and irreverent…I was so happy when I finally met her and she was so generous and giving with her time and advice. She hasn’t changed!
So without further ado…Alison Kent!
I date my writing career as beginning in 1990. That was the year I discovered and joined Romance Writers of America. I’d toyed with one story the year before, and that story was my first to complete, my first to submit, and earned my first rejection.
Joining RWA, I was able to learn how much I didn’t know about the craft of putting a story together. In fact, I tell everyone who asks me how to learn to write to join RWA - even if you’re going to write in a different genre. The organization’s writing workshops, found from small local conferences to the biggie each summer, are invaluable.
Since I started writing seriously, I’ve written upward of thirty novels and novellas. Once my editors had worked with me long enough to trust I knew what I was doing, I was able to sell on synopses. This was an exciting crossroads because it meant I didn’t have to write a full book and wonder if it was going to sell.
It was also a scary crossroads because writing a synopsis for an unwritten novel can be truly difficult when you have trouble with plot. Like I do. Or like I did. My synopses, in fact, for a very long time were nothing more than studies in character growth with vague plot points thrown in. (I joked with my husband that my books were all plotless wonders.)
Obviously, I had a subliminal grasp of plotting or I wouldn’t ever have been able to make it to the end of a book. But because I needed to be able to write a synopsis before the book was written, I had to master plotting - to learn what makes up a plot and how to weave those elements into a cohesive story.
Don’t get me wrong. I still believe that the basis of a strong story is its characters, but those characters need something to do in order for the story to be worth reading. And, yes, I can hear all of you saying you’ll never learn to write a synopsis for a book you haven’t written. We’ve all been there. We’ve all said that. And if you want to sell on synopsis, you will learn. We all do.
That doesn’t mean all synopses are brilliant pieces of storytelling work. Mine most definitely are not. They’re usually bland and flat and I nod off myself while reading them. But in addition to the romance, they include the elements that drive all of the novel’s mini-stories forward.
But you don’t have mini-stories, you say? You may not think you do, but read on, and I’ll prove it!
What I want to offer you here are a couple of tips I’ve found to be almost magical in weaving a romance plot into the central plot while wrapping subplots in and around. (Yeah, all those mini-stories!) And these tips involve office supplies - a writer’s best friend!
It helps me to have a visual layout of the various plotlines I’m working to braid together, rather than trying to keep them straight either in my head or in a narrative synopsis. These tricks are ones I’ve picked up in workshops I’ve attended over the years. By no means are they original.
So, first of all you need BIG paper, either posterboard or newsprint sheets.
Next you need markers, colored, one for each plot line. And finally white index cards.
(You may have seen a variety of author plotting boards online (this is my favorite) that use colored post-it notes. When I’m laying out my final plotting board
for writing, that’s what I do. But what I’m talking about now is the pre-work that lets me write the synopsis so that I can get to that final plotting board.)
Now to begin.
Say, for example, you are writing a story where a stranger rides into town and hires on to help a widow 
save her farm by bringing in a bountiful crop in order to pay off the mortgage loan her husband took out from the local banker to cover gambling debts. (External plot)
The stranger (hero) has come to town in search of the outlaws who killed his brother. (Hero’s plot)
The widow (heroine) cannot lose the land because both her mother and father as well as her two stillborn children are buried in the private cemetery on the hill. If she can’t come up with the money, her only choice will be to marry the banker’s evil son. (Heroine’s plot)
The banker and his son want the land because of hidden gold buried by war criminals (the same ones who killed the hero’s brother) beneath her barn, but the widow is in their way. (Antagonist’s plot)
Obviously, the hero and heroine will fall in love and their love will conquer all. (Romance plot)
On the paper, you are going to draw a different colored line for each of your interwoven plots. Straight lines, east to west.
Red will be your main plot - this is the struggle of the hero & heroine to save the farm. Along this line you will mark the events that effect this plot line only. Drought, fire, etc.
Blue will be your hero’s plot - the search for his brother’s killer. Along this line you will mark his progress and his pitfalls.
Pink will be your heroine’s plot - her struggle to pay off the debt and fend off the banker’s evil son. Along this line you will mark the heroine’s personal struggles - dealing with her husband’s betrayal, the unwanted suitor, etc.
The events you mark on the blue and pink lines will often be internal events, emotional decisions and dealings that propel your characters toward their personal goals.
The fourth line, purple, is the romance plot. Along this line you will mark the progression of the romance. The awareness, the first kiss, the events that bring your hero and heroine closer to love.
The fifth line, black, is the antagonist’s line where you will show the plotting and scheming of the banker and his evil son.
Now, the events you’ve marked along each line will be the natural progression of that story arc from beginning through various scenes and acts to the climax.
By marking these events along each line, you can see the relationship between your various stories, how an event in the antagonist plot will effect the main plot.
This way you have a perfect chart of cause and effect from beginning to end.
(Here is a very rough version of what I’m talking about. [Link to image]
It’s one I scratched on a legal pad while taking notes during a workshop giving by Jo Leigh over ten years ago - and I still have it! I credit Jo for teaching me how to plot!)
The second step is to take your index cards and, using corresponding color coding, list each of the story 
events from each plot line. (This is extra cool if you use colored index cards, but the colored ink works fine!) Then lay out your cards in progressive story order and get ready to assemble them.
As you begin, one look will tell you if one particular plot line is overwhelming the rest, or if you’ve failed to resolve one plot point that impacts another.
If you’re writing a romance, then you should have a lot of purple cards.
If you’re writing more action suspense, then your main plot line needs sufficient attention.
Having your cards laid out this way shows you exactly where you need to add, adjust, or rearrange the emphasis of story events for proper impact.
Ordering your events also points out pitfalls in pacing.
You can visually eyeball where you’ve overlooked the hero’s personal quest while spending too much time focused on the heroine’s need to save the plot of land where her family is buried.
This is so important when you’re dealing with subplots that are dependent upon one another for their cause and effect.
It’s hard to miss plot points or inadvertently drop clues in the wrong order when you have each scene outlined so simply.
If you’ve studied Robert McKee’s book STORY or done research into the basic three-act structure, you can even better use the plot line method of cutting your individual plots into their proper story arcs along their line.
And I have no clever ending but to say, “Go forth and braid.”
I really don’t want to fill today’s blog with comments about HOW Heath Ledger died. Rather, I wanted to talk about what I’ll remember Heath Ledger for — and that would be his role as an actor in the movies he made. The first movie I ever saw Heath in was A KNIGHT’S TALE, which I saw with my daughter, who thought that he was very cute in his role as a peasant squire who passes himself off as a Medievil knight in order to compete in a jousting competition. The movie is very tongue-in-cheek, with the setting more of a modern medievil times that is backed by the sound of Queen’s “We Will Rock You”, and the dialogue a mixture of modern-day and medieval. This movie was pure entertainment with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. We enjoyed it so much that we even have it on DVD — and I’m sure that we’ll be watching it soon in memory of Heath Ledger.
Another favorite movie that he starred in was CASANOVA. This was a movie that I originally saw with Julie when I was in Florida and we were trying to kill some time while waiting for Carly’s delayed flight to arrive. Here’s a brief synopsis of the movie: He was the world’s most notorious seducer. A swashbuckler, master of disguise and wit - it was said no woman could resist Casanova’s amorous charms. Until now. For the first time in his life, the legendary Casanova (Heath Ledger) is about to meet his match with an alluring Venetian beauty, Francesca (Sienna Miller), who does the one thing he never thought possible: refuse him. Through a series of clever disguises and scheming ruses, he manages to get ever closer to Francesca. But he is playing the most dangerous game he has ever encountered – one that will risk not only his life and reputation, but his only chance at true passion.
) Are there any movies that he made that you enjoyed or that have become a favorite?
The next morning, my husband took her driving for the first time at the local college. She did GREAT! 
Until she hit a pothole and popped a tire. 
On my mom’s car.
To his credit, my husband handled it without yelling. 
After all, accidents happen. And tomorrow is another day. 
# #52 Michele 
Jackie!
