Facing the inevitable plot glitch

I’m a morning person. When I’m in the middle of writing a novel, I must stew over it in my sleep, because I wake up with insights on the plot. This morning, the insight was that I had outlined a major plausibility problem that will have to be fixed.

The problem is as follows: The commune, Hearts are Mountains, faces a major threat on their horizon, the neighboring country of Free White State. FWS was founded during The Fragmentation by idealogues among white supremacist groups and nationalist ultra-conservative Christian groups, who had in commonality a desire to create a “pure” state. Their territory comprises a good portion of what used to be the Pacific Northwest states in the former US and borders the high desert where the commune resides underground (literally).

One of the main characters, William, works as a border guard for Free White State — and a spy for Hearts are Mountains. He appears to be a Native American mix; however, he passes well for white such that living and working in Free White State isn’t a problem for him.

Anna (the protagonist) and Daniel (from Hearts are Mountains) visit William for intel. At least that’s how I wrote the outline. The problem is that Daniel appears as a black/Native American mix. That’s going to get him, maybe the three of them, killed in Free White State. A shortened novel, and not an ending I’d wish to write.

I puzzled over this dilemma this morning and realized: William is an Archetype. Archetypes can teleport! (At least they could over the past four books I’d written about them.) He could teleport to Hearts are Mountains without any of the indoor or outdoor surveillance catching him just by crawling into a shed.

Problem solved!

Themes — the implied content

How does a story’s plot differ from a story’s theme?
The plot describes the action of a story while the theme describes its soul.

Although themes aren’t the same as plots, plots incorporate themes. A theme of “Family is important”, for example, must feature a plot in which facing adversity makes the family stronger. A theme of “We make our own family” may have a plot in which four unrelated people experience adversity and develop close ties as a result. If the plot doesn’t carry the theme, the theme never escapes the writer’s brain.

Some themes are universal and archetypal. A professor named Joseph Campbell spoke on a universal theme called “The hero’s journey” in a book called The Hero of a Thousand Faces. (Women scholars have argued his Hero is inevitably masculine, and I agree). The hero’s journey consists of leaving home in a naive state, facing a danger, feeling insecure about meeting the danger, failing at meeting the danger, discovering his strength, and overcoming the danger. In other words, growing up. Choosing good over evil is also a universal theme, and if you’ve read any of the Harry Potter books, you’re familiar with the theme. Fairy tales have great archetypal themes — reread them!

Some themes are shaped by our times. One of my common themes is “Acceptance of the Other,” whether they’re a different color, race, nationality, love preference, or species (there are non-human humanoids involved). This theme might not have been possible three hundred years ago. One theme of my current book is “We should choose our own destinies,” again not possible in the time of Calvinistic Determinism. Another is the previously mentioned “We make our own family” (or, in the movie Lilo and Stitch, “Ohana”) .

Some themes are shaped by our culture. The ancient Greeks viewed Eros, or passionate love, as a chaotic force that induced destructive behavior in its victims. How would they have reacted to the “happily ever after” of today’s romance novels?

One of the secrets of themes is that they should not be announced. Stories in which a character explicitly ties up the action by reviewing the theme with other characters — I am reminded of one of the staples of my childhood, ABC After School Specials on TV. “Johnnie, I told you not to open the door to strangers!” (Also, “Johnnie, I told you not to invite the drug dealer in for pizza!”) Your readers will find the themes, even subconsciously, when they feel themselves identify with them.

Themes, rather than plots, may be the way you perceive the world. If someone asks you what the book is about and you say, “It’s about a battle off the coast of Antarctica”, you’re a plot person. If you answer, “it’s about survival in the Antarctic during wartime,” you’re a theme person (see the difference?)

By the way, I’m a theme person. (My book is about a young person who discovers people who share her uncanny talent. Plot people grumble at descriptions like this — but what HAPPENS?)

Food and your Story

Seasoned writers often recommend that, if you want to enrich the scene you’re writing, you include food, What can food do for a story?

Sometimes food drives the plot — the poisoned glass of elderberry wine in “Arsenic and Old Lace”, for example, or the cookbook in the Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man”.

Sometimes the food drives the theme — for example, the lavish descriptions of food in “The Hunger Games”, or the lavish presentations of chocolate in the movie “Chocolat”.

Sometimes the food develops the characters — the residents of the ecocollective “Barn Swallows’ Dance” in my Gaia series eat mostly vegetarian diets they’ve grown and raised themselves.

Sometimes the food sets the mood — if a character picks at his food, we know him to be upset or distracted; if he gobbles the food, he’s rushed or famished.

Sometimes the food simply engages the senses in its descriptions. A character eats freshly fried, breaded cheddar cheese curds — are you hungry yet?

So let’s play with this: You have a character, female, college age. She hasn’t been able to eat for several hours, because she has been involved in a clandestine operation to stop the bad guys who wish to hijack a large political event. The action she and her group have taken has been marginally successful, and the group chooses a restaurant to eat at. She feels ambivalent about what she has done, because she has had to exercise the secret power she dislikes having. What will she eat, and how will she eat it? Will she gobble the food? Savor it? Eat it mechanically, not really tasting it?

How will this differ from her co-conspirator, a college-age Japanese man who practices vegetarianism and feels compelled to use his secret power to fix the world?