The Way You Tell Them - Guest post by Alison Bacon

Picture this. You are in the pub with a group of friends and there’s a gap in the conversation. You heard this joke a while back and it pops unbidden into your head. You step forward and find you are holding the floor.

‘Have you heard the one about?’

The audience is hooked and you start well. The trouble is, the joke isn’t quite as clear in your head as you thought. If you’re anything like me, you get almost to the end then realize you’ve missed some vital detail along the way. The punch-line just won’t work. Or it turns out that you’ve somehow given the punch line away too soon; the joke – and the audience – are left hanging out to dry.

You’ve blown it. You flap and flounder like a stranded fish. ‘No, no, sorry, that’s not it! Hang on, hang on, I’ll do it again.’ And you do, but mainly for your own satisfaction. The gang has lost interest and drifted back to the bar.

Well, a novel is a tad longer than the average joke, and not necessarily comical, but in terms of the plot it works in much the same way. Timing is all. The information has to be revealed in just the right order and at just the right pace, or it won’t work. But if it does go tits up (and there’s a lot more to go wrong in the 100,000 words of a novel than in a thirty second joke) the result is usually the same; you have to start over. And it’s a very long way back.

Of course, if you’re one of those writers who doesn’t even begin until every scene and character has been researched, planned, and filed on coloured cards, you’re less likely to mess up and find yourself, as I do, stuck on the hamster-wheel of constant plot revision. But even you (yes you, Clever Clogs) might still have something to learn from our comedy metaphor.

If constructing the ‘story’ of a joke is vital, it’s really only the start. Remember Ronnie Corbett in the chair? The punch-line could be an old chestnut or a pretty lame pun, but he found a way of telling it, with all his infuriating digressions, that would have you laughing just for the sheer relief of getting to the end. Do you think that didn’t take practice? Or if you prefer your comics standing up, think of Live at the Apollo. These guys (I’m including girls of course) might sound spontaneous as they toss one-liners to the crowd, but I bet every shrug, every wave of the hand or pause for a knowing smile has been rehearsed and rehearsed some more. That’s why, even if there are only seven distinct plots in the whole of literature, it doesn’t really matter, because successful writing is in the performance. So before you even think of putting your novel on the stage, it has to have style, flair, panache and the patina that come of regular and enthusiastic polishing.

When that agent opens your envelope, the floor is yours. Make sure you don’t choke. Make sure they remember your name.

Alison Bacon is a native Scot who lives in the West Country. A glutton for writing punishment, she is currently toying with a third novel. She also tinkers with short stories, one of which recently made it into The Yellow Room Magazine. She loves having visitors at http://debutnovelist.wordpress.com or you can follow her on Twitter as AliBacon.

You gotta have a system...

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...

I've just spent the better part of this afternoon watching England being knocked out of the World Cup and listened to every pundit in the land comment upon how they never stood a chance because of the structure of the team chosen by Capello.

To be fair, structure is something that takes up an inordinate amount of my little grey cells. Not the footie, you understand, but structures in writing. It's fair to say I'm a geek and I sometimes worry about the things that might have had to make room in my brain for my mini obsession.

Would I have been able to read a map? Or remember my Wedding Anniversary?

You see, where a footie fan watches a match and immediately disects the teams' systems, I disect every book I read.

No matter the beauty of the prose, I just can't help myself.

In my view, structure is what will make or break a story every time. A bit like putting John Terry on the wrong side. Doesn't matter how good he is. The structure just won't work.

Whenever a writer tells me about a new project, the first question I'll ask will be what structure they've chosen. The next will be why.

If a blank look follows, I know the writer either has an instinctive talent for structure, choosing the right methos for the story without too much brain ache...or it will end up as a stream of consciousness, which might have some interesting ideas, but won't hang together.

So what then is structure?

Well, let me tell you what it's not. It's not a set of writing rules that have to be obeyed. It's not a formula. It's not a template.

I've often read blogs and writing forums where writers set out the actual structure that they believe a successful story must have.

There is they tell me, a winning system. Follow it and you have a blue print for a best seller. I find it depressing to imagine the legions of would be writers going along with this rubbish, all chained to their system.

Step one: introduce your MC.

Step two: the inciting incident.

Yadda, yadda.

Look, one thing I know about this game, is that trying to shoehorn a story into this system won't work any better than Rooney on a bad day.

True, most stories have a familair pattern. It's the one we humans have in our DNA. Most writers know it without giving it any thought.

Take it as given, that if you like books and have spent any time reading them, you already get it.

You don't need to think 'aha, this is where I need my inciting incident,' you're already thinking about introducing your old lover/dead body/long lost relative, at the right point cos...well you are.

So why then do I bang on about structure's importance?

Her's the thing. The steps and systems aren't it. They're not the decisions that we, as writers need t make.

What I'm getting at are the fundemental questions that need to be asked at the beginning of any piece of work.

How will this work best?

A multiple POV?

A collection of letter?

How about two narratives running alongside and meeting deliciously at the end?

An unrelaible narrator?

Go to any book you like and check the structure. Then ask yourself what would have changed if anyother structure had been chosen?

Trust me it becomes addictive. Apply it to all your own work.

Soon, you won't remember your Mother in Law's birthday and you'll have joined the ranks of the obsessed. But at least you won't have just lost 4-1 to Germany.