I had the great good fortune to receive an email from my local San Francisco South SCBWI chapter to let me know that Martha Alderson, author of among many other books her latest The Plot Whisperer : Secrets of Story Structure Any Writer Can Master, would be speaking free for members of SCBWI in Palo Alto last Saturday. I Facebooked my friend Edna Cabcabin Moran and we met up there. Little did I know I’d run into so many other writer friends I made down in Los Angeles this past August at SCBWI LA. The wine and cheese event afterward was a wonderful way to catch up and share our latest news and projects.
I first became aware of Martha’s amazing Youtube videos on plot last year while writing my NaNoWriMo novel. It was a wonderful year, since I found her videos on plot in October and used them to structure my story. Are you in the midst of planning your next bestseller? Watch her videos! She makes plot and so much more as easy as pie. I think Martha’s videos are also great to view after your first draft.  And since so many of us are deep the throes of our NaNo, I thought I’d share a teaser from Martha’s latest.
From page 47:
THE MAJOR ELEMENTS OF ANY PLOT
Plot is made up of three elements:
•Character emotional development
•Dramatic action
•Thematic significance
I said earlier that every character wants something. You (and your character) must decide what she is willing to give up to achieve her goal. This begins the character’s emotional development plot.
The specific actions the chatacter takes to realize her goal comprise the dramatic action plot.
Tie the character’s private passion to a bigger, more transformative universal subject, and a thematic plot is launched. When the dramatic action changes the character over time, the story becomes thematically significant.Â
Martha lives in Santa Cruz and looks just like a Santa Cruz woman, all sunshine and brightness with eyes that sparkle. Her enthusiasm for story is amazing and I enjoyed her talk about story structure using the classic, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, as an example. And the real shocker, that The Secret Garden wouldn’t be marketable today. I’m a pantser and Martha spoke to the fact that women are more inclined to be this way because of our nature. It was interesting to me when she pointed out that most plot teachers are men, very left-brained in their thinking and plotting.
How do you plot your stories? Are you a pantser? Are you an outliner? If you are doing NaNoWriMo, check in with me here and let me know how you are doing. I’m a bit behind, but happy as ever. Sitting at 18K at the beginning of the day. Today is HALFWAY DAY! Hope to see you all at 25K, although I’ll most likely lag a bit behind y’all. 🙂