Plotting the Short Story (by Culpeper Chunn - 1922)

GERM-PLOTS: WHAT THEY ARE AND WHERE TO FIND THEM

A comprehensive system of plot development, and an adequate supply of material to draw from, are almost indispensable to the writer who turns out a large number of stories each year, and to the occasional scribbler who has little knowledge of plot form and structure it is of even greater value. Years of experience as a writer, literary critic and student of the short story have brought out these facts: The writer who is "long" on writing is generally "short" on ideas, and an inadequate knowledge of the plot and its development causes more aspiring authors to fail than any other one thing.

Most beginners seem to have the idea that the writing game is a very easy game to play, as easy as ping-pong, for instance. A few of them have acquired a fair education; others, not so fortunate, are equipped with nothing but a gnawing desire to write, and on first appearances it seems to them that it should prove to be a very simple matter to weave their ideas into readable stories. Some of them have a vague idea of what a plot is, but they know nothing about BALANCE, INCITING MOTIVES, CRUCIAL SITUATIONS, CLIMAXES, etc., and care less. When they read in their favorite magazine a cameo-like story by some master writer, they do not realize that the author may have labored for days over that story, rearranging words, eliminating paragraphs and even whole pages from the original draft, and reconstructing the plot after he has torn it to pieces half-a-dozen times. The words flow so smoothly, the characters stand out so clearly, the plot is so simple — how easy it must be! But these writers are soon disillusioned when the rejection slips begin to roll in on them with the regularity of well-oiled clockwork. Not until they have served a long apprenticeship do they learn that authorship is as much of a profession as surgery is and that, as in all other pursuits, it is simply a matter of the survival of the fittest.

No writer can hope to achieve real success in the writing field unless he is well-grounded in the fundamentals of plot construction, nor can he avoid an atmosphere of SAMENESS in his stories and give them the stamp of cleverness and originality unless he constantly adds to his store of plot material. "The plot's the thing," and the writer who relies solely upon inspiration to furnish him with suitable plots for his stories cannot begin to compete with his more practical brother craftsman who stimulates his imagination with tid-bits from real life, as it were, and builds the foundations for his stories with the same care and exactitude that a stone mason would employ in building the foundation and framework of a house. Inspiration is, without a doubt, a very great thing, although personally I know very little about it, never having had time to sit down and wait for it to visit me. But it is a fickle creature at best, and requires as much attention as a teething baby. Even those rare exceptions among the writing fraternity who possess the divine spark need a solid base from which to start on their flights into the realms of imagery. It is not difficult to build an occasional plot. With one girl and one man, or two girls and one man, say, for a starting point, almost any writer who has touched a few of life's high spots can build a plot of some sort, but he cannot repeat the process over and over again with any great degree of success for the reason that he must attack each new story from a different angle, and when he relies entirely upon his own limited experience and his imagination, he soon finds this a very difficult thing to do. For this reason experienced writers always keep on hand a varied assortment of story-ideas, original and otherwise, to be used as starting points when they make new voyages into the uncharted seas of fiction. These story-ideas are called germ-plots.

A germ-plot is an idea which may be broadened out and used as a foundation upon which to build a short story — a spark, to shift the figure, that starts a conflagration in the writer's brain and makes him an object to be pitied until he sits down before his typewriter and pounds out a story to make us sit up half the night to read. Germ-plots lurk on street comers, in dark allies, in dingy restaurants, in ballrooms, on the faces of men — and women, in the lisp of a child, in the newspapers, in magazine advertisements, in funny sayings, in love letters, in jail, in insane asylums — on board the train, ocean liner, zeppelin! The germ-plot, in short, is any original or acquired idea, unusual situation, striking title, curious advertisement, funny character, queer dream, clever story — in fact, anything that contains an element of mystery, adventure, humor, fantasy, love, etc., and which has a twist to it, is ideal material for germ-plots and therefore legitimate plunder for the writer.