Maintaining a Propulsive Plot in Literary Fiction
What is plot? How can you write a propulsive plot? And other musings on writing literary fiction. Plus a shoutout to The Guest, the bestselling novel by Emma Cline.
Why do literary fiction writers struggle with maintaining a propulsive plot? This is the question that drove me to write today’s blog post.
When I first sat down to write this post, I wanted to write about how you can maintain a propulsive plot. But the more I thought about this topic, the more I realized that it’s worthwhile to examine the why before we delve into actionable advice. After all, if we don’t understand why we’re struggling with the thing we’re struggling with, how can we even begin to apply someone’s advice?
Literary fiction: the quiet cousin
Literary fiction is known as the quieter, more internal cousin to upmarket and commercial fiction. You’ve heard it before: literary fiction is more thoughtful, slower, more concerned with the craft of writing. We oversimplify it by saying that as a category, literary fiction tends to be more introspective and character-driven, too.
I’m not here to talk about the perils of categorizing literature this way. I’m a literary agent, after all, and I use these categories every day as a sales tool. But what I am here to tell you, from a craft perspective, is this: Introspection and character development are not the antithesis to plot.
All novels, regardless of genre, need a propulsive plot. We’ve just somehow created a false equivalence that puts literary fiction in its own higher-than-thou category, where plot is somehow not important, but the introspection of the writer and the craft of language is king (To which I say: “??”).
So here is a reminder for you: your job as a writer is to hold the attention of your reader. This stands for all writers; it’s something you all have in common. And it is a hard feat! That’s why we’re here!
Most literary fiction is indeed “quieter” and concerned with the internal world of characters. At least that’s what I’ve seen in my submission inbox. So I think a good place to start this conversation on Plot is actually to meet at Character.
When I was in Creative Writing in undergrad, the first ever craft book I was assigned was Imaginative Writing by Janet Burroway. There’s a specific quote in it that has stuck with me. She writes, “those of us who write are often excellent observers, and we can fall into the trap of creating fictional people who passively observe.”
One of the most common reasons I pass on literary fiction projects in my submissions inbox is that the characters feel too passive, are observing the world—most of the time with such astute beauty— but ultimately not partaking in it.
We talk a lot about character desires when we talk about the craft of fiction. We ask: What does your character want? What is their deep desire? Their immediate desire? If you want to know how to plot literary fiction, begin with Character Desire.
All people want. All people have desires. And while in life you may not act on your wants or desires, in fiction, it is not enough to simply have them. Characters have to do something about their desires. They have to make choices that bring them closer or farther from their desires, choices that challenge their wants and complicate them.
I wrote a blog post about character emotionality a while ago, where I made the point that your character’s emotional makeup fuels the plot. It bears repeating here. TL;DR: A character’s emotionality (which includes their desire and want) influences their choices. It’s at the center of your plot.
A propulsive plot is the result of your characters making choices
In Bird by Bird (a book that I recommend to every writer), Anne Lamott writes, “That’s what plot is: what people will up and do despite everything that tells them they shouldn’t, everything that tells them that they should sit quietly on the couch and practice their Lamaze, or call their therapist, or eat until the urge to do that thing passes.”
It is not enough that your characters make choices; choices without context have no meaning. These choices must also be complicated and informed by the context and world in which they operate— A direct or indirect reaction to the situations they’re in.
The ripple effect (again)
This is where it’s helpful to think of the ripple effect, or causality, in your novel. With every plot point, with every choice your character makes, ask yourself: what does this cause? And then what happens?
This is how you move a plot forward, this is how you challenge your characters, how you force them to make more choices— whether or not that changes them, whether or not they are altogether altered by the end of the book.
As Lamlott writes, “you need to be moving your characters forward, even if they only go slowly.”
Emma Cline’s bestselling book, The Guest, is a masterclass in propulsive literary fiction. In it, a young woman named Alex is staying with an older man on Long Island who asks her to leave and sends her off with a train ticket after she flirts with a guest at a dinner party. But Alex doesn’t leave Long Island. Instead, she drifts from one person to the next, hoping that she can return to the man she’s staying with at the end of the long weekend, and everything would be fine. We, the reader, know this isn’t the case. But we watch her make choice after choice, each one leading into the next.
I’m of the opinion that nothing really happens in this book. The plot follows a meandering girl who doesn’t really have a plan, isn’t really certain of anything. But The Guest is so propulsive (no, really, the blurbs don’t lie) that there is something happening on every page.
Of course, the fact that Alex makes (bad) choice after (bad) choice isn’t enough for the novel to be propulsive. The reason I kept turning the pages was also because of the novel’s expertly crafted tension and stakes. Each of Alex’s bad choices raises the stakes further. Alex already has no money, no job, and a barely functioning phone through which she’s being harassed by a figure from her past for running off with some dirty drug money. Alex needs something to work; she’s in a perilous cycle and she’s potentially in real danger, if not because of the choices she’s making, then because of the looming drug dealer who is coming for her. But every time she’s close to salvation, every time her choices land her in a situation where we think it just might work, her next choice complicates that desire.
Both Alex and the audience are on a journey together. The novel considers both the character’s desires and the reader’s experience.
The structure of meaning
Let’s return again to Burroway. This is how she defines plot: “a plot is a series of events deliberately arranged so as to reveal their dramatic, thematic, and emotional significance.”
Storytelling, then, isn’t just about telling the audience a series of events. Nobody sticks around for a list of events. Otherwise, we’d all be selling story outlines in bookstores. It’s really all about the way in which a series of events reveals meaning. A propulsive plot isn’t just coming from your character’s journey; it’s also the result of the organization of meaning. I borrow this phrase from Matthew Salesses, who redefines Structure as “the organization of meaning” in his book, Craft In the Real World.
When I first read his book last year, I was struck by his definition of structure because of how it centers the audience’s experience. I think this is something that is worth exploring when we talk about a propulsive plot.
A book can have a series of events, ones in which the characters make choices that lead to other choices, but the truth is: in a competitive market where holding a reader’s attention is crucial, it is not enough for choices to be made or for tension to spike.
Why did I keep flipping the pages of The Guest? Why do you keep flipping the pages of a “quiet” book— or any book, for that matter? This, of course, is a hard question to pose, because its answer would not necessarily be objective, would not be something we can easily dissect and categorize and label under conventional craft terms. So consider it a probing question.
Something should also be said about your side of the desk, about how you, the writer, organize the structure of this novel to create meaning— about whether you are effectively communicating the significance of this particular series of events. That is why readers stick around. That is what keeps readers engaged.
