an absolute rule.
The only absolute rule is that, whether you write from the beginning or the end or the middle, you must start plotting from the end.
6
How to Develop a Plot Ability
You have heard it said that “art cannot be taught.” There is a sense in which writing cannot be taught; but in a different sense, it can.
To learn sciences like physics or history is simply to absorb facts consciously. Such sciences can be taught since the facts involved can be communicated. Physical skills like typing can also be taught. But to learn to type, more is required than merely listening to a factual lecture: you have to practice. First you learn how to move your fingers and strike the keys—slowly and by conscious effort. Learning to type then consists of automatizing this skill.
At first you have to think of how to crook your fingers, how far to reach for each letter, how to keep in tempo. Then you practice, faster and faster, so that eventually, when you look at a page of copy which you have to type, your fingers do the rest “instinctively.” If an experienced typist were to ask herself, “How do I do it?” she would answer, “I just do it.”
The same is true of dancing, or playing tennis, or any physical skill. First it is learned consciously—and you are in command of the skill when it becomes automatic, so that conscious attention is no longer required.
I pause on this analysis in order to illustrate what kind of automatic “instincts” have to be acquired in the realm of art.
I mentioned earlier the complexity involved in writing a single sentence [see pp. 1-2]. I said that you could not figure out the sentence consciously. You sit down to write, the sentence comes out a certain way, and with editing you can improve it—but you cannot compose the sentence consciously in the way that you can pass an examination in physics by stating the facts as you have learned and understood them.
This is why the process of writing cannot be taught—not because it is a mystical talent, but because so complex an integration is involved that no teacher can supervise the process for you. You can learn all the theory, but unless you practice—unless you actually write—you will not be able to apply the theory.
All that a teacher can do is explain the elements of writing and suggest a method of thinking and practicing that will enable you to write. I cannot give you rules sufficient to make you wake up one day with a talent for plot. But you can acquire such a talent if you know some general rules and the kind of mental exercises that will integrate into a plot ability.
So let me give you a few general rules for conditioning your plot imagination.
Concretize Your Abstractions
One rule that you need both as a human being and as a fiction writer is: Concretize your abstractions.
In your daily life, in thinking, and in reading, you deal constantly with wide abstractions. If you have only a general idea of how to concretize these, they are “floating abstractions.” If you can name one or two concretes under some concept, but no more, it is a semifloating abstraction. You do have some knowledge of how it applies to reality, but your understanding is very limited. For instance, if you are asked what you mean by “independence,” and you say, “A man who thinks for himself,” that is one good concrete. Much more is necessary, however, in order to understand such an abstraction as “independence.”
If you catch yourself using floating or semifloating abstractions, learn to concretize them. Project in ultimate action what any abstraction means.
For instance, it is worthless to say: “Love, well, everybody knows what love is.” To bring it down to earth, you might first say: “Love is a human emotion of appreciation for a value.” This is a good philosophical definition, but it is not yet concrete. To make it concrete, you must project what it means to observe love. Not only: How does it feel? but: How do you know it in other people? A writer has to project his abstractions in specific concretes. That he knows something inwardly is not enough; he has to make the reader know it; and the reader can grasp it only from the outside, by some physical means. Concretize to yourself: If a man and a woman are in love, how do they act? what do they say? what do they