Baseball Diamonds and Story Plotting
 
I haven’t done a writing craft post in a while. I was talking to Howard Jones the other day about plotting, and I brought up my “baseball diamond” metaphor from my blog. He had no idea what I was talking about. I looked it up and sure enough, I’ve never talked about the baseball diamond plot here. My cheesecloth brain often confuses what I’ve taught in classes and what I’ve written about here, so my bad, Howard.

Thinking about your plot as a baseball diamond is one way to evaluate your story structure.



A baseball diamond.

This concept is nice because it forces you to thing about your plot changing direction. To mix my sports metaphors, the goalposts suddenly switch location and your characters have to make a hard turn to head toward what they want or need.

At First Base, your story takes off in a new direction – I think in the screenplay game they call it the inciting incident, but it just represents a new element put into your character’s ordinary (or extraordinary, given that we’re dealing with sf/fantasy) life that require her to act. You can hit first base on the first page if you want – editors love stories that get going right away. Many modern thrillers have it in the first page or two. In Fatherland the detective finds the body of one of Hitler’s old gang on page two, or in Silence of the Lambs Starling is standing, sweaty and grass-stained and reeking of gunsmoke, outside Crawford’s Behavioral Sciences office in the first paragraph. It’s where Snake Plissken takes the deal to go into New York and get the President, or where Rose gets talked off the rail by Jack in Titanic, where Rick agrees to hide the Letters of Transit at his place in Casablanca and Ugarte gets arrested moments later.

Second Base is an important point in your novel. It’s where you reveal what’s really at stake, and it’s often where the heroes get their first real glimpse at the challenge they face to make it home. Also, like second base on a baseball diamond, from this point on they’re getting closer and closer to the finish with each step they take, because the objective is in sight and they’re heading for it as quickly as they can. No more groping in the dark. In Watership Down it’s where the Sandleford refugees, having established themselves on the down, realize that they need some does if the warren is to survive and grow. In Gone With the Wind it’s where Scarlett realizes that the full burden of Tara is upon her and she makes her famous oath that she’ll take care of herself and kin no matter what she has to do. In Pride and Prejudice it’s where Darcy confesses his love to Lizzie, awfully, and is rejected, equally awfully, leading to Lizzie learning the true history of the man and the beginnings of her understanding and love.

At Third Base I usually like the hero to discover what he has to do to win. Sometimes this is the darkest point in your story, when all seems lost, or the obstacle seems too formidable to overcome. Third Base in Lord of the Rings is probably when Frodo, having finally reached Mt. Doom, decides to claim the ring rather than destroy it. In Pride and Prejudice Darcy and Lizzie seem about to be at an understanding when her stupid spoiled whore sister runs off with Darcy's old enemy.

Home ends the story and brings the whole thing together. That's another nice feature of the baseball diamond concept. Though your characters will only rarely end up geographically in the same spot as they started, hopefully they've scored in some way, with new understanding of themselves or the world, or, depending on your story, just reached a place of safety. The beginning and the ending should be connected in some way (think theme!). Frodo's saved the part of Middle Earth he loves but can no longer live in it, Rick's rejoined the good fight and got his love for Ilsa back, Snake Plissken who began Escape From New York a prisoner ready to be kicked out of the world walks away a free man, sticking it to The Man at the same time.

Don’t neglect your villains. They’re running a different set of bases with their own plots and plans and reasons for acting, but at third they should have a clear goal that will allow them to triumph, too. They'll frequently collide at the bases. Remember in the first Superman movie with Christopher Reeve, third base came when Lex Luthor got the kryptonite around Superman’s neck – but he also explained his “double jeopardy” plot of the two missiles heading for two different targets.

Now, obviously a novel is not a game with exact measurements and definition. You can have lots of differences in your distance between the bases. You may have six bases and the characters turn for "home" at third base, who knows. A mystery or thriller is certainly enhanced by more turns for good and bad as clues are introduced, suspects eliminated, and discoveries made. An epic fantasy might have tens of thousands of words between bases.

Just like a baseball diamond, action tends to cloud up right on either side of the bases – especially second base and home plate.

Here are some examples to illustrate this concept:

Star Wars
1st Base: “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi”
We learn that R2 is carrying plans to the Death Star that must be brought to the Rebel Alliance.
2nd Base: “That’s no moon, it’s a space station.”
The heroes encounter the Death Star and are captured by it.
3rd Base: “Plans provided by Princess Leia”
A weakness is found and only a desperate attack by the rebel alliance has a chance of destroying it.
Home: Destruction of Death Star and Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Rebels

Empire’s POV in Star Wars
1st Base: “What happened to the plans.”
Darth Vader captures Leia’s blockade runner, but finds that the plans aren’t on board.
2nd Base: “Look sir, droids.”
Vader learns that she’s given the plans to some droids. He also wants to know where she was bringing them.
3rd Base: “She may yet be of some use to us”
Vader and Tarkin let Leia and her rescuers escape so they can trace their ship to the rebellion’s secret base on Yavin.
Home: Battle of Yavin 4
Tarkin attempts to destroy Yavin 4 and with it the rebellion.


The Birds
1st Base: Meeting (and disliking) cute
Melanie Daniels meets a handsome attorney named Brenner in a bird shop. They try to trick each other and end up fighting, but there’s clearly some kind of attraction. She decides to get him the birds he was looking for but finds that to deliver them she’ll have to go up to Bodega Bay.
2nd Base: Malevolent Birds
A series of escalating incidents between birds and man show that there’s something wrong with the birds around Bodega Bay. From here on out the story is mostly about surviving the birds.
3rd Base: “It’s the end of the world.”
The birds begin to attack in massive waves, besieging the town.
Home: Escape from Bodega Bay
Melanie and the Brenner family escape the birds -- we think.

Rosemary’s Baby
1st Base: The new apartment
Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse move into a lovely old apartment against the objections of her knowledgeable friend Hutch that the building has an unpleasant history.
2nd Base: Rosemary’s pregnant!
One of the strangest conception attempts in literary history puts Ro in a family way.
3rd Base: “They’re all a bunch of witches!”
Rosemary suspects that her weird old neighbors, her OB-GYN, and yes, even her husband, have designs on the baby she’s carrying. They snatch her and tell her she lost the baby.
Home: “Be a mother to him…”
Rosemary learns that her baby lives and that Satan fathered her child, not Guy.

So give it a try. Draw out your plot and decide where it turns, and why. Can you put more action and suspense on either side of the bases as the plot turns?

I’m not saying this is better than using “The Hero’s Journey” or any other plot formula. But if you have a story that clearly changes direction three times (or four, or seven) you’ve probably written an interesting plot.