Karen GoatKeeper's Blog - Posts Tagged "plotting"
Plotting a Book
I am again studying up on a writing skill for my writers' group meeting. Plotting: a simple step by step action plan the main character follows to get from the beginning of a novel to the end of the novel.
Is plotting really so simple? Where does that set of steps come from?
This brings up the plotter vs. pantser debate again. But there is a new twist for me.
A recent Writers' Digest has an article on this aspect of plotting. It includes a set of questions so you can rate yourself on the plotter/pantser continuum. Of course I took the survey.
Now, I love NaNo. That 50,000 words in 30 days is so liberating. It is a pantser's paradise. I would throw down a few plot ideas and be off and writing as fast as my clumsy fingers could make their hopefully coherent way across the keyboard.
But, according to that survey, I am mostly a plotter.
I can't be. My life is chaos. My house is a disaster zone. My garden is a weed's Eden. I am always trying to do too many things in too little time.
Except the survey is right.
My day is organized around a list of projects. Under the clutter everything in my house has a place it is supposed to be and eventually returns to. The weeds may outrun me but my guerrilla warfare takes its toll on them.
And my writing has a plot series of bullet points and character sheets.
All is not lost. NaNo gives me a month of freedom to throw all the organization - well, most of it - to the winds. Maybe that is the real reason I look forward to November madness. It's a break in the work of writing, a time to have fun.
Interestingly enough, that is a point made in the Writers' Digest article. Even the most organized plotter can use a time of pantsing to get the stodginess out of their writing.
Is plotting really so simple? Where does that set of steps come from?
This brings up the plotter vs. pantser debate again. But there is a new twist for me.
A recent Writers' Digest has an article on this aspect of plotting. It includes a set of questions so you can rate yourself on the plotter/pantser continuum. Of course I took the survey.
Now, I love NaNo. That 50,000 words in 30 days is so liberating. It is a pantser's paradise. I would throw down a few plot ideas and be off and writing as fast as my clumsy fingers could make their hopefully coherent way across the keyboard.
But, according to that survey, I am mostly a plotter.
I can't be. My life is chaos. My house is a disaster zone. My garden is a weed's Eden. I am always trying to do too many things in too little time.
Except the survey is right.
My day is organized around a list of projects. Under the clutter everything in my house has a place it is supposed to be and eventually returns to. The weeds may outrun me but my guerrilla warfare takes its toll on them.
And my writing has a plot series of bullet points and character sheets.
All is not lost. NaNo gives me a month of freedom to throw all the organization - well, most of it - to the winds. Maybe that is the real reason I look forward to November madness. It's a break in the work of writing, a time to have fun.
Interestingly enough, that is a point made in the Writers' Digest article. Even the most organized plotter can use a time of pantsing to get the stodginess out of their writing.
Plotter's Nightmare
Supposedly I am rewriting a draft I started a year ago and stopped when the plot hit a brick wall. Much of that draft is interesting. The main plot line is good. The brick wall now has a door in it.
The nightmare?
I like to write a draft freely with only a list of bullet point plot points. The plotter outline is swirling in the brain flowing through currents, eddies and backwaters carrying my draft along.
This time the bullet points are pages of writing. Events, people, dialog form dams blocking my new draft leaving me treading water. Even though the new draft begins months earlier with new events setting the action up and blowing it into being, my mind trips over those pages of words.
I am a plotter at heart. Those pages are security. Somehow they must work into the new draft.
My first draft is a pantser paradise. This one has soured worse than curdled milk. I need to find the paradise part again, unspoiled.
The solution?
Somehow I must close all those pages. The outline must return to bullet points. Then a good night's sleep may open up my pantser draft paradise again and the new draft will make the fingers fly once more.
The nightmare?
I like to write a draft freely with only a list of bullet point plot points. The plotter outline is swirling in the brain flowing through currents, eddies and backwaters carrying my draft along.
This time the bullet points are pages of writing. Events, people, dialog form dams blocking my new draft leaving me treading water. Even though the new draft begins months earlier with new events setting the action up and blowing it into being, my mind trips over those pages of words.
I am a plotter at heart. Those pages are security. Somehow they must work into the new draft.
My first draft is a pantser paradise. This one has soured worse than curdled milk. I need to find the paradise part again, unspoiled.
The solution?
Somehow I must close all those pages. The outline must return to bullet points. Then a good night's sleep may open up my pantser draft paradise again and the new draft will make the fingers fly once more.
Habit Changing Week
When I write a book, I have generally thought about the book in a general way for months. I have a plot point list to keep me on track and keep the book from sagging too much in the middle. I start on page one and write until I can type "The End."
This has worked for me for six novels. It is comfortable. And flawed.
Mistaken Promises, the third in the Hazel Whitmore series, will not write this way. Every few chapters I come to a stop wondering where to go next. There is a plot point list. I have thought about the book and know the general idea of the book. And I come to a stop wondering where I go next.
It is on bullying. The person doing the bullying has a reason and is desperate to hurt Hazel for this reason. One scheme after another falls apart. And I ran out of schemes before running out of book.
Dead stop. Blank mind. Frustration.
So I tried something new, something I never do. I knew what the climax of the book was going to be. I wrote the climax scene.
Now I know the next scheme. I can fill in the time from the former dead stop to the climax.
Then I can finish the climax, the denouement and type "The End."
This has worked for me for six novels. It is comfortable. And flawed.
Mistaken Promises, the third in the Hazel Whitmore series, will not write this way. Every few chapters I come to a stop wondering where to go next. There is a plot point list. I have thought about the book and know the general idea of the book. And I come to a stop wondering where I go next.
It is on bullying. The person doing the bullying has a reason and is desperate to hurt Hazel for this reason. One scheme after another falls apart. And I ran out of schemes before running out of book.
Dead stop. Blank mind. Frustration.
So I tried something new, something I never do. I knew what the climax of the book was going to be. I wrote the climax scene.
Now I know the next scheme. I can fill in the time from the former dead stop to the climax.
Then I can finish the climax, the denouement and type "The End."
