Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "plotting"

My wife is in labor. Though by the time you read this, she’ll probably have delivered a baby girl. In days gone by, fathers hung around in the waiting room sharing cigars with new fathers. I’m glad that’s no longer a tradition – if I wanted to suck on something long and dark, I surely wouldn’t be becoming a father, if you get what I mean.

But here I am, waiting. Our birth coach is giving my wife reflexology in the bedroom, so I’m taking advantage to pen my little blog missive for the week. Which is all about doing…very little.

It’s my new technique. Up until the book I’m currently plotting, I’ve been a fairly compulsive worker. I’m from Northern Europe; born Protestant; first in the family to attend university and cocktail parties. That sort of thing. This worked pretty well for me, up to a point.

However, since I completed the manuscript of my novel about Caravaggio in late April, I’ve been experimenting with a work method I would describe as “decisive indolence.” I’m still on the plotting stage of my next book. Almost everything about it has changed over those months. It was a historical novel set in London, 1914. Now it’s…not. The characters, the plot, everything’s different.

With my old technique, I’d have had a draft completed by now. But it might’ve been the wrong book. It’d be the book I abandoned already at the plotting stage.

So how have I perfected this decisive indolence? First, I work a little bit most mornings – but not every morning. But I allow myself time for other creative projects – music and painting – which keep my mind alert for the brief moments of creative concentration when ideas about the new novel come to me.

Second, no more car or bike to and from the gym. I’m walking home from the gym several times a week. It’s not the only time I walk somewhere, but it’s the only time when I don’t really need to get anywhere in particular and where my mind has been relaxed already by an hour of exercise.

As I listen to my wife’s contractions, I realize that labor is very much like the writing of a book. So many people these days are scheduling caesarians, and writers are rather doing the same thing – forcing their creative acts. I don’t advocate waiting around doing nothing, but I do think writers need to find a more natural formula from conception to delivery.

And with that, the reflexology is over, and I have to go back to stroking my wife’s back…

Figure out the end of the novel before you start to write

The great thriller writer Joseph Finder told me that figuring out the end of the novel is a key to getting started. “Gotta know the destination,” he said. (More from Joseph on plot.)

Take a look at my diagram of the outline for a thriller (You've seen it before). The two pieces I fill in first are the Set Up in Act I and the Payoff in Act III, where the hero prevents whatever the bad guy aims to do.



Why do it that way? Because you gotta know the destination before you start on the journey. If you don’t, you’ll meander. That nice rising diagonal line across the diagram will droop and zig zag -- and that means losing momentum. You’ll waste a lot of energy going in the wrong direction. That’s how novelists get deflated and novels get dropped. Plot those two elements first and the rest is just a matter of connecting two dots.

By the way, if you haven't read Joseph Finder, my favorites are Paranoia and Killer Instinct. Looking at the plot diagram, both of those novels have a great set-up and a knockout payoff.



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