Sunday, March 25, 2012

To Plot Or Not

I confess, I'm a non-plotter. I don't plot, not really. When I begin a book I have an overall theme in mind and that's about it. I start off with a scene, maybe a murder (murder is always popular) and that triggers the next scene and so on. I have only a broad idea of the story, which writes itself around the theme as I go along. The characters have to step out of my unconscious and take the story where it needs to go. I know there will be major events along the way, but I don't know what they will be. I know the ending, in the general sense that the good guys will probably win. They may, however, win in ways not expected. The victory may be pyrrhic. But I don't know that when I begin.

There are writers who plot everything, an approach often recommended in books and articles about writing. These folks outline and develop the entire story in detail. They follow their outline and know what's going to happen before they put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard).

Both approaches work. Both have positive and negative aspects. Both will succeed or fail based on all the indefinable skills that make up the creative process.

I tried to be a detailed plotter. It bored the hell out of me and I could never stick to it. It felt confining, artificial. I wish I could do it that way. It would make things a lot simpler.

As a non-plotter, I sometimes get in trouble. The thrillers I write demand accuracy in detail and a relentless logic to events. Things have to happen for a reason, not because a nice big explosion might be exciting. The more complicated the story, the more traps I can fall into. Because I write a series, it is inevitable that things will get more complicated. I've reached a point with the PROJECT series where I am challenged to give the reader more.

I am comfortable with the sense of when to end a chapter and how to do it. I trust my feel for the pacing of a story, so that is not a problem for me. I know when things are too slow or too fast, though that might not be apparent until revision. Since I revise as I go along, I usually catch it early.

But...I might be 20,000 words in and realize something is missing in the logical reasoning behind events. That will almost always have to do with hidden motivation that must be revealed as the story moves along. If someone is secretly watching my characters, why are they doing it? Maybe I didn't think that through enough before I stuck it in there, but now it's embedded and I must do something about it.

Being a non-plotter can come back and bite you. These days I'm working on the fourth book in the PROJECT series. I like to move my characters all over the world. It's fun for me and fun for the readers. They get to travel to places they would probably never visit, much less places where people were doing their best to kill them. I realized yesterday that I had moved my protagonists to a key place in the story far too easily. Now I have to fix it, which is moderately difficult. That happened because I did not have a detailed story line worked out. Easy moves the story, but it's a cheap shot at a reader. Readers invest time and money and deserve better.

WARNING: OPINION ALERT

Deus Ex Machina worked for Sophocles
but it won't work for you.

So where does the confession part come in? I confess, I do a sort of plotting as I go along. I start with eight or ten bullet points, ideas for the story. These may or may not end up in the book. I have a big whiteboard on the wall of my office, my primary tool to keep things straight as the story develops. I constantly put things on it, ideas, questions, possibilities. I list the names of new characters and their role, e.g., part of the Russian Security Services. If there's a hole in the logic, it will end up there until it's plugged. As I incorporate or discard those ideas, I erase them. The board is always full.

I love the freedom of not knowing how things will work out. If I can surprise myself, then I should surprise my readers. I love it when a new character appears from nowhere, driven by the logic of the story, someone I've never thought of until that moment. The real enjoyment for me of the hard work of writing comes in those moments.

It is also satisfying when the day comes that I erase that entire whiteboard and start over with the next book.

I can tear my hair out over a glaring hole in the logical development of my non-plotted story, but that becomes another opportunity to improve my writing. I wouldn't have it any other way. If you want a challenge, you might try writing from the seat of your pants. What British writers call a "pantser". It's not for everybody.

What kind of plotter are you?




12 comments:

  1. I usually start out with a loose, but not detailed, outline. It may or may not hold up. I'm finding that the more I write a particular group of characters, the less plotting I'm able to do. They are rebelling against it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Ashlynne, That makes a lot of sense to me. I think that life in a story has to come from the characters. They want to go their own way. Thanks for your comment.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I usually start of with a loose idea of where I want the story to go. The characters always take me off on different tangents. Sometimes, they're red herrings. Sometimes they are genius. It's more important for me that the characters be true to themselves than the plot. I let them wander around until they find their way back. When I get to the editing stage, I figure out how much of that wandering the story truly needs and trim the rest.

    I've tried detail plotting. It felt too formulaic for me -- stiff, cold -- and it didn't give the characters room to make mistakes and grow. It also took a lot of the surprise out of writing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi TP, That sums it up very well. Just the way I feel. Not much fun if the surprise is gone. Thanks for the comment.

      Delete
    2. I'm in the same club. I'm a panster. The seat of my pants got worn to a frazzle while writing my most recent novel, Ash: Return Of The Beast. I had a pretty good idea of how the story would go when I started. What I didn't realize was how complicated it would become because of the interconnections among several background characters over a span of several generations. These people don't even appear in the story as active characters but the active cast of characters are related to them. So I finally had to chart out all their ages and dates of births and deaths. It's not likely that anyone reading the book would ever know if there was a hole in the chronology of the events and actions of these less than minor characters but, since the active characters in the present are related to them, I just felt compelled to make sure it was all chronologically correct.

      I also thought I knew for sure how the story would end. I was completely wrong about that. I would never have guessed it would end the way it did. I couldn't believe it even as I was writing the final sentence.

      Delete
    3. That's great, exactly what I was talking about. It's that kind of attentiuon to details that readers may never notice that makes the whole thing work, And I love it when I don't know how it will end...
      Thanks for your comment.

      Delete
  4. I don't necessarily 'plot' as such. What I generally do is read a hell of a lot on the specific subject I have in mind, making copious notes along the way. A story usually suggests itself out of this research Alex. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Jack, I'm much the same way, sort of. The research is essential to fill out the details, to make the setting and events real. I want readers to feel and see and hear the setting. E.g., in my current work in progress a scene takes place in a large hospital in Thessaloniki, Geece. I've been to Greece, but not that hospital. So I research it on the net, look at pictures, etc. and now if a reader goes there in person (or has been there) it wil be familiar.
      Thanks for your comment.

      Delete
  5. Until I get a character, I got nothin'. After I get one, I need a beginning and an end if writing a children's story, where plot is important. Let's say you've got 2 peaks poking out of a sea of fog. Character starts on peak one, descends into the valley of fog, able only to see the path about fifty feet in front of her/him/it. There are surprises in the fog. New paths branch off, and choices must be made. Eventually, character ends up on peak two. This formula has worked well for the middle grade fantasies I write. It also wins bonus points for being fun.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Steve, great comment. I really like it and better, can see it. You put me there. It's a great way to "plot".
      Thanks!

      Delete
  6. At this stage of the game, I would say I'm like you, Alex: somewhere in the middle. A loose structure, owing a lot to Robert McKee's STORY, does float up and give shape to the book as I write. With my latest I knew that plot turning point 1 should arrive around the 33% mark, and looked up on page 130 to find it. But it's less planning than...awareness. I love getting so lost in the story that I hardly know I'm writing, and I think an outline would detract from that for me.

    Hopefully it won't take 22 drafts this time, though :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi jenny, I agree, less planning than awareness. There's a sense that something has to happen now, something to surprise, something to kick things into a different level. Since I write thrillers, that's really important. At the same time, there has to be consistent development of a wide range of characters. The book I'm writing is quite complex that way. I'll know later how well I've done!
      Thanks for your comment...

      Delete

Comments are always welcome. Tell me what you think! I've had some difficulty getting comments to show publicly on this blog, but I'll get back to you, even so...