To Plot or Not to Plot... Maybe Just to Plod

A week was spent in writing... maybe only 3-4K towards my book. However, maybe three scenes, I realized all of my notes and ideas were going to be a hot mess, just picking up where things would start to unfold. Some parts were flashbacks to shed light on why certain events happened, some were just present scenes that revealed the bigger mystery, but it was quite clear that all of these ideas needed a solid framework.

Every story needs a different touch, point blank. Even in a single series, I'm not formulaic. Of course, beginning, middle, end is true for all of them. I'm not a firm believer in making the first sentence or first paragraph the hook. I have seen very few that do this that are able to keep the pace or not sound like a desperate plea to hold your attention. In fact, I like to write under the impression that the reader is at least somewhat like me-- enjoying a courtship that isn't one sided. I'm not trying to impress myself with my vocabulary nor assume you need every sight, smell and texture described for my creative writing teacher, to give you the bits that are relevant to the experience and let you fill in the blanks. Mind you, this is not advice I'll give to everyone, only that each book is not everything and it takes a lot of skill to withhold the need to show off rather than just weave a story of proper pace. I've read Stephen King explain the 'kill your darlings' advice in a non-literal sense; not as a call to kill your characters ruthlessly, but to terminate flowery prose and self-aggrandization to preserve the spirit of the piece. That's something I can dig.

There are pros and cons to plotting or not and this isn't about apple picking-- at this point, that sort of blog is low-hanging fruit. However, I'll use the experience this week to perhaps help a writer that started with a pantser and ended up staring at the reality that planning cannot be avoided any longer. First, let's get your baseline. Were you truly winging it and have nothing but the body text? Were you coming up with substantial ideas and jotting them down? In a notebook? In a program? On the side notes of Scrivener?

Krista got you.

You got nothing? Start here.

Let's go with the big fancy headers so you can skip to where it applies to you.

Don't get stuck here and fixate on your brick wall. A lot of people that get knocked out of the free-writing phase often feel like this is a logical weight like editing can be. Your ideas are probably slippery little fish, an intimidating school of feeding fish you're trying to count. I don't like to assume that having no outside notes is the most difficult. It's probably more work, but skimming through for the main points will be a little extra work with the bonus of refreshing your memory more thoroughly. There are a couple of ways you can take a block of text and make it less intimidating. If you're not a fan of chapters, at least make sure the scenes are divided. While you are parsing text into manageable blocks, if you haven't already, parse your chapters/scenes into a formatted table of contents in a regular word processor or start drop each one into its own scene in Scrivener. 

I often name each scene (which does not show up on the full document unless you want it to) to match the events. I have some just named things like Magic Upgrade or First Dance and this is usually enough to help me cross-reference it with scenes involving that characters. For word processors with the highlight function, you can color code scenes in the table of contents with each color representing the dominant character/characters (I'll use red for one, blue for another and purple when they're both present. Yellow for one, blue for one, green for both-- you can be strategic with the combos. A lot of characters? Use brown. Character deaths? Black or dark grey.).

For Scrivener, you can use a multitude of icons and color flags, etc. for the same coding purposes. You may know your story enough to build a color/icon system right away or you might want to alter it as you go. The idea here isn't immediately wrangling the full body of information, it's building sections that become increasingly more manageable as you go. 

You may only want your scenes to contain a few important details (Entering the Dark Room) or start by lumping full scenes (The Haunted Castle). Those scenes may grow or shrink as you decide which details need to be together to check for continuity. Remember, I write epic fantasy, so I usually have at least three main plotlines moving in and out of sequence. If outlining requires you to seamlessly follow a certain characters to build their plotline, it may be important to give them their own color. Maybe your story is moved by places. You may need to gather everything that happened at the castle to decide what needs to happen in the labyrinth.

To simplify this so far, build your outline from your general intention and themes, dividing sections in a way that lets you jump to them and gather relevant details almost thoughtlessly. You can use:

• A linked table of contents to jump to these sections
• The scene feature in Scrivener
• A color coding or icon system
• The Control or Command F feature to locate weird word indicators heading each related section

The idea is to create a map that is about to zip you through outlining.

You've got... something. Little bits.

You've been outlining to a point, but it's a bit disorganized or you feel like something is missing. You may need to use the color-coding/icon/keyword systemizing I went into above just to help you locate what you did do. You may also have this intimidating pile of notes that, when you wrote them, seemed very thorough. Maybe too thorough, but not quite in order now that you look at it. This is where my current story ended up. Some things in notebooks, some things preempted in the notes section of Scrivener but not where I was using them, just where I thought of them.

This is where I had to get my hands a little dirty this week.

Part I was actually well-organized, but built a lot of particulars I'd have to deal with for Part 2, maybe 3. I knew I wanted to take a similar approach, alternating between the two main parties with some room to lead in some subplots. This is where I had to take my pile and build plotline notes. I used Mac's Stickies for this but you can use color coded pages, specific dedicated pages in a notebook, whatever works best for you. The idea is to treat each slowly revealed plot and block them together. In my case, this was a little tricky. One plot has three specific timeline, when the character was young, when his son reached adulthood, and when those decisions came to a head in the present. I didn't want them back to back but rather I wanted certain present events to act as a lead-in to the past. This was done through one of the two parties' discoveries. Explaining it might be more confusing so basically it kind of went like this.

• Main Party 1 - Broken Door, able to use Recall
• Door Scene 1- As a youth
• Main Party 2 - Light leads to tomb, name is important
• Door Scene 2 - Prior to Gala Event Part I
• Main Party 1 - Library, chains
• Relevant Subplot - Villain's entry into City (past)
• Door Scene 3 - A father's rage

Might not mean much to you, but each of those represents enough to lead me into knowing where to look if I need to make sure I've added certain details. One that I realized I missed early on was the affect that a certain sound had on a character. I had been able to zip through the scenes involving her just by following her labels.

From there, every idea got a container. I had an area map that I plotted their routes on quickly to plan each scene of their progress. It also set up where I alternated the scenes. Once I did this, it was a matter of making sure all the pieces found a home. What needed to happen in the conservatory, with Main Party 1 with these objects. Colonel Mustard in the Kitchen with the pipe wrench, if you must. You'd be surprised how fast those ideas fly into place if you prepared everything.

You overplanned. Your muse is MIA.

Yeah, been there too. Your details are not only chaotic and thorough, but they clash like a MF. You're probably staring a note mash-up that could be a novel all by itself and you've got it all together, but once you start to read it, it's chock full of inconsistencies. Sometimes they completely negate the way things worked in a previous book!

This may not be such a big deal unless you already have something published. Sometimes you know you're not 100% enough to release a series until you've written them all. Sometimes you jumped the gun. If they're not published, go to town on your (hopefully thoroughly outlined) first book and through in the changes you need. Otherwise, rework your sequel. I'd advise you not to heavily change an already published book. This really screws with your early print adopters and you do not want to do that. Bite the bullet and call it canon. If it's really hurting to let it go, store it for a future WIP or take on a second project. Even if it just means writing a scene that will fall somewhere in the middle of that book, get it out of your system. Remember, no book or series has to be everything. Often an author's entire body of work is revisiting a theme that you couldn't let go, courting it with other characters, a little different, but on its way to finding fulfillment. You don't want to half-ass an idea just to keep building it. Always give it all you've got but don't panic if you feel like it could be better. It may need a home somewhere else.

And the rest.

The only time you need to panic about having too much or too little is if you're aiming to be a one-hit wonder. This is where people really fret that maybe it isn't all it could be. If you can honestly say it's a solid story, where it needs to be for what it is, don't worry that you forgot the bad-ass dragon or the apocalyptic battle scene or that you just couldn't make them work on your first go. I think a lot of people give up when their first book flops, maybe even their first three. I have six books out there and I'm not even pressed about the marketing right now. When I started, I set one goal: fill a shelf with my work. That is my first priority. I'm not going to worry one whit about sales or marketing or financial comfort as long as I can keep focusing on building my library. That will come next. Even then, I'm not resting on that. Right now, I have so many ideas that one shelf would never hold them. They might fill the whole case. I might divide my priorities even then, but even with that driving goal, it's never been all or nothing.

Yes, I am planning on making this my career. Yes, best seller would be terrific someday. No, I don't plan on doing it for free. I don't care if a crafter is a novice or not, they should never undervalue hard work. There are absolutely atrocious best-sellers and under-valued masterpieces and neither really deserves it, but they both should absolutely stick to their guns. I was once accused of not being a serious writer because I'm not wasting time forcing the existence of my books.

In fact, one prevailing message I've learned is that some fantasy readers will not pick up a series until it's finished. Often, they are not convinced an author will do so. I can't shame an author for the time it takes to write a book and juggle life, but I have seen the frustration of readers who wait 5 years between books that are supposed to be finished in 5 books. Some people don't want to wait 20 years to reach the conclusion. Prolific readers sometimes want new material and to retain memory, visit one world start to finish, not treat every book like a serial comic. One thing I have done is feel out comments on social media, see where longtime readers and new readers fall on the spectrum. Young readers tend to be more forgiving while older readers tend to be set in their ways. If your target audience is young readers though, they might not see it through to the end if their tastes have changed significantly as they grow up. If your series is a classic, then it will still see consistent sales over time. If it's a trend, a wait might burn it out completely.

Of course I do my research and stay current. Market trends don't really interest me-- those are the shiftiest. However, audience trends are something I do watch. Genres and even age group content is often mislabeled because there are no regulations and they can skew their popularity by throwing their work into a niche. It's easy to seem more successful as a writer if your book is #3... in Grasshopper Fantasy. Or maybe YA Romance is trending, so even though your book is Adult Fantasy, you can get away with it because there's at least one subplot where young adults are interested in each other. This is why I never quite understand why people insists on labels, or warnings or guarantees of any kind. Why they think a cover or a review or a rating means jack shit. I have read terrible books and I have read wonderful books, but I have never regretted the act of discovery or the element of surprise. I believe the saying is something along the lines of 'If it's not a blessing, it's a lesson.'

I could probably keep babbling but I'll tie things up in a few paragraphs. The only thing I care about is whether a work shows integrity. That's what I try to do in my own stories. If you think that doesn't make me serious, it's both not my problem and sounds backwards in actual practice. When an author tells a story, I want to see that they care about it. When I read a dirty romance novel, I don't want them to juggle between intellectualism and smut. It's trying to please everyone and failing. To imply that you have to burn out trying to be successful just sounds like a superficial and temporary attitude. That kind of writer makes me think they'll stop once they've earned their fortune, that opinion will sway the quality too much, that they don't really care about their work, just the end game. I've seen too much work tank over time that way, whereas the really great work only got better and better as they struggled with what it meant to them even when financial success wasn't the motivation. I've seen so many writers even grumble over the demand to continue a series when they wanted to move on-- how they could still write a superb story that wasn't thrown away in spite of that. If you can write knowing that your most notorious work may be the one you're most embarrassed about, that's what I call serious.

I don't care how fast or slow you write. I don't care if you plot or don't. When you thirst for the way to make your story work, I respect that. When you'll read through long blog posts to see if you can learn at least one new thing, I get that (and do that). Because books, if they're lucky, have one magic moment in someone's life.

If you want a fun rabbit hole to research, look up famous books that the authors didn't like. You'd be really surprised by which books fall into that category. Plenty of people adore their work and never see reciprocation, but there's that flipside that makes you deepen your attitude towards your craft. Did you know that you can be detached and write an emotional story? Find your opposite attitude, your opposite method, and see what it can show you.

As for progress, the topic gets you mostly there: I've got Part II thoroughly outlined and ready to cruise. I'm excited to get back to a more creative flow. In the notes sections of each scene, I kept all of the main points to a short list that I can keep eyeballing as I go. I've tried making more thorough notes in the past, but when I get too detailed, I rarely commit even then. It tends to be wasted work if I overplan (and not the sort worth carrying over-- more like a 3 AM idea that I can admit I'm glad will never see the light of day). So UnSung is back on meaningful word count mode this week. I do intend to do some drawing towards the end of the week. The kiddos are out of school so I'm also going to spend some time keeping them from this alien concept called boredom. A couple hours of quality time can save me 8 hours of whining distractions. Both emotionally fulfilling and calculating-- some things are better bedfellows than you think!