Tag Archives: plotting

Technique

Becoming a story architect

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This entry is part 3 of 24 in the series The plot thickens (Mwahahaha)

I think most of us have to try a few Winchester Mystery Stories before we’re ready to become story architects.

floor plan sketchI really like the analogy of architecture here because I like floor plans a floor plan isn’t a complete house. It’s a sketch of what you plan to build. It’s an easy way to look at a scaled-down model of where you think you want the major rooms to go, where the appliances will be, where the doors are, etc. It isn’t your house.

The floor plan can change even after you start building your story. Sometimes we “remodel” as we “build”—we decide this doorway should be a window and the front entrance should go here. We change the door to a double door; we upgrade the A/C or the wiring; we knock out a wall and add a new bathroom. We scrap the entire second floor.

Having a floor plan doesn’t mean we have to build that house—or even that we’d all build the same house with the same floor plan. But having a floor plan means we don’t end up six months into the project with 123 bedrooms, 16 dining rooms and no kitchen or bathrooms.

On the other hand, the floor plan is just a basic sketch, which can be improved upon, revised, and changed during the process of writing. In fact, you probably wouldn’t recognize the house just from the floor plan.

For me (and others), the floor plan is such a basic sketch that once we’ve gotten that built, we still have a long way to go before we have a finished product. Once we have the events down in the first draft, we still have revising and finishing to do—furnishing, painting, decorating, accessorizing (moving all our crap in 😉 ).

There’s a long way from the bare drywall to the furnished home we hope to end up with. And even after we slap on the paint and get our boxes through the door, it’ll still take a lot of work—and maybe some more paint, some help from friends and professionals, a lot of reading catalogs and home magazines. . . .

But finally, after all that, we have a home we can be proud of—and one that we didn’t have to completely rebuild six times. (Okay, I’ve probably beaten that analogy to death.)

What do you think? Do you like to consider yourself a “story architect? How much detail (or freedom) do you need in your “floor plan” to make a house work?

Next week, we’ll start looking at methods of plotting—and don’t forget, I’m looking for volunteers to talk about how they plot! And tomorrow—free goodies!

Photo credit: floor plan—Richard Crowley; dry wall—Pattie; room and photo—Christopher Barson

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Technique

Making it up as she went along–the Winchester Mystery Story

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Larry Brooks, “the story fixer,” had a recent post that really got me thinking about this—Story Structure vs. Story Architecture: “Dude… what’s the diff?”

All stories, says Brooks, have structure. And, to employ my own analogy, so do all buildings. But not all buildings are created equal:

Winchester Mystery House Scary Exterior Tower

Winchester Mystery House Stairs to the ceiling

winchester mystery house

You might recognize this place, or the legend behind it. The owner believed that her house must be under construction always, or she would die. But they couldn’t use a master building plan.

Considering that, the Winchester Mystery House is pretty well-built. Yeah, it has stairs that lead to nowhere and doors that open out from the second floor (no stairs on that one—maybe move those first stairs over there?). It’s fun—it’s a blast to explore, and I bet Sarah Winchester had an awesome time throwing in every element she could think of.

It has a decent foundation—instead of leveling it, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake only knocked off the top three stories. After the quake it stood four stories. The remaining structure is a rambling, 160-room, 4.5-acre mansion. It required more than 20,000 gallons of paint—and it constantly needed painting.

I think we’ve all gotten to the end of a story, looked back and seen our own Winchester Mystery Structure. The Winchester Mystery House has structure. In some sense, it has architecture—but not really. There is no plan, and the closest thing they had to a designer (architect) was a crazy woman.

And “rambling” is right. Dead ends, doors and promises that go nowhere, accidental MacGuffins. . . . After round 28,657 of revisions, I got tired of writing stories that looked like they were designed by a crazy woman.

What do you think? Have you ever written a “Winchester Mystery Story”?

Photo credits: exterior shot and stairs to nowhere courtesy of the Winchester Mystery House; rooves—the_photographer; windows to windows—Emily Hoyer

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Technique

An “organic” story

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This entry is part 2 of 24 in the series The plot thickens (Mwahahaha)

Yesterday, I shared my experience with my “conversion” to plotting. And it turns out I wasn’t alone. As Katie pointed out, it seems like most of us had the same problem:

starting out as a pantster, realizing that writing-by-the-seat-of-our-pants exposes our weak areas, and realizing that plotting is necessary to some degree.

flying fingersI think that the mystique of the organic story, one that is so perfect and beautiful that it just wrote itself, is one of the big things that convinced a lot of us (or all of us) to become pantsers (and maybe even writers). There’s this romantic notion that “real” writers, “great” writers sit down and pound out a fabulous story, with minimal rewriting and never, no never, no never any planning in advance.

And then we try it—and somehow it doesn’t seem to work. We learn more about plotting, and give that a try—and lo and behold, we have story arcs. We have a non-sagging middle. We have a character changing and growing through the climax and resolution.

Granted, these don’t always automatically fall in line with plotting and planning—but often when we start a story with these things in mind, we are more mindful of them not only in the planning but in the writing, and look for opportunities to help our characters grow and change, to continually challenge them. (Or, as I like to put it, to put the screws to them.)

So, our mission (should you choose to accept it!) for this series is to look at the whys (for the unconvinced) and the hows of plotting. I’d also love to get some guest posts on how individuals put plotting to work for them—so if you’d like to volunteer to give a brief overview of your plotting process, let me know! (And stay tuned for a new free guide on Friday!)

What do you think? How can learning about plotting help you? Do you think you’ll ever go back to pantsing?

Flying fingers by The Hamster Factor

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Technique

The plot thickens!

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This entry is part 1 of 24 in the series The plot thickens (Mwahahaha)

As Andrew guessed last week, our next series is on plotting! (I’m mentally referring to this series as “Mwahahaha.” Three ha’s, if you please.)

plotthickensLast week, we discussed plotting briefly—but now let’s get into it. What do you want to learn about plotting? Are you a plotter or a pantser? Have you changed “sides”? (I have.) If so, why?

I used to be a pantser—some romantic notions about a story springing fully formed from my head like Athena from the mind of Zeus, and fears about outlining killing my muse. I would start off with an interesting beginning, a twist or two in mind, and the end goal. I would make up the middle parts as I went along.

And then I got stuck.

For like a month. (That’s a very long time for me, when I’m in the middle of the draft and supposedly letting those unstifled ideas flow.)

I finally got unstuck, but what I made up as I went along ultimately didn’t work. It all had to be rewritten, and should I hope to publish that MS one day, I’m probably going to have to toss most of it and do a whole new plot (with one or two of the same twists and turns, because they made those characters who they were, but other than that, starting from scratch with the characters/situation).

My next project was something I did with one of my best friends. We came up with an idea to write parallel novels with four main characters (a hero and heroine for each of us, with her heroine and my hero as siblings).

Oh, and also it was going to be a murder mystery (on my side; less so on hers, since they couldn’t all be investigating). We had to know who did it, when, and why—what events led up to it, what other characters were involved.

tapping pencilAnd since the investigation was part of my story line, I had to plot.

To my surprise, instead of killing my muse, plotting fueled it. I got to know the murderer (with a 1st person character freewrite) and his motivations. I searched for the worst possible thing that could happen—and the next, and the next, and the next—and made sure even the good things that happened were timed to my characters’ disadvantage.

I came to love turning the screws.

To me, plotting is your first chance to know your story. You may be like I was, and have an ending and one or two twists in mind, and take off to discover the rest. And there’s joy in discovering the story, finding the characters and their twists and turns.

But when I’m plotting, I get to experience that all at once. I get to discover—engineer—the twists and turns in a matter of hours, to hold the whole story in my mind (which I just can’t do with 100,000 words). As I mentioned last week, when I know what’s coming, I can plant clues, turn those screws to make the coming disasters even worse, or foreshadow. Naturally, I’ll have to go back and tweak all those things, but some of my favorite nuances have come from knowing where I’m going and finding a happy coincidence in the present scene.

I’m hooked.

What about you? To reiterate the original questions: What do you want to learn about plotting? Are you a plotter or a pantser? Have you changed “sides”? If so, why?

Tapping pencil by Tom St. George

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Technique

Plot spinning from pop psychology

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Man, I wish I could remember what book this idea came from, but the author of one of the many craft books I’ve read (or at least skimmed) recommended a way to come up with a plot premise.

Open to a random page in any pop psychology book and you can find a sentence to weave into a plot. Throw in characters that embody those attributes, or make the theory a central device in the story.

So since I have Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus on hand and I heart Random.org, I thought we could try this. So I pulled up three random numbers in the page range—let’s spin some plots!

From page 58—oh, how convenient, there’s a subhead:

It is difficult for a man to listen to a woman when she is unhappy or disappointed because he feels like a failure.

From page 134—another subhead!

Fulfilling a primary need is required before one is able to fully receive and appreciate other kinds of love.

A man becomes fully receptive to and appreciative of the six kinds of love primarily needed by women . . . when his own primary needs are first fulfilled.

And from page 285:

To be successful in our relationships we must accept and understand the different seasons of love. Sometimes love flows easily and automatically; at other times it requires effort.

How do you envisions these scenarios becoming central or sub plots? What kind of characters would people these plots? Share your plots in the comments!

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Technique

Write that Novel!

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I have the hardest time coming up with titles for my works. I usually don’t settle on a title I like before the fourth draft. But I know some writers actually start there. Are you looking for a story idea? Here are a few titles that just might get you started.

  • Ninja in Airwalks (or more generically, Sneakers)
  • Pickled Justice
  • A Faithful Lie

So write that novel—but what’s the plot? Share your craziest idea for a book with any of the above titles in the comments!

Photo credit: typofi

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