So, plotting.
I am currently plotting out an idea I had a few weeks ago for a horror novel. Now, I am a pantser — that is, I make sh#$ up on the fly while I write. I’ve done this for most of the time I’ve been writing, with a few exceptions.
If you remember, I talked about Monica Leonelle. She uses a method for plotting that is very detailed. More detailed than anything I’ve ever plotted, with the exception of Survivor, which was plotted using the Snowflake Method.
But I have to wonder. Would Survivor be the awesome book it is today if I hadn’t thrown stuff in on the fly? I have whole characters and situations I’ve added that were never part of the planning. If I’d stayed the course, what would Survivor be like? What about that cool ending I dreamed up, that wasn’t the ending I’d plotted? Would it be the same? Would I have gotten there somehow anyway? (It’s like writer-fate. Would the story still insist upon being told the way it was fated to be told, or not?).
Take Fey Touched, my debut novel. I purposely did NOT write a single thing down plot-wise. I just followed it along a vague path that was in my head only. In fact, I’d gotten superstitious about writing anything down until the last 10% or so when I got stuck for the first time and devised that cool plot twist where [redacted] does [redacted] and discovers [redacted]. Sorry, spoilers! Fey Touched is the novel I’ve written the fastest. Now, this is a bit extreme, because of the strength of the idea and the storyline in my head, but still.
Monica Leonelle says that if you have everything plotted in detail, you will know where you’re going (which is good) and you’ll be able to spot plot problems at the outline stage instead of having to toss a hundred pages in editing (which is even better). Every novel I’ve ever written, including Survivor, has needed extensive rewrites to “make sense of the mess” and “make the first half match the second” or to “get rid of the tangents” (unless they are cool, then they stay!). Every. Single. One. And that’s one of the reasons why I am such a slow writer. (The other is my wrists.) Because I have to essentially rewrite a book from scratch once, or even several times (in the case of Grave Touched). I call my first drafts exploratory drafts because I literally discover the story as I write it. I may not know until chapter ten who the real villain is, or in chapter seven I’ll learn who a character really is. Or I’ll come up with an awesome plot twist in chapter twenty that needs to be foreshadowed sooner. Stuff like that.
I’m worried, though. My mind has to have a bit of mystery in order to create engaging plots. I cannot possibly know everything. Then the magic goes buh-bye. But I am not anti-plotting, however. I am willing to try and see if i can make it work. Or even parts of it work.
For instance, Ever Touched was plotted loosely using the “plotting from the middle” method by James Scott Bell. You basically plot out the big picture, so you always have something to write toward. That left lots of cool possibilities for the muse to play with. I am having a blast. And that seems to work well, but one of my goals this year is to experiment with outlining to see if 1) anything works better than what I’m doing now, and 2) if I can increase my speed.
Because being a one-book-a-year-writer-if-that isn’t working too well for me.
Too many ideas, too many things. I’m not getting any younger. And this is IF I CAN. If it’s not possible, then fine. I will accept that. But if I hit upon something that works, well, awesome.
So for this horror novel, called Elysium, I’ve got the first part figured out. The goal of the characters, and then several big-picture moments, which is similar to the plotting from the middle idea. The next part is to outline every scene for each POV character. This is the part that has me in cold sweats. I have to actually decide on what happens NOW. Can I decide to do something different later? Probably, but it’s not what I’m supposed to do…
So this has me a bit in fits. I remember back when I was plotting Survivor, and I was panicking at the very same idea. Our instructor, a great writer and awesome person, laid it out to me. She said that I needed to learn this skill. That writers needed to know how to outline and if I wanted to sell to traditional publishers (this was pre-self publishing — yes, THAT long ago!), I would need to be abe to outline novels all the time and that was that. Long story short, I took her advice to heart and decided to stop being so stubborn and just try. Which worked. For a bit.
I think I’m having another moment like that. I need to set aside my preconceived notions and just DO IT. If it doesn’t work, okay, but what if it does? What if this is the thing that will help me? What if the story ROCKS because I decided to plot it this way? I just need to stop being so scared and go for it. Put it out there. Have courage.
And know that the net will be there when I jump.