So, for a while now I’ve been struggling to find a way to draft out a plot that doesn’t make me so frustrated I give up in disgust.
I was already resigned to the fact that I am not capable of writing without a good idea of where I’m going and when. I am definitely NOT what is popularly known as a “pantser”.
So I started trying to find a way to plan out where I’m going without allowing myself to stay in the land where no actual writing gets done because a huge amount of planning and “stuff” has to be done before I can write. I am good at letting myself fall into that trap and I know it.
So after some reading, some talking to other authors and some experimenting, I have discovered the following:
1) Writing plot outlines on the computer drives me nuts - I become too wrapped up in the formatting of the damned outline and let myself fuss way too much with it.
2) I do not plot in sequential order through a book. I know where I start, I know where I end but I think of things at random points through the rest of the story.
3) I hate worksheets - I dislike the formality and the idea that with no worksheets I have no way to plan.
So I did a lot of googling and searching around. I read some pointers by authors on how they plot and some blog entries from Shannon McKelden and I came to a few realizations on what I need in a process….
1) It has to be computer independent at the start so I don’t play formatting distraction games and I don’t feel that I can’t plot unless at the computer.
2) I need to be able to scrawl down ideas completely out of order and make sense of them later.
3) I have to use something easy to tote about and reorder at will without rewriting a lot.
So I took out a pack of index cards late last night and started by writing one story idea per card.
Then I picked the card for the book I’ve been trying to work on and started writing down scenes, one per card. I didn’t set any rules other than I had to figure out later what they meant so some have a lot of details, some have only a few.
I went into this exercise thinking I had knew of a few scenes for this book. By the time I stopped about 20 minutes later, I had 34 cards, not including the concept card. Ummm - wow
I even wrote down a few ideas for some of the other concept cards and just clipped them behind the concept to keep them together.
Now I am going to sit down and put the cards in a workable order - how I think the story can flow. I may have to put in a few more, I may discard some iffy ones but I’m already a lot further along than I was just yesterday morning.
Maybe I have found a system that can work for me without having to struggle so hard against the “rules” the system imposes.
I’m excited :)
- Maura
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