Writers in the Storm

Mystery Maven, Linda O. Johnston is back! We've gotten lots of mysterious questions lately, particularly about writing "process," and Linda O has some answers about plot.

The Plot Thickens
by Linda O. Johnston

My guest blog posts here on Writers in the Storm will largely be descriptive of how I write, focusing on mysteries.  That’s what sets me apart from some of the other bloggers here, since I write mysteries as well as romances.  I’ll tell you what I do and how I do it, and you can determine if you want to incorporate any part of it into your writing, no matter what genre(s) you work in.

Today’s topic, if you haven’t figured it out from the title of this blog, is plotting.

I’m a plotter.  A schemer.  A killer--just in my writing, of course.  But to me, plotting is one of the most enjoyable parts of writing mysteries as well as romances with suspense elements.

As with writing, everyone’s style of plotting is different.  I can describe my process, but it might not be the best one for you.  That’s for you to find out, if you haven’t already.

I’ve been writing for a long time.  My process has changed, become a little more streamlined, but I long ago discovered what works for me.

I’ve always had to plot things out before I write.  Over the years I’ve taken classes and attended talks on various kinds of plotting.

One thing I learned is that some people are “pantsers” who write by the seat of their pants and don’t always know where they’re going.  That sounds especially hard to me if you’re plotting mysteries or suspense, but I suspect those writers at least have some sense of whodunit or how they dun it or why they dun it right from the first.

Others use The Writers Journey kind of plotting.  I gave that a try years ago, but I really didn’t relate to it well.  In case you don’t know what I mean, The Writers Journey is a book by Christopher Vogler that describes plotting by using mythic structure.  If you’re not familiar with it, you might want to at least take a look at it to see if it meshes with your plotting style.

So what’s my method of plotting?  I use a modified sort of screenwriting style, a three-act structure that often starts with a grabber and changes direction with plot points that each turn the story in a different direction in the next “act”, leading to a satisfying ending.

How do I figure all of that out?  Well, I start off with a stream of consciousness kind of description of my story and characters that I type onto my computer.  It’s subject to lots of changes and refinements until I have a pretty good idea of where I’m going.

When I’ve got myself heading in a viable direction, I start working with what I call a plot skeleton, an outline with lots of blanks to be filled in that I’ve created and modified over the years.  Part of it contains the blanks for a screenplay kind of plot.

I also have sections that need to be completed in which my main characters are described.  For my mysteries with ongoing protagonists I don’t necessarily do much with this part since I already know the main people, although I might describe some of the secondary figures who play a large role in the particular story as well as the villain.

If I’m working on a romance, I also go into detail about the external and internal conflicts between the hero and heroine and how they’ll work ‘em all out at the end.  Then there are character arcs.

I’ve added other elements over the years, too, but I don’t always go into detail about them.  They’re good reminders, though, about other points that each story may need to address.

Next, I put together a synopsis.

Years ago, this was the time that I instead did a very detailed scene list, describing exactly what would happen and when.  That worked for me at the time, but I now find that I don’t need--or want--something that structured.  My subconscious does a lot of the day-to-day plotting now, and it’ll tell me before I go to sleep at night what the scenes I’ll be working on the next day should contain.

As a result, a synopsis works better for me.   My synopsis may have a different purpose from your synopsis.  I can sometimes sell books in a series, especially mysteries, as “blind” submissions, which means that I don’t always have to describe what they’re about before I enter into a contract with a publisher for them.  On the other hand, I often still write synopses for sales purposes, too.

If I’m writing one mainly for myself, I will still run it by my editor before I get too far ensconced in the story, just in case she sees something she doesn’t like.  I’d rather change it before I head in the wrong direction and need to edit the whole thing later.

Then, as I write the book, I refer often to my synopsis.  Is it an absolute, immutable bible?  Not at all.  But I’m usually sorry if I veer from it too much, since my gut during the initial plotting seems to work better than straying away from what I first thought of.

That’s pretty much it for plotting and me.  Let me know if you’ve got any questions, and I’ll do my best to answer them--or plot my next book around them!

Do you have any plotting methods to share with us?

Linda O. Johnston is the author of 27 published novels, with more to come.  She currently writes the Pet Rescue Mysteries for Berkley Prime Crime, a spinoff series from her Kendra Ballantyne, Pet-Sitter mysteries, also for Berkley .   The second Pet Rescue Mystery, THE MORE THE TERRIER, will be an October release.   She additionally writes paranormal romance for Harlequin Nocturne--the Alpha Force miniseries about a covert military unit of shapeshifters. The latest one, GUARDIAN WOLF, is an August release.  And watch for Linda’s upcoming Harlequin Romantic Suspense!

by Jenny Hansen

To answer this week’s “throwdown” here at Writers In The Storm, I’m taking the Non-Linear approach. That means that where Laura must start at the beginning and move forward in an organized manner, I simply cannot do so. The linear approach kills my stories.

After nearly fifteen years of banging my head against the Organized Writer Wall (it’s this very sturdy, well grouted thing located precisely in the middle of the Novel Desert), I finally figured out what the issue is. I’m a scene writer AND a big fat Scaredy Pants.

For more than a decade I went from manuscript to manuscript, even jumping from one to another then back again, trying with all my might to hold focus and finish a book. About two years ago, I realized I wasn’t having a writing problem, I was having a finishing problem. I’d crank out 100-150 pages of what seemed to be a stellar story…but then I’d fizzle.

I’d write a short story whenever I got stuck on a book and, let me tell you, I have a big stack of those piled up. After whipping out the short story, I’d alternate between feeling great at finishing something and berating myself that I was batting zero at completing my novels.

In my yearning to be linear and organized, I tried EVERYTHING:

• Attending workshops to learn what other people knew about finishing books that I didn’t.
• Creating outlines: this worked out fine for knowing what happened in the book but definitely stifled my creativity.
• Seat of the pants writing, rushing through the first three chapters to find out what the book is about.
• Character studies
• Synopsis writing
• Praying to the creativity gods…

I’m pretty sure I’ve tried it all (at least once) in my quest to get a book off the ground and finished. Then I read an article about Diana Gabaldon and how she wrote the Outlander series. I saw that she had re-constructed the movie in her head, scene by scene, until everything she saw was on paper. Then she shuffled them all together into the books we know and love.

While I won’t pretend to be anywhere in the Gabaldon’s league, we write the same. A light went on in my head and I accepted the truth: I’m a scene writer.

I can sustain interest and focus in a single scene. Most of the time, I can even manage to write it from start to finish since I am lucky to write fairly quickly. BUT. I work really hard to focus on nothing else besides that scene because the end of the book always feels like a big black scary hole to me (this is back to the Scaredy Pants issue). If I think about “The End,” I get stuck.

So I don’t even consider THE END OF THE BOOK until I’ve finished the first draft containing all the scenes I think need to be in the novel. At the end, I put them together, sort of like shooting a film out of order before sending it to the editing department.

My process has evolved into something pretty close to the following:

1. Like most writers, each book usually starts with an idea or a scene that comes into my head fully formed. I write that scene when it comes to me so that I have it out of my head and onto the page. This process seems to keep the gates open for more scenes to come crowding in.

2. I take some time, close to the beginning of the process, to bat some ‘what if’s’ around with my critique group and decide on the overriding theme or message for the book as well as the internal and external conflicts for the protagonist and antagonist. (I’ll discuss this in my “must-have” section below.)

3. If I’m really lucky, the turning points get decided in advance too. I’m not always lucky and sometimes I have to have a second plotting session over this one. At the very least, I take time with my critique group to discuss what I think the turning points are to see if I’m remotely on target and if it all sounds believable. For a great summary of turning points, read this breakdown of Jenny Crusie’s talk at the 2009 RWA conference, plus I’ve put more resources below.

4. I try to write at least five days a week as it keeps my brain open to receiving new scenes. When I let more than a weekend go by without keeping my work in progress on my mind, I start to lose focus.

Lorna Landvik, of Angry Housewives Eating Bon-Bons fame, does something that I’m planning to adopt when I finish my high-risk pregnancy memoir. I'm pretty sure it’s gonna work great! (Note: if you’re in need of high risk pregnancy information, click here.)

Landvik writes every scene in the book down on index cards (this is similar to Laura’s approach) except she does this as a FINAL step in the writing. She strings a clothesline at eye level down her hallway and, armed with clothespins, walks up and down the hall making sure her scenes are in order. She must not have small children at home because she said she keeps this clothesline up during the weeks of her second draft. I’m probably going to have to hang my string on the wall because of Baby Girl, but I am soooo doing this.

What are the Must-Haves for the non-linear approach?

1. You must have a good grasp of 3-Act Structure so you don’t end up with a pile of scenes you can’t use. It helps to know the 12 steps of the Hero’s Journey as well. Here’s the most helpful link I’ve found, which combines the two. I work with 3-Act structure because I can keep track of it better in my head.
2. Two words – Conflict Lock. If you don’t have a conflict lock, you don’t have a story. So says Bob Mayer, author or Warrior Writer and co-founder of Who Dares Wins Publishing. Here’s a blog to tell you more, plus I’ve included a three minute video of Bob teaching the Conflict Lock (see the bottom of this post).
3. Be sure you understand your project’s DNA (theme) before you write. If you have a strong visual of the underlying message you wish to convey to your reader, you will write to it. That DNA will inform every scene choice you make because it has to. John August, the screenwriter for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Big Fish, says it much better than I do in this post.

There are two main issues that led me to embrace this non-linear style:

• The linear approach was leaching the joy from my writing.
• This less-structured approach seems to help me ease by my fears.

I’d get stuck on one of three things with the linear approach:

1. It was boring (for me) to write straight through, and my creative side isn’t very patient or structured.

2. Once I knew what happened, I didn’t want to write the book any more.

3. Transitions are pure hell for me and I’d get stuck on them.

The first two are just my own lovely personality flaws  but the last one required an intervention in the form of teamwork. I can write emotional scenes or funny scenes all day long with complete focus and pretty good results. However, if you ask me to get the heroine out of her office and over to a restaurant for the next scene, I go blank and dither around, either writing too much or getting complete writer’s block.

Finally, in desperation, I asked my critique group if I could just ‘get a pass on transitions’ and they were sweet enough to say yes. We have a system worked out: I highlight a note like “Get heroine from point A to point B please” and they help me fill it in later, after the first draft is finished and in the bag. In return, I help them amp up their humor or their emotional scenes.

This brings me to…The Magic of a Great Critique Group

1. A good critique group wants your success as much as you do.
2. Everyone in the group has unique talents that, when combined, helps everyone get a fantastic book out of the deal.
3. I could not take the non-linear approach without a critique group to read my work and catch my errors.
4. If you’re a non-linear scene writer like me, I highly recommend you build yourself a writing A-Team to support you in your editing process.

Let me give you a good example of how this works for us, the founding bloggers here at WITS. Below are some areas of strength that we all depend on from each other.

• I have a great grasp of theme and how to edit or add in scenes to underscore this theme. I also tend to see the humor in every scene.
• Sharla Rae is a great all-around writer but she excels at word choice and putting Like with Like. She also writes the steamiest sex scenes you’ve ever read so she weighs in on those (thank God!).
• Fae is a World-Building Goddess who can invent everything from another galaxy to the medical accoutrements you’ll need to survive there.
• Laura writes descriptive prose that makes you feel like you’re inside a scene. Plus, she go, go, GOES.

Golden Gift - Bob Mayer's Conflict Lock LIVE

[youtube=http://youtu.be/MuG8bksFu9A]

The good news is, now that I understand my process and the simple fact that I’m a scene writer, I can stop berating myself for what I’m not and just focus on the joy of being what I am. I'm a much better writer now that I've just relaxed and embraced my process.

I finally understand why I’ve been able to finish short stories: they come to me as one long scene and I can hold my focus long enough for that. This is also why blogs are pure joy for me – they’re short.

Two writers I deeply respect – Diana Gabaldon (Outlander series) and Janet Fitch (White Oleander) – are both scene writers. As I said earlier, for Outlander, Ms. Gabaldon wrote the scenes that came to her and stitched them together later, like a quilt. Janet Fitch published White Oleander originally as a series of short stories which she later realized were chapters in a larger story that she combined into a novel. Everything worked out well for them, right?

I remind myself of that whenever I feel myself losing focus and force myself to slow down, breathe, and take things one scene at a time.

Which side of the "throwdown" do you gravitate toward? Straight through or scene-by-scene? We’d love to hear your feedback on this!

REMINDER: Linda O. Johnston will be back with us on Friday talking about how to plot a mystery. We hope to see you then. In the meantime, if you hang out on Facebook, we'd love it if you stopped by the Writers In The Storm page to chat!

 

by Laura Drake

In the last Writers in the Storm ‘throwdown’ (if you missed it, it was character driven vs. plot driven writing.) I was more than willing to admit that both sides of the argument are valid – even necessary to a great story.

But this time?  The other side of the coin terrifies me.

Do you start at the beginning of your novel, and write straight through? Or do random scenes come to you, so you write them and then, at the end,  stitch them together like you would a granny-square afghan?

I’m so far to the linear side of this one that I can’t even see the middle. I like things orderly -- bordering on regimented. I love routine. My library is in order by author, then by title. I admit to not being able to go to bed if there are dishes in the sink, and I can’t leave the house in the morning unless my bed is made. I’m a bean-counter in my other life and it fits me well.  I like things to balance – to fit neatly into the little boxes I make. But life is messy, and the little buggers won’t stay there!

Control freak? Huh. No, not me.

But before the other WITS bloggers schedule an intervention, let me get back on the subject.

I write in as close to a straight line as I’m able. I start (in a perfect world) on scene one, then move to scene two and write that, and so on. That doesn’t mean that I have no idea what’s going to happen through the story.

While I’m riding my bike, I may have a flash of an idea for a scene farther into the book. I record the thought on my voice recorder (one of the best inventions ever.) When I get home, I jot notes about the scene on a 3X5 index card. This allows me to reorder scenes with a quick shuffle. By the end of the book, I have a three to six inch stack of index scene cards.

There are disadvantages to the linear method though, I will admit.

• It takes me forever to get started with a new book.
• I’m not sure of the character’s traits, or the backstory that caused them. And I can’t begin until I know!
• I wring my hands.
• I write in fits and starts.
• I whine to my crit group. They’re wonderful, helping me look ahead and plot, reminding me that I’m not losing it; I always do this at the beginning.

I also use excel as a tool to help me see the big picture. I’m including it here in case you’d find it useful. Below is a snapshot of my “Cheat Sheet.” I create a file for each book. First is a quick chapter review. I fill in the page and word count as the chapter is completed.

Cheat Sheet

The next sheet is my detailed “Scene Sheet” breaking down the chapters. It gives more detail on what happens, and gives me a bird’s eye view of upward and downward movement of the protagonist, as well as turning points.

Scene detail

Drawbacks aside, Linear works for me. I’m a character-driven writer. It takes a long time to develop a rich, multi-layered protagonist. A lot of that I find out through naturally progressing through scenes, and the character’s arc, I don’t know it all when I start. If I didn’t write linearly, I could end up spending time on a scene at the end of the book that isn’t true to that character!

Aren’t you scattergunners afraid of that? Why not?

Which comes naturally to you? Linear or Scattergun?

Don’t forget to check back on Wednesday when Jenny answers the challenge and discusses the dreaded non-linear side. *shudder*

The dark side.