Rachel:

Picture, if you will, a spreadsheet. In the first column is a time frame. Across the top are the following headings: Plot, Subplot, and the name of each major character.  This spreadsheet is glorious and clarifies all of your twists and mysteries and subplots and character motivations. It looks a lot like this:

Would you read this story?

Now imagine you’d had the foresight to fill out this spreadsheet before you were drafting.

My six faithful blog followers will have begun to see a theme: I regret not outlining! How did my regrets affect the plot?

The plotting began with verbal brainstorming. I knew I wanted to write a mysterious love story that didn’t involve vampires, and that was the extent of my idea. Tiff ran with it, and I have to give most of the credit for the plot to her. She came up with the history and backstory of the situation and I furiously typed while she thought out loud.  We began writing with maybe a paragraph of an outline.

Then my pantsing took over and, when it was my turn to write, I let our characters walk all over me. I threw things in, giggling maniacally at how Tiff was going to have to write something after the bombshell I just dropped. We came to realize I have a bad habit of writing for effect—I created moments for the moments themselves, plot be damned! But Tiff is fastidious, and every time I added anything, she was all “There has to be a reason for this…” and then we’d have to re-work the plot.

Additionally, our whole premise shifted as we were writing. After the climax had been written—savvy readers will note this happens at the end of a book–we noticed a huge plot-hole that was left over from our original premise.  This meant many hours of following the thread of our abandoned idea to remove it and shift all subsequent events.

You want to know what a nightmare revision is? 190,000 words. Bear in mind, YA publishers want first novels to have around 90,000 words, with the MAXIMUM at 100,000. Yes, we have chopped an entire novel from our novel. And a large part of that is because of our miserable plot outline. Outlining your plot still allows for pantsing–you definitely can follow random threads and see if they go anywhere. The difference is, if they don’t go anywhere, you don’t have to re-work your entire novel.

 A lot of our ideas for the big picture (trilogy) came randomly. Writers, you know how you have a brilliant idea at 4:00 a.m. and you scribble something illegible on your Burgerville receipt with what you thought was a pen but was actually your dog’s toothbrush? That happens when you’re writing collaboratively as well. You’d think having two people would mean that you wouldn’t forget as easily, but it’s kind of worse. Because you both remember having that great idea while you were driving to the airport, but neither of you remember what it actually was. Or, worse, you remember different things and it turns into a flick-fight.

We are trying to be better about writing down our notes whenever possible. Usually that is on Tiff’s phone (the whole fastidious thing), but this is touch-and-go if beer ever becomes involved, which it does.  For our second book, we already have a fledgling scene list. Knowing what we do now, we will plot that puppy out once we’ve clarified our ideas for theme and character arcs. Then, we will create a spreadsheet for plot, character arcs, foreshadowing, research requirements, etc. so when it is time to write we’ll know exactly where we’re going. I imagine this will cut down the time it takes by half, not even exaggerating.

I know some people don’t derive the joy from spreadsheets that I do, and there are many different ways to plot. But for me and my tangled mind, I adore the cut-and-dry of excel.

If you have never written a novel and are tossing around the idea (hey, Nanowrimo), I would suggest googling different ways to outline following a basic three-act structure. Know what you are trying to say beyond the plot beforehand, and think of ways the events can underscore your theme.

You know whose books I love? C’mon. You know. K.M. Weiland’s Outlining Your Novel  and Structuring Your Novel.  Both are great reads. Outlining is good for your very first steps—when you have the seed of a story and not much else. Structuring would work great for revision, or after finishing your outline.

Another helpful book I found is Rock Your Plot. This seems like a good fit for beginners or experts, less so for intermediate plotters. It doesn’t go into nearly as much depth as Weiland’s books, so it is far less daunting—yay for beginners! Right now, I prefer the extensive activities in Outlining Your Novel, but I feel like once it comes more naturally to me, I would switch to Rock Your Plot to keep me on track—yay for experts!

Wired for Story is an interesting reference book for you sciencey geeks out there who like to know the ‘why’ of things. It focuses on human brains—lots of quotes from neuroscientists—to explain what makes stories appealing to the general masses. It doesn’t do much more than your average ‘how to plot’ book, but I have found it to be an interesting, if supplemental, read.

There is also Randy Ingermanson’s snowflake method, that seems to be quite popular among fiction writers. I think this would be geared to the Tiff Types—the people who formulate stories very quickly and already have the major plot points in their brains. It is a way of organizing and fleshing out ideas you already have. The other books mentioned here seem to draw from this method.

If you have a favorite way to plot or resource, we’d love to hear about it!