Easy Plotting for Pantsers and Plotters Alike

Yesterday my friend Liz posted this helpful template about how to use Dan Wells's 7 Point Plot System in addition to, or instead of, the Save the Cat Beat Sheet for Novels.

The behind the scenes look at that post is Liz and I (or Liz and Liz if I refer to myself in third person) are obsessed with plotting. We'll dissect a favorite movie, book, or TV show for hours on end. I do it because I like analyzing things and I suck at plot, and Liz does it because she sees the structure of a novel first. The end result is we've spent countless hours breaking down the 7 Point Plot System and Save the Cat so you don't have to. 

Liz mentioned in her post using the 7 Point Plot System to hammer out a basic plot before you start writing, and I can tell you it's awesome for that. It's quick and dirty. You just fill in what you think happens in the story and press on with the business of actually writing the darned thing.

Here is a reference guide so you don't have to keep looking at the outline on Liz's post:

The 7 Point Plot System

Hook
The beginning. The mirror image of the end.

Turn 1
Introduces conflict and bridges the gap between the Hook and the Midpoint.

Pinch 1
Something bad happens.

Midpoint
Bridges the gap between the Hook and the Resolution.

Pinch 2
Something even worse happens.

Turn 2
Bridges the gap between Midpoint and End.

Resolution
The climax. Everything in the story leads to this moment.

If like me, you want a short outline before you start writing, you can fill in some vague thoughts and start typing. Or if you're pantsing the entire book from start to finish with nary a character sheet, you can fill in events as you go. The beauty of doing that is you'll start thinking about the next major plot event ahead of time. "Okay, well, I just hit the Midpoint, so the next major event should be Pinch 2: Something Even Worse Happens".

But the fun doesn't stop there! I use the 7 Point Plot System to check the fiddly bits of my plot too, not just the entire kit and caboodle. Let's say you have a romance as a subplot. You can take just the events of your novel that relate to the romance, and use the 7 Point Plot System to check how it progresses. 

The application for this is endless. I've plotted out the relationship between the main character and the antagonist, the love interest, important secondary characters--any character relationships that I needed to see the progression of. I've plugged in just the action bits, the arc that leads to the betrayal, anything I felt would be important to track all the way through my novel. It's especially awesome if you have more than one point of view character. You can track their character arcs and have a quick and simple way of keeping track of what they are doing in the book and when.

Obviously you should only plot out what you feel like you need to know. If doing three separate 7 Point Plot Systems for your character makes you want to curl into the fetal position, uncurl. Take a deep breath. This is simply a tool for you to use as you need. 

I can tell you though, working out the smaller pieces has really helped me see the inner cogs of the plot. If you see that the betrayal, romance, and action parts all share the exact same three events, then you can really amp those scenes up with focused purpose. It can help you spot plot holes a mile away, and also give you a clue how to fix those same holes. 


It also helps with pacing. I've noticed that if all but two of points happen within the first forty pages, I've obviously front loaded the book. Same thing happened with all but one of the event happened after the midpoint.

Another way to approach this is in revision. All the stuff I talked about tracking you can hold off until you're done writing the novel. Rather than trying to read through your manuscript a bajillion (bajillion is a word, I swear) times, you can simply keep track of the important arcs of the story using that nifty guide.

Something else Liz and I discussed was using the 7 Point Plot System for a series. Are you plotting a gigantic epic fantasy series? Of course you are. Who isn't? You can check to see if your entire series is progressing in a coherent fashion by plugging in the important events. Book one might just be the Hook, and book two could cover the first Turn and Pinch.  It would be a handy little reference guide to stick in your series bible, that's for sure.


If you would like specific examples, click on the link to Liz's post at the beginning of this post. Liz plotted out the musical Wicked in both the 7 Point Plot System and Save the Cat beat sheet. She's also linked to Dan Wells's Youtube series explaining the 7 Point Plot System in great detail, as well as uploaded the place you can download the slides from his presentation.

If you have any questions or need clarification on something, don't hesitate to ask. Also, if you find another use for this, let me know! I love finding new ways to plot.  

Critical Writing Skills: Check Your Gut

Today, amidst the panic of Week Two for NaNo, I am going to blog about a topic that is important to all writers.


I usually refer to it as a "gut feeling" but I've heard it called listening to your Muse, or following your intuition. Whatever you call it, every writer has it.


Your gut feeling is there from the entire process of having an idea to editing. You just "know" things about your book, that can't be explained. Certain things just seem right and wrong. If someone were to tell you to make your main character a squid, you would feel in your gut that your main character isn't supposed to be a squid; she's a human girl.

Sometimes the choices you make for your book are logical ones. The setting is often a logical choice depending on your conflict. If you want to write a high seas adventure, then writing aboard a ship on the ocean is a logical choice.

But sometimes we make choices for our novel that are neither logical nor based on novel-intuition. They are just assumptions we make when we develop the idea. Sometimes these assumptions are fine, but if you haven't sufficiently thought through these assumptions they can cause real problems, the very least of which becoming parts of your book that sort of bore you.


I was in that place two days ago. I was feeling restless and bored. My gut was telling me something was seriously off. Not a good place while trying to write. In the past, I just wrote past those feelings, and had some serious issues to work through in revision. Normally those feelings crop up when I have something fundamental off about the book. So despite the pressure to continue, I stopped and took inventory of what I had so far. 

Taking inventory really isn't such a bad thing while writing a novel. Sometimes mid-novel your idea of the characters or plot or setting changes. You can either panic and run around the room (did that) or you can sit down and brainstorm all the elements of the novel you love, and how to incorporate them into your novel better (did that). My gut was telling me something was off. It was my job to figure out what.


How did I do that?


I questioned everything. Not just half halfheartedly going through the characters, plot, and setting, assuming everything is okay. You can't expect the problem to just jump out at you. If it was that obvious you would have fixed it already, right? 


Your problem will normally be something you didn't stop to consider when you were plotting your novel (or just threw out there, for you pantsers). 


I even went so far as to consider throwing out my conflict. Yes, ladies and gentleman, 21,ooo thousand words in and I actually considered throwing out my conflict. I just wasn't sure anymore that the conflict fit what I really wanted to write. When I first thought of the book idea I am writing now, the characters and plot were much different. Sometimes it's hard to let go of how things used to be. So I sat there, with my list of notes of elements that I loved about my book, and figured out how to best showcase that.


Turns out the conflict is still the best choice. But if I had thought of a better one I would have changed it in a New York Minute. I just needed to refocus the conflict so I am writing the scenes I actually care about, and not where the conflict was taking me initially.

Next I checked my characters. I talked with my friend Lena, and discovered while there was plenty of interaction between my two female main characters and their possible love interests, there was little to none between the two main characters. It gave the story a disjointed feeling, like I was writing two mini books. This fix was pretty easy. I didn't have to change the characters, just add some history in their backstory. 


This time around I lucked out, and most of the fixes I made were minor in nature. My plot, setting, and characters are still mostly intact, only now I am writing scenes with life in them.


Learning to listen to your novel-intuition is not for the faint-hearted. You have to be very careful--and confident--that it's actually your gut feeling telling you something is off about the novel, and it's not your self-doubt trying to sabotage you. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices when you realize what the problem is. If I had realized the conflict didn't fit the story I wanted to tell, I would have had a lot of work ahead of me.

For those of you who haven't made a radical change in your story mid-novel before, the technique is called Pretend You Got It Right the First Time. For example, I wrote a book where a villain threatened to release a DVD of people who were pretending to be normal humans changing into werewolves. I never actually planned on him releasing the DVD (I know, rookie mistake) but I got to the point in the novel where I realize there was no good reason (other than it totally destroyed the rest of my plot) that he WOULDN'T release the DVD. So he did. In this case, you DON'T throw away what you've already written and start over. You'll never finish a book that way. You just keep writing as though this is how it's been all along. Then in revision, you make the necessary changes to the earlier scenes.


Sometimes you DO have to chuck what you've already written. If I had decided the main characters needs a complete overhaul, the setting had to go, and the conflict was crappy, I might have tossed what I had already written. But you should make sure that's what you HAVE to do, and not your self-doubt talking. Your job as a writer is to finish this book, come hell or high water. 


Learning to listen to what your gut is telling you is, I believe, a vital skill as a writer. It's what will tell you during revision what is important to you, and what you can toss. It will tell you mid-novel that something is rotten in the state of Denmark, and then help you figure out what is stinking up your novel so you can go back to being brilliant. Before making any radical changes though, I suggest you talk with some trusted writer friends who have experiences similar to yours, and for the love of all that is holy, back up your current WIP just in case your self-doubt sucker punches you. 


You all might think I am raving mad, talking about listening to your gut. I just know it's been an invaluable tool for me. And in this case, it saved my novel.


I hope everyone is doing okay during NaNo. Slow and steady wins the race!

Critical Writing Skills: Time is on My Side

Quote: "Hear the ticking of the clock...the sound of life itself." Kamelot, The Human Stain

Song Playing: Time by the Rolling Stones (surely you saw that coming)

Despite my connotations with "Time" to the movie Fallen (great movie by the way, held up really well even after the Digital Age), I think it's quite fitting for today's post.

People complain about not having enough time. Time is one of the those non-renewable commodities; once it's gone, you're not getting it back. You can make more money, you can get healthy, but you can never get back time you feel you have wasted. The best you can do is learn from the experience and move on.


Almost as bad as that, there are many, many distractions out there to steal your time away. In today's age it's virtually impossible to avoid all distractions.


That's why one of the most important habits you can ever develop as a writer is to protect your time.


Learning how to improve your writing, learning the market, learning where the dictionary is are all important skills as a writer, but if you forever let other things get in the way of writing, you will never be a writer. Forget about publishing. You can't wait until you "have the time" to write, because that's like waiting for tomorrow to arrive. You have to make time. You have to squeeze time out of your day, like blood from a stone.


When I tell people that I am a writer, a good 50% of them tell me they've always wanted to write a book, but they've never gotten around to it. That makes me sad. It occurs to me that if they really really wanted to write, they would make the time, but still think there's a misconception that writers just sit down to write, and the rest of the world will arrange itself around you.


It won't. You have to fight for your time, however short or long it might be, and protect it like a mother bear protects her cubs (how many metaphors can I cram into this post? Let's see...). Even if you can only squeeze ten minutes out of your day, that is still 70 minutes in a week. You could write a novel in a year with that sort of time.


But only if you are consciously aware of how you're spending your time. I became a much happier person the day I started consciously using my time. If I sit down to vegetate for a half hour, I know that's exactly what I am doing. I no longer feel guilty when I sit down to relax, because I know how I am spending my time. Before, time would just slip away from me, and I wondered where it went.


Now I budget my time like I budget my money (there's another one), and I feel more relaxed for it. I know I have time to do what's important to me. Life events will snatch up your time if you let it, so be wary of time wasters.


I am not advocating that you lock yourself away in a hole and ignore your loved ones. You need to make time for other things in your life that's important to you (friends and family should probably figure on that list somewhere...they get cranky if you ignore them for some reason). I am suggesting you take a good look at where all your time goes, and then try to rearrange your day so you have time for what you want to do.


You might have to make sacrifices. Most writers aren't avid TV watchers not because we're pompous elitists, but simply because we don't have the time. There are a few TV shows I watch on a regular basis, because I enjoy them and sometimes I need to relax my brain, but I haven't just channel surfed in years, simply because I don't really enjoy TV and it's very time consuming. I'd rather be writing. Also, I have those shows on DVD so I can watch them on MY time, not on the TV's time.


Here's my suggestion for making the most of your time:

1. Make a list of all your activities. All of them. Include hanging out with friends, watching TV, everything you do for fun.

2. Make a list of all your chores. Include everything you have to do to keep the power on and food on the table. Cleaning, paying bills, etc.

3. Now, keep track of what you do for a few days, and how much time you spend doing them. Did you waste three hours watching TV shows you really didn't enjoy just because the couch is where your butt landed? Keep track of that.

4. Now, merge your activities and chores list. Keep things flexible, and don't plan your day too tightly, as that is a recipe for failure (been there, done that). Make your list according to what is the most important to you. For me, time with my husband and friends, writing and reading are the most important activities to me. So I make sure I have time to do that, and if something less important to me falls by the wayside (like keeping up with a TV show or the current movies), it's not a big deal to me. I am so behind on movies it's not even funny, but that's because I'd rather be writing. And I don't often have time for both.


You might notice gaps of time you're not using as well as you could in your time tables. Consider combining tasks. Do you have to have a cup of coffee to wake up in the morning? Why not read emails during that coffee time?


I won't say you'll have plenty of time for everything you want after you keep track of your time, but you will know where your time goes, and be able to take advantage of unexpected opportunities.


What about you? What measures have you taken to make sure you have time for writing?

Critical Writing Skills: Originality

Today kicks off my new blog series, Critical Writing Skills. Each post will cover one skill that I think is essential to novelists. Feel free to suggest skills in the comments section. I would be really interested to learn what other people think is “critical” for a writer. Today’s topic, as you may have gleaned from the title, is Originality.

Ahhhhhh originality. The bane of all writers. Every single piece of information out there about writing says you need to have a good book idea. And by good, they really mean original. But what are we to do when it fells like EVERY idea has been written already? And by someone more talented than we are? And better looking? And richer? (maybe those last few are just my personal worries…)

It’s almost seems like a subversive form of torture, to tell us we have to write something original. There are only so many basic scenarios that people can get into, after all. Some experts claim there are as little as seven basic plots, and others say 20, and so on. The type of conflict your character will come up against can be boiled down in a few basic types.

On top of that, within each genre there are conventions that you are expected to uphold, so that further reigns in some possibilities. For example, in romance, neither the female love interest nor the male love interest can die. Period. It’s not considered a romance novel if one of the main characters dies (or so I have been told/read).

So what’s a writer to do? Imagine the horror of writing a query letter, which is boiling your novel down to it’s core components, and realizing the book sounds just like Romeo and Juliet, or A Farewell to Arms. That’s not going to catch the mailman’s eye, much less an agent’s.

I’ve talked to many different writers, and most don’t have a problem coming up with an original idea. A post man who lives underwater, let’s say. But my personal theory is most writers run afoul of the Cliché Monster by not pushing this idea further. Most writers, with that kernel of an idea, would move on to developing the underwater environment for their post man, and the post man’s family, and the kraken that is trying to swallow him whole before he makes his deliveries. After all, the post office’s motto is through rain or shine, snow or sleet…and kraken, apparently.

This starfish wants to grow up to be a kraken.

So today I am going to give you this suggestion. The next time you have a book idea, try to tinker with it some more. I know everyone’s process is different, so fit this in however you need to, but if you feel like your ideas are a little lackluster, then spend some more time with them. You’re heard a lot of different book ideas—there’s a lot of them out there. Some of these ideas are even published. Browsing your local library or bookstore will reveal that. But not every one of those ideas grab you, do they? Some of this is because it’s not your personal taste in reading material, but I think a good part of it is because the idea is similar to something you’ve already read. There’s no pressing desire to find out what happens.

I suspect people are feeling that way about paranormal-vampire YA. There could be the most original character hiding in the latest paranormal YA romance, but because it’s so very much like Twilight (normal girl meets hot abnormal guy who is a supernatural something or other. Normal girl is in danger, and hot guy has to protect her. They have a forbidden romance for various reasons.) the YA authors are either going to have to steer clear of that concept, or write something shockingly brilliant to break out above the slew of other novels similar to it.

On the other hand, look at Harry Potter. Most elements from the series are not original, but the way Rowling puts the “chosen one---boy finds out he has special powers---magical school of learning---secret magic world on Earth” elements together felt fresh and new at the time.

The idea behind originality is not coming up with something no one has ever thought of, but packaging familiar elements into a book that FEELS brand new.

How one goes about this is tricky. Personally, I usually make sure my ideas are “original” by combining them with other ideas I have. I have tons and tons of ideas floating around in my head. I think about them, play with them, wonder what would happen if I tweaked the idea slightly like so, and after a while I come up with an idea that feels new to me, and doesn’t sound like something I have already read. Sometimes the ideas will naturally do the Transformer thing where they merge into something awesome, and sometimes I have to intentionally nudge them.

I discovered a new way of nudging ideas into originality just this past weekend. If you’ve kept up with my blog, you’ll know that I have been struggling with ideas to write. I have plenty of them, but none of them felt so pressing that I had to write the book RIGHT NOW. I’ve looked at my idea folder dozens of times, and tinkered around with several ideas.

This flower is even more original than me!

 I decided to look at all the ideas I had at once, and in doing so, discovered magic.


I took four big pieces of white printer paper and taped them together. On one side I wrote down all the character ideas I had in green Sharpie pen, and circled their name like a cluster map without the center.

Next to the character ideas I wrote the basic plot ideas I have, as well as various elements I enjoy. Again, I just wrote a quick blurb and circled it, this time with a black Sharpie pen. So I had things like “characters forced to be together” and “walking into a gas station and everything changes” next to each other.

On the right side of the paper, in red Sharpie, I wrote down all the setting ideas I have, along with various character jobs and magic abilities. So things like “snowy ice world”, “hacker”, and “siren” wound up next to each other.

The end result was three different colored columns of several different types of ideas you can have for a story.

I was going to start connecting the ideas together using another Sharpie, but I was so pleased with the results I decided to leave it as it. Now whenever I need to brainstorm for a book, I can just look at my cluster map. It’s a really great way of connecting ideas you wouldn’t have considered before, because everything is right there.

Well, this entry is long enough, so we’re going to leave it here for today. What about you guys? Do you give thoughts to making sure your idea is a strong one or do you just trust everything will work out?