Photo courtesy of Jessica Bell
Do you sit down at the keyboard and just write, a vague idea of the characters and their story swirling around in your head? Do you just throw stuff at the characters and see what happens? Then you’re a pantser* who writes by the seat of your pants.
But perhaps you plan each scene and chapter in meticulous detail – after having constructed detailed pen portraits of your characters – and pay careful attention to the rules of structure used by your genre. Undoubtedly, you’re a plotter.
Well, I’m not entirely sure these extremes exist, in the same way that Elinor and Marianne Dashwood don’t, but are symbols for extremes of Sense and Sensibility.
When I write, I usually start classically: a character who is suddenly faced with a terrible dilemma, but I only discover how she’s going to resolve it once I start writing her story. However, sensible hat back on, I do like to know the point she’s going to reach at the end. The story has to have some definite purpose otherwise it becomes a soup of pure muddle.
But if I don’t have free rein to develop the story, let the characters spark off each other and encounter and deal with setbacks, then I don’t enjoy the actual writing. There’s no point in creating a story if you can’t have fun doing it! Nor do you have the dedication to keep going through weeks and months of typing slog if you aren’t intrigued by what happens in the story.
I’ve just published the third book in my contemporary thriller series and have written ten novels in my alternative history thriller series so I think I’ve learnt how to resolve this dilemma for my own writing process. Yes, I’m acquainted with the main character in each story and I want to find out what happens next to her and the people around her.
But that’s it.
I let her (usually a ‘her’) run around in my head a bit, to have some adventures, get into trouble, struggle to get out, land in more – you know the rest. More than anything, I have to get to know her, to find out what she wants, what’s stopping her, what she has to do, or Goal, Motivation, Conflict, as creative writing tutors call it.
My way of doing this is to make myself jot down 30 lines of plot. Less an outline, more of a wireframe as I like the 3D analogy better.
Line 1: The beginning – the inciting incident/kick-off
Line 2: Impact and realisation of that event/situation
Line 3: The plan to resolve it
Line 6: First enormous set-back (turning point 1)
Line 15: First glimmer of light (turning point 2)
Line 21: Gritting on in face of terrible odds and sacrifice (turning point 3)
Line 25: Despite developments, we might be getting there – the false dawn
Line 28: Catastrophe/black moment – do or die
Line 30: The end – the resolution and loose-end tying-up
I haven’t put all the lines in, but you get the idea. It’s not fixed but it gives you a skeleton which holds the whole thing together but which will become absorbed into the finished product and never be seen by the reader.
Once you have these thirty lines and accept that you will inevitably change or omit some of the lines and substitute new ones, then you can release your inner pantser, and create and imagine to your heart’s content.
*If you want a more high-flown expression instead of pantser, you can use ‘discovery writer’. But it means the same thing. 🙂
Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO and RETALIO, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers. JULIA PRIMA, Roma Nova story set in the late 4th century, starts the Foundation stories. The sequel, EXSILIUM, is now out.
Find out more about Roma Nova, its origins, stories and heroines and taste world the latest contemporary thriller Double Identity… Download ‘Welcome to Alison Morton’s Thriller Worlds’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email update. As a result, you’ll be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.
My own method is very similar to yours, Alison. Your thirty lines map neatly into my 3/5 act structure.
Where I differ is in setting up all my empty chapters in Scrivener, and giving each a line or two of outline drawn from the act structure, before I write.
But it’s very flexible — I nearly always find my developing characters drive changes, especially from the mid-point climax!
Yes, mine rarely take the route I outlined for them, but they do get there in the end. 😉
Someone once said it’s knowing where you are and where you’re going making the difference between a journey and wandering. They might have a point.
I like an idea of which I’m going with a few landmarks along the route, but then choose my own way to navigate that route.