Pantsers vs. Plotters

Now that I've finished a fabulous series on plotting a great story, it's time to comment on the idea of outlining. I've mentioned this before, but there are two types of writers in the world: those who plot out the entire story before they begin writing (plotters) and those who do little-to-no planning before they begin writing (pantsers, as in by-the-seat-of-the-pants). I'm firmly entrenched in the plotters category. In fact, two weeks ago a great scene popped into my head that took place near the half-way point of my story, but I was only one-quarter of the way through the writing process. I figured I'd better write that scene out before I forgot all the good stuff I came up with. So I wrote it. Then I had to back up to the point where I'd left off and fill in all the stuff that took place between. Talk about anxiety! My poor linear brain is just NOT equipped to deal with non-linear writing. I wrote fast and furious to fill up the space and get that pre-written scene into chronological order with the rest of the story.

I have a pantser friend who has started to come around to my way of thinking (Dragonfallacy, that's you!). She now admits that she plots bits of her story before she writes. Sometimes she starts writing, then plots for a bit, then writes for a bit, then when she gets stuck she goes back to plotting. She admitted to me just today that *gasp* she frequently starts out with a scene at some random place within the first half of the story. She's *accustomed* to writing scenes out of order. I can't even begin to express how wrong that feels to me. It's like an architect trying to build a building without blueprints. Its like putting your socks on over your shoes. Its like putting mayonnaise on your peanut butter sandwich. It's Just Not Done.

(This "don't do it" photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net)

Yet I know people do it all the time, and they manage to get books written. Obviously, there's no right or wrong way. But there is a way that feels natural to me. I'll stick with it and not feel guilty that I can't stray outside the boundaries of my comfort zone to try someone else's way of doing things. I applaud my pantser friend for trying things my way. She found a nice common ground between the two that works for her. I personally think she may end up following rabbit trails that don't go where they should, so when it comes time to edit she finds herself deleting some unusable prose, but I haven't had any confirmation on my theory yet. And if she does, so what? The more writing you do, the better you get at it. Someone somewhere said it takes 10,000 hours of doing something to become an expert at it. If you put in your 10,000 hours and end up deleting some of those words, you've still put in the time. My friend and I have both put in a lot more than 10,000 hours, so I think we're doing dandy.

What about you, loyal readers? Are you a plotter or a pantser? Do you find yourself somewhere between the two? Can you write in a non-linear fashion without stressing out about it? Share your wisdom with the group.

-Sonja

 

Pantsers vs. Plotters

Now that I've finished a fabulous series on plotting a great story, it's time to comment on the idea of outlining. I've mentioned this before, but there are two types of writers in the world: those who plot out the entire story before they begin writing (plotters) and those who do little-to-no planning before they begin writing (pantsers, as in by-the-seat-of-the-pants). I'm firmly entrenched in the plotters category. In fact, two weeks ago a great scene popped into my head that took place near the half-way point of my story, but I was only one-quarter of the way through the writing process. I figured I'd better write that scene out before I forgot all the good stuff I came up with. So I wrote it. Then I had to back up to the point where I'd left off and fill in all the stuff that took place between. Talk about anxiety! My poor linear brain is just NOT equipped to deal with non-linear writing. I wrote fast and furious to fill up the space and get that pre-written scene into chronological order with the rest of the story.

I have a pantser friend who has started to come around to my way of thinking (Dragonfallacy, that's you!). She now admits that she plots bits of her story before she writes. Sometimes she starts writing, then plots for a bit, then writes for a bit, then when she gets stuck she goes back to plotting. She admitted to me just today that *gasp* she frequently starts out with a scene at some random place within the first half of the story. She's *accustomed* to writing scenes out of order. I can't even begin to express how wrong that feels to me. It's like an architect trying to build a building without blueprints. Its like putting your socks on over your shoes. Its like putting mayonnaise on your peanut butter sandwich. It's Just Not Done.

 

(This "don't do it" photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net)

Yet I know people do it all the time, and they manage to get books written. Obviously, there's no right or wrong way. But there is a way that feels natural to me. I'll stick with it and not feel guilty that I can't stray outside the boundaries of my comfort zone to try someone else's way of doing things. I applaud my pantser friend for trying things my way. She found a nice common ground between the two that works for her. I personally think she may end up following rabbit trails that don't go where they should, so when it comes time to edit she finds herself deleting some unusable prose, but I haven't had any confirmation on my theory yet. And if she does, so what? The more writing you do, the better you get at it. Someone somewhere said it takes 10,000 hours of doing something to become an expert at it. If you put in your 10,000 hours and end up deleting some of those words, you've still put in the time. My friend and I have both put in a lot more than 10,000 hours, so I think we're doing dandy.

What about you, loyal readers? Are you a plotter or a pantser? Do you find yourself somewhere between the two? Can you write in a non-linear fashion without stressing out about it? Share your wisdom with the group.

-Sonja

 

Pantsers vs. Plotters

Now that I've finished a fabulous series on plotting a great story, it's time to comment on the idea of outlining. I've mentioned this before, but there are two types of writers in the world: those who plot out the entire story before they begin writing (plotters) and those who do little-to-no planning before they begin writing (pantsers, as in by-the-seat-of-the-pants). I'm firmly entrenched in the plotters category. In fact, two weeks ago a great scene popped into my head that took place near the half-way point of my story, but I was only one-quarter of the way through the writing process. I figured I'd better write that scene out before I forgot all the good stuff I came up with. So I wrote it. Then I had to back up to the point where I'd left off and fill in all the stuff that took place between. Talk about anxiety! My poor linear brain is just NOT equipped to deal with non-linear writing. I wrote fast and furious to fill up the space and get that pre-written scene into chronological order with the rest of the story.

I have a pantser friend who has started to come around to my way of thinking (Dragonfallacy, that's you!). She now admits that she plots bits of her story before she writes. Sometimes she starts writing, then plots for a bit, then writes for a bit, then when she gets stuck she goes back to plotting. She admitted to me just today that *gasp* she frequently starts out with a scene at some random place within the first half of the story. She's *accustomed* to writing scenes out of order. I can't even begin to express how wrong that feels to me. It's like an architect trying to build a building without blueprints. Its like putting your socks on over your shoes. Its like putting mayonnaise on your peanut butter sandwich. It's Just Not Done.

(This "don't do it" photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net)

Yet I know people do it all the time, and they manage to get books written. Obviously, there's no right or wrong way. But there is a way that feels natural to me. I'll stick with it and not feel guilty that I can't stray outside the boundaries of my comfort zone to try someone else's way of doing things. I applaud my pantser friend for trying things my way. She found a nice common ground between the two that works for her. I personally think she may end up following rabbit trails that don't go where they should, so when it comes time to edit she finds herself deleting some unusable prose, but I haven't had any confirmation on my theory yet. And if she does, so what? The more writing you do, the better you get at it. Someone somewhere said it takes 10,000 hours of doing something to become an expert at it. If you put in your 10,000 hours and end up deleting some of those words, you've still put in the time. My friend and I have both put in a lot more than 10,000 hours, so I think we're doing dandy.

What about you, loyal readers? Are you a plotter or a pantser? Do you find yourself somewhere between the two? Can you write in a non-linear fashion without stressing out about it? Share your wisdom with the group.

-Sonja

Second Plot Point

This is the last post in this series, so you only have to put up with this bit of review one last time. Here goes: In his book Story Engineering,  Larry Brooks offers six core competencies involved in writing an excellent novel. Competency #4, Structure, has four parts: The Set-up, The Response, The Attack, and the Resolution. Within these four parts are some major milestones. The milestones within the structure are: 

The opening scene or sequence of your story;

A hooking moment in the first twenty pages;

A setup inciting incident 

The First Plot Point, at approximately 20 to 25 percent through the story;

The First Pinch Point at about the three-eights mark, or precisely in the middle of part 2;

The context-shifting Midpoint, at precisely the middle of the story;

A Second Pinch Point, at about the five-eights mark, or in the middle of Part 3

The Second Plot Point, at about 75 percent through the story;

The final resolution scene or sequence

 (This tent comes from freedigitalphotos.net)

The final milestone I want to discuss is the Second Plot Point. Think of the First Plot Point, the Midpoint, and the Second Plot Point as the three posts holding up a tent: two on the sides, one in the middle. If you don't position them correctly, the tent collapses. So be careful to put them in the right spot in the story, or the story will sag. The Second Plot Point (SPP) would be that side post on one end. 

Here's Brooks' definition: "the final injection of new information in the story, after which no new expository information may enter the story other than the hero's actions, and which puts a final piece of narrative information in play that gives the hero everything she needs to become the primary catalyst in the story's conclusion." That's a nice big sentence, and I'd hate to diagram it for English class, but it gets the job done. The SPP is when the story shifts into resolution mode because this new information enables the hero to complete the quest, solve the problem, save the day, etc. 

"It's when the final scene starts." This last piece of information revealed in the SPP needs to be powerful and meaningful. It's the last piece of the puzzle, the final ingredient, the biggest twist. Use it to delight your reader with a good old slap upside the head. Wake up the reader and make him notice that the ending is definitely in sight, and the hero will need to prove his hero-ness or die trying.

Sometimes "there is an all-hope-is-lost lull that occurs right before the Second Plot Point appears." It's not always necessary (The Da Vinci Code doesn't have one) but it's a nice place to add one more bit of tension before everything blows up. Feel free to create this lull, this sense of impending doom, to slow the pace before the frenzy of the final conflict.

The SPP separates Part 3 from Part 4 and falls around the 75 percent mark. In your 350-page novel, that would be around page 262. "The hero transitions here from attacking warrior to a hell-bent, selfless, heroic, and even martyr-like champion of all that is good. Or at least necessary in terms of solving the inherent dramatic problem at hand." The SPP "can deliver information that is not yet known or fully understood by the hero, but in such a case it still launches the final push toward the resolution." 

In The Da Vinci Code, the SPP comes when "Langdon, in his heroic wisdom, cracks the message hidden in the codex, which revealed every last secret to be had about the code Leonardo da Vinci had so cleverly hidden in his paintings. In other words, the point of everything." [Spoiler alert -- don't read the rest of this paragraph if you haven't read or seen The Da Vinci Code but intend to do so.] We also learn that the people who've been helping Langdon are, in fact, bad guys. The Teacher is behind everything, including the albino assassin. This is the last new piece of information Langdon needs to uncover the truth and find the Holy Grail.

That concludes my brief dip into an awesome book. Check it out from the library. You'll quickly learn that you need to own this one for your reference library and use it frequently. Mine's all highlighted with important pages dog-eared and sticky-note bookmarks poking out in strategic places. I've used this method to outline my last two novels, and I think they're my best works to date. I might even use this system to revamp previous novels. It's that good.

Comments? Questions? Requests for future series? I love hearing from ya'll!

-Sonja 

Second Pinch Point

In his book Story Engineering,  Larry Brooks offers six core competencies involved in writing an excellent novel. Competency #4, Structure, has four parts: The Set-up, The Response, The Attack, and the Resolution. Within these four parts are some major milestones. The milestones within the structure are: 

The opening scene or sequence of your story;

A hooking moment in the first twenty pages;

A setup inciting incident 

The First Plot Point, at approximately 20 to 25 percent through the story;

The First Pinch Point at about the three-eights mark, or precisely in the middle of part 2;

The context-shifting Midpoint, at precisely the middle of the story;

A Second Pinch Point, at about the five-eights mark, or in the middle of Part 3

The Second Plot Point, at about 75 percent through the story;

The final resolution scene or sequence

(This pinch is courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net)

Like the First Pinch Point, the Second Pinch Point is meant to showcase just how awesomely evil or powerful or determined the antagonist is. "The reader needs a reminder of the danger, the stakes and the implications, the unseen monster we know is waiting under the bed." This puts a bit more scary in this part of the book. Show the antagonist going after what he wants (which is in opposition to what the hero wants). You can either show this in the POV of the antagonist, or show a confrontation between the antagonist and the hero where the hero doesn't win.

The Second Pitch Point falls in the middle of Part 3 (The Attack), at about the five-eights mark. If your novel is 350 pages long, your Second Pitch Point will fall around page 219. That's a guideline, of course, so feel free to stray a bit from that target--you're the author, so you get to choose. Just don't stray too much.

In The Da Vinci Code, the Second Pinch Point comes a bit early, in Chapter 64. "The assassin clocks Langdon from behind, just as Langdon is opening yet another box containing a cryptic clue."  The assassin is the antagonistic force. "What better reminder of an obstacle, for both the hero and the reader, than having it hit you over the head." 

That was quick and easy, wasn't it? My next post will deal with the Second Plot Point. Please come back.

-Sonja

Book Review: A PLAIN DEATH by Guest Blogger Melody Steiner ((tag: book review)

Whatever it is about this book that makes it so relatable, so down-to-Earth funny, Amanda Flower should bottle it and sell it. Perhaps it’s the fact that this book takes place in rural Ohio, and I happened to live in rural Ohio for four years. Then again, maybe it’s because the main character, Chloe Humphrey is a born and bred city girl adjusting to life in a small town. Also like me. Or maybe it’s her interactions with her formerly Amish friends, innocent Becky and handsome Timothy Troyer—oh, wait. That’s not like me, although I did work at a hardware store frequented by the Amish for a couple of months before I moved out West.

Full disclosure: I’m a long-time fan and friend of Amanda’s, having read her India Hayes novels and the Appleseed Creek book before this one, A Plain Death. A Plain Scandal, the second installment in Flower’s Appleseed Creek series, begins with a dash of eaves-dropping, a hint of danger and, of course, a scandal. Chloe and Becky have new troubles: including a landlord who takes an inconvenient interest in restoring the old house and seems to have an equally inconvenient interest in Chloe; two jailbirds with a habit of harassing the Amish and Chloe; and, to further complicate matters, both Chloe and Becky (and even Chloe’s long-time friend, Tanisha) have ongoing relationship woes with their respective men.

While Chloe is unsure how to handle Timothy’s signals—she isn’t fully convinced he’s sending signals—a larger conflict brings the Amish back into her life. Someone is attacking members of their community and cutting off beards and hair, an insult of epic proportions to their way of life. Tension escalates when Chloe stumbles upon the corpse of one of the victims, turning her from Computer Technology guru into a P.I. for the Amish yet again. But there are voices within the Amish community that seek to stop Chloe from investigating the attacks and the murder, and hope to severe her ties to their community. As Chloe wrestles to piece together the evidence, searching for links among the victims while simultaneously fending off the advances and interference of her new landlord, it also becomes clear that a new bishop’s stringent regulations over the Amish might have more of an impact in their community than anyone has yet to realize.

The balance between mystery, hilarity, and romance is perfectly managed in this gem of a book. I found myself giggling during scenes where Chloe happens upon the most awkward of situations (again, me). The whodunit is compelling and kept me fastened to the book until the final page (I didn’t guess it!). As for the romance? Every gal should have a Timothy. The tender moments between them were heartfelt and sweet, and yet it never sidetracked into the mushy.

-Melody 

Melody Steiner works at an academic library as a circulation technician. In 2006, she graduated from a small private college in Ohio with a Bachelors of Arts in English. After she met and married her husband, they relocated to Seattle, WA. In March, 2011, she graduated from the University of Washington with a Master in Library and Information Science, aspiring to becoming a full-time librarian. Her hobbies include reading the latest YA series (recent favorites include Patrick Ness’ The Knife of Never Letting Go and Paoli Bacigalupi’s Shipbreaker), camping, and enjoying long walks with her best friend. Last November, they had their first little peanut—a rambunctious baby girl. In addition to adult science fiction, she writes fantasy and YA novels. She is represented by Nicole Resciniti of The Seymour Agency. You can find her at http://twitter.com/melody_steiner.

Midpoint

In his book Story Engineering,  Larry Brooks offers six core competencies involved in writing an excellent novel. Competency #4, Structure, has four parts: The Set-up, The Response, The Attack, and the Resolution. Within these four parts are some major milestones. The milestones within the structure are: 

The opening scene or sequence of your story;

A hooking moment in the first twenty pages;

A setup inciting incident 

The First Plot Point, at approximately 20 to 25 percent through the story;

The First Pinch Point at about the three-eights mark, or precisely in the middle of part 2;

The context-shifting Midpoint, at precisely the middle of the story;

A Second Pinch Point, at about the five-eights mark, or in the middle of Part 3

The Second Plot Point, at about 75 percent through the story;

The final resolution scene or sequence

(This median provided by my favorite free photos site, freedigitalphotos.net)

"A funny thing happened on the way to the ending of your story," Brooks says. "Everything changed. Right in the middle, in fact. A big fat unexpected twist." That's your Midpoint. He defines the Midpoint like this: "new information that enters the story squarely in the middle of it that changes the contextual experience and understanding of either the reader or the hero, or both." The hero or the reader suddenly learns something important. It could pertain to hidden information that the hero knew existed somewhere but hadn't found yet, or it could be something completely new. Whatever you chose, this new info adds weight and dramatic tension.

The Midpoint "changes things through meaning." It empowers the hero to move from Part 2 (The Response) into Part 3 (The Attack). Now the hero has enough knowledge to be proactive about his problem/quest. He knows who to go after, where to search, what to do next. "It activates new decisions, behaviors, and actions stemming from a new perspective."

The Da Vinci Code has two possible Midpoints, which I found a little amusing. The author knows which one of them is the true Midpoint, but it's murkier for the reader. In Chapter 51, Sophie and Langdon stop fleeing the cops/assassin and run toward "The Teacher"--the guy who can help them solve the mystery. The hero transitions from random running to direct attack. Then in Chapter 55, both the reader and the hero learn what the Holy Grail is all about. It's new information that completely changes the nature of the quest. It's a huge revelation. It explains why the church is so intent on stopping Langdon. 

These two revelations, packed closely together at the end of Part 2/beginning of Part 3, change the context of the story. The stakes are higher now, the quest is clearer, and the hero has a destination in mind for the final showdown. 

In your 350-page novel, the Midpoint comes right around page 175. Get as close to that as possible, make the revelation a big, juicy one, and your reader will love you and your story. Questions? Comments? Rants from the pantsers out there? I welcome them all.

My next post covers the Second Pinch Point. Here's a little hint: It's similar to the First Pinch Point.

-Sonja