tweener Archives -

Plantsing from the Bridge

September 4, 2014 by Valerie Comer 16 Comments

I’m a Self-confessed Planster©
By Ane MulliganThere isn’t as wide a gap between SOTP (Seat Of The Pants) writing and those who are Plotters as you might think. There actually is a bridge. I know because that’s where I write. I used to call it something different, until Rachel Hauck used the term in an article on Novel Rocket.

That’s it! I’m a self-confessed Planster.

“I’m a self-confessed plantser,” says @AneMulligan. What’s that in #amplotting terms?

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I think we all start with a kernel of an idea, that “what if?” After I have mine, I play with it, brainstorm it, and let it stew in my mind. While it’s simmering, I create my characters and find photos for each. I’m a very visual writer.

Once I have the photos, I interview each POV character. My character interview is 4 pages, filled with questions designed to dig out secrets and fears. The secondary characters get photos and a shorter interview.

Backstory is important. We are all the products of our parents’ and grandparents’ worldviews. We either connect with it or reject it, but it’s important to know. So for each POV character, I write a stream of consciousness backstory. By the time those are done, I’ve lived with them for a good month or two.

For me, that time is well spent up front. I believe motivation is the mortar that holds a plot together. And it’s in the character interview and the backstory where the secrets are revealed. By the time I begin to write, I know the character so well I know how each will react in any situation.

Now, I have an idea of how the story will play out. I have some scene planned and put those down in Scrivener, using the corkboard feature to storyboard. I can move those around to put into a good order.

At this point, I write a one-page synopsis, which then morphs into a 3-page one. By that time, I know where this story is going. I have my Plan. Now it’s time for the SOTP part to come out and play.

This is where the fun happens. I always have at least one character who will do something so unplanned, yet so organic to the story and the character’s personality, I let her/him run with it. It may change the story a lot or a little, but because I know the character so well, it always works.

I don’t write fast. I’ve tried throwing the story down to get that first draft, but it doesn’t work well for me. I have a very loud and obstinate inner editor. She doesn’t shut up. So I’ve given into myself. I start each day by editing yesterday’s work and getting back into my story world.

By the time I send a chapter to my critique partners, I’ve probably edited it 3 times, maybe 4. After I apply the critiques, it’s pretty much ready. When the whole manuscript has been critiqued and I’ve applied those, it’s ready for my two beta readers. After correcting anything they fined, it’s off to my agent.

While my way works for me, it may not work for another writer. But one thing that does work for all writers is:

Know your character’s core motivation. It’s the driving force of the story.

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While a large, floppy straw hat is her favorite, Ane Mulligan has worn many different ones: hairdresser, legislative affairs director (that’s a fancy name for a lobbyist), drama director, multi-published playwright, humor columnist, and novelist. Her lifetime experience provides a plethora of fodder for her Southern-fried fiction (try saying that three times fast). She firmly believes coffee and chocolate are two of the four major food groups. Ane’s debut book, Chapel Springs Revival, releases Sept 8th, 2014.

Spying on a Tweener Writer

April 24, 2014 by Valerie Comer 3 Comments

Guest Post by Patricia Bradley

I call myself a tweener, but I’ve learned tweeners don’t all write the same way.

Before I start working on my story, I generally know how it’s going to start, and how it’s going to end. That’s the way my stories come to me. It’s what’s in between that I have to work on. And this is my process.

Some things I have to know before I start writing:
• My Story Question
• My Characters and their goals
• Setting
• The general turning points in the plot.
• Death—what kind of death will it be? All stories are about some type of death: physical, psychological or professional
• What will propel the story from Act I to Act II and from Act II to Act III.

STORY QUESTION: For my third book, the question my story will answer is: Can a by-the-book detective who has lost her confidence and a private investigator who believes rules are only suggestions team up to catch a serial killer?

Since I write Inspirational, I also need a spiritual story question which is: How do we find freedom in Christ.

Spy on @PTBradley1’s tweener method for plotting a story:

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CHARACTERS
Basic things I need to know about my characters:

What type personality does each character have? I like to use the Myers-Briggs personality charts to help me. I pick an occupation and then Google the type of person who would do well in it and then I see if those traits listed fit my character. Somehow they always do.

Livy’s personality is ISTJ:

Introverted: reserved, controlled, self-motivated, deliberate
Sensing: realistic, practical, detail-oriented, traditional
Thinking: logical, objective, pragmatic, levelheaded
Judging: orderly, responsible, methodical, hard-working

These traits make her a great detective.

Eric’s personality is ESTP

Extroverted: outgoing, friendly, engaging, energetic
Sensing: hands-on, practical, observant, physical
Thinking: logical, objective, pragmatic, outspoken
Perceiving: responsive, spontaneous, adaptable, adventurous

These traits also make him a good private detective. But, can you see that they might have difficulty working together? I think I’ll have a fun time with these two characters.

Do your characters’ personalities match their occupations? Here’s how author @PTBradley1 does it!

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Dark Moment from the Past:
This is something that has happened to my characters and has influenced them in such a way that it affects the person they are when the story opens.

My heroine, Detective Livy Reynolds, killed a 17-year-old gunman six weeks before the story opens, and she has not been able to come to terms with it. The shooting has made her question her judgment, her instincts and her ability to respond in similar situations. Her story goal is to get her confidence back by solving the case of her missing cousin.

All his life, my hero, Private Investigator Eric Kincade, has been compared to his older brother and been found lacking, especially after his brother died a hero in Afghanistan. Eric has a law degree, but hasn’t taken the bar exam because he doesn’t want to be a lawyer. When the story opens, he is searching for a Texas state senator’s daughter who turns up missing in Mississippi. Solving this case will prove to his father that he is, in his own way, as good as his brother.

ACT I:

What I have talked about up until now is in Act I. It’s also where I introduce my characters and have them in their ordinary world. I set up where the story is going to take place and present the problem and what’s at stake. Act I also sets the tone: suspense, romance (if contains a romance introduce your hero-heroine either in person or have them think about the other), thriller, rom-com, women’s fiction, action.

At the end of Act I, is what James Scott Bell calls the 1st Doorway of No Return (Plot and Structure). Once your Lead goes through this door, the reader must believe she cannot go back to her ordinary world until she solves her problem.

ACT II:

This is where the Plot (the sequence of events in your story) really cranks up. Before I begin writing, I work out the Ds in my story: turning points that get progressively worse until the big one—The Black Moment.

The Ds stand for Distancing (getting the h/h further from their goal instead of closer) Disappointment (something happens that moves the h/h even further from their goal), Disaster (same thing only worse), Destruction and finally Devastation (Black Moment where everything goes wrong). I don’t describe what happens in great detail and the Ds are subject to change once I start writing, but at least I have a good idea of what I want to accomplish in Act 2.

What are the big Ds in story plotting?

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Something has to be at stake in my story.
What is the ultimate stake? Death. There are 3 kinds of deaths in a story: physical, psychological, and professional. I’m not limited to one type of death in my story, and Livy and Eric will face both the physical and professional kinds.

The middle is the battleground of the story. And in the middle I want to keep my reader turning the page. Each D brings the lead closer to the 2nd Doorway of No Return. In this sense, disaster doesn’t always mean something bad happens to the character. At the time it happens, it can seem like a good thing.

In an example from the movie Return to Me, one of the disasters is when the hero Bob falls in love with the heroine Grace. That’s a good thing. Right? But Grace has put off telling him that she has his dead wife’s heart. And now she knows she must. And when she does, he leaves, just like she thought he would.

Act III

Which brings us to the 2nd Doorway of No Return. Once Grace tells Bob she has his wife’s heart, there is no going back and undoing it. That thrust the story into Act III where the final battle is played out—she leaves to go on her dream trip to Europe, and he realizes he needs to go after her.

Act III is where the hero/heroine overcomes all odds and wins the day, and for me that means a Happy Ever After. (HEA)

Act III is the one thing I don’t really plot out.

And that is the way I, as a tweener, plot my stories. If you have any questions, leave them in the comment box and I’ll try to answer them.

Patricia Bradley lives in North Mississippi and is a former abstinence educator, but her heart is tuned to suspense. Patricia’s mini-mysteries have been published in Woman’s World, and her debut novel, Shadows of the Past released in February. She presents workshops on writing. When she’s not writing, she likes to throw mud on a wheel and see what happens.

5 Plotting Methods for Fiction

March 20, 2014 by Valerie Comer 14 Comments

In truth, there are probably as many plotting methods as there are writers on the planet. Still, I believe there are five major boxes within which most writers fit. I’ve talked about some of them here on the blog before.

Plotter
Many writers prefer to think through the entire story before they start writing. They may write character bios, do a lot of research, create extensive worldbuilding, and lay out the plot from start to finish in some sort of outline. Here’s how one writer plots.

Pantser
Seat-of-the-pants writers prefer to be surprised as they write. They figure if they know the whole story in advance, there’s little appeal to writing it all down. They write to discover what happens.

Others say that pantsing is an elaborate form of plotting. Instead of piecing together small bits of information to create a whole, pantsers write out everything they know. Their first draft acts as a very detailed outline from which they can write the next draft, adding, subtracting, and tweaking scenes as required.

Tweener
Some writers fall in between plotting and pantsing, and do a simplified amount of plotting before turning their muse loose to fill in the blanks during first draft. Different writers will find differing amounts of plotting useful, depending on where they are in the plotting-to-pantsing spectrum.

Tweening (tweenering?) is my method as described here. Note that I didn’t choose this method—it chose me.

Headlighter
Writing by your headlights simply means that you plan the first part of your story then write it. When you get that section written, you’ll be able to see what happens next and can plot out the next few scenes or chapters. Once you’ve written those, you’ll be able to determine what comes next, section by section, all the way to the end.

Looking back, I wrote my first novel this way. I’d done some planning, but quickly realized I didn’t have enough plot to run for 80-100K (the length of an average novel). Once I ran out of plot, I thought up some more stuff to happen then wrote it. Rinse and repeat.

Because I never had a good grip on the end result, I felt as though the whole story was a failure (other than achieving my word count goal, no mean feat in itself). And therefore the method was a failure for me. Since then I’ve discovered that with a few minor (tweener) modifications, this is exactly my best process. It took me ten more novels to figure that out, much longer than it needed to.

E. L. Doctorow summarized the headlighting method this way: “It’s like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

Tweetables

FIVE plotting methods for fiction? And you thought if you weren’t a plotter, you were a pantser. click to tweet
What do these have in common? Plotter, pantser, tweener, headlighter, polisher? click to tweet

Polisher
Although I believe few writers land in this camp, it’s a valid method for those who need it. It’s doubtless the slowest method of getting to the end of a first draft but, in theory, subsequent drafts are quick and relatively painfree.

A polisher tests the story with every step. Unlike a pantser who gives over to the freedom to write whatever comes to mind or a plotter who decides it all ahead of time, a polisher will write a scene then analyze it. Is it good enough? Does it work with the previous scene(s)? How can it be made better? What needs adding or changing in previous chapters to facilitate this new revelation? Only when everything previously written is polished and perfect is this writer ready to move to the next scene.

At a glance, it seems this type of writer is a perfectionist and may be keeping their intuitive right brain on a short leash. However, all directions remain viable at any given time, so the polisher can move the story wherever feels right on the solid foundation she’s already built. It’s a more methodical way of pantsing, with fewer big issues to deal with at the other end. An editing pass, and it’s probably good to go.

Embrace the way that seems to work for you and tweak it rather than throwing out the entire plotting method and experimenting with its opposite. You can learn to write effectively with fewer wasted novels than I did.

What is your plotting method? Does this list open your eyes to new possibilities?