The Wonderful Tedious work that is Plotting

The Wonderful Tedious Work that is Plotting

(My current wordcount: 24,270)

When you started writing, maybe as a child like me or maybe as an adult, you likely did not plot. Maybe you don't now! I only started plotting about a year ago.

Before that, I kind of knew what was going to happen when I sat down to write a book. "Well, this person has this power, and then this happens to them. So then... then... Well they get out of it. Don't worry." My philosophy was that I wanted to find out the big twist ending when my reader found out.

Using that tactic for the first thirteen years of my life taught me that your novel, if you finish one, will be a disorganized pile of -as katytastic said- "word vomit". (I love that phrase so very much.) When I was fourteen, I started plotting more. It made me look at writing a book in a new way. Less like a long game of pretend and more like a novel. I don't plan everything still, I often start writing without an ending or without a middle and then have to go back and plot, but since that first novel, the only one I've been able to get out was one that was almost totally plotted. Every sentence? NO. But I knew where they were when, and I knew what the major plot points are.

That doesn't mean they won't change. A lot of people, including me for a while, don't want to plot because it 'ruins' their creativity or their experience. But really, everyone human has the same skeleton, but we don't all look alike. Say you want to write a story that goes like this: a girl meets a boy, they fall in love, one (or both) of them is a supernatural creature, this puts them both in danger, love prevails. (You obviously don't HAVE to want to write that.) Let me list some books that are like that: Twilight, House of Night, Beautiful Creatures, etc. There are many, many, many of these books. Not all of them are the same. Some are similar, some are totally different. My point is, just because you have a backbone, doesn't mean you know everything.

Now, if you wish to plot something, most people use a structure. Much of the time, in the beginning, I would write an outline simply by making bulleted notes down a piece of paper. Each one was just something that happened. (Mary makes cupcakes. Takes cupcakes to Dan. Dan dislikes cupcakes, etc) Now, I've been trying to find a new structure. I mentioned katytastic on youtube previously. She has a great video about her structure, and I find it very interesting, but it includes a lot of detailed structure that personally does not work for me, though I do like to use the more general blocks in her method to get a general arc going. (links at the end) Today, I found a 9 block method that is working really well on my camp nano project. Each of the boxes is next in the sequence, but they're put together so that if one box is touching another, the two are related in some way. The article explains it a lot better.

Do you have any methods for plotting? I'd love to hear them!

katytastic:
on her method: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94F-3Z6CJJw
example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hialqv6sfP4 (starts at 1:19: 26)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ee3dYG32YA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBKO-t6_Caw (starts at 55:00)

something a little more simple: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEMxuZyxdCo

pretty simple, but a little more complicated: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Awm09336oM

the method I found yesterday: http://querytracker.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-to-plot-or-revise-your-book.html

Adverbs

Adverbs?

(I am now going to write my word count for my novel at the top of each blog post to make me feel bad if I don't work on it.

So...)

13728. (I'm hopefully going to add about 20,000 words to that by the end of April.)

What do you know about adverbs in writing? If you research writing as much as I do, I bet all you know is, they're the enemy.

Are they?

I definitely get what they're saying. If you say "He sat heavily in the chair," it doesn't make as much of an impact as, "He slumped into the chair with a thud against the wood."

BUT

They do have their place. That's why they exist. I say, adverbs deserve some respect. What people mean when they say adverbs are the enemy is really just another round of show-don't-tell. Which,is definitely true unless in very strange circumstances that I doubt you will find yourself in.

In class, we recently read "Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck. I feel my constant being taught that adverbs are evil tainted my view of the book. Because there was an adverb in almost every paragraph. And I thought it worked alright. Do I think there could have been more showing? Yeah. But it wasn't bad. And anyway, it's a classic. It's held above many books written by authors who used no adverbs whatsoever.

Adverbs (or lack thereof) don't make the author. So if you feel your story is stumbling without them, put them in. It's okay! Just don't OVER use them.

Now, while I'm here, is there a way for you guys to comment? If so, can someone say hi or something? I'm not sure if and how it works...