To plop or to plot ...

To plop or to plot … that is the question. Well, mine anyway. I’m currently writing my next book and I’m excited and filled with hope about a new idea. My natural instinct is to launch right in, to plop myself down in the middle of a comfy chair and race into the start of the story (and eat the last of the biscuits). Such is my keenness to inhabit any new idea, to look and see what I might discover there - rather like a visit to a continental supermarket - that impatience can get the better of me.

Similarly, I’m a technical-manual-refuser. A gung ho gah-I’ll-learn-as-I-go gal. Give me a manual and my eyes will soon glaze and blur in much the same way they did at school in subjects that weren’t History or English (sincere apologies, Notre Dame Comprehensive, Sheffield). It's why I still can’t operate anything that hosts buttons and flashing lights in my house. 

Which is fine, I can live with the inability to change channels remotely. But with writing - more often than not - I find that if I do just plop into a new story without some serious plotting first, I risk officially losing the plot.

And so, for my past two novels, I’ve been purposefully increasing my pre-plotting time. I’ve found – for me anyway – it not only helps develop my story structure, but it can really boost better idea generation. More ideas help to form a tighter structure; a tighter structure often enables more ideas. 

Therefore, fresh from a summer of plotting and filling up more notebooks than Nancy Drew, here are some of the crafting exercises and activities I have employed to help me avoid too much plopping …

Plotting exercises

📗Charts: I do lots of these as I begin forming a story. They can include charting key Strands, Character Arcs, pivotal Crisis Choices, Cause & Effect.

📘Craft books: re-reading screenwriting books such as ‘Story’ and ‘Into the Woods’ – I find guides that set out the science of our craft can really help develop structure and brainstorm ideas.

📙The 3Cs: Conflict, Choices & Change. A bit of a cross-check for acts and chapters against these critical 3Cs.

📕Story analysis: In my plotting period, I tend to analyse and critique more books and films. Assessing their midpoints, climaxes, motifs, character arcs ... and reflecting on my own.

📗The Circle: I get a bit addicted to drawing circles, lots of them. I quarter them into four acts and review how my story comes full circle, how scenes might mirror one another, how characters develop over time.

📘Map of Connections: I map settings, external and internal, present, past or imagination and I chart connections between these settings and the characters’ journey arcs.

📙Layer Trifle: I layer up revelations like a trifle, with key twists until the final reveal.

📕Stage set: I often draw key scenes as if they were stage sets, examining where characters are in relation to each other and to the audience (the reader).

📗Remember the Reader: possibly the most important part of plotting. I ask myself how the reader might engage with my story. What do they expect? How can I subvert expectations? What questions do I want them to ask? How will this make them feel? 

As Kevin Costner said, almost, Plot and the ideas will come. So, these days, I’m a reformed plopper; a born-again plotter through and through. However, technical manuals? I believe I’ll continue to press my remote control like it’s run out of batteries and wait for one of my teenagers to come home.

     

      Alex Cotter’s middle-grade novel THE MERMAID CALL was published on 7 July 2022 with Nosy Crow. She has also written THE HOUSE ON THE EDGE. Find her at www.alexcotter.co.uk or on Twitter: @AlexFCotter

When the story just takes over - by Nicola Morgan

Have you ever had the experience of something "just happening" in the book you're writing, something that you just have to find a way to deal with? This used to happen a lot to me and it felt rather wonderful, as though something was there, helping me write the story, something that was going to guide or drag me, something I needed to handle with a long rein. Sadly, this doesn't happen so much nowadays, as I think I've busified myself too much. But one day I'll get it back.

The most memorable time when it happened was when I was writing The Passionflower Massacre, which I confess remains my favourite of my books. There's a big chunk of me in that book. It's from the heart.

ANYway, quite early in the book, I found myself writing these sentences:

Before lunch, a message came for Matt to go back to the hostel. He didn’t come back to the raspberry fields. 

Matilda never saw Matt alive again.

What?? The gorgeous guy just vanishes? The one who was going to save Matilda? Just like that? What, as in dead?????? Nooooo! But he was gorgeous! Where's he gone? Why? Who did it? Is he dead? But I knew he was. But how and why and who and what would be the results? I had no idea.

Of course, I could have deleted it. But I didn't want to. It had been given to me. It sounded exciting. Twisty. Dark. Right.

So I went with it and followed the story and discovered what happened to gorgeous, doomed Matt. And why. And what it did to Matilda. I discovered that it had a part to play in the bursting, roasting strawberries and the ripening tomatoes and the deadly, rare, gorgeous passionflowers. He had to die.

Has this abolition of control happened to you? And isn't it a scary wonderful feeling when it does? I'll get that back, I hope.

_________________________

The Passionflower Massacre and Sleepwalking are to be republished in one pretty ebook on December 2nd! If you liked Wasted, I think you'll like these. Please give them a shot! Super-cheap as an intro offer. Free extracts of the PFM on my blog now. 

HANG-GLIDING by the THE SEAT OF MY PANTS or writing without a plot to a tight deadline – Dianne Hofmeyr

So my character looks at his friend and asks: "What if Fabio is caught in the fire?"  

Yes… what if? Because frankly I don’t know. And here I am with a novel that has to be sent in in a few weeks. And all my chapters seem to end with a question. Fine to keep the tempo going and make sure my reader is hooked – but what if I don’t know the answers? It makes getting up every morning to write at 6 am quite an adventure. 

Adventure stories have to have a strong plot firmly in place before you begin is the advice everyone gives. According to James Scott Bell in Plot & Structure it should go like this: 

Rising action, 

forward motion, 

setbacks/problems/obstacles, 

further forward motion, 

further setbacks etc etc 

until a final knock-out ending. 

Still I try to wing it... get up every morning saying, now what? What further conflict can I heap on this boy? Tick… tarantulas, leeches, piranhas, anacondas, Nile crocodiles and a lion. 

Move on to frogs. Ok… so the frog they’re looking for is the phyllobates terribilis commonly known as the golden poison dart frog, which makes it sound fairly innocent and doesn’t quite explain that one drop of it’s sweat is capable of killing up to twenty people. Wipe your eye with your frog-handling gloved finger and you’re dead!

Pile on the conflict… "tension on every page, make it your mantra" says Donald Maas in Writing the Breakout Novel. So I give the boy a dare. He’ll have to dive from the highest waterfall imaginable into a deep dark pool below. No… that’s been done before. Or am I just thinking of that picture on the CD cover of The Mission? In the previous book the boy tied himself to a huge log that was rolling down a storm swollen river. That got me into trouble. If it was rolling, the rope would get tangled, or he’d have to go under with it each time it rolled. What about straight on? Would a log float lengthways straight on? Indiana Jones where are you when I need you?

Tension on every page? What about guerrilla fighters armed to the teeth protecting their patch of coca plantation and a shack laboratory filled with acids that will convert the slush of coca leaves into cocaine? With Google’s help I become an expert on cocaine overnight. Just hope no one is collecting ‘cookies’ on my searches. 

What about a fire? A fire that’s set to destroy the laboratory but instead it destroys the forest. Does Fabio make it out? Isn’t this where I started? 

The book isn’t finished. Not even the plot is finished. But I’ve learnt about the secret lives of tarantulas and anacondas and jaguars. I probably could do a reasonable job of growing coca plants. I know the logistics involved in a mid-air helicopter battle and what NOE (nap of the earth) flying means. I don’t know that a rotor can’t be knocked out of kilter by a handgun. This my clever son points out to me. But I do know one should steer clear of guerrilla fighters. They’re very unpredictable… in real life as well in fiction. I can’t control them!

A friend once said when we were going round in circles in the Okavango Swamps that it wasn’t that we were lost… we just didn’t know where we were going. 

Each morning as I sit down to write, it's the same for me – I’m not lost… I just don’t know where I’m going. My structure’s intuitive. I’m writing the story from beginning to end, bouncing from chapter to chapter by instinct. And if the tension goes out of my writing, there are always the tracks Refusal, Asuncion, Alone and Guarani on the CD of The Mission to get me scared again. 

OLIVER STRANGE & the JOURNEY to the SWAMPS

published by Tafelberg and soon in E-Book format on Amazon.com

OLIVER STRANGE & the GHOSTS of MADAGASCAR

published by Tafelberg and soon in E-Book format on Amazon.com 

OLIVER STRANGE & the FOREST OF SECRETS (possibly? depends how I manage) 

www.diannehofmeyr.com