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Our Journey Begins Now, But How? (or: To Plot or Not to Plot)

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“A story tells us what happened, but a plot tells us why.” – E.M. Forster

“But, how do you know if an ending is truly good for the characters unless you’ve traveled with them through every page?” – Shannon Hale

“Plot as such is not a major ingredient in my novels… it’s often better to sail on the unconscious sea.” – Richard Adams

It has taken me years to write this blog post. YEARS. Actually almost halfway through a decade, since I began to write this series on the Big Three (Setting, Character and Plot), and the Spark that connects them in a haphazard and somewhat painful but always invigorating process we call Writing A Novel.

I did not follow this timeline for the first three installments (which emerged from the depths and into the blogosphere at a tidy pace, between January 2018 and January 2019). I knew Plot was going to take some time, ultimately because – and I will gladly die on this hill – there really is no single correct way to plot a story.

You heard me.

Okay, let me specify what I mean. The “what” of plot is easy to research: we’ve all learned the narrative structures in high school English classes. MasterClass has a pretty comprehensive article to that effect.

What I’m talking about is the “how.”

First, I should acknowledge the intrepid writers who throw caution to the wind and venture into the wilderness that is their novel-in-progress without a second glance at that damn Fichtean Curve. They are on the same journey their characters are. They don’t know what’s coming. They don’t know where they’ll end up. They just know the adventure is worth the end result, whatever that ends up looking like. And that’s… certainly one way to go about it. I envy those writers, to be honest. The National Novel Writing Month community (who affectionately refer to ourselves as NaNoers), have a term for those folks: “Pantsers.” Apt description, to be sure.

The opposite end of the NaNoWriMo plotting spectrum houses the Planners, a distinctively meticulous and cautious bunch, who live by the outline. Org charts and narrative structure drafts are their bread and butter. Planners have a sub-spectrum, of course (why wouldn’t they, these slightly-fastidious lovers of order, who live to categorize and subcategorize)… within this group you have those who need to have each step of the journey measured out ahead of writing a word, down to the smallest detail. Others within the Planner cohort are a bit more flexible, preferring a solid outline but understanding that, even though they created the universe the story resides within, they might not have all the answers at the outset.

I tend to fall into this latter subgroup of Planners. My ideas become tangible through outlining. My characters come alive faster when I have some degree of direction for them in the beginning. Outlining is freeing to me, because it allows me to dream big. I can support those dreams by identifying and filling any plot holes ahead of writing. I don’t accidentally end up in a dead end corner of the story. Several of my failed projects, earlier in my writing career, were lacking an outline. Some of them were complete stories (beginning, middle, and end) but still failures. They did not succeed, in my mind, because I hadn’t devoted enough time to building a foundation that would support the story and my characters’ journey through it.

The outline grounds me in the story, and can even help me see arcs down the road that may result in sequels, or series. My novel-in-progress, Stormriders, began as an outline, after the idea phase and world-building. I flushed out my characters in tandem with construction of the main story arc; well into the plot development, I realized I had enough story – and my world was rich enough – to create arcs for a sequel, and then a trilogy. And a spinoff novella. There is a lot more to explore within the world of Stormriders now, because I connected the plot threads ahead of weaving the tapestry.

So how do I plot?

I start by writing a chapter-by-chapter summary. I tend to see plot steps/chapters almost as scenes in a movie. I write a paragraph per scene. I insert additional character notes with each scene. Who is there? Who isn’t? Where are they? What is happening in that moment? How does everyone interact? What happens to get them to the next scene? And so on, and so forth.

My chapter-by-chapter summary for Stormriders is 21 pages long.

Even though my outlining process tends to be fairly linear, my writing process is not. I jump around to different scenes, flushing them out. A bit of striking description or witty dialogue may pop into my head unannounced and unplanned, and I jot it down knowing there may be a place for it later. Once I have the summary, I can assign those random pieces of writing to a chapter, or scene. I can add and remove scenes, or rearrange them, at will. I can attach my author notes to the outline: thoughts on what’s working, and what isn’t. The summary is the plot foundation. I can double-check to make sure I have the narrative structure needed to be a successful and satisfying end product (eventually).

Another critical reason why I outline is the inevitability (and sometimes obstacle) called life. Even if I have to step away from a project for a while, I can return confident in the knowledge that the dream isn’t gone. The ideas are there, bookmarked for me in summary form.

Plot development, no matter how you experience it, is a journey. And there is no ultimately perfect way to embark on this journey, but knowing your own tendencies and style, coupled with the literary basics of plot structure, will help any writer tell the story they need to tell.

This is the final (hooray!) post in a 4-part series about The Big Magical Process of Making Words Happen (According to This Author).

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Antagonists Need Love, Too

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“You don’t really understand an antagonist until you understand why he’s a protagonist in his own version of the world.” 

~John Rogers

Why a Weak Antagonist Can Ruin Your Story

Artist: isabellaquintana (Pixabay)

I’ve always loved a good bad guy.

I mean, a goooooood bad guy (or gal). The characters in your favorite books – or movies – who were so insidiously, deliciously villainous that you loved to hate them. Who had you shouting at your book in disgust and anger, but secretly a tiny part of you empathized with a tiny part of them, and that made you hate them even more.

But for every Annie Wilkes (Misery), Kurtz (Heart of Darkness), Hannibal Lecter (the eponymous series by Thomas Harris), Heath Ledger’s Joker (cemented forever into the Halls of Depraved Genius), Erik Killmonger (in Black Panther, and arguably one of the most sympathetic movie villains of recent memory), or Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis Moriarty (my favorite manifestation is by far Andrew Scott’s portrayal in the BBC’s Sherlock series) – for every strong and complex antagonist in classic or contemporary literature and film – there is also at least one flat antagonist automaton whose only motivation is that he must drive the plot forward somehow. While it is every writer’s tendency to want to focus on developing the protagonist – and I am guilty of this, too, time and time again! – a well-rounded antagonist with a relatable backstory can only strengthen your narrative. An antagonist with a driving purpose for his/her actions is far more interesting.

Artist: linolombardi (Pixabay)

“I am evil because the story dictates I need to be evil!” or “I am doing this or that to your beloved MC because I love power for power’s sake!” are certainly character motivations that lean toward the one-dimensional. On the page, a one-dimensional bad guy is one character whose flawed nature readers will certainly notice (and not a good notice), and can really make or break your story. I tend to treat my antagonists as top priority characters, sometimes giving as much if not more attention to their development than the protagonist.

That’s NOT to say your protagonist should be relegated to the Mary Sue/Marty Stu archetype, who simply reacts to everything the antagonist throws in their faces, to whom everything happens yet overcomes adversity with flying colors… although there are times where that model works. (That’s a blog post for another day!) Long story short: I try to give equal attention to writing flawed MCs as I do to write complicated and interesting antagonists and villains.*

*NOTE: To avoid confusion, since we’re talking about both in this article… antagonists and villains are not necessarily the same. While a villain will almost always fall under the “antagonist” category, an antagonist can be a villain, sure, but does not have to be villainous or evil. An antagonist can be sympathetic, charismatic and even likable.

By giving your antagonists your due diligence – creating backstory, figuring out what motivates them, identifying sources of their internal conflict as well as possible sources of redemption, injecting humor (even dark humor works!) or quirks into their personalities – you end up with a person, instead of just Evil Personified For No Reason. I recommend using the same Character Development tools you used to get to know your protagonist on your antagonist. As mentioned in my previous post on Character Development, my favorite is the NaNoWriMo Character Questionnaire.

Artist: sik-life (Pixabay)

Bad guys are quite adaptable, and even the same antagonist can change exponentially between the covers of a single book, let alone in the cataclysmic transition between a book and its film adaptation. Ever get angry about the portrayal of your favorite book characters when they appear on the silver screen?

The list of my favorite literary antagonists of all time includes:

  • Long John Silver, Stevenson’s Treasure Island.
  • Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, Maguire’s Wicked (this one is controversial, because she is the villain in Baum’s Wizard of Oz, but in his prequel-of-sorts, Maguire gives us a fully-realized complicated person whose choices and motivations set her on a course we are all familiar with).
  • Moriarty (again! forever!), Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes.
  • Hot take: Mr. Rochester, Bronte’s Jane Eyre. (Yes he is a villian. Fight me!)
  • The Goblin King, Jae-Jones’ Wintersong/Shadowsong duology (please read these! Pleeeeease!).
  • Any villains or antagonists I missed who deserve to get their due? Let me know in the comments!

A few final notes:

Antagonists don’t necessarily have to be single characters. Here’s an article that outlines four types of antagonists.

Looking for more sage writing advice regarding antagonists, villainy and evil? Author Chuck Wendig wrote an article about how to do it. Trust me, this guy knows what he’s talking about, and articulates the many facets of writing antagonists far better than I ever could.

 

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Writing Them to Life (or: The Complexity of Character)

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You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are.

~Joss Whedon

Artist: johnhain (Pixabay)

It all begins with the faint early tingles of a story idea creeping through my brain.

When that “spark” turns out to be a fantasy/speculative fiction idea that requires extensive world-building, the work begins. Through that planning and building process, as mentioned in my previous post, I learn the context for how my characters are going to live, interact with each other, and move their way through the world.

But without the characters, you have an empty landscape.

It’s as if they are reading over my shoulder, as I fill pages and pages of Google Docs with the geography and culture and systems of government within their world. They frown and shake their heads when I sketch costumes that are impractical for their trade or daily lives. I feel them rolling their eyes behind me when I write conversations on their behalf: words and statements that ring false, dialogue you’d never ever hear uttered from their mouths.

And suddenly, here we all are. Me, and the fictional people in my head.

I’m sure other writers relate to this, to some extent, although I can’t be sure to what extremes they take it. On the surface, at best it seems a little eccentric. Prior to writing the fundamental bones of the story, I spend quite a bit of time thinking about the people in it, as if they are living, breathing people who live actual lives when I’m not writing about them.

There are many different schools of thought, regarding Character Development; the art of creating characters people empathize with and whose journeys they want to follow. I, for one, start with one general rule, once I have the idea for the story roughly sketched out in the world I’ve painted. I get to know my protagonist first. There are many tools one can use to accomplish this; my favorite is the official National Novel Writing Month Character Questionnaire. Completing this exercise gets you thinking about how your protagonist grew up within the world you’ve created, prior to the events of the story you’re writing. It gets you thinking about what formative events shaped the personality traits you envision for them, and clues you in on what they might say or do in future situations (i.e. plot twists and obstacles). It helps you understand what they want, what their future aspirations are, which also shape their behavior.

My next step is to get to know my primary antagonist. The villain. The bad guy. The person (if it is a person) that adversely and actively acts as a foil to your protagonist, yet needs to be a fully realized and complex person/nonperson in his/her/its own right (this last point is extreeeemely important. Important enough to warrant a separate blog post). If there is no conflict in the story, it is difficult for that story to go anywhere or for your protagonist to experience personal growth, and for me it is more interesting to have that conflict stem from another vibrantly real and complex individual (although it is possible to create conflict without a villain… yet another blog topic for another day).

Next, I think about secondary characters. These are the supportive characters who know, are related to, are subservient to, have power over, are in love with, and/or despise the protagonist and/or the antagonist. They, too, need to have well-rounded backstories and motivations, even if not everything is alluded to in detail as the story is being written. Using character development tools for even minor characters will prevent them from reading one-dimensional on the page. Readers can absolutely pick up on characters who are plot devices, who exist merely to propel the plot forward. They receive a couple of pages (or even paragraphs) of exposition or action, their literary “15 minutes in the spotlight” and then they disappear into the depths of the plot and are not heard from again. Give these folks more credit, if you can. Especially if they create what I call “relevant complexity” within the narrative by bringing their own influence, advice, experience, hubris, perspectives, prejudices, and motives to light.

As with world-building, your readers might never see the full Character Development profiles you’ve so painstakingly crafted for your characters. They might never know the full background and exploits of Character A’s history as a notorious pirate, but they will know enough to understand why Character A has acquired so much wealth, and why the authorities are after him, why he hates storms, and why he avoids a certain port on a certain island. The more time we spend with our characters, the more details we flesh out… and the more details we know, the more we treat them as real people. Real people, with real motivations, with whom readers can empathize. Real people to admire or detest, but always to learn from, and – on some level – understand.

And when I do reach the point of understanding them, the people in my story, they become anchors. If delving into their world is my entry-point into the story, the characters I meet along the way keep me grounded there.

And along the way, I start to understand that the story is no longer, and probably was never, mine.

It is theirs.

 

Become a Patron, and unlock additional content! View the Character Profile for one of the main Stormriders protagonists… meet Ben Corley.

This is the third post in a 4-part series about The Big Magical Process of Making Words Happen (According to This Author).

Part 4: Our Journey Begins Now, But How? (or: To Plot or Not to Plot)

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Where the magic happens (with a fresh coat of zen)

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This morning is the first morning I feel well enough to write, after a week of mornings where the fever caused my bones and muscles to crumble under flu aches, and I despaired wondering if I would ever be able to breathe through my nose again.

After a week of days where I was rendered barely able to move, let alone clean my house, I was well enough this morning to survey the damage, and realized how depressing the cycle of being sick actually is. When one feels lousy, the cleaning and dusting goes undone, the clutter piles up (somehow!) and everything is kissed by a not-so-thin layer of dust and dog hair. Which makes one feel even lousier. Thus, the vicious catch-22 of the flu.

This morning, with a renewed frenzied energy bordering on frantic, I tackled the cycle. Eradicating every last residual influenza germ being the ultimate goal, I scoured and dusted and vacuumed for awhile before taking stock of my writing desk. Covered in bric-a-brac, unopened mail from two weeks ago, and the shuffle of papers and notes from my various writing projects, it was overwhelming. There is little wonder I’d been avoiding it, even in the days prior to my bout with the flu.

But this desk was the center of my writing world: where every scene I dreamed up in the shower or plot knot I untangled in the car (hands-free dictation apps, look ’em up!) was documented, flushed out, put to (digital) paper.

It is a white workbench-style table, with a solid metal base and an expansive rectangular surface made from hefty particle board with a white laminate overlay. Basic, plain. Utilitarian. A fresh, clean palette. And so, of course, my first instinct was to cover it with decoration: hand-painted yarn bowls, framed pictures, glass mosaic-tiled vases. Decoration eventually gave way to things: folders, notebooks, pens, more notebooks, fresh stacks of unused post-it pads, post-it notes with various scribbles. Seashells. Business cards. Coffee mugs. And books… so many books. Stacks of books. Four-fifths of the desk surface was books.

Overwhelming.

Today I made a decision: over the past several weeks, and even months, I had been gradually avoiding my workstation because it no longer was conducive to its original purpose… writing. Every time I sat down, I was distracted by things. And the words would slow, and stop. And so I would gravitate to my couch, which of course offered its own set of distractions in the form of the TV remote. Or my bed… which I will posit is a terrible, terrible place to try to write a novel. Or outdoors… this option actually works brilliantly in warmer months, but not so much in January in Minnesota. This flu hiatus acted as a reset; I needed to clear the space, so that the words could come again.

Which is what I did. I scrubbed the surface free of dust, after removing each and every piece of distraction from it. I sat there awhile, letting myself feel the full effect. Slowly, I added a handful of items back, but only the items that contributed to a calm, clean, zen aesthetic:

  • Three live plants, one set in the midst of a mini rock garden to add some texture and sparkle.
  • An artsy poster of text, made by a friend of mine, with an inspirational quote in gold foil print.
  • Three candles: two battery-operated faux candles that give off a gentle warm light, one real scented candle designed to fill the space with the warm fragrance of Snicker-doodle cookies.
  • A hand-painted paperweight I picked up in Tanzania, a polished black stone covered in dainty goldfish.
  • An antique coaster, made from blue hand-blown glass.
  • A head massager (a must-have within arm’s reach, trust me).
  • A crackle-glass votive, full of dried French lavender from my garden.

Lastly, my laptop. And then, reader, the words did come back. Because now I’m sitting here, at my desk, telling you all about it.

writing desk

The lovely end result. No, there is no “before” picture (thank goodness).

Yes, you just read a blog post about how I cleaned my apartment (sorry). But it’s also about how we really should be intentional about honoring the importance of where we write. If we do not allow ourselves the adequate environment in which inspiration and ideas can flourish, we aren’t allowing ourselves the chance to achieve what we want through our writing. This applies equally to creators of art in other mediums, and it all goes back to self-care… as creators we can easily become caught up in the act of creating, and neglect other supportive aspects of sustaining our creative drive. Finding a space that nurtures your craft and sparks your creativity is step one; nurturing that space as well as your craft and creativity is the critical step two.

Take care of your space. Take care of you. And the words will come.

 

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A Universe in My Head (or: The Intricacies of World-Building)

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All the world is a stage, And all the men and women merely players.

~Everyone’s favorite English bard

First, you must build a world.

There are several different camps out there, when it comes to world-building for a novel. And each camp will tell us something different, when we ask the questions we were always going to ask… the questions that pile up as we writers all sit down at our favorite writing desks, and open our notebooks/computers/etc. … when we try like hell to make sense of the places we’ve envisioned, the intricate worlds that thus far live only in our heads but yet are beautiful. Vibrant. Real.

  • Do I need to build a world?
  • How much of a world should I build?
  • Do I build the whole world before writing a word of the story, or do I make it up as I write along?
  • How much of my painstakingly-built-and-now-thoroughly-complex world needs to end up in my story?

To name a few. (There are so many questions!)

Where to start building?

The important thing to understand is that there is no right or wrong way to world-build, but if you gravitate toward the speculative fiction/science fiction/fantasy genres, chances are world-building will be a necessity for you at some point. Whether you design every aspect of the world, down to the smallest detail, before you write a word of the story; or create and pull pieces of the world in as you write along… your characters cannot exist in a vacuum.

I personally fall into the first category of world-builder. For me, creating the world where my characters will be born, grow up, meet each other, fight, go on adventures, suffer loss and find happiness, has to happen before I meet my characters. The world needs to have existed long before my characters’ stories begin, and could feasibly continue to exist long after my characters have departed from it.

Your characters cannot exist in a vacuum.

How much of the world should show up in your story? We are writers, descriptive people by nature, so of course if we had our way the worlds we’ve so painstakingly created would be captured on the page, in every last vibrant detail. But the reality is, not much of the world will actually show up in the story. World-building generally is more for you, the writer, than it is for the reader. Although we spend hours (days, months, years?) developing extensive historical, social and geographical complexities of the worlds we create, the story itself may contain only whispers of the detail we’ve meticulously planned.

We use world-building as metaphorical post-it notes, to highlight a cultural reference or a social norm, to provide a supportive context as for the reason our protagonist has to captain a sailing vessel instead of drive a car to the next town over. Our characters should be living, breathing, imperfect beings; they should screw up and feel losses and care about things (more on this in another post), but their choices and actions need to be grounded in the environment around them. However, it is a balancing act between providing the appropriate amount of context and over-explanation. Too much description and focus on the world, and not on the characters, will slow a story down and ultimately will prove distracting to a reader. You want to give your characters a place to travel, interact, grow and get into trouble, without sacrificing focus on key aspects of the plot or the characters themselves.

There are many, many resources and tools that can assist writers with world-building. I’ve linked a few here that I’ve used and found incredibly helpful:

The Ultimate Guide to World-Building – Writer’s Edit

World-Building for Every Genre: A Checklist – Writers Write

Fantasy World-Building Questions List – pcwrede.com

Additional Advice and Links to World-Building Tools – Fictorians.com

List of 42 World-Building Resources – The Dabbler

30 Days of World-Building Tool – Fantasy World-Builder Guide

Article continues on Patreon.com. To read more about Worldbuilding and the world of Stormriders, subscribe to my Patreon here!

 

This is the second post in a 4-part series about The Big Magical Process of Making Words Happen (According to This Author).

Part 4: Our Journey Begins Now, But How? (or: To Plot or Not to Plot)

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