Plotting

For whatever reason, whenever I'm asked for advice about writing, plotting seems to be the part of the process that aspiring writers are most resistant to. I've gotten comments like, "it takes too much time; I'd rather spend that time writing," or "I like to be much more organic with my process; I like to see where the story goes naturally," or "It doesn't seem to make any difference to my writing, so why bother?" or "I write short stories; what good is plotting going to do for me?" or "I never stick to my outline anyway, so I just stopped using one." In an attempt to convince you to at least do some plotting for your work, I'll address each of those concerns separately. Also, I'd like to say that I don't know a single published author  - and I know quite a few personally, and I read blogs and articles from many others - who doesn't do any plotting at all. While I'm sure there are some exceptions to that, it seems that the large majority does plot. That should tell you that plotting appears to be the habit of successful writers, and like my father told me years ago when I started a new job - look around and find the person in your field you think is the most successful and do what they do until you get your feet under you.


Now then, the question of taking too much time. The question I get asked most often, hands down, is how to get rid of writer's block, and my answer probably always disappoints - I don't get it. I never have suffered from writer's block and likely never will. Why? I head it off at the pass. I plot intensively and while it may take a few weeks of careful thought and simply letting some ideas develop in my brain without anything ever going on paper, I'm never stuck with no progress being achieved. And once I get my outline finished, I know exactly what I want to write and how, so there's no block involved - I just write.

Secondly, about waiting to see where the story takes you. That's fine, honestly it is, but you have to know what to expect from that - it's going to take you longer to finish, you may paint your characters into an impossible situation which requires "divine intervention" to get out of, and you can't guarantee you'll end up with the type of story you set out to write. If you're just writing for fun, or as an exercise it's fine to just sit down and write a stream of consciousness type of narrative, but if you're trying to write for a living or at least be published semi-regularly, I wouldn't suggest it. Plotting, or knowing where you're going, means that not only do you not waste any time stopping to decide what happens next, but that you get where you always intended to go and you don't end up with an ending that's dissatisfying to your readers because you either didn't tie up all the plot threads you wove or you had an entire books worth of build-up and then one chapter of a miracle resolution that feels hollow.

If plotting in advance doesn't seem to help your writing process, then you're more than likely doing it wrong - or at least wrong for you. I'll lay out my process, and I can give you all the advice in the world about how I do it, but you've got to adapt that to something that works for you.

Plotting can still be quite effective even for stories as short as a single chapter. Laying out the main event, some character information and things like tone or ideas you're trying to convey before hand can really make it easier to stay focused on the "meat" of your story once you get started. Obviously, you wouldn't need to do something as extensive as you do for a full-length novel, but just making a few notes can help. It can also prevent things like extraneous information or plot threads making it into your story. Successful short stories are all about being tightly focused and laying out a basic outline of events might keep you from adding things that just simply don't need to be there, and therefore distract the reader. It can also alert you - before you ever start writing - if you may need to make the story longer than originally intended to tell the tale.

It's okay if you don't stick to your outline once you start writing, but I would suggest updating it to reflect changes. Similar to when you first start your story, it may help keep you from going in an unintended direction or taking your characters somewhere you can't get them out of.

So, that was the why, and hopefully I've convinced you of the merits of plotting, so now let's get to the how. Again, let me be clear that this is my process, and it works for me, it may not work for you. I encourage you to take ideas you like from this, chuck the rest, and fill in the holes with ideas that will work for you. Make this process your own!

For me, plotting involves five steps: general outline, specific outline, character bios, setting information, and research.

For my general outline, I simply list the main events in each chapter. It might look something like this:

1. Joe and Tim meet at bar.
2. Joe and Tim have sex.
3. Joe goes to work next day and Tim is his new boss; they talk, agree to stay professional
4. Joe still wants Tim
5. Have sex again
6. Avoid each other; problems at work
7. Lose a major case
8. Joe quits; starts working at a smaller firm
9. They get together

Then I take that and expand that general outline into something very specific. For each chapter, I break that main focus down into individual events. So chapter 2 might look something like this:
- go into bar bathroom (500)
- kiss and grope each other (750)
- Tim unbuttons Joe's pants, puts his hand on his cock (250)
- Joe grinds into Tim's hand; comes (500)
- Joe gets on his knees; takes out Tim's cock (250)
- Joe sucks Tim off (1,000)
- clean up, slightly awkward (250)

I go into that much detail because it helps me during the writing process and also because I make sure everything's there. It sucks to write a hot, gorgeous sex scene and then realize you forgot to have them get naked first! I also include estimated word counts at this point. This helps me to make sure all of the chapters are relatively close to the same length, and helps point out areas where something else might need to happen in a chapter.

After I've got my general plot outline, I do bios for my characters. I've got a template saved on my computer, one for main characters and one for side characters. This is the one for main characters:

Name:
Age:
Occupation:
Positive trait:
Character flaw:
Internal conflict:
External conflict:
Looking for in a mate:
Bio:
Height:
Weight:
Hair:
Eyes:
Clothing Style:
Distinguishing feature:

And this is the one for side characters:

Name:
Age:
Occupation:
Relationship to character:
Personality:
Height:
Weight:
Hair:
Eyes:
Clothing Style:
Distinguishing feature:

Filling those out helps you get a better handle on who your characters are and it also gives you a handy reference to consult when you get to parts where physical descriptions are needed (this is especially useful for side characters, I find) I would fill one of these out for any character that shows up more than once or has a name. So, you wouldn't need one for the bartender, who is simply called the bartender in the one scene he's in, but you would for Sheryl, the receptionist at the law firm who's in chapter 3, 6 and 8, even though it's only briefly.

As far as settings go, I just sketch out a basic layout for all the places my characters go, just to keep myself from getting confused. Sometimes I go online and save pictures of things like apartments or furniture that I picture as belonging to my characters so that when I get to descriptions I can pull them up for reference. I don't find it necessary to do much more than that, since I generally write in the contemporary US, but you might. I know of authors who have setting outlines similar to my character outlines above when they write in imagined universes or historical settings. They outline things like political climate, common religions, monetary systems and the like so that everything is pre-planned and consistent once they start writing.

And finally,  if any research is required I try and do it before I start writing. Of course, if I get into a story and find that I don't have enough information on a topic, I'll look it up then, but I try to do the bulk of it before I start.