Warning: brainwork ahead; lots of words coming; you will need coffee We’ve covered opening yourself up to a new story, sowing those seeds, and allowing them to take root. Let’s skip ahead, assume you have a story idea, and talk about sketching out the beats, aka, plotting. This one’s not only for writers. It’s for any curious souls who want to pull back the curtain on the creative process. As always, you can listen to the audio version by clicking above or on my Drowning in Words podcast on Apple or Spotify. You know that Dos Equis commercial featuring the most interesting man in the world? He says, “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I drink Dos Equis.” Well, I don’t always outline, but when I do, here’s an idea of what’s running through my head. Don’t fear. Following my suggestions below and attempting to hammer out a plot before you start writing doesn’t mean you have to be a plotter for the rest of your life. An outline isn’t going to bite…hard. Stephen King, an infamous pantser, won’t put a hex on you. And you’re not losing the magic by engaging the analytical part of your brain. I can’t stand the idea that we authors feel a need to jab our flag into one camp, either plotter or pantser. Do whatever the project calls for, whatever’s pulling you. Yes, I pantsed the first half of Salvation Isle, and it was a wonderful ride, but with the new project I just started, the fourth in my Red Mountain series, I wanted to outline as much as I could. And I’ll explain why shortly. Both plotting and pantsing have wonderful merits. Pantsers, those who write by the seat of their pants sans outline, thrive on discovery. They have the joy of spelunking into a dark cave with only a headlight, seeing only what’s right ahead of them. It can be scary and surprising and a ton of fun too. It’s as if you’re enjoying the story in real time as you tell it. Also, it’s a thrill to simply start typing and see what appears on the page. Known pantsers: boo walker, Agatha Christie, Haruki Murakami, Ursula K. Le Guin Plotters, on the other hand, can set their story up in a way that might lead to a cleaner first draft. They can take time to weave in layers of complexity that pantsers won’t get to till later on. They have a plot that is likely already adhering to the theme and advancing the character’s growth in a steady arc. The obstacles are presented with precise escalation. And so on… One could argue that plotters are faster at arriving at a publishable story. I’m trying to squeeze this Red Mountain book in between two other contracted books that have fixed deadlines, meaning timing is of the essence. Plotting can make tackling a more complicated structure easier. In the case of my Red Mountain stories, I typically have three to five points of view. Pantsing that kind of spread can tax boo’s CPU to the point of a short-circuit, and nobody needs to see boo short-circuit. Lastly, I’ve found that having an outline makes it far more difficult to get bogged down by writer’s block. I heard someone say once that writer’s block only happens when you don’t know where you’re going. How true! Known plotters: boo walker, John Irving, Patrick Rothfuss, Tana French, George R.R. Martin Did you notice I’m part of both camps? I just wanted to see my name next to all those masters, though I couldn’t allow myself any capitalization. I’m a plantser: bi-curious, non-partisan, and plotsexual. I suggest you be the same. Change it up. Don’t get comfortable—or else your muse will get bored and go find someone younger and thirstier for words. Though it’s always changing, I prefer the middle ground. I hammer out an idea of where I want to go—sometimes a heavily detailed plan, other times a couple of paragraphs expanding on the premise—but always set out on my story journey welcoming distractions. An ADHD joy ride toward the climax of the story. Even the best plotters make room for their imagination to grab the wheel. You can’t know all the places a story wants to go till you’re submerged, wearing your character’s skin, hearing their dialogue, feeling their feels, seeing the plot whiz by in real time. Here’s a good place to defend a misconception about plotting. Pantsers love to rub in the face of plotters how boring it would be to miss out on the joy of discovering the twists and turns along with the character. Plotters can do this too. If you spend long enough prepping your story, figuring out your characters, and then pushing through the beats, you can absolutely play discovery games. Exercise: Create a character in your head right now. Yeah, you, right now. Imagine yourself wearing their skin, breathing through their lungs. Now, give them a desire and then put something in the way. Once, you’re there, close your eyes and imagine that character going after that desire, then hitting the obstacle. What do they feel? How can they get around it? Put them into action. Maybe they don’t get through. Think of another way around the obstacle. Keep going till they get their desire. You just played discovery without typing a word! Don’t be afraid to get dirty. Here’s the truth of it. If you really want to outline properly, giving yourself the tools you need to start writing without pausing for a month, then you need to get dirty. You need to get into the head and skin of each character, get into the specifics of each obstacle. You have to answer all the questions lingering as you watch your people run around in this world you’re building, and as you toss out plot ideas to keep them moving. Free write, research, play the “what if” game, find pics of your characters, speak out loud with their accents, create their family tree, draw out settings, go on long walks to consider all possibilities. Whatever it takes to bring the story to life in your mind. Choose your weapon. Now, choose your weapon of choice: whiteboard, chalkboard, sand on the beach, index cards on the floor, Scrivener corkboard, Excel (ugh, nooooo! Though I use Excel at times, it feels a little corporate to me). Naturally, I suggest changing it up. I’ve tried everything I can think of. Stretch those outlining muscles. During a recent rage-filled episode with Scrivener (which I’m back to loving, by the way), I discovered Plottr. The guys over there were kind enough to offer a subscription, and I committed to using it for this Red Mountain book. It’s a wonderful tool, cleaner and more elastic than Scrivener’s corkboard. In fact, I’m already thinking that with future books I’ll use Plottr for outlining and Scrivener for character/setting organization and drafting. I’m forced to use Microsoft Word once I start working with my editing team, but I like to stay in Scrivener as long as possible while writing. No matter your tool, here are the basics that I find important. Of course, talk to me in two years, and I’ll likely have an entirely different process. With Plottr, I can create as many rows of blank boxes as I’d like, but you can apply this to any tool you’re using, including a good ol’ fashioned notebook. Blank boxes are your index cards. They give you enough space to fill out the crucial information. What’s most important to me, whether I go physical or digital, is that the index cards are moveable, so I can arrange and rearrange them as I massage my plot. Creating empty boxes. First, I decide on a timeline. Will it stretch over the course of a summer or span a decade or more? The first step is to create a row of boxes that show rough dates. For Red Mountain Calling, it starts in March and ends around November. Locking that down early on is huge. Then, I create another row of boxes that’s dedicated to larger events in the story. It didn’t take me long to realize that if I follow the yearly pattern of my Red Mountain stories, this one kicks off in March of 2020, right when COVID arrived. In this timeline, I mark down factual dates such as when restaurants and hotels closed, when the hospitals started spilling over. I also might mark some important dates related to the wine year, like when budbreak takes place, when winegrowers pick their white and red grapes. And whatever other dates apply to the story. I’ll also insert important dates from my fictional universe too. For example, I know a very bad thing will happen on the mountain, and it will affect every character. That goes here too. I create yet another timeline to sketch out the classic beats in any story, like the catalyst, the midpoint, etc. More on these later. Now, the good stuff. The beats for our characters. As mentioned, I have a few different storylines going (only do this if you have a death wish), so I create a row of empty boxes for each of my POV characters. And here comes the author crisis… I created all these boxes, then just stared and stared and stared. My seventeenth book, and I felt as much like a newbie as I ever had. I beat myself up for a while, sped down Impostor Syndrome Boulevard, even had the urge to forget my grand idea of prepping and just start writing, but I ultimately held strong to my outlining commitment and took a step back. I had a sense of how each of the characters was starting out, but I wasn’t quite sure where they were going, so I decided to pull a few craft books geared toward outlining off my shelf. Thumbing through them knocked some wonderful ideas loose, but then I got super frustrated. I noticed that one book disagreed with another, and I found myself wondering if I was reading them wrong and which path to take and who to side with and… Stop overthinking, Boo. That’s what I told myself. Everything you need is between your ears—and behind your ribcage. That’s the issue with craft books. I adore them. Hell, I’m writing the first in a series of them! But the user must understand that they offer one way to do things, which is super helpful, but we can
