Chapter Fourteen
When to Plot
I invite you to use the Plot Planner in any way you find the most useful to your writing life. The following are three points in your writing where you might find it most valuable to use these forms.
I recommend that you plot out your story at least three times during a writing project:
- Pre-plot: before you begin writing your project
- Revision: after you have completed a first draft
- Final Edit: before you call your project “final”
1. Pre-Plot
There seem to be two general categories of writers: those who do not pre-plot their writing projects, and those who do.
Writers who do not pre-plot are often referred to as intuitive writers. They prefer to work things out on the page. The other group of writers finds that making things up as they go with no advance planning is like skydiving without a parachute. Since the objective of this book is to support you in your writing, do what works for you.
Long before we begin writing, each of us has some idea of what we want to say and why. Think of pre-plotting as a useful boundary that eliminates distractions that might lead you astray in your writing or take you on a wild-goose chase down blind alleys.
The muse often feeds us images in the same way that dreams do: ones that are disjointed, symbolic, and metaphoric. A Plot Planner is a form into which the muse can pour the vision. Once you create a plot structure, then you are free to imagine anything you want within those parameters. Or, as Wayne Muller writes in his book Sabbath, “... Imagine that certain limitations on our choices are actually seeds of great freedom.”
A pre-plot is the place to put your ideas in some sort of order as you brainstorm, allowing the ideas to flow.
Granted this pre-plot you create will be merely a skeleton. You need not adhere too fervently to it. If you find you are pushing your characters around to fit into the grand design, and they are digging in their heels in in response, stop. Surrender to the characters’ whims, and see what happens next. Either way, before you devote months, or possibly years, to a writing project, consider that the more pre-planning and careful thought you give, the less time you will spend rewriting.
2. Revision
When you are ready to undertake a revision, it means you have arrived at a most important destination: completion of your first draft. Celebrate! The first draft is a test of faith and perseverance, and is a rite of passage for many writers.
The first draft separates those who write from those who just talk about writing.
Once the celebration is over, and before you start your first rewrite, (yes, there will be many more than one rewrite), reread your story to see what you have on the page. Then, rather than just going back through your piece, moving words around, and calling it a rewrite, I invite both the intuitive writers and the plotters both to take the time to carefully re-plot your story. There is no better way to analyze your project than to do a complete re-plot based on what you have written. The process alone gives you a new vision or sense of the structure of your project so you know what to hone, refine, and focus on in the rewrite.
Now stand back from your Plot Planner. With the experience of having written the climax scene at the end, you spot a plot that is now dangling and forgotten in the middle. The end reveals a random coincidence rather than a planned and thematically true event that leads the protagonist to the climax. Like weaving a textile, if one stitch is dropped, a hole begins to form. A weaver has to rip out the threads until she reaches the hole and then she re-weaves. You have the benefit as a writer to go back and weave in the dropped or underdeveloped threads.
As you re-plot your story, look for openings where you can broaden and intensify the more subtle implications of your original insight. Look for ways to exploit your scenes by making them carry as much weight as they can bear. Make sure the scenes are working for the story on all levels—character, action, theme, and, where appropriate, historical and political significance. Does the reader always know the who, what, where, and when of the scene? Have you incorporated “showing” details? Is there tension and conflict? Do the characters experience emotional change in every scene? Are the scenes well written?
As you re-examine the placement and pacing of your scenes, you may find some of them are static and, contrary to the visual sticky notes on your Plot Planner, may even decline in energy compared to the scenes that came before. Be careful not to be lulled by the Plot Planner, with its nicely rising lines, or it might trick you into believing your pacing and intensity match the ideal as represented by the rising Plot Planner line. Be thoughtful when you evaluate each scene for its level of tension or conflict. Then tweak your scenes by rearranging the order, deleting static scenes, or ramping up the tension so your story is truer to the ideal plot pattern.
At this point, a unifying premise or central theme might reveal itself. Some of us require the input of a few select, trusted readers to uncover the thread. Whatever it takes to find it, that thread will be invaluable as you rewrite.
3. Final Edit
At this point, exhaustion has likely stepped in, and you might be tempted to proclaim to all your patient and loyal family and friends that you are finally finished. Please do not shoot the messenger, but I would like to recommend that you first take a deep breath and do a final plotting of your story before you make the heady declaration.
This is the time to test your final product:
- Examine every detail, every word, every sentence, and every connection.
- Is every summary relevant to the action that follows?
- Does every detail contribute to the thematic significance and make the dramatic action and the character emotional development more believable?
- Is every action meaningful?
- Does every scene contribute to the whole?
- Is the conflict rising slowly as it should?
- Have you provided adequate suspense?
- Is your core conflict resolved?
- Have you seamlessly integrated your theme throughout the project?
- Is the story fulfilled?
Are you sure? Okay, then go for it. Shout it from the highest hill! You’re finished! Congratulations!