The Importance of Plotting

"He who fails to plan is planning to fail."

~Winston Churchill

Good Ev'ning Beardies,

I apologize in advance for my lack of posts the last couple of days, but as Steinbeck once said, "the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry."

Writing stories is much like following a recipe while baking.  There are specific ingredients that need to be acquired and certain steps that need to be followed in order to get the cake to rise properly.  Sometimes experienced chefs can stray from the outlined recipe and create a masterpiece, but they must practice first with following enough of them to the tee in order to warrant the dissension.

Plotting isn't rocket science, but the task is not an easy one either.  When you plot your story, you are in essence deciding on how you will showcase the events to the reader as they unfold.  Think of a play or a movie, and then think of the scenes within either.  What happens in each scene?  Who are the characters in the scene, how do they interact with one another (perhaps they don't), and how do they propel the scene to the next?

A successful plot-line includes specific ingredients that are carefully mixed together: clever and believable characters, masterfully woven dialogue, perfectly placed action, and--in my humble opinion-vivid and streamline description of the characters and their surroundings without overwhelming the character.  And amongst the other ingredients of plotting is one we've all heard about throughout our schooling--writer or not.

The infamous hook.

As much as I love description in fiction, too much of it without reason is a burden the reader will choose not to bear.  Too much description--especially the purely prosaic type--at the forefront of your story will bore your reader, and they will quickly lose interest.  As an author, it is your duty to lure your readers--to tempt them to turn yet another page, and another--into the depths of your book until it is too late for them to turn back ;)  Personally, I like to lead my stories off with a bang, which warrants the reader turning the page to find out what happens next.  Action, however, doesn't have to be a stereotypical high-speed chase or a hostage situation (I'm not saying it can't be, though); action simply means an impetus that alludes to an obstacle or conflict whose theme will perpetuate throughout the plot-line.  How did your character(s) arrive at said obstacle/conflict?  And what drives the reader to turn more pages: How will the character(s) overcome said obstacle/conflict?  Which brings me to the our next ingredient...

Conflict & Side plots.


Once you've hooked your reader--with a strong line and a barbed hook, hopefully--you must increase the tension in your plot by adding yet more conflict.  Additional conflict for your character(s) to overcome may simply be an inner struggle, it may be conflict between characters, or it may be another obstacle to overcome.

With each introduction of conflict, there must come at least a partial resolution; and inversely, with each partial resolution, there must come another, more challenging conflict, building the tension to a major climactic scene.

Of course, however, there should be other happenings in the plot-line aside from the minor and major obstacles.  The other happenings provide a good source of side plots within the plot--family occurrences and interactions, social happenings and responsibilities, romantic intrigues, et cetera--yet none of them should overpower the main conflict within the story.

{Side note: Even though it should still never overpower, introducing another major conflict into the plot-line, which will eventually become main conflicts for subsequent books within a series, allows for some lenience as to how close a sub-plot can come to outshining (or overshadowing) the main conflict of the current story.}

Climax.


It is often a struggle with most beginner writers to develop an acceptable climax.  A writer may know from the point at which the idea for the story formulates in their head what the outcome of the story may be, but many forget to plot out the details of the actual outcome and the obstacles that lead up to that point.

The pay-off must not be contrived, and the build-up must be believable, set up by the many other events and choices that occurred in the prior pages.  But it's more than just a great showdown scene between the protagonist and antagonist, and it is necessary to take the proper steps so that your audience isn't blindsided by the climax, wondering where it came from or if it were even warranted.

Resolution.

As a writer you must also think of all possible outcomes for the resolution, and you must set up the obstacles ever so cleverly so that the resolution you choose is the only plausible one.  Otherwise, your readers will feel cheated and misled.

Simply throwing "The End" or "They lived happily ever after" just doesn't cut it.

Characters.


While Superman may seem entirely invincible on the surface, he still has his weaknesses.  It is important to show the strengths and weaknesses of all your characters, creating a multifaceted, true-to-life representation of human in everyday life.

Introducing strong (as in well-written) leading characters during your 'hook' will draw your readers to your characters much more quickly (if not immediately), but in the end, it is the characters themselves and how they respond/solve/fail at overcoming their obstacle(s) that will captivate your audience long after that last page has been turned and read.



I hope this helps your writing process; I know it has helped mine.

Happy Scribing,

P.S.  I always plot on 4"x6" index cards that are ruled on only one side.  I use the ruled side for writing out the scenes, and the blank side for jotting notes, such as characters, POV, scene conflict, and scene resolution (if applicable).

World Building Series: Introduction and Fundamentals

Greetings Readers!

While writing on my current project, Valkyrie, the other day, an idea for a post started to formulate in my mind.

World Building.  

Fantasy and speculative fiction or not, every book (and movie/screenplay) has it.  Even non-fiction has a bit of world building involved.  An author must know the limits and facts about the world in which he/she is writing before he/she can construct a believable, fully-formed story.  If an author's facts have inconsistencies or flaws, he/she can discredit his/her knowledge of the craft, and by doing so, quickly lose readership.  Simply put: if you don't know the world in which your story takes place, how are you supposed to describe it to your readers in its fullest capacity?

I have been pondering at how to go about writing on such an extensive topic--or even how to begin doing so, for that matter.  After much deliberation, I decided that breaking it down into several posts would be the most practical option, not only for my personal choice to put constraints on post lengths, but also to get more detailed and concise, content-related posts for you, my readers.

This first post will focus on the initial steps to world building, intertwined with my own anecdotes of trial & error with my own writing, and will also introduce the next post in this specific series.

Before I ever knew what world building was, I was unknowingly creating my own worlds.  After reading books like The Egypt Game, The Bridge to Terabithia, The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings, I became obsessed with creating worlds of my very own.  I sketched maps galore, created languages (minor undertakings back then), secret codices with which I could write notes to my friends, and planned out entire cities in which to create my stories.

Of course, those worlds failed me; more correctly, I failed them because I didn't know enough about my creations.  Sometimes I would sketch pages and pages of maps with great detail, but I neglected to populate it with creatures and characters that were believable for the setting.  Sometimes, vice versa.  Other times, I forgot to ask myself important questions whose answers would have provided me with a connection between the different aspects of my worlds.  I constantly wrote myself into corners--or worse, circles.  My writing was all jumbled--mismatched additions, not all too dissimilar from the Winchester House--without any coherence whatsoever.  I neglected to make the full blueprint before building the house; but fortunately, with training and practice, I realized the errors and remedied them.

The Winchester House - Santa Clara Valley, California

Most ideas for stories usually develop long before a writer even thinks about world building. Unfortunately, I feel that this leads to weaker stories in the end.  I am saying this from experience because the first few starts at my now-finished manuscript were torturous.  My characters and my world felt disconnected and, to be honest, a bit contrived. In my opinion, it is much easier to build believable characters inside of a defined world than to a build a foreign world around a cluster of characters.

Asking yourself fundamental questions will help guide you in creating the blueprint; and creating a basic blueprint for your world before you go any further will save you a lot of headache.

The first set of questions we will discuss have to do with Earth settings and their variations/possibilities:

1. If this story takes place on Earth, does it occur in the Past?
2. Present?
3. Future?
4. Some alternate version/history of Earth? [for instance, an Earth that has been decimated by a nuclear war or asteroid? A post WWII Earth in which Hitler had won?]

Each answer should and will produce more questions for you to consider, and each answer will also narrow down the genre/category of your manuscript.  Let's take our two examples from above, starting first with a post-asteroid collision.

5. When, where, and how did the collision happen?
6. How did it change the landscape/structure/rotation/orbit/population/technology of the Earth?
7. Were there any alien life forms or microbes on the asteroid?  Or maybe some advanced technology?
8. If yes, how did that change the landscape, environment, or population?  Did it change the genetic makeup of humans/animals/plants? On the negative side, did it bring disease or famine?  On the positive side, did the asteroid's introduction create a superior human/animal/plant?

As you can see, each answer spawns a whole set of additional questions, which then defines the conflicts and plots.  Placing characters within this constructed world is now a breeze.

The questions for our second example might look a little like this...

5. How had Hitler and the Axis forces defeated the Allied?
6. Did Hitler continue his mass genocide?  And if so, how has this affected the population of Earth? Did Hitler succeed in creating an Aryan race? Does everyone speak German?
7. How long after the defeat does the story take place?  Within Hitler's lifetime? Twenty years later?
8. Are there secret Allied forces still hiding out from the Nazi Regime? Are they physically hiding out (in, say, underground caves) or pretending to blend in with society while maintaining their Allied lifestyles in secret?  Are there plans to overthrow the government?

Literally dozens of scenarios with an exponential amount of questions can arise from the first 4 questions above, and that is only dealing with Earth or Alternate Earth settings and plots.  The second part of this post will deal with all other settings.

1.  If the story does not take place on Earth [or any variation], is the setting a known one (i.e., Mars, the Moon, or the Andromeda Galaxy) or some distant or unknown planet/moon/galaxy?  Is it even part of our known universe?
2.  If unknown setting, how was the setting formed?  Evolutionary (like the Big Bang Theory)?  Or Mythologically (created by omnipotent beings)?  Or a combination of the two?
3. How does the setting differ from Earth?  How is it similar?  Landscape/flora/fauna differences and similarities? Does it still have earthly forces (like gravity)?  Does it have unearthly forces, i.e., majick (more on this later)?
4. Is it populated by more than one race/species?  Are they humanoid?  Are all of them intelligent?
5. Are there areas with concentrations of certain races, or do all the races live together?
5. If there is majick, where is it derived from (sun, moon, water, earth, air, blood, artifacts, etc)?  Are all the races majickal?  Only a few?  One?
6. Are the majickal races exalted or suppressed?  Is a majickal race the ruling race?  Does it view the other races as unequal because of its lack of majick?  Or vice versa?

The questions are endless, and so are the answers.  And each answer lends itself to a different aspect of your world--from character races, history, politics (power struggles, classes), mythology (creation myths, deity current involvement and interaction), languages (spoken, written, ancient), majick (source, limitations, how it's produced and used), et cetera.

The list is infinite, and I know I barely touched the surface when it comes to introducing World Building, which kind of brings me to introducing the topic of the next series in this post:  Overdoing it!

I welcome any questions or comments and would be happy to respond to them.

Stay Tuned for the next post in this series,

P.S. If you are here visiting the page and reading this post and are not yet a member, please click the links to the left to sign-up. It's quick and simple.

Writing & Research Tool: AllExperts

Hello Everyone!

Today my post is again going to focus on Writing Tools.

Over the years, as I've scoured the internet while doing research for certain aspects of my manuscript, I've often run into the dilemma of finding not-so-accurate information.  Thankfully, being a great researcher and always retrieving my information from more than one source (more than three, most times), I am quick to realize the information is sometimes not all that trustworthy.

Although I am a great researcher, I must say that my work has been cut down drastically by one specific tool in general.  I don't use it for everything, though I could, but I use it for the important questions I want answered by an expert source.

The tool is called AllExperts, and it is a great source for any question you may have, writing related or not.  For instance... Yesterday, while writing on my new Urban Fantasy project, I ran into a few what I like to call "info blockades."  The main character of the project is a homicide detective, and while I am familiar with certain procedures dealing with homicide investigations (because of the plethora of crime dramas out there), my knowledge is still limited.  I wanted to guarantee that the facts I have in the book are absolutely correct, so I automatically knew to turn to this wonderful site.  I am still waiting for the question to be answered, but the wait time is typically only three days at most.

AllExperts is the oldest & largest free Q&A service on the Internet.  It is a compilation of various experts in a variety of fields.  Below is a screen-shot of the multitude of Categories, each of which can be broken into further Categories.

As you can see, the possibilities are endless.  Instead of trying to sort the accurate information from the rest of the fluff you come across, why not go directly to an expert for your questions?  Your readers will thank you!

Have a Great Night!