Well, you’re catching me on the road again. This time, I’m in San Diego for the NINC conference. NINC is an organization of multi-published genre writers. I’m here mostly for the networking and seeing friends, although I’m also looking forward to the workshops. We’re having a creativity workshop all day Thursday with psychologist Eric Maisel. And Friday we have the traditional strange evening sessions. One will be on collaging as an aid to plotting a novel. People bring magazines and other materials, and we cut out pictures and paste them on manila folders. I know it sounds weird, but last year it really did help me get some parts of NEW MOON straight in my mind.
This time, I’m working on the next Moon book. I wanted some basic story ideas to start with, so I did a quick plot sketch. Then I spent time cutting pictures out of magazines and getting images off the web. I needed stuff like graveyards, ghosts, wolves, the Kennedy Center, an FBI badge, and a gun. And I still need to have something that represents a portal to my parallel universe. I won’t tell you how it all fits together. But I know I’m going to have fun moving the parts around and making a visual image of my story.
Every book I write begins for me with an idea that turns me on. Then, as I start putting together pieces of a story on paper, the plot thickens. Usually I have an opening scene in mind. I know where the story’s going, but the details in the middle and of the ending are always vague. Somehow, I find that the more I know about the story, the more I will know. It’s kind of like magic. Or maybe it’s my subconscious working in the background.
So if you’re a writer, how do you plot? Do you plunge into the mist. Or do you want some idea of where you’re going?
Rebecca
I love the idea of collaging. I need to try that!
I used to write by the seat-of-my-pants, but I wasted a lot of time floundering and writing scenes that didn’t quite fit. A good friend of mine who is a heavy plotter once told me that before she started writing a story, she’d write a rough outline to use as a road map. I started doing the same thing, and sure enough, it made plotting and writing the book a lot easier.
Comment by Julia Templeton — March 14, 2007 @ 2:04 pm
It seems to me that ‘how to plot’ is the hardest thing to explain.
For me, a book plot starts with an idea, or a character, or a scene, or a dream, or a picture in my head. (Isn’t that lot of help!)
What I almost invariably find is that once that seed is there, like a pearl inside a shell, it grows by gathering to it stuff that I notice, or things I see in the news, or random thoughts that pop into my head, all seemingly serendipitous, but likely brought together because my subconscious mind is attuned and waiting for the other pieces of the puzzle to fall into place.
Then begins the work of taking all the bits and pieces and molding them into some kind of cohesive whole, and THEN I go backward and check character behavior, motivation, timeline, story flow, etc. Sometimes I feel like my books are big complicated machines that require a lot of maintenance!
I’m starting to plan another, and I’m going to do one thing differently. I have started to write ’scenes’ that occur at different points throughout the novel, and hopefully that will help me get the emotional tone right.
It’s quite an in-depth process, I guess!
Comment by Donna Lea Simpson — March 15, 2007 @ 9:45 am
Hi R!
The NINC conference sounds fascinating! Would love to know what goes on and what you think of the workshop with the psychologist.
Collaging is a really interesting idea, too…the only thing I can add to what’s said already (part outlining, part brainstorming, part alchemy in bringing together a story) is that it seems to me that my best writing comes out of some sort of what I call “juice.” If I’m very bugged or emotional about an issue (personal or sociological), I find that playing it out on the landscape of fiction gives me the best characters, ideas, and scenes. So if I feel like a story isn’t quite fresh enough or has enough energy, I try to reach inside an find a strong personal connection to overlay onto the plotline so it really comes alive.
Luv,
Cleo Coyle
Comment by Cleo — March 17, 2007 @ 7:57 pm