Totally unrelated, but something I’m absolutely infatuated with this morning:
The funny thing is, I loved Tom Hiddleston as Loki. I thought he made that role. And when I picture my Loki, they’re not the same at all. They have similarities, but he’s not the man I see in that role.
Which is so completely not my point. I have a confession to make. I’m a plotter. I’ve tried to deny this for a long time. I’ve insisted to myself that as long as I know the general idea of they story, or even better just have the characters in my head, I can write an entire novel.
This is not a true statement. I’ve only ever managed it once.
My plots are not sweeping epics in their own right. I don’t know how anyone writes 20-40 page plots. That boggles my mind and impresses the hell out of me. I don’t have that kind of attention span.
My plots are a series of bullet points. They say which characters are in a scene, what the main character’s goal is, and what the important elements are to reveal in the scene. If I have more ideas around that particular scene, like setting or dialogue, those make it in too. But for the most part, they say things like:
Conner sees Ronnie and Kii show up at the bar, and he’s aggravated when Kii abandons his date, but sees an opportunity to find out without anyone looking over his shoulder what Ronnie is up to. He’s talking to her when Lexi shows up. He backs off and gets back to work, but something about Lexi is sticking in the back of his head.
That becomes an entire chapter. Side note: as I skimmed my outline I realized that Conner is aggravated in almost every single bullet point. Which makes me think “Apathy’s Hero” is a bit of a misnomer and I should call the story “Aggravation’s Champion” instead.
/tangent
So yeah…I’m done pretending. I can’t just sit down and let my characters take me through a story. They have to have a direction before I start pushing toward my word count.
If you’re not a plotter, how much do you know before you start the story? If you are a plotter, are you one of those big, sweeping outline people, or more of a generic timeline type person?
I’ve never been a plotter, but I think I need to be. I’m going to try really hard to plot ahead for my next book, so I don’t end up in the mess I’m in now.
But on the other hand, maybe the mess I’m in now is because I tried to plot the book out ahead and was then too bored to write it because I knew what was going to happen….
I would really like to be a plotter, actually, but writing down a whole outline kills my creative juice. I generally get a crystal-clear scene/situation in my head, and then start trying to figure out what led up to it, and what the people will do next. The current novel has been really strange in that if I start trying to write the wrong scene, it just stops. Then I have to keep poking around until I find the right one to unlock the word count again. I dunno. I suspect I’m not as much of a pro at this as I think I am.
I’m totally a plotter. Sure there’s gotta be room for evolution, but without an outline I’d be lost and annoyed.
I like to think of myself as a “plantser” half plotter and half pantser. I do some bullet points and plot blocks, but I do follow the character if they take a detour.
Edge of Your Seat Romance
I call it “going-with-it” style and that’s how I write. I meet the main character, I watch a scene (mentally), and basically have a story. Things I keep in mind while I am listening to the MC are if there’s any romance going on, if the character absolutely has to be somewhere, and then I just simply listen.
I’m a plotter, but more of an outline. Some parts are very clear, and I have the whole scene in my head (but I take notes on it, because details can slip through the holes), but other parts, I figure I won’t know until I figure out the parts that come before it. So parts are detailed, parts are very far from it.
I do like you do and make bullet point plots. Sometimes I’ll start a book without much plot, but then I have to stop along the way and flesh it out.