Writing Help

Plotting

There are two types of writers, the detailed plotter, and the write-by-the-seat-of-your-pants plotter. I am the latter by far. The detailed plotter is just what it sounds like, they go through deep development of their plot, they have an outline before they start writing, and they almost always know where their story is going. That, although helpful, is rare to find in a writer, especially one that hasn't taken classes, or been formally taught writing. 

The write-by-the-seat-of-your-pants plotter is just what it sounds like. They have an idea, they think up a couple characters, and they go for it. Honestly they might not even know the whole story, they might just have thought of a cool piece of dialogue and written off it.

Both writers have their advantages. At first glance, you'd think the detailed plotter is better. Generally, that's true. But we've all been in situations where you need to change something, usually something major, and then you have to fix a bunch of what you've written to accommodate it, maybe even rewrite the whole of it. This, although inconvenient for the soyp (seat of your pants) writer, can be dealt with and doesn't cause a huge inconvenience. But when you have the entire plot of your novel written out, all the characters are developed, and everything seems to be going well, then you have to rewrite a character, or fix a basic detail? That can seriously mess you up. You have to re-plot the entire novel sometimes, fix things multiple chapters back, and then you find other things to fix and may end up scrapping what you had.

The soyp writer is also inconvenient in many circumstances. More often than not, these writers are the ones to scrap ideas because they couldn't figure out the details, or they didn't have enough to work with. In general, I think the soyp writer is better because writing is more lenient, but for others they may think detailed is better, and that's totally fine. Whichever works for you.

I think the best way to write is somewhere in between. Although many people are pulled violently in either direction, it's good to try and pull yourself towards the middle. A happy medium where you're not too concerned with all the details, but you make sure you have the basic idea of the novel down. This is what I'm going to try to be teaching today. The in-between plotter.

One basic rule of plotting that everyone needs to follow, no matter where you are on the plotter scale, is always write with the ending in mind. This gives you freedom to do whatever you'd like. You can plot further, or just leave it to a few important details, and go for it. But whatever kind of writer you are, you should always try to go into a novel or short story with the ending in mind.

This doesn't apply to just short stories written to help develop characters, or anything that isn't going to be seriously added to. When you're doing writing exercises or you have writers block, it's okay to not know where you're going as long as you're prepared to go anywhere.

Plotting usually happens as soon as you have an idea for a story. This doesn't always have to be the case, sometimes you can get a full few chapters in before you plot, and that's okay too. As long as you're certain you'll plot it out once you've gotten comfortable with the story. I would also like to mention that while plotting may look a certain way for me, it might not look the same for you. Take all my advice about the steps of plotting and make sure they fit how you think and write. 

Plotting for me usually happens just in my head at first. That means I'll try to work out where the story is set, what era, how old the characters are, and all the basic details. Sometimes I will write this down, maybe sketch out the characters or setting, and just get myself used to the story. That is my first step. Once I have the basics down, I can start figuring out the ending, even if I don't have any other part of the story. At this point I'll probably have a few paragraphs of dialogue, maybe some insights to the character's lifestyle and backstory, but nothing too huge. I may have written a little bit of whatever inspired me to write the story to begin with.

When you write the ending, you may have no idea what will happen in between and might later have to fix or rewrite it due to different deaths of character, turning points, and details you'll figure out while writing. That's okay, and is expected. I should mention that when I say "writing the ending" you don't physically have to write the last chapter or paragraph, although you may, it's more expected that you just understand how to story will close, if it will be left on a cliffhanger to lead into a sequel, and/or who dies.

After writing the ending, you may choose to write a skeleton. A list of events that will occur, important details towards a character's development, etc. This will often help you later on when you're struggling to keep writing the story, and is highly encouraged if you easily loose interest in writing or know that you'll get bored with the story. I often write this skeleton on paper first, then either type it out or use the voice typing option in google drive to transfer it over to digital. This helps me because I like writing in notebooks and on paper, it makes me feel like my story is really coming to life, and gives me more freedom to doodle and play around with different aspects of the story.

My last basic rule to follow is that when you finish your story, your characters must resolve all their conflicts, unless you plan to write a sequel. One of the worst things that can happen in a story is when you're reading and you reach the end but there's still something nagging you, a character that was just dropped, a side quest that was never continued, a problem that was never solved, etc. Make sure that if you plan any major, or minor conflicts in your story that they are resolved by the end of the story, completely dropped if you can't resolve them, or left on an appropriate cliffhanger to lead into the sequel.

After plotting with these rules, you can choose to start off anywhere in the story. If you want to write from the beginning, or maybe you have inspiration for something towards the middle, or you want to fully write the ending. Writing is not neat, and you don't have to pretend it is. Feel free to get messy, explore your characters and their backstories, how they met, and aspects that might not even be included in the final cut of the story. As long as you're letting your creativity flow.

There are other rules you may choose to follow as a writer if you are more detailed in plotting, but I just wanted to mention the three basic rules that I try to follow as a soyp writer. Plotting is very important to seriously writing a story, and following those three rules should help you on your path. Thanks for joining me in the first lesson, and I'll be back soon with more :)