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NaNoWriMo Tip #12: My Favorite Outlining Method

These are my personal tips for NaNoWriMo. You know the drill. Take only what works.
Sticky Note Outline-Book 7, chapter 1I learned this outlining technique from my dad, also a writer, when I was twelve. It remains my favorite and most heavily used method of outlining my books. It’s nice for long, complicated plots with multiple points of view. If you’ve read my Unfinished Song series, you know I love those!
Once I have played around with my plot cards, and I’ve settled on an order, I want to have my outline in a form that is still somewhat fluid (I still might add, delete or switch around scenes), and highly visual, but less easily disturbed by a cat looking for a place to nap.
Also, by now I’ve usually compressed several cards into one, and expanded other cards into several, so it’s all become messy. I pick out a nice pen and grab my pile of colorful post-it notes to write the new, clean plot points onto each post-it note. I try to keep it to a line or even just a word or two. It’s just to remind me of what the scene is; I’ll write a longer note about it as well in the third outline I keep on my computer. Again, you may not want to have this many outlines. This is just how I do it.

 

Post-it notes come in many sizes. I suppose you could skip the index card step by just writing out your plot cards on the larger size post-it notes. I prefer the smallest size, which is 2×3, and I always try to find a variety of bright colors.

I buy, borrow or re-purpose a three ring binder, not too thick (half-inch or inch) and fill it with hole-punched blank paper. At the top of each piece of paper I write the name of the book, the Act (sometimes) and the Chapter number. The “chapters” in that series are quite long, between 7,000 and 14,000 words each; each chapter has between 8 and 18 scenes. Each post-it note is a scene. I stick it on the appropriate page, in order. The post-it notes stick well to the paper, although they are also easily moved around.
In the Post-It Outline for my Unfinished Song series, which is written in third person, multiple points of view (PoV) I use the different colors to indicate whose PoV each scene is. In my current project, if I decide to write it in First Person, that won’t apply, so I might use the color codes for something else. Main plot versus subplot, perhaps, or something to do with setting.
The advantage to the Post-It Outline is that I can flip through the binder, and tell at a glance which chapters are too full of scenes and which are too hungry for scenes. I can tell if the pace of the novel is accelerating; if it is, there should be more (but shorter) scenes in the later chapters. I can tell by the color codes if I’ve remembered to include a scene or two with each of the main characters in every chapter. As a rule, I need the protagonist to be in a reasonable proportion of the scenes. If I see there aren’t enough post-its with her color, I know I’ve let the subplots take over, and I prune them back.
When I write the next outline, on my computer, I consult the Post-It Outline. I continue to consult the Post-It Outline even after I’ve commenced the draft, and sometimes beyond. In the days when I had to write synopses for agents, I would consult it again. Nowadays, I flip back through the Post-It Oultines of previous books in the series to refresh my memory about earlier events. (I used to have each book in its own binder, but I’ve joined the whole series into one larger binder.) It’s important to keep it current.

Update on NaNoWriMo #11: Plot Cards

My original idea of Stepdad’s character was a bit of a caricature.

I’ve made two dozen plot cards and have been playing around with them. Already, I can see a problem.

I have several, mutually incompatible ideas for the first third of the book. Different variations on the set-up, with different roles for the supporting cast, in this case the stepfather and two guys tentatively named Laurde and Darke.

Originally, my hero Brandon was going to be living with his evil but stupid white trash Stepdad and dumb brutish stepbrothers, Laurde and Darke.

I wrote a couple seed scenes/set pieces with them, and things started going in a different direction. My original idea was rife with cliche, which I realized as soon as I tried to bring it to life. It’s one thing to retell a fairytale; that archetypal. It’s another to use hackneyed tropes; that’s stereotypical.

Real relationships are seldom all negative or all positive. It would be better to make Laurde and Darke  friends than stepbrothers…when they betray Brandon, it’s all the worse. His stepfather is a mean guy, but all the more reason to introduce him on a conciliatory note. The reader, like Brandon, can be skeptical but hopeful that the reconciliation will work, and the outcome won’t be telegraphed right from the start.

This idea in turn sparked all sorts of possible plot paths and scintillating scenes… which was fantastic… except that I realized most of this was all bulking up the first third of the novel. The middle, which should be longer, was instead, quite sparse. It’s not that I couldn’t fill it with plotlines once I get there, just the opposite. If I let myself go crazy with all the complications I wanted to introduce in Act I, Act II and III were going to have to be much longer than my outline calls for.

I need to keep working the cards around to see if some of these delightful wrinkles can be made to work in Act II….

NaNoWriMo Tip #11: What To Put On Plot Cards

Kimberly’s Wanderings has a great post on plot cards, with many helpful photos.

These are my personal tips for NaNoWriMo. You know the drill. Take only what works.

You may notice that other writers are pressing ahead with their manuscripts, whereas I’m still diddling around with my outline. There’s method to my madness, though, so I’ll continue to spend this week refining my outline. I’ll burn through several different kinds of outline before I’m done. Any one of these methods might alone suffice for you, but I use all of them. Every time. Seriously. It helps me figure out my plot inside and out, and each kind of outline helps me with a different stage of deepening the story.

For the purpose of these tips, I’ll present the kinds of outlines one per day, but in practice, I often work with two or three at the same time. It’s faster and I attack the story on multiple fronts.

I start with tried and true method of outlining, playing with plot cards. You take a nice deck of line or blank 3×5 index cards (or 5×7 if you prefer) and write down your plot points on them. Start with the scenes from your beat sheet, if you have nothing else, and then start filling in other cards with everything else you think you’ll need to include.

Then comes the fun part. Clear a table (in my house, this is an Issue) and spread your cards out in order. Shuffle them around. Combine them. Write new ones. Play with your plot. It’s all pretty fluid at this point. The plot cards allow you to honor that and experiment with shifting your scenes around into different orders.

If you have this idea that outlining is bad because it squashes your creativity, you’re not doing it right. There are lots of places for you to gush creativity all over the place. The brainstorming stage is a bonanza of creativity. In fact, if you just start writing whatever pops into your head without brainstorming first, you might end up writing a lot clichés. Clichés are like mosquitoes, ready to swarm you and bite. Good ideas are like nearly extinct reclusive Amazon jewel-skinned frogs that must be hunted down with great peril and sweat. Brainstorming allows you to push past the cloud of jungle mosquitoes until you reach the frogs.

Keep in mind that you’re still in the brainstorming phase all through the outlining phase. Playing with the plot cards also involves brainstorming and it definitely also involves juicing your imagination.
Some things that you should put on plot cards, the better to place perfectly in your story include:

– Introducing major characters (introduce each one in a separate scene, if possible) 
– The Inciting Incident
– Monster Attacks (or Various Bad Stuff That Happens, as suits your genre)
– Cliffhangers for each act
– Actions That Forward The Main Plot
– Actions That Forward The Subplot(s)
– Clues To The Mystery (including Red Herrings)
– Necessary Infodumps & Foreshadowing
– Juicy Scenes You Can’t Wait To Write (even if you haven’t figured out how to get there yet)
List these things on separate cards at first. As you move the cards around, look for opportunities to combine them. You especially will want to place potentially boring things, like Infodumps and Introducing New Characters, into exciting scenes that involve Monster Attacks.

Careful, though! Some things are better kept separate, for instance, introducing major characters and introducing subplots. That’s because it can get confusing if you try to wave too many flags in front of the reader at once. Once these are introduced, it’s easier to have more people on stage at the same time or to host events that further both the main plot (say, the mystery) and the subplot (say, the romance).

Juggling Subplots: 3 Options

You may have figured out why I talked about the McGuffin, Mystery and Romance subplots. (Those aren’t the only possibilities). One, they are indeed awesome subplots. Two, in my project October Knight, I have all three. 

My hero, Brandon Kickabutt, is trying to win the love of the Homecoming Queen, which is difficult since he’s a goblin and she’s a monster-hunter. He’s also trying to solve the mystery of who killed his father and what happened to his mother. Ultimately, however, the story is a fantasy, which means it’s a McGuffin tale at heart. His main quest, though he doesn’t know it at the beginning of the book, is to master the power of the Gate Key and become the October Knight.

How do you communicate which plot is the main one and which are the subplots? Here are options:

1. Order of introduction
2. Emphasis
3. Tone

1. Order of Introduction

The simplest method to show the importance of a plot plotline is the order of introduction.

Chapter One: The detective arrives to examine the murder scene.

Chapter Two: When she meets the main suspect, she’s disturbed to find him incredibly sexy.

Chapter Three: She finds out that he’s searching for a valuable gem known as the Watermelon Tourmaline, the largest tourmaline in the world that’s green on either end and pink in the middle. Unfortunately, a lot of other unsavory dudes are looking for the Watermelon Tourmaline too.

That’s a classic way to introduce main plot (Mystery), subplot (Romance) and another subplot (McGuffin). This would be a Mystery or Thriller with a romantic subplot.

2. Emphasis

However, order doesn’t have to dictate importance. Emphasis is even more critical. You could have exactly the same order, in  Romance with a Suspense subplot. (Yes, there is a difference between a Mystery with a romance subplot and a Romance with a Mystery subplot.) For instance, suppose the heroine is at a lunch with her BFF. The BFF is telling her she needs to get over her ex and start dating again, and the heroine says she has no time. A call comes in; a body has been found. “See?” she tells her best friend. “The only men I meet are murder suspects.”

This set up could be just a few lines, and then the heroine is off to the investigation; but the key is that the author has clued in the reader that a primary concern of the novel will be with the heroine opening herself up to love again after a failed relationship. When she meets a hot guy who is a murder suspect, the reader will chortle.

A Romance will likely spend a lot more story space remarking on the sexual attractiveness, and feelings, of the murder suspect/romance than a Mystery. In a Mystery, a few lines could suffice; a Romance will dwell much longer on his dark, arrogant chiseled face, piercing blue eyes and incredible abs.

3. Tone

Another difference is tone. This is not just about emphasis but about the Voice of the novel itself. It’s the hardest of the three options to pin down, but incredibly important.

In my present project, I think I have a grip on Order and Emphasis, but I’m struggling with Tone. I want to keep this book on the young side of Young Adult, and not make it too dark. I want it to be breezy and humorous.

Yet, in my Seed Scenes, I keep finding myself dragging in darker themes and situations. Not outside the realm of Young Adult, which these days can be pretty dark, but in a different direction than I thought I wanted to go.

I have to choose. Should I go with the impulse, or should I stick to my original vision? I might need to try the same scene in two or three different Voices.

NaNoWriMo Tip #10: 3 Subplots To Strengthen Your Novel

 

These are my personal tips for NaNoWriMo. You know the drill. Take only what works.
Now you should have the main story arc traced out for your novel, but you may find that it’s thin in places. Perhaps it needs flushing out with a subplot.
There are three subplots that can’t go wrong. They work as plots too… In fact, they work so well as plots, that they define whole genres. Take Romance – a whole genre. Now, if you are writing a Romance novel, then Romance is your Main Plot, and you can’t use it as the subplot. Wait—I take that back. Of course you could—you could introduce a second couple, who also have a love story. Sometimes the second couple, the subplot, will be used as a foil for the main couple, and therefore won’t have a HEA (Happily Ever After.) Or they could have their own HEA. It’s up to you.

McGuffin

One McGuffin To Rule Them All. (Not to be confused with the Segulah Ring.)
Hitchcock coined the term “McGuffin.” It refers to the tangible object or visible goal that everyone is after or trying to achieve. Steal the secret plans. Discover the cure. Win the race. Blow up the Death Star. Use the One Ring to Rule them all and in the darkness bind them. You get the idea.
The key is that the McGuffin has to be a tangible, visible object or achievement. It’s not an inner goal, or a psychological achievement. It’s concrete. What the McGuffin means to the hero may change throughout the course of the story. He may begin by wanting it and end by destroying it, or vice versa. But either way, you’ll know if he has it or does it.
If your main plot has only psychological goals – and I include “falling in love” or “finding the murderer” in this – then consider adding a McGuffin plot.

Mystery

It’s hard to think of any novel that wouldn’t benefit from some suspense. If you are writing a thriller or a murder mystery, you already know this: it’s your main plot. But even if you are writing a fantasy (McGuffin) plot or a contemporary love story (Romance) plot, throwing in suspense or even a murder mystery, can add a layer of intrigue and page-turning fun.
If your genre is not mystery, you have to make sure that you don’t let the murder mystery plot overshadow your main story. It also can’t be too different in tone from your main story. If the main plot involves a gentle romance between a cat loving woman and a handsome veterinarian who is secretly a billionaire, you could include a minor mystery about who killed his rich uncle (maybe he himself is under suspicion), but it wouldn’t be wise to include gory scenes of the murder.

Romance

Have you ever noticed that when Hollywood adapts a novel, they often add a romantic subplot to a book that had none? Sometimes this stretches credulity, as when they throw a female character in with an all male crew on a pirate ship. In fact, this predates Hollywood. Gilbert and Sullivan made fun of this in their operetta, H.M.S. Pinafore, when they had “the Admiral of the Sea, the Ruler of the Queen’s Navy,” turn up with dozens of women in tow, who explained, “And we are his cousins, whom he reckons by the dozens, his cousins and his sisters and his aunts!”
Ridiculous as this sometime is, there’s a good reason for it. Any story that lacks a romance (unless it’s for children), can be improved by adding one. Almost any story. Ok, fine, I’m sure you can think of exceptions, but really, trust me on this, most stories benefit.
This doesn’t mean the romance subplot has to take over the book. Unless Romance is your genre, it shouldn’t be the main focus. But one of the best ways to signal to a reader that the hero has grown and changed during the story—and that should be the whole point of the main plot—is to show how he (or she) is now finally worthy of wooing and winning the love interest.
A word of caution. Sometimes, you might fly in a manic frenzy and throw all three of these powerful plot techniques into the same book. Can you get away with that?
Sure…as long as you keep in mind which is your main attraction. Be true to your genre and your vision for the book.

Set Pieces

Very similar to the ossuary under my house; except where this has skulls, candles and crucifix, mine has a water heater.

A set piece is a bit of description that doesn’t really move the story forward except to ground the reader in the location or give a physical appraisal of a newly introduced character. Set pieces can also be used, more rarely (and sparingly) for thematic tangents and rants. (Cough, Atlas Shrugged, cough.) Candidates for set pieces: 

– Locations

– Major Characters

– Minor (often Nameless) Characters

– Objects

– Thematic observations

You can write set pieces before you know where they will go in your novel. Let’s say that three important locations in your novel are going to be: the Ossuary, the Bedroom of Lady Astrid Kingwrecker, and the Hearty Wench Tavern by the docks. Before you ever write those scenes, you can start gathering relevant inspirational pictures, and then sit down and write a few paragraphs to a few pages of description. Go into extravagant detail. Describe smells, textures and sounds, even tastes, as well as sights. As many sensory details as you can. Also let your imagination meander to remark on previous events and free associations with this location. 

Do the same with the physical description of the characters. Describe their bodies, their hair, their eyes, their clothing, their fragrance, their stance, their tics, their speech patterns.
You can even describe a location that you already know won’t be in your book. For instance, you could describe your protagonist’s childhood bedroom, even if the book you plan to write is a Law Thriller that will take place in the courtroom and flashbacks to a crime scene in a rundown tenement building. The point is to gain insight into your character, not to use this description. If it shows up in your book at all, it might be a passing reference to his model airplane collection.

Another useful exercise is to have two or more characters, in particular the hero and the villain, but possibly also the best friend or romantic interest, describe the same place. If this is a locale in the novel and you have multiple viewpoint characters doing something here, you might even use these descriptions, but for now, don’t worry if it’s used or not. The point is to get a feel for the place and the perspective of different characters.

Set pieces work well to bring the five senses into your novel, and to enrich your setting. Set pieces can also encourage you to replace boring, cliche locations (or character types) with more uniquely realized locations and characters. If you’re writing a fantasy, you might find your characters served stew by a blowzy barmaid in a tavern. It’s a genre cliche. Take some time with your set pieces to brainstorm more interesting alternatives; or at least make your barmaid and tavern vivid and alive with unique details.
Just avoid the danger of falling so much in love with your set piece that you want to include every word of it in the novel, whether it fits or not. Be prepared to pare down or toss aside your set piece. It may or may not fit into any actual scene in the book. If you’ve written a three page description of the ossuary, with associated death histories of half the skulls there, don’t make the mistake of trying to cram all this into the book. Choose just a few juicy details to include. Sprinkle a few sensuous descriptions each time your characters are in the location, but don’t go overboard.
Do, however, keep all your set pieces. You might not be able to use them word for word in the book itself, but you may well be able to mine them for nuggets. 

Richer description should be more heavily weighted toward the beginning of the novel, when places and people are being introduced, and lighter toward the end, when the pace accelerates.

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