Plotting a New Book

Well, tonight I hit the wall. I can’t write this book by the seat of my pants anymore. I have to take a moment and get my bearings before I can do new pages. 60 pages isn’t bad for a start, but I’ll never get 300 until I get this straight.

My writing process is…odd. I make a lot of lists. Right now I have scraps of paper with story arcs scribbled, the hero’s internal conflict, the book turning points, and I know I’ll throw every last scrap away. I doodle in order to make sense of the mess in my head. Once I have it straight on paper, I don’t need it anymore. It’s locked in the brain. Weird, but that’s the way it works.

I also tend to work in sections. I’ll blast my way through the proposal and be intensely excited about it. Then about chapter 5, I start slowing down. That’s the part when I have to figure out my subplot. I brainstorm lists of plot ideas and try out a few until one sticks. Then I can usually get to page 100. I do the same thing to page 200 and then I go through a mini-crisis where I lament the entire book and what was I thinking?? I moan and mope while my brain sorts through the mess. Then suddenly, there is a ray of light and I figure it out. Once I hit page 300, I’m golden. Endings are never a problem for me, and I’ve been known to get 25+ pages in a day if I set my mind to it.

It’s that darned middle. I keep hoping I’ll get better at plotting, but part of the problem is that the plots I envision don’t always match the characters. Once I’ve written 60 pages, I then think–Aha! I know who these people are. And I groan because whatever I thought would work…suddenly doesn’t. So that’s the stage I’m at right now.

The good news is, I know I can churn out pages when I know what to write. And I have to stop and regroup every so often, which means no new pages. I always make up for it later.

Tonight the goal is to keep working on my subplot and figure out how to effectively mirror the main storyline. I tell you, it makes my head swim. Most of the time, I’d like to say–forget it!–and just write my way through it. But I’ve learned the hard way not to discount my subconscious mind warning me of severe problems. Sometimes writing through the problem results in a bigger mess.

Anyway, send good thoughts my way as I brainstorm the next few turning points. I have to remind myself that this is a romance and killing the secondary characters probably won’t solve matters.