The rollercoaster continues

 I agree with Rick. Here we are in another  bleeping lockdown, only a couple of months after our hopes were soaring high because vaccines were arriving and our liberation was near, along with the arrival of spring. As an aside, we Canadians relate everything to the season and the weather. Warm, sunny, deluge, freezing, blizzard; nothing is ever the same old same old. Right now we are in the midst of a gorgeous, sunny, summer-like heat wave. The tulips are blooming, when in other years dirty traces of snow might still linger in the shady parts of the yard.

This weather should be enough to energize and lift the spirits, but instead this recent crushing lockdown has made us all slightly unhinged. People are doing nutty things like trashing businesses in Old Montreal, already struggling from lockdowns. Driving donuts inside rings of fire created by pouring gasoline in a circle in an empty parking lot. Holding huge, maskless beer parties in public parks in normally well-behaved Ottawa.

As writers, as observers and commentators of human nature, this should all be fascinating stuff. We kill people for a living, for heaven's sake. What's a flaming donut or maskless beer party? But while we're living through it, this mass hysteria is pretty scary stuff. The best we can do as writers is file it away in that mental file marked "random story ideas" and try to cling to our sanity. As many writers have already noted, keeping our focus and our energy in these times is exhausting. I am writing in fits and starts, finding it difficult to get any purchase on the crumbling ground of my concentration. 

Maybe it would be easier if I were a plotter. It seems to me that's a more methodical way to write, because you proceed almost point-form from one scene and stepping stone to the next. Once you have the structure and the essence, there is a built-in scaffolding to hang on to and keep your focus. I'd like to know from plotters whether this is a help to this pandemic writing challenge.

Unfortunately I'm mostly a pantser. I don't know the overall story or what's coming next or where I should end up. This scaffold-free creativity demands lots of energy, concentration, and inspiration. The muse doesn't need to be here all the time, because once I hit on a new idea to move the story forward, I happily run with the idea until it's done. But the muse needs to make frequent visits. Pandemic lassitude saps the creative mind of energy. It takes a lot of determination to force myself to sit in the chair and stare at the page, willing the next brilliant idea to flit in. It's so much easier to walk the dogs or browse Facebook. I haven't resorted to mopping the floors yet, but this morning I did vacuum them. Yikes.

Because this is my twentieth book, I do know that it will get written, that at some point as the deadline approaches, the required amount of panic and frustration will kick in to give me the energy I need. With each book, there has always been a time when I thought I didn't have an idea left in my head and the book was going to fall flat on its face. Somehow, by the end of the teeth gnashing, hair pulling, massaging and rewriting, a passably good book emerges. And so it will this time. 

Neither a plotter nor a pantser be

I am fascinated by the many approaches writers use to writing a novel, and the attempts they make to conceptualize and pigeonhole their approach. Plotters and pantsers have been around for a while, and now my fellow Type Mers have introduced me to another – the plantser, aptly described by Sybil as a hybrid version. This 'neither here nor there' approach recognizes that writing is a spectrum, not a dichotomy. In fact, although writers may predominantly favour one style, they may use another if the mood or the task requires it. I am much more likely to be a plantser when writing a short story, mostly because short stories don't allow much room for stumbling around wondering where I'm going.

I also used the plotter style for some of my earlier Rapid Reads novellas because the publisher required a thorough outline before offering a contract. With these novellas, like short stories, there is no room for wandering, and the plots are straightforward, linear, and devoid of subplots. It's easy to write an outline in a straight line. 'This happens, which leads to that, and then that...' Even so, when I actually sat down to write the novella, the outline proved inadequate and both characters and storyline became richer. Luckily, few publishers complain when the end result is better than the plan.

Rapid Reads novella

Sybil also described another intersecting spectrum  -- lawful to neutral to chaotic - which I had not heard before, possibly because I avoid reading "how to" books. I don't like to analyze how I write, where my ideas come from and how my characters emerge. For me, there is a certain magic to the writing experience. Ideas come to me from somewhere in the jumbled cauldron of my subconscious, and I'm afraid if I look too closely, they will disappear. I also don't want to follow someone's plan for how to create the perfect novel, complete with heroes' journeys and three thrill points. These guides can be useful at the self-editing stage when you're trying to figure out why on earth the story isn't working, but as a creative aid, they are killers. Too close to paint by number. 

I read Sybil's link on lawful to chaotic styles with great interest. It breaks the process into more elements, like how you create character, what order you write scenes, how you use outlines. I still don't fit into any box, although there are some I never enter, but I generally jump around between pantser and plantser, and between lawful and neutral. 

Note the change of direction at the end 

I was interested to discover that I am rarely chaotic, even though in my mind my process feels quite chaotic. Chaotic as used in this matrix seems to refer to the order in which you move through a story. Do you write scenes out of order, copy and paste or shuffle them around, and end up with a "Frankendraft"? This is the one approach that would never work for me, because each scene grows out of the scene before, and the character's later actions and thoughts evolve out of what they went through before. I will insert scenes or move a scene around during rewrites once I can see the whole story.

It's a useful look at the writing process and entertaining to see how other writers approach it. I actually met a highly successful chaotic plotter (a combination I would not have thought possible). The important point is that there is no right or wrong way to write, just your way, and that depends on your personality, your experience, and the way that magic muse comes to you. What do other writers think? Where do you fit in?

Guest Blogger Warren Easley

Type M is thrilled to welcome Warren Easley this weekend. Warren is the author of the wonderful Cal Claxton Oregon Mysteries, featuring compassionate, guilt-ridden, crusading lawyer Cal Claxton and his precocious Australian shepherd, Archie.

My Kingdom for a Plot!

To paraphrase one of Shakespeare’s kings—you know, the one they found under a parking lot in Leicester a few years back—A plot, a plot! My kingdom for a plot! I love to write, always have. Give me a scene, any scene, and I’ll flesh it out for you. Give me two people caught in a face to face encounter, and I’ll capture their dialogue. Show me a setting, and I’ll bring it alive, replete with sights, sounds, smells and touch. But put all the elements of a novel together in a coherent, believable plot? That’s a task that gives me pause.

Plotting a mystery, you might argue, is easier than plotting, say, literary fiction. After all, there are some pretty clear rules in the mystery genre. For example, unless you’re a Louise Penny or a James Lee Burke, you had better kill someone off in the first fifty pages of your book, since the patience of your readers (and publisher) is notoriously short. And you also need to build-in an event that signals the approaching climax, and ensure that, in fact, you end with a bang, not a whimper. This leaves the “slushy middle”, which must never be slushy, so all manner of clever devices should be inserted to not only drive the plot but keep the pace brisk, the tone engaging.

Easy, you say?

One school of thought says outlining is the answer. Achtung! What we have here is a need for discipline, we’re told. Put your mind to it, and the plot will seamlessly unfold in an orderly sequence. This group of writers proudly refer to themselves as Outliners. I tried outlining in my early writing without much success. The experience was a little like driving in a dense fog. I could see a small distance ahead and very little from side to side. Sure, I could get something down on paper, but after a short burst of writing, the outline would have to be rewritten. Those pesky, unruly characters of mine kept asserting themselves in ways I hadn’t anticipated.

The other school of thought says that the plot is an organic element that must be allowed to evolve as the story progresses. In other words, the plot builds outwardly, informed primarily by what has already been written. Enter the Pantsers, an equally proud group that flies by the seat of its pants, metaphorically speaking. This laissez-faire approach may sound appealing, especially to those like me who dislike planning ahead. But the other side of that coin is that the story can easily bob and weave itself into chaos, a kind of literary proof of the law of entropy. And I can tell you from experience, there is nothing more painful than backing out of a corner into which you have written yourself. It invariably involves trashing a lot of good work.

Of course, authors should adopt a strategy for plotting a novel that works best for them. I land somewhere between the extremes of rigid outlining and unfettered evolution, although I admit to being a Pantser most of the time. I didn’t plan on using a hybrid strategy. It turned out that was the only way I could get a book written and keep my sanity.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to figure out how the book I’m currently writing is going to end…

_____________________-
Warren C. Easley is the author of the Cal Claxton Oregon Mysteries published by Poisoned Pen Press. Coming in October, book 7, No Way to Die.
https://www.warreneasley.com
facebook.com/WarrenCEasley
poisonedpenpress.com/WarrenCEasley

Leaping into the abyss

John's post of last Thursday struck a chord. For me, writing the end is one of the most challenging aspects of creating a novel. Some people struggle with the mushy middle - pacing, twists, how to fill 200 more exciting pages. However, for those of us who fly by the seat of our pants, figuring out how to end the book is what keeps us up at night and fuels many an argument on a solitary walk.

There are actually two parts to the end: the climax, when the hero solves the crime and catches the killer, and the denouement, where everything is explained and loose ends are tied up. Gone are the days of the sleuth gathering everyone in the library (or courtroom) and talking to one suspect to another until he reveals the killer. Nowadays, even in gentler cosy mysteries, readers expect some drama to keep them on the edge of their seats. The climax is usually an action scene that pits hero against villain.

When I write a novel, I don't know whodunnit, why, or how the hero is going to figure it out. I plow ahead from scene to scene, unrolling more twists and complications and putting more balls up in the air. About two-thirds of the way along, I start to panic. Enough complications and balls up in the air! How am I going to land this sucker? I need to keep the hero (and the readers) in the dark, chasing suspects and red herrings, until the last possible minute, when they have an epiphany and go after the right suspect. I also need to have them capture that suspect in a reasonably dramatic scene, to keep the excitement and suspense going to the final moment.

It's a very intricate, high-stakes dance that requires quite a few pieces to come together in exactly the right way. Sometimes I don't even know for sure who my villain is until the final climax, when I have an epiphany of my own. As in "Ahah! This is the perfect villain to pull the whole story together!" Oh, the stress of standing on the edge of the abyss, knowing the end of your novel waits on the other side but with no idea what it is and how you're going to get there. Or indeed whether there is another side.

Tying up loose ends actually plays a role in figuring out the climax. Loose ends are those dozens of balls I have thrown up in the air during the story. Each one of them is a question that need to be answered. Sometimes after days of pacing in front of the abyss, asking "What do I do now?", I list all those questions on a sheet of paper and stare at them, like pieces of a puzzle, asking how they can best fit together, do I need them all, and what if I do this instead of that. Usually out of all this hair-pulling and what if's, the kernel of a solution emerges. A key piece, around which I can start to fit the others.

Once I've written this hopefully spectacular climax, I breathe again. I have a book. Rewrites will focus it, sharpen it, and get rid of the inconsistencies and rough bits. But it works! After this, the denouement is a time to breathe again, to address most the questions as yet unanswered and to hint at the future. The hope is to leave the reader satisfied with the story rather than thinking "But what about...", but also intrigued enough by the characters and the lingering questions to pick up the next book. 

Guiding the string

Aline's Monday post made me smile, especially the "pounds, shillings, and ounces" in Winnie the Pooh's poem. But she poses a serious question; how long is the book you're writing at the moment going to be? Do you know?

This has always been a source of wonderment for me. As I am writing a book, I don't know where it's going, how long it will take to get there, or indeed, most terrifying of all, will it get there at all? As a modified "pantser", I set off on the book's journey with only a few guideposts and a blind trust that others will come into view as I draw nearer to them. I travel this unknown, uncharted road with the thrill of adventure and discovery, as well as the terror that I might never get to the end of it.

And yet, I always do get there, and in my case, almost always within roughly 90,000 to 100,000 words, coincidentally the word count specified on my contracts. How do I do it? What magic guides me? I don't know, nor do I want to put my creativity under a microscope, because I'm afraid it would fly the coop. But I do keep in mind a few crucial guidelines while I'm writing, and one of them is to keep the ounces out of the pounds and shillings. We want complications in our stories. They are the heart of tension. Without throwing obstacles in the protagonist's path, the story would be over in thirty pages. But an irrelevancy is not a complication; it's a distraction, and as Aline says, it pulls the reader away rather than pulling them forward. Sometimes a cool sidetrack pops into my head as I'm writing, and I feel like exploring it, but all the while I am trying to see if I can fit it into the main storyline. If it can add tension or intrigue to the overall question of the book, then I keep it. Otherwise, sadly, I kill it.

There are a few other guidelines that I use to keep my story moving forward and on track. I call myself a modified pantser because as I am writing, I try to see at least three or four scenes ahead. Since in my current Amanda Doucette series I have three main point-of-view characters each pursuing their own story lines, which have to be braided together into one story with proper pacing, tension, and timelines, I have discovered I need to plan ahead a bit.

Usually the idea for the next scene comes out the scene I am writing. I ask myself one or two of the following questions: "What would logically happen next?" Or "What would this character do next?" And in some cases, "What is the worst thing that could happen?" The first question helps to keep the plot on track, the second keeps the story character-driven, so that characters are not doing things they'd never do just for the sake of the plot. And the third - it's where the spice of the story comes from. It creates the twists, which are often as much a surprise to me as they are to the reader. In FIRE IN THE STARS, for example, I had Amanda's dog running up the path ahead of her, on their way to visit a hermit with some information. I hadn't figured out what Amanda would discover, so I asked myself "What will the dog find?" Followed by "What's the worst thing she could find?" And presto ...

But use the spice sparingly. Otherwise it will lose its punch. I once read a book which had a car chase or fire or explosion in every chapter. After awhile I thought, Oh yawn, not another explosion.

I agree with Aline. Life is too short to spend time on a 500-page novel that meanders and rambles. Some long novels are spell-binding and draw the reader deep into a fascinating world that we never want to leave. But the more I read and write, the less patience I have for padded verbiage and precious literary devices that leaves me feeling as if I'm spinning off-kilter. As writers we have to be ruthless with ourselves and our prose. That's what rewrites (and rewrites and rewrites) are for – to ask ourselves Do I really need this? Does it add to the story? Is it predictable? Boring? Irrelevant? Sometimes ounces are useful in a mystery novel, as red herrings that lead the reader down the garden path, but they need to do that in a way that is tied to the resolution of the story.

I don't need the story to be all neatly tied up in a bow at the end. Life is not tidy. I like ambiguity and even loose ends, especially in a series, where some questions remain to be answered in the next book. But the central question of the book has to be answered somehow, and I would find a tangle of irrelevancies and loose ends utterly unsatisfying. So the final job for a pantser is to hunt down all the loose threads and make sure you've tied them off.

Games writers play

Barbara here. And unlike Rick, I am not writing about setting a mystery in a school, although there are college-aged students in my current work in progress, THE TRICKSTER'S LULLABY, and some of the action does in fact take place at the college. But I'm not here to write about that.

I am currently nearing the completion of this WIP, and over the past few months, I have devoted a couple of blogs to my writing process, which I have described using various game analogies. In fact, authors are fond of comparing their writing to one sport or another. We're coming down the home stretch, we've knocked it out of the park, we've struck out, we've got too many balls up in the air, and so on. It's actually surprising how many expressions in general have a sports or game origin. Sports are ready metaphors for struggle, loss, and triumph, and lend themselves easily to describing life's travails.

I am a "modified fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants" writer. I used to be a full member of the club but have discovered, since writing more layered plots with multiple points of view and colliding story lines, that I have to have some idea what's coming next. I still don't know where the overall story is going or how it will end, but I try to plan a few scenes ahead so they will fit together. One might call this "the-stop-and-go-by-the-seat-of-my-pants" approach.

When I first start writing a book, I liken the process to tossing balls up into the air, to get ideas and story lines activated and evolving. It can be a random and rather chaotic process, in that it's difficult to predict where balls will fly and where and when they will land. When I am in the saggy, unwieldy middle of the book, the plotting process seems more like a chess game. Plot points, clues, and character secrets evolve step by step. Every move follows from the move that came before and affects what move will happen next. I find myself asking questions like "What would this character do next?", "What would logically happen next?", or "What would be the most unexpected thing to happen?"

The final climax is usually the most difficult part of the process for me. I know I have to end the book somehow, tie all the loose ends together, and solve the mystery in a fresh, compelling, unexpected scene. By this point I have many balls up in the air, many dangling threads to be knitted together, and a great many questions to answer. I always struggle with this task, and yesterday a new analogy came to me. Writing the climax is like clearing a logjam. Living in Ottawa, I've learned a lot about the logging industry that used to be the main source of jobs and income in the region a hundred years ago. Logs were cut in the forests, floated down the river, and funnelled through onto barges or into chutes at the mills. Like any free-floating body, logs tended to have a mind of their own, and often got jammed up together trying to get through narrow sections. Skilled drivers would walk across the logs in the water, prod them apart and guide them into line until all the logs had cleared the narrows one at a time.

At the end of the writing process, all the questions should be answered, the big ideas and small ones fitted into their proper place, and the story has surged to its conclusion. Sometimes I feel like that driver, balancing on the pack of logs and struggling to contain and keep track of all the competing plot points, separating them out and deciding which should go when. Hoping than none are forgotten and that characters all clear the jam.

I'm delighted that as of today, I have a very roughly cleared logjam. Unlike the driver in the logging industry, however, I can go back and replay the game, nudging the logs into an even better and tighter pattern in rewrites. Who knows, maybe the rewrite process will inspire me with yet another game or sport analogy. Stay tuned! Meanwhile, which does your process resemble most? Tossing balls, playing chess, or driving logs?