The Plotter's Bible: No gospels, just random thoughts

[SimonDoom]

I was inspired to start this thread by Yowser's thread "The Pantser's Bible." I'm a plotter, not a pantser. By that I mean I like to plot out my story before I start writing it, and I usually have a very clear idea how it's going to end before I get far into it.

I don't claim this is the right way. But it's my way.

I liken the process to painting a painting or building a bridge. You don't start from one side of the bridge or one corner of the painting and just go from there. You develop an idea of the whole--its purpose, its tone, its structure, its color palette, and the note on which you want it to finish, and you go from there.

I have no beef with pantsers. I kind of admire them. But I cannot write the way they do.

Probably one of the things that most separates me from pantsers is that I have a very clear idea of the ending before I'm far along into the story. In fact, very often I write the ending verbatim before I'm far along into writing the story. Everything I do from that point on is a matter of getting to that ending as artfully as I can. The ending becomes an organizing principle for the story.

Maybe to some it seems like a limiting approach. Not to me. I think of the ending as something I'm striving toward, and it motivates me to get there as effectively as I can.

I find, too, that this approach works with my style. I don't write continuously from point A to point B. I jump around as I write. If I'm working on Act 2 and I suddenly get an idea for Act 4, I'll abandon Act 2 and fast forward to Act 4 and write it. Then I'll go back. The whole time I have an idea of the story in my mind like a jigsaw puzzle coming together.

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

I write every chapter and scene in exactly the order they're going to appear in the story, but I do always come up with a plot outline before I start writing. If I don't, my story risks meandering from one event to the next with no purpose until I lose interest and finishing it becomes a chore done out of obligation to the readers, and not something I actually enjoy. I want to finish a story or series before I hit the point of running out of creative steam, and plotting it out beforehand helps immensely.

 

[lovecraft68]

I have a general idea of where I want things to go write without plotting. I've never had an issue doing this with any story.

I've written full length novels with no outline.

However, I'm on book four of a series, and realized I cornered myself with a couple things in book three and have been stuck for some time on what to do.

So, I guess at some point it may have helped with a project that long and involved.

 

[Voyeurkenneth]

I think I mentioned this in another thread but I like to come up with 4-5 scenes that I know I can roughly string together (including the ending).

Then I start writing. Usually in sequence but I do jump around when inspiration calls.

I just finished a first draft of a new story using this method. Reading back the first draft, it’s rough… too many ideas trying to branch off in diff directions.

But at least I have the skeleton in place, which can be a huge hurdle to overcome in itself. Now I can start rewriting and refining. I’ve embraced the editing process. I don’t need to write the perfect sentence on the first go.

 

[yowser]

Two threads going with the word 'Bible' in them. Hope we don't get shunted to the Politics board.

I suffered a lot through high school since many teachers (History and English in particular) often required an outline before a major paper. I'd deliver, sometimes with good results, but it was often awkward and felt forced. (I know here on this thread we are talking fiction, and these examples are non-fiction.)

It wasn't until grad school that I realised my best writing came in more 'open form' style. I didn't always know what my conclusion was, or would be. I'd start writing up my research, using my notes and data gathered, and only along the path of writing would I discover what direction it was all heading. (This was not a science or STEM field, so I wasn't writing with a 'hypothesis' in mind.)

I found I needed an outline, a blueprint, for longer works, but that was only AFTER I had done a first draft, and then the plan helped me stay organised, and consistent, and get everything right. It took writing first to let me know what it was I really did know, and allow me to continue.

In fiction I am more a pantser, but not 100%, as I often have a fairly clear idea of the ending. But once I get started, I find my characters change, or my story adapts to fit their quirks and revealed features, and the final result can look quite different from my initial conception.

I find it fascinating that minds can deliver results with such different processes at work.

 

[THBGato]

I usually start with a scenario: karaoke; a reunion; a performance; etc. Then I'll work out the steps that get the characters there and the outcomes/consequences. That gives me my outline. Music often gives me imagery to include, and sometimes themes too.

One massive advantage of plotting over pantsing, as I see it, is to "jump ahead" and write a scene that comes quite late in the story. I don't make a habit of this, but it can be really helpful when I'm blocked on a particular section to leave it, write a piece that will actually come much later, and then return to the tricky section. I did that a lot with Eve & Lucy. That's only possible I feel with a solid plan.

 

[NotWise]

I started as a pantser, and that gave me an epic-length novel I had no clue how to finish. So it moldered until I lost it in a disk crash. It lives on in scenes and ideas in some of my later stories.

Then I decided to plan my stories more, and I thought through a whole, long novel scenario and started writing it with at least an inkling of a plan. The inkling wasn't quite enough. My work slowed, and the end (which I knew, but not in a lot of detail) started to get farther and farther away. I took a break and plotted out a shorter story more as an exercise than anything. Looking for feedback on that story brought me to Lit.

Then I actually started writing stories for the Lit readers. The shear joy of producing work and getting a response pushed me back into pantsing to get things out on a shorter schedule. A lot of those stories gave me something I didn't really want -- readers commenting "More!" on stories I thought were done.

I started writing synopses of stories. That let me test ideas without writing it out in detail, and it gave me a framework. In some cases I finished a story by working through the synopsis from beginning to end, and in others I jumped around, fleshing out dialog so that when I finally got to that point in the story all I had to do was incorporate that scene into my story.

That's pretty much where I am now, except that now I'm learning to make the ending more than just the end of the story.

 

[intim8]

Maybe to some it seems like a limiting approach. Not to me. I think of the ending as something I'm striving toward, and it motivates me to get there as effectively as I can

So, a question.

The more academic term for "pantsing" is "discovery writing", in that we discover the characerizations and plot as we go.

I assume that such discovery happens for plotters as well. You're writing along, and your subconcious puts 2 and 2 together from what you've wriiten to that point, and you've learned something new about a character, or plot point, or whatever.

So how do you incorporate that into the outline you've laid out? How do you keep it from sending the story in a different direction?

And how much of that discovery do you do by other means - brainstorming, character cards, etc, - before you start writing?

 

[intim8]

I suffered a lot through high school since many teachers (History and English in particular) often required an outline before a major paper

I had the opposite, once. A middle school english teacher had a standing weekly assignment to pants one page. He didn't call it that (there probably was no such term in the 70s), but that was what it was. He didn't grade what you wrote, only that you wrote something, anything, that filled a page.

 

[SimonDoom]

So, a question.

The more academic term for "pantsing" is "discovery writing", in that we discover the characerizations and plot as we go.

I assume that such discovery happens for plotters as well. You're writing along, and your subconcious puts 2 and 2 together from what you've wriiten to that point, and you've learned something new about a character, or plot point, or whatever.

So how do you incorporate that into the outline you've laid out? How do you keep it from sending the story in a different direction?

And how much of that discovery do you do by other means - brainstorming, character cards, etc, - before you start writing?

I outline most of my stories before I start writing them. As I write, I frequently deviate from the outline, but I almost always end up where I originally intended to go. I can't recall having written a story where half way through I decided I wanted it to go in a completely different direction, or for the character to make an important decision I hadn't previously thought about.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I assume that such discovery happens for plotters as well. You're writing along, and your subconcious puts 2 and 2 together from what you've wriiten to that point, and you've learned something new about a character, or plot point, or whatever.

So how do you incorporate that into the outline you've laid out? How do you keep it from sending the story in a different direction?

And how much of that discovery do you do by other means - brainstorming, character cards, etc, - before you start writing?

I do tons of brainstorming and daydreaming, working through characters and situations while walking or driving, or even if I get a chance with a menial task at work which requires little thought, freeing my brain for daydreaming. I never sit down to type until my brainstorming comes up with something worth typing out.

My outline is never rigid. In fact, in a longer story I probably am only skeletoning ahead of my drafting, maybe a few scenes, maybe most of the plot, but as I draft I add to the skeleton, keep the outline ahead of the draft. Some stories the skeleton is all or mostly connected and ready to fill. Others I need to write the characters a bit more to figure out how some of it all will connect before I actually connect the outline. At any time during the process, if I get an idea that I'd like to include, I just add a bone to the skeleton wherever appropriate. In rare instances, the plot will actually change and I will remove stuff from the outline. Nothing is ever in stone until I'm ready to submit and that includes the outline.

At some point I came to realize that editing point form notes into full sentences and paragraphs was no different than editing weak sentences and paragraphs into strong ones. I'm never worried about not being able to flesh out a scene. I can do that at any time. It's the plot and motive and sequence of events that I don't want to lose. If I work something out, just jot down the point form. I can flesh it out at any time when I'm comfortable and in the zone. Plotting/outlining, fleshing/drafting, editing and proofing, it's all kinda one homogenous process, just different shades on the spectrum of writing. That's how I feel it.

Plotting the outline just makes things so much easier when I'm writing. I don't have to think about where the scene is going (unless I get a cool idea in the moment and change things) while I'm trying to write. It's easy to concentrate on the scene when you know where it's going. There are times when I have very little outline. A whole scene may be contained in one plot note for instance. Often when I go to draft the scene it is so difficult as nothing is planned and I start running into issues and the whole thing bogs down to a halt. I have to go back and brainstorm, then throw down some plot notes and almost start over. This is usually the only situation where I end up having to throw big chunks away.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Two threads going with the word 'Bible' in them. Hope we don't get shunted to the Politics board.

I suffered a lot through high school since many teachers (History and English in particular) often required an outline before a major paper. I'd deliver, sometimes with good results, but it was often awkward and felt forced. (I know here on this thread we are talking fiction, and these examples are non-fiction.)

It wasn't until grad school that I realised my best writing came in more 'open form' style. I didn't always know what my conclusion was, or would be. I'd start writing up my research, using my notes and data gathered, and only along the path of writing would I discover what direction it was all heading. (This was not a science or STEM field, so I wasn't writing with a 'hypothesis' in mind.)

I found I needed an outline, a blueprint, for longer works, but that was only AFTER I had done a first draft, and then the plan helped me stay organised, and consistent, and get everything right. It took writing first to let me know what it was I really did know, and allow me to continue.

In fiction I am more a pantser, but not 100%, as I often have a fairly clear idea of the ending. But once I get started, I find my characters change, or my story adapts to fit their quirks and revealed features, and the final result can look quite different from my initial conception.

I find it fascinating that minds can deliver results with such different processes at work.

I hated doing outlines. I'd usually just write the first draft, make an outline from that and turn it in.
"Here's what I'm planning to write..."

 

[Voyeurkenneth]

So, a question.

The more academic term for "pantsing" is "discovery writing", in that we discover the characerizations and plot as we go.

I assume that such discovery happens for plotters as well. You're writing along, and your subconcious puts 2 and 2 together from what you've wriiten to that point, and you've learned something new about a character, or plot point, or whatever.

So how do you incorporate that into the outline you've laid out? How do you keep it from sending the story in a different direction?

And how much of that discovery do you do by other means - brainstorming, character cards, etc, - before you start writing?

Realistically, I feel like if I discover something that deviates from the outline, then I usually discard the outline or don’t rely on it much going forward. In a way, the outline has already served its purpose in getting me off the ground.

I think I’d only update the outline if I needed to keep a timeline of events in order.

 

[ronde]

I always have an ending and some idea of the characters in mind before I begin writing. I tend to think of a story in scenes - introducing the characters, their meeting, and then the various things that happen to them in order to get them to the ending. I never use an outline because I probably wouldn't follow it anyway. My ending also often changes once I get to know my characters better.

I do keep track of character names. That saves a lot of embarrassment when I've changed the name of a character in mid story. I also keep a reasonably accurate timeline if the story is going to be told over more than a couple of days. I do both in the interest of continuity. If something about a character or detail is going to be important later in the story, I also write that down. That saves a lot of scrolling up and down to figure out where I first wrote it.

I have written two stories as a series and I wasn't happy with either. As I was writing subsequent parts, I kept finding things in Part 2 or Part 3 that didn't make sense with what I'd written in Part 1. I have three novels I'm ready publish, and I wrote the entire novel at one time. It's the only way I know to make everything the characters do consistent.

 

[yowser]

I was inspired to start this thread by Yowser's thread "The Pantser's Bible." I'm a plotter, not a pantser. By that I mean I like to plot out my story before I start writing it, and I usually have a very clear idea how it's going to end before I get far into it.

I know you said 'No Gospels' but do you have any recommended further reading for those of the Plotter persuasion?

A quick search came up with a couple possible titles, but I have no idea of their worth:

Narrative Design : A Writer’s Guide to Structure / Madison Smartt Bell. W.W. Norton, 1997.

Writing Fiction : A Guide to Narrative Craft / Janet Burroway, with Susan Weinberg. 6th ed., Longman, 2003.

 

[SimonDoom]

I know you said 'No Gospels' but do you have any recommended further reading for those of the Plotter persuasion?

A quick search came up with a couple possible titles, but I have no idea of their worth:

Narrative Design : A Writer’s Guide to Structure / Madison Smartt Bell. W.W. Norton, 1997.

Writing Fiction : A Guide to Narrative Craft / Janet Burroway, with Susan Weinberg. 6th ed., Longman, 2003.

I don't have any recommendations, because I don't use any sources like that myself. I didn't start writing fiction until 2016 and I didn't rely on any sources. I just wrote the way that felt write for me, and I've continued writing pretty much the same way since.

I rely on a variety of guides for things like grammar, punctuation, dialogue format, etc., but not for story construction. I think that's a very personal thing and it's better to go with one's gut than to shoehorn one's method into somebody else's structure.

 

[THBGato]

"Save the Cat writes a novel" was good.

My wife (a novellist) recommends Stephen King's "On writing".

 

[Britva415]

I know you said 'No Gospels' but do you have any recommended further reading for those of the Plotter persuasion?

A quick search came up with a couple possible titles, but I have no idea of their worth:

Narrative Design : A Writer’s Guide to Structure / Madison Smartt Bell. W.W. Norton, 1997.

Writing Fiction : A Guide to Narrative Craft / Janet Burroway, with Susan Weinberg. 6th ed., Longman, 2003.

I think a pantser can still make use of those titles. Pantsing doesn't mean "no revisions" or "no structure." Early drafts which were improvised still have to be polished into a final, and sometimes there's really not very much which has to be done to them in order to impart some beneficial structure and craft to the discoveries made via undirected flow writing.

 

[yowser]

I don't have any recommendations, because I don't use any sources like that myself. I didn't start writing fiction until 2016 and I didn't rely on any sources. I just wrote the way that felt write for me, and I've continued writing pretty much the same way since.

I rely on a variety of guides for things like grammar, punctuation, dialogue format, etc., but not for story construction. I think that's a very personal thing and it's better to go with one's gut than to shoehorn one's method into somebody else's structure.

Thanks. For me, these sorts of books, if well written, often aren't so valuable for their 'advice' as that they make me think about my own process.

A good guide often has various writing examples given, and there's often much to learn from them.

 

[yowser]

I think a pantser can still make use of those titles. Pantsing doesn't mean "no revisions" or "no structure." Early drafts which were improvised still have to be polished into a final, and sometimes there's really not very much which has to be done to them in order to impart some beneficial structure and craft to the discoveries made via undirected flow writing.

Of course you're right. In some respects, maybe most, the dichotomy is exaggerated and most of us work between the two extremes. I do find it interesting how various authors approach the creative process, however, and do not tire examining the range expressed.

 

[TheRedChamber]

So, a question.

The more academic term for "pantsing" is "discovery writing", in that we discover the characerizations and plot as we go.

I assume that such discovery happens for plotters as well. You're writing along, and your subconcious puts 2 and 2 together from what you've wriiten to that point, and you've learned something new about a character, or plot point, or whatever.

So how do you incorporate that into the outline you've laid out? How do you keep it from sending the story in a different direction?

And how much of that discovery do you do by other means - brainstorming, character cards, etc, - before you start writing?

If Simon likened Plotter Writing to building a bridge, I'd liken it to doing a jigsaw - only you've got an infinite number of pieces and can make an infinite number of pictures with them. Sometimes you find yourself working from the corners and edges of a story (the beginning and end) and sometimes you have a few random floating pieces of, say, a hot blonde driving a Ferrari into a gas station in the Nevada desert, but no idea how that fits into anything else. Once you've assembled a cluster you can break it apart again if you really need to, but if it looks pretty you probably want to keep it more or less as it is.

I need to have 'an' end. I don't need to have 'the' end. I only start writing* once I can answer the questions 'and then? and then?' all the way through the story. Writing prose is a slow process and I don't want to start anything I'm not pretty confident I can finish. But as I write or in the later stages of planning, if I have an idea I'll see how that idea would impact the rest of the story. Even with plotting nothing is ever truly fixed. It's quite common for my beta readers to come back and say that they don't like an ending and I'll consider if I want to change it. Endings are actually the easiest thing to change (but the hardest to land) because they don't affect anything afterwards.

(*actually, I've become a lot less insistant on this recently, if I have an scene with reasonably firm fixed entry and exit points, I'll tend to write it if I've spent the day imagining it and while it's still fresh. I've become used to the idea that its okay to have a bunch of fragments lying around that may or may not ever become a published story)

I'll give you an example with a recent story I wrote - Double Fault for the Sports event.

I had the basic spark for the story over two years ago. A young couple join a posh tennis club, they're not very good at playing together so an older couple suggest swapping partners (young girl with older guy, young guy with older woman) and training them up. Then swinging happens.

The problem was that I never really got any of the latter jigsaw pieces needed to make that 'then swinging happens' into actual events. I didn't really know who either couple were or what the final destination was - more than 'swinging good'. After mulling it over for the course of a week or so, I attached a title 'Eighteen Love, Forty Love' to it and filed it away as a one line entry in my ideas spreadsheet.

Much later I started to write a series of stories about a mid-twenties nerd couple (the Hannah has Plans series). I didn't really intent to, I just had a series of ideas that the same couple seemed to fit perfectly into. One story however gave me particular trouble - the Accidental Doggers in which our couple accidentally stumble across a notorious dogging site and the girl develops a particular fascination with it. Here I had an issue whereby I had the begining which I thought was fun and I had the twist ending which worked kind of regardless what went on in the middle, but that middle was about how much dogging sex would actually happen to our couple. Nothing I'd written beforehand indicated they were polyamorous in anyway and dogging didn't seem like it would exactly be the nice gateway into that. I ended up with them having sex with each other while others watch - possibly chosing 'realism' over 'giving the readers what they want'. I did however decide once that story was finished that it would probably be good to move the characters into the position where they became 'swingers' and to write a story to open that door.

And you guessed it, I realized that I could take my previously shelved tennis story and press it into service. Having written eight or so Hannah stories already, having fixed characters helped flesh things out immediatly, but the story still didn't really have a point - I did want to get to 'swinging good' but that is not, in itself, strong enough to build a story around. It would be a useful side-effect of the story for me going forward, but didn't seem to be the whole point. Still, there was an obvious outline - an opening scene with the couple getting badly beaten at tennis. The suggestion of a swap. The new teams enter a competition and get 'quite far' - whether to the finals, semi, doesn't actually matter, but a rising sexual tension over a series of matches. After the competition is over, the older couple suggest swinging and then 'swinging happens'. I was sure enough of the beginning that I wrote a couple of thousands words of the MCs losing badly at tennis.

I'm a great believer that when writing erotica that what characters *won't* do is almost as important as what they will. I don't like the idea of 'and then everyone did everything to everyone else'. For a first time swinging experience there needed to be rules and limits and I needed to work out what they were. Young guy does older woman? Younger woman does older guy? Two girls one guy? Two guys one girl? Concurrently? Serially?

Inspiration hits plotters just as much as pantsers. I can't remember if it was late night or early morning, but I had a scene come to me when I was half awake. The young couple is in the car driving back after the swinging meet. For him it's been 'fun', for her it's been 'transformative'. She reveals firstly that she kissed her older partner (against their rules) and secondly that the condom broke. She says she wants them to do it with the older couple again. He realizes that it's been a huge mistake and she now has feelings for the other guy. They sleep on it and I wake up. In a spare moment, later that day I write down, as pure dialogue, the conversation I had imagined between them. I add in description and action and do some minor stuff for flow later, but that conversation becomes the center of the story and what I go back and build everything else around.

And now the point of the story is 'swinging bad' - but it suddenly feels like there is a full story there.

There's a ripple effect that works its way back through the plot. Instead of just rising steam between the couples after every match, there also need to be the idea that the young couple aren't quite hitting it off in bed fully. I don't want to do the wimpy cuck has small penis trope (well not here...) so instead its a series of sexual encounters between them that don't quite come off. She's getting increasingly sexually demanding and he's not quite keeping up as well as usual.

Our male MC is now a tragic hero, so there needs to be a note of caution over the whole swinging thing. He needs to prevarocate before taking the decision. Instead of the older couple just saying 'Hey fancy hopping into bed together?', the young couple have to discuss whether they are going to do it over the space of multiple scenes over a week. And it's going to be sold to him as 'You get to bang a hotwife' not 'Your wife is going cuck you'. It's going to be explicitly said to him that its him and the other wife, or the other wife and Hannah or the other wife, Hannah and him. It's not the other guy fucking his fiance. During the same room sex, he realizes that she does want it though, and he weakens. She can fuck the husband but a different room. Hence her having to explain what happened later.

I wanted this event to have real consequences. This series has flitted around the time line some times the characters are in university, sometimes they have jobs and I've even written a couple when they are married. So now I'm setting this right before they get married. It makes sense, the tennis is exercise to get them into shape for the wedding.

The car journey happens 15k words into a 20k word story. If I had been a pantser then I may have gotten to that moment with none of the elements or foreshadowing for the pivotal scene to happen. As it was, because everything is just jigsaw pieces slotting together, I worked out the 'changes' needed before I'd written anything.

Despite having an outline I'm now very happy with, it actually takes ages to write. There's a whole bunch of scenes needed for 'rising tensions during the competition'. There's a whole bunch of scenes needed for 'discussing if we are going swinging'. I also need to work out a resolution. Weirdly, I write a 12k sequel to the story (as of yet unpublished) right after I've written the car journey and which is plotted and comes out more or less instantanously over a few days. The individual scenes of Double Fault however take me months and I'm constantly skipping around it. I write the 'discussing stuff' next. Then I struggle over the earlier 'tensions'. Then I write an ending. It takes me forever to actually write the sex. Then my beta readers don't like the downer ending and I have another crack at it.

Finally, I've got one of the stories I'm most proud to ever have written.

I publish it in Loving Wives and as a cuck story it scores 1.69 after twenty-four hours.

Welcome to Literotica.

 

[TheLobster]

I'll give you an example with a recent story I wrote - Double Fault for the Sports event.

Paging @StillStunned so that he can bug you to turn everything you’ve written there into a WIWAW entry

 

[StillStunned]

Paging @StillStunned so that he can bug you to turn everything you’ve written there into a WIWAW entry

I suppose I've fallen a bit behind in my bugging, haven't I?

Hey @TheRedChamber, how about it?

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I publish it in Loving Wives and as a cuck story it scores 1.69 after twenty-four hours.

And it's the best entry in the Yay Team! event.

 

[TheRedChamber]

I suppose I've fallen a bit behind in my bugging, haven't I?

Hey @TheRedChamber, how about it?

I'll think about it, but I'd actually like to write one about the series as a whole when it's finished. Next year, maybe?

And it's the best entry in the Yay Team! event.

Aw, shucks [I've just spent five minutes looking for an embarrassed emoji, but being old I can't find one. I thought I had, but then I noticed he had a themometor sticking out of his mouth and it was actually the 'I'm sick' one. Have a drinking coconut juice out of a real coconut with a straw emoji instead]