Create the Beginning portion of your Plot Planner similar to the End of your Plot Planner you created on Day Eight.
To review, so far, you have an index card or piece of 8 1/2 X 11 piece of paper or whatever works best for you as the Plot Planner for the End of your story AND a smaller version for the Beginning and Middle where you had plotted at least one or possibly two scenes from the Beginning section and at least one or three at the most for the Middle from Day Five.
Today, you are to expand the Beginning portion to its own index card. Simply draw a line that travels from the left to the right with a gradual ascent that ends at the End of the Beginning.
Welcome to Day Twelve of the 4th Annual International Plot Writing Month . As you are finding, this month is completely different in tone and approach to the process you recently used to complete your project's first draft.
Now, rather than give into the mysterious and mystical process of allowing a story to develop, this month is devoted to a more methodical analyzation of the ideas and scenes you have already processed. Whereas the first draft often relies heavily on faith and patience, this month, we ask you to take what you have created and revise it into a form that is satisfying to a reader.
The magic that came in draft one is for you the writer. The deepening that comes in subsequent drafts is for the reader.
Check off what you have accomplished.
Click on green highlighted plot concepts for further explanations via video:
1) Managing NOT to read your manuscript
3) Print a hard copy of your manuscript and insert in a binder (managing NOT to read your manuscript) -- Day Two
4) Made a list of scenes you remember in your story -- either as
plot points or just a list of the events themselves --
Day Three
5) List themes touched on in your story -- Day Four
THE END: PART TWO
People who know me are not surprised I start at the
End. I've always done things a bit backwards. I have three reasons for beginning this way:
1)
The
End never gets the attention the
Beginning does. Often by the End, writers are exhausted. The raw emotion having survived the
Crisis leaves you drained. Like the protagonist, you are tough enough to go all the way into hell and face your biggest fear or worst ordeal (the Crisis in the Middle). After that, to write about the journey back to share the gift -- not running home crying, -- returning a victor and faces the ultimate
antagonist at the
Climax, which often turns out to be herself, feels like it's all too much.
Drained from writing an entire draft and having lost energy for the story, the End is vague and underdeveloped.
(Please note: I'm using two different words to mark two different moments of highest intensity respectively:
Crisis , which occurs in the
Middle at about the 3/4 mark in the story
AND
Climax, which occurs in the End (1/4) one scene or chapter before the last page of the entire story)
2)
The
Climax is the crowning glory of the entire story and, thus, deserves focused attention.
In real life, a person who suffers a
Crisis has lost everything. After that, you either triumph over your fear and greatest antagonist at the
Each of us dreams of being lifting to great heights. So does your protagonist. We imagine our dreams from the safety of our own habits and routines and within a framework of mutually agreed upon rules and customs. Comforted by the known sameness of our lives, we wait for something outside ourselves to lift us up, always waiting...
Not so for the
protagonist of your story. She has to move from the ordinary world of the
Beginning into the murky
Middle. The very definition of the main character of the story as the one most changed by the
Dramatic Action. From the great height of the Climax of the book or screenplay, she prevails to lead the way for others to follow.
The
Climax is the moment one chapter or scene before the very end of the story when the protagonist does something she could not have done anywhere else in the story because she first had to
rediscover and learn the skills needed to shine.
What we are doing here at the 4th Annual International Plot Writing Month is dry compared to the magical and mystical process of writing a first draft. Processing your story through your intellect and analyzing it wipes away befuddlement and leads to clarity of character goals and motivation which in turn helps to create convincing expression and emotion.
Today is two-pronged:1) Organize
If you haven't already, print out your manuscript. Do NOT read it. Be sure to include a header on every page with your title in caps / name on the upper left and the page # on the upper right.
Don't worry about spell checking or chapter breaks. just make sure the pages are numbered.
Insert your project into a binder. [Warning: printing manuscript is a snap compared to hole-punching the pages. However, it's important to have the manuscript bound and in one place.]
Divide the total number of pages in the binder by 4. Stick a post-it note at the
1/4 mark and another one at the
3/4 mark.
Today represents the End of the Beginning of our month-long plot writing endeavor. The past week has been introductory. You're getting to know what is expected of you during PlotWriMo. You've made a few discoveries you hadn't known about your story and experienced a couple of ah, ha moments. Finding the time everyday proves challenging, but you've managed.
The other day I tweeted about how the work you do on your story during PlotWriMo is like cleaning out a cluttered closet. First you have to take everything out (the beginning). This causes quite a mess and before things get better they get way worse as you attempt to assess what to keep and what to toss. You rearrange the shelves and paint. You question your choices. The chaos begins to grate on you. You feel overwhelmed by the task ahead of you. You suffer a crisis and beg to give up (the middle). Out of the ashes of what was, you rise up and methodically restore order (the end).
Today, you decide whether you move forward into the exotic world of the
Middle of
PlotWriMo or you choose to stop this plot re"vision" work you started.
Whether you actually spend time making lists and filling out templates this month or simply reading the posts everyday, your relationship with your story will deepen. Your relationship with yourself will, too.
Today, take a look at the work you've been doing. Take a look at your calendar. As we move deeper into PlotWriMo, we also move deeper into the holiday season. You can rattle off 10,000 excuses why to turn from your story and devote yourself to your seasonal traditions. Challenge your belief system. Allow yourself to step up and honestly say that for no other reason and no one to blame, you're stopping.
Not you, you say? You game to keep at it? I promise you you won't regret your decision...
Take your time to decide. The
Middle is not for the faint-hearted. Hope to see you back tomorrow and the real work begins.
(***Click on
green highlighted plot concepts for further explanations via video. Each time a concept
The Middle poses lots of difficulty for writers for a multitude of reasons, many of which I discuss in The Plot Whisperer book.
One difficulty crops up when, having committed to writing all the way through to the end without going back to the beginning, you stumble across a terrific subplot when writing a first draft. Hopefully you resisted the pull to go back and foreshadow the subplot or introduce the unexpected element. Why? Because, if you do give in and go back, chances are good you'll overdevelop the subplot in the Beginning.
That problem then multiples when you get all attached to what you have created and suddenly are struck with the idea that perhaps you've been writing about the wrong character all along, that the subplot star is, in fact, the
protagonist. Before long you're off and writing an entirely new story or become entangled in the first version.
Now that you have successfully written all the way to the end at least one time it is the time to assess the strength of the each subplot, mull over the thematic tie-ins to the primary plot, and make determinations how best to foreshadow important elements without giving the subplot more attention that it deserves and detracting rather than enhance the primary plot.
(***Click on
green highlighted plot concepts for further explanations via video. Each time a concept is referenced you are directed to new informatio
Three plot consultations with three separate writers, all with similar strengths and the same weakness. Each story has well thought out scenes that draw the reader into the Beginning 1/4 of the project. Each one develops character emotional development through dramatic action in the Middle 1/2. In other words, for these three writers, three quarters of their projects work, at least on a structural plot level.
At the end, these same three projects falter with little or no real Climax to top off the entire work. In each case, the protagonist is reawakened by the Crisis. They are shown struggling to take full ownership of their newly discovered consciousness. This is all good.
What starts as a twinge, in the quick build-up to the Climax, the protagonist more and more recognizes quite painfully each time her actions and speech do not align with her new understanding of herself and the world around her.
Trouble is, in none of the cases does the character show herself fully healing this schism at the Climax.
One writer wrote the Climax as the grandmother in the story dying. In this young adult novel, the protagonist is, necessarily, a young adult person and not the grandmother. The answer presented itself. In the Grandmother dying, the Climax takes on a deeper relevance as the protagonist of this young adult novel is given the opportunity to assist her grandmother's spiritual departure. Such an action demonstrates mastery at the thematic level. That death is looming sends the conflict, tension and suspense higher and the energy of the Universal Story soaring. The clock ticks. The sense of everything coalescing in the final minutes builds.
The Beginning sets up the scene of highest intensity in the story so far ~ the end of the Beginning. This scene shows the shift or reversal outside the character that sends her into the heart of the story world.
The middle sets up the scene of the highest intensity in the story so far ~ the Crisis. This scene shows the character’s consciousness of the shift or reversal inside her.
The End sets up the crowning glory of the entire story ~ the Climax. This scene shows the character fully united with her new self-knowledge, new understanding of the world, new sense of responsibility through her actions and her words.
The Climax is the crowning glory of the entire book. Once you write that most important scene all the other pieces begin to fall into place.
For more support, read Chapter 11 of:
For more tips about how to use plot and the Universal Story in your novel, memoir or screenplay, read:
Watch your delivery of backstory ~ the story of what, in the past, made the character who they are today (in story time).
Writers want to cram everything right up front.
"I know all their history, why would I want to withhold it from the reader?"
"I wrote it that way."
"It's the good part."
Writers spend lots of time imagining and writing every little detail about a character's past, be it for a child or an adult. So, of course, writers would want to tell everything right away. Perhaps, in the process, even show off a bit how clever they are. Until, one understands how curiosity works.
Not telling everything makes the reader curious. Curiosity draws the reader deeper into the story world. The reader wants to fill in the "who," "what," "how" (the "where" and "when" have already been clearly established right up front to ground the reader). They keep reading. This is good.
Tell the reader only what they need to know to inform that particular scene. This is especially true in the Beginning (1/4 mark). During the first quarter of the project, the character can have a memory. But, for a full-blown flashback, where you take the reader back in time in scene, wait until the Middle.
(PLOT TIP: If you're absolutely sure you absolutely have to include the flashback, try using one when you're bogged down in the middle of the middle.)
Click on green highlighted plot concepts for further explanations via video. Each time a concept is referenced you are directed to new information about the Universal Story and writing a novel, memoir or screenplay.
Visit Plot Series: How Do I Plot a Novel, Memoir, Screenplay? on YouTube. A directory of all the steps to the series is to the right of this post. Enjoy!
A writer says her story "tanks around page 25" and bores her even to try to rewrite.
I recommend she spend some time standing back from the words of her story and view the inner workings. In other words, analyze the structure before you worry to much about the details and even the words you write.
A Plot Planner is a visual line that represents the invisible energy of the Universal Story. It enables you to assess the significance of your characters and the dramatic action of your story by seeing how all the scenes work together against the backdrop of the entire piece. Such a multilayered attentiveness to your story allows for a unique perspective into the deeper meaning of your story.
A plot planner gives a visual accounting of all the scenes in a story. It helps you compare scenes that heighten conflict and suspense to those quieter scenes that show the character in control. Each scene delivers more tension and conflict than the preceding scene and builds with intensity to the story’s climax. Standing back from all the words and viewing the story as a whole allows you to better determine the causality between scenes and the overall coherence of the story. With such an insight, you are able to turn scenes with emotionally rich characters who are experiencing conflict into the driving force behind an exceptional story.
The plot planner is a visual aid to help you write and finish your project in a way that pleases you and ultimately satisfies your readers, too.
Writers report that when they hit a rough patch and lose energy for their stories, merely a switch from writing to filling in a template stimulates their creative juices. Before writers know it, they are back to writing.
To depict character emotion beyond the cliches -- slamming things down and shouting when angry, dancing and singing when joyful -- takes having felt the emotion yourself as a writer or the intuitive ability to detect the subtle exaggeration of common external behaviors that signal deeper emotion.
We are not always encouraged to acknowledge our true emotions -- especially so, women, or so I wonder. Women of a certain generation, mine, were taught to be the peacemakers at all cost, to sweep the raw, edgy emotions out of sight of others which also became more comfortable for ourselves, too.
No wonder many of us have difficulty showing authentic human emotions in our characters in true and fresh ways.
Subsequent generations have been encouraged to explore feelings and express them more honestly. I wonder if that is true and makes it any easier to conjure up unique shows of emotion??
The little notebook and pencil you carry with you everywhere comes in handy to record people's show of emotion -- both authentic and inauthentic emotions.
should be up later today)
In my Twitter today I chose the wrong words.
To be sure there is absolutely no confusion = when I say "Keep going back to the key scenes", I do NOT mean go back to rewrite the key scenes. NEVER GO BACK AND REWRITE YOUR FIRST DRAFT UNTIL YOU WRITE ALL THE WAY THROUGH TO THE END. (I apologize for the caps -- my zeal to make my point sort of looks like I'm yelling. Not my intention. I apologize.)
What I meant to Twitter (or is it Tweet??), is that as you make your way through your first draft keep referring to the key scenes. Create a pre-plot visual with the loose ideas you have for the end of the Beginning scene (1/4 mark), the halfway point scene (1/2 mark), the Crisis scene (3/4 mark), the Climax scene (chapter or scene before the last one).
A pre-plotted visual aid like a Plot Planner can serve as your beacon. Put the visual up on your computer so you see it at all times.
Things will get choppy. If not before, then for sure somewhere in the middle of the Middle (1/2). Listen for the fog horn when overtaken by gloom and doom. Hug the coast and keep your eye on the light when the storms hit. You can survive this, I promise.
First draft is the generative draft. There is something truly magical about watching the words fill a page, a scene, a chapter, the book = watching something come out of nothing but a hit of inspiration.
We muck it up by trying to control the uncontrollable.
The first draft is often filled with angst and uncertainty, loneliness and insecurity. It doesn't have to be. Keep your head down and keep faith in yourself and the creative process, and keep writing.
When doubts send you sprialing off track, keep coming back to the key scenes. Write your way toward them one by one. Your job now is to get the inspiration down on paper. There will be plenty of time for fear and doubt later. Wait until you read the first draft for the first time. Moments of brilliance drown in the "vomit". Uncertainty and angst are sure to strike again.
About the loneliness, heck, a writer's life is lonely, but only so long as we look outside ourselves and beyond the inspiration for validation.
One thing I can promise you if you sign up for this writers life for real... Your life will be fraught with uncertainty and angst so long as you attach yourself to the process. Separate yourself / your ego from your task and you'll be fine. Trust the process. Magic happens.
The time you spend reading the posts during 4th Annual International Plot Writing Month and exploring the exercises is intended to provide a new way of viewing your story, deepen your passion, fuel your energy for your writing and help you come to a new understanding of the deeper meaning of your story.![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31672110-7593392467704805070?l=
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Nice aricle! I like it.
I'm happy with my climax and beginning hook. My protag has her inner conflict and her two opposing goals and desires. But I just feel the middle is not dramatic enough. Trying to concoct the villain's motives that makes sense is so convoluted. And I'm still puzzling over the subplot involving her sister.(Who's there to give her someone to care about other than herself). Trying to tie the sister with the crooks somehow.
I suppose I won't figure out the new middle until I rewrite. Somehow I'm like that. The old middle was too "easy". Rushing through November to get to the end. Now I've got to plod along, cause, effect, cause, effect, throwing complications along the way.
Thanks for helping me figure that nailing the beginning and the end is most important.
Thank you for sharing this article. I love it. Keep on writing this type of great stuff.