Plotters, Pantsers, and Playing the Whodunnit Game

By Skye Alexander

From the very beginnings of our books, mystery writers start setting the scenarios for our stories and planting clues. Mysteries are games we play with our readers. Your job is to try to figure out whodunnit before the reveal. Our job is to trick you, so you don’t guess correctly until the story’s climax. But although the objective is the same, we authors go about it in different ways.

Plotters and Pantsers

Unless you’re a writer, you may not be familiar with the terms “plotter” and “pantser.” Plotters are writers who carefully plan out their stories from the get-go, outline the events that take place, and organize the plot’s details so everything comes together neatly at the finale. Pantsers, on the other hand, fly by the seat of their pants. They dive into their tales without knowing where, when, or how their stories will unfold––and that’s part of the fun. For pantsers, writing a book is an act of faith, and they truly believe it will somehow work out in the end.

When I wrote my first mystery novel, I chose the plotter route. I meticulously outlined every step of the journey before I started writing the book, jotting down a paragraph about each scene in each chapter from beginning to end. This worked out well until an afternoon when I was driving down the highway and one of my characters slid into the passenger seat beside me and said, “We (meaning the characters in my book) have gotten together and decided you need to know whodunnit. I’m here to tell you it was me.” That revelation required me to go back and rewrite the first half of the book. It also changed me into a pantser.

Whose Book Is This Anyway?

Writers and characters work together to produce books. We’re co-creators with a joint goal. Like many of my writer friends, I rely heavily on my characters to tell the story. Sometimes I refer to myself as the “designated typist” who simply listens to them spin out their sagas while I tap the keys as fast as I can. Often it feels like I’m a surrogate mother who’s been chosen to birth the child of the Muse, without knowing what I’m getting myself into. I suspect my colleagues can relate.

Characters have a way of taking over the whodunnit game, surprising us by dropping unexpected information, backstory, and plot twists in our laps. A bit player may push her way into a leading role. A nice guy may reveal he’s a villain in the story’s final lap. I believe characters also send us tips that can help us develop our stories. An overheard snippet of conversation in a restaurant, a picture that pops up during an internet search, or a “found” object might be a hint from a character. Once I discovered a golf tee on the floor of my car. I hadn’t played golf since college and no golfers had ridden in my car in years. However, the tee turned out to be an important clue in one of my books.

The End Game

Do authors know how our books will turn out when we begin writing? Sometime yes, sometimes no. Agatha Christie supposedly carefully planned her stories’ plots before penning her novels, so she could design clever puzzles for her readers to enjoy. Stephen King, on the other hand, believes, “Outlines are the last resource of bad fiction writers who wish to God they were writing masters’ theses.”

Plotters probably don’t waste as much as time as pantsers do writing, editing, deleting, debating with themselves, and rewriting. For me, however, handing over some control and responsibility to my characters takes me down side streets I might not have explored on my own. It also gives me a measure of freedom and a sense of camaraderie. I’m not in this alone, and I trust them to see me through to the finish line.

Sometimes authors think we know where a tale will go and where it will end––but then “the plot thickens” as the saying goes and the path we were following leads somewhere else. That’s what happened to me in When the Blues Come Calling, the fifth novel in my Lizzie Crane Jazz Age mystery series, scheduled for publication in October 2025. The suspects kept changing, and I didn’t know whodunnit until the next to the last chapter of the book. I hope readers won’t either.

For me, writing a novel is an exciting adventure, an escape from the problems of the everyday world, and a search for meaning all rolled into one. Having my characters and my readers along for the ride makes the journey a joy.

Bio

Skye Alexander is the author of more than 50 fiction and nonfiction books. Her stories have appeared in anthologies internationally and her work has been translated into fifteen languages. In 2003, she cofounded Level Best Books with fellow crime writers Kate Flora and Susan Oleksiw. Her Lizzie Crane Jazz Age mystery series includes five traditional historical novels set in the 1920s: Never Try to Catch a Falling Knife, What the Walls Know, The Goddess of Shipwrecked Sailors, Running in the Shadows, and When the Blues Come Calling. Visit her at https://skyealexander.com

 

Plotting by Nancy L. Eady

 So, what do Frances, a golden retriever, Scout, a Maine coon cat, Sarge, an African Gray parrot, Vanessa, their owner, and a blessing of the animals ceremony have in common? Right now, I don’t really know. But when I volunteered to contribute a short story to our holiday offerings on Writers Who Kill, the five of them popped in my mind asking to be used in connection with a mystery. 

Frances is insisting on being the point of view character so far; Scout and Sarge are happy to let her do the heavy lifting, and quite frankly, Vanessa would just prefer to ignore the whole thing. I am casting around for a suitable mystery for these four characters and the Christmas season. Maybe one of the trees the church uses to decorate disappears under mysterious circumstances along with sundry ornaments?  

In addition to figuring out a mystery that fits with my characters, I also have to figure out the antagonist and how to come up with the (for me) obligatory happy ending. I really like happy endings. Not everyone does, and not every story calls for one, but it’s my story until the characters completely take over, and I’m going to try to convince everyone about the need for a happy ending.  

I’m also hoping I inject some humor into the concoction. One of my favorite things to do is make people laugh.  

Now is the point in plotting where I send everything to my subconscious to work on while I do other things. Usually (sometimes?) (maybe?) what pops out is at least the rudiments of the story I want to write. Unless my subconscious decides to chuck all of them and make me work on something else….

How do you go about plotting your novels and stories? 

The Villain Speaks by Annette Dashofy

After many months of non-stop writing to meet back-to-back-to-back deadlines, I turned in my latest manuscript to my editor on March first. My next book isn’t due until December, which, for me, is a luxury. Nine months between deadlines! 

It’s a good thing, too, because I’ve pushed so much non-writing “stuff” to the proverbial back burner for so long, I need some time to catch up on those little things like tax prep, annual doctor’s exams, yearly medical tests, and researching the wonderful world of Medicare since I’m fast approaching that age. March, I decided, would be a sabbatical from writing to focus on these matters. 

I’ve done quite well, even managing to slip a home improvement project into the mix. I still have some straggler tasks for this final week, but I think I’ll have that back burner cleared off by April Fool’s Day. 

Or maybe I’m kidding myself and I will be the April Fool. 

Either way, that December deadline is one month closer than it was on March first, so I need to call my muse home from vacation and get back to writing. 

And my writer’s brain is already working on it. 

A week ago, I dug out the proposal I’d sent to my publisher for the next contracted book. This consists of one very generic paragraph. It’s a starting point. I let that paragraph be a seed planted in my brain as I worked on financial reports. Usually, when I do that, my characters begin to discuss the plot amongst themselves and whisper their intentions into the ear of my subconscious. 

Mostly, that’s what’s happening now with one surprising exception. 

While this will be the fourth Detective Honeywell Mystery, Matthias Honeywell is keeping quiet. So is Emma Anderson. The characters who are growing progressively louder are my secondary characters, one of whom has never appeared on the page. Apparently, Detective Sergeant Cassie Malone’s veterinarian husband, Dr. Shawn, is going to be a major player if he has his way. Not what I had planned, but okay, I’ll run with it. 

The character who’s speaking the loudest though is The Villain. Or maybe he’s the one I’m listening to the most. I don’t know his name or even if he’s a man or a woman. All I know is he has a grudge and plans to exact revenge. 

Okay, to be honest, I know a bit more than that, but I’m not telling. The Villain will only share his secrets if I promise to keep them for now. 

One of my favorite mystery-writing tricks comes from Erle Stanley Gardner of Perry Mason fame. I can’t find the exact wording, so I’m paraphrasing, but he advised writers to plot from the viewpoint of the villain and write from the perspective of the protagonist. It’s a great tool. The villain is behind the scenes, driving the plot, from planning and carrying out the murder to covering it up and possibly helping misdirect the sleuth. 

Right now, I’m carrying my notepad with me wherever I go so that when The Villain starts to share his plans, I can jot them down. Hopefully, once I hear all he has to say, I’ll know exactly what Matthias and Emma will encounter once I type “Chapter One” on the page. 

The Accountant: How movies differ from books by Kait Carson

 

My husband and I have a penchant for picking up movies from the Walmart discount bin. Sometimes we enjoy them. Other times, we can’t make it through the first five minutes. It’s like putting your hand in a grade school grab bag. Ya never know what you’re gonna get. The determining factor is storyline.

 Movies, because they are visual, can get away with more story problems than books. Watching the story unfold moves the mind from scene to scene with little to no time for introspection. To a certain extent, books do the same. The reader moves from chapter to chapter much as the viewer moves from scene to scene. In a movie, the action takes place in front of the viewer. A novel’s action takes place in the mind of a reader. If the reader finds inconsistencies, their mind goes to work to resolve them. If the author doesn’t do the same at some point—bang—book hits the wall.

The Accountant is a 2016 movie starring Ben Affleck. Hard not to like it on casting alone. It tells the story of Christian Wolff, a high-functioning autistic child who is a math savant. Wolff’s parents take the child to an innovative school, hoping to cure him. Learning that a cure is not possible, but a normal life is, leads his career army father to undertake Chris’s education and cure on his own. Think tough love and add in martial arts and weapons education. Chris’s facility with numbers leads him to become an accountant, a money-launderer, go-to guy to uncover embezzlers for his organized crime clients, and a vigilante. Not necessarily in that order. He has both a moral code and self-awareness. While there are aspects of his personality he cannot control, he is in total control of his behavior. Throughout the movie, he takes his marching orders, via telephone, from an unnamed woman. I can’t be more specific. It would be a spoiler.

The first time I watched the movie, the violence was off-putting. So much so that I ignored the story. Last week we watched it again. This time, I watched it as if I was reading a book. There was a perfect symmetry to the story. The threads established by the opening scenes run seamlessly through the rest of the movie. The ending makes perfect sense—although the setup is too contrived to survive developmental editors. Tension builds with each scene, and Chris’s character changes and grows in a believable way. This second viewing made me realize the story is not about the action, it’s about Chris Wolff and his journey through life. It’s a pure redemption story and from that point of view, never strikes a wrong note.

 As a writer, I’m familiar with Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat. It’s an essential “beat sheet” for movie scripting. The Accountant originated in script form and hit every one of the beats. As a writer, I’m also familiar with the work that goes into connecting those beats. The action story of The Accountant moved from beat to beat with little connection. The redemption story filled in the blanks between the beats, but wasn’t developed until the second half of the movie. This format worked in a visual medium. It would be a much harder sell in a novel where the reader would look for a reason to care.

Readers and writers, do you prefer movies written directly for the screen or those adapted from books? If you prefer those adapted from books, do you find the movies hit all the highlights or move apart on their own trajectory?

Writing Gymnastics by D.R. Ransdell

A huge benefit to being a writer is that anything that happens is a tool. The person at the grocery store is rude? A minor character for your next novel. Someone cuts you off at the intersection? You monitor your own reaction, promising to transfer it to your protagonist. You can use everything; it’s like leftovers in the fridge. You fashion bits and pieces into a satisfying meal.

 

I recently started attending an adult gymnastics class. Most of the participants are teens or twenty-somethings. (I’m the only true adult.) We do gymnastics for fun, not for competition. One day a new student showed up. He was twenty minutes late into a ninety-minute class, so the coach had to stop mid routine and attend to this newcomer.

 

As we continued our warmup exercises, I appraised Sam. Although his shoulder-length hair was tied behind his head with a rubber band, he did not look like a regular gymnast. He wore khaki shorts and a button-down short-sleeved shirt rather than workout clothes. Didn’t he have at least one t-shirt? Was gymnastics the last thing on his mind when he set out that day? Maybe he saw the Gymnastics World sign and stumbled in.

 

As we stretched into splits, I kept my eyes on Sam. He was a good-looking kid, perhaps seventeen. He was thin and wiry as if he never ate enough. In high school he would be an outcast, someone who never fit in and struggled to make friends. So when we transitioned from warming up to tumbling, I greeted him and welcomed him to the class.

 

Sam had an easy grin even though he was shy. He introduced himself but didn’t offer further information. When we started in with somersaults, however, his body told me a lot. He had no form. He had no control over his body. But he could throw himself into the air and twist multiple times. When Coach Paul asked for a roundoff, Sam ended it with a backflip, a trick I only attempt after an hour’s warmup. Throughout the rest of the tumbling, Sam continued to do more than asked, veering off dangerously to the right or left of unsuspecting fellow students.

 

When we were given free time to work on individual goals, I went to the bouncy tumble track but kept half an eye on Sam. He was strong and fearless. He continued to do crazy tricks, wild flips and twists over which he had no control. After he did an amazing hard double back, a trick I will never achieve, I complimented him.

 

“Have you done a lot of gymnastics?” I asked.

 

“Nah. I just mess around with my friends.”

 

I mess around with bocce ball. Maybe with weightlifting. But gymnastics is not a sport I would ever recommend messing around with; there are too many ways you can land on your head. Yet Sam carried on, undaunted. While the rest of us worked diligently on slowly building our skills, Sam flew from the high bar into the cushioned pit as if the equipment were designed for him.

 

Coach Paul watched with concern. Students so fearless and uncontrolled are dangerous. They attempt tricks they’re not ready for, adds dents to the wall (there are many), act without thinking through their movements, and learn everything the hard way. Ouch. Yet Sam made it through the evening without hurting himself or anyone else.

 

And he came back to the next class. I felt bad for Coach Paul. If I were in charge, I would constantly worry that Sam’s next trick would send him through the window or atop unsuspecting gymnasts. But as a fellow student, I can enjoy Sam whole-heartedly as long as I stay out of his way. As I observed him during that second class, I kept wondering what makes him such a rebel. Bad relationship with his parents? Drugs? Bullies? He had the money to pay for a set of gymnastics classes, so he’s not destitute. Are his parents funding him? Are they desperate to find channels for his crazy energy?

 

By now Sam has come to yet another class. I engaged with him a bit before he spun off into his own universe. Eventually, I’ll get this story. It will come out one night once we’ve all tumbled ourselves so silly we can’t lift our arms anymore. He’ll talk about his foster care or his drug-addicted grandparents or tyrannical teachers who hated him so much they never gave him a chance. Maybe he’s been in juvenile detention; maybe his cousins did time with him. Or maybe he’s from an affluent background, has loving parents, and has no idea why he rebels. I can’t wait to find out. In the meantime, the character I base on him is all mine. Should he be the hero or the villain? Probably both.

 

Writers are all mini-Sams. We throw ourselves into our stories. We front somersault into our drafts without knowing where we’ll land. Even if we plot, we later un-plot, replot, cross-plot. We take risks by writing scenes that leave us sprawled between the uneven bars and dialogue that shake us from the beam. We regain our balance only to lose it again. An important unknown stems from our characters. Once placed into our stories, they’re gymnasts on trampolines. They flip around recklessly without our permission. At first, we watch as worried coaches. Then we thank them for their unstoppable energy. And use it.

 

Bio: D.R. Ransdell writes from the heart of the mariachi world where men cry over lost love and women exact revenge! The protagonist for her murder mysteries is a violinist, but Andy Veracruz spends his time chasing lost musicians rather than learning new songs. His latest adventure, Substitute Soloist, won a silver Independent Publish Book Award. D.R. is a violinist herself. Her musical tell-all, Secrets of a Mariachi Violinist, won the 2019 New Mexico/Arizona biography award. By day D.R. teaches composition at the University of Arizona, but her students don’t write as many drafts as she does! www.dr-ransdell.com

When Research and Plot Align by E. B. Davis

I was writing a short story to the theme of holidays, specifically Homicidal Holidays, one of SinC Chesapeake Chapter’s anthologies. The plot was formulated in my mind. Perhaps there was a bit of nostalgia in setting the story during the historical time of my college days, in the late seventies, in Washington, D. C., where I went to school. But another part of that decision was due to my intimate knowledge of the place and time.

 

During college, I experienced a mystical morning. I’d awoken early in my dorm room. It was snowing, and for some reason, I wanted to drive to Georgetown. Inexplicable. But as I was from Pennsylvania and had snow tires on my car, the weather wasn’t a deterrent, especially at the age of nineteen when there are no barriers. As I made my way down Wisconsin Avenue at the top of Georgetown, I realized that no cars had traveled before me. The street was serenely quiet. I pulled over into a rare parking spot that on no other occasion would have been available. I got out. No footsteps, car tracks, or even bird tracks marred the snow’s surface. No one opened a door or popped their head out of a window. I may be one of the few in the world who have ever beheld Georgetown unpopulated without human interference. Georgetown was mine.

 

Perhaps because of that experience, I decided that I wanted snow in my short story, and could think of no better holiday to illustrate the Washingtonian experience than Presidents’ Day. So, I began to research. It didn’t have to be authentic. But I asked myself, had there been any snowstorms in the late seventies over Presidents’ Day weekend? I found there was one in 1978, which was actually a year after I graduated, but no matter. The year was set.

 

I had already determined the murder would take place on the C & O Canal running parallel to the Potomac River in Georgetown. It was a secluded area with few businesses along it—a perfect place for a snowy evening murder. (And yes, the motive was revenge, and yes, it was cold.) My characters were much like myself at that age. From Pennsylvania having a car with snow tires and few deterrents. But what would draw my characters there, at night in the middle of a snowstorm?

 

During the seventies, there was a bar/band venue called The Cellar Door, on “M” Street, which also parallels the C & O Canal and Potomac River, close by to where my murder would occur— how convenient—the scene prior to the murder would be held there. I wondered, on the off chance, if a band was booked for that weekend. I researched The Cellar Door’s schedule. Yes—George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers played there on the Saturday before Presidents’ Day in 1978. The performance review said George dragged a long cord from the amp to his guitar, went out into the middle of “M” Street during the snowstorm and played in the deserted street. Knowing of George, I didn’t doubt the review’s claim. Had I but known, I would have been there, too!

 

The research and my plot aligned. I began to write.

 

Needless to say, my short story made it into the anthology, which was published in 2014. There have been a few times when the research I’ve done aligned and enhanced a plot. When it does, my writing is stronger. I have confidence in my story. That’s wonderful, like a story that needed to be told.

 

As a writer, have you experienced the beautiful marriage of research and plot?

Adieu, for 2018 by Kait Carson

It’s hard to believe this is my last blog of 2018. Where did the year go? Why didn’t it go faster? Oh, that’s another blog, one I won’t be writing. Never mind.

One of the joys of welcoming a New Year is planners, plotters, and calendars. I’m not sure what that says about me as I’ve only recently given up my pantser plotting ways. The moment new calendars arrive, I’m in a track stance. Over time I’ve discovered that Current calendars arrive first – followed by Colorful Images. Now those two companies have joined forces so I can get my wall calendar fix ordered, annotated, and hung (behind the remains of the prior year) by September 15^th.

Waiting for writing planners is more difficult. There’s always something new to consider. I’ve saved prior year blog posts from other plotter rabid writers in my One Note files and it’s Nirvana if they’ve posted updates during the year. I drag my feet while my finger is wearing itself to the nub clicking multiple sites and I’m considering buying a second screen for all those open tabs featuring calendars and planners. Just when I’ve made up my mind, a new one emerges and dang—I’m back at square one!

Not this year. This year I stood strong. I decided to shop for planners early too. That way, if they didn’t work out, I still had time to find others. Seemed like a win/win scenario—for the retailer at least. There is one constant in my agenda planner life. I am addicted to the Quo Vadis Minister planners. The paper is heavy and stands up to a flowing ink pen. There’s plenty of room for events, word counts, plans, everything I need. It perfectly combines my writing and personal life. I love it. So, why look further? I’m a creative. What if I’m missing something?

Last year I read about a new system, Plot Your Work. A few author friends were using it and it sounded fabulous. Of course, by the time I found it, the ship had sailed and we were well into January. Clip and snip and into the One Note planning file it went. I ordered the undated deluxe project planner, received it two weeks ago and dug right in. This is not an agenda so much as a writing system. It does something no other system has ever done. It marries the writing process and the marketing process reminding the author to make plans for the marketing and social media events at various stages.

Finally, it became impossible to resist the siren call of The Bullet Journal. So many writers have raved about how effective Bullet Journals are at organization. And, to be honest, I found one in my favorite color, a turquoise/teal. It’s a work in process for me as a planner. What I do love it for is as a speed journal and as a place to keep track of and catalogue ideas. The concept of the index is brilliant as are the shorthand icons. The author of the Bullet Journal encourages users to experiment and find their own ways to use the book. It’s not meant to be one size fits all and there are YouTube videos of all sorts of suggestions and recommendations.

Early shopping allowed me to start my New Year trials on November 1^st. I’m pleased to say that so far, both Plot Your Work and The Bullet Journal are successes, and are helping me stay on track.

What’s your favorite calendar, plotter, and planner?

Best wishes for a wonderful Holiday Season. See you in 2019.

Enjoy the short stories my fellow bloggers have written. They are wonderful.

Old Dog, New Tricks by Kait Carson

Those of you who follow me on Twitter and/or Facebook may know that I fell in June and broke both bones in my left wrist. I’m right handed by courtesy of the Sisters of St. Dominic, and the bones were more or less fractured in straight lines and not displaced. If all stayed status quo, no surgery. My day job is a paralegal, my typical day is twelve hours, of that ten are spent typing. Keyboards (and typewriters) are left handed. By mid-July the handwriting was on the wall. I needed surgery, and I needed it fast. The bones were healing in some kind of fancy macramé pattern.

I kicked, I screamed, I begged, I pleaded. My doctor said, “You will need to take a medical leave.” I said, “Okay,” and danced a modified happy dance. Visions of hours of uninterrupted writing danced in my brain. Hours of reading without guilt. I’m not sure what planet I was on, perhaps there was something in the air of the doctor’s office, but I was completely on board. I was a tad optimistic, and a tad unrealistic, but overall, it was great. Let me explain.

Over the Memorial Day holiday, I had taken a webinar titled Story Engines. It discussed a modified method of outlining a book and then writing the book in 30 days. Okay, that’s unrealistic (for me), but as someone who has been looking for a way to put more structure in the plotting process, the method struck a chord. Best of all, it works with Scrivener, a writing program I’ve used since the early 2000s.

The writer brainstorms scenes to create story elements familiar to users of the Hero’s Journey, a beginning, a bang up ending, twists, a seeking phase, and a trial and error phase. These elements are put on index cards, then the author uses more index cards to bullet point the bridges between the elements. Easy peasy. If you are using Scrivener, the index cards are in the program, and—I love this part—you can color code them. I use red for my bang up ending, green for twists, pink for my false ending, orange for red herrings (red was taken), yellow for red herring resolutions, blue for clues, and plain white for my bridges. I can move the cards around to create a flow, add cards, or delete them.

Although all of my books and most of my short stories had been written in Scrivener, and I had always used the index cards as part of the Inspector, I had never used the outline feature. Other writers had raved about it, I’d tried to learn it from my copy of Scrivener for Dummies but it never stuck. Finally, as my mother would say, light dawned and day broke. I got it! Naturally, that made me want to use it.

As you can imagine, surgery hurt. My original plan of hours of uninterrupted writing was not happening. Not at first. Hours of hazy pain meds was more like it. So, I indulged in reading a ton of books from my Kindle shelf and fell in love with cozy serials again. I’ve mentioned that pushy twenty-something nurse who’s been driving me crazy, I’d even started the Florida Keys series, but now, I wanted to outline her story and the subsequent books, at least the first four or so, and the overriding arc of her series. Using voice recognition software, a headset, Scrivener, and the Story Engines method, I’m on my way to writing four books and publishing three in 2019. Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

I’ll be returning to work on Monday. I’m curious to see how that affects my word count. I’m currently writing a chapter a day in first draft, plus editing the chapter from the day before.

Writers, have you ever tried something new and found it to be so surprisingly successful?

Readers, how often do you wish your favorite authors would put out new books?

A Plotting and a Planning by Kait Carson

No resolutions this year. Which is good, considering that although I am writing this in early January (and shivering under SW Florida freeze warnings), by the time you read this I’d have broken most of the resolutions. Turns out there is a reason for that, and a solution, and it’s similar to my writing style.

As 2017 faded into 2018, newspapers and blogs filled with stories suggesting goal setting as the avenue to make lasting changes. Resolutions, they say, are all or nothing and once broken, stay that way. Goals provide a different avenue. They can be broken down into small, attainable, chunks. Something that can be measured and achieved. These small successes build on each other until, voila – on December 31, 2018, the goal is accomplished and the change made and lasting. Resolution success by a different name.

Building a year by goal setting makes perfect sense to a writer. It’s the same way we build novels, stories, and blogs. My natural writing style is pantser. I have an overall storyline (the resolution) but no detail to get from inciting incident to satisfying conclusion (attainable goals). In fact, even though I have a general idea of the story, the perpetrator is often a mystery to me until I complete the first draft, and sometimes the second or the third!

A few years ago, I discovered a book that helped me go from pantser to a combination outliner pantser I call a plotster. The book, Rachel Aaron’s 2,000 to 10,000 talked about planning scenes—not the book—using bullet point outlines. The process was a revelation. Scenes are the building blocks of a story like goals are the building blocks of lasting change. Scene by scene the stories in my books unfolded in an orderly fashion and followed an arc to the ultimate resolution.

Goal by goal, the changes I want to make in my life can build on each other to accomplish the changes I want to make in my life. Last year’s traditional resolutions were failures. Forgotten before the month was out. The jury is still out on whether the program will be successful—it’s only January 6 today, but the principles are familiar.

How about you? Did you make resolutions this year? Or like me, did you decide to set goals?

New Book Mania by Gin Mackey

I confess to a fascination with the way writers write books, with the vast differences in approach. I’ve self-published two books, one silly (Suddenly Spying) and one serious (Disappear Our Dead). I’m afraid another is on the way, and there’s no stopping it. Getting ready to write a new book is like a sneeze that’s coming. You know it’s on its way, and you know you better let it, or your head could explode. But unlike a sneeze, in the case of a book, it’s gonna take a lot longer than a nanosecond.

When I feel a new book coming on, a thousand ideas swirl in my head. Another thousand live on the pages of my new book file. I start filling a new book box with columns from newspapers and articles from magazines and various items I think might relate—no matter how loosely—to the idea I have in mind.  

When I go for walks, I stop in random places to write down thoughts. I get acute anxiety when I find I don’t have a pen. When I hurry into a convenience store to buy one, I break into a sweat when they tell me the pens have been moved and they don’t remember quite where. When they finally find them, and I hold one in my hot little hand, I thank them loudly and voluminously. When they stare, I explain I am a writer. They nod sympathetically.

While riding in the car, I don’t turn on the radio; there’s so much noise in my head I wouldn’t be able to hear it anyhow. During this phase I often can be heard mumbling to myself, and people have told me I look cross. But that scowl’s not anger, it’s the confusion that comes with constantly crossing between this world and the fictional one that’s forming.

My office becomes a sea of stickies with cryptic notes, sometimes so cryptic I can’t even figure out what they mean anymore. I found one on my forehead the other day when I looked in the mirror (yes, I’m kidding!). I am in a miasma of information. Nothing makes sense, yet I have to move forward through a hot, smoky blur. I will have to make choices that slam the door on ideas I loved so that others may thrive. Some characters will have to go. I will grieve their loss (no, I’m not kidding!).

I start to write scenelets, scene ideas with a splotch of dialogue in there. I recognize along the way that there are scenes I must write. MUST. I am so over-the-top excited about the scenes I must write that I vow to make every scene in this book a scene I MUST write. (I will later break this vow.)

In a way I don’t completely understand, information is being sorted, connections made, acts forming. The time is coming when the words and stars will align (I hope).

On a three-foot by four-foot poster board, I label the left section the setup, the middle section complications, and the right section the resolution. I don’t recall who developed this technique, but I find it very effective. Here’s what happens:

I start putting stickies containing scene phrases on the board, placing them where I think they should go to create the story, but to be honest, it feels pretty random at times. The beauty of it is, I begin to see how the story might come together and begin to see what my characters need to do to get from this sticky to that one. I add stickies and move stickies and the story emerges, the fog lifting and morphing to shimmery sparkles on the midcoast, Maine sea.

Eventually (and I mean that with a capital E), a book is born, like Disappear Our Dead. The picture of the poster board included here shows the final version of stickies for that book.

Psst! Now I’m gonna tell you a secret. Lean in a little closer. That’s right. I’ve heard tell of an author who makes an outline, and writes straight from that, pretty as you please. Just writes a list of the scenes and then writes the scenes, right in order! Of course I’ve heard of Bigfoot, and Nessie of Loch Ness fame too, and I don’t believe in them. But…you never know. Maybe I gave up on the guy with the roly-poly belly and the sleigh too soon, and maybe there is a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow.

For me, the messy process changes from book to book, and there are always some unexpected twists. For Suddenly Spying, I didn’t know how much time I would spend laughing as I wrote. For Disappear Our Dead—a book about loss and grief and learning to live again—I didn’t know how many tears I would shed. While I wrestled with the plot, Disappear Our Dead was teaching me one of the most important lessons I needed to learn as a writer: Leave my heart on the page. And I did.

Has your process changed depending on the book you’re writing? Have any of your books taught you something you hadn’t expected to learn?

Gin Mackey is the author of Disappear Our Dead, featuring home funeral guide and amateur sleuth Abby Tiernan, and Suddenly Spying, a madcap caper. She lives in Owls Head, Maine. Visit Gin at www.ginmackey.com

Life, a Plot in Three Acts By Kait Carson

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how life imitates art and art imitates life. The conclusion: It’s all a plot!

Yep, no getting around it. We’re all familiar with the traditional three-act structure. Beginning, middle, ending. Any writer will tell you that’s how to set up a story, play, or movie. The beginning holds the inciting incident. It’s where you and the reader meet the characters, the problem, and the story world. In a good story, this part is a slam bang. An in and an out. Think of it as the man in the bowler hat who danced across the vaudeville stage. Enter stage right, exit stage left. Nope, I don’t remember it either, but it’s an appealing image! When done well, this section is no more than a quarter of the book/story/play. Sort of like birth through college in human years.

Some say the beginning should have its own arc and the arc should complete within the first quarter of the book. I respectfully disagree. The beginning should introduce a character arc that should arch across the entire book and not conclude until the very end of the book. After all, the beginning is about making us care about the character and the story. And, in mysteries, the victim. Don’t forget the victim. Without him, there wouldn’t be a story! So, in the beginning, there is—a beginning.

And that brings us to the middle. It encompasses approximately the next 50% of your book. Figure college graduation to retirement. It’s the meat of the story, and it has its own arc. This one is complete in the pages. It’s all about trial, success, failure, and renewal. The character makes a choice. Again, using mysteries as a genre, the choice is usually to take up the investigation. Something has to happen that forces your character to leave her comfy ordinary world behind and earnestly pursue an end goal. It’s time to leave the nest and venture beyond the known. The choice is also a big reason why the beginning has to be short. It’s hard to keep a reader’s interest once they have a handle on what the problem is. The reader craves action, and the middle supplies it. The middle also brings the book and the reader to the twists and turns of the plot. Two steps forward, one step backward, trial and error, red herrings and solutions to the red herrings. The middle needs two plotlines, one that shows progression toward the ultimate goal, and one that shows the forces of evil pulling the rug out from under that nice neat progression. Just like life.

The middle arc has an ending. In life it’s retirement and the new start we’ve worked so hard to attain. In plotting, it’s a disaster with the seeds of solution. The middle climaxes with the big twist. It traditionally takes place three quarters of the way into the book and it leads to the end.

The overarching character arc of the middle is also ongoing. There’s more work to be done to reach a satisfying end.

The last quarter of the book also has an arc. This one ties it all up. The protagonist builds on the knowledge gained in the twist and hatches a new plan. This part of the book moves swiftly, but deliberately to the climax. It can never feel rushed. There’s usually one more twist here. The protagonist has solved the main story problem, but there’s different problem, something personal to the character, that ups the stakes. A personal investment is at risk. And it‘s the solution to the personal investment that brings the character arc begun in the beginning of the book to a close.

The last bit of the ending is wrapping it all up. That’s not to say it’s a rehash of the story and how the protagonist got there, the reader already knows. The wrap up gives the reader a sense of closure and ties up most, but often not all, of the loose ends. It’s the sigh of a life well lived, of goals attained, dreams discovered, and moving on.

Life imitates art, a story in three acts.

What about you? Do you recognize a three-act structure in the stories you love? Do you see a three-act structure in your life?

Finishing a Book and Starting a New One

Less than a week ago I finally got my sixth book in my Catherine Jewell Mystery series published and up on Amazon both as a print book and an e-book. Carnations for Cornelia solves the mystery of who killed a young girl whose skeleton was found in an Underground Railroad tunnel in my fifth book, Murder in the Corn Maze. Also, there is a new murder Father O’Shawnessy discovers in Our Lady of the Roses church one evening – a body murdered like the man in P.D. James’ Death in Holy Orders. Ironically, The Portage Falls Library book club he belongs to had just read and discussed the book that evening.

Because I write in multiple POV’s not only Catherine’s and the police chief John’s POVs, but also police officers Tony Montecalvo’s and Robin Harper’s POVs come into play. Tony is upset because his abusive father has returned after being gone over twenty years, and Robin worries about what is bothering Tony when he refuses to discuss why he’s brooding.

And now I’m ready to start my new book. Since I am going by months starting in June with my first one, this one will be in December so poinsettias will be the flower on the cover. As always, my step-granddaughter came up with another beautiful cover for the last one so I’m sure she’ll do equally well with the next one, but for now I have no idea what the title will be.

I’ve been plotting and thinking of what this next book will be for weeks now. Obviously, since it’s a December book there will be a Christmas theme. I have some of the events going on already perking in my mind. I’ve been jotting down notes, and coming up with some new characters, also. My biggest hang-up was the method of murder I wanted to use. I thought of one idea, but my sister shot it down. She suggested having the victim bundled up in one of those Christmas tree bundling machines would be better. I didn’t like that, but I still liked the idea I had if it would be viable. So on Sunday morning as I was starting out on my morning walk with Maggie, my son Joe called out to me from his back deck. I went over to talk to him and asked if the murder I was plotting could be committed that way, and he said it could be. He also gave me some ways it could be accomplished. This is my son who willingly posed as a dead body for my first book albeit without the garden fork in his back. Later that afternoon I asked my oldest grandson what he thought of the idea. He laughed. He thinks it’s funny I guess that his little, old, white-haired grandma plots murders. Anyway, he also agreed my idea would work.

My murder won’t occur for some way into the book. I read the questions asked of Ramona DeFelice Long from Guppies (a chapter of Sisters in Crime) in a recent question and answer session on the Guppy digests, and her answers to those questions. She is a remarkable editor and has edited all three of the Guppy Anthologies.  The one thing that really resonated with me was there should be someone who mourns the death of the victims. I’ve tended to make my victims not very nice, in fact usually downright nasty, although some times, especially in this last book, I had mourners for both victims. So this time in book seven there will be many mourners for this latest victim of mine. Strange as it may seem, I grieve more for my murderers than for the victim. I feel horrible that they felt murder was their only way out of a situation. Not that I condone what they did, of course, but I feel sorry for those who loved the murderer and are grieving for him or her. Of course, that’s not true with every one of my books, but mostly it is. So far I have no idea who my murderer will be, although I have some ideas, but I do know my victim – that is unless I change my mind.

 

Of course, I will be adding new characters, and that is something I find really enjoyable. One of them is going to be a man who raises and sells Christmas trees. Murderer? Victim? Or merely a suspect? I know but you’ll have to read it to find out. And, of course, I also love bringing back familiar characters. Unfortunately, there are too many characters that both I and many of my readers like so some have been resting for a while. However, I plan on bringing back some of those earlier well-loved characters for this book again. Just who I’ll bring back, and who will be still resting off the page, I haven’t decided yet. Until I start writing and the characters demand to be heard, I won’t know.

If you’re a writer, what characters do you have a hard time getting rid of?

If you’re a reader, what characters would you like to see more of in some of the books you’ve read?

Plotting: My Writing Weakness

For me, plotting is the most difficult part of the writing journey. I think this stems from the fact that I'm an only child and, when I first began creating characters, I thought of them as playmates instead of people with their own stories. I wanted them to stick around so we could continue to have adventures together. After all, that's what happened to the casts on television programs I watched. They kept returning each week for a new episode.

Writing short stories has been a good experience for me because it's forced me to find endings. But, I still struggle to understand and apply story and character arcs.

Recently, I found two books that have been very helpful in guiding me through this process. It's interesting and completely accidental that I selected and read them in the order I did. They fit together beautifully, as if the first serves as an overview and the second explains the basic principles in greater detail.

As far as I can determine, the authors worked independently and did not plan their works as companion volumes. The only connection I've discovered is that they are both active in writing for the Christian marketplace.

The first book is The Plot Skeleton (2013) by Christie Award winner Angela Hunt. It is in fact the first of nine books she has written that provide short lessons about writing craft. The series is called "Writing Lessons from the Front" and includes the following subjects: (2) Creating Extraordinary Characters; (3) Point of View; (4) Track Down the Weasel Words and Other Strategies to Revise and Review Your Manuscript; (5) Evoking Emotion; (6) Plans and Processes to Get Your Book Written; (7) Tension on the Line; (8) Writing Historical Fiction; and (9) A Christian Writer’s Possibly Useful Ruminations from a Life in Pages. I've ordered the entire series, so I'll update you as I read and learn.

Angela Hunt

While The Plot Skeleton is short in length, only 32 pages, it is a strong concept and gives authors an excellent visual image for designing story structure: a stick figure skeleton. The skull represents the protagonist with an obvious problem and a hidden problem (the two eyes). The smile reminds you to give the protagonist an admirable quality. The neck indicates the inciting incident. Following the spine (the path toward the goal) and ribcage (complications) allows the author to map out a story line that reaches a point (the hip) where the protagonist experiences failure and must seek assistance. The thigh is the receipt of help, the kneecap is the lesson learned, the calf is the epiphany and decision to act, and the feet are the resolution.

Rebecca LuElla Miller

The second book, Power Elements of Story Structure (Power Elements of Fiction Book 1) (2014) by Rebecca LuElla Miller, began as blog posts. Miller provides a step-by-step process of developing a story, beginning with an exploration of what plot is, then considering specific aspects of plotting like three-act structure, scenes, stakes, and introducing information while keeping the story moving. In demonstrating her points, she makes reference to excellent resources and uses specific examples to demonstrate effective use of the principles she describes.

For example, Chapter 14 explains how backstory may be revealed through character memories or flashback scenes. Rather than having a character hear a bell chiming and think that it reminded him of a past experience, Miller suggests the sound of the bell causing the character to react in a manner that became habit when he heard the bell as a boy. The Amazon listing indicates Miller's book is the first of a projected series.

I hope you might consider each of these books on plotting and check out the authors' websites. Both are experienced and knowledgeable writers with the ability to teach the skills they have learned. Also, they are generous with their advice. Angela Hunt's website is http://www.angelahuntbooks.com and Rebecca LuElla Miller's website is http://rebeccaluellamiller.wordpress.com/.

What's your writing weakness? What sources have you found helpful to build your writing skills?