(and want to learn to do other stuff good too)

If you’ve read anything in my WJ you know plotting is my least favorite thing to do with a story. George R. R. Martin calls it a gardening approach - which sounds better than ‘making it up as I go along’ so we’re going to lean into that and think positively during this post. 

I don’t like planning things in general - vacations, appointments, what to eat for the week. This carries over into my writing too. I have shapes and colors of what I want to do - maybe emotional peaks and valleys, but laying that out and figuring out chapters and scenes is just…I know it’s helpful and I’m not knocking those who do at all - I just can’t be that person.

So. If you’re also planning-averse, I have some tips for how to help shade in the details of your story. 

Write Something Bad
Don’t be so afraid of not knowing where the story is going to not even start. Just write it. Stumble through it and then go back and edit the hell out of a thing until it’s where you meant to take it. 

Shapes and Colors
This is how I start almost everything. Like I said, I’m not good at details - the shading and hues and contrast and nuance - that has to happen in the moment or after three showers worth of random thought bursts. When I start a thing I’m writing paragraph blocks of ‘and then this happens and this happens and she reacts like this and it’s probably raining outside cause that’ll give it a sense of foreboding.’

It’s the basic shape of a scene or a chapter or even a whole story sometimes. The primary colors that are needed. Then I got into each paragraph and turn it into dialogue and actions and inner-thoughts until it looks like the actual picture I was wanting to draw. (p.s. I can’t draw so this analogy might be fucked by whatyagonnado). 

This is really helpful for moving ideas around. When I get to fleshing out a chapter and realize something isn’t going to make sense there anymore, that block gets pushed to the next chapter’s GoogleDoc to figure out. Sometimes blocks sit in my ‘planning’ doc for a while before they find a chapter to call home. There’s a part of Savage Love in my planning doc that will be a flashback or missing moment coming up because I love the idea but haven’t had a place for it yet. 

Here’s the three paragraphs that became Savage Love Chapter 04:

Quote

She goes to work (mimic chapter 1) and wonders how many of them know the truth, how many are just naive like she was. New recruits being brought in and lied to. She leaves and goes on another mission. The mission ends in a fight that nearly gets Anders killed and she saves his life because she needs him to lead her to the person behind it, but she feels disgusted that she saved him. He kisses her, being grateful, and she lets it happen hates it is confused by it. He applauds her work, her ruthlessness, her deadliness. 

The lightening around them flashes - i guess it’s raining - and then it’s like she’s back in the ballroom at Rosier Manor, Scorp’s kiss burning her from the inside out, then it flashes to Anders in that same memory, then she’s in the vault being burned alive. Play it off like time is mixing events and confusing things in the rift she must have created being here like she is. 

She leaves him, telling him she’s lightheaded and needs to lay down, she’s going to go home, then apparates away, recognizing the loft as she looks around from the floor. She sees Scorpius come in dripping wet. He drops whatever he was carrying to rush to her side and tries to help her. He’s angry when he asks who did this to her. She tells him it isn’t his problem, she just got a little dizzy after apparating. Build the heat and banter - then Albus comes in and kills the buzz.

Putting The Puzzle Together
So something that’s gonna not make sense seeing as I got on a soapbox at the start about not planning is that I do love a plot twist and leaving breadcrumbs for my reader. How does one do this when they don’t know where the breadcrumbs are leading or the plot is twisting?

You gamble. Honestly that’s how I do it. I’ll pepper in details or threads for me to tie together later and sometimes it pays off and sometimes they’re just errant details that flap in the wind. I usually have a running list of things I’m meaning to tie-in or refer back to as I write and when the moment arises it - loop-di-loop-and-pull.