Planning a Book Doesn’t Mean Figuring Out Every Last Detail in Advance
Me (left) and two of my sisters (the other is taking the photo) with the 10-speed bike I got for my 11th birthday.
I hit 45,000 words in my middle grade mystery the other day. My kid detective has finally discovered a major piece of evidence about the identity of the person who’s been poisoning the wolves at the zoo.
The way she figured this out doesn’t quite match what I wrote in my inside outline last year, but that’s okay. That 30,000-foot view of the story helped me get to this point more quickly than I ever have.
While speed certainly isn’t everything, it’s been good to learn that I can draft a novel in a year. (I hope I haven’t just jinxed myself! I’m not quite done with this draft yet.)
My hope is that this novel will be the first in a mystery series, which means that I’ll need to be able to write a novel a year. This has been good practice for that.
Plotting vs. pantsing
(Quick definitions: “plotting” generally refers to outlining in detail before you start drafting, and “pantsing” usually means writing the story by the seat of your pants, without an outline or plan.)
I used to be a “pantser.” I liked discovering my story as I wrote it. It felt free and creative that way.
At the same time, I was leery of the plotting/outlining approach. I thought if I planned my story in advance, I’d snuff out the creative spark.
My nervousness about outlines probably stems from fifth grade (hence the photo above). We had to create a formal outline, and I remember it being a stressful assignment.
There was so much emphasis on executing the proper form—the Roman numerals, the capital letters, etc.—that I have no memory of the content of the outline.
Was it supposed to help us write a research paper? Probably. I remember researching France and writing a paper about it.
But writing the outline didn’t help me write the paper. The outline was an onerous requirement, not a helpful tool to make the paper writing easier.
The “Blueprint for a Book” process is a helpful tool
One of my favorite steps within the blueprint process is the one called “sketch out the plot.” It uses a basic fairy tale formula (from Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling, Rule #4):
Once upon a time there was ____.
Every day, ____. One day ____.
Because of that, ____.
Because of that, ____.
Until finally____.
And ever since that day____.
This short formula is what I used to lay out the story of my MG mystery. I started with my two detective characters (one is a kid and one is a raven) and what they most desire, what their everyday lives were like, and what happened “one day” to jump start the story.
I really went to town with the “because of that” sections. Each character action had a clear cause and effect. It helped me create a chain of causation that allowed the mystery plot, and a thematically related subplot, to unfold.
At the same time, this simple plot sketch kept me focused on the larger story events. I didn’t yet know the small details.
Instead, those details have emerged in two ways:
Through the character interviews that I conducted before I started drafting
And during the drafting of each scene.
We novelists are made, not born. We can learn to write compelling fiction. The Blueprint for a Book process is an effective way to blend our analytical thinking with our creative thinking and write a novel we’re proud of.