I’ve got a confession to make: I’m a plantser. I thought I was a plotter until I wrote my upcoming novel. Nope. Firmly in plantser territory. And I’m alright with that. In fact, I think the various ways I outlined the plot in my upcoming fiction book are actually pretty good, which is why I’m sharing the method to my madness with you.
But first, you need a little history. I’ll keep it brief. I hope.
Last year, I decided to commit to writing a book. I chose to use the program I coach and develop edit for, a 16 week bootcamp where you start from zero and create a rough manuscript of a real book by the end of it. It was grueling, but I also knew I would end up with very rough, very ugly, rough draft (I did).
I went into it with an idea of what the book was about and a sketchy idea of the story line. But I’d never written a fiction book before that I’d show to people and hadn’t done much research in the nuts and bolts of the fiction book structure.
I cheated a little. I wrote before I met my editor and had 28,000 words written at that point. I also had a lose outline of what was going to happen, but nothing was firmed up. (Most of those words were killed in draft two, by the way, not that that matters here.)
And then I met with my editor and she shared two books with me – Save the Cat! Writes a Novel and The Story Grid. Anyone who has delved into the subject of fiction writing should recognize these tools. Because they are tools you should investigate to see if they work for you.
But I digress (and I’ll cover those tools on another post some time later this year).
Save the Cat! to the Rescue
I purchased Save the Cat! and sat down to read it. After highlighting and tabbing it, I understood a fiction book structure much better (see my post on it here). So, I sat down to write an outline in that format. For anyone unfamiliar, there are three Acts.
Act 1: The Setup, Catalyst & Debate
Act 2: B Story, Fun & Games, Midpoint, Bad Guys Close In, All is Lost, Dark Night of the Soul
Act 3: The Finale – gathering the team, executing the plan, the hightower surprise, dig deep down, executing the new plan, and final image
Some people break up Act 2 into two parts – to the midpoint and from the midpoint – but it’s still one complete Act.
I stuck with and created the three part, three act structure. I loosely labeled each chapter with the beat I thought they covered and merrily wrote my chapters and handed them to my editor. She left me comments like: “This feels like you ended this chapter mid-scene,” or “These two chapters should get combined and all this stuff in the middle removed because it does nothing to advance the plot. What’s happening here?” or “What’s the goal?”
These were valid comments. I had no idea what I was doing. So, I looked at Save the Cat! again, did some online research and discovered that chapters and scenes should also have a book-like structure. Namely: a goal, a path to that goal, an encounter/obstacle, and a crisis or climax.
At this point, finally!, the light bulb went on and I sat down to create outline version 2. Each chapter not only had a Save the Cat! theme marker, but also an answer to the four pieces noted above.
To sum up my journey so far, I went from (this is a real chapter in my book):
(S) Going Home (She Had Nowhere Else to Go)
- Leaving NYC & Roslynn’s apartment
- Beat: Break into Act 2
TO
(S) Going Home (She Had Nowhere Else to Go)
- Goal: Go home
- Path: On the bus, aunt meeting her at the bus stop
- Set up world-building on wards around town
- 42 people dead on sign
- Include bus driver fear
- Mention missing Thomas
- Aunt drops her off and leaves to find Thomas
- Encounter: Bad memories surface
- Outcome: Climax
- Beat: Setup S
As you can see, it’s a BIG difference. It lays out exactly what’s happening and where I’m going with it. Until I completely change the goal, chapter path and/or themes discussed within. Me <— Plantser.
I finished my book. I had a solid outline. I moved on to revisions and realized…my outline and chapter structure worked, but it lacked depth.
And then I read The Story Grid.
The Story Grid – A little of this, A little of That and Voila! A Masterpiece (Not really)
Warning note of caution here. The Story Grid is dense and intense. And takes a bit of work to use. This is not a tool for everyone because you may not see the book outline in the way that Shawn Coyne does. Or want to. Or like spreadsheets and data like I do. Or feel the need to have a crazy book chart with ups and downs on a line graph. And that is totally fine.
I didn’t use it completely either. I used what I needed from it and left the rest to those really analytical people who find it useful to go as deep as the method requires. These are the parts I used:
- Obligatory Scenes
- Scene/Chapter Evaluation:
- Value Shift
- Polarity Shift
- Turning Point
- Period of Time, Duration & Location
Obligatory Scenes
Every novel genre – crime, thriller, romance, etc. – has scenes that the readers expect to see. For example, for a crime novel, which I wrote, the obligatory scenes are: a crime; the villain makes it personal; red herrings; a ticking clock; speech in praise of the villain; hero at the mercy of the villain; and a false ending.
I took my book’s external and internal conflicts (because they are different) and laid out the obligatory scenes each required. And then I matched them to my written scenes/chapters to see if I had them all, when they occurred, and if they made sense where they were. Any scene or chapter without one of them present was on the chopping block.
Because I have two protagonists, I had to do this twice. Because I like to make things complicated on some crazy level in my brain (I truly thought my book was simple).
But my second protagonist doesn’t appear as much in the book as my main protagonist, so I was less concerned if I missed any of her internal conflict obligatory scenes. I still did the work to identify her internal conflict (it’s different from my primary protagonist) and where her moments to shine occurred to ensure her character arc was present, if not as deep.
Then, I put the two sets together, using spreadsheets (of course). I needed to make sure I had all the scenes covered, but also to make sure: 1) the story arcs for all three conflicts made sense and fit with the chronology of the book; and 2) I didn’t have chapters in the book without a purpose. No purpose here means the scenes didn’t advance either of the two types of conflicts, internal or external, for one or both protagonists.
If they had no purpose, I killed my darlings. It was brutal; murdered chapters, exposition, and the entire first Act fell to my knife.
But first, before hacking away, I did a scene/chapter evaluation to make sure they needed to go (because I really didn’t want to kill them).
Scene/Chapter Evaluation
Using the book’s definitions, plus the author’s very thorough blog, I delved deeper into my chapters.
Value Shift and Polarity Shift were used to add pacing, tension and emotional depth to the scene. Value Shift is literally that – the shift of emotional values the character undergoes during the scene. It could be good to bad, bad to even worse or good to really good (for example).
Polarity shift is a fancy way of saying that you want your scene to have emotional range – the polarity to shift in some way, from +/-, +/++(+), -/–, -/+, etc. This adds a range of emotions to the scene, making it more interesting and less flat.
Turning Points are the choices you make in a chapter that drive the complications to help build the story; they are either a revelation or an action.
Period of time, Duration and Location are self-explanatory. If you know when the action happens and how long it takes, it helps determine what happens next, how long it takes to get there, and who else is present at the time.
After cherry-picking what I thought would work best for me in my process from Coyne’s method, I then evaluated every scene, even if there were two in the chapter (A little reminder: I mentioned at the top of this post – a long time ago – that I wrote in chapters.)
For example, knowing that the chapter started with a Value Shift of denial and moved to dread helped me to add in the body language, dialogue and internal narrative markers it needed to show that to the reader. Knowing when there wasn’t a value shift led me to dig into the the content and see if it was: a) necessary to keep; b) not fleshed out enough to show a value shift.
Knowing that I wanted the Polarity Shift to move from “-” (negative) to “–” (- / –) (more negative) meant I needed to show the slide down and ramp up the emotional payout at the end of the chapter. Here again, I added in more internal narrative, dialogue and body language, all 5 senses, and/or used the setting to help drive this shift in a more concrete way.
Turning Point helped to clarify whether the point of the chapter was a revelation or an action point. That then helped me define what the driving motivation of the chapter was so that I could make sure the reader followed where I was taking them. It also ensured that my character arcs reached a satisfying conclusion at some point in the book.
Period of Time took an amorphous plotline and solidified not only the day and time the action happened, but how long it took and where it took place. This in turn defined what days were mentioned by the characters, if I needed to summarize in some way what happened in the two days we don’t see in the book, and/or kept my own plot on the right schedule. Ie, could all of that really happen in the time I gave it and the place I mentioned, or do I need to break it up and/or add other movement?
This is what the chapter I shared – Going Home – looks like with those additions:
Story Event | Value Shift | Polarity Shift | Turning Point | Period of Time | Duration | Location |
Seraphina spends her last night in NYC with her best friend, Ro | Denial to Dread | – / — | Revelation Ro has moved on | Saturday night, 8 pm | 1 hour | Apartment |
And now, I can add depth, emotional rollercoasters, timelines, etc., to the chapters as I revise them.
And it works.
Caveat: I don’t think I’d use The Story Grid outline addition – this part of it – for the first draft of book two in the series (yes, it’s a fantasy/mystery series), because I just want to get the story – what happens – down on paper. But I do think it is an invaluable tool for revision because it takes what happens to a deeper level than just writing it down.
Conclusion
I know this looks complicated – and it is. However, it’s only complicated because I used two tools at different times as I fumbled my way through my first novel. And, I have two protagonists on different internal conflicts, with an obscured external conflict. And I shifted my storyline and all the conflict points midway through writing the book.
It’s complicated.
But it doesn’t need to be that way for you. You can use my multi-layered approach or use either one of my approaches. Or fly by the seat of your pants. Or do something in between.
Basically, there are many ways to outline a book and this is just my crazy, complicated method, which totally worked for me. You may find a simple written outline on post-it notes works best for you, but hopefully how I got to where I did helped you to see that I’m nuts, my story is complicated, and the tools are useful if you use them in a way that works for you.
After all, they are just tools.