Hey everyone! I am back on time this week with my regular Saturday post. This post is going to be interesting because I personally don’t always do this step in the writing process, and I know some other writers skip this step as well. Hopefully for those of you who do this step this post will help. So, without further ado...
From Idea to Book: Plotting
Plotting is often the next step in the idea to book process. First the idea, then the developing of an idea, and then plotting. As mentioned above there are often writers who skip this step entirely when writing. Often called pantsers these writers fly by the seat of their pants with their mostly developed ideas and a love of writing. That is not to say that writers who plot do not have a love of writing – they just have a healthy respect for the difficulty of it. There are those writers who are in the middle – plotting loosely but not fully but also not leaving the writing to chance.
But whatever your feelings toward plotting, it is the next step in the book process. There are many different ways to plot, and many writers will use a combination of many different forms of plot devices. I personally have switched between being a plotter and pantser for most of my life, but I have finally settled on plantser – a person in the middle. So, in this post I want to discuss just a few of the ways that I plot my book before writing it.
Story Bibles
One of the things that I’ve found useful for me is to make something called a story bible. Some people’s story bibles are physical things with clips from magazines, print off from their computer, or printed documents. There are tons of different ways to do story bibles and just simply searching for how to do a story bible online comes up with hundreds of hundreds of online resources for just this thing. I’m hoping to make my own post about story bibles someday.
For me, my story bible is usually digital. I have a hard time keeping track of endless amounts of paper and I don’t always end up having time to write while I’m actually at home and often find I have more time to write outside of my home. So, my story bible is digital.
Story bibles can contain anything a writer thinks they might need to know about a story. It can be added to, expanded, or have things taken out of it for later. It’s simply for tracking all those important details, especially the ones that writers might forget. (Like how old their characters are, or when specific events happen).
My story bible also includes character sheets, world building, concept art, and anything else I think I might need for the future. The five-book series that I’ve been working on for several years has a story bible so big it’s almost a story by itself. Since the five books take place for around 10 years there is a chronological timeline section, sketches I made of the spaceships and space ports, lists of characters and which book or which planet or ship they are from and why they are important. It’s endless and goes on and on and on. It helps me to avoid the problem of having disappearing characters or related topics.
For any plotter or plantser the story bible is a very useful plotting tool to help you to write your books. It’s especially useful for me as a plantser because it gives me the ability to add things as my story changes as I’m writing it.
Plotting Sites
The other recommendation I have for the plotting step of the process is to use plotting sites. I have many friends who enjoy plotting that are not very good at keeping their own story bible. There are hundreds of different sites that can help a writer to plot their book well. Some are more free form, and some are very rigid in their assistance.
One of the ones that many of my writing friends have recommended more than once was scrivener. I personally have never used scrivener because from what I know it requires a subscription of some sort, but all of my plotter friends highly recommend it as totally worth the price if plotting is such a huge and important step for you in the writing process. I personally have used Word Anvil for one novel that I wrote for a Nanowrimo many years ago and it was great and worked out really well.
The other good plotting site that I have had recommended a lot by other writers is Plottr. From what I understand Plottr is a lot cheaper than scrivener, but it also focuses more on the actual plot of a book from first scene to last scene that is the emphasis of Plottr. For those who prefer to include all their relevant book information in plotting such as character names, settings, and other things, Plottr might not work the best but for those simply trying to plan the story it’s cheap and easy to use.
Notecard Method
The last method of plotting that I will mention is the notecard method. I have been told that this method is only for the experienced plotter. One of my family members who writes has used this method several times and it works very well for them. I have tried to use the notecard method myself and it did not go well for me as a plantser.
Essentially you will take notecards and write down the basic ideas of each scene in the book on them and arrange them in the correct order chronologically or by how they will appear in the book (not chronologically in the case of flashbacks or related jumping scenes). Then you can arrange or rearrange these scenes to make the plot. If you are writing in multiple character’s POVs you can even color code the scenes to remember which scenes are in who’s perspective.
That’s all of the things that I have today about plotting. Plotting can be fun for those who enjoy it and a slog for those who are much more inclined towards being pantsers. I personally find plotting fun if it doesn’t take too long and so I do a minimum of plotting and add to it later during the writing process. I hope that these methods can help those who are more into the plotting part of the book process.
If you have any questions about anything from this post or any suggestions on other ways that you have plotted that you find useful, feel free to leave a comment below. Next week we will start in on the part of the book process that most people talk about – writing! Don’t forget to like, subscribe, become a blog page member, share, and follow me on social media at the link on the bottom of the page. And remember,
Get Up, Get Writing, and Get Published. See you next week!
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