There’s a Story in Your Voice

By Alex Segura

“How do you plot?”

The question has bounced around my head since I got an email from Jay Stringer asking me to play nice and join the DSD crew in talking about our craft.

I’m not completely sold on the “to plot or pants” debate, which suggests that either you plot heavily before diving into the writing or you just wing it - i.e., start writing and see where it goes and then edit until you have a book. I don’t think it’s so black and white. I know my plotting, for example, is very gray.

My experience writing Silent City was one of trial and error - most first novels are like that. I started with a blank page and wrote a scene where we meet our protagonist, Pete Fernandez, as he awakens - hungover and regretting his misbehavior from the night before. This scene is still in the final book, but later, and it’s changed from the initial first person to third.

But when I put down those first few words, I had no idea where the book was going. I knew who Pete was - sort of. I also knew that he would stumble upon some kind of case while working at the paper and that it might involve a missing woman.

Pretty loose, right?

I wasn’t ready to handle that. I floundered. I spent time over-thinking the details and less time moving the plot along (or “writing”). I got a few chapters in and Silent City took a nap on my computer. Months passed. Finally, I started jotting down ideas for chapters (including a new Chapter 1). The descriptions became longer and the character mentions evolved into mini-bios. By the end of it, I had a fairly robust outline that incorporated my initial chapters and gave the book direction.

The rest is easy, right? So I thought. While having a detailed outline helped, it didn’t do wonders for spontaneity. I knew exactly what was going to happen - and I felt a little bored by it. So, over a few months, I went to what I see as the two extremes of plot vs. pants: the completely liberating blank page and the cluttered, somewhat recipe-like “detailed outline.”

But then the characters started doing things. One of them ran off with a bag of money. Another turned out to be a bad guy. Most shockingly, one of them died in an unexpected car explosion. None of that stuff - the cool, surprising things people who liked Silent City seem to bring up when I meet them - was in the outline. Thankfully, the outline - detailed as it was - still left just enough room for the characters to breathe. To get up and move around and determine that maybe the roadmap Alex created for them wasn’t that set in stone.

I remember trying to rest in bed, staring at the ceiling, after writing for a few hours and realizing the end was in sight in terms of a first draft. All the pieces were in play and I was going to roll into the epic, final battle that would reveal to the reader who the big bad was.

I couldn’t sleep.

The outline, as it was written, had it all mapped out. But something was missing. There was no twist-before-the-twist, no sucker punch to add weight to the final reveal. Nothing out of left field that still made perfect sense. Then it hit me.

I jumped out of bed and typed out a sentence. I’d would go on to write the actual scene the next day, but that line was enough. I slept soundly.

The sentence was brief, and changed the entire direction of a character’s arc in a way that made perfect sense but I hadn’t considered before. It also made the book more interesting and didn’t disrupt what was already in the outline.

So, the lesson learned from writing Silent City that I implemented most in the writing of my second novel was that while outlines are helpful, they should not be treated like scripture. Tweak as you go. Change. Delete. Let the characters do stuff. If the characters are pushing against the outline, maybe there’s something wrong with your outline. Don’t be beholden to an outline.

I read a great quote from comic writer Brian Michael Bendis this week that supports this. I won’t repost the whole thing, but it basically said that writers worry so much about plot, they forget about character and why they’re writing a story.

Don’t do that. Find the happy medium that allows you to feel like you have a complete story to tell, but don’t prevent yourself from being able to improvise and vamp a bit. Your characters will be stronger for it, and your readers will be surprised more often. If you’ve choreographed something, chances are your readers will be smart enough to figure it out, too.

How I Plot a Mystery Novel

by Holly West

Plotter or Pantser? That is the question the Do Some Damage crew has been discussing over the last week or so. I'm mostly a plotter--that is, I do my most efficient work when I outline a project before I get to the actual writing. But sometimes I wonder whether it's my best work. Am I somehow stifling myself by plotting a story in detail before it's even written?

I don't spend much time worrying about that, however. As Jay said in yesterday's post, whatever works. And for me, plotting works. Pantsing--well, it's useful if I just want to sit down and wander through a potential story, but it inevitably leads to writers block when I realize I have no idea where it's going and I've spent the last month writing 40 thousand words, 38 thousand of which might need to be scrapped.

When I plot, I generally use the three-act screenwriting structure, because I have a bachelor's degree in screenwriting and this method works for me. This is more or less the basic outline I used to write my latest mystery, Mistress of Lies. I usually try to fill in as many of these "blanks" as possible before I start writing the novel.

Screenshot of my outline for current WIP

Act One: 20k words
Opening Image

Begin Set Up

Inciting Incident (happens around 5k) - In Mistress of Lies, the inciting incident is a young girl who claims that Isabel Wilde's brother, Adam, was murdered instead of dying of the plague as Isabel had always thought.

Theme Stated or Central Question - The theme is stated by Isabel's brother, Lucian. He says, "Life is for the living, Isabel. Let the dead rest."

Continue Set Up (5 - 15k)

Catalyst/Stakes are raised (around 15k)

Debate (15-20k) - Should Isabel investigate her brother's death or leave well enough alone?

Act One Climax/Break into Act Two (around 20k)

Act Two A (20 - 40k)
In screenwriting, this act is called "Fun and Games" or "the promise of the premise." In a mystery novel, it's the investigation into the murder.

While I do plot it, it's a little less defined than Act One. Basically, I plot out what I think are the logical steps in the investigation, pausing around 22k to introduce the B story and raising the stakes (usually a subtle attack on the hero) around 26k.

At about 30k and leading into the midpoint, I do what Alex Sokoloff calls the "Parade of Suspects." The hero re-visits in some way each of the potential suspects we have. It could be an interview, a date, a confrontation--whatever is appropriate to the character(s) and story.

Midpoint Climax/Break into Act Two B (40k) - Usually, the midpoint climax will take the story in a dramatically different direction. It's often called a "reversal."

Act Two B (40 - 60k)
Continue Fun & Games (or in this case the murder investigation) - Often this will entail a re-calibration in response to whatever happened in the midpoint

Continue B story

Bad Guys Close In/Loss of Key Allies

Attack on Hero (Stakes are raised) (50k)

Dark Night of the Soul/All is Lost - That moment when your hero has lost all hope and doesn't know where to turn. He or she is tempted to give up.

Act Two Climax/Break into Act Three - In a mystery, this can be the revelation of who the murderer really is.

Act Three (60-80k)
The final battle - This can play out in a few ways. Sometimes it starts a "ticking clock."

Final image - A new normal has emerged.

I know, I know. It's a lot of detail. But my historical mysteries have been consistently praised for their good pacing, so I stand by it. And I really haven't addressed all of the elements that make up a good story. This post is simply a starting place for writing a mystery novel using the three-act screenwriting structure. Your milage, as they say, may vary.

The Hitchhiker's Guide To Plotting.

By Jay Stringer

Whatever works. That's the only thing that really matters in all of our plotting chat. You've got a story to finish, and whatever gets you there is okay. It might well be a different thing next time. That's also okay. There's more than one way to take cocaine. Ummm...I mean, there's more than one way to skin a rabbit. Or something. Shit, ignore me.

So any advice you're given should always be taken purely as what has worked most recently for the person giving the advice. It's not a rule, and it might not be the way that works for you.

With that out of the way, here's some specifics about my own methods.

Pantser or Plotter?

I call myself a pantser. But in truth, I'm somewhere in the middle. I know the ending when I set out. I'm a big believer in endings. You haven't told a story if you haven't hit an ending. And because of that, I'm always aiming for something when I write. I don't know the details of how to get there, but I already have the final scene, or image, or line of dialogue. There are times I've tried setting off without knowing the ending, and those are the times I've failed to finish. Also, there are times I've set off with an ending in mind and then gone a different way. Those are fun times.

I've written about dyslexia many times before, so I won't go back over all of it. But what it does mean  is that I knew storytelling and structure before I knew reading and writing. I'd learned from comics, films and television. I find this is common with other dyslexic writers that I speak to; we're bleedin' obsessed with structure. Other writers at DSD have already discussed various definitions and distinctions, whether they're plotters, pantsers, whether they think more of character, whether plot and character are the same thing.

My writing process is really about putting a character into a collision course with something. It might be the ending that I have in mind, it might be a political argument I'm having with myself. It might be the colour blue. It all comes down to throwing character and theme at a structure. If there's no structure there, there's no story.

So, while I talk like a pantser, and while I make up the large part of the book on the fly, I'm always writing with an ending in mind and I'm always aware of three act structure as I go. Even with my first couple of books, when I was essentially learning everything as I went along, I was aware when I was approaching the end of an act, or when I needed to hit some kind of mid-point reveal.

Oooops....

Old Gold is the exception to my rule. It only has two acts. I got to the point where I expected the second act to end, and I hit a moment, and a line of dialogue, that felt like the ending of the book. So I left it there. No third act. And that worked out okay, because then I got a trilogy out of it....

For the book I was writing this year -currently called Criminals- I decided to try things a little differently. I kept a loose road map. I was only plotting ahead one act at time, but it felt like a good hybrid between the two different sides of my writing brain.

So, in case this helps anyone, I'll talk some specifics about writing this book.

How I Structure

Firstly, I took a look at my last few books and decided on a loose guide of where I was going. This is what I came up with, and the numbers in brackets are what I actually achieved;

Act 1-     80 pages  20k words                        (19755)
Act 2A-  60 Pages 15k words                         (13150)
Act 2B-  60 Pages 15k words                         (15769)
Act 2C-  30 Pages  8k words                          (9951)
Act 3 -    60 pages  15k words                         (14221)

You'll see from that rough guide that I break my second act into three chunks. Some people might see this as five acts, but they're not. Act's 2A, 2B and 2C are all very much part of the same long progression, but I use the three-act structure within it to keep things moving. Act 2 has it's own beginning, middle and end, so that the situation at the start of the act is completely changed by the end of it.

Each section of ACT 2 moves things along.

During ACT 2A, the status quo that started the book is still in sight. Things could go back the way they were. Nobody has gone all in. There's a slow burn at this point. Or picture the fuse in the Mission Impossible opening credits. The plot is moving, the fuse is burning, but it hasn't all blown up yet. I do a lot of character work here, but as the act progresses things start to get out of control, there may be some violence or emotional arguments.

During ACT 2B, the slow burn gets fast. The emotional dynamite goes off, and pieces fly everywhere. By the end of this segment, things can't go back to the way they were. This whole section is really the mid-point reversal or climax, but I give myself  plenty of time to linger on it.

ACT 2C is then the point where the characters try and figure out what they're left with after the can of worms was opened. Things are moving out of their control now, but they're not happy about it. They might even be kidding themselves they can stop it. This is all the night before the war, leading up to a point at the end of ACT 2 where everyone is all-in. ACT 3 is coming and they realise they can't stop it, so they just strap in for the ride.

I also make a point of ending each act on an emotional beat, rather than an action scene or some heavy-lifting plot-wise. Sometimes I can managed to do all three in one scene, but my emphasis is always on the emotion. I'm aiming for the feels. The rest is just an added bonus.

In this picture, you can see me keeping track of the structure. The little marks you might be able to make out on the right are for violence. The more stars, the higher the violence. And, of course, as the story progresses, there are more stars.

So there you go. For what it's worth, this is my current process. It may well change completely when I start the new book in a couple weeks.

-Three Acts, but think of ACT 2 as a moving thing, a story in itself, with a beginning, middle and end. 

-End an act on an emotional beat. 

-Have an ending in mind, a landing that you're aiming for. 

-Keeping a visual aid for the structure helps to keep track of the pace. 

-Remember to go to the toilet sometimes.