{"id":5041,"date":"2007-01-19T16:17:29","date_gmt":"2007-01-19T16:17:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shilohwalker.wordpress.com\/2007\/01\/19\/plotting-can-happen\/"},"modified":"2007-01-19T16:17:29","modified_gmt":"2007-01-19T16:17:29","slug":"plotting-can-happen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shilohwalker.com\/website\/2007\/01\/plotting-can-happen\/","title":{"rendered":"Plotting can happen!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Did you all know that?\u00a0 And I’m not talking to the writers who can plot out the beginning middle and end of three books and know what’s happening in the fourth before they even start the first.\u00a0\u00a0 JR, if you’re reading this… you suck, darlin\u00a0 \ud83d\ude09\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0I’ve been working on the\u00a0first Veil\u00a0<\/em>book and I’ve actually managed to write out something that even my high school English teacher would admit was an outline.\u00a0 Maybe a very rough, nearly illegible outline, making sense only in my mind, but we won’t be picky.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The first story I can remember writing was a 30 page, handwritten pseudo-horror thing that I wrote in Mr. King’s history class.\u00a0 It was called Dark Alley.\u00a0 <\/em>I vaguely recall giving it to a friend to read and she never gave it back.\u00a0 But I was pretty proud of myself.\u00a0 I’d rewritten endings before(hey, I was a kid!), started my own ideas but never finished them.\u00a0 This one was all mine and I finished it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since then, I’ve written more stories than I could possibly count.\u00a0 I have a huge stack of old wirebound notebooks full of stories that I can’t throw away even though I can barely read the purple ink (what was I thinking) because somewhere in that crappy writing, there are the possibilities of some decent stories.\u00a0 Probably twenty or more.<\/p>\n

I’ve published more than thirty various books, novellas and short stories since I was first published three years ago.<\/p>\n

And with the expection of maybe five books, all of them were written without much plotting at all.\u00a0 No synopsis.\u00a0 No outline.\u00a0 Nada.\u00a0 The only ending I was certain of was that\u00a0Hero and Heroine Will Live Happily Ever After<\/em>.\u00a0 How I was going to get there was a mystery to me.\u00a0 Plotting something out was an alien idea.\u00a0 I mean, what I was doing worked, right?<\/p>\n

Yep. It worked. But it also wasted a lot of time.\u00a0 In 2005, I had my first full length book that I was scheduled to turn into my editor by August 1 of that year.\u00a0 In April, I had about 200 pages and I was moving along okay.\u00a0 Then the story stalled.\u00a0 In May, I had a miscarriage and I didn’t write most of that month.\u00a0 I shut down. I didn’t want to write. I didn’t want to do anything but hold my two babies and grieve over the one I’d lost.<\/p>\n

Then June rolls around and I sit down and open my laptop.\u00a0 I still didn’t want to write.\u00a0 But I had this stalled story that was due in less than two months.\u00a0 I didn’t want to write, but I’d signed a contract, received a part of my advance and I had two kids that I have to provide for.\u00a0 So I made myself look through it.\u00a0 And I saw why it wasn’t working.\u00a0 So I trashed all but 80 pages.\u00a0 80, out of 200.\u00a0 It was due in less than six weeks and I wasn’t even half way done.<\/p>\n

I finished it on time, after panicking, freaking and emailing my agent a million times to let her know I might not meet deadline.\u00a0 Bless her heart, she dealt with me and my anxiety attacks and told me to relax.\u00a0 She’d email the editor and let her know and everything would be fine.\u00a0 In the short run, it was.\u00a0 I finished the book.\u00a0 It kept my mind off what had happened, actually, until a little more time had passed and I could look back without breaking down each time I thought of the baby we’d lost.\u00a0 And in the fall, we got pregnant again.\u00a0 It still hurts thinking of the baby, but if I’d carried her full term, then we wouldn’t have had the precious girl we have now.\u00a0Just goes to show how God can take with one hand, but give something else with the other.<\/p>\n

But this thing of scrapping more than half a book wasn’t new to me.\u00a0 I’d done it before.\u00a0 It wasted a lot of time.\u00a0 I’ve said a million times that I’m not a plotter.\u00a0 I write by the seat of my pants and I don’t want to change.\u00a0 But the way I was writing wasn’t productive.\u00a0 I wasted so much time because I didn’t sit down and try to think my way through the twists and turns of the story.\u00a0 I could have used that time to write an ebook for one of my various publishers.\u00a0 Used it to read more.\u00a0 It just wasn’t cutting it.<\/p>\n

One of my fave sites is PBW<\/a>‘s blog (aka Lynn Viehl\/SL Viehl).\u00a0 She offers a lot of advice on plotting and writing in general.\u00a0 A few years ago, before I even considered trying to plot, Toni Blake<\/a>\u00a0gave a great workshop at a local RWA chapter meeting.\u00a0 Even though I knew plotting just wasn’t for me, I took a few notes.\u00a0 Going back and forth between Toni’s advice, PBW’s advice and winging it, I developed some sort of system.\u00a0 Using that system, I finished a full length book,\u00a0Hunter’s Salvation<\/em>. It took a couple of false starts, but once it started flowing, it worked.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I’m working on Veil<\/em>, the first of what might be a new series and I’m plotting out by using a scene outline.\u00a0 Each major scene briefly outlined in order.\u00a0 And you know what? For the first time, ever, I actually know a little more than just Hero and Heroine Will Live Happily Ever After.\u00a0 <\/em>I know how they are going to get there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Did you all know that?\u00a0 And I’m not talking to the writers who can plot out the beginning middle and end of three books and “Plotting can happen!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10161045129738658_54762468447":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[31,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-books","category-writing"],"yoast_head":"\nPlotting can happen! 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