I don’t know exactly where that comes from.
In Bitter Demons, she sort of took on a life of her own. I never realized how jealous she could be. They don’t always turn out to be the people I thought they were. I go with it and let the new scenes take on a life of their own. If I thought a scene would go one way, and it starts to go in a totally different direction, I have to trust that my instincts are right. But also to explore possible story avenues. In my first draft, I let myself be free enough to just get the story on to paper. My personal process is all about exploration and trust. And yes, I use my hello kitty ruler to create the story grid :).
I fill out the story grid and the notecards as I write, always allowing myself permission to make changes, throw out scenes, move things around or whatever I need to do to make the story better. Some kind of twist or reveal of important information. The color of the star matches the sticky tab on the story grid and each fifth card has a red star to indicate a mini-climax or climax in the story. I put colored stars at the top left corner of the notecard. The notecards in the bottom right corner are another tool I use in plotting. I figure out the basic climaxes, the central story action, and how I want the novel to start. If you are a writer and want to know more about story structure, please check out her blog or her book, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors.Īnyway, this is how I start, but I don’t usually fill out all the scenes before I start writing. She is kind of my personal hero, and I owe a lot of my organizational skills to her. A big part of writing is figuring out your own personal process, so this is part of mine.) I got the story grid idea from Alexandra Sokoloff. (Yes, I know most people call it a 3-act structure, and it really is 3 acts, but it makes more sense to me sometimes as 4 parts instead of just 3. Usually, I use little sticky tabs in different colors and separate a piece of paper into a 4 act structure. When I first start a new project, I set out my story grid. When I finally decided to let go and trust my instincts and trust the process, I realized that I don’t need to plot and control every detail of the novel.
Literally, I took the life and spontaneity of my stories out by over-plotting. When I first started writing, I thought for sure I was a plotter. Maybe a general idea of the central story action, but nothing specific and always open to whatever the writing brings. A pantster is someone who writes ‘by the seat of their pants’. Often, these plots are detailed and exact down to each scene and character motivation. Basically, a plotter is someone who plots their novels out ahead of time. In writer’s circles, there is a lot of talk about whether you are a “plotter” or a “pantster”. Since I’m at the very beginning of plotting Book 4 of the Peachville High Demons series, I thought I would do a post about the way I plot a novel.
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