Plot Break
It’s been an intensive four days of writing related work. On Friday Walter Jon, Victor Milan, Ty Frank, Ian Tregillis and I met at Daniel Abraham’s house to help him plot Book One of a new supernatural thriller series. Daniel had provided us with a broad strokes look at the world and a few of the characters, but the “what happens” part was nonexistent. As usual the process began with swirling chaos as we all threw out ideas and asked questions, but eventually it began to spiral in towards an idea of a story, a character arc, character interactions, until we had a planet… er sorry, a plot/book with a beginning, a middle and an end.
We didn’t have a white board for this one, but Daniel was making notes on post-it’s and sticking them up on the wall. We generally break a novel into three acts, and from my experience in Hollywood I find it’s a lot easier to plot if you know the final scene in each act. Then you can fill in the scenes that you know will carry you to that concluding and climactic scene.
I love this process. We laughed, and paced the living room, and the sense of support and freedom is great. You’re allowed to say something stone stupid, or make a really boneheaded suggestion. We used to call this “Holding the Dumb Stick” when I was on Star Trek, and I still have the glitter filled wand that became the dumb stick when I was working the show. The nice thing about the freedom to make any kind of off the wall suggestion is that sometimes they have merit. They just have to be twisted and tweaked a bit, and you’ve got to put them out there for that to happen.
At the end of the session Vic asked me if I thought it worked. I knew something was bothering me, niggling at me like an itch you can’t quite reach. I stood and studied the wall full of notes, and kept poking at it. I tried moving two scenes from act one into act two, but that didn’t work, and then Daniel nailed it. He said “what if I put in a B story?” That clarified what was bothering me. The plot we had was too straight ahead, a little too easy and on the nose. As we fiddled with the B story Daniel saw a way to have that smaller plot dovetail back into the A story in act three in a significant way. And then it was cooked. All in all a very good day’s work and a lot of fun spending time with my incredibly bright and talented friends.
Melinda
May 31st, 2007 at 9:02 am
That sounds like an amazing experience!! And I have to say I am a little jealous (j/k). So far the only real face to face interaction I’ve had with other writers has been at Clarion, and that was back in 2005 and not exactly the same kind of atmosphere. However, I did meet Ian and Walter Jon there so it was worth it. Still, it’s tough writing in creative isolation, but people do it all the time and I’m sure I’ll figure it out.