A Plotstorming Technique
By Jan O'Hara | July 20, 2020 |
Scenario #1: In revision instructions for your manuscript, your editor asks you to make backstory available through active discovery rather than dialogue. This means inserting a scene or two in the second act, which sounds great in principle. Except the book’s plot became fossilized some time ago for you, and you can’t see where to begin chiseling.
Scenario #2: You’ve written an over-the-top romantic dramedy filled with office politics and secrets. The climax requires a confrontation between three characters which will preferably take place without any possibility of interruption or escape. Also preferable? That it assumes the qualities of a Hollywood set piece, with a backdrop of cinematic appeal, stunt performances, and an outrageous budget if filmed.*
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There’s a brainstorming technique I’ve used to good effect to solve challenges such as these, and I’ve recently discovered it’s not obvious to other writers. So in case this will be of help to some of you, here goes.
Begin by listing your story’s known or potential settings.
I like to start with geographical formations and move from the big picture to the granular. If I were writing a space opera, for instance, my list would begin by naming the solar system and planetary options. It might conclude with the layout of a specific star cruiser’s engine room.
In your list of assets, don’t forget to include man-made infrastructure related to politics, healthcare, education, commerce, and transportation.
As with all brainstorming, don’t limit your imagination. Later, you will discard some items as being a poor fit for your story’s genre, tone, or level of realism. For example, you’re unlikely to want a James Bondesque setting for an introspective education drama. Or a safe injection site within a sweet, fantastical romance. But for now, just go crazy.
If I were writing a story set in a small town in the Rockies, my list might go something like this:
- mountain > stream, lake, waterfall, valley, bear, moose, hiking trail, glacier, forest, squirrel!
- town > market, library, bridge, hospital, restaurant, gift shops, ski lodge, citizen’s homes
- highway > roadside pit stops, roadside camping/picnic site, gas bar, construction areas, toll booths
Then I’d take one of the above items and break it down further.
For example: glacier > tour company’s office, touring bus, ice cave, meltwater stream, crevasse
Pro tip #1: As you write, you’ll likely find plot elements start to suggest themselves. Jot them down and keep going unless you’ve stumbled over the perfect solution.
Pro Tip #2: Depending upon your general setting and characters’ resources, your location-related assets might be limited or vast. (For example, a murder mystery featuring a globe-trotting billionaire versus a miner trapped by a cave-in.) In general, the fewer the setting options, the more granular you will need to go to find inspiration.
Running dry on location ideas? Broaden your repertoire.
- Do the unthinkable and dig out a paper map. (Joke.) Online maps are good, too.
- Perform an internet search for local attractions, paying particular attention to images. Sometimes they’ll suggest possibilities where words fail.
- Go for a drive while keeping your eyes peeled. Even if you’re writing a book set in an exotic location, when your gaze lands on your city’s basement library, it might suggest a useful idea. For example, what if your character lived in Taliban-occupied Afghanistan and you made them an avid reader? How would they go about acquiring a book…?
Write activities that correspond to your inventory of settings.
Some settings offer a virtually limitless supply of activities. Others can be more limited. But now take your list and brainstorm how you can put your locations to use. Write them down.
For instance, at a roadside gas station, people might: steal gas, pump gas, repair a flat tire, buy cigarettes, discover their credit card won’t work, fight over snack purchases, slip on a wet floor and break a bone, take refuge from the rain.
You don’t need to spend forever on this but try to get at least a couple of activities for each location.
Mine your manuscript for unconsciously seeded ideas.
I’m amazed at how often my subconscious leaves plot hints. A throwaway line in dialogue can suggest a source of tension (yay, conflict!). So too, an existing character’s micro-climate can point to story ideas.
To that end, make a separate list of known or probable characters, including secondary and tertiary ones. Then take a moment to list the locations they frequent and the potential activities suggested therein.
Sometimes this works even better if you mind-map it, with your character’s name forming one center of a word cloud, and their micro-settings radiating out from it, then the potential activities from the micro-settings exploding out one level further.
Click to see larger version
Pro Tip #3: Do your mind map on a piece of butcher paper, allowing a few inches per character. Then see sit back and watch the lists cross-pollinate.
For example, let’s say I’m the author in Scenario #1 above, and I’m writing a cozy mystery set in a small mountain town. My amateur sleuth, Lula, needs to stumble over an important clue via an emergency doctor. I need a way to push them together that feels organic to the story. But Lula enjoys good health. What are my options?
Via my lists, Lula already has a known intersection with her Aunt Betty. They typically have lunch together after Sunday church, when Lula takes Betty her weekly groceries. Upon reviewing my manuscript, I see that Aunt Betty had a flood twenty years ago that warped her kitchen cabinetry such that one drawer likes to stick partway open. Betty won’t spend money on carpentry. Her hips continually bloom with bruises.
Town > residential housing > Aunt Betty’s house > kitchen > wonky drawer > bruising
Easy enough, then, for Betty to be cooking Lula lunch and suffer a particularly bad collision with the drawer. And for Lula to check her aunt’s hip, see the veritable forest of black and blue, and decide she’s had enough. For her to jerk the drawer out until she can return with a carpenter, apply too much force, and wind up with the drawer upending and a steak knife in her foot. Naturally, this will require a trip to the ER for a tetanus shot.
Lula > Aunt Betty’s house for lunch > kitchen > wonky drawer > knife accident
Alternatively, this could work if Lula is a known hiker: mountain > hiking trail > black ice > rolled ankle > ER.
Magic can arise when you add a fish-out-of-water element.
An exotic location can be rendered joyless by the entitled. (The Chads and Karens of the world who are too upset about their drinks’ temperature to enjoy a view of the Ganges.)
An everyday setting can be rendered extraordinary by an imaginative character. (Anne of Green Gables who made schoolrooms and streams burst with life.)
Contrasts create inherent interest. So as you cross-pollinate your lists, give extra thought to having your characters land in a mismatched setting while undertaking mismatched activities. The result can be great fun.
In summary, this process is somewhat like a pandemic chef conducting a pantry inventory. By knowing the ingredients on hand before cooking, they are more likely to produce fabulous and nourishing meals. Otherwise, you risk a dessert of canned asparagus. A soup made of leftover goat cheese.
Now over to you, Unboxeders. What are your favorite plotstorming tricks? Can you see this method working for you?
*This scenario is from my second novel, Cold and Hottie. The book was nearly complete but I had no idea how to stage the climax. As I went through the above process, I stumbled across a geographic feature I could use to my advantage. Then a list of activities provided an unusual mechanism to get my characters alone. To this day, that scene remains a reader favorite.
A USA Today bestselling author, former family physician and academic, Jan O’Hara (she/her) left the world of medicine behind to follow her dreams of becoming a writer. She writes love stories that zoom from wackadoodle to heartfelt in six seconds flat: (Opposite of Frozen; Cold and Hottie; Desperate Times, Desperate Pleasures). Her latest Christmas novella, The Cowboy’s Comeback Christmas, is part of a 9-author-strong anthology (A Cowboy This Christmas: A Sweet Romance Anthology). She also contributed to Author in Progress, a Writer’s Digest Book edited by Therese Walsh.
A powerful system! Settings really are good ways to inspire ourselves about what might happen.
I’ve used an approach like that a few times. Along with brainstorming, I like to look at a setting from a sense of its “why” moving its “whats” around. That is, I look at the purpose a place was built for, and how that lays out the living space or the gas pumps or the road or whatever it is that people might come there for. Then I think of what else is there, and what people might do with those, including ways they might break down on their own. That gas station has gas, but it might also be the only bathroom on a long stretch of road, a source of snacks for kids to fight over, or a cash register that’s getting robbed.
If I want to go a step further, I’ll give a place a layer of history: it was built for one purpose, but that’s been changed or adjusted since then. One place might have gone more upscale than its roots are; another might be an Abandoned Warehouse or the next best thing. (Natural settings are all about this: terrain and ecosystems evolve along their own logic, and then humans try to make them their own.)
And, I’m a big fan of Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi’s Urban Thesaurus and Rural Thesaurus. They’re a superb list of options to start thinking about settings.
Ken, ooh, I like that idea of how a setting’s original purpose or aspects can be altered through time or intent. Will have to remember that. Thanks!
Also, I have the Ackerman/Puglisi books but keep forgetting to access them. Thank you for the prompt.
Jan, thank you for this wonderful, chock-full-of-ideas post. It’s going into my ‘craft’ file, but not before I re-read it a few times. There’s so much gold here. I’m coming to the end of a first draft and looking toward revision with an armful of edits and suggestions from my eagle-eyed book coach. Most of them are about cause-and-effect connections, so I especially love your butcher-paper mind map. I’ve done versions of it to plot out Draft One, but always little quickie thumbnails. Now I think it’s time to ‘go big or go home’. Hope you and yours are well!
We are well, thanks, Susan. Hope the same is true of you and yours!
I’m delighted you found this helpful.
I love computers, but there’s something so freeing about mind maps and paper. Wishing you many happy plotstorming sessions ahead.
I love lists as a brainstorming technique. I read a book on creativity years ago (can’t remember now what the book was) but the author was a proponent of writing a list of ten options to whatever it was you were brainstorming, and then writing a list of ten more options, and then ten more, and you keep going until you absolutely can’t think of anything else. The only rule is that you don’t censor yourself with the lists, you just write down whatever you can think of that might come to mind. The first ten options are the more common answers to the questions you need answered, the next ten+ are the more creative answers. Some are obviously ridiculous, but you end up with a lot of possibilities that, without pushing for the additional ten+ options, you might not come up with.
I like how your post kind of contextualizes the list making, and wrangles characters into a scene in an organic way. I appreciate the added direction to make the exercise a little more direct. Your concerns on Twitter were not founded. It’s a good post!
Aw, thank you, Lara. You’re very kind. Some posts are akin to dental visits in their production, so I’m distrustful of ones that come together without that level of struggle.
Your comment rings a bell for me. I know Alexandra Sokoloff is a big one for lists of 10. But in terms of going beyond that, could it be our own John Vorhaus? I think he’s a list maker.
Don Maass also suggests asking yourself 10 things that could happen next, or 10 ways a character might react. To me, the process is akin to Wallace Stevens’ poem, 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, and the classic poetry exercise of writing your own 13 Ways poem. Inevitably, something in your perspective shifts right at #10.
Thank you, Leslie. I don’t remember Don as the prompter but I’m sure you’re right. Also, that the technique would work.
You know, I think it might be John Vorhaus! When I read your comment something clicked and I looked up his books and there’s one called Creativity Rules which may be the book I read. Can’t say for sure, but I think maybe…
Also, yes, Don Maass’ lists are very helpful, but I know that the book I read wasn’t one of his. :D
Betcha that’s a match, Lara. I have that book of John’s, as a matter of fact. Might be time for a revisit, too.
This is going in my “How to Write Good” file. I have a book blocking my path, and most of the characters and their foibles are already known. Plot? TBD.
I’m honored, NTJ! Thank you.
I feel stupid for asking this, but should I know the Johnson you are distancing yourself from?
Ah. Never mind. Was about to type that I’m Canadian and might not know the reference, which prompted the thought of other nationalities, which led to the obvious reference.
No, you are not him. Suspect you are a hair-comber, too, which might be one of the smallest differences between you.
This is wonderful, Jan. Your scenario #2 might work as a general challenge for an intense/high-drama scene in a lot of books–I think I could use it in my WIP! (And of course, it would turn out completely differently than it did in your novel…!) Hmmm…I think I’ll try it….
One thing I like to do when I decide on the setting for a scene is to think about places I can circle back to later in the book–because then, when the character returns to the setting and feels different about it (or notices different things about it), it’s easier to show how the character has changed, or how their perception has changed.
That’s a fantastic technique, Heather, and one I could make more use of. Thank you for the reminder.
Hope this technique yields fruitful ideas for you! And absolutely: different locales, different voices, different genres–all will lead to different set pieces.
Hello Jan. My first time touring this site. Very interesting. I’m going to try this plotting technique for my next book. This is definitely going to be marked in my favorites. I’ll be back to – Writer Unboxed, in the future.
Thanks for visiting, Shaa! There is a lot of wisdom contained within this url. Hope you’ve found a valuable resource.
“Location related assets” is such a fresh way to think about location, Jan, and I love your tips. Accessing a map—a real one!—served me well when writing my first book, with characters in Rome. It actually inspired scenes for me that I never would have conceptualized without the guide, including my protag’s visit to a museum for the dead, which became a key part of her internal arc. I’m working on a story now that takes place in a locale that is fully imagined, and so I don’t have the peruse-a-map option, but creating one with some fine-grain details I can invent on the spot is a welcome idea. Thank you!
It’s kind of an entrepreneurial/start-up-y mindset, isn’t it, T? What do I have on hand or what could I easily access to accomplish task X?
Enjoy your map production. Having some sense of how your mind works, I suspect it will yield something useful.
I enjoyed your post until it got to “The Chads and Karens of the world who are too upset about their drinks’ temperature to enjoy a view of the Ganges.” Then I could read no further.
Sadly, my name is now associated with racism and bad behavior. So much so that when your 84-year old mom apologizes for giving you a Scandinavian name (a form of Catherine) in honor of her Swedish immigrant father, you know it’s gone too far. My husband Michael (not the proverbial Ken who is now feeling the heat) is super annoyed.
And I have to say it is unfair. While I’m no saint, I’m not a racist either and having your name dragged through the sewer, and worse is about as much fun as having a permanently overflowing toilet in your house. Consider for a moment how it feels to see a drawing of a person called a “Jan” hung from a tree by a Twitter troll. From a business perspective, there are said to be over a million Karen’s in all colors, sizes, and shapes. Do you really want to alienate all of them? I have to believe most of us aren’t racists!
As writers, we have to get into the skin and heads of all our characters. So why make Karen and Chad the continued villains? Although Chad’s now getting a lucky break since Ken’s the new target. Real-life “Karens” recently called out are named Amy, Mark, and Patricia. But I wouldn’t wish this tag on anyone. This kindergarten style name-calling and cyber-bullying should stop. Now.
My first novel touched on the dangers of viral videos and their potential impact on careers and even lives. Precisely what we are seeing right now with too many desperate for video clip entertainment and attacks on so-called Karen’s. Covid-19 is pushing many people with mental issues to act out and break down. Having their “fight or flight syndrome” antics broadcast around the world isn’t going to help them.
My final request is to think first before you call out and shame a whole category of people that happen to be named Chad, Ken, or Karen. Words matter, and this #KarenCares.
Fair enough, Karen. I don’t live in your shoes and took a shortcut to describe an entitled character. (Racism didn’t enter into the calculus. Perhaps I’m not up on current culture, but I believe there are different names being used for the stereotypical racists, not that that would negate the point of your objection.)
My surname before marriage and first name were the source of much mirth and derision when I was a child, and I did find it hurtful at the time. Grownup me doesn’t take these things quite so seriously. But I appreciate this might feel like one hit too many and get in the way of the post’s value for you.