My Love Affair with Plotting Methods

In the writing realm, you generally run into three groups of writers: plotters, pantsers, and plantsers. If you’re a plotting newbie, let me give you my take on plotting methods.

Plotters meticulously map out the details and nuances of their novels in order to make sure their characters stay on the straight and narrow thereby alleviating the possibility that their story will derail and of their characters run amok. Pantsers laugh in the face of planning as they sit at their computers and allow their story to spring from their fingers, thrilling in the unknown. And, plantsers are somewhere in the middle. This hybrid group recognizes they need some sort of planning as to avoid wandering willy-nilly about their novel with no real goal in mind.

My first attempts at writing were straight up pantsing. I sat gleefully churning out page after page of creativity, allowing myself the liberty to run wild and free through the story, like Julie Andrews running across the mountaintops in Sound of Music. Ah, the elation! Ah, the wild, blissful abandon! Until I bothered to read what I wrote and realized I had no clue where I was going, how I got where I was, or if I even cared what happened next. Inevitably, I would stare at my computer screen like a child in Walmart who’d lost her mother.

After a few attempts at writing in this fashion, I decided I was sick of my gypsy-like writing tactics and swung completely full-circle. Before I started my next book, I vowed, I would plot the entire thing out, leaving nothing to chance. I would know where I was going, by god, before I started. So, I sat at my computer. I made spreadsheets and outlines. I did character analyses and I did a storyboard. I plotted and plotted until I strangled the very breath out of it. By the time I sat down to write that book, I hated everything about it. The characters felt stiff, the plot felt stiff, and I felt stiff from all that time slaving over it.

My most recent efforts fall in the plantsing category. I began with a tentative outline and some scenes sketched out, but now that I’m in the fearsome middle, I’m afraid my characters aren’t motivated enough and that I haven’t set up enough conflicts along their way. So, again I’m questioning my recent strategy, wondering if there is some other plotting technique that would help me.

I have read a couple of books I’ve found helpful with moving along plot. One is You Can Write a Romance Novel by Rita Clay Estrada. (Yes, that Rita. The Rita that THE Rita for RWA is named after). This book mentions setting up each scene with a goal so that it’s driven by an action and has a reaction to that action. Many writing sites online speak of the multiple plot twist/black moment theory I mentioned on another post. Basically, you set up your book into a few “acts” with each culminating in a mini-black moment before the final BIG black moment.

So, help a fellow wench out. What plotting techniques (if any) do you use/find most effective? Help Help Help, I'm in the dreaded middle! Also, are you a plotter, pantser, or plantser? And what aspects of each method do you like/hate?