Plotting vs. Prose
I think like plotting more than prose. I love, love, love making bulleted lists about a story’s plot and what is happening, putting in details about what the characters are feeling and their motivations, designing exciting moments in their lives and then arranging them in order with little “connector” points showing how they drift from one Moment in their lives to the next.
When I am plotting, I feel myself humming with creative energy. I see little movie scenes in my minds eye, and write down keywords and mental tags so that I can recall the scenes again later. Sometimes I am writing so fast my hands are a blur and I am making all sorts of typos and I don’t care because I want to know what happens next as much as anyone. More. I put a character through their paces, see where the adventure leads, shave out the irrlevancies, and put it all in order. It’s like a rollercoaster ride that ends in the satisfaction of finishing a jigsaw puzzle.
Writing prose is MUCH harder. You agonize over every word, and find yourself tripped up over things like “what’s that post you tie your horse to called?” or “What’s the design schematic of the outhouse the character gets locked in?” Prose is a lot more work, and yet, in many ways, it is LESS creative than plotting. It’s satisfying when it’s over, but as Myke once said, it’s a bit like sawing your own leg off: It takes a LONG time, and it hurts a LOT.
The most enjoyable is when I plot IN prose. This keeps the thrill of creative energy flowing, keeping my attention focused. However, the problems of that method, which I used for many years and eventually abandoned, are twofold:
One is that when I am making up a story while I’m writing it, there is a real danger of going off-track. I want to explore some little side road, write several pages I like, and then look back and realize it took the story off focus and it needs to be scrapped. So now I have several pages of prose I really like that I can’t use. I can either include them anyway, knowing they distract from the overall thrust of the story, or relegate them to the limbo of my “deleted scenes” file, where they will probably never see the light of day. That time Arlen wandered into an abandoned building, only to find it was now a den for a hungry wolf pack, was awesome, but no one but me and a couple of test readers ever got to see it.
As an aside, if I ever get famous one day and someone other than my friends and family starts going to this website, I hope to make a “deleted scenes” page, giving people a chance to read some of those little side stories and tangents. Kind of like special features on a DVD. Naomi Novik does it, and Naomi Novik rocks the Casbah.
Hey, did I mention that my editor at Voyager is also Naomi Novik’s editor? Like me, she is signed with Del Rey in the US and Voyager in the UK. How fricken cool is that?
See what I mean about going off on tangents? I should have plotted this blog entry out with a bulleted list first…
The other problem with plotting in prose is that I plot MUCH faster than I write, and eventually the plot in my mind gets so far ahead of the prose on the screen that I have no choice but to stop and make another bulleted plot list, lest I forget something.
And then it’s back to square one.
Sorry to bring it all back to Pullman but this was on the NY Times website today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/movies/02mcgr.html?ref=movies
I can’t wait to see this.
I am really psyched to see it, too. As I said, I’ve been re-reading the series in anticipation, and am about 30% through book three. The series is even better than I remembered, and I am enjoying it thoroughly.
I was a little worried, based on articles like this one and a couple others which said that Hollywood had neutered it by removing mentions of the Church (so much for Myke’s “Hollywood has an anti-Christian agenda!” theory), and by cutting out the morally complex “Empire Strikes Back” ending.
But the director made it clear that so much money had been sunk into making this film that they needed a tight, upbeat ending to ensure the movie ended up in the black; a requirement of getting the as-yet-unconfirmed budget to make the sequels. The director claims he intends to maintain the integrity of the cut ending in the start of the sequel, and the story by its very nature will ask bold questions at the concepts of manipulation and control imposed by government and organized religion.
So anyway, I’m psyched again. 5 more days!
Psyched as hell here too. Only wish I could make it up to NYC to see it with you. Ah, well, we’ll text you excitedly from the theatre down here.
I’d argue that Hollywood fears controversy and lost ticket sales far more than it dislikes the Christian faith. Hence that decision.
As for plotting vs. prose – I find myself plotting things out as meticulously as an ADHD guy like me can, but once I start writing prose, it heads off in its own direction, and I wind up having to stop what I’m doing and rewrite my stepsheet again.
I’ll never forget that when I first plotted this novel, I actually wrote story arcs for each chapter. But the story has now gone off on its own so badly that I am just sort of writing, with the chapters acting as pauses more than cliff hangers. One of my big revision challenges will be going back through and making sure that the chapters begin/end in a fashion that adds to the tension.
Oh my God, dude. You can’t do that as an afterthought! You have to construct the arc of your chapters carefully to make them have a beginning, middle, and end, just like the whole story, but making the chapter end be the character resolving (even if only by fleeing) one problem in their life and stepping into the next (which is, of course, even worse than the last).
Seriously. The tension that carries a story forward and keeps the readers invested in the character isn’t some special effect you add with CGI after the regular filming. It IS the regular filming. It is the essence of the story’s energy.
Whether you step it out or plot it as you write, no chapter should be considered complete without that three part arc. If that means ending a chapter sooner or keeping it going longer until you get to a turning point in the character’s life, then that’s what you have to do, but you can’t just treat chapters as regular section breaks or a hard return.
Of course, by “can’t” I mean “really, really shouldn’t”. Far be it from me to tell someone they “can’t” do something in writing.
I half-agree with you that Hollywood’s bias is more one of money and not religion. Controversy is just a factor in the equation. There is money to be made pandering to Christians with The Chronicles of Narnia (and creating controllable controversy with non-Christians), and in the opposite, ala the Da Vinci Code. That’s why I get so annoyed when you claim that “Hollywood” is anti-Christian, like the town is just one entity, speaking with a unified ant-Christian voice. It is utter nonsense.
If you think Michael Moore or Sean Penn is a blowhard, don’t take it out on their neighbors by association.
This writing stuff is hard.
Word.
As one of your future biggest fans I must say that a “deleted scenes” section would make my freakin’ day. If I were not in a public place right now I would have let forth an excited squeak.
Awesome idea!!
And good luck with the prose.