Erin Lodes

I am the type of writer that we all call a pantser. I’ve been working on this novel for six years and most of that six years involved very little plotting and a lot of pantsing. In the last year or two, I’ve started to do more plot work. As a reader, I know I’ve absorbed a lot of knowledge through osmosis about how a plot is supposed to work. And I had already gleaned some of the basics from writing blogs and writing classes. But I never took a class specifically dedicated to novel structure. So I set out to learn.

I bought some great books on plot like Structuring Your Novel by K. M. Weiland and Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell. I took notes on structure and I tried to figure out where certain events I’d already written might fit into that structure. I bought a bunch of note cards and some corkboards and I put up cards on things like main plot points, subplots, and character development.

The first thing John had me do when I became a client of his was to completely take down all of the note cards I had up. He took my complicated mess of attempting to plot and gave me a much simpler way to do it. One note card per scene. What I’d been doing was trying to get down the main plot points (first turning point, midpoint, second turning point, climax) and then fill in all the bits in between those points. And I’d come up with plenty of variations for which events should go where, but the outline that I had was still — to borrow one of John’s favorite sayings — an apple cart where the wheels came off around what I’d deemed to be Chapter Four.

When I went through trying to do the outline with John’s note card method, I was less focused on story structure and more focused on asking “And then what happens?” I wasn’t looking at the hook and then the first plot point and wondering what the hell happens in between them. I was looking at the hook and then the scene that came after that and then the scene that came after that and then the scene that came after that.

I still had story structure in my head, along with all of the writing and thinking and attempts at plotting I’d made before, but my focus was different. And don’t get me wrong, doing it this way wasn’t easy. It was still a lot of difficult decision-making and a lot of freaking work. But the result was three beautiful corkboards, one for each act, filled with note cards that represented scenes that went in an actual order. I could look at the wall in my office and be like that is a WHOLE book outlined there. That is what happens in my book. ALL OF IT.

It was and is an amazing feeling.

There was more work, which I’ll talk about in later blog posts, before I got to the drafting stage. I am familiar with the drafting stage. As a pantser I have lived there for a long time. I’ve been stuck there for a long time.

But now, with my completed outline, I am back in the drafting stage. And I am not stuck. I am moving. Sure I still get stuck on individual paragraphs and scenes and the problems of how do I present this in a great way to the reader but I am not stuck with my story. I know where my story is going. I can look at what came before the scene I’m writing and what comes after the scene I’m writing and as a result I know what I’m doing now. I am moving. Racing.

And I am going to finish this damn thing.

How I Finished My Novel is going to be an ongoing blog series detailing how I finish this freaking thing. I know, I know, you could probably tell that from the title… I’m being helped along on this journey by John Adamus, who is amazing and you’ll hear a lot about him in this blog series.

If you haven’t already, check out Part One and Part Two.