Lately, I’ve been thinking and looking at different ways to plot. Well in addition to looking up info on excel, but that’s another matter all together. I do plot and have been plotting more in my latest books, but it’s never been easy. It’s still strange to me. At the start, I do have doubts, but that fades as the story unfolds.
Pantsing, letting the story flow from me as it will has always felt the most natural, but it also leads me to dead ends where I have to back up and attack the story from a different angle. Most of the time, I can find a point somewhere in the story to go from, but there have been times when I’ve had to start from the beginning.
So I’ve been looking at the different ways of plotting, trying to find something that will click. I’ve looked at the snowflake method. It seems a little more in depth than I want to go. I don’t want to know every little thing that happens. I need a little mystery even if I do know the major events.
The Three Act plotting method. I’ve used it and it does work, but I’m not quite confident with it, if you know what I mean. The characters have run off the rails between acts 2 and 3 at times. Usually for a good reason. Most of the time, I missed something in the character character, the love story, and the antagonist.
During my most recent forays into plot research, I’ve discovered Dan Wells’ Seven Point Story Structure. The points make sense to me, but that could be because I’d begun to get plotting structure in general from experimenting with other forms. I haven’t tried it yet with a book. The ones I’m working on are plotted already so putting it into practice will have to wait.
So are you a plotter or pantser? What method do you use? Is it the one you’ve always used or have your methods changed the longer you’ve written? I’m interested to know?
Happy Reading!
