
When it comes to fiction writing, I am the original Poky Little Puppy. I tend to spend a long time thinking about my stories before I write them, scribbling a key line here, a paragraph there, then erasing them when they aren’t perfect and starting again.
In other words, I take too damn long to finish the book.
Some of my pokiness could originally be attributed to lifestyle: When I wrote my first book, I was a new mom and had little kids. I could barely carve out 15 seconds, let alone 15 minutes to write. So I’d jot down a few sentences here and there and see what stuck.
Some of it was rebellion: As a freelance writer, I’m used to working with an outline and on deadline. Fiction, I’d decided, should be fun — and fun meant freewheeling the whole way.
Still, the time had come for a change. The ‘babies’ who took so much time when I started writing are now taller than me and require much less attention that I’d like to admit. And laboring over the same book for years was becoming less fun and more like … work.
But how to morph from Poky Little Puppy to Speed Racer? I had no idea where to begin. Until … drumroll please … the last UnCon, where two separate workshops collided in my head. Much like the candy commercials of old, the two ingredients combined to make something even better — a way to speed up my writing and improve the quality of my first draft.
What were these miraculous sessions? The first was a one-on-one with author and writing coach extraordinaire Cathy Yardley. I’d heard other WU peeps sing her praises before — most notably our own Vaughn Roycroft — but I had no idea what Cathy actually does. At the conference, her assistant passed the word around that Cathy would be holding a few free plot sessions if anyone was interested. I’d never done one, had no idea what one was, but in keeping with my philosophy of trying whatever fate threw my way at the UnCon, I signed up.
A plot session, it turns out, is where Cathy patiently pulls your incoherent story idea out of you, word by word, like a magician pulling scarves out of a hat. Only at the end of the session, you have something like a perfectly folded origami version of the Sistine Chapel, neatly tied up in red ribbon, with a legible roadmap on how to get to the real landmark, and possibly snacks as well.
Okay, maybe not quite like that, but that’s how it felt. I told Cathy my idea and she repeated it back to me, only in actual English words that made sense. She asked leading questions that led to a plot point, and then another, and somehow, from there to a climax and resolution.
Readers, I wrote these things down and wound up with something akin to a unicorn for a pantser such as myself — a coherent plot and outline.
The conference could have ended there and I would have been happy. (Well, not really, since we all want the UnCon to go on forever, but you get the idea.) And yet the next day, author and WU contributor Anne Greenwood Brown was teaching a workshop on beat sheets, to which I also trundled off, having no idea what a beat sheet was.
And BOOM, my happy little outline (the map) met beat sheets (turn by turn directions). Peanut butter, meet chocolate. Writing deliciousness!
Beat sheets essentially break down the action in a story. How many steps or beats do you need to get from point A to point D? What happens to get you there? How many words should it take you?
Brown’s workshop (which she recreated here) even shared a rough formula for how many words each section ought to be, depending on your genre.
I left the conference with an exact idea of how to write my next book. I had the plot (the general map), I had the approximate word count, and I had every major beat I needed to hit (the turn by turns).
And guess what? It has been almost exactly a year since the Writer Unboxed Conference, and I have just finished a fairly solid first draft that is within 5,000 words of what I estimated. For someone whose last book took four years to write and was 20,000 words over, it’s like a miracle.
Is it a good draft? I certainly hope so. But even if it isn’t, guess what? I actually have it written down, so I can tinker with it and fix it.
Have I become a slave to an outline, crossed over to the land of plotters? Not exactly. But sort of. I still daydream about my story, still go off on tangents while writing — but thanks to my roadmap, I always find my way back. I can’t get lost, because when I do, I just look at my beat sheets, which spell out the plot I Cathy helped me develop. And on days when I am not sure what to write, I simply look at my beat sheets and ask myself how to make the next plot point happen.
So how can you replicate this magic without going back in time to the UnConference 2016?
Consider talking about your book before you write it. I’ve always kept my story ideas close, fearing that if I talked about them I’d lose my enthusiasm for writing them, but my session with Cathy worked so well it has completely changed my mind. I’ve also always been of the mindset that as a writer, I need to work this stuff out myself. But my session with Cathy showed me how foolish I was being.
If plot session isn’t in your budget, consider brainstorming with a trusted friend. Try telling your story, in your own words, and having your friend write down what they hear you saying. Sometimes just the act of verbalizing can set you free.
Use your beat sheets. Find out what the word count is in your genre (there are many articles on this topic, or check how many words your favorite novels in this genre contain) and then apply Anne’s formula to figure out approximately where you should be hitting each beat. For example, I knew I wanted my book to be about 85,000 words. Using that as a guide, I knew my ‘inciting incident’ — the event that drives the story — had to take place at about 12,000 words. My ‘all is lost’ moment needed to come halfway, or about 42,000 words into the story, and my final crisis around 63,000.
Write down the different beats and their word counts in your story, then attach a short summary — one to three sentences — to each one. The summaries should be based off your plot session. Break it down as much as you want — include the smaller incidents, or ‘pinch points’ that Brown refers to — and when you are done, you have your roadmap.
Now, get writing.
Your turn — have you ever radically changed how you write? If so, how and why?
About Liz Michalski
Liz Michalski's (she/her) first novel, Evenfall, was published by Berkley Books (Penguin). Liz has been a reporter, an editor, and a freelance writer. In her previous life, she wrangled with ill-tempered horses and oversized show dogs. These days she's downsized to one husband, two children and a medium-sized mutt.
I love thinking about plot – thank you for this post… My own first novel was inspired by the image of a woman looking out the window of a decrepit house at a child’s footprints in a garden. I started writing to figure it out – her, who the child was, why this falling down house… At the time, I was also working with a mentor (during my MFA program) who asked me to do an outline once I got a ways in – and then another, and then another (I came to call my time with her “plotting bootcamp” – and talking it through with her DID help). It was all incredibly valuable; I learned SO much about seeing story arcs… For my second novel, I decided to be “smart” and outline before leaping in. Ha! I finished one, two, three drafts but the thing had no soul and even my agent agreed (although it’s not totally dead…). During the muddle of that second book, I was also writing short stories and one of them kept going, largely because I so loved the character’s voice. Again, no idea where I was heading…. I went back to that balance of exploratory ‘pantsing’ combined with writing out outlines as the arc appears and it worked. After three years, that one’s now done and has started submission rounds :) I haven’t given up on the idea of being able to start with an outline though – how I would LOVE to be able to do that and still have the vibrancy of a character-driven plot… Perhaps my compelling character can instruct me on her plot at the very beginning, instead of standing silently in a window, staring out….
It sounds as if our writing journey has been similar, Lauren. I wish you the very best with your submissions!
Thank you!
Liz, when I’m really, really stuck, I like to make a date with a trusted writer friend to whom I can tell the story to and she will naturally ask all the important questions. It’s funny how much clarity you can get with this process, except when you go back to the page and write yourself into a corner, again. I need to have a roadmap before I begin a book because I’m too fond of taking digressions. The beat sheet is perfect for that.
Thanks for this as I gear up for Nano. Gulp!
Vijaya, I’ve never really talked about my stories before I’ve written them, but my time with Cathy was a game changer. You’re lucky to have a friend you can bounce plots off of.
Best of luck with Nano!
Yes, my method of creating a novel has changed, radically.
I used to outline. Strict linear plotting. That worked for fourteen novels (under other names) but the limitations of that approach eventually became clear. It doesn’t work as well for character driven stories.
My current project is coming together as answers to questions. The answers are each a scene, like squares in a quilt that are slowly filling in a larger picture. It’s working pretty well.
I got some validation for this from Canadian novelist C.C. Humphreys who teaches trust in imagination. Start writing and what you need will come. Yes, though I do think it helps to have a grounding in plot and scene structure.
So, yes, we find ways. Love yours, but mine will always be different, as it should be, because it needs to be mine.
“The answers are each a scene, like squares in a quilt that are slowly filling in a larger picture.”
I love this, Benjamin. Thank you for sharing your process and how it has changed. (And 14 novels — wow!)
I had the same experience with Cathy Yardley- and I love how you describe what she does so poetically. She’s magic. I finished a solid first draft just a few months ago. Now, I’m sorry I missed the beats session, but will follow the link you so graciously shared.
Now that I’m working on a new book, I used what I learned in our one-on-one session. I’m plotting out my novel for NaNo and am stupid excited to begin work on it. Because I’m not going in completely blind and frightened I’ll be all over the place and never find the crux of the story. It’s amazing, isn’t it?
Thanks for this post. And thanks for taking me back to UnCon.
She is magic! I’m so glad your session with her was productive. And being excited about a new project is the best. I wish you good luck with NaNo. (And I so wish we were back at UnCon!)
Sorry I’m late to the mashup party, Liz. I’m watching the autumnal shores of the Danube glide by as I type this. But I’m very glad to have played even the smallest role in getting you together with Coach C. I can clearly recall her stripping away the story clutter, and revealing to me the bones of my central story. I’m still happily reapplying the flesh, but in a way that wouldn’t have been possible without her. Thanks for sharing and for the shout-out. Onward!
Thanks for taking time out of what sounds like a marvelous vacation to check in, Vaughn!
Thanks for taking time out of what sounds like a marvelous vacation to check in, Vaughn! And I can’t help but think of you when I think of Cathy.
Thanks for sharing some of your UnCon experience!
And yes, like you, I used to hold my writing close, worried that talking about it would… dampen it, somehow. I was so wrong. The projects that have found the most success are the ones that I shared with my crit group — they enriched the process, cheered me on, asked me great questions, and gave me great suggestions.