PlotOber--When NaNoWriMo Really Begins

Thank You NaNoWriMo for the term, PlotOber. I’m not even sure I am using it as you meant for it to be used, but I appropriated it for my own purposes. The Phoenix NaNo group put up three plotting methods to aid those using October for plotting and planning. I checked them out, but I’m sticking with mine.

Yes, it’s that time of year again. I just love this fall event—National Novel Writing Month, affectionately known as NaNoWriMo (or just NaNo to many of us). What’s the big deal? And why am I so excited about it every year at this time?

I get to officially start a new book on November 1^st!

Right, I can start a new book any time I want, but NaNo is special. Somewhere upwards of a quarter to a half million people, worldwide, will embark on the adventure of writing 50,000 words in 30 days. I am part of this great zeitgeist of word energy. About 13% of us will “win” (meaning you got to goal). But the other 87% won, too. Because on December 1^st they have more words written on a novel than on October 31^st. That’s a win!

The novel I am starting is Tequila Mockingbird, book five in the “Dinner is Served” culinary mystery series published by a yet-to-be-determined publisher. I will share lots of recipes using alcohol, but I don’t promise there will be other recipes as well.

Early October is sign-up time. That means that almost all of October, for me, is spent plotting twists and turns and red herrings. I have an extensive plotting and planning process that I have described before for Potluck, book three in my culinary mystery series that powers me through to November 30^th. No more saggy, soggy middles. Wahoo! No more wondering after chapter three what I’m going to write next. No more waiting for the muse to strike. My muse showed up in October and left behind a tidy pile for me to write about.

I was eating lunch with friends at an outdoor creperie in Flagstaff, Arizona and talking about my mysteries. My friends wondered at how I got my punny titles. I told them they just pop out at me, like Tequila Mockingbird. They laughed and then, “Did you just now make that up,” my friend asked suspiciously. “Oh, yeah. It happens that way all the time.” Making up titles is easy, but then I have to have a concept that matches the title. That takes more time.

For those who don’t know, a mockingbird mimics the calls of other birds, pretending to be someone else. In my story, Emilie, a woman who escaped arrest for the murder of her husband has resurfaced with a new identity after 25 years. I have her living in the neighborhood of my personal chefs, Alli and Gina and Gina’s mother, Maria. As her past is revealed, Alli takes on the responsibility of trying to clear Emilie’s name even while Alli’s fiance’s boss is seeking to prosecute her. This is the cold case he could never stop thinking about, so he wants closure.

So I have my premise and concept. Next for me in PlotOber is planning the theme and sub-themes, ten key events, writing my story treatment, writing the microblurb (elevator pitch), writing character sketches, and planning the 40 or so scenes on a grid (Expanded from 10 key events: who’s there, where are they, when is it, the point of the scene to advance the story, and what happens in the scene).

Busy month for me, right? But, oh, what fun! I just love beginnings! Join me in NaNoWriMo? Add me as a “buddy.”

Facebook: If you are a National Novel Writing Month participant, do you plan in PlotOber? Check out how I’ll be spending this month preparing for NaNoWriMo. http://bit.ly/2fmMiJ9

Twitter: PlotOber is when you get ready for #NaNoWriMo2017 by doing big planning. With prep, the 30 days/50K words fly by. http://bit.ly/2fmMiJ9

The Magic Five: Using Bell's Super Structure

Last post I told you of my challenges with NaNoWriMo beyond the normal ones I’ve dealt with before. And I told you that using five sign posts from James Scott Bell’s work on Super Structure gave me exactly what I needed to work on five separate, but linked, manuscripts, mysteries, no less, during November Madness. If you haven’t read Super Structure: The Key to Unleashing the Power of Story, stop reading this post and buy that book! I use Story Engineering (Larry Brooks) and Bell’s Write Your Novel from the Middle, along with Super Structure as my triad for planning my stories.

In Super Structure, Bell posits that in each well-crafted story, the protagonist faces death. The death can be physical, professional, or personal. In each “death”, ramifications are dire if the death occurs. So my five novelettes had to have five “death” threats.

Bell identifies five tent poles, part of his 14 signposts, that will support any length story. The examples I am using are from the five novelettes in Ancient Grease, my culinary mysteries set in the Aegean. Alli and Gina are demonstration cooks on a luxury liner that cruises back and forth between Istanbul and Athens. Because of the different ports of call, I wrote five linked mysteries.

In order to write five short mysteries, I relied on Bell’s five signposts (plus one) for my structure. The five signposts are: Disturbance, The Doorway of No Return #1, The Mirror Moment, The Doorway of No Return #2, and The Final Battle. The five stories in Ancient Grease are:

“Talk Turkey”: Set in Istanbul right before Alli and Gina board the ship for their summer gig as demo cooks on a luxury cruise liner, Alli sees a thief she observed in the Grand Bazaar on board the ship. When a major theft occurs on the ship, Alli knows whodunit . . . she thinks.

“The Garden of Eaten”: Alli meets a pastor who is taking some faithful people to visit the recently found Garden of Eden site. Is it possible that is true?

“On the Lamb”: A puzzling passenger attracts Alli’s attention when not all is what it seems and when Alli questions that she puts her life in danger.

“Something Fishy”: Alli questions the ship’s executive chef about food safety, and since he already dislikes her, she is persona non grata in the kitchen. What is going on with the ship’s food sourcing?

“Ancient Grease”: Alli and Gina finish their summer contract and disembark in Athens. Before heading home to Arizona, they have a job cooking for a charity dinner theater producing a Greek play where the actor in the play doesn’t just die in the play.

To illustrate how I constructed the stories, here are some of the signposts for them:

The Q Factor:

James Bond always had a gadget that was kind of the modern version of the old Greek plays’ deus ex machina. You know what I mean, a god intervenes and saves someone who is doomed with no way out. So, Bell built that in as a cool factor to include as one of his signposts.

In “Talk Turkey”, Alli (and all staff members) are given a GPS locator for emergency use if a passenger is in trouble or causing trouble. She does manage to save herself, but using the GPS locator gets reinforcement help to her site sooner. At this point, first draft stage, that is the only story with a Q Factor, but I am scouting Q Factor possibilities for at least one other novelette in this book when I revise.

Disturbance:

A disturbance serves several functions. It is a hook to engage the reader straight off. Something out of the ordinary happens. It also sets up what the story problem is going to be. It is loaded with clues that the reader won’t know are clues until later when the mystery solution begins to gel.

For example, in “On the Lamb” (It’s a culinary mystery, okay? I know how to spell the other “lam”.), Alli is sitting on the balcony of her room suite watching new passengers board. A object weighted with a rock sails past her and lands on the pier in front of her. A boarding passenger stops to pick it up and pockets the object while looking around in a suspicious manner.

Doorway of No Return #1:

Doorways of no return are self-explanatory, right? Once you go through the door, there is no turning back. Something shifts in the world, and it will never be the same again. The numbering is a tip that there’s another pivotal point coming down the road, but for now, the world as the protagonist knows it has ended.

In “The Garden of Eaten”, Alli approaches a passenger who is a minister for a conversation about religion and faith. She is not even agnostic; she simply gives no thought to religion to accept or reject. But the minister’s earnestness and goodness causes her to reconsider her stance. She finds that she is searching for something and religion/spirituality might hold part of her need.

The Mirror Moment:

Bell says that at the mid-point of a well-crafted story, the protagonist looks in a virtual mirror to consider one of two options the writer has set up. Either your protag is confronting imminent death (“I can’t win. I’m going to die.”) or irrevocable change (“Who AM I? What have I become? What do I have to change?). In this moment, the core value of your story is challenged. How the protag responds is the rest of the story. This is more than the doorways of no return; this moment goes to your story theme.

In “Talk Turkey” Alli must choose whether to go for justice or whether to give up pursuit of a crime she’s been warned off. Is she going to risk her job in order to continue investigating. If she doesn’t, she feels she is condoning the crime and criminal. She has to wrestle with what is at root important to her as a person.

Similarly, in “On the Lamb”, she deals with an issue she has struggled with in all the previous books: what is family and what do you owe them, if anything.

The Doorway of No Return #2:

This doorway, like the first, means there has been an irrevocable shift in the protagonist’s world. There is a new normal and the new normal has upended the status quo, yet again, but at a higher level, with greater stakes than before. This doorway leads to the inevitable final battle. A blockage occurs that makes the outcome questionable, but in going through the doorway the protag also gets new information, gets another clue, makes a discovery to carry into The Final Battle.

In “The Garden of Eaten”, Alli overhears a conversation that both reveals a major scam and that draws her into the circle of physical danger.

The Final Battle:

Sometimes The Final Battle is an internal struggle, but more often there is an action scene where the evil is confronted and the good prevails. Going back to the Mirror Moment, if the moment were one of confronting how must the protag change, then the battle is interior; if the moment were of the “I’m going to die” type, it will almost certainly be a physical confrontation.

In “The Garden of Eaten”, Alli has both moments going on. She is confronting a physical death at the end, but she also comes to a tentative resolution about the place of spirituality in her life.

In “Something Fishy”, The Final Battle is purely physical. The crooks are gonna do her in before she can turn them in, whereas in “On the Lamb”, Alli comes down on the side of her core value when she could reject that in order to do the legal thing.

If you are reading this saying, “Whoa! Are you trying to turn a pantser like me into a plotter?” I would respond to you that we have created a false dichotomy for ourselves with such a distinction. Bell isn’t judgmental about your writing style. He thinks it comes down to do you want to create a successful novel through a structure approach or an experimental one. Both successful novels will end up with these elements. Successful novels have them.

So start with structure or not. Your choice. But you will end up, in rewrites, including these elements. That is, you will if you want a successful novel. I choose to do it from the beginning because I am impatient to have my book done as soon as possible. As I say, your choice.

If you liked this post, I would appreciate you sharing on Twitter and Facebook. Thanks so much!

Tweet: Writers: Planning made easy with this post by @good2tweat using @JamesScottBell’s Magic Five  http://bit.ly/27RJ5mc

Facebook: Do you struggle with planning your books? This post by Sharon Arthur Moore-Author should help. http://bit.ly/27RJ5mc

Plot Points and Planning for NaNoWriMo

Like last year, I am using a grid to plan my scenes. I am finishing those up early this week. I’ll let them percolate a couple of days and tweak them. Then, early next week, I will print off the scene grids and affix them to 5x8 cards, one scene per card.

I came up, initially, with ten key scenes. From there I built out on either side to create scenes leading up to and leading from the key scenes. I ended up with ~40 planned scenes that way.

Here are the 10 Key Scenes for It’s a Dog’s Life:

1. Kitty and Maudie are walking behind the grocery store when Maudie is distracted by a neighborhood dog friend. While distracted,  a pallet of dog food falls on them and kills Kitty.

2. Kitty can’t accept she is dead, so she becomes a walk-in to the still-live body of Maudie, the dog who resists the effort. They negotiate a sharing arrangement. She teaches Maudie spoken vocabulary.

3. Maudie finally released from vet hospital and Kitty/Maudie come home where Kitty tries to let them know she’s there.

4. Kitty tries to adjust to her new reality: eating dog food, limited communication skills, and watching the family slide into poor eating habits and loose supervision. Worst are the casserole ladies vying for husband Robb’s attention.

5. Waiting at door when Calista her daughter breaks curfew. She breaks up a necking session with a boyfriend Kitty hates.

6. Helps son Brian with homework assignment for science report. She teaches Maudie to read/count.

7. Maudie fed up with sharing and wants her body to herself. Tries to boot Kitty out. Kitty resists because she’d be finally dead.

8. Family starts calling her “Mom” because she involves herself in everything about their lives. She gets peace from that.

9. Dad finally gets a serious girlfriend Kitty grudgingly accepts after Maudie chides her for selfishness.

10. Maudie and Kitty settle into their life but Kitty realizes Maudie is pregnant. A sequel maybe???

Each day of NaNoWriMo, I will type one or two scenes from the cards I made. That way I will complete the novel easily before November 30^th.

This year I am adding in two other components. Before I begin each morning, I will read over what I wrote the previous day and do some edits and revisions. This is because I want to have the novel in pretty decent shape by November 30^th to enter it into a contest run by One-Book Arizona. Deadline: November 30.

The second piece I am doing that is new this year is when I finish for the day, I will put in italics at the end any questions/thoughts/issues I want to be addressed in upcoming pages. These will be the “hot off the press” issues that I am dealing with in my mind as I write.

These two pieces will serve two functions: 1) they will get me into the novel again pretty quickly, and 2) they will keep me focused on the story so I am not as likely to stray.

Here are some of the early scenes that, as of now, I plan to write the first few days:

Scene	Where	Who	When	Point of scene	What happens
1	Store back lot near home	Kitty, Maudie, truck driver	mid-morning on a week day	Kill Kitty but not make it too awful (absurd death)	Dog food truck accidentally dumps pallet of dog food on Kitty and Maudie while the dog is checking out a male dog of interest
2	Store back lot near home	Kitty, Maudie, truck driver, police, paramedics	mid-morning on a week day	Show Kitty as a walk-in soul who will still be part of her family. If she went into one of the other people, she’d be separated from them.	Kitty panics when she realizes she is dead & the dog is gravely injured. She slams her soul into Maudie. The dog resists her but is too weak to fend Kitty off entirely. She hangs onto her body, too.
3	Vet hospital	Kitty/Maudie, Vet, tech, Robb, Brian, Calista	Early afternoon, day of accident	Kitty isn’t hurt in mind, but she is frantic about how to let the family know she’s alive	Licks family members, whines, as she tries to let them know who she really is; they take it as sweet she knows them; worried about her pains
4	Vet hospital	Tech, Kitty/Maudie	One week after the accident	Kitty shows her human side	Tech spills coffee and she laps it up while he gets a towel; doesn’t suspect the dog; happens again so tech slips her coffee everyday thinking it’s a weird side effect of anesthesia or the pain

Any comments? Suggestions? Concerns? Please comment below so I can adjust if I need to before writing! Thanks so much for any help you can give!

Color Wheel Relations

All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites.

-Marc Chagall

Not to get too political, but it’s the season, eh?

I have always been struck by Chagall’s work. He touches me deep in my soul. I resonate to the richness of his palate and the magnitude of his vision. Have you seen his mosaics in downtown Chicago? Amazing!

When I happened across this quote somewhere, it too struck a chord. Of course, on the surface the quote is about the color wheel we all learned about in school. Shades can be together in a room thus blues, purples, greens—they all harmonize. But for energy, we put red and green together, opposites on the color wheel, and magic happens.

Politically, I fear that we are in for more of the same bitterness and divisiveness that has dominated both Arizona and national politics for decades. Why can’t we all just get along? As an educator, I couldn’t choose not to teach certain children because they were unlike me. I couldn’t choose to disregard the opinions of other teachers who disagreed with me. We all had to work together, because it was about the children. Not about me. Not about you. Not about a philosophy. We came together around a common goal and found common ground so we could move forward.

The issues confronting our states and nation are mammoth. So call me naïve, but isn’t it the legislators’ job to solve the problems not focus on how they can begin campaigning now for the next election? Do the work you are being paid for, and do it not because of the pay, but do the work because anything else should be unacceptable. Legislators, find common ground and the solutions we desperately need to get out of this mess. Be the red and green and make magic happen.

Compromise is not a four-letter word!

Benjamin Franklin said, “Compromisers may not make great heroes, but they do make great democracies.” Yep!

Considering the Chagall quote in writing terms, think of how the quest for this quote could be the theme of your next novel. People similar to one another get along just great, but the opposites-attract scenarios spice up the action. It is one thing to tolerate one so different from you. To love that person, well, that takes some work. Think of the plot points you can exploit! Write Away, Reader!

When one door closes (or isn't there) . . .

A new beginning. Pastablilities.

Maybe changing the name of the book will make it easier to re-think how I am going to write a murder mystery that is mysterious.

I only had about a third of the book to finish. My red herrings were being cleared and others were deepening so I could conceal my killer’s identity. I knew who was doing what when. I wrote almost all the ending chapter so I’d know for sure where I was headed in the ones leading up to it.

When I got back to the killer and started to reveal his involvement, it hit me. He wouldn’t kill his boss over the motive I had identified. He is a grifter and a poser. He would simply melt away as he had in all his previous lives. Killing his boss was not his M.O.

I sent a chapter to Sandy and Annie, members of Pens Afire, my critique group. “This is the last chapter of Impastable I am sending you. I am abandoning this book and moving on to another one. My killer’s motive isn’t one. Talk me down, Ladies!”

Aren’t critique partners amazing? Sandy and Annie seriously confronted my problem as if it were their own. I felt trapped in a room with no exit, and they found a trap door that can very possibly salvage the book. All I have to do is write it!

I am changing the book title, the killer, and the motivation.

Piece of cake, as we in the culinary mystery book biz say.