The Next Wall - Plotting Problems (Part 2)

In my last entry I brought up the problem I'm faced with now, which is mid-level plotting. Let's continue down that path now, starting with some context.

They say that a good story, especially genre (as opposed to literary) fiction, is plot-driven. Events are set in motion at the mid-level, meaning the small-group or individual level, and each scene in a given plot (main or sub-) needs to follow from the previous one. Some stories have the macro level drive events at the mid-level, such as a crew of varied personality types walking through the steps of a prophecy, or orders sent down from a king or general (and his same-level enemy) guiding the actions and tribulations of a group of soldiers. Another way to go is to have a protagonist with his own goal fighting through a stressful, barely manageable, but logical set of obstacles that suit the story and that keep him from his goal.

It's much harder to tell a compelling tale about a wanderer who runs across somewhat random problems until he comes upon something major that focuses him. And that's how I'd approached the first half of the book initially: expecting to enhance the plot dimension along the way. So of course it's become a longstanding problem that I've got no choice now but to face head-on.

The issue came to a head recently when I spent a few days on writing a reasonably interesting pair of scenes, and then tuning them up, only to realize that they're not sufficiently driven by prior events to give as much of a sense of cohesion as I want in the final product. When I found myself tacking them into a framework of cause and effect that came to mind, I realized my real problem, which was the lack of a scene-spanning, event-connecting infrastructure.

A major reason for blogging, for me at least, is to think these things out a little better as I write about them, and I do seem to be gaining a few insights as I write this entry. For example, I need to choose an overall structure for the plot first and foremost.

Many writers start with that, but I'm not them; I've generally espoused the school of thought where you write your way into and out of issues. That approach seems to be working for me at the macro and micro levels, but at the mid-level it's not. So I need to bite the bullet and outline the plot part by part, chapter by chapter, scene by scene, stage by stage.

I hate doing that. But I have to. Or I have to give up. And that's not gonna happen.

So, I'm looking for two things here: motivation and advantages. Motivation isn't really something I can predict, so I'll just try to rest a bit to think and then bull through as always, As for advantages, well, tools would be one thing to look for. I don't know if they'll help or hinder me, but I've never felt it a bad thing to have them on hand.

Scrivener is what I've been using to pour the text of the book into, and it's worked out pretty well. But Scrivener is weak for story development--it offers an outliner, an index card view, the ability to create document templates like the character sheet and other forms I've mentioned, and that's about it.

Before I ever started this project I had spent the money to buy Dramatica Pro, in the hope of helping with this very class of issues. Then Apple immediately dropped support for 32-bit apps and I was never able to actually use it. Write Brothers never bothered to update DP to the new generation OS either. But recently I learned they're offering a product called Dramatica Story Expert which they assure me is a superset of DP.  (At this writing both products are on sale for $99 each, which is odd if one is more full-featured than the other, but I guess you have to look at DP as their Windows product and DSE as their Mac product at this point). Anyway, I got an upgrade and will be looking into using it for the planning process.

Or maybe I'll use notepads and miss the trash can with a lot of crumpled-up pieces of paper.

Either way, I need to invest the time and pain to plot this out and get going.