Question of the Day: How to find THE START
November 2, 2022Write-Life Balance
November 14, 2022Hello fellow Word-Nerds!
It’s the beginning of the second week of NaNoWriMo and I, like many of you, am waist deep in a word pit of snarled sentences, tacky descriptions, hurried notes, and character motivations which make absolutely no sense. This week, instead of providing a beautifully sculpted piece of prose about the finer points of POV, plot, narrative style, or character development, I’m going to do my best to help you make sense of the word pit you’ve stumbled into and provide a quick few tips to help you keep your plot points straight, even when you’re a quarter of the way through your draft and the plot points aren’t what you thought. Are you ready?
Plot Point Snare
This is one I tripped into two days ago and have only just managed to hack my way free from. The Plot Point Snare is sort of like a vine that wraps its way around your writing fingers and stops them in their tracks. Those wonderful plot points you vaguely outlined early in Preptober? Turns out, they are not what you thought they were. That beautiful first plot point you were so excited to write? Turns out, you already wrote it…where you thought the inciting incident was going to be. And now your midpoint makes absolutely no sense. And you can’t introduce your characters on time. And there’s this paralyzing fear working its way through your blood that says, “if I move from this spot, my entire plot structure will come crumbling down around my ears.”
Never fear, the plot point snare hacking machete is here! Have a few tips and tricks to work your way free from this word swamp obstacle and continue on your path to writing a complete NaNoWriMo first draft.
Don't Stop!
The first and most important survival skill is to keep going. Hint: you’ll hear me say this one a lot. This is NaNo, after all.
The only way the word swamp can actually eat you is if you stop moving. At the end of the day, this is NaNoWriMo and the point is to write 50,000 words. Note that these do not have to be good words. Theoretically, you could repeat I will not let the word swamp eat me a dozen times and count every single one of those words as part of your NaNoWriMo challenge. If you think it’ll help, then go ahead and do it! Bad words, good words, topical words, encouraging words: every single type of word you can think of still counts. So don’t stop. Keep going, and you’ll emerge from the NaNoWriMo word swamp with 50,000 words and a zero draft to your name.
5-Minute Thought Jaunt
The next survival tip is the 5 minute thought jaunt. What you need to do is set a five minute timer. Not six minutes, not ten minutes, not two minutes: exactly five. Why? Because any longer than five, and you’ve started straying into the procrastination danger zone and that might end up violating the first survival tip. Why not two minutes? Because this thought jaunt still needs some time. You can’t just stumble on the first answer you thin about, because that sort of defeats the point of the thought jaunt.
Next, take one last 10 second glance over the plot point you’re struggling with. Do you like the plot point? Does it work better with the theme? Worse? Then close your eyes and start the timer.
Use this 5 minutes of quiet thinking time to think about your plot as it currently stands. How does it measure up to your sketchy plan? How does this plot point interact with the theme? Does it need to be changed? Rewritten? Is it better than your old plan? What would the story look like if you just kept it there? How would it impact other plot points? How would it change your outline? Is this plot point snare a good thing, or does the scene need to be re-written?
When you’re done with your 5 minute thought jaunt, write down everything you thought about. If it is a better plot point that works more smoothly with the theme and your vision for the story, then write down how this change will have to impact the rest of your plot points. These notes are going to be essential for your next survival tip.
Pick a Path
Now you’ve got a good idea of what you’ve actually got on the page and how it will impact the rest of your plot. If you’ve decided that you are not happy with the problematic scene and it needs to be re-written, you may be feeling discouraged. Wasted words, starting over, future editing—all these things may be weighing on you. Never fear, that is what this survival tip is here to help you with.
Remember, NaNoWriMo is all about the words. Whether the scene you just wrote needs to change or not, you get to keep every single one of those words. No take-backs!
Now it’s time to decide your approach to actually applying this plot point snare to your trek through this word swamp. You’ve got two main options. The first is to go back and fix the scene (use a clean document and rewrite, please), and the second is to move on as though the scene were already fixed. Perhaps you already know which path works for you. If so, bon voyage and happy slogging! If not, stick around and I’ll help you decide which to use this time.
Going back to fix the scene is great for writers who do not get distracted by editing and also for writers who aren’t really sure if their new idea for correcting the plot point will actually work. I’ve used this method several times, the most notable of which was during the ending of a low fantasy fairy story whose ending was absolutely abysmal. I completely rewrote the last three chapters about four times until I finally found something that lined up with the theme and resonated with the first chapter while bringing a satisfying end to the plot and intriguing set-up for the beginning of book 2. By the end of rewriting those chapters, I had almost 15k words in alternative scenes for a set of chapters which were only 5k words to begin with. You better bet I counted every single one of those 15k words toward my writing goal!
If this plot point snare is placed at a tipping point of your story, and you’re just not happy with the shape it produces when written, feel free to go back and fix it – but only if you aren’t distractible. If you tend to leave your novel unfinished when you go back to fix things, or if you know exactly what adjustments must be made and how it will impact the rest of your story, you might choose method number 2.
Method number two is great for making sure you write your whole novel during November, and is usually my go-to strategy. This strategy works best when you feel super solid about what changes you need to make in the problematic scene. You’ve written down the notes about what needs to be changed, you understand the implications of those changes on the rest of the plot. You could go back and fix it, but you’ve got forward momentum. Instead, you pretend that all the changes have been made and move forward with your next scenes as though you’d already made all the changes. Then, when November is over and it’s time to fix your plot up, you can go back and implement those changes.
Method number 2 is actually what I’m using to deal with my current plot snare. I’ve realized that my character’s motivation needs a fairly large adjustment, and I know it’s going to shift the events which happen at the midpoint of my story. I’ve written down several hundred words of notes (which I am counting toward my 50k, of course), and am now moving on to the next scene.
I hope these three survival tips on how to hack your way free of a plot point snare have been helpful. Whatever happens, know that I am slogging through this word pit with you all, and feel free to send me questions!
Happy Writing!
