Introduction

Plotting Is Like Juggling

Imagine yourself as a juggler, and you are juggling one ball. For our purposes, we will label this first ball “dramatic action.”

Toss this first ball in the air. It is best to “pop” the ball from the palm of your hand rather than to let it roll off your fingertips. This metaphor also applies to plotting out your stories: It is best to start with a “pop” of dramatic action rather than to let your story unfold at a leisurely pace. Also, it is best not to throw the ball too high—in other words, you don’t want to introduce too much dramatic action too soon. With the help of the Plot Planner, you’ll see how the intensity of a story builds incrementally from beginning to end, and you will also learn how to create smooth transitions from one scene to the next without letting the action drift.

With the dramatic action ball in play, it is time to integrate ball two. This one we label “character emotional development.” As the action ball starts to descend toward your hand again, pop the character ball in the air. This means that when the tension or conflict or suspense caused by the dramatic action starts to fall or lose its effect, you can use your character’s emotional development, his flaw or prejudice or fears, to cause more.

What message do you want your reader left with after reading the story? This will be ball three, “thematic significance.”

As in real juggling, when one ball or layer of plot falls and its conflict and tension is reduced, another element of plot is sent airborne, and its conflict and tension increases. As you become confident with these three balls or layers of plot, you can add more: the subplots of secondary characters, history or politics, and so on. The more you practice, the better you will become, until you are tossing the balls while standing on one foot with your eyes closed. Eventually you may even be able to juggle knives and mallets and the kitchen sink.

Like a juggler, the more adept you are at keeping all three elements of plot rising and falling through cause and effect, the deeper, richer, and more compelling your story.

The Plot Planner

The Plot Planner is a visual tool to help you keep an eye on your story as a whole as you write its individual parts made up of scenes and summaries.

Practice alone will not turn all of us into jugglers. Some of us do better when the steps are mapped out on paper. In the case of plotting, think of the Plot Planner as the route or map of the journey you envision for your protagonist. Along this route, the three elements of plot—the dramatic action, the character’s emotional development, and thematic significance—will rise and fall.

When you start planning your plot, your route will likely contain lots of gaps and dead ends, but these will be smoothed over and filled in as you come to know your story and characters better.

Once the plan is in place on your Plot Planner and you and your protagonist have set off, one of you is likely to trip up or misread the map or even intentionally veer off the planned route. Stay loose, but try to keep close to the plan as the dramatic action sends your character off a cliff or crashing through the underbrush to slay a dragon or two before fighting her way to the top peak. Puffing hard, you reach the summit together. Oops, it’s not the summit after all. A crisis ensues. The true summit shimmers in the distance. In a rush of energy and excitement, you scramble alongside your character toward the final struggle, the climax of the book.

I recommend building your Plot Planner horizontally, on big pieces of banner paper taped to the wall. This serves as a continual visual reminder of your entire story and helps you keep the larger picture in your mind as you concentrate on smaller parts: writing and rewriting chapters and scenes, creating just the right sentence, choosing just the right word.

If you do not have the space available or simply are not inclined to wallpaper your walls with story ideas, then use smaller paper. Or, if you are adept at keeping all of these ideas in your head at once without the visual support, plan your story with a spreadsheet on your computer.  Use whatever method encourages you to actually write. Find a way that works for you.

It can be tough to simultaneously juggle all three primary and intertwining plot threads, plus the countless other plot elements. Often we end up trying too hard. Our writing suffers, and we become stiff and self-conscious. The joy of writing diminishes. If you are struggling with keeping all the balls in the air at once, try following one thread at a time. Rather than outline your plot in list form or storyboard your ideas in a flat and linear progression, you can plot scenes and scene ideas on a Plot Planner. One plotline at a time, follow the rise and fall in the same dynamic pattern found in all great stories. 

As you plot action scenes, remember the primary reason people go to the movies and read books is for the characters. Jot down ideas, pin character and setting images to your wall, or add a historic time line to a Plot Planner. With one plotline either vaguely or firmly in place, weave the character’s emotional development in and out of the external excitement. The more you write and the more interactive you are with your Plot Planner board, the more thoroughly the overall meaning of the story, as well as the meaning in each scene, will emerge.

Plot one plot thread on a Plot Planner at a time or all three simultaneously—you choose.

Again, there are no rules when it comes to writing fiction. Every idea I present has as many exceptions as rules. Every Pulitzer Prize–winning example I cite can be matched by a Pulitzer Prize–winning example that illustrates the opposite.

Now you are ready to develop the map for your story using the Plot Planner.