Episode 8 - "I'm no good at plotting."

Of all the insecurities writers confront, this is one of the most vexing. But is it true? Or are these writers looking at plotting the wrong way? In this episode, Pat, Drew, and Joni offer insights into how plotting can (and should) be a process of discovery; how your characters can help you figure out what happens next; and how there comes a time when it is critical you impose structure on your story...but maybe that time is later than you think.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:04

An author, a psychotherapist, and an entrepreneur walked into a bar. What came out is Dead Frog in the Driveway, a podcast that celebrates our potential as creative beings. No matter who you are, no matter what you might believe, no matter what you've been told. If you've ever wrestled with a blank page, a stuck idea, or a shifting sense of purpose, we hope you'll find some company and maybe some inspiration from this podcast. Our show is co-hosted by author and teacher Joni B. Cole, therapist and writer Pat Williams, and me, Drew Rockwell, a writer and business entrepreneur who still believes my dead frog in the driveway story deserved a much better grade. But it's time to move on and get started with today's episode.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

All right, we're starting off with a quiz, you guys. What do you think is the main comment I get when people talk about their insecurities as a writer? And I'm in a workshop, leading a workshop. And what do you think is one of the main things people say to me as to why they can't write or work on the project they want to work on?

SPEAKER_03 1:12

They don't know what to write about.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

All right, that's a good guess.

SPEAKER_02 1:16

They don't feel like they are really a writer. They don't have the skills, they don't have the craft.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Well, those are way up there. And um, in terms of the comments I get about why people can't work on the creative projects they want. But I would say the number one comment I get is I'm no good at plots. I just can't write a plot. And they mean it, or they feel that they really mean it. And so what that tells me, because A, it ends up not being true, not their feelings aren't true, but the reality that they're no good at plots is not true. But but it really to me shows that we don't really understand what plotting is or how to plot or how structure comes into the creative process. And so I wanted to ask you guys, because you're both accomplished novelists, I've read your manuscripts. There's gorgeous plots in them. But do you feel you're good at plotting? Drew? Why don't you go first?

SPEAKER_02 2:07

No. Um There you go again. In one sense, in the sense that I could not sit down and architect a complete through line story before writing scenes and understanding characters and getting to know what's happening. So I'm not one of those plotters who has an outline and starts writing. I'm sort of more a splunker where I kind of work my way through it until I start to find through lines and then and then I can step back and sort of think about well, where is this going? But honestly, I think I'm at least in my first novel, I was really inefficient because I didn't I didn't really know where I was going. And so I kind of just put one foot in front of the other and the other, and then I had to step back and then pay attention to plot and through um what about you, Pat?

SPEAKER_03 3:00

God, I don't know how to answer that. First of all, I'm I'm still working on the fact that that's the first thing. Like I would never have thought that. That that would be the first thing. I don't know why. It just and for me, I don't know. I think what I'm not good at as good as I'd like to be, is being able to tie together more than one plot. You know, so that it makes sense that there's continu no continuity is really not the right word, but you know what I mean. Yeah, I don't know how to answer that. I don't think I would say I'm terrible at it, but I actually feel it's funny. I feel more secure in the idea of plot than I do actually in craft, in a way, a c a character, maybe. And in really being able to develop and show a character.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

I think there's so much out there that misleads writers in terms of what plot is, or when we want to imbue our works with plot. Or, Drew, you just said something that I'll take to task in my own personal worldview that if we don't know how to plot our novel, we're gonna be inefficient. And I think there's so much out there that is wrong about plotting that people internalize it and think I need to write a book, a novel this way. And hence, since I can't, because I'm struggling to do that, I'm no good at plots. I think plot and character are basically the same thing, or at least the same two sides of the same coin, because plot, something happens and your character has to respond, or your character is a certain way, which will drive the plot. So even that distinction, character-driven, plot-driven books, is too clean-cut of a distinction. And I recently read, and I had to bring this in, a tip sheet for would-be wannabe novelists from a writer and editor who is well known. And he wrote, The trick is to figure out related to plotting, the trick is to figure out the structure of your novel before you even start typing. And I read that and my head exploded. Yeah, because that is what's feeding this. I'm no good at plots, because we often don't know where to start or what comes next. And so what happens is in thinking we have to know that, some writers can get to chapter two or even chapter seven, but then they run out of steam. They don't know what comes next. As if that's the only way then they get the green light to write forward. And not only does that then put the kibosh on the project, but it also I think closes the door, slams the door on the creative synergy that happens when you just allow your characters to go wherever they want, write scenes in any particular order, and they can inform you what might happen next. But the order of structure coming before we start writing is I think the biggest killer to creativity for maybe 97% of the writing world and maybe the creative world, you know, across the board. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong for most of the writers I've seen. And and that, you know, yeah, that's really intimidating too.

SPEAKER_02 6:21

It so therefore you don't start. You know, because uh no, I fully agree. I mean, I think when I started my novel uh five years ago or more, I think I just wrote um I I had a building and I uh that had eight apartments and I wrote about the characters in each of the apartments. And so I had eight chapters, and then I looked at it and I said, well, four of these characters aren't very interesting at all. And so I took them out and then I started over again. And uh because now I knew the four I knew a little bit about the four people that I wanted to begin to tell the story story about.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Yeah. I mean, I feel like it is in the writing that we discover who gets to be our point of view characters. I saw that with you, what our plot is, where our story should start. And if you're not in motion and manifesting words, and if you think you should know everything well before you can possibly know it, what's your theme? What are your narrative arcs? It's maybe going to be a connect the dots type of book, or you simply can't do it. Most of us can't do it. So plot is a beautiful, important part of any novel, but it is not something that comes before, you know, you don't put the cart before the horse.

SPEAKER_02 7:33

I mean, I'm sure there are people who can. I'm sure there are people who can sit down and write a complete outline and then start telling the story. And I um Oh, absolutely. And there are people who can't, and I think that's fine. The problem is if you think it's all like you're saying, one way or the other, then you're sort of you're either in or you're out.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

And I don't think it is either one way or the other.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Yeah. But Pat, what's your process in terms of plotting out a book?

SPEAKER_03 7:58

As you know, my novel is based on a true story, semi-true stories. And so there's a larger plot that is sort of there that I didn't create. But you know, I did have an experience the other day where, you know, I've been revising and in a in the process of revising this one chapter, which is pretty crucial in terms of the whole story. So I guess we are talking about plot, right? That I had to do something, I had to change something. And in changing it, uh thinking about the larger story, it sort of changed itself, actually. And I just like I followed you know, my the keyboard, so to speak. Yeah. And it definitely has changed the the arc of the story, the plot. And I I'm I've been thinking and listening to the two of you about like the difference between story and plot. Like, is there a way to articulate that?

SPEAKER_00 9:10

Because I'm Yeah, absolutely. I mean, plot is your protagonist's physical journey. This happened and this happened, whereas story is your protagonist's emotional journey. And they truly are in a good work of writing. They're inseparable. Um one and motion is emotion. Emotion drives motion. So if motion is plot, emotion character, they're they're even the same root word. Um so anyway, that's how I would define the difference between plot and story. We use those words interchangeably, but they're very helpful, particularly when you're beginning to look at why is this an action-packed thriller but flat? Well, what about the storyline, the character's arc? And then you can imbue characterization and causality in that way.

SPEAKER_03 9:55

But um, how does that work when you're writing a memoir?

SPEAKER_00 10:00

I don't think there's any difference really between a novel and a memoir in terms of the plot. You have to have a story move forward. There has to be, I'm talking about Western culture anyway, profluence. This happened and then that happened.

SPEAKER_03 10:11

Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

And memoirs are tricky, aren't they? Because I think they're a tough genre. Because, well, this happened, I was born, then I went to kindergarten. Like that can we can fall into that with a memoir. But there's a plot, right? But where's the causality? Where's that that first of all, the frame where something meaningful happened among all the meaningful things that happened? And how do we frame it? And so you really want to look at where this happened, which caused me to run away. This happened, which caused me to forgive my father. So again, that causality is the same as it is in fictional works. And and really until you begin to find where the character comes into play, has some agency or screws it up, there's no, there's no story there yet. And you can see how hard it is to talk about these things because I'm using story and plot interchangeably. It's so beautiful to know this in the revision stage, however soon that comes in, when you do begin to impose structure, is look for what's causing a character to do something and rather than just a series of events. And without character engagement, what you have could be a bestseller, but you have like a mission impossible where everything opens with a big chase scene or whatever. But but the main character of Mission Impossible, he has no character arc. And we don't care in that genre. But when you're writing something where you really want it to be layered and deeper, then characterization and the character's emotional arc is often the most compelling part of the plot, in a way. And that's why I say character and plot are interchangeable. You you can't separate. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So and rarely do people say I'm no good at characterization. That's interesting to me because that's where the layers and the deeper thing. But but as writers or as people who want to inspire any kind of creative people, I do feel it's helpful after that first, second draft, to now look at causality and begin to sort of see, well, why would he do that? Why did she do that? And that helps you to revise.

SPEAKER_02 12:15

So Yeah, and it also argues for writing forward and getting to know the characters and seeing their story. And as you get the story of the characters starting to shape, the plot will also need to come along with that.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Um if you're wedded to a connect the dots prefabricated plot line, it really can stifle that creativity to allow you to do exactly what Pat said she just did. Something happened on that page and it informed and shifted how that scene wrote forward. But if you're so wedded to that pre-made plot line, there isn't nearly as much room for that. And and I think writers are very much more resistant to doing that. But this has to happen next. Whether the character really would be motivated to have that happen next or not.

SPEAKER_02 13:05

Yeah, that's why I use the inefficient word, you know, maybe that. But what I was thinking about there is that sometimes as the those stories, you know, and I am playing around with multiple point of view characters, but as those stories emerge, then they intersect, like Pat, you were talking about intersecting plots as well. Then there's some I you know, I paint myself on a corner. This doesn't make sense here, you know, from the narrative. So I have to kind of come back and and start over, not not start over again, but kind of rewind and because I haven't pieced that part of it together. Right. Um but that's okay. I mean, in some sense, I kind of like the and then what happened. You know, that interview we had, I don't know if listeners heard that interview with Merrick Bennett that I did uh a while ago, but he was talking about teaching kindergartners how to write, and he folds this piece of paper and he, you know, they draw a picture of a dragon, and then he goes, and then what happened? And then the next quadrant, they draw another picture, and the next quadrant, they draw another one, and then they at there's the end. And it's it's I I was struck by the and then what happened, and then what happened. It was really cool. And he was teaching kindergartners.

SPEAKER_03 14:13

I'm thinking as you I'm listening to you both that you know how to how to expand this a little bit, or you know, bringing this beyond the subject of writing. And I'm I'm thinking about how one of the things that I end up saying a lot to people is the idea that we have this imagined life. And I've never thought of it before as a plot, but it is, right? So you know, that I I've said this so many times, including to myself, about that when you have an imagined life or when you have kids, and you, you know, the imagined kids that you're gonna have, and then the life that you imagine is not what ends up actually taking place, usually. You know, so you have this plot in your mind of the way things are gonna be, and they're not. And that in a way, that's sort of like what you were talking about about the kindergartners, in some ways, right? Like what happens next?

unknown 15:21

Right?

SPEAKER_03 15:21

I mean, I don't mean you go through life that way. You have to have some structure, obviously. But, you know, like thinking about the plot and philosophically, where does that come from? Like what's what are the ideas behind that? About what does that mean, right, in relation to human life? Like, how did we get those ideas, right? Philosophically, about the idea of what what is a plot anyway? What does that mean? Why do we need that?

SPEAKER_00 15:51

That harkens to something you had said earlier. I don't even know if we were on air at the time, but about the security of plot. And I think we all want the security of structure. If I have kids, my life will unfold this way. Right, right. Exactly. If we have my structure, my book will unfold this way or my composition. But in the end, it can be a prison. But the reality is that we do need structure and plot at some point, because as much as I'm an advocate for all those 98% of writers who don't know what happens next and aren't writing because of it. So just a scene, a memory, a moment, whatever, because I witnessed this with you, Drew, which is why I didn't think of your writing process as inefficient at all. Everything you wrote led to you knowing what you couldn't have known before from point of view to what happens next. But there is a point, I think, where you've manifested a critical mass of material, and now you are like, whoa, your head is overwhelmed. And at that point, I think then you can try to lay a template of your best idea of structure, informed by your characters, informed by whatever you've slapped down on the page. So some people think structure first, plot first, then write, or just write, write, write, and it'll find its way. But I think at some point, and the writer anyway can feel it inside their gut. Now I'm now I've got too much. Now I'm feeling it's too unwieldy. But now they have something to work with to begin to manifest their first blush of a plot. So again, another misleading thing I think we hear about is plot first and then write. Or if you take me too much to heart, right, right, right, right, right, right. But at some point, then that becomes debilitating. So when you want to start imposing structure is when your material begins to suggest a structure.

SPEAKER_03 17:35

That's sort of the process in maturity, too, isn't it? And when you think about it, well, exactly what you just said, right? About we do need structure.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 17:47

Right? So it's it's being having the flexibility everything you just said.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:53

We can apply.

SPEAKER_02 17:54

Have you guys ever had any um gotten any value out of those kind of books like uh I think Save the Cat, for example, where there's some sort of structure that a story, typical structure that a story has. And so if you've got a lot of material in front of you and you're trying to sort of piece together that plot, I mean, are there uh recipe doesn't sound right to me. There's not the right word, but are there are there approaches like that that can that can help?

SPEAKER_00 18:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:23

What do you think, Johnny?

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Aaron Powell Well, that's a popular book. There's another popular book whose which title is alluding me. In their time, they are extremely helpful. Like if you have a nebula of great scenes, but no sense of structure yet, then looking at your work as a three-act structure or doing some of the exercises in Save the Cat or some of the other books can really help. The issue I have with some of them is that you have to do all this first. You you can't write for weeks and weeks, if not months, until you have identified your themes, until you have written your elevator pitch, until you have looked at your character arcs, do all this first. And that's where not only do I think they're useless, I think they're dangerous. But when you get to that point, give me some structure, please. What a great set of questions or exercises to begin then to apply, things you can now answer more readily because you've got material. So I think those books are really useful, but not in terms of when they're recommended.

SPEAKER_03 19:28

And you know, I read Save the Cat way back when. I don't even remember, during the pandemic, I think. And I I can see now that, you know, it's so tempting to sort of want to follow before you're re like what you were just saying, Johnny, right? Before you're actually there, the idea, you know, about like some of the questions, I mean some of the exercises, but I I think I have a difficulty with structure all all the way around. I think I'm really need it you know, as a person, I'm saying. Right. I'm very conscious of structure, both professionally, you know, we all need structure. I mean, from the moment we're born. It's a question of what what is the structure that gets um scaffolded for us or not, for that matter. And I think I have a a little bit of an oppositional streak in me.

SPEAKER_02 20:31

A little bit, you think?

SPEAKER_03 20:35

Okay, this is what happens when you do a podcast with somebody who knows you too well. Um I was trying to be kind. Okay, so I have an oppositional streak in me, which you know, I think in some ways I n I definitely need structure. I I mean I could list all the ways I need structure. And then I have a certain rigidity, I think, inside myself. But I also have this oppositional part of me which uh rebels against that because I grew up in a very structured family.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

That's interesting.

SPEAKER_03 21:14

Yeah, so part of how I experienced myself with a capital S was through opposition. So I have that tendency, you know, to think about structure.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

I really like this notion of Joni that you're talking about about there's a time for it. And I think you're right in the sense that if you try to impose that structure too early, there there are people who can do that and God bless them. But what you're really doing is weaning out a ton of creative people and energy in the process. And if you can write scenes and begin to write stories and write characters and see how they evolve, we can all All do that, you know, we can begin to do that. And then there's a time when plot and structure really matter. But if it's brought in too early as you're arguing, what you're really doing is weaning out this great pool of ideas and imagination that people just get terrified and they can't go forward and what a shame.

SPEAKER_03 22:25

I just had a thought, you know, in terms of structure. I was thinking that in those moments, those times that you were just talking about, Drew, uh, you know, to be open that in a way you do need a internal resource of structure. You have to trust right that it's sort of like that quote from M. Doctor in terms of writing, that you can only it's like driving a car at night with the lights on. You can only see what the lights show at the road ahead. You don't that's as far as it you can go.

SPEAKER_02 22:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:00

Right?

SPEAKER_02 23:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:01

But in order to do that, you have to have an internal structure that creates a certain kind of, I use the word again, safety, right? To be able to do that, to be open or fluid enough. Yeah, confident enough. Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

The way I would put that is you have to trust the creative process.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:21

That you will get there by not knowing, but by trusting enough to play the what if game, to say, maybe this. Well, I'll have her do that. I'll I'll write about her in this unusual situation with no understanding of why she's there other than my imagination put her there. But I don't think you're the only one who rebels from words like structure or plot. I think a lot of us do. I think that's why people come in and say, I'm no good at plots, because it just uh it feels conformist or or I just can't see it. And I think one of the things that would help certainly writers, but maybe anybody in the creative realm, but let's just I'll just speak to writers is we think of plot in terms of structure. We think of plot in terms of, well, what's gonna happen next? And that's a little bit out of my comfort zone or my strength. But if I think not in terms of what's going to happen next, but what maybe will my character do next? I don't feel at all insecure. Well, maybe they'll get, you know, put their dog up for adoption, or maybe they'll adopt six more dogs. I can have so much more fun and freedom with that. And because character drives plot, because I still feel character is plot, then that question, what will my character do next? Doesn't feel intimidating at all. And so maybe that switcheroo in language for some people, forget about what happens next. It's just what's your character gonna do next? Maybe that will help. Yeah. Some people feel more like, oh, I can do that. That's kind of fun.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

And there's no wrong way to pursue that either.

SPEAKER_02 24:50

I agree.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

So maybe that's a bit of a a switch in language that can help.

SPEAKER_02 24:54

Yeah. I like I like what you said about the creative process too. I mean, I, you know, I'm I've gosh, I think I've said this a thousand times, so I'm probably boring all our listeners, but this this notion of rehearsal, uh drafting, revision, editing is comforting in that process because even if you're exploring, if you're doing kind of the the splunking kind of work, that's just part of the process. And it doesn't have to be outline, you know, page three, subbullet A, little I. I mean, you're just exploring in that point. And you can always go back and say, well, that was a rehearsal, that was a dead end. That's actually super interesting. I'm gonna revise this. Now I understand this emotional journey. I'm gonna revise this a little bit differently. So having that craft wrapped around you to lean back on and not saying that that's a waste, it's just part of the process, basically.

SPEAKER_00 25:44

Yeah. Um, having been lucky enough to see people start their novels and not have a clue what those novels are gonna be. Well, that's not true. Their unconscious knows a ton, and they have some semblance of an idea and then finish them however many years, one, two, three, four years later. I feel like I can honestly sincerely say that the most efficient thing they did was just to keep writing, to keep discovering rather than wait till they knew something they couldn't know. And so that's where sometimes the time that it takes is because people need to learn craft and they can't achieve what they want to achieve because craft takes a bit of time. But in the creative process, I think the more you generate in a weird way, the faster you get to the insights you need to create layered characters and to create an inspiring plot. So efficiency, it can feel inefficient, but I actually have witnessed it being quite the opposite. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 26:37

Talk about, you know, w not wanting to bore people, but I want to go back to safety and the polyvagal theory, which we talked about at some point about fear. You know, that I think I can imagine somebody listening to this and thinking all of that, you know, sounds because everything you just said, it sounds like if I was listening and I was thinking, like I want to be in your workshop, Joni, because Yeah, that's what I would be thinking. That that there would be an environment of safety where I could do that, right? And so I think that's really important. If you don't have that environment, how do you help yourself move into a emotional state where you can do that kind of exploration? Because you have messages coming from your, as they call it, you know, the downstairs brain that it is not safe to do that for whatever the reason. Right. Right? So breathing, you know, grounding your you know, all that there are ways to recognize that it's not real, that you are able to do it, but you have to get your nervous system into a state which feels less constricted somehow.

SPEAKER_00 27:48

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. Any other thoughts about plot before we lose the plot?

SPEAKER_02 27:53

The only other thing I I would say that's that struck me at the end of this conversation is, again, across discipline. I was thinking about a new product that we're building in the company that I work. And I think I've talked to you before about this notion of minimal viable product where you basically just build the initial piece and get the plot or the initial story into the marketplace and then learn. And so we've built this product that's kind of does this one thing, and nobody could see the journey of that product or where it was going and just solving basically a little bit of a problem. But when we solved the problem and we had this initial thing out, then all everybody's imagination started going, well, it could do this, it could do that, it could do that. And pretty soon we had a real story and a novel about what this product could be. And to your point, what you've been saying all along, Joni, is nobody had conceived it beforehand. It never would have started if we hadn't built this first thing. We never would have gotten there. So I think the creative process, you know, I'm I always get myself excited when I see the connective tissue across disciplines. And I just, you know, I just had to say that I'm living that experience right now.

SPEAKER_03 29:05

I really appreciate that. I really do.

SPEAKER_02 29:16

Listeners, thanks for tuning in to Dead Frog in the Driveway with Pat Williams, Joni Cole, and myself, Drew Rockwell. We hope you join us for more stories and conversation that explore our creative intelligence and how we can all expand our thinking, ideas, and imagination. Plus, if you'd like a heads up about future episodes, make sure to subscribe to Dead Frog in the Driveway wherever you listen to podcasts. Go figure. Subscribe to Dead Frog in the Driveway.