I have a secret to tell you lot.
Come here.
Closer.
…
I can’t plot to save my life.
I’m what folks call a “pantser,” which is basically a nice way of saying that I can’t do outlines and just make stuff up as I go along. This is fine for shorter stories, since I can just focus on the characters, their interactions, and a smaller conflict. But when you’re writing a 7-8 volume epic with interconnected character arcs and a large cast, you start having regrets real quick.
Live footage of me trying to explain my stories to people.
I feel like that’s probably a factor as to why I never actually finish any of my projects. They tend to be very big in size and scope and I often find myself extremely overwhelmed. I’d have a bunch of notes gathering dust in my Google Drive, filled to the brim with cool ideas and heartwrenching character moments. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll even get a first draft of a chapter down. But then I get so lost in the mess of a plot I had created that I’d just set everything down.
It gets discouraging after a while. I see people consistently working on their projects when I can’t even get started. Sometimes folks can even manage multiple- shoutout to Red of Overly Sarcastic Productions, who not only helps with a YouTube channel but a podcast and webcomic as well. And that’s great! Folks like her are awesome! But I knew that, if I wanted to join her ranks, I’d have to find a compass instead of sailing in the dark.
And that’s when a lovely little video was recommended to me by the lovely YouTube.
I’ve turned to this table approach for outlining Spectrum, my webcomic that will hopefully happen at some point, and boy do I love it! Despite how different it was from my usual writing methods.
Something you need to know about my stories is that they tend to be very character-driven. My stories focus on character arcs and relationships and all that. But the problem I’d run into is that I’d have all these ideas for character drama, but no idea as to how to get them into the story itself.
The idea of focusing on setting instead felt very weird to me. Don’t get me wrong, I love worldbuilding and all that! It’s just that I never really saw it as something so critical to outlining. But nonetheless, I heeded her advice, writing down lists of potential locations:
The Indigo Arc
Settings:
The Wastelands
Luca’s hideaway
Calamity’s cavern
Spectra
Indigo Icecaps
Powder Town
The frozen lake
Lilac’s cabin
Beau’s house
The Glacial Mountains
A destroyed base camp
A series of ice caves inhabited by Blights
Glacier Falls (city made from ice)
The Beast’s cave
Snowstorm Summit
Mount Hearth Resort
The lift
…and immediately, I was flooded with ideas for what I could do at these locations. An avalanche leaving my characters trapped in an ice cave. A climactic battle at the peak of a mountain. None of those ideas would’ve popped into my head without the settings being more prevalent in my mind.
Granted, I had a more solid framework of a plot for Indigo Icecaps. For Violet Skylines, I had… uh- very little to go off of. The section for Violet Skylines in my original Twine story was terribly barebones: you just find a missing piece of a power plant and put it back. That’s it. And because of that, I was very stuck when outlining for the Violet Arc.
But this is when I was able to marry this new plotting method with my own. Once again, I turned towards settings to be my guiding light:
The Violet Arc
Settings:
- The foundry/industrial area
- The power plant
- The train cars/cables linking the islands together
- Jewelry store
- Casino
- Theatre
- Prison
- City Square
- Downtown/financial district
- Jett’s apartment
- Public park
- Merlot’s memorial?
- City capital (where the Violet Prism is)
- Museum
You might notice that there are a lot of locations that involve valuables (a jewelry store, a casino, the financial district, a museum…). This is because the main villain of the Violet Arc has a great love for shiny things: coins, jewels, anything. So, I used my knowledge of her character to guide the settings, and in turn, guide the story.
And I think that’s the important thing to take away from this: you have to find a method that works best for you. Look at what others are doing, but don’t feel like you have to follow everything they do exactly. Modify it so that it suits you, your writing style, and your story.
So, maybe you’re hearing this and think this method is life changing. Or maybe you find this whole thing weird and confusing. Even if you’re in that second camp, I encourage you to give this a try. If it works for you, great! If not, no worries! Regardless, I hope you find an outlining method that suits you!
Happy writing!
– Eliza