Hey! I love your work. I have been a fan since reading From Darkness We Rise (and I am super in love with Eversion right now!) My question to you involves plot-do you plan everything out before you right or do you fill in the plot as you go? Sometimes I stuggle tying events together in my own writing.
<3 I’m so glad you enjoy the writing! :D
In answer to your question though, I’m both. In some things I wing it, and in others I have a plan from the beginning, and some things I do both for.
Like for example, for From the Darkness We Rise - I winged book one, and most of book two, and then plotted out the last 15 or so chapters.
Eversion I winged for the first 15 and then plotted the last 18.
I usually know major plot points that I’m heading towards, mostly because if I’m thinking about writing a story, it’s often around major conflict or comfort points that come at different points in the story I’m imagining. So plot forms around those, and even if I have nothing planned, I sort of have an idea of what I’m working towards?
But I’ve also had stories where like, I’ve just started writing out hatefucking, and then it’s developed some plot, and then it became huge (see: Game Theory - and also The Wind that Cuts the Night).
The only things I’ve plotted from start to finish are The Ice Plague, Blackwood and The Court of Five Thrones. Even then, I often end up changing the plot around, adding in or taking out plotlines as I go. I don’t adhere to plans very strictly, I think that’s sort of…potentially doing injustice to letting things unfold naturally with the characters and the story.
In the future though, I mostly plan to plot my original stuff, and still follow a ‘whatever works’ for fanfiction.
Regarding tying events together, that can be challenging! Sometimes towards the end of a story, or around the middle, I’ll sit down and look at the plot points I’ve opened, and which ones I want to close (I don’t always close all of them, I don’t mind loose threads sometimes, or open-ended sections). ‘Closing’ a plot point doesn’t always mean anything momentous. For example, I’ve been working on ‘closing’ Connor’s relationships in a fanfic I’m writing atm which to me just means leaving them in a better place. So we’ve had the last significant scene with Markus and Simon already, and it ends with Markus promising to reach out to Connor more, and Connor being more open with him.
Or say with SAL, I chose to put Bunnymund and Jack on ‘amicable speaking terms’ as their closure, and didn’t do anything else with them. But to me, that closed their storyline even though it didn’t resolve everything.
Some events will require a lot of work, but others can be surprisingly easy to close if you don’t overthink it, or if you put yourself in the position of reader for a little while, reread your own writing and think ‘how would I want this to end if I didn’t know the author / what was coming?’
Sometimes your more valuable tool will be ‘if I was a reader and this was something I picked up, what would I want to happen with this storyline?’ You don’t always have to do what you’d want to do (sometimes it’s good to mess with expectations if you like another idea better), but if you’re really stuck, it can be good to step back and look at the overall event and why it’s there, what it’s for, what it’s trying to achieve, and once it’s achieved it, closing it off (and this doesn’t have to be at the end of a story, either).
Some events take multiple stories to close off and others can be opened and closed in a single chapter. But yes, stepping back and plotting can help! Without going into too much more detail (I’ve already written you an essay, I’m sorry), if I’m in the middle of a long story and I need to tie up storylines, I generally do this (this is literally what I did for Eversion):
1. Write down all the major storylines or things that I’ve introduced:
2. Write down all the characters I’ve introduced
3. Begin to group things together
4. Attach those groupings to ‘scenes’ that begin to tie up 1 and 2.
At 3, you will notice characters and events will often group together naturally. For example, I wrote down ‘Veritas’ in point 1, and this included ‘Gabriel, Perkins, Gavin, Zlatko, Fowler, Connor and Hank’ in point 2 automatically. This means I have an opportunity to close off those character storylines and the Veritas storyline at the same time. That makes sense!
Or in point 1, I wrote ‘Connor and friendship’ and then Kara, Luther, Alice, Markus, Simon, North in point 2. I can’t resolve this all in one chapter, but I can begin to give Connor scenes with all of these characters that show the evolution of his friendship capacity, and his openness with these characters (which I’ve started doing).
So at point 4, I’ve introduced - Kara teaching Connor to cook (which also helps with ‘Connor and food’), or Luther asking Connor about his hobbies, or North helping Connor to save Hank’s life (which also ties into Hank and his coding issues and helps with this too), or Markus and Simon coming to visit. The ‘scenes’ themselves aren’t like…100% crucial. Kara didn’t have to specifically teach Connor to cook, but it grouped points 1 and 2 together well, and gave me a vehicle to do it in.
And that ties up the ‘Connor and friendship’ storyline nearly completely across 6 other ensemble characters (I’m not done yet, but you can actually see all the scenes I’ve introduced to start sort of reassuring the audience that Connor actually has a growing, stable support network as we head into the end).
After that, your chapter plan or plotting can be really simple, if you want it to be, because it just serves as a reminder of what you’re trying to do - feature aspects of point 1 and 2, grouped together (3) in a scene (4). So I might write as an example:
Chapter 28: Hank and code, Hank’s code malfunctions and Hank collapses, and Connor calls North. Panic/anger, temporary resolution.
It’s a thin chapter plan, but it does this:
Hank and code (point 1). Hank’s code malfunctions and Hank collapses (the scene - 4), and Connor calls North (point 1 for ‘Connor and friendship’ and point 2 for dealing with ensemble characters). Panic/anger, temporary resolution (leaving things open for potential resolution in the future, but we’re not there yet).
And this is basically how I juggle giant ensemble casts, a ton of different plot points, and still try and weave them together. Most of my stories feature jumps in linear time, and multiple scenes per chapter. Usually by about the midway point in a really long story, I actually really enjoy kind of putting down some skeleton chapter plan ideas, because it gives me more scenes to look forward to writing. I change whatever doesn’t work once I get there, because I’ll still know I’m meant to be dealing with points 1 and 2, so I can change 3 and 4 if I want.
(ETA: In something huge and unwieldy like The Ice Plague I will colour coordinate different plot lines and groupings of characters, and sometimes write it all down on post it notes and it’s messy and complicated but I enjoy that, lmao).
THIS WAS SO LONG I AM SO SORRY dskljfasdfsd please don’t write like me I don’t know anything
