On the Craft: Pounding Out Story Beats
Warning: brainwork ahead; lots of words coming; you will need coffee
We’ve covered opening yourself up to a new story, sowing those seeds, and allowing them to take root. Let’s skip ahead, assume you have a story idea, and talk about sketching out the beats, aka, plotting.
This one’s not only for writers. It’s for any curious souls who want to pull back the curtain on the creative process.
As always, you can listen to the audio version by clicking above or on my Drowning in Words podcast on Apple [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/boo-walkers-drowning-in-words/id1871330758] or Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/7eT5GbBUYyTEtYRbgU4eZr].
You know that Dos Equis commercial featuring the most interesting man in the world? He says, “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I drink Dos Equis.” Well, I don’t always outline, but when I do, here’s an idea of what’s running through my head.
Don’t fear. Following my suggestions below and attempting to hammer out a plot before you start writing doesn’t mean you have to be a plotter for the rest of your life. An outline isn’t going to bite…hard. Stephen King, an infamous pantser, won’t put a hex on you. And you’re not losing the magic by engaging the analytical part of your brain.
I can’t stand the idea that we authors feel a need to jab our flag into one camp, either plotter or pantser. Do whatever the project calls for, whatever’s pulling you. Yes, I pantsed the first half of Salvation Isle, and it was a wonderful ride, but with the new project I just started, the fourth in my Red Mountain series, I wanted to outline as much as I could. And I’ll explain why shortly.
Both plotting and pantsing have wonderful merits.
Pantsers, those who write by the seat of their pants sans outline, thrive on discovery. They have the joy of spelunking into a dark cave with only a headlight, seeing only what’s right ahead of them. It can be scary and surprising and a ton of fun too. It’s as if you’re enjoying the story in real time as you tell it. Also, it’s a thrill to simply start typing and see what appears on the page.
Known pantsers: boo walker, Agatha Christie, Haruki Murakami, Ursula K. Le Guin
Plotters, on the other hand, can set their story up in a way that might lead to a cleaner first draft. They can take time to weave in layers of complexity that pantsers won’t get to till later on. They have a plot that is likely already adhering to the theme and advancing the character’s growth in a steady arc. The obstacles are presented with precise escalation. And so on…
One could argue that plotters are faster at arriving at a publishable story. I’m trying to squeeze this Red Mountain book in between two other contracted books that have fixed deadlines, meaning timing is of the essence.
Plotting can make tackling a more complicated structure easier. In the case of my Red Mountain stories, I typically have three to five points of view. Pantsing that kind of spread can tax boo’s CPU to the point of a short-circuit, and nobody needs to see boo short-circuit.
Lastly, I’ve found that having an outline makes it far more difficult to get bogged down by writer’s block. I heard someone say once that writer’s block only happens when you don’t know where you’re going. How true!
Known plotters: boo walker, John Irving, Patrick Rothfuss, Tana French, George R.R. Martin
Did you notice I’m part of both camps? I just wanted to see my name next to all those masters, though I couldn’t allow myself any capitalization. I’m a plantser: bi-curious, non-partisan, and plotsexual. I suggest you be the same. Change it up. Don’t get comfortable—or else your muse will get bored and go find someone younger and thirstier for words.
Though it’s always changing, I prefer the middle ground. I hammer out an idea of where I want to go—sometimes a heavily detailed plan, other times a couple of paragraphs expanding on the premise—but always set out on my story journey welcoming distractions. An ADHD joy ride toward the climax of the story. Even the best plotters make room for their imagination to grab the wheel. You can’t know all the places a story wants to go till you’re submerged, wearing your character’s skin, hearing their dialogue, feeling their feels, seeing the plot whiz by in real time.
Here’s a good place to defend a misconception about plotting. Pantsers love to rub in the face of plotters how boring it would be to miss out on the joy of discovering the twists and turns along with the character. Plotters can do this too. If you spend long enough prepping your story, figuring out your characters, and then pushing through the beats, you can absolutely play discovery games.
Exercise: Create a character in your head right now. Yeah, you, right now. Imagine yourself wearing their skin, breathing through their lungs. Now, give them a desire and then put something in the way.
Once, you’re there, close your eyes and imagine that character going after that desire, then hitting the obstacle. What do they feel? How can they get around it? Put them into action. Maybe they don’t get through. Think of another way around the obstacle. Keep going till they get their desire.
You just played discovery without typing a word!
Don’t be afraid to get dirty.
Here’s the truth of it. If you really want to outline properly, giving yourself the tools you need to start writing without pausing for a month, then you need to get dirty. You need to get into the head and skin of each character, get into the specifics of each obstacle. You have to answer all the questions lingering as you watch your people run around in this world you’re building, and as you toss out plot ideas to keep them moving. Free write, research, play the “what if” game, find pics of your characters, speak out loud with their accents, create their family tree, draw out settings, go on long walks to consider all possibilities. Whatever it takes to bring the story to life in your mind.
Choose your weapon.
Now, choose your weapon of choice: whiteboard, chalkboard, sand on the beach, index cards on the floor, Scrivener corkboard, Excel (ugh, nooooo! Though I use Excel at times, it feels a little corporate to me).
Naturally, I suggest changing it up. I’ve tried everything I can think of. Stretch those outlining muscles.
During a recent rage-filled episode with Scrivener (which I’m back to loving, by the way), I discovered Plottr. The guys over there were kind enough to offer a subscription, and I committed to using it for this Red Mountain book.
It’s a wonderful tool, cleaner and more elastic than Scrivener’s corkboard. In fact, I’m already thinking that with future books I’ll use Plottr for outlining and Scrivener for character/setting organization and drafting. I’m forced to use Microsoft Word once I start working with my editing team, but I like to stay in Scrivener as long as possible while writing.
No matter your tool, here are the basics that I find important. Of course, talk to me in two years, and I’ll likely have an entirely different process.
With Plottr, I can create as many rows of blank boxes as I’d like, but you can apply this to any tool you’re using, including a good ol’ fashioned notebook. Blank boxes are your index cards. They give you enough space to fill out the crucial information. What’s most important to me, whether I go physical or digital, is that the index cards are moveable, so I can arrange and rearrange them as I massage my plot.
Creating empty boxes.
First, I decide on a timeline. Will it stretch over the course of a summer or span a decade or more? The first step is to create a row of boxes that show rough dates. For Red Mountain Calling, it starts in March and ends around November. Locking that down early on is huge.
Then, I create another row of boxes that’s dedicated to larger events in the story. It didn’t take me long to realize that if I follow the yearly pattern of my Red Mountain stories, this one kicks off in March of 2020, right when COVID arrived. In this timeline, I mark down factual dates such as when restaurants and hotels closed, when the hospitals started spilling over. I also might mark some important dates related to the wine year, like when budbreak takes place, when winegrowers pick their white and red grapes. And whatever other dates apply to the story. I’ll also insert important dates from my fictional universe too. For example, I know a very bad thing will happen on the mountain, and it will affect every character. That goes here too.
I create yet another timeline to sketch out the classic beats in any story, like the catalyst, the midpoint, etc. More on these later.
Now, the good stuff. The beats for our characters. As mentioned, I have a few different storylines going (only do this if you have a death wish), so I create a row of empty boxes for each of my POV characters.
And here comes the author crisis…
I created all these boxes, then just stared and stared and stared.
My seventeenth book, and I felt as much like a newbie as I ever had. I beat myself up for a while, sped down Impostor Syndrome Boulevard, even had the urge to forget my grand idea of prepping and just start writing, but I ultimately held strong to my outlining commitment and took a step back.
I had a sense of how each of the characters was starting out, but I wasn’t quite sure where they were going, so I decided to pull a few craft books geared toward outlining off my shelf. Thumbing through them knocked some wonderful ideas loose, but then I got super frustrated. I noticed that one book disagreed with another, and I found myself wondering if I was reading them wrong and which path to take and who to side with and…
Stop overthinking, Boo. That’s what I told myself. Everything you need is between your ears—and behind your ribcage.
That’s the issue with craft books. I adore them. Hell, I’m writing the first in a series of them! But the user must understand that they offer one way to do things, which is super helpful, but we can’t get pulled into thinking there’s only one way, that there are specific guardrails we must follow. I’ve already talked about Theo of Golden breaking rules. A totally static character without an arc and arguably last year’s favorite in the book world. How about Daniel Kraus winning the Pulitzer with his novel Angel Down? It’s one big sentence! I bet you I can find umpteen billion craft books telling you how to structure your sentences and not one of them will encourage a sentence that stretches for 304 pages.
With these how-to books, we can learn how other writers think, but then we must set ourselves free to make and break our own rules.
In the end, I’m looking to do two things:
1. Chase an idea that brings me joy as I usher it to life
2. Entertain my readers and hopefully make their lives a little better
The first is easy. Write from your soul. Write for yourself. Do not write to prove that you matter to those around you. Do not write because you want to be known as a writer.
The second requires work, but the good news is that the vast majority of readers out there don’t care how strictly you follow the rules. They wouldn’t even know to notice. They care about being pulled in by an interesting character that’s going through something intriguing. They care about pacing. This day and age, we’re competing with other forms of media that are more easily distracting, so we can’t let them get bored.
My point is that you don’t need to ever read one craft book. Just like musicians don’t need to know theory. I was a music major in college because I adore seeing under the hood. Same for story. But by no means are how-to theories required to create a masterpiece. All that said, studying the craft can be a tremendous joy and learning some tricks can save you from reinventing the wheel.
Before I return to the topic at hand, let me say while smashing my fist down on the podium that the far more important piece to your growth is consuming stories, including those that don’t quite work. Books, movies, poems, songs, television shows. Do that enough, and you’ll know what to do once you get started with your own. You’ll build an instinctual sense of pacing, of how characters grow, of how good dialogue works, of how to capture the audience.
Putting my books back on the shelf, I ultimately returned to this idea that it’s all in my head and my heart. Let my instincts steer.
What followed was tremendous.
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What is a story?
Before we drill into the specifics, let’s hammer out what we consider a story. That’ll give us a better idea of how to build one.
With respect to plenty of exceptions (hello again, Theo of Golden), a story, or at least my stories, have a flawed character(s) who change as the plot progresses. Typically they want something (even an inkling of the vaguest something, internal or external) but obstacles get in the way. By the end, whether they achieve their goal or not, they have positively or negatively changed, the latter of which can lead to a pretty sad story. Regarding Theo of Golden, the protagonist didn’t change but the cast around him did, which is a glorious example of how the rules are here to be bent and broken.
Here’s another simple distillation I like apropos story, attributed to playwright George Abbott:
Part one, you get a likable guy up a tree.
Part two, you throw rocks at him.
Part three, you get him down.
That’s all you need to pound out a story, amigos, but let’s add a few other ideas in.
Cause and effect.
Your story needs to flow, and the best way is getting most of your plot points to lead into the next. In other words, unless you’re shaking it up, maybe don’t construct a story with a bunch of random scenes. That’ll take you into episodic territory. Your scenes need to flow into each other by cause and effect.
I can’t go further without mentioning the “but/therefore rule” brought to the writing world by the creators of South Park. Trey Parker and Matt Stone would make sure each scene was tied together with “but” or “therefore,” instead of “and” or “then.” Try that and see how much more interesting your story becomes.
I’ll have this concept in my head while plotting, then revisit it when I go over it later. Make the story easy for your reader.
The premise/theme as the spine.
Most scenes should (should is such a bad word!) be connected to the overall premise and theme of your book. To me, the premise is the basic concept, your elevator pitch, and the theme is what you’re trying to say, the underlying currents running between the words. Don’t overthink them and let the definitions of each hang loosely, no matter who tries to tell you exactly what they are.
As you fill out the empty boxes in your outline, stay true to your premise and theme. If your teacher gave you an assignment to write a collection of elephant poems, don’t cram in a tiger poem just because you like stripes.
For all my Red Mountain novels, I’ve held onto this premise: a cast of colorful characters in a small wine-growing region fights for life, love, and belonging. The themes have to do with working together for a grander cause, finding meaning in life, learning to love yourself and others—despite the ugly bits. See what I mean by keeping it loose? Notice how I didn’t just stick to one? This is my party; I can do whatever I want.
I consider these ideas with each plot decision. I’ll even create a micro-premise (and maybe a related theme) for each POV character, which falls under the main premise umbrella.
On structure.
I have a flexible structure concept that I’ve been tweaking for years that includes a few beats that always find a way into my stories—and most stories. I mentioned creating such a timeline earlier.
All of my novels so far reflect the hero’s journey, as brought to us by Joseph Campbell. Go read Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey for the best way to understand it. You’ll also find I adhere to a three-act structure, the second act being split in two by a midpoint. Thank you Aristotle and Syd Field, among others.
Along with marking each act and midpoint, I have some other essential beats: the opening scene, the setup, the call to adventure/catalyst, character breaking into Act II, midpoint, dissolution/crisis/dark night (my fave), the awakening, the charge leading into Act III, and the final scene, which might hark back to the opening. These are just story basics, beats that I recognize in nearly every book, tv show, and movie I consume, and they come out of me instinctually.
With my multiple POV books, I try to have the characters grow in roughly parallel fashion, meaning that each POV character’s big moments, such as the dissolution, happens around the same time.
Because I have my timeline, knowing that Red Mountain starts in March and ends in October (at least for now) I can guesstimate where the beats will land. The midpoint will be in June. The beginning of Act III will land in September.
Know your characters.
Before we fill this growing collection of boxes, know your people. What are they dealing with? What is their flaw? How’d they get so damaged? What is the wound that led them to this place where they need a story to grow? Why am I telling their story? How are they going to change? What are their worst nightmares?
Once you can answer these questions, nail down what they want. As I say over and over, their desire can be anything. ANYTHING. Don’t let anyone tell you it has to be a measurable external goal. Most craft books will push this idea on you. Yes, that’s one way to do it, and it just so happens to be an easier way, but there are tons of stories out there proving the options are endless. The desires can be internal or external or both. They can be concrete, such as going after a promotion or solving a murder, or they can be absolutely vague, such as a pursuit of happiness or simply a will to get by every day.
It’s just nice to have something in mind, so that you can throw obstacles at them. That’s your story.
I’ll write out what each character wants, then brainstorm all the possible obstacles that could get in the way. You’ll see this in action down below.
This can be the most fun of the whole project. Don’t hold back, write down anything. Then pick and choose your favorites, especially considering what challenges will be most germane to the story at hand.
If you’re really good, you can organize them in a way where each obstacle is more daunting than the next. In other words, start by throwing rocks at your character, then bricks, then daggers, then pull out your gun. But prove me wrong. Start with the biggest monster and end with a tiny bang.
Once you have a list of challenges, start filling out boxes. Your character goes after what he wants, runs into an obstacle, which causes him to recalibrate. Perhaps he’s knocked back a few steps, but he pushes forward. Once he gets past one obstacle, throw the next at him. Your story is coming alive.
At this point, it’s good to remember that your character is growing. He will try to solve his issues in unenlightened ways in the beginning. By the midpoint, however, we should expect that he’s grown and has a sense that he must change before he can truly realize his internal and/or external goal(s). Bake that into your scenes. Think about how someone who has grown might face the same obstacles he faced earlier on.
Putting things into practice with my WIP.
To show you this thinking in action, let’s get granular and look at one of my characters. Otis Till is one of the stars of my Red Mountain series. He’s had a ton of flaws over the course of the series, so I needed to come up with something more creative.
Side note: when writing in series, you might have a character slowly grow over the whole story. In my case, I didn’t know it would be a series from day one, so most of my characters grew out of their initial flaws in book one. No matter, I just give them new flaws with each new book. That’s a lot like each of us, isn’t it? We work on one challenge, only to discover we have a new issue the next year. Of course, the issues are often related.
In the last Red Mountain, Red Mountain Burning, Otis left the mountain, but now he feels this desperate need to return. His flaw has to do with feeling like Red Mountain can’t continue without him. He can’t relinquish control even after being gone for a year, and he feels as if he doesn’t matter unless he’s a part of it. His journey will be about returning to Red Mountain and trying to clumsily save the mountain and its inhabitants, only to realize that he must stop white-knuckling and let go.
Here’s a workable micro-premise: an elder winemaker of Red Mountain must find his new place on the sidelines if he is to go into his seventies with a sense of peace.
No promises if that will stick, but it’s a good start. As I hammered out his beats, I only allowed material that hit on that premise. His call to adventure comes to him as a dream; he wakes knowing that he must return to the mountain. His Act II begins when he sets out to drive back from Miami to Washington state.
The Ending.
What I find very important in outlining is getting a sense of the ending. I don’t always have a clear vision, but even a taste helps. Maybe one specific detail or a scene where I see him awakening, see him defeating his monsters. You take his flaw—his issue—which in this case is not trusting that Red Mountain can thrive without him, and ask what his overcoming it might look like.
Let’s assume that he can finally let go of his leadership position and become a sideman on the Red Mountain stage. That possibility leads me to believe that as he returns to Red Mountain, he’ll first try to micromanage everyone, driving everyone mad as he tries to get the mountain back on track. By the end though, I keep seeing him settling on a piece of land on the backside of Red Mountain and being happy in a simpler state, laying down his arms, like a retired general. That gives me a pretty good idea of some beats that I can add into his timeline.
The Arc.
Regarding Otis’s growth throughout: in the beginning, he’s desperately missing Red Mountain and sure that if he doesn’t get back, the mountain will fall apart and everything he’s worked for, for many years, will prove to be a waste. It’s gonna get ugly in the first part of Act II as he tries to save everyone.
But around the midpoint, he might realize that he can’t save everyone, that it’s not about him anyway. He’s just one of the cogs in the wheel. Still, that won’t be easy, especially when he feels like everyone around him is drowning.
The second part of the book will be about him coming to truly believe that he has to let go and that the mountain and its inhabitants will be okay without him carrying every bit of the weight. Along with the external story, the internal story kicks into a higher gear. What all these troubles are really about is his ongoing grief for his sons, wishing he’d done more for them, feeling like he failed them.
See how this thinking can help you refine your story beats as the story moves along?
Sketching out desires and obstacles.
He wants to save and protect Red Mountain and its inhabitants. Things that could get in the way:
* COVID - a huge issue for the food and bev and hospitality industries. So many ways to go. Restaurants can’t buy wine; no one is visiting the tasting rooms. And what about people on the mountain getting sick?
* Otis sold his land and is homeless. He wants nothing more than to make wine again, but there’s no land for sale.
* A time-traveling gladiator challenges him to a to-the-death brawl. Nah, that’s not germane. But it would be fun!
* A new bad guy. How about the son of a bad guy in a previous novel? Ah, yes.
* Brooks, his mentee and closest person he has to a living son, is struggling both emotionally and with the vineyard he bought from Otis, but Brooks doesn’t want his help.
* Brooks has not taken on the leadership role on the mountain, so the community is warring with each other. There is no common vision.
* A new pest or disease that could affect the vines.
* Otis’s or his partner’s health become compromised, outside of the COVID threat.
I could go on forever. Once I have a good list, then I can pick through for favorites, organize by escalation, and then see how they would play out over the course of the story. Each one could be a whole story if I wanted. There you go, more cards to fill out!
Other scenes that need a home.
Another way to fill in the empty boxes is to capture any random scenes that might be floating around in your head. I always have a few ideas that will happen somewhere, but I’m not sure where. I’ll just plug them in as best I can.
For example, a scene with Otis howling at the moon naked is a sure bet at some point; it’s a part of who he is and a reader favorite.
I know that Otis needs to have a fight with his mentee, Brooks, which will crush him as he feels like he’s letting down yet another son. The ultimate way for that to climax is for Brooks to shout that he doesn’t need him. That will knock Otis down to the studs. Which means that’s likely a good dark night of the soul spot, the place where the worst things happen.
Also, I know that there will be a scene where Otis gives Brooks some very powerful advice; I’ve already written down the dialogue. I put that somewhere on the timeline towards the end, and again, I can shift it later.
I mentioned plotters can insert some complexity into early drafts. Here’s an example:
Say we know something about the end, such as Otis and Brooks’s inevitable fight. What can we do to layer in pieces that will make that fight hurt more? Considering their father/son relationship, I will definitely thread in early on Otis’s grieving for his dead sons, and I’ll make it clear how much it hurts that he let them down. I’ll also make sure the reader sees that he considers Brooks a son from the early chapters. And I’ll gradually build the tension between the two men all the way through. By the time the big fight happens, it should be inevitable. Pantsers can’t always do that as easily.
Every POV character needs such attention.
Follow this process with each of your POV characters. You can even do it to important non-POV characters. It can only enrich your story.
As you go, consider the other characters and how they will interact with each other.
There will be a scene where Brooks refuses to let Otis taste his wines, as he’s ashamed. That will impact Otis, but it’s certainly a big internal issue with Brooks. I need to choose where that scene will fall as far as point of view. And I know it’ll happen early in Act II.
Brooks’s moment of dissolution will certainly tie in with the scene when he shouts at Otis and tells him he doesn’t need him. That’ll be both of their low points.
Because that scene applies to both of them, I will have to decide which POV will cover it best. Unless we see it from both POVs, I can remove the block from one of their timelines to simplify.
Now what?
Once I have a general beat sketch of each of the characters, I go back and visit the important beats. Where does the midpoint fall? I’m hoping that the midpoint of each of the characters will fall closely to each other. I like that, similar to how the climaxes all come together. In fact, if I can, I’d like all of them to experience their climaxes in the same room. That’s not always the case, but it serves the reader well if you can pull it off.
Once you’ve done your best, take a day or two, then revisit. Follow the story though the beats. Is there a natural cause and effect flow? Does it escalate in tension? Is there a proper payoff? Does the character grow in a nice arc?
And then…
There is a time when you must start writing, and so much reveals itself only then. The plot that you created needs to be incredibly fluid. If you’re suddenly in your character’s head and something doesn’t feel right, go in a different direction. Let the character and your intuition steer.
Typically I’ll go at it for a hundred pages until things start to feel like they’re falling off the tracks, and then I’ll pause and say, “okay, now that I’ve seen who these characters really are and what’s actually going on, once I’m immersed into the details of the story, I’m gonna spend a few days tweaking the beats.” I might have gotten their flaw wrong, perhaps guessed the wrong ending. And I will pivot.
Don’t be afraid to pivot, friends.
It’s not always pretty, the process. It shouldn’t be! We’re all hacking away, trying to find the pretty. Create a path, then start moving your fingers. Recalibrate the plan, then back to moving fingers. Do that over and over, and you will soon have a book in hand.
Hold on, that didn’t feel exciting enough. Do what I’m suggesting, and by Gods, you will defeat your demons, defy all odds, experience moments of blissful flow, and end up with a book in hand that has your name on the bloody cover!
God speed.
boo
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