My method to plotting

We all have our way of doing things. Some are plotter, other pantsers, and some utilize something in between. I’m a hard-core plotter, not because I want to but because I need to. This is how I do it. What’s your method?

Why

Having ADHD makes it difficult for me to keep interest in long tasks and tasks I don’t really vibe with at the time.

My method breaks down my story into small parts and enables me to jump between different parts depending on interest without getting completely lost and my writing spiraling out of control.

I have tried a less structured method, but without having a good grasp of the road ahead, I quickly lost interest.

I need to be obsessed about the story, to live and breathe it. This method has shown to be a good tool for that.

I’ve taken inspiration from several authors both for the method and how to document it.

Plant the seed

I take the idea I have and write it down in a few sentences as soon as I can, either in a document, notebook, or on my phone. I keep it as simple as I can.

No frills or flair, like:

Mira’s family is killed by bandits. Left for dead in the attack, she swears vengeance, even if it takes her 100 years.

If I have a more sense of the story I note that down in bullet points. It can be detailed on what the core conflict is, background, characters etc. The purpose of this step is to create a foundation for the next step in the plotting process.

Expand

I then expand on the initial idea by asking questions regarding it.

For example:

• Who is Mira and who was her family?
• Were they rich, poor, religious, non-religious, specific ethnicity?
• Why was Mira’s family attacked?
• Were the attackers really bandits?
• How did Mira survive?
• Did she pretend to be dead?
• Was it a fluke?
• Did someone intervene?
• What would she be willing to do for her vengeance?
• How far would she be willing to go?
• How would she go about it?

The purpose is to put some meat on the initial idea and get a sense of the story, the characters, and what the actual conflict is. I take the result of my answered questions and revise my first summary with the details. If I have a sense of certain points in the story I want to hit, important side characters, or even the ending, I highlight that. This is an iterative step, so I‘ll repeat it until I’m content.

Brainstorm

At this stage, I usually have some sense of the major scenes I want to hit. I list the scenes and a short description in no particular order in a document as they come to mind. This phase usually takes time and can span several hours or days. I can also do it in several goes, making one version then revising it, and so on.

If I have several POV I split them up into two different parts. With these stories, I usually use some kind of table, like Excel or google table, with each column a different POV. Depending on the POV interconnectiveness I might brainstorm each POV separately.

I find this phase quite freeing, as I don’t need to take order into account. Instead, it’s more of a flow of thoughts.

Cluster

I first put the scenes I’ve brainstormed into two different piles: start, middle, and end.

When I’ve done that I take a pile and divide the scenes up into parts according to the same logic: start, middle, end. I now have a clear sense of how the story will progress going ahead. It’s time to put everything together.

Organize

I take each scene description and put them in order in a table. Each scene is a new row and if I have several POV it’s divided into one column per POV. After I’ve put the scenes in order, I go through the list and divide everything into chapters.

If I need to get a grip about what season the scene is in, or have a clear sense of how many days have passed, I go through the list of scenes and chapters to calculate that.

I now have a full outline of what to write. I use Scrivener to write, so I end this phase by putting the scenes and chapters in order according to the outline in the table.