The Plot Board

I posted a picture of one the most vital tools in my writing life on Twitter yesterday and was surprised by how much interest it got. I'm talking about my plot board. This is it, bare and ready for a new story:

Nothing too special. Just a A1-sized cork board with added bits of string, pins and headings on cut-up index cards. However, I've found I'd struggle to write a book without it!

I can’t claim to have invented the idea – far from it – but I’ve been tweaking my own approach for about ten years now. I don't always use the board the same way twice - it really depends on the story, but I'm fascinated about plotting and story structure and I wondered if blogging about my process as I write the next book might a) be useful to someone else who loves this kind of stuff and b) actually help me work out exactly why this helps me so much!

I think part of it is that I’m quite a visual thinker and it helps me to ‘see’ the structure of my book this way.  It also provides a place to put all those ‘lightning bolt’ ideas I get about my book before, during and after the first draft.  You  know the kind of ideas I mean: the ones you get when you’re minding your own business, not even really thinking about the book and – BAM! – suddenly you know why your heroine is acting that way, or the perfect setting for a scene comes to mind, or just a line of dialogue pops into your head and triggers something off.

When I get those kind of ideas – and they are generally my best ones – I scribble them down and pin them to my board. My board follows a chronological timeline of my work-in-progress, and when I think about where to pin that scrap of paper it often becomes instantly obvious where and when it should go. Do things move and change as I work on the book? Absolutely. That’s why God gave us coloured pins! That’s the beauty of a plot board: nothing is set in stone.

My first plot board looked a little different. My whole approach to plotting was much less sophisticated (and probably much less neurosis-inducing) back then. I’d read that a good way to plot was to think of 20 things that needed to happen in your book. That’s what the pink index cards are: 20 plot points for the story. Then, as other ideas came to me, or notions of how I could develop those plot points floated to the surface of my consciousness, I tacked them onto the board next to the relevant plot point.

I then switched to trying to divide the board into acts. I particularly liked Michael Hauge's way of breaking down a story, I tried dividing my board into six stages with five turning points, on the right, but found I couldn't quite fit everything on there so it was easy to see the flow of the story. Then I read Save The Cat by Blake Snyder.  Great book, and I loved his idea of storyboarding too.  He divided his story board into four horizontal strips: Act 1, Act 2a, Act 2b and Act 3.  I immediately decided to try the same thing, and discovered I now had room to use my plot point cards in chronological order, but I still had room to pin all the little flashes of ideas around them too.  So this is what the plot board of my recently finished book, The Other Us, looks like:

So that's the introduction to my plot board, next time... the different stages of a story and where they go on the plot board.

Almost there...

I wrote the final scene of my current book (working title: The Valentine's Trap, part of a duet I'm doing with Nikki Logan) this morning.

Hard at work at my local Waitrose!

I had the scene all planned out, but I couldn't get my head in the right place to put it down on paper. So what did I do? I went shopping. No, not shoe shopping - grocery shopping. Writing in cafes is my trick when I can't seem to settle to write at home. Nothing to distract me there, especially if I take pen and paper and don't have internet access.

I can also then feel virtuous that I've crossed another chore off my list. Also, I use the hand held scanner to zap my shopping and leave my trolley outside the cafe while I buy a coffee and write. I know I don't have long before the chiller stuff in my cool bag starts to get warm, so I can't dally. And there we had it. 1200 words written in just under and hour and I left my hero and heroine arguing about who proposed to whom...

Yay!

According to my progress meter, I am 111% done! Whoops. Will definitely need to trim as I'm waaay above my word limit.

But the changes I made removing the added external conflict in the second half of the book really worked and I am much, much happier with the result. I had stopped writing halfway through the final scene because it was so dull, but this time round I romped through it, writing 4000 words today alone (hence, the overshot word count).

Now just have to tidy it up and hand it in to my editor on Tuesday morning. Phew!

In the meantime I am enjoying the uplifting funkiness that is Nerina Pallot's new single, Lift Your Hands Up. (You can see the fab video below). Her track, Learning To Breathe, was on the soundtrack for the current book, by the way.

Great British Traditions

I don't think many people the world over could have missed the fact that yesterday was Royal Wedding day here in the UK. The nation has been in a fever for months, but in the last week all anyone seems to have been thinking about, writing about and talking about was the impending nuptials of William and Kate.

Like the rest of the country, even though my deadline is looming large on the horizon, I couldn't resist turning the TV on and watching at least some of the festivities. It's practically research, after all!

I edited the current book in the morning, stopped to watch the royal family arriving at Westminster Abbey and the arrival of the bride and groom. I also watched the vows and prayers, but then I disappeared back up to my 'office', definitely romantically inspired, to write a first kiss scene between my hero and heroine. No similarities to William and Kate's balcony kiss, I'm afraid, as this one took place on a desert island in a thunderstorm, but I was pretty pleased with the result, and it definitely ups the conflict and emotion in that part of the story, which is what I was looking for.

When the Royal Wedding guests disappeared inside Buckingham palace I went back to work, but after sorting out most of chapter eight and nine, I gatecrashed a street party in a road literally round the corner. Well, not exactly gatecrashed, as my family had been invited by friends who lived there to join them. It wasn't so much a formal street party as people setting up their barbecues and garden furniture outside their houses and generally wandering around getting to know the neighbours. The street had been officially closed for the day and someone had hired a bouncy castle for the kids to play on. Everyone had a wonderful time.

But then street parties, as well as Royal Weddings, are something us Brits know how to do well. I have a wonderful picture of my grandmother (3rd from the left), mother and her twin sister (twins with white ribbons 3rd & 5th from left on far side of table) enjoying a similar occasion in Clockhouse, London at the end of the second world war.


However, the street party above, with its pristine white table cloth and everyone in their Sunday best, was a little different from the one I attended yesterday. Shorts and t-shirts were the order of the day in 2011, and instead of nicely cut cucumber sandwiches we had charred burgers and salads, but we did also engage in yet another great British tradition that my ancestors probably steered well clear of in their 1945 finery - British Bulldog.
Now, for those of you not familiar with the term, British Bulldog is a playground game with a playing area of varying size (depends on where you are playing), where one player (bulldog) tries to catch the others as they rush past him from one end of the pitch to the other. Those caught help the bulldog to catch more until only one is left. (If you really want to know all the rules you can find them here).

After a few beers had been consumed, one of the dads on the street suggested a game. Mr Harper initially refused, as last time he played a game of British Bulldog he broke a bone in his hand and it has never been the same since. However, it didn't take much persuading to get him up and having a go, and I have to say that I haven't seen Mr H move that fast in about 20 years!

On the first pass of the first game there was injury. Which is probably why a lot of schools banned this game when I was younger. Injured party was nine year old girl in white dress (Belonging to me. The girl, not the dress, that is.) who was mowed down by another child on a bike. Rules clearly explained to child on bike and game resumes. Nine year old receives germoline and plasters from kind mum at nearest house and cuddles from non-Bulldog playing parent (me).

I wish I could say that was the only mishap incurred during the game, but after one of the participants had to be taken to hospital with a dislocated shoulder the game, not surprisingly, was dropped in favour of cricket.

The street party, however, carried on into the evening without any further mishap. It was lovely to have a day off work (well, for most people - I had to keep popping home to do a bit more editing) and have nothing to do but celebrate the Royal wedding by getting out of our houses, away from the television and out into the sunshine to meet each other and forge new relationships.

Falling off the face of the earth...

My blog has been unusually quiet recently, I know. Unfortunately, my RSI has returned and I'm having to limit my time at the computer. Combine that with school holidays, a few health issues and a looming deadline... Well, let's just say I saw a ball of tumbleweed roll past.

And the problem is, after not blogging for a while, I couldn't think of anything to say! Fascinating, aren't I?

Anyway, my fifth book, Saying Yes To The Millionaire, the Summer Bride in the 'Bride for All Seaons' series, is going to be available online in a week or two, and I promised in my Dear Reader letter that I would give some in-depth behind-the-scenes info, so I reckon it's time to get going on that. I have so many locations I could talk about that it could easily take more than a month!

Saying Yes To The Millionaire is a fast-paced adventure in which the hero and heroine enter a treasure hunt and race round London for four days. It was great fun to write and I researched way more than I could ever fit in, but I had to work very hard on keeping the romance developing and letting the emotional story shine trhough. So, as I talk about the different locations and ideas behind the story, I'm going to add some snippets of advice for aspiring writers on how to use your plot to maximise your characters' emotional journeys.

And don't forget to pick up The Bride's Baby this month as Liz Fielding kicks off the 'Bride For All Seasons' series with the Spring Bride!

Hallelujah!

I’ve finished! And what a marathon it was.

The word limit for Romance is 50,000–55,000 words. This one weighs in just short of 59,000. That means I’ve written about 33,000 words in 14 days! That’s 6000 words today alone and more than 10,000 in the last two days. You may picture me slumped on my desk, whimpering.
And now, within an hour of finishing, the cold that has been tickling my nose for a few days has decided to arrive properly. I may just give up and go to bed. But not for long – I expect revisions will be back on Friday and I have the next two weeks to tidy it up!

The upside is that the title for this book looks as if it's going to be "Christmas Wishes, Mistletoe Kisses". How adorable is that?

First page fear

This always happens. It's time to start the next book: the characters have been growing and becoming three-dimensional in my mind, I have a setting and a general idea of the main conflict. I even have an idea for the first scene, but still I find it hard to get stuck in.

This is the point where my internal editor screams the loudest. What if you can't do it? she whispers. What if all those lovely, rich ideas in your head come out all grey and lifeless on the page? What if this story isn't going to be all you want it to be?

That's the crux of the matter, right there. It's not fear about what my editor would think, or even what readers might think; it's all about measuring up to this strange, nebulous 'feeling' I have about the story. Can I capture it and pin it on the page in black and white characters?

I need to give myself permission to write a duff first scene, don't I? Or even if it's not duff, a less than perfect first scene. Okay, here goes...watch out for a new word count ticker tomorrow!

Books and covers

I'm not posting much because I'm wrestling with the current book. It is not behaving itself. I love my characters and I've got some great ideas for later chapters, but getting the beginning right is practically impossible.


On the up side, I just found the lovely cover for my next North American release on amazon. I love this book. I think it's my favourite so far.





I was a bit miffed yesterday evening when my husband disappeared to have a bath and didn't get out again for an hour. We were supposed to be having a little bit of 'together' time.


"How come you were so long?" I huffed.
"I was reading the last two chapters of your book (Her Parenthood Assignment) and I couldn't put it down."
Instantly forgiven.