Panicked About Plotting!

Monique's Typewriter by JE Theriot

LUCY BURDETTE: This is my brain on deadline. I have my word count, I’m writing as fast as I can, dictating some days, slapping the keyboard some others. And then at night I am reading a mystery, say Ann Cleeves or Michael Connelly or Barbara Ross or Rhys Bowen... Oh my God, I say to myself. I have no idea what I’m doing – my book doesn’t look anything like these books. How could I not know how to do this after 15 books published and more on the way?

I scramble through my bookshelves. Where is Hallie’s beginners guide on how to write when I need it? When I can’t find that, I go to my web browser and type in how to write a mystery. Dennis Palumbo‘s article comes up, and I read about how it’s important to have multiple suspects, and motives for each of them. Suspects? Motives? Do I have any of this? Panic! Panic!

Reds, I have to know—does this happen to you? How do you talk yourself off the ledge?

 HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Truly, this happens every time. Lucy, don't you remember when you said this the last time? You did.  I am in the very throes of it right now  (In fact yesterday, briefly, I gave up, and decided never to write again because I have no idea what I am doing.) But here's the thing. Two things. One: it is a FIRST DRAFT.  Just go on, advance the story:  goal, motivation, conflict, decision, result, obstacle, goal, decision, result. What do they want? It doesn't matter that it stinks. You can fix it later, in the fun part. (You cannot believe what the first draft of TRUST ME looked like. Gah. And now I adore it.)

Two:  You won't know what happens until it happens. So--one step at a time. Don't think about the WHOLE THING. Think about the next paragraph. AND: I just thought of this. Think what you have previously promised the readers is going to happen. What have you foreshadowed? What already woven-in thread can you pick up and keep weaving?

You can do it! And thank you for the opportunity to give myself a pep talk, too. 

(My new book is called THE MURDER LIST. I am almost done. What does "the murder list" mean? No idea. So there.)

LUCY: This is embarrassing--apparently I write this same post, with these ramblings, more than once a year! Thanks pals for accommodating writer's neurosis, LOL!

HALLIE EPHRON: It happens to me every time. SEVERAL TIMES every time. 

I go searching for writing advice, Google suggests a link that sounds helpful, I go to read it and it turns out I WROTE it myself! So it's not about not knowing what to do. 

Do men do this, find themselves wracked with self-doubt? Waiting for someone else to tell them it's good? Which by the way is what my editor said when I sent her my manuscript two weeks ago for CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR. She loved it loved it loved it (she knows to repeat it so I believe her.) And now that having finished editing it again, so do I. 

JENN MCKINLAY: No, this sort of panic doesn't happen to me. I'm a plotter so when I start writing, I have a pretty solid sense of where I'm going and how I'm going to get there. That being said, the middle of every book is like the Dead Marshes for me, where my momentum always seems to stop and I am absolutely positive I am never going to get out alive, oh, and my book is garbage. So, there's that. I have discovered that the best way out is to plow ahead, throw in a funny scene or a poignant scene or another body, until I clear the bogs and am racing toward the finish.

by Lainey's Repertoire

INGRID THOFT:  Yes, this happens to me, and honestly, I hate it.  It’s the most difficult part of the process for me, and I don’t think it’s going to change no matter how many books I write.  You know who really doesn’t like it?  My husband.  When I fret that I can’t figure things out and proclaim, “It wasn’t this hard last time!”, he reminds me that it was just as hard last time, and I got through it, with good results.  I think there should be a support group for our mates, who feel like broken records getting us through the tough spots.

Hank offers great advice for dealing with the panic, and another person who has provided me with some guidance is Mike Lawson.  The author of a political mystery series set in D.C., Mike is an advocate of writing whatever scene strikes your fancy, no matter where it appears in the book.  I’d always written sequentially, but adopting this approach has minimized the work stoppages than can occur! 

LUCY: Yes, Ingrid, I did this with the manuscript I just turned in, and it was a life-saver!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Oh, my gosh, Lucy, it's that terrible point when I've done all the set up and I'm stalled in the middle book doldrums. I can remember in the very early days when I thought books would get easier. But they didn't, and even though logically I know the struggle happens every time, that doesn't help. THIS book could be the one that doesn't work, that was a terrible idea, that I will never manage to muddle my way through.

But I do know from experience that the only way to get through it is to write a little bit at a time--200 words, a scene, a chapter. I'm lucky to have a couple of great writer friends to brainstorm about plot problems with, and then there is always my trusty notebook and pen. If I just start writing down the things that are bothering me, I can usually work myself over the hump.

RHYS BOWEN: Lucy, I don't get middle of book slump as much as panic at the beginning. I'm not an outliner so I start knowing very little. And every book, without exception (41 mysteries so far) I have flashes of self doubt, that this was a stupid idea, I'll never be able to work it through etc. But I forge on, 5 pages a day even if they are terrible pages, and by page 50 I see light in the tumble. And by page 100 I am advancing merrily. And in those middle chapters remember what Raymond Chandler said: when things get slow, bring in a man with a gun.

This is great advice. Not necessarily a man with a gun but something that takes your sleuths theories and derails them. An unexpected character, an overheard conversation. Something that makes the sleuth say, "I hadn't seen that coming." If you want the prime example of that read Debs's Dreaming of the Bones!
Funnily enough I'm teaching my course in Tuscany and yesterday we focused on plotting--how to keep the book moving forward through the dreaded middle slump.

Writers--confessions about your neurotic thinking? Suggestions? Readers, can you believe the way our minds work??

And PS, do you Instagram? If so, please follow us, we're having so much fun over there! (Okay, I'm going to be honest, some of us love it more than others, but we're working on this!)

Jungle Red Writers
Lucy Burdette
Hank Phillippi Ryan
Jenn McKinlay
Deborah Crombie
Rhys Bowen
Ingrid Thoft
Hallie Ephron

And PPS, Rhys and Lucy are sharing a book birthday in August and the Reds have convinced Rhys to come east. So scratch these dates on your calendars if you'll be in the area: 

August 8 at Brookline Booksmith with supporting appearances by Hallie and Hank!

And August 9 at RJ Julia in Madison CT!