What We're Writing Week: Julia Doodles

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: May was a month of travel, travel, travel for me and not a lot of writing, writing, writing as a result. I was in DC to help my sister with some stuff, in Colorado to celebrate a dear friend's landmark birthday, and, importantly for this post, in East Hampton, where I joined in an artists' retreat at my friend Shari Goddard Shambaugh's house.

Shari is a painter, one of those seemingly effortless hostesses, and someone who draws all sorts of interesting and creative people into her orbit. I was there with Gail Donovan, who writes middle-grade fiction, and artist Meredith Cough, another painter. 

We worked, we ate really well (another one of Shari's talents) we talked for hours every evening and we made a pilgrimage to see the Jackson Pollock/Lee Krasner House, where we got to put on disposable booties and walk ON the floor of Pollock's studio, which was a lot like walking on one of his paintings. 

The visual artists went out for several plein air sessions, while Gail and I wrote. The Shambaughs live in the historic rectory of St. Luke's Church, which was built in the days when the residents were expected to have a half dozen kids and an attic full of servants. There was plenty of room for everyone.

Part of the pleasure of the retreat was hashing out ideas and issues with each other. I had been expressing my frustration at feeling stuck near the very end of the book - the big action set piece and climax of the mystery/thriller plot. These scenes are never easy for me, because moving characters through space and having them do action-y stuff like run, jump, shoot, fight - and keeping it all flowing and easy for the reader to visualize - is tough. (Sometimes I wish I could write 300 pages of my characters just talking. I'd be done in a month.)

This time, it was even more difficult than usual, because the denouement takes place in a real-world location and I've managed to collect six major characters and three side characters, all of whom do things, make decisions, affect the action, etc. Yes, I know I'm an idiot.

Part of the issue, as I explained it to the group, was having TOO much in my head - I had outlined the big strokes of the scene, but breaking that down into the granular moment-by-moment had me snarled and overwhelmed.

Shari suggested I try drawing a rough map of where the action takes place, and, using a different colored dot for each character, move them moment by moment through the scene. I'm not much of an artist (ie, not at all) but I figured I'd give it a try. She handed me a sheaf of sketch paper and a box of colored pencils and off I went to my room.

Reader, it was a breakthrough! I didn't cut out dots (I honestly figured I'd lose them at the first sneeze) and instead used the first letter of the characters names, each with its own color. Within sketching out the first two pages, I realized what had kept me jammed up was holding all the decisions each major player had to make in my head. Drawing the who-what- when-where, instead of thinking or even outlining, enabled me to break down the scene into it's component beats: decision -> action-> results-> next decision-> next action, etc., etc.

I spent all afternoon sketching (badly) and marking up the pages with notes, working my way through the scene and eventually positioning my characters for the second half of the climax, where they get spotlighted in their own individual/couple moments. 

 

When I finished, I felt as if a 500 pound rock has been lifted off my shoulders. Illustrating the events, rough as it was, turned out to be a terrific technique for busting up that mental logjam. I've been using and expanding on the original sketches since then (well, since getting home from Colorado at the end of May,) much to the pleasure of my cat Neko, who really, really likes stretching out on sketching paper. 

Dear readers, have you tried a new way of solving an old problem?