Novel Planning #2 – Plot-Type

Yesterday, I introduced this week’s series of posts about planning for novel-writing.  Step back there for one method, or read on for another method of planning your forthcoming masterwork. I refer to these masterworks as novels, but these methods would work with a bit of tweaking for other writing formats too.

Today, let’s look at plotting the Christopher Booker way.

Those who have been following my Booker’s Seven project will know the basics here. Christopher Booker says there are only seven basic plots in the world, and all stories fall into one or other. You might not agree, but if you do, you can probably identify which of those seven yours falls into. They are:

Overcoming the Monster

Rags to Riches

The Quest

Voyage and Return

Rebirth

Tragedy

Comedy

How, you have to be a bit slick, because Comedy doesn’t necessarily mean funny; it ties in more with the Shakespearean definition, and has a lot to do with large casts of characters, and situations caused by miscommunications between them. Think Much Ado About Nothing or Twelfth Night. Similarly, Overcoming the Monster might not involve a physical monster, but more something internal or an external (but non monster-y) challenge like an asteroid heading for earth.

Anyway, once you’ve picked out which Booker Plot you are intending to write, you can use it to plan your novel. Ideally (certainly in Mr Booker’s mind) you’d go out and buy his book, for a full breakdown of what that plot entails. Alternatively, you can go online and google search some summaries of his ideas. Like this one at tvtropes.org.

The plot is neatly broken down for you into stages, and your task is simply to take each stage and write a couple of paragraphs detailing how that stage will look in your story. Take time to think not only what will happen, but why, how the characters will react and – particularly if you have a target word count for the whole piece – who long that stage will be. Remember, as we saw yesterday, not all stages should be the same length.

NaNoWriMo

It’s mid-October, which means a fair proportion of the writing community is starting to eye next month with nervous glances. November is National Novel Writing Month; in which writers across the globe try to hone a single story into at least 50,000 words over 31 days. It’s a challenge, it’s a community and, for many, it’s an obsession.

There are some basic rules to NaNoWriMo, like it should be a single piece of fiction, which you haven’t started writing (planning is OK though) before November 1st, but no-one checks up on you and “winning” is merely determined by inserting your word count into their count feature, so it’s a question of honesty. Mind you, the prize is a PDF certificate and a warm fuzzy feeling, so if you cheat, you’re only really cheating yourself.

For the last two years, I’ve followed the rules. Eric is the product of last year’s effort – 80,000 words or so – and Adam (at 120,000 with a LOT of padding) was 2009’s contribution. This year, however, I’m trying something slightly different.

I’m going to be away from my computer / internet connection / life for the next three weeks, (blog posts will be brought to you through the wonders of delayed posting!) so I’m going to start November a week behind. Also, I’m still deep into editing Eric, and don’t really want another novel on my back at the end of November. Finally, I’m signed up to do a short story writing project I’m referring to as Booker’s Seven, for which the target is 49,000 words.

So, as of November, I will be trying to write seven short stories, each 7,000 words long (plus a bit so that the total tips 50k!). Each story has been allocated one of Christopher Booker’s seven plots (he says there are only seven possible plotlines in all stories. More another time on my reaction to this), seven main characters, seven themes and seven first-lines. I’m working with a group of 6 other people, who are combining these differently, so that we will in the end have 49 stories mixing up our plots and themes, but the writing will be entirely my own.

To add to the challenge, I have decided to write the stories in seven different genres, most of which I’ve never dabbled with before.

In all honesty, I suspect I will find this harder than a single novel of 50,000 words, but I like a challenge, and having been a purist for two years, I’m ready to branch out.  To all my nano-ing buddies, good luck with the first week. I’ll catch up with you after 7th!