Plot Bunny versus Developed Story Plot

I probably should have written about this sooner, it's something I've been wanting share for awhile. The difference between a plot bunny and an actual developed story plot.

I've long since learned that the initial seed of an idea, or a plot bunny as many will call it, is in fact, almost useless. It can be good for inspiration, but that's as far as it goes.

My last thriller is based on a very simple plot bunny. It had no plot, no chosen genre, and in essence, there was only one scene I had in mind which helped to drive me to finish a whole novel based on the plot bunny. I ran so far with that initial idea, that I can barely recognize it anymore. But I do remember and made it a point to never forget.

Human beings have an imagination by nature. One of the things that distinguishes us as humans is the ability to take that imagination and craft it into something real. A book, a song, a computer game, or even a retail business. This is what makes us human.

But guess what? Just having an imagination, doesn't mean anything. Great! You have an idea! Yeah, you and everybody else on the face of the planet.

What can make an idea special is when you take the time and hard work to develop the idea into a reality.

I'm the kind of person who gets a lot of ideas at once. I tend to get one big idea, it explodes into a million ideas, then I'm left scrambling around trying to organize all the mini-ideas, and hope it all actually makes sense by the end to someone else beside me. This is the main reason I've worked hard on constant practice to keep all my multitude of thoughts organized, as best as I can.

It's fantastic to be a human with a good imagination, but there are downfalls. Having a good imagination can seem powerful, when it isn't everything.

A plot bunny is just an idea, a seed, nothing more. A developed story plot is the whole garden, with many different plants and an entire ecosystem. It takes a lot of work to maintain a garden, every writer should accept that fact right at the beginning.

I can see why many aspiring writers tend to get beguiled by their plot bunnies, and I freely admit I'm guilty of doing that, too. It's easy. Too easy. Plot bunnies are so much fun. Just come up with ideas, no work involved. Good times.

Yet the point where some writers, myself included, fail, is when there's an expectation for the plot bunny to do everything.

I once encountered an aspiring writer who had an amazing imagination, to the point even I was blown away by how imaginative they were. Sadly, I couldn't get them to understand, to save my life, that having an imagination is about 1% of the work. They really believed just by having an idea, that will be enough to write a whole book. Nope, never works that way. There are no shortcuts in life. A shame, really. All that imagination went to waste.

Plot bunnies are a very necessary 1%, of course. After all, it's impossible to write a whole book based on no ideas. Yet, whenever I hear someone claim, “I have the best idea,” that tells me they're not doing any actual work. If I hear, “I'm working on a novel,” I can take that a bit more seriously. If I hear, “I'm writing a book based on the best idea and it's so easy,” then I know they're full of sh*t. The latter makes me sad more than anything else.

Cherish your plot bunnies, they are worth something, but never expect them to be a substitute for skill, hard work and a developed story plot.

Occupation versus Purpose

Any author can tell you that part of the real work is character development. I would even say it's the majority of the hard work. I find it very difficult to even think abut writing any story before my main character, at the very least, is fully developed.

Trust me, I've already tried. It really doesn't work. It's like trying to buy a house without knowing what city you want to live in. Damn near impossible.

With my last thriller, I got lucky. Very lucky. That book will probably be a once in a lifetime experience. Many things came naturally to me, including both the occupation and the purpose of the main character, at the same time. I just... knew.

In some ways, I was a bit spoiled by that good luck.

With my current thriller, I find I have to pace myself more and break things down. Although I've already learned this lesson, it is interesting to me how I broke this lesson down for my current project.

Occupation and Purpose are two different things. Often related, but still different.

Give me a moment to explain.

The Purpose of a character, especially main characters, has to do with the overall theme of a story. Hamlet is a depressing fool, but he lives in the world of a Shakespearean tragedy, so that's his purpose. His occupation is prince of Denmark.

It's much easier to come up with a Purpose, I find, than an Occupation. Okay, fine, main character is an anti-hero or a hero or some guy out for revenge, but... what does he do?

Well, the answer is up to me. That's my job as the author.

An Occupation could be anything, just like everyday life. Banker, waitress, telemarketer, zoo keeper, Star Wars Storm Trooper without a name so you know this character is going to die, etc. The Occupation isn't as important as the Purpose, it just has to make sense within the context of the story. Hamlet couldn't be a merchant in Venice, that wouldn't make sense.

So, I was stalled with my current project. It took more effort to develop and get to know my main character than with my last thriller. I despaired for a little while that maybe I hadn't learned my lessons, maybe it's never going to get easier for me, and maybe, oh my god, I suck as a writer and life has no meaning!

Yeah, I have my Hamlet moments, too. Then I get over it.

Yesterday I had a burst of inspiration. The Occupation for my main character finally came to me! I knew his purpose, his name, back story, everything else but his elusive occupation.

Now that he's finally developed enough, and that did take a good two months of thinking about him, on and off, the writing is flowing beautifully again. I'm getting back that same feeling I had with my last book. That feeling of, I can just sit down and write whenever I want, like flexing a muscle. It's a wonderful feeling.

The irony of all of this is, his occupation is a hustler. Go figure.

And now... I'm working on page 20...

The Art of Chapter Outlines

Okay, the title of this post isn't completely true. I'm still learning how to write chapter outlines, and they tend to be very rough. Numbered chapters followed by a rough paragraph of “And then this happened...” Yeah, it's a bit amateur, but I'm getting better at it, slowly but surely.

In my last post, I talked about how to write chapters, as short stories without endings to keep things going. It's a trick which works very well for me. But this trick also presented a problem.

If chapters don't have endings, how the hell am I supposed to know where to end a chapter?!

This is where chapter outlines come in handy. Overall, I find if a chapter summary is longer than a paragraph, it's too much for one chapter, break, start new chapter. It's quite useful.

I also find that chapter outlines are the most unstable and will change all the time as I'm writing and the story evolves. With my latest finished thriller, there were many moments I found certain events worked better in other chapters and I was constantly switching things around. I began seeing the summaries of each chapter like puzzle pieces. Some pieces just fit better in other spots.

And there would be no way for me to tell until I had written up to that point.

It can be frustrating to feel like I have to go back ten steps and switch things around. Yet that's the hard work aspect of crafting fiction, and it can also be very fulfilling once a puzzle piece fits perfectly in place.

Maybe I'll refine the process of chapter outlines as I write more books. After all, I do plan on writing books for a long time.

How to Write Chapters and Building Suspense

I started my next thriller, but it felt like a false start. I started worrying I'll have to go back to the drawing board.

Then I remembered a valuable lesson I learned while writing my other thriller. How to write chapters. This was a brand new lesson for me. It's also the nitty gritty part of crafting fiction. I learned a rather neat trick that works well for me.

Now, I have no idea if this trick works for other writers, or if it's an age-old trick and I'm late in the game. Either way, it's a good lesson and I planned to share it on this blog.

Here's the trick:

Write each chapter like a short story without an ending.

For myself, I find it too easy to get bogged down with the whole story, that writing each chapter can seem impossible, and I end up rewriting. This is a bad habit. With my other thriller, one thing that helped a lot to keep going and finish a whole book, was to approach each chapter like a short story.

It's all the same, you see. It's still crafting fiction.

Surprisingly, not writing a definitive ending to each chapter not only helped to keep going, but also built suspense. The story became a page-turner. After all, there's only one ending in the last chapter. I realized that giving an ending to each chapter was a block. I was finishing with the story before I got started :(

I ended up writing constantly because I wanted to get to the ending. It was a form of beautiful torture, like holding a carrot at the end of a stick. So I kept going.

Since a lot of lessons I learned from writing and completing a thriller novel are still relatively new to me, I had to remind myself. Already, with my current project, I put in blocks.

But! Now that I've remembered, I know I don't need to go back to the drawing board. I have a two page outline, a one paragraph synopsis, a one page chapter outline. The drawing board is already full.

It's time for the nitty gritty. One chapter at a time. And no endings.

Spam or Not Spam?

I just wanted to let everyone know, although I disabled a lot of comment filters for this blog to allow free commenting, the spam filter is still on.

I received a comment tonight that's in the spam folder, the only one I got, and it's in there because it contains a link to a possible spam website.

So, fair warning, now you know.

Comments, but not spam :)

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New Psychological Thriller by Tweets

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