A Guide to Novel Writing for Intuitive Plotters

hi guys it's ellen brock novel editor i hope you are all having a great start to the new year um in this video we are going to be talking about intuitive plotters this is the second video in my four part series that goes into the specific writer types if you didn't see my original video on the four types of writers i recommend that you watch that first because that will really give you a better idea of how well these tips might apply to you and whether this video is going to give you a sort of model that you can work with or whether it's really not relevant to your personal writing style if you've already watched that video or you just want a sort of quick overview the four writer types are built on two continuums the first continuum is methodological to intuitive methodological being writers who use scene structure story structure character arcs methodology and systems to create their stories and intuitive being writers who use sort of a gut feeling or their instincts to craft their stories on the other continuum we have plotter versus pantser a plotter is someone who plots their novel in advance to varying degrees and a pants or someone who sort of flies by the seat of their pants especially with the first draft they don't really plot or plan the story in advance you might also say that they are a discovery writer so so those are the two continuums and that's where we get the four types methodological pantser methodological plotter intuitive panzer and intuitive plotter so today we are going to be talking about the intuitive plotter before i get into the tips for this type i do want to say that you can sit between two types you can even sit between all four types because they are on a continuum so you're not going to be a hundred percent intuitive or a hundred percent a plotter there's going to be some variation there so you might need to pick and choose tips from the different videos for the different types based on what works for you personally and also of course i can't account for personality and other factors and so some of these tips just might not work for you for whatever reason even if you do strongly identify with just one type so please don't take these videos as prescriptive i'm not saying this is what you have to do these are just things that i've seen work for writers who do fall very strongly into these individual types i do want to make a quick announcement that i do now have a patreon so if you want to help support the channel i'll put a link in the description i'll be doing a a q a session there once a month and you'll be able to ask questions about writing and plotting and editing in general or even questions specific to your individual project so if that's something that interests you the link will be in the description so the first tip that i have for this type is plot in a way that sparks intuition for the intuitive plotter it's really important that the systems and the methods that they use for the plotting process spark intuition or at the very least don't cause stress or dampen their creativity or intuition so often intuitive plotters are not the biggest fans of things like excel spreadsheets or bulleted lists they tend to do better with more flexible plotting methods and more aesthetically pleasing structuring methods or plotting methods so personally i really like onenote because it allows you to sort of move text boxes and pictures all around the screen it's very unrestrictive but you might like something like scrivener or a series of word documents you might also need several different organization methods so maybe you have some pinterest boards and you also have some note cards or you have a notebook and you also have some digital planning but it's important to have ways to gather your ideas that that um is inspiring and sparks your creativity you don't want to use a method that's either stressful to look at because that can make it really hard to activate your intuition or that's just ugly and not inspiring because the intuitive types tend to really need things to be visual and aesthetically pleasing intuition can get sparked in different ways for different people so what some people find inspiring and creative other people might find it just doesn't do anything for them or that method just doesn't spark their intuition some writers might also have the experience that certain types of plotting or certain methods spark intuition about a certain element of the novel so for example one method might spark intuition about the emotional arc or the internal arc while another method might spark their intuition about the more literal or external conflicts of the novel so taking a mix-and-match approach to the plotting methods themselves can be very helpful in sort of attacking from different angles and sort of sparking your intuition about different elements or different subjects relating to your novel so i'm going to go over four different plotting methods you might find that all four work for you or you might find just one or two that work for you i do think for this type as many options as possible as many different angles that you can use to look at your book as possible the better because you'll be able to spark your intuition in different ways so method one is to plot using summaries for most intuitive plotters the easiest way to sort of spark their intuition is when something really feels like a story so bulleted lists and outlines and things like that often don't really feel like a story and they don't necessarily spark that same sort of intuitive flow of ideas and creativity so a summary which can sort of act more like a short story is often a better option because it feels more like an actual story so i recommend that you use summaries for plotting but i recommend that you use two different ones one that has individual scene summaries so that sort of treats the scenes as short stories and another that just focuses on the overarching story of the entire novel or the whole plot the reason that both can be helpful is often intuitive plotters are better at one than the other they may be they may be very good at um scene structure they may always nail scenes that they just really they really get it they really have a strong skill in that area and so when they look at their scenes they won't necessarily see anything wrong with the novel as a whole because the scenes are flowing they're strong there's conflict they're engaging they're not really seeing problems on that level but they might be missing overarching problems with the storyline as a whole or the plot as a whole because they may find it difficult to see that element that big picture element when they can see the details of the individual scenes for some it's the opposite they may really struggle with the individual scenes and so if they try to plot using that method it might not work just because they might get stuck or they might get frustrated trying to build the novel from the scene level through they may find it easier to build the overall story arc first before getting into scenes a lot of writers will will find it helpful to switch back and forth sort of writing some scene summaries working on the plot overall plot summary back and forth until both are developed to a point where they're satisfied with how far they've plotted the novel i also recommend that you make summaries of the side plots or emotional transitions for side characters anything that's not extremely intricately linked to the primary plot line or anything that you can sort of look at as its own standalone short story or its own standalone concept it's easy to sort of skip steps or lose parts of a um a character's emotional transition or the steps involved in a side plot when they're just integrated into the main plot summary or the main scene summary outline that you have so it can be really helpful to sort of separate those even if they are still included in the overall summaries that way you can sort of play through them and think about how well they're working in isolation of the bigger plot line method two is plot using keywords this is not a method that will work for all intuitive plotters but hopefully if this is something that will work for you you'll understand what i'm sort of getting at with this suggestion so for some intuitive plotters scenes sort of come with an impression or a vibe or something they can kind of bring to mind sort of yeah essentially like a vibe or or a tone or a concept that they can sort of feel in their body or kind of bring up visually in their mind in some way if this doesn't make sense to you don't worry about it just skip this method but if this makes sense to you sometimes using a keyword or a simple phrase based outline can be really helpful because all you really need is a reminder of the scenes and the order that they go in so that you can sort of have that experience of each scene and then you can kind of play through the novel almost like you're reading these scenes as musical notes in a bigger composition and you can kind of feel through the whole storyline in this way so you might create an outline that has very simple phrases like fight scene letter comes in the mail max goes to work john meets max very very simple you don't even need to get into describing the conflict or the details that happen or anything like that because those keywords will automatically sort of ignite an impression or a visual or concept of that scene if you're able to do this plotting using the keywords and then sort of reading through them and just experiencing those impressions as you move through the scene it can really help you to quickly assess how the overall plot is flowing how well things are conveyed and what that emotional pacing of the story feels like so if this is something that makes sense to you using keywords in addition to a summary as your primary plotting method or even using this as your primary plotting method can be very helpful so method three is to plot using note cards a lot of intuitive potters will find just the act of sort of shuffling through and moving around cards just that physical act to be helpful others might find narrowing your focus to one scene at a time to be the helpful element of using note cards if that's the case and especially if that's the case and you also like using other media such as videos or pictures or songs or things like that a powerpoint presentation might be something you could consider i know it's a little off the wall as far as plotting goes but using a powerpoint presentation you can use all kinds of different media and it can help you to sort of play through your story one step at a time especially if you tend to get distracted when you can see all of the scenes at once if you use the physical note cards it might be helpful to use both the keyword method if that's something that applies to you as well as a summary method so you could have a front and a back to your index cards or your note cards and that will let you to try two different approaches to plotting if you decide to use other media like you use a powerpoint presentation or you print out photos i do recommend that you focus on photos um that really capture the concept of your novel or the essence of your novel rather than trying to find photos that are identical to your character or identical to your location because that can end up really being a big time suck and it won't necessarily translate into more inspiration if it does by all means go for it but i do see a lot of writers sometimes kind of wasting time matching actors or models or locations that are exactly accurate it's sometimes better to just go for like the general impression and that way um you're sparking your creativity and you're not getting bogged down with looking for an identical match to your location or character or what have you some writers will find that this notecard method works best for them early in the process when they're first sort of writing down their initial scene ideas so they can kind of move things around and play with it other writers will find that this works best really late in the plotting process once they have their overall plot summary nailed down and they're really looking to fine-tune the scenes and move them around so you might play around with when you use note cards because you might find that they have a very different purpose and effect if you use them early versus late in the editing process method four is a plot using visualization a lot of intuitive plotters will find that visualization offers a sort of different type of intuition for them or a different kind of inspiration um you might find that it works just to close your eyes and imagine the story sort of playing out like a movie for some writers they might find they get too easily distracted doing this or maybe they even fall asleep doing this so you might find it helpful to use the keyword list that i mentioned um just giving enough detail that you can open your eyes look at a scene close your eyes visualize the scene open your eyes look at the next scene and so on to try to sort of play play the um the novel out almost like a movie you could also record yourself reading your narrative style summary of the overarching plot or even of every single individual scene and then just close your eyes and listen to it and sort of imagine the characters taking those actions and doing those things and sort of just how that would look and how that will play out often this method works really well to identify slow slow sections of the plot or even fast sections of the plot things that just don't feel right with the pacing you might also find that when you visualize in this way the character just doesn't want to take a certain action or you might even see in your mind the character taking a different action from the one that you have plotted so this can be a way to really dig into the story in a more visual way or a more emotional way and you might find that it really helps you to approach your novel from a different angle now that we've gone over the four different methods that i recommend trying for plotting let's go over some just general tips and tricks for the intuitive plotter explore your idea freely this type tends to get sort of sparks and inspirations that sort of start as a hodgepodge so you might get some ideas for characters and some ideas for themes and some individual scenes that you're really excited about but they don't necessarily all come together right away into one cohesive idea for this reason i think it can be really helpful for this type to spend some time just sort of daydreaming or maybe doing some free writing just exploring the idea and letting it develop and percolate if you try to box your idea into quickly to sort of jump into plotting or outlining right away you can sometimes end up stifling your creativity and sort of ending up with a story that might be a little bit more mundane or a little more predictable because you didn't give yourself time to have that sort of dynamic expansive exploration of the subject and your ideas and all of that in the beginning in the early phase so try not to jump too quickly into plotting let yourself have some time to to let the idea breathe essentially find the amount of plotting that's right for you for intuitive plotters it's important to note that not all of them need to plot to the same degree plotting is a tool that should benefit you and so if it's not benefiting you anymore it's okay to stop using it a good indicator that you're that you're plotting too much is if you tend to abandon projects after you plot them so you get it all ready to go and then you never write them losing interest is really common when you've over plotted and that's a good sign that you should maybe stop your plotting a little bit sooner to leave more up for discovery and to not box yourself in quite so much on the other hand if you find that you're often abandoning projects because you don't know what should happen next and you're getting stuck when you're writing then maybe you need to put more attention on plotting and actually linger in the plotting process for a little bit longer write down what you intuit it can be tempting when going through the plotting process the writing process even the editing process to have a vague idea of a problem or an issue but to just sort of let it go because we don't really know what the answer is right now or we don't really have a solution the problem with doing this is that you're often then needing to re-intuit the same problem or the same issue over and over and over again and that can sort of lead to brain fatigue and frustration and it can kind of cause the process to stagnate especially in the editing phase or the plotting phase you can really get stuck if you're skipping over sections when you don't know exactly what you want to put there or exactly what the problem is that you're trying to fix so i recommend that you write down anything no matter how small that sort of comes to you intuitively so for example maybe you are reading through your outline or you're reading through the novel itself and you know that something should happen in between two points so you have scene a and scene b but really you need another scene in between and you know that and you're feeling something should happen in between but you don't know what it is instead of just skipping and coming back to it later thinking well maybe next time i'll come up with an idea write down that you know that something should go there even if all you're writing down is a scene should go here then next time when you go through that same section instead of having to re-intuit the same problem again you'll be able to build up from what you've already intuited so maybe next time you add something like something spooky needs to happen here and then the next time you go through it you go through the outline or the novel itself or whatever you're working on you might build up to something like something spooky needs to happen here and it needs to have something to do with the uncle secret book so you just keep building up and building up until you have a much stronger bigger idea of what needs to be done to solve the problem turn vague issues into defined problems sometimes with intuitive plotters you can know that something is wrong but you don't necessarily put it into words you sort of intuit that it's wrong but you don't take it that extra step and sort of define exactly what the problem is and you might not be able to immediately or right away get the words correct for what the problem is but one option would be to sort of imagine that you're telling someone else and maybe you start kind of in a rambling way of like of something like i really just don't like this chapter this chapter is really frustrating me and it just isn't coming together right and maybe over time as you sort of imagine telling someone else or maybe you write that down to yourself uh you might start to find that you narrow your focus on to what the problem actually is so maybe you can narrow that down to something like the second half of the scene feels irrelevant as soon as you can key into something a little bit more specific like something feeling irrelevant dull etc you're able to brainstorm then specific solutions so defining and writing down what the problem is will help you to then intuit possible solutions if you think something feels irrelevant what would make it feel relevant it immediately assists with sparking that intuition and helping you to actually solve the problem another reason that this is really helpful is that sometimes intuitive plotters can have a tendency to sort of throw the baby out with the bath water so maybe you know something feels off about a scene but you're not sure exactly what it is and you end up just replacing the scene with something else and maybe that something else actually has the exact same problem as the scene that you got rid of but because you didn't define the problem you got frustrated with the scene itself and sort of abandoned something that you really didn't need to abandon right in chronological order with most intuitive writers they find it easiest to spark their intuition if they write in chronological order so once you're satisfied that you've solved the bulk of the problems with your novel you've plotted as far as you want to plot as far as your comfort level is and what works best for you to stay inspired and motivated at that point writing front to back is often the best option because it allows you to really dig into the emotional experiences of the characters the progression of the plot it lets you just sort of um be in the moment and sort of live the story as it would play out so i highly recommend that you write in chronological order if at all possible if that doesn't work for you and you like writing out of order by all means do so i've just noticed that with intuitive types they sometimes have difficulty with projecting out the consequences or the outcome of changes so if they sort of skip sections they might have a hard time bridging the gap between those two sections and they may have a hard time sort of imagining those connecting parts well enough to skip time if that makes sense so they might might find if they skip time that they've missed some emotional reactions that would have happened in there or some plot developments that would have happened in there and that can ultimately make the editing process more difficult mainly i find that chronological order helps with the emotional context for intuitive types they tend to really need to dig into the character's experience so that's usually the biggest benefit but there can certainly be some plot challenges for some intuitive types if they write out of order allow yourself to deviate from the outline no matter how much plotting and planning you do in advance most likely once you dig into the novel and you're actually writing it that experience of really bonding to the characters and really living in the world it's going to change the plot so try to be flexible with that don't stick too rigidly to the outline i know it can sometimes be frustrating to deviate because it means you have to change a bunch of things but you're an intuitive type so if your intuition is telling you that you need to deviate from the outline you almost definitely need to deviate from the outline this may also be a factor in how long you want to stick with the plotting process if you know you tend to deviate wildly from your outline then maybe you only want to spend a few days or a few weeks in the plotting or planning process or stage it's not necessarily going to benefit you to plot out each scene if you know that you tend to deviate in big ways like changing the entire plot line so that might also be something that you need to take into consideration at your plotting phase in any case no matter how you normally operate or it what usually works for you if your intuition is telling you that you need to deviate from the plot just deviate from it it's not the end of the world even if it is frustrating edit the outline before the novel assuming that you did deviate from the outline or from your summary or whatever method that you used to develop the plot update that after your first draft so reflect whatever you changed in your first draft in the summary or outlines and then go back to the planning phase again and sort of follow those techniques that worked for you visualization note cards powerpoint whatever worked for you in the planning or plotting stage update those note cards or files or documents or whatever you used and keep tweaking them and use your intuition because if you work from those summaries or notecards before you work on the novel itself it will save you a ton a ton of time it's very very very difficult to edit a whole novel in the novel itself it's very helpful to use other methods like summaries note cards outlines things like that to assist you so you can edit that first before you start messing with the novel itself read the whole novel at once or in as few sittings as possible one of the best ways to spark your intuition is to look at the whole story at once and as daunting as it might be to read the whole book in one sitting it can be extremely extremely valuable in getting a good sense of the overall flow and rhythm and tone of the story if you use some methodologies or you're somewhat familiar with methodologies you could break the novel up into quarters and look at each quarter individually or if you don't do that kind of quarter system or if you don't use a three act system or anything you don't like that you could break it up by location or by significant goal change so that would really be if you're looking for ways to not have to read the whole novel in one sitting but carving out an afternoon and spending six to ten hours to read the novel straight through taking notes in my opinion it's a super valuable process and even though it's very time consuming you're going to be able to get really the best possible overall picture of how the novel is working by looking at it all at once my recommendation when you do this is to either use a notebook or a separate document to take notes in but absolutely don't change anything in the document the story itself if you start changing things in the novel itself even if you're just tweaking a sentence here and there or you just want to clarify a certain thing you're going to get distracted and it's going to be really hard for you to keep your focus on the overall plot line and to keep your intuition flowing it's really going to put you into problem solving mode instead of just intuition creativity mode so i recommend that you read on a tablet or something that's harder to edit so you're not as tempted to start tweaking and making little changes and then sort of take your notes in a separate document you might want to do this several times focusing on different things each time i really like to focus on just the rhythm and flow of the story the first time so how does the pacing feel how does the emotional progression feel just those really big broad overarching elements you might find really easily when doing this that for example an emotional beat is just completely missing so you know that to get from this point to this point emotionally this point needs to be hit but you can just tell it's just not happening because when you read it all at once this sort of journey that's happening here it just feels kind of awkward it just doesn't curve gracefully and nicely and i'm trying to put this into intuitive terms rather than methodological terms which is why i'm being vague so if you're frustrated by how vague i'm being then you might be a methodological type and you might prefer to watch my videos on the methodological pantser which can have a lot of similarities to the intuitive plotter so first if you focus on this on this bigger picture flow are you missing any big steps in the process um that that type of uh approach to the first round of reading your novel you might then want to uh read it again focusing on individual scenes and taking notes on specific scenes again not editing the scenes in that moment but just taking notes so eventually you'll be able to gather up notes that are both big picture and somewhat smaller picture you don't need to go that small with this method you don't need to get into line editing by reading the whole book at once but i think it can be helpful to identify self-contained issues within scenes because you still want to feel the flow of the story into the scene the problem is if you take a scene in isolation it might look great but then when you read it in context the flow just feels very odd it doesn't the previous scene doesn't flow into it or doesn't flow out of that scene into the next scene in a way that makes sense so you really need to read it in context even when you're looking at more self-contained issues with the scene like tonal issues or logic even issues plot holes continuity issues things like that so i highly recommend that you take that approach for the early part of the editing process because it will help you to really gather up your big picture issues and determine what needs to be done in a more efficient way polish front to back so at this point when you have nailed down all the big picture issues you've read the whole novel you've written down your major concerns and things like that you've edited in the outline or your summary or your note cards or however you find best and you've nailed down all of your big picture things at that point you will likely find it the easiest to actually edit the novel front to back so actually polishing chapter one and then polishing chapter two and so on this type might find it to be very difficult to take a sort of scattered approach to editing if they sort of skip around to edit different parts it can be hard to project out how the character will be feeling or what the character will know at a certain point or what information will have been revealed even things like the tone for the reader it can be hard to project out what that should be like at any given point and often the intuitive types do best if they polish in order because they can really dig into the flow of the novel and the emotional progression of the novel and things like that most likely at this point you will still uncover more overarching problems plot problems character arc problems big picture problems it will probably happen at least once and it will be extremely frustrating because you'll feel like you're coming down the home stretch and then you'll realize actually once i get into polishing this scene and really honing the honing in on exactly what i'm trying to do it actually isn't really flowing right anymore or it's not fitting the plot correctly or the emotions don't really feel right as frustrating as it is at that point just try to step back to your outline again or your summary or whatever method you use to plot step back to that again tweak it again and then move forward with your polishing i know it's really frustrating but don't be tempted to just tell yourself well maybe it's not really a problem or maybe i can get around it later i'll find a simple solution later in the long run that's going to cost you more time than just stepping back for a few days or a few weeks or whatever it takes to reassess fix the problem and then move on know when you can't intuit the answer just because you're an intuitive type that doesn't mean that you can solve every single problem with your novel using intuition sometimes you might find that you know kind of what's wrong or you know the area that's having a problem but you're just not figuring out a solution if that's the case don't be afraid to dabble in methodologies there's nothing wrong with taking a look at some structural systems or mapping out your character arc there's no extra brownie points for doing everything intuitively there are very few writers who are a hundred percent intuitive and they don't need to use any kind of methodology so if you get to a point where you need to use methodology just use it methodology is a tool it's supposed to make your life easier more efficient and the benefit of the intuitive types is that they can actually sort of meld both worlds together and get the best of both so you can get the benefits of intuition and then add to that some tools that can really help you to speed up the process or to become more efficient over time so if you get stuck and your intuition isn't bringing you any further along in the process don't be afraid to try some methodologies it's not too scary it's not too too difficult and you might find that it helps you very quickly identify a problem that otherwise you might have been spinning your wheels on for a really long time so that's all i have for you today if you are an intuitive plotter and you have any tips or tricks or any recommendations at all i'm sure that everyone will find it really helpful if you would post about it in the comments i have two more types to cover in two more videos i might be interspersing them with some other videos that was my intention but uh the holidays really threw things off so we will see again if you want to help support the channel i do have a patreon now i would really appreciate your support especially to help me keep up a more frequent upload schedule so i really hope you found this video helpful i will be back again soon with a new video and in the meantime happy writing guys

Channel: Ellen Brock

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Length: 33min 48sec (2028 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 06 2022