So, it turns out I should be a plotter. Looking at my story from the point of view of character arcs it became obvious that I haven’t even decided on several characters’ outcomes that are pivotal to a satisfying resolution to the plot. Put succinctly, somebody’s got to die. And maybe that’s part of the reason why I haven’t moved those character arcs along. I’ve grown fond of all my main characters and deciding which of them has to die and then writing that outcome is disturbing. But I do see it has to be done and I’ve begun working out the scenario.
So now I understand why just drifting along on plot can be very problematic for anything more complicated than a short story. If you have six or eight main characters and another dozen secondary characters, not mapping out what ends up happening to them risks all kinds of conflicts or worse; wasted opportunities for adding interesting content to the story.
I said that writing a death scene was disturbing. And it is but at the same time it’s interesting to plan how this event will impact each of the adjacent characters. For instance, it’s not too challenging to have associates and even friends react to a death. But one of the most likely “victims” has a parent/child relationship with one of the other characters. That will have to be a developed carefully to produce a satisfactory effect. So now all of a sudden, my simple dystopian sci-fi book has emotional states like bereavement and anguish. Who knew?
And a much bigger consideration for being a plotter versus a pantser is how much more important it is if your story is part of a larger series of stories. If the story doesn’t end with the end of a stand-alone book, then things like killing off characters, even killing off antagonists is much more serious. If you invest an enormous amount of effort into building up a really wonderful villain then you’d be crazy to kill him off in book one. Sure, kill off his henchmen; Helmuth and the Tyrant of Thrale by all means. But Gharlane of Eddore has to last through six or seven books.
And that’s just one aspect of what needs to be coordinated between a series of stories. Doing that without a map would be very difficult. And I see that now. So, I’ll be heading down the path of plotting an outline for the whole story first and then a detailed outline for the first book. It’ll take a little longer but in the long run it’ll save me a lot of time and it’ll make for better stories.
And on a completely unrelated topic, today I reduced the number of videos I watched of Kamala voters barking at the moon to three. Well, everything’s relative and I think that’s pretty good progress in kicking the habit. I remember in 2016 I watched the Hilary shriekers all the way through December and still couldn’t get enough of it. Now it’s starting to get boring. Maybe with Trump in the White House we’re all ready to move on from all of this jazz.