Plotting is Hard
Plotting is hard. I always start a book with some whacked-out idea. This one I'm working on now-- an octogenarin robbing a bank in his bathrobe-- and he does it maybe once a week. Everybody knows him, and they just go get the money back later.
Okay--so that's how I started-- a little mustard seed of an idea. The PROBLEM is-- I need a little bit more plot than that. And a few more things have to happen. And they have to kinda go together. Intricately. They have to go together intricately and logically and on top of that, they need to be funny and did I mention logical? When it's all over, the reader must put the book down and say: Of course, it happened that way. That's the only way it makes sense.
Okay, so you get the idea of why Mousetrap comes to mind?
The weirdest thing-- if I just show up at my desk and do the work-- I know it will fall together. It will be a lot of work-- I'll have to show up a LOT--but eventually I'll show up enough and it will happen.
Kurt Vonnegut said, "When I write I feel like an armelss legless man with a crayon in his mouth."
I inderstand, Kurt. I understand.
posted by Susan Goodwill at 10:05 AM
2 Comments:
Yay! You're writing that book. I can't wait to read it. And I get it too. Understand completely.
But keep going! Your writing is to fun to miss.
One day grandfather robs the bank, taking the mobs money. He has a moment of recognition of what he's done and he hands out on the lam, sure in the knowledge that family, friends, the mob, the police, the FBI (there was an informant in the mob), the inept Homeland Security agnecy are after him as he tries to flee to a retirement community in Cary, NC where a childhood sweatheart (a recent widow) of his now lives and for whom he pines feeling that once he gets there, all his troubles will be over.
Plots I don't have problems with. My problem is tapping into the appropriate emotion depth of the character, their motivation, and the consistancy of that character.
It's not "Mousetrap," it's "Clue".
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