It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog about my
writing process, and I promised ages ago that I’d do more of these. So today
I’m going to talk a bit about planning.
Let’s get one thing straight right away: I’m not a
meticulous planner (much to the chagrin of some editors). In the spectrum of
‘Are you a planner or a pantser?’, I fall pretty much in-between. I do some
planning – sometimes lots of it. But I know the plan will change once I start
writing – the plan is guidelines, more than actual rules. Yarr.
My planning starts life in a notebook. I carry one
everywhere, so I can jot down anything that pops into my head about the current
project. Once I’ve got enough notes that a story has presented itself, the fun
begins. That’s when I take a pack of Sharpies (other brands are available), and
a big flipchart pad, and start mind-mapping story elements. I have one or more
flipchart pages for almost every book and short story I’ve written/am writing.
I don’t always go about this process the same way, and
sometimes I do multiple pages for different purposes, so let’s take a look at
some specific examples.
The Iscariot
Sanction
This particular page is really just a plot chart, but
doing it this way allowed me to identify the gaps in the story, and add extra
scenes easily, then link them all with arrows later. The eagle-eyed amongst you
will see that The Iscariot Sanction changed quite a bit after the planning. The key points
are still there, but in this version John Hardwick started out in Alaska investigating
the thinning of the veil, while Lillian battled vampires in London, then I
brought them together at the midpoint. I also changed Sir Arthur’s name (which
we implemented in the final edits of the Lazarus Gate, too) from Cecil to
Furnival.
The Red Tower
I do this type of chart occasionally for fine detail, and
I use a flipchart rather than an Excel spreadsheet so I can pin it up somewhere
over my desk and refer to it easily. This is an hour-by-hour breakdown of
character movements in Sherlock Holmes: The Red Tower – absolutely invaluable
when dealing with multiple characters interacting over a short period of time.
As you can see, flipcharts don’t always survive contact
with #bdog…
A Betrayal in
Blood
This is the more usual way for me to start my
flipcharting, but I’ve saved it till last because this particular example is
the most interesting.
What you have here is the very first mind map for A Betrayal in Blood, then called ‘The Trial of Van
Helsing’. There are loads of little details that didn’t make the final book. The
main reason was one of space. When I sold Betrayal,
I’d assumed it would be a standalone book, and therefore length wouldn’t be an
issue. It was only after I’d started writing that I found out it was to be published
as part of an ongoing series of Sherlock Holmes pastiches, and therefore was
subject to a strict word count. Chapters had to be cut, characters had to be
conflated. A lot of my research into Stoker’s anomalous notes on Dracula sadly
went unseen – I never got to really characterise Aytown, singleton, Young and
Windeshoeffel, although I managed to put a little nod to them all in the book. There
was also no room for the royal conspiracy I had planned, and to save space I
ended up making Van Helsing far more villainous, and Arthur Holmwood less so.
Not all of these changes were to save space. Some became
apparent during the writing process as being overly complex, or exemplifying
the sin of showing too much research on the page. What we ended up with was a much
tighter, more action-packed narrative, with clearer-cut villains and less
ambiguity of motive. I’d love to revisit this plan one day, if only to write
the essay about the inconsistencies in the ‘crew of light’s’ story.
