I like to be organized. Maybe a little too much. We go to the grocery store twice a month these days. Well, actually, HH only goes to pick up the groceries we’ve ordered online. I always worry I won’t have enough (not that we’ve EVER run out) and that we have all of the ingredients I want for each meal, so I make out menus. I plan our suppers for every night before we’ll order groceries again. And when I scribble down each night’s meal, I list the ingredients we’ll need for it.
For example, for our last list, I served chicken piccata, buttered noodles, and green beans on Monday; BBQ ribs, mashed potatoes, and broccoli on Tuesday; salmon with fried rice and brussel sprouts on Wednesday; almond noodle bowls with ramen on Thursday; etc. When I’m done, I know I’m prepared. Even though there’s always something we run out of between each trip to the store–milk, juice, bread–those pesky everyday things.
The same holds true with my writing. I’m so far from being a pantser, I’d probably break out in a rash if I just sat down and decided to wing it. A lot of people can do it. It’s not in my nature. So I make a plot point for every chapter of my book. I include the things that I think are important that I should cover. And when I finish, in theory, I have enough plot twists, clues, interactions to have a novel. For Muddy River One, it took 34 plot points to come up with 57,000 words. This time, for whatever reason, I expected each chapter to be longer, more involved. I wrote two or three different scenes for quite a few of them. I had two subplots. So I only listed 26 of them. And guess what? There’s no possible way I can reach my word count unless I come up with more.
So, I sat down tonight, after much fussing–my poor husband–and redid the last ten chapters of Muddy River Two. It looks great on paper, and I should have enough, or at least, really close to enough to meet my goal, but who knows? Every book is different. The mystery’s rogue incubus is a lot more clever than I expected, and he’s a lot more ruthless, too. Suspects that I thought Raven and Hester could question end up dead before they get there. Now that blows a few nice scenes. You can’t interrogate a person who’s been drained dry. But even though I do my best to whip my characters into shape to obey me, they don’t always listen. And if they don’t get too crazy, I’m willing to give them some leeway. Then I need to stop somewhere in my writing and restructure the story. Which I did. And hopefully, it works. It should this time:)
Judi Lynn 