2017 NaNoWriMo - DAY 1

PLOTTING

I write most short stories by the seat of my pants. So far, I've had 22 of these stories accepted for publication, so 'pantsing' works for that format. For longer works, like novels and novellas, I've had too many false starts, either painting myself into a logic corner, or finding upon later revisions that characters don't behave consistently, or I can't find an ending that wraps up all the details I worked into the developing plot.
I had no plans to do NaNoWriMo. I have a bunch of projects that are in the works which I really should be working on instead. But yesterday (November 1), while listening to one of the many soundtracks I assembled for future and current writing projects, some details snapped into my head, and I was motivated to sketch down these details while on a bathroom break at work. I always bring a sketchbook into the toilet. It's a great place to brainstorm.

STEP ONE

A couple of months ago, I bought the Story Forge card pack and had been experimenting with them. The way these cards work is like a tarot deck, where each card is printed with two parallel but inverted concepts — read it one side up, and it is vaguely positive, read it the other way up, and it is vaguely negative, but both directions provide a plot concept from which to react. 

The booklet that comes with the deck provides a few templates of how to lay out the cards to tell different types of stories. I found that the first template, called Once Upon a Time, was good at kicking off a concept, but provided no closure:

CARD 1: The protagonist at the beginning of the story
CARD 2: The status quo of the world
CARD 3: The catalyst for change in the protagonist
CARD 4: The protagonist's reasons for resisting the call to adventure
CARD 5: What compels the protagonist to get over that resistance
CARD 6: What pushes the protagonist to act
CARD 7: The direction the protagonist moves
CARD 8: The apparent goal

Using these cards requires a bit of colorful interpretation. It helps to have a kind-of-sort-of story idea, or at least the genre you want to work in. In this case, I had the genre and a basic plot, but needed a little more framework. These cards are excellent for providing a framework, but since I found this Once Upon a Time template lacking in closure, I used the inverse of the eight cards in reverse order and assigned them meanings loosely based on The Writer's Journey. 

CARD 8 INVERTED: The protagonist acts on the apparent goal
CARD 7 INVERTED: The protagonist's achievement / reinforcement of this path
CARD 6 INVERTED: The protagonist awakens a deeper truth within themself
CARD 5 INVERTED: The protagonist transforms in some way, maybe achieves the apparent goal, but finds it lacking
CARD 4 INVERTED: A major obstacle appears
CARD 3 INVERTED: The protagonist realizes the goal all along should be this other thing
CARD 2 INVERTED: The return home (physically or metaphorically)
CARD 1 INVERTED: Resolution

Again, with interpretation, and a little squinting at the card concepts, this revised template gives closure. I had my story.

STEP TWO:

Many moons ago, I had adapted two excellent resources in plot development — John Truby's The Anatomy of Story, and Donald Maass's Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook — and combined them into my own mutant workbook. For the record, all of Maass's books are amazing and inspirational, but his Workbook was instrumental in helping me understand how to dissect and assemble my own plots. In my version and particularly in Maass' original version, the protagonist's back story can transform from a vague trope into a very personal exploration of yourself through your characters' adventures. All the subplot characters conspire to reinforce or contrast the protagonist's world view, and orbit around a core theme that keeps your writing project tightly interwoven and cohesive.
At lunch, I began applying the Story Forge story architecture into the workbook. Typically, I will emerge from the workbook with a radically altered version of the original plot. The key is to not be too protective of the concepts you may have already fallen in love with. I'll let you know how that all turns out.