Plotting with a Partner
Collaboration Series, part 2 of several
Last time, I touched on how Alyssa and I begin working out a new story idea. This post will detail how we plan the actual events. (Keep in mind, I’ve learned that while this process works fabulously for she and I together, it has proved an absolute disaster when I attempted to use it by myself. More on that when I discuss my own solo writing later this year.)
First, an addendum to the CHARACTERS post – when we agree upon their names and descriptions, we both start to get a “feel” for their personalities. Is someone a brainiac? Are they bossy? Possibly a true leader? Do they have hidden desires? If so, are these desires hidden from themselves, or simply something they won’t reveal to others? Do they have a goal that motivates all of their actions? (They’d better!)
This type of characterization and developing personality traits is something there are many, many books written upon, and I own quite a few. To date, I have yet to gain significant insight on characters from a reference book. It just seems to me, and Alyssa from what I gather, that when you have a “real” full-bodied person in mind, their character traits come to you naturally. This isn’t to say those might not change, depending upon your story — or more specifically how the character grows…just that from my point of view, books on characterization haven’t proved as helpful as some of my other reference material.
Now, details on how we PLOT our stories together:
Since we’re about 2000 miles too far apart to schedule any face time, we’ve learned to plot out the entire story during one marathon phone call. This means planning for quality, uninterrupted time–Alyssa feeds her daughter mega helpings of turkey, a gallon of warm milk, and tucks her in, complete with padlock & bedpan; I hand Mr. Lyons a fifth of Jack and tell him to keep quiet. 
We’ve learned the hard way not to do part of the story one day and plan to finish it another. We both had vastly different ideas during the interim of what the characters would do and how to resolve things, and ended up with a morass of jumbled ideas. We’ve found it’s much more efficient to get all our major scene ideas out in one session.
I use a headset so my hands are free. Alyssa uses a speakerphone so hers are. She types up a summary or brief idea for each scene as we go along, starting with our beginning idea, the major plot and turning points, then the conflict resolution. This typically takes a couple of hours, depending upon the length of story.
Since I’m not typing, you might wonder why my hands need to be free…often the ideas start flowing fast and furiously. I make notes when her fingers can’t keep up or when I have ideas and she’s currently typing something else. Now the first joint story we wrote together (it wasn’t the first one we talked about…simply the first one we successfully learned how to work together on!) was Orchids and Orgasms, and on that one, we did some of the actual dialogue and exact narration using the method I’ve described here, as we were both getting our feet wet and learning the characters. Since we now develop our characters before the scene plotting, we already have an idea of how they’ll respond and talk in certain situations so we no longer write actual first draft scenes in live time together. Eventually, when we think we have all the main points covered, we both hang up happy and sore from laughing.
In the next day or so, Alyssa smooths her typing (ensuring everything is recognizable!); she also includes which viewpoint each scene is to be told from and what the setting is for each (all of this was touched on in the phone call, but not necessarily jotted down the first time). When she’s finished, she sends the document to me for a glance over.
Once I okay it, she’s ready to go.
Next up — writing the “Rough” Draft.
Currently Reading: Don’t Bargain With the Devil by Sabrina Jeffries and The Spy Who Loved Me by Ian Fleming
