Does Plotting Have To Be Hard?

Shannon Dittemore is the author of the Angel Eyes trilogy. She has an overactive imagination and a passion for truth. Her lifelong journey to combine the two is responsible for a stint at Portland Bible College, performances with local theater companies, and a focus on youth and young adult ministry. For more about Shan, check out her website, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

One of the biggest problems I run into when I'm giving other writers advice is remembering just who I stole it from. I'd like to be an honest thief at least and give credit where it's due, but we hear things over and over again and from different folks and eventually the original source is forgotten entirely.

So, to whoever said this first, I apologize. But I know for certain that James Scott Bell has said it on multiple occasions and has included it in his book Plot & Structure. A book I absolutely recommend, by the way. All that said, take a look at this tid-bit and then let's talk about it.

I'm in the early stages of writing a shiny new story and as I sink into the process I've decided something. Sometimes I make the whole plotting thing so difficult. I have charts and scene breakdowns and reversals to work in. I have coded index cards and a series of multi-colored markers.

ALL GOOD THINGS, friends. Hear me, these are not bad tools. But if I'm honest, I can sit at my desk for eight hours, play with these tools, and get nowhere with my story.

I find I make the most important kind of progress when I keep it simple. And there's nothing more simple than this concept. Create a character. Give him a problem. Give him another one. And then when he can't possibly take anything else, resolve the thing.

It's so simple. And yet, we find variations of this model in every successful book.

Perhaps, during the writing of a story, we should free ourselves from the juggling act that is pinpointing each story element. Perhaps we should leave that to those who find joy in dissecting our stories.

I don't know. Am I oversimplifying things now?

It's possible.

But, I'll tell you this. Once I set my fancy plotting techniques aside and focused solely on the rocks I wanted to throw at my heroine, I plotted my entire story in less than a half hour.

Now, it's a story I've been thinking about and toying with for a while. The ideas were floating around in my noggin, but I had to abandon my own self-imposed process before I could lay the scenes out in a manner that made sense.

And I wonder if keeping it simple would help you too.

What do you think? Is your dependence on a certain process crippling you? Is it making the writing more difficult than it needs to be? How do you keep it simple?