When a Pantster has to Plot – or how I wish I knew then what I know now…

Excel worksheet showing the timeline for each character

I consider myself to be a pantster because I don’t plot the events of my stories out in advance, but as you can see from the Excel worksheet above, there comes a time when plotting is a necessity.

Every ‘event’ shown in the top half of the timeline has already happened – in book 1 of Vokhtah – and generally speaking, I managed to keep that story nice and tight. The trouble started when I first realised that the timeline for the caravan to and from Deepwater was way out of whack.

That unpleasant discovery lead to the first Excel spreadsheet which reverse engineered the plot, but only for the Blue/Messenger and the Apprentice. If you haven’t read Vokhtah, don’t worry. All you need to know is that the Blue-disguised-as-a-Messenger and the na-Seneschal-disguised-as-an-Apprentice were the two main characters. Reverse engineering their timelines necessitated the making of a map:

Map of Vokhtah created using Inkarnate

The grid on the map allowed me to get a realistic [ahem] idea of how long the different parts of the journey would take. That was when I realised just how out of whack my guestimate in Vokhtah actually was.

What the hell was I going to do about it? Vokhtah was already published and book 2 relies on that timeline. Could I fudge it?

The simple answer is no, I can’t fudge it because a small fudge in book 1 will snowball in subsequent books as I weave the lives of the other characters into the storyline.

In desperation, I went back to Excel and created the spreadsheet you see up the top.

I’ve now got a pretty precise handle on the various timelines, but what’s become painfully obvious is that a few things will have to be changed in book 1. They’re not major things; the story stays the same. What will change is the sequence of some of the chapters. Chapters, and the sequence in which they occur, give the Reader a sense of time passing. I needed more time for certain things to happen, even though they aren’t mentioned at all in book 1. These are the things that happen concurrently with the main plot and lead directly to plot events in the next book.

What kind of things? Gestation, for one. The Six of Needlepoint is mated on day 16 of the story [in book 1]. Something has to happen XX number of days later, but it can only happen if the foetus has had a reasonable amount of time to develop…

Okay, I can see some of you rolling your eyes in disbelief. Why don’t I simply make the gestation period fit what the plot demands?

The reason is that biology is my thing, and although I’m writing about aliens, there are certain things that probably stay the same for all carbon based lifeforms – the bigger the animal, the longer its gestation period. So yes, I could fudge it, the Vokhtah series is a work of fiction about a place and a people that do not exist, but… -deep sigh- I HATE scifi that fudges things.

So, now to my regrets. When I published Vokhtah [book 1 of the Suns of Vokhtah], publishing anything was a brand new experience. I did a lot of research about how to publish as an Indie, but there were so many things I did not know, could not know. One of those things is that the first book of a series sets the rules of the world in place. Subsequent books have to live with those rules. You can’t just suddenly change a core constraint – like time – without ruining the story for people,like me, fussy, picky people with a decent memory. 😦

By the time I’d written the Innerscape series I knew better and did not publish book 1 until the whole damn lot was right. I think it shows in a plot that is tight, despite being written by a pantster. How can I do any less for Vokhtah?

The result of all this soul searching is that once the whole series is finished, I’ll put out a new edition of the first book before I publish the subsequent books. I just hope that doesn’t mean I’ll lose all the hard won reviews dating all the way back to 2013. 😦

Anyway… every decision has consequences, and I’ll just have to live with mine, but boy do I wish I’d known all this in 2013.

Anyone else have regrets?

Meeks-with-a-sad-face

Backstory, World building & Motivation

As a reader, one problem I’ve always had with plot driven stories is that the motivation behind pivotal events is often paper thin. The author wants Character X to do something or be somewhere because the rest of the plot depends on it. A flimsy excuse is offered, and the story moves on, usually without me. I’m fussy, no apologies.

Well, imagine my dismay when I found that I was in precisely the same situation with book two of Vokhtah. 😦

I’m a pantster by nature, meaning I don’t like to outline, but the second book of a series inevitably constrains how freely you can write because much of the world building and ‘rules’ have been set in concrete as part of book one. You can’t suddenly unwrite details that are no longer convenient.

And that’s the problem I’ve been tiptoeing around for weeks. I have a character who calls itself Death*. It appears in book one as the assistant to the Yellow. In book two, however, I need Death to be at the entrance to the Settlement when Kaati** arrives. The trouble is, for higher level Messengers*** like Death, gate duty would be seen as a dreadful punishment.  I’m talking maximum humiliation here.

So what could Death possibly do that would result in such a public punishment?

I already had some of Death’s back story and the world building from book one, but the ‘crime’ and its motivation eluded me. I tried to fudge it, but my subconscious wouldn’t let me. Every time I sat down to continue the story, I’d find myself going over that scene, again and again and again. Yet no matter how much I polished the words, it still felt like a bloody fudge so last night I spat the dummy and decided to delete the whole scene and start from scratch.

Oddly enough, I had a great night’s sleep, and this morning I started writing the outline, yes the outline, with a clear head. Two thousand words later, I finally have all the background and world building needed to explain Death’s motivation for being where it needs to be. Yes! 😀

I won’t spoil the story by giving it all away, but I will explain some of the world building that emerged. It revolves around the Guild of Healers and how their Council works. In a nutshell, the Council is made up of a total of seven Councillors who are the most powerful Healers in the Guild.

But Councillors are not chosen solely on merit. When a Councillor dies, or disappears [as happened with the leader of the Blue faction****], a replacement is usually chosen by a vote amongst the remaining six Councillors.

Now this is where things become interesting as the Councillors are divided into two dominant factions. Those in the Yellow faction believe that all Vokh abominations must be killed. Those in the Blue faction believe that not all abominations are dangerous. In fact, they believe that some abominations actually decrease the aggression of the Vokh and thus should be allowed to live and breed.

And finally there’s the Green. It has no faction of its own and its purpose is to break any deadlock between the two major factions. In the past, Councillors chosen as the Green tended to be strictly neutral. In book one, however, the current Green tends to side with the Yellows more often than the Blues. In book two, it continues to side with the Yellows until Death does something that really ticks it off.

If the Green lends its vote to the Blue faction it will cause a deadlock in the selection of the seventh Councillor – i.e. three Yellow faction members versus two Blues plus the Green.

In situations where the Council is deadlocked, the vote must be thrown open to the entire Guild. If that were to happen, the Yellows might still manage to get another Yellow voted onto the Council, but it would not be a certainty, and the delay could seriously disrupt the Yellow’s plans [the Yellow is the leader of the Yellow faction].

I can’t tell you what Death did, but it works perfectly with the Machiavellian politics of the Guild and its own, personal motivation. At this point I have no idea how much of this world building/back story will end up in the actual book, but at least I’ve stopped fighting my ‘muse’, and we’re both happy for the first time in weeks!

The sun is shining, the wind is mild and my Sunday is turning out to be a really good day. Hope you enjoy your weekend as well.

Cheers

Meeks

* Both Vokh and iVokh keep their personal names secret, and in public are known solely by rank or profession.

** Kaati is the young Apprentice from book one. Book two follows what happens to Kaati after parting company with the Blue/Messenger at Needlepoint gather.

*** Messengers are Healers who act as ‘enforcers’ for the will of the Guild of Healers. They are distinguished from ordinary Healers by their ability to inflict pain without suffering any of the empathic consequences that affect true Healers.

**** The leader of the Blue faction was known as the Blue. This powerful Healer left the safety of the Settlement to stop the guild from shooting itself in the foot. See book one, Voktah.