THE SPAGHETTI PLOT DEVICE

[Chief Editor]

 

by Paula Munier

Plot matters. The days when you could sell a slice-of-life novel in which very little actually happens are over, for the most part. As an agent, former acquisitions editor, and mystery author, I’ve learned this the hard way, in the trenches, so to speak. No matter what genre you’re writing in, something needs to happen.

In short: You need a plot. Which is why when Writers Digest asked me to write a book on plot, I wrote PLOT PERFECT: How to Build Unforgettable Stories Scene by Scene. Because I knew that selling a novel without a strong plot was infinitely harder than selling a novel with a strongly plotted one.

No surprise, then, that I’m a plotter, not a pantser. When plotting my own Mercy Carr mysteries, I’ve followed my own advice, straight out of my own (bestselling) how-to-plot book. So imagine my delight/dismay when my latest mystery, THE NIGHT WOODS, received a (wonderful) review in bookreporter.com by the fab (oh-so-astute) Pamela Kramer in which she writes:

…The crimes seem unconnected. What could a billionaire and a visitor to a hermit have in common? But as fans of Munier know, she is supremely capable of throwing spaghetti at the ceiling and not only having some stick up there, but braiding it en route. The more messy facts and mysterious matters there are, the more Munier will confound us with myriad suspects and many possible motives….

Spaghetti? Really? Is that what I’m doing? I didn’t think that was what I was doing, but having given it some thought, I realize I was wrong. Yes, I plot out my novels, first by nailing the usual plot points—inciting incident, plot point #1, midpoint, plot point #2, climax, denouement—and then by sorting out the scenes in between that take the reader from plot point to plot point. Once I finish the first draft, I sit down with a Sharpie and a giant Post-It and write out a scene-by-scene outline of the entire book so I can see the whole story at a glance. (I know, I know, very analog. But what can I say, it works for me.)

For the early books, I followed this aforementioned process to the letter. I would have been lost in the story woods forever without a pathway out. But it’s different now, I’m not such a stickler for plotting every beat of the story.

I find that this is partly a matter of time; my day job as an agent (which I love) takes up most of my waking hours, so pounding out a book a year means writing whenever I can steal the time. More time spent putting words on paper, less time spent plotting. That is, more time spent throwing spaghetti at the ceiling.

Which begs the question: Where does the spaghetti come from? It comes from that mysterious gold mine inside our writer’s mind: the sub-conscious. The longer I’m in this writing game, the more I have learned to trust my sub-conscious—the pump that fuels the creative process. I will think of something, or more accurately, my sub-conscious will think of something.

All I have to do is pay attention when my sub-conscious whispers to me—and keep it happy and productive. Is my pump running dry? Do I need to prime the pump of my creative process? That’s when I turn to 1) research and 2) my husband. Let’s start with research, since that’s easier.

I love research. I started as a reporter, so I’m good at research. Good at getting people—cops, game wardens, dog handlers, first responders, wildlife biologists, to name a few—to talk to me, good at tracking down leads, good at doing deep dives on search engines, in libraries, through organizations. Good at reading around the subject. All grist for the mill, fuel for the fire, the wind beneath your wings… choose your own metaphor.

As long as I keep priming the pump—and don’t think too hard—my sub-conscious keeps on noodling and I keep on throwing spaghetti. I weave those noodles into my story, with the faith that somehow, someway, they’ll stick. And most of the time, they do stick. All good.

Sometimes, however, the spaghetti slips—and I struggle to, as Pamela Kramer put it so vividly, braid it en route. That’s where my husband comes in. Now, my husband is not a writer. (No worries, he is a reader.) He’s not much of a talker either, but he’s a good listener and he can fix practically anything. I go to him whenever I’m faced with a Gordian knot of a plot problem.

Explaining the issue to him forces me to identify and articulate exactly what’s not working—and that process alone usually prompts a remedy to come to my mind. If it doesn’t, we keep on talking about it, and he comes up with his own answers. Sometimes I use them, and sometimes I don’t, but either way I almost always have at least a hint of a real solution by the time our little talk is over.

As I write book #7 of the series, I find myself at the halfway mark—around 200 pages, 45,000 words—the point at which I typically throw a lot of spaghetti. Anything to get through that endless second act. You know the feeling.

The next time you find yourself muddling through the middle, try tossing some noodles up into the air. See what sticks. Keep priming your pump. And if you get stuck, talk it through with a good listener. Preferably someone who’s not a writer.

And then keep on plotting to The End.