Let’s say you’re not a pantser; someone who just sits down, writes by the seat of their pants and then a few days later, they’ve finished their first draft of their latest novel. The reason why is that because every time you sit down and do it just that way, you’ve written up a cool beginning, belted out a few chapters, you have the ending in mind, and then you hit writer’s block. Literally run into it like you just ran into a brick wall.

However, when you Google up sites to help you plot or read blogs on plotting, you read, “First choose your theme, then write up a detailed plot, then outline your Three Act Structure, then take your Three Act Structure and break it out into the Ten Points, answering all these questions. After that, grab some notes cards, jot down every character in your book—what they look like, their motivations, flaws, their quirks, and the last time they went to the bathroom.”

Even I get intimidated if that was the process of plotting and I am a plotter.

While that is a very involved exercise, you don’t need to plot like that. Actually, you don’t need to put in a lot of effort into it at all. You just want a guide that will tell you, “Here’s the beginning, this is what happens, this is the middle, here’s the climax, and here’s the denouement. Done. Need to make changes? That is why the Tri-Headed Queen invented erasers.”

It’s the middle part that gets the writer every time!

You have this idea, this general plot, but you just need to get from A to Z by filling out all the other letters in between. Want to know my secret?

You jot down a bunch of crap.

Does it make sense? I don’t care.

Does it flow? I don’t care.

Does it stick to the theme? Theme? I’m sorry, but I really don’t care.

For now, I’m just writing down whatever random scene pops into my head as to what comes after A, what comes after B, and what comes after C. If you ever played table-top role playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons, you may have heard the expression, “Bumbling from one random encounter to the next.” Because that’s all your chapters are: one encounter that leads to the next. When you have good characterization, consistent pacing, good tension, a theme that pops up here and there, a twist, guess what? You’ve written a concise story.

“Talk is cheap,” you say.

You’re right. Let’s work through an actual example in Part 2.