Plotting and Lifers

In August I’m giving a seminar on plotting novels at the Writer’s Digest Annual Conference (as mentioned the first of infinite times here; let me tell you, promoting things like that is exhausting) so I’ve been thinking a bit about how I’ve plotted novels. I’ve written a lot of novels — more than thirty, actually, about twelve of which are worth looking at and eight of which I’ve published so far — so I suppose I have something halfway intelligent to say about the process.

While the secret sauce of my awesomeness will only be revealed in coherent form at the conference, I thought a good place to start would be examining past novels and my approach to plot. Last time out I looked fondly at Chum, and today I thought I’d look at my first published novel, Lifers.

I wrote Lifers in 1997, and submitted it to a tiny small press in 1999 without an agent or a clue, and they wrote back and told me they would love to publish my novel if i would send them a check for about $12,000. Vanity Presses did shit like that – they pretended to be a regular royalties publisher and then they sent you a letter detailing the sad state of the economy and how we all had to contribute.

I told them to please burn the manuscript and considered flying to California to burn down their offices as well. The last thing a largely-unpublished author needs is someone trying to scam them out of twelve thousand goddamn dollars.

Then, something odd happened: They called me back 6 months later and said, we’ll give you a $1,000 advance and standard royalties, because we want to publish it for reals.

Good times. Selling your first novel is pretty exciting stuff, but we’re not here to discuss business. We’re not here to discuss how I only ever got $580 of that advance, and that only because my wife The Duchess is a pitbull. We’re not here to discuss how they went out of business soon after my book debuted. Or how The New York Times Book Review gave me a “Books in Brief” slot and I thought I had it made.

No, we’re here to discuss plot.

The plot of Lifers is probably the last time I wrote a novel based on my own life. I was 26, working a dull job in a cubicle, drinking too much and perhaps not at my happiest point, though I had little to actually be sad about. I was actually just experimenting with writing anything that wasn’t Science Fiction or Fantasy, and Lifers was in fact just the second long-form work I’d written that lacked wizards, cyborgs, or a combination of the two.

As a result, it’s also the only novel I’ve ever written that starts with me imagining doing something unusual in my own life. Lifers is the story of a young guy working a dull job in a cubicle who gets the idea to stage a robbery of his office, mainly as a way to break out of his rut. He recruits his two friends and they steal all the computers, copiers, and other equipment and sell it all on the black market.

That’s it. That’s the plot.

See, Lifers is one of those books where the plot is secondary. The character interaction, the soliloquies and inner monologues about their lives, that’s the meat of the story. The actual robbery isn’t exactly Ocean’s 11, after all. And the one aspect of it that I still like very much is that this ridiculous act of defiance, in the end, doesn’t really change their lives very much.

Plotting Lifers was a series of solving problems.

Problem One: I have these characters, what in the world will they do for 50,000 words or so?

Problem Two: Okay, they decide to stage a robbery at his job. How would they execute it?

Problem Three: What can they possibly do with all this stuff?

Problem Four: There was no problem four. At this point I had written the book.

There’s no real conflict or antagonist and some will tell you that means it’s a terrible story, but these three problems offered several chapters each of solutions: One, they meet and discuss the details, scope out the office, formulate a plan. Two, they identify allies – knowing and unknowing – and come up with plans to bring them into the fold, knowingly or unknowingly. Three, they execute the plan.

Four, because I was 26, there’s a love interest. It’s the least interesting aspect of the book.

I was definitely pantsing this book – Lifers was born as a vague idea and then developed as I wrote. I put myself in this ridiculous scenario and asked myself: If you were the sort of man to get involved with something like that, what would I do next? And that was my plot.

Whether or not that’s a good way to write a novel is another discussion altogether. It’s only 99 cents on the Kindle or Nook, though – you can figure that out for yourself.