When plots go sideways
For the last week, I’ve been chipping away at the chapters of Seeing the Crooked Lines, the prequel to Great Purpose. I have a story outline, defined character arcs, even some initial prose I want to make sure is included. I have a timeline defined for all events in the plot. I have background stories for the setting and all the principal actors in the novel. I even have estimated word counts — it looks like this book will be about 90,000 words, which will be about 15,000 longer than Great Purpose.
In summary, I have all the pieces defined to create a great story.
Or so I thought.
The first half of Seeing the Crooked Lines (or what I’ve been calling “SCL”, for short) is essentially a mystery story: Father Karl Becker investigates a weeping statue of the Virgin Mary in a rural parish. This means writing some interesting characters with different motivations, figuring out the mechanics of the examination and validation, and keeping within the strict perspective required by the nature of the story. It’s a different book than Great Purpose, because it essentially focuses on the point of view of one character throughout.
And therein lies the problem. I was rocking along, cranking out close to a couple thousand words per day, generating chapter drafts aligned with my outline and background material. “At this rate, I’ll be able to publish this in the fall,” I was thinking proudly. And then everything came apart.
Mystery stories are hard to write. You have to balance the procedural aspects with character development, or else it devolves into something that feels suspiciously like an episode of Law & Order (a favorite of the Lovely Jane, but one I find laughably implausible; she says I take it too seriously). Writing a mystery story is like solving a Rubik’s Cube. You have to twist the elements together in exactly the right sequence, or it never aligns perfectly in the end. And if you make the plot too long or too detailed, it becomes too much work to be enjoyable, and readers will simply give up. Pacing is everything. A good mystery always feels like it’s moving forward at a brisk pace, even when the investigator is stymied by some obstacle.
Which brings me to my quandary. I had a lovely timeline showing Becker’s investigation taking place over a four month period. Then I started writing, and realized the man would figure it out in a few days, tops — he’s a super-smart guy, after all. The problem is, that’s not enough time to raise the dramatic tension. So now I have to figure out a way to make the mystery part work out in about a month, elapsed story time, or else it’s not going to be both plausible and engaging.
The Lovely Jane had some useful observations for me, and a few suggestions. Should I introduce a sidekick? Would another subplot help? Could I introduce more obstacles to overcome? All good ideas, but they just make the front half of the book more complicated, which would distract from the essential theme.
So, today, I start over. I’ve got about 15,000 words composed and I hope to salvage some of that, but I honestly don’t know if I can. My desk is a mess, covered in printouts and yellow Post-it notes with frantic scribbles on them. It got progressively messier as I slowly realized the story was not coming together as easily as I’d hoped. So, I’m clearing it off and rebooting the whole thing into “SCL 2.0”.
If I can get the mystery of the front half working properly, then I’m confident I can get the rest of the book — the really interesting part, I think — nailed down quickly.
The second half of Seeing the Crooked Lines is about the implications of Becker’s investigation, which does not go quite like one might think it would. There’s some unexpected insights to be found here, and I can’t wait to get to that part of the story, where the real character transformation takes place. It should set the stage for the later events in Great Purpose nicely.
But I’ll never get that done unless I can wrestle this stupid front half into submission first. So, into battle I go. I’ll let you know, dear reader, when I’ve defeated the elusive plot monster. Wish me luck.
