When I decided to write my first novel, Operation Devil's Fire, I knew I had only a vague understanding of plotting. I had been writing short stories for years, but had never tackled a novel. To help myself, I bought a copy of Ken Follet's excellent WWII novel Hornet Flight, read it, then sat down and plotted it using Excel. I entered the name of the point of view (POV) character and a one-sentence description of the chapter. Next, using Excel's formulas, I counted the number of times each character appeared and calculated the percentage of "screen time" they each had. Side note: I have no idea how Mr. Follet writes his books.
For my next step, I bought two books on writing by literary agent Evan Marshall: The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing and the companion workbook The Marshall Plan Workbook.
I read them cover to cover and still have them in my home library. Mr. Marshall laid out a logical approach to plotting, which I converted to Excel using a pattern of appearances by each of my POV characters. I saved the file as ODF Story Plan.xls and used that same naming convention for all of my books. In case you’re wondering, as an IT professional, I used Excel on a daily basis so it was familiar territory for me.
Because my books are thrillers (I call them WWII action thrillers), my chapters tend to get my characters into trouble, then end. The next chapter switches POV, often to the bad guys whose chapter then ends with a new threat that the reader knows about but the main character doesn't. This doesn't occur all the time, but I use when needed. Remember, the writer wants the reader to worry about the characters and wonder how in the world he or she is going to get out this jam.
Using Marshall's general POV pattern, but modifying it for MY story, I ended up with a spreadsheet for Operation Devil’s Fire whose first ten chapter’s POV column looked like this:
Here's how each character's appearances add up as a percent of the total chapters.
My main characters in bold, take up 82% of the total, with the minor characters taking the rest.
My latest book, Disrupt and Destroy, has the POV characters appearing this often:
Our three favorite main characters in bold make up 91% of the total. Notice the smaller number of POVs (5), but notice how much more Saunders gets than in book one. That started in book three, Brutal Enemy.
Confession: I often plot one POV character’s entire arc at one time. I also often write the books that way.
The key advice I can give you is: if you decide to plot your book in a similar fashion, always remember that the story is the boss. Don't just put a POV chapter in a certain place just because the spreadsheet pattern says to; you have to adjust all the time so the story stays tight, tense, and true.
Help your readers come to love your characters, care about whether they survive, and cheer for them when they do.
Thanks for stopping by today.
