Posted on February 17, 2009

Fluid Plotting and Viewpoint Characters

My first novel wasn’t outlined prior to writing.  I’d constructed a backstory and had a general idea of how I wanted it all to end.  Along the way, I’d occasionally map out a handful of scenes in advance, but only if the writing wasn’t flowing.  I find this method more organic–and sticking to outlines had proved futile in the past.  Some genres, like the thriller or mystery, need structure, but generally I feel that stories tell themselves.  Too much planning makes them feel too planned.

When I finished The Hole and began work on Karaoke Quintessence, this preference was very much in mind.  KQ had the added benefit of being better formed in my mind.  A few years before the idea for The Hole had even occurred to me, I’d written forty-thousand words of something I was calling “Karaoke Quintessence.”  That’s roughly half way to a length that can be called a novel.  But it had sputtered out.  I didn’t like where the story was headed and that all important backstory wasn’t formed enough to give me an idea of where it would end.  So I set it aside, turned to The Hole, and ended up completing my first novel.

KQ was calling, however, and I liked the character, Jimmy Pete, I’d created as its protagonist.  The trouble was, I had another character, Alex Dale, I was itching to get to.  Alex has been around even longer than Jimmy, appearing in a short story I’d written many years ago, one that will appear in my upcoming short fiction anthology.  That story had a post-cyberpunk vibe, but Dale was easy enough to port to the newly developing Karaoke Quintessence.

That gave me two protagonists through whose eyes the novel would be told–and a third, Danny Weeks, was soon added.  I refer to these as “viewpoint characters” and I didn’t realize at the time how much trouble they can cause.

Telling a story from a single viewpoint is relatively easy.  You only have to worry about what happens to one person, and it’s difficult to lose track of him or her.  But multiple viewpoint characters means multiple story lines with multiple sets of events to keep track of.  A possible solution to the difficulty is to write one character’s story completely, then the next, then the next, and finally go back and intercut them into the novel as a whole.  Which is a fine plan, except that Karaoke Quintessence, like The Hole before it, was meant be serialized on my website as I wrote.

Had I outlined all of KQ before writing, this would’ve been easy.  I’d just follow the outline each day and post as I finished each chapter.  But this conflicts with my fluid plotting style.

The solution?  I cheated.  As everyone who’s read the last two chapters noticed, all three of my viewpoint characters were brought together.  Danny, Alex, and Jimmy found themselves in the same place at the same time and, for the foreseeable future, they will remain that way.  This makes alternating between them each chapter significantly easier, while allowing me to maintain the varying perspective on events that makes Karaoke Quintessence such a fun story to tell.

It’s a writing hack, so to speak, but it’s one that has granted KQ a newfound smoothness in crafting.

If my readers have further suggestions on how to handle such fluid plotting mingled with multiple viewpoint characters, write them up in the comments section below.  I’d love to hear how others have handled this issue.