We will have to wait a little longer to break Cara’s legs.
If you read my last post, Organizing the Madness, Part I (I suggest you do so now if you haven’t), you’ll know that I’ve shed my plotting ways and pantsed my way to the midpoint of my WIP, but I’m now taking a step back and attempting make some sense of the mess I’ve made. I want to make sure I’m making it as difficult as possible on Cara, my protagonist, hence the breaking her legs comment.
Next time, I’ll resume with the second part, but I had to take a surprise side trip to voice a more immediate concern and address some words of wisdom that were passed down from one of my favorite writers on Substack, Tamara. Yes, she’s so cool she has no last name—of which I’m wildly jealous.
Other writers ask if I plot or run free. Do I follow a protocol, a process? Do I always have a logline? Do I strictly adhere to the hero’s journey structure? Do I stop at a certain point and edit what I’ve written or race to the end? If I may pass along any one lesson in all my rambling on craft, it’s that you should not follow an instruction manual. Yes, study the craft and diagnose stories till your mind breaks, but don’t you dare attempt to find a secret sauce that you can apply to every project. Doing so seems to be a way to make things easier, but that’s not what you want. I’m on my sixteenth novel, and this whole gig is as hard as ever—and I suspect that’s for the better.
The only part that’s easier is that I now know there’s a way through. That if I keep pushing every day, I will get to the end. No matter how much of a mess it’s in, I will find a way to edit the manuscript into cohesion and will one day deliver it to readers. Resilience kills writer’s block and sets books in their rightful place on the shelf. Period. Knowing these facts helps.
But the getting there, figuring out where to go with the plot, skillfully building suspense, the bringing of characters to life, the writing of sentences that dazzle, that’s as hard as it ever was.
What I want to convey by this interlude is that you’re starting over every time, and you don’t want to hone your process till you’ve landed on the perfect recipe. You want to light your process on fire. Hell, do the opposite of what you’ve done before. Change it up, be liquid, and go with whatever’s happening in the moment.
Here’s what I mean:
This post was unplanned, but I was gifted some fresh thoughts on where I should go with my WIP. It’s by no means my usual MO to post about my process as a way to seek the answer, but that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve written out these essays for you—but also for me, as a way to joggle free the right words. It’s a new trick that’s been delightful. On top of that, I never thought someone would chime in and give me such incredible wisdom as Tamara has. But I so welcome it! I’m also making a giant pivot from pantser to plotter as I survey the battlefield of this project from the halfway point.
Years ago, I read Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World by General Stanley McChrystal, and his words have stuck with me all this time. He suggests that the key to being a great force in battle is adaptability. Yes, soldiers should take what they’ve learned by studying every important battle ever fought, but elite warriors should be able to move with the fluidity of a ballerina. They should be able to take in the uniqueness of the particular situation, studying what’s happening in real time, adapt, and then act quickly.
The times are changing. What I did last book doesn’t necessarily apply to this one. The “your books are like children” cliche has been run into the ground, but seriously, are you going to raise your straight-As, never-breaks-a-rule go-getter the same way you raised your pot-smoking hellion of a teenager? Let’s hope not.
I’ve been adapting from the start of this project. Early on, a voice from inside the story screamed at me that I needed to leave all the rules behind and just go, get to typing, move the fingers, see what happens. Don’t think, don’t plan. Do.
Wait, isn’t that what Maverick teaches Miles Teller in the new Top Gun? [Goes to browser] Yep! Maverick tells Rooster (Goose’s son), “Don’t think, just do!”
The same voice has told me lately, “That’s enough of that.” Maverick now says, “Step back, run a tactical assessment, triple confirm your orders, then make sure you have missile lock on your Russian MIG, and only then pull the trigger.” You see, I’m water. I’m not steering, not by a long shot. I’m simply listening—to Maverick, in this case. Who would have known?
Continuing with the flow, I’d like to share Tamara’s comment to my previous essay and explore how it can help me pave the right path to find an ending for my WIP. She’s suddenly pushed Maverick out of the cockpit, and rightfully so. Even her replies and comments on Substack are worthy of their own platform. Here she goes:
This is the moment most writers misdiagnose as fatigue when it’s actually structural intelligence kicking in. Résistance may be easily seen as a lack of energy. But it’s the psyche refusing to spend narrative capital blindly. Early drafting is appetite-driven. Midpoint work is ethics. You’re no longer asking what happens next, but what must happen to justify what’s already been said. That’s why it feels heavier. And yes, I reiterate, the office really is a psychological gymnasium, and you’ve just increased the weight. The slowdown means the story has found its governing verb (running), and now every scene has to either accelerate that motion or break it. Options multiply right before coherence hardens. That’s selection pressure.
I admire here your instinct to inhale instead of panic-type. Even if writers have imagination, most novels die from over-exploration without consequence… curiosity without a spine. You’ve already located the spine: Cara’s flight reflex. Now the island doesn’t need to offer plot; it needs to remove exits. Community, weather, memory, witnesses, all forms of friction that make running expensive. You don’t need dragons or ghosts; you need social gravity. The torture devices that work the best are sustained exposures: situations where silence costs more than speech, where staying hidden hurts someone she loves, where confession stops being moral and becomes practical. That’s when play turns back into momentum. The muse doesn’t return, in fact she never left, but the story has finally told you what it demands in return.
Yeah, you should read that a few times. She’s a sage, and I’m so honored that she would take the time to post her wisdom into my comments.
Let’s get back to my damaged protagonist Cara and apply a couple of Tamara’s suggestions.
—The governing verb is running. She’s so right about that. “Every scene has to either accelerate or break that motion.” If you’re lucky enough to find a word that captures your story early on, preferably a verb (you rule breakers can use whatever lexical category you like; an adjective?), then you have the keystone that will hold up the rest of the story, the mighty coatrack where you can hang every sentence.
Cara is running. We get that now. How about her husband, Luke? And Lainey? Ah, the dusty gears are kicking into action. Luke has a sense that Cara has always held back truths, but he has no idea what they are. Same with Lainey. But what are the two of them running from—or to? We best know, if we’re going to bring them to the party. To that end, how about Cara’s aunt, who plays a major part in the story? And even the more minor characters. Won’t it be a stronger narrative if I, as the author, have a sense of their relationship to the governing verb?
Not that I need to rub the reader’s face in it, but you can bet I’m going to spend a few days considering how running applies to every character that matters in the story. And as I chase the ending, let’s see how my deep brain weaves in those ties.
If I plot out the rest of the story before I resume drafting—which I’m leaning toward, every scene beat that’s pinned to my cork board will drip with the velvety blood of the verb “running.” And if I simply start going again without an exact structure sorted out, I’ll still have my keystone in mind.
—The island doesn’t need to offer plot; it needs to remove exits.
We’re getting into the guts of it now. I mentioned that my plot could go almost anywhere, and that’s why I needed to recalibrate.
Remember that scene in Star Wars: A New Hope where Luke and company are stuck in the trash compactor and the walls start closing in? What if I make Cara’s family, the island, and its inhabitants the aggressors, closing in around her?
It pushes her to respond, doesn’t it? Her goal arises as she begins to squirm. For the rest of the novel, she’s trying to keep a lid on her secrets. And I, as the author, am trying to rip the lid off! I’m removing exits. That’s plot, the yin and yang.
Here’s how I’m doing that so far:
Cara and family lost their house in California to the fire. Even if they wanted to rebuild, the insurance payment was abysmal, and all contractors are overcharging for their work. The only option they have is to move into the island cottage Cara inherited from her aunt on Salvation Isle in Maine. Little do Luke and Lainey know, Cara experienced something horrifying on Salvation Isle when she was summering there as a seventeen-year-old; it’s the wound that led to a series of terrible mistakes. So Salvation Isle is the last place Cara wants to go. It would be great if they could sell the cottage, but her aunt prevented a sale of any kind in the will.
Do you sense the walls tightening? It’s getting worse by the minute for her. Here are a few more:
- Cara’s intent is to leave Luke, but not until after they get Lainey off to college in a year, as she wants to protect her daughter’s emotions. So Cara’s stuck on the island and in her marriage.
- Someone on the island knows her secrets. The second part of the book will definitely explore how that vulnerability plays out.
- Tamara mentions memory as a form of friction. That’s a great one. Cara’s memories keep bubbling up, and I’ve been showing them in flashbacks. But one crucial set of memories needs to start closing in on her, and it’s how much she and Luke used to love each other. As she starts to recall and hopefully feel their love again, the sustained exposure will begin to eat at her, and her need to confess her sins will grow stronger. She can’t keep lying—which is most often the exit she takes.
As you’ll see, I’ll fuse more of these ideas into the final part of my essay on organizing the madness, but I want you to see what a vulnerable spot I’m in as I carve out next steps. The experience of the last fifteen novels only gets me so far. Only this story matters now, and the answer lies in setting your literary rabbit-ear antenna just right so that you can clear the static.
Analyzing what I’ve written so far is helping. Writing out these thoughts for you is helping. Tamara is playing a part. And I’m hoping, in the course of the next few days, that I’ll have equipped myself with what’s needed to plow ahead.
Can you see that it’s laughable to think you will arrive at a place as a writer or creator where it’s easy, where you can simply tap into the same process time and time again? The muse will laugh at you, and no one wants to be laughed at—especially by her.
Isn’t it fun to blindly run toward the edge of the cliff and leap, fearless and faithful? You might have a plot in hand, you might not, but you’re listening, you’re open, your lightning rod stands tall. You are water, ready to flow wherever the source/She/the universe/He/Spirit guides you.
Let’s end with Terence McKenna’s brilliant words:
“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it’s a feather bed.”
There is no shamanic dance if you’re caught holding a cookie cutter. I can guarandamntee you that.
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