PLOTTING THE PLOT

Besides the leaked original writer's guide for LOST, one would like to know if the producers or head writers ever plotted out the series from the very beginning. This has been a growing debate since The End.

There has been floating around a J.K. Rowling photo of a page of her outline/plot spreadsheet for Harry Potter.

It is interesting because it shows how a writer begins to plan a novel from the beginning to the end through a series of sections to see if everything flows properly toward the conclusion.

From various web sources, I glean that spreadsheet plotting is a good tool to avoid the pitfalls of character or story continuity errors.

Using a computer spreadsheet program, writers divide up the grids in order place various story components in distinct sections. For example, the spreadsheet could have the following headings:

1. Act. This helps track the act to which this scene belongs.
2. Chapter/scenes. This helps the writer divide the story into chapters/scenes.
3. Headlines. This isn’t a summary of the scene’s events, but headlines of main events of the scene with emphasis on how it affects the main character(s).
4. Time. Time of year, time of day. This helps the writer track passage of time and keep events in order, or deliberately out of order for flashbacks.
5. POV or Characters present. This column helps ensure that each character has a proper amount of exposure. Writers may use the colored initials for each character for at-a-glance evaluations.
6. Setting. This lets the writer track movement. It can set the basis of reusing a narrative pattern.
7. Action. Similar to Headlines, but with a different function. The Headlines puts the event in context of the main character, while the Action can be more specific or give a context.
8. Pulse. This highlights the emotional tension driving this scene.
9. Words. If a writer wants to track the length of the manuscript, he can add a column for the number of words/chapter and set up the spreadsheet to keep a running total.
   
   Depending on the type of story, a writer could add more detailed headings such as "clue," "mystery," or relationships to other characters (siblings, business rivals, associates, motivations, etc.)

Many writers like computer spreadsheets because of the sort function. A writer can sort a character, a place, a clue, an object to find out who, what, when, where and how it comes up in various parts of the story.

A big advantage to writers is the ability to add columns to address any issues.  For example, if you know that setting is your particular weakness, then the writer forces himself to add a column to address that weakness. The columns can be as simple or detailed as the writer believes is needed to get a sense of what his story is about: going from general to specific  - -  from overall emotion of chapter, main emotion of scene, emotional beats of scenes, emotional reactions of various characters, etc. The flexibility of this approach is a real advantage. Many writers believe Spreadsheet Plotting has an additional benefit of creating an ongoing Inventory for a look at the Big Picture of the story as it is being developed and put into manuscript form.

When you are developing a complex, layered fantasy world story, a writer needs to put together the general elements of the story down in a universal framework from which the character's actions and plot events take place. Otherwise, the writer would be pounding away at the keyboard, totally in the dark.