Making it up in the middle

No writer I know can get through an entire novel without stopping at some point to make up more stuff, not even the most organized and linear of planners. The pantsers who make it up as they go along are a whole different kettle of fish, but they, too, seem to pause occasionally to catch their breath mid-book. In fact, the need to stop and consolidate is so common that writers come up with various names for it: the First Veil, the next event horizon, the zero-visibility point.

There are a couple of different reasons why writers hit this point. Possibly the most common is the build-up to a critical point – a scene that will change the direction of the plot, the characters’ attitudes and beliefs, the general location where things are happening, or all three at once. The writer’s plot outline may look complete, but really, it’s a series of Big Scenes sticking up out of a fog-covered valley.

The writer may know that this Big Scene will reveal something that tears up a friendship, changes the character’s main story goal, or sends them from France to China for the next part of the story, but exactly what happens after that depends on the way the scene plays out. Until the scene is written and then thought about, and all the details and reactions considered, the writer can have only a general idea of what happens next. So once the scene is down, the writer has to stop and make up what comes next in light of what has just happened.

Or the writer is the sort who plots in sections. They have a good idea of how to get to the next Big Scene, but they have no idea what will happen after that. So they have to stop once they’ve completed the scene and look at where the characters are, what’s changed, and where they want/need to go next. In extreme cases, the writer doesn’t even have an end game in mind – they’re not quite a pantser, because they have to have a plan for the next section, but they don’t have a direction for the book as a whole.

Another reason for this creative pause is the build-up of seemingly tiny, throw-away details that suddenly require one to stop and fit everything into a coherent whole before one ends up with a contradictory mess. Scene One mentions an antique teacup on the character’s mantelpiece; in Chapter Three there’s a porcelain statue in his bedroom; and then, when they’re examining the crime scene, the character starts going on about the broken pottery and the writer suddenly realizes this guy is an expert on antique china and pottery. Since the writer knows nothing about antique china, this means stopping for research and then figuring out how this expertise factors into both the character’s background and personality, as well as how it’s going to affect the plot.

And of course there’s the sudden brainstorm – the writer is in mid scene when he/she spots a previously unrecognized opportunity for an amazing plot twist or bit of background or character development, which then has to be integrated into everything else. And finally, there are all the places where the writer has a general idea of what happens – they go to China and find the next piece of the puzzle – but none of the specific details (like exactly where in China they go, what the puzzle-piece is, how they locate it, and what kind of trouble they run into in the process).

In all of these cases, this kind of making-stuff-up is different from the pre-story making-stuff-up because the writer is already very thoroughly committed to a lot of the character, the plot, and the background. It’s a lot more difficult to make changes in five or ten or twenty thousand already-written words of first draft than it is to fiddle with a bunch of notes. For one thing, the draft is almost certain to need lots of subtle changes in many place, from direct references to elliptical conversations to plot twists that may be more obvious or less plausible given the new information.

Sometimes, a mid-book brainstorm is so compelling that it is well worth the effort for the writer to throw out all twenty or forty or eighty thousand words of already-written draft and start over so that everything can be fit together smoothly. More commonly, it is the new idea that has to be made to fit What Has Gone Before (and, if the writer is committed to a particular endgame, What Has To Come Eventually).

In other words, making stuff up in the middle of a story is constrained by what has already been written and by the writer’s willingness to do whatever degree of rewriting is necessary to make the newly-invented stuff fit the existing words. It may also be constrained by the presumed endgame, and the farther along one is in the story, the more likely this is to be a problem. If you’ve been setting up a particular outcome for 60,000 words, inventing something that will drastically change the story climax is going to take a lot of rewriting.

A few things, like renaming a particular character, can be handled with a quick search-and-replace, but usually it takes more than that. The writer has to find a spot in the first five chapters to mention the gun on the mantelpiece and work a reference to Craig’s temper into a conversation (or better yet, work a demonstration of his temper into a scene), so that when, in this new scene, Craig grabs the gun in fury and shoots the dog, it is not merely plausible, it is inevitable.

If one has a good memory and/or is deeply involved in all the minutia of one’s work, one may be able to keep mid-book inventions consistent without a lot of effort. If the new stuff one is making up changes things rolling forward, one can sometimes toss all one’s plans and move on without needing to fiddle much with the existing draft. But unless one is sure about this, it is usually better to reread both one’s draft and one’s notes from time to time, and the larger and more striking the cool new idea is, the more advisable it is to go back and look stuff over.

There’s also the fact that many writers have one particular area that comes so clearly and naturally that when one talks about making it up, they just blink. They have one area of writing that works for them the way everything works for pantsers – they sit down with a character and it’s obvious what plot-like actions they’ll take, or their plot skeleton is instantly populated by Prince Ivan the Ridiculous and Mage Marion, never just “the prince” or “the magician.” When they’re working well, they can move ahead rapidly, but when they hit a wall, it’s often very difficult for them to stop, back up, and slow down their process enough to get around whatever obstacle they’ve hit.

I think I’m going to do one more of these, about making stuff up in the rewrite/second draft, if people aren’t bored with the topic yet, and then I’ll move on to something else.