About a year ago I posted a question on Twitter to anyone who has used The Marshall Plan to write a novel. Surprisingly and perhaps not so surprisingly I have yet to get a response. I find using Twitter is a lot like screaming into a wind tunnel and was not surprised when no one responded to my question. But I did wonder if no reply was an implication that not many people had heard of The Marshall Plan even though my copy of Evan Marshall’s work came out in 2001.
Evan Marshall is a writer and literary agent so it’s pretty fair to say he would be a valuable source of information when it comes to getting a novel written. Before the month of October arrived, I knew I wanted to take November—the national month of writing novels—and finish my work-in-progress. I was already 60 something pages into my new mainstream thriller, but it was nowhere close to being finished. Not to mention I still had some glaring questions about how my detective would ultimately catch the killer.
My story’s beginning is good. My characters are solid but I knew I needed to plan out the rest for cohesion and probability. That was going to take a lot of work and time. My copy of The Marshall Plan stood on a bookshelf; its spine glaring at me in a challenging way. The clock was ticking. I needed some help. What the hell, let’s try it.
I’m a very tactile person and like the idea of using paper not a computer screen to get my ideas out of my head. This allows me to shift the characters around. Focus on one segment at a time, stand back and think how my story will logically unfold and what I need to do as the writer to make it happen.
The Plan uses action and reaction pages to map out the story from beginning to end, breaking down the work into three segments: beginning, middle and end. Mingled in those three segments are major surprises that help ratchet up the tension for the lead character. My lead is Detective Seth Richter, who has a family member causing the second and third surprise hindering Richter’s ability to reach his goal of catching a killer. Without using The Marshall Plan I would not have known this as I slogged my way through a story I had not thoroughly plotted.
Working with the Plan the whole month of October, allowed me to toy with my characters without committing anything to manuscript pages. Notes were taken. Certain clips of dialogue were pondered for hidden clues. What ifs were mulled over at times when I wasn’t working on the outline. The pressure was off because the Plan was just that. A plan. Now, this month, this NaNoWriMo, I am ready.
We can do this!
Writer Lora Kempka 