Generally, I close up plot holes in the 12 Draft Editing phase.
Yes, I do 12 drafts of each novel.
I would say Draft 9–11, which might be tightening up layout and covers is also about is each “beat” hit in the overall novel.
Free-
Dream to Page to Story to Novel To Outlined Plot
A few months ago I dreamt a whole novel—-I regularly do—-or at least the broad strokes of the plot/story. I dreamt about a neighborhood trying to stop a very large man, with a huge afro of hair from killing his son. But they were doing it in such passive ways that insinuated he was very powerful in their lives and that maybe the son had it coming.
I wake up, jot down in my Dream Journal the idea and then immediately type up 7 pages. Is this a short story or a full novel? As I looked at the pieces I had I realized I had a novel but a short one. How many characters, how many chapters, therefore how many main characters?
I decided on 10 tight chapters. (PLOT POINT OUTLINE.)
Free, the son, the lead character, is moving through these chapters or deeply investigated in them—-at some point it might not be productive to stay in his sole perspective.
Characters Main: Free , his father, so he needs a mother—-Maya.
Then I decided on a main trans character, Mary-K because I wanted a trans character that was on the liminal of hero/villain—we’d see where this would go.
At this point—Chapter 1–3 I’m still unclear about Dominic, the father’s tirade through the neighborhood to kill his son—-in at least Chapter 9–10.
Overall Plot
In workshops that I’ve taught over the years, Black men have talked a lot about their fathers wanting to or trying to kill them. This kept popping up, uninvited into people’s history, so I knew I had the thread of something culturally.
Plot Strengthener
Then I Reflected back onto when my own father tried to kill me at about 10 years old.
A schoolmate friend and I were deeply into comic books and video games. And like all addictions, it got out of control so now as little boys we’re both trading and stealing from each other. I eventually slip out of school at recess, go to his house (I’d left a window cracked), slip in, take some comics and video games, and stash them at home.
Unbeknownst to me, when I get inside, his mother and her boyfriend are home in the other bedroom, but they don’t notice me.
I get back to school and no one is the wiser. Until someone is the wiser and tell my parents and I break down and take the comics and video games from under the kitchen cabinet to return.
“Where’s the money? The $2500?”
“What?!” I gasp.
It seems Karen, my friends mother and my father, had the same drug dealer. My father proceeds to beat me demanding to know where the rest is at.
In retrospect, he crossed the line from corporal punishment to interrogation techniques—-as my mother rushed in to stop him—-when he had me 4 feet off the ground, strangling/dangling me, in midair.
(She didn’t know about their connection either.) So Karen was trying to do a set up and cash out on top of this kiddie larceny. My parents break up soon after this and my mother even asked me later if I had the cash, she wouldn't’ be mad, and we were far away from them. I said no, no, I never had.
BUT
I transport this to Free.
Plot Point-Back Story
This is why Maya and Dominic break up—-Dom though intended to kill Free as he was strangling him. Because HE was the man in Karen’s bed when Free snuck in; he saw his son. (Dom assumed Free might have seen him as well.) And Karen was a cash-drop. A cash drop in street life is someone who say holds $25,000 for a drug dealer. The dealer calls Karen to drop off the money to Judy at the mall. Judy is a drug dropper. They switch shopping bags and return to their respective bosses who are never at risk for being busted by the police.
BUT….what if…?
Plot Point-Conflict Between Dom & Maya
Dom decies to ace out Wes, Karen’s boyfriend, and put him in hot water with a drug dealer by having no cash for the ordered re-up. Wes is now assed out of business, all his bank “gone”. Dom can then slip in and takeover Wes’s territories but only if the person who stole the money is dead—-Free, as a child. And Dom’s street cred savagery at killing his own child is solidified.
The enormity of Dom’s ambition terrifies Maya, who stops him from killing their son as a child. So there’s precedence for his murderous intent towards the boy.
Plot Point
Free grows up with Dom as a father figure, in absentia, who builds a drug empire. And breaks his son off 5 blocks in all directions from his mother’s house. He can run his own corners, drugs, whatever. A mini-empire. And a prison.
Plot Point
Dom sends Maya money monthly but doesn’t visit Free until he’s 18 to give him these blocks to control.
Plot Point
Is this territory of cash profit or a prison to keep both of them imprisoned with money and territory?
Every Plot Point should act like slots into a shelving system—-or chapters into a book for the overall Plot. We’re now getting the complete backstory to how the family broke up, what Dom did and what has been happening since Free was a child and the family ended.
Plot Point
Free doesn’t have a complete memory of Dom trying to kill him as a child, so his idea of why his parents broke up is vague. And therefore useful to further plotting.
Plot Point
Mary-K, the trans character, has been like an aunt to Free, indoctrinating him into not only being loved and cherished but playing around with sexuality and identity. It seems that Mary-K, when Kevin in high school, fooled around with Dom, they were classmates. Kevin then left and came back Mary-K, but Dom was with Maya. And Maya gave him the one thing Mary-K never could—-a child.
Plot Point
Dom was capable of killing Free as a child….because he never wanted children, Maya used Free to trap him into a marriage.
Plot Point
Free gets married to Lena after high school. She comes from an extremely abusive home, her father kills her mother. Free and Lena have children. All the while, he’s becoming more and more enmeshed in his father’s “territory gift”, drugs and sexual experimentation.
Indexing Scene to Overall Plot Points to Full Plot Structure
That's about 11 Plot Points in Free so far and as you can see they act as almost dominoes into each other as well as support structures for the overall Plot.
The Connection work I now have to do is how does each character feel/react about these different Plot Points? I generally outline each Scene on Index Cards.
“Free Talks to Maya-1st time, while she cleans up children’s toys.”
Generally I do this for novels over approximately 300 pages in novel format (6x9). Anything shorter generally marginalia notes are enough or the overall Plot isn’t as diverse/sophisticated to need such dissection. The Index cards allows me to see what is happening chapter by chapter without looking at the writing as this is generally in a work binder for the project itself not the typed manuscript (though the binder could be big enough to include the printed pages.)
Chapter 1
Maya cleaning up the toys is both technical foreshadowing as well as underwriting and metaphorical.
One, she’s cleaning up toys after waking Free up. Childhood is over.
Two she’s cleaning up his children’s toys but Lena, the children’s mother is nowhere around. Maya is putting these toys in boxes to be picked up. The children don’t live in her house.
Three, Free and Lena are no longer together—-but why? How is he broken up in Chapter one before we even see them get together and why is this secondary to Maya telling her son that his father is serious, he’s put the word out in the neighborhood, he’s coming to kill him.
Chapter 2
Free visits Lena’s grave.
He thinks about his family history.
He finds a message from Dom, bullets on Lena’s headstone. Glib in the previous chapter, now, now he’s terrified.
Chapter 3
Free goes to Mary-K for help. Mary-K promises to help, intercede, even as she thinks about the fact that she won’t do it. She’s directly duplicitous to Free’s face but the reader now knows this about her. Why is she so?
The above is beautifully structured and I’ve left out the ending, Plot Point, Resolution, etc. Chapter 9 being the Denouement and 10 the Resolution of who lives, who dies and why.
The best way to garner the above is to start a work with a reasonable and possibly alterable structure in mind—-Ten Chapters. Now you know exactly how much space to fill. Then give each Chapter an assignment and more importantly, each Chapter must move what occurred in the preceding Chapter through the Current one and to the next one. Each Chapter is like a weightlifter that must carry the previous Chapter OVER it to dump into the next Chapter——like water flowing through a water mill as the overall cycle rotates.
But here’s the writing secret—-similar to biological surgery—-the symmetry does not occur in straight forward to middle to end. Yes, after decades of writing, the above is easier for me to structure and do, seemingly from mind to hand to fully formed step. I started out writing in my pre-teens and by my teens, I estimated that I was getting about 30–40% of what I imagined onto the page into full manuscripts. Now I’m getting about 80–90%. After 30 years.
I write through 10–50 chapters—-get the story out, get the characters out. I don’t write a book yet for an audience. Editing, hence 12 Drafts, is where I’m cleaning it up for myself and then an audience.
Cleaning it up for myself is making the whole thing make sense from Step A to Step Z.
Making it sense for the audience is when I pull it apart piece by piece and does each piece make sense to my overarching plot—-Free’s father announces and then comes to kill his son.—-that’s the whole Plot in a nutshell. Every Plot Point must SERVE that overall Plot Arch. I purposefully don’t get bogged down in what people directly look like, how tall they are, what their favorite color is—-those are amateur moves of the writer trying to imagine the characters. I’m trying to stick to everything serving—-Free’s father has come to kill him—-that’s all that’s important.
Now when I dump into slowly 11 to 15 Plot Points that SERVE and CONNECT to other another to move and SERVE the overall Plot Arch then I can go back in Draft # 11 and mention Free’s plaid shirt in Chapter 3 and Maya’s nose ring in Chapter 8 or Lena’s braids in Chapter 7.
In the beginning, you imagine writing as a progressive linear process.
Instead, really good writing is more like omni-directional layering.
Forward, backward, sideways, inside, outside and on top of—-direct, indirect layering and writing decoration—-like interior design of labels, things, colors, objects, etc..
Think of it this way—-I might have a huge blow up argument in the living room during Christmas.
- My first layer is the argument—-what is it about?
- Then, the second pass by layering, what is it REALLY about? Is it really about so many guests visiting? Or the cost or certain people are disliked?
- Then the third pass by layering, hints at financial ruin—-foreshadowing the following chapters.
- Then, the next/fourth layer shows a drinking problem, which adds to the foreshadowing effects of the next chapter which will double back and explain the money troubles—-so now you have a cycle of drinking, money mismanagement, fights, etc..
- Then, the 5th layer is where it gets fun—-now I can put in digs and sleights and harsher words and attacks—-because now I know all the secrets all the characters know.
- Then Layer 6—I put in the description of the Christmas tree, stockings, food——all of this was absent, barren, bare until my other Layers were in.
Plotting is much the same. Layers. Then going back and sewing it together, making it tumble together, pulling the pieces logically together, snipping pieces that don’t matter or are unnecessary.
If you’re having trouble connecting plot points—-finish the whole thing. Then go back over it, scene by scene, chapter by chapter breakdown, character motivation teased out and then simplistic assemblage.
What writers get better at doing is doing the above less and less obviously in a mass of structured tasks and prompts and instead doing it in their heads—-generally because you followed simple structures—Chapters, Layers, Index cards, Layering.
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Kyle Phoenix is a teacher, certified adult educator, sexologist, sex coach and sexuality educator with over two decades of intensive experience. He studied at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, New York University, and Columbia University. He has worked, consulted and taught individuals and focused professional developments for the CDC, Department of Education, Gay Men's Health Crisis, New York City Department of Health, non-profits, Fortune 500 companies and unions. He began his career facilitating on-campus workshops addressing a wide range of sexuality and sexual health issues and then moved on to teaching at universities, non-profits, private groups and clients, hosting The Kyle Phoenix Show on television and multiple online webinars, including YouTube and Sclipo and writing extensively through his blog, Special Reports, articles and other print and E books in the Kyle Phoenix Series on relationships, finance, education, spirituality and culture. He lives in New York with his family.
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