My first revision letter was not exactly what I had expected. I had thought a revision letter would tell me exactly what things to change on exactly which pages. Instead, it was full of general comments like, "You have a secondary character that you refer to starting mid-way through the book, and he shows up in person near the end. Could you remove him?" Um, yeah. If I delete that entire subplot, I guess I could. But how in the world could I do that? It would impact the entire manuscript if I took that character out! I just sat in my office staring at my computer and feeling totally overwhelmed about how I was going to revise *an entire book*. After about two weeks of sheer panic, I thought that what I really needed to do was to separate one plot line from another (as much as anyone can really do this!) and start fixing the problems scene by scene. So, the first thing I did was to go through TRUE NORTH, listing each scene on a spreadsheet. That way, I was able to focus on revising a single scene, not the entire book.

This method worked so well for me that I continue to use it, oftentimes while I'm writing the book--even though I am not typically one to outline ahead of time. Because other writers have taken the time to let me know how much my method has helped them, I've organized my thoughts and the "how-to" so I can share it with others. The following workshop outlines all the details about both using a spreadsheet, Word table, or even index cards to organize your story structure, and also explains the Plot Steps I use to make sure I'm not writing the crisis scene in the middle of the book, when it should come near the end. To help illustrate the plot steps, I analyze one of the plot lines from Bridget Jones's Diary as an example, so this is also included at the bottom. If you would like a copy of the spreadsheet template I use, please contact me at beverly@beverlybrandt.com.

NUTS AND BOLTS

What is a spreadsheet?

A spreadsheet (Excel or Lotus 1-2-3 are the major spreadsheet programs) is a software tool that enables you to easily isolate each scene in your novel and attach attributes to that scene such as a brief description, chronological order, or purpose. I would have to say that if you've never used a spreadsheet before now, it's probably not time for you to start. But don't worry! You can use the method I describe below on colored index cards, tables in your word processing program, or just pages from a notebook.

Okay, enough of the boring introduction-on to the nuts and bolts!

The basic idea behind this method is that you are going to categorize each scene by what I call "Plot Category" and then sort each plot category by scene order as they appear in your book to see where you might be missing a critical plot element. Since I'm the type of person who learns by doing, I'm going to give you an example out of my first book, TRUE NORTH. I will warn you right now that this is a LOT of work and, as such, I've only used it on my own books. Therefore, you'll be hearing a lot about TN-not because I'm trying to promote my own books, but because I am NOT going to analyze someone else's book . . . even for you!

In the opening scene of TN, my heroine, Claire, is packing for a long-overdue vacation with her fiance. Here is how I laid out this scene (if you're doing it in a spreadsheet or table, the capitalized words would be your column headings):

SCENE NUMBER: 1

DAY: Saturday

PLOT CATEGORY Romance

SCENE DESCRIPTION: Claire packing for vacation

PURPOSE: Sets up that she's a workaholic-packs her phone and laptop

PLOT STEP: 1

The first-and most important-thing to do is to number each scene as it appears in your manuscript. I can't emphasize this enough! If you don't do this, you'll never be able to put it all back together again. So, number each scene as you go through this process.

Next, I added the day the scene occurs because the span of TN was only one week. If I wanted to do in and add scenes or reorganize them, I wanted a quick way to know what happened on which day so I'd be able to make sure it still fit into one week when I was done.

Third, I added the all-important plot category. If you're using colored index cards (or even colored dots like you can get from any office supply store affixed to a sheet of notepaper), I suggest using a different colored card for each plot category. This will make it easy to sort them when you're all done.

Fourth, I gave just a brief description of the scene to remind myself what was happening, and then I defined the purpose of the scene. In several instances, I was hard put to come up with a purpose for the scene. That was how I knew which scenes to delete. If the only purpose you can come up with is to move a character from point A to point B, the scene isn't needed. If the purpose is just to have the character do one thing (like send a fax, as I had in one scene of TN initially), consider combining it with another scene.

Finally, I added a "Plot Step." And, of course, here's where you ask, "What the heck is a plot step?" Let me ask you to bear with me for a minute. I don't want to dump too much information on you at once. So, for now, you can just leave the "Plot Step" blank. We'll come back to it in a minute. I'm going to go ahead and lay out another few scenes from TRUE NORTH just so you can get a feel for how to do this.

SCENE NUMBER: 7

DAY: Saturday

PLOT CATEGORY Mystery-Claire

SCENE DESCRIPTION: Claire in parking lot, waiting for ride to lodge-working

PURPOSE: Shows her ordinary world in terms of work

PLOT STEP: 1

SCENE NUMBER: 13

DAY: Saturday

PLOT CATEGORY Mystery-Claire

SCENE DESCRIPTION: Claire reading e-mail

PURPOSE: Finds out boss's accounts have been assigned to her

PLOT STEP: 2

SCENE NUMBER: 21

DAY: Sunday

PLOT CATEGORY Mystery-Claire

SCENE DESCRIPTION: Robert finds out Claire will be handling boss's accounts

PURPOSE: Sets Robert up as protagonist, foreshadows his determination and

craziness

PLOT STEP: 3

Obviously, these are not in scene order but I want to use the mystery subplot in later discussion, so I used these as examples. When you do this for your book, however, you will want to list each scene as it occurs in the book. So, go ahead and do this now-even if you only have time to do it for the first few scenes in your book.

Again, I'm happy to e-mail the Excel template I use if you contact me at beverly@beverlybrandt.com. If you're using colored index cards, I would suggest that you use difference colors for each plot category-using red for romance, blue for subplot #1, green for subplot #2, pink for subplot #3, etc. so that you can sort them easily when you're all finished.

Okay, so it's a few hours later now and you've entered the above information for every scene in your book into your spreadsheet or index cards or whatever, right? Now, the real fun begins! It's time to sort your scenes by plot category, and within plot category by scene number. In this way, you'll have all the "Romance" scenes together, in the order they appear in your book; all the "Subplot 1" scenes together, in the order they appear in your book; and so on. In this way, you will be able to isolate each plot line and see how it flows as an entity unto itself.

One thing I found about the secondary character my editor had taken issue with in the aforementioned revision letter was that the problem with the secondary mystery plot line I had worked into the book didn't start until too late in the book. It was easy to tell this, because out of 88 scenes total in TRUE NORTH, this subplot didn't start until scene #37. By isolating this plot line, I was able to brainstorm things that could happen earlier in the story so it wouldn't just jump into play on page 200. It also allowed me to easily skip to the scenes that had to be fixed based on my changes. All I had to do was to look at all my "Mystery #2" scenes and change them. I didn't have to change the earlier part of the book and then read the ENTIRE ms again to see what later scenes were impacted. If I'd had to do that for just one comment, think of how many times I'd have ended up reading TN before I fixed everything my editor mentioned!

So, now let's take a look at the "Mystery-Claire" subplot that I was beginning to outline above. In the first scene of that subplot, I have my intrepid heroine sitting in the parking lot of an airport, waiting for a ride to the luxurious lodge that she's supposed to be staying at with her fiance. She missed the first van, and has an hour to kill before her ride shows up. So, being the workaholic she is, she sits down on the warm pavement and fires up her cell phone to start leaving voicemail messages to her assistant. As I mentioned in the "Purpose" field above, this is Claire's ordinary  world in terms of her work life. She never misses an opportunity to work-not even on her so-called vacation. This is where those "Plot Steps" that I mentioned earlier come in to play. You all thought I was going to have one glass of wine and forget about these, didn't you? No way! What the plot steps do is to help you determine if you've organized the scenes of each plot category (whether it be the romance or another plot line) in the most effective manner.

Throughout my writing "career" (such as it is), I've taken dozens of writing courses and read hundreds of How To books on writing. Two of the best things I've ever done, however, were to attend plotting workshops given by our own Alicia Rasley and the incomparable Jennifer Crusie. I devised what I call my "Twelve-Step Plotting Method" mostly from the plotting tips I learned from these two intelligent women. I am no plotting guru, so I won't even try to explain WHY these steps are important, but I will tell you that I have analyzed quite a few commercially successful movies and books since I made my plot notes, and almost without fail, the stories told follow this pattern.

So, here they are:

PLOTTING--THE TWELVE-STEP METHOD

1. Ordinary world-set up what life is like before the story begins; give reader only what she needs to know (what's going to change)

2. Inciting incident-get one of the major plot lines moving

3. External conflict begins to rise-life is thrown off course, raise the

stakes

4. Intensify conflict-troubles accrue because of the protagonist's actions in response to the antagonist. The protagonist appears to be making the right choices, but it just causes more problems for the antagonist, who then has to act in response, forcing #5.

5. Protagonist engages-have to give her a reason to do something (motivation)

6. Antagonist bites back-this forces the protagonist to take action, the antagonist is ACTIVELY working against the protagonist

7. Reversal (optional)-everything a character believed before changes 180 degrees

8. Point of no return-event, action or decision where the protagonist commits 100%, life as the protagonist knew it is over and things will never be the same.

9. Crisis-the worst that can happen does; bring in the internal conflict to make it the worst thing that could happen to your character. This is where it seems the protagonist is going to be conquered either emotionally or physically. S/he begins to think "maybe I am beaten"

10. Dark moment-emotional reaction to the crisis; giving up shouldn't seem like the coward's way out but a rational choice, but of course s/he won't do that

11. Climax-what happens after the h/h make their decision based on the dark moment (as much as you can, make crisis & climax happen in a BIG way -- make it public and not just in their minds. The dark moment is internal, the crisis and climax shouldn't be.) The protagonist appeared to be beaten, but continues on against all odds. The protagonist should come into direct, physical contact with the antagonist in this scene to make it more satisfying to the reader. The protagonist could not have won out against the antagonist when the story began, but what s/he's learned along the way gives her the tools to win out.

12. Resolution-show world restored to order. Should be triumphant; resolves interactive conflict between h/h and shows internal conflict has truly been resolved for all time; show the change your story has wrought in both the setting and in the protagonist. Shouldn't just be "I love you", "I love you, too."

For the scene with Claire sitting in the parking lot working on her vacation, this fell into plot step #1. For the next scene in that plot category (Mystery-Claire), Claire finds out that she is being assigned all of her boss's accounts to handle as he's been admitted to the hospital for emergency surgery. This is plot step #2-the inciting incident. Claire may not know it yet, but her boss is instrumental in an embezzlement scheme.

With his accounts now assigned to her, she's going to come under the watchful eyes of her boss's partners, which happens in scene #21. This is plot step #3-the stakes are raised (in the readers' minds, not Claire's yet) because I introduce the antagonist and let readers know that this guy has a vested interest in Claire remaining in the dark. And so on, throughout this plot category.

I will tell you right now that this is not how TN was originally laid out. In my original ms, I started the Mystery-Claire plot category with plot step #1 and then flew to plot step #5 (the protagonist engages). I didn't notice this "spike" in pacing until I used this revision method. Once I identified the problem, I was able to add  some scenes between #7 and #56 (yes, you read this correctly-I had one Mystery-Claire scene in Chapter 1 and didn't have another until Chapter 15!) that ratcheted the conflict up gradually instead of just having it happen-BOOM!-after chapters of nothing.

Next, I'll give some common feedback you might have received from an editor or critique partner and show you how the spreadsheet revision method might help you identify what's really going on.

COMMON FEEDBACK COMMENTS

Comment: Your pacing seems flat here.

Solution: First, look at the purpose you've listed for that particular scene. Is it compelling? Is something unexpected or deeply revealing happening in the scene, or is a "driving and thinking" scene? Not that all "driving and thinking" scenes are flat, but if something really different isn't happening, maybe you could think of a new way to convey the information.

Next, look at the plot step number you've assigned to the scene. Is it the same as the last scene and/or next scene in this plot category? If so, you might want to find a way to increase the stakes. It's perfectly okay to have more than one of the same numbered plot steps (3 #5's, for example). You just need to make the first one mild, the next one medium, and the third one HOT. Otherwise, it ends up being sort of ho-hum.

Comment: It's like-Bam!-all of a sudden, people are dying. (Okay, I'll confess, this one came from my agent regarding my third book!)

Solution: Do you start with plot step #1 and go right to #9? (You think I would have learned, wouldn't you?!) Having someone die right away in your book is not wrong. But if this is the WORST event that your protagonist is going to face in the entire book, you might not want it to happen right away unless you have a damn good reason for doing so.

Now, you could say that you're writing romantic suspense and you WANT people to start dying right away. Okay, that's fine by me! I'm not saying that people dying are always going to be plot step #9 (the crisis). If you're writing romantic suspense, that first murder or rape or whatever is probably going to be plot step #2 (the inciting incident). This is going to be the event that will set your protagonist in motion toward solving the crime. In my book (ROOM SERVICE, 5/03), however, the murder was the first event of sabotage by my antagonist and the events got weaker from there. FYI, this is NOT the correct way to ratchet up the tension in your book! So, I took out the murder and made the first step in the sabotage something more mild-something the protagonist had to respond to (thus raising the stakes for my antagonist, who had to then do something even worse to try to get the protagonist to stop, etc., etc.).

Comment: Whatever happened to so-and-so?

Solution: Look at your plot steps. Did they go from #1 through #8 and then end? If so, you need to have a resolution. ONE WORD OF WARNING: not all plot categories will go through all 12 steps. If they did, you'd have a book the size of WAR AND PEACE, which worked fine for Tolstoy but not work so well for you. In a minor subplot, you may only have a few plot steps. But you really do need to have some sort of resolution to each plotline that you introduce, no matter how minor. For TRUE NORTH, I have a kid that Claire meets on the plane on the way to her vacation. The little boy ends up staying at the same lodge as she does and he stars in some scenes, but I realized during revisions that I never closed the circle on Claire's interaction with him. So, I added a scene that I felt brought that "relationship" to a conclusion.

PLOT STEPS EXAMPLE--BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY

Someone asked if I would expand on the plot steps I use, so I watched Bridget Jones's Diary and assigned plot steps to one of the plot lines just to give some examples of the steps (as I saw them) in something you could see for yourself. This is just my own analysis of the movie, mind you. But I think this movie lent itself very well to this analysis. Just for fun, you might want to watch the movie again and plot out the romance between Mark Darcy and Bridget. I think you'll find it follows the plot steps fairly closely, too. If you do this, you may notice that some scenes fall into more than one plot line. When this happens, I do one of two things: 1) try to figure out which plot line it impacts the most and categorize it accordingly, or, 2) copy the line twice and assign one line to plot category A and the other to plot category B. Anyway, here's my take on the plot steps for the internal growth of Bridget Jones.

Character Growth-Bridget Jones

1. Ordinary World

"It all began on New Year's Day in my 32nd year of being single. Once again, I found myself, alone, going to my mother's annual turkey curry buffet."

This is Bridget's ordinary world-her life as it is when the story begins. In these two sentences, you find out exactly what the problem is. Bridget is tired of being single. You use the ordinary world scene to show the "before" picture of your protagonist's life. Keep in mind that this is not supposed to be an entire day of following your heroine around, showing the reader what a boring job she has or anything. It's just a fraction of a moment where you shine the spotlight on the problem that is going to be solved by the time you write "The End" on that last page.

2. Inciting Incident

Bridget meets Mark Darcy, who her mother is trying to fix her up with, and they do not immediately hit it off (to put it mildly). Bridget overhears Mark insulting her to his mother, and she is devastated. That night, she goes home and writes in her diary that this is the year that she resolves to drink less, smoke less, and will stop fantasizing about her boss, who is the wrong sort of man altogether.

The inciting incident is that instant in time when everything begins to change for your character. In a mystery, this might be the scene where the protagonist discovers the dead body that's stuffed in the closet. In the romance, it's typically the first meet.

3. External Conflict Begins to Rise

Bridget starts flirting outrageously with her boss, played by Hugh Grant (for the life of me, I can't remember his character's name right now!). This goes against the vow she had just made to herself to start leading a different life. In this plot line (Bridget's character growth) the "antagonist" is her own attraction to her current lifestyle; the drinking, the smoking, the attraction to bad boy Hugh. By continuing down this path, she is driving herself further away from what would make her happy-being in a healthy relationship with someone who can love her for herself.

4. Intensify Conflict

Hugh asks Bridget out but she refuses, knowing full well that she's just taunting him. Before the release party, she spends hours trying to make herself more attractive to Hugh. In so doing, she is just causing more problems for herself.

5. Protagonist Engages

Disaster ensues at the publishing party. Bridget feels like an idiot around all the seemingly intelligent partygoers, and then flubs her introductory speech in a public and humiliating way. Just as Mark Darcy is making a move to comfort her, Hugh scoops in and whisks her off to dinner. Before this event, Bridget and Hugh may never have gotten together. Yes, they were flirting, but Bridget wasn't full committed to going out with him yet. The night of the publishing party, however, Hugh became her knight in shining armor. He comforted her when she was feeling stupid and inadequate. This is her motivation to sleep with Hugh and to start imagining that they can have a life together.

She is now fully committed to the Hugh path-the exact opposite of what she stated were her goals in the beginning of the book.

6. Antagonist Bites Back

Hugh and Bridget go for a weekend in the country and, in the afterglow of lovemaking, Bridget tells Hugh she loves him. I know, you're all groaning by now. Dumb mistake. What she wanted in the beginning-to find someone to love her-is not going to happen here. Her confession to Hugh makes him run back to London to the arms of his American girlfriend (a.k.a. The American Stick Insect), who Bridget discovers in his apartment, naked.

7. Reversal

I didn't see a reversal in Bridget's character growth plot line. I did see a very nice one in the romance between Bridget and Mark Darcy, but that's another discussion!

8. Point of No Return

Because of Hugh's infidelity, Bridget decides to quit her job. She has finally made the decision to stop being a victim. Her exact words are, "I will not be defeated by a bad man and an American stick insect." She throws away her "How To Be The Woman Men Want" self-help books, gets rid of her cigarettes and booze, and moves toward making herself a better person-without a man.

9. Crisis

At her birthday dinner, Mark Darcy shows up and helps her cook dinner for her friends. Things are going swimmingly, when Hugh comes back and tells her that the American stick insect has left him-because she knew that he couldn't get over Bridget. This is the worst thing that can happen to Bridget at this point. She's attracted to Mark, but he's so uptight and she hardly knows him. Hugh is her weak spot and he's offering himself to her. How can she choose?

Editorial note: What follows is perhaps the funniest fight scene I've ever watched between Colin Firth (who plays Mark Darcy) and Hugh Grant. This movie is worth watching for this scene alone, IMO!

10. Dark Moment

At the end of the fight scene, Bridget accuses Mark of having an affair with Hugh's fiancee (a lie that Hugh told her to gain her sympathy the night of the publishing party). Mark walks away, leaving Bridget with Hugh. In a great dark moment, Bridget kneels down next to Hugh on the broken-glass spattered pavement and he says to her, "If I can't make it with you, Bridge, I can't make it with anyone." And Bridget tells him that isn't enough for her anymore. So, knowing that this means her goal of finding a mate is defeated, she makes the right decision and walks away.

11. Climax

Bridget is beaten. She ends up back at her parents' house on New Year's, hanging out in her pajamas while her parents get ready to go the Darcy's house for a party. And that's when her mother tells her that it was Hugh who had the affair with Mark's wife, not the other way around. And Bridget realizes what a mistake she's made. So, she races to the party and tells Mark she likes him-right before his parents announce that Mark is leaving for N.Y. and that they are hoping for an engagement between Mark and one of his co-workers.

Bridget, in usual Bridget-fashion, blurts out, "No," in front of the whole party. She's continuing on against all odds. She now sees what would be right for her and she stands up for herself by telling Mark that she doesn't want him to leave.

12. Resolution

Mark leaves for N.Y., but comes back. Unfortunately, he discovers some unkind things that Bridget wrote in her diary about him and leaves her apartment while she's changing into some sexy underwear. She sees him leave and races out into the snow after him. And, of course, she catches him and he kisses her, and she says, "Hey, nice boys don't kiss like that." And he says, "Yes, they fucking do!"

She just never knew what she was missing by always choosing the bad boys! What I love about this scene (besides Colin Firth at his cutest!) is how it circles back to Bridget's ordinary world, where she's trudging to her parents' house in the snow. In it, she was passively waiting for Mr. Right to come along. In the end, she's racing out after Mr. Right. The lighting is different-the snowy world brighter.

As you can probably tell, I love this movie. I think Helen Fielding did a better job with the screenplay than with the original book (of course, this is just my opinion!), because Bridget has some character growth in the movie that she didn't have in the book itself.

CONCLUSION

So there it is.  All the writing books on my shelves condensed into a few short pages.  Well, not exactly.  But this method *has* helped me to organize my books, analyze  my plots, and control the panic that comes with revisions.  I don't think you can expect much more than that from a simple spreadsheet--even if you ARE a financial analyst like me!

Beverly Brandt

=======================================

TRUE NORTH, St. Martin's Press, Jan. 2002

RECORD TIME, St. Martin's Press, Oct. 2002

ROOM SERVICE, St. Martin's Press, May 2003

Like most writers, I have an entire bookshelf devoted to books about writing.  I have books on dialogue, books on plotting, books on characterization and point of view.  (You didn't know there was an entire book on POV, did you?  Well, there is.  And I own it!) 

These books were all very helpful at learning the basics of the craft, but I never really had anything that put it all together for me in a way that I found useful for writing or revising an entire manuscript.  Fortunately, I was able to muddle through writing my first manuscript without such a tool, but when I got my very first revision letter from St. Martin's Press on my first book, TRUE NORTH, I panicked.

Read the rest of the workshop below!

ADD ANOTHER TOOL TO YOUR WRITERS' TOOLBOX--THE SPREADSHEET!

Presented by Beverly Brandt

INTRODUCTION

Help, My Plot's Drowning! Somebody Throw Me A . . . Spreadsheet?

Beverly Brandt, author of TRUE NORTH and RECORD TIME (St. Martin's Press), shares her amazing revision system.

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