Stella, a young reader, recently wrote to me and asked: “I find it very hard to invent plots for my books. How do you do it?”
Dear Stella, yes, writing a whole book, even thinking about it, can be overwhelming. Sometimes scary. In fact, it is very hard work. And it takes a long time. But when you do it, it gives you a lot of satisfaction.
Just know one crucial fact: Nobody, nobody, nobody begins by having a complete book in their head. It comes together, bit by bit. Over time.
Let me explain by way of a comparison.
Consider a jigsaw puzzle, one that has been put together, so the image, whatever it might be, is complete. That whole image is, shall we say, the full plot. The onlooker (reader) does not focus on the thousand pieces, but the complete picture — the whole book.
How do you get to that point, the full image?
Simply put, you have to make (write) and put a lot of different pieces together to make a whole image.
But what if — when you began — there are no pieces? How do you get the full picture if you don’t even have any pieces?
Are there really no pieces? Hopefully, you do have one vital piece, the idea for the story.
I don’t know how or where you got it (that’s a whole different essay), but you have it in mind, or, shall we say, in hand. Once you set that piece down on the card table (which was where my favorite aunt always did her puzzles), you start to think. Having that one piece gives you a few more ideas — pieces. The location of the story. A particular event in the story. Maybe a character.
Since these are odd pieces, you set them down randomly. They are NOT connected. Not yet.
Then you go back to that original piece, the idea.
You consider it. That piece has, if you will, jagged edges with tiny parts of an image. A bit of design. Some color. Maybe it even has a flat side, an edge. In other words, a beginning.
You consider it. Think about its shape. Its color. The fraction of meaning. What you do next is design and make (write) a piece that fits to that first piece. Slot them together.
Once you do that, the original piece has grown bigger, which means the image is bigger. More defined. Has a clearer shape. That enables you to think of another piece, and then another. Bit by bit, you keep fitting new pieces together. As you add pieces, the picture becomes bigger, clearer. A whole image begins to take shape.
But when you design the next piece — a handsome piece — it does NOT quite fit. So you go back to one of your older pieces and change it so you can fit in that new piece. That changes the color, design, and shape of everything. You may have to go back and recolor other pieces so as to shift the image slightly, until everything fits together.
You go on in just this way, shaping pieces (writing) to fit what you have already put down, even as you reshape the whole puzzle to accommodate all your new pieces.
Remember those extra pieces you had when you first began? The location of the story. A particular event in the story. Maybe a character. Now is the time to attach them to the other pieces. Of course, nothing quite fits.
You may need to reshape (rewrite) ALL the pieces. Lots of work.
But as you do this, the picture gets bigger and bigger. Yes, it is not quite what you had in mind at the beginning. So what? Not only does the evolving picture (plot) look good, but it is even more interesting than your original idea.
Indeed, piece number 239 is so interesting, it begs you to reshape ALL the earlier pieces so it can fit together.
One of the key functions of all these changes, all this reshaping, is that it is done in such a way that the person who looks at the whole image never sees the parts — much less the parts you changed — but only the whole image.
Let me give you an example of how this works when I’m writing. Just today, I reached a point in a story I am writing where I realized a minor character could be used in a major way. I therefore went back and rewrote the story so she could play a more impactful role in the story.
I suppose there are writers who have the whole story in mind before they set down one word. A fine writer friend of mine once told me she never began a story until she had the very last sentence in mind. While I’m sure that was true, even then, she did a whole lot of rewriting before her work was done.
I repeat how I began: Nobody, nobody, nobody has a complete book in their heads. It comes together, bit by bit. Over time. Sometimes a long time.
Stella, I do hope this helps with your book plotting. Never forget: piece by piece.
Avi
1 thought on “Writing Jigsaw Puzzles”
Avi, you are a gifted teacher and writer. Thank you! Edie Pagliasotti