Writing is easy; plotting is hard

When I know where I'm going with a story, I find it relatively easy to write all the way through to the destination. It's figuring out the route - in other words, plotting the story - that's difficult. Been having some problems with that this weekend.

I finished another chunk of Project SG a few days ago, and while I was fairly pleased that I'd managed to tweak it from my original outline to include an erotic scene*, as a result it left me just ever-so-slightly off course from the original plotline. And you know how lost you can get when you meant to take that left turn at Alberquerque.

While I knew where I was supposed to go with the story next, something bothered me about that direction - and it stopped me writing. Unfortunately I couldn't put my finger on just what was bothering me for most of this weekend, until last night I figured it out: after reviewing the plot outline for the next section of the story, I realised it was just plain lame.

Which meant, I knew, that I was going to have to re-plot a large chunk of what I'd had down for absolutely ages. Which also meant, I knew, hours staring into space trying to come up with plausible - but preferably erotic - ideas.

You see, I have quite high standards for anything I write, and believe it or not that includes fiction that's pretty much solely designed to get you off. I have several criteria I like to fulfil whenever I'm writing:

1. The plot has to make sense. If (in the case of a masking story) it's nonsensical and just a bunch of sex scenes in a row, it's just not going to have that much power and it's going to be boring to write.
2. Character motivations have to be believable. I ask myself the question "Yes, but why are they doing that?" an awful lot. If I can't answer it then I have to keep asking it until I can come up with a good reason. (Sometimes coming up with that good reason takes years. Sometimes it never happens.)
3. The story has to maintain internal plausibility. Most of the time what I write can generously be called 'science fiction' but with a few elements aside, I write as close as I can to the real world. So things have consequences and generally make sense. I ask you to accept one unbelievable thing (or several that are related to each other) but everything else has to make sense in that universe.
   

Doing all these things, while writing a plot that makes sense and having erotic stuff that isn't just spliced into the main narrative like bad movie editing... is actually kinda tough. Poor me.

One thing that I'm constantly reminded of while plotting is that stories that involve deception and disguise are just hard to write. (Why? You're dealing with multiple points of view all the time; you're constantly referring to people in different ways; you always have to keep the reader in mind, to make sure they're not confused - or that they are confused... I could go on.) In fact I have some things plotted or half-plotted but unwritten yet, like Project TNG, because the plot is so complex that I end up tied in knots, trying to figure out how to actually resolve the damn thing. (This is when I call on external opinions, which usually jumpstarts the process.)

Complex plotting was partially what I was dealing with last night, but what I was really looking for as I sat in my 'writing chair' for something like five hours was the magic idea. Which sometimes comes immediately, and sometimes comes after five hours. Eventually it did come ("... I get her to come back and help out! Of course!") but it took a loooong time. Hence my thoughts about how plotting is hard... writing is easy.

So writers, the lessons from today, in summary, and using some more bullets...

• Plotting any story is hard
• Plotting an erotic story (where the eroticism comes out of the situations and characters) is harder
  
• Plotting a masking story is harder than plotting a 'normal' story...
  
• Ergo, plotting an erotic masking story is the hardest bloody thing of all!

So good luck. I look forward to reading what you come up with.

* Erotic, of course, in terms of our specific, masking fetish. I don't let you down.